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  • Notes on Iain Banks’ Transition

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    2–4 minutes

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    46 comments on Notes on Iain Banks’ Transition

    Iain Banks’ latest novel, Transition, is perhaps his strongest work in recent years, straddling his science fiction persona (Iain M Banks) and his non-genre, non-M persona (Iain Banks). For me, it combined his fantastic world-building imagination that we see in his Culture novels with the more rooted nature of his traditional novels – with a…

  • Spooks: Code 9 – They Got it Backwards

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    3–5 minutes

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    3 comments on Spooks: Code 9 – They Got it Backwards

    Note: I am not about to reveal any secrets about Spooks: Code 9 or its production. A dedicated fan of Spooks could have written this, and while I’m not one, I did spend a lot of time thinking about, and watching, the show. These are my own opinions, and not that of Six to Start.…

  • Books of 2009

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    3–5 minutes

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    I haven’t talked much about the books I’ve read recently, and having finished a slew of them recently, I thought I’d take a look back at all the books I’ve read this year. On the whole, there aren’t as many as usual; work, magazines and periodicals, and notably Infinite Jest, really took their toll. January…

  • Why Smokescreen is the Best Game Ever*

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    1–2 minutes

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    No comments on Why Smokescreen is the Best Game Ever*

    I just published a post, Why Smokescreen in the Best Game Ever*, on the Six to Start blog with some game design thoughts behind Smokescreen, our latest game. It goes into a fair level of detail about some of the interesting features in Smokescreen and provides the reason why we added them; if you’re into…