Author: Sleepypete

Back to books today !

I may have gotten myself distracted in Stellaris this weekend …. The new expansion is out (haven’t bought it yet, waiting for discounts) but there’s a fairly hefty rejigging of the core game with the planets being completely redone. I’m not convinced to be honest, it’s very easy for the game to do a massive shift in your economy as the planets redo their priority lists when you build stuff. You can very quickly run out of the basics by going for the end products that go towards ship building. Maybe a refinement in the strategies ….

But my Nomnivorian Ravagers are way ahead of the second placed normal race (the Fallen Empires stay out in front) so I must be doing something right. I’ll be launching the conquest as soon as I have 3 fleets together.

I first thought today’s Lego was a taxi or the car that Senator Organa used on Coruscant but apparently it’s General Grievous’ fighter …

Today’s books are on an Empire theme.

The one on the left is Mutineer’s Moon by David Weber. It’s the first in a loose series of 3 and follows an astronaut heading off to the Moon. Or at least, what he thinks is the moon …. It’s actually a long dormant battleship called Dahak.

Yep. This is scifi.

Turns out there was a mutiny quite some time ago and the ship managed to get rid of the mutineers who left in still dangerous but unable to go faster than light parasite craft that usually go on board the full battlemoon. The narrative trick of having an unknowledgeable person act as the protagonist is fully in play here too as the central character is rapidly brought up to speed by Dahak and given his mission, to defeat the mutineers before they cause chaos on Earth.

Oh and there’s a time limit …. a race of alien invaders who sweep across the galaxy every few aeons destroying everything in their path. But that’s for another book.

I quite enjoyed this book, although there is gratuitous weaponry effect descriptions in which are not for the squeamish.

Next up, set in the Imperium of Man in Rynn’s World by Steve Parker. It tells the story of the Crimson Fists Space Marines, genetically enhanced elite warriors of the Adeptus Astartes and the defence of their homeworld from an immense incursion of Orks.

(Yep. The Warhammer 40k has elves, orcs, dwarves, ogres and other nasty things to give it the variation.)

Quite early on, the battlefleet is destroyed and an errant missile wipes out their home base. The mission then turns into a battle for survival.

To be honest, can’t remember that much of this one although I think it held the attention all the way through.

Last up, is another one by Timothy Zahn. It’s Heir To The Empire and it’s set around 5 years after Return of the Jedi.

There is a fledging New Galactic Republic that is rebuilding after the end of the war with the Empire. Well, almost. The Empire collapsed after Return of the Jedi but there are still sizeable continents of ex Imperial ships, fighters, military and planets. This book is part of a trilogy that sees the emergence of brilliant strategist Grand Admiral Thrawn as he aims to sweep away the Republic and rebuild the galaxy as he sees fit.

It’s a great book, showing off the talents of Timothy Zahn as he plays in the existing galaxy of Star Wars and he even adds a bit of his own lore to the telling as well.

I’d highly recommend this one, although it is part of the old Expanded Universe so it has no bearing on the new films. (Some may say that’s a good thing !)

That’s it for today ! Shoulders and neck are sore again so I think I need to give Stellaris a rest for …. weeks maybe !

See you tomorrow.

Oh my, what a title.

No books today. The books will be back tomorrow.

Yesterday saw me head up to road to Chester and a meet up of the Roll4it community. They’re led by some of the Lovely Gaming People over on the right and for this meet up, we were hosted by :

Enter Elysium who is mostly Youtube (link) and also streams (link) and does the Roll4Its.
Mangledpork aka Bentham of the Youtubes (link).

With special guests :
Margaret Krohn of vlogs (link), gaming videos (link) and streaming (more link). (also admin and major organiser for the Roll4its)
FuzzyFreaks of streaming (link)
RandomTuesday of streaming (link), videos (link), amazing cosplay (more link) and great DM’ing.
And finally the wonderfully voiced Josh of streaming (link) and videos (link)

They’re a lovely mob and as charming in person as they are on screen.

The meet up is continuing for the cast over this weekend, with more streams coming soon on the Roll4it channel. I can’t watch all of the content that appears over there (mostly because of time !) but I have been hugely enjoying the Stargate Horizons stream that has been playing on Sundays lately.

There may have been a series of posters appear in Goa’uld controlled territory as a result of actions that happened in a previous episode.

It’s good to be engaged enough in what’s going on to have the ideas spark for daft pictures to make. And I do very much like to do nice things for lovely people.

Oh ! What’s in the picture ! Today’s advent selection was a Battle Droid from the prequel movies joining the rest of the advent thingys. And then we have :

A selection of sweeties, our American friends are being introduced to some of the British sweetie things. I’m wondering what Maggie K and Fuzzy will make of their special teacakes.
A gorgeous dice bag and lovely purple dice within.
Two Roll4it special badges and …
I picked up a Spider Friend as well.
(There may well have been tastings of the bonbons and the kola kubes too)

I’m super tired now and chilling out to videos, music and writing of the posts. Definitely looking forward to more Roll4it stuff later.

It was fantastic meeting the organisers and the rest of the cast and definitely a highlight saying hello to the rest of this lovely community.

Quick one today.

Today’s advent box sees a starfighter arrive :

A pretty little Naboo starfighter. A design going more for the looks than the capability perhaps. But they were nicely shiny.

Gotta get up to road now to a meet up of role playing games people. How many of the games can you recognise above ?

How many have you played ?

Laters :-).

What’s behind the door ?

There we go. Front and centre.

Lamp post ? Actually … looking a bit more (and cheating with a peek through the googles) and it’s the Cloud City of Bespin with the red thing being a cloud car.

The Empire Strikes Back is one of those great films, from the set pieces during the Hoth segment of the movie and the trip through Cloud City that was massively enhanced in the special editions. There’s a Lego set too … which I have no intention of getting (it’s £200+ and a bit meh)

What are the books for today ?

On the left is one of Isaac Asimov’s final novels, Nemesis. The first new colony on an alien world has sent a distress signal and a rescue mission is dispatched using a spaceship with a revolutionary new hyperdrive. At least, that’s what I can remember from reading this book a few decades ago. It’s been on the list to read again, need to get around to making a dent in that list.

In the middle is The Ship Who Sang, by Anne McCaffrey. This is from her earlier days, before the Dragonriders of Pern books really took off. It was written as a standalone book, although the Brainship millieu has expanded since then. There have even been novels with guest authors like S.M.Stirling who wrote The City Who Fought, another shell person novel.

This was a pretty interesting book, posing all sorts of ethical questions in its own gentle way. At the core are the shell people. If I remember right, they had genetic manipulation but for some issues, the genetic damage was too great and would have resulted in a quick death for the little person. However, the central theme of these books is that they are permanently inserted into a life support system that looks after their basic needs. Keeps them sustained, gives them an interface to the outside world, provides them mobility. I vaguely remember a scene where the shell children are racing around in their life support shell buggies.

Happy children, albeit in a metal shell. They are also taught and conditioned to be able to mentally accept connections with computers and other complex electronics and the central character in this book, Helva, is selected to be the brain at the centre of a spaceship.

The crews are a symbiotic relationship of a Brain and a Brawn, with the Brawn being the pilot that the outside world sees while the Brain is hidden behind a protective shell, interfaced with the spaceship. The Brain is effectively the spaceship.

But they’re not just computers, Helva develops a taste for music which she uses to refine a voice and become …. the Ship Who Sang. The book itself is a combination of several shorter stories tracking Helva and her interactions with the people who travel on her ship and her brawns.

A pretty good book. Recommended.

Last one for today is Voyagers by Ben Bova. He’s an author that I read a lot of in my teenage years. He doesn’t have quite the same hold on my attention now though. Other authors write far stronger stories.

Anyway … in this one, the Solar System has a visitor. An object entering our sphere of attention and … slowing. The object comes within close enough range of Earth but … wouldn’t be sticking around. Can they reach it and examine its secrets before it is lost to the void forever ?

There are 2 more books in the series …

That’s it for today ! I’ve been struggling for the past couple of days with a sore fuzzy head but should be good for a bit of travel tomorrow. Hopefully. There are going to be 3 people from the Lovely Gaming People on the right (Enter Elysium, Maggie Krohn and FuzzyFreaks) plus a few more who I’ve enjoyed watching.

Should be an excellent trip.

What’s in the box !

We have a droid today, which means it has to be books to do with robots. With artificial intelligence. And a cyborg ….

(Not in that order for the picture above !)
(Oh and that may well be my arm causing the shadow to the left. Oops ! Puts “Better lighting” on Xmas list)

First up is Consider Phlebas by the dearly departed Iain M. Banks. This is the novel that kicked off his series of Culture books, introducing the future setting, the universe of The Culture, the alien races that share the universe and in the case of this book, an equivalent tech race called the Idirans who were waging war on the Culture.

This book will be a classic. Possibly not for everyone but it keeps the tale rattling along through numerous locations in the Culture universe. The point of reference is kept consistently to the same character, the protagonist called Bora Horza Gobuchul. You are kept constantly aware of the war that’s rattling along in the background, with apocalyptic forces never too far away.

Interesting characters abound, both in the meat world of the people and the machine world of the drones and the Minds. The Culture isn’t run by people, it’s run by massively advanced AIs that coalesce into the Minds that run the Culture stellar cities and their ships. The AI Minds stay above the routine, while making sure the routine runs smoothly. They interface with avatars and with drones that are often irascible in personality and deadly in the tricks they have built in. And then the people are mostly human …. but often modified as the whim hits them.

It’s an excellent book and I’d thoroughly recommend it.

And then when you’re finished, read Excession. One of the issues with the Culture books is that they are so advanced compared to other races, you don’t believe they could be taken down. Or could they ….. Excession is the highlight of these books for me.

But I’m starting to talk about a second book there. Consider Phlebas, the story of Bora Horza Gobuchul on a madcap jaunt across the galaxy staying one step ahead of a war, chasing an immensely valuable prize.

Next !

Is Isaac Asimov’s The Complete Robot. I have to confess that I have not yet found the chance to read this one. I gather that it’s a forensic psychological examination of robots and what happens when their governing laws come into conflict with each other and into conflict with the world around the robot.

I definitely enjoyed the Will Smith I Robot movie, where the central character was a living artifact of where one of those robots had been forced to choose between a child and the man. Good film, should be an even better book.

Last up is Man Plus by Frederik Pohl, which was bought for me for Xmas 3 years ago and I devoured it within the next week.

A compelling tale of a man who finds himself being steadily converted into a cyborg in order to assist with the exploration of Mars. His body is steadily replaced with implants and the book traces his changing mental state as this occurs and he becomes less than human and more than machine.

Definitely a compelling tale.

I’ve been attempting to acquire more Frederik Pohl books since Man Plus … need to find the good bargains. I refuse to pay £10 for books ! That’s a rip off.

Oh and there may have been a lego on the floor incident earlier. But I think I’ve found it all.

Back tomorrow !

What does Day 4 have for us today ?

Apparently the new thing is a Republic Tank. Dunno though, must come from one of the various animated series. Yesterday’s was the Arrowhead, from another animated series. It’s a shame that, the old Star Wars Expanded Universe canon which was accessible to all through books got ripped up and replaced by stories told mostly through animations which are locked away behind a D….y company paywall.

There are too many paywalls appearing in our modern entertainment and it makes a mockery of choice and accessibility. Personally, I have a Netflix sub plus a higher value cable TV package with movies and sports. I have no intention of subscribing to any more entertainment subscription services, I’d rather do without sampling their content. And there isn’t enough time in the day to get the full value out of all of those subscription services.

Especially if it’s people like Amazon who got into their dominant position by not paying taxes.

How about the books today ?

The first is Revenger by Alastair Reynolds. This book should really have been in the 52 books challenge but I left it out because I finished it pretty much just before the year started. Anyway, the story is a lovely tale about 2 sisters who run away from home and are taken on by a band of treasure hunters who are down on their luck.

Alastair Reynolds is fantastic at world building and that talent is on show here as well. The setting is rather different to any other tale of interplanetary adventure, with the ships depending on solar sails instead of anything more forceful like sublight or warp engines.

It’s a compelling, standalone tale and I’d heartily recommend it.

From a standalone novel to part of an epic …

The Lost Fleet books by Jack Campbell brought to life a fleet, hopelessly outnumbered and trapped behind enemy lines by a cruel and sadistic enemy. All hope is lost, until Admiral Jack Geary emerges from a few centuries of coldsleep to lead the fleet to home and safety.

The Beyond the Frontier series picks up the tale after they get home, with Dreadnaught having the remaining ships of the fleet getting sent on a mission beyond known space, to chase the unknown Enigma race that was menacing the fleet in the later days of the previous series.

Jack Campbell (aka John G Hemry) is pretty good at allowing you to visualise what’s going on with the epic space fleet that he has bouncing around numerous systems. He uses the narrative trick of having the central character Jack Geary being brought up to speed by his fleet XO, Captain Tanya of the Battlecruiser Dauntless. The weapon systems in play and the tactics available are explained by the reader in a very believable and understandable fashion.

A wise man once said “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” but book readers should demand more than that. The magic is brought to life in the world built by the author but an author also needs to explain the fundamentals for the book to be successful in my eyes.

And Jack Campbell does that brilliantly in these series of books. I got as far as the book Steadfast and should really pick it up again. These are great books.

Last one is a throwback to my childhood and a really old book …

It’s Caverns of the Snow Witch, a Fighting Fantasy book from Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone. These books are choose your own adventure books, where the narrative is split up into (usually) 400 segments, with horrible things and creatures awaiting your character as you journey through. Each segment would have choices, which would send you to another segment often at the other end of the book.

This one is somewhat more linear than most, with what amounts to a few phases as you go through the book. It also has a “if you don’t get this item, you die”, which was a bit too common in these books.

It’s one of the better ones though and I enjoyed it when I was a lad.

Last century indeed.

I am old.

What will be tomorrow’s books ! And Lego ! We shall see.

Day 3 ! What’s in the box …..

As per usual, click for bigger.

I asked for opinions on one of the Discord servers and we think that it’s an A-Wing star fighter.

The A Wing was an interceptor star fighter. Lightly armed, a hull like paper but the fastest thing out there. Until you got to the TIE Defenders and some of the other ships where you could abuse game mechanics to make them go even faster.

How about the books ?

I got something wrong yesterday. I put a copy of Around The World in 80 Days on the stand and all my brain saw was The Time Machine. Today, The Time Machine is there ! But I talked about that yesterday.

Around The World in 80 Days was a charming book. I’m sure you all know the story, a newspaper journalist comes up with a plan to go around the world in just 80 days and manages to recruit Phileas Fogg and loyal servant Passepartout to embark on the epic trek. I can’t remember much of this particular book except for it being a page turner. It’s well worth finding a copy to check out the original legendary tale.

Since then though, there was an animated tale with an anthropomorphized animated man dog character called Willy Fogg taking on the journey. This was a series that I’d race home from school to watch and definitely enjoyed that. It was a similar story with the Michael Palin series, which was recorded in 1988 with Michael Palin attempting the same goal.

One thing that strikes you about these stories is that while they are amazing stories in their own right, the world has massively moved on from when they were written. They are still utterly valid in their own times … but you become painfully aware that the same journey could not be done now (it would be done differently). Like a trip in a sail junk through the Suez Canal around the Horn of Africa and Yemen. I don’t think that trip could be attempted now due to the piracy and rebel problems around there.

We have tamed more of our world but the world has become wilder in the taming.

I’d highly advise you to check out both the book and the Michael Palin series. He has a dry wit, very sharp, highly entertaining.

Next up is Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson and tells the tale of the first 100 settlers to the red planet.

I loved this book and the story of Nadia in particular. In the book, she builds the first permanent settlement and the telling is of a credible settlement that tackles the challenges of heat, power, protection from radiation plus the psychological challenges that are presented to an outdoor culture being forced to live underground.

Red Mars is a compelling book, followed by the decent Green Mars and then Blue Mars, a book which felt like it lost its way for me. As if the series were 1 book too long and the author didn’t know how to wrap up the tale. Must read Red Mars again some time.

The last book is one of the legends …. it’s Triplanetary by E.E. Doc Smith, the first of the Galactic Lensman books.

When this first came out in 1934, it did not merely add to an established genre, it created it. And I really, really need to read it. I think I read the opening couple of chapters and then had my attention drawn away. I must remedy that.

What else have I been up to ? Check out these brave souls :

Yes, those are Christmas jumpers. What are they flying ?

Glorious isn’t it ? The game is called Bomber Crew and I’ve been checking out its early stages. I wasn’t feeling too great over the weekend (ate something that has been disagreeing with me) so I didn’t play too much but I did unlock another bit of outfit :

Special hats to keep the crew toasty at higher altitudes.

Oh and that one on the far right, I have my eye on him. He’s a rebel.

LOL – BTW, each Sunday during the Winter months (OK kinda mild presently but….) I'll be posting pix of SF/Fantasy women to warm our way through….. But will you recognise them?????

Oops. Seeing things that aren't there again !

I think I know what one of tomorrow's books is going to be ….

Erm… The picture shows 'Around the World in 80 Days' by Jules Verne… Not Wells! [lol]