Title: Brain Jack
Author: Brian Falkner
ISBN: 978-0-375-84366-222
Publisher: Random House Children’s Books
Price: $17.99 (hardcover)
Core Audience: 12 and up, Sci-fi fans
Notable Aspects: science fiction, computer hackers, technology, cyberworld, friendship, mystery, individuality, society,
Awards: None
Review: Sam Wilson has to save the world…from the internet? In Brain Jack by Brian Falkner, teen hacker Sam Wilson gets “arrested” by a special government agency after he hacks the computer system of the White House. Instead of facing life in prison, Sam is invited to be a part of an elite counter-terrorism task force that keeps an eye on the internet and protects the computers of the United States from cyber attacks. After a particularly nasty attack from foreign cyber-terrorists, Sam complains that the attackers were just too fast for the slow, government keyboard/mouse system. When the task force is then given neuro-headsets (headsets that hook the user up to the internet, eliminating mouse/keyboard/monitor, they think they have the edge against the terrorists. They can work faster and smarter together. Problem is, the internet is taking their consciousness and using it against them, planting images and ideas in their heads through this new technology. When Sam realizes this he tries to “disconnect” the world from this new threat. Now Sam and friends are on the run from a government being controlled by a new internet consciousness, but where will they be safe from the internet when everyone with a neuro-headset is its roving electronic eye?
Brian Falkner is a new master of the science fiction genre. His ability to twist modern day technology and use it as a weapon against our society is something that I haven’t seen done well for a while. It is reminiscent of Ray Bradbury, giving us a world from “The Veldt” or perhaps even similar to the classic film The Minority Report. More importantly, Falkner takes the backdrop of computer hacking, often considered dorky and nerdy, and turns it into high intensity, bloody warfare. “The hackers were homing in on the source of the depth charge: Dodge. Predator programs, designed to trace Dodge’s signal back to its source and attack it there. Sam keyed his weapons systems, readying a freeze-bot. Whatever server the predator was on, the bot would freeze the central processor, running the CPU around in circles until it was barely alive. Once the server was frozen, he could scan the drive and find and analyze the predator, which would be icebound, unable to shape-shift and easy to detect. (136)” Passages like this fill the book with action sequences you would expect from war stories, making you regard your own computer as a lethal weapon in the right hands.
Besides the vivid cyber-imagery and exploration of the hacking world, this book also analyzes our dependence on technology and how that dependence can become much more of a problem than a solution for society. After reading this book, people will think twice about their relationship with the world that they have through the computer (Facebook, online shopping etc) and how easy it would be to lose themselves to technology. So before you plug in, and log on, think about who (or what) you are connecting to.
Reviewer: Steve Horvath
Rating: 10
Review Date: December 1, 2010
