Book Review – Hacking Galileo by Fenton Wood

Back in the early days of the internet of the late 90’s/2000’s you had a number of stories you’d come across that were hacker-based based that had just enough of the technology but didn’t skimp out on the “fiction” to make the story interesting. Some of these book titles have been lost to memory and time but their stories I remember reading. Hacking Galileo was remembering these stories and adding good ol’ nerd indie writing to the mix!

This book is not going to be for everyone. Wood has done a lot of homework and the science and tech of the late 80’s of telephony, computers, HAM radio, and astrophysics are there. Homages to early OG hackers like Kevin Mitnick, 2600, and others are scattered throughout. This is like Stranger Things but with nerdier people and less running around with monsters.

On one hand, many of these characters are too smart and too good at what they do, especially in high school to be real. But again, I harken back to the days of reading hacker fanfiction and this is right up there with all the characters I loved to read about. I will say that the main character who is telling the story tends to get lost in the story. He’s there, of course, and he helps do things as he has some skill for “not being noticed” but that seems to be it. He might add details but the other characters are doing the heavy lifting in “the team”. The book is also “written” by the main character and the indie author gets away with the amateur look to the font and chapters because it makes it out like one of the self-published conspiracy books you’d buy from a guy at a table by the Grassy Knoll in Dallas, Texas. It just adds a lot to the story and the feeling of reading it. The excess of chapters also makes the book read very quickly.

There are parts where you suspend your disbelief when it comes not to just the characters but to the plot. Going to Russia and acceptance to different groups that puts our characters on the right path and is just part of the fun. There are a couple of chapters in there where it switches to this attempt to parallel the story with a fantasy novel a friend was working on and I just hated that shift. But it’s a few pages and is done after that. The conclusion was a bit mixed but overall, the renegades of society against the Man, the System, the Fedbois, the world – I really just had a lot of fun with this book. This was nostalgia done right! Final