Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Birth of the Firebringer

For my free book, I read Birth of the Firebringer.  It's about unicorns. But these are awesome unicorns!  They don't just sit around in fields of flowers and do nothing.  They're involved in a long-standing war with the wyverns, who invaded and stole their homeland.  The unicorns went into exile, but there was a prophecy that foretold a unicorn that would lead them home (called the Firebringer).  And conveniently, that unicorn is the book's main character.

His name's Aljan, but he doesn't know he is the Firebringer yet.  The whole book is about his adult initiation journey, and all along the way his immature and mischievous antics get him into trouble.  Of course, by the end he's matured and discovered that he's the "chosen one" and all that.  It's a really good book, but it's just the first in a trilogy.

I was apprehensive about reading this at first.  I mean, unicorns? Really?  But the story quickly had me hooked because the unicorns actually do stuff and they're actually pretty badass.  It starts out with this battle between the unicorns and the gryphons (another enemy of the unicorns).  It's all pretty intense for the first third of the book.  The middle of the story got a little boring because a lot of it was just "and now they're traveling across this part of the plains... And now this part..."  and occasionally it was broken up by important plot events.  The way it's written is very easy to read and understand.

Overall, I think this is one of my favorite fantasy books just because it manages to break the unicorn stereotype.

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

The Media in *blank* Years

In five years books will have become even more obsolete as the Kindle and other digital libraries become more popular.  Most actual libraries will have shut down from lack of need.  Only the largest ones will remain open.  Newspapers won't be in circulation anymore and people will read all of their news online.  Video games will have become even more user-inclusive as the Kinect proves the remote control isn't needed anymore (only the player's body is needed to play).  There will be even more touch screen and voice recognition stuff and less and less buttons to press.  This also means tha voice recogntion software will have become better and more sensitive to what people are actually saying. 

In fifteen years television will be more or less a thing of the past as people move in favor of Youtube and other online sources for all of their shows and news.  As such, the amount of advertisements online will skyrocket as people realize that's where their audience is moving to.  3D with no glasses will have become commonplace in both television and video games.  The 3DS console was the gateway to more and better 3D systems, and perhaps using 3D they will have developed better virtual reality software to eventually implement into video games.  On a side note, glasses will be much more commonplace as most people are looking at screens and straining their eyes most of the time.

I have absolutely no idea where technology or the media will be in fifty years.  Hopefully the world will still be running somewhat fine and every government hasn't devolved into a completely totalitarian state.  Maybe TV will have evolved into something fully immersive where you're completely surrounded by the 3D images.  To allow this cameras will have to be developed that can use very good 3D technology.  Maybe we'll finally be able to have electric cars in full circulation without the oil companies being butthurt about it.  Or maybe the oil will be used up and that's why we have electric cars.  Who knows where computers will have gone in that time, or music players.  Maybe most things run on projectors and you can move things around a la Tony Stark in Iron Man.  Video games may be running in full virtual reality.  Also hopefully I can retire in fifty years.