The Bookian » Games

Soon I Will Be Invincible: The Movie

Bookian — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 21:08:17 +0000

Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman, one of the newest, flattest, most comic-book-like written, and most excellent, contemporary translation and update of a paratactic Rabelaisian Le Quart-Livre of Pantagruel, is a true contribution to that canonical and oft-under metabolized taxonomic clade of literature dealing with the inhuman fables of a fictional character… and one of the best examples of this subgenre to arrive. Usually exhibiting symptoms of the referred pain of author-characters such as Micheal Chabon or Art Spiegleman or any of the new, so-called, hyper intelligent graphic comic novelists, Austin Grossman in Soon I Will Be Invincible is a breath of fresh radioactive vapor fumes. He, unlike many of the others in the genre, clearly knows his medium: in a story about comic book characters, questions of authenticity of character must be thrown out the window entirely if any authenticity of character is to survive! As much as we like Chabon, when writing about boyhood, or about comic books, please: do justice to the medium! We dont see world famous sculptors known for the way they apply color to their surface, or the way world-class painters paint three dimensionally, for a good reason: sculpture is about sculpting. Painting is about paint. And stories about childhood topics are not reflective. In an era in which worlds are created and destroyed at the drop of a pin or a brandable buck, and the oracle of the divine bottle is spun in attempts to resolve the question of the marriage of Penelope, the faithful wife of Odysseus, to her own vows… Nay, but tis for naught? Shall the paratactic hyper-lists of past, fictional, actions of the gods-who-walk-among-us, those bringers-of-us-to-histories, must these lists be created by super-minds who have successfully navigated those very worlds they recreate? The answer to Should superheroes be making their living by charging people to beat them up is clearly a game played by such game players of Titan: The new super-authors of our current generation must be those unafraid to speak in the secret languages of the day- “Born of Fire, Born of God,” our ancestors have said, that “Art is born of Humiliation”: and for those who cower, afraid to look fully upon the face of our modern lives, and absorb the inherent humiliation when subjecting ourselves to seemingly pedantic roles of Fantastic Literature, or Amazing Stories! or Worlds of IF, or Captain Justice and the Hero League, will become lost as the next generation arises, and recreates the world as it should be: populated by the class of those who wear skin-tight pajamas and attempt, once again, to destroy the world! – reviewed by Dr. Impossibles Shysteroo

Virtual Unrealities: The Short Fiction of Alfred Bester

Bookian — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 20:35:17 +0000

No one can Best the Bester. In some ways, Besters writing requires the heavy onslaught of his novelistic form to function, as his language is highly immersive. In short stories, it mostly highlights the weird prose poetics of his florid writing style. However, its unfortunate that we have so little from Bester.. He really should have writ more. There are some good little isotopes of wisdom in here though, and some of them are downright personable and cosy. Required addition to any science fiction reader. – reviewed by demo lish eddifier

Software Engineering and Computer Games

Bookian — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 18:58:17 +0000

Not to review textbooks, but this is a good textbook. Its rare that discussions of engineering veer into the conceptual gestalt as much, especially as practices become enmeshed in ratiocination to the nth degree. The window foundation class codebase is highly outdated and inappropriate for the level of design presentation and discussion, but if taken as a mere example of one instantiation of a uml take, sok. – reviewed by proggie

Mad Professor: The Uncollected Short Stories of Rudy Rucker

Bookian — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 18:53:17 +0000

For those who have read Ruckers novels, many of these storys are familiar, with a few add in tweaks. For those who havent, lord only knows what theyll think. Not a bad collection but I preferred his very early shorts. They had a roughness and less formulaic infectiousness, not that his writing ever lacks infectiousness. A three for homogenity. The novels are better. – reviewed by eigenvector