The List below are classics all, like Walker of Worlds, I’ll bold the books I’ve read, and italicize the ones I own and should read :) Granted, this is one publishers list of titles, and I do not find fault with any choices other than is seems very heavily weighted with PKD. I really like PKD but always run into road blocks of one kind or another when i get ready to pick up something to dive into. His influence is surprising the entertainment industry today. I venture to say more of his stories have been created into successful high quality productions than Stephen King (and I like SK too). Granted SK has a ton of movies out there, but few satisfy like the results you get with Blade Runner, Paycheck, or Total Recall.
1 – The Forever War – Joe Haldeman
2 – I Am Legend – Richard Matheson
3 – Cities in Flight – James Blish
4 – Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? – Philip K. Dick
5 – The Stars My Destination – Alfred Bester
6 – Babel-17 – Samuel R. Delany
7 – Lord of Light – Roger Zelazny
8 – The Fifth Head of Cerberus – Gene Wolfe
9 – Gateway – Frederik Pohl
10 – The Rediscovery of Man – Cordwainer Smith
11 – Last and First Men – Olaf Stapledon
12 – Earth Abides – George R. Stewart
13 – Martian Time-Slip – Philip K. Dick
14 – The Demolished Man – Alfred Bester
15 – Stand on Zanzibar – John Brunner
16 – The Dispossessed – Ursula K. Le Guin
17 – The Drowned World – J. G. Ballard
18 – The Sirens of Titan – Kurt Vonnegut
19 – Emphyrio – Jack Vance
20 – A Scanner Darkly – Philip K. Dick
21 – Star Maker – Olaf Stapledon
22 – Behold the Man – Michael Moorcock
23 – The Book of Skulls – Robert Silverberg
24 – The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds – H. G. Wells
25 – Flowers for Algernon – Daniel Keyes
26 – Ubik – Philip K. Dick
27 – Timescape – Gregory Benford
28 – More Than Human – Theodore Sturgeon
29 – Man Plus – Frederik Pohl
30 – A Case of Conscience – James Blish
31 – The Centauri Device – M. John Harrison
32 – Dr. Bloodmoney – Philip K. Dick
33 – Non-Stop – Brian Aldiss
34 – The Fountains of Paradise – Arthur C. Clarke
35 – Pavane – Keith Roberts
36 – Now Wait for Last Year – Philip K. Dick
37 – Nova - Samuel R. Delany
38 – The First Men in the Moon – H. G. Wells
39 – The City and the Stars – Arthur C. Clarke
40 – Blood Music – Greg Bear
41 – Jem – Frederik Pohl
42 – Bring the Jubilee – Ward Moore
43 – VALIS – Philip K. Dick
44 – The Lathe of Heaven – Ursula K. Le Guin
45 – The Complete Roderick – John Sladek
46 – Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said – Philip K. Dick
47 – The Invisible Man – H. G. Wells
48 – Grass – Sheri S. Tepper
49 – A Fall of Moondust – Arthur C. Clarke
50 – Eon - Greg Bear
51 – The Shrinking Man – Richard Matheson
52 – The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch – Philip K. Dick
53 – The Dancers at the End of Time – Michael Moorcock
54 – The Space Merchants – Frederik Pohl and Cyril M. Kornbluth
55 – Time Out of Joint – Philip K. Dick
56 – Downward to the Earth – Robert Silverberg
57 – The Simulacra – Philip K. Dick
58 – The Penultimate Truth – Philip K. Dick
59 – Dying Inside – Robert Silverberg
60 – Ringworld - Larry Niven
61 – The Child Garden – Geoff Ryman
62 – Mission of Gravity – Hal Clement
63 – A Maze of Death – Philip K. Dick
64 – Tau Zero – Poul Anderson
65 – Rendezvous with Rama – Arthur C. Clarke
66 – Life During Wartime – Lucius Shepard
67 – Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang – Kate Wilhelm
68 – Roadside Picnic – Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
69 – Dark Benediction – Walter M. Miller, Jr.
70 – Mockingbird – Walter Tevis
71 – Dune - Frank Herbert
72 – The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress – Robert A. Heinlein
73 – The Man in the High Castle - Philip K. Dick
74 – Inverted World – Christopher Priest
75 – Cat’s Cradle – Kurt Vonnegut
76 – The Island of Dr. Moreau – H.G. Wells
77 – Childhood’s End – Arthur C. Clarke
78 – The Time Machine – H.G. Wells
79 – Dhalgren – Samuel R. Delany
80 – Helliconia – Brian Aldiss
81 – Food of the Gods – H.G. Wells
82 – The Body Snatchers - Jack Finney
83 – The Female Man – Joanna Russ
84 – Arslan – M.J. Engh – Arslan

Not sure if I have the funds for it right now, but it will be on my list of possibilities for sure. Thanks for the follow on twitter and good luck with the book! They also have a few web comics on their site. Check them out.

Optimum Wound

ImagineFX has a feature (not sure if it is regular) they spend a page on with a shot of an artists studio, some notes and a short bit by the artist on their process (or just a rambling, depending on said artists temperament). Many artists books like Mechanika: Creating the Art of Science Fiction with Doug Chiang use this as part of the process of teaching.

Finally, Studio Space is an entire book on just this subject. This book in particular covers quite a few great folks and allows you to get inside the head of  the artists in a fairly revealing way. It may have not been the intention but it reveals quite a bit just the same.

Adventure Art #1 is offered both as a print and a PDF, I am reviewing the PDF version and think for this type of produce, while it is nice there is a print version available, really works best as a PDF as you are granted permission to reproduce the art for personal use. The product is a collection of twelve character sketches with a bonus action sketch thrown in. It has a table of contents of sorts consisting of a very short intro for each character as well as the credits for the concept and art.  Very handy way to make sure the creators get credit while keeping the utility of the character sketches clean. The quality of the art is above average to very good.

Other than being just fun to look through, for me, the best use for this around the game table would be a tool to spark ideas for a game master looking for help with NPC’s for his game. Players would gain the benefit of having a picture to place with the description the GM throws at them. Always nice to have a face to associate with in a game. All in all $6 for a PDF of printable clean character art is not too bad. Mythic Design has two issues out so far, give one of them a try.

Mythic Design

“Violations of our copyrights and piracy of our products hurt not only Wizards of the Coast’s financial health but also the health of whole gaming community including retailers and players,” said Greg Leeds, President of Wizards of the Coast. “We have brought these suits to stop the illegal activities of these defendants, and to deter future unauthorized and unlawful file-sharing.”

If it is their intention to bring all pdf sales inhouse, expect two things. An increase of anywhere from 50 to 100% price increase. A horribly broken system for downloading the files that limits sales to the point they beomce non existant.

Either reason WotC has for doing this is sure to cause all those pdf’s to become even more available via torrent than they were before, because it will be the ONLY efficient way to get them, and if you have downloaded anything via torrent you know how sarchastic that statement was.

I personally just grabbed a couple of Planescape products I was missing from Paizo while I still could. Oh well. WotC/Hasbro really does just not know how to make a smart call. If only they would choke their sales to the point Paizo can just buy the whole thing, lock stock and barrell, we might actually game to be proud of again.

It also is very subtle once installed so does not get in the way. Nice that is does not add a freakin toolbar, eating your browsing window or cluttering things more. Highly recommended.

I read Penny Arcade regularly. The comic is decent to good and the blog is usually better than that. Today I was dumbfounded that Tycho had not fully consumed Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories. Heck I was a little suprised he even admitted it. Oh well, all the better for me because in this confession was a link to Graphic Novel Review. Specifically a review of Conan: Tower of the Elephant (And Other Stories)

Good review and tasty links to waste more of your time on. The blog itself seems very nice and the reviews are board spectrum as far as graphic novels covered. Looks like I’ll add it to my list of regular reads.

While talking about links, finding new info and the time it wastes. We must always hit Wikipedia for the ultimate in sidetracking ones self.