James Bond (Hollywood in Toto): John Glen’s “The Living Daylights” (1987) was Dalton’s first vehicle as Bond, after Roger Moore stepped away from the unliked but wildly popular “A View to a Kill” (1985) and series icon Sean Connery had embarked on the enormously successful third act of his long film career. Dalton was a respected but unknown film and theater actor (his appearance in the 1980 cult classic “Flash Gordon” was arguably his most well-known turn prior to 007).

Gaming (Walker’s Retreat): As if the degeneration of videogames as a business wasn’t bad enough from the business side, there is also the player side- i.e. cheating.

The problem arises once Player v. Player arises, and most of the cheating talk online is in this context. This is not, and has not been for years, idle whining; esports is still a thing, so real money is on the line, and when real paydays are to be had you better believe that serious actors will do what it takes to secure the bag. No amount of exposure of cheaters has ceases the cheating; it’s only made the cheats more popular and sophisticated.

Fiction (John C. Wright): Yes, the famous George Orwell did indeed review the famous C.S. Lewis, in a column titled “The Scientists Take Over” appearing in the Manchester Evening News, 16 August 1945.  Available here: http://lewisiana.nl/orwell/

While generally favorable, an unseemly bias is evident from the first line: On the whole, novels are better when there are no miracles in them. 

Gaming (Table Top Gaming News): Vehicles aren’t usually a huge part of Necromunda. Normally, it’s just gang members walking to battle. But if you want to get to combat in style, you’ll grab a set of wheels.The Book of the Outlands, coming soon, will change that. Get a look at the Cargo-8 Ridgehauler and the various upgrades you can make to it in this article.

D&D (Grognardia): Old advertisements fascinate me. Take, for example, this advertisement for the second AD&D game cartridge to be released for Mattel’s Intellivision system. This ad differs from the one I’d highlighted previously and features a much more comic book-y style.

Games (Wasteland & Sky): The first is the one you all know, Street Fighter II. This game finally proved what fighters were capable of when pushed to the max. Essentially a worldwide martial arts tournament with a wacky cast of characters, the rock solid and tight controls, and legendary soundtrack, as well as bright and bold artstyle, allowed it to show the potential the genre had. It still remains one of the most re-released and updated games of all-time, for good reason.

Conan (Sprague de Camp Fan): “Black Sphinx of Nebthu” by L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter was first published in Fantastic, July 1973. (CONAN IS BACK ! is yelled on the front cover.) It is the second story in Conan of Aquilonia, Prestige Books (distributed by Ace Books), 1977. he cover illustration is by Harry Roland. He illustrated several covers and inside art for Fantastic and it’s sister magazine Amazing.

f 18 squadron flying for the 4th july celebration

Cinema (Takis): The striking result: Everybody loves Top Gun: Maverick, with the film earning $296 million domestically through its first two weekends, drawing back to movie theaters huge numbers of over-35-year-olds for the first time since Covid. Critics were near unanimous in giving it their thumbs-up. Cruise, of course, returns as the now-middle-aged flyboy Maverick (all characters are known by their colorful radio call signs, which helped me keep track of the plot). He’s a legend but also the Navy’s oldest officer still stuck at the rank of captain.

Games (Wertzone): Final Fantasy VII is regarded as one of the most important video games ever made. A huge unit-shifter for the original Sony PlayStation console, it demonstrated the console’s graphical capabilities (through enormously impressive CGI cutscenes) whilst retaining the depth of gameplay and customisation that the series had previously become famous for on the NES and SNES.

Forthcoming (DMR Books): Adrian Cole is one of the most talented and prolific writers working in the field of fantasy adventure fiction today. This fall DMR Books will unveil the first installment of his most ambitious project to date, the War on Rome trilogy. Set in an alternative Romano-Celtic Europe, Arminius, Bane of Eagles opens with the murder of young Claudius, 14 year old brother of Germanicus, during the last years of the reign of Augustus Caesar, ruler of the vast Roman Empire.

Games (Neowin): Recently, several developers have announced a slew of new games based on, or inspired by, the works of H.P. Lovecraft, an author who is known for his neo-gothic novellas. In the past year, games including Moons of Madness, Black Mirror, and Conarium have all aimed to take us back to the murky depths of these short stories.

Fiction (Tentaclii): Online Books recently catalogued The Mummy! A Tale of the Twenty-Second Century, which it had spotted in a nice clean .TXT version at Gutenberg. A fascinating curiosity, it seems, is Mrs. Loudon’s The Mummy! A Tale of the Twenty-Second Century (1827). A lively proto-steampunk and partly aerial adventure by all accounts, albeit stretching over three volumes.

RPG (The Other Side): We are now up to 1996.  Games Designer’s Workshop, unfortunately, had folded at the end of February 1996. At this time the rights to Traveller reverted back to Mark Miller.  So Mark started Imperium Games to produce a new game called “Marc Miller’s Traveller” but most called T4 online. It has, as far as I can tell, the least amount of supplements for its game line but that is not a huge surprise.

Lovecraft (Tentaclii): Pucciatti was perhaps of a different order than Morton or the posers at New York parties. Maybe more syndicalist, depending on how much experience he had of the dramatic and very sudden industrialisation of Italy, before leaving for America. Though we can’t be sure, since he doesn’t appear to have left any writings. On him Radical Gotham: Anarchism in New York City can only offer that his restaurant was one of…

Games (Goodman Games): It’s time to venture once more into The Valley Out Of Time! The middle two parts of the 6-part Valley Out of Time series are now on Kickstarter! This third-party DCC/MCC adventure series takes its inspiration from the classic “caveman” style adventures of yesteryear (and we love a good caveman story). Skeeter Green Productions continues the series that got off to a great start with Welcome to the Valley and Exploring the Valley with a duo of dangerous dives into the Valley Out of Time. Here are some details on each book, straight from the Kickstarter:

Fiction (Paperback Warrior): There’s no doubt that Jack Higgins, real name Henry Patterson, is a household name and one of the cornerstones of the second generation of action-adventure novelists. By the mid-1970s, most of the author’s literary work from the late 1950s through the 1970s was re-published as paperbacks under the name familiar name of Higgins. Patterson’s 1963 hardback novel, Pay the Devil, was one of the few novels absent from the 1970s reprints. Oddly, the book wasn’t released until 2000. It was revised and published as a paperback by Berkley.

Cinema (Neotextcorp): It was a big car park, but it was in bad shape. So in 2010, the Trinity Square high rise car park, an iconic brutalist building that dominated Gateshead’s skyline in the 1970s, was demolished, and a part of British film history was gone. Though not before the canny council sold tinned lumps of rubble to film fans for £5.00 a go. The film they wanted a piece of was Get Carter, a 1971 Jacobean (Jack-obean?) revenge tragedy dressed up in grim, Northern gangster style. It was from here that Michael Caine’s Jack Carter throws Brian Mosely’s Brumby over the edge to the streets below.

History (Ancient Pages): New analysis into the residue inside ancient ceramic vessels from 11th–12th century Jerusalem has found that they were potentially used as hand grenades. Previous research into the diverse sphero-conical containers, which are within museums around the world, had identified that they were used for a variety of purposes, including beer drinking vessels, mercury containers, containers for oil and containers for medicines.