The TCG Curriculum: Innovation on a Spectrum

It seems I've become a curmudgeon when it comes to expandable card games (TCGs, CCG, LCGs, whatever). I've played these games long enough to be critical of the new games emerging on the market. Recent games like Lorcana, Star Wars Unlimited, One Piece, Riftbound, etc. leave me decidedly meh. They are expandable card games, and expandable card games scratch the lizard itch in my brain. But they don't scratch the itch in the same way many older games do. Which got me thinking, why?

The market, experience, economy, IP, —these all seem to factor in. But the more I think about it, the more I realize innovation is the real reason. Most such games released today are risk-averse, i.e. they position themselves around the center of the bell curve of originality. They are afraid of trying something truly groundbreaking for reasons, reasons most likely based on fear of market failure but likely others. Which got me thinking further: what would a hierarchy of expandable games based on innovation look like? A college curriculum seemed the natural structure.

And so, without further ado. Here is the University of Friday Nights course offering in the iterative card-gaming department.

Review of Our Townish by David Marusek

For the past five years I have been casting an occasional eye to the happenings in rural Alaska. It's there that David Marusek has been plugging away on a self-published series, Upon this Rock. Quirky, clever, and relevant, the series drops aliens into the middle of a rationalist versus religion scenario, sprinkles it with jimmies of the apocalypse, and sets it all loose in the Denali. It's been fun, and in 2024 Marusek published the fourth and concluding volume, Our Townish.

Our Townish picks up precisely where Consider Pipnonia left off. In fact, they should be considered one volume published in two pieces. The rogue planet Pipnonia comes crashing into Earth in the opening pages, bringing about a literal apocalypse. But it's not all death and destruction. Dead bodies mysteriously come back to life in the Alaskan bush, and slowly a new society begins to form. But is it really all that new? One by one, the skeletons in humanity's closet begin to emerge among the new residents of Alaska, threatening to take us under once and for all.

Review of Shadow Ticket by Thomas Pynchon

Let's face it. Nobody expects fresh material from Thomas Pynchon. If the internets are to be believed, the man—if he is a human—is eighty-eight years old. Well past retirement age, readers have no reason to anticipate a new novel. He already produced a literal trove of some of the best fiction of the 20th century. And yet in 2025 a new Pynchon novel is dropping. Flapper life, the tail-end of prohibition, the American midwest, and the rise of Hitler feature heavily in the noir of Shadow Ticket.

Shadow Ticket kicks off, like any good noir, with a seemingly innocuous crime. A small-time Milwaukee gangster gets himself blown up in a car, and private eye Hicks McTaggart (great name) must find the culprit. His investigation takes him to a local cheese baron, Bruno Airmont, who informs McTaggart of his daughter Daphne's disappearance. Illicit activities are all around, meaning the investigation is not without danger. When a bomb attempt on McTaggart's life cuts a little too close, the private eye heads to New York where he is duped into another journey, one that takes him closer to Daphne and wider happenings in the world of fascism.

Review of Those Below by Daniel Polansky

I opened my review of the first book in this duology, Those Above, with George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire. An inspirational series, a generation of writers walk in his footsteps, presenting stories set in fantastical worlds with hard, often brutal morals, including Polansky's Empthy Throne. But three decades and counting, Martin hasn't finished his series. Daniel Polansky has. Wrapping up the Empty Throne duology is Those Below (2016).

Those Below picks up where Those Above left off. Thistle is now Fire, and he roams the lower levels of the Roost, fomenting rebellion against the Eternals. Bas continues to play a new game, court games, in accompanying Eudokia, who herself has her own games to play. Aimed at the highest levels of the Roost, plays a hand of subtle but powerful cards. And Calla, now witness to some of the greatest drama the Eternals have experienced in ages, attempts to adapt her worldview in a way that ensures her survival.

Review of Those Above by Daniel Polansky

It's fair to say George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire was (is?) a watershed moment in fantasy publishing. A large chunk of the genre's titles which have emerged in the aftermath of A Game of Thrones explore his use of more realistic/less archetypal characters and quests for power. High spoken elves, pipe-smoking hobbits, and the immutable honor and glory of kings were put to bed in favor of Machivellian anti-heroes, hard truths, and naked egoism. Embracing this grimdark style and spinning a tale of his own is Daniel Polansky in Those Above (2015).

Those Above is set in a world where humanity's power has been quashed by a group of four-fingered immortals called Eternals whose strength and speed are no match. The four-fingered live at the peak of a tower-city called The Roost while the five-fingered humans in the five levels below slave to provide them food and water, heat and home. They pay no mind to the lands beyond where humans war among themselves, in essence securing the power of the immortals. Little do they know, however, rebellion is forming at the lowest reaches of The Roost.

Cardboard Corner: Review of "The Drowned City" expansions for Arkham Horror: The Card Game

Note: this is a review of both the Campaign and Investigator expansions for “The Drowned City”. There will be zero spoilers save story intro.

No use building up to it. No use trying to quietly lead the reader to it. This is it. The big one. The Big One. The Cthulhu one. I confess this means nothing to me. In some shadowy corner of my brain, a dusty place my conscious tosses useless information, I dimly understand Cthulhu possesses weighty importance in the minds of Lovecraft lore lovers. Or perhaps I'm getting old. Maybe that corner just needs a cleaning. Maybe it's just a leftover teddy bear, aged into misshapen, lumpy, tentacled malevolence... Sorry, don't know what came over me there. Fans of Arkham Horror have been speculating for ages when the giant green squid will finally see screen time. The time is now. Let's get into the review.

“The Drowned City” is classic Arkham Horror in more ways than one. We begin with story. The opening scenario has players doing One Last Job (yes, that one) for a curio shop owner they owe a debt to. He tasks you with finding a lost shipment, presumed stolen by one of Arkham's gangs. You head out onto the nighttime streets—Eastside, Downtown, Miskatonic University, and other districts from the core box—looking to parley with dangerous gangsters. You ultimately find the lost shipment, but it isn't without a cost. Yes, you read the tea leaves correctly: it was not One Last Job. And so into the wild blue yonder (that's the non-spoiler place; the real place has more ominous spires and alien glyphs) you go to fulfill one more One Last Job. It's not an easy job. If you fail, indeed the previous job was the last one. If you succeed you will have experienced a pulp tale of alien exploration and adventure, from the seas to the skies, and won... Play on to find out.

Review of Orbitsville by Bob Shaw

Reading science fiction of old is a surprise package. What reflects as 'well-regarded' in the mirror of history can be highly contextual today. Hal Clement's Mission of Gravity, for example, is lauded over the past 75 years—awards, critics' lists, best ofs, etc., etc. But it's the biggest piece of genre cheese you're likely to encounter. Elementary prose, low reader expectations, juvenile plot, wimpy characterization—it's one of the reasons Margaret Atwood decries sf as 'squids in space'. And then there are books like Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles, a book which did and does receive a lot of attention that is still worthwhile today. Suffice to say I was nervous going in to Bob Shaw's 1975 Orbitsville. ”Shaw's best!” “70s British SF at its finest!”

Orbitsville is the dramatic life of Captain Vance Garamond after fate twists it upside down. Vance an interstellar explorer, he is taking a break on Earth when tragedy befalls a meeting with Earth's most powerful leader, Elizabeth Lindstrom. Forced on the run, Vance's wild flight from Earth takes him to humanity's biggest discovery: the biggest and dumbest of Big Dumb Objects. Adventure ensues!

Cardboard Corner: Review of Steampunk Rally

In the Polish language exists the word kombinować. Its meaning can be straightforward, as in the English “to combine”, but it is most often used in the sense “to cleverly manipulate a situation to one's advantage”. , In other words, to use the elements at your disposal in crafty fashion to get something beneficial for yourself or to avoid a bad outcome. The government warns citizens not to “combine” during tax season, and children who generate lengthy excuses for their capers are told “don't combine!”. Steampunk Rally, the 2015 racing game, is the ultimate opportunity for people to kombinować.

Building wonderfully from theme, Steampunk Rally is a racing game for two to eight players. In the course of a game players build and wreck steampunk jalopies, trying to generate movement while somehow staying wired together. Push too hard and you may find yourself in a trash heap aside the track. Push too little and you'll have a big beautiful machine but lag behind. Find the right balance of speed and safety, and you may be among the racers vying for the lead as the finish line comes into view. The player who crosses the finish line furthest, wins.

Review of Where the Axe Is Buried by Ray Nayler

A few years ago, a former professor of mine wrote a journal article on the positive power of alternate history. The reference material was a YA series that features Poland's underground resistance in WWII emerging victorious, as opposed to the brave defeat it suffered in reality. For context, Poland is a country that has had historical successes, but few recently. In WWII it survived the invasion of the Germans only to be overrun by the Soviet Union. Congrats! Oh, wait... Maybe the Nazis were better than the Soviets? Regardless, my professor argued that such use of alternate history, by making the Poles victorious, offers readers a form of catharsis, a relief from the historical weight of defeat. Whether you agree or disagree, it's an interesting idea. Spinning this concept into a Clone Trump future is Ray Nayler's Where the Axe Is Buried (2025).

Nayler has another name for him, but I will call him Clone Trump; the novel presents a naked extrapolation on current politics. So yes, the left's worst fears come true. Trump extends his grip on power by perpetually transferring his consciousness into new bodies, all in service of implementing a draconian regime based on limiting personal liberties and censorship. When a new term approaches, propaganda is dispersed, fake elections are staged, a body is made ready, and a new president takes power. But between the ears it's the same person: Clone Trump. Meanwhile, most other countries have chosen to opt out of human leadership and moved to AI prime ministers. These machine minds make the hard decisions—limiting energy usage, food consumption, commercial activities, etc. Beneath all this is an underground group of biohackers and tech wizards looking to “set things right”, which is where the book's rubber (quietly) hits the road.

Altered TCG Is Slipping: What In Tumult Is Going On?

Just over a year ago, Altered TCG took kickstarter by storm. It raised millions and millions of dollars, setting a TCG record at the time. And why not? It looked brilliant, offered a unique and interesting racing mechanism, and seemed to be taking an informed shot at evolving collectibility and trading. More than a year later, however, the game's popularity is fading. In what appears an attempt at rescuing Altered, Equinox has announced it will be moving away from standard distribution to Gamefound, a place some TCGs have gone to eek out another year or two of existence. For fans of the game, including myself, it's not a good sign. They then issued a statement to players, indirectly threatening them that if a certain pledge goal was not hit, the game would fail. Not a good look. In this post I want to take a semi-informed look at why Altered started strong but has not risen to meet the hype.

The following will be covered:

• Themeless-ness-ness-ness

• Fence-Sitting

• Lack of Faction Identity

• Evolving Fiddliness

• Buying, Selling, and Trading

Themeless-ness-ness-ness

It wasn't recognizable at first, but with several games under our belts it became clear Altered has a theme issue. It isn't controversial, or overdone, or annoyingly cutesy, or silly animals, or anime teens—I mean, women—with giant boobs. The issue is that theme is spread thin, at best. Where games like Dixit can thrive in an infinite dreamscape, a TCG cannot. It needs a confined concept which synergizes the game's win condition, phases, and mechanisms, and can then be complemented by art, keywords, symbolism, and card effects. For example, Ashes: Rise of the Phoenixborn, which presents itself as a duel of wizards, features two players who cast spells and summon creatures in magical combat. Makes sense. There are futuristic hackers versus shady corporations in Android: Netrunner, which means installing programs and anti-virus software, making cyberruns, taking meat damage, and cleverly using PR to sneak an agenda. Makes sense. Altered's theme of... generic fantasy dreamland where players cast spells to influence a race won by counting terrain symbols carried by allies with names like Haven Warrior, because when you're racing you need a warri—wait, what?

Review of City under the Stars by Gardner Dozois & Michael Swanwick

Gardner Dozois has gone down in history as one of the great editors of science fiction and fantasy. I know. The history of sf has yet to be written. But it's fair to say he's secured his place. Which is a bit of a shame actually; Dozois was also a writer of short fiction, including the 1995 novella “The City of God” co-written with Michael Swanwick. But novella-length wasn't enough. In 2020, upon Dozois' passing, Swanwick picked up the notes the two had been working on for a novel and and finished it. City under the Stars is the result.

City under the Stars recalls the story of a man named Hanson. He spends his days shoveling coal in an industrial complex while a distant wall, promising freedom beyond, reminds him of the backbreaking limits of his situation. Getting long in the tooth, Hanson is wary of every new kid joining the shovel line. And his boss doesn't help. The two constantly irritating and badgering one another, things finally come to a head one day, and Hanson's fortunes shift in the blink of an eye.

Review of Making History by K.J. Parker

I've not read K.J. Parker's oeuvre. But what I have read brings to mind the glossy national parks photobook sitting on the undershelf of your uncle's coffee table. Great to look at, inspiring even, but you walk away and forget. Making History, a 2025 novella, is the first Parker story I've read in years. Something that sticks?

Making History, as the title hints, tells of a group of scholars who, at the behest of their king Gyges, have been tasked with creating the ruins of a fictional society. Our main character is given the task of creating a language, while his colleagues each receive their own—art, money, artifacts, relics, ancient buildings, etc. Knowing that both success and failure will likely result in death, the unnamed main character sets about trying to build a metaphorical escape hole in his creation of language. But one day when he accidentally hears sailors dockside speaking the language he's creating, things twist weird.

Horus Heresy Series: Symptom or Substance?

Two-and-a-half years ago I started reading the Horus Heresy. Forty-eight books later, comprising dozens and dozens of novels and hundreds of short stories, I've reached the end. What a journey. What a story. Time for reflection.

This post will cover the following:

• Introduction

• Structure

  • The Missile's Arc

  • The Triangle

• Mode: Mythopoeism

• Theme

  • The Classics

  • Imperialism/Colonialism

  • Perennial Wisdom

  • Free Will

• Tone: Grimdark or “Grimdark”?

• Challenges

  • Technique

  • Permadeath

  • Structural Variability

• The End & thee Conslusion

• Bonus: Top 10

Review of Era of Ruin anthology

It took sixty-four books, but Dan Abnett's three-volume The End & the Death marked the end-end of the Horus Heresy. Humanity's stage had been set for the 40^th millennia. But had it? In 2025 along came a surprise anthology: Era of Ruin, leaving readers to wonder: epilogue or something more?

A mood piece kicks off the anthology. “Angels of Another Age” by John French features three Astartes who have been separated from their legions, wandering the outskirts of the siege of Terra. The story rings a touch false through French's overt emphasis on art (particularly after book after book of blaster porn), but the story ultimately accomplishes its mission by defining the stakes for the average Astartes in the wake of the Heresy: on which side of history will they fall? “Fulgurite” by Nick Kyme stars the Word Bearer sniper Narek who stealthily maneuvers the Terran battlefield, picking off Traitor Astartes (yes, Traitor). His goal is to use fulgurite weapons to take down one particular primarch. Fulgurite (in our world) is the hollow glass tubes formed by lightning strikes in the desert, and Kyme makes appropriate use of the metaphor.

Review of The Zenith Angle by Bruce Sterling

Bruce Sterling was one of the strongest and most unique voices in science fiction. He's taken a significant break from fiction, producing little the past decade+, and as a result has faded from the genre's eye. But there was a time in the 90s and 2000s when most every reader of sf would have known his name. A godfather of cyberpunk, collaborations with multiple other well writers, and award recognition, Sterling was a prominent figure. In the wake of 9-11, he published the novel The Zenith Angle (2004).

The Zenith Angle is the story of a man named Van. Uber-intelligent programmer, his talents took him to the top of the 90's internet boom. Leader of a multi-million dollar dot.com, he finds himself looking for new challenges. 9-11 happens, and Van is successfully recruited by the US government and tasked with tightening up homeland IT security. He accomplishes this through an ingenious invention, but at what cost? Van's family life, corporate tech, and government control all cross paths leading to a Bond-esque conclusion.

Review of Isle of the Dead by Roger Zelazny

If ever there were an author who enjoyed playing with and incorporating the world's mythologies in his speculative fiction, it was Roger Zelazny. Wikipedia has even devoted a section of his bibliography to a breakdown. Egyptian, Greek, Navajo, Norse, Indian—there is a list of origin lore that Zelazny found ways of weaving into science fiction tales (and a gruff, cigarette-smoking, world-weary male lead to boot). Looking to Hades is 1969's Isle of the Dead.

If the internets are to be believed, however, the inspiration for Isle of the Dead is actually a series of paintings by the artist Arnold Bocklin featuring, you guessed it, isles of the dead. The fantastical isles are captured in a surprisingly warm ambiance that possesses more hints of shadow than overt darkness. It leans toward the highs and lows of mortality more in tone than color.

Review of Shatterday & Other Stories: Voice from the Edge Vol. 5 by Harlan Ellison

I have greatly enjoyed the first four volumes of Voice From the Edge, an audiobook series collecting a large chunk of Harlan Ellison's short fiction. Most stories are read by Ellison himself, which is a treat considering the character Ellison was. Where some writer's prose feels awkward on the page, unnatural to the mind's ear, Ellison's flows in print and off his tongue. Fifth and final volume in Voice from the Edge is 2011's Shatterday & Other Stories.

A swathe of prosaic prose about sex and death kicks things off. “Delusion for a Dragon Slayer” tells of... well, there are a couple interpretations. One is a man in full, sweaty passion with a woman. Another is skirting the ecstatic edge of death. Title story and classic premise, “Shatterday” tells of a man and his unexpected doppelganger. Each sabotage the other's lives, and eventually things come to a head that satisfies plot concerns but likewise parallels any crisis of soul a person may have had. A story written in a six-hour sitting, “Flop Sweat” tells of a radio show host who invites a shadowy figure on air. Set in LA during the Ripper's heyday, Ellison introduces elements of horror that is good enough for a one-off read.

Review of Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon

How it must have been for a writer in the early 20th century. The world was your oyster—as long as you knew the right people, natch. There were no genre expectations, no market expectations, no massive reading culture to conform to, or rebel against. You could write what you want, and as long as you passed a basic eye test and knew the right people in publishing, then your story could see print. How else could an essentially plot-less, dialogue-less, character-less “novel” about the extreme, long-term evolution of humankind find book form? Enter Olaf Stapledon's debut novel Last and First Men (1930).

A plot summary of Last and First Men is therefore short and sweet. The book starts in modern history, at least as of Stapledon's time of writing, and moves forward, conveying the critical moments in human social and biological evolution over the next two billion years. Almost Lamarckian, it casually skips and jumps, taking advanced monkeys to the end of Earth, beyond bipedal, and into the wide universe afar. If anything, the book is a spot of intriguing imagination.

Review of The Wanderer by Fritz Leiber

I dislike cats. I don't hate them. I don't swerve toward them in the car. But I'd rather not live with them. They're alien. The lack of emotion—the twitchiness, the tweaker clawing, the killing of things just for fun then playing with it. I find it difficult to relate to such psychopaths. Fritz Leiber, on the other hand, thought it would make good sf material. Maybe. Let's see The Wanderer (1964).

The Wanderer tells the story of Earth's response to a weird, purple and yellow planet arriving in our atmosphere. Hippies in NYC, astronauts piloting ships at the lunar base, a smuggler in Vietnam, a trio on a cross-desert drive—Leiber gives a variety of viewpoints to the mysterious appearance. When it destroys the moon, however, Earth's tidal patterns are thrown into chaos, and the anthill of humanity is well and truly kicked.

Console Corner: Review of Warhammer Chaos Gate: Daemonhunters

Space Hulk: Tactics is a simple but solid turn-based experience in the Warhammer universe. Quintessential some would say, it features a 4-person squad of space marines exploring the derelict hulls of abandoned space ships, destroying the Tyranid enemies which emerge from the corridors and rooms. Classic Warhammer. It's an old game, however. In 2022 Complex Games decided to upgrade the experience for the fourth generation of consoles. Enter Warhammer Chaos Gate: Daemonhunters.

Like Space Hulk: Tactics, Chaos Gate: Daemonhunters is a turn-based experience featuring a small squad of space marines fighting evil. But it expands everything. Space travel between worlds becomes a game unto itself, not to mention directly links ship progression to marine upgrades. Combat missions are more varied, better fleshed out. There are significantly more options for interacting with the environment: statues to topple, nests to gain psyche points, explodables, etc., for example. The options for units, weapons, and armor are significantly, significantly expanded. And the nuances of combat offer more variety through the simple abandonment of tight corridors for open planetary terrain.

Second Look: A Reread of Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen

I read Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen a decade ago. It took a year; the ten-book series has a lot of words. A lot. It's a massive-massive world and Erikson's story is not easy to read. Dozens upon dozens of locations, hundreds upon hundreds of characters, an extensive pantheon of gods, multiple layers of internal history, cultures, and lore—reading the series is an investment in time, concentration, memory, and, of course, money. I only keep books I intend to re-read, and looking at my bookshelf at the end of 2024 I asked myself: will I ever re-read Malazan? Should I free up some shelf-space? I decided to do a re-read to answer the question. Eight months later and I'm back from the journey, older and wiser.

The Magic Ruler

I'm not the most well-read epic fantasy reader, but I can't think of a fantasy world as large and complex as Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen. Ignoring Ian Esslemont's contributions to the setting, or even Erikson's Malazan short stories or adjacent novels, it's immense. The dramatis personae of one book is longer than the majority of other fantasy novels, let alone the sum of all ten books of the series. I assume the average pages-per-novel is around 1,000 (paperback). Each book juggles six or more different settings/character groups. There are around ten different sentient species, each with its own history, appearance, magic, lore, mannerisms, etc. The fantastic is a ubiquitous, hand-wavy affair, no system or structure to limit or keep it in check. Likewise, the idea of “gods” is nebulous at best, as mortals are capable of suddenly becoming gods, while gods are capable of dying and being killed. It's a massive milieu in which a million things are happening at one time, and a million things are possible.

Review of Limbo by Bernard Wolfe

One of the interesting mini-games in science fiction is tracing lineage. This author did this, another did that, another author picked up this, then still another author combined this with that and tweaked a little something here, and then... It's a sordid tale, so they say. I was somewhat taken aback by a novel, written in 1952, which acted not only as a node, but a proto-nexus for many of the ideas I find common in sf. Cyberpunk in rudimentary form. Concerns around invasive surgery. And psychologically edged dystopia. These three vectors cross paths in Bernard Wolfe's Limbo.

Limbo is a vignette of Earth post-WWIII. The nukes have fallen, and the global order is not what it once was. But neither is it stone age. Two core groups have emerged as nation states: the left over United States and the left over USSR. In the wake of such violence, the flag of pacifism flies high, so high, in fact, some people show support for the ideology by literally disarming themselves, voluntarily amputating limbs. These people are called Immobs. But most human existence is on the fringe, frontier and free. The novel centers on one such doctor living in the jungles of Africa, a man named Dr. Martine. He helps the local tribe implement mandunga, their version of pacifism via lobotomy. But when their jungle tribe sees its first group of Immobs visit, Dr. Martine knows he must leave his peaceful existence and return to his home in the US to do something about the phenomenon.

Review of Metallic Realms by Lincoln Michel

A nerd is a person that everybody instinctively knows when they see one but are hard pressed to define. And even when put into words, the definition doesn't feel right. Knowledgeable about science, ok, maybe, yes, often—but not always, definitely not always. Socially awkward, yes, likely, but it's 2025. Many celebrities openly geek out but don't seem to have trouble speaking into a microphone. A nerd exists in a dark basement, smashing Star Wars figures together with lightsaber noises. Hmm, yes. Could be, could be. But all nerds? Pinging readers' instincts like a submarine radar but never providing a dictionary entry on nerdom is Lincoln Michel's culturally insightful Metallic Realms (2025). The subtle humor is the icing on the cake, or should I say: the goo on a blarpstrim's purple snout schnuck, schnuk.

Metallic Realms is the inadvertent biography of one Michael Lincoln. Obviously there is a a connection to the author, but it feels nothing deeper than tongue-in-cheek, or at best, a tiny contributor to the novel's meta layer. It's an inadvertent biography because Michael is ostensibly writing a piece of academia: the be-all end-all history of the Star Rot Chronicles, a series of pulp fiction stories. The stories are written by friends of Michael's, a group of writers calling themselves The Orb 4. Michael desperately admires The Orb 4. He loves their fiction, and more so wants to be accepted by them. But he just can't seem to get over his own personal hump to connect. While singing the praises of The Orb 4, Michael describes the background social dynamics—the inspirations, the conflicts, the real life happenings—of the group which lead to their stories. But the fact he can't help inserting the perceived injustices of his own life into the narrative is where the novel truly comes come alive.

Review of The Girl in the Glass by Jeffrey Ford

It's fair to say a large portion of horror fiction's miles have been had from seances, necromancy, channeling, speaking with the dead, Aleister Crowley, divination—anything to do with the occult and occultish happenings. There is, naturally, a certain fascination with what lies beyond the light at the end of the tunnel, so much so a certain type of grifter thrived in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. For these grifters, seances for communiques with the dead were the name, but the game was appearances and deception. The lengths these con artists went to 'selling their wares' is the stuff of legend. Digging into this rich sub-culture in a 1930s New York gangster scene is Jeffrey Ford's The Girl in the Glass (2005).

The Girl in the Glass is the story of Diego. Once a Mexican street kid, he was taken under the wing of a traveling performer named Schell and taught to be “Ondoo”, a mystical Hindu assistant helping Schell with seances. The pair, along with their jack-of-all-trades assistant Antony, travel the Long Island area, helping the rich commune with the departed. And quite successfully. The trio have grown rich, and in doing so have attracted the attention of an aristocrat named Barnes whose young daughter recently went missing. Invited to a session to help locate the girl, the three's carefully crafted world starts to unravel in the aftermath.

Gush-Gush-Gush: Balancing the Internet Review Formula

The following is the opening paragraph of C.J. Sam's novel Temple of the Bird Men.  It's a book on some readers' 2025 radars and is spoken of in glowing terms by certain reviewers (Gush-Gush-Gush!).  But a counter-weight is needed.

The capital gates loomed high above Daran, the farmer from Southern Shangee Province. Their riveted metal plates shimmered under the late afternoon sun, casting shadows over the road, paved in stone. Guards in polished armour stood at attention, their hands resting on the hilts of swords that gleamed as brightly as their distrustful eyes. Daran shifted uneasily, adjusting the satchel slung over his shoulder. Within it lay the letter from Sanrat, Lord of the Southern Shangee Feudal Domain, a man revered in his lands as much for his cunning as for his authority. The weight of his mission pressed on him heavier than the miles of rough terrain he had trudged on his tired horse to reach the capital.

The opening sentence is awkward; the clause should open a separate sentence or be communicated in another fashion at a later point.   But ok, let's keep going. Shimmering in the sun, ok. Paved in stone—wait, what? What are those stones doing at the end of that sentence? They have no place. It's spurious info which contributes zero to the mood, and in fact disrupts the flow of prose. But onward, forward. Daran... Sanrat... his. Wait. Whose is “his mission”? Daran or Sanrat's? I assume Daran's, but I was taken into Sanrat's lane by the details about him <wink>. And why do we need to know such details about this Lord character? Sam has shown he's willing to include spurious info, so is this another instance or just foreshadowing? Ok, ok, keep going. The weight of his mission pressed on him heavier than the miles of rough terrain he had trudged on his tired horse to reach the capital. Overdone sentence.  Remove “rough” and “tired”. Typical genre overuse of adjectives.  The terrain is inherently rough due to the Medieval-esque setting and the horse is inherently tired due to the word “trudge”. Better yet, show the difficulty in some other fashion—aches, sweat, gauntness, etc.

Review of Gatherer of Clouds by Sean Russell

Before getting to the review of Gatherer of Clouds, it's worth briefly—briefly—summarizing Initiate Brother. Initiate Brother introduced the land of Wah and its paranoid Emperor who sought to play dangerous games in keeping the power of the Wah's largest house, House Shonto, in check. A handful of key actors on this stage were introduced and positioned on one side or the other, but the final chapters introduced still a third major player: barbarian tribes from the North, threatening to invade. Is the Emperor behind the barbarians in a ploy to eliminate House Shonto, and if yes, has he bitten off more than he can chew? Will Lord Shonto be attacked by barbarians from the North and the Emperor from the South? Will the land of Wah survive? Gatherer of Clouds (1992) answers these questions.

For readers curious if Gatherer of Clouds delivers on Initiate Brother, absolutely. It starts exactly where Initiate Brother left off, then only picks up momentum. No peaks and valleys. No hot and cold. Gatherer of Clouds just keeps moving steadily upwards and onwards til the stakes are fully in conflict. The barbarian threat fulfills itself, as does the struggle between the Emperor and Shonto. And there are several main character deaths. In short, any reader worried that Gatherer of Clouds does not deliver need not worry. Some writers spend two books getting the same quality substance from their stories.

Review of Transreal Cyberpunk by Rudy Rucker & Bruce Sterling

Bruce Sterling and Rudy Rucker are two of science fiction's most imaginative minds.* Sterling broke fresh ground in the 80s and 90s with cyberpunk, ground still being farmed to this day, while the only element common to Rucker's oeuvre carries the sparkly label 'gonzo sf'. The two writers collaborated enough over the past decades that in 2016 a collection of their dual efforts was released, Transreal Cyberpunk**.

Kicking the collection's doors off is “Storming the Cosmos”. Two Russians in the 1940s chase down a reported UFO landing through a web of KGB, mosquitoes, and tribal voodoo deep in Siberia. A wild ride, you never knowing what's coming next or where the story is going, only that you want to hang on to find out. Pure Soviet gonzo. Tug-Tug Mesoglea is an entrepreneur with an idea: "Artificial Jellyfish: Your Route to Postindustrial Global Competitiveness!", and in the story “Big Jelly” his idea comes to spectacular life with the help of a drug snorting, broad-minded Texan venture capitalist named Revel Pullen. Tug and Revel alter egos to Rucker and Sterling, the story is not only a cyberpunk romp about a product in development that goes wild, but a formula-setter for the most of the remaining stories in the collection.

Review of Yellow Blue Tibia by Adam Roberts

There is a wonderfully expressive idiom in Polish: to paint the grass green. I don't know the etymology, but instinct tells me this is left over from communist times, times when the appearance of things was more important than the reality of things. Comrade big boss visiting? Ok, we can do this. Get things presentable. Get your stories straight with everyone. Falsify the reports to look good. Make sure the motivational slogans are appealing... Interrogating the space between this paint brush and the grass is Adam Roberts' Yellow Blue Tibia (2009).

Yellow Blue Tibia is a tale of Stalin's Soviet UFO program. In the years following WWII, the dictator commissioned a group of Russian science fiction writers, one being Konstantin Skovrecky, to write a story. Naturally these writers wanted to write a story that properly represented communism and the communist struggle against capitalism and the bourgeois West. Aliens would represent anti-Soviet interests, and as the USA had dropped atomic bombs on Japan, why not make them radiation aliens? But just as soon as Stalin commissioned the story, he commanded the group lock the ideas away and never speak to anyone of their story again. Yellow Blue Tibia is Skovrecky's memoir of the decades following this command.

Cardboard Corner: Review of Vale of Eternity

Seasons is one our family's go-to board games. It fits nicely somewhere between trading card game and Euro, and plays in about an hour. Mostly solitaire engine building, you still have a chance to interfere with opponents' game plans through dice selection and card play. But it's in combining card effects where Seasons hits its sweet spot. Taking the Seasons model and stripping it down into a more streamlined experience is Vale of Eternity (2024).

Vale of Eternity is a 2-4 player card drafting and engine building game. Players start a round by drafting two cards each from a selection wheel, then have the choice of selling the cards for money, paying for and playing them, or keeping them in hand to play a later round. The cards are in five factions, each with its own sale value and type of card effects. Card effects can do anything from generate resources to earn victory points, and are meant to combo off one another. The player who builds the card-combo engine getting to 60 points first triggers end-of-round scoring. After final tally, the person with the most VPs, wins.

Review of The Last Continent by Terry Pratchett

For people who have been to Australia, they will know it's almost like another planet. The people, culture, society, etc. are all recognizably human, of course, typically European in descent or Aboriginal. But everything else is otherworldly. The flora looks and smells different. The landscape is largely flat, unforgiving, with occasional strange bumps of rocks. And the fauna covers a spectrum of unique to just plain weird. It's clear things evolved differently compared to other continents on Earth. Looking to take humorous and insightful advantage of this fact is Terry Pratchett's The Last Continent (1998).

The Last Continent follows two wizardly plotlines. Plot A features Mustrum Ridcully, Ponder Stibbons, the Lecturer in Recent Runes, and the Dean as they attempt to help the Librarian return to orangutan form. Every time the ape sneezes he turns into an orange hairy something—book, chair, tree, etc. and wants to return to form The group arrives at the bedroom of the one wizard who may be able to help them, only to discover a dimension to another world, one millions of years older than the Disc. Plot B features our unlikely tourist hero Rincewind as he finds himself bouncing around the Ecksecksecksecks-ian (Australian) outback, sometimes literally, trying to get back to Ankh-Morpork. DEATH is ready and waiting in the wings, but Rincewind somehow manages to avoid the snakes and spiders and bandits. He does, however, find himself a sheep thief awaiting the gallows.

Did We Watch the Same Series? Defending Game of Thrones Season 8

It goes without saying, but I'll say it: spoilers ahead...

If one goes online, the opinion they inevitably find of Game of Thrones Season 8 is sorely negative. Specific reasons are rarely given, but it's definitely “bad”, “awful”, “a series' killer”, etc. Which leaves me wondering, did we watch the same series? Season 8 definitely has its issues, which I will get into, but as a whole it delivers.

To get the obvious out of the way, yes, Season 8 was too short. It should have added two episodes rather than subtracting two. Ten seems about right to present the showdown with the Night King and still have time to resolve who sits the iron throne. Too much was crammed into too little space, and it was over too quickly. The powerful scenes which needed room to breathe, scenes the previous seven seasons had been building toward, didn't get the freedom they deserved. People with that criticism, I agree. (And people with the criticism that Bran's nod to “democracy” was cheesy, yes, I've got your back. Cheesy.)

But length (and democracy) do not destroy Season 8. Scenes which progress the story exist in organic concatenation, i.e. everything follows linearly from what came before, no wild tangents, no novel producer ideas, no last minute changes to “shake things up”, no new character to revive a fading series as Hollywood is sometimes wont to do. No, it's clearly, identifiably the same story, same actors/actresses, same sets, same writers, same dialogue, etc., and it all flows naturally—quickly, but naturally.

Review of Madness Is Better than Defeat by Ned Beauman

The opening scenes of the film Babylon are glorious madness. Sex, drugs, and rock n' roll at the height of the silent film era, it's the definition of a decadent, world-is-your-oyster, liberal frenzy. The sense of freedom is redolent. Taking those scenes and extrapolating upon them through variegated lenses is Ned Beauman's criminally underread Madness Is Better than Defeat (2018).

I generally provide a plot overview in my reviews, and I will attempt to do so here, as well. Just be aware the following is superficial, at best.

Madness Is Better than Defeat starts off as a quasi-competition between two groups of Westerners who come to learn of an undiscovered Mayan pyramid in the Honduran jungle circa the late 1930s. One group seeks to dismantle the pyramid and rebuild it in a museum, while the other seeks to make a Hollywood blockbuster using the pyramid as a set piece. A bee's hive viewed through facets of time, Beauman proceeds to tell the tales of the varying interests to the pyramid, their entourages, and the people whose orbits move in and out of the pyramid's fate. Madness, indeed.

Review of Initiate Brother by Sean Russell

The past fifteen years, poked and prodded by social movements, have seen myriad books emerge with Oriental and Oriental-esque settings and motifs. Before that time, however, such books were inconspicuous. Readers interested in non-Medieval European settings had to dig deep on genre bookshelves to find material. Occasionally they were rewarded. Dig far enough and it was possible—and still possible today—to find Sean Russell's high fantasy gem Initiate Brother (1991).

Initiate Brother is set in a world called Wah which strongly echoes feudal Japan/China*. Wah is ruled by an Emperor who has consolidated power through a loyal group of advisers, generals, and houses paying fiefs, but is paranoid of the more powerful houses in his empire, the largest of which is House Shonto. Lord Shonto, despite his power, is loyal to the Emperor, and guides and rules his house through patience, long-term strategies, and intelligent alliances, including the monks of the botahari religion. At the outset of Initiate Brother he takes one of their brightest young minds, a monk named Shuyun, as his new spiritual advisor. Little does he know the implications of this decision on the future of Wah.

Review of Red Snow by Ian Macleod

I've always thought of Ian Macleod as a writer who can transcend genre, or at least get beneath its skin, to find its human heart. The Light Ages is steampunk with real adolescent concerns. The Summer Isles is alternate history specifically positioned to get to the bottom of one man's personal issues. The superb novella “New Light on the Drake Equation” is 'hard sf' to a lot of readers, but it is more about an alcoholic astronomer stuck in a rut of life. So where does Macleod's 2017 novel Red Snow, a novel ostensibly about vampires in the late 19th century, apply its human spade?

Red Snow tells the story of three different people. For the purposes of spoilers, however, we'll start and end with Karl Haupmann, who begins the novel. Doctoral student swept into the American Civil War, he helps the North's effort, surviving only to be bitten by a crazed man in the aftermath of battle. Two other soldiers likewise bitten, Haupmann observes radical changes in their and his bodies. Wounds heal quickly, an aversion to sunshine develops, as does a thirst for blood—classic vampire symptoms. Clinging to his humanity, Haupmann searches for and finds a bandaid solution to his situation: morphine. The drug dulls his urges and gets him through waning moons. But returning to his friends and family after the war he discovers his appearance and behavior are too cold, too strange. Rejected, Haupmann is left to scour the Earth, looking for the source of his condition, heroin syringe in hand.

Cardboard Corner: Review of Flesh & Blood

Note: this review is intended for people interested in trying Flesh & Blood casually. For information on competitive play, the game's secondary market, play formats, etc., please seek out the other, innumerable internet channels available.

The Big Three in trading card games have been the Big Three for more than a decade. Dozens and dozens of games, as well as game models (LCG, UCG, etc.), have appeared. But Magic the Gathering, Pokemon, and Yu-Gi-Oh still stand tall. And they remain the most popular by a margin. But in 2025 there is a contender. It has slogged for years to even have a peek at the summit, and shows the best potential yet of making it a Big Four. I dove in to see what Flesh & Blood (2019) is all about.

Rooted in common ground, Flesh & Blood is not radically different than any other popular TCG. If there is a TCG bell curve, it falls halfway between its fattest and thinnest points. Players spend resources to play cards to attack their opponent and drive their life total to zero. You've heard that before. The central combat engine of Flesh & Blood is, however, its own. It's where the game distinguishes itself, making for a singular TCG experience.

Review of Norstrilia by Cordwainer Smith

One of the joys of Jack Vance is the manner in which he surfs the edge of the absurd. Constantly on the verge of being swamped by a wave, he perpetually shoots the pipe, always emerging into the colorful yet familiar waters of pulp science fiction. Cordwainer Smith's Norstrilia (1975), with its wild possibilities and worlds and characters, feels similar. But instead of shooting the pipe, Smith busts out a triple flip into the froth of the absurd beyond.

Norstrilia is the wild and wacky, far-future story of Rod McCan and his quest to be a hiering and spieking inheritor of his family's legacy. A naive teen Aussie, Rod's family have become immensely rich raising exponentially large, sick sheep. Yes, vast, mouth-breathing ewes. They have a hundred or so of the animals, harvesting them for stroon, A Dune-esque immortality drug sold to the wider universe at top dollar. Yes, you read that correctly: hiering and spieking, which in Norstrilia are the telepathic ways everyone communicates. Except Rod, who is so desperate to gain those skills he has been reborn multiple times. But each time he lacks the skills. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and at the beginning of the novel he asks his AI computer friend for ideas. He gets one: buying Earth. And that is just the beginning.

Gone vacationin'...

Speculiction is going on vacation for a couple of weeks.  Upon return, we'll be putting some of the big series we've been reading for a while behind us (Horus Heresy, Malazan, etc.) and digging into the fantastika 2025 has made available, as well as closing out the oeuvres of several authors.  See if any of you amateur geoguessrs can identify where we're going based on the photo...