The 2019 Annual Greed List!
Every year, I publish my Christmas list for public consumption, jokingly calling it “The Greed List.” It’s not because I expect you to get anything for me.
(Though the first two items are free gifts that may be useful to you as well, so maybe checking them out wouldn’t hazardous.)
The reason I publish it, and hence commit these lists to the communal memory, is that I think “What you want” is a reflection of “Who you are” at this moment – your music, your hobbies, your fandoms, all help define who you are as a person. I find it a fascinating history, watching how what I’ve desired has mutated – for example, the list used to be heavy on physical Things, which then changed slowly into digital objects as MP3s and iTunes became big, and now as I’m renting a lot of digital stuff nowadays I’m back to wanting Things again.
(And it allows me to chronicle strange bumps in my desires; for example, 2016’s list contained not one single book. Why? Was it because I stopped loving books? No! It’s because I just got off a book tour promoting my book Fix, and I was so overflowing with books that I needed to run down my pile. If you’re curious as to what I’m reading at the moment, well, my GoodReads automatically tracks most of it; feel free to follow me.)
(And also, well, I’ve directed my family to look at my blog for my Christmas and Birthday lists – and my Dad wants me to publish it, so here we are. I’m still on blogging hiatus, but I’d forgotten that I had this as a commitment.)
And while I guess I could just shove my Amazon Wishlist at you without context, why bother? I want you to know who I am in this moment, and so I not only list what I want, but explain why I want it.
So. Here’s what I’d like for this holiday season.
50 Amazon Reviews On The Sol Majestic. (Free!)
My book The Sol Majestic came out this year, to grand reviews and middling sales. It was always a hard-to-market beast; a gay foodie space opera? Oh, God, any one of those things would be a hard sell, let alone combined.
Still, those who got there largely took The Sol Majestic as what I’d intended; it’s not been a bestseller, but those who loved it found it to be somewhat of a sacred text.
Basically, those what loved The Sol Majestic really loved it, and those what didn’t skipped past.
But what irritates me about The Sol Majestic is Amazon’s review list. It’s rumored in the industry that 50 reviews is the magic number that lets a book be on promotions, on sales, in recommendations – and The Sol Majestic has been hovering at 48 reviews for, like, two months.
So if you’ve read The Sol Majestic and if you haven’t already left a review, then maybe leave a review on Amazon as a special Christmas present to me? And if you haven’t bought it, well, the great American indie bookstore Powells just listed it as one of their best science-fiction books of 2019. So maybe it’s not too late for any of us.
Dank Memes. (Free.)
As noted, I’ve shut down my social media accounts as of yesterday, and it’s already pretty lonely. I’m staying in touch with people (and feel free to email me) – but severing the ties from social media means that I am now bereft of Baby Yoda memes.
I have no idea how the Internet is having fun these days. So if you see a meme you think I’d laugh at, trust that I haven’t seen it – and maybe send it to me?
Buy My Next Book, AUTOMATIC RELOAD. ($16.99)
If you’re looking for romance and gunfire, for PTSD and automated cyborg combat, for human bravery in the face of computer-targeted guns that, for all intents and purposes, will never miss – well, my new book might be for you.
The Outer Worlds (Playstation 4, $59.99)
2018 may have been a nadir for the kinds of roleplaying games that I like; the big, sprawling story-heavy games had evaporated, and the game companies had put narrative-free “shooters as a service” in place, where people just ran around and shot things and nothing mattered.
I don’t do games without a motivation. It’s not enough to “git gud” at a game; I have to know why I’m slaughtering my way through a warehouse of colorful aliens.
Then, in 2019, the “shooters as a service” market collapsed. It turns out there’s only so many shooters you can play at a time for a couple of hours an evening, and when a newer game comes out it eats into the older games’ time, and several classic companies came out with rushed misfires (talkin’ to you, BioWare and Bethesda).
And then the best game of 2019 came out – Disco Elysium – which was a miracle of gaming, but I’ve already played it. But the second-best RPG, Outer Worlds, has gotten beautiful reviews for its story – and I saved it, because someone had to get me something for Christmas.
Untitled Goose Game (PC, $19.99)
Remember when I said I would lose fun things by being off the Internet?
Untitled Goose Game is the prime example of the good things I’ll miss by deactivating my Facebook and Twitter.
Untitled Goose Game is just that – a malicious goose goes around town, picking on the town’s inhabitants. It went viral on the net because people loved the idea of a game with a comparatively harmless goose being a dick, and the game provided the experience people wanted.
Unfortunately, it’s not available in physical form – if you want to get this to me, you’ll have to get me a gift certificate from Epic. Still. Worth it.
PlayStation 4 Pro ($325)
Okay, this is a weird one because it’s low. But that said:
The PlayStation Pro is basically a PlayStation 4, but with 4k hi-def graphics. And I want one because it would make my games very much prettier on our big-screen television, but it’s also not, strictly speaking, necessary; I just want the pretty games.
But I also have a light list this year, so I don’t know. Life is pretty good. We’re doing well. I have lots of books, and bourbon, and shirts; if my family wanted to pitch in on this to get me something, I’d be happy, but beyond that I don’t know.
(And in terms of truly stupid purchases I can’t justify, I want the PlayStation VR to play Beat Saber and yet the whole shebang is like $600, and who the heck wants to pay that for one game?)
(Don’t mention the fact that we essentially did that for Rock Band.)
So this is a very short list, and most of it is communication. That’s where I’m at this year, I guess; good financially, struggling for healthy connections.
And, you know, trying to sell books. 🙂
I just want to throw out a comment that my Wife and I bought an HTC Vive and 99% of the time it just gets used for Beat Saber, which I consider to have been 100% worth it. A nice benefit of the PC version is that you can endlessly download new songs with new mappings, whereas my impression has been that this is much more limited in the PS4 version.
Definitely lesser, I’m told. Even if I can play song games ad infinitum.