Category: Uncategorized

Back in the glory days of my gaming career, when six hour sessions of D&D were a regular occurrence, and not a rare celebration, the story that developed was as much a surprise to the DM as it was to the players. Sure, the DM had read or written...

Good old Vox posted a group shot of WorldCon attendees for The Current Year.  Some comment wag suggested that it looked like any other shot of 40+ people.  The scientist in me took that as a challenge, picked up the gauntlet, and ran to the internet to run a little...

A few weeks back a copy of Decision Games’ Khyber Rifles found its way into my shopping cart.  Listening to too many episodes of Wargames to Go will do that to a wargamer.  Between that and regular does of Wargaming Wednesday over at the Castalia House blog, my hankering...

Can you imagine trying to fight a war with Loyal Oppositionist and Vichy Republican John Podhoretz on your side? Every time you poked your head above the trenches, you’d have to check the area behind your own lines, look left, look right, and then only after assuring yourself that Podhoretz isn’t around,...

Is it strange to include a number of posts about a non-writing hobby on a blog founded specifically to track one’s progress in pursuing writing as a paid hobby?  Fine, I contain multiples, there’s your literary reference for the day, now let’s get to the good stuff. It’s been...

In a recent post, I stated that Schuyler Hernstrom’s “Images of the Goddess” is better than Jack Vance’s “Dying Earth”.  That might be controversial.  It wasn’t stated lightly, nor simply as click-bait.  Let me expound on it a bit. Jack Vance is a great author.  He does an outstanding job suffusing...

P. Alexander is the guy behind the Short Review series posted at Castalia House, in which he reviews tales originally printed in classic pulp magazines such as Planet Stories.  His series, along with Jeffro Johnson’s Appendix N series and repeated warnings not to read anything written before 1980 inspired...

Yesterday’s post slapped the women’s image magazine Uncanny around pretty hard for being a vapid and shallow periodical that dilutes the deep and rich medium of storytelling by using it as a medium for do-nothing wish fulfillment.  It’s a great article, and every fan of short form fiction magazine,...

Jeffro Johnson – [trump speak]great guy, very thoughtful, I’m a big fan of his, big fan [trump speak] – posted a simple question on G+:  “What’s missing on [this cover]?“ Have to judge it by something, andthe cover is all we got. It may have been a rhetorical question,...

When I grow up, I want to be Jeffro Johnson.  His Appendix N web series, soon to be released in full book format, is much reviled by all the right people, and justifiably so.  A bit late to the party, I was nonetheless impressed with his analysis which shed new...