STG's

The Phoenix Code, by Catherise Asaro, is a SF book about a group trying to make the first sentient android. It is somewhat entertaining, but it mostly moves a little too slowly, and I was expecting the final twist from the beginning of the book. The twist takes so much time to appear and is so clearly hinted at that I was actually bothered by how long it took. Overall, OK. I've read some other books by the author (long, long ago) and they were both better and more innovative.

RocketsRocketsRockets is a shooter with (you guessed it) rockets. It looks OK and everything, but I just hate the control scheme (press the direction you want to go - feels MUCH MUCH worse than the alternate Thrust/Left/Right/Brake), and the constant zoom in/out is very annoying. The music is OK, though :-)

Steam Marines is a turn-based tactical rogue-like shooter with retro graphics. I have played other turn-based games before and enjoyed them, but for some reason the turn based aspect here is just getting on my nerves. I might try again later, but so far I really didn't enjoy the gameplay at all...

Reassembly is an interesting ship shooter, where ship building is a big component. In Reassembly, your ship is made of smaller, vector components - pieces such as hull, thrusters or weapons - such as lasers, plasma cannons, missile/torpedo/drone launchers. You can see the building screen below - you just drag and rotate the components in place. Yes, that is awful looking ship I designed, but it isn't half bad in combat! You go around destroying ships of the other factions. The neatest part is that you can just put together 4 different ships design, and every time you press F (and if you have enough resources), a new ship is built by your factory. And soon you can have a huge fleet of ships fighting for you. You start with a small ship, but as you collect stuff around in space and leftovers of destroyed ships, you accumulate resources, which can be exchanged for credits - which allow you to get unlock extra pieces for your ship and to make it larger and larger. ...

You're Never Weird on the Internet (Almost): A Memoir - by Felicia Day - is a book her upbringing, work and production company. Personally, I'm not a huge fan of her work. I liked her appearances on Buffy, Supernatural and Eureka, but I'm not a fan of The Guild (I watched just a couple of episodes) or anything by her own production company (maybe the Dragon Age videos). Still, the reviews were pretty good, so I went along and bought it on release day. I'm glad I did, it was fairly entertaining, specially the old reminiscing on old tech - I too had a Geocities page! I felt a little tense about the parts about her depression and other problems, but there were plenty of LOL moments. And the whole Gamergate thing is just crazy. Most notable quote on the book: "...don't study!". There was some more text on the line, but I feel that was the most relevant part. :-) Overall, fun, with some dramatic moments and a somewhat uplifting finish, but I imagine i...

The Annihilation Score, by Charles Stross, is a book on the Laundry Files series. The laundry series is about a group of the UK government (The Laundry) that protects the country against Lovecraftian horrors. In this volume, the narration is for the first time by Mo O'Brien - the wife of the usual main character. What she faces is the start of a breakdown in reality, where common people start getting occult powers, which naturally they view and frame as superpowers and start being supervillans and superheroes. This is a very, very different path from the usual Laundry series, and tends to be more humorous, with use of slight slapstick comedy in places. I didn't really like it as much as the rest of the series, and it seemed to drag a little around the middle. It does pick up around the end, which is quite satisfying (and avoids the "it all ends well" with everyone being saved that so many books follow).

I recently was suggested Diaspora, by Greg Egan. It is an older book (1997) which is about societies of software-generated sentient entities and uploaded humans, which are called polis. The beginning of the book goes into an interesting view of how intelligent entities could be generated, and  including how they would be created, learn, and achieve sentience. This was probably the most interesting part of the book. Most of the rest concerns how the polis decide to spread beyond the solar system after a major cosmological event. It is pretty good at pieces, but Egan seems to get a little carried away explaining the details of the theory upon which the tech on the book depends. Personally this wasn't very interesting to me. Overall, the book is good and the view of human uploads and how their societies would be is excellent, but the pace is marred by an excess of details. Still very much worth reading if you like th etopic.