Welcome to the weekend!  Here are six articles which I found interesting. Sit back and enjoy with your favourite beverage.

What is this book about? Besides knights riding dinosaurs?  Who cares? There are Knights and there are Dinosaurs! What else could make it better? 

Have you ever come across a story set in such a wonderful universe that long after finishing the book you find yourself thinking about the worlds these story's are set in and the possibilities of how these would affect our own lives?  I do! In this series I don't want to talk about the books story line, per se, but the actual mechanics or world building which carries the plot, that makes the book all that more memorable. Memorable Reads:The Long Earth Series. Stepper Box Schematics In the Long Earth Series , a device called a Stepper  was made freely available over the internet, it is a box which contained some rudimentary wiring, a three-way switch, and a potato as the power source. The idea explored is that our Earth sits in one of many parallel universes and that this Stepper  device allows people to step through them, sort of like moving from one card to the next in a deck of cards.

When my two oldest son’s were five and three years old I gave them a cardboard box and an old radio to pull apart, I never expected that I would end up in trouble from them for withholding critical information about the inner workings of the time machine they were ‘ building ’. It wasn’t working and they were very unimpressed when I wouldn’t provide the technical knowledge they required. How could I tell them that robots from the future would come back in time and try to kill us if I allowed them to create one? Because I know one of them is going to create a killer robot soon, no point in giving it a time machine as well. If you’re like me then there will be times in your life that you wish you could to travel back in time and knowing what we know now, make different decisions. These points in time generally involve feelings of regret especially if we believe those times changed our lives for the worst. The reality is that we all have to live with the mistakes we’ve made....

A lot of Science Fiction stories deal with a Dystopian future and, for the most part, I'm alright with that because Dystpoian stories work well with my view of human nature and entropy. This is why I have trouble reading Utopian stories. To me the Universe in which these stories are set is as much a character as the Human and Alien characters and as such should have a believable back story (or history). The history of the Universe in which these Utopian society are set need to be well thought out and allow us, the reader, to suspend our disbelief .

April 23, was the anniversary of William Shakespeare's death. (400 years ago). This is my contribution to commemorating this quadricentenary. Let's kick things off with this quick video I made on The Best Way to Experience Shakespeare. Enjoy with with a tankard of Metheglin or Malmsey .

 A few more hand picked articles from across the internet which I'm sure at least one of these will be of interest to you. Don't forget to check out my YouTube channel and let me know what you think. Last week I looked at a the Lack Of Resolutions In The Wheel Of Time. Now sit back with your favourite beverage and enjoy!

Because I like reading and watching Science Fiction and Fantasy related novels and films I often get asked questions about these topics so I thought that I would try to answer some of these frequently asked questions in this new series Ask Wolf.  I'm here to help and I'll try to answer any questions related to my interests. Tim writes “Why does Robert Jordan set up big scale battles and then tell us nothing about the battles.”