TEOTU has moved to its new home at www.theendoftheuniverse.ca. If you need to access any of the old content on the site, you can find it at the subdomain www2.theendoftheuniverse.ca.

The new and, maybe improved, Website at the End of the Universe is coming very soon.

You've probably noticed a slowdown in updates on the blog in the past few months. It's mostly been due to a lack of time, but I've still been "microblogging" via Twitter.

That's where the new-look website comes in. My goal with TWATEOTU has always been to provide an outlet for me to share interesting information about science fiction with other fans online and to provide a place where they could interact with each other.

Twitter gives me the opportunity to quickly share those links, but it still lacks something. With Wordpress, I've been able to create a site that lets me pull in those quick links and allow readers to comment on them and interact with them easily. If I want to go beyond Twitter's 140 characters, I can still do that.

Check out the beta version of the new site at http://beta.theendoftheuniverse.ca. You'll have to create a new account if you want to comment or you could log in directly with Facebook, a Google account and other services if you don't want to create yet another website account.

Let me know what you think

Don't be fooled by the title. Ready Player One, by Ernest Cline, is a science fiction book, not just a book about video games, although they are certainly very prominent throughout the narrative.

I am sure that readers nostalgic for video games of the 80s will love Ready Player One, but wonder if it will resonate with a more modern audience.

In brief ,the plot is about a contest among gamers to win the fortune of a deceased technology magnate by solving various riddles that he has left scattered about a futuristic version of the internet which is called OASIS.

OASIS is a sort of a massive multiplayer online simulation game that is a a type of virtual reality universe which is completely immersive and difficult to distinguish from the real world. You could liken it to the holodeck from Star Trek.

Our hero is a geek named Wade who is in competition with a horde of other gamers who commit themselves full-time to the quest of finding the clues for the fortune.

The creator of OASIS, James Halliday, is a product of the video-game universe of the 80s so the gamers questing for his fortune immerse themselves in tech and pop-culture trivia from that time in attempt to decipher his clues.

If you ever played D&D's Tomb of Horrors module, played the arcade game Joust or watched the movie War Games, then you'll be tickled that these, and many other touchstones from that era, figure prominently in this book. If none of those things mean anything to you, then Ready Player One may seem like a series of "in" jokes.

Our hero's quest becomes complicated with a love interest with whom he is in competition with online as well as a conglomerate which is throwing a lot of money and resources at the contest in order to reap the profits of Halliday's fortune.

I found myself doubting the plausibility of a VR universe as convincing as the one portrayed in the book, but didn't try to let it lessen by enjoyment of the story.

Enjoy it I did, but to a point. While it was fun to relive some of those 80s moments, I thought the story was perhaps a bit too predictable.

I'd heartily recommend it to anyone who's spent evenings spending quarters in the arcades of yore, but think the kids of today might find this one a chore.

Some observers are theorizing that part of the reason for the success of e-book readers is that people are using them to read "downmarket" genre fiction. You know smutty stories and trash like science fiction. The thinking is that people can read this stuff in public and not worry about anyone noticing the tell-tale book cover as they sit on the bus.

One of the bloggers for Wired's GeekDad notes that one of the things lost with ebooks is the cover art with which we judge a book's merit before we buy it. With that in mind, he offers up 102 essential science ficton books for reading on your Kindle, but he has the foresight to include all of their covers for you to browse before making your picks.

If you're still not tired of people guiding your reading choices with their lists of "essential" books, here's another one that suggests 50 sci-fi authors you must read. Not much new to long-time readers on the list, but it may be useful to newcomers.

I've always used award wins and nominations to guide me towards fiction worth reading. John Scalzi is asking his readers to come up with titles worthy of nomination for the 2011 Nebulas. Certain names come up again and again so I know that I probably should check some of those out.

Much more intimidating is Locus' recommended science fiction reading list for 2011. I think it would take me most of 2012 to read even half of it.

Today was the day that they announced the Academy Awards nominations for motion pictures and, as usual, science fiction films didn't get much attention apart from the obligatory effects and sound awards. It's probably just as well since last year's crop of sci-fi films wasn't particularly great.

Not that genre fans care that much about their favourites always being snubbed for the Oscars. We do have our own awards, after all, especially for books.

For example, there are the Hugo Awards for which nominations are now being accepted. I don't know which books will ultimately end up on the ballot, but other award short lists are often good indicators.

One such list is from the British Science Fiction Association Awards. Their list of nominees was recently released. I have a strong suspicion that China Miéville's Embassytown will make it to this year's Hugos list.

The other big book award, of course, is the Nebula. During that ceremony, the Science Fiction Writers of America also honour one of their own as a grandmaster, which is a sort of honorary title that recognizes an author's distinguished career. This year's grandmaster is none other than Connie Willis who is no stranger to awards, having pretty much set the record for most wins.

Recently, I encountered yet another award designed to celebrate excellence in genre fiction. These prizes are known as The Kitschies and are sponsored by a rum company. I'm not sure where they fit on the spectrum of honours, but it's always nice for authors to be recognized.

Is there any lesser-known award that guides you in your selection of reading material, movie or TV watching?

One of the most amazing things about the internet is its ability to bring to light forgotten movies, TV shows and other cultural works.

For example, I encountered a link to this BBC adaptation of Aldous Huxley's brilliant book Brave New World. I haven't yet dedicated the three hours necessary to actually watch it, but it pleases me to know it is there when I want to.

On the radio side of things, the BBC also did a dramatic adaptation of Isaac Asimov's Foundation Trilogy.

I'm sure with a bit more digging, I'd be able to find all sorts of other BBC productions of classic science fiction works.

Another radio adaptation  I unearthed recently was Samuel Delany's The Star-Pit. There are even some notes by Delany himself on how the adaptation came to be.

Got any hidden radio or TV gems out there that you want to share?

I've always had a fascination with forgotten authors. Given the huge amount of books and stories that have written in different languages over the years and the exploding number of new material being added to that vast library, it's no wonder that books and writers fall out of fashion then fade into obscurity.

The most recent writer to come to my attention is the intriguing Homer Eon Flint who wrote pulp fiction, some of it science fiction. He died young in what might have been an attempted robbery, not of him, but by him.

Some of his books are available on Project Gutenberg for free, but a small publishing house is working on releasing some of his other works.

The ever-reliable Science Fiction Encylopedia has an entry about him. (As an aside, check out this good interview with Peter Nicholls, one of the founders of the SFE.)

The pulp era had more than its fair share of forgotten authors, but what is interesting is that you could argue that the rise of the ebook is creating a similar market for short, disposable fiction by obscure writers, most of whom will be long forgotten in 50 years.

Enough time has passed that we can stop looking back at 2011 and focus on the year ahead.

IO9 recently compiled a comprehensive list of genre movies to look out for in the coming months. There are some interesting looking titles in the pipeline. The one that I am most looking forward to won't be out until December and that is Peter Jackson's movie adaptation of The Hobbit. I don't even want to know how long I have to wait to see part 2 of that film.

Speaking of Jackson and all Tolkien, have you ever wondered why he omitted so much of the source work in his film adaptation? This article gives some reasons why.

If you really want to see something that omits a lot of the original material, try this animated version of The Hobbit. No, it's not the Rankin-Bass version that you know. It's another, more obscure, version.

I seem to have gotten off the topic of movies for the year ahead. In that case, how about going back to the 70s for a moment and checking out this list of dystopian science fiction from that decade. I'm kind of surprised that Soylent Green is not on the list and you could make a case to include Sleeper, even if it is a comedy.

While I'm linking to dystopic science-fiction movie items, I would be remiss to omit this link to the Blade Runner sketchbook that collects the production art that was instrumental in delivering that film's distinctive look and feel.

OK, back to future films before I sign off. I saw this interesting tidbit about director . Now that is something I'd like to see.

Let's get one thing straight, Neal Stephenson's newest book Reamde is not a work of science fiction. If that doesn't turn you off and you still want to know more about it then read on.

If you were going to classify the book then it would probably qualify as a techno-thriller with geek appeal.  Computer hacking figures prominently in the story, but not as prominently as good, old-fashioned gunplay.

The book gets its title from a typo in a readme file in a computer virus which is the maguffin that sets the entire story into motion. A fictional multiplayer online fantasy game called T'Rain which resembles World of Warcraft is targetted by Chinese hackers who infect players with their Reamde virus. The malware locks the victims' computers and in order to rid themselves of the virus, players must pay ransom to the hackers within the game's economic system. The hackers can later convert the fantasy money to real cash.

Richard Forthrast is the founder of the game and he had recently hired a niece named Zula to work for the company. She is a bit of an oddity in his straight-laced Iowan family in that she's adopted and originally an orphan from Eritrea.

She also has a bit of a douche-bag boyfriend who's a small-time hacker that has stolen some credit card numbers and ends up selling them to a man with links to the Russian mafia. It turns out the guy is also a big-time T'Rain player. That is when the troubles begin.

The guy who has just bought the credit card numbers is infected by the virus and can't extract the data for the impatient Russian mobsters. Zula and her boyfriend are forced by the Russians to help them track down the hackers .

Their adventures take them to China, the Philippines, Taiwan, remote parts of British Columbia and the American Northwest as the layers of the plot start to pile up. Not only do they have to contend with hackers, but Islamic terrorists also become involved, including a charismatic leader who is a killer, but is still a character for which the reader is partially sympathetic partially because he is fairly clever and somewhat compassionate towards Zula.

The cast of characters expands as the story progresses to include a Bulgarian and a Chinese hacker, a Russian former special forces operative, a pair of British spies, more Islamic terrorists, American survivalists and a Chinese woman from some remote tribe. What is surprising is the amount of romantic entaglements that this creates.

The characters combine, split and recombine as their actions carry them around the world until they all ultimately converge in a too-convenient series of coincidences which make sense in the internal logic of the story, but are pretty hard to believe would ever happen in real life. Of course, that's not unusual in most works of fiction, but I occasionally found myself rolling my eyes as my read the story.

If you've read Stephenson's Cryptonomicon then this book is somewhat reminiscent of that work except it doesn't jump back and forth in time and spares a lot of the obsessive detail of the geekier aspects of the story, although he does seem to show off a lot of the research he did on weapons throughout the tale.

In the end, the story is well told, the plotting is imaginative and the characters are diverse and brought to life, but it all seems very conventional compared to the kind of books that Stephenson is famous for. That will probably make him more attractive to the average book buyer and I can see how the story might attract the attention of Hollywood as they look for books to adapt to the big screen, but the hard-core Stephenson fan might feel a bit let-down.

While I enjoyed the book, I felt it was a bit too long which is pretty normal for a Stephenson book, but I felt that given the conventional nature of the book it seemed to only prolong the inevitable outcome of the story.

Despite some criticisms I might have about the story, I think that it is a solid tale and a memorable one so I'd certainly recommend it to anyone who enjoys thrillers, geekery or is just a Stephenson completist who needs to consume his entire output.

To usher in the new year, here is the latest in our long line of pulp-themed science fiction calendars. 2012 marks the ninth time we've offered a calendar and judging from the thousands of downloadsthey get each year, they remain as popular as ever.

Space babes in distress is a theme that never gets old so each month of the calendar displays a classic example of another harried female space explorer as depicted on the cover of pulp magazines from years gone by.

Download your copy for free from http://www.theendoftheuniverse.ca/calendar2012/calendar2012.pdf. If you print it out, be sure to scale it to fit your paper size. It's designed for letter-size paper, but if you use A4, or some other size, you will have to adjust your printer settings accordingly.

If you want to check out previous editions, click on the following links to get the 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009,  2010  and 2011 installments.

If you're new to TEOTU, don't just leech the calendar and run. Take a second to add our newsfeed to your reader or follow us on Twitter so you can get a regular injection of irregular science fiction links throughout the year.

We hope your 2012 is a happy and prosperous one and that all of your science fiction dreams come true.