050: : like some kind of Timberlakian Aslan
Hullo.
It's 2018. We survived 2017. We can survive 2018. We'll find out whether that's true or not as we progress, but it's best to go into these things with our best foot forward.
Contents!
Star Wars
Little Wars
Links
Byeeeeeeeeeee!
****
I always try to see what the first book of the year actually is saying. I'm someone who is intensely anti-superstition while simultaneously looking for omens (i.e. narrative) in everything. I don't think it's true, but watch for it anyway. I often come back to the sentiment in from Hell: “I made it all up. It came true anyway.”
I say that as my first book of the year is Star Wars 41, which I saw a reviewer describe as the darkest issue in the whole Star Wars run. Thinking about it, they may be onto something.
But yes. As far as omens go, Luke going to gaze into the abyss of destruction and see if he can survive a brush with the dark side isn't exactly a happy-happy-joy-joy one.
Though it's me. When is it ever?
In the shops! In digital shops! Into the abyss!
****
I'll be doing my tracks of the year next week, probably. That's been my tradition since 2003 or so, and I won't be breaking it. Yet, anyway.
But first, books of 2017. Not favourite. Just a list, and the effect of keeping a list on my reading.
Inspired by Marguerite Bennett's mighty list of books, I decided to actually keep a formal one of everything I read in the year. I set myself a fairly ambitious target of six books a month – 72, across the year. Not a hard target, but an awareness that I'd like to hit it, if I could. I did. I'd have predicated that.
It's been a while since I've been a game critic, but I'm aware of my vulnerability to gameification. That “if” is enough. I'd tweak my life to hit that target, in the most efficient way I could. That's not quite true, but I'm certainly aware that I've been glancing at the thickness of a spine before starting something. The heftier the book, the more brutally necessary for The Work it was. So I look at the list, and roll eyes at self. Some are novellas, frankly. On the other hand, stuff like Playing The World is oversized and thicker than my torso, and probably counts as four. Plus the point is to read. Yeah, I gobbled up some shorter classics, but a shorter classic is still a classic. I found keeping e-books on the phone, especially collections of essays, ideal for journeys, and better than arguing with Jamie about the relative merits of Alien/Aliens on twitter. At the least, there was an awareness of wanting to read more prose, which led me to priotise it. “Am I doing anything useful?” “No” “Are you too tired?” “No” “Read!” “Okay.”
That said, there was a lot of my general reading I didn't include. Game manuals, for example, because they're read in a way unlike “reading.” There's stuff in a game manual I've read dozens of times, there's stuff I've not read at all. It's filled internally as a separate thing. Conversely, game design or theory or even weird things like Little Wars definitely counted as books (Though Little Wars and Floor games I lumped together).
So – the list! Arranged in reading order, so you can see the sweep of the year.
Lolita - Nabakov
The Fall of Rome: And the End of Civilization – Bryan Ward Perkins
Death In Ancient Rome – Valerie M. Hope
Capitalist Realism – Mark Fisher
The Fall Of The Roman Empire: A New History – Peter Heather
Designers & Dragons: 1980s – Shannon Appelcline
The Exphoria Code – Antony Johnston
Uncertainty in Games – Greg Costikyan
Necessary Trouble – Sarah Jaffe
Monitor – Leigh Alexander
Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl – Carrie Brownstein
Bear – Marian Engel
Designers & Dragons: 1990s – Shannon Appelcline
The Age Of Bowie – Paul Morley
Peter and Wendy – J.M. Barrie
The Bones: Us and our Dice – Will Hindmarch (Editor)
The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant 1: Lord Foul's Bane – Stephen R. Donaldson
The Red Carpet – Lavanya Sankaran
Army of She – Evelyn McDonnell
Split – Katie West (Editor)
Designers & Dragons: 2000s – Shannon Appelcline
The Dying Earth - Jack Vance
Dreadnought – Cherie Priest
Chalk – Paul Cornell
Metronome: A history of Paris from the Underground Up - Lorant Deutsch
Britain's War Machine - David Edgerton
The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
Neurotribes – Steve Silberman
Smuggler's Run – Greg Rucka
Guided By The Beauty Of Their Weapons – Phil Sandifer
Between the World and Me - Ta-Nehisi Coates
Man Of Shadow – Jeff Noon
Content Provider - Stewart Lee
The Girl With All The Gifts – M Carey
Things We Thing About Games – Will Hindmarch/Jeff Tidball
Star Wars: Rebel Rising – Beth Revis
Bad Feminist – Roxanne Gay
Star Wars: Catalyst – James Luceno
Star Wars: Guardians of The Whilll – Greg Rucka
Dark Money – Jane Mayer
The Intellectuals And The Masses – John Carey
And Then There Were None – Agatha Christie
Kill All Normies – Angela Nagle
The Mirror Crack'd - Agatha Christie
Death on the Nile - Agatha Christie
The White Box Essays – Jeremy Holcomb
Dangerous Games – Joeseph P Laycock
Ten Things Video Games Can Teach Us – Jordan Erica Webber, Daniel Griliopoulos
A Thousand Sons – Graeme McNeil
Deep Work – Cal Newport
The Left Hand of Darkness – Ursula LeGuin
The Lathe of Heaven – Ursula LeGuin
The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll And Mr Hyde – Robert Stevenson
To The Lighthouse – Virginia Woolf
Playing The World – Jon Peterson
Wizardry and Wild Romance – Michael Moorcock
The First Heretic - Aaron Dembski-Bowden
Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
Bitch Doctrine – Laurie Penny
Dawn – Octavia E. Butler
We Were Eight Years In Power - Ta-Nehesi Coates
The Fire Next Time – James Baldwin
Stancliffe's Hotel – Charlotte Bronte
We Got the Neutron Bomb - Marc Spitz/Brendan Mullen
The Storm Before The Storm – Mike Duncan
Why I'm No Long Talking To White People About Race – Reni Eddo-Lodge
Prospero Burns – Dan Abnett
Little Wars/Floor Games – HG Wells
Murder on the Orient Express – Agatha Christie
A Murder Is Announced – Agatha Christie
J. R. R. Tolkien: A Biography – Humphrey Carpenter
Cats Cradle – Kurt Vonnegut
Smith of Wootton Major - JRR Tolkien
The Silmarillion – JRR Tolkien
The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe – CS Lewis
The Monsters & The Critics – JRR Tolkien
Beren and Luthien – JRR Tolkien
Orlando – Virginia Woolf
It was a fun time. There were casualties in my life though.
The main one was comics. My to-read pile is horrible. I'm up to date with many books, but trades have been hurt. I suspect the solution may be to start some kind of gamification of them as well. I tried to have a “3 issues of comics per day” rule, but that proved impossible. Instead, I'm going to keep a list of graphic novels as well as prose.
As I said, the fact it was a “Hit 70” target influenced my choices of what to read. I'm not doing that. I'm adding a second limit to it. I want to read something distinctly Big a month. I don't know what Big actually means, so that'll be interesting to find out.
I'm also wondering about all those pieces of design research about the second you add extrinsic rewards to a task you decrease the effectiveness of intrinsic rewards. As in, a game may become more compulsive if you add all the achievement-chasing, but the actual experience in terms of what you're doing becomes less appealing. I'll have to see if there's been any change of research.
Do shout if there's anything particular you'll like a hot take on, obv. Twitter, ask, pressing reply to this mail, etc.
I also wonder if I should keep a list of TV stuff too. Not that I need any motivation, but it'd help in making a list of it.
TV show of the year was the Good Place, if you were wondering. I love it so.
****
Assorted links I cut and pasted in here over the holidays...
Here's the writer notes for the WicDiv Xmas special. Lots of words on what it was like to bring sexy back, like some kind of Timberlakian Aslan. That phrase is totally lifted from conversation with wonderful editor Jordan White. Hi Jordan!
I pulled together some thought's for the Beat's creator survey.
I was linked this interesting take on Banks' Culture, and think it's worth chewing over.
I was interviewed by Syfy about coming up with Star Was names. I said words.
Paul Cornell's 12 days of Xmas is always fun, and here's a round-up of a lot of his friends' work. Nice to be included here. In passing, his Chalk was one of the most impressive genre novels I read last year, and its bleak magical viciousness was not what I was expecting. Paul is so nice! This was the opposite, and a scream of a 80s school urban fantasy.
****
It's been the first newsletter since before Christmas, hence there is much work to update you with. I'll talk a little about that next time, as it will be safely disposed of.
The short version is “That good idea to do a fiction novelette as part of a single issue? It's not a good idea.”
Byyyyeeeee!
Kieron Gillen
London
4.1.2018