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sThis is part 3 of 5 dealing with the Robotech novelizations. Parts 1 and 2 are here. Last week I talked about Robotech‘s second generation, the story of rebellious brat put in charge of a squadron of transforming tanks and the events that spell Earth’s imminent doom that result from her command. Okay, that’s not […]
I’ve been looking forward to this game for some time and I’m not the only one; the guy at GMT games table at PrezCon was surprised the week before last when the six copies they’d brought sold out in fifteen minutes. You don’t normally see the “fighty” space games on the table there, but people were playing […]
SENSOR SWEEP: Gernsback’s Brainchild, Massive Xenophobes, Pervasive Ignorance, and Imaginative Pallets
Monday , 7, March 2016 Sensor Sweep 3 CommentsMagazines (Pulpfest 2016) The AMAZING Story: The Fifties — Dream Worlds — “One noticeable feature of all the best stories from this period is that they are scarcely science fiction at all, but convey a deeper mood of the fantastic or the unnerving, bringing a more adult feel to the treatments of their themes. They […]
I have been reading William Lind for about ten or eleven months. I generally go to the Traditional Right website very two weeks to see if Mr. Lind has a new piece up. Having read a good number of his online blog entries and also the downloads at the resources tab, I was eager to […]
If trends in game design are moving toward getting more with less, The Last Spike would be a case in point. It doesn’t even take five minutes to explain the rules. Playing time clocks in at well short of an hour. And even though this is a strong candidate for the new “go-to” gateway game in […]
Short Reviews – Prodigal Weapon by Vaseleos Garson
Friday , 4, March 2016 Book Review Leave a commentProdigal Weapon by Vaseleos Garson appeared in the Summer 1945 issue of Planet Stories. Prodigal Weapon was, at best, a missed opportunity. Like Garson’s later story, The Little Pets of Arkkhan, I can see this being made into a mediocre episode of Outer Limits or Star Trek, but, for a story about laughter, it offers […]
SPACE ODDITY: An SF Musical Storytelling Game. Song 2, Clue 3
Thursday , 3, March 2016 Games, Short Fiction 3 CommentsYou can see a complete game of Space Oddity played out in the original post. The rules are simple: I’m going to tell you a short genre story that makes sense of the inscrutable lyrics of an otherwise popular song. I’ll do it in very brief parts to keep things interesting. There will be weekly clues. […]
Elements of Wargaming: Putting the “Game” in Wargaming
Wednesday , 2, March 2016 Wargames 4 CommentsWargaming is separated from other games in its intensity and its application—For all of the fun and good times, Wargames are training tools for the historian and the military mind. Serious business. However, the reason it is so useful and productive for their purposes is the same reason that school classes are effective for teaching […]
PREZCON REPORT: Mark Herman and Volko Ruhnke’s Fire in the Lake
Tuesday , 1, March 2016 Wargames 6 CommentsThe fan base for this game has changed quite a bit over the past year. The last time I played this one, it was difficult to find a table with even one player that was fluent in the game. The first two heats of the tournament games then were liable to have more than one person […]
This is part 2 of 5 dealing with the Robotech novelizations. Part 1 is here. I mentioned last week that Robotech, for all its vilification in anime circles, began life as an attempt to bring anime to the US without hacking it up into oblivion. (I haven’t ever actually watched Science Ninja Team Gatchaman/Battle for […]