For this guy,
Millennium Bug
is a thriller

by Ray Hanania, Amoco Torch newspaper

Sometimes, life’s successes result from little more than good timing.

When Joe Massucci first tried to sell a proposal for his new technothriller novel about the Y2K Millennium Bug, New York wasn’t interested.  But good luck and timing were on his side, although he didn’t see it right away.

Massucci was enjoying success with his first published novel, a technothriller called Code:Alpha (Leisure Books, 1997), with a first printing of 70,000 copies.  When his New York editor asked for another novel, he pitched a sequel that would bring the excitement of a high-tech thriller closer to home.  The Millennium Project would show how the ubiquitous computer glitch could be exploited by terrorists to bring down the defenses of the United States and wreck havoc worldwide.

However, back in the spring of 1997, the term “Millennium” was little more than wide-eyed Biblical prophecy.  Few people then were talking about how stray lines of software code would end up costing everyone from small businesses to major corporations billions of dollars just to get their computers to display the year in a complete set of four numbers instead of only the last two.

“Early in ‘97, I was putting together a communication plan for Amoco’s Year 2000 Millennium team,” Massucci recalls.  “The team leaders offered some scary scenarios and explained to me the impact that this computer bug could have on corporate and everyday life all over the world.”

Convinced the Millennium Bug was more than just a simple problem, Massucci sent his editor at Leisure Books a synopsis for a novel about how this computer bug could be exploited to bring the world to its knees.

“Don wasn’t familiar with the Millennium Bug,” Massucci says.  “He shopped the idea around his office asking the staff if they had heard about this computer problem.  Everyone, with the exception of one man, said no.  Even the guy who heard about it brushed it off, saying, ‘It’s no big deal.  You just have to rewrite a few lines of computer code to fix the problem.’”

And that’s when timing and luck fell into place.

At the same time, Newsweek ran a Y2K cover story titled “The Day the World Crashes.”  “The article included great graphics and interviews with experts about what could go wrong,” Massucci says.  “The message was very clear: we must take this threat seriously.”

Massucci sent the magazine to his editor and his agent.  Two weeks later, his agent had a contract from Leisure Books for The Millennium Project that doubled his advance.

A year and a half later the book is now appearing in bookstores everywhere as the world is scrambling to assess the breadth of the problems that a few lines of computer software code will have on everyday life.  Not to mention the real possibility of terrorists taking advantage of our vulnerabilities.

Although we can read the outcome of Massucci’s scenario in The Millennium Project, the world is still uncertain about what will happen on January 1, 2000.  n