Reviews and Comments

As the drummer of the band, and as one of the members who has been with the band from the beginning to the end, you would think this would be the definitive telling of the story of Pink Floyd.

But, it's not very personal. You rarely get any details of how Nick felt, or any more details that make the story be told from the inside. Maybe the same reason they always had such troubles talking with each others about how they felt, is once more stopping Nick from becoming too personal.

What it does have is lot of funny stories about things happening on tour, on some of their creative processes and how they worked with different people for their shows.

Sometimes I did laugh, as Nick has a way to choose understated phrases and use some dry wit to good effect.

I guess we will have to go to the music to find the emotions, and the personalities behind the story.

If nothing else, this has made me go back and listen to some fantastic music. I love Pink Floyd.

Sometimes I see people who have been hooked by the board/miniatures-game asking for fiction recommendations, and I almost always manage to stay away from expressing my feelings about game fiction. I have read my fair share, and most of it is dreck! Some of it is more terrible than other, and a kerfuffle within the last 6 months saw a Battletech author of the more chauvinistic and unpleasant kind get dropped and it reminded me of the reasons some of these books are terrible literature.

I did pick up the first issue I read of Shrapnel because I knew one of the hosts of the podcast WolfNet Radio had been published in this series. I was curious about Charles' skill as a writer, as he came across as witty and informed on the podcast. It turns out he can indeed write decent enough!

The reason I've read more than that first taste was that apart from Charles' work, there were some others that did stand out as more than half decent. It almost seems like the shorter format, with the discipline needed to utilize that form, might bring out more skilled writers. Also, maybe editor Philip A. Lee does a better screening job than the novel editors whose products I had tried before?

In any case I got hooked on a story by Tom Leveen, serialized in 4 parts, called Three Ways Home and ended up buying all the issues of Shrapnel it was published in. In the end I have not finished all those issues yet, but having finished off this volume I decided to put down my thoughts on the series.

This is a bona fide game magazine, with scenarios and source book style materials in addition to fiction. It's a rare beast these days, and I guess many read it as an ebook, and not the POD paperback I insist on. Still, I love they provide that option.

The scenario material is good, and the articles with in-world news and descriptions are useful and well written. The fiction, as I alluded to above, is pleasant enough to read. You have to love military sf with big stompy robots, but why would you even look at a magazine like this if you weren't? Some stories are funny, some are tense and the editor have managed to find writers who write stories with interesting plots and with the characters in focus. Sure, they are often a bit super human in their efforts, and the toil and suffering before the final victories can be slightly over the top, but still I found them engaging.

Will I keep buying more issues of Shrapnel? I wont be buying it regularly, but maybe if I see one of the writers that have impressed me on the cover, I will be tempted to get another fix.

Steve Sechi is a big fan of Jack Vance. This is not only something he freely admits, it's very clear if you read a bit about the world of Talislanta. In this anthology he has found some other writers, and together they manage to cover a lot of the weirdness, colourful language and dashing characters typical of Vance style fiction. Even the type of characters with sardonic wit and rascals who meet their fitting end is in the style of Vance.

But, Talislanta is not the Dying Earth. It's its own thing, and while it play off stereotypes and cultural tropes it manages to do so in a fashion that almost always come across as a loving homage. In this collection it skirted clear of almost all of the slightly cringe worthy elements.

None of the stories where any great revelation about the world, as I know it quite well already, and none struck me as particular inventive as far as character and story goes either. Probably the one that I felt was the most inventive when it came to plot twists where Steve Sechi's own Rogues which contained enough different character viewpoints to make it stand out a bit. Many of the others where a bit weak. The Ring by Simon Shapiro I found to be perhaps the weakest of them all, with an un-engaging main character and a story that mostly rested upon the "yuck factor", even though it did contain the weird magician.

I had not slotted this into my Talislanta collection until now, and it's not without a slight feeling of being underwhelmed that I put it on my shelf.