Of all things Geek. I am…
The Talismans of Shannara is the final chapter in the four-part Heritage of Shannara series. And accordingly, it concludes the various storylines that have appeared (and were not concluded) in the previous novels: The Scions, The Druid, and The Elf Queen.
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“From the emergence of the first browser through the boom of social media, this fascinating history reveals how the internet changed everything we thought we knew about technologies–and ourselves.”
That first sentence from the inside cover flap explains in broad strokes what How The Internet Happened: From Netscape to the iPhone is. But it is more than that.
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Zeppelins, or rigid airships, are now just a distant memory. While there are still blimps occasionally in the sky over our heads, they are in fact similar but not the same. The airships discussed in this book, Airshipwreck, are what was and at one time they were the future.
For author Len Deighton, who wrote this book, “the airship has a magic that the aeroplane cannot replace. The size is awesome, the shape Gothic, a pointed arch twirled into a tracery of aluminum. And the reality is not disappointing.”
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Shampoo Planet by Douglas Coupland is another book which moves him up the list of my favorite authors. Not quite a direct follow up to Generation X, and not quite a bridge to Microserfs, but it also kind of is.
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Completing my read of Return to Earth by Buzz Aldrin and Wayne Warga also completed my own personal Apollo 11 trilogy of biographies/autobiographies of the three brave men who made that first trip.
What sets Aldrin’s book apart from the other two, is that while it tells his story it focuses more on feelings and his eventual spiral into, and battle with, depression. It overall is just as candid as Collin’s Carrying the Fire albeit more personal.
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