A Stainless Steel Trio

Exit Strategy, the much-hyped open source novel by columnist and commentator Douglas Rushkoff (Coercion, ecstasy Club), is both a moral allegory and a ""hypertext labyrinth of references and cross-references"" creating a ""community riff on our bizarre age."" It can be as daunting as it sounds: the tale of a modern Joseph who's caught between the opposite worlds of hackers and venture capitalists sometimes nearly gets buried beneath the footnotes added by readers of the novel's online version, who were told to imagine that the novel had been discovered in the 23rd century (""wedgie: an attack meant to cause pain and embarrassment simultaneously,"" writes a helpful contemporary reader to future humans). (Soft Skull, $16 paper 340p ISBN 1-887128-90-5) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.