This is a collection of short stories by Greg Egan which I really enjoyed. The stories are usually hard-sci-fi nuggets–explorations of “what if this were true about the universe?”
Some really great, though-provoking pieces.
A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge
A “first contact” story. But it’s not about space-faring species exploring the final frontier. Nor a nascent space-exploring species being welcomed into the intergalactic fold.
More of an exploration of what happens when fate puts a pre-industrial civilization at the center of an intergalactic incident.
Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood by Oliver Sacks
Sacks recounts the development of modern chemistry through the lens of his childhood in England before, during, and after World War II.
A time when an 11-year-old kid could wander down to a supply shop and come home with all manner of caustic, toxic, and explosive chemicals to play with.
Wild in how fundamentally different his youth was from anything that would be considered “normal” today.
And finally, The Father Thing by Philip K. Dick; which I read as a standalone short story. I think it qualifies as American Gothic in style–a brief horror story about an invasive species.
Games I played in March 2024. Like books, I didn’t get nearly as much game playing done this month compared to February.
Wyrmspan – Expand your cave system and attract new dragons to live in it. This game just came out last month. It’s an adaptation of the game Wingspan–changing some mechanics and swapping dragons for birds. This games falls under “group solitaire” in that what each player does has very little impact on the other players.
It’s a game of resource constraints requiring careful analysis to maximize your actions for gaining points. If you want to score well, that is. You can just enjoy the artwork and collecting dragons and not worry too much about points.
We played once at the very beginning of the month and once more today. I lost both times (Jess won both times).
Escape the Crate – Sled Race – One of the “escape room in a box” companies for which Jess’ parents gave us a subscription for Christmas.
This is the second box for us. The story set ups and narration are a bit campy, but the puzzles have been pleasantly reasonable and we’ve been enjoying them as a family. I think I enjoy them more than the “Exit” series. In this one we’ve time traveled to 1925 when a mustache-twirling-type nefarious time traveler had swapped the diphtheria antitoxin out before the dogsled relay rushed it off to Nome, Alaska. We have to work together to catch up and put the correct medicine back in place.
We completed the first half successfully at _just_ below expert speed–still have to play the second half.
Kinfire Chronicles: Night’s Fall – Jess and I continued our adventure as Feyn and Roland and played Quest 16 (you don’t necessarily complete them in numerical order).
We had a very successful little adventure and handily defeated the ursaur in battle and rescued the elven pilgrim. I’m still very much enjoying it and looking forward to continuing our story.
With prepping Corinne’s birthday adventure and being sick I didn’t get nearly as much reading done in March as I did in February.
The Toyota Way by Jeffrey Liker
I bought this way back in 2016, but only just got around to reading it.
It describes the 14 principles that embody the “Toyota Way” of doing manufacturing–much of which has come to be known, in part, as “lean.”
I think perhaps the most distinct aspect from traditional American approaches is the requirement that systems be viewed holistically. Demanding that each individual process get faster/cheaper/better may get you worse results than are otherwise possible.
Spare and Found Parts by Sarah Griffin
I’m not really sure how this ended up on my list as its description didn’t pique my interest, but it was and it was on sale for $2 so I grabbed it. It’s kind of a modern adaptation of the Frankenstein theme.
Some interesting ideas, probably could have used another 100 pages to give it more depth.
The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation by Jon Gertner
This was my most recent pick for the tech-books book group I meet with at work.
Bell Labs was a ridiculously influential organization of the 20th century: the transistor, undersea telephone cables, microwave data relays, satellite telecommunications, cell phones, fiber optics, Unix, the C programming language–just to name a few. All that, so much more, and the foundation of Information Theory.
It’s kind of crazy how much of the modern world was influenced by that organization.
Mystic Vale – This is a deck-building game, but instead of adding cards to your deck, you add overlays to existing cards. An interesting mechanic which avoids the problem of decks getting bloated or needing to get rid of low-power cards as the game progresses. However, it means cards are made of plastic and require sleeving. Played at the board-game group, I lost.
Empires’s End – Instead of building up your civilization from scratch, your peak civilization is assailed by disaster after disaster. You do your best to mitigate the damage. The winner gets to be emperor of the rubble. Played at the board-game group, I won.
Keep the Heroes Out – The pesky “heroes” are coming to loot your dungeon, keep them out. Play as one of the creature factions that lives in the caves and work together to fight off the invading humans. It’s a fun, light-hearted game. Played with friends, we lost.
Davy Jones’ Locker: The Kraken Wakes – Sail your ship from port to port gathering supplies and readying yourself for the day the Kraken attacks. Then fight the Kraken in an epic sea battle. A cooperative game that I backed through Kickstarter. I want to like this game, but I think it fell victim to “more is more” and would be more enjoyable if the designer cut 15% of the features and focused on ways to streamline the game loop. After several plays, the most accurate word I have for it is “finicky”–which is annoying. I played solo (loss), solo 2-handed (win), 2-player with Jess (loss), 2-player 2nd-act-only (win).
Dune: Imperium Uprising – The sequel to Dune: Imperium, which builds around the 2nd-half of the Dune story (apparently the games were designed to coincide with the 2-part movie releases). The goal is to gain enough influence with the various factions to take control of Arrakis. It’s a worker-placement crossed with deck-building game. We played in teams mode during DunDraCon for a whopping 5.5 hours. My team, the Fremen, lost–but not by a lot.
DunDraCon
Encouraged by the guy that runs the board-game group I attend I decided to see what a board-game convention looks like. DunDraCon held its 47th event this year. It’s emphasis is on RPGs, but they have miniatures war gaming, board games, table-top games of all varieties, and mostly lots of space for open gaming. It runs all weekend over Presidents’ Day, but I opted for just a single day. I figured a whole day would be enough of new social environments for me for one weekend.
Recently the event moved to Santa Clara. It used to be in San Ramon, which would have been a lot more convenient.
As mentioned above, I played a game of Dune: Imperium Uprising there which took most of my day. But I also took some time to visit the vendors’ hall. Lots of what you’d expect, but also a couple selling these laser-cut, hand-painted and -assembled Mimics and Monster Books (operating under the name “Serial Hobbyists“). They’re absolutely amazing and available in a variety of sizes. After selecting your box/chest/book you get to pick out eyes to go on it which they glue in place for you.
I selected this Mimic and this Monster Book:
I still have to decide on something fun to store in each of them.
While there I participated in one prototyping event for a game called Rift Zone: Contact. It’s a miniatures war game run through an augmented reality app on a phone. It’s a neat concept, but not really my jam. One of the appeals of table-top gaming for me is to not be fiddling with technology, since I spend all day doing that for work.
Sagrada – Build the best stained-glass window in the cathedral. I also played this at DunDraCon. It’s a drafting game which mostly falls into “group solitaire”. It’s fine, but not a game I’ll be adding to my library. I lost.
Everdell + Spirecrest expansion – Return to Everdell Valley, but now send your explorers on an epic quest to map the surrounding regions and discover wonderful new experiences. Jess and I really enjoy Everdell. It’s an enjoyable worker-placement game at its core, but built inside beautiful artwork and a cozy/folksy theme. I received the Spirecrest expansion for Christmas, but hadn’t played it until now. It is a pretty significant expansion and really changes the game flow. With the base game (and other expansions) we always found the end game revolved around optimizing which cards you’d add to your town as you hit the 15-card limit But in our Spirecrest game there was much more scarcity pressure and I think only one of us actually hit the 15-card limit.
The game adds “big creatures” which you can put a little saddle on and have your regular meeple ride, which is completely unnecessary as a design element, but greatly amusing. Jess and I played with a friend, I lost.
Everdell with Spirecrest expansion really fills the table.
Kinfire Chronicles: Night’s Fall – I’ve been searching for a cooperative narrative-adventure game that strikes just the right balance. I’ve tried Sleeping Gods, Legends of Andor, Legacy of Dragonholt, Legends of Sleepy Hollow, and Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion. Sleeping Gods is alright, but a little finicky and can be demoralizingly rough at times. Legends of Andor is a series of independent scenarios with tight time pressure, making it a puzzle/optimization game. Legacy of Dragonholt is a choose-your-own-adventure story with only a hint of gameplay. Legends of Sleepy Hollow hits the right core, but lacks polish. And Gloomhaven: JotL has a continuing narrative but is fundamentally a puzzle/optimization game due to a time pressure mechanic (I like it, but the puzzle/optimization nature slows things down dramatically).
Kinfire Chronicles, so far, is working out well. It’s core mechanics are deck building and tactical combat. I’ve been playing it with Jess. I’ve been playing as Feyn Longstride (human bard) and Jess as Roland Wordforger (dwarven scholar). It builds an interesting world and the combat loop is pretty snappy–without the time-pressure of Gloomhaven: JotL or Legends of Andor.
We’ve played through Quests 1, 2, & 3 and won them all. I also played Quest 1 solo as Kohr and Valora Helsman (and won) to get a feel for the game before inviting Jess to join me.
Ex Libris – Compete to curate the best library in the land. It’s a game about collecting and organizing books! Jess gave me this for Christmas and this is the second time we played it. It’s a calm, relaxed game of acquiring books then adding them to your bookshelf while keeping them alphabetized, avoiding the banned books, seeking out the prominent works, and striving for your own, personal library focus. We played with a friend, I lost.
The Last Ringbearer by Kirill Yeskov, translated by Yisrael Markov
What if The Lord of the Rings were just the revisionist history of the warmongering men and elves of Middle Earth? In this retelling of the events of the War of the Ring we see Mordor as a civilization on the cusp of industrial revolution. Gandalf convinces the men and elves that if Mordor’s technological progress isn’t stopped immediately then the magic- and tradition-based societies of the rest of Middle Earth are doomed.
Armada by Ernest Cline
Aliens are coming to invade the Earth. But video games are being used to secretly train a defense force of drone operators.
It’s campy–and like Cline’s other works full of pop-culture references. But the prose flows smoothly and it’s a fun read.
Strength in What Remains by Tracy Kidder
This is the non-fiction story of Deogratias, born in Burundi (I hesitate to say “true” because, as Kidder acknowledges, it’s impossible to corroborate many of the events). Deo was a third-year medical student working an internship in a rural medical clinic when Burundi erupted into another wave of sectarian violence.
After surviving a horrifying journey filled with abject brutality he finds himself with a chance at safety in the guise of a series of plane tickets to NYC and a falsely obtained business visa to enter the country.
He speaks French and Kirundi, but not a word of English. In a few years, through the persevering kindness of strangers and his own grit, he graduates from Columbia University, restarts medical school at Dartmouth, and eventually returns to Burundi to open the medical clinic he’d been working for since childhood.
Permutation City by Greg Egan
The human mind can be copied and then simulated on computer systems. These copies definitely feel conscious and sentient to themselves and others. But if the processing of the simulations can be cut up and distributed across space and time, what does that mean for our understanding of consciousness?