User Profile

You may get the impression from the title of the book that this is going to be one of those usual books that has Apple as the center of the early computer universe and yet another story about how the singular genius of Steve Jobs (and maybe Steve Wozniak gets a mention) single handedly created the personal computer industry. You would be 100% wrong. This book is about looking at the birth and early growth of the personal computer market from a different lens, one that doesn't center it around the humble beginnings by some boy tech genius (or geniuses) who self started with nothing more than coffee money in their pocket but saw the foregone conclusion that computers would be everywhere and took a chance. It instead explores the societal, cultural, and financial mileau around which many of these upstarts were growing out of. It explores how the personal computer's supposed inevitability was very much not that. It was a lot of trial and error and effort by lots of people and organizations to capitalize on the socioeconomic anxieties of the time with this new technological savior made ever more practical and real as the technology became more powerful.

Why the title then? First, it's not meant to be an encyclopedia but exploring a through line of a multi-decade birth of an industry. The Apple II's sweet spot was right in the middle of it was a pretty stable platform from 1977 to 1987. In the middle of that period it was the platform with the largest installed software base because of it. Because of some of its technological advances in the early part of the error it was also the early trail blazer in the microcomputer living up more to the vision of what it could be being presented by the industry. So it allowed an insight into the industry and its changes in a unique way. The book is actually only partly about the Apple II. The other part is on the burgeoning software industry of that era as well covering major facets of the industry from the business side (VisiCalc) to home software (Print Shop) to games (Snooper Troopers).

As someone who bought into the bootstrapped hero myth of the early computer industry put out by MSM and pop culture I have long since soured on the notion. Having an exploration of the counter-narrative was refreshing. It was in some places overwrought in how it pointed out privilege points of many of these early computer pioneer's history, many being straight white men who just so happened to have unusual access to very expensive and hard to come by computer resources, but it was a handful of places of style issues not issues with the overall point. The same can be true in their popping the "I'm just doing this to change the world" narrative we are constantly fed with pointing out how this was substantially about making a lot of money as well. It's good to recognize their greenwashing away of the profit motive for what it was but again it was done in some points in a bit heavy handed way. These instances are pretty few and far between though so doesn't detract from the book over all and, again, it is a bit of a stylistic issue not a fallacy of the underlying point.

As someone who has read countless books and articles on computer history much of the history was not new to me at all, neither was the stripping away of the mythology around the titans covered in the book. What I enjoyed even more than the book presenting the counter-narrative in a way approachable to people with more casual interest in the topic was the exploration of the history of programs I never explored before. I never knew about the history of The Print Shop or Snooper Troopers. I never even heard of the latter even. As someone that not only likes history but has had a career in software development and entrepreneurship I love reading project development history and company origin stories, especially when it is a more grounded exploration of it.

Originally I gave this 4 stars because of the implausibility of some of the scifi details, such as the translator symbiont. But reflecting on it, I was like, "that really isn't the point, and it's not any worse than the Babel fish." So, I'm giving this a perfect rating for being smutty romance that actually made me laugh and root for the protagonists to prevail in their conflicts.

MC is a wildlife biologist, out on the savannah, studying meerkats. Suddenly she gets attacked by a lion! But then neon-colored bird-like aliens abduct them both! And then she and the lion (whom she names Toto) make friends and escape from the bird aliens, only to crash land on a planet full of dinosaurs as well as sexy goat-man aliens. The sex is pretty hot, but there's a t-rex chasing them as well as a villain they have to fight. The whole thing is entertaining as hell. I just with that Toto the lion got more air time. His character was hilarious. I would love to read a spinoff novel about his adventures with his sabertooth queen.

Brandon Sanderson is one of my favourite authors, so I didn't even bother reading the back of the book before starting this novel. There I was, on the first page, stunned that I was reading an amnesia story. Red flags were going off; this is one of my most hated tropes. Several hours later, I'm here expressing my disbelief that I actually enjoyed an amnesia story. Apparently this is considered the 'White Room' story style: where the narrator has to figure out who they are along with the reader. Keeping the reader in the dark is the critical difference, and what a difference it is!

In order to avoid spoilers, I'll simply expresss how well done the amnesia story element was. It drove character growth in a meaningful capacity while also avoiding irritating resolution mechanisms. All the downsides of the trope were avoided, and the fragments of the titular Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England guidebook was a clever way to introduce worldbuilding to both narrator and reader. The first-person POV was critical in pulling this off. I liked the main character's personality, as a blend of sarcasm and self-deprecation that was both funny and gave us an underdog we could root for.

Perhaps it was the title of the novel that made me assume everything would be tongue-in-cheek, but the accuracy of the historical fiction in this novel surprised me. It's lucky that I had dived into realistic Arthurian legends recently! The Celtic and Anglo-Saxon culture is really well-represented, and I further appreciate the main character calling out that just because he's from the future, doesn't mean the people of the past are dumber. I loved the representation as culture shock; something that's difficult to write because it requires us to recognition things we didn't realize existed.

The story skips a lot of Sanderson traits though: there's no magic system, it's not set in the Cosmere, and it's not even building up a trilogy! Despite all that, this is a tremendously enjoyable one-shot. It's imaginative, unique, realistic yet funny, and defies easy categorization as I tag it as fantasy, science-fiction, and historical fiction all at once.

Highly Recommended.

I loved this book. At moments, it's a very typical novel, and at others it's as if David Lynch took the wheel. The NYT review says it well:

"“Ah, a nice old-fashioned novel,” the reader thinks, gliding through the opening pages of “Carnality.” The author, Lina Wolff, begins in a conventional close third-person perspective and quickly dispatches with the W questions. Who is the main character? A 45-year-old Swedish writer. What is she doing? Traveling on a writer’s grant. When? Present day, more or less. Where? Madrid. Why? To upend the tedium of her life.

Premise established, we are safely buckled in for the ride, which rumbles along a scenic track for roughly five minutes before a crazed carnival operator assumes the controls and we take off at warp speed through loops, inversions and spins."

I am definitely going to read Wolff's earlier books, especially Bret Easton Ellis and Other Dogs.

And because I'm a sucker for any moment in a book that talks about the torture of writing...

"It occurs to her that everything gets easier when she makes no attempt to write. Her should no longer aches and she no longer has to come up with topics for her columns. Somewhere deep inside her she knows she has never been a good columnist...In any case, she thinks, when you are writing you have to create the situations and the links between them yourself, but when you are living you get them for free. She says this to Mercuro, which is when he says that writing is the kind of occupation that consumes you. You pay for it with your soul, and one fine day your soul has been used up." (134-135)

This is one of those times that I actually appreciated the time jumps. It was satisfying to get to see what happened to Cora's mom and what was going through Caesar's mind when he picked Cora. Gruesome realities of slavery are on display throughout, so just be sure that you're up for the journey when you dive into this.

I did not feel like I had the ending figured out at all. After so much bad crazy stuff happening along the journey, I could not say that I was certain if Cora was going to survive in the end or not. Good execution on Whitehead's part through this book.

I would recommend this one for sure, but just be prepared with the Underground Railroad being a literal train under the ground. That threw me off quite a bit because the rest of the book is so heavily based in reality. So I think as long as you're prepared for that, you'll find this to be a good one to read.