Cyberspace Cowboy

Cybersurfers #2

by M. Gilden

After a teenager finally tracks down a fellow net hacker, she realizes that he is hiding from gangsters and that she has unintentionally revealed his identity to them.

144 pages, Paperback

First published September 12, 1995

Reviews

[Ben · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a product of it's time, so more of a history lesson in computer tech than anything else. Weirdly the text sections formatted to look like a computer terminal are actually just more like thoughts/actions of the character when they're using a PC. I'd have preferred a more accurate reproduction so people could see what a text MUD would be like back then. But maybe that would be jarring.

The story is pretty cheesy and ends pretty conveniently, but this is for a young audience so I suppose that makes sense. I think the best part of this book is how different the online landscape was back in the late 90s compared to today. There was so much protection of anonymity and these days you post your life story for everybody to see.

[Woff · Rating 2 out of 5]

“Let’s do some surfing,” he said with a slightly wicked smile, “and see if we can catch us a wave.”
I love a good teens-solving-mysteries/saving-the-world-with-the-power-of-the-INTERNETS novel from the 90s. This one had a terrible plot which made no sense, and terrible characters that read like they’d been written by a man who had never had an actual conversation with a woman in his life. I liked the use of the font Chicago, but it could have done with more dumb retro tech slang.

[Eric Fritz · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fun continuation of the series with some great info about MUDs.