Agent of the Imperium: A Story of the Traveller Universe

 

Agent of the Imperium: A Story of the Traveller Universe by Marc W. Miller
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I make no bones about it: The Traveller RPG and it's primary setting, The Third Imperium, is one of my favorite places to take my imagination and has been since the early '80s. As a young child, I always wondered who the creator of the game, Marc Miller, was. As an adult, I've had a chance to meet him, game at this table, and really get to know him in a different way than just being a star-struck 12 year old fanboy. Marc is not just a creative genius, he is a gentleman and a kind, benevolent person, politically active in calling out racism and prejudice, just a general all-around good human being.

Back in 2023, after a very long conversation about politics and gaming (I'll spare you all the details), I bought this book from him at the gamehole convention. Of course, I asked him to sign it. He was very excited about the premise, wherein the main narrator has his consciousness loaded into a "wafer" that allows his personality and experiences to be plugged into a host body. He acts as a spokesperson who speaks as if the Emperor or the Empress (depending on when the narrator has been activated) and makes the most difficult decisions, often sacrificing thousands or even millions to save millions or billions. He is the one who makes the difficult decisions, acting, in ways, as a sort of god with the fate of the (known) universe in his hands. It's a tough job, but someone's got to do it. And these are not decisions that are made lightly. There is a pathos to the power, with some degree of regret and the haunting of the ghosts of the past that one might expect in such a situation.

But the central conceit of the book allows a broad view of a large universe. It is a rather brilliant mechanism, and one that requires a delicate balance between the vast and the personal.

In what could be a sanitized, clinical exposition on the setting of the Traveller RPG, Marc Miller takes a different tack, posing questions about what one would do if one had uninhibited authority, including the ongoing questions about the needs of the many versus the needs of the few. The humanity here is never lost, with all the attendant good, evil, and indifference that this infers.

I don't have time to go into details of Miller's Traveller universe. Suffice it to say, it's complex, but does not bury itself under details. There are nuances in the book that I had not expected from the source materials of the original game. For instance, there is the "problem" of the Zhodani, a human race that has embraced the use of psionics to the point where honesty is the only policy that makes sense in their culture. It is often compared to a pure communist system (Marc confirmed this to me directly in a conversation we had once). But here, there is a textured cultural take on a small sliver of Zhodani society showing both the diversity that is possible in a society where there are no lies and all thoughts are transparent, while simultaneously showing the impossibility of such a society understanding a culture that dissembles, deceives, and lies (i.e., the rest of Humaniti).

I'm glad I'm familiar with the Traveller universe. Yes, I could read this without it and still understand what's happening, but having been steeped in the lore for over 40 years now, I have a much clearer understanding of the impact of the events being portrayed here. But this should not stop the reader who has never played the game. The novel stands on its own feet. But if you'd like to know more, to engage in the actual ongoing creation of the setting, there's always the roleplaying game. Such is the creative magic of RPGs!

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Ossuary of Dreams: Twenty-Five Tales of German Horror and Weird Fiction

 

Ossuary of Dreams: Twenty-Five Tales of German Horror and Weird Fiction by Robert Grains
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

My kids are great. They're all adults now, so to call them "kids" feels a little disingenuous. But my kids are great (and my wife and grandkids, too, I must add).

"So why," you are likely asking yourself "are you leading off a review of a collection of weird horror fiction with 'My kids are great'."? Well, here's the deal. At around Christmas time, I do a bunch of massaging to my Amazon wishlist. Before you go ballistic, I try to order my books direct from publishers or, even better, directly from authors, so get off your high-horse for a second. I keep that Amazon wishlist to help my kids with Christmas shopping for dear old dad. One of the biggest issues with this is a recency-bias. If I see something new and shiny and it's getting near Christmas, I add it to my wishlist.

Such was the case with Ossuary of Dreams. I don't remember why I added it to my list last minute, but I did. Maybe it was the cool title or the even cooler font on the cover (no seriously, I live that font), or maybe I read a review about it that impressed me . . . I don't know. But, added it, I did.

So, this might be a sort of apologia to my daughter, who bought me the book. Kiddo, I really do appreciate the gift. It means a lot to me . . .

But I gotta give this one two stars.

The collection had its high points.

I found "A Walk in the Morning" to be a highly effective story.

There are echoes of Dhalgren in Grains hurtling-toward-the-collapse story "Our City at Night," but with a strong injection of occult forces. Here, I found that I prefer Grains at longer word counts. It gives his voice needed breathing space and makes the flourishes more emphatic and impactful.

I rather liked the unfolding-apocalypse (with a dream-time glimpse into the pyrrhic acknowledgment of respect to the lone survivor, imparted by the new God of this world) portrayed in "The Golden Age". I, for one, embrace the arrival of our robot overlords. This was an effective story, paced perfectly, with an air of reverent restraint that fit the tale to a tee. Well-played, not-quite-terminator.

"The Portraits of the Baron," the second-longest work in this collection, was, admittedly, very enjoyable. I loved the deep dives of esotericism here and the ending, while predictable, was satisfactory and held an ironic twist. This is the strongest work in the book.

"Metamorphosis" is an apocalyptic horror story somewhere between Clark Ashton Smith and China Mieville, wherein the narrator embraces the inevitability of change on the cosmic level, accepting fate with a philosophically stoic attitude that masks the shock of an undeserved fate of extreme horror.

So, there was something to like the collection. But, as Stepan Chapman used to say, there's also "something for everyone to hate".

I didn't hate most of the other stories. They ranged from "meh" to "I want to lem this book," but few of them went to the extreme of me wanting to do physical harm to the actual object. I reserve most of that hatred for one book in particular, which I'd like to see burned off the face of literary history. So, I didn't hate any of them that much. But there were some in there that I just kind of wanted to punch in the mouth.

I think that there are two fundamental problems, for me, with the work. First, the absolute fascination, nay, worship of overwrought and just plain faulty description drove me batty.

For example:

. . . a rumbling like from a squadron of unleashed poltergeists in the entablature.

This phrase has so many problems, I can't even begin to enumerate them. Well, maybe I can, but I really don't want to. Suffice it to say that I have more questions than answers about what is happening here.

Unfortunately, this was not an isolated incident.

Secondly, the overuse and downright abuse of adverbs had my inner editor clawing at my innards the whole way through. I honestly wanted to scream at times. Instead, I sighed heavily (I wince at having used an adverb here - is there no escape?!?) so I wouldn't wake up my wife. the "ly" ending now makes me twitch whenever I see it, like an abused puppy. It's going to take a while before I can see it without twitching.

Finally, I think that while the translation is mostly very good, you can also tell, in places, that it is a translation. I speak conversational German, and I know how convoluted German sentences can get. I don't envy anyone translating such a work of purple prose from German to English. The effort was good, but it is inevitable that there are some hiccups, and given the often awkward phraseology, they really show.

Had this been my first weird fiction rodeo, and had I read this, say, thirty years ago, I might have felt differently. But I can't, in good conscience, say anything beyond "it was ok," hence the two stars.

As always, your mileage may vary.

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Garycon 2025 Rogues Gallery

 

As you can probably tell by my paucity of posts, life has been very, very busy. Particularly with my day job because, well, screw Trump and his lack of actual economic and diplomatic policy. Tariffs are taking a stupid toll on those of us who work in procurement and supply chain. Yeah.

Despite all the intentional chaos our unhinged government is creating, I was able to get to Garycon this spring. Now, not all cons are absolutely amazing. And this Garycon was only amazing because I was able to see an old friend I haven't seen since high school. 38 years later, we were able to get together and hang out a little bit. Man, that felt good. I don't have a ton of contact with people I went to high school with, both because I am avoiding most social media and because I graduated from a small Department of Defense school in England. Upon graduating, we all spread to the four winds. So, the best part of Garycon was seeing my old friend. He'll be coming back next year, too, for which I am very, very grateful.

But this Garycon was . . . well, it was fine. But nothing spectacular. Of course, I had a great time and played in some great games, but outside of one particularly great DCC game (thank you, Julian Bernick), the games were . . . alright. Nevertheless, I'm trying to make it a habit to show the many faces I wore as a player, so here we go.

First off, you'll notice that two of my characters have the same name: Dweezel Space Jesus. I think that's going to be my default name for any DCC/MCC character I play at conventions. It fits the mood of DCC and it's easy to remember. Of the two Dweezel Space Jesii that I played, the elven sage in the lower left hand corner of the photo above was my favorite. This was the one I played in Julian Bernick's outstanding adventure "Expedition to Yuggoth," which is just what the label says, a 4th level DCC adventure to Yuggoth, home of Mi-Go, gigantic automata, and other nasties whose names Chaosium has copyrighted (they'll probably sue me for using the terms "Yuggoth" and "Mi-Go," but whatevs). As is usual with one of Julian's adventures, all descended into chaos rather quickly, which is just what I had hoped for. I think Julian exhudes some kind of spiritual force field that drives players insane in his presence. It's a wonderful gift, and I enjoyed it, especially the part where the party cleric was able to charm some Mi-Go into going back and killing off a party of mercenary lizard men who tried to rip us off as we were busy stealing - uh, I mean "transporting" - some . . . goods from the planet. We had trapped them in a building so we could off with the goods, and encountering the Mi-Go and being able to charm them just as we were getting ready to jump off-planet was a godsend. And by "God" I mean the Elder Gods, of course.

Here's our intrepid party of adventurers. Notice the lady in the back trying to sneak up on us and backstab:

Speaking of Chaosium, I played in two Call of Cthulhu games, one put on by the awesome guys at You Too Can Cthulhu, and another put on by the awesome guys at Court of Cthulhu. Both were great, mysteries were had, people died in grisly ways or sold their souls for their own personal gain. Call of Cthulhu always brings out the best in people.

I also played in a Traveller game where we had to infiltrate a red zone planet and find a Zhodani spy. Good times were had by all except the Zhodani spy and one of our party members who, if I remember correctly, lost a good chunk of their face. Important safety note: If you get in combat in Traveller, you've made a grave error. That system is deadly.

Last of all on the roleplaying front, I played the newest incarnation of a Conan RPG, Conan: The Hyborian Age. It's an interesting system with additive dice rolls and well-differentiated classes. I always like to play at least one game I've never played before at a con, and this was it this time. Good game. I'd play it again.

With every con, I try to get into at least one miniatures game, as well. I can't afford to buy all the minis in the world, so I pay good money to rent them at cons. This year, I played Legions of the Petal Throne for the third year in a row. I splurged and bought the rulebook, as well. It's way out of print and bloody expensive, but sometimes you just have to bite the bullet.

Here's a little chunk of my army ready to charge, then in the midst of the final battle. Yon Koryani won. This felt like vindication after the horrific loss I suffered last year!

And this year, I played in two miniatures games. The second was Pulp Alley: The Lost World of Lemuria. It was a little more complex than I like in my mini games, but it was fun, nonetheless. Here are a few of my thugs in action:

So, good times had, as usual. Not quite as spectacular as, say, Gameholecon last year (where I played in one of the coolest adventures I've ever played in, to be honest). But going to Garycon is always great. I'll be there as long as I'm on two feet and breathing.

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If you like my writing and want to help my creative endeavors, ko-fi me at https://ko-fi.com/forrestaguirre. Every little bit is seen and appreciated! Thank you!