Sid Meier's Memoir! A Life in Computer Games by Sid Meier

The book covers Sid Meier's career from the days of computer infancy, talking about tech and business challenges, early trade shows, founding MicroProse with larger-than-life military pilot Bill Stealey, and later, Firaxis.

Sid sports no rockstar persona like other industry pioneers. Rather, he seems content to methodically design and code by himself mostly, a self-described nerd and introvert, who also values the feedback of people he's working with. A developer who brings his computer when going on vacation. Aiming to put player agency first in his games, offering interesting decisions to drive the experience (I enjoyed the parts where he talks about design rules he follows).

The chronological structure of this memoir uses published game titles as waypoints. Floyd of the Jungle, Silent Service, Gunship, Pirates!, F-19 Stealth Fighter, Railroad Tycoon, Covert Action, Civilization, Gettysburg!, Alpha Centauri, and a lot more: they're all here. When talking about inspiration, influences, and initial ideas, there are sometimes longer personal tales from Sid Meier's childhood. One great in-depth chapter delves into the design philosophy behind the Civ series.

In a rather weak section he talks about game addiction, and there seems stuck in the past when he was working on his older titles, as he fails to mention the psychological exploits now widely employed by some studios. I am buying that Sid Meier has never been someone willing to base his design on such principles, but for me it was too shallow a treatment of addiction in games.

This is an excellent autobiography (with some writing help), and for the most part I found it hard to put down. Particularly when being transported back to the 1980s and early 1990s, I didn't want it to end. I feel the book captured the atmosphere of the era regarding buzz around tech perfectly. Full recommendation, a real joy to read. Also, stories about the flight sim focus of the MicroProse days made me buy Solo Flight.

I only recently learned of it too, the book was published in 2020. Loved it, for sure one of my favorite reads this year.

Blue World, by Robert McCammon. A short story collection, although the title story is more like a short novel. It's a mixed bag, as collections often are, although I would say most of the stories are at least diverting.

The better stories have a sort of Twilight Zone vibe. Yellowjacket Summer is a bit like It's a Good Life, but with huge, deadly swarms of yellowjackets involved.

Makeup is about a low-level burglar who gets a magical makeup kit that a horror actor used to own that transforms him into whatever design he uses. It's fun.

Nightcrawlers actually was adapted into one of the 1980s Twilight Zone episodes. It's about a Vietnam vet who literally brings the war with him wherever he goes.

Yellachile's Cage is a sweet story about guys in prison that feels like it could be a companion piece to The Green Mile or The Shawshank Redemption.

He'll Come Knocking at Your Door is a fun story about a town that made a deal with the devil that is only slightly undercut because it feels like McCammon screwed with the "rules" a tad to make the story work.

Night Calls the Green Falcon is about a former matinee serial star who suits up one more time to stop a serial killer. It feels like it might have influenced the Grey Ghost episode of Batman.

Most of the other stories, like Pin, are more like formal exercises or experiments that McCammon probably just had to get out of his system and are kind of dull.

The title story, Blue World, is about a Catholic priest who becomes obsessed with a porn star whose movies play in a theater across from his church. I wanted to like it but I found it a bit of a dud. It's one of those stories in which characters are secretive about their true selves and are too nervous or contrived circumstances keep them from revealing it, which I'm not fond of. I've seen it in too many mediocre TV shows.

Hong Kong Architecture: The Aesthetics of Density by Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani

Published alongside an exhibition with the same title held from 15.11.1993 to 27.2.1994 in the German Architecture Museum, Frankfurt. The main part of the book details 12 signature projects with gorgeous photos, floor plans, diagrams, sketches, and drawings. There is info on contracted architects, intended usage, execution phases, as well as challenges.

Features icons like the Bank of China Tower, Shun Tak Centre/Macau Ferry Terminal, Lippo Centre, Central Plaza, including (at the time) planned projects: Chek Lap Kok airport on Lantau Island, and South-East Kowloon Development.

A historical overview of how Hong Kong evolved into its modern form, and some b/w photos of the city from the 1980s/early 1990s. Most interesting the early, continous focus on social housing, and the huge efforts to reclaim land from the sea in order to cope with the limited building space. Beautiful book, got it last year when my local library had a sale on titles leaving their system.

Eternal Knight

While not standing out in any way, the first five chapters are nice enough, catching my attention and keeping me reading and interested in the characters and events. But what truly matters is the last quarter or so of the book, when things change dramatically multiple times, the mess that I tend to call the typical human filth gives way to thrilling action, the fact that it’s hard to know who or what to believe can actually be a positive aspect as well, considering the valid points made by the various sides and the genuine intentions of the antagonists, and characters develop in ways that are largely positive. And, while it opens the way for the rest of the series, Eternal Knight also has an entirely serviceable conclusion on its own.
The problem, however, is pretty much everything between those first five chapters and that final quarter, which is dominated by that typical human filth, making for rather painful reading. And that’s not just because I’m all too aware of that filth in “reality” and would want to escape from it while reading fantasy, but because it’s also poor in concept. I learned that the book was edited down to less than half of the size of the original draft, forgetting that fantasy should carefully craft and present new worlds in detail, so it’s possible that there was more to it at first, but what’s left is a court, and a society, that’s little more than a caricature, roughly pushing something like the trope of the noble savage and savage nobles and some themes of privilege and discrimination without having any impact, without giving them meaning. And opportunities for action and explanations are either skipped entirely or so forced and amateurish that it’s hard to believe that they were written by the same person who wrote that last quarter of the book. And I’ll also note that, while I was initially surprised by the use of creatures from Romanian myths, I then realized that the author just liked to use the words for some creatures he imagined.

Rating: 3/5

Child of the Knight

There was a moment when I feared that this book would be as dominated by what I call typical human filth as the previous one, but that is not the case, the occasional moments when it rears its ugly head quickly giving way to action. And action is what Child of the Knight is all about, the characters, and the reader, hardly being allowed a moment’s rest, with the antagonists having every advantage and victory tending to take the form of an escape and a brief respite, usually at a great cost. And it should also be noted that the combat is presented well, the author displaying his familiarity with the techniques and equipment.
However, this is also the book’s problem, stringing together action scenes being pretty much all there is to it. There’s hardly any room for depth and very little worldbuilding or character development, the possible exception, if you’re feeling generous, being Kael and Maret. No bits of wisdom, no brilliant plans, no complex and possibly relatable characters; if something’s not an action scene, it’s only there because it’s required for one that will quickly follow. In addition, despite the hardships and all of the advantages held by the antagonists, or perhaps just because of that, all too often hero’s luck is the plot device that allows wrenching that questionable victory from the jaws of defeat. And while this does make for thrilling reading and a reasonably pleasant way to pass some time, after a while it gets to be too much and, despite being so fast-paced and much shorter than a proper fantasy book should be, the feeling that it’s overstaying its welcome may appear before reaching the end. Plus that I was obviously very bothered by the fact that it’s centered around babies and motherhood.

Rating: 3/5

The Way Back by Erich Maria Remarque

This is the sequel to All Quiet on the Western Front. Accompanies a group of veteran soldiers as they make it through the final days of World War I, and subsequently return to Germany in 1918. Here, their hopes for a life in peace clash with the harsh welcome of a civilian society that does not fully understand the reality of this lost conflict.

Again, Remarque's autobiographical weight is felt in the wide array of situations of that particular point and place in time described. There are melancholy, desperation, harrowing combat details, also funny moments that lend some brief levity, and a hint of hope new-found. A grand book, as important and powerful as the one it's following.

A Study In Scarlet

by Arthur Conan Doyle

Kinda not adherent to the title of the post but for the sake of opening additional discussion hoping to dive into Scott Robertson's How to Draw, How to Render and Complete Guide to Perspective by Craig Attebery.

The Removers, by Donald Hamilton. Matt Helm series #3. In this one, Helm is called back in action to investigate a rogue agent who's working for a Las Vegas crime boss, and coincidentally his ex-wife lives in the region and is involved in a dispute with this crime boss thanks to her marriage to a British gunman who used to work for the guy.

The Helm books are often described as being like James Bond but less genteel or whatever, which I don't think is quite accurate. The truth is that Helm and Bond have a good deal in common because they're both government assassins who are about as brutally unkind and pragmatic as you would expect such a job to require. Bad guys who fight worse guys. I guess Bond likes to live it up on the taxpayer's dime because he assumes he's going to be killed at any moment, while Helm seems somewhat humbler, less likely to describe his fine-cooked meals in detail. Helm's thing is that he's kind of hilariously nitpicky about how women dress, often sounding like a fashion critic. Then he starts stabbing people and snapping bones and stuff.

Anyway, the book is quite good. It's short and doesn't waste any time at all and is very hard-boiled in ways that you can really only find in books this old. If these books were reprinted today, at least by a major publisher (maybe they have been, I haven't checked...), they would have to be double-wrapped in trigger warnings.