Archive
Starburst Magazine Issue 490!
It’s another Star Wars issue, and Starburst’s long relationship with the Galaxy Far Far Away continues. The Revenge of The Sith 20th Anniversary issue let us have council of contributors, include Abigail Thorn and Force Majeure‘s very own Adam. Everything from toys to burlesque. There’s also a smashing feature on The Murderbot Diaries and so much more. It’s a great issue. (I always say that.)
My main thing for the print magazine is books and games, so it was a delight to get to talk to the Mantic Games team about Halo Flashpoint, and I love the pun title of the piece ‘ Say Halo To My Little Friends ‘. (So much so that I couldn’t help but show it off to the Mantic Team when I visited them at UKGE. ) My Brave New Words column was a pick of cool new books, include Ben Aaronovitch’s latest, Stone and Sky . Emily Tesh’s The Incandescent, Aliya Whiteley’s Three Eight One and I couldn’t resist taking a look at Critical Role spin off book, Tusk Love. There’s more, you should read the whole column.
Roll for Damage covered the UK’s amazing miniatures scene. Obviously we talked a bit about Games Workshop, but shout outs also included Bad Squiddo, Warp Miniatures, Crooked Dice, Loke Battlemats and so much more.
As always, you can buy the latest issue here.
Starburst Magazine Issue 489!
It’s that time again, and issue 489 of Starburst Magazine puts it’s heart on it’s sleeve by having a memorial cover for David Lynch. Suffice to say that Lynch had a massive influence on movies, and the Starburst crew takes the passing of this titan of cinema very seriously.
It’s a great issue, of course. In addition to a comprehensive and quality feature on David Lynch and his works, we also get a 70th Anniversary special on the Muppets. It’s really good.
My bits include a smashing interview with Bionic Man, V and Alien Nation TV Series creator Kenneth Johnson. I interviewed Kenneth on the eve of the US election, so it was a very interesting (and slightly tense) chat. A lot of the best stuff made it into the issue. Fascinating chap.
We also have tenth anniversary look at Critical Role. This is peppered with comments from the likes of Ginny Di, Liv Kennedy, Jasper Cartwright and Professor MacCallum-Stewart. I hoped to talk to some LA based folk for the piece, but I picked the wrong time to arrange that. It worked out well though.
Brave New Words was mostly about source material style books; movie books etc, and Roll For Damage was filled with some of the most exciting indie games, plus a little bit of commercial stuff like D&D and Games Workshop.
Starburst Magazine Issue 488!
It’s always nice when I get to write about fantasy movies, and issue 488 has a full top 50 feature. The way we do these things that the team pick a handful of favourites and write about them. I got to write about The Seven Voyages of Sinbad and Dungeons and Dragons Honour Among Thieves as well as a few others.
We also have a really solid feature about Kieron Moore’s movie, Secrets of a Wallaby Boy, written by Kris. It’s a fun piece on a fun and bawdy indie movie. (The Guardian didn’t understand it, which is high praise indeed.)
This issue’s Brave New Words column talks about the fun I had Glasgow Worldcon 2024 and a whole host of science fiction and fantasy books. Roll For Damage lets me talk about the Aliens boardgame, space dwarves and a host of fun party games for your christmas present list.
Starburst Magazine Issue 487!
Scary clown on the cover means that this issue all about Terrifier. It’s really not my sort of thing, so unsurprisingly I didn’t help with the cover story. (I love a good horror movie, but the Terrifier moves just aren’t fun or interesting to me. As big a fan as I am of all things genre, even I have limits.
My feature in this issue is called Beyond The Dream Park and talks about all the interactive theater you can find in the UK right. It focuses especially on Lemon Difficult’s Key of Dreams, which is more my speed for horror; I like the mix of the mundane, the mystic and the cosmic. Also, Beyond Dream Park was also the name of one of the first convention panels I ever moderated.
Brave New Words focuses on women writing modern science fiction, from speculative climate fiction to shooty bang explosions in space. Roll for Damage gives Wizkids some love, talks about the end of Fantasy Flight’s X-Wing game and cover’s Gale Force Nine’s Alien’s game, Another Glorious Day in the Corps. We also look at the Darrington Press edition of For The Queen and Bright Eye Game’s storytelling game, The Plot Thickens.
Starburst Magazine Issue 486!
I’m a sucker for the Alien franchise. (Fun fact, the Alien on the cover isn’t the one from Romulus. The issue came out round about when Romulus came out, but this is from an earlier movie. Because the rights were easier to get. Tricks of the trade and all that.) In addition to a brilliant feature on all things Xenomorph, there’s plenty of coverage of the criminally under-rated Star Wars: The Acolyte. It was fun to work on this issue.
My Roll For Damage column talks about the excellent Star Trek skirmish game, Star Trek Away Missions from Gale Force Nine. I also get to talk about Free League’s Alien RPG. (Sometimes, the column matches the cover. Sometimes.) Brave New Words is about cook books. Seriously, I have so many genre focused cook books, so I have to write about The Game of Scones, Flavours of the Multiverse and of course, Wookie Cookies.
Starburst Magazine Issue 484!
This issue celebrates the 40th anniversary of the Toxic Avenger. (If you don’t know who that is, or what Troma is, blimey you’re in for a very specific treat.) I met Lloyd Kaufman a whole bunch of years ago, fascinating chap. The magazine has covered all things Troma in the past, but it’s nice to revisit themes.
This issue’s Roll For Damage Column is all about Play By Mail, and yes, that includes IT’S A CRIME, a game that was heavily marketed to geeks in the 80s. It was a blast researching this; I recall playing En Garde! as a student and having more fun writing the letters and the like than actually playing the game.
Brave New Words looks at women in horror, Sci-Fi and fantasy, so I get to talk about Jen Williams, Silvia Moreno Garcia, Cassandra Khaw, Kiersten White and whole bunch of other exciting authors.
Features wise, there’s a lovely tribute to works of Terry Pratchett written by myself, specifically his non-fiction and non-Discworld fiction. A lot of this about reprints of his earlier work, many of which are fascinating in terms of seeing how his work evolved.
Finally we have a piece called What They Did In Shadows, which talks about the Stranger Things stage play, First Shadow. It’s an amazing show (go see it while you can), It was an interesting set of interviews to do, and as always I asked some standard ‘silly’ questions that didn’t go into the feature but let me gauge tone and clarity (as well as establishing rapport, to be all mechanical about it.) One of those was ‘Webber or Sondheim’, which one of my standard ‘stagey’ questions, but it did get quite a response from one of the actors, who was surprised I’d compare the two.
Ed Fortune 