My reading is technothriller heavy and has been since I was a teenager. Technothriller is a classification I give to books with plots driven by current or near future technology and that tightly integrate teaching the reader about the technology or its implications into their story lines. Technothrillers have been my go-to genre because books that entertain me while leaving me feeling smarter are my favorite kind. It’s often said that authors write at least their first novels for themselves, and that’s certainly the case with me and the technothrillers I’m writing.
This post is the first in a series that shares the technothrillers that I consider the best in terms of their use of technology in an engaging story. Each post recommends one book with a few comments about why I liked it. Hopefully you see at least one you haven’t read and can add to your reading list. Let me know what technothrillers you’ve enjoyed by posting a comment.
My first recommendation, The Cuckoo’s Egg by Cliff Stoll, actually isn’t fiction, but the plot is so captivating and well-paced that only the best authors craft stories as good. He published it in 1989 and it’s the first-hand account of how he investigated a $0.75 computer usage accounting discrepancy at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where he worked at the time. That small clue opened a detective case that lead him on a 10-month hunt of a complex cyber espionage scheme aimed at the lab’s government projects and eventually led to the arrest of the criminals. The digital trails lead around the world and only someone with Stoll’s persistence and ingenuity could have cracked the case. We’re lucky that he took the time to document it.
The book is over 20 years old so obviously technologically dated, but that doesn’t detract from the entertainment, and the fundamentals of hacking, malware and cybercrime he presents are the same today as they were then. The Cuckoo’s Egg is a required book for technothriller fans.
After you’ve read The Cuckoo’s Egg, be sure to check out this 1989 Booknotes interview with Stoll about his experience.
Email me a receipt at verifying your purchase of my $0.99 short story, Operation Desolation, by August 22 and you could win a signed copy of my new novel Trojan Horse before it’s publicly available for purchase on September 4.
Mark makes the case for how his hit cyberthriller, Zero Day, is likely to be realized in non-fiction form in this 20-minute short version of his popular RSA Conference session:
A few weeks ago I announced the giveaway of signed copies of Zero Day to a random selection of 10 entries from those that emailed me a copy of their receipt for my new book on my Sysinternals troubleshooting tools, The Windows Sysinternals Administrator's Reference. Thanks for all your entries! I'm excited to announce the winners below. Please email your address to me at by September 1 to claim your prize.
Aniv Das
Dave Voeller
John Jewett
John White
Mark Graham
Pieter Wigleven
Richard Ahl
Richard Todd
Stephen Grigg
Tomica Kaniski
If you didn't win, stay tuned for further promotions!
The publisher notified me today that Zero Day is going into its second printing! Thanks everyone for your support and helping to spread the word about the book!
There's been a lot happening in the world of cybersecurity and cyber-terrorism. Here's a summary of some of the key recent headlines from just the last two weeks that relate to Zero Day:
Zero Day has been inducted into the Cybersecurity Canon Zero Day is now part of the collection of books recognized as ones everyone interested in cybersecurity should read: The Cybersecurity Canon
Publisher's Weekly on Rogue Code: “In Russinovich’s well-crafted third Jeff Aiken novel (after 2012′s Trojan Horse), the cyber security specialist must contend with insider trading, long cons, and multimillion-dollar thefts”
.jpg "The Cuckoo's Egg")
My first recommendation, The Cuckoo’s Egg by Cliff Stoll, actually isn’t fiction, but the plot is so captivating and well-paced that only the best authors craft stories as good. He published it in 1989 and it’s the first-hand account of how he investigated a $0.75 computer usage accounting discrepancy at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where he worked at the time. That small clue opened a detective case that lead him on a 10-month hunt of a complex cyber espionage scheme aimed at the lab’s government projects and eventually led to the arrest of the criminals. The digital trails lead around the world and only someone with Stoll’s persistence and ingenuity could have cracked the case. We’re lucky that he took the time to document it.
