Araminta Station, by Jack Vance

Araminta Station is pretty solid SF that I think must have had a bit of a retro vibe even when it was fresh from the printers in 1987. It might easily have hopped out of the pages of Astounding in the 1940s. Nevertheless, it's solidly put together and has some interesting themes and details here and there. However, the worst thing about the book is clearly the Boris Vallejo cover:



PS Jack Vance is still alive and kicking, at 96.

In old game news...

Still enjoying replaying OG Bioshock. The number of pixels and the controller button set-up are about the only two things that are worse in Bioshock than BS Infinite.

A while back, my Nyko guitar controller broke. I decided to go for an authentic Rock Band guitar as a replacement, and I have to say I am not a fan. I'm slowly getting used to it, but I doubt I'll ever match what I could do on the old one. The one advantage is that it has the extra set of frets for the solos, but they're so small I find them hard to use, and switching between the two sets accurately ain't easy. The star power sensor is a bit dodgy, which is very annoying. I don't mind the non-clicky strum bar that much, but the frets themselves are really loud, and you can't slide from one to the next as easily. All right, that's the end of my 1st world problems.

Oh, okay, in new game news, I got word this morning that my live game did not win the Larpwriter Challenge. I still haven't seen any official announcement about who did win.