The Gundam series is one of the longest-running and most successful anime/manga franchises in Japan. Starting with Mobile Suit Gundam in 1979, the Gundam franchise spans multiple television series, OAV series, movies, video games, novels, manga, and virtually any sort of merchandise one can imagine (and probably some you can't). Gundam itself is credited with changing the old "giant robot" genre from stories about a boy with some inexplicable and often personified superweapon to a story of war and politics which happened to feature [ Continue reading... ]
Under the Influence: Nero Wolfe
December 28, 2012 By 7 Comments
In a timeless brownstone in New York City, on West 35th Street, there lives a very unusual man. He is moody, arbitrary, arrogant, quite rotund (over 300 pounds) and highly eccentric. He is also the best detective in the world ("Probably not. The best detective in the world may be a rude tribesman with a limited vocabulary.") – all right, one of the finest private detectives in the world… if you can afford him. He's expensive; has to be, as his fees must support his world-class gourmet lifestyle and the upkeep for the brownstone, his [ Continue reading... ]
Under the Influence: Jules Verne
December 24, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Jules (Gabriel) Verne is a household name throughout the Western world, and a well-known one even outside of it. Versions of his stories have been turned into movies, TV series, video games, anime, and any other form of entertainment imaginable. For me, he was one of the original sources of wonder. I first encountered the work of Jules Verne in a hardcover abridged (probably for children) version of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Even the abridged version was fairly heavy going (I think I was [ Continue reading... ]
Under the Influence: Star Trek: The Original Series
December 21, 2012 By 4 Comments
"Space… the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds… to seek out new life and new civilizations… to boldly go where no man has gone before." There is perhaps no piece of science fiction more well-known, more roundly mocked, and more completely loved, than Star Trek, the original series. Today it may often seem quaint, old-fashioned, sometimes even wince-inducing, but in its day it was a groundbreaking and shining example of what [ Continue reading... ]
Under the Influence: The Mighty Thor
December 13, 2012 By 5 Comments
As I mentioned in an earlier post on the D'Aulaire's Mythology books, the Norse Myths have always had a powerful symbolism for me; they were the mythology of half of my ancestors and I always liked the myths themselves. Oh, the Norse Gods were far, far from perfect, but overall they seemed more likeable and less, well, dicks than the Greek Gods, which were the other mythology that I was most exposed to. But their stories were, after all, relatively static; their stories were finished, their race was run. But then in [ Continue reading... ]
Under the Influence: Isaac Asimov
December 3, 2012 By 2 Comments
The First Law: A robot may not harm, nor through inaction allow to come to harm, a human being. The Second Law: A robot must obey the orders of a human being, where those orders do not conflict with the First Law. The Third Law: A robot must act to protect its own existence, where this will not conflict with the First or Second Laws. Isaac Asimov was the only one of the Big Three (Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke) that I ever actually saw in person. It was at a talk whose subject I don't even really recall, but I do remember [ Continue reading... ]
Under the Influence: Eric Flint
November 28, 2012 By 1 Comment
I've described elsewhere on the site how I managed to end up getting published through the clever strategem of insulting the editing skills and moral choices of Eric Flint in his editing of the James Schmitz reissues. Here, I want to talk about the influence Eric has had on me outside of that specific sequence of events. People who read some of my older postings (in the 90s and before) would likely see, at some point, my mentioning that I wouldn't detail some particular idea because I intended to use it in my [ Continue reading... ]
Under the Influence: The Arduin Grimoires
November 23, 2012 By 12 Comments
Back in the ancient days of roleplaying games, Dungeons and Dragons was pretty much the only game in town, a game consisting of three little booklets: Men & Magic, Monsters and Treasures, and The Underworld and Wilderness Adventures, followed a bit later with the supplements Greyhawk, Blackmoor, and Eldritch Wizardry. But one day, I joined a game with a GM – John Robb – who was using a new book: like the others, it was a staple-bound pamphlet-style book with a sort of buff-colored cover, on which was a warrior [ Continue reading... ]
Under the Influence: Godzilla
November 16, 2012 By 1 Comment
One dull, rainy weekend in the early 1970s, when I was living in Latham, NY, my brother and I were bored, and my father turned on the TV and checked what was on. This didn't take long, since we could receive exactly 4 channels – Channel 13 (CBS), Channel 10 (NBC), Channel 6 (ABC), and Channel 17 (PBS). He stopped at one and settled back in his chair. "I think you'll enjoy this." At first we didn't get it. It was a bunch of Japanese people, occasionally with a guy I recognized as usually playing [ Continue reading... ]
Under the Influence: Computer/Console RPG Thoughts
November 12, 2012 By 4 Comments
I've already reviewed and talked about several videogame RPGs, ranging from the venerable yet still amazing Chrono Trigger to the Elder Scrolls games Oblivion and Skyrim, the Fallout series, and Dragon Age. Undoubtedly I'll review more later; I have quite a few on my shelves from the past many years. Today, however, I want to muse on the things I've liked, the things I don't like or find missing, and what I really would like to see in future CRPGs. To me, the ideal CRPG would be one that allows [ Continue reading... ]
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