Neal Stephenson

An Eco-Thriller

Zodiac

Sarah Sammis

Green is the current buzzword. It is the tent that covers everything from organic, saving the environment, renewable energy, alternate fuel sources and so forth. The eco-thriller Zodiac by Neal Stephenson by predates the current fad by twenty years.

Sangaman Taylor works for GEE (Group of Environmental Extremists) (p.7). His goal is to force the big polluters to clean up no matter how unethical the methods. Taylor spends most of his time describing the poisons in the day to day life. They're in the water, in the air, in the soil, in the furniture, the clothing, the food, the computers, and so on and so forth.

The first couple chapters with all the tangents on the inter-play between chemistry, the environment, technology, politics and business were interesting. After a while though all those details get in the way of the actual plot. Take away the techno-babble and there is maybe a hundred pages of plot (out of 308 pages). I wanted more adventure and less lecture.

Jason Skicewicz

Very entertaining book. I actually read this book in one day, and just couldn't put it down. This is an early Stephenson book, and you can definitely see his style developing which matured in Cryptonomicon.

Zodiac An Eco-Thriller

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