Latest News from John Guy Collick
Welcome to this relaunch of my newsletter. with a very different style and theme from before. Much has happened since it last went out, and the content going forward will reflect that change of direction.
At the start of 2024 I retired from the world of Education Technology. After much thought I decided to devote my time to the things I really feel passionate about, especially books (both reading and writing) and gaming (mainly tabletop roleplaying games like Dungeons and Dragons).
So, my plan with this newsletter is to talk about:
- the books I’ve read each month - my thoughts and recommendations for both newly published fiction and nonfiction, and older classics.
- my own writing projects - the books and stories I’m working on or about to release.
- tabletop roleplaying games - reviews, recommendations and thoughts aimed at both people unfamiliar with the hobby, and those who are already players. In my talks on education I often referred to the value roleplaying games have in building communities and exploring group emergent storytelling, so I’ll also talk about that.
I do hope you will find enough things of interest in here to keep subscribed and encourage others to join up. My plan is to do this once a month, so I won’t be cluttering up your inboxes unnecessarily.
Writing
Since the last newsletter I’ve released Slaves of Titan, the second volume in the tales of Banjo and Alexandra. Here’s the blurb:
Marrakech 1925. Following the events of THE STAR TSAR, Banjo and Alexandra are fugitives hiding in Morocco from Stalin's agents. While the ex-commissar loses herself in opium dreams, the Yorkshire engineer hunts through ancient ruins for a means to return to the stars. They soon find themselves hunted by an alien assassin that slaughters without mercy, Where will they find a safe haven - in a fortress deep in the Atlas Mountains, at the end of a deadly trans-dimensional labyrinth, or as the captives of deranged Italian Futurists seeking to build a new Utopia of blood and steel in the forests of Caporetto? Whatever actions they take may ultimately decide the fate of the entire Solar System.
You can get your copy here:
I’m also working on releasing a new book The Blocko Tower. This is a fantasy horror set in the 1980s about a young woman, Sally, who is haunted by visions of a ghostly high rise block where one of her childhood friends was abducted.
Books Read in March
Anaximander and the Nature of Science, Carlo Rovelli, 2023
More of a treatise on the nature of science and scientific enquiry than a history of early Greek thought. As with Pythagoras by Kitty Ferguson, the lack of surviving texts by Anaximander (c 610 BC) means that a lot of this is speculation based on later scholars referring to his work. Nevertheless, it is interesting and Carlo Rovelli is a very entertaining science writer.
Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space, Adam Higginbotham, 2024
A fascinating but sobering study of official cover-ups, cost-cutting and the group-think pursuit of ridiculous launch schedules that led to the Challenger tragedy in 1986 and the loss of Columbia in 2003. I had no idea the shuttle was so jerry-built and fundamentally unsafe.
Judgement at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia, Gary J. Bass, 2023
Long and detailed chronicle of the Tokyo war trials, especially the debates over jurisdiction and whether waging war counts as a crime or not. Where does the boundary between ‘legitimate’ warfare and atrocity lie, and who is culpable for horrors committed under their command? After the firebombing of Tokyo and the A-bomb, how could the allies legally prove that they were passing legitimate judgement, and not just victor’s retribution?
The Haunted Wood: A History of Childhood Reading, Sam Leith, 2024
A lovely, informative and often quite funny study of children’s literature since the beginning of printing. Leith makes the point that adult authors were often trying to recapture their own childhood when writing kids books. Many of them were also heavily influenced by their experiences in both the first, and the second world wars.
Rudyard Kipling comes across as a particularly tragic figure. I didn’t know that ‘O best beloved' in the Just So Stories was his young daughter, Effie, who died at the age of 6, a year after the first tales were published.
Maker of Universes and The Gates of Creation, Philip Jose Farmer, 1965 & 1966
A trip down memory lane to when I started reading SF in my early teens. I can see why tales of a disfunctional family of ultra powerful gods lording it over pocket universes appealed to my 14 year old self. Very typical SF adventures with loads of bizarre locations and creatures. Farmer has a great imagination, although it does get a bit repetitive, as in new planet - new weird monsters, rinse and repeat. He also has a tendency to slip into passages of unwieldy explanation, and his portrayal of women is painfully outdated at the best of times. My motive for reading these was preparation for a re-read of Roger Zelazny’s Amber series which was influenced by Farmer’s World of Tiers series, of which these are the first two books.
Rosamund Pike reading The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan
I just wanted to finish this round up of books by mentioning Rosamund Pike’s audiobook version of The Wheel of Time series (she also plays Moraine Damodred in the Amazon TV Series). She’s recorded the first four books and they are, without doubt, the best audible books I’ve ever listened to. Her passion, characterisation and pacing is incredible, nothing I’ve heard before comes close. She does, on occasion, sound a bit posh (‘hises’ instead of ‘houses’), but my god these are wonderful, and highly recommended. Jordan’s books were very take-it-or-leave-it to me before, but now I’m utterly hooked.
Gaming
My love of table-top rolepaying games (TTRPGs) goes back to the mid-70s when I started playing the first edition of Dungeons and Dragons. Like many others I got back into the hobby during Covid, but the latest fifth edition of DnD didn’t have the same magic. It felt too scripted, with over-powered characters being railroaded from one scene to the next without any of the mystery or danger I remembered.
Then I came across the Old School Renaissance, a movement in the roleplaying game world that tried to recapture that earlier sense of exploration and wonder, and its attendant emergent storytelling. I’ll go into more details in later newsletters, with reviews of different games and my own thoughts on why these games are so enjoyable, and positive.
In the meantime I’m currently the Games Master on two campaigns. The first is a face-to-face game set in Dolmenwood, a wonderfully detailed world based on Lord Dunsany’s The King of Elfland’s Daughter, and the sinister fairytales of Angela Carter and others.
I’ve also started on online open table that players can drop in and out of, this time based on Kelsey Dionne’s Shadowdark which is a more traditional swords-and-sorcery game. I’m running this using Discord and the online tabletop system owlbear.rodeo.
That’s all for this month. It’s good to be back, and with a change of direction. If you are already a subscriber then I hope you’ll find things of interest in this newsletter. Please feel free to comment as all feedback is very welcome.
John
Really interesting article John
I very much enjoyed The Star Tsar and must get on with the sequel. The new one sounds good too.