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
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
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
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
The 17th edition of Nuketown’s sci-fi and fantasy Summer Reading List features 19 books (15 novels, three non-fiction books), three novellas, and five graphic novels. The Summer of 2024 will be a fun one. My wife and I are going to Iceland with our extended family for a week and we’ll be spending a week … Read more
Usually I write these Summer Reading List retrospectives at the actual end of summer (rather than days before the start of the next summer) but 2023 was a particularly trying year and motivation was lacking. But now a new summer is upon us … so let’s take a breath and see how last year went. … Read more
The game I’d love to see a new edition of is Star Frontiers … but as they say, be careful what you wish for. Star Frontiers was the second role-playing game I ever owned. It was a space opera RPG set in a “frontier” region of space with a mix of settled and unexplored star systems. There … Read more
I made steady progress through Nuketown’s Summer Reading List in June 2023, completing three books and starting two new ones. At this point, I’ve read six of the 13 books on my reading list. Given that we’re headed into high summer, that’s a pretty good pace. You can my reading list on Goodreads and The Story Graph. Children of Memory (Children … Read more