James Nicoll Reviews

The Age of Calamities by Senaa Ahmad (January 2026)

For fans of Karen Russell and Carmen Maria Machado, The Age of Calamities is a genre-defying, mind-bending collection of absurdist, funny, and speculative short stories.

In this bold and enchanting collection Senaa Ahmad takes license with history and its players, sending the reader on a thrilling ride. In ​“Let’s Play Dead,” Henry VIII wants Anne Boleyn gone, but there’s a tiny problem — she keeps coming back to life no matter what he does. ​“Choose Your Own Apocalypse” hurls readers back to 1945, where they assume the role of a technician for the Manhattan Project, surrounded by labyrinthine paths and harrowing outcomes. And ​“Inside the House of the Historian” invites us to a dinner party turned murder mystery full of figures like Nefertiti, Queen Victoria, John Adams, and Marilyn Monroe. These stories and others entice readers to confront the past, the present, and themselves all at once. Zany and haunting, inviting and brilliant, each poignant tale delves into surreal nature of today through the lens of yesterday, charting the tragicomic yet hopeful act of living.

The Age of Calamities is an evocation of life and death on history’s unsteady margins, of how to reckon with the blunt-force trauma of ill-fated times. Fiercely clever and wildly inventive, this debut establishes Senaa Ahmad as a literary force. 

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This is Free Trader Beowulf: A System History of Traveller by Shannon Appelcline (2024)

This is Free Trader Beowulf, calling anyone … Mayday, Mayday. 

A box emblazoned with those words went on sale for the first time on July 22, 1977, at the Origins III Game Fair, heralding the advent of the Traveller roleplaying game from GDW. It wasn’t the first science-fiction roleplaying game, but through its innovative design and through the development of its evocative universe of Charted Space, it would become the longest running SFRPG in the industry.

However, its path would not be simple. After Traveller reached its early apogee just four years in, it would face decades of increasing problems, raising many questions. Why did GDW decided to shatter their Imperium? What led them to seek outside help to produce the second edition of the game? Why did they abandon the Traveller game system with their next revision? How could such a popular publisher face bankruptcy just two decades on? Similarly, what happened to Imperium Games, QuikLink Interactive, and others who followed in GDW’s footsteps as the inheritors of the Traveller legacy? And finally, how did Mongoose Publishing reach into the past and bring Traveller back to its position as the industry’s best-loved SFRPG?

This volume answers those questions and more. It tracks Traveller from its inspirations in the early ​’70s, though its initial publication, and across seven distinct editions of its original 2d6 gaming system. It reveals the stories of Traveller’s three major publishers; GDW, Imperium Games, and Mongoose, as well many licensees. Most importantly, it tells how Traveller fell into increasing darkness before descending into a Long Night, and how it rose again as a phoenix.

From the author of Designers & Dragons, which told the story of the entire roleplaying industry, comes the intimate history of a single roleplaying game, culled from hundreds of primary sources and interviews.

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1: On a geological time scale. 

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