Books

This is simply brilliant: A free pattern for a crochet Cthulhu. It tells you what materials you need to make your own tentacled monstrosity from beyond imagining, as well the pattern to create it.

My good friend (and geeky partner-in-crime at Knights of the Dinner Table) Mur Lafferty launched her the print edition of her superhero novel Playing for Keeps today.

Go buy the book.

Initially released as a podcast, Playing For Keeps tells the story of Keepsie, a bartender with third-rate superhero powers that kept her out of Seventh City's equivelent of the Justice League. Other "Third Waves" -- those who have minor or seemingly inconsequential powers -- frequent her bar. These Mystery Men-style also-rans suddenly become important though, when villains and heroes battle in the sky, and a certain something falls into Keepsie's posession...

My friend Damon's got a review of Rendezvous with Rama up on his blog, Books Like Dust. Rama's one of my all-time favorite books, so naturally I had to go and comment.

Summer is in roasting and roaring its way across the United States, which means its time for me get cracking on my summer reading list.

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.

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.