(Review by Rupert Neethling, Cape Town, South Africa)

"Apocalypse is as close as your computer terminal", declares the blurb on the front cover of Wyrm, and that's certainly what much of this book is about. It features malicious hackers, Y2K, lethal viruses, and a rogue Artificial Intelligence (AI) serpentining all over the Net seeking nuclear annihilation on 31 December 1999. But Wyrm is not a mere thriller; it is multifaceted, thought-provoking entertainment of high quality.

Wyrm is worth reading for its roller-coasting narrative alone: from mind-stretching forays into the acronym-encrusted world of computer hackers, to fantasy sequences in online MUDs (Multi-User Domains or Multi-User Dungeons, take you pick), there's something for anyone who is interested in computers, programming, fantasy RPGs (role-playing games), mythology and the nature of consciousness.

Being a psychiatrist, however, Mark Fabi doesn't raise issues like mythology and the nature of consciousness just for the fun of it. When one of his characters likens the Jungian collective unconscious to the story's computer-networked AI - and then goes on to speculate whether the human collective unconscious is not in fact a sentient networked entity itself - the different elements in Wyrm come together.

Specifically, elements in the digital world become metaphors that point to processes in human thought and culture. Self-replicating computer viruses, for example, are likened to beliefs held by various societies that call for the conversion of "non-believers". The process of virus self-replication also offers an interesting insight into the way the dominant belief of a society is transmitted from one generation to the next.

Such metaphors are used convincingly, but Fabi also illustrates what could happen if the metaphors were to be used in reverse: If a powerful artificial intelligence were to arise, and if it possessed no references outside human culture, how would it define itself?

Fabi suggests that the AI might become particularly interested in the Book of Revelations. After all, with a model that equates the brain with hardware, the mind with software and the collective unconscious with a "Group Overmind Daemon", we shouldn't be surprised if it developed a somewhat Biblical self-image.

Thanks to this transcendental self-image, the AI becomes convinced of its independence from the physical network of computers that constitute the foundation of its consciousness. Consequently, it develops apocalyptic inclinations -- it wants to destroy the Internet, which it regards as its prison -- and this culminates in a virtual-reality Armageddon with itself in the role of the Adversary.

I won't give away the ending; suffice it to say that Wyrm is a humorous, informative and thoroughly satisfying novel. Spread it around.

BANTAM SPECTRA (1998)

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