Gary Ballard's Blog: The Bridge Chronicles by Gary A. Ballard, page 4

The Ultimate Choiceby Lisa Hinsley Book Review

Since I enjoyed Hinsley's horror novel, Coombe's Wood, I had confidence in her abilities with a science-fiction tale like The Ultimate Choice. The subject matter sounded weighty but intriguing. In a world so overpopulated that unlicensed sex is outlawed and an unsanctioned pregnancy is punishable by death, would a mother make the ultimate sacrifice on a live television spectacle? Would she give up her life, allowing her organs to be donated to willing recipients chosen by the audience?

Unfortu...

A Clash of Kings Book Review

I was a huge fan of the first novel in the A Song of Fire and Ice series, so I eagerly began reading this the second book in the series, A Clash of Kings, as soon as I could. What carried over from the first book to this was Martin's crisp writing and the sweeping epic feel of the series. Unfortunately, what didn't carry over was the tightly woven narrative structure.

Perhaps it was the expansion of the epic nature of the conflict from two sides to multiple factions all vying for the crown...

My latest toy/hobby/creative outlet

Behold my latest toy!

That's right, I bought a guitar! As I told my wife, this is probably going to be as close to a mid-life crisis as I will ever have. Back in my long-haired youth, I played guitar and loved it. Somewhere in my early '20′s, I got the idea that I would never make money playing guitar so I gave it up, selling the guitar I had at the time when I needed the money. However, a few years ago, I needed some music for the book trailer I created to promote Under the Amoral Bridge. To ...

Not Quite a Revolution: Deux Ex: Human Revolution Review

Let's get the history out of the way. The original Deus Ex game, published in 2000, was a flawed masterpiece, a revolutionary video game that took the context of a first-person shooter game and added elements of role-playing games, open world sandboxes and cinematic narrative to create a truly original game. It's 2003 sequel, Deus Ex: Invisible War, was not and the less said about it, the better. While the story of the original game did carry the gentle scent of hackneyed plot, the game...

Wear the Black: Why Wikipedia is Going Dark

Hopefully, you've heard the news about Wikipedia. Today, January 18th, Wikpedia is taking its entire Internet encyclopedia offline in protest of the two Congressional bills worming their way through the festering guts of our crumbling legislative body: the Stop Online Piracy Act in the House and the Protect IP Act in the Senate. Both bills are backed by major media companies in their never-ending attempt to force you to continue to prop up their failing business models by claiming that...

Up the Rebellion: The Windup Girl Book Review

At its heart, The Windup Girl is a book about rebellion. In subtle and some not so subtle ways, everything and everyone involved is in some way rebelling against something else. The titular character rebels against the genetic programming that compels her to be subservient to humans. The foreign calorie companies attempting to strike up trade with the isolationist Thai government rebel against the restrictions by trying to fund an actual rebellion. The "white shirts" of the Thai Environment M...

Tales from the Bridge Chronicles Released!

It's been a bit longer coming than I thought, but I'm happy to announce that the eBook-only short story collection, Tales from the Bridge Chronicles, Volume 1 has been released! The collection is a compilation of the short stories that I've released on the Tales site (found here), as well as short stories that have been published elsewhere. It also includes two short stories never before published in any form. All told it clocks in at around 65,000 words with 10 short stories in all, some...

A Long Road: Altered Carbon Book Review

My initial thoughts on Richard Morgan's Altered Carbon were that the book would be right up my alley. A noir-inspired cyberpunk action story with a hardassed protagonist? What more could I ask for? The book is full of interesting ideas about a futuristic society where death is a temporary condition so long as your stack (a digital file of your personality/memories/soul) is intact. Interstellar travel is accomplished by means of transferring your stack from one body to another body, either a c...

How Citizens United Creates Consequence-Free Lying

I've written before about the atrocity that is the Citizens United decision. You know the one, the Supreme Court decision that equated political advertising dollars with free speech, granting corporations the same free speech rights as individuals. I'd like to give you an example of how this decision is starting to poison the already poisoned political process. In what should surprise no one, this lesson comes courtesy of the master of shitbag political tactics, that rat bastard Karl Rove.

It...

High Def Nothingness: Zero History by William Gibson Book Review

I am a huge fan of William Gibson's work. His Sprawl and Bridge trilogies have influenced my work a great deal, as anyone who has read my novels can attest. Moving his Bigend novels back to present day, of which Zero History is the third in the series, sounds like a bigger deal than it actually is. The present day setting doesn't really hinder Gibson, but there's a lot more wrong with all three of the novels in this loose series than any sort of temporal shift can explain.

I unfortunately...