Category: Science Fiction

  • 4am. WBGT: 87 The heat hit Felice like a punch in the face, a wall of seething fury. She started sweating as soon as she stepped onto the smooth panels of her balcony, felt it prickling across her brow, and a few moments later trickling down her ribs. The city lay shrouded in early morning…

  • This week I watched the new War of The Worlds so you don’t have to. The sacrifices I make for my reader(s)! I watched it because a) I was interested in whether it actually deserved the 0% rating it has received on Rotten Tomatoes and b) I am interested in all the variants of this…

  • I recently finished reading Manchukuo 1987, by a person known by the pseudonym Yoshimi Red on Twitter who blogs at lateral thinking. It’s in the Sci-Fi section in Amazon, and presented as an alternative history military sci-fi detective novel by Yoshimi themself, which I think is a good description. I think it’s self-published (sorry Yoshimi…

  • I have been playing Star Wars recently with my regular group, first using the Genesys rules and (since yesterday) using a port of the Coriolis rules, because we’re all sick of Genesys. The Star Wars universe is fun and, like D&D or Lord of the Rings, has that particular positive quality that you can settle…

  • I am writing a series of posts about my attempt to re-read The Mists of Avalon in light of the terrible things we know about the author Marion Zimmer Bradley (MZB). The story has now advanced considerably and although it wasn’t my original intention in this re-reading, I feel I am able to glean a…

  • Dita Voss was born and raised in the Numenorean Argosy, a large fleet of ships that moved through the galaxy as a caravan, centred around the ancient behemoth called the Numenor. The Argosy was composed of thousands of ships, ranging in size from single-family yachts to kilometre-long hospital ships and resource barges. They traveled approximately…

  • Recently in conversation with one of my players I was led to ponder whether or not SpaceX is revolutionizing space travel, and whether it has driven costs down to new record levels. My initial response was skeptical, but upon reflection I thought there should be data on this, and it should be possible to make…

  • Everything Everywhere All at Once (EEAO) is a weird “absurdist” science-fiction in which a multiverse-hopping Michelle Yeoh attempts to deal with her family issues while saving the universe from destruction. It was released in 2022, gained plaudits at some random US film festival, and has been making a killing in its public release. It has…

  • Some years ago now I played in a World of Darkness campaign set in a near-future world where McCain was president and a secret conspiracy was slowly pulling the world into an evil and hellish future. I played a washed-up communist called John Micksen, who served the Winter Queen and had found magic (he eventually…

  • Distance  Separation Leaving  Terra Firma Darkness  Ringing empty Lights out  Resurrection Burn it down and start over I want to leave this all behind Abandon all the trepidation Weighing heavy on my mind  – Catechism of the Cult of the Dancer Our heroes have ground their way through waves of soldiers defending the secret base…