Ralph’s Reading Background and Favorite Fiction Books

First, as to my bonafides for writing a review. My first job after college was as manager of my father’s book store. I’ve been an avid reader all my life and am very fast. Like most bibliophiles, I’ve read in the tens of thousands of books in my long life and written many reviews. Although I’ve read the classics, and still enjoy the best new ones, and poetry, most of the time I like to read Science Fiction, as I grew up as a kid with that. You might like my web page, Must Read Books on Cybersecurity, which is mostly fiction, such as Mark Russinovich’s novels, Rogue Code (2014), third in his series that stated with Zero Day in 2010 and Trojan Horse in 2012. I especially like the books by Neal Stephenson, including his classic, Cryptonomicon (1999) and his more recent book, Termination Shock (2021). My latest read is Adrian Tchaikvosky‘s new space opera series, The Final Architecture (2023). Before that I read the first two books in the three books anthology, Neo-Cyberpunk (2021), Kindle only, collection of short stories. Honestly, I did not like most of the stories and so skipped the last volume..

Anyway, none of the books I like use a fast, stream of consciousness, hipster punk style. As a kind of analytical person who prepares fastidiously, I read the past winners of the DefCon contests before submitting my entry, OPERATION VERITAS. I noted they were all very youngish, stream of consciousness type stores involving solo outcast hackers. So I knew I my team approach had no chance, which was fine, since it took all the pressure off. I truly enjoyed writing about hackers inventing and fighting with AI. The team approach is my way, ie – e-Discovery Team, so I was not going to write about lone wolf approaches. My style is somewhat old-school, sci-fi conventional. Not the type of wiring to impress DefCon judges. Plus, in retrospect, I tried to have five characters in my short story to set up a team dynamic, which is two or three too many in view of the DefCon story length restrictions. It ended up more like an outline for a movie. Not a winning effort, I agree, so please don’t take my criticisms of the event as sour grapes.

As mentioned, the DefCon writing contest limited you to ascii text alone. No images whatsoever were permitted. This was very unnatural for me, and I suspect others. I think and write in a mutlimodal fashion, incorporating words and visuals. Writing with letters alone is too stifling for my meager fictional writing skills. My final version, not allowed or submitted to DefCon because it was not just text, includes many of my MidJourney illustrations. All the words are my own, without AI. I only used GPT to double-check Word’s grammar and spell check. Although I did use it ChatGPT-4, and Google, for technical background research. My characters did, after all, invent a new type of AI.

Like most of the DefCon 31 stories submitted, my OPERATION VERITAS story was a sci-fi, hacker, cyber, adventure genre involving AI. My particular submission involved a near future dystopia, with daily mass shootings and evil politicians, where a band of brave five hackers create code and devices to save the day. The five heroes prevail after facing many challenges where they create a new type of AI and non-lethal laser firing drones. It culminates with a massive AI battle, ediscovery of evidence of criminal conspiracies by the politician villains. Then there is happy ending with the arrest and convictions of the evil politicians his broadcaster girlfriend. Gun control laws are enacted and the nightmare of mass shootings ends.