Interesting, care to give me a few author names and titles? The only one I can think off the top of my head right now is Douglas Adams. That however has a lot more humour than sci-fi.

And I wouldn't have it any other way.

Here's al little list of favourites then:

Patrick 'o Brian; mostly for the Aubrey/Maturin series, which is historical fiction set in the English navy of Nelsonian times

Neal Stephenson: mostly science fiction, often with a very sly sarcastic tinge and a few truly hilarious lines in between great storytelling and nice action. "Diamond Age", "Reamde", "Snow Crash" are all majestic, especially snow crash in my opinion.

Nelson Demille: Writes thrillers, mainly. But his main characters are mostly grade A assholes with a monstrous sense of unrestrained dark humour. John Corey gets me every time :)

The "plum island" line is great, as are the Gold coast and The Charm school.

Salman Rushdie: In between finely worked out suggestions and allures about the origins of Islam and the nature of the visions Mohammed got he writes many a great book. It's not so much the outright humour as the total bizarness of many lines that really gets to you.
And these are books you can really think about after you've finished them, there are little details and masses of material to keep musing about long after the pleasant experience of reading one. Satanic Verses, The Moor's last sigh are good for a start.

James Clavell: Mostly for Shogun this one; that book is A- mazing. And most of his other works are fine to. And not to much heavy reading, while maintaining a very interesting set.

Douglas Adams: duh, mandatory (Hitchikers' guide)

Teryy Pratchet: duh, mandatory (Discworld)

And William King (Gortrek and Felix) and Dan Abnett (Gaunt's ghosts and Eisenhorn) for some good action and mirthy laughs at absurd over the top combat scenes and crunchy punch lines when the dust settles and the blood starts caking.

Kim Stanley Robinson, though I know him only of "Return to Katmandu" and the "Mars (Red, Green, Blue) trilogies. A fine, rather more serious and pensive read.

Well, I'm slowly crawling off for my bed now ...

Keep well everyone, and have pleasant dreams yourselves too!!

*goodnight, sleep well hugs and kisses on the foreheads*

About time to add something before Fred goes into a coma.
For you strategy fans Paradox store is having a very nice sale, up to 80% off.

Someone must've told GOG that I was trying to cut back on purchases. I can see 11 titles on the front page alone that look interesting.

And don't forget Master of Orion remake is 'upcoming' ;)
Also that bizarre Valley game is supposed to be out next week, might be a rather chilled-out experience.
Darn Xcom has become a bad habit for me, unable to think of playing anything else before it's finished... Not too long now , please ;)

Well thanks to my absolutely CHARMING parents, I'm out of a bit of cash that I needed to move out on my power and to add insult to injury: they want me out of the house in just a few weeks. Fantastic. I go back home to save up some more money after a homeless scare and then they basically rob me (recently had to cover a large purchase for them) and are ready to kick me out on the streets in a few weeks because they've decided that yes indeed, they want to be bigots. What a lovely life I have.

I WILL be okay though. I'm just too freaking stupid to give up on myself :P I've got college coming up soon, a few microjobs that I can count on and some great friends (including some of you folks here!). I'm at least 65% I'm NOT going to be homeless, have a belly full of nice buffalo chicken and a cup of Starbucks iced coffee. Life ain't so bad. :P

Yes...that IS the first time I've used a smiley here...what of it?

They sound like wonderful, wonderful pieces of shit. Truly. You are indeed fortunate on that one.

I was going to write a wall of text to give some insight but ya know what...I'll just agree with you. They often flip flop back and forth between being good and terrible parents (and people in general) but this little episode is gonna be hard to overlook when they decide to resemble decent human beings again.

Not a problem. If you decide for whatever reason to throw that wall out, my chat's open.

Yeah...they don't exactly sound like winners on a number of levels right now.

Thanks! :) I might take you up on that later. For now I'm listening to 80s new wave music.

How is your evening going?

You're welcome. Just got through watching a Suicide Squad trailer and thinking the guy playing Joker is trying way, way, way too hard. Other than that, it looks all right.

Can't complain too much here. Standard evening, nothing terribly interesting happening around here. Watching a Let's Play of Aliens: Colonial Marines for some reason and thinking that my Netflix backlog is ridiculous given how little I actually feel like watching anything on it.

*hugs and waves*

Oh wow. That sounds aweful of them. I hope things will work out well for you. It might be hard, but you are probably better without them...

And using smilies is great :P

-waves back with a morning milkshake-

Oh awesome! That is a good drink to start the day with :D