2017-2018 fantasy, continuing light novel adaptation in 13 episodes: AniDB. Momonga, the VR MMORPG player who found himself stuck in the game world when the servers shut down, lives on as a super-powerful lich, and continues to…
2015 modern fantasy anthology, short stories in the Kate Daniels universe.
2018-2019 fantasy comedy, 13 episodes. The afterlife's experiments with ethics and moral philosophy continue.
2012 modern fantasy, intermediate novel in the Kate Daniels series. Andrea Nash looks into the murders of four shapeshifters… and the possibility that something much, much worse is going on.
I've been doing the Perl Weekly Challenges. This one was a couple of standard computer-science problems.
1987 mystery, first in the Carlotta Carlyle series. Carlotta was in the Boston Police, but left for reasons which aren't yet clear; now she's a private eye without clients. Then a nice old lady, worried about what's happened to her brother, offers her a bundle of cash to look into the matter…
2019 action comedy drama, 13 episodes. A motley group of rough men (and women) run around saving the world while trying to get in touch with their feelings.
I've been doing the Perl Weekly Challenges. This one was to implement the Ackermann function and parse URLs.
2014 science fiction, third in the Chronicles of St Mary's series. The St Mary's team of time-travelling historians continue their highly dangerous observations of historical events, this time visiting Troy and Agincourt among other places.
This Meetup-based boardgames group continues to meet at the Marlow Donkey.
2010 cosy mystery, first in the Mac Faraday series. Just after his firing and divorce, homicide detective Faraday finds that his birth-mother went on to become a hugely successful mystery writer, who's left him everything in her will. So now he doesn't have to do anything but laze around… though his neighbour did get murdered recently, and the local police chief doesn't seem to be up to the job…
Why have a calendar server in the first place? Because I want to check my schedule from multiple devices, and because I don't want to sell out to Google. (Which of course just means that when Google takes over I won't have been paid.)
2013 science fiction, third in The Expanse series. The mysterious plot-device-producing alien supertech has built a ring out past the orbit of Neptune, which seems to be a gate to Somewhere Else. In spite of his best efforts, James Holden will get involved again.
I've been doing the Perl Weekly Challenges. This one was to do a fiddly numerical calculation, and to check Bitcoin addresses.
Clarkesworld is a monthly on-line magazine edited by Neil Clarke.
The Leighton Buzzard Boardgames group put on their second convention, and having seen a flyer for it at the last Tringcon I went. With images; cc-by-sa on everything.
2009 fantasy. In a parallel 19th century America, Eff's twin brother Lan is the seventh son of a seventh son, so that means he's lucky, and he'll probably become a great wizard. But Eff is a thirteenth child, which means that everyone knows that sooner or later she'll turn bad.
Back to the boardgame café. With images; cc-by-sa on everything.
2015 Regency romance. Elinor Bascombe, a widow who's been bringing her late wastrel husband's estate back to something like prosperity, meets the wicked Lord Ryde, exiled from the country for decades, and here to raise money from his own neighbouring estate before leaving for good.
2018 modern fantasy novella, third and last in its series. The big bad vampire has broken the others out of prison, and is setting up for the big battle.
I've recently started doing the Perl Weekly Challenges. This one was to hunt primes and do "Vigenère" enciphering.
This long-running games convention had another instance at the start of July, on a sweaty weekend but not as hot as the last few have been. With images; cc-by-sa on everything.
2018 Lovecraftian SF, second in the series. Aphra Marsh is in New York, trying to track down any relatives who might have survived the Innsmouth Raid. But other forces are at play.
This is my ballot for the 2019 Hugo awards. I've talked about some of it already; see the "Hugo 2019" tag.
These are my thoughts on the Hugo-nominated short stories. If you're planning to vote, you may wish not to read these notes until you have done so.
These are my thoughts on the Hugo-nominated novelettes. If you're planning to vote, you may wish not to read these notes until you have done so.
I used to go to the Reading Boardgames Social quite a bit, but they went silent. I recently learned that they'd moved to Facebook and now Meetup, and went along to a Sunday afternoon meeting at the Greyfriar in Reading.
2018 SF novella, set in what I now learn is known as the Xuya Universe, the Vietnamese empire in space with mindships. A ship who's working as a blender of mildly psychoactive teas has an odd new client, a "consulting detective".
2019 drama/comedy, dir. Stephen Merchant, Florence Pugh, Jack Lowden; IMDb / allmovie. Siblings Raya and Zak Knight come from a wrestling family in Norfolk, but is that going to be enough to get them to the top?
Some trailers I've seen recently, and my thoughts on them. (Links are to youtube. Opinions are thoroughly personal. Calibration: I didn't know the cybernetic death squads would be used for violence.)