I am a huge fan of anything that has to do with space. Especially when space is portrayed in  movies, books, and video games. When I stumbled across Kinetic Void in the Steam Community, I was very excited. Kinetic Void is a single player action simulator, made from the Indie developers Lumberingtroll Workshop on Steam. It is a greenlight item, meaning that it is an Indie game being supported and voted on through Steam and its members, which Steam is a video game digital store and hub for gaming. They are providing great opportunities for Indie developers like Lumberingtroll to get their games out there, like Kinetic Void.

In the game, you are in charge of your own ship, building your own ship, exploring galaxies, and running into different types of factions that may or may not like one another. Decisions are taken into consideration when coordinating with different factions, so be careful what you say, do or who you interact with. So far, Kinetic Void looks promising and intriguing with its innovative in-game physics and exploration capabilities. By visiting the Steam store, like I did, you can find more information on the game, its controls, screenshots and other updates from he developer. This particular game looks very interesting to me, but if it does not, take some time and browse other greenlight items and support your favorite game.

Into Darkness

I recently found an article talking about something J.J. Abrams did for a Star Trek fan for Christmas. A very heartfelt story. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/02/jj-abrams-star-trek-fan-dying-wish-upcoming-sequel_n_2397746.html

Mayan Calendar (Photo credit: Michael Kwan (Freelancer))

I’m just going to come out with a bold prediction: the world isn’t going to end tomorrow. I’ll just leave it to the friendly people at NASA to do the grunt work of debunking if you don’t believe me. While I think this whole Mayan calender hysteria has gotten a little overboard I do find apocalyptic things generally fascinating. I often nerd out on documentaries about fallen civilizations. I sometimes go on mini marathons of the History Channel show Life After People and the book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed was my favorite non-fiction book that I have read this year. On the fiction side I don’t really care how the world ends I just like reading about what happens in the aftermath.

It may have been the confluence of the attention December 21st has gotten and my recent marathon of The Walking Dead (I haven’t caught up yet so *shhh!*) but in the last couple of days I’ve been examining my, and the worlds, minor obsession with the end of the world. My logical, analytical bran can laugh off the thought that the world is going end on Friday but I’m not going to lie; there is a part deep down inside that makes my butt hole pucker just a little bit at the thought. There is some deep seeded fear that at any point a catastrophic event could happen and change the world as I know it. I initially thought it was because I grew up at the tail end of the cold war and my young impressionable mind was inundated with the possibility of a nuclear holocaust.

I think it goes deeper than that, that the concept of a catastrophic world ending event is a pivotal function of the collective unconscious. That it is something that has pushed humanity to its height and continues to drive our society forward. Fear is a fantastic motivator and nothing is more motivational than the prevention of the end of all things. It has pushed humanity to collect together in larger and larger groups. Once humanity has the skills and resources necessary to sustain a civilized society it was stronger than the same amount of people living in small scattered groups. While he same things that could wipe out one of those small groups could still effect an early iteration of a city it wouldn’t be as dramatic. A collection of those cities are stronger still leading to the globalized society we have today.

We have only become a globalized society a short time in comparison to the overall length of humanity. I highly doubt the people who wrote of the religious end of time stories like Ragnarok or the Apocalypse knew how large the world really was yet deep down humanity still carries those ancient fears. In reality an apocalyptic event needs to be much more grandiose than when the term was first coined. For example the tsunami of 2004 was a horrific and tragic event it was not seen as an apocalyptic event in our modern globalized eyes. But roll back the clock even a couple hundred years where people and information didn’t travel the same as it does today and that same event could have severely crippled and quite possibly eradicated multiple societies.

As a bonus if the title of the article didn’t get that song stuck in your head here’s the video:

Click here to view the embedded video.

2 weeks ago Capcom spoiled a video showing Mega Man battling Ryu in a 8-bit Mega Man fashion.

Click here to view the embedded video.

It is actually a fan made Mega Man game where Street Fighter characters are the bosses. Also it is Totally free and only on PC. Here is a link to the Website with info and Download

Anyway, Here is the teaser for the new Star Trek film Star Trek: Into Darkness. This looks as intense as J.J.  Abrams first Star Trek film. As dark as Wrath of Khan?? Well now I’m in the mood to watch the first one. This one is out May 17th 2013.

ENJOY!!!!!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Trailer:

Hit Machinima Prime’s Channel for this show and a lot more: http://www.youtube.com/user/MachinimaPrime

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Cover via Amazon

I have been waiting for this for a long time. I know the making of this film has hit some rough patches that prevented it from being out this year but, it looks quite intense. The novel World War Z by Max Brooks is one of the most definitive source materials for zombie fiction of any type. The swarming zombies that seem to move at an unreal level of speed may be something to worry about but, that type of creature worked well in 28 Days Later. Just watch the trailer to see for yourself.

It sometimes takes me a while to finish a book. I have many responsibilities and hobbies that consume my time. I also like to deviate from my normal intake of fantasy and science fiction novels with historical fiction/non-fiction.

My latest read was Isaac’s Storm by Eric Larson.

It was entirely by coincidence that I found myself reading a book about the deadliest hurricane to hit the United States as Hurricane Sandy was gearing up to ravage the East coast. I live in the state of NY. But, in this case, thankfully not an area effected much by the storm. Regardless, frequent and powerful warnings filled our news feeds. Many wondered if the warnings were just hype churned up by the media. The morning after the storm made landfall and what weather that was predicted to hit our area fizzled out, I repeatedly heard dismissive comments about the warnings being overblown. Many just heard category 1 and felt that it couldn’t be that bad.

As the storm unfolded, I was alternating between reading news reports and finishing Issac’s Storm by Eric Larson. Did the novel impact my thinking about the storm or vice versa? Actually..both.

I must say that I am not new to Eric Larson’s style of writing. I loved Devil in the White City and it led me to read more of his work. Larson weaves historical fact into his novels in such an anecdotal fashion that you will learn quite a lot without the dryness of some historical based novels. In the case of Isaac’s Storm, you learn of the then growing science of Meteorology through the story of Issac Monroe Cline. Cline was the Galveston meteorologist from the U.S. Weather Bureau as signs of impending doom came to the city of Galveston Texas on September 8th 1900. As Larson describes it, the hubris of the age was a bigger obstacle to saving lives than not having the benefit of modern knowledge and technology. Cline himself believed that a Hurricane was unlikely to reach Texas and was equally unlikely to damage the city of Galveston. Government bureaucracy also played a hand as warnings from Cuban weather observers fell on ears deaf with a sense of superiority. All of this is told through a suspense filled tale as you await the inevitable wrath of the hurricane on a city that at the time rivaled both Houston and New Orleans.

On the flip side of this coin: Reading this novel as Hurricane Sandy was hitting the US. It made things very clear that it is so much better to be over warned and to weather the storm. To find yourself inconvenienced but underwhelmed compared to what could possibly have happened. The massive loss of life from the epic storm that hit the city of Galveston was avoidable. The loss and guilt of not effectively seeing the warning signs and warning the public must have haunted Issac Cline until his death in 1955. I will never fault the media or government for warning too much or evacuating an area just in case. So much worse has and could happen.

Check out Eric Larson’s site here: http://eriklarsonbooks.com/about-the-author/the-authors-lair/