What's the difference between a core gamer and a hardcore gamer? A core gamer plays to live. A hardcore gamer lives to play. Often these days gamers don't seem to understand who the core gamers are. I've noticed that in the last half a year people have slowly stopped using the term hardcore, and started using the term core to mean the same thing. It's not. People also use the term casual gamer these days to mean non-gamer, which seems like a silly contradiction to me. Nintendo recently came under fire for saying that Animal Crossing: City Folk was a core game for core gamers. The ...

I've just finished reading all three books in Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. It's a fantasy series for young adults that is comprised of the books the Golden Compass, the Subtle Knife, and the Amber Spyglass. The name of the trilogy comes from a poem quoted in the start of the first book. This stuff, His Dark Materials, are the reserve of matter that God uses to create worlds. It's especially fitting considering this fantasy series takes place in a world much like ours, but different in many ways, as well as many other worlds including our own. His Dark Materials A ...

Having just finished reading Eragon, I will now complete The Fantasy Novelist's Exam for the Eragon. This test really amused me because lately I have been annoyed at how similar many of the fantasy books I've been reading are. Ever since J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis created the worlds of Middle Earth and Narnia, it seems like every windbag off the street thinks he can write great, original fantasy, too. The problem is that most of this "great, original fantasy" is actually poor, derivative fantasy. Frankly, we're sick of it, so we've compiled a list of rip-off tip-offs in the form of an ...

I stumbled upon an interesting argument in the current video game console debate. In world wide sales, Nintendo's new product, the Wii (pronounced "we") is simply clobbering both the Microsoft XBox360 and the Sony PlayStation 3. Some anti-Nintendo gamers like to say that the Wii is just a fad, or that the Wii will lose it's appeal as HD TVs increase their market share. The thinking goes that since the Wii cannot do HD graphics (the number of pixels on the screen) that people won't like it when they get better TVs. The numbers are like this: 30 million American homes have HD TVs, 16 ...

I was discussion fantasy with a co-worker the other day when I mentioned that Harry Potter fell in the fantasy genre. He admitted that he disagreed, so I thought I'd make a fun, easy-to-use, "you know when" kind of list. How do you know that the story in question (book, movie, et cetera) is fantasy? Magic Man Done It - Does the story in question contain sorceress, wizards, witches, and warlocks? Or, more generally, do certain people have meta-physical magical powers? Do they travel along family lines? This is typically a diagnostic criteria of fantasy in general. So called ...

I'm tired of the fantasy I've been reading. It's always full of crumbling empires, long forgotten powerful magic, and all that jazz. It typically involves some boy from some town out in the middle of no where who gets swept up in to a grand struggle to remove evil from the universe. Good and bad are clearly defined. And heredity and birth right rule the day. I want to see glorious empires. I want to see civilization at its peak. I remain wanting. I have to try out new authors, I guess. I needed to try out new Science Fiction authors as well. So I started to read Alastair ...

I've read the book "Stephen Harper and the Future of Canada", by William Johnson, and it left me thoroughly confused. The book itself is well written, and a very in depth look at Canada's 22nd Prime Minister up to shortly after his election victory in 2006. (I read the updated edition.) Even before we get introduced to Stephen Harper, it's pretty clear where William Johnson sits. Just reading about one of Stephen Harper's relatives you can here the awe and respect coming from the page. This utter adoration of Stephen Harper saturates the pages, and would leak if you ever squeezed the ...

Recently I read Richard Dawkin's the Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Life. It's a biology book (currently on sale at Chapter for $10 CAD) which starts with modern humans, and goes back through the ages describing what our common ancestor with other animals would have looked like. One of our first stops is the common ancestor we have with other modern apes. From their, we visit the common ancestor of us and monkey, all the way back to fungi and single celled organisms. For every common ancestor we meet, they have a tale to tell us. Each of these tales explains something ...

Some people are really stupid. They see the world their way, and don't like to see it any other way. They use very specific ways of measuring something, and use it even when it's no longer useful. Think of a Sci-Fi critic who reviews a classic work of literature. Perhaps Shakespeare. If the review of Shakespeare said that Romeo & Juliet failed as a modern Sci-Fi story because there was--literally--no technology involved, and thus the social, political, and personal ramification of technology was not dealt with in the story, you would think the reviewer was nuts. Of course it doesn't ...

First off, let me say that even the best Science Fiction movies are not very good. Books are much, much better. But that aside I decided this weekend to take a good look at movies that other people recommend just to see if I missed any. Boy, is this a contentious issue! Some people say that 2001 is one of the best, others say it's one of the worst. And how can any top list of science fiction movies not have the movie Contact? (And I know some of you will disagree with me there.) Well, here's a list of top science fiction movie lists. ...