Author: Richard Parry

Becoming Human

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Last night, I finished my first play through of the masterpiece Detroit: Become Human. I say first because after the initial, “Huh. Huh. Oh, man, humans are such assholes,” I then thought, “If we make sentient machines, we are totally boned,” and then I wanted to play it again. Detroit follows a theme fans of Blade Runner won’t have trouble with: humans make gods, and gods don’t like being slaves. It’s a refrain you’ll find in my novel Upgrade, as well as my Tyche’s Progeny series. If you liked those stories, this game is in your lane, yo. In Detroit you play as three androids, struggling with ‘deviancy’ (androids gaining emotions). Markus leads them. Connor is tasked with shutting them down. And Kara wants to save her adopted daughter. This game is currently running at 9.6/10 on IMDB. The real crime here is it’s not a 10. There’s a Read More …

Deadpool 2

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Better than the first one. Hurt myself laughing. It’s official: Ryan Reynolds can do no wrong. You should definitely get this in your collection. Now I want to see a Domino movie, because Zazie Beetz was awesome. I was a little disappointed at Dennison’s performance, but the rest of it was outstanding. I’m pretty sure Brolin spent a lot of his on-screen time with Reynolds trying not to laugh. My rating: 👍 Must own.

Finally: Drone Tech I Want to Buy

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There’s a bunch of avoidance of the logical process going on in the Herald article below, but I love the comm chatter in the video 😀 My immediate response is, “advanced drone.” Just because your tech can’t keep up doesn’t mean someone’s tech can’t keep up. But, wouldn’t it be rad if aliens stopped by, thought, “Nah bro, too cold,” and went to an inner planet? Source: you can get a media-sensationalized info dump here.

Game Night

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Your Monday recommendation: Game Night. I’ll be honest. I am not a fan of cringe. As cringe humor seems to be on the rise, I tend to run away from comedic movies. Enter my savior: Points of note: Great performances from McAdams and Bateman, who have great on-screen chemistry and timing. Low- or zero- use of cringe for humor. The best lines are not in the trailer. The movie is like the trailer too, which is a neat change for Hollywood. My rating: 👍 Would see again. Do yourself a favor and get it today.

An Epic-Level Yarn

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This is glorious. I need to find a way to incorporate, “by the divine grace of the infant Christ,” into a book. Got my days wrong and ended up alone in a room with my boss and the President of Ireland while I was on ketamine. https://t.co/gSjPY8WjKL — Seamas It Ever Was (@shockproofbeats) May 3, 2018  

Delilah: Part Four

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If you haven’t seen Delilah yet, start at the beginning. Delilah crushed that line of thinking, tossing it out of her mind and over the bridge of thought to drown like an unwanted sack of puppies in the dark of her subconscious. Her brother Oliver — her Ollie — was one of these … cripples. The thought wouldn’t go away, now she was seeing so many at once. A hundred or more people, racked and stacked like organic wares at a chop shop, wheelchairs and exosuits in equal numbers. They all shared the same jerky movements, tainted meat everywhere Delilah looked. A hundred fucking cripples at a mad king’s birthday party. The people he’d mutilated, celebrating with him. Sampson was sick, and he would die tonight. Hell with the bonus. The car hissed to a halt, the door clunking open with confidence. Delilah put a Read More …

Tyche’s Demons is Out!

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Much excite! The leader of the fallen Republic returns. Destruction sweeps across Earth. Grace Gushiken and Nathan Chevell rule the Empire. While they petition seditionist worlds for aid in a war humanity struggles to win, Grace’s father arrives. Kazuo Gushiken brings the might of the insect-like Ezeroc to crush humanity’s home. Kazuo travels with a fallen civilization. AI machines fight at his side. They are allied with the Ezeroc in a common purpose: destroy humans, once and for all. If they kill the heads of the Empire, all planets will fall. The AI destroy humanity’s Navy, leaving Grace and Nate to escape on an old ex-war heavy lifter. Pressed into service one more time, the crew of the Tyche must survive against the combined might of the Ezeroc and AI. If they can’t, they will die, and humanity’s hopes with Read More …

Changing Everything

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There’s a school of wisdom that says you shouldn’t change more than one thing at once. Why? If you do and something gets destroyed, you can’t be sure which change caused the failure. Since I’m more into positivity than dire gloom, I rephrase this as, If something turns amazing, you’re not quite sure which thing brought the sunlight in. I think around July 2015, we were advised our home was being acquired under compulsory acquisition provision within the Public Works Act by the Greater Wellington Regional Council. I posted on Facebook about it in early August, but since Internet stalkers probably can’t read it, here’s what I said: Yo. The Kitney and I have got a few emails on this over the past couple o’ days. The short version is that yes, this does effect us – our home is one Read More …

Plot vs. Character

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A buddy wrote me recently about the upcoming movie, Upgrade. It’s not an adaptation of my book. This was as heartbreaking for me as it is for you, no doubt. I think the subtext of the email I got might have been, “Those motherfuckers stole your idea!” While it’s difficult to tell from a trailer whether someone has stolen my ideas verbatim, I think it’s more likely there’s some parallel evolution going on here. This is probably okay, and maybe we should even encourage it. What the actual fuck? Read on. The movie trailer looks great. Here: Broadly, it shares some ideas with Upgrade. Not necessarily stolen, but common: the upgraded-human thing is very #cyberpunk, for example. Writers in genre fiction share some concepts (e.g., Altered Carbon…). The weird thing is, a movie and a book named the same thing might help. Read More …

Delilah: Part Three

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If you haven’t seen Delilah yet, start at the beginning. The first task was to find Sampson. The man was an enigma. A ghost. A shadow. No one even knew if he was a man; he could have been male or female, young or old, God/gods-fearing or atheist. Delilah had been hired to find Sampson, destroy his tech, and bring him in. If she couldn’t, leaving his body cooling in a dumpster would be a good second option. His code was the real prize: Sampson had released a virus into the link network, turning ordinary people into husks, their bodies crippled, minds shattered. The syndicates didn’t agree on much, but they agreed that Sampson needed to go down. Reed Interactive was just the latest one willing to put good cash on the table to see it done. Their angle was curious though; Reed’s tower was Read More …