<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!--Generated by Squarespace V5 Site Server v5.13.156 (http://www.squarespace.com) on Mon, 20 May 2013 20:41:39 GMT--><feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"><title>Darien Yawching Rickwood</title><subtitle>Darien Yawching Rickwood</subtitle><id>http://www.spineonline.ca/darien-yawching-rickwood/</id><link rel="alternate" type="application/xhtml+xml" href="http://www.spineonline.ca/darien-yawching-rickwood/"/><link rel="self" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.spineonline.ca/darien-yawching-rickwood/atom.xml"/><updated>2011-09-06T19:57:04Z</updated><generator uri="http://five.squarespace.com/" version="Squarespace V5 Site Server v5.13.156 (http://www.squarespace.com)">Squarespace</generator><entry><title>Mass Effective?</title><category term="Bioware"/><category term="Blog"/><category term="Mass Effect"/><category term="Sci-fi"/><category term="Video game"/><id>http://www.spineonline.ca/darien-yawching-rickwood/2011/4/8/mass-effective.html</id><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://www.spineonline.ca/darien-yawching-rickwood/2011/4/8/mass-effective.html"/><author><name>Darien Yawching Rickwood</name></author><published>2011-04-09T03:54:02Z</published><updated>2011-04-09T03:54:02Z</updated><summary type="html" xml:lang="en-US"><![CDATA[Yeah, alright, dumb title, yadda yadda yadda.

Anyway, today I am going to talk about a videogame, a science fiction one of course. Why a game? Well, part of it is admittedly that I’m running out of semi-obscure genre novels that I read recently (and I can’t just do something on, say Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter; got to keep my nerd-hipster cred high after all), but also there’s the fact that, apart from my movie review, all I’ve done is blab about books.]]></summary></entry><entry><title>Set Phasers to Read</title><category term="Convention"/><category term="Fantasy"/><category term="Farrell McGovern"/><category term="Jim Botte"/><category term="Sci-fi"/><id>http://www.spineonline.ca/darien-yawching-rickwood/2011/3/28/set-phasers-to-read.html</id><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://www.spineonline.ca/darien-yawching-rickwood/2011/3/28/set-phasers-to-read.html"/><author><name>Darien Yawching Rickwood</name></author><published>2011-03-28T16:57:56Z</published><updated>2011-03-28T16:57:56Z</updated><summary type="html" xml:lang="en-US"><![CDATA[I meet Farrell McGovern and James Botte in the latter’s office at Carleton University. Jumbled with old computer parts, monitors and motherboards, it makes for the perfect environment to talk speculative fiction. Both men work in the high-tech industry and James is in the middle of getting his degree at the school, where he also works as a research assistant. More importantly, they are the founders of CAN-CON (not to be confused with the CRTC edict on broadcasting), Canada’s first speculative fiction convention that brought the focus to the literary side of fandom, rather than the “media,” a catch-all term they use to describe more profit oriented affairs than writing.]]></summary></entry><entry><title>Always remember to fill your boots with soup</title><id>http://www.spineonline.ca/darien-yawching-rickwood/2011/3/25/always-remember-to-fill-your-boots-with-soup.html</id><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://www.spineonline.ca/darien-yawching-rickwood/2011/3/25/always-remember-to-fill-your-boots-with-soup.html"/><author><name>Darien Yawching Rickwood</name></author><published>2011-03-26T01:42:29Z</published><updated>2011-03-26T01:42:29Z</updated><summary type="html" xml:lang="en-US"><![CDATA[A lot of people know of Sir Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books, even if they haven’t read them. Though they should! Pratchett’s novels take place in an anachronistic and inventive fantasy world, the Disc is a flat circular continent perched on the backs of four elephants standing on top of a gigantic, space faring turtle that is peopled with flawed and interesting characters, and deal with topics of society of politics. They are also very, very funny. I would honestly argue that the man has become one of the best satirists around. Anyway, this blog is going to be a little different; I’ll give a brief introduction on a specific “arc” of his books before focusing mostly on Monstrous Regiment the most recent one I’ve read.]]></summary></entry><entry><title>Love in the Time of the Malarial Queendom</title><category term="Bas-Lag"/><category term="Blog"/><category term="Books"/><category term="China Mieville"/><category term="Fantasy"/><id>http://www.spineonline.ca/darien-yawching-rickwood/2011/3/11/love-in-the-time-of-the-malarial-queendom.html</id><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://www.spineonline.ca/darien-yawching-rickwood/2011/3/11/love-in-the-time-of-the-malarial-queendom.html"/><author><name>Darien Yawching Rickwood</name></author><published>2011-03-11T21:23:34Z</published><updated>2011-03-11T21:23:34Z</updated><summary type="html" xml:lang="en-US"><![CDATA[China Mieville is part of the so called "New Weird" movement of writing and the logo is well applied. Perhaps his most famous novels take place in the world of Bas-Lag. Though a fantasy trilogy, Mieville defies the staples of the genre, and tends to draw influence from horror and science fiction instead. For one, Bas-Lag itself is a setting you're more likely to find in your fevered dreams and nightmares than anywhere else. Instead of taking place in the times of armoured knights and stupid pants, the world is an industrialized, adaptive place, but straining at the seams and peopled by a myriad of bizarre, inhuman races and twisted cultures and its heroes are scientists and unionist, in fact a group of "adventurers" hired in the first book are shown as sociopaths and killers. Though the setting is wildly inventive, the author doesn't go for the traditional approach to world building, instead scattering details of far off locations, such as the nation of High Cromlech and its zombie factories or the long dead and transdimensional Ghosthead Empire, who mined and monetized probability.]]></summary></entry><entry><title>Losing Trails</title><category term="Fantasy"/><category term="Fiction"/><category term="Short Story"/><id>http://www.spineonline.ca/darien-yawching-rickwood/2011/3/3/losing-trails.html</id><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://www.spineonline.ca/darien-yawching-rickwood/2011/3/3/losing-trails.html"/><author><name>Darien Yawching Rickwood</name></author><published>2011-03-03T14:36:03Z</published><updated>2011-03-03T14:36:03Z</updated><summary type="html" xml:lang="en-US"><![CDATA[They strode through the ash, hand in hand. The brother, the younger of the two, looked up and asked, “Will we die?”]]></summary></entry><entry><title>Welcome to the Culture</title><category term="Blog"/><category term="Books"/><category term="Iain M. Banks"/><category term="Sci-fi"/><category term="The Culture"/><id>http://www.spineonline.ca/darien-yawching-rickwood/2011/2/23/welcome-to-the-culture.html</id><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://www.spineonline.ca/darien-yawching-rickwood/2011/2/23/welcome-to-the-culture.html"/><author><name>Darien Yawching Rickwood</name></author><published>2011-02-24T01:38:12Z</published><updated>2011-02-24T01:38:12Z</updated><summary type="html" xml:lang="en-US"><![CDATA[Many science fiction novels take place in realistic simulacra of our own future, tackling modern day issues from an advanced, but also parallel perspective. Not Iain M. Banks Culture novels, a loosely connected series of titles that documents a largely humanoid (but not terran) society that has transcended scarcity, taboo, internal strife and, if its citizens so choose, death. A utopia in the truest sense, the Culture is an anarcho-socialist civilization with no currency or even real government. Disease and genetic disabilities are unheard of and, though the average lifespan is 400 years, individuals can choose to forgo death or go into stasis with the order to be woken when something interesting happens.]]></summary></entry><entry><title>Malazan Book of the Fallen</title><category term="Blog"/><category term="Books"/><category term="Erikson"/><category term="Fantasy"/><category term="Malazan"/><id>http://www.spineonline.ca/darien-yawching-rickwood/2011/2/10/malazan-book-of-the-fallen.html</id><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://www.spineonline.ca/darien-yawching-rickwood/2011/2/10/malazan-book-of-the-fallen.html"/><author><name>Darien Yawching Rickwood</name></author><published>2011-02-10T22:07:20Z</published><updated>2011-02-10T22:07:20Z</updated><summary type="html" xml:lang="en-US"><![CDATA[The Malazan Book of the Fallen is a fantasy series written by Canadian author and archeologist Steven Erikson and it is a big one. I mean really big. The series is ten books long, each novel is roughly a thousand pages and there are spin off stories written by him and the world's co-creator, Ian Cameron Esslemont. Though the last book isn't out yet, Erikson has already been signed on to write a pair of trilogies and an encyclopedia of the world. It may all seem excessive but no cash grab this; it's worth it.]]></summary></entry><entry><title>Review: Moon</title><category term="Duncan Jones"/><category term="Film"/><category term="Moon"/><category term="Review"/><category term="Sam Bell"/><category term="Sci-fi"/><id>http://www.spineonline.ca/darien-yawching-rickwood/2011/2/10/review-moon.html</id><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://www.spineonline.ca/darien-yawching-rickwood/2011/2/10/review-moon.html"/><author><name>Darien Yawching Rickwood</name></author><published>2011-02-10T14:04:53Z</published><updated>2011-02-10T14:04:53Z</updated><summary type="html" xml:lang="en-US"><![CDATA[Released in 2009, Moon is a different breed of science fiction than the ones we’ve seen in recent years. Duncan Jones’ directorial debut (let’s get it out of the way here, yes he is David Bowie’s son), it takes a slower, more personal approach to the genre. A character study at its heart, there are only three individuals in the film and one of them is a machine. Instead of a blockbuster explosion-fest, Moon is a study of personal identity and what it means to be human.]]></summary></entry><entry><title>Into the black</title><category term="Blog"/><category term="Fantasy"/><category term="Introduction"/><category term="Sci-fi"/><id>http://www.spineonline.ca/darien-yawching-rickwood/2011/1/27/into-the-black.html</id><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://www.spineonline.ca/darien-yawching-rickwood/2011/1/27/into-the-black.html"/><author><name>Darien Yawching Rickwood</name></author><published>2011-01-27T13:39:58Z</published><updated>2011-01-27T13:39:58Z</updated><summary type="html" xml:lang="en-US"><![CDATA[So. A lot of people figure that the twin genres of science fiction and fantasy are only about space ships blowing up and knights saving princesses; robots and dragons and swords, oh my! But that just isn't true. About every novel, short story or movie (those worth a damn at least) uses the setting to explore social issues, either modern or imagined, and the ways that people would react to impossible events.]]></summary></entry></feed>