Ninjalicious’s Access All Areas is a surprisingly well-written bundle of guidelines, warnings, and stories having to do with Urban Exploration. Urban Explorers pursue hidden and off-limits areas with the goal of appreciating the spaces (habitable or otherwise) that humans have created. Destinations include drains, abandoned/construction sites, hotels, and—this was the coolest one by far—ghost ships. I was saddened to hear that Ninjalicious (Jeff Chapman) died recently due to lung cancer, but his contributions are everywhere (q.v. the Infiltration and Yip e-zines). 8/10 on the enjoy-o-meter.
Stealing the Network is a collection of short stories by various authors involving present-day hardware and software. On the whole, they aren’t very well-written (clearly the authors’ strengths lie elsewhere) but til I discovered this gem I was finding it hard to stomach books on computer crime that had no basis in reality. These stories feature real software, real hardware, and believable trickery that made me a little nervous about how we exchange data in the real-world. That, and the overall theme of the collection is that bad guys always win. 6/10.
