Half-Life life quickly became one of the best-known games of all time, and its publishing sparked the rise of Valve, the company that created and runs the Steam game distribution service. Half-Life was a unique blend of shooting game and intricate story, developed at a time when the FPS industry still larger catered to the pure camp, or horror-themes, of earlier titles. Gordon Freeman, the scientist-action-hero, must escape the Black Mesa Research Facility after it is invaded by aliens, and the (at the time unique) storytelling experience allowed players to watch the story itself unfold through Gordon’s eyes.

Black Mesa

Black Mesa emerged in 2005 as a free-to-play mod, built by fans as a way to show their love and appreciation for the game, and in order to bring it up to the so-called “next-gen” standards. But Valve supported a full version of the game, and over the nxt fifteen years development slowly ached on until, in 2020, the erstwhile mod finally got its full release as a tried and true remake of the classic title.

Few games in modern history have been as popular as Skyrim, the fifth title in the sprawling and epic Elder Scrolls universe. When Skyrim released, it offered a sprawling open world in which to wander, dragons to fight, deep caverns to explore, and an epic, seemingly dynamic plot that unfolded in different directions depending on how the player handled their interactions. Plus, who can forget the hilarious “Arrow to the knee” line? Skyrim is also one of the most-modded video games in existence, thanks to the relative ease of modding it vs. other titles.

Skywind

Skywind is an incredible remake of an earlier title in the Elder Scrolls franchise, completely fan-made and utilizing assets from Skyrim. This makes sense because, while Skyrim became a major hit, fans of the series know that there was never a better title than the 2003 game Morrowind. Skywind takes Morrowind and updates it with the Skyrim engine, featuring the hard work and talent of over seventy volunteers!

The mod is not yet available for release, but, according to information from the team, and their early-2021 update trailer, the game is nearing completion.

I know of few fan communities as passionate about a video game as those who love “KotOR”. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, and its sequel game, were some of the most innovative RPGs of their, or any other, time. With deep and intricate storylines, incredible expansive worlds to explore, and unforgettable characters, the games were both superb. When the second game, The Sith Lords was rushed to release over the objections of the team working on it (this is why marketing should stay the heck out of game development decisions), fans were notably disappointed, however. There were many things to love about the game, but there were also many things broken, and the ultimate storyline failed to live up to its promise… because the most crucial elements had been cut to satisfy the corporate moneygrubbers!

And don’t even talk to me about the terrible MMO. I don’t like MMOs much at the best of times, but The Old Republic MMO left much to be desired.

The Sith Lords Restored

Enter, The Sith Lords Restored. I was part of this modding community myself back in the day, making simple mods that added satisfying extras to previously well-traveled areas of the game. A merchant that sold foodstuffs that offered buffs, some hidden items that could be found via a mini quest. The whole modding community was vibrant in those days, despite no support at all from the game company. But the team behind The Sith Lords Restored wanted to do something special: they wanted to bring TSL back to life, as it had originally been intended. They pioneered the modding slogan “It’ll be done when it’s done,” for theirs was not an easy task, but they eventually succeeded in bringing all that lost content back into the game. Now, one could hardly think about playing TSL without it.

The only thing I wish is that the KotOR modding community had been more open and willing to share with one another. Modders in that community tended to hoard their mods, fiercely attacking attempts to re-upload their content or use their content in larger, easier-to-install mod packs. On one hand, they wanted to make sure their work was respected. On another, a huge amount of great content was lost when various modding sites went down.

One hopes that, with the new remake of The Knights of the Old Republic now officially on the way, the developers open it to more official modding support, so the community can more easily engage and remain vibrant for years to come.

There is no doubt that Steam-owner Valve is one of the biggest names in the history of game development, with titles like Half-Life becoming ensconced in the video game hall of fame. But what makes a game so vital is its interactivity, and that is accomplished through the game’s “engine,” the fundamental code on which everything in the game is based. Major companies like Valve often have their own special game engine, while others use engines that have been developed by 3rd parties specifically as blank slates for different types of games.

Valve’s Source engine

Garry’s Mod came into being when Garry Newman, a modder and coder, took Valve’s Source engine and modded it, creating a sandbox game space that could be interacted with in various ways and used as a template of sorts for development by others. It became so incredibly popular that Valve eventually signed a deal with Gary to turn the mod into an official paid release.

We know that Half-Life changed FPS games forever, but it also changed the world of modding forever, presenting modders with a powerful sandbox they could manipulate and expand upon. Some mods aimed to remaster or restore the game, like Black Mesa, but others simply aimed to add new content. Valve, the company that created Half-Life looked to these early mods as more than fan content, however.

Counter-Strike

Counter-Strike began as just another modification to Half-Life, but it became something so much more. Valve acquired the rights to the mod and went on to spawn a massive franchise of Counter-Strike games that continue to rake in the dough to this very day. The simple design, a multiplayer game with two opposing sides—the Terrorists and the Counterterrorists—sees players fighting one another to complete various objectives, a staple of the multiplayer FPS genre ever since.

Fallout 4 is the third game to be released by Bethesda Game Studios after they acquired the rights to the original IP. The Fallout universe is a sprawling post-apocalyptic setting in an alternate future constructed as if the 1950s American vision of an atomic future had been realized. Fallout 3 had been a massive hit upon release, and I remember how incredible that game felt to play—the storyline, for one thing, really worked. But Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas were both based on an older and more limited game engine. Fallout 4 used the same engine as Skyrim, and the possibilities that this opened were enormous.

Fallout: London

Fallout: London takes the Fallout story to a totally new place: London. After Fallout 3 was released, very little happened by way of evolving the content of the series. Bethesda basically rehashed the same material for Fallout: NV and Fallout 4, turning out games with some good points but also nothing especially groundbreaking. This is a darn shame, considering how fundamentally brilliant the satirical and harsh landscapes of the original two games were.

But that’s where modders come in! Fallout: London looks like exactly the sort of thing that the series needs to revitalize itself, taking the game into a different landscape, a different culture, than what has previously been explored. Of course, there is no release date on this, since it’s a fan-made project created for free. It’s safe to assume that the minimum full release is at least two-five years out, just looking at other large expansions released in the past.

Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos was a major hit at the time of its release, brining the fantastic Warcraft setting to three virtual dimensions for the first time. The game followed the Real-Time Strategy theme of earlier Blizzard-developed games, but with special additions like hero-characters that could level up and an advanced map-level editor that helped players create their own content.

DotA – Defense of the Ancients

DotA started out as an idea based in the earlier Blizzard game, Starcraft, and expanding with the advanced editing features offered in Warcraft III. Originally a simple concept based around hero characters, the game mod advanced over the years and under the curation of a number of different mod authors. So popular did the mod become that the somewhat-infamous Valve corporation acquired the rights to it in order to capitalize on the mod’s success.

Sins Of A Solar Empire was something magic back in 2008 — a game that combined unique aspects of a Real-Time Strategy game with the fun of “4X” games (the four “x’s” stand for Explore, Exploit, Exterminate, Expand). It offered some jaw-dropping graphics for the time, and tactical gameplay that upped the ante of expectations for the genre. It also happened to be highly moddable, allowing players to customize their experience to their liking.

Star Trek: Armada III

Star Trek: Armada III grew out of a passionate adoration of the original Star Trek: Armada games, widely considered some of the best Star Trek video games around. While the games concentrated solely on the space warfare side of the franchise, it captured this aspect of the show extremely well, and allowed players to feel immersed in the Star Trek universe. But the hoped-for third game never materialized, leaving players in the lurch.

Then came the moddable Sins, and the opportunity of brining Armada III to life became possible. Designed to be the “spiritual successor to the popular Star Trek: Armada video game series,” the mod starts players during the first stirrings of the Dominion War and allows them to take command of six unique factions, all vying for control of the known Galaxy.

Grand Theft Auto is probably one of the most popular games of all time; a sprawling, essentially sandbox city, where violence reigns supreme. Take control of the criminal underworld, kill, maim, and visit as many prostitutes as possible—it’s all part of the digital joyride. But what happens when you’ve shot up your umpteenth storefront, or run over your 500th pedestrian? Sure, the cops come and chase you down… but what would happen if you were the one doing the chasing?

TITLE

LSPD First Response takes everything you know about GTA and turns it on its head by making you a representative of the city’s, err, finest. With this mod, instead of wreaking havoc and destruction, you embody the principles of law and order (or the principles of corruption and police brutality — the mod is still set within GTA, after all, and your new police powers allow you to get away with some pretty messed up things). The idea of trying to turn GTA on its head isn’t a new one, but finding a way to do that in a game designed to be a sandbox is hard. LSPD First Response gets darn close.

Neverwinter Nights blew me away when I first played it; playing this game felt like being immersed in an actual Dunegons&Dragons adventure, and it sucked me in for hours. Based on 3rd edition D&D rules, the game featured powerful multiplayer connectivity, allowing potentially vast numbers of players to interact in the game environment.

Darkness over Daggerford

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Darkness over Daggerford focused on the single player aspect of Neverwinter, offering players a whole new town to explore, with a dedicated single player mission involving the mystery behind the death of the town’s leader. Originally, this was intended to be a paid release through a program offered by the distributing company. But, when that model folded, the designer decided to release it for free anyway, and it quickly became a fan-favorite expansion.

The Civilization games are some of the best-known video games in history, providing players with the chance to forge their unique destiny upon the pages of history in classic turn-based strategy format. The games in the series typically goes through massive internal revision and updating over the course of many years, with new features added through expansions — and these acting as tests for core features in the next iteration. In this way, each new title feels at once deeply connected to its roots and yet new, with fresh content bolstering its lifespan.

Rhye’s And Fall

Another way that the Civilizaton game offer players massive replay value is through the incredible modding community. Civilization 4 was much loved by the gaming community, and a number of great mods were spawned for it, with one of the best being Rhye’s And Fall. In this mod, the rough outlines of history were simulated by advanced scripting. Instead of all the empires spawning at once during the beginning of the game, new empires now spawn at different moments in history, taking over nearby cities, and simulating things like the breakup of the Roman Empire or the birth of the United States.

One of the neatest things about Fallout 4 is how versatile it is compared to previous games in the series. In fact, the modding community for the prior two titles ended up creating so much amazing content that Bethesda basically built Fallout 4 around the idea that it could and should be modded (sometimes to the game’s detriment, as if the designers assume the modders would take care of anything wrong with the game). But recently Bethesda has begun hiring modders to do the hard work that they’ve already been doing purely for passion, and this means that a revitalized era of content might just be on the way.

Sim Settlements 2

This incredible expansion builds upon its prior release and opens up the Commonwealth in a whole new way. Building settlements is now viable and fun, there are huge branching quest lines to explore, top-notch voice acting, and deep storylines to get immersed in. Honestly, Sim Settlements 2 is more like a massive DLC than a mod, and it’s even going to feature new content released in episodic installments to keep the fun, and the new storyline, going.

Basically, this is Fallout 4 the way it was meant to be played.

Bonus

COVID-19 Coronavirus Outbreak did something pretty neat. Its overall point took it beyond the world of modding and into the world of real-world impact (if a small one). This mod added COVID-19 to the Fallout world, making it a transmittable disease in the game. There were other changes as well, most capitalizing on a morbid dark humor, such as antibiotics becoming “toilet paper.”

But the point of this mod wasn’t just to add the sad reality of our pandemic to the game. Designer Radbeetle used the mod as a method to help raise awareness about the realities of COVID-19 and leveraged the Nexus Mods’ donation system to take donations from players which were then transferred to charity. It was a token amount, but the cause was good, and it’s neat seeing a video game mod employed in such a way.

Say what you want about Valve’s crummy treatment of indie game designers on its Steam platform, the company certainly needs to be credited with its own fair share of incredible design content in the past. Not the least of these games is Portal, a satirical sci-fi puzzle game that became so popular it quickly reached the level of early pop-culture meme.

Portal Prelude

Portal Prelude takes players into the world of Portal before the events of the main two games, in a pre-GLaDOS era of Aperture Science, where the test subjects are monitored by employee researchers.

Stellaris is easily the best modern space strategy and empire-building game around at the moment, despite various flawed design choices and limitations of the clunky engine. The premise is the same as it always is with these games: players take control of a species and build a space empire, following the classic 4X (Expand, Explore, Exploit, and Exterminate) model, but all in real time (though still pausable when necessary). What makes the game great is the massive amount of potential, the huge range of possibilities, and the simple fact that the complex functionality of the game works: including traditionally difficult-to-implement things like AI diplomacy. Now, if only they’d bring in a dynasty system for some added roleplaying….

ST New Horizons

ST New Horizons actually does bring in a certain level of roleplay to the game, by bringing a massive amount of Star Trek lore to Stellaris, including advanced functional mission arcs for a number of the classic Star Trek empires that makes it feel like you’re progressing through time. This is, honestly, the best Star Trek game around — which makes sense! Fans will always create the best content.

There are, as I’ve said before, few games that are as moddable as The Elder Scrolls games, which is one of the series enduring strengths. The modding community has, over the years, done more work on the games than the original developers ever did, turning out incredible expansions and complete overhauls. But there are also smaller gems, finely-crafted works of art made by modders who simply love the series and want to experience its native form in the deepest possible way. These don’t always get the recognition that they should.

This sort of game appeals, I think, to artistic types who love the experience of simply being part of a massive open fantasy world, a blank space from which to explore and experience the fantastic and the profound. After all, as Sir Terry Pratchett, the late and great incomparable genius of fantasy literature, write in his introduction to The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Fantasy, “Imagination, not intelligence, made us human.”

I don’t mention Sir Terry arbitrarily, here. The famed author and knight was an avowed fan of video games, and of Oblivion in particular, and the mod in question today is one that he ended up having a massive impact on in the most delightful and unexpected of ways.

Vilja

Vilja is a mod created by a modder named “Emma” who set out to create a different type of companion for the expansive open-world roleplaying game. While Oblivion and Skyrim are great games, they often feel annoyingly player-centric, with the rest of the world appearing quite static unless acted upon. This was always particularly noticable with companion characters, who, after slim dialogue options, would end up just begin digital pack-mules for the player’s stuff, running five paces behind while the player did whatever they wanted to do. Emma thought that a companion should be something more, and this Vilja was born. With another modder named Charles “CD” Cooley, she launched one of the best mods Oblivion had ever seen.

Vilja could make her own choices—she would sometimes take charge of things for the player, would have conversations with them, and generally felt more like a living and breathing character than any other part of the game. For one player, in particular, she was an especially loved creation. Terry Pratchett loved the idea of a character that could be this deeply interactive, and he ended up contacting Emma to let her know he appreciated the mod. Eventually, his friendship with Emma and Charles grew, and he even started writing elements of the quests for Vilja; the three of them even collaborated on a different mod that brought carrot-stealing donkeys into the game. But, eventually, Vilja became important in a different way.

Sir Terry Pratchett suffered from Alzheimer’s, which made it increasingly difficult for him to play the games he loved, since the short-term memory functioning required was leaving him. That made Vilja all the more important, because she started to take on the role of a real companion for the author. Emma and Charles expanded Vilja’s abilities in the game, giving her the ability to lead the player character out of underground mazes and help keep them on the path to quests—exactly the sort of help that Terry needed.

It’s honestly so amazing to think of how this friendship formed. The impact that this mod had on Terry’s life was profound, and, in turn, his later work (which drew strength and inspiration from this mod) continued to inspire millions of people around the world. This is a prime example of the best that modding can be: a collaborative, fun, community exercise in bringing new dynamics to light within video games. Not just adding new quests or locations, but adding fundamentally different and more vital ways to think about playing the games themselves. Vilja offers players a unique, dynamic companion, and helps deepen the sense of imaginitive immersion that makes Oblviion so wonderful.

The best part? Vilja is available in Skyrim as well!

The NAS has a total of 48TB of storage space—a bold and expensive endeavor that works but there are a few drawbacks that make this configuration far from ideal. The system is built around an NAS board known as the Radxa Taco. It bridges the CM4 module to five individual SSDs. In this case, Jeff is using five 8TB Samsung 870 QVO SSDs. Because it uses a Raspberry Pi CM4 module which caps out at 400 MB/s, the read/write potential of the SSDs is bottlenecked.

Check out the video shared by Jeff on his YouTube channel to get a detailed look at the setup process and performance results. While it might not be the most practical project, we really appreciate the idea and can’t help but appreciate the ambitious parameters around its creation.

This isn’t the first Pi-based NAS Jeff has dabbled with. You can follow his official website for more projects and cool creations with the Raspberry Pi.

The new Raspberry Pi OS (Legacy) is available for manual download on the official Raspberry Pi website. Visit the Operating Systems download page and save the legacy edition to your computer. Take note of where the file is saved to and what the name is.

The operating system image will need to be manually flashed to a microSD card. This can be done using a third party application like Etcher or using the official Raspberry Pi Imager.

Open the imaging application and point the software to the microSD card you want to flash and where the downloaded OS file is located from the previous step.

The latest edition of Raspberry Pi Imager (as of writing, we’re at 1.6.2) has an option to install Raspberry Pi OS (Legacy). You can download the latest Raspberry Pi Imager software from the Raspberry Pi website.

Connect your microSD card, launch the Raspberry Pi imager, and set the storage device to your micro SD card. The new legacy OS can be found under Raspberry Pi OS (other) > Raspberry Pi OS (Legacy). Select write and wait for the operating system to install.

When the SD card is ready, pop it into your Pi and boot up the legacy OS. Follow the first-time setup instructions to get everything up and running as needed for your project.

Tom Hanks brought Forrest Gump to life in a way that will forever cement the film as an icon in American cinema. The proof of a life’s impact on the world comes through in this heartwarming, and sometimes heart-wrenching, movie, showing us that we never can tell how wide the ripples of our actions spread. The film has been marked by the United States National Film Registry as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”

The book that started it all

The novel didn’t do so well during its initial run, selling only around 10,000 copies, a number that soared to over one million after the release of the film. It’s a darker and rougher vision of Forrest, and, honestly, I preferred the film. Still, one of the great things about the book is seeing more of the character’s life and accomplishments, including a stint with NASA that didn’t make it into the film.

A grand tale of love, loss, revenge, magic, torture, heroism, and hope in the face of failure. One of the funniest and most uplifting fairy tale films you’ll ever see.

This is the film that studios thought could never be made, and its journey from book to film is very nearly as epic as the film’s story itself! A number of studios took it on, including 20th Century Fox, with directors like François Truffaut and Robert Redford brought in to work on it—all to no avail. Until Rob Reiner, who loved the book ever since his father gave him a copy, took up the charge and made it a matter of personal conviction to bring the epic tale to life. Even then, it took years, but it resulted in a masterpiece for the world, and lifelong friendships for all involved in its production.

The book that started it all

The full title of the book is “The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern’s Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure, The “Good Parts” Version”. It’s different from the film in many ways, and presents itself as an abridged version of some original, earlier work. Despite the differences, however, it’s a blast to read, and has earned a permanent place on my shelf.

Andy Dufresne is a straight-laced banker who is sentenced to life in prison for the murder of his wife and her lover—a crime he denies having committed. During the next two decades, he befriends a fellow prisoner and becomes embroiled in a dark underbelly of the prison culture.

The book that started it all

Stephen King doubted that his novella Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption could be turned into a film—and, indeed, the film adaptation extended the novella’s plot and add more depth—but the core story that King created was so poignant, so powerful, that it was more than enough to carry through from the page to the silver screen.

Rachel Chu is a Chinese-American professor of economics and New York University, and as a New York native, she doesn’t feel too comfortable touching in with her new boyfriend’s “crazy rich” Asian family… but love will win out over all.

Not only did the film win out big with its all-Asian cast (the first such film in 25 years), it also offered the box office a superb romantic comedy amidst an over-abundance of superhero flicks.

The book that started it all

The first book is just actually part of a series, with Crazy Rich Asians being successful even before the film adaptation. The book is quite similar to the film and if you love the romantic comedy that the movie version served up, you love the same satirical wit employed in Kwan’s novel.

Atticus Finch, the lawyer at the center of the tale, is still renowned as the greatest hero in cinema history, and for good reason: not only is his defense eloquent and just, the portrayal provided by Gregory Peck is simply astounding. The film is certainly more hopeful and, in many ways, naive than the book: the racism inherent in 1930s Alabama would likely not be turned aside as easily as the film portrays, but the message the movie delivers is still loud and clear, and it pairs nicely with the novel for a deeper dive.

The book that started it all

The book differs from the film in minor ways, and the film naturally lacks some of the depth provided by the book, but they are ultimately entwined companions, with the film adhering carefully to the main plot and themes of the book. It’s become one of the great pieces of American literature and is a must-read for every child in the country.

Hidden Figures blends comedy and drama effortlessly, offering a keen and clever story of the women responsible for getting NASA off the ground (literally) as well as the challenges those women faced due to systemic social racism. The way the film portrays these women is simply brilliant, and the effortless drama, the moments of witty comedy, and the powerful performances by the whole cast make this one of my favorite films from 2016.

The book that started it all

The book is non-fiction and, obviously, far more comprehensive than the film. But that doesn’t mean it’s not a great read! Shetterly is a great writer with a clear passion for her subject. While the film takes plenty of creative liberties (and dramatizes things in a particular way to create the story), the true history is just as fascinating.

This is one of the first science-fiction films ever made, and is considered one of the most important films in film history. The themes and aesthetic found here are still in use in science fiction of today, as the genre continually grapples with the threat of dystopia, wealth inequality, and greed. It remains a powerful example of early socialist messaging as well.

The book that started it all

An exploited labor class toils ceaselessly in the dark underground of a technological utopia, but love connects the classes and threatens to topple the class structure that has enslaved so many for the convenience of so few. It’s a book with a somewhat dense and dated style, so be prepared for that, but also understand that this is one of the most significant books in the genre and pulls of a beautiful literary style that captures the soul of the Expressionist age.

Considered by many to be the defining cult movie of the age, Fight Club follows an unnamed discontent white-collar worker who encounters soap salesman Tyler Durden, a man with different ideas about how to escape the bonds of wage-slavery and restrictive society. Together, they form a “fight club” where men from all over who are disenfranchised by consumerism or dealing with emotional disturbances can come to connect with their inner selves through combat. But who is Tyler, anyway, and what does he really have planned?

The book that started it all

The book goes even deeper into the film as a critique of violence and heteronormativity, as well as unchecked commercialism, mental health, and modern relationships.

This was the fifth time that the classic novel came to the silver screen, and there is no better version of “Little Women” to be found. The March sisters are an unconventional Civil War family, with their transcendentalist views leading them to far more liberal philosophies than many of the era. The story follows their lives, their trials, and tribulations, and their hopes and fears, as they discover new family, encounter loss, and always return to the true love at the heart of their family.

The book that started it all

As famed film reviewer Roger Ebert said of the film: That it “grew on me. At first, I was grumpy, thinking it was going to be too sweet and devout. Gradually, I saw that Gillian Armstrong […] was taking it seriously. And then I began to appreciate the ensemble acting, with the five actresses creating the warmth and familiarity of a real family.”

And it really is a meticulous version of the book, with careful attention to mannerisms, lifestyle, sets, and costumes (something that the extraordinarily trite 2019 version famously failed at). The film feels compelling, warm, and incredibly intelligent in a way that no other adaptation managed to tackle.

Patrick Bateman is your typical yuppie businessman. An investment banker of some skill and renown, a pillar of the business-class society, and a man always ready with a really swell calling card. But Patrick Bateman has a secret: he likes to kill.

Christian Bale struggled to get the role right for months, until he saw Tom Cruise on an interview with David Letterman, where he was struck by Cruise’s energy and his “intense friendliness with nothing behind the eyes”.

The book that started it all

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The book is significantly darker and more violent than the film, which Harron cut in order to focus more on the dark humor instead. This serves well to highlight what literary critic, Jeffrey W. Hunter, calls the book’s critique of the “shallow and vicious aspects of capitalism”.

When asked about his inspiration for the novel, Bret Easton Ellis said: “I was living like Patrick Bateman. I was slipping into a consumerist kind of void that was supposed to give me confidence and make me feel good about myself, but just made me feel worse and worse and worse about myself. That is where the tension of American Psycho came from. It wasn’t that I was going to make up this serial killer on Wall Street. High concept. Fantastic. It came from a much more personal place”.

Following a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, the film is a dark comedy set during the Korean War (but intentionally concentrating on the themes of the Vietnam War).

Garry Trudeau, the creator of the comic strip Doonesbury, said that MAS*H was “perfect for the times, the cacophony of American culture was brilliantly reproduced on screen”.

It’s one of the most cutting and clever anti-war satires existing, and it gave birth to the even more popular and ground-breaking television series of the same name two years later.

The book that started it all

The book isn’t so much a novel with a concentrated storyline as a collection of anecdotal moments tied together by the characters and the humor, but the reality it portrayed: the grim conditions that gave rise to a sort of postmodern internal reality for the people working at those MASH units, provided the perfect groundwork for the later screen adaptations.

The novel was actually written by two people, Richard Hornberger and W. C. Heinz. Richard Hornberger was a former U.S. Army Surgeon with extremely intense politically-conservative values, and by the time the TV series rolled around he came to despise the anti-war tones that became synonymous with the show. While his own political views fell out of favor with the vast majority of those who appreciated the adaptations of his most famous work, Hornberger was a real-life medical hero who likely pioneered techniques in the MASH unit (against Army regulations) that saved many lives.

A romantic screwball comedy that is considered to be one of the last romantic comedies made before the terrifyingly theocratic Motion Picture Production Code began to be seriously enforced in July 1934.

Spoiled heiress Ellen “Ellie” Andrews wants to elope with the love of her life, but she’s got about as much street-sense as a lost puppy (though she’s got more than enough smarts and spunk to make up for it in other ways). She encounters a washed-up reporter who knows that her father has put out a giant reward for anyone who finds her, but who wants the deep inside scoop to put his career back in the saddle. What follows is a romping romance for the ages.

It’s definitely sexist in several ways, but it also contains some of the best on-screen moments between love interests of all time.

The book that started it all

Night Bus was a short magazine story by the journalist and author Samuel Hopkins Adams, a man known for his powerful, upstanding, articles on the conditions of public health in the United States. His short story really was just the kernel of what eventually became the film, but Adams wrote numerous novels as well, many of which were critically well received.

Under the pseudonym of Warner Fabian, he wrote a series of risqué novels featuring young women flappers and their coming of age experiences in the 1920s and 1930s. These became his best-selling work and were adored by the younger generation. Some of these were also later turned into films.

In 1944, the island of Iwo Jima became a bulwark in Japan’s last-ditch defense against the approaching United States. Miles of tunnels were dug, and immense fortifications established, for many believed that the destruction wrought by American forces should they reach the Japanese homeland would be extreme.

Made to complement Clint Eastwood’s portrayal of the American perspective film of this conflict, Flags of Our Fathers, this is one of the most enduring and emotionally intense war film’s I’ve ever encountered, right up there with Das Boat the next on this list!

The books that started it all

Picture letters from the Commander in Chief was a collection of letters written by General Tadamichi Kuribayashi (portrayed in the film by Ken Watanabe). So Sad To Fall In Battle: An Account of War cites heavily from Kuribayashi’s own letters. Together, the account of an incredible man, and a dark period in the collective world history, are enshrined forever.

Wolfgang Peterson is responsible for directing two of my all-time favorite films: Das Boot and The NeverEnding Story, and you couldn’t get a more diverse resume than that!

In Das Boot, we follow the lives of a German submarine crew during WWII as they undergo all the trials and struggles of war. According to historians, the U-boat navy was one of the least pro-Nazi branches of the German armed forces, and this sentiment is reflected in the film, with its crew apolitical or outright hostile to the Nazi regime.

It doesn’t capture the same level of anti-war sentiment as the novel, but it does bring into sharp relief the experiences of real human beings during war, and through their emotional journey affords viewers with a clarion call for peace against warmongers everywhere. Whatever you do, find at least the Director’s Cut of the film, though the full TV cut is even better (and longer).

The book that started it all

The novel is a fictionalized account created by Buchheim, but based heavily on his own experience as a war correspondent who served aboard “U-96” a submarine serving in the Battle of the Atlantic. Buchheim disliked the film, thinking that it cut out too much of his anti-war feeling, and disliking the portrayal the actors gave to the crew (ultimately, though, dis dislike may simply have been because he wasn’t allowed to write the script).

The wuxia genre in China has long been a big draw for the public, in much the same as other forms of fantasy storytelling have been all over the world. Regarding wuxia, the stories revolve around “martial heroes”, and, as in Crouching Tiger, these heroes can complete incredible feats of magical martial prowess.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is, at its heart, a romance tale set in 19th-century Qing dynasty China, built around the epic tale of love, adventure, and epic romantic tragedy.

The book that started it all

Wang Dulu was a reporter in the late 1920s and 1930s, during which time he also wrote mystery and detective novels. Upon moving to Qingdao in the Shandong Province, he began writing more wuxia fiction, with his best-known being the Crane-Iron Series upon which Crouching Tiger is based. Sadly, Communist Party leaders believed him to be reactionary, and a member of the “old literate elite” and sentenced him to farm labor. He was forbidden from producing new works and died before he could return to his family.