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Books Received, December 5 — December 11

12 Dec, 2020

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The job was routine, the money fair. Then the damn company diverted you to answer a distress call from a ship that disappeared almost 80 years ago — a derelict carrying something bizarre, twisted, and alien. What the ship’s frozen crew brought back with them was bad enough — what they themselves were turning into was a bloody nightmare. Add to that an annoying sensor ghost shadowing you in the void, and your stress level is shot.

It’s all a bit much.

You don’t get paid enough to deal with monsters. But hold your breath, count to three, and play your cards right with this one, and you just might walk away very rich. Oh, who am I kidding?
You’re all going to die.

This is a starter set for the official ALIEN tabletop roleplaying game — a universe of body horror and corporate brinkmanship, where synthetic people play god while space truckers and marines play host to newborn ghoulish creatures. It’s a harsh and unforgiving universe and you are nothing if not expendable.

Stay alive if you can.

This set contains everything you need to start playing:

  • A 104-page rulebook with a fast and effective ruleset designed specifically to support the core themes of ALIEN: horror and action in the cold darkness of space.
  • The 48-page complete scenario Chariot of the Gods by sci-fi novelist Andrew E.C. Gaska, taking you on a thrilling, terror-filled ride into deep space where no one can hear you scream. Chariot of the Gods is designed for 3 – 5 players plus the GM.
  • Five pre-generated characters to play.
  • A huge full-color, double-sided map, with one side depicting chartered space in the year 2183 and the other floor plans for the Chariot of the Gods scenario.
  • 84 game markers for keeping track of characters, motion tracker pings, and more.
  • 56 custom cards for weapons, personal agendas, and initiative in combat.

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Books Received, November 28 — December 4

5 Dec, 2020

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I was suddenly struck with the sight of a trail of rich red vegetation of several miles in the midst of the eternal snows. I approached with curiosity this oasis in the frozen desert.”
An antique-shop owner gets a glimpse of the Red Planet through an intriguing artifact. A Martian’s wife contemplates the possibility of life on Earth. A resident of Venus describes his travels across the two alien planets. From an arid desert to an advanced society far superior to that of Earth, portrayals of Mars have differed radically in their attempts to uncover the truth about our neighboring planet.
Since the 1880s, after an astronomer first described channels” on the surface of Mars, writers have been fascinated with the planet, endlessly speculating on what life on Mars might look like and what might happen should we make contact with the planet’s inhabitants. This wonderful collection offers ten wildly imaginative short stories from the golden age of science fiction by such classic sci-fi writers as H.G. Wells, Ray Bradbury, and J. G. Ballard, as well as hard-to-find stories by unjustly forgotten writers from the genre.
Assembled and introduced by acclaimed anthologist Mike Ashley, these stories vividly evoke a time when notions of life on other planets — from vegetation and water to space invaders and utopian societies — were new and startling. As we continue to imagine landing people on Mars, these stories are well worth revisiting as gripping and vivid dispatches from futurists past.

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James Nicoll Reviews Review Categories

2 Dec, 2020

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Curious about the list of Review Categories? Here’s a short and updated (as of December 2nd, 2020) guide:

Each category header is a link.

Sponsored Reviews

You can buy a review for a book for $100. Various guidelines pertain, which can be found at the other end of the link. 

Active Projects (some more active than others)

Because My Tears Are Delicious To You (335)

My weekly foray into the books I loved as a teenager, which is to say, books I first encountered between March 18, 1974 and March 181981

Big Hair, Big Guns! (27)

An episodic sampling of the science fiction of the 1980s.

BRP(2)

An exploration of science fiction roleplaying games using the Basic Roleplaying Game engine.

Doing What the WFC Cannot Do (98)

A weekly review of works by Anglophone authors of colour, focusing on a different author each week of the year. 

Graveyard Orbits (5)

Reviews of the final books written by writers who have suffered author existence failure. 

Illimitable Dominion (2)

Reviews of books featuring pandemics. 

James Tiptree, Jr. Award (9)

Reviews of works that won the Otherwise Award. I don’t think I can rename the category without breaking a lot of urls.

KW Science Fiction and Fantasy (4)

Reviews of works by local authors. 

Military Speculative Fiction That Doesn’t Suck (38)

Reviews of Military SF works that were not unspeakably terrible.

Miscellaneous Reviews (282)

This is where everything that does not fit into one of the other categories gets put. 

Rediscovery Tuesday (42)

Reviews of works long out of print that have been recently republished. Ironically, back in 2014 this was going to be my main focus. 

Reds Under The Bed (5)

Reviews of works about those commie rat-bastards taking over the US. 

Roleplaying Games (6)

Reviews of roleplaying games, at least the ones not covered under the Tears reviews.

Space Opera That Doesn’t Suck (27)

Reviews of Space Operas that were not unspeakably terrible.

Special Requests (315)

Reviews of works I was asked to review that do not fall into one of the other categories.

Translation(233)

Reviews of translated works. 

Completed Projects

50 Nortons in 50 Weeks (50)

Reviews of every Andre Norton novel listed in an obscure Ace Books ad in the 1970s. 

A Bunch of Bujolds (12)

Reviews of a dozen assorted Lois McMaster Bujold novels. You might expect every Bujold to be listed under this. You’d be wrong, although I reserve the right to change my mind. 

A Dozen by Tchaikovsky (12)

Reviews of a dozen assorted Adrian Tchaikovsky novels. Again, anyone expecting me to list every Tchaikovsky review here has unwarranted faith in my organizational skills.

A Variety of Vaughns (12)

Reviews of a dozen assorted Carrie Vaughn novels. See previous disclaimer re: whether all of the Vaughns I have reviewed are listed under this tag. 

A Year of Tanith Lee (61)

A now completed project in which I reviewed one Lee work a week. You may well wonder how I crammed 61 weekly reviews into 52 weeks. 

A Year of Waterloo Region Speculative Fiction (49)

Reviews of works written by authors in some way connected to or adjacent to Waterloo Region in Ontario. 

An Expanse of Coreys (6)

Reviews of some of the books in James Corey’s Expanse space opera. 

Leigh Brackett’s Solar System (7)

Reviews of works set in Leigh Brackett’s Planetary Romance setting. 

Not Actually A Review (1)

This was not actually a review.

The 2017 Prometheus Award Finalists (4)

Reviews of some of the works nominated for the 2017 Prometheus Award. 

The Great Heinlein Juveniles (Plus The Other Two) Reread (14)

Reviews of Heinlein’s Scribner juvenile SF novels, plus a couple of ancillary works. 

Twelve by Diana Wynne Jones (12)

Reviews of a dozen assorted Dianna Wynne Jones novels.

Women of Wonder (6)

Reviews of Pamela Sargent’s iconic Women of Wonder Anthologies, plus an interview with the editor. 

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Books Received, November 14 — November 20

21 Nov, 2020

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On April 25, 1986, the worst nuclear reactor accident in history occurred in Chernobyl. Until now, all of the books published in English focused on the facts, names, and data. Voices from Chernobyl presents first-hand accounts of what happened to the people of Belarus and the fear, anger, and uncertainty that they lived through. In order to give a voice to their experiences, Svetlana Alexievich – a journalist by trade – interviewed hundreds of people who had been affected by the meltdown. From innocent citizens to firefighters to those called in to clean up the disaster, Voices from Chernobyl is a crucial document of what happened and how people reacted to it. Alexievich presents these interviews in monologue form, giving readers a harrowing inside view into the minds of the affected people untempered by government spin, accusations, or judgements, leaving the reader with just the life-shattering pain of living through such an event and its aftermath. 

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Books Received, November 7 ‑November 13

14 Nov, 2020

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Wine-Dark Deep Book Three: The Odyssey 

Flung beyond the solar system and adrift around an unknown star, the crew of the spaceship Ulysses must use their wits, skill, and luck to determine their location in the galaxy if they ever hope to find their way home. 

A ruined solar system awaits them. A seemingly derelict space station hovers over a green moon, waiting to be explored. A living spacecraft powered by starlight approaches from a planet strewn with ancient ruins. And amidst it all, an inscrutable and menacing presence has awakened. 

They know now that they’re not alone.
But to be remembered …
… they must survive. 

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Books Received, October 31 — November 6

7 Nov, 2020

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Everything I knew about the Were was wrong“

A Were of no fixed form, a Random, able to Turn into any warm-blooded creature it sees… a young Random whose failure to Turn forces him into taking his destiny into his own hands and becoming full Lycan in the name of pride and fury, learning things he never thought were possible… a true Shifter, the wild card, Turning into anything he chooses at will… thrown together in a tale of vision, drama, tragedy, and transcendence — in a world in which none of them are safe…

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Books Received, October 24 — October 30

31 Oct, 2020

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It takes an AI to catch an AI in Chaos on CatNet, the follow-up to Naomi Kritzer’s award-winning near future YA thriller.When a mysterious entity starts hacking into social networks and chat rooms to instigate paranoia and violence in the real world, it’s up to Steph and her new friend, Nell, to find a way to stop it — with the help of their benevolent AI friend, CheshireCat.

Read more ➤