Wargaming Wednesday: Not Just Dungeons and Dragons

Dungeons and Dragons was the first pen-and-paper tabletop role-playing game I ever encountered. I started playing in the summer of '93, when two of my friends had the "Big Black Box" edition of the DnD Basic Rules set. For those of you who know what the BBB version is...well I don't need to tell you anything. For all you newbies out there, this was a really big intro boxed set that had a ton of "rules cards", a big map adventure, tiny cardboard monsters and PCs...basically everything you'd need to play the first few levels of your characters - which is not unusual for the D&D boxed sets - but in a larger format, with full-color maps and cardboard counters.

Up until this point, I really hadn't been into "Fantasy", but I had read the first three Dragonlance books (that's a post for another day), and so I had some idea of what I was getting into. Needless to say, I was immediately hooked - in fact, far more than the two other people I was gaming with. I quickly bought the 2nd Edition Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, and Monster Manual, and the over the next few years, I bought EVERYTHING that TSR produced - settings, Class handbooks, DM's guides...the works. The biggest problem, unfortunately, was lack of players, since I was living in a fairly rural small town in Maine, and my high school peers, for the most part, weren't interested in gaming.

When I moved off to college in 1995, I brought most of my gaming materials with me, certain that I'd be able to find a DnD group at a large urban university. But of course, as soon as I found some nerdy brethren and asked who played D&D, I received mocking laughter. "We don't play that game, you dork. We play White Wolf games. Those are real role-playing games".

I got sucked into a Werewolf: the Apocalypse game, and really enjoyed it, and I played a little Vampire and a little Mage as well. My RPG tastes began to grow, and I started buying other games, surprised that there were dozens of games put out by a wide variety of publishers in any genre you could think of. And of course, this was the late '90s, when the Internet gave us the ability to communicate around the world and share documents online with each other, enabling the explosion of what is commonly known as the "indie gaming" revolution. New voices emerged in the industry, edgy people with games that strayed far from the staid boundaries of D&D, GURPS, Rifts, World of Darkness, and other, more established platforms.

Fast-forward twenty years, and the more things change, the more they stay the same. Dungeons and Dragons is now well into its fifth - and most popular - edition, and most of the old guard are still around in one form or another. But smaller, indie presses and self-published games continue to arrive on the scene almost daily. In addition, the disdain most D&D folks had for the 4th edition rules, coupled with the death of D&D co-creator Gary Gygax back in 2008 sparked the "Old School Renaissance", where many gamers went back to the old editions of the game, breathing life back into them and using the bones of their rules sets to create a huge variety of different games.

Over the decades, I've collected a lot of role-playing games. Far more than I ever have, or ever could, play. I don't know what the current number is, but it is probably creeping up towards a hundred different RPGs and/or editions. And yet, that barely scratches the surface of what's out there, even from larger game companies, never mind "indie" developers. It's interesting that Dungeons and Dragons is more popular and more mainstream than it has ever been, and yet, most people have no idea of the immense variety of games out there - settings, play styles, rules types - whatever your interests might be, there is likely a game for you. And, just to give a minuscule taste, here's a YouTube video I watched last night, which dips a toe into the fathomless pool of games out there:

Yes, the video is a bit long, but if you have any curiosity about role-playing games, it is definitely worth your time to watch, and certainly better than me trying to pitch a bunch of different games. Oh, and it is worth noting that of the ten games they mention, I only own one of these - Call of Cthulhu - and it's an old edition. So if I own nearly a hundred RPGs, and only 1 of them is on this list, that gives you some idea of the variety out there.

Wargaming Wednesday: The Pure Insanity of Warhammer 40,000

Continuing with my push to deliver more blogging content, I'm dedicating Wednesdays to wargaming and role-playing games. Although in recent years I haven't been able to get in much (or really any) of either tabletop wargaming or pen-and-paper RPG playing, I still count both among my hobbies and interests.

Today I just wanted to highlight the wargame I am most invested in on an emotional level - Games Workshop's Warhammer 40,000. For those who don't know what it is - I'll do this REAL QUICK - a bunch of British tabletop miniatures folks had a set of wargaming rules called Warhammer. It had armies of Elves and Dwarfs and guys with swords and pikes, and orcs and goblins, even skeletons and ghouls and "chaos" warriors and monsters. Basically every fantasy trope you can think of circa 1985 or so, thrown into a blender. Warhammer became super popular, and as it grew, they decided to do a version of the game as a sci-fi skirmish game, which they decided to call "Warhammer 40,000".

Just Another Day in the 41st Millennium

The universe of Warhammer 40,000 has changed somewhat in the 30+ years since its inception, but, well, I'll just cut and paste in the quote that appears at the beginning of most of their products:

It is the 41st Millennium. For more than a hundred centuries The Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the Master of Mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die.

Yet even in his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the Warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor's will. Vast armies give battle in his name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst his soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Imperial Guard and countless planetary defence forces, the ever vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants - and worse.

To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.

Yeah, it's like that. This is the kind of science fiction wargame you dream up when you're a young British nerd who subsists on a diet of heavy metal, Michael Moorcock, Tolkien, the punk aesthetic, European political chaos, Dungeons & Dragons, Star Wars, the Alien franchise, Hammer horror films, and a thick, heady dose of Generation X nihilism.  The "good guys" in the Warhammer 40K universe are the Imperium of Man, but you quickly realize that in 40K, "good" just means not quite as demonically horrifying as the "bad guys", but still pretty goddamn awful. The Space Marines, genetically modified super-humans in a suit of nigh-invulnerable power armor, might be call "the Emperor's finest", but they're also know as "The Angels of Death", and they'd stomp your skull into paste as soon as look at you if they thought you were a threat.

'Ello Guv'ner!

Even the Imperial Guard, the "good little guys" who were just your normal humans in basic body armor and carrying basic guns - somewhat analogous to regular army guys of today, just with sci-fi trappings - are often portrayed as psychotically violent and xenophobic, or just plain insane. Many of them come from "death worlds" where everything there tries to kill you, and it's basically Rambo with a plasma rifle and a chainsaw sword.

Some of my favorite parts of 40K are when things get delightfully subversive. There are nuns in 40K, but they are sociopathic religious zealots running around in black powered armor with all-white hair (white head covering, black outfit, like a nun's habit), blazing away with guns and flamethrowers, slaying heretics and the "impure". The Space Marine chaplain isn't a kindly older man giving you spiritual guidance...well okay he is, but he's also an eight foot-tall crazed murder machine in coal-black armor with a skull-shaped helmet, smashing people to pieces in the name of the Emperor and driving on the troops with his "inspiring presence". Yeah, it's like that. Even the Librarian is a force to be reckoned with, as "Librarians" are actually Space Marines with psychic powers, who can blow your body apart with their minds, set tanks on fire, and cause all sorts of supernatural havoc.

Yes, this is one of the Good Guys.

If anything, my biggest criticism of 40K in recent years is that they seem to be toning down the darker, more punk-rock elements of 40K in favor of something a little more family-friendly. There are still demons and mutants and heretics, but the Good Guys are a little more Good and the Bad Guys are a little more Bad. While 40K has always bee appealing to teenagers, I think Games Workshop knows that they need to aim for a younger audience, in order to get brand loyalty at an earlier age *and* tap into the "toy money" of the parents, rather than 30- or 40-somethings who have discretionary income, but who can also say "$35 for a single model an inch and a half tall? Ehhh...".


And that's my other big complaint - the cost. New model kits and new pricing structures mean that a playable, "competitive" army can set you back $400 or more if you buy everything at store prices. Sure, hobbies can be expensive, but the nature of wargaming is such that you feel the need to buy the newest, coolest stuff, as the rules and the "meta" changes to give different armies an advantage.

Glorious Old-School '90s Boxed Set Artwork!

But despite these problems, I really like the universe of Warhammer 40,000. It's cruel and violent and cynical and bloody as hell - in fact, it reminds me of that other British dystopian setting, JUDGE DREDD, in a lot of ways - but back in its earlier times, 40K didn't take itself as seriously as it does now, and I think the new, more serious 40K has lost a little something because of that.

Now, pardon me while I go burn some heretics - I mean, search on eBay for an out of production miniature...

BOOK REVIEW: William Gibson's NEUROMANCER

There's nothing I can say about NEUROMANCER that hasn't been said ten thousand times in the 34 years since the book was published. I read it first maybe...fifteen years ago? Some time not too long after college, so in the first couple years of the 21st century. At the time, we didn't have a lot of the advancements we had today, such as smart phones with the sort of power we enjoy now, or a lot of the social media available to us, but we had a good idea where things were leading, and a lot of the technical capability was there, we just weren't taking full advantage of it quite yet.

If you have any interest at all in Science Fiction literature, you know something about the Cyberpunk genre, and if you know Cyberpunk, you've either read NEUROMANCER, or you feel somewhat guilty not having read it yet. It was the defining work in the genre, with pretty much every written or visual work coming after it in the genre taking elements from it, and some elements even bled into more traditional science fiction. For example, in THE EXPANSE series, full-sized computers are referred to as "decks", which is the term Gibson uses for the computer systems used to interact with Cyberspace. Point of note: while Gibson didn't invent the term "Cyberpunk", he did invent "Cyberspace", a term that has become almost universally used by people who don't quite know what they're talking about to discuss That Which Is Accessible On The Internet.

Gibson's imagining of Cyberspace, while tremendously evocative, has never caught on, despite decades of computing advances. The idea that you would access the Internet through some kind of neural interface, and "fly" through a vast cyber-space landscape in order to reach and access data is the sort of thing that Hollywood salivates over (see also: Jurassic Park's "Unix System" scenes), but even in the here and now of 2018, it's just easier to tap an icon on our phones, or click on a bookmark. In fact, when it comes to traditional desktop and laptop computing, the way we use computers is, I would argue, not much different than the way we used them in 1983, when Gibson wrote the novel. Computers at the time had all the basic components of the modern desktops of today, some even using very basic Graphical User Interfaces and mice. Indeed, I would imagine that if you took a computer user from 1983 forward in time 35 years to today and set them down in front of your average modern desktop, it'd take them only a short while to understand that you clicked on icons to launch programs rather than type commands, and from there, you used the mouse to select functions and the keyboard to enter data. The difference lies more in what we use the computers for, rather than how we use them.

Of course, I do not in any way fault Gibson for not predicting the future, especially since the world in which NEUROMANCER takes place is probably well over a century from now, some place likely in the mid-2200s. There are references to a dynastic family existing for over two centuries, so depending on when they started, the book could even be set in early 2300s. By that point, it may very well be that the easiest way to access data is through direct neural interfaces. Of course, there are some odd anachronisms in the novel, such as using traditional telephones! Indeed, like may other science fiction writers Gibson didn't anticipate the pervasiveness of wireless connectivity, except on the largest scale, such as satellite transmissions. Decks are carried around and jacked into wall interfaces, often requiring special jack adapters in order to make them compatible. Data is also quite often carried around and transferred physically, either in the form of tiny sliver-like "microsofts" or larger data cartridges. I always enjoy reading older science fiction works (and truly, NEUROMANCER isn't even that old) to see what older technological paradigms they imagine will still exist in the future.

But of course, that's not what people really read this novel for - they read it for the atmosphere. In fact, it's probably got one of the greatest opening lines in the history of science fiction:

"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel." 

If you can picture that image in your mind's eye, you're most of the way to understanding the aesthetic of the dystopian Cyberpunk setting. The glaring, clashing intermingling of the old world and the new, the gleaming cities of chrome and glass built on the crumbling brick and iron of the old. There's a layer of grime on everything, even new tech, and everyone's got an angle. Anything you eat or drink is recycled from something else, and non-artificial environments are difficult (and expensive) to come by. Weapons are a mix of highly lethal new tech and battered but reliable old tech, and absolutely everything has a price. It is a largely amoral world, where people are simply trying to cling to a life worth living, because if they let go, even for a second, there is no merciful net to catch them, no social welfare program worth giving them the security they need.

So, is there anything NOT to like about this book? Well, to be fair, there are times when Gibson's (usually successful) attempts to be evocative of the setting wander a bit, especially when detailing Cyberspace itself. These moments aren't so much poorly written as they are a bit too lingering, causing breaks in the action, especially at the end of the novel. I suppose this is inevitable in describing something that most people in 1983 couldn't really imagine, so I have no problem with this. The other big pain in my butt with this book is one of my pet peeves in fiction and visual medium - that moment when, in the middle of a climactic moment, the protagonist finds themselves in some kind of idyllic dreamland, where they suddenly are offered paradise, if they just didn't wake up / accept their fate / whatever. I hate this device pretty much every time I encounter it, and there is a moment at the end of this book where that occurs, and it seems to go on forever.

Other than that, and a couple of other quibbles here and there, I enjoyed the novel immensely, and although I don't read a lot of the Cyberpunk genre, it did whet my appetite to go out and find more titles in the genre - specifically, I want to re-read Neal Stephenson's SNOW CRASH, which is a *great* novel.

Movie Review: MAD MAX - FURY ROAD

It has been many years - too long, really - since I've seen any of the original three Mad Max movies in their entirety. I know I've seen THE ROAD WARRIOR a couple of times, but it's probably been over 20 years since I've seen the first or third movies. Still I know I enjoyed them all, and I'm a big fan of post-apocalyptic movies like these, relying on desolation and desperation rather than a zombie outbreak as their main settings.

So when they announced FURY ROAD, and I saw the first pictures and the trailers, I knew I was going to be first in line for this new movie. Thankfully, through a connection with a couple of friends and podcasters over at Nerd Spastics, I was able to score early premiere tickets due to Boston Comic-Con's movie promotions. I saw this film last week, and I have to say, I was utterly floored by how much of an incredible spectacle it was.

The plot of the movie is pretty dead-simple. Mad Max is captured by the "War Boys" of Immortan Joe, a warlord living in a massive fortress carved into the side of a mesa. He controls water and food and commands an army of young, fearless men, who follow him without question because he's indoctrinated them all with a Viking-esque belief in Valhalla, where he will make sure they will go if they die gloriously in his service.

Given his relative good health and lack of mutation or disease, Max is set up as a blood donor for the War Boys, many of whom have diseases or tumors and need regular transfusions to live. When Imperator Furiosa, one of Joe's war-rig drivers, goes rogue and escapes with all of Joe's "brides" (aka, sex slave breeding stock), Joe sends out all of his Boys to hunt her down. Nux, one of the younger drivers, is getting a transfusion from Max, and to ensure he doesn't miss any of the action, brings Max along, chained to the front of his car while still transfusing blood via IV needle.

Thus begins a massive, insane chase across the post-apocalyptic wasteland of Australia, as Furiosa and her war-rig try to escape Immortan Joe's seemingly endless horde of other war-rigs, armored cars, and motorbikes. Along the way they run into several different factions in the wasteland, some of them allies of Joe's, some of them hostile to everyone. It doesn't really matter who they are, because in this hellscape, resources are thin, and everyone is a potential source of something you're willing to kill for - bullets, gasoline, food, whatever.

Overall, the movie is an amazing assault on the senses. The score is brutal and powerful and perfect for this kind of insane road-rage taken to its natural conclusion (one of Joe's war-rigs is a massive war-stereo on wheels, complete with war-dummers and a gimp-like madman guitarist thrashing away on a guitar that doubles as a flamethrower). On the big screen, the wanton destruction of men and machines, all moving at suicidally high speeds, looks just phenomenal. While I am sure aspects of the action sequences were augmented with CG effects, all the major action looks like it is (amazingly) practical, real-life carnage of cars smashed into other cars at high speed, with fire and smoke and flaming pieces of twisted metal spinning through the air. The whole effect, from the sound to the visuals, it utterly mesmerizing.

I have to give special props to the folks who handled the production design. Everything looks totally organic to the world in which they're living, from the rusty, beatup weapons to the improvised machinery, to the cobbled together vehicles and their own armor and weapons (like the bucket loader turned into some kind of anti-vehicle weapon, or the buzzsaw on the mechanical arm). Those of you who are fans of the Warhammer 40,000 universe will see how the Orks' love of high-speed mechanical death fits perfectly into this world (and was, indeed, influenced heavily by the Mad Max universe). It feels to me like that influence has reflected back, when you consider this Ork Battlewagon Model:

Or perhaps, one of the Ork Wartrukks:

This isn't a movie that's deep in any meaningful way, it is simply a story of a contest of wills, two forces pitted against each other in the middle of the desert. The Mad Max world has always, for me, been a mythology - a series of campfire tales, told generations after they'd taken place, perhaps to eventually make their way into history books when the world finally picked itself up and began to put itself back together again, centuries later. If you watch these movies with too literal an eye, they might begin to fall apart, but if you think of them like post-apocalyptic version of the Iliad or Odyssey, they make more sense in my opinion.

In conclusion, if you enjoyed the original movies, and if you're more a fan of post-apocalyptic stories that don't involve zombies or viruses or games of hunger, go and see this film. I highly recommend seeing this in the theater, because it simply won't have the same impact on your TV, or - god forbid - on your computer screen.

Sean McLachlan's THE SCAVENGER Free April 4-8

I've read both THE SCAVENGER and Sean's first Toxic World novel, RADIO HOPE, and they're both great stories. Post-Apocalyptic fiction that isn't hyperbolized or filled with zombies (yawn...), these are great stories filled with believable characters and great action. If you're interested, pick up THE SCAVENGER for free between now and April 8th.

Here's the blurb for THE SCAVENGER:

In a world shattered by war, pollution, and disease, a lone scavenger discovers a priceless relic from the Old Times.
The problem is, it's stuck in the middle of the worst wasteland he knows--a contaminated city inhabited by insane chem addicts and vengeful villagers. Only his wits, his gun, and an unlikely ally can get him out alive.

Set in the Toxic World series introduced in the novel Radio Hope, this 10,000-word story explores more of the dangers and personalities that make up a post-apocalyptic world that's all too possible.

GUEST BLOGGER: Sean McLachlan Discusses Post-Apoc Novel RADIO HOPE

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Sean McLachlan's new novel, a post-apocalyptic story titled RADIO HOPE, is now available on Amazon for the Kindle. I was lucky enough to read an advance copy, and I thought the story was spectacular - strikingly realistic, but with enough action and adventure to satisfy even the most demanding bullet-junkies.

Here, Sean discusses some of the thought processes behind creating The Toxic World of RADIO HOPE.

Constructing A Destroyed World

One of the rewarding things about a career in writing is that you get to try new things and extend your creative boundaries. My first novel, A Fine Likeness, was a historical horror set in the American Civil War. I used many real characters and situations, and even bits of real dialog culled from contemporary newspaper accounts.

My second novel was a radical departure. Radio Hope is a post-apocalyptic tale. No zombies, no alien invasions, just regular people living with their grandparents’ mistakes. I had to extrapolate a series of disasters from our current world situation to get the toxic, ruined world that was the setting for my novel.

Writers tend to lump themselves into “plotters” and “pansters”. I’m about in the middle of the spectrum. While I do tend to think out the world situation and the basic plot, I leave plenty of room for winging it. I had the three main characters and the setting—New City, the last settlement that could really be called a town. I also traced out the fall of civilization, but many of the details of how civilization fell came to me while I was facing the keyboard, and sometimes those details filled out my world’s background.

For example, I knew that New City was going to be threatened by a bunch of zealots called the Righteous Horde. I didn’t want them to show up until near the end because the story isn’t so much about their attack as it is about how the threat of their attack brings out all the best and the worst in the settlers, and highlights the divisions between citizens and noncitizens. So I wanted to have New City know the Righteous Horde was coming but have plenty of time to stew in the knowledge that their days might be numbered.

Then I asked myself, “Why isn’t the Righteous Horde galloping over the plains and swooping down on an unsuspecting New City like a Mongol army?”

Simple solution: no horses.

So where did all the horses go? My subconscious informed me they got killed off, along with a large chunk of the human population, in the Biowars. Part of humanity’s fall into chaos included deadly biological warfare that killed hundreds of millions of people along with several major species of animals. Horses were one of them, as were cows. It killed off the dogs too. How could my subconscious do such a thing? Because icing Man’s Best Friend will tug at my readers’ heartstrings as much if not more than destroying most of humanity.

The fall of civilization didn’t happen overnight, and so there are bits of high technology still lying around. Most, of course, have since fallen apart, and the lack of electricity except in a few places lucky enough to have solar panels means that most future inventions are useless. I do leave a few hints of advanced tech, though—advanced medicines such as blanket antivirals and weapons like the DShK-4, which is obviously a later model of the Chinese DShK. Actually there are a lot of Chinese-made weapons lying around, but I can’t talk about why that is because I don’t want to be found guilty of Blame. In New City that could get me branded and exiled. . .

So while the future is bleak, it’s a fun place to play if you’re a writer. As you build up your setting often the demands of the story will dictate details. You get to mix the old and the new, science fiction and the 19^th century. People wear homespun and grind their grain in handmills while looking up at the bright dot of the International Lunar Base and wondering if humanity will ever make it that far again.

Sean McLachlan is an archaeologist turned writer who is the author of several books of fiction and history. Check him out on his blog Midlist Writer.

Nanok and the Tower of Sorrows - Eighteen Months Later

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Back in the early spring of 2012, I began working on a pulpy "Sword and Sorcery" short story involving a stereotypical barbarian swordsman duking it out against an evil wizard and his diabolical henchmen.

I'm a fan of not only Robert E. Howard's Conan, but the various "iron-thewed barbarians" that came much later, mostly in the late 60's through the 80's, created by authors who'd grown up reading Conan stories and wanted to pen stories of a similar vein. Of course, as well by this time Tolkien's Lord of the Rings was published, and while Hyboria is about as far from Middle Earth as you can get, I'm sure publishers were desperate to find anything they could slap a "fantasy" label on and throw at readers. As well, after 1974 the Dungeons and Dragons phenomenon began to take off, and in the early 80's Marvel comics also begain publishing Conan comics, and of course, there was the Schwarzenegger Conan movies, which although often reviled by Howard purists, were some of the better 80's fantasy fare, if you ask me.

So, this whole heterogeneous, multimedia soup stock of books, comics, games, artwork, movies, and hell, even barbarian-themed metal music helped me to brew up a short story that eventually became Nanok and the Tower of Sorrows. The premise is pretty simple: Midar, the Wizard King of the city-state of Urgh, hires Nanok - thief and barbarian swordsman of the Iron Wastes - to steal the Sunsword from Draaa'kon the Bleak, evil sorcerer and ruler of a dark citadel known as the Tower of Sorrows. Nanok steals the magical blade, only to be chased by Draaa'kon and his horde of vat-grown mutants. A battle ensues, and Nanok is apparently slain by Draaa'kon's dark magic, but he is saved by the power of the Sunsword. Nanok washes ashore miles away and with the help of a mysterious hermit, Nanok eventually returns to the Tower, and battles his way up through the citadel until he at last confronts Draaa'kon at the top of the Tower, just as the sorcerer conjures his deadliest ally...

Over the last eighteen months, Nanok has sold a whopping 41 copies at $0.99 cents apiece. I've probably given away a couple hundred copies in KDP Select promotions, but compared to my other works, even my other short stories, it seems like I can barely give the story away. In fact, after the first month, I had a three month period of time when I didn't sell a single copy of the story, period. I've sold maybe half a dozen print copies, which is a little surprising, but I don't know how many of those were purchases made because the buyer didn't realize how short the story actually was.

It's hard to pin down where exactly I went wrong with Nanok. My original cover was no gem, but it could have been worse, and sales certainly haven't spiked since I began selling the title with its new cover. I've had almost no returns, so I'm not sure if people are just reading the sample and not liking what they see, or if they even get that far. I've played around with the product description copy several times as well, but there doesn't seem to be anything that really sells the story.

And yet, those folks who read Nanok, seem to like it. There've been ample opportunities to tear it to shreds on Amazon, yet all my reviews are pretty solid. The worst review of the story I received on Goodreads, which said it was okay but "was a little like an SNL skit that went on too long", which I suppose is a fair criticism if the sense of humor in the story doesn't completely align with your own. Poking around the internet, I even found a short but positive review on a German-language Conan forum. I'm using Google to translate this page, but here goes:

This little volume contains just 51 pages and was therefore in one go by. Nanok and the Tower of Sorrows is a barbarian story in the tradition of the 60s and 70s. You get evil magician, disgusting mutants and demons. Everything you need for a good Sword and Sorcery cocktail. This story comes with no frills and are therefore of the first pages of full throttle. Light fare in between, but with a high entertainment potential. Both thumbs up!

I primarily put the failure to sell this story on two factors. The first is the over-saturation of fantasy fiction through KDP, especially short, often campy (and really badly written) fantasy stories. Shortly after I published Nanok I went around Amazon and read a bunch of stuff similar to my story, and the vast majority of it was just awful - not just the plots of the stories themselves, but the writing was often extremely amateurish, and perhaps an even greater sin, the books were usually very badly edited and formatted. I feel like a lot of people dusted off high-school era submissions to various fantasy fiction magazines and simply threw them up on Amazon. Because of this, I felt that people who'd run into one of these turds became gun shy of trying my own story, especially when they got a whiff of the "humorous" aspects of the story.

This, of course, leads to the second problem; the comedy/pastiche nature of the story. Writing comedy is hard - really hard - and trying to hit a broad swath of people's tastes in comedy just right is even harder. What one person finds to be a perfectly entertaining pastiche, another reader will find boorish or even insulting. To write a barbarian sword and sorcery story - a genre of fantasy that's almost a cliche unto itself these days - and then weave in a tone of lighthearted homage comedy and some "Easter Eggs" referencing various movies (there's a Commando reference in there, although many people miss it entirely) means that there's just too many land mines that are going to cause someone to take a hard pass on the story.

One day, I hope to return to Nanok's world and write another story. I actually have one outlined in my head, a story that doesn't involve Nanok at all but instead is a sort of Frankenstein's Monster meets Spartacus. It'll be much more serious, without any of the humorous gimmicks of Nanok. Only time will tell if it'll also sink to the bottom of the lake...

Mack Maloney's WINGMAN Novels Now Available as Ebooks!

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I read the WINGMAN series of post-apocalyptic aerial adventure novels in junior high and high school, and back then I thought they were the greatest novels ever written. A zany menagerie of characters battling on the ground and in the skies over a world devastated by the nuclear ravages of World War Three, the WINGMAN stories were filled with crazy adventures, battles on land, sea, and of course, in the air, as Hawk Hunter, "Zen Fighter Pilot" took to the skies in his customized F-16 fighter jet.

I read about 10 of the 16 WINGMAN novels before I lost track of the series, probably around the time I went off to college. But I'd read and re-read the books I had - especially the first four or five novels - several times. As time went on, I would sometimes wonder what ever happened to the series, and it turns out it languished in out-of-print hell for a long, long time.

But, like an F-16 rising up from the ashes of a nuclear post-war wasteland, the WINGMAN series has been given new life by the folks over at Open Road Media, a publishing house specializing in ebook publishing. They've given the series new covers and priced them competitively (smart thinking on their part), and as of today, the series is now live and ready for purchase on Amazon.

I was fortunate enough to get in touch with Mack Maloney, the author of the WINGMAN novels, a couple of years ago, and after some correspondence back and forth Mack was kind enough to do an interview for me, which I published in Hatchet Force Journal. I've also been working with Mack to build a new home for him online, and it can be found here, on his new Wordpress blog. As time goes on, we'll be adding new information, but there are links to all his books, as well as a lot of other information.

I could carry on about the series a lot more, but Open Road Media got together with Mack and made a promotional video for the release of the WINGMAN series - so I'll let the video do the talking:

Warhammer 40K Space Marine Armor: All Right, Let's Get Cracking

A friend of mine just shared with me this video taken at a Science Fiction convention in Stockholm back in December. A lot of people who play Warhammer: 40,000 talk about whether or not the armor worn by Space Marines would ever actually fit or articulate for a normally-proportioned human being (although Space Marines  are genetically altered, and much larger/stronger than normal people). There are models and poses that simply appear to contorted or impractical to work in "real life".

I think this video answers the question.

So...let's get cracking on this, people. Bolters and Power Armor for everyone!

Book Review: Task Force Desperate by Peter Nealen

Former Recon Marine Peter Nealen has written an excellent debut novel, another in a great new class of 21st century paramilitary men's adventure novels that we've begun to see over the last few years. With over a decade since the Global War on Terror started, there is now a whole new class of veteran/author emerging at a time when the ebook and indie book publishing world is making it easy for someone with a deft pen and some great creative talent to make a name for themselves in the world of action-adventure fiction.

Task Force Desperate focuses on a small, hearty band of mercenaries called in to perform a reconnaissance after a US base in Africa is overrun, with two hundred hostages taken. Probably the most interesting aspect of the novel is the dystopian, near-future world Nealen has created. Although no exact year is given, the reader is given the impression it is only a handful of years into the future, but the world has taken a nasty turn for the worse. The US economy has collapsed, and with it a lot of the global economy, coupled with uprisings and destabilization all around the world. This subtle shift in timeline, coupled with the encyclopedia of African and Middle Eastern factions that are mentioned or make an appearance in the book, means that if you're not on top of your global current events and poli-sci, your eyes might glaze over a little bit in certain parts of the book. I don't ding Nealen any points because of this - it means the reader simply needs to pay attention. The book is written to a certain audience, particularly those people who pay attention to world events, military technology and tactics, and enjoy reading about a crew of crack operators kicking down doors and double-tapping bad guys in the X-ring.

Thankfully for Nealen, this sort of fiction has a pre-fabricated audience: former runners and gunners like himself, guys who've played in the sandbox, know the dope, and are also smart, savvy, articulate professionals who'll talk geopolitical trends one minute, the advantages of the .338 Lapua Mag the next, and maybe even settle in for a few beers and some Call of Duty on a lazy Saturday afternoon. These guys might like to call themselves "knuckle-draggers", but to be fair, many of them are or will become college-educated, and possess a lot of skill in assimilating data, dynamic problem-solving, and other cognitive skills. In short, they're smart people, and they can appreciate a smart, complex story like Desperate.

I should perform my due diligence and point out that the action sequences are top notch, flow quickly, and really keep you flipping pages. Nealen isn't above killing characters off, and things get pretty messy before they...well let's face it - there's a reason the book's titled "Task Force Desperate"...

If you like sophisticated, well-written action, give this a read - you won't be disappointed.

Movie Review: Total Recall (2012)

I thought a long time about whether or not I wanted to see this film. I'm a huge fan of the original, as it features both Arnold as well as Michael Ironsides, who I always love to see in movies. It was also directed by Paul Verhoeven, one of my favorite directors. I remember seeing something out there that listed the film as "the most violent movie of all time", based on number of violent acts per minute or some such calculation. Even now, 22 years later, my friends and I crack each other up with "Get your ass to Mars!"

This new film...not so much. There is no Mars here. Nor any mutants. For some reason, within the next hundred years or so the only two habitable areas left on the planet are portions of Britain and Australia. In order to move back and forth between the two, this great big elevator called "the Fall" has been installed that goes through the center of the Earth. Not only that, it does this in seventeen minutes. I don't know if Len Wiseman and Co. just never went to junior high school or whatever, but hey guys, the earth is REALLY BIG. Did anyone do a little math on this? I just did.

The Earth is 12,756.2 kilometers in diameter. Assuming a 17 minute travel time, that's about 750 kilometers a minute...which is 45,000 kilometers an hour. Consider that the Space Shuttle accelerates to about 28,000 km/hr during liftoff. This is an elevator the size of a jumbo jet that moves almost twice that fast, without several million pounds of fuel being burned by rocket engines the size of traincars.

At one point, our heroes are actually climbing out of the side of this thing as it's racing through the Earth and scaling it with an external ladder. I would imagine the wind speed alone (assuming you could actually accelerate an elevator the size of a skyscraper to such ridiculous speeds) would be enough to either A) suck you right out the hatch as soon as its open, or B) slice through your flesh like a knife as soon as you stuck your arm out. Never mind that even when you're not racing through a molten core that's multiple thousands of degrees, the inner temperature of the Earth is still hot enough to probably kill you in a matter of seconds. What, is this magical tunnel also air conditioned?

Oh, and did I mention that they go through the center of the Earth? Yes, literally the center. As in, that big molten core of iron that is turned into a liquid state because of all that intense head and pressure? And of course, when you near the center of the Earth, gravity suddenly disappears like you've flipped a switch, only to have it reappear just as quickly.

Why do I care so much about this stupidity, you ask? Because the whole plot of the movie is balanced on the idea that people ride this ginormous, planet-spanning commuter train to work and back every day. Board the Fall in the morning in Australia, and seventeen minutes later, you're in England, going to work in some factory building robots. End of your shift, back on the 7:30 departure, you're having drinks with your buddies down under by 8PM.

What galls me is that I'm sure, during the discussion of what to leave in the new plot from the original film and what to leave out, some studio executive probably said, "Having the workers be on Mars? That's ridiculous! We need to keep this on Earth. How about we make it something like, I dunno, Australia? That's far enough away, right?"

Heads nod all around the table...

Idiotic. I could almost sanction this assassination of a movie if it wasn't so plain they were desperate to somehow draw fans of the original in by making coy, come-hither gestures in the form of throwaway moments like the prostitute with three breasts, a quip about someone having a Rekall dream as "the King of Mars", an arm being severed by an elevator, or an overweight woman vacationing for "two weeks". Rather than making me think "Yay, see, they love the original!" it just felt like a cheap bit of theater to somehow keep me from walking out.

And, to give the movie one last slap in the face, I'm getting tired of Really Skinny Chicks somehow beating the snot out of guys who look like Olympic Athletes. Both Kate Beckinsale and Jessica Biel need to eat a damn sandwich or three, because I think my twenty-pound tomcat could probably kick the crap out of both of them. I had this problem with Columbiana and Zoe Saldana, who was otherwise all right in the film but appeared so thin I couldn't imagine her winning a fight with an eighth grade bully. If you want to see what a tough, strong woman looks like, take a look at the Olympic Women's Crew Team. Those girls look like they could put their fists through a brick wall. But Hollywood, in all its infinite wisdom and destructive body image marketing, doesn't want women with actual strength, they want women who fit into size 0 jeans. Geez, where's Xena when you need her?

At the end of the day, if you're thinking of seeing the new Total Recall, save your money for Expendables II.

R.I.P. Author Jerry Ahern

The following Facebook announcement appeared yesterday afternoon on the "Men's Adventure Paperbacks of the 70's and 80's" FB Group:

FROM THE FAMILY: We just wanted to let all of Jerry's friends know that their kind thoughts and wishes over the last few months have been greatly appreciated. Jerry wrote about how to survive most of life's disasters, but, unfortunately he was unable to survive cancer. He put up a very strong fight, as we all knew he would, but on Tuesday morning he was overpowered by the disease and passed away. Please keep our family in your thoughts and prayers and please always remember Jerry as the wonderful Husband, Father, Grandfather, and friend that he was.

I read a bunch of Ahern's THE SURVIVALIST books a number of years ago, and I still consider it the seminal "post-apocalyptic pulp" series. Ahern was an expert in firearms, personal defense, and survival techniques, and his knowledge came through in his prose, adding a very strong flavor of authenticity. I also read his THE DEFENDER series and while the subject matter is pretty politically charged, they were also great pulpy men's adventure books, also well-written and entertaining.

I  had the chance to exchange a few messages with Jerry via Facebook and he was always polite and welcoming. The social networking technologies of the 21st century have given readers such as myself unprecedented access to our favorite authors, and it is always heartwarming when an author is willing to accept and return correspondence from fans.

Jerry Ahern will be sorely missed by his peers in the writing community and the fans who have enjoyed his works for decades.

Movie Review: The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

I'll keep this relatively short. While I'm not a huge fan of comic book movies in general and the DC movies in particular, I thought Christopher Nolan's Batman reboot was fairly well done. A more "realistic", less cartoonish view of the character compared to the movies of the late 80's and 90's.

However, I didn't think TDKR was all that hot. I found it overly long, really slow and all too often, the overall effect was one of stentorian music with not all that much going on. That Christopher Nolan signature foghorn-esque BWWWWWWAAAAAAAMMMMMPPPPP was sounded a hundred times throughout the movie's two and three-quarter hours, and after about the third time, I was tired of it.

I'm not going to give this movie a blow-by-blow, but I just felt the idea was fundamentally flawed. We're given a detailed explanation of how battered and damaged Bruce Wayne's body is, and then by the end of the movie, after he's been beaten near to the point of death and spends MONTHS in some vile underground hell-pit, he's suddenly back in the peak of his physical conditioning.  I also find the hand-to-hand combat in all of the Nolan Batman movies abysmal, and this movie especially so.

Furthermore the entire plot device for the last half of the movie was really tiresome and wholly unbelievable, even by comic book standards. I understand this is "comic book reality", but you can't both make a "realistic, gritty comic book movie" and create a narrative that seems utterly unrealistic. Not to give much away, but essentially the city of twelve million people is suddenly cut off from the rest of the outside world for about five or six months.  There are apparently "shipments of food and supplies", but whatever. I'd imagine 90% of the population of the city would be dead due to starvation, violence, or general suffering by the time the bomb threat is a reality.

Oh yeah, the bomb threat. I will try hard to not spoil the ending, but let's just say a four-megaton nuclear weapon leaves...quite a footprint. Using this awesome website, you can see that a 4MT bomb will, at the very least, shatter windows up to around 30 miles away. Something to consider...

Anyhow, while people will no doubt be flocking to this movie for weeks to come, I just wasn't that enthralled.

Quick Review of The Hunger Games

So I saw the movie on Sunday. There was a scheduled showing every 10 minutes from 2:50 to 3:40 when I arrived, and everything was sold out by 3:00 except the 3:20, which was almost full by the time I sat down. I don't think in the last 10 years, I've gone to the movies on a Sunday afternoon and seen that place so completely mobbed. No wonder THG hit one of the highest weekend grosses of all time.

I've not read the books, but I wasn't the least bit confused by the background and plot of the film. If you've watched a number of other "Most Dangerous Game" styled movies, you can push the fiddly bits aside and watch teenagers hunt and kill each other for sport. About that - I didn't have any problem with what I saw, and I would have been willing to take a kid (if I had one) to see this movie if they were old enough to read and fully comprehend the book. I've seen people who claim they wouldn't even let 15-year olds see the movie. What reality are these parents living in? I've no idea. I was reading Vietnam memoirs in grade school, so maybe it's just me.

Overall, I thought this was a very solid film. I was certainly more emotionally invested in the story and the characters than I was watching John Carter. The issues that these sorts of "gladiatorial" movies bring up, such as The Running Man, Spartacus, Gladiator, Gamer, Death Race 2000 (and to a lesser extent the remake) and so forth are all relatively similar. The clincher is of course making the combatants teenagers, and also teenagers of a wildly varying age range. Pitting a 12 year old girl against an 18 year old boy is, by and large, going to be an unfair fight. I'm not going to post any spoilers here, but let's just say the fighting isn't always fair, and comments early on in the film about how the most dangerous opponent in the Games is the arena itself are certainly true.

Overall acting and screenplay I thought were solid. Child actors, especially those having to play very emotional roles, can be really good or incredibly awful. I definitely feel that the cast for this film was well-chosen, and although there were a few chuckle moments for me, that's mostly because I'm a bastard and often find myself laughing when others weep. So sue me.

I did say this would be a quick review, so I'll leave it at that. For a story that comes from a Young Adult novel, I think this was a very good movie and well worth the money I paid. I only wish I took the money I spent on John Carter and used it for this ticket instead.  It's actually kind of sad that a story that's almost a hundred years old gets handled so poorly while a book that's only been out a couple of years does so well. I wouldn't want to see their fortunes reversed, but it is interesting to see the differences in how the two franchises have been handled.

Joe Kenney is a God Among Mortals

Why is this book-reviewing machine made flesh a resident of the divine realm?  Because he finds and reads - nay, devours - such delightful trash as David Alexander's Phoenix #1: Dark Messiah.  You all really need to go over to Joe's blog and read this review ASAP, because Joe considers this one of the most over-the-top action pulps he's ever read.  And considering he's read titles I've never even heard of, that is a gold-leaf seal of approval from deep in the heart of Texas.

Joe was the fellow who brought us the review of Penetrator #1: The Target is H, which appeared in Hatchet Force Journal #1.  He's got dozens of amazing reviews up on his blog, Glorious Trash, and since I have been following his reviews, I see now that I must really step up with my A-Game if I'm going to compete in the pulp review arena. 

Joe points out in his Dark Messiah review that the five novels in the Phoenix series are now available as an e-book compilation.  One of the most awesome (in my mind at least) aspects of the new e-book revolution is the e-pubbing of titles that have been out of print for years or even decades and lack any real justification for a new print run.  After all, what 21st century publishing house would print this stuff and distribute it to brick & mortar bookstores? Sadly this won't be possible with every series (although, Gold Eagle Books, if you released your old Able Team and Phoenix Force titles as e-books you would make bank), but for many this would be a wonderful occurrence.

I just picked up the Phoenix Rising e-book compilation, and if you like lurid post-nuke trash as much as I do, you should too.