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Once upon a time, there were two boys. Though apart in age, they both attended Lakeside High School north of San Francisco when they reached their teens. Both boys distinguished themselves at school and after. The older one, Bill Gates, grew to create the Microsoft empire. The younger, Po Bronson, wrote a wry take on Silicon Valley and all the greedy Gates wannabes with his satire, The First $20 Million Is Always the Hardest.
The First $20 Million pits the jaded head of a Silicon Valley research center against a bright-eyed newcomer who risks everything in a start-up company. Bronson's novel is peppered with techno-speak -- ironmen, the infinite loop, and a lot of industry asides. But even if you don't know how to switch on a PC, you'll be pulled into the book as the David and Goliath story for the '90s unfolds.
"People go after the American Dream but end up getting the American Story," by which he means corporate corruption. "Big money will knock your head off," promises Bronson, 32. "It comes down to people with resentment and greed and fear winning out over those with ideals." Sort of like one of Cinderella's ugly step-sisters jamming her own feet into the glass slipper, walking off with Prince Charming, and keeping Cinderella around to wipe up the scuff marks on the floor. That's the happy ending for the '90s.
The First $20 Million's protagonist Andy Casper starts out as a code tester at La Honda Research Center, a prestigious idea mill where tomorrow's technology is created and tested today. La Honda appears to be a noncorporate think tank which respects its work force, a Generation Xer's dream come true. "What young people in America wanted more than anything else, in 1995, was a place to go during the day where their brain wasn't wasted," Bronson writes.
Loaded with ideals, Andy knows his big break is coming. And why not? Francis Benoit is why not. The brains behind La Honda, Francis is a genius ironman, a coder with the right stuff. But despite the illusion of success, both Francis and La Honda have been ruined by the machinations of big business and the intrusion of big bucks.
Andy must choose between becoming Francis's political pawn or leaving with his code team to compete against La Honda -- a hard choice. "For every kid at La Honda there were three at Stanford willing to take his place."
Bronson, a Stanford alum, knows of what he speaks. "College prepares you for college," he says. "My first job was defending Pacific Gas and Electric's nuclear reactor construction costs."
Preparing to defend itself against a lawsuit, PG&E hired a number of young hopefuls like Bronson and set them to work at the most mind-numbing, spirit-sapping tasks. All the construction costs had already been calculated by computer, but Bronson and a roomful of others crosschecked pages and pages of figures "in a windowless room for four, four and a half months, ten to 12 hours a day, six days a week. There I was sitting in the back row, wearing a blue wool suit. My goal was if I did well, I got to move to the front row. Kafkaesque. When I left school, I cried and cried for six months."
What saved Bronson is what saves Andy Casper and his team in Bronson's new novel -- the promise of breaking out and doing better. While still totting up figures in the back row at PG&E, the author founded a greeting card company. "I sold stock to the other people who worked in the room. We raised like $20,000. I started managing my sales force from the phones at the back of the room. I'd hit bottom but this irrepressible creative spirit sort of rescued me."
It's either his first-hand experience with it or his wry humor, but Bronson's portrayal of bucking the system seems pretty appealing, particularly for a whole American subculture chained to their desks. In fact, he worries the audience he's trying to reach -- "people in these high tech firms" -- will be too busy to read his book.
Bronson, who lives in San Francisco, does more than create novels with pretty images about beating out the corporate baddies. He does it for a living, as chairman of Consortium Books, the national distributor for fine independent presses. Why, when he could be in a cushy office working for a megaconglomerate publisher? Sometimes Bronson must wonder, too. "You live in fear that chains are going to think they don't need these books. They're taking a big risk on us and I appreciate that. But independent authors and publishers, despite the longer and longer odds, keep coming up with new book ideas. People still take a crack at it and these things have a huge effect."
Bronson may have always cheered for the underdog, but he wasn't always a writer. He went from being a high school math whiz to studying art and economics at Stanford and didn't begin reading novels until he was 24. He's making up for lost time. "Sinclair Lewis, Upton Sinclair, Mark Twain, Tom Wolfe, Joe Heller . . . some of our biggest, greatest writers remind me it's OK to write about big things." But the author insists on hands-on understanding about his subject, whatever its size. "I wouldn't write about murder unless I'd done it or been witness to it."
For his new book, Bronson, a feature writer for Wired, spent two years in Silicon Valley and invested in some start-up companies. Experience is how he is able to convey the tech-heads' pervasive bluster and bravado which doesn't quite cover their underlying nervousness. Engineers "live in such uncertainty. You could get your butt kicked by a competitor you don't even know exists. You work hard for tomorrow but you're afraid to come out looking stupid. These people want to be right above all else."
He explored the world of high finance bond tradesmen for his first novel Bombardiers -- turf from Bonfire of the Vanities, which Bronson never finished reading. He sees the value of novels set in the workplace. "So many of us have tried in the narrow pipe of our work and we're frustrated or we succeed and that's the drama of contemporary life. People say real life isn't being lived in big office buildings, but real life goes on everywhere."
Happily ever after isn't guaranteed, not in Silicon Valley, not in publishing. Boy doesn't always get girl. Underdog is defeated by the machinations of big business more often than the other way around. That doesn't mean dreams aren't worth pursuing. Bronson believes the entrepreneurial spirit is still alive and well in America. He dedicates The First $20 Million to those "who remind us that the human creative spirit is irrepressible." Every now and again, Bronson reminds us, the good guys really win.
©1997, ProMotion, inc.