Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton

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We are here to review the book Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton. We are not here to review the movie of the same name by Steven Spielberg (at least, not yet). The book is a study in the power of science that the problems with chaos theory. The movie is an amazing display of state of the art computer generated special effects. Michael Crichton loves taking cutting edge science fact and mixing it with fiction and a lesson on how what we know is not as perfect and exact as most people think it is. So, let’s go visit some dinosaurs.

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The New Frontier by Darwyn Cooke

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After reading the Darwyn Cooke’s Superman book the other day, it brought be back to want to re-read his masterpeice, The NewFrontier. This book not only made Cooke’s name, but also spawned an animated feature. I hadn’t read Cooke before reading The New Frontier,  but afterwords I was a fan. Cooke not only captured the superheroes, but also the 50s zeitgeist. So, what is The New Frontier?

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The Half-Made World by Felix Gilman

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Felix Gilman’s The Half-Made World is a mixture of steam-punk, fantasy and a western. And it pulls it off brilliantly. Gilman who had previously published two fantasy novels (Thunderer and it’s sequel Gears of the City) has stepped into a hybrid book that many different types of readers will enjoy. Even though I’m not much of a fantasy fan (as I’ve mentioned a few times previously), but I might check out Gilman’s other two books to see if they are as much fun as this one. So what is The Half-Made World?

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Wallace and Gromit

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The lovable Englishman and faithful canine companion (Wallace and Gromit) have 4 shorts films, a movie and even a fewbooks. They are a scrappy duo and the studio that made them (Aardman Animation) and their director (Nick Park) deserve all the accolades, Oscar wins and appreciation they’ve received. But who are Wallace and Gromit.

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Stargate Universe Cancelled

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For those of you who might have missed the announcement yesterday, Syfy canceled Stargate Universe. Fan favorite writer John Scalzi was the creative consultant on the latest of the Stargate shows. I enjoyed the original movie (and only own the DVD because it came in a set of free movies when I bought my first DVD player), but had not kept up with any of the sequels or spin offs until SGU came out. Since I had enjoyed Scalzi’s writing, I tried the show. I watched the first three episodes and realized that I wasn’t really interested in it. It’s not that it was bad, it just wasn’t something I was interested in watching.

I have heard good things about SG-1 and Atlantis, so I hope that Syfy tries another Stargate show (if for no reason other than to keep science fiction on TV). But I worry that Syfy’s original programming isn’t getting the audience it needs and that Syfy might stop producing original science fiction programming. That would be a worrying development.

E.B. White’s children’s novels

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One of the underrated pleasures of children is the ability to go back and revisit the classics that we loved when we were children. In my case that included the trio of E.B. White children’s novels. White was a long time contributer to the New Yorker, but he is mainly known for 4 books: the trio of children’s novels and The Elements of Style (THE goto book for grammar and style). So what’s so special about the kid lit?

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How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu

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How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe written by and starring Charles Yu has been popping up on a lot of best-of lists for 2010. This is Yu’s first book (he does have a collection of short stories titled Third Class Superhero), but it doesn’t show. Having listened to an interview with Yu, he mentioned that he put his name in for the main character as a placeholder, but it worked so well in the novel, that he was reluctant to remove it later. So, how do you life safely in a science fictional universe?

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Superman: Kryptonite by Darwyn Cooke and Tim Sale

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The Superman series Superman Confidential was designed to showcase stories from the early years in Superman’s Metropolis career. The first story in that series (which didn’t actually finish until issue 11) was Darwyn Cooke writing about Superman’s first experience with Kryptonite. This was interesting to me, since there are a lot of questions about Kryptonite. For instance, how does everyone know it’s from Krypton? How does everyone know it’s harmful to Superman? Cooke and Sale take on the challenge and create an interesting story about it. So, how does Superman find Kryptonite?

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DC Universe Online MMORPG (Beta)

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I was lucky enough to receive an invitation to beta test of the DC Universe Online MMORPG. I installed and downloaded the game Wed night and played for an hour Wed night and another hour Thur night. If you’ve seen the trailer, then you’ve seen the beginning and the premise of the game. Here’s a quick overview of the game, based on two hours experience.

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The Guild Online Series

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Felicia Day is known mainly for her work with Joss Whedon (Buffy Season 7, Dollhouse and of course Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog), but she wasn’t happy with the roles available for her. So she decided that the best way to rectify that problem was to create her own series. Knowing that it was unlikely that she could get a network to fund her, she decided to do her own web series. Drawing on her experience with playing online games (such as World of Warcraft), Day decided to create a web series about a group of lovable losers who are in a Guild in an online game. So, what is the Guild about?

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