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A fascinating book about the various way computers and coding have changed the world. Some essays are on the history of coding and others are on famous code hacks. Some essays touch on ethics, social justice, discrimination and cheats that coding has enabled. And, of course, one essay is one that infamous comment found in the Commentary on UNIX: "You are not expected to understand this."

What follows is a summary of each essay in the book.

1. The First Line of Code: a look at what may be the first lines of code written in history to control weaving looms using punch cards.

2. Monte Carlo Algorithms: Random Numbers in Computing from the H-Bomb to Today: on the history of Monte Carlo Algorithms, whose statistics and random numbers are used in many fields to estimate the future behaviours of systems in many fields.

3. Jean Sammet and the Code That Runs the World: on programmer Jean Sammet who (with Grace Hopper), pulled together early attempts at programming languages to come up with COBOL.

4. Spacewar: Collaborative Coding and the Rise of Gaming Culture: on the history of Spacewar, the first graphical computer game, and the culture (and joy) of hacking computers that came up around it.

5. BASIC and the Illusion of Coding Empowerment: on how BASIC enabled interactive programming for students on time-shared systems. But early on, this was only for entitled students, mainly the better-off white males in the US.

6. The First Email: The Code That Connected Us Online: the ability to send messages from one user to another on the same computer system was so in demand that the need to be able to send messages from one system to another was developed and became the email that we know today.

7. The Police Beat Algorithm: The Code That Launched Computational Policing and Modern Racial Profiling: the search for a technological solution to policing at a time when racial riots were rife would lead to the surveillance systems in use today.

8. "Apollo 11, Do Bailout": on the capabilities of the computer on the Apollo Lunar Lander that enabled the moon landing.

9. The Most Famous Comment in Unix History: "You Are Not Expected to Understand This": this comment, and others in source code, show the personalities and abilities of the people who wrote the code, and left such comments in the code as guidelines (or for fun) for future programmers.

10. The Accidental Felon: on the history of the Morris worm, the self-replicating code that bought down many systems in the early days of the Internet.

11. Internet Relay Chat: From Fish-Slap to LOL: on the propagation of the culture of leaving 'actions' as words on the early internet relay chat into today's social media, leading to postings of LOLs and other kinds of interactive reactions, as well as emojis.

12. Hyperlink: The Idea That Led to Another, and Another, and Another: the history of hyperlinks, which lead people from one document to another, ad infinitum.

13. JPEG: The Unsung Hero in the Digital Revolution: how JPEG works to compress digital images and how this would lead to the fingerprinting of images to individual digital cameras.

14. The Viral Internet Image You've Never Seen: refers to the notorious single pixel image file that appears (hidden) on webpages and emails to track who is fetching the information.

15. The Pop-Up Ad: The Code That Made the Internet Worse: written by the person who wrote the first pop-up ad, it talks about taking responsiblity for what you do with technology.

16. Wear This Code, Go to Jail: starting with the Perl code for the RSA algorithm printed on a shirt, it goes on to shows the problems with trying to do export controls or to restrict software.

17. Needles in the World's Biggest Haystack: The Algorithm That Ranked the Internet: on the ranking algorithm that lauched Google.

18. A Failure to Interoperate: The Lost Mars Climate Orbiter: the Mars probe was lost due to conversion bug between metric and imperial measurements. But the article points to the bigger problem of the decline in interoperability of current day software and applications due to business decisions (to restrict competition).

19. The Code That Launched a Million Cat Videos: viral videos of cats reacting to the iRobot Roomba vacuum cleaner helped to make it popular. But the software for the Roomba at the time, that controlled its somewhat random behaviour, also helped to make it beloved for the idiosyncratic way of cleaning a room.

20. Nakamoto's Prophecy: Bitcoin and the Revolution in Trust: on the development of bitcoin and the blockchain behind it that may yet revolutionize the way people trust one another and do business without a central authority.

21. The Curse of the Awesome Button: the development of Facebook's 'Like' button started off as a way to provide feedback on the social network. But it then became a way to track users as they moved from site to site.

22. The Bug No One Was Responsible For-Until Everyone Was: Heartbleed (a buffer overflow error in OpenSSH) was a programming error, but it showed the effects of using a popular piece of code but not providing proper support to the developers of the code.

23. The Volkswagen Emissions Scandal: How Digital Systems Can Be Used to Cheat: how software became a way to cheat and get around regulations.

24. The Code That Brought a Language Online: the development of software to allow users to enter text in Bangla after a terror attack in Bangladesh would have repercussions for blogging and freedom of expression in the country afterwards.

25. Telegram: The Platform That Became "the Internet" in Iran: Telegram enabled users in Iran to communicate and to broadcast messages in channels until it became Iranian's view of the Internet, for a while.

26. Encoding Gender: the issues around storing information on gender, when most databases are set up to only accept two binary gender values.

A good collection of stories about the Second Age of Middle-Earth, told in chronological order. The stories are from the writings by J.R.R Tolkien, as collected and edited in various books by Christopher Tolkien. Many of the stories concerns Númenor, from its rise as an island haven for Men in the west after the fall of Melkor (Morgoth), to its downfall (and the end of the Second Age) after being corrupted by Sauron.

The book starts with a look at the geography and ecology of Númenor, followed by what makes Númenoreans different from other men in Middle-Earth. The chronological story of the Second Age is then told, showing the rise of Númenor, first as teachers of the men of Middle-Earth, then becoming arrogant and turning into conquerors. The parallel story of Sauron, who deceives some of the Elves into crafting Rings of Power, only to craft the One Ring to rule them all, is also told, setting up the conflict between Númenor and Sauron.

It is one that Númenor apparently wins at first, but Sauron is cunning and corrupts most of the Númenoreans from the inside, eventually leading to its downfall. Back in Middle-Earth, the kingdoms of the faithful Númenoreans in exile and Elves form the Last Alliance to fight Sauron and succeed in defeating him. But the One Ring is lost, not destroyed: the story of its discovery and destruction would be told in other books.

An interesting graphical novel based on the usual 'chosen one' who has to save the world. But this one has a rather big twist towards the end, and you may start to wonder whether she has been chosen to really save the world or to destroy it.

In the story, the world as we know it ended in the year 2000, when electricity failed and magic began to work. Trouble is, nobody knew how to control magic at the time, leading to catastrophic spells being cast. Now, many years later, stable magical regions of the world exist, but a dark magic is creeping out, slowly devouring the regions.

Into this steps one special girl who has been trained by his grandfather (now a powerful wizard) to be the Chosen One to gather magical items for him so he can cast a spell to save the world. But clues left throughout the story hint that something is not quite right with her journey: as if she is being led to a foregone conclusion. It is only resolved with a massive twist at the end and now, it is truly up to her (and her friends) to come together and really try to save the world.

"True Names" is Vernor Vinge's fascinating story that is one of the first to present the concept of a cyberspace and is generally considered one of the first stories in what would become the genre of cyberpunk.

In the story, True Names refer to the actual names of persons who have personas in what Vinge calls the "Other Plane". In the Other Plane, those which hacking skills are the 'Warlocks' and they dominate the Other Plane with what is essentially 'magic' since their hacking skills is akin to casting magical spells on regions in that world (which represents hacking computer systems around the world and in space). Of course, the Warlocks would protect their True Names, as once they are known, they can be forced to do the others bidding so as not suffer a True Death (killed).

The story starts with the True Name of Mr Slippery in the Other Plane being discovered by the government. But the government is more concerned with another person known as the Mailman, who has apparently hacked government and possibly military systems without being detected, and they need his help to discover who is the Mailman.

As the story proceeds, Mr Slippery and another hacker discover that the Mailman might not be another human, and may be about to launch a cyber-driven attack on the world. To stop him, they have to grab control of the resources of the US government systems. But even then, the Mailman is a powerful adversary, and they may not be able to stop him while the Mailman is also trying to stop them by sending them to their True Deaths. Worldwide pandemonium in computer systems ensue. In the end, the real identify of the Mailman is discovered, but the world may never be the same.

The story is fascinating for its portrayal of the Other World, where a virtual world is visualized much like a fantasy land. But the landscape is actually a representation of computer systems from around the world: ponds represent data storage, castles represent defended computer systems, and fantasy creatures are the systems that guard the entries to the system. The warlocks themselves are master hackers, able to break into systems, and the battle with the Mailman is the act of controlling and gathering computer resources to dominate and deny them to your opponent.

The book starts with a series of essays on the influence of the story on various people and computer systems at the time. Some essays examine the issue of computer security and the tension between free speech and privacy, and the US government's desire to gather more information on people. Others look at attempts to produce a cyberworld using networked computer systems. The essays, written in the 1990s, are an interesting look at the time when microcomputers and computer networks are just starting to have an influence on society.

An average issue, with interesting stories by Tia Tashiro and Grant Collier.

• "Every Hopeless Thing" by Tia Tashiro: a space scavenger visits a deserted and polluted Earth, only to discover it is not so deserted after all. Her attempts to get them to leave Earth fail, and she realizes that her desire to help every hopeless thing, like her ship that has an AI that was destined for the scrapyard, will be her guide to helping those who prefer to say at home.

• "I Will Meet You When the Artifacts End" by Amal Singh: on a colony ship heading to a new world, two people send messages to each over, though they have never met. But plans to do so are interrupted when parts of the colony need to go to deep sleep to save resources. And there is no guarantee they will wake up at the same time in the future. But one person is still determined to find the other, or at least, keep some memories of their talks together.

• "The Best Version of Yourself" by Grant Collier: the story is set in a future where nanotechnology can allow people to 'edit' themselves to remove unwanted mental states and achieve 'nirvana'. One daughter's mother has undergone the procedure, and she now believes her mother is no longer her mother. But a promise she had made to her mother has to be kept.

• "Stellar Evolutions in Pop Idol Artistry" by Em X. Liu: in the future, K-Pop like stars perform to a galactic audience. But like pop stars nowadays, they are made for their roles, and can just as easily be discarded for the next big thing.

• "Aktis Aeliou, or The Machine of Margot's Destruction" by Natalia Theodoridou: an explorer crashes on a planet where a strange signal was discovered. The signal turns out to be from a person that, to the explorer (and readers), is basically a god. Now they have to decide how far they want to take their relationship together.

• "The Happiness Institute" by AnaMaria Curtis: at an institute that tries to explore happiness, one person decides to dig a pool to be happy, while another discovers a way to mentally connect to others for happiness.

• "Born Outside" by Polenth Blake: in a future, some form of children would be born from large seed pods, and adjust to living on a world may not welcome them.

An average issue with reasonable stories by Harmony Neal, Sarah Brooks, Rich Larson and David Cledem.

• "Alts" by Harmony Neal: in a comedic variation of HG Wells' "The Island of Doctor Moreau", a genetically engineered 'person' sits in on a group of similar altered people, trying to figure out what they are good or; or rather, what a military complex thinks they may be good for.

• "Dogfights in Olympus and Other Absences" by Ryan Row: a strange planet with a huge atmosphere becomes the backdrop for this dogfighting story around an ace pilot who only wants what's best for his daughter. But then the daughter wants to become like him.

• "The Hunger of Auntie Tiger" by Sarah Brooks: in a desert future, two kids eke out a living among the wreckage of a city, being told tales of a hungry tiger. But will the tale become true when they are caught in a huge dust storm, and they see a familiar figure in the sand.

• "You Make Pattaya" by Rich Larson: sex, deception and money form the backdrop of this story of a future Thailand, when a man sees an opportunity for quick gains by exposing a celebrity secretly looking for adventure.

• "Rock, Paper, Incisors" by David Cledem: the story of a young girl tricked into become her tribe's chosen hero / monster by transforming herself in one of three types of creatures to do battle with the other tribe's hero / monster. But when she senses a connection with her enemy, she may be able to escape being killed and, perhaps, escape the constant strife between the tribes.

• "My Generations Shall Praise" by Samantha Henderson: a story about a prison inmate being signed up for a procedure to allow a dying relative take over her body in exchange for money for her children. But can she go through with it, especially when she realizes that doing so would make her children end up being effective body slaves to her relative in the future.

A very entertaining graphic novel about how it might have been if Ada, Countess of Lovelace and Charles Babbage had managed to bring to life the Analytical Engine. The book starts with the real-life stories of Ada and Babbage, then branches off into a 'pocket universe' where the Analytical Engine is created and run by them.

In a series of adventures, the pair hilariously show off the Engine to Queen Victoria who wants to 'RULE THE WORLD!', called to save Britain from a global financial crisis, fight off the mathematical Luddites, try to mechanize fiction writing by statistically analysing a book by Mary Ann Evans (George Eliot) and even try to visualize the third dimension (remember, the characters live on a two-dimensional page).

Probably one of the most hilarious short parts of the book is when George Boole (of Boolean logic fame) is reduces to mumbling "Error, error," when asked a non-boolean question (not a "Yes" or "No" answer) while being served a drink!

The book is full of footnotes by the author pointing out historical, mathematical, engineering and computing references to the situations depicted. Making the book more true to life is the effort the author went through to ensure that the words being said in the novel closely match what Ada, Babbage and other characters (like Isambard Kingdom Brunel) actually said or wrote in real life.

The book ends with a very technical appendix outlining how Babbage's Analytical Engine would have worked if it actually had been built.

A very entertaining read indeed.