I don't know if it's an awareness thing because my group started playing Star Wars, but there seem to be a lot of science fiction games being released over the last year or so, and particularly the last few months. Case in point: over the last two weeks there have been reviews of Slipstream, Imperium Chronicles, Helix, All Tomorrow's Zombies and Shock.

But first, a look back. Greywulf offers his rundown of the best games of 2008, including some you might expect -- Pathfinder, D&D 4E -- as well as others that you might not, like 3:16 Carnage Among the Stars and D&D 3rd Edition.

Uncle Bear's posted reviews of two new games: Helix, a post-apocolyptic western RPG, and Slipstream, a pulp scifi setting for Savage Worlds. The later of the two inspired the ol'bear to post two mashups based on the setting: Deadstream (merging it with Deadlands) and Lost in Space. Clearly he loved Slipstream; Helix, well not so much.

A Butterfly Dreaming reviews Imperium Chronicles, a space opera-meets-cyberpunk-meets-12-other-subgenres RPG pitting two great empires against one another. Meanwhile, RPG.net has a review of Shock: Social Science Fiction, an indie sci-fi game in which players choose which concepts to mash up Issues (e.g. societal or political challenges) with Shocks (science fiction ideas) and then play through the intersections with both protagonist and antagonist characters.

RPG.net also reviews All Tomorrow's Zombies, a sourcebook for All Flesh Must Be Eaten that looks at science fiction zombies. The book introduces rules for nanotech, bioware, and cybernetics, as well as the obligatory Deadworlds.

Venturing into non-SF territory, Living Dice talks an issue that every gamer has encountered: transporting his or her stuff around a game convention. Their solution to the problem? The Zuca Wheeled Bag. Finally, over at Gaming Report there's a review of the Radio Rivendell Compilation CD 2: The Book of War, a music CD featuring a variety of fantasy-inspired music tracks.