How to get this started? Hm...well maybe if we discuss the state of
the genre (god, how boring...). Well, I do count myself among the many
fans of The Wheel of Time (TWOT) series by Robert Jordan (remember,
I told you I spent many hours in hotel rooms?). There are quite a few home
pages dedicated to this; click 
for more information. How do you feel about book 8, The Path of
Daggers? It seems a little slow to me. I am not sure the
it was worth the wait. Also see The
Green Eggs Report.
My main interest is the fantasy side of SF&F. This was probably fueled by my maternal Aunt and Uncle, who bought me Tolkein's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy when I was young. I devoured these books, and have re-read them with pleasure several times since. I particularly enjoy one of the final episodes in The Return of The King, "The Scouring of the Shire."
I also count Terry Brooks' Shannara series and Landover books as a must read. The magic in Shannara is interesting, although not as complex as saidin and saidir in the WOT series. Brook's latest, The Druid-King of Shannara is a prequel to the series and provides a lot of background for the stories later told.
And of course one must mention the grandfather of SF, Robert A. Heinlein. This man, who has been productive for what, sixty years, has written such a broad spectrum of science fiction. I said above that I tend towards fantasy, but I have not yet read a Heinlien that I could put down. Some notable titles are Podkayne of Mars, Farnham's Freehold, and The Cat Who Walked Through Walls. Not to mention the adaptation of Starship Troopers, which was very good.
I am also an avid mystery fan. I plan my Monday nights around A&E 's Poirot and lately Sherlock Holmes, starring Jeremy Brett, who is the quintesential Holmes. David Suchet does a wonderful job as Poirot, too. I have long toyed with the though of combining Holmes and Nero Wolfe to produce a nineties detective who can "use the little gray cells."
I was in shift job which rotated mids/swing/day, and at the end of the cycle we got five days off. Myself and some cohorts from my crew would regularly get together for marathon sessions of D&D during these "five-offs." We had a very imaginative Dungeon Master, who spent many hours preparing for our weekend escapes. I developed several characters, a Mage and a Thief most notable amongst them.
One of the things in the back of my mind for a programming project is to 1). learn about how cgi and Java applets work so that I can 2). write the software to allow realtime RPG over the internet. I don't know if this is currently available (send me mail below if anyone knows more), but I envision a site which acts as a dungeon master and central location to which players can log into to interact.
This site would be running at all times, with several "games" going. The typical player would log in, and interact with which ever real characters or Non-Player characters the game daemon is running. When the player logs out, he would have the option of having his character disappear, or tag along with a party (sort of as a NPC) with e-mail sent when a major event occurs. I am still trying to flesh this out and would appreciate any comments and or suggestions.
Click HERE!
to see the results so far.
