The Greek figure Achilles and the Irish figure Cú Chulainn were fated to live a short life, filled with glory. So it is with the programmers in Masters of Doom. Nearly everyone in this book is younger than thirty, and few of them did much of note after thirty. John Carmack has left id, and doesn’t seem that fussed with FPS gaming anymore. John Romero bounces between working for game studios and trying to keep independent startups afloat. The world of gaming has passed them by, but that’s how it is for everyone. Technology is a turning wheel that leaves no spoke at the top for long.

But between 1990 and 1996, the studio called id Software revolutionalised PC gaming four times. First there was 1990’s Commander Keen, the definitive “shareware” game, and proof that PCs could handle smooth side-scrolling action games without exploding. Then there was Wolfenstein 3D, which let you fight Hitler in a crude pseudo-3D environment. Then there was 1993’s Doom, which was anything but crude: this was the first game where you didn’t need to extrapolate or use your imagination, all the gore and violence was right there on the screen in front of you. Finally there was 1996’s Quake, which had a fully 3D engine and a sophisticated multiplayer interface (which facilitated deathmatching and online clans and competitive gaming and all the rest).

This book documents their story. When I opened the book and cringed a bit at the fish-out-of-water critic blurbs (“After finishing the book, readers may come away feeling like they’ve just played a round of Doom themselves, as, squinting and light-headed, they attempt to re-enter the world.”), I had three hopes for Masters of Doom, 1) that it wouldn’t spend overly long telling us about Carmack and Romero’s childhoods, 2) that it wouldn’t get on a soapbox about school shootings, and 3) that it wouldn’t dumb anything down or misrepresent the games. All three hopes were met.

We learn about the formation of id Software, with Carmack as the technical wizard and Romero as the creative genius. We learn of the various legal and semi-legal maneuvers that got them a creative team, a payroll, and computers to work on. They come across as people so focused on their work that they didn’t have time to check whether they were compatible as friends and as people. Early in the book the Carmack/Romero team is compared to Metallica’s Hetfield/Ulrich, which is a striking comparison – those guys were a tight unit when the band was furiously gigging and recording, but they started fighting as soon as they became rich and famous. Except that’s not fair – id Software kinda were friends, at least at the beginning. We learn about a D&D game they played together.

Other developers get some spotlight, such as poor ignored Todd Hall, hardcore “gamer-grrl” Stevana Case, and an incongruous middle-aged Mormon called Sandy Petersen (who would later work on Ensemble Studio’s Age of Empires strategy games). I got to speak to Petersen on an online forum once, and I asked him why he never says much about his time with id Software. His answer was something like “Working with id was like being a hyena stripping a carcass – the job got done, but it was unpleasant. With Ensemble, I enjoyed the process as well as the result.”

The years rolled on and id Software kept laying cards on the table like a poker player with a nut hand. But infighting between Carmack and Romero took its toll, and Romero left to form a new company: Ion Storm. The sad tale of Ion Storm is also documented here, and I was expecting to skip through that part. Ion’s disastrous three years working on Daikatana is well known on the internet. But I was wrong, and learned a lot of new things, such as exactly how hostile the relationship between Ion and Eidos became after Romero blew through $44m of Eidos’s money and failed to produce a game. It makes me wonder whether Romero would ever have been successful without Carmack’s technological sorcery backing him up. Some people can only thrive in a symbiotic relationship.

For fans of Doom etc, this is a fascinating book. It shows how the games were made and how we got from there to here. Most of it seems reliable (or at least backed up by other sources I’ve read), and it’s readable and entertaining regardless of technical knowledge. It came out in 2003, but there seems to be very little in 2013 worth adding to it. Id Software had its day, and now the night comes.

This book humbles you, and makes you realise how powerful stories can be. It’s about rabbits.

It’s been said that carnivores evolved binocular vision – both eyes pointing forward – because it’s better for hunting, while herbivores have eyes on the sides of their heads to maximise their field of vision (there are exceptions, pandas have binocular vision, for example). Combine sideways eyes with disproportionate ears and fast legs and you have a rabbit, a creature with a thousand enemies. To be a rabbit is to live in fear. Your very design is a statement of your vulnerability.

It must be stressful to be a rabbit. Constant danger. Constant alertness. Attacks might come from any quadrant and any direction – the sky, or the ground below. Your weapons are inadequate. Your only defence is vigilance. Fortunately, the fictional rabbits in this story have another defence: a precognitive runt called Fiver who one day has a vision of destruction falling on their warren.

Attempts to persuade the chief rabbit fail, and a handful of believers abandon the warren. What follows is an adventure in southern England, and then an attempt to start a new warren next to the aggressive and warlike Efrafans.

Adams makes us feel the terror and smallness of a rabbit’s existence. Human things like trains and bulldozers seem as monstrous as Greek titans. Cats seem as cruel to us as they do to the numerous small creatures in the story. There’s a scene where the heroes are helping some rabbits escape from a hutch and it feels like they’re storming Fort Knox. Reading Watership down is like watching an IMAX movie, every blade of grass magnified a hundred times on the screen.

The numerous scenes of lightness and comedy (such as the stories of the mythological rabbit El-ahrairah) are perfectly inserted into the story, and relieve the tension without breaking it. Characterisation is another strong point. Every real life rabbit has seemed boring indeed next to these ones. Nearly every real life human, too.

Some authors cheat and make their animals into humans (as in Pride of Baghdad). Other authors are conservative and leave their animals fully animal, which sounds laudable but is often boring in practice (I think Tarka the Otter was like that, but it’s been years since I’ve read it).

Richard Adams achieves a balance. The rabbits are anthropomorphalised enough so that we relate to them and understand their motives, but they are still animal enough to thrill the reader with their strangeness.

Despite their vulnerability, rabbits have proven to be astonishingly successful. A thousand enemies haven’t stopped them from devastating my country’s ecosystem. This book is equally successful, and far less harmful. It’s an amazing story that exalts the small, and makes holes dug in the ground seem like palaces.

After releasing a few albums so featureless that I suffer from narcolepsy thinking about them, AC/DC stopped messing around.

The greatest four-song streak in accadacca history starts with “Thunderstruck”, featuring a iconic main riff and a great vocal performance out of Brian. “Fire Your Guns” is fast boogieing rock with lots of attitude – when it wants to, this band is better at being Aerosmith than the actual Aerosmith. “Moneytalks” is fun, catchy, and irresistable. “The Razors Edge” is another patented AC/Creepy song…maybe their second best AC/Creepy song, after “Hell’s Bells.”

After these four songs end, the album goes into fillerland, but even the filler sounds energetic, switched-on, and inspired. Listen to “Rock Your Heart Out”, with its nimble, ninja-like slashes of guitar and bass weaving through Chris Slade’s percussion. “If You Dare” is built around a catchy hook-and-release formula. “Are You Ready” is a drawling, sprawling song that sounds like a bar’s last call encapsulated in music.  “Shot of Love” has a hard, mid-tempo grind. On every track, the band sounds muscular, vital, and alive.

What happened? Slade is definitely a factor. His drumming is much busier and more interesting than Phil “Wants To Be A Metronome” Rudd. I gather he didn’t work out personality-wise, but he’s probably the best drummer AC/DC has worked with. Normally Angus and Mal’s riffs are what I pay attention to when I listen to this band. On The Razors Edge I listen to the drumming, too.

The production is also a bit different to past records. The muddy, reverb-saturated din of Fly on the Wall et al has been traded out for the crisp production style that AC/DC has used ever since.  The title is appropriate, as this record has a sound sharp enough to shave with. This is the first AC/DC album to not be immediately dated by its production style.

But mostly, it’s the songs. They are good, and nothing else is required – the new drummer and revamped sound are just paint. I don’t know what happened, but the band seems revitalised and renewed.

AC/DC realises that never changing your music can be a bug, but it can also be a feature. While other bands are getting in on prog rock or grunge or nu metal, AC/DC just keeps doing what they do, oblivious to trends. On this album though, they made some subtle shifts, and all of them were for the best.

This lineup fell apart, and AC/DC began another gradual slide into boredom. But this was an exciting album, not just on its own merits, but because of what it portends for the future. The old power lives on. AC/DC might seem hooked up to life support these days, but only a fool pronounces them dead.

The missing apostrophe bugs me, though.