STG's

 Katana Zero is an interesting side-scroller with a lot of sword action. It stays in an interesting place between pure action and pure strategy. I do like that it quickly rewinds the level when you make a mistake. Seems a little too easy to make mistakes, and some levels can take a while, so that part is annoying. Graphics are pixel perfect retro, with plenty of effects - it looks great. There are some wall to wall jumps, but they are quite forgiving.

 Unclean Spirits, by Chuck Wending, tells the story of a man who got in serious trouble, discovered gods exist and are everywhere, then discovers he has some god blood in him, then gets in the middle of gods' fights. Wait, that is the exact description of American Gods, too... In all fairness, these are different enough that they are both enjoyable, but in general lines, the plots are pretty similar. Pretty enjoyable.

 The Quantum War, by Derek Hausen, is the third in a series that started with The Quantum Magician. These are usually complicated (and I am not so sure a lot of the physics in them make any sense), but pretty fun, and usually involve some complicated scheme by the main character, Bel Arjona, which is a Homo Quantus - a race specially developed by the banks for predictions and quantum computation, but that didn't seem to work so well. In the last book, a large portion of all the Homo Quantus were kidnapped by a big power, and are being used as puppets with their minds suppressed in the war. So, Arjona is going to try a impossible prison break... I really liked it (except for the ending, which didn't seem to conclude Arjona's fate). A summary of previous events on the other book would be nice though - I was confused on most of the beginning.

 Phoenix Extravagant is an interesting fantasy take on golems. On an occupied country, an artist is blackmailed into working for the government branch that makes golems, as artists are needed to make the instructions (and thus are the coders). They (the artist - it is the pronoun used. As a side note, it seems to me that it would be better if another pronoun that wasn't already used became the standard for this - I was confused a few times) then end up making one of the golem sentient and fighting the occupying government. There was also a complicated romance with the woman who killed the artist's sister-in-law. Overall, I really liked it.

  I just watched the first episode of Foundation on Apple+. Personally, I was ambivalent about subscribing to Apple+. I did subscribe to Apple Music for a while (and switched to Google Play Music, which I do somewhat regret, because of YouTube Music), and had a couple of iPads, but I’m not an Apple fan. In particular, not having an Android app for Apple+, which is really  in your face  monopolistic behavior — yes, everyone else does it when convenient, including Amazon and Google (in particular, not having Youtube/Youtube Music skills for Alexa), but they are harder to avoid. Also, they seem to be taking a boutique streaming service angle, which is nice but diminishes the service value (i.e. how long till I watch everything I want to?) Anyway, I got a 3 month free trial from another streaming service (Globoplay), and that was convenient because while I am OK skipping the rest of their series so far, I am a huge Asimov fan, and I have been since I was a kid. So of course I...

 Do Androids dream of electric sheep?, by Philip K. Dick, is the 1968 SF novel that Blade Runner was based on. For some reason, I never got around to reading it, but recently got it on a sale. It was pretty interesting. The larger story is basically Blade Runner, but there were some interesting details along the way, including the explanation of the world state (bombs spread radioactive dust everywhere), the whole Mercerism religion, and the boxes that allow to induce feelings. Overall, very good, and well worth reading.