Another try - but the second is never as good as the original. *sigh*
- The Shub-Niggurath Cycle (Robert Price, Ed.)
- Delta Green: Rules of Engagement (John Tynes)
- Marooned in Realtime (Vernor Vinge)
...
The Shub-Niggurath Cycle (Robert Price, Ed.)
Shub-Niggurath is one of the all-time favorite indescribable beasties from
H. P. Lovecraft's stories - despite the fact that Lovecraft barely mentions
her and provides little detail except in a few choice chants of invocation.
Shub-Niggurath's place in the pantheon of unspeakable evils is defined only
in tales by other authors. This is one of several collections of Cthulhu
Mythos stories released by game publisher Chaosium, most edited by Robert
Price - a Lovecraftian and religious scholar who knows just way too damn
much, but writes a mean editorial summary.
Also known as The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young,
Shub-Niggurath is quite different from Cthulhu and many of the other
unfathomable horrors of these tales. The latter is, to a reductionist
extreme, merely a powerful alien entity. Shub-Niggurath is a personification
or incarnation of a true primal force. Admittedly, the line is blurry - or
nonexistent, depending on which stories you read. In the pseudo-factual
world of the Mythos, Shub-Niggurath is the truth behind the widespread and
varied worship of a fertility goddess, of Pan/satyr/horned god found in
pagan beliefs, and of the demons and devils of Christian mythology. The
truth is more horrible - an uncaring manifestation of miscegenation between
gods and men, lurking in the hidden shadows of deep forests and invoked by
insane cultists.
Some of the stories predate or are contemporary with Lovecraft and supply
similar themes � such as The Demonaic Goat. Others take place within the
mythos, dropping the appropriate names of eldritch entities or forbidden
tomes. Still others are direct sequels to Lovecraft stories. The quality of
the stories individual stories is good, only a few are truly above average -
within the elite selections of the �Cycle Book� series. Of the series, only
�Tales out of Innsmouth� really sticks in my mind as having consistently
outstanding stories.
So, would I recommend it? It�s definitely for those with a specific taste
and willingness to focus on the details. I enjoyed the stories but they�re
unlikely to appeal to anyone not on a Lovecraft kick.
3 / 5 on the Josh-O-Meter
...
Delta Green: Rules of Engagement (John Tynes)
Delta Green is a supplement for the popular role playing game "The Call of
Cthulhu". In TCoC players take on the role of an investigator who is dragged
into adventures and mysteries intricately tied to Lovecraft's realm of
supernatural horror. A 1930's adventure might have a "film noir"-style
private eye - and his sidekick or socialite friends - hired to investigate a
mystery that turns out to be much more than anyone expected. Was the
kidnapping really motivated by ransom, or was there some darker purpose?
What really happened to the survivors of that polar expedition? What's the
scoop in those nightly gatherings deep in the bayous of Louisiana?
Delta Green is a 3rd party source book which provides a backdrop for
roleplaying in the Mythos realm in the 1990s or 21st Century, within a world
of conspiracies, aliens and shadow governments. Investigators - now likely
to be anything from FBI agents to Park Rangers - are faced with challenges
of keeping the American population safe from unimaginable horrors and
fighting invisible wars with other conspiracies and groups with conflicting
agendas. The source book is a wonderful and brings a fresh perspective to
the omnipresent alien conspiracies exhorted by The X Files as well as the
potentially tiring Cthulhu Mythos, overflowing with the same gibbering
tentacled monsters in the same well-worn haunts.
The book itself, DG:RoG is a novel set within the conspiracy-riddled world
of Delta Green. After pouring over the source book I was looking forward to
exploring more of the mystery and secrets. Instead, it amounted to little
more than a poorly novelized transcript of a DG gaming session run by an
unimaginative Keeper and based on a very short adventure module. Numerous
references back to adventures in the main DG sourcebook are made - Remember
that adventure? Wasn't that fun! - and essentially every group mentioned in
the sourcebook has at least a cameo in the adventure. Every few chapters the
characters stop to go shopping and you're treated to a detailed accounting
of what they purchased. Every airline ticket or required permit shows up in
a timely fashion to move the action along. Perhaps the most annoying feature
of the story is that every character - from a 20-something recruit to a
60-year-old naval officer to a 80-year-old vetran of unspeakable horrors
suffering from gunshot wounds - speaks exactly like a disenfranchised
Gen-Xer.
Since I bought DG not intending to play it but to read up on the ideas and
world-building I was hoping that the novel would provide more of the same
imagination and quality. I was wrong.
0 / 5 on the Josh-O-Meter
...
Marooned in Realtime (Vernor Vinge)
*** SPOILERS FOR _THE PEACE WAR_ (?) ***
Finally - a real book!
I picked this up as Vinge books tend to be (a) good and (b) out of print. It
turned out to be a sequel to a book - The Peace War - which I haven't yet
read. As I read MiR I kept thinking of how it could easily have been written
by David Brin in terms of style and pacing - but that it wouldn't have been
a sequel in that case. Like many of Brin's books, you're quickly dropped
into the action and information about previous events is dropped
occasionally but is generally irrelevant to the story.
The literal plot device of the book is a force field called a "bobble". A
spherical, perfectly reflective field with a radius anywhere from
microscopic to hundreds of meters across and generated from within by an
unspecified but apparently quite energy efficient technology, a bobble has
the property that time within the field is completely suspended. A bobble
comes into existence with a defined duration which cannot either be measured
or altered. Need to keep your food fresh for a week? Just stuff it into a
bobble set for 7 days. Dying of a horrible disease, and hoping for a cure?
Pop into a bobble set for 100 years. But just hope that the bobble hasn't
sunk to the bottom of the sea, or you're in for a rude awakening.
The story explores the consequences of this technology, developed in the
mid-21st Century and used intentionally and accidentally to transport people
forwards (along the time axis) - and what happens after the un-bobbled
population of near-Earth-space vanishes in the early 23rd Century. Alien
attack, or did humanity's ever-accelerating technology lead to a Singularity
- and what does that mean?
In common with the other two Vinge books I've read - Fire Upon the Deep and
A Deepness in the Sky - the near-magical technology is explored in detail.
Unlike those other books (and especially ADitS) the characters, while well
developed, are not as memorable. This might be a good thing for some; ADitS
had me cringing in sympathy and ready to hurl the book across the wall in
frustration at the vile Machiavelians within that story. A page-turner,
though - I stayed up too late last night to finish it.
4 / 5 on the Josh-O-Meter
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