What are computer nerds really like? There are thousands of stories about how their brilliance and clever insight has led to our current tech world, but this is not one of those books. This is a collection of fictional stories about the early computer scientists from the 1970s and 1980s.

Computer nerds appear in fiction quite often, typically as unappealing slobs who nevertheless save the day. The nerds in those stories are one-dimensional characters who exist only to advance the plot to its thrilling finale.

Once again, this is not one of those books. The stories here present an honest view of the early nerds, and each of Rubin’s characters is someone he knows, with their looks, traits, and back history intact.

To protect them, he’s changed their names, given them nicknames, and described things that were nearly true, but not completely. The nerds might well have done these things and perhaps should have, but it didn’t always end that way.

This is the human side of the nerd revolution, real people with complex lives they balanced while playing with computers, long before it became popular. .