Book Review – Galactic Pot-Healer by Philip K. Dick

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From the back cover:

Sometimes even gods need help. In Galactic Pot-Healer that god is an alien creature known as the Glimmung, which looks alternately like a flaming wheel, a teenage girl, and a swirling mass of ocean life. In order to raise a sunken city, he summons beings from across the galaxy to Plowman’s Planet. Joe Fernwright is one of those summoned, needed for his skills at pot-healing — repairing broken ceramics. But from the moment Joe arrives on Plowman’s Planet, things start to go awry. Is the Glimmung good or evil? Are Joe and his friends helping to save Plowman’s Planet or destroy it?

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Galactic Pot-Healer is a strange novel. From what I understand of Philip K. Dick that is not an unusual way to feel about his writing, but the novel struck me in this way more than I had anticipated — primarily because the summary above makes the story sound a lot more straightforward than it really is. The narrative, while following along the general path laid out above, plays out in a much different way than the description suggests.Read More »

TV Series Review – Jessica Jones Season One

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Jessica Jones is a Netflix original series created by Melissa Rosenberg, and is the latest series set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). The show is based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name, portrayed by Kristen Ritter. The series also notably stars David Tennant as the lead antagonist Kilgrave, as well as Mike Colter as Luke Cage. The story follows Jessica Jones, a woman with superhuman strength, who works as a private investigator after a brief superhero career.Read More »

My Nagging Problem with ZombiU

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Developed by Ubisoft Montpellier, ZombiU was released for the Nintendo Wii U at launch back in November 2012, and again this year as Zombi for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC. I recently completed the game on the Wii U.

You play as a random survivor in London, which has been ravaged by a zombie plague. Aided and guided by “The Prepper,” a former military man, your survivor must traverse the ruins of London to gather weapons and supplies, fortify the safe house, and eventually work toward trying to find a cure.

ZombiU is a fantastic survival horror game. I want to make that opinion clear now. I do have one big problem with it, however, which this post shall explain.Read More »

Book Review – Welcome to Night Vale: A Novel by Joseph Fink & Jeffrey Cranor

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From the inside cover:

Welcome to Night Vale … a friendly desert community somewhere in the America Southwest, where the sun is hot, the moon is beautiful, and mysterious lights pass overhead while its citizens pretend to sleep. It’s a town like any town, with a city hall, a bowling alley, a diner, a supermarket, and a community radio station reporting all the news that’s allowed to be heard. In this ordinary little town where ghosts, angels, aliens, and government conspiracies are commonplace parts of everyday life, the lives of two women, with two mysteries, are about to converge.

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Welcome to Night Vale is a novel by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor, set in the world of the podcast series of the same name and written by the same authors. As a fan of the podcast this novel has been on my radar for quite some time. I have a particular love for all things weird, eldritch, and vague yet menacing, so the series has been right up my alley since I heard the first episode. While the podcast has been going on for several years, with a number of live shows having been produced as well, this is the first time the series has ventured into the medium of prose.Read More »

Wrapping up Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season One

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This post contains some spoilers.

Months ago I posted an entry discussing my feelings after watching the first five episodes of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. It has been a while since then, but I have just recently finished watching the first season through, and I’m happy that things went as expected. In my previous post I noted that my lukewarm feelings about the show were a common reaction, but that the series improves as it progresses. For the most part I agree.Read More »

Movie Review – Grave Encounters

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Grave Encounters is a 2011 Canadian found-footage horror film, written and directed by The Vicious Brothers. The film is a collection of footage from the final episode of a fictional ghost hunting TV show called Grave Encounters, which was cancelled after airing its fifth episode. This sixth episode was never broadcast. The host and crew are investigating the abandoned Collingwood Psychiatric Hospital, a supposed hotbed for paranormal activity thanks to its tortured history. After touring the grounds during the day they have the groundskeeper lock them in, from sundown until 6:00 AM, as they begin their mission to capture footage ghostly activity.Read More »

Destiny & The Importance of World-Building

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While I’m about a year late to the party I have recently started playing Destiny, an action role-playing first person shooter for last and current generation Microsoft and Sony consoles. The game is set in the far future after a “Golden Age” of colonization in the solar system by humanity, thanks to the technology granted to us by The Traveler, a gigantic sphere of extraterrestrial origin.

While there is a lot more explained about the circumstances of the world the game inhabits that I enjoy, and I am enjoying Destiny mechanically as well, I am continually dumbfounded by the lack of tangible world-building that was put into the game’s storyline and world. This was a criticism I’d heard before from friends and family as well as people in gaming media, but it’s been a whole other matter to experience it firsthand. The reason for this is the apparent fact that lore does actually exist, but you have to go out of your way to learn about it.Read More »

Reading The Shining

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The Shining has always been a fixation in my life when it comes to horror — specifically the 1980 Stanley Kubrick adaptation of the famous Stephen King novel. There’s always been a certain je ne sais quoi about it that has cemented it in my mind when I start to think about horror films. Whether it’s the beloved Simpsons short from “Treehouse of Horror V” that first exposed me to the idea or the impact of watching the film itself for the first time, I can’t begin to think about watching Halloween movies without asking someone new “Have you seen The Shining?” There’s something about the whole scenario; the grisly spectres, the oppressive, isolated landscape, and descent into madness that makes the whole thing a tantalizing horror story.Read More »

Which is Scarier?

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While there are numerous ways to present the horror genre, I’ve found myself considering two distinct types of horror stories: those where the threat is paranormal, and those where the threat is mundane. When I say mundane, I mean something that we all acknowledge is within the realm of possibility. Stories that tell of gruesome killers and levels of cruelty only a twisted human imagination could conjure up and for all intents and purposes could actually happen.Read More »