A note by the author of "The Fugitive Game"
and "The Watchman",
Jonathan Littman



Hackers and the dilemmas they pose fascinate me.

Are they high-tech bandits or Robin Hoods?

Do they threaten privacy or challenge authority and the notion of governmental control?

And will the current Internet crackdown make their kind extinct?


My first major hacker story was the "ShockWave Rider, the saga of Robert Morris", the creator of the Internet worm. Originally published in PC Computing, this story of an NSA code breaker's son won the 1990 Computer Press Award for best feature and was widely re-published. In 1993, I wrote "The Last Hacker"  for the Los Angeles Times Sunday magazine; the colorful story of a hacker who rigged radio contests to win Porsches and wiretapped by computer. "The Last Hacker"  earned me a movie option and a book contract. The book is called "The Watchman"  and like "The Fugitive Game"  is published by Little Brown. My first book,"Once Upon A Time In ComputerLand"   (Simon & Schuster, 1990) chronicled the rise and fall of personal computer billionaire, Bill Millard.

I got my start in journalism writing for some of the first PC magazines in the early 1980's. I did stints at both PC Week and Mac Week magazines as a reporter and editor. In the early 1990's I wrote some investigative pieces that had nothing to do with high-tech. Redwood Summer, my 1990 California Magazine cover piece, was an inside look at the leaders of Earth First, the radical environmental group. My 1991 expose of Indian gambling and a series of unsolved murders at the Cabazon reservation were featured in four front page San Francisco Chronicle articles. I was asked to testify before Congress, and on October 21, 1991, I spoke before the Employment and Housing Subcommittee of the Committee on Government Operations. The series was nominated by the Chronicle for a Pulitzer.

My work has also appeared in Forbes, The Village Voice, the San Francisco Examiner and Upside. A native of San Francisco, I graduated from the University of California at Berkeley with a B.A. in Rhetoric in 1982. After graduation I took courses in computer programming and technical writing. My first professional writing assignment in 1983 was a software manual.

I enjoy surfing, golf, cross country skiing, roller blading, hiking, cooking and growing tomatoes. I speak Spanish, and a little Italian and Portuguese.


Jonathan Littman
Mill Valley, California, U.S.A.
jlittman@well.com

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