I never really thought about it until I listened to Neil Gaiman's Norse Mythology, but there is something rather inescapable about the corpus of Norse Mythology. And that is, compared to the Greek, or Egyptian canons of Mythology by comparison, we don't have a lot of it. The Greek sources are stuffed full of characters, legends, variations on the tale (something I really appreciated when I listened to Stephen Fry's trilogy on Greek Mythology). But Norse mythology is definitely impoverished. In fact, the basic stories you've seen even alluded to in Marvel movies and comics are a substanti ..read more

Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what your country can do to you Every tyranny encounters opposition. But there are also, under every tyranny, a number from among the population who mold themselves to match what the tyrant demands of them. That raises a valuable question: what type of citizen does authoritarianism want? The typology of dictators has been catalogued extensively in political philosophy, but what about those on the receiving end of absolute power? If we could envision a nightmare scenario, where the common human being gladly consented to being controlled, what would ..read more

How do you keep living when you no longer recognize the world? It was inevitable that the coronavirus quarantine would leave its mark on the Zeitgeist. After the first year of enforced isolation, none of us felt we were the same people anymore. We've had to learn to live with a peculiar form of always-on anxiety for which the earlier generation couldn't possibly have prepared us. One way to describe what this cultural shift feels like would be to say that, when we finally walked out of our houses and back into the world, the world looked new again, but not particularly inviting. Look in every ..read more

Gimme the straight dope, see Machine Vendetta is the 3rd installment in Reynolds' Prefect Dreyfus series. It takes place in the broader Revelation Space universe, which Reynolds has been developing for more than twenty years. The basic conceit is that humanity has spread out across the galaxy. Unlike other space operatic settings, in this case humans are still constrained by the basic laws of physics - most notably, the speed of light. This means that each human-settled system grows and develops in unique ways; they are only connected to each other by "light-huggers," large interstellar vess ..read more

Alan Bahr is an award-winning and best-selling roleplaying game designer, known for his company Gallant Knight Games, as well as his work at Osprey Games, Steamforged Games and many other companies. With the Kickstarter of Siege Perilous now live, today he tells us about Six RPG games that have influenced him.            1 & 2. King Arthur Pendragon / Prince Valiant—Perhaps combining these is cheating a bit, but separating them would feel wrong. Both by Greg Stafford (my polestar in game design), these games both showcase Greg's talent for finding the soul of ..read more

An inventive take on found-footage horror with incredible '70s period detail that builds slowly into a wild and unforgettable climax It's still 6 months out from spooky season, but getting the chance to head to the cinema to see a movie set on Halloween was a nice treat. As a caveat for this review, two things: Horror movies never, ever scare me and also, I won't delve into too many details because half the fun of scary movies are the twists. But let's dive in! Late Night With the Devil is framed as a found-footage horror tale told in real time on Halloween night in 1977 on the set of Night O ..read more

Oliver K. Langmead is an author and a poet based in Glasgow. His novels include British Fantasy Award-nominated Glitterati, Birds of Paradise and Metronome, and his long-form poem, Dark Star, featured in the Barnes and Noble and the Guardian’s Best Books of 2015. Today he tells us about his Six Books: 1. What book are you currently reading?   I've just finished Kelly Link's The Book of Love, and I'm still recovering. It felt like an indulgence, reading that book - as if it was an enormous box of chocolates, and each scene was a rich treat. I found myself savouring it. There is a ..read more

G - Joe D. and I are back to talk more video games! This time our topic is a divisive one in the gaming community: remakes. Before we get to the impact of remakes on the gaming industry, have you been playing any remakes recently? And if so, how was the experience? Joe D. - Yes. The main game in my rotation right now is indeed a remake. Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is the sequel to Final Fantasy VII Remake, and it’s the second game of a planned trilogy. With this project, Square Enix’s Creative Business Unit 1 has split the original title into three separate games. You’ll have to play them all t ..read more

Netflix's adaption of Liu Cixin's Hugo Award-winning novel succeeds thanks to Benioff & Weiss making necessary changes to the story to make it more human — all without sacrificing the science and complexity of the original text. Liu Cixin's The Three-Body Problem won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards in 2015, garnering acclaim the world over for his ambitious and highly scientific ideas. For years, rumors of adapting it to the screen swirled, with many expressing skepticism about the practicality of adapting the worldbuilding, complex technology, and vast epochs of time to the screen. When ..read more

Paint some murals, save some lives. Concrete Genie follows protagonist Ash as he tries to rid his old hometown of Denska of an encroaching darkness that threatens to pervade all. It is evident that the darkness is tied to the negativity that the old fishing village has had to endure over the last number of years, and despite its ugliness, Ash still waxes nostalgic over Denska. And then there are the bullies. In the opening moments of the game, Ash’s binder of drawings is scattered by a bunch of mischievous kids who torture him for no reason. Despite his parents’ warnings about the dangers o ..read more