Silicon Follies

Thomas Scoville

Simon and Schuster, Aug 22, 2001 - Fiction - 336 pages

Welcome to Silicon Valley -- where fortunes are fast, dating's dysfunctional, and computer geeks rule. Meet Paul Armstrong, a late-twenties computer "consultant" who sits in his cubicle at TeraMemory wondering where it all went horribly wrong.
"Well, I wasn't always a nerd. I started out as a liberal-arts type in college -- though I aggressively concealed this on my resume. Hiring managers don't like it. Non-technical outside interests. Bad sign."

Watch him order a latte from the ofÞce coffee cart and poke at his Chinese lunch special while his longtime pal Steve Hall, hacker extraordinaire, accuses him of selling out to The Man.
"When the money dries up, this place will be just like anywhere else. It was never the place, anyway -- that's what The Man will never understand."

Meet The Man himself: Barry Dominic, the þamboyant, lecherous, millionaire founder of TeraMemory. He insists they're poised to revolutionize networking with a cutting-edge technology, appropriately called WHIP.
"Nobody fucks with Barry Dominic."

That's where Liz Toulouse comes in. A Stanford English Lit grad and TeraMemory marketing associate, she accidentally cc's the entire company a snide e-mail about The Man's bad grammar on her very Þrst day....
"If only I'd had any idea. I'd have stayed in school. I'd have changed majors. Gotten a master's. Anything."

Welcome to Silicon Follies, a hilarious dot.comedy of ambition and disillusionment in a land of luck, loss, and sometimes even love.

Contents

• Adrift Among the Cubicles: 1
• The Disinhibition of Market Leaders: 8
• Hacked in Seattle: 13
• The Claw and the Classifieds: 18
• Addressed for Success: 22
• Large Number Eleven at the Tung Kee Noodle House: 28
• Death by a Thousand Emails: 33
• Psychrist The Semiotic Demolition Derby and Deathmatch 3000: 38
• Liz Faces the Wrath of the Nerd King: 45
• The WHIP comes Down on Paul: 49
• Liz Descends to the Engineers Level: 55
• Why Barry Carries a MIG Stick: 61
• Managing for Total Chaos: 65
• Programming in Vampire Mode: 70
• Where Elite Geeks Meet to Eatand Run: 75
• Looking for a Gal Whos Quick with a Vaporizer: 80
• Wizards with Harvard Degees and 4000 Suits: 86
• The Womens Locker Room GameDecathlon of the Flesh: 91
• No Boundaries for Barrys Libido: 95
• Liz Regroups at the Chateau: 101
• Stalking the Wild Frys Salesperson: 105
• Barrys Announces the Death of the Nerd Maverick: 111
• Zeb Cats Dragons Eyes and the Valleys Gertrude Stein: 115
• The Guru gives a Pep Talk: 120
• The Doom Server Atop the Throne of Infinite Logic: 128
• The Sysadmin vs the World: 134
• Afterglow of the Robotic Inferno: 140
• Fire off the Press Releases Sales Force Start your Engines: 146
• Marketing Mutiny and the Magic love Burrito: 150
• Kikis Salon Des RefuseesNo CyberTalk Please: 154
• Whats an NDA between Friends?: 159
• Barry and the Big Red Bong: 164
• Steve Draws a Bead on the Man: 170
• Candys Comdex Freakout: 174
• Last ChanceSquatters Off Highway 17: 179
• Comdex BurlesqueBarry Preaches to the Choir as Paul DuctTapes the Demos: 184
• CauseAndEffect Breaks Down in the Lab: 188
• Liz and Pauls Dating Game: 198
• Teramemory Stock Catches Fire Productivity Plummets: 202
• Hackers of the world UniteGeeks Plot Palace Coup: 207
• Kikis Cryptic ErrandShady Deals in the Apricot Orchard: 213
• IpoWhered Pauls Office Go?: 219
• Bidding for a Date with the Love CFO on the Ebay of Love: 224
• The Lowly Sysadmin moves One Step closer to Barry: 230
• Liz wins the tugofwar between heart and cubicle: 237
• Four days to ship and the bugs are everywhere: 242
• Hot words as Barry barbecues his board: 247
• The bad newswhip gets whipped by pundits: 251
• Barry dines on candy at fleur de lys: 256
• Barry loses billions over breakfast: 262
• The Contractors Contractormigrant labor on steroids: 268
• Layoffcandy gets taken out with the trash: 273
• Disappearing boxsters mistaken hot tubs and necrophilia in the footlights: 279
• Caterers become cable moguls Barry flies down under: 285
• the rich man and the sea: 290
• Paul flames outLiz and Laurel cash in: 294
• silence at 40minute: 301
• Barrys singularity ship without a captain: 307
• Mixed reactionsconflicting emotions in Barrys wake: 312
• Laurel moves out Paul moves in and a CEO goes UFO: 319

About the author

Thomas Scoville's debut novel, Silicon Follies began as a serial on Salon.com. Scoville's articles have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Village Voice, the San Jose Mercury News, and The Surfer's Journal. He is also the creator of the Silicon Valley Tarot. He lives in Providence.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Silicon Follies
• Author: Thomas Scoville
• Publisher: Simon and Schuster, 2001
• ISBN: 0743419456, 9780743419451
• Length: 336 pages
• Subjects: Computers / General; Computers / Internet / General; Fiction / General