Aaaand no.
I don't often return a book, especially by an author I know I like, but this one isn't for me.
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I don't often return a book, especially by an author I know I like, but this one isn't for me.
Alzrius
The EN World kitten
I just finished reading MIT Press's 2024 anthology Fifty Years of Dungeons & Dragons, and I came away unimpressed.
I've spoken before about how anthologies tend to be a mixed bag, something which makes them difficult to summarize. You either have to draw in very broad strokes, knowing that you'll be vacillating between misrepresenting/glossing over some of what's here or simply speaking so broadly as to compromise usefulness, or you end up writing micro-reviews for each individual entry (which runs the risk of being too brief for each such entry while still being a great deal of work in total). Neither result is very good at informing others about what's here.
And yet here I go anyway.
First, the requisite disclaimer: of the twenty essays that are here, there were several that I liked. Jon Peterson's essay about the evolution of experience points, for instance, was fascinating to read (serving as another example of why he's D&D's most eminent historian). Esther McCallum-Stewart's take on play styles via evaluating the "Matt Mercer effect" was likewise insightful. And while Jonathan Walton's take on what D&D would look like one hundred years from now necessarily had little to say to that effect (being more of an overview on what goes into trying to forecast future developments of anything), the presentation of a series of tables you could roll on to see what RPGs would be like in the future was genuinely amusing.
There were gems like this throughout the book, and even the chapters that I think fell flat often (but not always) had some interesting tidbits here and there.
But having said all of that, I feel like this book missed a lot more than it hit.
Part of this was contextual. When I picked this up, I assumed it would be various examinations of D&D itself, and to be fair it does have several instances of that, such as the aforementioned Peterson essay about experience points, or a chapter about how J. Eric Holmes wrote the first Basic Set. But there were several other chapters which used D&D as a lens through which something else was written about, such as methods of classroom-based education, or the development of contemporary fantasy in Singapore. While those weren't uninteresting topics, they weren't about shedding light on D&D per se, being instead about what light D&D sheds on something else.
The bigger mark against this book, however, was that several of its essays relied on premises and interpretations that I found fault with. The most glaring example, here, was Aaron Trammell's essay (co-authored with Antero Garcia, but as the two of them clearly indicated who wrote what, I'll focus on Trammell's portion) about how the 1991 D&D Rules Cyclopedia's rules "show how the game's multicultural facade is a gateway to white supremacist ideology." Even leaving aside debate about the RC itself, Trammell cites not just one but two specific essays of his own (from Analog Game Studies) in support of this and other points he raises. I highlight that because Jon Peterson himself—in the comments in both articles—calls out Trammell for not only "cherry-picking" evidence in support of his claims, but engaging with old D&D texts through a "distorted historical lens."
If that sounds like a rather specific point to harp on, it's not; several other essays cite one or both of the aforementioned articles, and a few others reference Trammell's chapter in this book. Even if I didn't find fault with several similar criticisms made by other authors, that alone would have been enough to sour me on what's here. While I can understand that no one likes having their work called out for inaccuracies, citing texts that another (I'd say more reputable) scholar has called into question (without even acknowledging the points that were raised) strikes me as disingenuous at best, and at worst suggests less of an interest in historical analysis than in validating a preexisting belief. That this was done several times over was more than sufficient to sour me on this book as a whole.
Again, there are still good materials here. It's just that the bad seems to outweigh them, and I worry that anyone who isn't familiar with the materials cited (or isn't willing to put in the time and effort to track them down and read up on them) could give the bad stuff more credit than it deserves. Overall, with a small number of specific exceptions, this isn't a book I'd recommend to anyone who wants to learn more about D&D.
I've spoken before about how anthologies tend to be a mixed bag, something which makes them difficult to summarize. You either have to draw in very broad strokes, knowing that you'll be vacillating between misrepresenting/glossing over some of what's here or simply speaking so broadly as to compromise usefulness, or you end up writing micro-reviews for each individual entry (which runs the risk of being too brief for each such entry while still being a great deal of work in total). Neither result is very good at informing others about what's here.
And yet here I go anyway.
First, the requisite disclaimer: of the twenty essays that are here, there were several that I liked. Jon Peterson's essay about the evolution of experience points, for instance, was fascinating to read (serving as another example of why he's D&D's most eminent historian). Esther McCallum-Stewart's take on play styles via evaluating the "Matt Mercer effect" was likewise insightful. And while Jonathan Walton's take on what D&D would look like one hundred years from now necessarily had little to say to that effect (being more of an overview on what goes into trying to forecast future developments of anything), the presentation of a series of tables you could roll on to see what RPGs would be like in the future was genuinely amusing.
There were gems like this throughout the book, and even the chapters that I think fell flat often (but not always) had some interesting tidbits here and there.
But having said all of that, I feel like this book missed a lot more than it hit.
Part of this was contextual. When I picked this up, I assumed it would be various examinations of D&D itself, and to be fair it does have several instances of that, such as the aforementioned Peterson essay about experience points, or a chapter about how J. Eric Holmes wrote the first Basic Set. But there were several other chapters which used D&D as a lens through which something else was written about, such as methods of classroom-based education, or the development of contemporary fantasy in Singapore. While those weren't uninteresting topics, they weren't about shedding light on D&D per se, being instead about what light D&D sheds on something else.
The bigger mark against this book, however, was that several of its essays relied on premises and interpretations that I found fault with. The most glaring example, here, was Aaron Trammell's essay (co-authored with Antero Garcia, but as the two of them clearly indicated who wrote what, I'll focus on Trammell's portion) about how the 1991 D&D Rules Cyclopedia's rules "show how the game's multicultural facade is a gateway to white supremacist ideology." Even leaving aside debate about the RC itself, Trammell cites not just one but two specific essays of his own (from Analog Game Studies) in support of this and other points he raises. I highlight that because Jon Peterson himself—in the comments in both articles—calls out Trammell for not only "cherry-picking" evidence in support of his claims, but engaging with old D&D texts through a "distorted historical lens."
If that sounds like a rather specific point to harp on, it's not; several other essays cite one or both of the aforementioned articles, and a few others reference Trammell's chapter in this book. Even if I didn't find fault with several similar criticisms made by other authors, that alone would have been enough to sour me on what's here. While I can understand that no one likes having their work called out for inaccuracies, citing texts that another (I'd say more reputable) scholar has called into question (without even acknowledging the points that were raised) strikes me as disingenuous at best, and at worst suggests less of an interest in historical analysis than in validating a preexisting belief. That this was done several times over was more than sufficient to sour me on this book as a whole.
Again, there are still good materials here. It's just that the bad seems to outweigh them, and I worry that anyone who isn't familiar with the materials cited (or isn't willing to put in the time and effort to track them down and read up on them) could give the bad stuff more credit than it deserves. Overall, with a small number of specific exceptions, this isn't a book I'd recommend to anyone who wants to learn more about D&D.
Last edited:
Ralif Redhammer
Legend
I finished Leblanc's Embodied Exegesis: Transfeminine Cyberpunk Futures anthology. The stories really span the gamut, from traditional cyberpunk to biopunk, to out-there W.S. Burroughs-style body horror/surrealism. I also finished Ray Kurzweil's The Age of Spiritual Machines. I think he was a bit too optimistic in both the timeline and the beneficence of technology, but he nailed a lot of his closer predictions.
Now I'm reading Mick Farren's Vickers.
Now I'm reading Mick Farren's Vickers.
Eyes of Nine
Everything's Fine
Over lunch today, read all but 2 pages of Ursula K LeGuin's chapbook The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction.
Both the intro by Donna J Harraway and the main text are excellent reads.
Highly recommend
www.goodreads.com
Both the intro by Donna J Harraway and the main text are excellent reads.
Highly recommend
The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction
In The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, visionary author …
Autumnal
Bruce Baugh, Writer of Fortune
Blood Standard, Black Mountain, Wirse Angels, and The Wind Began To Howl, by Laird Barron. Three novels and a novella, all featuring the same main character. We meet Isaiah Coleridge, who narrates all of these, in Alaska. He says, “Those movies by Albert Broccoli about the world-famous spy? In every flick there’s a sinister, powerfully built dude in a nice suit lurking at the margins. He kills people who annoy his boss, the archvillian. I was that dude.” He’s the Mafia’s best hit man in the frozen north. Until he screws everything up.
For all his badness, and he’s not kidding himself or is about that, he does have limits. Cruelty to animals is one of them. So when it comes to his current boss or the targets of a poaching party, it’s no choice at all for him, and shortly he’s about die for nearly killing the boss. Complicated circumstances lead to his being relocated to upstate New York instead. Gradually he makes a place for himself, adjusts to life outside the Mafia, falls in love, rescues a dog, learns to be a private investigator, deals with local crimes, their committers, and connections to larger matters.
One of the really neat things here is their genre shifts. The first book is straight-up modern-day noir. The second combines noir and horror, bringing Isaiah and his world of crime up against the edges of horror elements Barron has built up in the past - searches for transhuman experience gone terribly wrong, very rich and powerful families and government groups trying to weaponize ancient occult secrets, things that are very much less human than they seem. Third third book and novella follow up on that to make life much weirder for Isaiah and those around them.
Barron excels at writing about the awfulness of living somewhere the normal bounds of reality are falling over. And his deep dive into Isaiah is his best character building yet. Isaiah isn’t out to become a good guy. He’s honest with himself, including about his propensity for violence and ways his work is satisfying to him. But there things he wants to change without dooming himself to frustration and relapse. Hugely satisfying. Highly recommend to people who like noir with their horror, and vice versa.
For all his badness, and he’s not kidding himself or is about that, he does have limits. Cruelty to animals is one of them. So when it comes to his current boss or the targets of a poaching party, it’s no choice at all for him, and shortly he’s about die for nearly killing the boss. Complicated circumstances lead to his being relocated to upstate New York instead. Gradually he makes a place for himself, adjusts to life outside the Mafia, falls in love, rescues a dog, learns to be a private investigator, deals with local crimes, their committers, and connections to larger matters.
One of the really neat things here is their genre shifts. The first book is straight-up modern-day noir. The second combines noir and horror, bringing Isaiah and his world of crime up against the edges of horror elements Barron has built up in the past - searches for transhuman experience gone terribly wrong, very rich and powerful families and government groups trying to weaponize ancient occult secrets, things that are very much less human than they seem. Third third book and novella follow up on that to make life much weirder for Isaiah and those around them.
Barron excels at writing about the awfulness of living somewhere the normal bounds of reality are falling over. And his deep dive into Isaiah is his best character building yet. Isaiah isn’t out to become a good guy. He’s honest with himself, including about his propensity for violence and ways his work is satisfying to him. But there things he wants to change without dooming himself to frustration and relapse. Hugely satisfying. Highly recommend to people who like noir with their horror, and vice versa.
I'm now on book #6 of Jonathan Mayberry's Captain Joe Ledger series, Code Zero. This time, he's up against a team that overran a lab where all sorts of infectious bacterial diseases are stored for study, and are now releasing them in the world. And I'll be on a week-long business trip next week, so I'll be bringing along books #7 and #8 with me to tide me over in the airports, airplanes, and hotel room.
Johnathan
Johnathan
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