So I'm here on the eve of Christmas, watching some chronic Japanese TV that's barely more than a commercial for shit to buy, wondering whether to wait until I wake up tomorrow for the ceremony of opening presents (it's 11.48 in the pm as of this word).
Obviously I'll open them tomorrow, don't fret. But as I sit here unsure of what to do with myself in an entirely non-christian country, I've come to the realisation that we could all use some excellent music in our lives, no matter the time of day or time of year.
As such, here's my christmas pick for best christmas music. Christmas.
If you listen to the lyrics you'll understand perfectly why this is an excellent christmas song. Also, for whatever reason, this is the song that has really got to me recently. Obviously if you don't know what the song is about insofar as it is part of a soundtrack for a video game, you won't have the overall aesthetic in your mind - but I think this is a song that entirely transcends the work it draws inspiration from.
That might just be me to be honest. It'd be interesting to know what you think.
Everyone has their own quirky tastes, this is mine!
After I've brought you all down with a haunting ode to the bleakness of life - here's a santa delivering pizza. I think I uploaded a very similar picture a few years ago, because these guys are everywhere and always out and about during christmas - but you can never have enough santa with a crash hat on a trike.
So this is my traditional christmas eve meal. The traditional christmas foods of home-made gyoza (ungodly in its deliciousness, in case you were wondering).
The other half of this epic was the lasagne, pictured below. Contrary to popular opinion it was actually this variation of pasta eaten by jesus before he was hung, or drawn, or born or whatever it is christmas was invented to pretend happened.
A much less well known fact was that he enjoyed gyoza as a side dish, and a mug of white wine. Note, his mug might have been a black disney mug that changed colour when it got hot. That might just be mine though.
Anyway.
I have special plans for tomorrows meal so if things go well I'll upload a picture of that. I'll see if my holiday blues have cleared up enough that I can stop listening to the above song, and possibly come up with another recommendation.
It's a way less formal thing than I normally write which is fine by me, it feels more like a blog than an advertisment or article for a newspaper - just like this!
The only problem is the picture they used for the header. I have literally no idea where they found it, what it's supposed to show, or what it has to do with the article itself. I don't know what the thought process on that one is really.
Feel free to check it out, leave a comment and so on. I'm sure my next writing job with them will rely on pageviews and comments and whatnot, so it would really help if you clicked on the link, even if you don't read it!
So the girlfriend recently went to a beer manufactory with the intentions of creating a brew so delicious, so compelling, as to turn me into a beer drinker.
I won't beat about the bush - this beer is a travesty. I have no idea how they go about explaining the process of beer creation at this place, but needless to say they need to work on their methods.
I have never been one for enjoying the finer foods so I've not had the need to improve my food related vocabulary but here goes: It smells like crap. The first attosecond seems pleasant, with the distinctive beer smell the first through the olfactory gate. After that, however, things turn grim. To be honest I don't have a point of comparison so will refrain from elaborating further, but needless to say, things are grim from the off.
The taste follows an incredibly similar trajectory, with the first drop seeming palatable, only to descend into chaos mere moments later.
Despite this, and despite the expense, it's something I'd recommend to anyone. The intrigue inherent in not knowing what is going to turn up on your doorstep, coupled with the crushing disappointment, is a valuable life lesson in patience and setting expectations. There are few things in life, and were it not beer, I'd recommend it to anyone from the ages of two to two hundred.
As there is alcohol involved I am required by law to only recommend making your own beer starting from the age of five. So, for everyone from five to two hundred years of age should try this out.
(To be fair to the girlfriend, they were limited in the ingredients they were allowed and the volumes they could create. You would think they would steer their customers towards something that actually tasted decent, though.)
So it snowed today. A lot. Absolutely out of nowhere.
I was hoping it would settle and destroy all the trains like it normally does, alas it was not to be and I had to go to work. I didn't see the normal bizarre driving that you normally find around snowy days, with no overturned apple carts and cement mixers.
I now know just how cold toes can be, because my shoes haven't been waterproof for five years, which is probably too long to own the same pair of shoes but they are just so damned comfortable.
Anyway, the reason I'm writing this today is because I saw this:
I'll have something more interesting to write about later. Probably.
I just came across an interesting statistic with regards to money in the UK.
If you earn 40k a year or more, then you're in the top 10% of earners.
Wages have stagnated to the point that 40 grand puts you near the peak of the pyramid. From there I would imagine it's a fairly steep climb to the top, but the idea that you only need such a modest amount in order to be, by definition 'rich,' in the UK is heartening for me, because I might like to buy a house one day.
If you only need to earn that much to be rich, I can buy a house!
The average UK house price for pre-owned dwellings in February 2015 was £269,000.
It's been a while since I've seen some good old fashioned Japlish when I've been out and about.
I was starting to worry that their robots were coming online, that universal translators had rendered me useless.
Luckily, google has yet to perfect their translation services.
All that trouble
The best part about Japlish is that it's often perfectly understandable, if given a moment. It's endearing to see just how close the author came to getting it spot on.
Having said that, I don't want to make trouble a lot for whoever designed this thing, but as always, how hard would it have been to check this?
If the Japanese media and old people are to be believed, Japan is swimming in foreigners. You can't walk ten feet without wading through a sea of the unclean. So why couldn't the editor for this picture have leaned out of his office window and shouted at any of the passersby? Odds are that he would have happened upon more foreigners than Japanese, and the chances are that he'd strike upon an english speaker to boot.
Having spoken with a few others it seems Japlish is still rife. I think my brain is filtering a lot of it out, which is a shame. I'll have to retrain myself.
Spitting image, down to the mustache
Bonus picture: I answered an casting call for 'typical Englishman,' and I think they captured my likeness perfectly. What makes this better is that it's the British Council cynically preying on the local public. For shame!
(No one tell anyone outside of Europe that this is a hundred years out of date - I'm pretty sure our tourism industry would collapse overnight)
I looked in on my Strawberries on Sunday, then again today, five days later. It's been raining a lot lately and what with the unlikelihood of them ever sprouting, I just forgot about them for a while.
And then this:
Symptoms include leaf death, wilting and a generally blurred outline.
One of the weaker ones is completely dead. Like, dead as a door nail.
The other four plants seemto be completely fine, with just the two being affected. After the melonpocalpyse I bit the bullet and bought some pesticide, so I've sprayed them all down and bought the sufferer indoors. I have no idea whether it'll survive, but I'll keep an eye on it and hope for the best. I wonder if I should feed it too? We'll see how it goes.
So I went along to the Tokyo Game Show this past weekend.
It was an absolute blast.
The event itself is as big as ever, with 270,000 people attending over the four days. The first two days were business only which means the vast majority of the quarter of a million people attended on the Saturday and Sunday.
Having said that, the big publishers avoided the event as much as possible, with the obligatory enormous stands and almost nothing else. Now that the Japanese game market has collapsed the big breaking headlines happen elsewhere, which makes sense, but is still disappointing for attendees.
What Japan has in abundance is mobile games. So many mobile games. If you're after something to play on your phone then this is the country for you. The largest stages were reserved for Sony, playing live concerts and whatnot, but almost all the second tier stages were mobile publishers and streaming services.
Turns out there's a lot of money in phones these days, who would have thought.
Anyway, my favourite section was definitely the stage/indie/dressup hangar. The main area was unbelievably loud and incredibly crowded on the public days, so much so that I had to retire to the other half of the show on several occasions. I'm not one for loud spaces in the first place (nerd) but it really was unbearable.
So in the (slightly) quieter building I met a ton of really cool independent developers showing off their software.
I played a few really fun games, a few challenging ones, and a few in VR.
I met someone who worked on Dungeon Keeper, one of my favourite games ever. He's working with his wife on the mobile game above and it was a treat to get to chat to them. I was probably destroying their chance to advertise to the crowds, for which I apologise (not that they'll ever read this).
I didn't play it because I'm shocking at actually playing video games, especially puzzle games, but as long as there's an easy mode for me to try out I'll jump in when it's released. It'll be interesting to see how it does because they're still working out how to make money from their games. It's a tricky proposition, especially with the amount of free dreck out there. Convincing someone to pay money is something everyone was talking about. Unless they're creating in VR, because the assumption is that if you can afford 1,500gbp of PC and 800gbp of VR equipment then money is no object.
Another game I checked out was this one:
It's really hard. Like, really really hard. It's a fast moving platformer that will appeal to anyone who likes perfecting lines and speedrunning, and anyone that doesn't mind sending a Rude Bear to his death over and over again. The interesting hook with this game is that every death leaves behind a body that will cover spikes, block projectiles and so on, meaning your next run through it slightly easier. No matter how bad you are at the game you can eventually finish it with enough perseverence.
I also love the music. Every stage has its own unique track, and I didn't hear a single song I didn't like. It's all filthy, grimy and industrial, and sits well with the overall design and aesthetic.
It's too difficult for me by far, but it's still great. (Also, I was chatting to the dev who took the controller off me because I was so bad and started playing while barely looking at the screen. My guess is that he's playtested every one of the levels quite a bit.)
So a lot of indie games are 2D, sprite based platformers or RPG's with a fairly limited scope. This is due to money, basically, and it means that when a team does end up aiming higher, they can crash and burn (cough cough No Mans Sky cough).
This game is a 3D adventure, and I tried it out in VR. It's not an adventure game in the style of an old Monkey Island or Day of the Tentacle, but more in the modern style of a Gone Home.
To be honest I'm not sure whether it's an adventure game at all, but I don't really have any other way of describing it.
You walk around and experience the life of the main character, interact with those around you and generally, if you're me, make a nuisance of yourself by throwing basketballs at people and turning lamps on and off incessantly.
It's impossible to get a sense of whether the story is compelling or not in the space of a demo in a booth, but what I can say for certain is that the VR works, just sit down while you're playing. This game uses a controller which means you move forward and backwards like a normal first person game, but the sensation of moving forward throws your entire sense of balance off. It's even worse when you stop because you slow down really quickly and your body is expecting the normal forces involved in deceleration, which means you overcompensate, which means you end up leaning forward and nearly falling over.
At least that's what I found.
That aside I think the inclusion of VR in a game of this type is a smart move because it really does add to the immersion. It's one of those things that you have to try in order to see whether it works for you or not, just like the move from 480p to 1080p, or the upcoming move to 4K. Hearing someone wax lyrical about the tech does nothing to convey the feeling.
As a side note, I commented on just how fantastic one of the characters looked, and it turned out the character artist was standing right next to me. It also turns out she's from England. It also turns out she's living in Tokyo.
Small world.
Needless to say the characters look amazing, even when you get right up in their grill. I was probably the creepiest dude on the planet at the exact moment where I was millimetres away from this characters face studying every detail.
If you're interested I found a portfolio of hers here.
Those were some of the things that stuck out to me at the show.
After I've written up the article (the reason I was there in the first place) I'll put some of the rejected photographs on here. I'll also get a video of me messing around in VR put onto my youtube, and onto here.
So I had a whole day off yesterday, so I decided to do something computer related with it.
I also did a few pages of editing (read: copious amounts of deleting) for my book, so that's still ticking along (about 1/3rd done with edits).
Anyway, I decided to do this:
I need a name for this blocky mess.
It's a little game I made. I found a program called 'game maker,' on humble bundle, bought and downloaded it (15 of your us dollars) and started messing around.
So it's all programming which is unfortunate, because I have no idea how to program. Luckily there's a decent sized community, and I know just enough to change up the bits I need to when two tutorials conflict.
In the screen you see above, the green box is the player. The red box is an enemy that moves back and forth as it runs into walls. The pink box is a portal of sorts that sends you to the next level.
If you land on top of the red box, it disappears, simulating the banishment of said enemy.
If you land next to the red box and it runs into you, the scene resets, simulating the unfortunate death of a green box (the player).
The basics are there with this setup. The player jump height varies depending on how long you hold down the key, up to a maximum height, and the player has a nice momentum to it, so you're not just at 100% speed when you move left and right. There's also a decent feel to the gravity.
Some other stuff I want to add: enemies that detect edges, so that they don't need to be boxed in and they won't fall off ledges.
A player attack that affects what would be the equivalent of a square in front of them in this design.
Pickups, that show text on the screen. I want the player to walk over a box and for it to pop up text, to tell a little story.
Spikes, but that should be an easy thing to make as I already have the red box code.
If I get all the done, then it's just a case of making a metric boat load of art to take the place of everything. Art for backgrounds, art for the characters, art for the enemies. So much art.
The only problem is that I cannot art to save my life.
Oh well. We'll cross that bridge should we ever come to it.
So as we all know, fun is dead. No one is allowed to have any fun anymore, what with the news shoving constant drudgery down our necks (I haven't watched, read or listened to the news in a very, very long time, with the eception of what makes its way to my facebook page. Regardless, I am confident that I am correct in this assertion, and that the news is still a parade of misery) and everything being just the worst at all times.
On a more personal note, Summer Holidays (tm) have ended, so I'm back at work.
That is the real tragedy.
Also, my school has bought in a new load of laptops which have, after close inspection with a ruler, 12 inch screens. 12 inches. In a laptop. They're fully laptops too, the screen doesn't unclip like a tablet, all the connectors are in the base. And they have touchscreens.
What on earth.
Someone at the municipal service for education was scammed (see: bribed) into buying these shit sandwiches.
The keyboard is miniscule. I can cover half the keyboard with two fingers which makes typing a nightmare. The screen is god knows what resolution because who can tell as everything is tiny. WHO WOULD USE TOUCHSCREEN ON A LAPTOP WHEN THE MOUSE IS RIGHT THERE?
The whole thing is a terrible piece of deign.
So now you're thinking, 'what's the point of this little rant?' To be honest I haven't thought that far yet.
Anyway. My second book is coming along nicely. This one might actually see a release. Once I'm at the final editing stage I'll start looking for an illustrator to do the covers (I draw like a four year old) and I'll start the self-publishing process.
Unfortunately I have a pretty solid idea of what I want out of the whole thing, which might make the self-pub system somewhat more annoying and substantially less accommodating.
My big target, my life goal, is to sell a hundred copies. I want to sell a hundred books in my lifetime. That is my aim. If it takes me writing fifty books and getting my mum and dad to buy a single copy each then so be it.
Digital or physical doesn't matter, just one hundred books.
Is there any way a touchscreen laptop with miniscule keys could help me in writing? I'm struggling to find a connection... No, I really can't think of one.
Anyway, in other news, I went to the same festival I went to last year. You might say I'm a regular, now that I've been twice. Last year was incredibly disappointing in terms of pictures and this year was only marginally better. I've started the process of editing them and have found a couple I like so far. I don't know whether they'll go into the 'best of,' folder I keep, but they're decent enough to stick on here at the very least. (Truth be told one or two of them might go onto the Japanese calendars I make for Christmas, but don't tell anyone).
Those updates will come about when I get home and don't immediately fall asleep on the sofa. We've just installed new aircon and it's glorious. It also uses 3.2kw/h at peak load, so it's very much a luxury that should not be used every day, but almost always is.
Frugality is not my strong suit.
On an entirely unrelated note, I really, really need a new PC now. This one is huffing and puffing and often refuses to boot. It's being a real pain in the derriere which wouldn't matter if I were a millionaire, but I'm not, so it is.
So I recently broke my nose again. It was on the left hand side, but now it's on the right.
NBD (no big deal)
Stuff like this happens all the time, it can't be helped. It does mean that I can't breathe out of the right hand nostril now, which is a bummer because I was fine on both sides before.
Oh well. Life moves on.
So, just out of idle curiosity (and because we needed a new mosquito door thing) me and the girlfriend went to the local DIY store. It happened to have a fish place, so we went and had a look around. It turns out that they have the world most unimpressed fish for sale. No, really, blow this picture up to full size and tell me that guy isn't just eyeing everyone and everything with contempt.
Ugh, they went with blue, really?
On the way to the fish store we came across this. In case you can't tell, this is a giant net covering someones back garden. The purpose of this monstrosity? To keep golf balls at bay. Yes, someone has made a golf cage on the back of their house. What in the world?
I can't imagine any of the neighbours are too happy. Then again, if you have this kind of disposable income you're probably leader of their home owners association or something.
Fooooouuuuuuur! ty thousand dollars worth of cage?
We also saw this cool little butterfly. It was surprisingly cold that day so I managed to get up nice and close before it flittered away. Not the most colourful, but it's nice nonetheless.
We bought a bread maker a while ago. It was that, or a deep fat fryer. A tough choice I'm sure you'll agree, but the bread won out on daily usage levels. Normally it makes fantastic bread, but sometimes I'm left in charge of making it, and then this happens.
When someone else is in charge it can make some fantastic white bread, and some amazing raisin bread.
The melonpocalypse from last year has been shelved, and now I'm trying to grow some strawberries. We had a small crop of beans in the growbags but the yields were disappointing. The wind up here really messed everything up.
The strawberries were grown from seed, which is uncommon, apprently. They've yet to fruit, they may yet decide not to, but if they do I'm interested in seeing what kind of size and taste we get out of them. I wonder if they're like apples in that you never know what the taste of a new plant will be like unless you graft. The random genetic lottery may not be kind to the tastebuds. Only time will tell.
And that's it for this little update. It's been a month since I wrote anything, so I just wanted to drop a few pics down and let the internet at large know that I'm still alive.
As a terminally lazy bugger I have to say it far outperforms my expectations.
It's particularly effective in the small rooms that constitute my abode, even with the density of furniture present. Given that I can barely navigate my tiny living space without stubbing a toe, that's no mean feat.
I wouldn't recommend using it when you're in the room, not least because it's pretty thick and will drive into your legs constantly, but also because of the noise. It's not as loud as a normal vacuum, but the constant whine of its motors and the spinning doohicky that sweeps stuff into the hoovering part are both annoying sounds. Not to mention the fact that it constantly rolls in and out of earshot, and quite often crops up when you're least expecting it.
Aesthetically it's uninspiring, but as a utilitarian object it's fine. I have never been one to care about how an implement looks, and I'm not going to start caring now.
I don't know how many terraatorrs of vacuum it can generate, but it's pretty damned effective at picking up the daily detritus that I couldn't be bothered to. There are noticeably fewer dusty spots, and it no longer feels like walking over gravel when I take my socks off.
Anecdotally I would say its pretty damned useful. It's not going to eliminate all the work I'll need to do, but it's filling in pretty damned nicely so far.
I have one major gripe, and that's the things distinct lack of intelligence.
The high end models are just now starting to include cameras and lasers to map out rooms, and they will devise effective strategies for cleaning based on the maps they make. The cleaners capable of this are about 400gbp above my price range, and this basic one took a long time to save for already. There are modders out there who have been adding this functionality to their roombas for three or four years at this point, so why isn't this a standard feature?
Obviously it's not a standard feature because the manufacturers can incrementally roll out smarter and smarter devices that people have to upgrade to every year, just like iphones (and soon, gaming consoles) but it's pretty galling to know the tech, software and manufacturing processes are already available.
Then again that gives the NSA another direct feed of your life, as if they needed another.
So the UK is out of Europe. Well, not out of Europe. We're still in Europe. The residents of Dover haven't banded together and purchased a thousand outboard motors, yet, but the regulatory ties to the EU that the UK has been subject to for decades, will all be thrown out of the window.
Except of course they won't.
If we want to trade with the EU we'll still be subject to their regulations, and as much as the BBC and whoever tries to convince us otherwise, we still need them FAR more than they need us. This is demonstrable by even a cursory glimpse at the relative size of economies involved.
But this isn't an issue of mathematics, it's one of spin. And complaining. Oh my lord the complaining.
The leavers have complained about a million different things, whether it's stupid EU immigration laws or the buckets of money we give away daily. Roughly a thousand different things are terrible about the EU.
The stayers have complained about a million different things, whether it's the hopeless state of the UK economy and how free trade is keeping it from collapsing in on itself, to the woeful state of human rights legislation, only kept at bay by EU law.
Don't worry though, big business and vast amounts of money will always prevail with help from their cronies in government.
Honda will take their plants outside of the UK, and they will do just fine building millions of cars in France, or Germany, or wherever they end up going. The poor sods who will be out of a job within the next few years are fucked, but they only make tens of thousands of pounds a year, so who gives a shit? Their million dollar bonus packages aren't at stake, because they don't have any.
The tiny companies that manufacture odds and ends for the mega factories are all in China anyway, so once again, we lose nothing there.
The small, family run or privately owned companies will face taxes and tariffs that will markedly reduce their competitiveness in the marketplace, but they're not earning millions either, so fuck them.
The enormous companies will bribe (sorry, donate) their way to exemptions from these tariffs and taxes, so they'll be fine. Thank god.
The banks are an entity unto themselves at this point, and beyond petty 'laws.' They'll be fine.
It's going to make travelling into Europe a right pain in the arse. France will erect a fifty foot wall of concrete andrefugee limbs in the chinese style <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Wall_of_China#Characteristics>. All of the limbs will be arms, all pointing at the channel. All the hands will have a single raised digit. You guess which one.
Whichever side of the fence you sit on it doesn't matter. The Tory regime are now fully able to enact the thought-crime laws they've tried to pass in the past, and that have been blocked on human rights grounds. The pig fuckers will abolish any and all regulation to do with banks, the UK economy will continue falling apart exactly as quickly as it would have anyway. You won't be able to vandalise French cities during football riots. Actually that last one won't change.
The french waiter at your favourite restaurant will pee in your soup.
But the absolute worst thing about this farce – none of it matters.
So I've recently finished a few books that are worth talking about, and a few that most definitely are not.
Let's start positively, in this case with a small independently financed book called 'Empires of Eve.'
If you don't like games then you can skip this. Empires of Eve is a book written entirely about a game, about the political intrigue and entirely inconsequential goings on in the virtual universe imaged by the players.
It is conceivable that you have never heard of Eve, because its player base is, frankly, small. Only tens of thousands play the game regularly, which in the MMO space is a paltry figure.
The giants (World of Warcraft, Runescape) aside, MMO's launch with one of two aims. Either, they aim to gain enough subscribers to support continued development of the game, earn a little money on the side, and keep chugging along indefinitely. Or, they try to dethrone the king. They go for broke, costtens, if not hundreds of millions to make, and require a million monthly subscribers just to break even. The latter approach spawned WOW, and a host of failures. The former approach spawned Eve, one or two others, and a host of failures.
With this small community comes a fervour that takes all aspects of the game to illogical extremes. Or perhaps it's not terribly illogical. If you consider the amount of time, and money, people spend flying the ships around and building corporations, it starts to make a little more sense.
The universe they've built is one almost entirely player driven, so humans control the vast business interests and swathes of space that end up causing wars that engulf everyone and everything. This, without over-egging the wotsit, means Eve feuds are some of the best on the internet. Not even celebrity hacks hold a candle to these spats.
And this book chronicles the first half of the games history, from creation to around 2009 (if I remember correctly) in which time any number of nefarious, nonsensical acts of treason and treachery were enacted unto the (virtual) universe.
The writing is solid, striking the right balance of facts (whatever 'facts,' there are in a virtual world) and editorialising. The way things pan out from a neutral observers perspective (namely, mine) mirror real life to a frightening degree. The times a player in charge of thousands of people and multiple corporations accidentally left their PC running, leaving something exposed, or vice cersa, the result of whichch is a collapsed empire, really strikes home. The only times we find out about nefarious banking practices, corruption, or prime ministers shagging pigs, is when something goes wrong behind the scenes and someone accidentally left their laptop open in a taxi.
Corporate espionage is more fun (and, frankly, more interesting) when giant spaceships, and not your pension scheme, are on the line.
The author is also desperate to justify his writing, reminding the reader on several occasions that the digital happenings of the game hold value just as the real world does.
Insofar as tens of thousands of people have spent more time in this game than all the politicians on either side of the Atlantic have ever spent in their respective parliaments in the whole history of America or the U.K. it is important. To the people who spend their times planning how to destroy 6,000USD (one of the later battles, not included in this book) worth of virtual stuff, it's obviously worth their time and, by being such, is important. It's entirely unnecessary to keep reminding us of this, or even, to be perfectly honest, to bring it up in the first place.
Everything is important to someone. Just look at train spotters, who have always been at the bottom of the ladder in terms of nerd-dom and might very well remain there until the sun explodes. They don't have to justify their hobby any more than you or I do. Don't even open that dialogue.
The book is great bar the mild annoyances I've mentioned, I don't recall any spelling mistakes, which for a self-funded (is it self published? I'm too lazy to check) book is a minor miracle. The story(ies) are great, and I love the interviews, which punctuate the diverse ways in which humans enjoy themselves, and enjoy the behind-the-scenes machinationsusually reserved for millionaires and politicians born into that particular life.
Rating: 3 that's no moon / 4 space stations
Another book I recently read, on the recommendation of a website I frequent, was called The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet.
I'm not going to guild the lily here. This book is not good. This book is very not good, to the point that I've struck that particular website from my list of recommendatables (what a word).
If you've ever seen the cult hit Firefly, you know the basic premise for this book. It's about a crew, some weird alien/human mix that ensures plenty of 'we're all weird and special in our own way,' proselytising without a single meaningful interaction in the whole book. There's not a single point at which I could say I was entertained, nor could I say that the message of diversity struck any meaningful chord. It was stiff, inflexible, and dull.
The plot is uneven. The main plot point occurs thirty seconds before the end of the book, which makes me wonder whether the author originally intended a duology, or whether they ran out of ideas and needed to wrap it up quickly. It reads like an introductory lesson in the lives of the crew and how their species function, while never physically moving forward. The scenes in which the new human crewmember with a dark past (whom the reader is supposed to identify with perhaps? I certainly didn't) learns about the various aliens and their clutures may well have been better handled in the form of brief flashbacks. Instead we are treated to long, winding, and entirely dull sequences of no importance to man or alien.
The scene in which the overt racist is humbled is contrived to the point of being cringeworthy. In fact, at that point I put the book down and vowed to read no further. Unfortunately as I was putting it down (read: closing the application on my phone) I noticed that I was near the end, and having struggled this far thought I may as well continue.
There's a racy relationship between two of the crew which is kind of forbidden, I guess? There's another racy relationship that has to be spelled out as being such in order to give it the spark of forbidden love. If you have to spell it out to such a degree for the reader, I think it's fair to say that something has gone wrong in the telling. The whole point of these things is that they stand on their own two (or four, or six, or in some cases eight) feet! For heavens sake, if you're going to treat your reader like an imbecile then at least give them something to think about, however small it may be.
But the author doesn't. They just spell everything out in the most basic terms, stopping just short of supplying a set of crayons and colouring instructions.
The writing is fine. It's by no means the worst thing I've ever read in that department. There were a few spelling mistakes which makes me suspect this is independently published. The entire thing is easy to read which is good, because the whole ordeal can be dealt with in an afternoon.
I would definitely check this author out again if someone else supplied the plot details.
Take that for what it's worth.
Rating: 1 canteloupe / 13 pineapples
The star of this particular edition, for me, is a book entitled Earth Has Been Found. It is by an author called D.F. Jones, and is one I recommend picking up for any fans of sci-fi, mystery or fantasy books. Tonally speaking it's quite dark, so if you skew towards more light-hearted fare I might give this one a pass. If you enjoy watching people scrabble around fighting around in the proverbial dark, this will be of interest.
Before I continue I must address the biggest, most annoying flaw at once.
This is an overtly Christian book.
Moreover, this is an overtly American Christian book.
Without spoiling too much (hopefully) the central conceit allows for the possibility of extra dimensions and other associated fluff.
The author makes the monumental leap that this necessitates the existence of god. That aliens may exist, in an extra dimension, and this is basically used as de facto proof of god. If you don't see how ridiculous that statement is then I'm afraid you were probably inculcated at too young an age and are too far gone to see the priestly buggering from the trees.
To add the cherry to this cake, they use this ridiculous assertion to ridicule and undermine an entire nation. This is an american author writing an american book for an american audience so, you guessed it, it's the Russians. The eternal bogeyman for the american psyche are at the pointy end of an existential dilemma brought about by the a few yankees that slept through a school philosophy class once.
Let's stop, take a breath, and backpedal momentarily. The book is set in the 1980's, so the red menace makes sense as the go-to big bad. Fine. Let's go with this conceit. The initial disappearance of a plane and subsequent setup of a government agency is great. There are a thousand books out there whose main premise is this kind of clandestine operation, that market themselves as being for war nuts, and that barely live up to the interest this book creates.
I found myself drawn in during the first few pages and, not knowing anything of the plot, was utterly drawn in. Had I known where this story was going, I would still have loved it because the pacing is just perfect. The writing is strong, but there are a number of spelling mistakes, particularly towards the end. I assume the author and/or editor ran past some deadlines at the beginning and was rushing by the latter stages, as up to about three quarters of the way through it's quite well edited. It all falls apart towards the end though, which is a shame because it's the only criticism I have of the presentation.
Having just lambasted the author for lazy ra-ra american-centric nonsense, let me say it's an excellent book. The lives of the people are interesting, the story travels everywhere you want it to, and inept doctors aside, everything is as I imagine it would be. Nothing pulls you out of the story (except the world shattering eye rolling I did when they talked about god, and then the universe shattering eye rolls when the russians were introduced) which is a great endorsement given the science fictional nature of things.
In all I'd say this book is an absolute delight. There are areas that could be improved, but none of those are in the writing department, and I suspect the author would have to be re-brainwashed in order to get the stereotypical nonsense out of his mind long enough to write something for non-americans.
That I spent most of this time talking about the two terrible aspects of the plot, and yet still whole heartedly recommend this book is probably proof enough in my own mind that it's a great read. I'd recommend this to almost anyone.
Rating: Onerussian beating a bear over the head with a salmon / one lazy U.S. writing stereotype
That's about it for now. No one reading this will buy any of the books I've written about, but I think they were worth writing about nonetheless (that last one is really good!).
