| Well I finally finished Alec Effinger’s series about Marid Audran. Moving onto Spook Country but not before I give you all a quick review and my recommendations. I will try not to include any spoilers. First of all the series consists of 3 books. Make sure to read them in order: When Gravity Fails, A Fire in the Sun and The Exile Kiss. A new book of Marid Audran Short Stories was just released called “Budayeen Nights”. It is important to note that Effinger passed away in 2002 so unless someone discovers more short stories or decides to takes up the mantle of writing about Marid Audran this most excellent “Shaykh” will reveal no more of his story.
Setting: The setting is all important here. Sometime in the future in an Islamic ruled city somewhere in North Africa in a quarter of the city called the Budayeen. The world’s countries have fractured into smaller nation states. Islam has a much larger hold on the world’s population. |
Monthly Archives: August 2007
Another Punk… Steampunk
Out of the world of Cyberpunk came the concept of Steampunk… ” Steampunk is a subgenre of fantasy and speculative fiction which came into prominence in the 1980s and early 1990s. The term denotes works set in an era or world where steam power is still widely used—usually the 19th century, and often set in Victorian era England—but with prominent elements of either science fiction or fantasy, such as fictional technological inventions like those found in the works of H. G. Wells, or real technological developments like the computer occurring at an earlier date. ” (from wikipedia).
Of course I credit William Gibson and Bruce Sterling’s book “The Difference Engine” (I think I need to re-read it) with mainstreaming the concept…
Anyway here is a great link to steampunk like items that people have created.
Enoc
A night with William Gibson in Spook Country
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As mentioned in my last post – Ling and I attended a signing and reading of William Gibson’s Spook Country last night. About 50 + people attended (full house) the event at Cody’s (last remaining) Bookstore on 4th St in Berkeley. Ling and I have attended these kind of events before ( for Neil Gaiman and William Gibson ) and it follows a usual pattern of the author reading a chapter, answering some questions from the crowd and then the book signing. This was indeed how the night went. Gibson read chapter 42 of the book ( perhaps an homage to Douglas Adams someone in line suggested ). |
Spook Country…
| Tonight Ling and I are heading to Spook Country …. actually we are heading to Cody’s bookstore in Berkeley to see/hear William Gibson talk about and I am sure read from his new book Spook Country… Clearly Gibson is one of the pioneers of Cyberpunk and either Ling or I will have a report back to you on the experience. |
All The World’s Indeed a Stage …
Well, “Spook Country” I hear has a rock star protagonist. Rock stars have appeared in a few cyberpunk stories, one of them actually on my list of “Book I’ve Never Finished.”
But a modern day concert a cyberpunk bloggable event? Oh hell ya! Especially if it’s RUSH.
CONCERT SPOILERS BELOW I should note, just in case, they’re on tour for awhile and don’t read if you don’t want to know.
A Fistful of Steampunk!
Interesting site, A Fistful of Games, has a write-up of playing a steampunk board game, or a modified rule set of another game to encompass steampunk elements. Or something. OK. I didn’t really read it all the way through, but I intend to. So I’m bloggin it here to remind me!
Anywho — we’ve really enjoyed playing the full-fledged WoW boardgame, though I don’t recall ever really finishing a game. We just don’t have the full weekend to play like we did in our youth with D&D. But I like the “quick” start up time of these very advanced and complicated board games and am facinated by them. Not sure my kids are up for playing them, but in a few more years, perhaps, perhaps.
Blogging from Firefox
Just found this great Firefox addon called ScribeFire (actually Ling told me about it). It allows you to blog directly from within Firefox. Very cool you should check it out.
Powered by ScribeFire.
Shadowrun the series Part 2
So what makes the Shadowrun Novels so special? Glad you asked. As I said in my previous post I was really a fantasy book reader prior to reading the first book in the Shadowrun series Never Deal with a Dragon
Shadowrun the series Part 1
I mentioned earlier that this site’s name is an homage to the Shadowrun Novels and thought I would expand on the series a little bit and tell you why I enjoy it so much. First of all Shadowrun started out as a RPG ( role playing game ). I have to admit I have never really played the RPG though I was definitely raised on Role Playing Games like Dungeons and Dragons, Arduin Grimore, Car Wars, Boothill and the like. I think up until I started reading the Shadowrun books my interest in Science Fiction was fairly low. Up until that time I spent most of my reading hours on Fantasy. William Gibson’s Neuromancer
More to come…