Books
Book: Lord of the Rings series, by J. R. R. Tolkein
Rating: 9/10
Comments: Excellent book, a bit long.
The Lord of the Rings was an excellent story, even though it's a bit long. Like Dune, Tolkein created his own universe, and worked from that. The plot is fascinating if you're willing to think about it some. There wasn't quite so much action as some books, so keep away if you have a three-second attention span. The basic idea of the book is the Ring, which is immensely powerful, and also makes the wearer invisible. They all have to go and destroy the Ring, because it is fundamentally evil, and has a mind of it's own, among other stuff. I refuse to tell you the ending. Read it yourself.
Book: Dune, by Frank Herbert
Rating: 10/10
Comments: Frank Herberts own little universe. It is sci-fi with a bit
of
fantasy.
I won't tell too much of the story or else I would ruin the book. There
is a
planet called Dune/Arrakis that is entirely desert. Most of the book is
about clan warfare. The people all find plausable reasons to fight with
swords even though they have the technology to have better. The book
has
action and all those other good things like conversations. The ending
leaves
you hanging but that's why they invented sequels. Read it, I say.
I've read this too, so I'll add my two cents. Dune is an excellent book series which is definitely worth reading. In case you're interested, the next few books in the series are Dune Messiah, Children of Dune, and God Emperor of Dune. I seem to have forgotten the rest, but I think that there are others after that. I would only give the book an 8, because it occasionally gets a bit long-winded and overexplains. However, it's an excellent story worth reading.
Book: Hyperspace, by Michio Kaku
Rating: 3/10
Comments: This isn't exactly what one would call good bedtime reading, or
good reading for that matter
Here is a book that should be renamed "A Long, Drawn Out, Boring History of Time". The first chapter is about Kaku's obseesion with carp swimming in a pond. Kaku sporadically puts in poor analogies and then spends as much time telling what the analogy is analogous to as he spends making the analogy. He also spends the same amount of time explaining concepts as he does saying "the". Kaku is also a quotation mark farie. Every "twentieth" word get put in "quotes" whether "it" needs them or "not". Back to the analogies. Imagine an apple, covered with worms. One worm, named "Columbus" decides to walk around the "apple" to prove that it is curved. After going "around" the world, he decides "to" dig through the apple to "make" a faster way of transportation. Columbus goes on to "theorize" that the apple is not the only one, that there are "many" apples in vineyard, some "covered" with worms and some not. We are the worms. This book has a very hard time deciding whether it is a history book or a science book. It is a pretty useful book if you want to go to sleep. Just read five pages and you'll "be" out cold.
Book: Earth, by David Brin
Rating: 9/10
Comments: Without a doubt, best book I have ever read.
Earth is an excellent book. The plot develops early on, and is pretty fast paced after that. The book centers on a black hole let loose inside the earth, set in a polluted future. Then, while trying to find their black hole, they stumble upon another one, seemingly placed there. The plot thickens when the main character figures out how to make a superweapon with the black hole: a gravitational laser. The plot becomes fairly hectic towards the end, and then suddenly mellows out in the last few pages, with a completely unexpected ending. Sadly, that's all I can say without giving away the whole story. You'll have to read it for yourself.
12/14/01: Bumped it down to a 9, after all, it isn't perfect.
Book: Mars, by Ben Bova;Return to Mars[sequel], by Ben Bova
Rating: 7/10
Comments: Pretty good book, if you like sci-fi.
This book centers on Mars, life on Mars, and the struggles of a native american (half Navajo) who happens to be an astronaut. It's not that bad, and at least it's accurate. In the sequel, the main plot is a second mission to Mars, six years after the first. They investigate the canyon where they originally found life, and find a whole building, mysteriously empty. Oh yeah, and they try to stave off tourists. That's all I can really say without giving away too much of the plot. On the whole, not a bad read.
Book: Mission: Earth, by L. Ron Hubbard
Rating: 1/108
Comments: Although this is the longest sci-fi book ever written, that is no substitute for quality. Not a recommended read.
While this is the longest book I have ever read(10 normal sized volumes), it was also among the worst. The author was completely unimaginative, and passed up what could have been several good scenes. There are also fairly stupid concepts, like life controlling time and letting us go faster than light at will, or aliens that are exactly like us. It was also disgusting in some places(Kris knows what I mean!), and tedious in others. The plot does not move at all. It just goes from one place to another, and then you are at that other place. It reminds me of the horribly bad literature on a world that Arthur Dent visited in the Hitchhikers Guide, in that it is long, has altogether too many details, and is just generally bad. It's really not worth the copious amounts of paper it took to print it(a largish sapling or so).
12/14/01: If you have ever heard of Scietology, I just want to let you know that the author of this book invented it. I suppose the book COULD have been a commentary of what's wrong with modern society, but the writing style is bad enough to rule that out.
Movies
Movie: Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
Rating: 9/10
Comments: Excellent movie, followed the book pretty well, while still being worth watching.
As you can probably guess, the movie is based on J. R. R. Tolkein's Lord of the Rings series, which I reviewed in the books section if you care to check. I really liked it. The special effects were pretty good, and it followed the book, which puts it way ahead of most books-turned-movies. The plot is the same as the book, so i won't bother putting that here. The movie is much more enjoyable if you haven't read the book, as it leaves some aspect of suspense. However, after reading the book, you notice the details more often. It's definitely worth watching.
Movie: Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone
Rating: 6/10
Comments: They didn't screw up horribly, which is worth praise in its own right. Definitely worth watching, especially if you've read the book.
The Harry Potter movie was not nearly as bad as it could have been. In fact, it was pretty good. I was skeptical at first, because I've seen books taken down with horrible movies, but this came out pretty well. My personal favorite scene was the Quidditch scene, with all the people flying around. I would love to be able to fly...but enough about my problems. There were quite a few scenes cut, but this was mostly for brevity, and didn't affect the plot too much, though we all feel cheated about Norby. All in all, the movie is worth watching.
11/28/01
What was I thinking? Previously, i'd given the movie a nine. A nine! I've decided that it was because I missed 4th period to see the movie. A minor complaint: Most of the stuff was word-for-word from the book.
Movie: The Emperors New Groove
Rating: 8/10
Comments: Really really funny movie that you ought to watch.
The Emperors New Groove is the story of Kuzco, an egotistical, spoiled emperor who is the victim of a backfired murder plot by his advisor, Yzma. [Run on sentence alert!] He gets turned into a llama. The movie develops from there, and is pretty derned funny. Personally, my favorite scene is the laboratory in the end. In case you want to know how to spell the rest of the names, they are Pacha and Kronk. The names are, for some reason, icomprehensible. However, this should not be held against the movie. Go watch it already!
First Sci-Fi RPG I've ever seen. It has a few problems, as the first of a genre usually do. Story is as follows: Aliens attack, Humans unite in communism, Humans win by luck, Human rulers want power, People want
freedom, tempers rise, thus you have Rebels and Confederates. You start in a weaponless, weak shuttlecraft and quickly gain money by doing cargo deliveries. It isn't your regular RPG mindless repetition AKA leveling up, you explore systems and run into space pirates. When you get enough money, you can buy whatever ship you like, become a freelance trader, Confederate, Rebel, Pirate, or keep doing dull cargo missions. As you get more money and reputation, you can buy the most powerful ship in the game and soup it up with legal and illegal addons. Weapons, speed upgrades, armor upgrades, cargo space upgrades, fake ID's are all buyable addons. Battles are fun if you have a fast ship. Best of all, YOU CAN"T WIN! Moohoohoohahahaha. It does have a few major gameplay bugs though. In the second weakest ship you can destroy the most powerful ship with a trick I will not divulge. Storyline very good and by no means linear. Strongly considered making it an 8.
Game: Half Life
HalfLife's is one of your classic shoot-em'-up game. The plot is basically that the evil mutant aleins attack the Black Mesa Research
Facility and you have to make it "topside" until the evil "Delta Force"
decides to kill you. The game is extremely detailed. To see that
you just have to play the intro level. Heck, I played the intro level for
over an hour even though there are no enemies. It is pretty fun to jump off
the train and walk around the Transit System. Ironically, you can only do
that due to a bug that lets you jump off the train and inspect places that
were obviously intended for you not to explore. The sound effects are
awesome, mainly because of the sound echoing and echoing in different ways in
different rooms. The weapons are'nt too creative, the more of the
classic pistol-shotgun-machine-gun-bazooka artillery but they are very fun to
use. The enemies are very diverse. You fight brain eating rodents, sonic
dogs, acid spitting dogs, tounges from the ceiling and much more. You also
can get security guys and doctors to follow you and help you. But the best
thing by far is the boxes. Boxes can be pushed, pulled, broken, jumped onto,
pushed off ledges, hid behind, blown up, etc... The story is pretty good too.
Unfortunately, it is only for Windows and requires a rather fast
computer.
Game: Ares
This game's story basically is as follows: Earth is taken over by the evil Cantharin Empire. With the Human's bad technology they escape very slowly at lightspeed to the friendly Ishmians. When they get there the Ishmians insult their technology and give them a nice pastoral planet to live on. The stubborn Humans say "No we want to fight can we borrow some spaceships
to kill the Cantharans?" The Ismians are interested, being mortal enemies
of the Ishmians and give them technology. Enough of the story, let's get
on to the game. Ares has a set of 20 missions where you battle various aleins
including the Cantharans. You command an army of spaceships. There is a
lot of strategy involoved in this game, unlike StarCraft where the person
who is the first to 255 units wins. It is still fun even if you are not very
good at the strategy because you can directy control the ships. The
commanding system is very different from most strategy games. Instead of selecting a unit and saying "Unit go here" or "Unit attack here" you have a target and a control object. The control object is the unit and the target is the destination. Pressing control on the keyboard means "control object go
to nuetral target", "control object escort friendly target" or "control
object attack enemy target", which ever applies. The ships you can build are
Fighter, Cruiser, Gunship, Heavy Cruiser, Carrier, Defense Drone, Transport,
Engineer Pod, Assault Transport. All ships are built at a planet or
station and all money is gotten from those too. Just trust me, it's a good
game.
Credits:Games
Game: Escape Velocity
Producers: Ambrosia Software
Rating: 7/10
Comment: Space Invaders meets Dungeons & Dragons!
Producers: Sierra Studios
Rating: 8/10
Comment: Spectacular Game, a bit buggy.
Producers: Nathan Lamont of Ambrosia Software
Rating: 8/10
Comment: Space Invaders meets StarCraft! Highly reccomened.
Review for Dune contributed by Michael Treiman.
Review for Escape Velocity contributed by Michael Treiman.
Review for Hyperspace contributed by Michael Treiman.
Review for Half-life contributed by Michael Treiman.
Review for Ares contributed by Michael Treiman.
[See a pattern here?]