I was a little nervous as I waited for Half-Life 2 (Vivendi, 2004) to start. The original Half-Life (Sierra, 1998) is one of the reasons this column exists — the game brought atmosphere and intelligence to the first-person shooter without skimping on the visceral kickassocity, and brought me […]
Slate pans Michael Crichton’s new book, State of Fear: “Crichton is like a college professor who insists on lecturing 10 minutes after the class period ends, when his students are edging toward the door.”
Jamie Friston compares Lucky Wander Boy to Philip K. Dick’s VALIS and Haruki Murakami’s The Wild Sheep Chase and calls it a “delightful surreal trip through geek culture.”
Now that the Matrix franchise has collapsed under its own hype and mystical mumbo-jumbo, it’s refreshing to see a well-executed cyberpunk tale in what is perhaps its ideal medium: the videogame. Because it’s not just about the style — the leather overcoats and the sunglasses — that shit […]
To the converted, the guest list at this weekend’s Canadian National Comic Book Expo is stupendous. The star attraction: the famously ovular Patrick Stewart — though the Star Trek skipper only slightly outshines the comics brethren sidling in his corona, like Asiophile David Mack and Marvel Ed-in-Chief Joe […]
Greg Costikyan tells science fiction writers: “I want to be challenged with interesting ideas, distinctive writing styles, unconventional ways of looking at things, and transportation to a world very different from our own. I don’t want to sink into the familiar, I want to be surprised and shaken […]
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The Cultural Gutter 