review of
David Bischoff's The Crunch Bunch
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - August 31, 2016

When I bought this I didn't realize it was aimed at teens, I just thought it might be light reading, funny. It IS aimed at teens, that's ok, at least lit aimed at young people isn't generally depressing - once it's aimed at adults it's 'ok' for it to be so morbid & miserable that the reader feels like killing themselves. Like after witnessing a movie by Fassbinder. He DID kill himself. No wonder. This is an Avon Flare novel, apparently Avon's YA (Young Adult) imprint. I reckon in YA novels the characters may kiss but may NOT go any further. It begins:

"Although I've never seen Brandon Torrance smoke any dope, the guy usually acts like he's stoned out of his mind.

"I mean, take the very first time I saw him. We're both tenth-graders at Eisenhower High and we got stuck in the same chorus class together." - p 11

This was published in 1985. Apparently pot-smoking was common enuf by then to be acceptable as something to be referenced in a YA novel - as long as it's not encouraged. Fine.

"I think it was the second week of school that I brought my science fiction book into chorus class. The science fiction book started everything I'm going to tell you about, really." - p 12

Apparently promoting the reading of SF is also ok. After all, this is an SF bk. I think that's kindof interesting. Do you ever think about the possible significance of ingesting plant substances & their synthesized derivatives? Of course, we do it every day. You are what you eat, you are what you get high on. Sometimes I think that when people get high on plants they become plant-like. When they do it too much they become 'vegetables'. Loco Weed (Jimson Weed) is notoriously dangerous for you in that respect. Of course, I'm oversimplifying but I remember taking peyote & finding myself imagining putting down roots & sensing things telepathically. I thought of myself as thinking like peyote.

So what happens to you if you read SciFi? You're probably already a bookworm or you wdn't be reading it in the 1st place. I read an enormous amt of SF & I'm ok.. aren't I? I don't hear any reassuring affirmations people! Maybe that's b/c we're not actually in a conversation here.. altho in SF we cd be - wch is one of the fun things about it.

There's some parent-spoofing here, the POV is sympathetic to the teen character. The mom isn't that different from my own, except that my mom probably doesn't know what "perverse" means:

""William, I can't believe you. You're getting so twisted, so perverse! Where is the nice little boy who used to sing in the youth choir at church? Where is the pleasant little fellow who used to do his chores so uncomplainingly? I realize you're older now and feel it necessary to show us that you're independent. But you're still only fifteen, and I'm still your mother. God Himself and the government give me the right as your mother to oversee your growth, and I honestly just don't like the path your feet are on!"" - p 18

Our hero, the above-harangued Bill, gets sucked into being Brandon's friend b/c Brandon's sister has a good SF collection:

"A whole section of shelf was devoted to old pulps. Above these I saw Keith Laumer novels, Robert Heinlein novels, Anne McCaffrey novels. A saw Piers Anthony books and Isaac Asimov books and Ray Bradbury books. And fantasy! She must have had every fantasy written in the last century. Tolkein. Donaldson. Even the Gormenghast trilogy by Peake." - p 23

Interesting. Of course such a list appeals to me. Are these Bischoff's favorite writers? OR were they his favorite writers when he was a teen? OR are they all published by Avon? That doesn't seem to be the case, at least w/ the ones I have in my personal library by Laumer, Heinlein, Asimov, Tolkein, & Peake. OR all they all considered age-appropriate? Heinlein's a total lech so I have my doubts about him & Peake, well I love his Gormenghast Trilogy & read it while I was in my mid-teens but, contrary to what I wrote above, it's a bit grim (as I remember it). I remember Bradbury as being pretty menacing & grim too.

I like reading bks that feature computers as main frames (Ha ha! Get it?!), uh, as main framing devices, & I like reading ones from the early days of when home computers were becoming available to well-to-do families (not mine!), 1985 in this instance:

"I got up. Kinda dazed. I followed her over. "Bulletin board?" I muttered.

""Yeah. We can just hook old Apollo here to bigger outside computers where other programmers will be able to see that we need help. We connect it through a modem."

""Modem?"

""Yeah." She tapped a strange-looking box. "A modulator-demodulator. Digital audible, analog signals, and all that. You can link up computers vis telephone lines with them."" - p 33

My how things have changed in the last 31 yrs. I wonder if the-youth-of-today (in richer countries) wd find this so prehistoric as to be annoying. Let no child be w/o personal GPS coordinates!

This was written in the Reagan era, a time when any pretense of intellect in a president was apparently no longer a requirement for the job. The mom continues to represent the Reagan era values (except that she knows funny words like "capitalism" wch my mom wdn't've):

""Well, well, well," my father said. "Talk about coincidences! There's an article in the paper today about the fact that the president is helping to introduce a bill into Congress that will cut appropriations to radio-telescopes and the space program."

""High time," my mother said. "Why throw all our money into outer space when we should spend it spreading Christianity and capitalism throughout the world."

""What?" I cried.

""Yes, indeedy! Your man Doctor Amos Hagar is even quoted." Dad began to read. " 'I suppose it's just as well. I'd have to explain to extraterrestrial life why the richest country on Earth elected a B-movie actor to its highest office.' " My father shook his head." - p 39

The teens conceive of a way around this dilemma - complete w/ philosophical justification:

"You've heard the question: If a tree falls in the middle of a forest, but there is no one there to hear it, does it make a sound?

"Similarly, if Brandon and Courtney and Bill don't get caught trying to fake a message from outer space by crunching the computer of their friendly local radio-telescope, is it a crime?" - p 53

Yes, this involves hacking, always a favorite subject of mine:

"Nope. This business wasn't going to be easy, no matter how simple that War Games movie makes it look." - p 55

That got me to wondering: what was the 1st computer hacking movie? I noted that "Mr. Bischoff wrote the novelization of the movie War Games" (p 143) & that might be the earliest one I remember, maybe the 1st one I saw. SO, I looked it up online.

Wikipedia provides this list:

Hacking

* The Italian Job (1969)
* Sneakers (1992)
* Hackers (1995)
* The Net (1995)
* Pirates of Silicon Valley (1999)
* Takedown (2000)
* The Score (2001)
* Swordfish (2001)
* Foolproof (2003)
* The Italian Job (2003)
* Firewall (2006)
* Die Hard 4: Live Free or Die Hard (2007)
* Untraceable (2008)
* The Social Network (2010)
* We Are Legion (2012)
* The Fifth Estate (2013)
* Algorithm: The Hacker Movie (2014)
* The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz (2014)
* Open Windows (2014)
* Who Am I – No System Is Safe (2014)
* Mr. Robot (2015)
* Blackhat (2015)

Motion picture

* Tron (1982)
* WarGames (1983)
o IMSAI 8080
* Prime Risk (1985)
* Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)
* Defense Play (1989)
o IBM Personal Computer XT
* Sneakers (1992)
* Hackers (1995)
* The Net (1995)
* Under Siege 2: Dark Territory (1995)
* Masterminds (1997)
* 23 (1998)
* Entrapment (1999)
* The Thirteenth Floor (1999)
* Takedown (2000)
* Swordfish (2001)
* What's the Worst That Could Happen? (2001)
* Code Hunter (2002)
* Bedwin Hacker (2003)
* The Italian Job (2003)
* The Incredibles (2004)
* Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004)
* Firewall (2006)
* The Net 2.0 (2006)
* Live Free or Die Hard (2007)
* WALL-E (2008)
* WarGames: The Dead Code (2008)
* Robot & Frank (2012)
* Disconnect (2013)
* Algorithm - The Hacker Movie (2014)
* Chappie (2015)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_about_computers#Motion_picture

It's not really clear to me why War Games us under "Motion Pictures" instead of "Hacking" since both categories are about motion pictures that involve hacking. On TechWorm's "11 Best Hacking Movies That You Should Watch Right Now" website there's this list:

#1 Algorithm (2014)
#2 WarGames (1983)
#3 Hackers (1995)
#4 The Matrix (1999)
#5 Takedown (2000)
#6 The Italian Job (2003)
#7 Live free or die hard (2007)
#8 Blackhat (2015)
#9 Untraceable (2008)
#10 Eagle Eye (2008)
#11 Fifth Estate (2013)

- http://www.techworm.net/2016/03/10-best-hacking-movies-watch-right-now.html

At any rate, it seems that the 1969 version of The Italian Job is the earliest of the lot so now I'm curious about that one. I can always use more entertaining explication:

"Astronomers have been using radio-telescopes seriously for only a little over twenty years, but the instruments have proven marvelously useful. Optical telescopes can only pick up so much. The ideal lens-and-mirror-type getup would be out in space or on the moon or anywhere so that it doesn't have to contend with the Earth's atmosphere. Thanks to the ionosphere and dust and junk, lots of starlight doesn't make it through. But radio waves do. In fact, a lot of starlight can't get through the huge clouds of interstellar dust hanging through most parts of the universe. But radio waves do." - p 61

Interesting, right? What if it were to be discovered that there's something even better than radio waves to monitor?

As part of Bill's distraction routine during one part of the hack, he evokes conceptual ceiling art:

""Uh, just a moment, Mr. Martinez," I said, desperately grabbing his sleeve. "Is there any way I can get some of this graph paper with these markings and take it home with me?"

"He thought for a moment. "Not these particular sections. Maybe I can scrounge up some for you in the trash somewhere, though."

""That would be really great. A whole bunch, too. I think it might be a kick to uh, well, put some of this stuff on my ceiling."

""Your ceiling?"

""Oh, yeah. Ceiling art is all the rage at school. And besides, it's so . . . conceptual. Kind of like a paper planetarium. Looking at the radio waves from the stars. Yeah! I like the idea more & more! Just think . . . it will be a great excuse to get girls to come into my bedroom. Come and stare at the stars, I'll say. I'll be absolutely irresistible!"" - p 67

Welp, that's a perfect excuse for a tangent. Way back somewhere between 1978 & 1981 I made a present for my girlfriend. It was multiple large sheets of paper with a painted outline of the state of Maryland. These had some sort of backing skeleton w/ a central pivot point. I hung them from the ceiling of her bedroom in such a way so that each one cd spin separately & so that all of them cd be seen at once. I thought it was great! My girlfriend, on the other hand, being of a more portrait-preferring mentality & not liking things that moved very much, didn't like it. As far as I know, she destroyed it. Interestingly, my body of surviving 'art works' wd be at least twice as large if it weren't for the censoring viciousness of my various girlfriends. It's too bad, really, b/c I've made some very nice things that've been destroyed by them. Ahem.

The above cd be taken as a generalization about women. Bischoff's observation below definitely jives w/ my experience:

"So when Bill Keester, the wallpaper kid, starts holding hands in the halls with the cutest junior in school, heads start turning and tongues start wagging. Who was this guy? Isn't Courtney Torrance the girl big Morgue Waggoner has his eye on? How could she ignore one of Ike-o's Psychos and go for a klutz like that? Maybe he's not such a klutz. And you know, come to think of it, he is kind of cute.

"Suddenly, all the girls were looking at me. And they were talking to me, too! Like "Hi, Bill" and "I'm giving a party, Bill. You and Courtney have got to come." All this from females who wouldn't give me the time of day before. And from the way they looked at me I knew they wouldn't have minded at all if I came to those parties alone." - p 81

Still, women, like humans, can be seen as entertainment w/ the right degree of detachment:

"The big alien shook its ugly, wrinkled face and made a sighing sound.

"Norwrack said, "Please understand, we have nothing against human beings. Actually my ally and I, stationed here in this Solar System as we are, find ourselves rather fond of you. You creatures are so much more entertaining than the last intelligent life we surveyed."

""Rock people!" X said. "Didn't move around too much."" - p 117 ( )