I have just finished reading a cyberfiction novel Rice Tea by Julien McArdle. The novel offers a fictional account of a group of college students engaged in a series of innocent computer and phone pranks. During one of their pranks they come across an evil bot herder who, once discovered, decides to frame innocent kids for infecting thousands of computers. With all odds against them, the innocent hackers group together to track down the black hat hacker. Does the plot sound familiar? Of course it does! It's the plot from the much loved and hated movie Hackers.

There are so many similarities that on the first read you could make a mistake of dismissing this novel as just an adaptation of a major motion picture. To the contrary, Rice Tea does what the movie failed to do for the technical audience and what other cyberfiction works like Stealing the Network series failed for the non-technical audience: It covers technical topics accurately, while keeping details at a level where they do not overpower the main plot.

The work itself is interesting since it is a living project. http://www.ricetea.ca/ lists several release batches. With that in mind, I hope the author will take the following into consideration when releasing the next batch:

• Exactly what type of attack was performed to intercept black hat's ssh session. If it was Man in the Middle, I feel that it should be stated as such to be consistent with other attack definitions.

• The antagonist appears to be dumbed down and stereotypical. I feel that it would make the plot a bit more interesting if his character was developed beyond a Hentai watching, messy, energy drink gulping evildoer. Also, it would be more exciting if it was more of a challenge to track him down.

As a bonus, Rice Tea offers a few timeless lessons for hackers:

• If you are going to do something illegal, don't do it from your home.
• Lock you computers, when you leave.
• Use disk encryption and bios passwords.
• Stay quiet and ask for a lawyer.

Should you spend an afternoon reading Rice Tea? Yes, absolutely! As for the similarities with the movie Hackers, consider this novel as what Hackers should have been in the first place. Bravo to the author and looking forward to future editions. You can download or purchase the novel at http://www.ricetea.ca/.