This soon to be released game looks intense and has already won a bunch of awards.
Tag: sci-fi
Culture & Ringworld Series Cancelled
The Ultimate Rotary Phone
Geeky Thought of the Day #242: “How the hell could you possibly remember any Stargate Atlantis address.”
I watch a lot of sci-fi TV shows. I’ll turn on shows I’ve watched a hundred times just for background while I do something else. They’re shows I love, but having seen them so many times I don’t have to really watch and can do something else while still enjoying the company of “an old friend”.
So it was that I had an early episode of Stargate Atlantis on the boob-tube recently while doing some house work. The day before it had been Stargate SG-1. Having seen them both so close together, despite the tons of times I have set them both, something dawned on me that never really “clicked” before…
“Damn, are the symbols on the Stargate Atlantis ‘Pegasus Galaxy’ gates complex, or what?!” To my eye those symbols are just a bunch of unrelated dots that could have been changed from show to show and I would never be able to tell the difference. Continue reading The Ultimate Rotary Phone
No Man’s Sky: So Cool, So Tempted
A number of videos keep coming out showing more and more details of “No Man’s Sky“. This is the first time I have seriously considered buying a console strictly for one game. It’s hard to admit, but I am strongly tempted to make the jump. I keep finding myself rationalizing that it might be time to get a new desktop PC, that just happens to have a really good video & sound card. But then it may just be easier and cheaper to get a PS4 if all I really want it for is this game?…
And so the chain of logic and lame rationalizations grows longer as I find myself “jonesing” for a game that is not even out yet. We’ll see as the June 21st release date comes closer. Will I resist the temptation or take the plunge, update my antiquated hardware, and explore The Universe?
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Worth Living For…
“It’s easy to find something worth dying for. Do you have anything worth living for?” — Lorien
More sci-fi philosophy…
This quote is from Babylon 5, Season 4 Episode 2 ‘Whatever Happened To Mr. Garibaldi?’. The series as a whole has some great quotes, but this episode alone had a bunch of powerful lines, most coming from the enigmatic character of Lorien, ‘The First One’.
The quote above comes from the beginning of an exchange between the character of Sheridan and Lorien, which ends a few lines later with these two lines: Continue reading Worth Living For…
‘The Martian’ Meets ‘Ready Player One’
A friend of mine pointed out a little bit of sci-fi geek trivia I hadn’t heard yet that features a neat little short story…
Andy Weir, author of the very popular novel “The Martian” wrote a short bit of fan fiction in the “universe” of Ernest Cline’s very popular “Ready Player One”. Apparently Cline heard of it, liked the story and it’s implications, and got approval to include it in a recent edition of Ready Player One, effectively adding the story to the RP1 “canon”. Continue reading ‘The Martian’ Meets ‘Ready Player One’
Review: Nemesis Games
Nemesis Games by James S.A. Corey
The Expanse series #5
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My Rating: 
5 out of 5 stars
First Published: June 2nd, 2015
Read from: Mar. 1 – 10, 2016
The Best Novel In the Series!
For me that headline is saying a lot. I have really liked this series as a whole. But I have never given any of the novels (and only one of the novellas) my, “I loved it,” rating of 5 out of 5 stars…. Until now. Read the Full Review
Where You Start: Stop Thinking
More Stargate Spirituality, this time courtesy of Stargate Atlantis…
WEIR: Rodney … I still believe there’s a chance you can ascend if you put your mind to it.
McKAY: We both know that that is a waste of time. Maybe you could do it, but …
WEIR: I don’t know if I could, but you are certainly selling yourself short by not even trying.
McKAY: To be honest, I don’t have the first clue where to start.
WEIR: Stop thinking.
McKAY: See, I don’t understand that.
Review: Zoe’s Tale
Zoë’s Tale by John Scalzi
Old Man’s War series #4
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My Rating: 
3.5 out of 5 stars
First Published: Jan. 30, 2016
Read from: Feb. 18, 2016
Ok… to Good… to Really, Really Good!
When I started this I didn’t realize it was basically a retelling of the previous book in the The Old Man’s War series, “The Last Colony”, only from the perspective of Zoë, the teenage daughter of the protagonist of most of the books. So I started off disappointed with this book. I checked some other people’s reviews just to make sure I wasn’t losing my mind and that, yes, I had indeed read this story before. There I discovered that besides the different perspective on the previous story there were some new things, and that much of it was… well, patching some of the parts of “The Last Colony” that had issues. So I took my time reading this, as I was not really “in” to it. I expected my disappointment would continue, and I considered giving the book the boot early on.
I’m REALLY glad I stuck with it. Read the Full Review
2 Reviews: Slaughterhouse-Five and Peace in Amber
A classic sci-fi-“ish” novel and the post 9/11 short story it inspired.
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
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My Rating: 
4 out of 5 stars
First Published: 1969
Read from: Jan. 24 to Jan. 28, 2016
I read Kurt Vonnegut‘s Slaughterhouse-Five at least once a long time ago. I remember that I liked it, but that it effected me in a negative way and left me of two minds on the experience: I liked the book but hated what it described and made me feel. It not so much described, as allowed you to experience and feel some thing that by nature we resist discussing, describing and by all means feeling if we can avoid it.
I reread the book this time around as there was a short story, Peace in Amber: The World of Kurt Vonnegut by Hugh Howey, that I wanted to read that was basically Howey’s tribute to, commentary on, and his literary attempt at describing and moving past some of the same issues exposed in Slaughterhouse-Five. Knowing this I wanted Vonnegut’s work to be fresh in my ever-more-forgetful mind. I’m glad I did, as the novel and short-story compliment each other. And I discovered in the middle of Howey’s story, he described his experience with reading Slaughterhouse-Five and in doing so described far better than I could what Vonnegut’s book did to me. Read the Reviews