Ken Newquist 
Tom Clancy’s Red Storm Rising (Amazon) takes us back to the mid 1980s. America and the Soviet Union are the world’s only superpowers. Their respective alliances – NATO and the Warsaw Pact – have been engaged in a Cold War for decades. Neither is quite crazy enough to launch an all out nuclear war (at … Read more
Developed at MIT between 1977 and 1979, Zork is the quintessential interactive fiction adventure game. Descended from the earlier Colossal Cave Adventure (the game I’m actually much more familiar with), it started players at a simple White House in the woods and invited them to explore an expansive underground empire. I played the M.I.T. release for this … Read more
The Expanse novels and novellas were part of my summer reading list for years. The nine book series initially takes place our own star system, with a focus on the stellar political situation. Earth rules the star system, but martial-oriented (and slowly terraforming) Mars is a powerful countervaling force that seeks to usurp Earth’s position. … Read more
Sometimes, nostalgia hurts. That’s rarely been more true than when reading Action Park: Fast Times, Wild Rides, and the Untold Story of America’s Most Dangerous Amusement Park (Amazon) by Andy Mulvihill and Jake Rossen. The book tells the behind-the-scenes story of the Vernon, NJ-based amusement park, which was equal parts famous and notorious for my generation growing … Read more
The apocalypse is here. Again. In The Broken Earth series by N.K. Jemisin, what we’d consider the end of the world – toxic gases wiping out entire provinces, catastrophic earthquakes that destroy dozens of towns, drowning tidal waves – are just another season (albeit one that only happens every few decades or centuries). In the first book … Read more
Fire Emblem Engage is a straightforward entry in the long-running strategy skirmish series. It leans heavily into nostalgia for earlier releases, and eschews the branching storylines of recent entries (Three Houses for Switch and Birthright for the 3DS) in favor of a linear story. As with its predecessors, Engage puts you in control of a … Read more
The Cold Forge is a deep space research facility focused on deadly corporate research. Set in the Alien universe, the black site is funded by long-time corporate villains Weyland-Yutani. Along with ethically questionable bioweapons and a destructive AI, the Cold Forge is home to a cache of xenomorph eggs from … somewhere. Lead researcher Blue Marsalis is … Read more
Every few summers, things get so busy that I need a list to remind myself how focus on the things that help me relax. This is that list. Is it a big list? Yes. Will I finish everything on it? No. But it gives me something to shoot for … and something to focus on. … Read more
Murder follows Mallory Viridian. Elementary school, college, day jobs, parties: If she’s there, someone is likely to die. And if they die, she’ll be uncannily drawn to the mystery of who did it, much to the ire and skepticism of law enforcement. She wanted to get away from the death, so she became one of … Read more
For years, my go-to tablet was an iPad Air from the early 2010s. In December 2023, I got a surprise upgrade to the iPad Pro when my wife and mother-in-law bought me one for Christmas. It’s a hell of an upgrade. The old iPad was functional but, well, old. Battery life was getting worse every … Read more