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Favorite Fantasy/Sci-Fi Books, Movies and Games!

blange3

blange3

OK since I rudely hijacked the Potter thread in a desperate attempt to keep my imagination stimulated, I'm starting this thread with a really broad scope.

When it comes to books, my favorite all time fantasy reading was the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. In sci-fi I liked Dune up to the 4th book and then I gave up. I've also read the Foundation Trilogy a few times.

Star Wars wins the movie category for me hands down!

When it comes to games, the old Warcraft was my favorite. I did limited on-line gaming, can't handle the 24x7 need to be on-line for things like Everquest and World of Warcraft.

I've always had an interest the Warhammer modelling and gaming, but never got going with it.

And at this point I'll stop as I realize I am the consummate geek!
 
Hawkeye

Hawkeye

I recall there to be a fourth book and also a prequel. Robert Jordan's long-winded wheel of time series is also interesting. I actually liked Tolkien's Hobbit a lot - it had much more depth on the dwarves and helped set the stage for the trilogy and the ring and of course that crazy guy Smeagol.

In terms of movies - The Princess Bride, ('My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die!')
and
Monty Pythons Holy Grail ('what is your favorite color?')

For gaming...let's just say my wife has seen enough of Shogun Total War, Starcraft, Diablo...oops I'm relapsing into my vice again.

Are we competing on this thread for top geek?
 
MadReefer

MadReefer

Staff member
NJRC Member
Moderator
Only fantasy game I recall playing was D&D. As for books I read many books by Piers Anthony and Roger Zelany.

Mark
 
blange3

blange3

Hey Phil,

Although I keep mentioning LOTR, I've read The Hobbit at least 6 or 7 times as well. I liked the dwarven focus as well. I even managed to make it through The Silmarillion.

Hey John, you want to talk about religious undertones, The Silmarillion is Tolkien's book of Genesis. Tough reading, though.

Genesis?! Genesis is planet forbidden! Oops I warped into another fictional realm! ;D

I don't know if this is becoming a competition or not, but I have also been addicted to Starcraft and have played Diablo. I never played Diablo online, though.
 
M

mladencovic

blange3 said:
So what follows the Trilogy? Or are you just suggesting read everything Asimov??
Click to expand...
:)

for starters

- Prelude to Foundation (1988)
- Forward the Foundation (1993)

then comes the trilogy, after which he continues with

- Foundation's Edge (1982)
- Foundation and Earth (1986)

AND THEN he connects it with the whole robots cyclus that is in

- Robots and Empire (1985)

which connects with

- The Robots of Dawn (1983)

which is sequels for

- The Caves of Steel (1954)
- The Naked Sun (1956)

which of course connects with all of his Robots stories.

And yes he even managed to connect his Foundation, or to be more precise, to cennect the First empire (the one that falls in pieces in first Foundation) with much earlier Empire novels:

- Pebble in the Sky (1950)
- The Stars Like Dust (1951)
- The Currents of Space (1952)

Belive it or not, in the end he managed to connect all of those and who knows what else ::)
 
K

kathainbowen

I love, love, love the new White Wolf Changling book, even though I'm not supposed to know that I love it yet! A friend of mine in Atlanta has some connections and ended up with a copy before the release, so we were all enjoying pouring over it. I used to do improve games with friends, but, when I moved to Atlanta, I fell into a grou of people who were head over heels with White Wolf, and especially the live action portions of it. They used to drag me to games, and I'll admit having a lot of fun playing (up until combat happened and rule books, regimental turns, and S.T.s had to step in- then I'd get bored and make my character conveniently duck out if possible).

I enjoy odd games like Apples to Apples and Fluxx. If any one else is game, I'll bring a Fluxx deck to a meeting if I ever get to one, for a massive, madness Looney Lab game! (*Some people play Fluxx to win, I play Fluxx to mess things up since you can change the rules every round). But I'll never argue with a good game of Settlers of Catan, providing the other players have a good sense of humor about crushing sheep into other things (*if you've played, you might get the joke). If I can get my hands on a big enough group, Are You A Werewolf is an awesome game. The first time I played, I was mildly.... er.... more than mildly intoxicated at 3:00 AM at Dragon*Con.

And, yes, The Princess Bride is one of the best movies evah! ("As you wish!" and the Rodents of Unusual Size still kill me to this day), although the Tremors, Pirates of the Carribbean, and Aliens movies hold special places in my geek heart.

Comics run in my family, so it's no surprise that I'm a lover of comic books, especially off beat ones. Some of my favs are Neil Gaiman's works (Signal to Noise is one of my favs that you rarely see ever, but you just can't beat The Sandman or The Eternals), as well as some of the defunked CrossGen comics like Ruse and Route 666. And, as obvious by my first thread in Open Water, I'm a big zombie nut, so, right now, my comic reading enjoyment stems from an absolutely wonderful read in The Walking Dead. I highly recommend it!

But, right now, I haven't had much reading time. I've been working on character design for a small-ginormous project with a friend of mine. He caught wind of a manuscript of mine I'd been kicking around for a couple of years and fell in love with it. So, he's been helping me get into gear to launch this comic online on December 31st (we hope!). I spend a lot of time tooling around with the different characters (three of them are finally there!)
 
J

jerseydiablo

Never really got into reading books all that much. Comics & Graphic novels were my thing - Spawn, Cable, Youngblood, most of the Image comics when they first came out. Graphic novels - Bone, Dart Knight Returns, Watchmen

Movies - Star Wars, LOTR, the first Matrix, The Fifth Element, What Dreams May Come and

not sci-fi but my all time favorite action flick is Leon: The Professional

games -
Halo, Half Life 2, Command & Conquer series


how bout for TV shows as well?

Quantum Leap was great, Heroes is awesome, and I used to love Lost but got really tired of it after a while
 
MikeNapoli

MikeNapoli

Books - Anything StarWars, the after story with Luke and the New Jedi Academy is really good, Grafic Novels for Xmen, Spiderman, Batman, Superman, Sin City, Image and Marvel are great D.C. is good but a distant third .. the only other books i read are John Grisham.

Movies - StarWars, Legend(anyone remember this movie.. before Tom Cruise became a scientologist weirdo), Running Man(arnold), XMen-Spiderman-Transformers-Fantastic Four, A Clockwork Orange (great), Teenwolf, Back to the Future 1, Sky High, there's alot more.

Games - Resident Evil Series, Resistance of Man, I tried W.O.W. and it was too much game for me to handle, anything with football and soccer.

TV - I agree Heros is great, Lost is our Generations Gilligans Island (not into it either),
 
T

Treadingwater

My favorite fantasy books are also the Hobbit and Lotr series, though I have read a few other good series like the Dark Elf Trilogy. The Dragon Riders of Pern series was pretty good also. I liked The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, but I found it hard to follow in some spots. Overall the storyline was really good, though.

As for Sci-Fi books, I never really got into them to much. I'm much more into the fantasy.

I've played the Warhammer game before my friend moved away. He played the Undead and I played the knights. We had some really awesome battles. In truth though, I liked the modeling as much as I liked playing the game. Painting all the miniature knights and horses and modeling the terrain that we battel ed on was really fun.

As for on-line games, I've played quite a few. Eq, Dark Age of Camelot, and EQ2, just to name a few. Right now I'm playing the Lord of the Rings online, which I really like because I can hop on for an hour or 2 and feel like I can accomplish something. It's much less time demanding then other online games that I have played.

TV - none, except for Futurama and Family Guy, or the History and Discovery channels (depending what's on) for half an hour to an hour before I go to sleep. I will occasionally watch a hockey or football game also. I'm just not interested in most of what's on tv. I'd rather spend my time doing other things.

And yes, I guess I would consider myself a geek too, LOL :)
 
Hawkeye

Hawkeye

blange3 said:
Hey Phil,

I never played Diablo online, though.
Click to expand...

I did, especially the LOD expansion. What was worse was I started to sell stuff on ebay. I think I needed to go thru rehab after that. :eek:
 
Hawkeye

Hawkeye

Treadingwater said:
I liked The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, but I found it hard to follow in some spots.
TV - none, except for Futurama and Family Guy, or the History and Discovery channels (depending what's on) for half an hour to an hour before I go to sleep.
Click to expand...

The white gold wielder right? Yeah that was an interesting series.

I know it sounds crazy but I love zoidberg and amy wong - what crazy characters.
 
blange3

blange3

Treadingwater said:
As for Sci-Fi books, I never really got into them to much. I'm much more into the fantasy.

I've played the Warhammer game before my friend moved away. He played the Undead and I played the knights. We had some really awesome battles. In truth though, I liked the modeling as much as I liked playing the game. Painting all the miniature knights and horses and modeling the terrain that we battel ed on was really fun.
Click to expand...

Well Jack, if you think the Brentonians might harbor a grudge against some High Elves, I might just have to give it a go! Do you have any heroes?
 
K

kathainbowen

blange3 said:
Not me, but my son was. Now it's all about WOW.
Click to expand...

Aw, man! You guys have to check it out if you enjoy Halo and especially if you enjoy it on Xbox Live! Unfortunately http://www.redvsblue.com Rooster Teeth only posts the current to previous season, and, even more unfortunately, it's over with episode 100. But you can youtube pretty much every episode from 1-100. Might I suggest trying out one of the best episodes (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bz09qZLbcLA Episode 39 : The Best Laid Plans) to see if you like it.
 
S

sharks

For you Star Wars fans you really should check out the books that continue the story. I recently started to reread them. They are all very good. The 6 from Timothy Zahn are great reads. If you want to check them out find a more recent novel in the series. In the first few pages there will be a novel timeline chart. You can read them in order and create a much larger picture of the Star Wars universe.

LOTR is still one of my favorite set of books and movies. Including the old cartoon movies. I grew up watching them over and over.

For games I would have to say WoW is my favorite. I played for a few months straight but decided to take a break and read some books for a while. I’m sure I will go back and play again but more in solo quests and leveling up. That way I can quit anytime and not have to worry about leaving other players/friends high and dry.
 
blange3

blange3

Hi Mark,

Good to see you around! Where have you been?

Are there a lot of solo opportunities on WOW? I wasn't aware that you could do much by yourself. To me the biggest barrier was not wanting to get involved with a lot of addcited gamers and spending more time playing than what I have to spare; and that ain't a lot!
 
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