Signal to Noise
Eric S. Nylund
 The novel follows Jack Potter, a computer cryptographer tenured at the fictional Academe of Pure and Applied Sciences in Santa Sierra, California (a city assembled from the ruins of San Francisco.) The story details Jack's first encounter with an alien calling himself Wheeler who apparently wishes to trade information with humanity. Accompanied (for a while) by "gene witch" Zero al Qaseem and data paleontologist Isabel Mirabeau, Jack establishes a corporation based around one of the technologies he was traded by Wheeler, but soon finds that there may be more to his dealings with the alien than he bargained for. Traitorous alliances, deceitful propaganda, and shady business practices are frequent elements of the novel.