Exhalation

The 2016 science fiction film Arrival is based on Story of Your Life, a short story by American writer Ted Chiang, which I thought might be interesting to read because I recall finding the movie rather unimpressive. I probably should have read the blurb on Exhalation: Stories more carefully because the anthology doesn't include that particular story -- it's in another one. That didn't stop me from reading this one, though.

Echopraxia

In 2014, Peter Watts released Echopraxia, a continuation to his thought-provoking 2006 novel Blindsight. Echopraxia is a sidequel: it takes place largely concurrently with Blindsight. (And apparently Watts wrote a lot of it while surviving a flesh-eating disease on his leg!)

Roadside Picnic

Roadside Picnic (Пикник на обочине - Piknik na obochine) is a science fiction novel written by brothers Arkady (1925 – 1991) and Boris (1933 – 2012) Strugatsky in 1971. The book has been the source of inspiration for various works and been adapted onto various media over the years. One of its merits in influence is coining the loan word stalker in its specific meaning (which I've gone over in my Metro 2033 post) in the Russian language.

Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition

I picked up my paused Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition run again. Actually beating the game took longer than I recall it taking back in the day, though -- I could swear I used to get through it from start to finish over one weekend. Maybe due to not playing it for years I had forgotten the best routes to take for optimal time saving.

The Fractal Prince & The Causal Angel

Hannu Rajaniemi kept his heavy show-don't-tell style until the very end of his Quantum Thief trilogy. Only in the third novel I got a somewhat clear understanding of the factions and the recent history of the setting: how things came to be. The trilogy is certainly a wild ride all the way through. There's no stopping for strange words; you just keep reading and hope things will make sense at some point.

Control: AWE & The Foundation

Control Ultimate Edition was on Prime Gaming to claim, about two years ago now. I did just that (for free too with a trial, I think) because I wanted to play the game's downloadable content. I have to say that I was surprised how girthy both of the expansions were -- I had expected them to be maybe two hours at max each but instead they were several. I replayed the main game too -- and couldn't tell if anything was different (other than better performance on a more powerful GPU) -- because I didn't feel like figuring out if the game pass saves would work with the GOG version.

Metro 2034 & 2035

There are many years between the publications of Dmitry Glukhovsky's Metro novels. Metro 2033 was first released in 2002 (online -- printed in 2005), Metro 2034 in 2009, and finally Metro 2035 came out in 2015. With over a decade between the first and last, it's not terribly surprising there was a shift in direction -- especially with the final book -- Glukhovsky finding different things more important.