STG's

I've been watching The Handmaid's Tale, and recently noticed it at the Black Friday sale on a bookstore. The story is very well known by now and happens in a dystopian version of our world where fertility rates kept dropping, and a extremist religious group takes over the US and starts calling itself Gilead. It is told by a Handmaid - a fertile woman who is forced to reproduce for commanders who want to have children. The story is on most occasions very similar to the series. Obviously the series has a whole lot more room than a single book, so some things change such as more characters, some have more depth, and some who die or disappear have continuing stories in the series. So the book is good, but that is one of those super rare cases where the TV version is actually better than the book. Still, pretty entertaining and if I had not seen the series I would just be saying that the book was very good.

I recently finished (a couple of times) Sniper Elite 4, and I loved it. So when Sniper Elite 3 went on sale, I decided to try it out. So far it is pretty good, although of course graphics are quite inferior, and look their age. There are also many small changes in 4 that were clever, such as being able to see the stats of guns before you switch in the field. A few things seem nice, such as the number of unlocks you get along the way, including various weapons and weapons parts, as well as having actual weapons that are much better than the first one. Overall, very much worth it at sales prices.

Uncompromising Honor is the latest book in the Honorverse series. It is supposed to be the last Honor Harrington book, which is sad to think about, as I've been reading these for over 20 years (the series is 25 years old!). This felt like it could easily be a couple of books. Personally I would have preferred it that way - it's been 5 years since the last Honor book and I have forgotten many details about what was last happening. As it last ended, the Grand Alliance is at war with the Sollies, after a vicious attack by them to Manticore that utterly failed because of the Sollies' inferior tech. Still, because of the Mesan Alignment simultaneous attack, there was massive destruction in the system. As usual, there are changes in the tech all around. There are many battles, described in what I think are David Webber's pretty weird way (which work very well) and oh so many interludes everywhere breaking up the action, with the maneuvers in the Solly, Mesan and other...

Consider Phlebas, by Ian M. Banks, is an SF novel and the first released book in the Culture series. I have actually read Player of Games before on recommendations. One thing to note is that this book actually defines some things that Player of Games don't. Seems silly that Banks didn't do it for the other one, as most explanations are a couple of paragraphs at most (example: drones auras). Yes, you could understand it from context, but this felt better and was more informative. The story was interesting and views the Culture mostly from an enemy's perspective - a Changer (which was quite interesting) - an human that is capable of changing his appearance and also has minor combat enhancements. The tech is pretty nice overall, specially when you consider that the book is from 1987! Many older SF novels have extensive silly sequences when read now, this one aged well apart from maybe a few bits. There are a couple of things I didn't like, in particular the some...

New York 2140, by Kim Stanley Robinson, is an SF novel set in a New York that has large parts of it underwater because of global warming. The premise is good, and the description of how this was handled, including the tech is nice. Unfortunately, large parts of the story are quite annoying, in particular near the ending. There is also a "let the people take over everything" semi-communist theme going on - which include super taxes that were actually tried in real life and never worked (i.e.: the people being taxed just move out of your jurisdiction and take either their current money or future earnings with them), or just having the government handle everything (which sounds nice because the government in theory wouldn't be as greedy, except that in most instances it actually is and tends to not know what it is doing, because there is no competition to force it to actually be competent). I actually only finished the book through stubbornness - the story wasn't...

The Labyrinth Index, by Charles Stross, is the latest volume in the La undry horror series. Following the last volume, a god from another dimension is now in control of the British government. And turns out the in the USA, nobody seems to be talking about the President, or even remember that he exists... So Mhari (a "vampire") and her crew are going to the US to find, rescue the president, and try to save the US from being taken over by another alien god... Excellent as usual. Lots of exciting bits, and the evolution across the books of the powers of the groups fighting has been nice, although we did lose the "this could be happening right now under your nose" vibe a few books ago. Strongly Recommended by fans of the series, and if you don't know it yet and like clever horror, you really should start with the first one.

All Systems Red: The MurderBot Diaries, by Martha Wells is a SF novella, the first of The MurderBot Diaries. It got a bunch of awards, and have been in my suggestion lists for quite a while, so I decided to check it out. The story is about a secUnit, which is a conscious mix of organic and mechanic parts made in a very humanoid form to do security of planetary survey teams. Basically a slave. It hacks its governor, so that it doesn't have to obey orders. Then all hell breaks lose and it decides to help, just because it can. It was pretty good. It seems fair that it won all those awards.

Some people recently suggested that I should check out the Culture series. Looking online, it was frequently suggested that I start with  Player of Games,   by Iain M. Banks. I'm glad I took that suggestion. The book is very good, and full of interesting tech and ideas. The twists in the end were pretty good too. Barely shows its age, which is pretty impressive for a 1988 SF book. One thing that probably helps is that a lot of the tech is understated, and not even described until it is used. Very much worth reading, and I will definitely be reading more of the Culture series.

I have been interested in the Sniper Elite series for a while, as I usually like sniper games, but never got one because I thought the hard ballistics would be annoying. But it was a game in this month's Humble Bundle, so I decided to try it. First of all, at the lower levels there are basically no ballistics. You aim, you hit. That might be annoying for some, but I felt it was fun enough. I mostly liked the missions, and how useful stealth were, while not being a requirement. Graphics are good but a bit dated. I love how fast it starts (and in an HD!), and how fast saving and loading games are. What I didn't like was how short the campaign was (7 hours), and the minimal progression of guns (kept the first one all the way through) and skills. I've gone through all the DLC levels and they are totally worth the current price. Overall, pretty good at a discounted price.

Salvation: A Novel - is the latest book from Peter F. Hamilton. It does not take place in the CommonWealth universe. I am a huge fan of Hamilton (both the CommonWealth and several of his other books) and this one did not disappoint. There are quite a few parallels between Salvation's universe and the CommonWealth: - They use portals (even more, here) - They are invaded by stealth aliens that can take human form It was great fun to see all the ways portals are used - like how they use threading to get large portals around, and the use of portal ships to use breakaway glaciers to "terraform" deserts. Also portal homes. I read that some people was upset at ALL the background stories getting in the middle of the action. True, they take a lot of the book but all add to a big deal in the end. The story is a little hard to describe well. A few important envoys take a journey to a distant star where an alien ship has crashed. On the way in a ground car (used to protec...

Forged Battalion is an RTS game for PC, currently in early access. It is overall generic, except for the faction design, which allows you to create your own units, as well as upgrade structures, and the deep, persistent tech tree. Overall, I found it conceptually interesting, and graphics are nice, but it did not work for me as it is. Maybe later in development.

I just read The Hobbit - by J.R.R Tolkien. It is very obviously a classic, but I never got around to reading it. There were some recent celebrations of Tolkien, so I after some recommendations of what was the best one to start with, I got an illustrated version (by Alan Lee). It was quite pleasant. Of course, I had already seen the movies, so the story itself wasn't new to me, but I quite enjoyed reading it with the extra details. One notable thing is how the dragon part and the battle of the five armies are comparatively underwhelming in the book version... The illustrations were quite nice and really added a little extra flavor for the story.

Written in Fire, by Marcus Sakey, the is the finale of the Brilliance trilogy. Now the war is prepped to start, and meanwhile John Smith has a superweapon getting ready... Overall, pretty good, and a reasonable conclusion.

Forts is a nice RTS, where you make forts to destroy other forts. You build the whole structure, then add stuff like mines for metal, and wind turbines for power (the only resources). Then you add weapons (such as mortar, machines guns, cannons, missiles and lasers) and upgrade these while shooting at your enemy and doing repairs. Overall, it is fun. Took me 6 hours to finish the campaign, but there are many more maps.

A Better World, by Marcus Sakey, is the sequel to Brilliance. Cooper got away with the murder in the first book, but now brilliant terrorist are attacking and crippling several cities' infrastructure. It seems that everyone wants to go to war... Pretty good, too. Not sure how much I liked the portrayal of the speed brilliant. He can't watch movies and hates music because they are too slow... So, he and Smith could not figure out how to play music or movies 11 times faster, even with plenty of super advanced tech? It is not that hard... Specially when you consider that his power is not unique, just more powerful than the others. Even regular DVDs and DVRs could be used with subtitles on... Yes, that is a silly thing to nitpick on but for some reason it bothered me.

I had actually bought Brilliance, from Marcus Sakey, in 2013. As so often happens something more interesting came up and I completely forgot about it. Then Amazon suggested it to me, and when checking it out they showed I already had it. I decided to try it out. (why a supposedly data driven company which is a pioneer in advanced suggestions showed me a book they knew I had, isa mystery...) It is pretty good. The base idea is not new at all - in the 80s, people started getting born with powers. They are called brilliants.  Mostly these are the reasonable-I-could-see-this-working kind - better pattern recognition, for strategy, lie detection, financial markets, fighting, etc. As also very tradicional, the people without powers and the ones with them are being mistreated and exploited (there are probably olders ones, but the X-Men come to mind). The main protagonist is Nick Copper, which has powers and works in an agency dedicated to arresting misbehaving brilliants, and ki...

After finishing Seeker  Amazon suggested I read Mindwar, also by Douglas E. Richards. Since I had already read the first two volumes of the series, I decided to read this next. I can't review it without spoilers for the first two volumes, so stop reading now if you didn't read them. Nick Hall was kidnapped back in volume 1, and put through experiments, which got him a mental implant that can access the internet (and is a supercomputer), and also mind reading powers. As in the last volume, there is a major terrorist attack that he has to stop. Then a series of events that obviously will end in a fight between mind readers (that would be a spoiler, but I am pretty sure anyone who read the title will already have guessed it. Overall, pretty good, and recommended for fans of the series. While the author says that the book is self contained, I'd really recommend reading the first two volumes first.

Seeker, by Douglas E. Richards, is an SF novel about an alien vessel that lands on Earth and the rush to get to it. I have read a few books by the author, and like all of them, this was pretty fun. The characters feel a little phony at times, but the story flows well, is entertaining, and I liked that it didn't go the more predictable, boring way and ended in an interesting way. I don't usually feel his books are particularly memorable, but this one is definitely a cooler/not as common concept and had a better conclusion. I also really like that there is a section discussing the tech in the book and some insight on the writing.

I have been watching Lucifer, I believe since last year (for whatever reason, they only decided to show it now here in Brazil, and played all 3 season nearly continuously). It is nice, but not great (in particular they drop almost all the supernatural to make it a police procedural - which I am told is Fox's fault, which is good news since season 4 will be Netflix) - but I really like it. So after the whole near cancellation debacle, I was thinking that since I like Neil Gaiman, I really should check the comic books out. So I read Lucifer Book One  (affiliate link - there is no point with my traffic numbers, but why not?). I liked it. The beginning is sometimes too weird - I guess I am used to having some set of marginal rules instead of powers and concepts coming out of nowhere - but by the end I was truly engrossed. It is pretty much completely unrelated to the TV series, though, and I imagine many who like the series would not like the comics. Already got the next on...

The Soldier, by Neal Asher, is an SF novel that takes place on the Polity. Many old favorite characters are back, and this time the main focus is a ring of old Jain tech, carefully guarded by Orlandine, one of the Dragon spheres, and many AIs. As usual, bad tech gets loose, and large scale battles occur. I like the new scope that this trilogy format allows. The wait between volumes, though, is brutal. Overall, strongly recommended for fans of the Polity series.

I've recently started playing Shadow Warrior 2. It is a nice FPS with shooting and melee elements, as well as many ways to customize your skills and weapons. On some points, it feels like they tried too hard and some UI elements are not explained at all. It also gets repetitive quite fast (which was a problem with Shadow Warrior (2013) too). I just took two of the first side missions, and they take place in almost the same location. Some things I love: The next objective has a nice dot trail on the map. No more walking around trying to find a key! Most useful things, such as loot boxes are marked on the map, too. Overall, it is nice, specially considering I got it at a nice discount. But just like the first one, I am not too sure I will bother to finish it. Update: currently 20 hours in and did most of the side missions on the free DLC. They are not great, but they are fun enough and worth it for the extra action points and occasional skills. Update 2: finished th...

I usually don't bother to review series here, but Cobra Kai deserves it. It is a sequel of Karate Kid, with the same two "main" characters - Daniel and Johnny Lawrence, the bully that Daniel fights in the first movie. That would already be notable to me, as I really liked the movies as a kid, but the new characters and how they evolve through the 10 episodes was pretty much great. Given the use of 80s rock, I loved the song choices, too. In Brazil you have to buy the episodes individually, which was kind of annoying the Youtube android app. It was not that cheap but well worth it. It ends in a big tournament fight, just like the movie, and the ending is very satisfying, even though a bit expected. It also sets up the next season nicely, which I hear is definitely coming. I think this is the first major YouTube production, and it bodes very well for its future if they continue in this quality level. It would be nice if it was included with Google Play Music ...

Quantum Magician, by Derek Künsken, was not a book per se, but serialized in Analog. I understand it will be released later in the year as a book, though. It is an SF novel which features a number of human races created by genetic engineering. The main character has enhanced smarts, a savant mode and a quantum fugue that blocks his personality so that he becomes a quantum computer (no observer) - pretty clever. He also has other features such as a magnetic sense. There are a few others - such as the puppets, which were biologically engineered to think the numen (other engineered people) were gods. That went, of course poorly. These and some more will be required for a huge scam to move a group of ships. Overall, I really loved it.  I really recommend getting it when the book is available.

Got a new Kindle Paperwhite to replace my older 3rd generation one (still had a keyboard, battery failed after 8 years - can't complain!). I like the touch screen. It was weird not having the buttons to switch pages, but just for the first hour or so. After that, if you like highlighting passages (I really do - and I'm even worse in technical books), it is WAY better than the old way with the cursor. Page changes are much faster, although pretty slow compared to the Kindle on an iPad or Android phone. The 4-led screen is a bit irregular around the bottom, but I didn't want to spend more because there is nowhere to repair these here - AFAIK after the warranty you are on your own. As in the old Kindle, reading it is much easier in the eyes than devices with normal screens. It is also nicer to hold, I even like the texture. Pretty good so far. Battery duration still remains to be seen... I'll update the review then. Update 21/May/2018 - Two weeks with minimum light, still ...

Head On, by John Scalzi, is an SF/police novel and a sequel to Lock in. In Lock In, a disease (Haden) struck people around the world that makes them unable to move or communicate in any form. Someone develops hardware that enables people to access a VR world and command robots (there are actual diseases that cause this, but thankfully none are as widespread as in this series). The second volume, Head On, follows the same FBI agents as the first in a new case, involving a sport specially played by Haden robots. I liked it. It has a good flow, but seems to be a little too complicated. Overall I like it, but read the first book first.

Children of Time, by Adrian Tchaikovsky is a wonderful, non-cliche SF novel. In the book, men have an empire with a few colonies, and is in the middle of an experiment to uplift monkeys in a terraformed world, by using virus to make them sentient within a few generations. Everything goes wrong, but not on the regular cliche way. Instead, we get an wonderful, creative description on how the uplifted society and individuals slowly evolve. All of which leads to a great ending. Really worthy of the awards it received.

Home Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, by Yuval Noah Harari is a very interesting book that talks both about our future, and the past trends that made it and allows to imagine what our future would be like. It was full of insights  on how things are, and on the current state of the art tech and what it means for our future. Overall, very interesting, strongly recommended.

X-Morph: Defense is an interesting hybrid of tower defense and top-down shooter. You are an alien force defending your tower, which came to Earth to take our jobs (er, I mean resources). As usual, you have to place towers (which seem to have only types, not strengths) to make enemies walk on mazes and to destroy them. As is traditional, there are several types of towers - regular, artillery, anti-air, etc. They can also have laser fences between them, so as to make more sense to why enemies just don't on their sides. You also get an alien ship with various weapon types (you can make different choices on what are available on each mission). Graphics are good. What frustrate me a bit is that the controls feel a bit clunky, and it is quite annoying to change bunches of towers between waves, as suddenly they stop making sense or can be destroyed by certain enemies (you lose nothing, but building towers in the middle of a wave is too time consuming). Overall, pretty interestin...

Heat Signature is an interesting title, with roguelike parts. It is a top-down "shooter" where you invade a spaceship per mission and try to achieve objectives (such as kill someone, steal a device, etc) while using several objects - such as guns, stealth shields, the old trusty wrench, etc. You can pause to issue orders, which makes a big difference. So far I find it quite enjoyable. Graphics are very adequate, and run quite fast. Story is minimal and tutorial is somewhat adequate (I didn't get that you could throw objects at first, which was a big problem). Some people complained that the missions are too similar, but I haven't played enough for this to be a factor yet.

Splasher is a platformer with an interesting use of paints, for different effects in surfaces. That reminds me a bit of Portal 2. I'm not a big fan of tricky jumps and redoing sections, though, so it is really not for me. Nice graphics and probably interesting for platformer fans, however.

Drawkanoid is an interesting game based on Arkanoid. I've playing these since the 80s, and there many variations. I got it from the Humble Monthly Bundle. This variation is defined by drawing the position of the paddle, with a slow time zone (otherwise you wouldn't have time to draw). The graphics are pretty nice looking, with an abstract style and 80s neon colors. The effects look good. There are also many possible upgrades, such as a bigger paddle, more lives, more damage, etc. For extra flavor some of these are activated by a number of bounces, which is an interesting choice. Overall, though, the reactions needed on constant use of bullet time end up being very tiresome, so the game is fun for a little while, then feels like work. Interesting concept, though.

I've read It - by Stephen King - way back, when it was somewhat new. But I've seen the 2017 movie, loved it, and wanted to re-read the book. I really liked it, and the mixing of the past and the present is certainly more suspenseful than the approach the movie took (part 1 has only the past section). The books feels WAY too verbose, through. Mine had 1090 pages, but it feels like it could be trimmed to almost half without losing much. Still, the ending was pretty great and I hope the second movie does something similar - it'd look pretty epic. Of course, not sure how good the "mind space" will look visually.

Recently someone revealed that he managed to use deep learning libraries to generate fake videos after training with celebrity images. A few days ago, there were multiple stories mentioning how there is now ready-to-go apps that can do this, and even come with pre-trained neural nets for specific celebrities. And groups on Reddit dedicated for the resulting videos. While this was obviously going to come sooner or later, it means that very soon video evidence is going to become meaningless. There are already other papers about how to sync mouth movement to generate audio, and how to create audio that matches a voice. That is pretty much all that is needed for very high quality fake videos. The ones generated by the app are not that convincing yet, but I'm pretty sure that is just a matter of time, and probably not a lot of it, either...

I recently felt like re-reading The Owner's trilogy - The Departure, Zero Point and Jupiter War, by Neal Asher. I had read these back in 2013, and for whatever reason it stuck on my mind. They were pretty much as good as I remembered. The story is about Alan Saul - a man that was awoken by an AI, without memory, while being sent alive to an incinerator. From this, he goes and messes up a probably slight exaggerated evil dystopic socialist world government, meanwhile stealing a space station made in a large asteroid in Earth orbit. Very enjoyable.

I saw It (2017) recently. I really liked the mini-series and the book, and with all the good reviews I expected a lot from the movie. Thankfully, it pretty much delivered. There seems to be quite a few changes, but it's been a while since I read the book, and anyway, they seemed to work well. Everyone's acting was pretty good. As some have complained, some characters were really, really skipped over, though. Can't wait for the sequel!

Prison Architect is an interesting PC prison management sim.  I actually got it in a Humble Bundle way back in 2014, but it was on sale last week, and there were so many comments praising it that I checked Steam for opinions, and realized I had it. Many said it can easily take hours of your time, and that is certainly true. I've played the whole campaign in 11 hours (I'm sure it can be done much faster, but I wanted to complete some of the optional quests, too). You can also just create prisons as you want to, outside the campaign. I found it quite entertaining. There are many possible things to build and control, many with important consequences. It is a bit buggy, too, but usually not too serious (mostly things like having to enclose areas for them to be recognized, even though it isn't a requirement). The game clearly states it is for prison reform, through both the mechanics and the cut scenes, which I think is a useful thing. Clearly it makes no point to use ...