I donned my dream suit and lay in my bed and was deep within my dream. In the dream I was in a world of shafts and corridors, doors and windows. As I climbed and walked and slid between them I passed others. They smiled and nodded as I passed but I did not stop them on their journies nor did they stop me in mine. Soon I came to the door I was seeking. The guard outside hesitated then smiled and stepped aside, proceeding on his way. I entered to find my bed wtih myself lying in it. But the bed was wide so I lay beside myself. I slept into another world, this one of warm inviting waters and islands covered with cool, dim forests. There were others here too, but I did not ignore them nor did they ignore me. We talked and laughed and traveled together, lying on the warm sand or swimming in the cool oceans. But inevitably after the long days I became tired again. One of my companions and I slipped into the forest where we found the small, guarded hut. Its guardian smiled in recognition of me and stepped aside, allowing us to enter the room with the wide bed. There were suits there for both of us and we donned them then lay together in the bed. We slept into a world of magnificent mountains and abysmal valleys. For days we explored this world together, climbing to the peaks of the
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Dreams of the Dreamer’s Dreams
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Steam Sale – Winter 2011
As regular as the changing of the seasons the Steam winter sale has started. As usual, there are a lot of games from independent producers marked down to ridiculously low prices as well as a handful of AAA titles to keep things interesting. The gimmick this time seems to be coupons. There are Steam Achievements associated with many of the games and completing them gives you either a coupon or a lump of “coal”. You can trade in coal for… more coupons. The coupons really aren’t that big of a draw. I have a couple so far but the “deals” on the coupons are worse than the sale prices on the same games right now, so they are kind of useless. Still, some of the deals are really good. I’ve cut way back on my video game spending (I only bought two full-price games this year (Dragon Age and Skyrim) so being able to pick up enough games to keep me occupied for the next few months is worth it. I’ll probably look at some of these in more detail later, but here’s the haul so far. Portal 2 – Yes, I’m probably the only one who hasn’t played it yet, but at $7.50 it finally fell into impulse buy range. Orcs Must Die! – Been lots of good buzz about this one. It seems to be a combination of tower defense and FPS. Psychonauts and Costume Quest – A pair of games from Double Fine. I started playing Psychonauts
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Review – The Breach
The Breach by Patrick Lee Ex-corrupt cop/ex-con Travis Chase, recently released from prison, is hiking through the Alaska wilderness and trying to figure out how to get his life back together when he stumbles across the crash of an unmarked 747. Inside the crash he discovers that everyone on board has been executed, including the First Lady of the United States. A note in her hand sends him in search of the two survivors of the crash, who are being brutally tortured to force them to reveal the location of an object that could lead to the destruction of everyone and everything on Earth. And thus begins Breach, the first novel in a new thriller series by Patrick Lee. While many thiller novels by such writers as James Rollins, Jeremy Robinson or Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child skirt the edges of science fiction in their novels, Patrick Lee embraces it wholeheartedly. While it is marketed as and starts out as standard thriller fare, make no mistake; this is a science-fiction thriller. Travis soon rescues Paige Campbell, the last survivor of the crash, and learns what is happening. (Warning: Minor spoiler for the first of the novel.) Paige works for an international government organization known as Tangent. Thirty years ago, an experiment beneath Wyoming opened the “Breach” of the title; an opening to… somewhere. Various artifacts (which they call “entities”) have been coming through the Breach at regular intervals since then. Some of these entities are benign, some are very dangerous
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