Category: Groovy Things

Some Links (Lustrous Wombat Edition)

There are always more things.

David Bowie’s son started a bookclub of his dad’s favorite books. All on Twitter, basically.

STAND STILL STAY SILENT: I dig the style on this post-apocalyptic webcomic.

Nothing needs piracy more than the academic publishing racket. RIP, Aaron Swartz.

I dig the style on Gareth Damian Martin’s website. Lot of cool game, art, design stuff.

An interactive game book thing. Combines a book with internet content. Basically, riddles and puzzles. Looks pretty cool.

Some Links (Feelings Wombat Edition)

Man, I forgot how much fun old school web logging is.

You can take some tests to figure out how “authentically happy” you are. Neat idea. I don’t feel “authentically happy” when taking tests, so I haven’t done any of these yet…

“A Culture That’s Sick About Sex Will Never Be Able to Stop Harassment and Abuse” Tough to argue with the points in this article. If you asked me what “healthy sexuality” means to me, I’m not sure I could give you a good answer.

A good summary of the Stoic philosophy. If I have any guiding principles, these are probably them.

I love this URL. I also love this idea for a publication. Free to print yourself, but you can buy a limited print edition.

Dwarf Fortress is the most awesome game I can never quite figure out how to play. The world generation is a thing of beauty.

Some Links (Meta Wombat Edition)

So many things to link to… So many cool things to link to…

I sure do love Paul Di Filippo’s reviews. They consistently make me want to read whatever book he’s writing about. Also, John Crowley is really really good.

When I was a kid, I was super into these LONE WOLF adventure game books. Holy cow, now you can read them all online! (This is a link to the first one.)

Proxima Centauri. A surreal and delightful science fiction (?) webcomic. Great beards!

I’ve listened to a couple of these Hilary Mantel lectures on writing fiction, history, memory, and imagination. Worth a listen!

On SIX FOUR by Hideo Yokoyama. Sometimes I like reading more about books than the books themselves. This may be one of those times.

 

 

Some Links (Luminous Wombat Edition)

More links. Woo!

100 albums based on fantasy and science fiction novels and stories.

Facebook is the worst. Here are some things you can do to make it slightly less bad.

There’s a long and impressive history of black science fiction and fantasy. Lot of great authors and books on this list.

Ignatiy Vishnevetsky writes some pretty smart movie reviews.

A great little essay on utopia and failures of imagination: “MEDITATIONS ON MOLOCH”

Some Links (Complicated Wombats Edition)

I’ve got all these open browser tabs, damn it. I feel like I should start using this old weblog in the original sense of weblog, as a way to track what you find online. This is my first stab at it. I’ll probably keep each one of these to about five links.

It’s an online encyclopedia of Victoria-era heroes and adventurers. (This is F. Scroll down to the bottom for the letter index.)

A Rube Goldberg-type deal made from common household items. (I guess fidget spinners qualify, these days.)

HORRIBLE FOLK: A MONOLOGUE FOR TWENTY-EIGHT VOICES CONCERNING DEVILS, THE LANDSCAPE, OLD STONES, OLDER GODS, ORDINARY MURDER AND MANY OF THE OTHER CRIMES OF MAN. BEING THE FORTY-EIGHTH NUMBER OF STRIP FOR ME, AN OCCASIONAL ANTHOLOGY OF GEOGRAPHIC TERROR AND UNFRIENDLY ROMANCE BY THE ARTISTS AND WRITER DOUGLAS NOBLE.

An excerpt from a comic about heretics about Liebniz and his many worlds dimensional concept.

A list of book recommendations. Based on the 2-3 I’ve read, I think everything on this list is probably worth reading.

 

 

Maze of the Blue Medusa

THE MAZE OF THE BLUE MEDUSA by Zak Sabbath and Patrick Stuart is an amazing piece of art. It’s one of the most beautiful books I’ve ever seen. Which is why I bought it.

Then I read it. It’s simply one of the most amazing and creative things I read in 2016 and maybe ever. It’s filled with maps and charts and strange creatures. The first time I read it, I stayed up way too late a couple of nights in a row reading it. It’s mesmerizing and a bit like being handed a key to a magical world. It reads the way my dreams tend to go, peering into a strange and distant land.

Not only that, but it’s a game as well. It can be played with D&D or pretty much any roleplaying game, I imagine, with a little tweaking. It’s a book that screams, “Here are hundreds of amazing ideas! I dare you not to use them!”

I’ve since used this book to play three games with three different sets of friends. It was simply hours of fun and every time it spun out in a slightly different way.

People who write and publish books as beautiful and imaginative as this one should be rewarded for their effort. Go buy a copy. If the hardcover price seems steep, you can always buy the PDF to preview it. I expect you’ll end up buying the book once you do.