Category Archives: Reviews

While the Epic of Gilgamesh is the oldest epic poem known, and one of the oldest works of literature, it was lost to history until the 1870s. Since then, different versions have been painstakingly reconstructed from broken cuneiform tablets scattered all over the world. Checking Amazon and Goodreads, here’s how different translations and adaptations are rated.

The premise is simple—and absurd. Nuclear waste explodes and propels the moon out of our solar system at FTL speeds. While the 300 people living on Moonbase Alpha have no control over the moon’s trajectory, fortunately it encounters a new planet or alien every week!

Warp Your Own Way, by Ryan North and Chris Fenoglio, became the first interactive fiction to ever win a Hugo Award!

Here are the top-rated Hugo winners of the past 10+ years, according to GoodReads.com: #1 Network Effect, #2 The Stone Sky, #3 A Desolation Called Peace.

Hypothesis: The first IMDB ratings are by the biggest fans and therefore represent the peak rating, with stable ratings being lower as non-fans eventually catch up and watch something. I look at Section 31 ratings and Season 5 Lower Deck ratings to prove the hypothesis in that context.

Originally pitched as a prequel, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds now has to be conceived of as a reboot on an alternate timeline, based on its own changes to the timeline and to the development of its characters. Nor should this be a surprise. The future of the 1960s show didn’t quite pan out.

Dark Tower was one of my favorite boardgames as a kid. It was an “electronic boardgame,” a category that came to life in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Dark Tower really was a boardgame, complete with a board and player pawns (nicely sculpted plastic warriors, as well as a dragon miniature) with a rotating computer assistant shaped like a black tower.

I really enjoy the premise of Enterprise: the first human deep space explorers using the first warp-five starship. It’s a fun era of Star Trek, and they handle many aspects of being a prequel right, even if they went against fan expectations. I get why people think it is one of the worst Treks and don’t want to watch all of it, but I wanted to curate the best episodes.

⭐⭐⭐⭐, 4 of 5 stars, a fun mobile boardgame if not quite as thematic or challenging as I’d like. I wanted something heavier to play on my phone while I travelled, so I picked up Steam: Rails to Riches by Martin Wallace (available, no surprise, on Steam as well as for the iPhone and Android). The game is a redesign of Age of Steam, which I’ve played a bit and always found to be a taut experience.

Sturgeon’s Law says that “ninety percent of everything is crap.” With 940 episodes of Star Trek so far, assuming 90% are crap, the top 10% would be 94 episodes—but let’s round that up to an even 100. Here are the top 100 highest rated episodes from IMDB, from the nearly one thousand episodes across 49 series of television and the 14 movies (though none of the movies made the list).

We started a campaign using the second edition of Apocalypse World. At the end of July 2024, Vincent Baker announced a beta of AW: Burned Over 2024 for his Patreon subscribers. We began using the reworded basic moves where we could. It took quite a few months before I managed to get three of my players to convert their playbooks.

Our most popular posts center on fantasy PbtA TTRPGs, card games, and Star Trek watchlists. Less popular are articles about interactive fiction, BASIC, and conlangs.

If you were invited to a beer-and-pretzels game night, but you’re the designated driver, here are my favorite “non-alcoholic” beers to consider, though technically some of these do have up to 0.5 alcohol by volume (ABV). Or perhaps you’re thinking of abstaining or limiting your alcohol consumption.