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

I just realized after watching this episode how limited the creative bucket is again. Essentially we are getting another version of the Hurtling out of Control Trope. For me anyway this device was made famous by Lost in Space and Space 1999. Space 1999 fits the most closely because of the larger group dynamic. Technically it was the device in the original and to some extent the recent Battlestar Galactica shows, I’ll grant them the “Running for our Lives” variant.  Another obvious spin is the “Fighting to get back Home” of Star Trek Voyager.

Ok, you get the idea, so lets return to the Hurtling out of Control. SGU and LiS are really pretty close the more you think about it.

• Dr. Zachary Smith = Dr.  Nicholas Rush
• Will Robinson = Eli Wallace
• Judy Robinson = Cloe Armstrong
• Dr. John Robinson = Colonel Everett Young
• Penny Robinson = TBD
• Major Don West = Lieutenant Matthew Scott
• Maureen Robinson = TBD
• The Robot = Not Found Yet

Now the TBD roles up there are probably going to rotate out among the other crew/staff who are “not ready” for their situation. I am betting the Robot role will be filled somewhere mid season by an alien they pick up on one of their ship induced stops.

That is all I have on this right now, I may return later if the show makes it worth my time to continue watching.  So far I am turned off on just the complete parallel they have taken with its development and that of the New versions of the Star Trek shows.

• Next Generation = Stargate
• Deep Space Nine = Stargate Atlantis
• Voyager = Stargate Universe

The new show is nice and pretty and it is keeping those CGI folks employed so it ain’t all bad.

Rocket City Brewfest

“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.

Now after watching that fun little video, go check out this rant by Michael Resnick reproduced over at the Planet Stories blog.

Photo of Jesse Williams and Lois Markle in The Sandbox © Jaisen Crockett/Art Meets Commerce.

In todays computer games, one of the popular genres is the Sandbox. The hallmark of this type of game is nonlinear gameplay and it can be incredibly fun. In my opinion, these games got their popular start in home RPG games like Dungeons and Dragons.  DnD campaigns in and of them selves are not by nature sandbox affairs, but with the right setup and agreement of the players and DM they can go this route. I’ve recently found an excellent series of posts describing an example of this type of game. It reminded me of a similar game our group played in back at the height of playing. John ran the campaign and the players were myself, Mike, Rick, Dave, his brothers, with a couple of other folks making small cameo appearances if I remember correctly. The details are fuzzy, but the fun we had was not.

The closest thing to a group experience like this in computers today is the MMORPG, but these fall short to varrying degrees because they are not true sandbox enviroments. Things you do in the world have no lasting impact. There are often world changing events but they only provide a passing illusion of impact. They are really just a hugely shared linear experience as they are often tied to game updates shared by all worlds tied to expansions. They are quite fun, but fleeting.

Sandbox games offer the player a sense of real impact, but in the case of the crop we have now, nothing is shared. Oblivion, Fallout, Grand Theft Auto, etc all offer rich worlds to explore but you do it solo. Maybe someday someoen will figure out how to offer the experience of a sandbox with room for more than one.