Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card may possibly be the best novel I’ve ever read. That’s not a statement I make lightly. While my other favorites – Stranger in a Strange Land, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Death World – have all effected me in different ways, none has moved me as much as this […]
Charles Stross’s latest novel, Rule 34, is one of the notable books of 2011, a cyberpunk novel for the social media age. Gone is the notion of revolutionary computers and technologies just out of reach: this futuristic Scotland is a recognizable world that’s just around the corner, one that shows just how scary a high-technology […]
Captain Darian Frey has had some more reversals of fortune. Despite the encounter at Retribution Falls, keeping his beloved aerium fueled airship The Ketty Jay is serious business. His navigator is still weird and possibly inhuman, his daemonologist is still haunted by something he won’t talk about, his outrider fighter pilots are still a […]
ShadowBytes is a new webcomic from Patrick Hester and Clifton Hill. New episodes appear every Tuesday and Thursdays on the Webcomic website.
“The book does prominently feature three of the foundational touchstones of all things steampunk: giant airships, brass computers, and kinky feminine underwear.” ~ Bruce Sterling, Afterword, The Difference Engine When I first delved into The Difference Engine, by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, I had no previous experience reading the work […]
ShadowBytes is a new webcomic from Patrick Hester and Clifton Hill. New episodes appear every Tuesday and Thursdays on the Webcomic website.
ShadowBytes is a new webcomic from Patrick Hester and Clifton Hill. New episodes appear every Tuesday and Thursdays on the Webcomic website.
A disaster recovery plan does exactly what it sounds like: it gives you a way to recover from a disaster, usually a loss of data. This can be anything from losing your laptop, or having your hard drive die on you, to something as terrible as losing your home in a fire. With recent advances […]
ShadowBytes is a new webcomic from Patrick Hester and Clifton Hill. New episodes appear every Tuesday and Thursdays on the Webcomic website.
Happy Holidays! ’Tis the season for frightful weather, and nothing warms the soul after a slog through the snow to buy those last minute gifts like a hot, spicy drink. For some, the perfect antidote is a cup of coffee, or tea, or even hot chocolate. But this is a Booze Nerd post, so you […]
The Worker Prince by Bryan Thomas Schmidt takes the Biblical story of Moses to the stars and beyond. When Prince Xander Rhii – Davi to his friends – graduates from the Borali Military Academy at the top of his class, his horizon looks clear and bright. Privileged enough to grow up in the […]
In Episode 84 of the Functional Nerds podcast, Patrick Hester and John Anealio welcome Karin Lowachee and Gabrielle Gantz. About Karin: Karin was born in South America, grew up in Canada, and worked in the Arctic. Her first novel WARCHILD won the 2001 Warner Aspect First Novel Contest. Both WARCHILD (2002) and her third novel […]
Lucy Stone works as a game designer in Edinburgh. Digital Damage is making a Massively multiplayer online role playing game based on dark ages Britain. With Zombies and other odd things. Slaving away at this game, Lucy gets a call from her mother, a fellow émigré from a troubled region in the Caucaus. Her mother […]
ShadowBytes is a new webcomic from Patrick Hester and Clifton Hill. New episodes appear every Tuesday and Thursdays on the Webcomic website.
We all know the holidays are filled with opportunities to merrily eat festive baked goods while drinking down buckets of holiday cheer. It’s no surprise the scale tends to go up a few pounds after the holiday season is over. Here are a few tips to help you avoid weight gain during one of the […]
Jacob Aldridge, scion of a respectable, well off family in 1882 London, has had the shadow of tragedy hanging over him. His beloved fiancée, Rhoda Carothers, has suddenly died, and he seems more than usually affected by the tragedy. A chance meeting with Livia Aram is shocking to both, for Livia very much resembles the […]
City of Ruin, by Mark Charan Newton #2 in Legends of the Red Sun Series 448 pages ISBN: 0345520882 What do you get when you blend noir, 1920’s-style glitz, horror, an approaching Apocalypse, alternate universes, and a smattering of nearly every genre out there? Well, in this case, you might just be reading Mark Charan […]
Its late 19th Century Seattle. The gold rush of the Klondike a couple of decades earlier meant that the city was large and growing when inventor Leviticus Blue’s magnum opus due too greedily and too deep, releasing a gas that turns those who breathe it too deeply into the walking dead. Those bitten or injured […]
Hello again! This is your friendly Booze Nerd, back from a short hiatus. I hope you all have been drinking well. I know I have. So here we are in the late fall, rushing towards winter and (in the northern hemisphere at least) colder days and especially nights. As far as I’m concerned, those crisp […]
Boneshaker, by Cherie Priest, grabs the reader from page one and refuses to let go. The characters stand out, the setting is fantastic, and the situation dire. What better way to start a horror story? Set in the late 1800’s during the Civil War, the scientist Leviticus Blue invents an incredible drilling machine called […]
I love writers. Writers are my friends. Many of my writer friends are doing NaNoWriMo this month. (John Anealio wrote a lovely soundtrack for them). I was feeling a bit left out until I discovered that there are some nifty art/comic alternatives for us visually oriented folks.
ShadowBytes is a new webcomic from Patrick Hester and Clifton Hill. New episodes appear every Tuesday and Thursdays on the Webcomic website.
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