Words are inadequate

William Gibson, Mona Lisa Overdrive

It's not as good as Count Zero. I don't even think it's as good as Neuromancer. But then, it had pretty darn high standards to live up to.

Four viewpoint characters this time: the daughter of a Yakusa oyabun who's been sent to England for protection during a Yakusa war; a mechanic who winds up taking care of Bobby 'Count Zero' Newmark's comatose corpus; Angie Mitchell, the MacGuffin of CZ; and Mona, a street girl who looks a lot like Angie. The main story revolves around a plot to kidnap Angie, who'd had her head tampered with in CZ and still occasionally talks to the ghosts in the machines

MLO is a sequel to both Neuro and CZ, and maybe that's why it doesn't impress me. Angie-the-plot-device seems completely different from Angie-the-character, and all the Yakusa daughter added was some insight into Molly Sally's character; not really enough to justify the amount of time spent with her. There's still neat stuff going on, but . . . I dunno . . . it didn't move me as much. It's still exploring the ramifications of the end of Neuro, but it also brings in 3Jane, just to give Sally someone to worry about. CZ was all about "When It Changed;" MLO wants to make it more about the characters than the world. Which is a shame, because the characters are cool, but the world-changing made for a better story. (The last page or two redeems this, somewhat. Very cool way to end it.)

William Gibson, Neuromancer

What can you say about The Quintessential Cyberpunk Book? I started flipping through it a few weeks ago and it just drew me in again. Bits of it feel very eighties, and occasionally the future Gibson paints is jarringly retro, but on the whole the book has aged quite well.

I'm not sure I completely believe in Molly, which may be a problem since I think she continues to show up in the next two books. Case, though. . . Case was damn near perfect. Ditto Armitage. (His last scene. . . wow.)

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Shigeru Miyamoto, Pac-Man Vs.

Always it's the simple ones that make the best party games. This one is multiplayer Pac-Man, as weird as that sounds. Three players control the ghosts, on the television screen. The ghosts can only see a little bit of the maze around them. The fourth player uses a GBA hooked up to the GameCube via a link cable to control Pac-Man. With the GBA, Pac-Man can see the whole maze. If a ghost catches Pac-Man, the game starts over only now the ghost gets to be Pac-Man and Pac-Man plays as a ghost. So simple. . . and so incredibly fun. Spontaneous teamwork among the ghosts ("Upper right! He's in the upper right!") and frenetic cable-tangling, to the immortal sound of wakka-wakka-wakka. My only complaint is that neither the analog stick nor the D-pad are ideal control devices. Maybe if I could find four arcade sticks. . .

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Greg Stolze & Chad Underkoffler, Break Today

The Mak Attax sourcebook for Unknown Armies. Lots of good crunchy bits: a new archetype, three new schools of magick, a few rituals, and Familiars (which are, in fact, sufficiently creepy). Mak Attax was one of those things in the main book that always struck me as kind of wacky-- they're a loose cabal of fast-food workers who pass magic 'charges' on to unsuspecting customers, who then have those charges manifest as spontaneous magick, in the hopes that with enough weird stuff going on the world will be better able to accept the existence of the unnatural. Or something. Anyway, the book gives them a lot more . . . not structure, as such, but organisation? Purpose? There's a lot of write-ups of individual Attaxers, and just seeing the detail on the specific people makes it feel a lot more 'real' and less wacky. I'm not sure it was worth $30 (%&$ hardback) but it's a great sourcebook.