A group of friends lean in; it’s the final battle, the end of an epic campaign, years in the making. The only thing that stands between them and the ultimate triumph of good over evil is the roll of a single die…
Well, that’s how
Dungeons and Dragons does it, anyway. But genre games are as varied as genre fiction, and most don’t require the time or monetary investment that a thick, rules-heavy D&D campaign often asks for. The stories told around the table (or over Zoom!) with your adventuring party can rival the great works of fiction, and have been oft-cited as sources of inspiration. But with the advent of experimental lyric games, journaling prompts, and new systems for mechanics including using tarot cards, betting structures, or even a Jenga tower genre tabletop games have never been more diverse or more exciting.
Ian Mond
Several things kept me sane over the last 12 months. My family, the privilege of having a job while in lockdown, the
Backlisted and
Coode Street podcasts (particularly
Coode Street‘s “10 minutes with” series), and the books I read. Yes, there were times in 2020 where I struggled to read more than a handful of pages, but the novels, novellas, and collections I did complete (47 of which I reviewed for
Locus) were some of the best books I’ve read in the last decade.
My favourite work of 2020, the book I know I will return to again and again until the pages are dog-eared and the spine has cracked, is Robert Shearman’s three-volume, 1,700-page, magnum opus
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Book World: Let s talk about Starship Troopers and other science fiction and fantasy novels that became great films
Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Lavie Tidhar, The Washington Post
Feb. 23, 2021
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Starship Troopers/Under the Skin/The Reposession MamboAce/Harvest/Harper - handout
It s been too long since we ve been to the movie theater, so join us as we refresh your memories of the experience. Specifically, let s talk about the great science fiction and fantasy novels that have wowed us on the big screen.
Everyone has their classics. Lavie loves Paul Verhoeven s Starship Troopers, the controversial 1997 film that parodied Robert A. Heinlein s 1959 novel (and is slated for a reboot.) Silvia is a fan of Roger Corman s Poe cycle and the stories that inspired it. There are so many science fiction and fantasy books-to-films, so we decided to focus on favorites that perhaps haven t gotten as much attention as they should.