Larry Niven is more of a pocket universe in geek literature than a strong force of undeniable magnitude the likes of Arthur C. Clarke or even Robert Heinlein. If it weren’t for a friend casually mentioning the man’s Ringworld series, I never would have taken note of him. And I would have been a lesser man for it.

See, I don’t think I’ve ever read more refreshing fiction than this guy’s fiction. Sure, you could say that it borders on somewhat hardcore sci-fi - as evidenced in the titular story in Convergent Series - but Niven’s enjoyable prose that’s funny and witty at times, as opposed to most of the other available sci-fi writers, who tend to overdo the science in their fiction (Clarke, for all his genius, is a dry storyteller).

I’ll write a review of some of the stories next time, since I still have to reread some of the old stories. But Niven’s introduction to the short story collection as a solution to a moral problem that instantly involves the reader is audacious, cheeky - and is probably one of the best first lines from a book I’ve ever read:

" . . . This book is my solution to a moral dilemma. If you’ve opened this book, you’re already involved, and I suppose you’d better hear about it. . . "

As to what that moral dilemma is - that’s a story for another day.

And it was awesome. No two ways around it. It was all I expected it to be, and more.

I love how they didn’t stray too far from Stark being a totally crazy, drink-oriented man. It wouldn’t be Iron Man if Stark was made more, ah, consumer-friendly, so to speak. And yeah, Robert Downey Jr. just had to act like himself to get the man’s character down - so in a sense, he probably was the best actor for the role.

Considering that it was an action flick, I also loved how there wasn’t that much action littered all throughout. Matter of fact, you pretty much just see the MK III armor in action twice. Most of the other times you see Iron Man, it’s either Stark testing his armor, or Stark creating the armor. And the big fights that he had were fantastic - they don’t leave you with that "OMG I was just steamrollered by that sequence" feeling you get with long, drawn-out action sequences. I think the word I’m looking for is "balanced."

Maybe that was the only bad thing about the film - the focus on the armor’s creation. You don’t really get to empathize with any of the other characters - I don’t think Pepper Potts even grew on me, and while Jim Rhodes was cool and all, there was just way too much focus on Stark and his armor for the movie to be about anything else.

That’s just nitpick, though. I still loved the movie, enough to give it at least a 4.5 / 5 rating. I find that hilarious, since I’m not even that big a fan of the character!

If you’re a fan of exceptional animes that focus on telling an immersive story bordering on slipstream, you’ve probably heard of Wolf’s Rain. This magnificent and exemplary specimen of what quality entertainment should be like.

It’s no surprise that this show had a stellar crew behind the production, gathering together people from noteworthy projects such as Ghost in the Shell and Cowboy Bebop. But what really drew me to this series was the fact that Yoko Kanno had a hand - a really big hand - in the production.

I’ve always been a huge Yoko Kanno fan since I first heard her work with the Seatbelts for Cowboy Bebop, and I’ve been hooked. But Kanno’s work in Bebop was different from her work in Wolf’s Rain (by a mile, at least). While Bebop’s scoring tended to focus on the active strains of blues and bebop jazz, Wolf’s Rain focused more on real compositions that told stories within themselves, stories of love and hate and despair and melancholy. It was deeper, darker, and that added to the steampunk-gaslamp gothic appeal that Wolf’s Rain had.

Here’s the show’s opening sequence:

If you can get past the facts that it sounds like something you’d expect to hear from an 80’s industrial rock group (or that Steve Conte, the man in charge of the vocals, sounds a bit like Sting), Stray emanates a dualistic vibe of melancholy and a little bit of hope, fitting perfectly with the show’s near-apocalyptic theme.

Now, this show is something of an acquired taste. Some of the later episodes, admittedly, get boring, and if you have trouble accepting some of the realities presented in the story at face value, you’ll have a hard time accepting this series. But that doesn’t mean that it isn’t good; in fact, the storytelling is so good that it’ll surprise you out of your shoes.