Tuesday, May 13, 2014

The Exorcism of Sathish Kumar, MBA - my novel


My first novel, "The Exorcism of Sathish Kumar, MBA" has been published by Tata Westland publishers. The book came out in ebook format this week. The Print edition will be out next month.

Brief Introduction
-----------------------
The novel is a thriller/fantasy set in Chennai. The hero, Arjun Palani, is an young man, fired thrice from IT companies in a career of four years. He is asked to join a strange team of top managers as the IT company, BSD Technologies, is collapsing. A set of tasks are assigned to him (the first one is to get ganja, btw), while he starts suspecting that a crazy man is held in the top floor of the building. 
The novel takes us through Arjun's adventures, while unravelling a plot by the hedge fund company, PH Capital. It involves drones, Wikileaks, Anonymous India, a dangerous computer worm, sorcery and finally, to top it, a trip across the Vaitharani river to the world of the dead.

Links you can download the ebook from:
Amazon
Flipkart
Google Play

My notes to publicist
----------------------------
The computer worm in the story, named "Blaze" is named after "Flame" an actual worm that infected Iranian computers. Most evidence points to the United States and Israel government as behind Stuxnet and Flame.
Link below is the Wired article on Stuxnet:
"How Digital Detectives Deciphered Stuxnet, the Most Menacing Malware
in History"
http://www.wired.com/2011/07/how-digital-detectives-deciphered-stuxnet/
A normal virus affects computers and steals or destroys data. Stuxnet, on the other hand, tries to control physical machines, such as the huge centrifuges in nuclear reactors. These machines are controlled these days by software instructions. Stuxnet then messes up the instructions and causes them to malfunction. If these grow, then companies can use them against rivals for industrial sabotage. Similarly drones are controlled by an operator far away from the battle field. These are cheap and small - so they can be used by police forces and by companies to spy on a large number of people. The two more weapons not mentioned in the book are pervasive surveillance and fighting robots. Taken together these show a frightening future, which is countered by other technical successes such as the internet and community bonding in this age.