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“Spine” SGF: Play Days 2025 Hands-On Preview

 

As someone who’s been writing about video games for more than 30 years, one of my pet peeves is when a game developer denies that their game is similar to or influenced by another game or a movie or a TV show. “So, your game is a sci-fi first-person shooter in which you play as a supersoldier in a mech suit…but it’s nothing like Halo? Really?!?”

It’s why I was pleasantly surprised when a representative of Nekki asked me if I wanted to see their upcoming third-person shooter Spine at this year’s Summer Game Fest: Play Days event in Los Angeles…and almost immediately said it was influenced by, and somewhat similar to, both the Batman: Arkham games and the John Wick movies.

And then I was pleasantly surprised again when she handed me the controller.

Here are my impressions of the game.

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Books

Exclusive Interview: “Deception” Author C.C. Robinson

 

In the following email interview about her new novella Deception (paperback, Kindle) — a side story to her Divided series of young adult dystopia science fiction action / adventure novels — author C.C. Robinson admits that, “I love novellas featuring secondary character side quests, as readers see more of the world and gain greater insight into the main characters.”

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Books

Exclusive Interview: “The Dark Mirror” Author Samantha Shannon

 

With The Dark Mirror (hardcover, Kindle, audiobook), author Samantha Shannon is presenting the fifth book in her seven part dystopian fantasy series The Bone Season.

In the following email interview, Shannon talks about what inspired and influenced both this Ancient Greek myth-inspired alt-history series and this fifth installment, as well as where things stand with the final two books.

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Books

Exclusive Interview: “The Adjudicator” Author Susan Daitch

 

While gene editing could have benefits for humanity, it’s a pipe dream to think it will only be used beneficially.

But as we’ve learned from, well, so many things, what works badly in real life can often work well in fiction.

In Susan Daitch’s biopunk / futuristic steampunk science fiction novel, The Adjudicator (paperback, Kindle), she presents a world in which — as she explains in the following email interview — eugenics have run amok.

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Books

Exclusive Interview: “The Sum Of All Things” Author Seb Doubinsky

 

Over the last fifteen years, author Seb Doubinsky has written ten stand-alone novels in his dystopian noir and more series, the City-States Cycle, including the newest, the sci-fi and espionage-infused The Sum Of All Things (paperback, Kindle).

But while he went into writing The Sum thinking it would also be the end of the story, it seems this series has different ideas.

In the following email interview, Doubinsky talks about why The Sum was going to be the end of the City-States Cycle, why it’s not, and how thinking it would be influenced how he wrote it.

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Books

Exclusive Interview: “Divided” Author C.C. Robinson

 

People often talk about our current political and social situation as being dystopian and a time when we have never been more divided, ideologically-speaking.

But in C.C. Robinson’s The Divided Series, the world actually is dystopian, and the divisions are not just social and political, but physical as well.

In the following email interview, Robinson discusses the first installment of this dystopian Y.A. science fiction series, Divided (paperback, Kindle), as well as her plans for the other books.

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Books

Exclusive Interview: “The Fortunate Fall” Author Cameron Reed

 

When we talk about iconic cyberpunk stories, we usually mention Blade Runner, The Matrix, and the novels of William Gibson, Philip K. Dick, and Neal Stephenson.

But we should also talk about Cameron Reed’s The Fortunate Fall, which took what Gibson et al. did and took the genre in a unique direction.

And maybe now we will, since Tor Books are releasing A Tor Essentials version of The Fortunate Fall (paperback, Kindle, audiobook), which augments the 1996 novel with a new intro by sci-fi writer Jo Walton [Tooth And Claw].

In the following email interview, Reed discusses what originally influenced this story, as well as why the main character has an implanted camera as opposed to just some snazzy video glasses.

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Books

Exclusive Interview: “The Bound Worlds” Author Megan E. O’Keefe

 

In most trilogies, the Big Bad is usually defeated in the third and final installment, while its impact is often left as an afterthought.

But in Megan E. O’Keefe’s The Devoured Worlds series, the central antagonist was [SPOILER ALERT] beaten in the second book, The Fractured Dark, which meant she could really delve into what happened next in the last book, The Bound Worlds (paperback, Kindle, audiobook).

In the following email interview, O’Keefe explains why she altered the trilogy formula, as well as what else inspired and influenced this horror- and dystopian-infused sci-fi space opera story.

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Books

Exclusive Interview: “Briefly Very Beautiful” Author Roz Dineen

 

In the following email interview, writer Roz Dineen talks about how her new sci-fi novel, Briefly Very Beautiful (hardcover, Kindle, audiobook) takes place in a post-apocalyptic world, but one in which people, “…take it for granted as a back-drop,” an idea she got from a classic show about a house.