Review of Extremophile by Ian Green

The names of a few counter-culture/beat writers from the 60s still echo—Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, and Ken Kesey among them. But the novel which captures the espirit of the era the best is perhaps Jack Kerouac's On the Road. More rhythm and melody than plotted story with waypoints, it tells of a young man who sets aside his day job to live the moment—sex, drugs, and jazz concerts. It's been thirty years since I read the novel, but I don't remember much political ideology. It's thus interesting that Kerouac's novel kept springing to mind reading Ian Green's (wildly different) Extremophile (2024).

Extremophile is cyberpunk through and through. Body augmentation, cyberspace, corporate dystopia, dark streets, hackers, loads of neon, evil CEOs, etc., etc. You're familiar with it. Charlie, punk rock bass player by night, gene artist by later night, sleeps during the day. She and her band mates enjoy carousing with fellow musicians, just as much as they enjoy mucking with the system—ecoterrorism, DNA hacking to help their friends avoid corporate watchdogs, and generally sticking their middle-finger up at the man as much as possible. When an opportunity to hit a particularly vile corporate suit comes along, the band are all over it. Trouble is, the suit has his own private security.

Review of A Different Kind of Tension: New and Selected Stories by Jonathan Lethem

Jonathan Lethem has somehow been writing fiction for more than three decades. I say 'somehow' as his recent novels remain relevant, fresh, and off-center of typical mainstream genre fluff. Those decades also include almost one-hundred short stories, some of which have been collected, some which have not. A Different Kind of Tension: New and Selected Stories (2025) brings together almost a third of said output, but rather than a 'best of' or 'greatest hits', Lethem himself seems to have chosen what made the cut—'author's picks' the better descriptor.

A Different Kind of Tension is organized chronologically 1990 - 2024, starting with the earliest published work. Tone-setter more than story, “Walking the Moons” is a very short piece about a man in a virtual reality simulator walking a treadmill on a moon of Jupiter. Human nature ensues until mother nature comes knocking to highlight the absurdity of his attempts at experiencing reality in a sim. Unfortunately prognostic. “Program's Progress” is a Rudy Rucker or Paul Di Filippo-esque (bizarro) tale of an uploaded man (thing? consciousness?) who abuses his position for pleasure drugs and gets demoted back to stationary (immobile) life. He has "adventures" in clever, subversive fashion.

Review of A Trade of Blood by Robert Jackson Bennett

When a writer hits a groove, it's tough not to hope they can stick it for a while. Robert Jackson Bennett put the needle in with The Tainted Cup, first book in the Shadow of the Leviathan series, then settled in, letting the turntable sing with A Drop of Corruption. Just a year later, the third book in the series, A Trade of Blood (2026), is hitting shelves. Still spinning?

A Trade of Blood drops the unlikely detective duo, Dinius Kol and Ana Dolabra, into the middle of Sapirdad, a frontier agricultural land where two families, the Armentas and the Buravs, are engaged in a clan war. The Armentas raise cattle while the Buravs harvest the crops needed to feed the cattle. They feud despite this symbiosis. Din and Dolabra are called to the scene when the eldest daughter of the Armentas is found disemboweled on a hotel room floor, the scion of the Buravs, her ostensible lover, covered in blood in the forest. What they uncover turns the clans on their heads, leaving the land in tatters.

Review of A City Dreaming by Daniel Polansky

That thimbleful of Speculiction's readers are aware this blog has no love for fantasy which elicits a vibe of anything is possible therefore nothing is interesting. The kitchen sink is a mess, not art. Reading back cover copy for Daniel Polansky's A City Dreaming (2016) is not promising in this regard. I paraphrase: An immortal, charmed man visits the surreal side of New York City, a place full of monsters, pirates, shifting cafes, witches, aliens, zombies, Mister T, and much more. But it's Polansky, a writer who is one or two novels away from taking a place on Speculiction's (unenviable, unpublished) Top 10 Underrated writers' list. Let's dive in to the milieu...

Indeed, A City Dreaming is the story of a modern mage in an urban world—at least some of the time. His name is M, and at the outset of the story he leaves Paris for NYC to stay with a friend. In the course of his daily life—going to cafes, walking the sidewalks, and trying to pick up girls and/or narcotics—he finds himself slipping in and out of alternate realities. But the chump lifestyle has its price. Maybe those occasional rewards are worth it?

Cardboard Corner: Review of Sorcery: Contested Realm

I held off for two years. I had the game in the basket on more than one occasion, only to delete it. We already have enough TCGs... I would just be giving in to FOMO... Ignore the algorithm!!! But voices I trust, voices that have steered me away from simple, speculator-friendly TCGs and toward rich, unique card game experiences, slowly mounted to a chorus. I gave in. I loaded the cart, again, but this time clicked Buy on Sorcery: Contested Realm (2022). Mama was right; it's important to choose good friends in life.

On the surface, Sorcery is like the other TCGs out there. You build a resource engine to play cards, permanent and temporary, in order to knock your opponent's life total to zero. And there are further similarities to Magic: one land per round, minions and spells, summoning sickness, twenty-health start, Dungeons & Dragons motif, etc., etc. So much richer and more thematic is Sorcery, however, that it is actually Magic³.

Review of Ship of Magic by Robin Hobb

Robin Hobb's debut trilogy, The Farseer, is one of the most mixed bags I've ever encountered in a fantasy series. It starts good, gets better, then kills the momentum in a streeeeeeetched 700+ page conclusion. Good intentions, but incongruous execution. It didn't put me off Hobb, however. Something else did (more to come). But when the stars aligned, and I finally read Hobb's next offering, it had me asking: has a new arc of quality begun? Lets' look at Ship of Magic (1998).

Ship of Magic takes readers to a new location in Hobb's Realm of the Elderlings setting: the Pirate Isles. First book in a trilogy, it shifts away from kings, queens, wizards, dragons, and pseudo-Medieval villages, and moves toward pirates, treasure, slavery, sea serpents, plunder, trade, and port city ribaldry. It also anthropomorphizes calling ships “she”--making bowspirits of bowsprits. And it's a massive success. But I get ahead of myself.

Review of The Men in the Jungle by Norman Spinrad

By the time the late 60s rolled around, America had had enough of the Vietnam War (or what the Vietnamese call the American War). Unable to shit or get off the pot (same situation Russia currently finds itself in Ukraine), the US kept sending troops and armament to 'fight the war on communism' (Russians are 'fighting the war on Nazis') but never committed enough firepower to actually win the war. And the North Vietnamese, using their own brutal, ruthless methods, fought back, hard. From a certain viewpoint, it was animals fighting animals, killing for the sake of killing, ideology a far cry. Commenting on, or at least seeming to want to comment on the war, is Norman Spinrad's The Men in the Jungle (1967), a science fiction tale/allegory of dubious execution.

Ousted asteroid dictator, Bart Fraden, sets his sights for power on a new destination, the planet Sangre. He invites along his mistress, the power-loving Sophia O'Hara, as well as General William Vanderling, a strategist Fraden hopes will easily knock over the military dictatorship on Sangre. The trio's plan is to peddle pleasure narcotics among the elite and sow discord among the rural villages, then wait for the right moment to engage with uber-weapons. The drugs work among the Brotherhood of Pain, leaders of Sangre, but rousing the villagers runs into a little trouble, one of an atavistic nature.

Review of Dagger Key & Other Stories by Lucius Shepard

There are a number of waypoints in a science fiction and fantasy reader's journey. Some enjoy the latest published hype and never look elsewhere—the years the waypoints. Others branch out, maybe taking a look at what uncle Joe was reading or what an obscure blog (Speculiction, cough cough) recommends. If uncle Joe was reading in the late 20th and early 21st centuries and kept up with genre, there's an extremely good chance he knew the name Lucius Shepard. Writing almost exclusively in short form, story to novella, perhaps Dagger Key and Other Stories (2007) is something a reader looking to explore might find on his dusty shelves?

The collection kicks off with the novella “Stars Seen through Stone”. It begins with a man contemplating life on the steps of the town library. A record producer named Vernon, he recalls the events leading him to contemplation—a demo he'd received from a preternaturally talented blues musician. An emotionally immature, overweight teen who expects the world but is unwilling to put in the effort, Jason Stanky is not the most likable guy. But his music is, and Vernon attempts to reconcile his disgust to get a record deal that will earn them both a little cash. But it’s in relating the town’s history to Stanky one day that things begin to take a turn for the weird for Vernon. Escalating alongside the potential for the young man’s success, their small town of Black William, RI finds itself on the map in ways no reader can predict. This is cited as one of Shepard's best stories for a reason.

Culture Corner: Italy - Tuscany to the Dolomites: Part II

Continuing from Part I, here is the second half of our Italy trip, Lago di Garda to the Dolomites.

#B1 - Classic di Garda – starting at 800 euros per hour. We didn't go for a ride, just dreamed of James Bond.

Culture Corner: Italy - Tuscany to the Dolomites: Part I

As is annual tradition here at Speculiction, we like to take a break from cublicle life to post photos of our vacations - not as pseudo-Instagram fodder, rather as a celebration of the beautiful places and people there are to experience with our time on Earth.  As proof, you will not find my ugly face muddying the crystal blue waters.

The following is the first of two posts related to our Italy vacation.  We started in northern Tuscany, visited a few places in the region, moved to Lago di Garda for a few days, and finished in the Dolomites.  It was even better than the photos.

#A1 – The first week in Italy was spent in Tuscany at this villa, spending time under the sun, going for walks, swimming in the river, and otherwise relaxing.

Review of Strange but Not a Stranger by James Patrick Kelly

Nobody remembers now (due to the past couple decades of history feeling like a millennium), but once upon a time James Patrick Kelly's Think Like a Dinosaur and Other Stories was a major talking point in science fiction. The publishing sphere was contained enough that most readers were aware of the majority of what was happening, and the collection was a triumphant capture of one the genre's brightest new voices. An established name, Kelly followed it up with another collection, 2002's Strange but Not a Stranger.

The collection kicks off with a piece of Cold War Americana pierced by the uncanny: “10¹⁶ to 1?”. It's the 1950s and young Ray lives for superhero comic books. Playing in the woods near his Long Island home one day, he discovers an odd man, a man who seems to know the future. Ray's life twists sideways in the aftermath, and through that transition Kelly gives readers a twisted piece of Golden Age American loosely reminiscent of Jeffrey Ford's “Shadow Year” or Harlan Ellison's “Jeffty is Five” .

Review of Mortedant's Peril by R.J. Barker

An important aspect of reading and reviewing fiction is (to attempt) to discern author intention. Just what is he/she trying to do here? Common answers are: art piece, zeigeist rider, bildungsroman, genre mish-mash, veiled imitation, character examination, etc. Another is: insular entertainment, aka quality escapism. In some ways such entertainment is the purest form of fiction. Less subjective than more ambitious efforts, the reader/reviewer can focus on how well it tells a story—technique, character, scene setting, prose, plot, etc. Such intentions 100% clear, enter Mortedant's Peril by R.J. Barker (2026).

Mortedant's Peril is one, unfortunate week in the life of Irody Hasp. As a mortedant, he is a respected member of society, a person who can read the final thoughts of the dead and offer comfort to those still alive. In the opening pages, Hasp is called to the dusty, dingy home of one of Elbay's bean counters, a dime-a-dozen civil servant in the lower tiers. Hasp thinks nothing of the last thoughts being around the berries the man ate. He collects his fee from the grieving wife and returns home to discover the berries actually meant something and he is being accused of murder. The grand magister of the mortedant's priory is able to grant Hasp a reprieve, however. He gives the unlucky mortedant a guard, one of the city's large alien osters, and one week to solve the crime himself. Or be hanged. Little does he know it, but Hasp is about to uncover threats to more than just his own life.

Review of Galactic Empiires ed. by Neil Clarke

On the west side of the Atlantic, science fiction and fantasy were built upon big, strong, cartoonish foundation stones—Buck Rogers, Barsoom, E.E. Doc Smith, Edmond Hamilton, Conan, and H.P. Lovcraft among them. Genre has iterated multiple times since, from Silver Age to New Wave to the wide-wide beyond. Technique has generally improved. Theme has more often found expression. And certainly some works have transcended genre. But the foundation stones remain. Laser pistols, space adventure, and the massive backdrop of the universe remain. A curated anthology, Neil Clarke's 2017 Galactic Empires looks to bring to the table a quality selection of what the early 21st century has to offer in the way of power structures across vast distances.

Galactic Empires kicks off with “Winning Peace” by Paul J. McAuley. An indentured scavenger is assigned the task of going to a remote location in space to find out what happened to a fellow scavenger who had been teaming up with an alien Cha!. He has a plan up his sleeve to escape indenture, a plan only accelerated by what he finds upon investigation of the location. Not everything is predictable, however, in this classic story rendered in contemporary voice. “Night's Slow Poison” by Ann Leckie is a mixed effort. It tells of a galactic voyage in which a guardsman is forced to confront an uneasy history through the eyes of his dead lover. Leckie has not shortage of imagination, but technique is a challenge, making this a rough read. Continuing with alternate perspectives, “All the Painted Stars” by Gwendolyn Clare is a human encounter told from the alien's view when its octopus-self gets stuck aboard a human ship. The ship is not of human origin, however, and the alien finds itself in a compromising situation. More classic sf in a modern voice.

Cardboard Corner: Review of Kira-ai: The Duel

Our board game collection consists of games big and small. On one end we have giant boxes like Tidal Blades: Rise of the Unfolders, the Ashes Reborn all-in box, and the mother of them all, old school Fireball Island. On the other end, we have Pax Transhumanity, Radlands, and Hannamikoji—games that fit snugly in a shoebox, together. But the smallest game of all, smaller than the size of a wallet, is Kira-ai: The Duel (2023). And here the adage is true: size doesn't matter.

If you enjoy games where you sit across from an opponent, trying to discern what's going through their mind as they do precisely the same to you, Kira-ai is one to check out. No fluff. No draw a card and see. No roll a die. It's mind games, only mind games, wrapped tightly around the theme of a samurai duel.

Review of The End of Everything by M. John Harrison

Over the past few years, my thoughts return with increasing frequency to the Camus-esque absurdity of normal life. Juxtapose the thousands of years of work, sleep, family, food, etc. with the fresh soil modern humanity is tilling (AI, screens, globalization, politicized media, etc.) and its mindblowing—in slippery yet sturdy, bizarre yet normal, out of touch yet 100% palpable, Camus-esque fashion. There are people following the love advice of chatgpt. That's a human doing what humans would do given such an opportunity, yes? But chatgpt?!?! Capturing this (seeming) juxtaposition pitch perfect artistically, narratively, and thematically, is M. John Harrison's The End of Everything (2026).

Boil away the skin and hair, muscles and organs, and in its bones The End of Everything is a near-future alien invasion of Britain. The iGhetti have appeared slowly and steadily in myriad forms on the island nation's shores, sometimes invasive of daily life and sometimes just hovering on the perimeter. In the wake of their arrival, government is degrading, a dense fog has descended on Europe, and all manner of the odd and uncanny is washing ashore. Two characters, Philip the beachcomber and Marnie the senior citizen artist, attempt to come to terms with their evolving world.

Review of The Rainseekers by Matthew Kressel

It's always an interesting question: what will the current generation go down as when all is said and done. It's an interesting question because, the youngest generation always faces the harshest criticism, yet seems to defy that criticism in interesting ways as time goes on. It's still too early to tell with Gen Z, but one thing for certain is that their youth will be youth, going off doing the wildest, logic-defying things that the youth of every prior generation did. Optimism is priceless, but only for a time, when a price must be paid. Matthew Kressel, in his 2026 novella The Rainseekers, features the lives of people reflecting on their youth.

The Rainseekers is a quasi-frame story. It is ostensibly about Sakunja, former holo star on Earth now journalist on Mars. She recounts for the reader this path, including her joining a group of people on an excursion to be the first to witness rain on the red planet. During the overland journey, she talks with her fellow travelers, and agrees to write the stories of two for her newspaper—an orphaned engineer and a reformed Muslim truck driver. That is, until a not-so-proverbial wrench is thrown into the works of the excursion.

Review of Rite of Passage by Alexei Panshin

Robert Heinlein is best known these days for a handful of novels—Starship Troopers, Stranger in a Strange Land, and The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. But before these books were published, Heinlein had built a foundation on YA fiction featuring silver space ships, clunky computers, intergalactic aliens—he helped shaped the stereotypes. Almost two decades later, when science fiction was near the end of the generation which followed Heinlein's YA work, New Wave sf, Alexei Panshin decided to throwback with Rite of Passage (1968), and oddly enough, was rewarded for it.

Rite of Passage is as classic a YA bildungsroman as classic YA bildungsromans can be. It tells the story of Mia Havero, teenager living aboard a galactic ship that moves from planet to planet, trading knowledge for the goods its limited population need to stay alive. Eugenics are part of the reason the population is tight, but another is that every teen must go through a rite of passage. Each year the group of teens coming of age are dumped on a strange planet with basic supplies, and thirty days later the ship returns to pick up the survivors. Hotheaded, arrogant Mia has a lot of work to do to get ready for this trial.

Review: I Hear a New World by Alan Moore

In 2022, Alan Moore signed a Bloomsbury deal to write a five-book series. At the time Moore was excited, saying he bubbled with fiction (I paraphrase). A difficult feeling to sustain, Moore nevertheless delivered a sparkling, exuberant effort two years later in The Great When. An irreverent mix of Dickens, Joyce, and Aleister Crowley, Moore deployed his singular style on an alternate, mid-20th century London indeed, in bubbly fashion. But could Moore maintain the groove in 2026's I Hear a New World, second book in the series?

It takes a fun, meandering road, but I Hear a New World eventually picks up on the happenings of our weak-chinned hero, Dennis Knuckleyard. Roughly ten years after the events of The Great When, Dennis is still possessor of the key brought back from Long London, and in the early going, he uses an opportunity at a socialite party to pass possession to Joe Meek, a music producer. Meek's never the same after, and Dennis finds himself caught between an occult rock and octogenarian hard place.

Review of Loss Protocol by Paul McAuley

Aldous Huxley may be most well known for his dystopian novel, Brave New World. But he wrote the counter point, also. No, not his novel Point, Counter Point, but the utopian Island, which tells of a near-perfect society created through the communal living, hallucinogens usage, ritual trances, contraception, and “uplifting propaganda” (dispersed by mynah birds, interestingly). Regardless intentional or not, Paul McAuley's 2026 novel Loss Protocol acts as a counter point to the counter point—the Jonestown-side of believing narcotics, living in dream-states, and homesteading are humanity's enlightenment.

It's 2070 and Marc Winters is the ranger/steward of a small British island, a nature reserve in the process of re-wilding. Despite the isolation, Winters is not a lonely man. The mainland is a short boat ride away and there is no shortage of scientists, researchers, and tourists who visit the island. It's on one such excursion that something odd happens: a break-in at his small houseboat. Nothing is stolen but an environmentalist slogan is spray painted on the wall—odd considering the island is a reserve and he the protector of it. But that is just the beginning of Winters' story. Rather than look for clues, the police come to Winters with suspicious questions, particularly about his sister, a woman who he thought dead years ago as part of an environmentalist mass suicide. When no answers are forthcoming from the constabulary, Winters decides to get them himself.

Review of The Faith of Beasts by James S.A. Corey

2024's The Mercy of Gods introduced readers to a new space opera series from James S.A. Corey, the pen name of writer duo Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck. Where their prior series The Expanse focused on a human war in the solar system, the new series, The Captives War, looked to the universe beyond and the myriad of alien life possible there. Humans just one of hundreds of sentient species, in The Mercy of Gods they were taken as slaves by an alpha lobster race called the Carryx. The second book in the series, The Faith of Beasts (2026), looks to tell the next chapter in humanity's attempt to escape captivity.

The Faith of Beasts picks up where The Mercy of Gods leaves off. It follows the surviving members of the team who have been tasked with scientific research in support of the Carryx's galactic war. At the start of the novel, the team are split into groups, sent to separate locations or planets, and given new research goals. They are also tasked with growing the human population, a task the group sets about doing, not through regular Friday-night orgies, rather embryos developed in artificial womb sacs. Power dynamics within the human moiety, let alone the universe at large, are put to strong test by the new research tasks, complicating the scientists' secret plans to overthrow the Carryx.

Cardboard Corner: Review of Etherstone

The Dark Crystal is a 1982 film for families and children. Jim Henson, creator of Sesame Street, brought his muppet-style to a dark fantasy world, spent a good chunk of money on puppetry and set pieces, and told a harrowing tale that will have even the most hardened adult squirming with emotion. One of the reasons for this is the film's baddies, the skeksis, anthropomorphized vultures who cackle and gloat while competing among themselves to suck the souls from the film's elfen heroes. The 2025 board game Etherstone gives me skeksis vibes. <cue cackling glee>

Both strategic and tactical, Etherstone is an engine building game for 2-4 players that is not multi-player solitaire. There is a small but important degree of interaction that forces players to pay attention to game-state as a whole. How it plays is, after a one-time card draft, players take turns drafting dice, collecting etherstones, playing cards to their engine, triggering card effects, and attacking NPCs, all in an effort to build the best points engine. The player with the most points when there are no more points in the pool, wins.

Review of Nonesuch by Francis Spufford

The horrors of WWI, while brought home to Britain in body bags, nevertheless occurred on continental ground. The country remained almost entirely intact, the artillery blasts and machine gun fire happening in France, Belgium, and other places. It was WWII that brought war home. In an effort to subdue the Brits, Hitler launched unending waves of attacks—rockets, bombs, and fighter jets. Those who survived were inevitably faced with soul searching possible only when mortality is at stake. In dynamic, colorful, dramatic, and comedic fashion, Francis Spufford's Nonesuch (2026) digs into the life of one such mortal.

Nonesuch is the story of Iris Hawkins, her romantic adventures as Britain emerges from the Great Depression, and the arrival of Hitler's bombers over London rooftops. She's a free-spirited young woman who enjoys a night out (or seven) with handsome young men, typing her way through a menial clerk's job at a stockbroker's by day. But her routine takes a turn when she has an encounter with the uncanny after a one-night stand. And then everyone's lives in London take a turn when the luftwaffe start dropping bombs.

Culture Commentary: What You Wanted: The Mandalorian & Grogu

Let's do it. Let's fight the power. Let's break the modern media mold. Let's give a reasonable, balanced opinion. The Mandalorian & Grogu is a good Star Wars movie with caveats.

Depending which corners of the web you haunt, your algorithms will attempt to feed you media based on other media you've consumed prior (with a strong dose of sponsorship). If you're not careful, I mean really careful, this can quickly swing to one extreme or another. Love-love-love! Hate-hate-hate! Love-hate-love-hate.... And on and on spins the media monster we've built. Mandalorian is crap! It's great! Disney is doomed! Star Wars is back! The truth often lies in the middle, and the film is no exception.

Review of The Sheep Look Up by John Brunner

Cli-fi has slowly and unsteadily become a sub-genre of science fiction. Works have appeared here and there—Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake, Paolo Bacigalupi's The Water Knife, Kim Stanley Robinson's New York 2140, Matt Bell's Appleseed, Lily Brooks-Dalton's The Light Pirate, and Ned Beauman's Venomous Lumpsucker among them, all with varying visions of nature's power in relation to human life. Whether they know it or not, most of these visions owe a debt of gratitude to the granddaddy of all the environmental novels, The Sheep Look Up (1972) by John Brunner.

If something could go wrong for humanity in The Sheep Look Up, it has. A Greta Thunberg wet dream, pollution chokes cities, forcing people to wear masks in public. Epidemics of food poisoning, accidental and intentional, occur with the randomness of clouds. Potable water doesn't exist anymore save through treatment. Viruses and infections sweep through society like granny's Saturday morning broom. Oily sludge covers coastal and inland waters. Agricultural practices have denuded prairies, forming dustlands. It's bad.

Review of The Ends of the Earth by Lucius Shepard

What a world the West has woven. Technology, with its mantra of making life easier, has in fact made our lives more busy and inundated us with information, so much so that our lives are ever more consumed by the present. It hurts my heart clicking on links to 'Best SF of All Time”, or “Top 100 Fantasy Ever” and seeing that 75% of the books were published after 2000. The efforts of so many brilliant writers are invisibly crumbling in the public eye. Not quite vanished but on the verge is Lucius Shepard. Once one of the absolute titans of fantastika in (semi) short form, few if any of the younguns have even heard his name. The Ends of the Earth (1991) may just well be the best collection he produced, and if not, at least has several horses in the race. Beyond himself, the collection likewise contains some of the tip-top best short stories to come out of the late 20th century.

The collection kicks off with the title story “The Ends of the Earth”. A down-on-his-luck NY writer tries to get away from it all in Guatemala. He meets an alluring young French woman in a lonely tourist town, but has his advances blocked by a weed dealer who is trying to translate a native board game he found into English. The writer's advances eventually go too far, and the small town is turned on its fantastical head. Out of all the stories to choose to title the collection after, I'm lost why this is the one. It's a loosely developed, forced concept with random “fantasy” coming alive in a form that is intended to be horrific but doesn't go beyond cheap 80s slasher. If the idea was to ease readers in, one toe at a time, then fair enough. Because...

Review of No Man's Land by Richard Morgan

J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings famously tells the story of the end of one era and the beginning of another. The giant evil is defeated and the elves go to the Gray Havens, taking magic with them and leaving humans and halflings in a spring of mortal peace and prosperity. In jarring contrast to that pastoral idyll, Richard Morgan's new novel, No Man's Land (2026), shifts forward in time to the beginning of the next era: What if the horrors of WWI were the reintroduction of fae evil into Britain? No hobbits smoking pipes here...

No Man's Land is the story of Duncan Silver. Hired gun, woodsman, tracker, hunter—the WWI war veteran is highly experienced in the wilds of the Forest, dealing with the evil Fae who dwell there. In post-war Britain, the Forest is spreading its roots into farms and cities, giving Duncan a lot of work. The opening pages find him at a farmstead where a woman believes her daughter has been stolen by the fairy folk, the Huldu, leaving a lookalike in her stead. After performing a simple alchemical test, Duncan determines that indeed, the girl the woman thinks is her daughter is just a Fae. He agrees to go into the Forest and retrieve the woman's real daughter, and by doing so unwittingly begins a new chapter in his life that will rival WWI for horror and chaos.

Cardboard Corner: Ashes Reborn – Breakdown of all "Red Rains" expansions

This is a breakdown of all seven Ashes Reborn “Red Rains” expansions. It will focus primarily on the Chimera and their aspects, with secondary notes on the phoenixborn and player cards which come in each box. While every Chimera is unique, I didn't want to repeat myself seven times regarding the player cards, so I'll do it once now.

Every “Red Rains” expansion contains four phoenixborn. None are new. As of 2025 (prior to Ashes Ascendancy) all have been previously seen, either in the master set or in individual packs. But each does have new specialty cards, and the remaining nine cards (three copies each) included in the pack are likewise new, never before seen in Ashes. Other than the fact the cards are based around one of the dice types, there is no synergy. They are intended to expand the broader player card pool rather than work together as a precon deck. To be clear, they can be played as a legal deck by adding Phoenixborn specialty cards, just not a good one. If you enjoy a particular dice-type or phoenixborn (included in the notes below), check out the relative pack as there will be new options for play.

Organized in release order, the following is a breakdown of the seven “Red Rains” packs:

Review of The Book of Fallen Leaves by A.S. Tamaki

It is an unfortunate reality of fiction in 2026 that the reader must do research prior to purchase. There is such an extreme diversity being published that it's more important than ever to know what you're (likely) getting into. Gone are the days of blind jumps leading to a reasonable amount of fun. I am reading a minimum of three reviews and checking if sample pages are available for anything by an author I have not encountered before—which is probably 60-70% of the titles scrolling on my screen. I did my research on The Book of Fallen Leaves by A.S. Tamaki (2026), and it still wasn't enough.

A piece of epic Oriental fantasy, The Book of Fallen Leaves is set twenty years after the Gensei rebellion. The rebelling clan was crushed, it's leader was executed, and its survivors were scattered to the winds. But pride, fate, and honor still burn. The Gensei work in the shadows to re-establish order, their holdings, and their army. Their continued goal: destruction of the emperor, his Ten'in clan and those loyal to him. At the start of the novel, the Gensei's plight again seems headed to defeat, but a handful of cackling gods and demons start to meddle, ensuring no result is certain.

Review of Darwin's Blade by Dan Simmons

For whatever the reason, despite not having any sort of personal relationship, we readers feel a touch of sadness when a writer we enjoy, passes. Dan Simmons took his pie to the sky in early 2026 and in tribute, I decided to dust off a novel of his I've had on the shelf for more than a decade, Darwin's Blade (2000).

Simmons has written—sorry, I must adjust my grammar going forward. Simmons wrote in a wide variety of genres, including space opera, fantasy, historical fiction, science fiction, horror, and neo noir. Darwin's Blade is yet another: straight-forward action/thriller.

Front and center is Darwin Minor, a Vietnam vet who, after the war, has made a name for himself as the best accident reconstructionist in southern California. Running a private business, he uses knowledge of physics and the latest computing tools to help the police and victims identify what really happened at accident scenes. It's business as usual until somebody tries to kill Darwin as he drives home from an accident scene. Next thing he knows, a statewide investigation is underway for fraudsters staging accidents for insurance claims. That proves to be just the tip of the criminal iceberg.

Review of The Promise of Space and Other Stories by James Patrick Kelly

Science fiction, like so many cultural mediums, has exploded in content the past couple of decades. Gone are the days when a fan can read, or at least be aware of, the key writers in the genre. James Patrick Kelly was once one such writer. Most sf readers knew of his stories and style, and many were reading him. With the swamp—ahem, milieu—of genre fiction rolling in the mud today, JPK has been pushed to the reedy fringes, unfortunately. Unfortunate because, he only continues to improve and mature. Living proof is the 2018 collection The Promise of Space and Other Stories.

The collection starts off with the title story and features a relationship as only the near future can hold. A science fiction writer talks with the AI memories of her dead astronaut boyfriend who died on a Mars mission. The story is entirely dialogue, and Kelly paints their relationship with a gray brush, making for rereadable content. The next story, “The Chimp of the Popes” is an homage to Robert Silverberg. Humans have transcended to the Cognisphere, leaving bots and uplifted chimps to rule Earth. A handful of humans remain in stasis, however, and at the beginning of the story one is unthawed who claims to be the pope. The chimps put him with the other unthawed popes. But this new pope has a little extra kick, eventually forcing the chimps to discover the reality of the cognisphere.

Review of The Compelled by Adam Roberts

For those paying attention, this site does not review graphic novels. The reason is simple. I don't read them. I'm dimly aware that graphic novels have evolved beyond their comic book roots the past several decades, and if I did the research, would likely find material the adult mind can grapple with. But one can only have so much on their plate. I did notice, however, Adam Roberts' pairing with artist Francois Schuiten in 2020 for the “graphic novel” The Compelled (more on the quotation marks later), and decided to have a gander.

The Compelled is a novella featuring multiple point-of-view characters that has a definitive artsy nature to its premise and mode. It's set in the present day after a small percentage of the population suddenly becomes 'compelled', that is, they pick up random objects, bring them to different places, and hodge-podge them into improvised structures and compositions. There is no explanation. Feeling compelled is a subconscious thing. A person just gets the feeling they need to go to their neighbor's house, take a lawn chair, and bring it to the town square where a giant sphere of objects is slowly taking shape. As a result, the urban landscape is evolving. New constructions and artifacts are taking shape while existing buildings, homes, and places are being slowly cannibalized.

Review of Brooklyn Crime Novel by Jonathen Lethem

Motherless Brooklyn and Fortress of Solitude are often cited as Jonathan Lethem's best novels. And reasonably so. Motherless is subtle neo-noir with a main character that leaves an impression beyond quirks of personality. Also set in NYC, Fortress is a coming-of-age tale that slips in and out of super-hero fantasy in nostalgic yet socially relevant terms. One might assume a Lethem novel titled Brooklyn Crime Novel (2023) would be in an similar vein. It is, and yet it definitively isn't.

Brooklyn Crime Novel, while not entirely plotless, operates in a mode that feels more like a series of historical vignettes. If it weren't for Lethem's singular diction, the emotion-less presentation of events could have had a textbook feel. By shifting points of view, the book relates the lives of a handful of children, of all shapes, sizes, and colors, growing up in the late 60s and 70s during the gentrification of Brooklyn. None of the children are given names. Instead, they are given identifiers—screamer, millionaire's son, board game boy, slipper, etc., which adds to the distance between reader and character. Their individual stories have arcs, but they are flat, short, and focused on the quotidian details of their lives as they link to Lethem's theme.

Review of Livesuit by James S.A. Corey

Ty Franck and Daniel Abraham (James S.A. Corey) frequently took side trips writing the nine-volume Expanse series. They released bits of short fiction every year or two to fill holes and complete the tableaux of the series' storyline. Enough short stories produced, in fact, a tenth and final volume was eventually released, a collection. While I don't expect the planned three volumes The Captive's War trilogy to generate the same amount of short fiction, the duo nevertheless continue the practice, releasing the intriguingly incongruous tie-in novella Livesuit in 2024.

Livesuit is the story of Kieran, leader of a team of soldiers battling against the galaxy-dominating Carryx. The team is a specially selected squad, each of which wears an expensive, difficult-to-manufacture skinsuit that keeps them alive in battle and maintains their bodily functions in normal life. In the early going, Kieran's leg is crushed in a trap, but the suit keeps his leg intact and his body upright throughout the remaining fight. And resilience is needed as the team have a difficult mission: to infiltrate a prison and rescue the humans held captive.

Cardboard Corner: Review of Hive

Do you like Chess or Go but don’t like the commitment—the weight of tackling brain burning hours of iterating if/then scenarios? Do you think the idea of kings and queens, soldiers and knights on a battlefield is a hoary, outdated notion? Or maybe, you think the idea of a grid is too limiting? <cue salesman voice> Well then, do we have a game for you! Hive (2000)!!

A tight-tight package, Hive is an abstract strategy game for two players that plays out in half the time of chess, and in significantly less time than go. Combining elements of both those games and simplifying them, players take turns laying hexagonal pieces in hive formation in attempt to surround their opponent’s queen. The game is insect-themed, meaning it is in fact a queen bee.

Like chess and go, Hive features black and white sides, with each side having the same pieces and starting conditions. Like chess specifically, each type of piece in Hive has its own unique move set (more in a moment), but unlike chess they do not start on the board in ready position. More like go, Hive’s “board” begins empty. I put “board” in quotes given Hive has no board. Any small, flat space will do—even airplane trays. The board creates itself as players lay pieces, making for an open, evolving experience.

Review of The Alteration by Kingsley Amis

Kingsley Amis is not a known author in households where science fiction or fantasy rule. A staunch Brit with Oxford pedigree and steady hand in politics, he doesn't spring to mind as such a writer. And to be fair, I assume neither would Amis himself associate with the common understanding of said genres. The vagaries of time being what they are, however, means Amis has a toe across the line whether he likes it or not. That appendage is the alternate history The Alteration (1976). It's (ironically) such a relevant work today that perhaps it should even have an additional appendage over the line?

Ten-year old Hubert Anvil possesses the voice of an angel. His singing touches the heavens, and the Catholic church of Amis' alternate history Europe intends on keeping it that way. They propose castrating Hubert, preserving his pristine voice, rendering him a eunuch in the cause of the church til the end of his days. Hubert's father, an aristocrat dependent on his relationship with the church, reluctantly agrees, while his brother advises him not to—“Sex is good.” being his standby argument. But things are more complicated than just pleasure, forcing young Hubert into dire straits that he will eventually emerge from, just in what form?

Review of Zeppelin City by Eileen Gunn and Michael Swanwick

Different readers have different reactions to stereotypes and cliches. Some forgive, ignore, or even embrace the overt depiction of communal cultural phenomenon. Not this blog. It's difficult, painful to read “the thing” laid bare exactly as the lowest possible common denominator would have it. Ready the tylenol with Michael Swanwick and Eileen Gunn's novella Zeppelin City (2011).

Zeppelin City is the story of Radio Jones, Amelia Spindizzy, and Rudy (no catchy last name; he's the commie). Jones is a plucky electronics wiz who has an idea how radio signals can be overheard, an idea she hopes to bring to reality so she can make a dime off listening to the autogyro operators and their crews during the big races. Spindizzy is an autogyro pilot, and a damn good one. But she has her rival—her “Red Baron” in the skies—who may or may not have her number. And there's Rudy, a single-minded lad if ever there were. He spouts commie logic all the way to the halls of the brains in jars who rule Zeppelin City. Yes, brains in jars...

Culture Corner Morocco: Part II – Erg Chebbi, Meknes, and Essaouira

 This is Part II of our Morocco photos.  Part I is here.

We spent three days at Erg Chebbi, including this obligatory camel photo.

Culture Corner: Morocco Part I - Marrakesh and Atlas Mountains

No other way to start this post than: what a pleasant surprise Morocco was! Due to past experience visiting certain Middle Eastern countries, I went in with certain preconceived notions. I was wrong. WRONG. Our two weeks in Morocco were fantastic. The people we met were amazing and everything went off splendid on the 2,200 km journey. From markets to deserts to hospitality to palaces to camels to madrasas to riads to tajines to oranges to snow-capped mountains to flocks of sheep to the genuine smiles and openness of Moroccans, it was an amazing trip.

This post will be the first of two showing various scenes from our trip. No AI, filters, or any of the stuff the kids these days use to spice up photos was used. Just a boomer with a mobile phone.

First stop was Marrakesh, perhaps Morocco's most famous city. And it's for a reason. Just ask the mule.

Review of North Sun, or the Voyage of the Whaleship Esther by Ethan Rutherford

The thimbleful of faithful Speculiction readers will be aware we love and hate taxonomizing fiction. It's a fun exercise and can be helpful for a certain type of reader, but overall fiction is fiction, and when you get down to brass tacks, there is a lot of subjectivity what is what (Derrida, cough, cough). Ethan Rutherford's North Sun, or the Voyage of the Whaleship Esther (2024) is a bucket of brass tacks.

North Sun is split in two parts. (Technically it's split in three, but the third acts more as an epilogue.) The first part will have readers breaking out comparisons to Moby Dick. A wealthy magnate, in the twilight of New England's whaling industry, equips the Esther with captain and crew, and sends them out to the seas to reap whales. Day to day life aboard the ship, from crewmen to first mate, captain to steerer, deckhands to cook, are portrayed in brief scene after brief scene, giving readers a glimpse into life aboard such a ship. (Astute readers will note the extreme brevity compared to Melville.)

Review of The Book of Lamps and Banners by Elizabeth Hand

She survived a serial killer on a lonely island in Maine. She escaped the cold wilds of Iceland. Britain chewed her up and spit her out. But Cass Neary lives on, on to what may be her final, unintended adventure: The Books of Lamps and Banners (2020).

As with all Cass Neary novels, The Book of Lamps and Banners picks up precisely where the prior novel left off. Neary is back and London after her escapades on the sandy, pagan shores of Cornwall. She tries to find out what happened to her former lover Quinn, still hoping to get back to the US. After a spot of convenient pickpocketing, she runs into an old acquaintance at an antiquarian book store. He has a lead on an esoteric volume sought by the most avid of collectors, and invites Neary along for the appointment. Shit hits the fan in the wake of that visit, and Neary finds herself with a torn manuscript page and a handful of neo-nazis a little too close on her heels.

Review of Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett

In 1987, Terry Pratchett published Mort, and by doing so introduced Discworld readers to what would become one of the series' most iconic characters: DEATH. Looking to build on the success and throw in an alien invasion (as one does), Pratchett returned to the character in 1991's Reaper Man.

Before going off the rails, Reaper Man tells two parallel stories, the first of which is of Windle Poons. Unseen University's oldest member, the wizards gather one evening to celebrate what is to be his last day alive. But things don't go as planned, and Windle finds himself with newfound life and the strength of the undead—which will be needed when aliens invade (as they do). The second is of Death. Where he normally attends to the hourglasses of ordinary mortals, at the story's outset he finds himself attendant to his own. His days are numbered, and Death decides to get the most of his final days. He abandons the robe and scythe and becomes an ordinary farmhand living on an ordinary farm on the ordinary outskirts of Ankh-Morpork. Windle lives on borrowed time and Death on finite time, the rest is Pratchett.

Review of Pagans by James Alastair Henry

It is the case, unfortunately, that identity has become a point of hyper focus the past decade. Much ado about nothing... Nevertheless, for some people ethnicity, nationality, gender, religion, and self-perception of those ideas have taken over a large chunk of cultural discourse. Wallowing like a pig in identity mud is James Alastair Henry's Pagans (2026).

The twist? It's an alternate modern world where the tribes of the British Isles never united. Celts, Saxons, Picts, Scots, and Norse abound, each with their own distinct culture, religion, behavior, fashion, etc., as well as territory they claim as their own. The heart pumping blood through this fictional setting is a murder mystery. A man is found nailed to a tree in a Celtic forest, exsanguinated, and due to the fact he is of Saxon blood, a Saxon investigator is called in for assistance. What follows is a dark journey into the shadows of fundamentalist religion and cultural identity.