{"id":266,"date":"2013-03-15T09:25:32","date_gmt":"2013-03-15T13:25:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.bulletpattern.com\/?p=266"},"modified":"2013-03-15T09:25:33","modified_gmt":"2013-03-15T13:25:33","slug":"2012-the-year-of-classic-sci-fi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.bulletpattern.com\/?p=266","title":{"rendered":"2012 – The Year of Classic Sci-fi"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have a long commute to work. During my drive time I listen to audiobooks. I listen to many different things – comedy, fantasy (a lot of fantasy), science fiction, non-fiction, lectures – a varied mixture of genres. This past year I tried something different, I decided to catch up on all the classic sci-fi books I had heard of but never read. Here is the list and what I gained from each title and how it inspired me.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Ender’s Game – This was a big one on my list and it did not disappoint. It’s difficult to glean much game design inspiration from a book that’t about a kid caught in a game that is being manipulated to be as difficult as possible to impossible. We game designers are supposed to be making winnable games for players! However, there is a lesson here, if someone always believes that someone will help them, they will be less likely to stand on their own. Perhaps game can stand to be a little more stingy with help bubbles and such.<\/li>\n
  2. Speaker for the Dead<\/li>\n
  3. Stranger in a Strange Land – seems like an attempt to start a cult.<\/li>\n
  4. Neuromancer – Interesting read of the ‘birth’ of cyberpunk.<\/li>\n
  5. The Forever War<\/li>\n
  6. Foundation<\/li>\n
  7. Foundation and Empire<\/li>\n
  8. A Canticle for Lebowitz<\/li>\n
  9. Cat’s Cradle<\/li>\n
  10. Slaughterhouse Five – Hands down, one of the best books I have ever read.<\/li>\n
  11. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep – Unbelievably disappointing. What a jumbled mess of a book with MASSIVE plot holes. Movie much better than the book. Who knew?<\/li>\n
  12. Fahrenheit 451<\/li>\n
  13. The Mote in God’s Eye<\/li>\n
  14. The Difference Engine<\/li>\n
  15. Brave New World<\/li>\n
  16. I, Robot<\/li>\n
  17. Starship Troopers – It’s amazing to me how many of these classic, famous sci-fi books are barely sci-fi. You could easily replace ‘bugs’ with any enemy on Earth and have a mundane boot camp & war story. That being said, this book was an well-told tale of a man’s time in boot camp and first contact with the enemy.<\/li>\n
  18. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress – Heinlein has some weird about about society. A place where somehow the constant threat of death for the smallest infraction from a mob creates some sort of psudo-utopia? Lots of fun ballistics though!<\/li>\n
  19. The Cat Who Walks Through Walls<\/li>\n
  20. Gateway – Wow, just wow. This book’s plot is a perfect template for an MMO. An high risk\/reward MMO full of permadeath \ud83d\ude42<\/li>\n
  21. Hyperion<\/li>\n
  22. Fall of Hyperion<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    I can’t go into too much detail about all these books. I have been trying to wrap up this blog entry for 2 months! There were many inspirations and insights in this books. While I did get a bit sick of “space travel is boring” theme, which many of the books touched on, this was a great year of reading.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I have a long commute to work. During my drive time I listen to audiobooks. I listen to many different things – comedy, fantasy (a lot of fantasy), science fiction, non-fiction, lectures – a varied mixture of genres. This past year I tried something different, I decided to catch up on all the classic sci-fi […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.bulletpattern.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.bulletpattern.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.bulletpattern.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.bulletpattern.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.bulletpattern.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=266"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/blog.bulletpattern.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":509,"href":"http:\/\/blog.bulletpattern.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266\/revisions\/509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.bulletpattern.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.bulletpattern.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.bulletpattern.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}