title: The Pinocchio Syndrome: A Novel
author:  David Zeman 
description: Freelance public health reporter Karen Embry stumbles onto the story of her life in this far-fetched political thriller by debut novelist Zeman. The American cruise ship Crescent Queen has been zapped by a nuclear missile in a presumed terrorist attack, and the U.S. government has yet to identify the perpetrators. Soon afterward, people around the world begin to succumb to a mysterious illness that seals them in a zombie-like coma. Doctors and scientists are baffled. Then the disease strikes the vice-president, Dan Everhard, the brains behind the current presidential administration. Without him, the unnamed president, whose popularity has already plummeted since the Crescent incident, is all the more vulnerable to the attacks of Colin Goss, an ultra-right-wing billionaire vying for the presidency. His platform consists of one plank: death to terrorists. Coming to the rescue of a floundering administration is charismatic Maryland senator Michael Campbell ("Michael had a near-perfect body for a man of his age"). Secret Service agent Joseph Kraig ("He liked to immerse himself in the longer Dostoyevski novels, and sometimes even read Shakespeare") rounds out the cast as he investigates the illness and eventually must save Campbell's kidnapped wife. Embry's story about the public health crisis becomes an investigative coup de grace revealing the evil Goss's ultimate goal: "World domination." The plot leaps from one improbable scenario to another, heedless of common sense. The characters barely achieve one dimension, the plot turns are preposterous and the sex scenes, of which there are scores, are laughable: "He would enter her gently and stroke her with himself until her sex was literally aflame." Ouch, that's got to hurt. <br />Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
zlib_text: THE JACOBS PROJECT
  In Search of Pinocchio
  The story that changed the world, told in six vignettes.
  BY
  Samuel J.M. King
  Self published by Samuel J.M. King
  DBA: New Century Books
  "Old school Science Fiction - For the Twenty-first Century"
  
  COPYRIGHT
  THE JACOBS PROJECT
  In Search of Pinocchio
  Copyright © 2013 by Samuel J.M. King
  All rights reserved.
  Editor: Heather Coman
  Cover: Angela Zambrano
  This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is
  entirely coincidental.
  
  For My Son,
  Samuel J.M. King, III
  —Taken from us far too soon
  
  THE JACOBS PROJECT
  In Search of Pinocchio
  "How ridiculous I was as a Marionette! And how happy I am, now that I
  have become a real boy!"
  From The Adventures of Pinocchio
  by Carlo Collodi
  
  I. A Novel Concept
  23 June 2047
  Office of Dr. Irwin C. Jacobs, Chairman
  MIT Cybernetics Dept.
  Irwin Jacobs, renowned cyberneticist, waited impatiently for
  neurologist Tom Wilson's answer. "Well?"
  Tall and impeccably dressed, Wilson shook his head emphati