Netspionage by Eddie Thames - Sci Fi - An unstoppable computer virus threatens the world financial markets.  Elite hackers the world over are mysteriously disappearing.  A revolutionary new technology is revealed which the powerful high-tech corporations are determined to have at any cost. Only one person has the key, a mysterious super hacker known only as The Magician who is determined to bring the world to its knees.   107 pages - pdf, format 8)

Read 40+ pages and this is right up my street. i love this kinda story and you obviously know your subject matter. seems well researched. Particularly like the way you're telling the story thru action rather than relying on dialogue, although the dialogue is overly long on too many occasions. if you can trim the dialogue down i think the pace could be stepped up even more which i would improve the overall structure. I'll post again when i've finished

When Bill realises that the super-computer is at the training centre he seems surprised yet when the hackers are on the jet at the end he talks like he knew exactly what was going to happen. Maybe its my ignorance but when he tells Agent Gandy that he's changed the world he's again implying that he was part of the whole plan yet he's ignorant to the plan 40 pages earlier. I understand that you don't want the reader to know that Bill is part of the plan but you can't cheat us by changing tack midstream; either he knows or he doesn't.

How is Marcus able to see and hear EVERYTHING? You explain that he's tampered with Gandy's computer but unless i missed something theres no description of how he's done everybody elses.

Whereas you obviously have a wealth of knowledge regarding computers, IMO people are turned off when confronted with a lot of jargon and it can come across as alienating them because of their lack of knowledge.

IMO the flicker of romance between Bill and Sonja needs elaborating or ditching. At the mo your caught inbetween and it detracts from your story.

Definately need to trim down the dialogue; think the maxim 'half short, twice strong' truly applies to dialogue in screenwriting.

All in all i enjoyed reading Netspionage. Your characters are mostly well defined and the pacing of the story is good. The ending is a little too contrived but i feel you've got a good story that could be great after a couple of rewrites.

Just my opinion but i hope its of use

Thanks for the thoughts. Regarding when Bill became aware of the extent of the plan, his first glimpse was given him via the e-mail in the Hole. If he were not aware why was he preparing for Gandy's visit before Gandy arrived and why would he possibly go with an FBI agent anywhere unless he knew? It became necessary for the Magician to have boots on the ground to ensure his people were handled properly hence Bill's journey.
In the underground where the elite play, there are often relationships that develop between the players. It starts out with respect and as the communication develops each player creates in his or her mind an image of the other, Fantasies develop and soon before either party realizes it feelings creep into cyber-reality. Sonja and Bill had never met and would have never met in all likelihood but the situation I've just described had blossomed.
Once a network is breached by a system cracker he has access to everything within the system. Most computer hardware has built- sound and visual capability. Our government computers are nearly all purchased with these capabilities. It is simply a matter of updating drivers and software. Snag is a neural based artificial intelligence. Once the Hackers established the access to the core security system it was simply a matter of using the parallel processing power of the learning centers computers to monitor and update Snag using thousands of software agents working within the context of the innate services within the system architecture. It's much the same of virus detection software or management tools such as SMS or SMPT. I need to trim the dialogue but I wanted the viewer to have at least a rudimentary understanding of the actual feasibility of the story. Anyway thanks for the comments.

Excellent script. I really enjoyed the read.

I'm not a technical person, so much of the computer stuff was over my head. Maybe it will be more understandable as spoken dialogue on screen.

I wasn't sure what Bill's motivation was for suddenly leaving his life behind and getting on a plane with a bunch of people he didn't know. Maybe this is an indication of how strongly the Hacker Elite feel about their brotherhood but, if this is the case, maybe you could bring that out a little more. It didn't ring true for me in its current form.

The other bit that seemed not to work was the network anchor dropping his pants. Regardless of how much debt he might have had, I doubt he'd destroy his career with behaviour like that.

Thanks for posting the script. Great, great stuff.

Wordartisan,
Thanks for the thoughts. Just to clarify, Bill had no choice but to leave or go to jail. Once he read the e-mail in the hole he knew his life was going to change which is why he was destroying all his files. These hackers are not your norm. They were a group unknowingly pulled together by the Magician. The scenario in the story is based on fact. Many of the elite are taken in custody when the laws of foreign governments do not coincide with those of the US. Many global corporations use this scenario to stop system crackers. Many pay Hackers to do what was delineated in the story while many corporations pay those governments to hold the hackers in custody. A hacker in Russia makes more than a tenured college professor while in China they are just part of the bureaucracy. The newsman's pants were just a symbolic gesture of desperation to show just how credit is destroying many people's lives. The current interest rate credit card companies can charge id 30.99%. Loan sharks on the Southside of Chicago don't charge that much. Anyway thanks for the thoughts.