Monte Cook's Short Story Collection Released

Monte Cook's short story collection Small Matters has been released. 

Monte Cook has written a couple of novels and several short stories but is primarily known for his game designs.  He worked on D&D 3.0, Ptolus, and Arcana Unearthed just to name a few.

The author describes the collection on his website: "Small Matters is a new collection of some of my short fiction. It includes seven stories, all of which are science fiction and fantasy tales. As the title might suggest, these are not stories about saving the world or mighty quests to defeat the ubiquitous dark lord. These are smaller stories. Nevertheless, they have big implications for the lives of the characters involved."

The collection is available from Stone Box Press, Amazon.com, and DriveThruFiction over at DriveThruRpg. 

I bought my copy from DriveThru, and for $3.99, I received a pdf, mobi, and epub version.

Quick Review: Harry Harrison's Wheelworld

Too Dangerous to Live. Too Valuable to Kill.From the back cover: Jan Kulozik is in exile: sentenced to service the machines of Halvmork, the farmworld that grows crops to the the holds of Earth's grain-ships.  This Wheelworld, baked by eternal summer, is a world of peasants enslaved by a handful of powerful families.  The disaster.  One year, the ships do not come; starvation threatens Halvmork.  Jan rallies the people for their own survival, and guides them on a perilous trek across half a planet.  Battling heat and savage creatures, earthquakes and volcanoes, fighting the violence and treachery of the Families, Jan leads the people of Wheelworld to their new destiny.

The first time I read Harry Harrison's Wheelworld, I was in highschool, about twenty-five years ago, and it was the fond memories of this one that spurred me on to finally read the entire To the Stars trilogy.  I remember the image of the great trains making a desperate run from the north pole to the south before the four-year summer cycle began.  Having reread it now, I see there's so much more there to appreciate. 

The great run constitutes the largest part of the action, but the tension of the book is built around the protagonist's clash with the stagnet, ultra-conservative rulers of the human settlement.  When the people's normal cycle of harvesting corn, migrating to the other pole, and delivering the food to ships is disrupted, the ruling class clings to its old ways.  Jan, our hero, realizes this is basically suicide.  They must change or die - new situations call for new actions.  So the power struggle begins.  It is interrupted by the many obstacles and hazards they must face on their trek, but it always re-emerges.  It's also interesting in this volume to see Jan, who was at the top looking down in Homeworld, on the bottom side of things looking up.  If book 1 taught him about the injustice of his world, book 2 is all about preparing him for the battle to come.  More than anything, though, this book reveals the dangers of ignorance.  The ruling families rule by keeping knowledge away from the population, and as the book ends, Jan's battle for freedom begins with education.

I very much look forward to the final volume, Starworld.  As for Wheelworld, I have to give it an extra star, not only for nolstalgia's sake but for also having a more complex and exciting plot than its predecssor.  Wheelworld is available as an ebook at Amazon.

Enjoy!

Quick Review: Jack Vance's The Dying Earth

An exotic world hovering on the edge of time!From the back cover: “THE TIME is fabulously far from now; over the dying earth hovers a worn and burned-out sun; in the red day and fearful night strange creatures wander horribly through the frighted forests; magic governs man.  Revelry and sloth absorb the time as Earth spins its last few courses and prepares to plunge to eternal night.”

I can't believe it took me all these years to read this book! I've known about The Dying Earth for decades, threatened to read it just as long, and yet have always put it off. 

The book is actually a collection of Vance's earliest Dying Earth stories.  Each tale focuses on a different character for the most part, but they are not the main focus of the book anyway.  Not to say that the characterization is not there.  It definitely is.  Liane the Wayfarer is fleshed out in just so many pages more so than many characters in a series of novels.  Vance is perceptive when it comes to humanity, even when that humanity is simply waiting around to die.  And that, to me, is the BIG thing about this book. 

The setting is so rich and beautiful and developed that it is much like a character unto itself.  It shapes so much of even what the characters do and how they act.  In case, you aren't familiar with it, the stories are set so far in the future that the sun is swollen and red, and magic and technology are indistinguishable. 

I've noticed in some reviews that readers were put off by Vance's language.  Some of the words are archaic or from British usage, but that didn't bother me one bit.  If anything, it added to the alien feel of the far future setting.  To me, the book read like prose poetry, and I would even catch myself reading it aloud at times.

All of these books are being released as ebooks in authorized versions.  I will definitely be reading the other books in this series.  I only wish I hadn't waited so long.

Enjoy!

Quick Review: Harry Harrison's Homeworld

 Trapped Between Two WorldsFrom the back cover:

"Jan Kulozik is one of Earth's privileged elite.  A brilliant engineer, he enjoys all the blessings of a 23rd-century civilization which survived global collapse and conquered the stars.  Then he meets Sara, the beautiful, desirable agent of a rebel underground dedicated to smashing the iron rule of Earth's masters.  She shows him a sordid world he never dreamed existed!  And suddenly Jan has to choose - between slaves and masters.  His choice plunges him into a web of intrigue, assassanition and betrayal that will lead him to death . . . or to the stars."

I liked this book a lot.  It's the first book of the late, great Harry Harrion's To the Stars trilogy.  I read the second book back when I was in high school and only recently decided to read all three parts.

As far as dystopian fiction goes, I don't think there's anything new here. What makes the book, however, is Harrion's writing and characterization. The story moves briskly and smoothly throughout, and I admit, I did not expect the one big thing to happen at the end that happened. The main character is very capable, but not a superman. He is outsmarted by the baddies even when everything seems perfectly planned.

Even more impressive, Harrison is capable of telling his tale in a couple of hundred pages. The entire trilogy combined are not as long as a single volume in the ten book traps writers push off on readers today.

Fortunately, all three books (Homeworld, Wheelworld, and Starworld) have recently been released in ebook format, from Amazon at least.  If you prefer a hard copy, they're not too difficult to find at affordable prices from used online booksellers.

Definitely worth checking out. 

Enjoy!

Team Fortress 2: Mann vs. Machine Gameplay Video

I've been playing around with the newest Playclaw release for video capture.  Here is a short video of one round of the new TF2 mode Mann vs. Machine, which is basically a co-op horde mode.  I'll try doing one with voiceover soon.