Some of My Favourite Media:
PETER
Welcome to my curator page!
While I spend most of my waking hours slaving away as an attorney for a large commercial law firm, I like to spend my free time escaping from reality in all sorts of stories and games – fantasy, sci-fi, horror, you name it. When I’m not reading, writing, or painting miniatures, I like to hit people (or more likely, get hit) with a sword.
In my speculative fiction, I like plot-heavy stories that still make you connect with the characters, and world building that is not just interesting and exotic, but that actually works on a historical, geographic, economic or scientific level. I like stories that put your brain to work. I’m a sucker for the classics and love to read older stuff to get an idea of how genres and tastes evolved over time. I like games that have a strong narrative element – even in board games, I like the ones that give you the feeling you’re setting up a colony on a distant planet over ones that may be more balanced but feel less alive.
Nowadays, what with my job and life in general getting in the way, I don’t spend nearly as much time gaming or reading as I used to, but I still listen to as many audiobooks as I can and I try to make time for everything else. But sometimes, everything that is out there that I would still like to see or read or play is overwhelming. If you feel the same, please look around! Your time is precious, and we all want to spend it on the very best the genre has to offer!
Realistic or grimdark settings
Characters getting punished for their mistakes
Tightly written plots and well-foreshadowed plot twists
When magic is a mystery (and you sometimes wonder whether it is magic at all)
When the story structure itself wows you
Realistic economic and geographical worldbuilding
Writers that trust their readers to figure it out by themselves and do not feel to need to explain every detail
When the stakes in a story grow beyond the point where it is relatable
Love triangles and sappy romance
Superheroes
When stories or games take way more time than they have any right to
Whiney main characters
Really competitive games
Poorly executed politics
Pet PeeveS
Historical inaccuracies in medieval fantasy settings (especially in combat)
Humanoid aliens in sci-fi
Characters inexplicably having really modern mindsets/sensibilities in settings where that makes no sense
Needlessly edgy characters in order to make things ‘dark’
The thing where the dainty woman always has to be the archer even though shooting a 100+ pound warbow takes far more strength than properly wielding a sword
Characters that do dumb stuff but get away with it
Writers coming up with a new name for their orc-race despite the fact that they are clearly just reskinned orcs
Fantasy names with a bunch of open vowels and unexplained ‘ä’s or ‘â’s
Recent Contributions
Review: Dogs of War – Adrian Tchaikovsky
Rex is a dog-human hybrid, a bioengineered supersoldier known as a bioform, serving alongside a number of other human-animal hybrids in a private security company engaged in the supression of an uprising in Mexico. When he loses connection to his master on a mission, he and his team are faced with difficult questions on their role in the war and the world beyond. The world, meantime, is faced with exactly the same questions.
Review: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress – Robert A. Heinlein
Manny is a computer engineer in charge of programming Mike, the central supercomputer running the systems of Earth’s penal colony on the Moon. Unbeknownst to anyone but Manny, Mike has achieved self-awareness. Mike mainly wants to learn to understand human humour, but when the AI meets political activist Wyoming Knott through Manny, the three of them start speculating on an uprising that would free Luna from the yoke of the Warden and the Federated Nation’s Lunar Authority.
Review: Starship Troopers – Robert A. Heinlein
The Earth is at war with several alien races. On a whim, rich kid Johnny Rico joins the Mobile Infantry on his 18th birthday, to serve a term and earn citizenship. But as he goes through bootcamp to join humanity’s greatest military outfit, and he trains for orbital drops on alien planets, his resolve is sorely tested.
Curator Question: Do you prefer books or films?
Another question for our curators: would they rather read or listen to a book, or have the story told through a television screen?
Review: Floating Hotel – Grace Curtis
The Grand Abeona Hotel is both space ship and resort, an interstellar cruise ship floating from system to system, providing old fashioned luxury to the well-to-do of each planet at which it calls. Its crew are a chaotic bunch of outcasts and refugees, forged into a well oiled machine (well, mostly) by kindly hotel manager Carl – who knows that each and every one of them has a story of their own. But even an out-of-this-world place like the Grand Abeona cannot escape the political realities of the galaxy. Some of the guests carry secrets – and even worse, perhaps so do some of the staff…