Headcrash

by Bruce Bethke

Book Overview

Jack Burroughs was a young, brilliant computer programmer working in the shadows of corporate tyranny. That is, until corporate restructuring forced him down the fiber optic road to subterfuge. This is his incredible story--a melange of betrayal, abandonment, impish wit, imaginary sexcapades and a final, desperate attack against the forces of corporate evil.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0446602604
• ISBN13: 9780446602600
• Release Date: January 1995
• Publisher: Aspect
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 4.1" x 6.7"

Customer Reviews

One of my favourite books of all time

How the internet could have been. Even the layout of the book is innovative and a shout out to the web. Genuinely laugh out loud funny. If you love tech, and a good laugh, I cannot recommend this book enough!

HeadCrash Won Me With Humor

In a massive sea of cyberpunk books that take themselves way too seriously, HeadCrash is a shining example of how humor can turn an ordinary novel into a piece of literature that everyone should read. Bruce Bethke has created a book that is truly engaging for the reader. One way he accomplished this is through an interesting plot line with numerous twists that kept me constantly on guard. HeadCrash follows the story of :cybergeek" Jack Burroughs; a.k.a. Pyle; a.k.a. MAX_KOOL. The story starts with Jack going through a management shake up at MDE, Monolithic Diversified Enterprises. Later on, after Jack suddenly finds himself in a sticky situation, the reader watches as Jack uses his cyberspace alter ego, MAX_KOOL, and an embarrassing way to interface with the internet, to do a hack job for a mysterious woman known only as Amber. Saying anymore about the plot would lessen the amazing experience that any reader would have reading this book. The engaging plot and Bethke's outrageously funny style of writing made reading this book a truly positive experience.

A funnier, less complex version of "Snow Crash"

"Headcrash" started out slowly for the first chapter, which was devoted to establishing the nerdy thought processes of the narrator. After that, it kicks into high gear and never lets up.Set in 2005, the plot is kind of a funny version of Neal Stephenson's "Snow Crash" (without the Sumerian mythology) crossed with Jay McInerney's "Bright Lights, Big City," with some doses of William Gibson's "Neuromancer." The narrator works as a tech-nerd at a huge corporate conglomerate, with a horrible boss, gets fired, and is approached to cause some havoc at his former employer's information database.Much of the novel is set in a virtually real Internet -- and for once, an author writing about virtual reality does NOT resort to the "if you die in here, you die in reality" trick.Bethke pays homage along the way to an impressive collection of pop culture: "The Godfather," "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," "Sesame Street," "Brave New World," and "Doom" and other first person shooter games among others. He takes aim at political correctness (there's a law against Ethnic Humor).

Absolutely Brilliant

This book is amazing. It gives an alternative view to what the net COULD be like, and uses humour in the best possible way.

A great send up of cyber-pretentions. Cyberpunks must read.

This is the official notice that cyberpunk isn't really dead, but maybe it should be. An excellent send up of both the oh so cool cyberpredators and their heartless corporrate foes. Dilbertesque management humor meets cyberpunk and neither side wins. Highly recommended.

cherised the time spent within the brief confines the book.

I found this piece simply, delightfully dapper! Rather than wankering around trying to re-invent the wheel of cyber-noir (read: high tech hard boiled hard/soft sci-fi techno mysticism add water have story gumbo), this book introduces a level of cultural and technical extrapolation that simply doesn't occure elsewhere as brilliantly. For example, William Gibson, albeit a genious on an even playing field, gets very fuzzy around the edges on the technical front. That's fine, sure, but when you pick up a book and personally HAVE an understanding of current technology, and additionally, know a bit about how that came to be, "fuzzy" doesn't work. Fingers need to be stuck into the proverbial stigmatas, the deeper the better, and this book delivers all the wonderful techno-babble derived from all the real nick-knacks that are and have been. Bethke has an understanding of the corporate atmosphere rivalling Scott Adams, a verve for banter similar to ol' guru Douglas Adams, a perception of how artificial intelligence might actually play out that envokes Rudy Rucker's works, and an understanding of dual existence (of real geek versus virtual glam). He constructs actions, reprocutions and most of all consiquences as subtle and deep as a Haruki Murakami short story, but also makes a point of tying in all the contrived gimics (while similtaneously satiring) that have made Critin and Speilberg such wealthy men indeed. He scribes rich descriptions of settings and manages to work them into the narrative without destroying the pace (something Bruce Sterling could stand to work on). Bethke unabashedly looks at trends, gender issues, cultures (contrived and otherwise), political correctness, decades worth of ridicule vs. acceptance, Orwellian beurocracy (no one gets "fired" anymore, he he), Artistic derevations, HTML scripting/"hotpoints" (one click to nowhere)/java-esque applets vs. linear text, generational memory, musical persistency, pop/pulp mass media entertainment, coloquialisms (new and old, like quoting Star Wars/Trek without knowing where the utterance origionally came from, or caring), network games on the LAN during business hours, all this and a singing coffee maker, too. There is a lot of little things going on here, snippets of jibe and awareness that the casual tourist might easily pass by. Honestly, as a jaded, cynical reader who makes PC video games for a living, it has been truely refreshing to read a book that was so dead on target about how things are and could easily be, a book that doesn't curb bets or hide away flaws behind mystical shaman-come-author drivel. I can understand why he won his award. Phillip K. Dick had, above all else, a sense of irony. Like Phillip, Max Headroom, Jeff Noon or Neal Stephenson, Bethke has presented a piece that depicts said irony. The delightful surprise here is that Bethke (like a technogeek Hunter S. Thomson or William S. Burroughs) bothers to pull away all the curtains and pull off all the scabs to present all