2017 mystery. Dale Whitehead's company has sent him to the BSD North
convention, which isn't a good match for his ADD or anxieties. But
when someone drops dead on stage, he seems to be the only person to
have thought of murder.
I was reminded of Bimbos of the Death Sun: like that book, this
uses an outsider at a convention (there an SF and fantasy one) as a
way of showing the reader what it's like. But where McCrumb ended up
describing weirdoes and losers, Lucas does actually contribute code
and time to BSD. Still, the
intended audience is clearly also outsiders, and basic things get
explained for the newbie who hasn't been frightened off by the title.
But things sit oddly sideways. Whitehead has a plan to insert code into
the "CoreBSD" kernel and other software that'll let him take over any
machine running the full set, and we're repeatedly told how many
machines this is… but nobody ever mentions Linux, which in 2017 would
be a much more tempting target if one just wanted numbers… which seems
to be all he does want.
Also we're expected to sympathise with him. And all his ADD-related
anxieties. He has medication which helps, but he forgets to take it,
and doesn't make any effort to use any of the well-known tricks that
could help with that. It gets a bit dull and repetitive, especially
when nobody else seems to have similar problems even though they are
similarly socially incompetent; and if Whitehead were unperceptive
enough simply not to notice all that, which is plausible, he shouldn't
be noticing all the things he does.
This feels like a book written by someone who's read a lot of classic
murder mysteries, but who doesn't feel them; so he's copying the
forms and they more or less work because they're good forms, but they
don't fit together properly. The hardest part of this sort of thing to
bring off is the resolution, and sure enough that's the bit that falls
down most.
(Has this book been brewing for a while? Were large projects still
using Subversion in 2017?)
It's all right, I suppose, but I was expecting more.