Month: April 2022

So, You’ve Angered a Sea God…

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So, I’m playtesting my contribution to the Deluge zine that is part of Knight Owl Games’ Aquatic Adventures Kickstarter, which you should totally check out. My contribution, “So, You’ve Angered a Sea God…” is inspired by The Odyssey, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, and the story of the whale ship Essex (which inspired Moby Dick, though I haven’t read that). It includes a system for generating a minor deity who was somehow angered by someone in the crew—possibly an NPC sailor who messed up at the last port, or possibly the PCs when they ransacked the deity’s old, ruined …

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Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada by Anna Brownell Jameson

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This entry is part 16 of 56 in the series 2022 Reads

As with other posts in this series, these #booksread2022 posts go anywhere from a few weeks to a month after I’ve read them. I read this particular book last week, though!  This is a book I’ve had for ages, but from which I only read a little bit. I figured I’d resolve that, and… quickly remembered why I had never read much of it. Anna Brownell Jameson was long-winded in the way of many people from her era—she was born late in the late 1700s, and this book is an account of her travel to Canada in the 1830s.  Notably, …

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Djuna Interview Up at Clarkesworld

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This entry is part 71 of 72 in the series SF in South Korea

While this is not a full-fledged update on SF in South Korea, I thought it’s noteworthy that Clarkesworld recently published our interview interview with the author Djuna, a longtime enigmatic titan of the Korean SF scene.  (We’ve also translated two of their stories recently, so it’s been very 듀나-듀나-듀나 at our place lately.) Anyway, the interview is up at Clarkesworld now, alongside lots of other great stuff including an interview with translator Rachel Cordasco (founder of the SF in Translation website) and some a really gangbusters lineup of stories—for me, the Pan Haitian and Greg Egan are especially attention-grabbing. Go …

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May We Borrow Your Husband? and Other Comedies of the Sexual Life by Graham Greene

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This entry is part 15 of 56 in the series 2022 Reads

As with other posts in this series, these #booksread2022 posts go anywhere from a few weeks to a month after I’ve read them. I read this particular book last week, though!  May We Borrow Your Husband?  is a 1967 collection of short fictions—in some cases, they’re in fact extended vignettes, and Greene himself called them “entertainments”—by Graham Greene. The subtitle—”And Other Comedies of the Sexual Life”—isn’t printed on the cover of the Penguin edition I have, but it pretty much sums up the book. It reminds me a bit of Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City except it’s much grittier …

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Dragons (Time Life Enchanted World)

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This entry is part 14 of 56 in the series 2022 Reads

As with other books of 2020, this comes a while after I read it.  We visited my grandmother’s house in Quebec when I was a kid. That was the trip when I discovered one of my cousins shared my interest in RPGs. It was also the trip when I noticed our uncle’s book collection. He had piles of graphic novels—all in French, of course—but he also had what I remember as a full set of the Time Life Enchanted World books. If you were growing up in the 1980s, you probably knew someone who had them, or at least saw …

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