2017 non-fiction. What is bitcoin, and why should any sensible person have absolutely nothing to do with it?
The 1 Player Guild is a group of solo game players, organised on BoardGameGeek. I do this occasionally, and when the inaugural real-world meeting was suggested in the UK, I went along. What could work better than a bunch of solo gamers getting together in one place? Actually, it was an excellent day - in a village hall in the middle of nowhere, bring your own food and drink (but much in the way of snack makings provided by the organiser), eleven people.
With images; cc-by-sa on everything.
2001 thriller/mystery; fourth of Granger's novels of Fran Varady, would-be thespian and amateur sleuth. A private investigator tracks down Fran to tell her that her mother (who abandoned the family when Fran was quite young) is dying, and wants to talk to her. But that's not all she wants. It turns out that after she left she had another daughter…
I missed the second instance of this because it clashed with the Worldcon in Helsinki, but made it to number 3. Given how far I travel for other games conventions, one that's just on the other side of High Wycombe is a pleasant change.
2017 non-fiction, popular science; short treatments of scientific aspects of farming, food transport and cooking.
Burned-in screens were standard when I started with computers, though towards the end of the CRT era it mostly didn't happen any more, and more modern monitors tend not to do it either.
1982 classic English detective fiction; thirty-second and last of Marsh's novels of Inspector Roderick Alleyn. Peregrine Jay is putting on Macbeth at the Dolphin, but tensions are running high and not all the cast will make it to the end of the run.
This Meetup-based boardgames group continues to meet at the Marlow Donkey.
2017 science fiction novella. Murderbot is an AI running a light-duty security robot, trying to keep the humans of a planetary survey expedition alive, though it would much rather spend its time catching up on episodes of Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon. Unfortunately its job is going to get rather harder.
I recently played Peter Blenkharn's game Statecraft, and I wasn't terribly impressed. Here are some ideas that I think might improve it.
1980 classic English detective fiction; thirty-first of Marsh's novels of Inspector Roderick Alleyn. The Great Soprano is being pestered by a paparazzo; her millionaire friend takes her to a retreat in the New Zealand bush, with just a dozen good friends – including the young composer she's taken over, and whose new opera she's going to put on in a private performance. But all that's not going to stop someone from killing her.
Pyramid, edited by Steven Marsh, is the monthly GURPS supplement containing short articles with a loose linking theme. This time it's fighting – not a theme I find particularly compelling in RPGs any more.
With a role-playing session cancelled because of non-availability, the people who would have been doing that got together to play some boardgames.
1957 murder mystery in rural England. The Jeacocks have split off part of their house to make a cottage to let, but not only is their tenant entirely too willing to pay three months' rent in advance in lieu of references, he's mostly interested in the Big House nearby, and its new owner.
Back to the boardgame café. With images; cc-by-sa on everything.
2016 non-fiction. Sandifer writes about the alt-right, starting with the writings of three luminaries of neoreaction and in demolishing them wanders through a variety of strange places.
Note: this is the title both of the collection and of the first essay, which seems also to have been published separately.
Some trailers I've seen recently, and my thoughts on them. (Links are to youtube. Opinions are thoroughly personal. Calibration: I hate everything.)
2017 non-fiction, popular science. A biologist and a cartoonist look at ten fields of technology that seem likely to produce large changes in human life.
2017 science fiction/investigation, 5 or 12 episodes; H. G. Wells pursues Jack the Ripper into the modern day.
1985 Hugo- and Nebula-award-winning science fiction, expansion of an earlier short story. Ender Wiggin is brought up to be the tactical genius necessary to fight off the alien invaders.
This long-running games convention had another instance at the start of January. With images; cc-by-sa on everything.
1979 detective fiction; fourth and last of Brand's novels of Inspector Charlesworth. On a stormy night, faded film star Sari Morne finds her road blocked by a fallen tree; but a stranger has just arrived at the other side, and they swap cars to finish their journeys. But the next morning the car in her garage has a corpse in it.
This Meetup-based boardgames group continues to meet at the Marlow Donkey. We planned for a long day of gaming.
2015 science fiction. Captain Caleb Shepperd runs a rustbucket interplanetary freighter, trying to make enough money to keep going. Number 1001 is a synth, supposedly built to be some rich woman's immortal body, but in practice sent off as an assassin. Things aren't going to go well.
I went to the Museum of London to see a particular exhibition, and stayed to see the rest of it.
1978 classic English detective fiction; thirtieth of Marsh's novels of Inspector Roderick Alleyn. The wealthy double-widow Sybil Foster apparently commits suicide while staying in a hotel for hypochondriacs. But this is not a story about suicide. vt A Grave Mistake.
2015 drama, dir. Jocelyn Moorhouse, Kate Winslet, Judy Davis: IMDb / allmovie. In 1950s rural Australia, Tilly Dunnage is coming home to upend the small town that threw her out as a child.
2015 military SF. Catherine Blackwood is a privateer ship's captain, which in practice means mercenary; a new contract has her employed by her estranged father to haul her idiot brother back out of whatever trouble he's got himself into.
2017 was another very boardgame-ful year.
In 2017 I read 124 books, down again from the previous year.
A friend likes to sum up his year in a set number of words, and I copy this fine idea. "Think of it as a short and un-boastful summary of the year, which nobody is expected to understand all of."