Black Gate

Heroscape Master Set 3: Dungeons and Dragons Battle for the Underdark
Wizards of the Coast ($21.99, Jan 2010)
Reviewed by Howard Andrew Jones

Here at the Jones household we have the new Heroscape Master Set 3. Judging by the amount of Heroscape I’ve been playing with the kids, the game may have us.

The new master set is smaller than either of the first two, although its 50 interlocking terrain pieces can simulate a variety of battlefields — and can add in to any existing terrain sets a Heroscape gamer already owns. If you’re a relative newcomer to the concept of Heroscape, like I was until just recently, it’s a do-it-yourself game board of surprisingly sturdy interlocking hexagonal tiles. Some of the tiles are part of larger platforms, and some are merely a hexagon. Different colors suggest grass, or rock, or sand, or swamp — or even swamp water or regular water. They can be combined in an almost endless array of patterns, limited only by imagination and the amount of tiles.

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Well, entering the year (both in terms of typing the title and having lived to see it) was a little weird to write. The first chapter of The Martian Chronicles is January 1999, which from the vantage point of the middle of the 20th century, when the German V-rockets had landed not on another planet, but London, that seemed about right for when humanity might be “reaching for the stars” as it was called.  The book ends in April 2026 which, with luck, proper diet and exercise, and health care reform I might actually still be alive to see. And which more than likely humankind, assuming it hasn’t blown itself up, will remain earthbound.

So much for the fantasies of the Golden Age of science fiction writers.

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It’s the end of another year which means everybody’s thinking up “best of lists.” Partially, that’s a marketing thing — and it apparently works because I’ve just finished ordering a couple of albums that were on various critics “best of list” that I hadn’t heard. As a DJ for a local radio station, I’m supposed to be up on these things. Also as a DJ, I was supposed to have submitted my own “best of list,” but haven’t. Maybe as the short fiction guy hereabouts, I’m also supposed to come up with a list of top short stories. But, I won’t. I just have a hard time with this exercise. There’s a lot of stuff that I’ve found interesting, but whether that qualifies as “best of” I’m not sure. And, then, whatever I come up with will invariably leave out stuff that I simply didn’t get to, or didn’t even know existed, which doesn’t seem fair.

Worse, as the end of a decade, there’s also these best of the decade lists. Again, this is largely to fill traditionally slow periods in the news cycle, but it is a conversation starter, which can be fun. I’m not going to provide a list (mainly because I just don’t want to spend the time thinking about it; I’d rather catch up on my to-be-read and to-listen pile), but here’s one by Jonathan Strahan that caught my eye. I like to think I’m fairly well-read and stay on top of these things, but of the ten “best of the decade” short fiction collections cited by Strahan, I’ve only actually read two, though I own two others that I never got around to (yet, I hope). At least, I’ve read all these authors, even if I haven’t made it through all the collections. If you haven’t already jumped, here’s Strahan’s list:

1. Beluthahatchie and Other Stories, Andy Duncan (2000)
2. Stories of Your Life and Others, Ted Chiang (2002)
3. Black Juice, Margo Lanagan (2005)
4. 20th Century Ghosts, Joe Hill (2005)
5. Magic for Beginners, Kelly Link (2005)
6. The Empire of Ice Cream, Jeffrey Ford (2006)
7. Map of Dreams, M. Rickert (2006)
8. Pump Six and Other Stories, Paolo Bacigalupi (2008)
9. Oceanic, Greg Egan (2009)
10. Cyberabad Days, Ian McDonald (2009)