Picks and Shovels

"Picks and Shovels", by Cory Doctorow, 2025, 419 pages, 129k words.

The 3rd (and final?) Martin Hench novel. These have been told in reverse chronological order.

Here's my post on the 1st "Red Team Blues".

Here's my post on the 2nd "The Bezzle".

This installment is the secret origin story of our superhero forensic accountant. Martin Hench is entering MIT in 1979 as a 17 YO freshman (11 years after I did). He's supposed to follow his dad as an engineer, but once he encounters computing, he is hooked. He winds up in early Silicon Valley on the west coast, where he helps an unlikely group of founders fighting a totally crappy, abusive, lockin computer company. Lots of action, but, the characters are what make the book. They all have so much heart.

I was working for DEC (mentioned) 1977-1980 installing & programming PDP-11s (mentioned), hooking up Okidata printers (mentioned), twiddling pins on RS-232 connectors (mentioned). So lots of old memories for me.

It's definitely a page turner, I was up til 1am finishing it, I very rarely do that anymore. Doctorow continues to be the Bard of the Revolution.