A puzzler from BusinessWeek

[Mikko Keskinen]

On Tue, 23 Jan 1996, Greg Montalbano wrote:

> On Tue, 23 Jan 1996 09:14:17 -0800 you said:
> >
> >The following lines were contained in a review in this week's BusinessWeek
> >of two books about chasing down hacker Kevin Mitnick ("Manhunt on the
> >Info Highway," BusinessWeek, January 29, 1996, p. 12):
> >
> >  Inadvertently, perhaps, both books describe an America worthy of
> >  Thomas Pynchon.  As in that author's _Gravity's Rainbow_, Mitnick
> >  and Shimomura live in a world that's chock-full of brand names,
> >  rife with technology, flooded with electronic signals, and fraught
> >  with paranoia.
> >
> >Huh?  You reckon reviewer John W. Verity has confused GR with, say,
> >_Snow Crash_ or that repellent novel about the mass murderer with
> >the penchant for designer menswear?  Paranoia, sure, but *brand names*?
> >Moxie is about the only brand name I can recall from GR.
> >
> >(Someday, I am going to collect a list of books that have been
> >compared to Pynchon's.  I bet it will surprise just about everybody.)
> >
> >Penny
> I'm willing to bet he's thinking of William Gibson's NEUROMANCER.

Or William Coupland's _Microserfs_, in which, however, paranoia relates to 
the fear of not getting the computer code right.

Mikko