News:// Solo Tabletop Gaming Appreciation Month

I'd completely forgotten about the November Solo Tabletop Gaming Appreciation Month being promoted over at Solo Nexus. Been really very busy with the family so I've not been keeping up with my feeds.

Anyway I'm a little late to the party so I'm going to have to have a think about what to do. I've just received a cheap copy of Avalon Hill's Blackbeard which I've been wanting to try for ages so maybe I'll have a little pirate fun and wrestle with those scary looking rules. Or maybe a B-17 Queen of the Skies campaign, that could be fun. On a bit of a vintage board game kick at the moment so it'll probably be something along those lines.

Meanwhile there are some links over at Solo Nexus as to what other people have been getting up to.

Reboot:// The New Dummies and Death Rays (Now With Added Dice!)

Like the vast majority of new blogs, this one died a quiet death. I didn't mean to let it die, I started with good intentions, had a lot of ideas for interesting content, and was generally enjoying the whole process. Things change though and towards the end of last year I found myself reading less and less and so there seemed less and less reasons for me to keep a blog active that relied on me reading constantly. There are a number of reasons behind the lack of reading, I think I just burnt out a little, my youngest daughter's lack of sleep didn't help with my concentration in the evenings, but the biggest reason was another, newer interest that was slowly pushing many others aside.

So what was this new interest which had surreptitiously crept into my thoughts, and slowly grown to push aside my love of reading? Well it was gaming...

...no not video games, I've been playing those regularly as far back as I can remember. I even found the old console I started on recently, one of those old pong/racing/tennis things where every game involved a number of white squares on a black background and the controllers were two little knobs you could turn on the console itself.

No the games that have been consuming my thoughts are board games, and not just those old traditional games of Scrabble and Monopoly that everyone seems to have played growing up, but a whole plethora of games that I had very little idea existed. Sure I knew a little of strategy games and wargames, and I had dipped my toes in the gaming waters back in the Games Workshop years, but I was largely unaware of the huge number of interesting games available until I stumbled across something last year which would lead me on to this fascinating new obsession...and I call it an obsession with good reason.

That little something I stumbled across was Zombie in my Pocket. I'm not sure where I found it or how, it might have been a Boing Boing post or just the result of a random search but somehow I found it, this game about zombies I could print...and play. That in itself blew me away, that there were people creating games that I could then print out and play, but the fact that the game was actually fun was the tipping point. I had to know what else was out there and it wasn't long before I found myself poised on the edge of the rabbit hole that is BoardGameGeek. I fell in and some eight months later I'm just climbing out, blinking at the sunshine and coming to the realisation that my life will from this point on always contain board games. Actually my wife came to this realisation a lot quicker, after opening a cupboard containing my exponentially expanding collection and exclaiming "by Jove don't these boxes consume a large volume of space" but perhaps in slightly more colourful language.

So like a not particularly impressive Phoenix rising from some barely cold ashes, I'm resurrecting Dummies and Death Rays. The themes here remain fairly similar, I still love science fiction, horror and fantasy, I still love the pulps, comics, and b-movies, but I will be shifting my focus from mostly books to include board games and gaming in general. I'll still be reading and reviewing when I can but I'm expecting this new interest to play a big part in the content available here. I'm not going to make any promises I can't keep about updating this blog but I'm hoping to at least keep the old thing active.

Thanks for reading, more to follow shortly.

Service:// Interrupted

Well my plans for productive blogging didn't work out too well. Went on holiday, had some nights out, didn't sleep much, done some web design on the side, been far too busy with the family. In short, I've rather neglected things.

I have managed to get some reading done, and I've also made it through the rather long reading of Justin Cronin's The Passage so it's not all bad.

Rambling will continue shortly.

News:// Free Doctor Who Game From the BBC - City of the Daleks

OK so maybe starting a new blog the week my baby daughter decides to develop a habit of screaming all day with trapped wind probably wasn't the best idea. Typing is pretty hard whilst holding a writhing, yelling infant most of the day but she appears to have worn herself out, providing me with a couple of hours of peace. So what to do...apart from posting here? Well I was about to pick up a book when I remembered seeing an advert for the Doctor Who games, so I checked the BBC website and it appears the first episode has finally launched.

The BBC had mentioned releasing a set of free game episodes based on Doctor Who quite a while ago so I'd been keeping an eye out for them. I've only had a very quick play and they seem like a lot of fun for what is a free game, certainly better than most game give-aways and compared to other Doctor Who games, well are there any?

I have a soft spot for Doctor Who, it's silly, it makes almost no sense if you even scratch the surface of the plots but it's fun and so very British and I love it. So I'm off to play a bit more while I can.

News:// Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show Subscription Deal

Looks like it's a good week for short fiction, I just had an email from Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show online fiction magazine detailing about the relaunch of the website, which does look improved, plus details of their new subscription deal.

Subscriptions are $15 for a year which gives you six bi-monthly issues but even better gives you access to all sixteen issues which have currently been published. For people who have not bought any issues previously it's a whole lot of short fiction for your money. I'd previously only bought one issue and had been meaning to buy a few more so I'm very happy to grab a subscription.

I've not read many of the stories but from what I have they mostly seem like easy, fun read, which is just what I need at the moment with a new baby and limited concentration. :)

1)  Our web designer worked long and hard to give IGMS a cleaner, sharper look. Navigation around the site will be simpler. With each new issue, the background will change to showcase some aspect of the issue's cover art. Explore it; I think you'll find it an intuitive and pleasantly easy experience.

2)  We now have something available that our readers have been asking for for a long time: an annual subscription. From now on, instead of having to purchase each issue individually, you can buy a year's worth of IGMS at one time and then not have to worry about it again; each issue will be there for you, ready and waiting as soon as it's published. And there's particularly good news (and a good reason to subscribe); the way our new subscription will work, you will not only have access to each new issue as it is published, you will immediately have access to every issue already published. That means that if you missed any of our previous issues, your $15 dollars will gain you access not just to the next six bimonthly issues, but to all sixteen issues already published. And that unrestricted access will last as long as you keep your subscription current. That means for those of you who've only read an issue or two, you'll be getting every story we've ever published for less than a buck an issue. So if you've seen IGMS mentioned in numerous Year's Best anthologies, on Locus's recommended reading list, or on any number of awards ballots, and wondered what the magazine was all about, there's never been a better time to try us out at: www.intergalacticmedicineshow.com or www.oscigms.com.

News:// New Online Short Fiction Magazine "Lightspeed" Launches

I just checked http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com as there has been a "Coming June 2010" page up for a while now and I was pleasantly surprised to see they have launched on the first day of the month. Just in time for my first real post too.

I love short fiction, I consume large amounts of it. I think it suits the short periods of time I have for reading but more than that I just really get a kick out of the form, it's where the really great ideas seem to crop up. It seems the restricted nature of short stories forces a different kind of storytelling, the author has to hook you quickly with no room for flabby back stories and world building. I imagine it is incredibly difficult to do well but when it is, it's beautiful. I mourned the closure of Borders mostly because it was one of the few places to stock Asmiov's, Analog, F&SF and the wonderful Interzone so I've been reading more and more of the online fiction magazines and it's always great to see a new one, particularly one with such great names attached to it.

John Joseph Adams is editing fiction, he's put out some really great anthologies (maybe a review or two in the future) and also co-hosts the Geeks Guide to the Galaxy podcast which I always enjoy. So I'm looking forward to seeing what stories he runs.

They also have Stefan Rudnicki as Audio editor, one of the best audio book narrators around among the many other things he does so really excited to see what happens with the podcast.
 
They are releasing one story and one piece of nonfiction from the magazine each week, for free or you can buy the whole thing as an ebook for $2.99. I'll definitely support the venture and buy a copy, if I get a chance to read it I might even report back. :)

Lightspeed is an online magazine focusing exclusively on science fiction. Here you can expect to see all types of science fiction, from near-future, sociological soft sf, to far-future, star-spanning hard sf, and anything and everything in between. No subject will be considered off-limits, and we encourage our writers to take chances with their fiction and push the envelope.

Each month at Lightspeed, we bring you a mix of originals and reprints, and featuring a variety of authors—from the bestsellers and award-winners you already know to the best new voices you haven’t heard of yet. When you read Lightspeed, it is our hope that you’ll see where science fiction comes from, where it is now, and where it’s going.

Lightspeed also features a variety of nonfiction features, fiction podcasts, and Q&As with our authors that go behind-the-scenes of their stories.

Our regular publication schedule each month includes two pieces of original fiction and two fiction reprints, along with four nonfiction articles. Fiction posts on Tuesdays, nonfiction on Thursdays.