STG's

The A.I. War Book One: The Big Boost - by Daniel Keys Moran - is the sequel to The Last Dancer and part of Tales of Continuing Time. This follows part of Trent's exploit, very long after he left Earth. Unlike The Last Dancer, this one is all about Trent - which I really prefer. Plenty of battles with the crazy plans that only Trent could get away with. I'd like the Trent AI bit to be a little more explored, though. Very enjoyable, and I can't wait for the next volume (although given how long this one took, it probably won't be available anytime soon).

Freehold - by Willam Dietz, is an SF military book. The overall style of the book is quite common on older SF, but that doesn't make it less enjoyable. It has plenty of battles, both on ground and on space, with the usual clever tactics thrown in. There isn't a whole lot of character development, but that is filled up with action. Overall it feels a little short, but it is still plenty of fun.

Level Zero - by Jaron Lee Knuth - is the first book in the NextWorld series. It is SF mostly about VR (virtual reality) and AI (artificial intelligence). NextWorld is a VR world which is accessed using nanobots inside the user bodies. The VR world has everything - public education, clubs, shoppings, churches and games. This is a particularly nice (although being mostly hand-waving as far as tech goes) way to make up VR tech. It is certainly easier to imagine it being life-like versus the goggles and gloves on oh so many other VR books. As is so very very common in other VR stories, in the middle of a game world something happens and they can't log out. Not surprisingly, the excuse of why there isn't a better override is a little phony (i.e.: if your computer locking up could physically damage you, there would be a lot of people dying on a daily basis). Even if the basic theme isn't all that original, I really like VR game based stories, and this one is particularly

Creeper World 3: Arc Eternal is a tower defense game. It has 90s style graphics, that go somewhere from retro to slight embarrassing. However, it probably is THE BEST TOWER DEFENSE GAME I have ever played. Seriously, I can't remember enjoying any TD game anywhere near this, and I played a ton of them. The basic "monster" is quite a bit different than the usual fare. It is just a blue mass that keeps being generated from some points in the map. It will eventually find its way to your base (and probably much sooner than you'd think reasonable). Your mission is to build up to creeper generators and destroy them. There are plenty of weapons, shields, a power system that uses flat surfaces (bringing Perimeter to mind, of course). Landscape features are very important, and you have a terraforming tool (called TERP) that can have huge effects. You can make walls, make mountains plain, and make bridges into the creeper sea. Power is a huge deal. You have the re

I have been playing Creeper World 3: Arc Eternal a lot, and I really like it. But one thing I discovered is that under some circumstances it will crash every single time I start it! The message is Oops! The game crashed. The crash report folder named "" next to game executable. The error log has the following: CSteamworks.dll caused an Access Violation (0xc0000005)   in module CSteamworks.dll at 0023:04f64c79. Fortunately, I figured a simple way to fix it. This happens every time after I hibernate my computer. If I just exit and start Steam again (the internal restart doesn't work), the problem disappear till next hibernate.