Just how much time does the Channel Tunnel save, compared with a ferry?
2012 steampunk western fantasy. In 1867, Jett Gallatin is a gunslinger searching for his brother who went missing after the War; White Horse is a civilian scout attached to the Union Army; and Gibbons is a scientist and inventor. All of them arrive in the town of Alsop, Texas, just as the zombies attack. But who made that happen, and why?
This post is about what I brought back from Essen – as well as some things I'd been thinking about but ended up not buying.
2019 collection of short science fiction stories set in the universe of the Heptarchate/Hexarchate.
2008 urban fantasy, fourth in the series. Kitty Norville, the late-night DJ who has become the world's most famous werewolf, returns to Denver to be with her sick mother; which means that all the problems she's been running away from come back to haunt her, with new ones to join them.
I'm now a regular game demonstrator at Essen SPIEL shows. Here's my advice in case you're contemplating it.
2009 mystery; third in Cleeves' Shetland Island series. At an archaeological site on Whalsay, the old woman who lives nearby is shot one foggy night – accidentally, everyone assumes. Then one of the archaeologists is found with her wrists slit. DI Jimmy Perez investigates.
This Meetup-based boardgames group continues to meet at the Marlow Donkey.
This GURPS supplement is primarily an equipment catalogue, listing electrical and related equipment from Galvani and Volta to the present day.
I went along to the march on Saturday, again not because I think it will help, but because I'd have felt bad if I hadn't.
1999 mystery, eighth in the Robert Amiss series. Amiss is brought in to help an old, money-losing, right-wing weekly newspaper lose slightly less money. Which puts him in a prime position when one of the senior staff is murdered.
Clarkesworld is a monthly on-line magazine edited by Neil Clarke.
I went over to a friend's place for boardgames.
1934 non-fiction, a short look at the writing mindset and how to set oneself to work.
2012 non-fiction, following the life and death of Marie Colvin.
2019 Australian science fiction comedy audio drama in eight parts, by John Richards. Dr Anastasia Black, Eddie Jones and Sue Denholm continue to travel through time and space in a suburban house, fixing problems and getting into trouble.
I've been doing the Perl Weekly Challenges. This one dealt with date calculations and exhaustive number searches.
Strange Horizons is a weekly on-line magazine edited by Vanessa Rose Phin.
Uncanny is a bimonthly on-line magazine edited by Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas.
1992 cosy American detective fiction; fifth and last of MacLeod's novels (as "Alisa Craig") of Madoc and Janet Rhys. They've gone to Wales to help celebrate Madoc's great-uncle's 90th birthday, but soon enough there's a dead body to be dealt with.
I've been doing the Perl Weekly Challenges. This one dealt with expanding braces and calling C functions.
2018 non-fiction. HMS Erebus had already travelled to the Ross Ice Shelf; in 1845, she was sent to search for the Northwest Passage, and never came back.
2012 fantasy, third in the trilogy. In a parallel 19th century America, Eff Rothmer travels on an expedition past frontier territory, to where the magical beasts dwell.
1995 mystery, fifteenth in Muller's series about Sharon McCone, private investigator in San Francisco. McCone's trying to get the reward for tracking down the "Diplo-Bomber" who's been sending explosive packages to various embassies and consulates… but it quickly becomes personal.
Today is my birthday. And I now feel that I can be regarded as officially Old.
2018 SF anthology, 14 short stories; all except the last have been published previously.
I've been doing the Perl Weekly Challenges. This one dealt with testing file contents and producing the current time.
Eighth in this series of one-day conventions in bustling metropolitan Baildon (suburban Bradford).
2013 historical detection, twentieth in Greenwood's Phryne Fisher series (1920s flapper detective in Australia). The hated conductor of an amateur choral ensemble is murdered… twice. And an old friend of Phryne's is in love with someone who doesn't know he exists, and who seems to be the target of murderous attacks.
Some trailers I've seen recently, and my thoughts on them. (Links are to youtube. Opinions are thoroughly personal. Calibration: Hatred is a vice of narrow souls; they feed it with all their meanness, and make it a pretext for sordid tyranny.)