Mongoose Publishing's latest edition of its homegrown magazine Signs & Portents is out. Issue #56 of the role-playing/wargaming magazine includes "An introduction to 760 Patrons" detailing a new mission-oriented source book for Traveller, "Conan Combat Styles", two alternative campaigns for Babylon 5 Call to Arms, "Cthulhutech Spells" and much more.

The StarShipSofa podcast (http://www.starshipsofa.com/) is metamorphosing into the StarShipSofa - The Audio Science Fiction Magazine, following in the great tradition of magazines like Analog, Asimov and Fantasy and Science Fiction.

Each week the StarShipSofa will deliver a full package of SF related audio material all free including audio fiction, fact audio essays, flash fiction and poetry, all by leading names in the SF field. Many many writers have agreed to let StarShipSofa narrate their works including Ben Bova, Joe Haldeman, Alistair Reynolds and M John Harrison to name a few.

There will be two shows per week, the Wednesday show, also know as Aural Delights will contain narrated audio fiction, fact and poetry and the weekend show will be an in depth look into an author's life and work.

This week (4/27/08) saw the first of the metamorphosing with the StarShipSofa's Aural Delights show. Fiction was provided by Kage Baker's fantastic story "The Likely Lad", there were two poems by Bruce Boston and Laurel Winter, both winners of the Rhysling Award for SF Poetry. Flash fiction came from a very short but very powerful story called "Repeating The Past' by Peter Watts, author of the SF novel Blindsight.

The X-Titles have gone through another cycle of relaunches in the wake of the Mutant Messiah crossover, most of which are disappointing.

Uncanny X-Men sees the X-Men team disbanded (again) in the wake of the apparent death of Professor Xavier. Colossus, Wolverine and Nightcrawler are touring Europe as Peter (Colossus) tries to get over the loss of his love Kitty Pryde (though we don't know exactly what happened to Kitty, since giant-sized Astonishing X-Men #1 hasn't been released yet). Meanwhile, Angel's lost in a trippy, 1960s-flashback San Francisco, and Cyclops and Emma have to try and find him. It's a decidedly low-key relaunch, but I don't mind this sort of X-downtime occasionally, and I'm willing to roll with it.

My reading list this month is dominated by books demands spawned by the two book clubs I've joined: the Secret Lair Book Club and my gaming group's own graphic novel book club. The first two books are Market Forces, a Car Wars meets Wall Street novel by Richard K. Morgan and The Sky People, a tale of Venus as a pulp-style jungle world colonized by Americans and a Sino-Russian alliance by S.M. Sterling, The last is Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, a manga graphic novel and Japanese fairy tale by Hayao Miyazaki.

If you ever wanted to check out my "Summon WebScryer" column in Knights of the Dinner Table Magazine, but were never able to pick up a print issue, here's your big chance. Kenzer & Company is has posted Issue #132 as a free download.

It's a full-version of the magazine, including 26 pages of comics, plus a wealth of regular features. In addition to my column, which rounds up official and fan web sites dedicated to RuneQuest, theres also Mur Lafferty's print version of "Geek Fu Action Grip", which deals with the rise of social networking.

You can also check out the Lost Game Safari (reviewing Greyhawk Wars) , Tony DiGerolam's "Lookin' At Comics focusing on Dragon Con finds, and Noah Antwiler's infamous "A Gamer's Rant on the Movies", which takes on Babylon 5: Lost Tales. On the gaming side of things, there's "Treasures and Mysteries", "Deadly Trappings" Casting Call", "Bait and Tackle", "Dungeons: Ready to Occupy" and more.

My comic collecting has entered the mid-winter doldrums; the big X-Men crossover has just ended, and while DC's Countdown is approaching it's end, that means little to me since I haven't been keeping up with it.

Instead, I'm waiting for the first few issues of the rebooted X-men titles and checking out the occasional one shot or limited series. The most recent of these is Hulk #1, which looks to be a relaunch of the Incredible Hulk title, but I'm also going to be checking out Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind as part of my gaming group's Graphic Novel Book Club.

GoodReads is a social networking site for readers, allowing users to add their book collections to online bookshelves and then share those collections with friends. Books can be stored on different book shelves, rated, and reviewed. You can compare your collection to that of a friends, with the site giving you a side-by-side comparison of ratings for the books you have in common as well as a percentage indicating how much alike you are. It also supports a cool group feature that allows you to have a group reading list, and then talk about that list in a discussion forum.

Last week was a light one for Marvel (or at least the Marvel titles I read) so I let Tony at Phantom of the Attic talk me into trying out a couple of other titles. In addition to my X-Universe standby – this week it was “New X-Men”, Part 12 of the Messiah Complex – I picked up Penance: Relentless #5 and Dark Horse Comics' The End League.

Finally there’s Marvel's The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger Born, one of the four graphic novels I got for Christmas.

The end of the summer saw me pick up a bunch of new books, including Hyperion and its sequel, The Fall of Hyperion and autumn actually gave me enough time to read one of them!

As we moved into December, the movie release of Phillip Pullman's The Golden Compass – and the religious controversy that surrounded it – led me to pick up the book, and the subject of gods and religion inspired me to return to this summer's audio book listening project, Neil Gaiman's American Gods.

The Geek Gazette returns from holiday break with its January/February 2008 issue. It includes a 2007 geek news recap, an essay on the merits (or lack there of) of digital comic books, rumors and speculation on Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, and a look ahead movies, game and book releases for the new year, and capsule reviews of The Simpsons, Halloween and Futurama: Bender’s Big Score.