MindJack

Square-Enix doesn’t want you to forget about their upcoming third-person mind-jacking game about jacking minds called MindJack. Unfortunately, the screenshots they sent out also serve to remind you that the graphics will make you wish it was a PSP game.

Creepy, creepy dead eyes. In fairness, she may have already been mind-jacked.

Battleship Movie

Apparently Peter (Damn You for Making Enough Good Movies to Actually Make Me Want to Watch a Movie Based on the Battleship Board Game) Berg is doing re-shoots for the Battleship movie in order to have multiple endings. HOW MANY ENDINGS COULD THERE BE?

• Hit
• Miss
• You Sunk My Battleship
• What Happened in My Career That Lead Me to Make a Movie Based on Battleship?!

Brooklyn Decker, who is a model-turned-actress (which should tell you how much she knows about the film-making process) had this to say:

“We will do re-shoots. We have shot a bunch of alternate endings. There’s a lot of CGI to be done – a lot of stuff in post. Depending on the storyline and where they want to take it we might be doing some re-shoots.”

Since none of you dirtbags who read this site care about what she has to say, I’ve inserted a picture of her. I didn’t bother to look it up, but she most likely plays a scientist or various smart person in the movie.

Speaking of Movies That Probably Don’t Need to be Made…

Only if the movie takes itself this seriously, will it be any good.

There are MORE video game movies on the way. No, I’m not talking about Uncharted. I’m talking Asteroids, Roller(fucking)coaster-Tycoon, and the newly announced MISSILE GODDAMN COMMAND movie. I do not pity the poor bastards who have to come up with a storyline for this.
For those of you who don’t quite remember Missile Command, it’s a game where you command missiles. You can play a version of it over at Atari.

Apple Releases World’s Largest Promo Banner!

It has Emily Browning on it, so it could be even bigger for all I care.

Click for giant version!

I have watched the SuckerPunch trailer several times, with absolute scrutiny, going as far as frame by frame viewing in *ahem* certain scenes (for SCIENCE!) and still have no idea what the hell this movie is about.

In Attempt to Sell Fewer Copies, New Tomb Raider Games…

… will feature a more realistically proportioned Lara Croft. Psh… next you’ll be telling me she’s going to wear clothes, send text messages, and she won’t be doing flip-cartwheels while blasting dual pistols into endangered species.

ARTISTS RENDERING

*Heavy Sigh* Let’s get this over with. I just got off my other job as a waitress, and I’ve only got a babysitter for two hours. - Lara Croft

/Shameless Plug

Ahem, but I digress. I’m here today to talk to you about the merits, downsides, and controversies surrounding the a320. First, what is it?

Yeah, what the hell is it?

The Dingoo a320 is a portable gaming/media system. It’s slated as a pocket all-in-one retro emulation platform. It’s about 5″x2″x.5″ or roughly the size of the bottom half of a Nintendo DS Lite. For simplicity’s (read: laziness’) sake, I’ll post the features from ThinkGeek’s page on the subject:

Product Features

• Mini Handheld gaming system plays roms from your favorite 8 and 16 bit game consoles
• No emulator software to load. Just copy over the roms and start playing.
• 4GB of internal storage, expandable via mini SD
• Beautiful 2.8 inch QVGA (320×240) LCD Screen
• Output to TV via included composite video cables
• Full media player functions including videos, music, FM radio, e-books and voice recorder
• Built-in Stereo Speakers
• Internal li-battery [sic] gives 6-8 hours of runtime on a single charge

Ain't it cute?

That’s pretty cool, but what is it really?

I’m so glad you asked. It’s a teensy-weensy package of wonderful with a list of caveats that any potential buyer should absolutely be aware of. Let’s run through those previous claims to clear the smoke and shatter the mirrors, so to speak.

* Mini Handheld gaming system plays roms from your favorite 8 and 16 bit game consoles
* No emulator software to load. Just copy over the roms and start playing.
Caveat 1: Ok, these two points require the biggest caveat the system has, and I’ve got to be brutally honest here. Out of the box, the a320 is only good for a couple things: playing NES games and being an overly complicated MP3 player. Its claim to playing “roms from your favorite [16-bit] game consoles” is very overstated. Again, out of the box, it can maybe only handle a handful of SNES or Genesis ROMs. The majority of them (favorite or not) are most likely out of reach for this little machine in its factory state. Rest assured though, gentle reader, for the story has a happy ending. We’ll get to that later.

* 4GB of internal storage, expandable via mini SD
Caveat 2: Most buyers of this sort of hardware are probably accustomed to reading the fine print before purchasing anything short of Mt. Dew and Cheetos. However, I stress that you read the above “feature” very carefully. It does indeed have 4GB of internal storage (via a 4GB NAND chip on its mainboard), but what about that expandable storage? A mini SD slot? What the hell is a mini SD? You’ve heard of the popular SD and micro SD cards, but when was the last time you saw a mini SD card? Fortunately, they do exist. Unfortunately, they’re hard to find and this device does actually use one for expandable memory. Fear not, my poppets, for even if you can’t find (or have one lying around) the fabled mini SD card, there are converters for micro SD cards that work fine in the a320.

* Beautiful 2.8 inch QVGA (320×240) LCD Screen
No caveat here. The 2.8″ QVGA screen is indeed LCD and beautiful. It’s more than clear enough to handle what you most likely want to use the a320 for: playing old school console games.

* Output to TV via included composite video cables
Caveat 3: Just a minor addendum here. The output to TV does work, and even gives you sound through those good ol’ Yellow/White/Red composite cables, but outputting to a TV overrides the devices own video output. Simply said, when outputting to a TV, the LCD goes black until you turn off the TV output in the a320’s display menu. Something to note: The TV output port also doubles as a second headphone jack that is actually in a better position for playing video games. The primary headphone jack sticks off the side of the device and is a detriment to comfortable hand placement.

* Full media player functions including videos, music, FM radio, e-books and voice recorder
Caveat 4: The device is capable of playing back some video and audio formats. You’d have to look up the device’s specs to get a full listing. It does have an FM radio tuner built in, but as one would expect from a radio with no external antenna, the reception isn’t wonderful and the software that runs it is pretty wonky. The radio function doesn’t have a “stop” button that I could see, so in order to turn off the radio you actually have to turn off the device. I haven’t fully tested the e-book function as 2.8″ screens with 320×240 resolutions make for very difficult reading. The voice recorder is adequate, but you probably didn’t purchase this to be a digital voice recorder.

* Built-in Stereo Speakers
Caveat 5: The built-in “speakers” are of very poor quality. There are instructions out there for switching these out for the marginally superior speakers from a scrapped PSP, but I’d rather just use headphones.

* Internal li-battery [sic] gives 6-8 hours of runtime on a single charge
Caveat 6: Here’s the second biggest caveat for the a320, and the reason I’m posting this review today. Apparently, and it doesn’t matter where you actually purchase the a320 from, many of them are shipping with batteries that are significantly smaller than the advertised volume. Mine, for instance, shipped with a paltry 450mAh battery installed instead of the respectable 1800mAh it is advertised as having. We can only surmise that this is either an accident in manufacturing, or an intentional decision by Dingoo Digital to save money on each unit. Luckily, it’s a fairly simple matter of soldering in a new battery (or splicing into the existing battery wires) to get the device’s full battery potential. I was able to purchase a replacement 1800mAh battery off of a Chinese website for roughly $9 including shipping.

Now that you’ve finished crushing my spirit, what was that you said about a “happy ending”?

Not that kind of happy ending, you pervert. The happy ending I speak of is, of course, Linux. Ah, Linux, nepenthe of the downtrodden hacker. As I said earlier, the a320 is kind of useless out of the box. It can, however, have a special version of Linux (called Dingux by those in the know) installed on a mini/micro SD card and run through a backdoor firmware hack to infinitely increase its usefulness. Before Dingux, the a320 could competently run most NES games, but anything more advanced was a crap-shoot. Afterward, 99% of Genesis/SNES games now become playable, nay, enjoyable on the device. There are still a small handful games that won’t play (mostly any SNES game with a SuperFX chip), but that shouldn’t matter, since you aren’t playing any games you don’t already own the cartridge for, right?

*Yawn* Sorry, I fell asleep reading that. Can you just give me the summary?

Fine. The a320 is a brilliant little machine for the people out there that really want to be able to play their old 8-bit/16-bit libraries on the go, but only if you’re willing to put in the time and effort to make it. Out of the box it’s only going to play some of your old NES games well, and that could be a major disappointment for some people. It’s highly recommended that you use headphones with the a320 as the built-in speakers are shoddy at best. And be aware that you may, or may not, get a sub-par battery installed with yours. However, after putting in the extra $9 and a few man-hours, I wouldn’t trade this little gem for anything. It just needs a good polish, that’s all.

I’ve been playing through 4 Heroes of Light for a couple months now. It gets a solid “meh” from me. The best way I can describe it is as “Mystic Quest’s retarded cousin”. Square-Enix took what could’ve been a decent RPG with a terribly mediocre story and ruined it by restricting the inventory and making it so you could only make the most basic decisions in combat. Despite that glowing testimonial, it is still fun to play for 10 minutes at a time while you (or your baby) take a wicked heinous shit. Lord knows that’s the only time I actually play it.

What I do like about it is their funky hat/job system. As you progress through the game, you pick up a couple of these “crowns” after defeating almost every boss. The crowns will increase/decrease various stats on the character they’re equiped to, as well as unlock special abilities (more of which are unlocked as you upgrade the crowns with gems you get off of killing creatures). This more-or-less allows you to tailor the party to your liking. The problem that I have with it is that upgrading a crown permanently uses up the gems, but the crown is only upgrading for that particular character. You have to do the same upgrade multiple times on the different characters if you want them to have the better abilities. Also, if you remove the crown, they lose the abilities that they got while wearing it. Now, that sounds entirely reasonable, but it also means you can’t mix-and-match jobs/abilities like you could in Final Fantasy Tactics or Final Fantasy V, which was one of my favorite parts (A black knight that can heal itself with white magic? Fuck yeah!).

What I absolutely hate about the game is its entirely moronic combat system. It does not allow you to even pick your targets. You just choose what you want that character to do (fight, use an ability, etc.), and it will do it to whatever target it thinks is best, regardless of what your actual strategy might be. I even think that Squeenix realized how bad the system was, because they put in an option to just do auto combat. You choose what actions you want each character to take, and they will keep doing that ability, even from combat to combat, until you tell them to stop. That way you don’t have to put any effort into thinking about your characters actions while you’re pushing out a particularly difficult growler that needs your full attention.

That said, does anybody remember when Square and Enix were both separate entities and both made amazing RPGs? Apparently the combination of the two gives us something not as good as either.

***Update***
It occurred to me earlier today that I’m done with this game. I haven’t actually finished it, I’ve just decided it’s not worth my time to continue playing. About three-quarters of the way through, the game decides to stop playing musical-party-members and give you the party you’re stuck with for the rest of the game. This isn’t the problem. Around the same point in time, you’re given this game’s “airship” (a dragon somewhat akin to Hiryu from Final Fantasy V) and free reign to explore the world at your leisure (generally a very good thing). However, you’re are also given no direction to go in and are forced to start wandering around to the towns you’ve visited previously while simultaneously looking for new places to explore (again, usually a good thing for a Final Fantasy game to do). The problem here is that to try and mash this all together with the story, the game world apparently goes tits up and time is no longer a constant. While you’re going around to all the towns you’ve been to before (however now they’ve gone back in time to before you were ever there), you also have to go back through almost all of the dungeons you’ve previously completed and do them all over again with slightly more powerful enemies. On top of all of that, even though the dungeons take place in a different time period, none of the chests you’ve previously opened are full again. So, basically, all the crap you’ve done so far in the game gets to be redone in an effort to pad the game’s play time for no reward other than furthering the already tenuous story to completion. Coming to this realization is what made me put it down and go in search of greener pastures.

Final Note:
If you’re looking for a good, solid, old-school style RPG for the DS, avoid this and check out “Nostalgia” from Matrix Software.

A Thousand Suns, while retaining many elements that made Linkin Park great, is practically a polar shift from much of their previous work. In the past it always took a certain mood to listen to a Linkin Park album (usually anger..), however A Thousand Suns has been playing in my car for almost a month solid now, and I’m far from bored with it.

The album itself is designed to be a complete experience, there are no gaps between songs, they flow into each other, so it is best listened to at first in one sitting. I consider every song to carry its worth, but there also a few short filler tracks that may be a bit off-putting if you are just skipping around the album.

Instrumentally the album boasts more of an electronica style, there are some really heavy, fantastic beats and lots of ambience, guitar is less often heard here then in the earlier albums. However, their greatest asset, the dichotomy of vocals that is Chester Bennington, shines brighter here then in any other album. Even Mike Shinoda took me by surprise with his fantastic vocals on this album(see Iridescent). The vocal interplay between these two vocalists has always been what really makes this band great, and A Thousand Suns takes it to a whole new level

When they Come for me was one of the songs took me off-guard, I normally wouldn’t put a song on repeat so many times that drops the f-bomb like that, But this one taps into something primal, it resonates with me on a raw level, I feel strongly compelled to jump behind a large drum and join in.

Waiting for the End has a completely different feel to it, Shinoda pulls off a major reggae vibe while Bennington interjects with softer vocals that almost jar the song off its axis, this is a very unique sounding track that I cannot get enough of.

The Catalyst is a progressive track that keeps building upon itself. Rather then moving between verse and chorus, this song is really more about building upon an introduction to reach a finale, the lyrics are simple but stirring as if they were written to be shouted in front of a crowd, I love this track, and it sets the mood perfectly for the final track of the album.

While The Catalyst builds us up, the Messenger tears us down. This completely acoustic track boasts Benningtons Vocal abilities more then any other, and also happens to be the last track I expected to hear on a Linkin Park album. I played the track for many friends and made them guess who it was, none could guess correctly, and were all shocked to hear who this came from. Meaningful lyrics and Benningtons “beauty and the beast” vocal range really make this song powerful, while an acoustic track isn’t a groundbreaking thing to see on an album, for this artist it was, and so the song carries an extreme amount of weight as it brings this album to a close.

While I will not mention every song in detail, there really isn’t a single song on this album I don’t like, and I manage to listen to the entire thing end to end repeatedly. With the release of A Thousand Suns, Linkin Park has taken a new direction. It shows they have matured as artists, and the lyrics show they have matured as individuals as well. I realize this album will not appeal to every fan, but for this fan, they pulled this risky gambit of theirs off in a big way, I cannot wait to see what they’ll come up with next.

I will not hesitate to rate this album a 10, for both the courage it took for this artist to go this direction, and its fantastic execution.

Having read Victor Gischler’s Vampire a Go-Go, I thought I new what to expect from his Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse.  I was mistaken.  Or rather Go-Go Girls exceeded my every expectation.  It was fun, witty, ballsy, crude, intense and entertaining.

Set nine years after the end of the world as we know it, Mortimer - whom the story revolves around - comes out of hiding and decides to make contact with what’s left of the outside world.  His first experiences with people, after his nine years hermitage, are violent and frightening.  Taken captive by a man that he refers to as the Beast and his child sex slave, Mortimer is robbed, beaten, humiliated and tortured.  When suddenly he is rescued by a cowboy, a man with six-shooters, the ten gallon hat and everything.  Buffalo Bill, as he calls himself, agrees to help Mortimer make it to his old home town so he can look for his estranged wife.  Once there Bill convinces Mortimer to visit the local Joey Armageddon’s Sassy A-Go-Go where the beer is cold and the women are hot, which ends up being a life altering experience for Mortimer.  It turns out, that in this new post-apocalyptic world Joey Armageddon’s are the closest thing to civilization.  It’s not just a titty bar, but a jumping off point for all kinds of commerce and industry, as well as a stabilizing influence and a rallying point for defense and militia.  Mortimer trades away some of his supplies which he had brought down the mountain with him - mainly booze - and finds himself suddenly a very wealthy man.  He is given a platinum membership for Joey Armageddon’s which is valid at all franchise locations, a tool which will open many doors for Mortimer and lead to unexpected dangers.

Bill and Mortimer set out together to track down Mortimer’s wife, who it appears was sold as a Go-Go girl out further east.  In the process they come across all sorts of troubles, from Red-Stripes - highly organized and ruthless thugs - to con men, hillbillies and cannibals.  They get into and out of much trouble and many tight situations, all the while Mortimer is not only struggling to survive, but also to come to terms with this violent and strange new world.  And just when it seems that they have reached their goal and Mortimer may be re-united with his ex-wife - who he’s not sure that he wants to see anymore - they are thrown into a greater tumult and given a new mission with a fun new companion, Sheila.

This story is crazy action packed.  It was intense and funny, and filled with all kind of surprises.  The imagery is straight out of a movie; which, although I don’t usually enjoy in a book, in this case makes it even more exciting and fun.  For example, after liberating the bad guy’s harem Mortimer is surprised and pleased by what they do next:

She climbed behind the wheel and started the truck, backed it off the curb.  Lisa came in from the street and jumped in the back.

The redhead - Brandi - hopped in the back too.

Brandi had found a pair of combat boots among the dead, stood tall and strong and straight in her green panties and bra, the butt of her AK-47 assault rifle resting against a cocked hip.  The wind tugged at her red hair.  A long streak of somebody else’s blood down one leg.  Her head was up, eyes bright.  She looked like she owned the world.

There she goes, Mortimer thought.  The icon for a new age.

I really enjoyed Go-Go Girls of the Apocolypse.  It was just so much fun to read and has given me a new appreciation for Gischler.  The things which I most enjoyed about this book were the surprises.  Since it was so movie-like in it’s plot and imagery I often found myself thinking that I knew what was going to come next, but each time I was completely surprised.  I eventually started anticipating these new surprises; each time I found myself speculating about what was going to be said or what was going to happen I became even more excited because I new that it was going to be awesome and unpredictable and completely unlike anything I would guess.

In the highly competitive world of online reviewing, filled with intrigue and sexiness (don’t question it, just trust me on this), it is important to remain fresh, exciting, and relevant. Since I am neither fresh, exciting, nor relevant, but more on the funky, staid, and obscure side of things, I present to you a review of an old movie. Well, not classically old. New old. One of the many thrillers to fall through the asscrack of the early 2000s.

Shiver, or Eskalofrio in its native tongue, is the premier outing of little known Spanish director Isidro Ortiz. He released a couple pseudo thrillers around 2000, but good luck digging them up. This film, release in 2008, is his first outing as a distributed filmmaker.

Shiver focuses on Santi, a young man possessed of a rare skin condition that makes him hypersensitive to sunlight. Also, for the super scientific reason that “it makes him more vampiric and that’ll build tension”, the condition makes him grow fangs. In order to preserve his health, he and his mother move to a secluded mountain village that, due to its deep valley location, only sees direct sunlight for part of the day. Shortly after arriving in town, Santi finds himself accused of several murders coincidentally accompanying said arrival. Not an unreasonable supposition to make, considering your local shepherd just showed up exsanguinated after a night stroll in the woods. It seems perfectly understandable to blame the pale kid with fangs who lives in a gloomy house on the edge of the wood. Without spoiling anything, shenanigans ensue.

It’s difficult to review this film without giving anything away, so for those of you who really don’t want to have it spoiled, I will first give a quick opinion of the quality of the film and leave my criticism of the plot for a spoiler tag.

The film isn’t bad. I don’t know what it is about Spanish filmmakers, but they have an uncanny knack for creating a sense of dread and tension without resorting to a splatterfest. Either the children’s stories in Spain are disturbing as hell or they just have some natural predilection for being terrified all the time. As far as the creepy factor goes, this film stands about on par with The Orphanage or Pan’s Labyrinth. If you don’t come out of this film with a slight sense of the wiggins, then you are jaded enough that you’re better off watching Phantasm or Hellraiser to get your kicks.

The plot moves pretty smoothly through the first part of the film and the characters are as well written as they are well rounded. Seeing young Santi marginalized by his peers in town and country alike gives you a bit of sympathy for him. Particularly since he doesn’t engage in needless moping like the “Emopires” of popular supernaturalia. This element of estrangement doesn’t dominate the story, though by and large the writers seem to remember that the movie is fundamentally a thriller, keeping the tension on a simmer the entire time and bringing it to a boil several times to great effect.

All these nice things having been said, the latter fourth of the film really screws the pooch. The monster of the film has the potential to be really horrifying and is, I confess, refreshingly original. Though I’ll be damned if they don’t take the best idea for a villain and smear it around in a haphazard fashion, much like a retarded ape hurling around a bucket of shit. When a movie reveals the big bad, IF it reveals the big bad (the unseen threat is often more terrifying), it ought to not only make sense and agree with the facts that we have already established about the monster, but it should also increase your fear of it. When the monster in The Thing reveals itself, it taps into our primal fears, as opposed to tapping into our suspension of disbelief and igniting a paroxysm of laughter. Well, The Thing this ain’t, and it shows most especially in the last 15 minutes of the film. If the effects manager had, at some point, talked to the writers before he set his design in stone, the disparity between monster and effects might have come off as something awesome instead of comical. While the film deserves a seven or eight, the revelation of the actual monster puts it firmly at:

This new launch trailer is, in my opinion, the best Rockstar has released thus far. I suppose it makes sense to save the best for last, as they say. And I imagine this will be the last video released, save for the half hour long (!) trailer that’s premiering this Saturday.

I’m so excited, I kind of feel like I’m gonna throw up.

I must admit that I was hesitant to read this.  I mean, I love Pride and Prejudice, I’ve long had a soft spot in my literary heart for Austen and the Regency romance, and Pride and Prejudice has to be my favorite Austen novel.  And man do I ever love me some zombies.  But somehow the combination seemed like a little too much of a gimmick.  And I just wasn’t sure if anyone could do justice to Pride and Prejudice while inserting zombies into the mix.

Seth Grahame-Smith did an excellent job of fitting zombies into the lives of the Bennett sisters.  He skillfully worked a whole background of a longstanding war against the undead into the story.  And a lot of the humor of the story, for me, came from that backdrop which he had created.  I  found enjoyment in the small additions such as Sussex becoming Section Six East in transformed fortress of London.  According to Grahame-Smith it was acceptable for the nobility and gentry to send their sons and daughters to study under Eastern masters in order to learn the “deadly arts” to use in defense of his majesty’s realm.  I was a little taken aback by the disciplined, katana wielding, violent Bennett girls.   It was hard for me to imagine my familiar little heroine Elizabeth Bennett cutting down hordes of zombies while worrying over her younger sisters’ improprieties and her own unhappy marriage prospects.  Yet there was a consistency in the storytelling that quickly won me over, and left me wondering how else this familiar story was going to be transformed.  One of my favorite changes had to be from Elizabeth’s best friend having been stricken with the plague and her quickly deteriorating state contrasted against the day to day business of upper class tea parties and walks through the estate grounds.  And the fact that her friend was three quarters dead and no one but Elizabeth seemed to notice!  Pretty hilarious.

One complaint that I have heard about this novel is that as fun as zombies are it’s still Pride and Prejudice.  And I would have to say that this is a fair assessment.  Grahame-Smith leaves most of Austen’s story intact.  In fact he leaves most of the story in her own words, inserting his own story elements.  This is actually where my biggest criticism comes from.  Some of Grahame-Smiths additions were just to liven up the story a bit.  He threw in luridly hinted at infidelities and lots of balls and sex jokes clothed in Victorian language and indirectness.  It came across like a trashy romance novel.  I was really really tired of the references to the attraction being to “his most English of parts” and young women blushing as they cradled his (musket) balls gently in their hands.

Overall I enjoyed this story and think that Grahame-Smith did an excellent job in his work.  Sadly the one element which I most hoped for, zombie hordes chasing frightened gentry and devouring them in bloody carnage, was missing.  As for anyone who may be interested in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies I would just say that it is still Pride and Prejudice.  I don’t think Grahame-Smith edited anything out of Austen’s novel, instead inserting his own additions, so this book is loooong.  In some ways that’s good, because all of the elements which I most enjoyed from Austen are still present, but I think that it would have been more enjoyable as a zombie novel had it been shorter.  It’s hard to sustain zombies as a credible threat for 61 chapters in which business goes on as usual in the round of balls and tea parties and visiting country estates.  All that said it was a well crafted story and quite enjoyable to read.  And there is just something so deliciously exciting about the irreverence of putting zombies in the middle of a Jane Austin novel!

Fleet of Worlds co-authored by Larry Niven and Edward M. Lerner is one of those novels which I sat down fully expecting to enjoy.  I found it to be, in a lot of ways, quite disappointing.  While the story was interesting and the characters were for the most part well done, there was just too much else wrong with it, too much that didn’t fit or tried too hard to fit.

Fleet of Worlds is set in Larry Niven’s Known Space universe.  Also in this universe is Ringworld, and it’s sequels, probably his most well known an awarded novel.  This is the universe of the Amalgamated Regional Militia (ARM), Jinxians, Bandersnatchi, Louis Wu, the Man-Kzin wars, Beowulf Schaeffer, Piersen’s Puppeteers, and… I can go on and on.  Anyway the point being, that this is a well established universe.

It takes place mainly in and around the Fleet of Worlds, the Puppeteer homeworld and concerns humans and Pierson’s Puppeteers - an alien race of sentient, technologically superior, perpetual cowards.  There are in fact two groups of humans in this story, the ones living in and around Earth and it’s colonies - referred to as wild humans by the Puppeteers - and the Colonists, a group of humans descended from a failed colony ship living on one of the Puppeteers food worlds.  The Colonists are virtual slaves to the Puppeteers and are kept completely ignorant of their true past and of the rest of humanity living on Earth and it’s colonies.  The Colonists serve the Puppeteers, whom they call Citizens, and are handed only the technology and information that the Citizens feel it is safe to let them have.  A small group of Colonists are being groomed and trained to act as forward scouts for the Fleet of Worlds, and it is in their training and work for this that these humans begin to question the story they have been told about their history and begin to question their previous blind devotion to the Citizens.  Also in this story are two Puppeteers; Nike an overly ambitious being who is striving for political power for both himself and his Experimentalist political party and Nessus a half crazed - due to the fact that he is willing to risk his life in such frightening ways as daring to fly in spacecraft and to meet face to face with humans (I did say they are perpetual cowards as a race) - Scout and agent willing to take whatever risks to win Nike’s love.  Throughout the story of the humans struggle for knowledge and eventually independence we get to see Nike’s schemes and plots which will eventually lead him to become the Hindmost (supreme political leader of the Puppeteers) and Nessus’s complete infatuation and pursuing of Nike, at almost any cost, a lot of which involves working with and manipulating the humans.

I had two main problems with Fleet of Worlds.  First, it just didn’t feel like a Larry Niven novel.  There was something so indefinable and yet so essential missing.  One thing which I can point to is his characters.  They were very interesting, but somehow they just didn’t read like Larry Niven characters.  One of the things I have always enjoyed about his characters is how intuitive they are.  Well, the ones that survive at least.  And a big part of that enjoyment is in seeing these characters connect the dots right in front of my eyes and I still don’t get it.  Yes, you read that right, I like not knowing what is going on.  Well for a moment at least, it creates wonderful suspense to know that all the groundwork has been laid out and that it will all make sense in a moment when the characters explain themselves, but that for the time being I can only guess and speculate.  The main human characters in Fleet of Worlds, Kristen, Omar and Eric are all wonderfully intuitive, but they take the time to explain - right in the middle of the action and the crisis - what it is they have figured out.  It drove me crazy.

My other main complaint about Fleet of Worlds was that it tried to do too much.  There was too much it tried to explain and connect.  And in a lot of ways all those connections and explanations seemed to invalidate a lot of what had come before.  It’s always difficult when an author goes back and fills in the backstory.  But I think there was just too much done here.  In the interest of not summarizing the entire plot (and at the risk of sounding like a complete geek) I will be both brief and general in my descriptions.  The authors connected stories which stood on their own - I felt that the Puppeteer involvement in Forward station, from a Beowulf Schaeffer story, really detracted and distracted from the fun short story that it had been.  It seemed to me that the Gwo’th were a re-imagining of the Jokoti from the Man-Kzin wars - either they are newly emerging as an industrialized race or they are a former galactic power now subjugated, you can’t have it both ways.  The Puppeteer’s meddling with Earth’s Fertility Board was another such example, the Fertility Board scandal being a bit of back story in several short stories.  The authors spent a lot of time establishing that it wouldn’t be easy - and at the same time making it seem so half-assed - it wouldn’t be easy but all that was done was throwing obscene amounts of money at human agents and then occasionally monitoring them.  I was bothered also by the entire treatment of Nessus - a character who shows up in several known space short stories, and who is one of the main characters in Ringworld.   I found the character to be less and less sympathetic and less and less competent the longer the story went on and the more fill-in-the-story work that he was made to do.  The romance - if you could call it that - between Nessus and Nike seemed boring and cumbersome and made me care very little for two previously fascinating characters.

I have enjoyed some of Larry Niven’s previous collaborations - for example The Mote in God’s Eye with Jerry Pournelle was one of the most original stories I have ever read - but they tend to lack the excitement of his solo work.  So when I picked up this novel I was both a teeny tiny bit leery of it as a collaborative work, and quite overly excited to have more Known Space to consume.  After reading this my conclusion is that Mr. Niven should leave his Known Space alone, it’s beautiful as it is and he keeps fucking it up.  I was disappointed by his last installment of the Ringworld stories, Ringworld’s Children, and I was disappointed with and angered by Fleet of Worlds.   There are two more books following this and I must say that even being as much of a completist as I am - I will not touch them.

The story of the Colonists was quite interesting, but not at the expense of all that had come before.

Fun and light, I found Victor Gischler’s Vampire a Go-Go to be entertaining. It was very reminiscent of Christopher Moore to me, in the sort of lightly vulgar and irreverent style of supernatural comedic horror, with a bit of sex thrown in. And the title is pretty awesome. The story mainly centers around Allen, a mostly unremarkable young grad-student who is sort of rushed along through events for the greater part of the story until he finally has enough and grows a pair. Yeah, he’s that kind of protagonist. But it’s ok, because there’s enough comedy thrown in - and not all of it at Allen’s expense.

Allen finds himself facing his upcoming summer abroad in Prague with dread - he’s to be the research assistant for a disliked professor. Allen goes to a party at the professor’s home where he meets up with his friend Penny - who obviously has a thing for him which he equally obviously can’t see because he’s blinded by his need to seek out soul sucking bitches. Oh yah and then he meets the vampire. The party is actually unimportant except for that it’s chalk full of foreshadowing.

Once in Prague, Allen sort of mopes around for a bit, oversees the professor’s packages that are supposed to arrive - one of which to the reader obviously contains a coffin - and then goes to a local bar. Where he unexpectedly meets up with a priest he knows and they sit down for some drinks. Pretty soon Allen is lured by an attractive young woman named Amy out into the night - a woman who had slipped him a cryptic message warning him against the priest - and is hit over the head and shoved into the trunk of a car. At the end of Allen’s ride in the trunk he is taken to meet Basil, a man who promises to explain it all. After some initial apologies and explanations the scene proceeds as follows:

‘This doesn’t have anything to do with me,’ Allen said.

‘I’m afraid it very soon might,’ Basil said. ‘For you see, your very own Professor Evergreen has come to Prague, not to write a chapter on Kafka as he’d have you believe, but rather to plunder the secret dungeons of Prague Castle in search of the philosopher’s stone.’

Allen went slightly pale, the surprise plain on his face.

‘I can understand that this might be a lot for you to digest,’ Basil said.

‘It’s not that.’ Allen swallowed hard. ‘It’s just that there’s a priest at the window with a machine gun.’

And there was. Lots of carnage. Allen gets pulled out of there by pretty young Amy and they find themselves on the run.

For me most of the book read like a cross between Christopher Moore and The Da Vinci Code. The story is mostly told by a ghost, who breaks up the action with some really odd anecdotes that overall felt like it was better suited to the Twilight Zone than to story at hand. There was of course the vampire, who disappointingly didn’t figure as prominently in the story as I expected, what with the title and all. But upon further consideration this may be for the best, the vampire was rather compulsion, sex and lust and not much else, and I am rather tired of hyper sexualized vampires as I’ve stated before. There was also a fun lycanthrope and quite a bit of sorcery - good witches covens and evil warlocks - as well as some fun and unexpected zombies.

The story is pretty fun, but for me the writing got in the way much more than it entertained. It attempted to be clever and witty with lots of thrown in one liners that were very hit or miss. Very often I just found it annoying. Or pointlessly vulgar. I was also bothered by the narrator and the seeming stylistic inconsistencies that became most apparent through the narrator’s anecdotes and breaks in the narrative. In some ways it really reads almost like an extended screenplay. It the kind of story that could easily make a fun little gore and comedy filled horror flick. In no way subtle. Overall I found it enjoyable, the good and entertaining outweighing the annoying. I don’t expect to remember very much of it, or to ever read it again. However, that said, I think I’ll give Gischler’s other hot title a chance, Go-Go Girls of the Apocolyse.