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Some time in the mid-to-late-60s when I was a high school kiddie, I discovered to my dismay that I had succeeded in cleaning out my local public library of all its science fiction titles. I noticed an old-at-the-time volume, Wiener's "Cybernetics", and thought the title had a nice technical computer-y ring to it. Nevermind that I'd never seen a computer outside of NASA documentary films and didn't stand a ghost of a chance of ever meeting one.
A week later I closed the cover, contemplating what I'd read. There was something attractive there, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it, and I looked around for other computer-y titles. Sadly, there were none to be had. Shrug.
Next summer my parents moved to another city, giving me access to a new public library to plunder. That's when I found your Fortran guide; I tore through it, fascinated at the clarity with which you could program one of those storied beasts. I wrote a fair number of programs at home, curled up on the sofa under the lamp by the side table, thoroughly desk-checking and pretend-executing them. Couldn't run a single one, for I had no access to a computing system, but I was hooked solidly.
I got my Mom to drop me off in downtown Orlando so I could see what other computer titles there were at the big library. I came home with Weiss' Lisp 1.5 Primer. Wow that's different, I remember thinking.
My physics teacher had a handful of books on his shelf, including Fink's "Computers and the Human Mind", which was a fun read, and Adler's "Thinking Machines", which was also nontechnical but still exciting.
A brand-new state university was in its second year of operation in Fall of 1969, and offered one of the few computer science degrees that could be had in the US at the time. Best of all it was in my back yard, and there was little doubt that I'd do computer science.
40 years later here I am, still doing this stuff and still loving it.
In a substantial way, it's your doing. Thank you for that Fortran book, the first book I ever picked up that really fired me up, that told me that THIS is what I want to do.