Ed Morland

Book Review: China Mountain Zhang A stone cold classic of future lives which holds up more than 30 years after it was written.   We are small, governments are large, we sur...

Book Review: China Mountain Zhang
A stone cold classic of future lives which holds up more than 30 years after it was written.
@dreddieclark.bsky.social has our review at the NOAF blog

www.nerds-feather.com/2026/03/book...

because I keep forgetting to mention it: LITERALLY ANYONE can nominate books for this prize! yes! that means you! you have until march 31st!

My favorite Critical Friends in a minute - I'm constantly banging the drum that style, the actual words on the page, is something we need to be talking about much more in speculative criticism.

Book Review: China Mountain Zhang A stone cold classic of future lives which holds up more than 30 years after it was written.   We are small, governments are large, we sur...

Decided to write about one of my favourite novels - and a 90s SF classic - for @nerdsofafeather.bsky.social this month.

China Mountain Zhang is a prescient, brilliantly drawn collage of a China-dominated future from the perspective of people living that future at ground level.

Calls for Reviews & Essays: June 2026 The Ancillary Review of Books publishes reviews and essays with an emphasis on utopian impulses and systemic injustices. ARB seeks to build a community of radical thinkers writing about amazing, sp…

Calls for Reviews & Essays: June 2026

Middle-earth Hexcrawl Project: The Shire (Complete) Back in September of this year , I began a daily writing prompt inspired by this year's reread of The Lord of the Rings and  Idraluna Archiv...

Is there something in the air or is it just the Bader-Meinhof Effect?

In any case have just come across this delightful LOTR based project due to a mention on the RTFM podcast, scrolling a few hexes of things you could encounter in the Shire is a great break from the dayjob.

THREEDOM: MYTHIC BASTIONLAND - Old Men Running The World Mythic Bastionland, the latest game in Chris McDowell’s Bastionland series, was one of the best-smelling books we had ever encountered when it arrived last

This week eminent gamesmaster @kierongillen.bsky.social and I got to talking about Mythic Bastionland, which, by sheer chance, we've just played a campaign of!

Hit or *myth*?

I make that joke several times, so please enjoy the repetition.

Refugee status to be temporary as Shabana Mahmood rips up rules on UK asylum Home secretary announces 30-month protection limit, with refugees required to leave if their home countries are later judged safe

Today is a dark day for anyone who believes in sanctuary in the UK.

People who've fled war and torture should be able to rebuild their lives in peace and security - not live under a constant threat of removal.

We must not stop fighting these appalling anti-refugee laws.

Ursula K. Le Guin — Nominate a Book for the Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction

It's time! Nominations are now open for the 2026 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction, which will be given to a work of imaginative fiction, published in 2025, that reflects the concepts and ideas that were central to Ursula’s own work.

When There Are Wolves Again is a BSFA finalist! 🐺 Utterly delighted and in amazing company too. Congratulations to all the finalists!

www.bsfa.co.uk/bsfa-awards-...

Congratulations, thoroughly deserved.

Good Morning Womble.

I'm currently reading Luminous by Silvia Park. Currently lots of interesting things being touched on.

3D render of Colourfields by Paul Kincaid - a rainbow-coloured cover with white text - and a badge that says "BSFA finalist"

Delighted that Paul Kincaid's Colourfields: Writing About Writing About Science Fiction is on the @bsfa.bsky.social shortlist! Congratulations to all the finalists: www.bsfa.co.uk/bsfa-awards-...

Treebeard The draught of water refreshing them, natural or not, see elves and their drinks A forest suspended in time "what Spring would look like here" Mirkwood vs Fangorn – tree-ish Light vs the dark of Mirkwood,a gap in the forest as in the Old Hello Treebeard, much less like a tree in description than I remember I enjoy the cutting to Pippin's remembrance There remains a whimsy that is effective at cutting through the epic, tonal consistency is overrated if you're good The Ent, echoes of Tom One day there will be a Fantasy unconcerned with names, not this day Young Saruman, Radagast unconcerned with trees, mild sass "And I might have said much the same, if you had been going the other way." We're still concerned with decentring perspective and the sin of the age being insularity. Time passing, struggling to hold it back or accepting change "It is quicker and closer with trees and Ents, and they walk down the ages together" The sadness of Treebeard vs the sadness of Elves, one rather more healthy It's interesting that nothing in Wellinghall is to scale but still it is a place of comfort

Like Éomer, Treebeard is taking in a lot Interesting comparison of responses to Sauron and Saruman Peter Jackson loves a cliffhanger, Tolkien really doesn't We're alas back to race speak and inherent evil Always fun to find dialogue used for the movies elsewhere Do love a bit of preparation and planning Chekov's Entwives will be staying on the mantlepiece thank you very much An almost reverse gender dynamic to Tom and Goldberry, doesn't take away from the intense gender of it all though Do you have thoughts about decline and the passing of time? Do Ents communicate like whales? There is a dignity to the Entmoot, it feels meaningful Ent on Ent sass Amongst it all there is still joy, and anger at its destruction Again the importance of resistance, whether successful or not, even in the face of loss It's also interesting that the match of the Ents is talked of as a fait accompli, Ents roused therefore war won. The chapter posits it more like Ragnarok then victory lap.

The White Rider And we return to the three Hunters, looking for meaning in events they cannot, at least yet, know The Hobbits, we shall know them by their snacking Aragorn plays Sherlock to Legolas' Watson We come again to Legolas for the eerie landscape report Even in these times, in a strange wood, we should not shoot a pensioner Who is the old man is held as a point of tension for a while even if clues are there And we go from that tension/surprise to declarative statements "the tide has turned" And again we meet Gandalf after a troublesome journey and the schedule behind all becomes clearer It was Gandalf at Amon Hen Despite all he has been through Gandalf still enjoys sass That Sauron cannot guess the purpose he would not intend remains one of the great lines through LotR "Yet a treacherous weapon is ever a danger to the hand" Opsec and Intelligence remain a nightmare to all Nazgul Mk II, Electric Boogaloo Saruman was just wandering around, it's a confused time "You are beset by dangers, Gimli son of Gloin" "Hope is not victory." The contrast of Aragorn and Gandalf hits, what is power. Gandalf vs the Balrog is a battle out of time, reported on as if from another story entirely. From Galadriel to Gimli, I liked you enough not to use poetry And now we solve the horse puzzle, also of course there are the lords of horses, why would there not be. And so we leave individual heroics and ride to war.

And next we come to two chapters which feel like a hinge in the events of Book 3, a turning of the tide perhaps.

My Locus piece on 2025 reading, in which I don't really know what's going on with American SF, find some unexpected pairings elsewhere, and have lots of good books to recommend throughout. locusmag.com/feature/the-...

Intergalactic Mixtape #42 Hey! I’m dragging my way through February with the power of rereads. Latest: the Finder Chronicles by Suzanne Palmer. The series doesn’t end on a cliffhanger...

Intergalactic Mixtape is live!

Apologies for the full on thread, that got away from me.

Anyway different games for different tastes, I very much agree it would be lovely to get a boardgame or a TTRPG onto the shortlist but it feels unlikely. On TTRPGs Mythic Bastionland is one of my nominations at present, pays homage successfully to the true weirdness of the original Arthurian stories

Again, not really a case of one way of choosing to engage with the source materials better than the other. Neither can be accused of having a tacked on theme, looking at you Knizia's LotR. But the latter feels rarer, certainly it's less often been done with this much care and attention.

There was something refreshing in the trick-taker about just engaging with the plot of the books as it is. Lets give you a round where we've mechanised the Old Forest fighting against you, we'll play out the creeping dread after Bree as your characters wills and thus abilities are sapped by the Nine

And while there's enough mechanical incentives in the quests and the mechanics to try and make it still feel in tune with the source texts it doesn't always hold. In my first game Arwen leading the army of Rivendell to purge Moria was the correct call but it's a different feel than the "Long Defeat"

B) Fate of the Fellowship is the classic case of game allowing you to play out What Ifs. What if Gimli raised an army of Dwarves in Erebor and marched south to the aid of the southern kingdoms? What if we just took a boat from the Grey Havens to Dol Amroth rather than going on a big hike?

When it all comes together there's an immense satisfaction similar to a perfectly played round of Hanabi or when a correct guess/deduction in Bomb Busters comes off. Minds in sync not because we just hashed it all out over the table but through deductions and the gameplay itself.

The trick-taking and hidden information inherent to the genre thus scratch my coop itch in a more satisfying way. The attempts to work out what meaning is trying to be conveyed with the exchanges, can I go for my goal now or does the balance of hands/card played means waiting is the better call.

1) I ultimately prefer coops where the cooperation is mechanically part of the game being played rather than it being an open puzzle the players are solving together. Thus Fate of the Fellowship is a very good Pandemic-like but is ultimately still the same procedure as its origin.

So I definitely prefer The Fellowship of the Ring – Trick-Taking Game to Fate of the Fellowship and I think it boils down to two points, 1 mechanical & 1 theme.

1) What sort of cooperation do you actually want in your coops.
B) How do you want games to engage with the texts they're drawing from.

Text reading “OCTOTHORPE 154* *See, it’s like this. This is the first day of 2026 that hasn’t been cold, or wet, or both, so instead of doing the Octothorpe cover I went for a nice walk. And bought no board games, but a jigsaw. And did the jigsaw. Sorry.” The text is on top of a photograph of a bridge and some trees underneath a blue sky.

John, Alison and Liz start getting excited to nominate things for the Hugo Awards, and they consequently talk about books and games! They also chat about LAcon V and the upcoming fan funds. Listen here: octothorpe.podbean.com/e/154-at-lea...

@laworldcon.bsky.social @thehugoawards.bsky.social

Anyway, will be back with thoughts on why John is wrong about LotR games when I have time to compose them.

On a side note if we can reasonably count The Old King's Crown as " a professional publication in the field of science fiction or fantasy" then Pablo Clark for Best Professional Artist.

The game is absolutely gorgeous.

Much like I found Root for example it's still fun on a first play. It sets up a really enjoyable space to play around in even if it's too complex to fully grasp on that initial run through but that does feel like an issue for popular voted award not focussed on board games.