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sExplore the seventh book in Vaughn Heppner’s Lost Starship series. It finally happened. Commander Thrax Ti Ix created a hyper-spatial tube for the Swarm Imperium. Across thousands of light-years, a vast armada of warships is heading for Earth to burn the homeworld down to its bedrock as the Swarm begins its genocidal campaign against the human […]
Short Reviews – The Devils of Po Sung, by Bassett Morgan
Friday , 4, August 2017 Uncategorized 7 CommentsThe Devils of Po Sung by Bassett Morgan appeared in the December 1927 issue of Weird Tales and was the featured Weird Story Reprint in the March 1939 issue. A scanned pdf of this issue can be found here at Luminist.org. I’ll admit, at first I had a bit of a tough time getting into The Devils of […]
July 2017 was an outstanding month for science fiction and fantasy, publishing enough worthy titles that the following list is just a short sample of the riches published last month. For those looking for “the feeling of romance and the sense of wonder I had known as a kid. I wanted the world to be […]
THROWBACK SF THURSDAY: The Next Conan Movie Should Look More Like Mad Max
Thursday , 3, August 2017 Appendix N 14 CommentsWe deserve another Conan movie. One that is more 1982 Conan the Barbarian and less Conan the Destroyer or 2011 Conan the Barbarian. (I posted short reviews of the three Conan movies over at Every Day Should Be Tuesday.) Making a good Conan movie brings certain challenges. Not the least of which is the difficulty […]
The ardent space gamer will tear into this game and crunch through all the scenarios like it’s nothing. But how does it work with the average gamer that’s only just now testing the wargame waters…? Well I’ll tell you, the opening scenario which starts in media res tells you everything you need to know about […]
The fourth horseman of the Revelations Cycle rides forth! The slaughter is on! Across the galaxy, Human mercenaries are being ambushed, and an ever-increasing number of companies aren’t returning from their contracts. Someone even appears to be plotting the demise of the premier Four Horsemen companies, and disaster for the other three companies has only […]
Brilliant sleuthing and twist endings have been kicking around SFF pretty much for as long as there has been a recognisable market for the genre – in fact, you could make a strong case for what we know as SFF to have emerged from the same kind of detective fiction that gave us Sherlock Holmes, […]
Seems like everyone wants to know what exactly this Pulp Revolution thing exactly is, and how exactly and precisely do we define it, and what stories are or are not included in the specific canon of this very specific bomb throwing literary book club movement thing. In the interests of clarifying nothing, and agitating everyone, […]
When the Dark Gates open and unleash the monstrous Darksiders on an unsuspecting Earth, only the toughest and most determined people will survive. Roland and Maggie Kane are more fortunate than most, because their father, Daniel, is a Chicago cop who has taught them how to shoot and prepared them for almost every eventuality. But, […]
Many of us wargamers grew up playing the Axis and Allies boardgame in at least one of its incarnations–the original, Second Edition, Third Edition, Iron Blitz, Revised, 50th Anniversary (my favorite), or one of the big global editions. Many of these are still played in wargame clubs around the country, or in the basements and […]
Post-apocalyptic literature has a tradition almost as old as literature itself. From the Egyptian drowning of the world in the seas of chaos to the pagan world eating wolf of Ragnarok to alien and kitchen-sink approach of the Biblical Apocalyptica, wondering about the death of the world is as natural as wondering about the death […]
ON THE TABLE: Journey to the Planet of the Amazon Women
Tuesday , 1, August 2017 Tabletop Games, Traveller 14 CommentsOkay, this was a really neat Traveller session. Yes, my character was in the hospital at the start of this one. And yes, the planetary authorities were not at all pleased at my having saved the world last time. Can you believe it? They actually credited us with turning the alien pyramid laser tower on, […]