Stephen Bury released two books, Interfaceand The Cobweb, in the mid 1990s. They were both political thrillers with a technical edge. It later came out the Stephen Bury was a pen name for science fiction writer Neal Stephenson and J. Fredrick George (and came out later that J Fredrick George was a pen name for academic George Jewsbury who is Stephenson’s uncle). These book are often overlooked in by  Stephenson fans, but are well worth checking out.

Interface is story of William Cozzano, a maverick mid-western Governor and ex-football player, who is extremely popular and a favorite to run for President in the next election. Cozzano has a stroke and begins a strange journey from an experimental neurological facility to the presidential trail. Joining him on this journey are his a med school graduate daughter,his lawyer, a neurologist with a new technology, a media consultant who wants more control over a candidates campaign, an almost homeless widow who has had enough and a shadowy investment network that wants a more stable political environment for their investments.

The book is an interesting look into the intersection of technology and politics. And as we see more and more targeting of ads and issues by candidates based of feedback from media consultants, the issues postulated in this novel will become reality at some point in the future. The interface between brain and computer will happen sometime and I wouldn’t be surprised to see this novel being brought up in the discussions about it.


The Cobweb is set in the run up to (and early part of) the first Iraq war. The main characters are a small town deputy who everyone underestimates,  a CIA analyst who’s in over her head, a biological grad student (and analyst’s brother) who might be in with the wrong crowd, a Diplomat who might be on the wrong side of history, a group of displaced mideastern families and a cameo by President George HW Bush. The war time setting deals with the Iraq-Kuwait war and biological warfare. Some of the politics in the Mideast (as well as grad school politics and inter-office warfare) are brought up as the war intensifies. The threat of biological weapons becomes more real to the sheriff when his wife is deployed to Iraq and he might be the only one who can save her.

The book is a good look at the time frame around the first Iraq War and some of the political and financial battles that brought enemies together and drove friends apart. The reality of war hits home when innocents are put into the line of fire. The Cobweb is more political and less technical than Interface, but is well worth reading.