Review of Beluthahatchie and Other Stories by Andy Duncan

Ahhh, Andy Duncan. What to say? The definition of quality over quantity, the man writes only a couple short stories per year. Each is hand-crafted, polished to chrome shine, and will certainly feature an organic premise speaking to some measure of humanity at large. And authorial voice, amazing. Each story drips with flavor yet is told in a way that fits the story being told. But I gush. Duncan’s first collection, Beluthahatchie and Other Stories (2000), is well worth seeking out by connoisseurs of speculative fiction in short form.

A Robert Johnson crossroads story with an agenda, the title story “Beluthahatchie” tells of a vice-ridden blues musician from the early 20th century who meets an untimely end and finds himself on the train to hell. But it's when encountering the devil and learning about his new living conditions that the reader really gets to thinking. Written in fabulous prose, Duncan sets the tone for the collection by drawing the reader in with rich character and dialogue, and leaves them pondering over the substance.

Cardboard Corner: Ranking Arkham Horror: The Card Game Opening Scenarios

Arkham Horror: The Card Game campaigns have a definitive arc. They ebb and flow through six, eight, nine scenarios, giving players a variety of ways to test decks and test skill, and culminating in a boss battle. That boss should be, and most often is, the ultimate test. Knowledge of the campaign's mechanisms and upgraded decks go a long way toward success. Opening scenarios are the opposite, and the focus of this post.

In some ways, the opening scenario is the best point of any campaign. The mystery of what is happening, the excitement of what is to come, and the simple joy of getting into another campaign combine to give them a little extra zest. They are also a challenge. Players have the weakest decks they will have all campaign and no knowledge of the new mechanisms. First impressions, as they say, mean everything. In previous posts, Speculiction has ranked the Arkham Horror releases and bosses. As such, I thought it would be fun to rank all the opening scenarios, as well.

From worst to first, here they are. Enjoy!

Review of Hard Light by Elizabeth Hand

Elizabeth Hand's Cass Neary series, at the structural level, doesn't poke its nose above ordinary. It's slow burn murder mystery through and through, a saturated genre if ever there were. Where the series gouges its mark is in Neary. Like boiling a frog, the reader slowly realizes they are bound to her vices almost as much as her virtues, and by default bound to the dubious circumstances spiraling around her. Not an archetype, she lives and breathes inner demons, her antagonism serving character and plot. It's that level of credibility which makes the series worthwhile and worth mention whenever the best neo-noir books are discussed. Let's see how third book in the series, Hard Light (2016), continues digging into Neary.

Generation Loss was set on the coast of Maine and Available Dark in Iceland. In the direct aftermath, Hard Light takes readers to London Penniless, Neary finds herself in a dive bar, looking for a means get home to the US. She runs into a goth singer, who takes her to a coke house, which gets her into an art party, which puts her in contact with strange prehistoric artifacts, which... takes the reader on yet another subtly evolving murder mystery that has both feet in a dark, personal reality. No spoiler, the manner in which Hand integrates the physics and chemistry of photography into murder mystery continues to astound.

Review of Moon Dogs by Michael Swanwick

Whether you know it or not, Michael Swanwick has been producing some of the best off-center fantasy fiction since 1980; he plays in the sandbox but uses his toes. What some people also may not know is that Swanwick has also been one of the best voices in non-fiction over that time. He has produced 100+ published essays, and likely just as much content if not more on his blog, in interviews, etc. Swanwick's 2000 collection Moon Dogs features the best of his short fiction between 1991 and 2000 as well as the most relevant of his non-fiction during the same time frame.

Moon Dogs kicks off with the title story. It tells of a young man who goes to a near-drowning clinic in the hopes of purging his thoughts of mortality. After, he rests in the woods and meets a strange woman with a pack of mechanical dogs. Her backstory relevant, the man's sense of mortality takes a dramatic swing in the aftermath of their meeting. This story is the lone, previously unpublished piece in the collection and is an oddly successful combination of gothic and science fiction. It delivers on mood, and, if anything else, is a well written bit of cheap revenge.

A True Phoenixborn: Breaking Down the Ashes: Rise of the Phoenixborn Product Line

In a way, this is a spurious post. Like baby spiders emerging from the egg sac, it's inevitable Ashes: Rise of the Phoenixborn will find its own way in the world, the words below unnecessary. But the game has evolved a couple of times the past ten years, and therefore for people interested, here is a quick and dirty breakdown of Ashes products. Skip to the summary if you just want to know where to start.

Ashes: Rise of the Phoenixborn

The first Ashes product release was the 2015 master set Ashes: Rise of the Phoenixborn. It was popular and spawned expansions: nineteen standard hero packs, three deluxe hero packs (new dice types), tournament play, deckbuilding websites, forum chatter, and all the jazz one associates with a popular collectible card game. Anti-Magic: the Gathering in several ways, the master set offered players a complete, out-of-the-box TCG-esque play experience without the need to chase cards, worry about rarity, etc. The game's design is better for it. All the cover art for the products released during this cycle has a white background.

Review of Angel Down by Daniel Kraus

Every once and a while, out of the blue, brushing your teeth for example, lightning strikes. Every once and a while you're going to work, same path you always take, and an elephant falls from the sky. And every once and a while, traveling the well-trodden highways and byways of contemporary fiction, a truly exceptional book plops in front of your eyeballs. This review is lightning; Daniel Kraus' Angel Down (2025) is the blue.

Angel Down is the story of Bagger, a gravedigger deployed to an American company of soldiers at the front-lines of Bois de Caures in World War I, France. The front-lines provide Bagger no shortage of work, and a cynical view of his fellow soldiers to boot. No use getting close to people when you'll bury them the next day. Bagger hopes to survive the war in order to return to his Iowa farm. But a chance encounter with an angel one battle changes his fate.

But that is just the story of Angel Down. Just.

Article: Phase Three: Z-Factor TCGs

Maybe it's just me, but cultural movements seem to be divided into three phases. You have Phase 1, the Indiscernable Phase (official name, natch). Disparate pieces appear in the ether of culture but are not yet discernable as a "thing". Take cyberpunk, for example. In the mid-20th century, books appeared with techno-dystopias, datanet heists, body-embedded technology, evil corporations, information wars, etc. scattered among them. But it wasn't until the late 70s and early 80s that writers like William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Pat Cadigan et al. pulled these ideas together into a phenomenon we call cyberpunk. Yes, you're reading correctly: cyberpunk as an identifiable concept does not emerge until Phase 2, the Coalescing Phase. One other important point about Phase 2 is that it sits on the edge of popularity but is not yet popular. Neuromancer was a niche hit upon release, not a mass market hit. The hucksters need time to catch on, which leads us to Phase 3: the Commodification Phase. The "thing" is now an ordinary thing, a known entity that companies can market, produce, and sell en masse. They can put the 'cyberpunk' label on the cover and most people will know what it is. Rinse, repeat, until ubiquity is achieved.

Of course, the transitions between the three phases are nebulous. What precisely is the line between Coalescing and Commodification? Hard to know. But the phases undoubtedly exist. Cyberpunk, jazz, romantasy, or any other cultural phenomenon have gone through them. Which brings us to TCGs.

Review of Ice by Jacek Dukaj

One of the things linking my wife and I is our love of speculative fiction. It's the majority of what we both read. But there are many conversations we're unable to have. There is a huge swathe of Polish fiction she has read that I cannot. Stanislaw Lem and Andrzej Sapkowski are about the only two authors available to the English speaking world of the dozens if not hundreds who write fantastika. For years my wife lauded and lamented Jacek Dukaj's Lód. You should read it, but it's untranslatable. In 2025 I finally did. Ursula Phillips brought us Dukaj's Ice (originally published 2007).

Ice is set in an alternate,early 20th-century in which World War I never took place and Russia rules the territory we currently know as Poland. A deep freeze has settled on these lands. Everything is covered in ice and snow, including gleiss which shifts and moves by some form of arcane sentience. Gleiss appears in cities and towns, and anything which touches it is frozen to crystal. Scientists work to harness its power. In society, there are a diverse array of political affiliations—nationalists, tsarists, anarchists, autarchs, slavophiles, westernisers, conservative religionists, materialists, and many others. This short paragraph does not do the setting of the novel justice, but suffice to say it is a richly populated world bridging known history and culture with an alternate history that is imaginative and engaging.

Review of Sacrifice of Fools by Ian McDonald

1996 was an unassuming year from our tumultuous perch in 2026. The majority in the West agreed on unwritten social rules and gender identity. Politics were dramatic but reasonable by comparison. Trans people existed and few made a big deal about it. And immigration, while ongoing, was not as hot a topic as it is today. Into this calm before the storm, Ian McDonald published a tasty piece of alien noir, Sacrifice of Fools.

The setting of Sacrifice of Fools parallels situations happening in the western world today, for example the influx of Somalians to rural American towns, Syrians into Europe, etc. In McDonald's novel, the Somalians and Syrians are the Shian, an alien race who has flown light years across the galaxy to trade tech and find a new home. (Not sure what tech the Somalians and Syrians are trading, but you get it.) And rural America and urban Europe are 1990s Northern Ireland, a place still rife with Protestant-Catholic tensions as well as conflicting views to how the Shian should be handled. And in this clash of cultures there develops a small subset of Northern Irish who want to appear and act like the Shian, up to and including body modification surgery. Uncanny the parallels...

Review of Molten Flux by Jonathan Weiss

It happens. Interviews with the author indicate a person who is reasonably articulate or potentially more. No major red flags lurk in one- or two-star reviews. The description sounds interesting, even on the third independent check. And yet a book can still disappoint.

Wait. Let me start again.

It's a Mad Max scene where massive metal cities rove the deserts, scavenging scrap and warding off gangs of bandits who pressgang people to join the ranks of the molten dead. A young man is thrown into a fire in the opening pages, and after must use his wits and strength to navigate uncertain situations. Pace is controlled: the world is not revealed in gusts of author impatience; Weiss takes his time peeling back the layers of this world, gaining reader interest in the process. And tactile description exists. More later, but effort is put into bringing the reader into the world. All in all, Molten Flux would seem a delight.