I keep writing these almost a month late. Not a great pattern!
Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift - Everything that's social commentary here has already been written. I'll just say that the tone holds up even if the specific targets have faded. But if you've ever read a published RPG module or supplement, it's hard to imagine how this hasn't influenced it. The Atlas of The Planet of Hats!
It's worth calling out the misogyny is troweled on so heavy none of the discussions I've read are sure if it's the author's own prejudices bleeding through or part of the satire. I didn't find similar discussions around the assumptions that every society encountered would be broken into labors and "betters", but, again, that's Swift?
Let's take some gameables from each book.
- Give your players a coloring book conflict. Make them the biggest players on the stage. Let them think their actions are unaccountable.
- Make your players weak and unaccountable, physically. Let them try to play factions against each other. Introduce a medium between the two scales.
- Flying island. Math worship. There's not a lot here that isn't just a shitty 1E module, other than that the clothes made by math are bad and that immortality destroys in kind.
- Infectious philosophy. Your "race" is a degenerate servant here.
The Mammoth Book of Terror edited by Stephen Jones - I was going to throw this into a purge box, but noticed one of the authors was Manly Wade Wellman, an author I have been interested in recently. Flipping the pages, I realized this is a book that had a whole bunch of stories I vaguely remembered reading through the years but had given up hope of discovering the source. No idea where I got this thick old volume to start with, but let's try to consider each story. I'm going to pull the list from this Goodreads review because, well, this is enough to type already.
(Hate the cover of this edition btw.)
- "The Yougoslaves" by Robert Bloch: Wouldn't have been so creepily racist if the author hadn't acknowledged it was a self-insert in the intro.
- "The Last Illusion" by Clive Barker: The novelette that apparently inspired the Lord Of Illusions movie, but branches off from it wildly after the first paragraph other than the characters' names.
- "The House of the Temple" by Brian Lumley: I love the idea behind this and want to steal cosmic horror parasites as a lower-level encounter.
- "Murgunstrumm" by Hugh Cave: Pulpy as fuck.
- "The Late Shift" by Dennis Etchison: Cyberpunk as fuck.
- "Firstborn" by David Campton: Ehhh, no.
- "Amber Print" by Basil Copper: Makes a little more sense now that I've seen The Cabinet, but not my favoite.
- "Crystal" by Charles L. Grant: I couldn't follow what this was trying to do, but a lot of Londoners died.
- "The Horse Lord" by Lisa Tuttle: THIS IS LEGITIMATELY ONE OF THE SCARIEST STORIES I HAVE READ. I was so glad to rediscover it here. If I ever edited a collection of horror, wow, I would feature this. I need to find more by Tuttle, I adore this story.
- "Bunny Didn't Tell Us" by David J. Schow: Good for the mud imagery, not much else.
- "Out of Copyright" by Ramsey Campbell: Weird revenge fantasy from a fiction author against the concept of EDITORS.
- "Pig's Dinner" by Graham Masterton: Gore. I was already off pork before I read this but, it'd help.
- "The Jumpity-Jim" by R. Chetwynd Hayes: Steal this for a simple D&D module: Demonic entity can be summoned by non-magical but very specific circumstances.
- "Junk" by Stephen Laws: What. At least the guy liked his dog.
- "The Satyr's Head" by David Riley: Basic cursed item story, but wet London.
- "Buckets" by F. Paul Wilson: I thought I imagined this story, but someone wrote it.
- "The Black Drama" by Manly Wade Wellman: Worth saving the volume from the trash. This is a weird bit, but it stood out to me as the first time I remember any character in a 30s/40s story wearing anything but a suit or dress. The guy puts on jeans and "canvas sneakers" while he's changing in the boathouse! A fun story in any way even if you can see what's happening a mile away. Good job, Manly Wade Wellman (what a name).
- "The River of Night's Dreaming" by Karl Edward Wagner: Invokes a fever dream well, but not sure what's going on here. Wet.
The Great Outdoor Fight by Chris Onstad - Achewood is brain tape for me, but it's fun to revisit the classics. I'd forgotten this volume includes (terrible) old recipes.
The Walking Dead Vol.10-22 by Robert Kirkman and friends - Flowed over from last month. Mostly an excuse to lie on the floor while my back healed up (much better now, thanks), but still interesting to compare to the memories of the show. By the end of this run I hated all the characters so good job.
