PLEASE NOTE: The mp3 file links for this post are outdated. To listen to this episode please visit  The SBU Podcast Archives.  Sorry for the inconvenience. A review of the movie Noah and a look at how Jesus tacks up next to prophets and angels!

Review by Paeter Frandsen The original Merchant of Venus board game was published in 1988, but for many years after was out of print. In 2012, after some awkward legal confusion, two different companies somehow both holding the publishing license shockingly agreed to work together to release a new version of the game. The new version is actually two games in one box- Merchant of Venus and Merchant of Venus Classic . The classic version has received high praise by an influential few for a number of years now, so this is the first and only version of the game I have tried so far. (However, it should be noted that the rules included for solo play are only for the standard version of the game, not the classic.) As the text from the official game webpage at FantasyFlightGames.com explains: “The galaxy is bursting with opportunities for savvy space traders to exploit, and the race to profit blasts off in Merchant of Venus . Discover new alien cultures and learn where you can ...

PLEASE NOTE: The mp3 file links for this post are outdated. To listen to this episode please visit  The SBU Podcast Archives.  Sorry for the inconvenience. A review of the Merchant Of Venus Classic board game and Paeter's top 20 "Pre-52" DC Comics stories and series. Plus, the start of our look at the New Testament book of Hebrews!

"Tell me your name and tell me who you were in your life?" "My name was Ludlov, and I was a witch hunter." So begins the opening for one of the best audio dramas I've heard in a while.  The Witch Hunter Chronicles  is a production (episodes are roughly 20 minutes apiece) from a Dutch-based group called  Audio Epics . The Witch Hunter Chronicles  is the story of Ludlov, the most successful witch hunter employed by the Church of the Goddess. His mission is to stamp out illegal magic use. However, Ludlov is a rare animal in the city of Sevenpeaks. He is a witch hunter with a conscience. He entered the order after his wife was murdered by the mysterious cult, the Black Sickle. Of all the witch hunters, he alone seems to be immune to the hypnotic enchantments utilized by the witches. He attributes this resistance to the one thing he possesses fully: his Purpose. Ludlov does not believe that all who use magic are deserving of death, only those who use it for evi...

Story : "Soft and Chewy" by Kenneth P. Harmeyer Genre : Science Fiction, Strange Rating : PG A man is abducted by aliens  and discovers what alien life is really like.  Credits: "Soft and Chewy" by Kenneth P. Harmeyer " Ken From Honolulu " contributions to Spirit Blade Underground Podcast Princess Bride Review Troll Hunter Review Sound Effects Attribution: ggctuk , kyles , Owdeo , chipfork , reg7783 , tmkappelt , jak damage , primeval_polypod Music Attribution: “Sneaky Snitch” by Kevin MacLeod ( incompetech.com ) Originally Appearing on The Untold Podcast  

PLEASE NOTE: The mp3 file links for this post are outdated. To listen to this episode please visit  The SBU Podcast Archives.  Sorry for the inconvenience. A review of "Justice League: War", the DC animated movie, and Ken From Honolulu's review of "Plan 9 From Outer Space"! Plus, part 2 of our look at Christian Geekery And "Escapist" Entertainment.

While I was away on a once-in-a-lifetime tour of the Holy Land, I received a note from Paeter inviting me to write for Christian Geek Central. That invitation, was as I'm sure you all can imagine was just gravy to everything my wife and I were experiencing on our tour, but my very quick response was "absolutely!" This is an amazing honor, one that I realize isn't given out lightly. Since then, there have been many everyday life events (including having to say "goodbye" to our best friend and canine companion of 18 years) that have derailed my attempts at a proper initial post. So, as I cast about for a suitable way to introduce myself, I thought about listing my geeky bona fides : I am a geek from way back: watched reruns of STAR TREK, LOST IN SPACE, and THE WILD WILD WEST  on TV as a youngster, and saw STAR WARS that first glorious summer in the theaters; In the early 1980's, I joined  my eighth-grade SF club where we attended two cons in the same...

Written By Paeter Frandsen- (Part 1 of this article may be found here .) My tendency, when faced with stress or discomfort, is to pray "Jesus, take this away or help me to learn from it what I need to so it can be over." And that prayer is pretty brief, so that I can move on to "escaping" into the land of Faerun. It's my pattern throughout the day to frequently connect with God in prayer, but these are usually "on the go" prayers or quick mental shout-outs to God when I'm "in the trenches". Then about once or twice per day during the work week I'll spend a few or at most 10 minutes in dedicated prayer time. This has been the norm for me for years now. It's not natural for me to put my life on hold for more than a few minutes to converse at length with Jesus. Metaphorically speaking, I'd rather fire off a quick text than tie myself up in a phone conversation with him. But if we turn to geek entertainment to escape or f...

PLEASE NOTE: The mp3 file links for this post are outdated. To listen to this episode please visit  The SBU Podcast Archives.  Sorry for the inconvenience. A review of "300: Rise Of An Empire" and some great reasons to embrace retro gaming! Plus, part 1 of our examination of Christian Geeks and "Escapist" Entertainment!

It's been only about two years since I started reading comics, and since it was actually the Green Lantern movie that really got me started, I've primarily been a DC Comics girl, with a whiff of Marvel thrown into the mix to add some variety. But lately, with all the relaunches and  soft reboots  that have been going on at both DC Comics and Marvel, my usual batch of comics have been lacking some important traits that had kept me interested up until that point. Long story short, I ditched a number (but not all) of my usual titles and started looking "elsewhere". Since I'd been hearing a lot of enthousiastic reports and reviews about "the new Valiant", a comics publisher that had relaunched as recently as May 2012 under the name Valiant Entertainment, I decided to try some of their titles a couple of months ago. Starting with  Archer and Armstrong . Who? Archer and Armstrong - a duo I knew literally nothing about when I opened issue #1. I didn...

Review by Paeter Frandsen Like many fans of the original Robocop , I've been very curious about the remake. As buried as I've been with work and other activities, I’ve had almost no exposure to the marketing campaign aside from a couple of early trailers, and so I sat down in the theater with no idea what to expect. In the near future, OmniCorp is the leading developer of military and law enforcement robotic technology, but their products are only in use overseas. Americans just don't seem to like the idea of robots making the kinds of hard, life-altering decisions that police officers so often face. The head of OmniCorp decides to try to grease the wheels for robot cops in the U.S. by introducing a cyborg to U.S. law enforcement. To this end, he has critically injured Detroit police officer Alex Murphy rebuilt from the inside out and turned into "Robocop". The physical transformation is completed all at once. But when tests reveal that Murphy'...

Review by Paeter Frandsen The year is 1987. The Nintendo Entertainment System is putting the last nails in the coffin of the Atari 2600 and ushering in a new age of video games. The Real Ghostbusters Saturday morning cartoon was hitting its stride. The Flash, Superman and Wonder Woman all receive their post-Crisis On Infinite Earths reboot treatments, and Peter Parker finally marries MJ in Amazing Spider-man Annual #21 . That summer, the ridiculously titled Robocop hits theaters in America, and changes the sci-fi action genre forever The story of Robocop is set in Detroit of the near future, which is overrun by human depravity. Crime is at an all-time high, yet media coverage is strangely numb to the crisis of the human condition. The police and military are effectively owned and operated by OCP, a large technology corporation. Driven by a self-serving collection of board members, OCP hopes to use robotic and cybernetic technology to solve the city’s crime problem (also...

-Written by Paeter Frandsen It's been a rough day. I've been constantly surrounded by people who require large amounts of emotional energy to interact with. Tension has been building as I notice my productivity being interrupted and I begin wondering how long it will take for people to notice that I'm falling behind. I seem to keep running into problems I have to solve that are outside my strengths. By the time the day is over I urgently want to put thoughts of it all behind me. I want to go somewhere and do something that will remove me from the feelings of stress and the expenditure of energy that have been my default mode of existence all day long. More than anything else, I want to escape. Escapism,(noun): the avoidance of reality by absorption of the mind in entertainment or in an imaginative situation, activity, etc. Geeks have the best means of escapism in the world. I dare you to tell me different. TV, film, books, comics, video games, board games, role-pl...