Obviously, it would be impossible for Wolf to work all of those elements through to their conclusions. But imagine what the Tom Wolfe of Bonfire of the Vanities or Radical Chic, or the Michael Lewis of Liar's Poker could do with this material--and the sense of glee they'd bring to the proceedings! Alternately, it also could have been fun (and very much in keeping with Wired's style) to see this book as the sort of mixed media effort that Michael Crichton attempted with his first novel, The Andromeda Strain. You could easily see lots of memos, faxes, emails, notes and documents in a variety of typefaces interspersed to break up the more traditional text. All of these techniques would have been perfect to cover the McLuhan-inspired switched on, hyped up, plugged in tone of Wired the magazine and could have helped turn Wired - A Romance into the book of the year, talked about nationwide.

Instead, two months after its release, it's an anemic number 10,500 on the Amazon hit parade.

Don't get me wrong: this is a good book, and well worth reading, because chances are, if you're reading this on Blogcritics, you remember the Internet frenzy of those years quite well--and probably bought an issue or two of Wired as well. But it could have been a blockbuster.