A science fiction blog featuring science fiction book reviews and with frequent ramblings on fantasy, computers and the web.
I just finished watching Seriel Experiments Lain and all I have to say is: Wow.
SEL is the story of a girl who’s life is changed by the apparent suicide of a friend. Soon after, Lain receives an email from this friend saying she was alright and had only abandoned her flesh. Things begin to become surreal for Lain from here on out.
This is the January 2004 update of my New Year’s Resolution.
QUICK STATS:
SF-POINT© QUOTA: 31
SF-POINTS©EARNED: 40
ANTARCTICA Dream-Dollars is a really cool web site detailing the currency of a fictional Antarctica colony. They’ll even send you a free sample of the money.
Extremely well done art on the denominations.
Sorry for lapsing back to the eighth grade, but in light of IE’s newest, err, feature , I decided to try Firebird (I already have Mozilla). Its really nice and it has a lot of cool extensions.
Particularly intresting are the Edit CSS extension (which allows you to edit a web pages styles on the fly), the JavaScript console (for writing and testing scripts), and the NewsMonstorer RSS, Weblog, mondo-aggregator (which causes my Mozilla/Firebird browser to hang).
Check ‘em out.
REVIEW SUMMARY: Excellent Lego reproduction of the real thing – great for kids of all ages (10 and up.)
MY RATING: 
SYNOPSIS:: 858 piece Lego reproduction of the Mars Exploration Rover (Spirit and Opportunity) with wheels that roll and turn (front and back turn opposite just like the real robot), camera mast that swivels, a remotely operated rock drill / camera, and working deployable solar panels.
MY REVIEW:
PROS: Very well done with good fit and finish, awesome stearing mechanism, and very fun to play with!
CONS: 3 hour assembly time (for a veteran lego builder), instructions sometimes enigmatic
BOTTOM LINE: Awesome way to teach the whole family about the MER and easily the most complicated Lego build I’ve ever seen.
REVIEW SUMMARY: Another must-have for anybody who likes short sf.
MY RATING:
BRIEF SYNOPSIS: A collection of the short story, novelette and novella winners of the Nebula Award between the years 1965 – 1969.
MY REVIEW:
PROS: Mostly top-notch tales.
CONS: Some stinkers. (These were award winners?)
BOTTOM LINE: A very good collection of classic short sf.
How many Highlander movies/TV shows can there possibly be? The first movie was decent enough, although poorly edited IMO, and the other movies sucked dingo’s kidnies. I never watched the TV series so I don’t know much about them. What can they possible do?
Is Rick Berman out of Enterprise? We’ll see after February. Personally, this is the wrong half of B&B to be removing. Braga must have pictures of someone…
From Sci Fi Wire: Robert A. Heinlein’s SF classic Have Spacesuit, Will Travel is in planning stages to become a movie.
A website that allows you to take an interactive virtual tour of an imaginary Mars habitat.
Saw this trailer on another website. I saw an older Appleseed a few years back and this one looks good.
Neave Games …Pac-Man, Space Invaders, Tetris, Asteroids and more are all re-creations of these classic games in Java I believe. What I do find cool is the liquidy borders around the content. Sweet.
Decomposing Whale Explodes on Street. Tim, Tim, Tim. Where did you get the explosives? It ain’t sushi anymore, it mushi…
@CNN. Now, who invented the blue screen?
Oh great. Another output device for reality TV. [Link]
Mark Hamill has directed and stars in Comic Book: The Movie, a straight-to-DVD (just releases this week) self-referential mockumentary about a comic book fan hired to direct a movie about comic book heroes.
The notable cast list includes Bruce Campbell, Kevin Smith, Matt Groening and Billy West.
And, not that I troll Star Wars sites or anything, here is a recent interview with Hamill.
Now this is cool. Forewarning: the JPG link will open about half a dozen windows. Open the movie link instead to see it in action.
REVIEW SUMMARY: It’s like a Tivo for your brain.
MY RATING:
BRIEF SYNOPSIS: In a future where memories can be digitally recorded, one man must solve a murder mystery.
MY REVIEW:
PROS: Imaginatively-envisioned future; quick pace; terse writing style.
CONS: Weaker middle; mostly unmemorable characters.
BOTTOM LINE: An excellent story in a well-imagined future.
Get ready for a new TV viewing and gaming experience. Ultraprime will soon be producing “The Evolvers“, the “first television show created specifically to be part of an online game”. It promises “opportunities to participate in the show and potentially affect the storyline as the show is being broadcast.”
Sounds interesting. There was that one time I channel-surfed past The Simple Life and wanted to smack Paris Hilton upside the head with a really hardcore frying pan. Will the game let me do that?
In a virtual sense of course. Terra Nova has an interesting article concerning how avatars reflect the user’s view of themselves and how the avater influences others actions towards the user.
An interesting read, especially when talking about the Looking Glass Self (link in post)concept. Basically, the theory states that it doesn’t matter how you percieve yourself, others will see what they want to see in you. In other words, the ‘real’ you in the world is controlled by other’s perceptions of you and your actions. This is an interesting concept, which was re-inforced, albeit unknowingly, last night as I was watching the 12th episode of Serial Experiments Lain. First let me say this is the whackest anime I’ve seen, it beats the final two episodes of Neon Genesis because Lain has been whack from the beginning. But I digress. In the episode, the Looking Glass Self theory was espoused as to why the main character is the way she is. And it was couched in the same terms: we are who others see us as, regardless of how we see our selves or how we act. Personally, I see some validity here, but I haven’t really done a lot of thinking about it. Having played a female character in Earth and Beyond, I did notice that people would treat me differently because of the avatar. That changed when they knew I was male. Quite interesting.
Also note that Terra Nove has a list of MMOGs on the side. Cool.
Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles is a new GameCube only game from Square Enix. It is an entry in the FF series, however, it looks and plays a lot like Gauntlet and isn’t a regular entry in the series.
In fact, the big draw here is the coop multiplayer mode. To play multiplayer, each person must have a GameBoy Advance and GC to GBA cable. Notice the must. On eace GBA, the screen shows you your character’s stats, inventory, a radar and, since this is a coop game, info that you must share with the others to win. This is an interesting idea, although I don’t know how well it works in practice. It is different, but I would like to see more games using this. For instance, the football games should allow the different players to select their plays and call audibles using the GBA so that the opponents can’t see what is going on. Racing games could implement the rear view mirror here, although a split-screen and inter-screen mode of play could be quite busy. It should be interesting to see what the eggheads at Ninetndo can come up with as to how to mix the GBA and GC. Then all you PS2 and Xbox loser-boys will be crying to your moms wanting a CG and CGB.
Yeah, just wait.
I downloaded the demo of SpellForce – The Order of Dawn the other day, and its actually been rather fun. Spellforce is in an interesting mix RPG and RTS, with the RTS being the main focus of the game.
You start out commanding one guy, your avatar, and he/she is an uber unit compared to the others. As you do things, you gain XP which allows you to increase your level. You can then increase your stats and abilities to allow your guy to do more stuff. Along the way, you’ll pick up runes which will allow you to command up to three more not-so-uber units, such as fighters or wizards, to complement your persona.
As if that isn’t enough, each scenario is played out using the classic RTS style. You find a temple, bind to it, then you can start building the grunts. These guys go out and gather resources which you can then, of course, use to build structures and different grunty types. Along with the main goal of each scenario, there are also several side quests which you use your avatar to complete. You gain items, such as weapons and/or runes, that you can then use in the scenario. You don’t have to complete these in order to end the scenario. Also cool, when you complete a scenario, your guys are still there and you can cycle around your temple areas to build more stuff in later scenarios. Or so they say, the demo doesn’t do this.
The game looks nice, and you can play in the traditional isometric view, or zoom on down to an over-the-shoulder, third-person view of your avatar. Apparently, there are loads of spells, abilities and equipment to unlock. All of this adds to the playability of this game, and that comes from someone who doesn’t like RTS gams in general because of the amount of clicking involved.
All in all, I’ve had fun playing it, and I’m thinking about purchasing it when its released on this side of the pond on Feb. 2.
From CNET News.
REVIEW SUMMARY: A good film if viewed the right way
MY RATING: 
BRIEF SYNOPSIS: An Engineer is paid to steal designs and have his subsequent memories erased.
MY REVIEW:
PROS: Great premise
CONS: Out-of-place action sequences; broken suspension of disbelief;
BOTTOM LINE: Concentrate on the story line and ignore the out-of-place action sequences.
