Between finishing Halo and the release of Halo 2, I got the itch to return to the original ringworld crafted by Larry Niven. It had been years — probably more than 10 — since I last strolled the imagined, curving plains of the Ringworld. For those unfamiliar with the concept, imagine a wedding ring scaled … Read more
I got a bunch of books for Christmas — the Robert E. Howard’s The Bloody Crown of Conan, Stephen King’s The Dark Tower, a bunch of D&D source books, and Star Trek alum-turned-writer Wil Wheaton’s autobiography Just a Geek. It’s a measure of how good Wheaton’s book was that after reading a page or two … Read more
Victor Koman’s Kings of the High Frontier shows us a world a few years in our future where a number of individuals, from billionaire Larry Poubelle to smuggler Marcus Grant, seek to shrug off the combined shackles of Earth’s gravity and Earth’s government to live among the stars. Caught between the astro-entrepreneurs and the sinister … Read more
Black House by Stephen King and Peter Straub (Amazon): The sequel to the horror duo’s 198x The Talisman is a far darker, grimmer book than the original. In it, Jack Sawyer – the 12 year old who traveled cross country through two worlds looking for a magical talisman to heal his mother – is all … Read more
In the Pit is a comic book about gamers penned by some of the folks behind Eden Studios, the company that brought us the All Flesh Must Be Eaten and Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPGs. It takes place in a comic book store crawling with a not-unfamiliar cast of dysfunctional misfits, each more eccentric than … Read more
Sue and I recently went through a bunch of our old stuff looking for items we could sell at an impromptu yard sale, give to Good Will, or just chuck. In doing so, I found a couple of my old science fiction books from high school/college … and among them was an old envelope upon … Read more
Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass: My audio book selection this month returns to the past of Roland the Gunslinger, before he went west on his titanic quest to hunt down the Man in Black. It’s a tragic tale that deals with Roland’s star-crossed first love and it’s a painful read. Nonetheless, in this second … Read more
I first read Robert Jordan’s The Eye of the World six years ago when I was near the top of our own world. My wife and I were hiking outside of Fairbanks, Alaska, and on a clear day, you could see the Artic Circle from the top of the ridges we were walking along. Eye … Read more
George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones offers fantasy fans a gritty, realistic medieval adventure that stands in sharp contrast to the aloof elves and all-pervasive magic populating endless Tolkien knockoffs. The book is set in the land of Westeros, a fantastic realm removed in time and space from our own medieval period. In this … Read more
I love Amazon’s personalization features, constantly offering up new products for me to check out, but occasionally its recommendations veer into the surreal. Take, for example, this recent recommendation: Nancy Drew: The Secret of Shadow Ranch was released just 4 days ago on July 16, 2004; We thought you’d be interested because you bought Diablo … Read more