![]() ![]() You can build defenses like sandbags and turrets to help you ward off raiders and hostile animals. There’s hunting, cooking, and growing crops for food and medicine. They can get scars and health conditions like asthma and infections and diseases. When your colonists are injured, you can see exactly where – they might get a bruise to their torso or lose a pinky or toe. There are several modes and difficulty variations to toy with. If you’re unfamiliar with this title, it’s a scifi colony sim/survival game. Now I’m on to Rimworld, and oh boy this is a time sink. In gaming news, I recently powered through XCom 2, which was a flawed but ultimately fun preoccupation. So far most of the human protagonists blend together, but there’s a lot of cool technology, intriguing plots (especially if you’re into “hard”ish SF) and at least one rad alien character. ![]() Rather than space elves and dwarves (which I suppose you could argue some of the variant non-terran humans resemble), you’ve got space-faring cat folk, intelligent and honest yet cowardly monstrosities like the gentleman pictured in the above cover art, and physically weak, bizarre-looking yet honorable squid people. ![]() Incidentally I’m also really liking that about Niven’s Known Space. In my Doc Smith post at Castalia House, I noted my enjoyment of Smith’s aliens. Stylistically his sense of humor and sarcasm come through without crossing over into silliness (a ‘la Douglas Adams). So far I’m really digging the setting and Niven’s writing. Once I’m finished I intend to proceed as chronologically as I can, though I’m eager to get to the famed Ringworld. Neutron Star is a collection of short stories taking place in the Known Space universe. It isn’t exactly publication order, but close enough. I don’t think you can ever really go wrong following stories in publication order, but for some reason I settled on this order, starting with Neutron Star. One of the challenges with going back to read these older series is sorting through the various collections that pop up, along with conflicting or sparse information on proper reading orders. Since then I’ve read one of Pournelle’s solo works and it was pretty solid. I read the Mote in God’s Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle some years back and remember being impressed. Well, I’m nearly done with my first “Known Space” book. But what else have I been up to? Certainly not writing blog posts, right? What have I been up to of late? My discovery of the Last Kingdom and first reading of EE “Doc” Smith are chronicled over at the Castalia House blog. ![]()
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