Book details of 'Deadline Y2K'

Title	Deadline Y2K
Author(s)	Mark Joseph
ISBN	0312202024
Language	English
Published	February 1999
Publisher	St. Martin's Press

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Reviewer amazon.com wrote:
They're heeeere. Spawn of the ungodly amount of hype surrounding the dread millennium bug, Y2K thrillers have been sneaking onto bookshelves for months now. Deadline Y2K comes a little late to the game, but if you still haven't acquainted yourself with the new genre on the block, this gripping, well-researched read is a fine place to start. The book's central plot device may strain credulity--a band of six good-guy hackers called the Midnight Club spends the late '90s secretly preparing to save the entire New York City infrastructure from millennial disaster. However, the story line makes a nice vehicle for getting readers up to speed on Y2K issues without slowing down the action, and it gives them a likeable, multicultural cast of characters to root for. The main attraction is, of course, the main event: the tick-tocking countdown from the early morning of December 31, 1999, to the fateful midnight hour. It's no spoiler to tell you that all hell eventually breaks loose, but Y2K skeptics may find themselves surprised at how convincing Joseph's tightly paced and vividly rendered worst-case scenario feels. As disaster creeps around the globe, knocking out power grids and national economies one time zone at a time, Manhattan watches the approach via an increasingly spotty world communications network, while mounting revelry, rioting, and religious hysteria mingle surreally in the streets. It's enough to give even diehard doubters a goosebump or two.
Reviewer Rob Slade wrote:
First of all, I have to say that after the halfway (or maybe two thirds) point, I really got into this book. The action is tense, interesting, and well thought out. The geeks save the day, even outclevering the semi-evil capitalist. That said, I'll go back to the opening I originally intended to use for this review: The Bad News is that Joseph figures we're all gonna die, or a reasonable facsimile thereof. The Good News is that Joseph gets so much else wrong that, based on the fact that he predicts disaster, we'll probably have a fairly easy time of it. The author has a deep, profound, and abiding lack of understanding of Y2K. The one concept he does seem to understand is that the most serious Y2K problems arise from the interconnected nature of modern systems, and the fact that small problems, added, multiply themselves. This is good, and is used to good effect at times in the story. The list of negative accomplishments is rather longer. Lets start with stereotypes. We have magic bullet Y2K fixing software. We have the traditional, mythical salami scam. We have the hygienically challenged genius hacker. (Who starts out as a completely irresponsible flake, and suddenly transforms into a dedicated, managerial, recruiting, social worker.) We have the multi-millionaire tycoon having his bagel every morning and shooting the breeze with the boys from the old 'hood. (This is the same guy who alienates his wife and kid by never having time for them.) Then there are specific technical errors. The credit card companies hit the Y2K wall in 1997 because of expiration dates, and therefore have generally dealt with the issue. There will not be a sudden collapse of the credit card system in the hours just before midnight, December 31, 1999. (In fact, a large number of failures in the book happen in the last few hours of 1999, rather than months or years before, or slightly after.) The failures of old GPS (Global Positioning System) terminals that will happen in August of 1999 have a very vague and conceptual relation to Y2K in that the problem results from a "number of weeks" field that is limited to ten bits. It has nothing to do with a sudden change of format. And I have no idea why you need to calculate dates in order to tell the difference between O positive and O negative blood. Then there are the more general mistakes. One platform definitely does not fit all: it is highly unlikely that a single IBM mainframe could accommodate all the control programs from a power utility, civic infrastructures, telecommunications companies, and transit authorities. (Nobody snuck a VAX or a UNIX box into the mix anywhere? Besides, I understand that the New York subway still has drivers. But you could check with Bombardier ...) It is also unlikely that a single mainframe could handle the processing load required to run all of them concurrently. (We will ignore, for the moment, the likelihood of a small band of geeks being able to fulfill all the checking that large corporations were unable to do. *And* get it to run right the first time they do a smoke test ...) There is no reason that someone supplying utility software would have any need to access full bank data records. Yes, there is a T-4, and, yes, it is bigger than a T-1 or T-3. But almost nobody uses that designation: it just isn't that useful in discussing the bandwidth bundles that are provided. And I don't care what von Neumann said, a data file, even a very large data file, is *not* the same as code. Yes, if someone was careless, a very large data file could possibly overrun its bounds and crash a system, but there would be no difference between a store completely restocking and a store starting up for the first time, now would there be? Joseph's dialogue is readable, although not particularly great. His characterizations could use some work. At one point (page 166) someone goes from being "amused and thrilled" to being ready to "die of anxiety" in the space of one sentence, with nothing happening in the interim. Entertaining, yes, but only after you get through the annoying bits at the beginning. copyright Robert M. Slade, 1999
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Book description:

On New Year's Eve 1999, a chain reaction of computer malfunctions turns what was to be a global gala into a catastrophe. When computers begin to fail along the international dateline, the infection moves westward, causing massive power failures, train and airplane wrecks, and general havoc. As the "Millennium Bug" passes hour by hour through each time zone, it moves inexorably toward the epicenter of the global economy, New York, and the thousands of computers that control the world's monetary systems. The Midnight Club, a group of cyberpunks led by Michael "Doc" Downs, has the solution--but they also have an adversary: energetic venture Capitalist Donald Copeland, who has designs on using his technological prowess to "capitalize" on the impending disaster. Around 10:30 a.m. on December 31, a Safeway in New York is hit by the Bug, sent all the way from Guam. All systems freeze, and what begins as a simple malfunction snowballs into looting and rioting. Pandemonium reigns on the streets of Manhattan. As the day progresses, the blaze of fear increases to the point of insanity. In the style of Michael Crichton and Stephen Coonts, Mark Joseph has created a techno-thriller that is sure to touch a nerve in everyone as the millennium draws closer.