Review of The Melancholy of Mechagirl by Catherynne M. Valente

Is there anything she can't do? Catherynne Valente's oeuvre not only covers a swathe of genres and sub-genres, but does so in a variety of styles and approaches that make putting her fiction in a box impossible. Ensuring that task is truly out of reach is the Japan, Japan-adjacent, Japan-inspired, and Japan touched short story collection: The Melancholy of Mechagirl (2013).

The Melancholy of Mechagirl kicks off with the eponymous poem. The zig-zag of the title becomes inherent as Valente takes the reader on a mini-journey through the soul of a Japanese teen girl. “Ink, Water, Milk” is a 3x3 grid, columns and rows the same names, or as Valente describes it, like three cells from a film roll, one laid on top of the other on a light box. More stories than story, it is a short but brilliant interplay of color, history, emotion, myth, procreation, all bleeding one into the other, separate yet part of the same whole. One of the best of the collection.

TCG Resource Systems (aka, How I Met Your Mother)

Captain Obvious says, economy is one of the three pillars supporting every TCG. Lieutenant Apparent adds, economy must be considered in every decision made and every card played. And Private Plain squeaks: economy is to blame for not being able to splash all my hardest hitting cards in one turn! (Umm, Private, that game is Yu-Gi-Oh...) Invisible yet influential, economies can make some TCGs stand tall, and others hang noodle limp. At the risk of hyperbole, it is the spine of every TCG.

As such, I thought it would be fun to look at some of the economies—resource systems—that have developed since Magic: the Gathering appeared 35+ years ago (and cursed us with the shittiest resource system known this universe—and all the universes beyond).

And there have been a number. From simple to complex, static to dynamic, inherent to abstract—the ability to pay and play those sweet-sweet cards has appeared in many iterations in TCG and TCG-esque games. (If you consider yourself a purist of the definition of “TCG”, run the other way. I will discuss TCGs, CCGs, LCGs, ECGS, UCGs, etc., etc. without a fig given to taxonomy.) A variety of systems will be discussed here, and in the closing paragraph I will draw some conclusions—objective conclusions, naturally.

Review of Colossus by D.F. Jones

It's an understatement to say AI has undergone significant shifts in perspective. Undoubtedly cavemen would have furrowed their foreheads at the idea, industrialists of the 19th century, also. But when machines entered everyday life in the mid 20th, it was allowed as a possibility. And when computers appeared, it became an inevitability. The interesting perspective to that perspective is: the context was always 'the future'. AI is in the future. Guess what, it's 2026 and the future is here. AI, or something resembling AI, is in our homes and in our pockets. Beyond inevitable, how could we not have seen it come when it did? Why was it a far future thing? That's what people ask in hindsight. Looking back to the era between 'possibility' and 'inevitability' is a novel portraying a Cold War AI, Colossus by D.F. Jones (1966).

Charles Forbin is the US government project head, leading the team of people designing and building the world's first artificial intelligence. In the opening pages, Forbin has put the finishing touches on the massive project and enters the president's office to inform him of the green light. A gregarious, determined man, the president praises the project and the next day holds a press conference to announce to the world that the US would be downsizing its military by 70% and turning over control of the armed forces to Colossus, the AI. Almost simultaneously, the Soviet Union announces its own AI, an entity they call Guardian. What happens next turns the world upside down and puts humanity on the back foot for the first time in history.

Cardboard Corner: Review of Endeavor: Deep Sea

Surprise, there are critical views of the modern liberal education system. It doesn't push students. It doesn't set realistic expectations. It doesn't prepare them for the real world. It doesn't recognize differences. It's not like school when I was a kid... I will let reality speak for the legitimacy of those concerns. What I want to do here is demonstrate how the system has appeared in board games—at least one board game: Endeavor Deep Sea (2024).

Endeavor: Deep Sea is an action-selection game for 1-4 players. Each player is the leader of a team of marine biologists, technicians, engineers, etc. exploring the sea. Anything the player does—gets another submersible, discovers a new place, explores a new location, conserves a species, collects journals, fills a board with tokens (ahem)—will get them victory points. The player with the most victory points after six rounds, wins.

Review of The Wilding by Ian McDonald

Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child's 1995 novel The Relic tells of an Amazonian creature accidentally transported to NYC's Museum of Natural History. It proceeds to wreak havoc on the museum, brutally killing staff and visitors. The story is brainless escapism of the purist variety. Ian McDonald's 2024 The Wilding is an Irish peat bog take on the same.

Lisa Donnan is a tour guide working at Ireland's largest environmental reclamation project—a 400 sq. km. bog that was nearly wiped out by peat extraction and is now being allowed to regrow. She and her coworkers oversee the re-wilding of what is now a nature park by tracking wildlife, monitoring biosystems, and leading tours and hikes. Trouble starts when one of the farmers allowed to use the land discovers an eviscerated cow. The discovery coincides with the first day of hiking for a group of middle-schoolers, and Lisa soon finds her hands full with more than just teen angst.

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.

Review of The Universe Box by Michael Swanwick

I get people who don't pick up what Michael Swanwick's The Iron Dragon's Daughter is putting down. It's a fantastical carousel of moods and settings—the central post of main character remains fixed, but the horses are lenses, rotating the narrative through a wild selection of moods and tones. The approach lends a kaleidoscope glow to what is actually a dark, gritty story of one woman's battle with herself. Swanwick's The Universe Box (2026, Tachyon*) is much the same despite being a collection. The only difference is each carousel horse moves to its own gait.

The through-lines of The Universe Box are therefore few and far between. Moreover, Swanwick's imagination falls off-center of the bell curve of fantasy; he continually zags when the average writer zigs. Plots are wholly unpredictable and prose is dynamically effective. Overall, the collection is a varied set of stories that are definitively not mainstream—readable, engaging, yes, but anything except derivative or monotone.

Cardboard Corner: Review of Ashes Ascendancy

If capitalism weren't what it is, I would attribute the re-emergence and re-emergence of Ashes: Rise of the Phoenixborn to poetic manifestation... Regardless, the game as undergone effective revision throughout its history. It was popular, is popular, and though a niche game, is going strong. Ashes Ascendancy (2025) adds fuel to that fire.

Ascendancy is an Ashes product that sits in the Ashes Reborn (v1.5) model. It is both supplementary to and complementary of the Ashes Reborn core set, and all the hero expansions, deluxe or otherwise, that go with it. The box is intended for both Ashes veterans and players who just want to try the game. I'll start with the latter.

For new players, Ashes Ascendancy is a two-player starter set that contains all of the cards, tokens, and dice to play a complete, proper, unabridged game of Ashes. There are two heroes, two dice types, and all the cards two players need to build full decks. The Ascendancy box also contains the board, tokens, dice, and cards needed to play the solo/cooperative version of Ashes for two players. Whether it's PvP or PvE, Ascendacy covers the full play experience in a small/medium box.

New Year, Few Prospects: The Science Fiction Blues

On many occasions over the past five-six years I've had the feeling: Speculiction is winding down. This blog, which clearly does not exist for the Benjamins, is purely a hobby. On the About page, I describe it as a means of exercising a language I rarely have the opportunity to use to its fullest. That is 100% true. But I also must have a topic to exercise with, and for the past sixteen years, that topic was speculative fiction, then video games, then board games, then... Nothing. Nothing new. A person only has so much time, and so many hobbies.

Another thing that is finite (although it doesn't feel that way the past decade) is speculative fiction titles.

Over the past sixteen years, I have explored a vast-vast amount of what we might call senior speculative fiction—books and writers published before 2000. I've read 1,155 books published prior to the millennium, the overwhelming majority being science fiction and fantasy. It's a lot. What's more, every year the feeling gets stronger the amount is approaching comprehensive. Which is where the seed for this blog post takes root.

Review of Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene

There are undoubtedly some, if not many, who would say the Cold War was the golden age of spying. Mission Impossible to James Bond, it even birthed a niche of entertainment. But reality is something different; agent field work is the opposite of sexy. Collecting data and building networks of contacts sounds more corporate than thrilling. Injecting a syringe full of clever, black humor into Britain's espionage efforts in Cold War Cuba is Graham Greene's Our Man in Havana (1958).

Our Man in Havana tells of a British vacuum salesman named James Wormold living in the titular city in the 1950s. (Bear in mind this period is just prior to Castro's communist rule.) A bit of a pushover, Wormold's sales are limited, to put it nicely. His wife is estranged and his relationship with his entitled teen daughter Milly isn't any better; she plays him like a fiddle getting what she wants. Wormold's moping, plodding life takes a major turn, however, when British intelligence identifies him as potential agent. Needing money to pay for Milly's excesses, Wormold acccepts, and his life as an unlikely spy is born.

Best Reads of 2025

Speculiction has alrady posted about the speculative fiction published in 2025, which can be found here. But we are a blog which casts its nets far and wide seeking quality fantastika. ~70% of the books we read each year is older than a year. In this post we will highlight the best of that entire spectrum encountered in 2025, regardless of year published.

In no particular order, the following books stand a chance of being remembered, and possible even re-read, years from now:

Fairyland by Paul McAuley – A criminally overlooked work of cyberpunk, Fairyland may also be Paul McAuley's best novel. Descriptions, plotting, and setup are all strong in telling of the next generation of humanity we ourselves may spawn. While there are elements of body horror due to the subject matter, McAuley maintains focus on the larger meaning, almost one of neanderthals looking at the emergence of homo sapiens type of scenario. Where most books approach this from a mental/intelligence perspective, McAuley maintains a wholly biological/zoological perspective, which makes things interesting.

Grendel by John Gardner – I cast a wary eye to retellings; they can be cash grabs or cheap political criticism as much as legitimate commentary on the source material. Grendel is wholly the latter. It holds a mirror to Beowulf and in the process excellently captures the human condition. Told through the eyes of the monster rather than the hero, readers get a psychological snapshot of the avarice and pain the monster possesses, in the process gettign a different view to heroism and humanity.

Speculiction's Awards - Best Fiction Published in 2025

And the years go by.

2025 has ended. Time to look back at the books published and consumed this year, here in the bustling offices of Speculiction. But first some comments on the meta.

In parallel with broader social phenomenon, the female influence on speculative fiction is huge, if not the majority. Female authors are performing extremely well on the market. Female authors are performing extremely well in awards and recognition. And women in general have a strong foothold on the largest media platforms associated with the genre: content creators, YouTube, awards committees, Locus, etc. Compared to speculative fiction of the 20th century, the gender pendulum has swung to the other side. We're living in a time women hold clear power in the field.

In keeping, neoliberal (neomarxist?) politics continue to heavily influence speculative fiction. While I think we've seen the peak, and are moving past the peak, there is no shortage of token homosexuals, ethnicity tagging, or females wielding indomitable power in spec fic. There is no shortage of weight being thrown behind books which agree with the neoliberal agenda, from the authors themselves to the content of their work. And yes, the number of girls holding swords on book covers has not abated. Finding recommended books which do not go out of their way to highlight the left's virtues is difficult.