{"id":498,"date":"2012-04-28T23:51:47","date_gmt":"2012-04-28T14:51:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/2012\/04\/28\/books-by-shamus-young\/"},"modified":"2012-04-28T23:51:47","modified_gmt":"2012-04-28T14:51:47","slug":"books-by-shamus-young","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/2012\/04\/28\/books-by-shamus-young\/","title":{"rendered":"Books by Shamus Young"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"floatleft\">\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.smashwords.com\/books\/view\/124443\">Free Radical<\/a><\/p>\n<p\/>\n<p><iframe src=\"http:\/\/rcm.amazon.com\/e\/cm?lt1=_blank&#038;bc1=000000&#038;IS2=1&#038;bg1=FFFFFF&#038;fc1=000000&#038;lc1=0000FF&#038;t=daveva-20&#038;o=1&#038;p=8&#038;l=as4&#038;m=amazon&#038;f=ifr&#038;ref=ss_til&#038;asins=B006JALMLG\" style=\"width:120px;height:240px;\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p\/>\n<p><iframe src=\"http:\/\/rcm.amazon.com\/e\/cm?lt1=_blank&#038;bc1=000000&#038;IS2=1&#038;bg1=FFFFFF&#038;fc1=000000&#038;lc1=0000FF&#038;t=daveva-20&#038;o=1&#038;p=8&#038;l=as4&#038;m=amazon&#038;f=ifr&#038;ref=ss_til&#038;asins=B007AKDFM8\" style=\"width:120px;height:240px;\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>I&#8217;ve linked to Shamus Young&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/\">Twenty Sided<\/a> blog before.  He puts a lot of time into his blog and what he writes there, often explaining technical concepts in plain, easy-to-understand language.  He has run a great series on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=2940\">procedurally generating a nighttime city<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=141\">a 3d terrain engine<\/a>.  <\/p>\n<p\/>\n<p>I was happy to hear that he was working on writing a fiction novel, The Witch Watch.  He&#8217;s actually written two novel type things before, one of them the freely available &#8220;Free Radical&#8221;, which is loosely based on the old First Person Shoot &#8220;System Shock&#8221;.  I never played System Shock, I actually never really got into first person shooters.  I did play Bungie&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Marathon_(video_game)\">Marathon<\/a> (look it up kids, also now freely available as <a href=\"http:\/\/source.bungie.org\/\">Aleph One<\/a>) but never got too far.  I kept getting lost and confused, and people were shooting at me.  It was too much pressure.  <\/p>\n<p\/>\n<p>I did actually, come to think of it, complete one &#8220;first person Shooter&#8221;, <a href=\"http:\/\/orange.half-life2.com\/portal.html\">Portal<\/a>.  But that was more because it was a great game and allowed me to take my time to think about things without getting shot up all the time.  Or lost as much.  <\/p>\n<p\/>\n<p>Anyway, I didn&#8217;t know anything about System Shock, but I have read a lot of cyberpunk and I do know a lot about computers.  So I was really happy to read Shamus&#8217; take on the genre, and also thought he did a great job of writing about Cyberpunk and computers without making all the dumb mistakes about computers that people who don&#8217;t know about programming make.  You can get a kindle version for free at the link to the left, and I highly recommend it.  You won&#8217;t beat it for the price (free!) so you can&#8217;t lose much by taking a chance on it.<\/p>\n<p\/>\n<p>More recently, Shamus wrote an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=12687\">autoblogography<\/a>, and then turned that into a book (linked to the left.)  Shamus didn&#8217;t enjoy school much and homeschools his own children.  While I never really fit in at high school, I don&#8217;t think I had a bad experience.  I made some great friends, worked hard, learned a lot, and had some fun.  I&#8217;m not sure that I would have described it as such at the time, but that is probably more just about being that age with others kids in a social situation.  At any rate, you can read Shamus&#8217; take on his education process in the book &#8220;How I learned.&#8221;  It is also full of funny stories and is a run read itself.  You can read through it on his blog as well, so give it a try.<\/p>\n<p\/>\n<p>Once you are done with all of that content I linked, you can then decide if you want to buy his book &#8220;The Witch Watch.&#8221;  I really enjoyed this book.  It is completely worth the price &#8211; I think he has dropped the price all the way down to $5, which is my impulse purchase price for books now.  I&#8217;ve been reading a lot more with the Kindle, and taking chances on books with lower prices and finding some really good stuff.  For $5 though, The Witch Watch is a steal.  It is well written, has a very well-thought-out magic system, and has interesting characters, as well as a strong female lead.  The only knock I have on her is that she is a bit too appealing as a smart, confident, skilled, and attractive character that seems like a dream come true for geeks, but that isn&#8217;t really too hard of a flaw to overlook.  Better than the default of assuming that a woman couldn&#8217;t be all those things at any rate!<\/p>\n<p\/>\n<p>I highly recommend the Witch Watch!  If you liked Brandon Sanderson&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/B003G93YLY\/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&#038;tag=daveva-20&#038;linkCode=as2&#038;camp=1789&#038;creative=390957&#038;creativeASIN=B003G93YLY\">Elantris<\/a><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=daveva-20&#038;l=as2&#038;o=1&#038;a=B003G93YLY\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" style=\"border:none !important; margin:0px !important;\" \/> then you will like the Witch Watch.  And if you haven&#8217;t read Elantris, I recommend that one too!<\/p>\n<p><br clear=\"all\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Free Radical I&#8217;ve linked to Shamus Young&#8217;s Twenty Sided blog before. He puts a lot of time into his blog and what he writes there, often explaining technical concepts in plain, easy-to-understand language. He has run a great series on procedurally generating a nighttime city and a 3d terrain engine. I was happy to hear [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=498"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}