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Amazon / Goodreads

MY REVIEW

The Trapdoor by Hal Glatzer was originally published in the 80s and I think it would have been a realistic, frightening look at the computer world. I still enjoyed the book and remember those early years of computers and see how this would have people believing it could really happen….because it has.

Hackers put in trapdoors, so they can easily access a forbidden computer system and do what they will.

The Lightning is a hacker and his name is Joe. Of course, he is a nerd. 🙂 Anyone seeing him would recognize that about him. He loved his pocket protector and wore it everywhere, carefully choosing the pens. Even before he ever touched a computer, he loved to tinker with electronics, whether it was his electric train or the family’s television.

He makes his living taking from others, but gets in way over his head. There is a heart stopping moment or two, as his life is put on the line.

The Trapdoor is a great introduction into the world of computer hacking. It took half the book for me to get involved, but I would recommend meeting Joe and seeing what the repercussions are for crossing the line.

Hal Glatzer used his knowledge of computers to take us into his world and I enjoyed visiting it with him.

I voluntarily reviewed a free copy of The Trapdoor by Hal Glatzer.

AMAZON SYNOPSIS

Originally published as a paperback in 1986, The Trapdoor was one of the first novels to be set in the underground digital world of cyber-thievery and online pornography. In the book, a hacker gets into trouble with organized crime, and has to hack his way out. The title refers to a sinister technique for theft; but it also alludes to the risk of falling into one’s own trap!
A forerunner to today’s notorious hackers, such as “Anonymous,” the protagonist of The Trapdoor is Joe (alias “The Lightning”), a techie nerd who lives quietly in a small apartment, surrounded by computers. Secretly stealing money online – as much for the thrill as for the money – is a flirtation with danger to which many of the earliest hackers were addicted. But Joe is drawn into a wider digital underworld until he’s not safe anymore. Suddenly he has enemies. And it’s bad enough when they try to kill him; but it’s worse when they steal his secret hacker identity.
Progress in computer technology was once front-page news. In 1983, TIME magazine – for the first time ever – didn’t name a “Man of the Year.” Instead, the editors named the personal computer “Machine of the Year.” Computer entrepreneurs like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were just getting noticed; and magazines were launched to help people use those new “machines”. At first, noisy modems slowly dialed computers over telephone lines; data storage was limited to mere kilobytes, on easily-damaged floppy disks. But technologies were constantly surging forward, and illegal computing activities surged right along with them.
Readers of The Trapdoor will get a glimpse of that early time, when anything seemed possible, and the shadowy side of high-technology was just coming into view. And readers of a certain age, who were intrigued by computers in the ’80s, will enjoy The Trapdoor as a fond nostalgic trip back in time. So The Trapdoor has now been re-issued in the most up-to-date form for a novel: the e-book.

ABOUT HAL GLATZER

Hal Glatzer wrote his first piece of fiction in elementary school. He submitted The Mysterious Island to his third-grade teacher, who handed it back with this critique: “Great imagination. Terrible handwriting.” Perhaps that is what led, years later, to his embrace of computerized word processing! Visit his WEBSITE to learn more.

Conserving the Radio Spectrum (Sams, 1984). Glatzer was one of the founders of the Computer Press Association, a virtual press club for fellow writers and editors in the field. He served as its vice president, and for six years chaired the committee that created and presented the annual Computer Press Awards for excellence in high-tech journalism.

Glatzer has subsequently had more mystery novels published; but his first was The Trapdoor. “Considering how far information technology has progressed since the early ‘80s,” he says, “I want to give the computer users of today a good idea of what life was like when the computer revolution began, and give people like me, who were there, then, a trip into the past. And the best way to bring that vintage paperback to today’s tech-savvy readers is to turn it into an e-book.”

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