The Bug
I read a galley of The Bug, thanks to Sumana, and on Wednesday I went with Will to hear Ellen Ullman read from it at City Lights.
In answering questions, she revealed that the bug described in the book was a real bug in a real system, that it was a bug she herself had encountered as a programmer.
I said "Ethan Levin's name is very phonetically similar to yours -- it would be a good soundex match."
(This turns out not to be clearly right -- I ran them both through soundex and they didn't look as alike as I'd thought.)
But Ellen Ullman went on to say that Ethan Levin's character is based on her, and many of the character's experiences are based on her own.
