"Wage Slave Rebellion" by Stephen W. Gee

"Imagine what would happen if a magician’s workshop had sex with a scientist’s laboratory. Now stop that, because it’s weird, and not helpful at all."

Mazik hates his crappy job as a weapon salesman, and his friends aren't particularly happy as wage-slaves either. So he decides is time to put his magic skills to actual use and strike out on his own. Time to be his own boss! Time to become an adventurer!

( Ain't perfect, but pretty decent. )

Overall: It's not Terry Pratchett in his heyday, but it's a fair stab in that direction and a very good first outing. Modern escapism for the fantasy-loving frustrated 20-something.

"Pwned" by Matt Vancil

A story taking place in the Gamers universe (with Lodge, Cass and Leo guest-starring) about a man who loses his girlfriend to WoW addiction, and goes into the game to get her back. Basically, if The Gamers was about MMOs.

( Doom doom-pah doom... )

Overall: Like many things, it could have used a slightly firmer editor's hand. But I'd call it a worthy addition to the Gamers canon, and that's as someone who only knows MMO culture secondhand. I suspect that if you actually play WoW, you'll do a lot of "Yep, yeah, that totally would happen."

"What If?" By Randall Monroe

This is the book by the guy who writes xkcd; and I find it hard to believe anyone who wasn't already a fan of his style of extreme nerd humor would find themselves reading it.

Based on his columns (link) but including some new questions and annotations to old ones, there's a fun variety of insanity. Light-speed fastballs? Disappearing atmospheres? Giant raindrops? (I fell way behind on reading the posted columns, so a lot of the questions and answers were new to me.)

My one big disappointment is that I thought a bunch of the weird "rejected" questions would have made for fun dissections. Instead they mostly get rejected with a "You're a weirdo for asking this, ha ha." Which seems kind of insulting to his target audience, especially coming from him, y'know?