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Softwar
Brenton T., Howson M., Holt, Rinehart & Winston, Austin, TX, 1986. Type: Book (9789780030049989)
Date Reviewed: Oct 1 1987

Softwar is a “novel” about using computer programs to fight political wars between the US and the USSR. There are several very flat characters moving through the explanations of the political crises, badly written Ada code, and propaganda for the greatness of French computer science, but these do not hold the “novel” together very well. The male protagonist is supposed to be a full professor of computer science at MIT by the age of 26. His specialty? Debugging. Our MIT man, with the unlikely name of Brendan Barnes, is handsome beyond any reasonable bounds. His female graduate students fight over who will get into his bed first, but in the opening pages he has taken up boxing] He is socially adept enough to be at Boston society gatherings, and then to be a CIA undercover man who is chosen for meeting foreign diplomats in Paris. He is also the wise man à la Robert Heinlein. There are several more of these Heinlein wise guys who present endless expositions to a nodding colleague. The author is at least aware that he is giving us a dose, when he has Mrs. Barnes reply, “Tell us, then, O Socrates, how all this is to come about?” But he should have remembered that this sort of “dialogue” was boring in Plato too.

The female protagonist is equally incredible. Yulya Voronkov is a brilliant and beautiful high official of Soviet computer research. She was once one of Barnes’s students and his mistress for the year she got a (masters?) degree at MIT. She had such control over her study and computer time that she got herself and a not-so-bright exchange student through all the homework, wrote papers for both, and still had sufficient time for her social life, including having an illegitimate daughter with Barnes. Because she is a model of Soviet womanhood and scientific prowess, she is chosen by Andropov as a newspaper and television personality to represent the new computerization of the USSR. The only character who begins to have more than two dimensions is Yulya’s right-hand man, who is quickly removed from the scene.

Since the characters are so flat, one must put importance on all of the “facts” in this “novel.” (I keep using “novel” in quotes because propaganda without character development does not fit my definition of the genre.) The streets in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the marvels of Ada and the Craig1 [sic] computer, and the “software bomb” take on ridiculous importance, and therefore small errors in these “facts” become painful nuisances. Some of the errors are probably translation errors--one must have sympathy for translator Mark Howson, who must have torn his hair out looking for computer jargon for the imaginary parts of this book, since he has otherwise created rather readable prose.

Terms such as “hardwired” for hard-coded, and “routing controller” for network control program are not really terrible, but noticeably not in perfect “computerese.” The computing is also rather flawed. No MIT man above sophomore-level would fall for these tricks. The first software bomb is the checking of a pair of values, one of place, the second of pressure. When the barometric pressure of St. Thomas (Virgin Islands) reaches 1,029 millibars, the Russian computer begins printing gibberish, and continues to do so until a barometric pressure of St. Thomas is 1,028. Both 1,028 and 1,029 millibars are forbidden values for St. Thomas to report without CIA approval. The problem is detected by the Russian data center by running a program to see which statements are executed only once or never. The impression is that the machine has been keeping a tally of commands by some performance measurement tool, but it is probably a trace program. One can imagine many reasons why the solution might not be found easily by the Russians, and why the MIT/CIA man could have foreseen that even a Russian would catch on quickly. The second software bomb, which might be a CIA or a KGB plot, is even sillier.

The philosophical and propagandistic intrusions are the least forgiveable. The authors seem to believe that children working with computers will develop multidirectional minds and therefore be much smarter than their parents. One must believe that the authors have more read about Ada and APL than actually used them. But while children may be malleable, the assumption is that this brilliant MIT graduate, because she is Russian, must use Western computer programs rather than develop her own (Russians can never catch up because they are just too backward.) Ada is wonderful because it is French. (Wait until the author discovers that Prolog and the old 360 principles of operation manual are also French.)

The book is also full of political detail and sociological philosophy (with references to the pre-Socratics). Although this stuff appears more believable and tolerable, it would be interesting to see the comments of a political scientist, sociologist, or classicist (any of whom would probably believe the computing sermons).

Despite the fact that this book was written by a so-called computer scientist, it could just as well be classed with all the cowboy-opera-science fiction: Read once on a boring flight from Utah, consider how to patch the programs, and then deposit in a Chicago recycling bin.

Reviewer:  D. Patterson Review #: CR110841
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