S.A.’s place in the SF Universe: Cyberterror

R.J. Pineiro finds yet another way to blow up San Antonio.

Call me sick, but I’ll pick up pretty much any book where San Antonio is blown off the face of the map.

I think I may be guided by the same kind of ass-backward civic pride that keeps Tokyo residents flocking to Godzilla movies: I like seeing the familiar disrupted and I recognize that it’s all just make believe.

The latest installment of “S.A.’s place in the SF Universe” involves just such a novel — and boy, does it do a doosie on the Alamo City. I’m talking about R.J. Pineiro’s 2004 technothriller “Cyberterror” (Tor Books).

In the opening pages of “Cyberterror,” the enigmatic terrorist Kulzak messes with the computer controls to San Antonio’s natural gas lines, triggering explosions that kill thousands, likely tens of thousands, of people. A dream team of U.S. intelligence pros spend the rest of the book tracking down Kulzak before he can reenact the cyberattack on an even more massive scale.

The characters are roughly sketched cliches and there’s nothing particularly deep here, but “Cyberterror” is a fun, brisk read. There’s also enough focus on hacking, viruses and cool gadgets to appeal both to readers of thrillers and sf. Pineiro, an Austin-based computer engineer, has built a decent second career churning out thrillers with similar themes — “Spyware,” “Firewall” and “Y2K” among them.

While “Cyberterror” isn’t exactly high art, the book does put Pineiro in good company alongside JOE MCKINNEY, who’s destroyed San Antonio twice (once with zombies and another time with a plague) and WHITLEY STRIEBER who’s destroyed it once in a nuclear war.

Bring on the destruction.