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Cyberpunk of Altered Carbon

In almost all Cyberpunk masterpieces in literature, comics, movies, games or whatever media exposure we think of when it comes to this genre, the settings is familiar. Dark atmosphere in both social and technological aspect of the story with dystopian surroundings and thin distinguished line between all characters within, no matter whether they are good or bad. I can't tell exactly why, but despite all the prosaic backgrounds and used stereotypes, I actually like this literary movement, perhaps because of the fact that people can't be really divided into good and bad per se. We all are combination of all possible adjectives out there and their summary is what makes us what we are. Actually, this is more accurate and closer to the truth compared to the "normal" or "usual" fiction with its ordinary hero-villain relations and idealized characters. Of course, like in any other genre, there are many poor and unmentionable works but also couple of those masterpiec...

Jules, Isaac, Arthur and Carl

I don't really remember what was the name of the novel I read for the first time in my life. Probably one of those great books for children, like Mark Twain's "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" or several of those with treasure hunt in story line with pirates and children in main character roles. It seems that it happened ages ago and whichever the book was, ever since then, especially in first decade or two after I learned to read, I swallowed a big amount of novels in realms of science fiction and different variety of adventurous stories. If I add tons of magazines, short stories and comic books to my reading habits back then, I think I can't be too much wrong if I say that my personality is shaped, more than I am ready to admit, with that big pile of paper I held in my hands decades ago. My early reading gave me one more thing besides pure knowledge and as weirdly as it sounds it is the smell of paper. Especially, the odor of printed paper just got out of printin...

Science Fiction

Do you remember Sony's first cassette-based Walkman that was remarkably playing stereo audio magnetic tapes back in 80s? Yes, everybody had it at the time hanged on the belt with pair of shiny wires playing music directly to both ears in awesome stereo. Comparing to 21st century, who doesn't like the iPod, right? Well, not me. I never liked it and I always thought everybody was staring at me the moment I stepped out the house. Even today I am not using any mp3 players or iPods or smartphones for listening music on the go. I simply want to think while walking, it relaxes me and it's a great brain exercise. But let me get back to the Walkman of the 80s. I had couple of those as well, but on occasions when I carried one from home to school I wasn't listening the pop music. I had that one audio cassette with complete audio track from the movie "Star Wars" and I am not talking about sound track accompanies the movies - it was the audio of the complete film, ...