Ready Player One Review

Ready Player One, released in August by Random House, is written by Ernest Cline. This is Cline’s first published novel, but he already has a lot of credibility with me by being the screenwriter for the fun movie,  Fanboys. The book is based in a dystopian future where fossil fuels are extremely scarce and most people spend their days in the ubiquitous online virtual reality system, OASIS. The book opens with the lead character introducing the reader to what happens when OASIS’s creator, James Halliday, dies.

Halliday, immensely wealthy, has been a recluse for several years and on his death everyone in OASIS gets invited to play in a scavenger hunt. The prize…his fortune including ownership of OASIS. To help, Halliday has left clues to help the players on a hunt that is influenced by his passion for the 1980s. The book is a romp through almost everything geeky and good about the 80s…John Hughes movies, video games, and Dungeons & Dragons and the like as players try to find 3 keys to open 3 gates to get the easter egg prize.

The book definitely made me think fondly of the movies I watched with friends as a teenager, the first video games I played, my favorite cartoons/anime and role playing back in the day. I felt the story was the recent successor to Neuromancer and Snow Crash (which if you haven’t read them, go do it now).  It blends the “real” world of the dystopian future with the virtual worlds of OASIS well and if you have played video games, you can easily picture something like OASIS coming in the future.

At the end, you will want more. That isn’t to say that the story isn’t complete, it is, you just want to have more time with the characters and the world. I really enjoyed this book both for the story and the reminder of all those great things we got to experience for the first time in the 1980s. Sure they were often cheesy, but they were completely new. I give Ready Player One 5 Mick Happies. You should read it or listen to the Wil Wheaton audio version of the book. Go to the Random House website to read the prologue. Check out Ernest Cline’s blog for more geeky goodness.  Once your done, you can wait with me and hope  for the Ready Player One movie, which Warner Brothers optioned earlier this year.

How Firm A Foundation Review

How Firm a Foundation was released in September 2011 and is the fifth novel in David Weber’s Safehold series. The Safehold series is set in a far distant future where mankind has fled Earth and the planets we had colonized after a devastating loss in a war for survival against an alien race, the Gbaba.  Safehold is a refuge planet far away from the areas of space the Gbaba have been seen and was planned by the colonizing leaders to be a world the Gbaba would never find (they destroy civilizations before they become threats by finding them via their electronic emissions).

To help ensure that Safehold would remain secret, the founding leaders brainwashed the colonizing humans during their suspended animation into thinking they awoke on Safehold to a world created by God and the archangels (the leaders of the colonizing mission) and were given a book to guide them, which denounces technological progress beyond a certain point. That is the premise of the first book, Off Armageddon Reef, where we find that not all of the colonizing mission leadership agreed with that approach and some took matters into their own hands to ensure mankind would again rise to take on the Gbaba. This fifth book continues the story of how a group of a few people fight to overthrow the oppressive church on Safehold and bring mankind back from this imposed backward level. For more detail on the background, click the links above.

Those familiar with David Weber know that he is known for military science fiction with his Honor Harrington series. I came to read his work through the Dahak series, which I highly recommend and can be found online. The Safehold series has a nice mix of science fiction and historical “feeling” naval and political intrigue. In How Firm a Foundation, Weber really channels a Master and Commander feel in the beginning of the book as we are given a detailed account of a ship battling a storm. At the time it felt a bit too much of a venue for demonstrating a great knowledge of nautical terms, but later I realized that it was to let the reader know how skilled those sailors were as they are pivotal characters in this fifth book

The series is going to be much longer than five books, the exact number hasn’t been set as far as I know. However, the story continues to move along with some new reveals and twists and turns you don’t see coming. If you like gunpowder, ships and religious and political intrigue, this series is likely for you. The books come out once a year like clockwork (thank you Mr. Weber). I would give this book 3 Mick Happies. It is an enjoyable story, not the best book in the series, but worth a read. Catch it in paperback when you can.

X-Men: First Class Review

I have enjoyed the X-Men for many years. I know there are those that didn’t like some of the trilogy movies or only know the movies, but I have liked X-men since I watched the cartoon on tv and then went and read the comics they were based on. I had even heard good things about X-Men: FirstClass before it came to my home from Netflix.

X-Men: First Class stars James McAvoy and was directed by Matthew Vaughn. I have enjoyed several of Matthew Vaughn’s other films like Stardust and especially Kick-Ass. Here are some of the things I liked about X-Men: First Class:

·         The kids learning to use their powers

·         The cameos

·         Getting to see Professor X before he was Professor X

·         Getting to see the X-Men again in a movie

Okay, that doesn’t feel like a very long list. It isn’t. I am either becoming jaded on the whole superhero movie or it was just I was disappointed in this one. I think it was this movie. I had high expectations and it missed. I am male, so I understand and eye candy is enjoyable, but how many shots do we need in one movie specifically designed to show January Jones in her underwear? How many blow it up over the top explosions? The whole thing just fell flat for me and seemed a bit forced. There is potential there, but it never was realized in my opinion. That opinion was strengthened watching Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger soon after X-Men: First Class.

At the end of the day, I will wait patiently for the next Wolverine movie and give X-Men: First Class 2 Mick Happies.