Inherit the Stars: re-reading an old book

Thanks to my new kindle, I was re-reading Inherit the Stars by James P. Hogan, which is available for free at Baen. I was especially fond of this book when I was a teenager, for the crisp image of how the scientific thinking works towards the finding of solutions to apparently impossible problems.

Well, obviously a lot of things have changed since 1977, oneself for a start. So I do not find the book so good as when I was 14, but it can be still read.

The real good thing that I noticed is that the thing that most surprise you reading it is not the fact that URSS is still there, that  we should have personal jets available for renting at popular prices, or that the concept of personal computer is at least strange. No, the real things that makes the book sound dated is the fact that the scientists and the bosses are practically all male, and that all of them keep smoking as hell… even in the moon-to-jupiter starship.

The fact that this surprised me so much say a lot on how and much things are changing. This is, I think, a good news.