Enjoyed

An interesting read, weaving between topics of operating system histories and philosophies.  I am about a year into my Linux journey and I think this mostly motivational for me to continue that, but also made me think what would have been different if had succeeded in my experiments to get Linux running at home in the basement during my high school years.  I remember burned Mandrake Linux CDs and also Ubuntu ones that I got in the mail for free.

I chose this book knowing that it was old.  My thoughts were that it would be interesting to see how things used to be, and also that it would focus more on what nowadays seem to be basic principles.  I can report success of both points.

The book overall had a nice balance of hacking stories, security principles, protocol analysis, and functional recommendations.

I did not realize how old this was when I started reading it.  I was thinking early 90s for some reason--off by 20+ years!  So my initial thoughts of mediocre quality of framing of technology and processes were similarly off and it is really a great book in that regard.

I am not a fan of the report/write-up structure, with the frequent wry sidebars about how the scientists were missing things.  One or two of them did nice foreshadowing but that is all I will concede.

I recently read Project Hail Mary and I wonder if some concepts with regards to the organisms in that were inspired by this book.  Or maybe it is kind of a genre and other examples exist.

First book of a three-person book club that I am in.  The "He might have a kid of his own at home" message of the opening sequence really set the tone for the rest of the book--it is a message of positivity and being thankful.

I found myself a bit bored in the middle of the book.  It was repetitive but also firmly established some kind of Americana vibe, so fine overall.

A book of many very short chapters with positive messages.  Willie gives lots of uncontroversial advice, mostly along the lines of be kind, let others be, enjoy life, etc.  A chapter about biodiesel was a bit out of touch when it comes to practicality.

While this is not a full biography or anything, it does discuss a lot of his past.  So now I know at least a little history about Willie.

A pretty interesting history of the early days of science fiction, centered around the magazine Astounding.  I would have rated it fairly boring but as I became more familiar with the characters it became more engaging.  Admittedly, some of the most interesting was when it got into the forming days of dianetics and Scientology.  I say "admittedly" because I regard these as trash topics and don't really think that it is worthwhile to spend time learning about them, but it seems that I the same inner urges as most do to rubber-neck that wreck.

Reading this did make me want to go back and read some of the discussed works.  I have already read the main three parts of Asimov's Foundation stuff, and Heinlein's Starship Troopers.  I should probably go for a couple of the latter's other Hugo winners.  Also it made me want to see what the old pulp magazines were like.  The Internet Archive does have some that I might read through, but I think I am almost as interested in the physical details as in the contents.  So I may pick up a year of them sometime for $50 or so on eBay.  It would also just be interesting to have some old stuff like that.

A well written time travel story, and again a good balance of cutting edge science topped of with some made-up things.

Great for the price I paid, which is free since I signed up for the Kindle Unlimited free trial (and set a calendar reminder to cancel it).  Hey, there are a lot of books that I won't even read for free so this is still a compliment.

Good pacing and very nice mix of real quantum theory with some made up stuff, and an accompanying final "chapter" that tells you exactly what was real and not.  There were some hints at time things in the story which the third book Quantum Time will surely get deeper into.