SHADOWRUNNING

How can you go wrong with a blog entry that instantly quotes both William Gibson … and Dan Quayle! Well, nevermind, but The Age has an interesting read on some future trends in gaming, with somewhat of an Australian slant but still some good insights and trend analysis. And a mention of the long hyped “Spore.”

PC World has a pretty good list of the Top 50 Tech Visionaries, and admittedly, there were more than half that were unknown to me — not as big a geek as I thought I was! But yep, holding his own at No. 48 …. William Gibson!

I have already read Kelly’s first book WebMage (book 1 in her Ravirn series) and I will have to say I enjoyed it. I particularly like the way she combines technology and magic. There is always the problem of too much Deus Ex Machina though and not enough clever writing but I think that goes with territory of writing this kind of book. Check out Cybermancy and Codespell(pre-order) books 2 and 3 of her Ravirn series.

Recently I read Jeff’s book the “The Electric Church” and found it a good read. He has just released his new book “The Digial Plague” and you can buy it Amazon. I never really reviewed his first book, so I will give you a quick insight into his writing style. Jeff Somer’s writing style is reminiscent of Frank Miller’s Sin City or probably more accurately of the hard-boiled detective stories of the 20’s and 30’s. The book is very readable and the characters are definitely anti-heroes. Technology plays 2nd fiddle to the storyline and is not too inventive thought I am not sure how important that is with this kind of story.

His blog has gone quiet, which is always a good sign! Most likely taking a much needed little vacation, but he usually blogs while “in between” — perhaps Lady Muse have visited him! Anyway, he’s now all doctored up — honorary degree conferred! I like one of the headlines, “Now he’s the Doctor of Cyberspace!” Plus some steampunk musings at an LA Times’ Blog. Huh, I thought the VanderMeers’ Steampunk anthology was out already, pretty sure it’s on my shelf at home having just scored it? I could be wrong, big bag of books from a trip into SF last week! Maybe that was the post-cyberpunk anthology?