My pandemic reading list

I stopped WIJFR posts five years ago (switched to Goodreads), but during the COVID-19 pandemic I found myself tending towards related topics. Such as: “The Andromeda Strain” by Michael Crichton (actually, I watched the classic film and the not-so-great 2008 mini-series in preparation to read the below) “The Andromeda Evolution” by Daniel Wilson “The Strain” trilogy …

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WIJFR: Heinlein time travel (and “Predestination”)

The other week I saw “Predestination,” a recommendation from Steve Gibson on episode #492 of his Security Now! podcast. The movie is a pretty good brain-twisting time travel romp starring Ethan Hawke and was based on a short story witten by Robert A. Heinlein in 1958. I’ve read Heinlein in the past (i.e., “Stranger in a Strange …

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WIJFR: Rogue Code

Cyber security expert Jeff Aiken knows that no computer system is completely secure. When he’s called to investigate a possible breach at the New York Stock Exchange, he discovers not only that their system has been infiltrated but that someone on the inside knows. Yet for some reason, they have allowed the hackers to steal millions …

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WIJFR: Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

The Committee, an international cabal of industrialists and media barons, is on the verge of privatizing all information. Dear Diary, an idealistic online Underground, stands in the way of that takeover, using radical politics, classic spycraft, and technology that makes Big Data look like dial-up. Into this secret battle stumbles an unlikely trio: Leila Majnoun, …

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WIJFR: Lucifer’s Hammer

The gigantic comet had slammed into Earth, forging earthquakes a thousand times too powerful to measure on the Richter scale, tidal waves thousands of feet high. Cities were turned into oceans; oceans turned into steam. It was the beginning of a new Ice Age and the end of civilization. But for the terrified men and …

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WIJFR: Masters of Doom

Doom, the video game in which you navigate a dungeon in the first person and messily lay waste to everything that crosses your path, represented a milestone in many areas. It was a technical landmark, in that its graphics engine delivered brilliant performance on ordinary PC hardware. It was a social phenomenon, with individuals and …

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WIJFR: Trojan Horse

It’s two years after the Zero Day attacks, and cyber-security analyst Jeff Aiken is reaping the rewards for crippling Al-Qaida’s assault on the computer infrastructure of the Western world. But the West is under its greatest threat yet. A revolutionary, invisible trojan that alters data without leaving a trace – more sophisticated than any virus …

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