STG's

I recently got Slay the Spire in the Humble Bundle. It is a deckbuilding roguelike, which I doubt I'd get by myself because I usually don't like either type of game. When I started playing, it felt a little boring. But once I got more cards, relics (objects you get that give an effect and stay you throughout the whole run) and potions, the strategy of the game became more apparent, and I really enjoyed it. There can be a lot of thought on each round, and there are cards that can affect the whole battle. I've played for 80 minutes for now. I am still not sure what happens when I die, but so far I really like the game.

Sapiens, by Yuval Noah Harari has a very fair title of a Brief History of Mankind. Since I liked Homo Deus and 21 Lessons so much, I fully expected this book to be great. To say that I was not disappointed is a major understatement. There is so much in this book that covers history and culture that I never learned, and that had huge influences on where the world currently stand! I can't possibly recommend this enough.

Peace Force, by Simon Haynes, is self described in many places as a "light sci-fi adventure". Seems pretty fair. It is the first of a series where Harriet Walsh joins the local police, called Peace Force, as its only human member. I probably wouldn't have heard of it, but BookBub.com showed me the offer for US$0 on Amazon. BTW, it is totally worth subscribing to BookBub, as it is free and I get interesting offers for books of very known and occasionally unknown authors. Just pay attention before you pay - I am from Brazil and many of the offers are not available here. Anyway, the book was nice and short, with adequate amounts of action and humor. The twist about the robot was good enough. It was good enough to be enjoyable, but not good enough that I will be buying the sequels.

Yoki's Island Express is a pretty bizarre game - a mix of pinball with platforming. You are a beetle that is supposed to go around on deliveries, but so far it has been mostly using fruits you collect to unlock bumpers that allow you to navigate the levels. There are also a number of creatures that can help or hinder you. It is pretty weird, but somewhat entertaining. There are a few stations where you need to get bumpers just right to collect unlocks to leave the area, these feel a little annoying. This is certainly unique, and looks great, but I don't think it is worth the time, as I don't really enjoy the pinball mechanics.

Autonomous, by Annalee Newitz, is a SF novel that takes place more than a century in the future, where bio-tech, autonomous robots with full human rights and 3D/tissue/everything printers are everywhere. And in a pretty common turn of events, evil corporations have taken over the world. Sure, this is overused, but is it hard to see it happening as things are going right now? I really liked the tech on this novel. While most of it isn't really new in SF, it was applied very well, and there was so much of it that the world felt like a nice, integrated dystopian mess. The story was nice, particularly the weird tale of the bot just coming off training and going on its first mission. As silly detail picking, seems pretty bizarre to have all that bio-tech and full AI, and yet not have algorithms for expression detection when those are available right now to a pretty good level... I was a bit surprised that the review ratings weren't higher - but I guess I like weird tech more...

I just recently finished Life 3.0, by Max Tegmark , and Artificial You - by Susan Schneider just happened to pop up on recently added on O'Reilly Safari. It looks like it wasn't released on several other places, so no reviews, which I see as a minor perk. A nice discussion about AIs, consciousness and human enhancement and uploading. Of course, most of it is highly conceptual, but it still quite interesting and somewhat fun in a SF way to talk about. It goes in a different theme than Life 3.0, but still covers much of the same areas. SF fans will see many parallels to new and older books. For example, the issue of duplication is covered in an interesting way in Kiln People, by David Brin. Probes with uploaded minds are covered in some of Charles Stross' work, and he also has AIs based on human uploads. We are legion by Dennis E. Taylor also goes into interstellar probes and mind duplication. I do disagree with some of it (for example, there is much talk about how futu...