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About the Author:
Thomas L. Clancy, the so called master of techno-military thrillers, was born on the 12th of April 1947 in Baltimore, Maryland / USA. He was educated at the Loyola College in Baltimore. Then he worked as an insurance broker.
In college he dreamed of writing novels. In 1984 this dream came true and he got his first novel published, namely "The Hunt for Red October", which was a great success.
Other also well-known works followed, e.g. "Red Storm Rising" (1986), "Cardinal of the Kremlin" (1988), "Debt of Honor" (1994) and "Rainbow Six" (1998). Almost each of his books has been a number one best-seller.
Clancy has also worked with other authors, e.g. with Steve Pieczenik to create the mini-series "OP-Centre" in 1994.
The novel "Net Force - Hidden Agendas" is also part of a series created by Clancy and Pieczenik - it was published in 1999.
Three of his novels, namely "The Hunt for Red October", "Patriot Games" and "Clear and present Danger", have been made into quite successful movies.
Important characters: - Alexander Michaels: Commander of FBI's elite Net Force unit
- Thomas Hughes: Chief of Staff of US Senator White
- Platt: Hughes' assistant
- John Howard: Colonel
- different programmers
Contents:
The story "Net Force - Hidden Agendas" is set in the year 2010 in different cities all over the world. Virtual Reality is the most important thing then and so there is an organisation, which has to look for safety in the internet - Net Force.
Everything starts with an explosion of a bomb build by a teenager, who got these information from the net. This fact is not good because it makes Net Force somehow unreliable.
Later Thomas Hughes and his assistant Platt are talking with each other about something going on. Their plan is to meet the President of Guinea - Bissau because Hughes wants to buy the country. So the both of them start several attacks to the internet to irritate Net Force so that they are not able to find out what is really going on. The first attack is that there is a list published of American spies all over the world, which is a catastrophe. But Net Force is able to fix it rather quickly.
The second attack is that they organised a plutonium - transport via virtual reality and Net Force needs quite a lot of time to find that out. The third big strike against Net Force is when an organisation named "Frihedsakse" appears and crashes the US Internet Bank System, but fortunately they are able to fix it again by finding out that this organisation does not exist and by working all night and day.
In the meantime Hughes is in Guinea - Bissau because of the negotiations with the President and Platt tries to do his own thing by "blackmailing" Hughes because he wants to get more money.
It takes Net Force quite a long time to find out what is really going on, but then they do not lose any second and try everything to catch the both of them, which they manage in the end pretty "well" - Platt is dead and Hughes is imprisoned.
The novel contains also two lovestories and other interpersonal relations inside the Net Force agency - Michaels falls in love with one of his programmers Toni Fiorella, Lieutenant Joanna Winthorp gets together with Sergeant Julio Fernandez, the son of John Howard experiences his first love and so on.
Interpretation:
The novel "Net Force - Hidden Agendas" is divided into two parts and in forty chapters altogether. It is told in an auctorial way - the narrator knows everything and also characterises the persons, which causes a neutral point of view for the reader.
The period of time is approximately one month and there are many time-lapses and slow-motions used and mostly it is told in a chronological order.
The setting changes really often because the programmers of Net Force have to find clues all over the world (in virtual reality) and there are so many persons involved that the places are on nearly every continent.
The language Clancy uses is very colloquial with many abbreviations so that it appears as some kind of "ghetto-slang" on the contrary to his other books where he never or hardly uses colloquial language.
It is kind of difficult to interpret the novel, but I think it can also be seen as a utopia: It is set in the future, but that alone does not mean that it has to be a utopia. On the one hand it describes rather good aspects of the future, e.g. that there are still "real" people with real feelings and necessities. Although there are so many possibilities given in the virtual reality, people know they are human beings and that the computer world is not real. But they learned how to live with a virtual reality and it is okay with them - it became daily life like it is daily life nowadays to have a TV or a computer with an internet access.
People in eight years are able to change places and times like opinions or underwear - everything is possible. You can go foxhunting in Ireland and then ice-fishing in Siberia and things like that.
On the other hand there are also negative aspects described in the novel: It becomes very easy to strike someone by using the internet. Mainly these things happen by hackers, who try to change things on a hard disc or something else, and of course it is also very easy for terrorists to ruin something very important - economy, secret service things and so on. If you have got access to every kind of computer system, you have power, the power to change things, to ruin lives or even a whole country and there is even the possibility to start a war via virtual reality because one cannot have control about every thing that is happening.
Statement:
I do not really know what to think about this novel. Of course, it is interesting and gripping on the one hand, but on the other hand I cannot imagine such stuff happening in eight years. It is also very difficult to imagine to go wherever you like to go in virtual reality - in one moment you are in a wild west town at the end of the 19th century, the next second you find yourself on a beach in Hawaii. It seems so impossible to me, but maybe one day it will become true.
As in most of Clancy's novels the real story starts about 100 to 150 pages before the end, the rest is just introduction and it can get a little bit boring to read for a really long time only stuff about a computer or how the internet works, but you have to read it because there are details, which are important for the rest of the story.
But what I liked better in this novel is that there is not that much technical stuff as in the other ones I have read with a big question mark on my face. So I could follow better and had a little idea what was going on there.
What I also like was that there were some humorous or sarcastic statements from the characters which was easing and relaxing.
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