In this book, a distributed system architecture which is called LOCUS (the name is not explained) is described. The main features of LOCUS are to be an extension of UNIX and to stress network transparency (i.e., the underlying network is invisible to users and programs).

The book encompasses eight chapters: (1) “The LOCUS Architecture” (author not listed), (2) “Distributed Operation and Transparency” by G.J. Popek (this chapter outlines important distributed computing concepts), (3) “The LOCUS Distributed File System” by B.J. Walker and S.H. Kiser, (4) “Remote Tasking” by D.A. Butterfield and R.M. Matthews, (5) “Dynamic Reconfiguration” by R.M. English, (6) “Heterogeneity” by G.E. Popek, (7) “System Configuration, Installation, and Management” by G.I. Thiel, and (8) “Conclusions” (author not listed). System calls and internal network messages are listed in two appendices.

The goal of the book, “to convey to the reader both the concepts which are key to the distributed system architecture, and ‘truth’ in the form of an actual case study of what is required to support such functionality,” is well achieved. The reader gets a good and fair survey of the problems encountered in the design of distributed systems. People interested in UNIX should especially benefit from the concept of extending UNIX into a distributed system. The argumentation is descriptive; quantitative considerations, with respect to the behavior of the distributed system and to software engineering issues, are not given.

The authors would have achieved a better appearance of the text by tuning the word processor to the same space between the lines and by using more figures (which appear in two chapters only).