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james_davis_nicoll

The current Skeleton Crew ruleboo plus a Legion of adventures.

Bundle of Holding: Vast Grimm

Here we are in the middle of 2026, which is as good a marker as any to see where my movie watching is at. Thanks, Letterboxd, for enabling my OCD! All stats are as of June 30th.

I watched 197 movies in the first half of the year. I have a not totally serious goal of 500 this year, which is a number I hit in 2023 after which I decided to stop being quite so obsessive. You don’t need to make the number go up every year, so I pulled back for the sake of my sanity. Now, however, I have more free time. The math says… maybe, particularly since I’m gonna see like 75 movies at Fantasia. (I do count shorts in this.)

Full post: https://popone.innocence.com/archives/2026/07/07/midyear-reels/

james_davis_nicoll

The Company will surely triumph over the Union upstarts, just as soon as R&D solves a few minor, pilot-killing, bugs in their cutting-edge systems.

Hellburner (Devil to the Belt, volume 2) by C J Cherryh

james_davis_nicoll

Random generators from Kent David Kelly for tabletop fantasy roleplaying games such as OSRIC (based on the 1979 First Edition of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons) and other fantasy retroclones.

Bundle of Holding: Oldskull Generators

A reminder that I am no longer here, but am instead here. The new RSS feed is here. If you're still reading this for some reason other than being on Dreamwidth, please update your feed.

james_davis_nicoll

A small British town falls victim to an insidious invasion.

The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham

This is a Scott McNealy story. Kids these days may not remember Scott; he was the long-term CEO and co-founder of Sun Microsystems. He was legendary for being outspoken, opinionated, and a maverick. He wasn’t a technical guy at heart, leaning way more towards the business side. Nevertheless, he was pretty smart about which way the technical winds were blowing.

Sun Microsystems was built on the idea that a computer which wasn’t attached to a network – preferably the Internet – was less useful. I’ll loop back and talk about the first two jobs I had at Sun at some point. Right now, we’re gonna talk about the last job I had at Sun, which was working on the internal Javastation deployment program. Javastations were perhaps the pinnacle of Scott’s network-oriented philosophy, so this was pretty important stuff.

Full post: https://popone.innocence.com/archives/2026/07/03/attaching-files-to-email/

james_davis_nicoll

Petanj needs an Investigator. What Petanj gets is a well-meaning academic.

The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses (Investigations of Mossa and Pleiti, volume 3) by Malka Older

james_davis_nicoll

Phineas Kidd wants her own starship. Phineas Kidd does not have her own starship. Phineas Kidd will have to steal a starship... from a god.

Grist to the Cannon (Kidd Commander, volume 1) By Aria Bell

We are now officially past the halfway mark for 2026!

( Cut for length. )

So what's coming next?

July 16 will mark the end of Timecrossed Engineer: Back to School's exclusive period in the Kindle Unlimited store so I will be bringing it onto Kobo and whatever else is reasonably doable without a lot of fussing.

I have some editing to do on the Rose's Crime Spree, and then I need to decide if I want to commit to publishing it for free on Royal Road. I don't really see too many options here; it's a choice between selling in the low tens (spare change basically) or trying to grow an audience for what is probably a relatively fringe subgenre (furry science fiction heist novels).

After that, I should get back to Shakedown Cruise, either edit what I have already or push on.

I've been thinking about what could be 'next' after that. Starting to think about a more typical LitRPG story for Royal Road. Maybe a space trader in an EVE-alike game?

Hope you all are doing well out there!

In my inevitable quest to learn more about the history of our new home in the Twin Cities, I recently read Teamster Rebellion by Farrell Dobbs as a primary source on the Minneapolis general strike of 1934. That strike was a significant moment in US labor history, beginning a shift towards industrial unionism – the idea that all workers in a given industry should be part of the same union, rather than organizing unions by trade. It also, not coincidentally, triggered real growth for the Teamsters and was one of the turning points leading American Trotskyists to split from the Stalinist Communist Party USA.

Full post: https://popone.innocence.com/archives/2026/07/01/teamster-rebellion/

james_davis_nicoll

Turns out 175 points of dynamite-related damage is more than enough to kill even a _fourteen_ hit point character. Who knew?

Call of Cthulhu was fun but as my low-san character Daniel went catatonic every time something weird happens, I am looking forward to playing someone useful 24/7. Thus, the 13th Age, 2E Forgeborn Paladin of Pleasure Cabochon.

( Read more... )

james_davis_nicoll

James Nicoll Reviews is the only speculative fiction reviewing site that promises reviews that are 100% gluten-free! You too can help fund James Nicoll Reviews!

August 2026 Patreon Post

james_davis_nicoll

What holiday horrors await Ganta and Isaki in this, a tankōbon in which absolutely nothing terrible happens?

Insomniacs After School, volume 10 by Makoto Ojiro

james_davis_nicoll

Many books were read and I won an entirely unexpected award.

June 2026 in Review

james_davis_nicoll

The Loyalists' survival depends on Lord Martinez and Lady Sula's unsavoury embrace of merit and innovation over rank and tradition. The pair's lovers-to-enemies arc is an unwelcome complication.

The Sundering (Dread Empire's Fall, volume 2) by Walter Jon Williams

james_davis_nicoll

This all-new Colostle Bundle presents Colostle, the solo journaling game from creator Nich Angell at Draconeer Games about exploring a world-sized castle.

Bundle of Holding: Colostle

james_davis_nicoll

We have a staff member who _will not_ stay off their phone, even when they are in highly visible positions. Even when I am briefing staff. I have had to move from verbally warning them to documenting each time I catch them. As they have no situational awareness, it's trivial to do this: yesterday I was able to read their screen over their shoulder without them noticing. I also have permission if staffing permits to dismiss them from their shift on the spot if I catch them with their phone.

I think in the long run this means my boss will eventually conclude the behaviour cannot be changed and that person will stop getting shifts. Which is a pity because aside from the phone thing, they're a decent employee.

james_davis_nicoll

Tembreabrezi offers Hugh and Irene something neither miserable American could ever have at home: the chance to solve Tembreabrezi's problems with a fantastical quest from which neither may return.

The Beginning Place by Ursula K. Le Guin

james_davis_nicoll

Four books new to me. One science fiction, three fantasy. At least three of the books are series books.

Books Received, June 20 — June 26

Poll #34772 Books Received, June 20 — June 26

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 36

View Respondents

Which of these look interesting?

Mickey Prime by Edward Ashton (February 2027)
12 (33.3%)

By Breath by P. C. Cast (March 2027)
4 (11.1%)

A Fist of Molten Fire by James Rollins (December 2026)
3 (8.3%)

The Bookbinder & the Thief by M. Stevenson (February 2027)
9 (25.0%)

Some other option (see comments)
2 (5.6%)

Cats!
30 (83.3%)

My friend Sarah Gould keeps telling me I should write an autobiography because I love telling stories. I cannot deny the premise of the argument, and I know I want to redevelop my writing skills; thus, I’m going to start capturing some of those tales of how I got from there to here. Like all good stories, I’m going to start in the middle. Don’t expect any of this to be linear.

Full post: https://popone.innocence.com/archives/2026/06/26/arriving-at-netcom/

james_davis_nicoll

Saria returns to the city where she died, in quest of the man who murdered her.

This Monster of Mine (This Monster of Mine, volume 1) by Shalini Abeysekara

denise posting in

dw_maintenance

Folks may have noticed that the site has been slow for logged-out users over the last while. This is partly because we separate traffic by logged-in, "logged out but have visited the site before", and "logged out, never visited the site before" and assign the fewest resources to the last category (because we're pretty confident the overwhelming majority of it is bot and scraper traffic, even if it's often impossible to say for sure). The flood of garbage traffic is a plague and a scourge the entire internet is dealing with, and it's hitting small sites the hardest as operators get better and better at cloaking their requests to look like real, authentic use. We long ago hit the point where adding more resources is a possible solution (because they just eat them up as soon as we do), and splitting traffic lets us keep the site usable for our actual users without wasting too much server power on garbage.

We've now, lucky us, reached the point where the "logged out, have never visited the site before" path is just flooded all the time, and the "logged out but have visited the site before" path is suffering some of the overflow. We've made some changes to the routing to try to improve things for logged out users who have visited the site before and keep it at "it may be a little bit slow, but at least it works" instead of "it keeps timing out", and we've seen some improvements, but if you're accustomed to browsing the site while logged out, I'm really sorry but it may continue to be a little miserable.

You will get the fastest page loads and the best performance by browsing the site logged in. If you are having trouble loading the front page to log in, bookmark the direct login page. We can't route the front page to the "more power" server pool, because it's a common target for garbage traffic, but we've switched /login over to "more power" and we'll try to keep it there as long as we can unless it starts getting slammed, too.

james_davis_nicoll

Before isekai began ramming people into other dimensions, classic SFF tried out some other weird strategies...

Five Ways to Get Transported to Other Worlds That Don’t Involve Getting Hit by a Truck

james_davis_nicoll

Prudent students would refuse Professor Deighton's dangerous request... which is why Deighton doesn't ask permission before sending them to another world.

The Sleeping Dragon (The Guardians of the Flame, volume 1) by Joel Rosenberg

james_davis_nicoll

This all-new Mappa Mundi Bundle presents Mappa Mundi - An Exploration + Ecology RPG, the tabletop roleplaying game from Three Sails Studios.

Bundle of Holding: Mappa Mundi

I’m sitting on the Coho Ferry on the way to Victoria; I’ve got one last Ingress key drop to make before we leave the area. Admittedly this is also serving the purpose of checking off one more ferry we hadn’t tried in the past. There’s something kind of romantic about driving to a small city on the edge of America to take a small ferry to a city that always feels like a lost outpost of the British Empire. Naming their big luxury hotel the Empress probably has something to do with that feeling.

Full post: https://popone.innocence.com/archives/2026/06/24/june-moving-checkin/

james_davis_nicoll

Baby Assassins is what happens when the Dirty Pair work for John Wick.

The action sequences are violent, lack quips, and seem to show what happens when someone prioritizes dodging over aiming.

Watch on YouTube

james_davis_nicoll

A dutiful student and the unpleasant genius he has inexplicably befriended accept a boat tour on a yacht OF DEATH!

Gosick (Gosick, volume 1) by Kazuki Sakuraba

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