Books from (somewhat) long ago...

It seems to me that great books from the past decades often get buried. I realized that in talking to the new gen of college grads the odds of them coming across any of the below series was mighty slim, so I figured I'd post a list of classic sci-fi/fantasy that really shouldn't be missed that might escape other "greatest of all time" lists. Most of these are not necessarily great literature, but really fun and interesting reads none the less.

Lensmen series- Starts with Triplanetary by EE "Doc" Smith
OMG, this is a crazy awesome space opera. This series was started in 1934. That's pre-WW2. The series blows away Star Wars in every aspect. Cooler tech, cooler psionics, way better plot, way better characters. Did I mention it was written in 1934-1948???
I don't reread series, but I've reread this series at least 3 times...
Chronicles of the Lensmen, Volume 1 (Triplanetary, First Lensman, Galactic Patrol )

Amber series- Starts with Nine Princes in Amber by Roger Zelazny
Amber is a mind-blowing universe of interesting worlds, magic, intrigue and action.
The Great Book of Amber: The Complete Amber Chronicles, 1-10 (Chronicles of Amber)

Elric series- Starts with Elric of Melnibone by Michael Moorcock
Elric was goth before it was a cool. Super good swords and sorcery series. At least two Blue Oyster Cult songs are based off this fiction.
Elric: The Stealer of Souls (Chronicles of the Last Emperor of Melniboné, Vol. 1)
Elric: To Rescue Tanelorn (Chronicles of the Last Emperor of Melniboné, Vol. 2)

Vlad Taltos series- Starts with Jhereg from 1983 (series) by Steven Brust
This one is still ongoing, and it's awesome... but you might have missed it since it started so long ago.
The Book of Jhereg

Black Company series- Starts with The Black Company from 1984 by Glen Cook
Again another long running series that you might have missed since it started before you might have been born.
Super awesome tale told from the perspective a mercenary company caught in the middle of a sword and sorcery epic.
Dark, gritty, and magic.
The Black Company (Chronicles of The Black Company #1)

Xanth series (Don't read past the third!)- Starts with a Spell for Chameleon by Piers Anthony
Ok, it's pretty embarrassing to put this up here... but the early Piers Anthony had a certain silly charm. It's probably too juvenile for most people but
Three Complete Xanth Novels: A Spell for Chameleon; The Source of Magic; Castle Roogna

I'm sure I'll think of more...

Borderlands: DLC

I've Been playing Borderlands DLC with Liz. I loved Borderlands. I love the DLC.

General Knox got really good reviews so I talked Liz in to trying it with me. Had a great opening movie, looked a lot of fun, but it was apparently for level 50+. Our highest characters were 38, so we took those characters and went and did the other DLC we had.

We started with "The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned." It was fun, but a bit grindy. There are LOTs of zombies and they take awhile to kill. Near the end we ended up blitzing the missions instead of stopping to kill all the waves.

After (mostly) doing Dr. Ned (250 brains will have to wait) and getting to level 47 we had to choose between the single player campaign to get the last couple of levels to do General Knox or do Mad Moxxi. The reviews for Mad Moxxi were terrible, getting a ~50ish on MetaCritic.

Liz talked me in to risking the $10, mostly because it has a bank you can store stuff in.

We both ended up really liking Mad Moxxi. It's not for the faint of heart though, it took us like 3 hours to "conquer" one area. It was like 5 rounds of 5 waves each. It was long enough we had to take breaks while holed up in a corner or hard to reach spot while the enemies roamed looking for us.

The loot in Mad Moxxi was pretty kicking, but no exp (which was fine.) The map was really, really cool and you didn't understand the neatness until you really had been playing on it for an hour. The music is awesome and Mad Moxxi's voice is great to.

Mad Moxxi also requires tactics. You can lose and have to restart if all players die... and dead players only come back at the end of a wave. The neat thing is that dead players can still help... they get put in a crows nest sort of "penalty box" that you can shoot out but you can't leave.

I'm looking forward to trying the next maps/rounds. I'm wondering if it saves any of your progress though. Those rounds were long.

I think I would have rated Mad Moxxi a lot higher. I think what people were frustrated by is that they wanted a full campaign like Dr. Ned, and overlooked the interesting bits of Mad Moxxi.  I suspect if they had released Mad Moxxi after General Knox people would have been more interested having been sated in their appetite for more campaign content.

The evil Speck

"Since I was small I had heard tales of the mysterious and elusive Specks, the dappled people who could only live happily in the shadows of their native forest."

"The very name of the people had crept in to our language as a synonym for inattentive: to do a Speck's day of work meant to do almost nothing at all. If I was caught day dreaming over my books, my tutor might ask if I was Speck-touched."

The above passages unchanged from Robin Hobb's book Shaman's Crossing. This goes on and on talking about the evil Speck threat. Who payed her to pick that name?

Finished- Battlefield: Bad Company 2

The Battlefield: Bad Company 2 single player campaign started strong and ended in mediocrity. I never touched the multiplayer (which I hear is awesome) since I got my fill of being circle/jump/porpoise strafed about a decade ago.

The story was pretty interesting until the very, very end where the MacGuffin is shown. It had a lot of potential as a mercs + lost tv show story. They would have been better off with a cliff hanger and maybe pick it up in a future expansion then ending it how they did.

I should write up good old books

Battlefield: Bad Company 2

I bought BC2 on Steam.

So far about 2 hours in to it I like it... it's a generic shooter, but so far the story is cool. It's obviously heavily influenced by Lost, but I like Lost. It also reminds me of the Shaftoe stuff from Cryptonomicon ever so slightly.

Radio

I have electrical problems with my car. I suspect that the connection of the cables to the battery are very flakey.

Anyways, my radio has reset occasionally upon starting the car resulting in unexpected station changes.

The "normal" rotation is supposed to be NPR and AM sfbayarea talk radio. Now when I hit my normal cycle button, I cycle between some sort of odd pop station, NPR, a religious station, and my AM sfbayarea talk radio.

This morning I got hit with: http://www.youtube.com/watch#!v=_j_HYMUakpk&feature=related
Some sort of reggae/rap/pop hybrid of "Angel of the Morning."
Of course, anyone with a modern clue will tell me that this is an old song from 3 years ago by Shaggy. Video here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch#!v=ZJNfAJlFcz8&feature=fvw

In any case, I liked the song.

And occasionally, I find myself liking hearing the preaching of the religious station. It makes me feel like I'm giving the other side a chance to convince me.


So, I sort of like the new, weird, radio rotation.

New game...

I think I'd like a new game. The challenges are finding something I can have fun with. My habits are in general:

• Don't care about multiplayer competitive
• Love cooperative multiplayer
• Love Turn Based Tactical RPGs
• Ok with shooters, RTS, action games

Here is what I have my eyes on:

• FF XIII (I think the PS 3 version...)
• Battlfield: Bad Company 2 (PC)
• Supreme Commander 2
• Stalker Pripyat (unlikely)
• God of War Collection (never played them)
• God of War III
• Bayonetta
• Assassin's Creed 1/2
• Heavy Rain (unlikely)
• Uncharted 2

 The "for sure when available" list is:

• Dawn of War II: Chaos expansion
• Dragon Age: Awakenings

Bioshock 2

One of the titles I recently bought in my search for a new game was Bioshock 2.

It's just not engaging me.

My issues with it are:
* Story isn't engaging me
* I seem to suck at it, I'm always out of ammo, health, and money
* I lowered the difficulty to easy, and I still suck
* The constant spawning enemies feel like a nuisance, it's like the JRPG deal of random world battles
* The UI and game menus are all very clunky on the PC. You can't easily remap weapons or plasmids. Bringing up the menus has weird pauses in it where the game seems to freeze for a second.
* Bioshock 2 comes mapped with F11 to quick load and F12 to quick save. This is so painful. The first time I hit F11 and lost 20 minutes of progress I went to the clunky menu to check to remap this. You cannot remap this from within the game. I had to do some searching to find out that you can only change that mapping by editing the .ini config file. Ugh.

It does have pretty graphics though, and the trap aspects are fun... but that's about it.

I'm 7 or 8 hours in and the only thing making me want to finish is my OCD.

Gaming

This past couple of months has been pretty good for video games that I like.

* Borderlands
* L4D 2
* Dragon Age
* Mass Effect 2
* Star Trek OnLine

Those I've mostly all finished, although I'm still hunting around for someone to do the Borderlands DLC with. Liz says she will, but we keep ending up playing Star Trek Online. We're around level 35 in STO and content is starting to become pretty thin.

So what do I move on to next?