Schlock Mercenary

Confession time: the Planet Mercenary session at ConFusion was the first time I have run a Planet Mercenary game. I'm familiar with the system, and (obviously) the universe, and I've played the game several times as a player, but I'd never before been the Game Chief.To the game's credit, it worked just fine in spite of me. We identified a lot of small problems with things like layout and wording, but the mechanics of the game did exactly what they were supposed to do, and encouraged some brilliant role-play.Granted, 90% of that came from the brilliant players: Saladin Ahmed (Ob'enn quartermaster), Delilah Dawson (Ursumari medic), Mur Lafferty (Esspererin engineer), Brian McClellan (Unioc legal counsel), Cherie Priest (Human pilot), and Brent Weeks (Fobott'r captain). Brent managed to role-play "four-armed and in charge" with some hilarious pantomime, and Delilah got so into character as "Doctor Murderbear" that on a couple of occasions I thought she was mad at me.Brian put that big eye to use and spotted a spy, who he then bent to the party's aid. Cherie got down with the tactics; her roguish pilot did some mad stealth work, cutting off the enemy's escape route. Mur's engineer then performed some spectactular disassembly on the enemy getaway vehicle, reducing it not just to pieces, but to pieces of jewelry.And Saladin's bookish, persecuted, expat Ob'enn bet large, and managed to turn a nasty piece of enemy gear into a nasty piece of bookish, persecuted, expat Ob'enn gear.I can't thank these folks enough. They sawed a huge chunk of time out of their convention schedule to play this game we made, and they provided lots of suggestions about how to fine tune it.

I'm amazed by how good SyFy's The Expanse is.It is head-and-shoulders above anything else in TV science-fiction, with the possible exception of The Martian, which was a movie. Yes, I include Star Trek, Babylon V, and Firefly.Here's my stake in the ground: In 2020 we'll look at the state of science fiction programming, and ask ourselves how we got into this golden age. Then we'll look back and say "ah. The Expanse. It set a new bar, and for the last five years everybody has been racing to clear it."The Expanse has flaws, sure. It's a television program, after all. The series of books from which it is drawn are solid, but they're not epic-level standouts of literary science fiction. That's okay. They're worlds better than what usually gets turned into TV programming, and the folks working on them are doing everything they can to convince us that the characters we're following live in space, on asteroids, in accelerating vessels, and (most importantly) in our future.This is science fiction that manages sense-of-wonder without sugar coating the dangers of space exploration. It is science fiction that depicts many of the grim realities of human nature, while still instilling hope for the amazing things humans can, and will, create. It is science fiction that does not feel like high-magic fantasy wrapped in robots and ray-guns.Minor spoiler: There's one scene in particular during which a vessel loses power, and stops accelerating. Everything starts floating. Then a hole gets punched through the cabin. The characters still able to move spend no more than three seconds looking shocked, and then they do what people who live in space do. They patch the holes so they don't run out of air.The Expanse is very non-episodic, much like Netflix's Daredevil. Each episode is one act in a multi-act story, and while these acts have beginnings, middles, and ends, the overarching story is never lost as we drive forward. I bought the Season Pass on Amazon because I expect to binge watch this at least a couple of times before (huzzah it got renewed!) Season Two comes out.We're only six seven episodes in, and the season is short, but if you love science fiction, and you have sufficient discretionary income to let you comfortably put some money where your mouth is, this one's worth buying now.Content alert: There's some PG-13 nudity in episode 1, presumably to rope puerile male viewers into thinking this is Game of Thrones (episodes 2 through 6 have none of that in them). Also, there is PG-13 violence, and can I just say that arterial spray in null-gee is terrifying?(This review originally appeared on howardtayler.com)

This weekend I'll be attending the 42nd annual ConFusion science fiction and fantasy convention, aptly dubbed "Life, The Universe, and ConFusion."I'm not on any panels, because I didn't want to be on any panels. I'm not selling anything, because I didn't want to be stuck in the dealers' room. I'll have a badge, but I'm not really *at* the convention as anything other than an attendee who is taking a vacation this weekend.Except, of course, for the bit where I'm running a Planet Mercenary RPG session on Saturday morning with several of the convention's notable guests as players. That's a little bit like work, and it's something that fans can come and watch. When it's done, I will hide in my room and edit a bunch of the Planet Mercenary stuff, focusing on the bits my party of fine storytellers and wordsmiths ran roughshod over.If you want me to sign something, or sketch in a book, I will do that for you, provided you don't try to get me to do it during the RPG session, or while I'm eating.If you want to talk to me, hey, that's cool, assuming you choose to do this in a setting where approaching people for conversation is appropriate. If I'm not feeling approachable, I'll probably hide in my room and write.

Seems I waited quite a while before putting up a new blog post here. 2016 has been really busy so far, which is nice, because it's the "getting things done" kind of busy, rather than the "putting out fires" kind of busy.I'll write more later, I guess? At this moment I'm waiting for food to come out of the food machine, and then I will eat the food and start getting more things done.I really hope I do not need to put out a fire in the food machine.

Finally, you get to read Barsk: The Elephants' Graveyard, by Lawrence Schoen.I got to read it early this year, and I loved it. I wanted to tell you about it, but I was told in no uncertain terms that I needed to wait, because you would not be able to have it until the very endmost days of the year, and we would all be happier (you, me, Lawrence, and the publisher) if I held off.This is science fiction that gets the aliens right. With no human POV characters, our only eyes into the story are alien ones, and Lawrence does this so well I felt like I was a wrinkled, hairless historian with a prehensile snout and oversized ears.I say "aliens," but that term will get quibbled over. Barsk is a wet, cloudy world settled by the Fant, creatures who, as the full title of the story suggests, bear a non-coincidental resemblance to Earth's elephants. The setting is, technically, an anthropomorphic one, but saying "oh, it's an anthro story" does the book an enormous disservice. Barsk is to anthropomorphic, "furry" fiction as Heinlein's Starship Troopers is to Lucas's stormtroopers.The story is part detective story, part adventure, and part "idea" story whose central conceits do a delightful job of blurring that line between sufficiently advanced technology and magic. It hits familiar notes in ways that tell me "this is like other books I love," and then delivers new notes in ways that remind me why I like reading stuff that is actually new.I've raved over Lawrence's "Amazing Conroy" stories before. As delightful as those were, Barsk: The Elephant's Graveyard is better, and for all the right reasons.(originally posted at howardtayler.com)

It's been a week. If you haven't seen Star Wars: The Force Awakens yet, I completely understand. Theaters have been packed. This review may spoil some things, however, so by all means click away from this page now.Still reading? Still?Okay, then. Before I tell you how awesome it was, let me get something out of the way. Star Wars: The Force Awakens does NOT take my top spot for 2015. The Martian set a very high bar.Look at it this way: Star Wars: The Force Awakens was amazing, and restored my faith in the cinematic tradition and my hopes for the franchise. The Martian, however, gave me hope for humanity. The Martian penetrated all the way to my soul and changed me a little. Star Wars: The Force Awakens simply made me very, very happy to have seen a movie.Don't get me wrong, however. Star Wars: The Force Awakens was an amazing and powerful film. The Star Wars prequels made so many terrible mistakes that they ruined the franchise for me. That I again have interest in, and hope for the Star Wars franchise is close to miraculous.An examination of the craft of film making is in order here, but I need to see the film a few more times to cement my thoughts. For now, I'll summarize. Everything the filmmakers did wrong with Episodes I, II, and III were done right (or simply not done) in Episode VII. More amazingly, almost everything that was done well in Episodes IV, V, and VI was done better in Episode VII.And I mean "better."Not "bigger" or "louder" or "more." BETTER.

During the early part of this year I posted "Hot Cocoa, My Way." Here's the concoction I came up with this morning. It's more complex, but the basic principle is the same: start with cocoa powder, and go dark.