During the Cold War, many people in the USA worried that one day the USSR would decide it was time for the long-fated final war and send the nukes raining down. (Undoubtedly, many people in the Soviet Union worried that the USA would make the same decision). This fear made its way into our literature for a couple of decades, spawning its own subgenre of postapocalyptic fiction which included such classics and less-classics as The Chrysalids, by John Wyndham, The Magic City by Nelson S. Bond, the later Mad Max movies, and TSR's Gamma [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: Dragonball/Dragonball Z
October 29, 2012 By 3 Comments
SAA, NEGAI O IE. DONNA NEGAI MO HITOTSU DAKE KANAETE YAROU. (COME THEN, STATE YOUR WISH. I SHALL GRANT YOU ANY ONE WISH.) When Kathleen and I lived in Pittsburgh, I had made the acquaintance of a gentleman named Michael Collins. Mr. Collins was quite an anime enthusiast, and I often referred to him as our anime "pusher", as he had a fairly large collection and was willing to loan tapes to get us hooked into various shows. People can blame him for my having knowledge of quite a number of shows, including Sailor [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: Persona 3 and Persona 4
October 26, 2012 By Leave a Comment
While they are separate games, the two most recent entries in the Persona series for the Shin Megami Tensei multiverse, Persona 3 and Persona 4, are connected enough that I feel they're best discussed together. The link for Persona 3 goes to the FES extended play version; and the link for Persona 4 goes to the soon-to-be-released Persona 4 Golden, which is also an expanded version. I actually played a small amount of the first Persona game way back when, but I couldn't play through enough of it at the time to [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim
October 25, 2012 By 3 Comments
Having played The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, I looked forward very much to the chance to play Skyrim, the next installment in the Elder Scrolls franchise. Both installments of course share a good deal; they have very similar mechanics, are set in the same world (although in a different portion of it – Skyrim takes place in the eponymous region of Tamriel, while Oblivion took place in Cyrodil), and even begin with your characters in the same position: imprisoned by the local authorities. However, things are a bit more … [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: Thoughts on the Chronicles of Narnia
October 24, 2012 By 10 Comments
Once upon a time, there was a man who had an image in his head, of a faun walking through a snowy wood, carrying parcels and with an umbrella held above him. And the man decided one day to write a story about that image, a story centered around some children sent away from London during the Blitz. The man was C. S. Lewis, and that story was The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the first of the Chronicles of Narnia to be written and published. The seven Narnia books – in internal chronological [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: The Thirteenth Child
October 19, 2012 By 10 Comments
This was a really excellent book. On the Amazon scale, I'd give it four-and-a-half stars (unfortunate that Amazon doesn't permit half-star ratings to be given out) First-person protagonist "Eff" (her first initial; her actual name is hardly ever mentioned in the book) is the eponymous Thirteenth Child, one supposedly born with cursed magic and destined to go bad according to many in her society. Her plight is made worse by the fact that she is the elder twin sister to a fourteenth child, her few minutes younger brother [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
October 10, 2012 By 1 Comment
The Elder Scrolls is a long-running videogame series, but I had never had any opportunity to play it as the first three installments were for PC and later Xbox, and I've always had Macs as my computers and the platforms I've had were SNES, PS, PS2, and finally PS3. But finally, the fourth title in the series – Oblivion – was released for the PS3. I actually had no real expectations, or knowledge about, the series when I put the disc in for the first time, just that it was a well-received part of one of the [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: Prince of Bryanae
September 4, 2012 By 25 Comments
Prince of Bryanae is a self-published novel that does everything right. It starts by having a fast-moving, well-written story as its core and reason for being, but in addition the author, Jeff Getzin, has gone those extra miles that, sadly, few self-published authors seem to realize are necessary; he has obviously had professionals provide him with editing and layout as well as a well-done cover painting, and the result is a fully professional novel that can sit proudly next to anything the big houses produce. I will admit [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: Terry Brooks’ _Shannara_
August 13, 2012 By 6 Comments
In 1976, I first entered the world of the Lord of the Rings, and my hunger for epic fantasy was suddenly insatiable. In 1977, I saw this huge book with a group of people – human, elven, and dwarf, I thought – around a sword in a stone. A book titled The Sword of Shannara. I immediately grabbed it up – the first of many purchases Mr. Terry Brooks would convince me to make – and took it home. There were obvious similarities to The Lord of the Rings – many of them quite deliberate. But there was a great deal that was [ Continue reading... ]
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