Yearly Archives:
sThe 2016 H. P. Lovecraft Re-read: At the Mountains of Madness
Sunday , 9, October 2016 Fiction 8 Comments“At the Mountains of Madness” is H. P. Lovecraft’s third longest work coming in at 40,881 words. He wrote it from February 24 to March 22, 1931 (Joshi, H. P. Lovecraft: A Life). I read 1/3 of the short novel 33 years ago but bogged down and scanned through portions of the rest. I think […]
If it was just up to me, I’d only play the best of the best games out there. Yeah, I’d go to a convention and try before I buy, I’d watch box opening videos on YouTube and track down a half dozen reviews. I’d play the game solitaire in order to master the game before […]
Short Reviews – Garden of Evil, by Margaret St. Clair
Friday , 7, October 2016 Book Review 2 CommentsGarden of Evil by Margaret St. Clair appeared in the Summer 1949 issue of Planet Stories. It can be read here at Archive.org. Garden of Evil is a short, sweet, absolutely delicious swipe at anthropologists. When I had finally read some of Vance’s Gaean Reach, I had an “aha” moment—“So, THIS is what LeGuin was […]
A Conversation with Scott Palter of West End Games
Thursday , 6, October 2016 Tabletop Games 4 CommentsNote: Scott owned the first incarnation of West End Games, but not the three that followed it. Also, while he is affiliated with Final Sword Productions and Under the Moon Books, he is semi-retired. His statements here are his own and do not reflect on any of these other entities. — Jeffro: First off, let’s […]
WARGAME WEDNESDAY: The Last One Percent is a Killer!
Wednesday , 5, October 2016 Wargames Leave a commentOver at The Players’ Aid, Grant A. Kleinhenz has a great interview with designer Harold Buchanan. This nugget in particular is of especial interest to aspiring game designers: Grant: What was the hardest part about the design for Liberty or Death? Harold: Finishing the game! Mark Simonitch said: “The last 20% of the game takes […]
Life as a Macross fan is hard. Harmony Gold’s copyright jerkery makes it difficult to obtain in the West. Installments are infrequent, usually years apart. (Compare that to the Gundam meta-universe, which appears to have a new series in some continuity every other season.) When those installments do come, I, for one, start this whole emotional […]
Guest Post by Brian Renninger: Running First Edition Oriental Adventures, Session 5 part 1
Monday , 3, October 2016 Tabletop Games Leave a commentPlay report 5a: 1st Edition AD&D, and 1st Edition Oriental Adventures. Summary: Stern Librarians and Smoking the Panda. Note 1: this one contains spoilers (to some degree) of specific encounters from Vornheim so, if you plan to play it, I recommend skipping this one. Note 2: this session is broken into two parts as there […]
With nothing to do but work or lose himself in the dubious digital pleasures of the Netrix, Sam Hammond finds himself bored beyond belief on the oppressive planet of New Princeton. And when he gets himself in trouble for a stupid act of vandalism, he has the choice of spending a year in prison or […]
The 2016 H. P. Lovecraft Re-read: The Whisperer in Darkness
Sunday , 2, October 2016 Fiction, Short Fiction 9 CommentsH. P. Lovecraft’s next story in Weird Tales, “The Whisperer in Darkness” appeared in the August 1931 issue. It had been over two years since a story has appeared under his name. Zealia Brown Reed’s “The Curse of Yig,” essentially a Lovecraft story was in the November 1929 issue of Weird Tales. The end result […]
Gilberic Parzival Moth is a strange and lonely boy who has grown up without a father, raised by a single mother who moves from town to town in fear of something she will not name. His only friends are animals, with whom he has always been able to speak. And although he has begun to […]
Short Reviews – Peril Orbit, by C.J. Wedlake
Friday , 30, September 2016 Book Review, Uncategorized 3 CommentsPeril Orbit by C.J. Wedlake appeared in the Summer 1949 Issue of Planet Stories. It can be read here at Archive.org. If Payne needed to fill up a couple of pages, he picked the right piece to do it with. Peril Orbit is a (very) short story of a one man craft that had attempted […]
SENSOR SWEEP: Tarzan’s Daughter-in-Law, Quixotic Publishers, Romantic Fiction, and Male-centric SF Adventure
Wednesday , 28, September 2016 Sensor Sweep 2 CommentsAppendix N (Cirsova) The Son of Tarzan — “Really, The Son of Tarzan could’ve just as easily been called The Daughter-in-Law of Tarzan. Though the narratives’ focus on Meriem doesn’t ratchet up into high gear until the middle of the novel, Burroughs has given us something that the first book lacked – a co-protagonist who […]