Entertainment
George R. R. Martin’s epic fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire begins its TV adaptation this weekend with the first episode of HBO’s Game of Thrones. As a longtime fan and evangelist of the book series, I’m naturally excited about the TV show after seeing what appears to be a staunch faithfulness to the original material. Advance reviews have started showing up online, and one in particular has stirred up a hornet’s nest today.
The last novel I read was The Well of Ascension, the second book in Brandon Sanderson’s fantastic Mistborn series. Since I’ve been reading a lot of chunky epic fantasy books, I decided to take a break and read something a little shorter and lighter. That lead me to The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, which did turn out to be shorter but definitely isn’t an emotionally light read.
This story has been all over gaming websites the past day or two, and it still blows my mind. Anybody who has played World of Warcraft or pretty much any other massively multiplayer game knows the routine for these games. You make a character and then kill a bunch of stuff to gain experience points. Those experience points eventually raise your character up to new levels, at which point you learn new and more awesome abilities to enhance your smitingness. Lather, rinse, repeat until you reach the maximum attainable level and, presumably, are a virtual badass in fantasyland. That’s the way it’s supposed to work, but one player turned it all on its head this week when she hit the level cap without ever killing a single critter, monster, or bandit.
I had heard about Top Gear for a long time but never had seen any episodes. As I’m not at all a gearhead and know the bare minimum I need to know about cars in order to move them efficiently from point A to point B, I didn’t think the show would have much appeal for me. But then BBC sent us seasons (or series; it’s British, after all) 14 and 15 of the show to review for Fandomania, and I started realizing that the cars are just vehicles (pun only slightly intended) for the craziness the show’s hosts get up to in each episode.
