A new Magpie Games Apocalypse Megabundle presenting a diverse abundance of Powered by the Apocalypse tabletop roleplaying games from Magpie Games.
Bundle of Holding: Magpie Apocalypse MEGA
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A new Magpie Games Apocalypse Megabundle presenting a diverse abundance of Powered by the Apocalypse tabletop roleplaying games from Magpie Games.
Bundle of Holding: Magpie Apocalypse MEGA
First contact as conducted by two groups of field researchers, both of whom want to observe the other without being observed.
Everything about the Boy excited Terry; the Boy's good looks, the Boy's appealingly mod fashion sense, and especially his pointy, pointy teeth.
The Shiny Narrow Grin by Jane Gaskell
Strategies range from paraterraforming to radical cybernetic transformation...
Five Stories About Surviving and Adapting on Mars
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An all-too diligent FBI agent must be silenced... but there's no reason he cannot serve SCIENCE! as well.
The Silicon Man by Charles Platt
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Tsukiko entertains her former high school teacher with an extraordinary tale.
Parade by Hiromi Kawakami
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(![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
james_davis_nicoll Mar. 24th, 2026 11:30 am)
james_davis_nicoll Mar. 24th, 2026 11:30 am)
Telling the truth can make you unpopular... or put you into real peril.
Five Stories About the Dangerous Business of Truth-Telling
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(james_davis_nicoll Mar. 24th, 2026 08:57 am)
james_davis_nicoll Mar. 24th, 2026 08:57 am)
A brief guide to creating plausible planets.
How to Build a Planet by Poul Anderson & Stephen L. Gillett
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This is more partial even than usual, because I've had some download problems that I've since fixed. But we can let that filter out to the second quarter; time waits for etc. etc.
This Is Not a Love Poem, Alexandra Dawson (Reckoning)
I Met You On the Train, J. R. Dawson (Uncanny)
The Doorkeepers, A. T. Greenblatt (Uncanny)
Unsettled Nature, Jordan Kurella (Apex)
Straw Gold, Mari Ness (Small Wonders)
No Kings/No Soldiers, A.M. Tuomala (Uncanny)
Blade Through the Heart, Carrie Vaughn (Reactor)
Antediluvian, Rem Wigmore (Reckoning)
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I've started writing my own viewpoint on the loss of CBS Radio News, but haven't gotten very far. The post below is from Jim Bartlett, another former radio guy, who says much of it in a way that I like, and maybe youwill too.
The Last Roundup
On March 23, 2026 By jb
It made waves within the broadcasting industry late last week, but I don’t know if it’s broken though everywhere yet: CBS News has decided to shut down its radio service effective in May. Editor-in-chief Bari Weiss issued a memo claiming that attempts were made to save the service even before she came aboard last winter, but it was all for naught.
Is that true? It could be, I suppose, although if Paramount Global were serious about preserving anything about CBS News, it wouldn’t have hired Weiss to begin with. She isn’t qualified to lead such an organization. Bari Weiss is a blogger, with less broadcast journalism experience than I have. (I ripped copy from the AP wires, called the local sheriff’s departments for their overnight reports, and assembled and delivered actual newscasts, which is more than she’s ever done. Which Paramount may see as a feature, not a bug.) If, in addition to Trumpifying CBS News, Paramount Global wanted simply to lessen the amount of information available to Americans, they’d do exactly what they did with CBS Radio.
CBS Radio was more than just the radio arm of CBS: it was the inventor of broadcast journalism. The first CBS World News Roundup aired in March 1938, in response to Germany’s threatened annexation of Austria, anchored by Robert Trout and featuring reports via shortwave from correspondents in Europe including Edward R. Murrow and William Shirer. Roundup has continued to air weekday mornings at 7AM Central; an evening edition, which is often considered to have been born after the Pearl Harbor attack on December 7, 1941, aired for the last time last December. Initial reports about the shutdown last week indicated that it’s not clear what will become of the vast CBS audio archive. If we lived in rational times, it would be donated to a museum or university, but today it’s just as likely that the whole damn works will end up in a landfill.
CBS Radio was a large part of my life as listener. Decades ago, as a young radio jock working oddball shifts, I often did not want to hear music on my way to and from work. So I often listened to WBBM, the all-news station from Chicago, which was at the time owned and operated by CBS. (CBS spun off its radio stations to Audacy in 2017 but continued to operate the radio news service.) The anchors and reporters on WBBM and CBS became as familiar to me as the Top 40 personalities I’d grown up with. I’ve written before how during the summer I worked the rock-and-roll night shift, I would listen to WBBM overnight anchor Millard Hansen (a legendary personality in his own right) on my way home. I could tell what time it was by what was playing on the radio during the midnight hour, and often where I was on the highway, so precise was the station’s schedule. The CBS top-of-the-hour news sounder became as familiar as the weather.
Richard C. Hottelet was the last working member of the “Murrow Boys,” the reporters hired to cover World War II for CBS by Ed Murrow. He filed the first eyewitness reports from Omaha Beach on D-Day, and he worked for CBS until 1985. (He died in 2014 at the age of 97). For many years, he anchored the noon Eastern time CBS radio newscast. A friend of mine tells a story about being at his station’s control board one day for Hottelet’s newscast when the CBS sounder sounded … and then nothing. Just silence. “I was torn,” my friend said, “between putting something else on the air myself and wanting to hear what would happen next.” As it turned out, Hottelet was only a few seconds late, but even that was unusual for the well-oiled machine that was CBS Radio News in its heyday.
It has been many, many years since I would routinely turn on the radio at the top of the hour to catch up with CBS News. The big wheel has rolled, and we have different ways of getting information now, and different priorities. But as an old radio guy who believes in the medium’s service responsibility, I find the death of CBS Radio News a hard thing to take. Radio stations by the thousands have abdicated that service responsibility, but something like 700 stations around the country have continued to meet it with the help of CBS Radio. This week they’re left scrambling to figure out what to do now, and some will likely decide it no longer matters to do anything at all.
The Last Roundup
On March 23, 2026 By jb
It made waves within the broadcasting industry late last week, but I don’t know if it’s broken though everywhere yet: CBS News has decided to shut down its radio service effective in May. Editor-in-chief Bari Weiss issued a memo claiming that attempts were made to save the service even before she came aboard last winter, but it was all for naught.
Is that true? It could be, I suppose, although if Paramount Global were serious about preserving anything about CBS News, it wouldn’t have hired Weiss to begin with. She isn’t qualified to lead such an organization. Bari Weiss is a blogger, with less broadcast journalism experience than I have. (I ripped copy from the AP wires, called the local sheriff’s departments for their overnight reports, and assembled and delivered actual newscasts, which is more than she’s ever done. Which Paramount may see as a feature, not a bug.) If, in addition to Trumpifying CBS News, Paramount Global wanted simply to lessen the amount of information available to Americans, they’d do exactly what they did with CBS Radio.
CBS Radio was more than just the radio arm of CBS: it was the inventor of broadcast journalism. The first CBS World News Roundup aired in March 1938, in response to Germany’s threatened annexation of Austria, anchored by Robert Trout and featuring reports via shortwave from correspondents in Europe including Edward R. Murrow and William Shirer. Roundup has continued to air weekday mornings at 7AM Central; an evening edition, which is often considered to have been born after the Pearl Harbor attack on December 7, 1941, aired for the last time last December. Initial reports about the shutdown last week indicated that it’s not clear what will become of the vast CBS audio archive. If we lived in rational times, it would be donated to a museum or university, but today it’s just as likely that the whole damn works will end up in a landfill.
CBS Radio was a large part of my life as listener. Decades ago, as a young radio jock working oddball shifts, I often did not want to hear music on my way to and from work. So I often listened to WBBM, the all-news station from Chicago, which was at the time owned and operated by CBS. (CBS spun off its radio stations to Audacy in 2017 but continued to operate the radio news service.) The anchors and reporters on WBBM and CBS became as familiar to me as the Top 40 personalities I’d grown up with. I’ve written before how during the summer I worked the rock-and-roll night shift, I would listen to WBBM overnight anchor Millard Hansen (a legendary personality in his own right) on my way home. I could tell what time it was by what was playing on the radio during the midnight hour, and often where I was on the highway, so precise was the station’s schedule. The CBS top-of-the-hour news sounder became as familiar as the weather.
Richard C. Hottelet was the last working member of the “Murrow Boys,” the reporters hired to cover World War II for CBS by Ed Murrow. He filed the first eyewitness reports from Omaha Beach on D-Day, and he worked for CBS until 1985. (He died in 2014 at the age of 97). For many years, he anchored the noon Eastern time CBS radio newscast. A friend of mine tells a story about being at his station’s control board one day for Hottelet’s newscast when the CBS sounder sounded … and then nothing. Just silence. “I was torn,” my friend said, “between putting something else on the air myself and wanting to hear what would happen next.” As it turned out, Hottelet was only a few seconds late, but even that was unusual for the well-oiled machine that was CBS Radio News in its heyday.
It has been many, many years since I would routinely turn on the radio at the top of the hour to catch up with CBS News. The big wheel has rolled, and we have different ways of getting information now, and different priorities. But as an old radio guy who believes in the medium’s service responsibility, I find the death of CBS Radio News a hard thing to take. Radio stations by the thousands have abdicated that service responsibility, but something like 700 stations around the country have continued to meet it with the help of CBS Radio. This week they’re left scrambling to figure out what to do now, and some will likely decide it no longer matters to do anything at all.
The 2024 Second Edition of Onyx Path Publishing's Scion, the tabletop roleplaying game about the children of gods discovering their birthright in the modern world.
Bundle of Holding: Scion Origin
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Sunday book summaries are my casual log of what I’ve been reading this week. These are not formal reviews. They’re more my reactions and musings as taken from my journal when I complete the reading, and at times will contain notes about how they influence my thoughts on what I’m writing.
I’ve had some issues with sleep and back pain this last week, so you get a week’s worth of writing this time.
First off is a reread of a book which has had a significant influence on my life with horses—Alois Podhajsky’s My Horses, My Teachers. This book is Podhajsky’s memoir about specific horses that he recalls very well, along with a dose of his horse training philosophy, crowned with the simple phrase—“I have time.”
This book was my introduction to the world of dressage. Until then, considering the time (early 1970s) and the location (south Willamette Valley), and my lack of exposure to any professional training or schooling, my best resources had been writers like Margaret Cabell Self and the Western Horseman magazine. Most nonfiction horse books available either in the school library or the Springfield Public Library were either generalist or specifically Western-focused. I was wrestling with a difficult mare to train and handle, and Podhajsky gave me some useful insights that have carried over to my attitude toward training horses. Besides “I have time,” his assessment of how he needed to change up his training based on the differing temperaments of the horses he worked with made me realize early on that “one size fits all” absolutely did not work for horse training. As a result, I learned some techniques that later served me well with my Mocha mare and now with my Marker boy. These days I also have a little thrill when I recognize significant names in dressage, such as General DeCarpentry. I didn’t know who he was back in the day, but now….
Next up is a read inspired by my past reading of Starry and Restless, Emily Hahn’s The Soong Sisters. Alas, it was a bit disappointing (not surprising, given the history of the book as related in Starry and Restless). While there are some good insights about the nature of China in the era of pre-World War Two and the early days of the war, there are a lot of passages taken from writings by the sisters’ husbands. No doubt these three ladies had a significant influence on Chinese political development, not only given who they were married to (Sun Yat-Sen, Chiang Kai-shek) but the role each woman played behind the scenes. I had expected a little more, but still…on the other hand, I’ll be checking out other Hahn writings. She wrote this at a fraught time in her life (a fraught moment in a life full of them) and it was a piece pushed out quickly.
Do Admit by Mimi Pond was a fun read, being a graphic book interpretation of the history of the Mitford sisters. The cartooning style works very well for this particular history, and Pond’s callback to not just Charles Addams-style drawings but the stylings of assorted political graphics of the era adds depth to the history. Not just that but Pond made it a fun read, plus she picked up on some additional historical pieces that I hadn’t seen elsewhere. Definitely worth checking out!
Then there’s the reading inspired by a social media exchange about women reading Sword and Sorcery fiction with one writer who, frankly, looking at the credentials she has in her bio, should probably not be making broad statements moaning about the lack of female presence in S&S and the lack of female writers just yet in her career. I pulled out Joanna Russ’s The Adventures of Alyx, where the title character—female—goes on assorted adventures, eventually getting pulled into a science fictional time travel story. But before then…Alyx is a pick-lock, and has multiple adventures (including sexual escapades). There’s a shoutout to Fritz Leiber and his character Fafhrd which is somewhat amusing since he’s one of her conquests but she can’t remember whether his name is Fafnir or Fafhrd but she definitely has fond memories of him.
Even better, the Suck Fairy hasn’t visited Alyx, which is rather nice to encounter. Alyx is witty, fun, and a quick study when it comes to interesting magical stuff.
Finally, a wee bit of a rant. I picked up a historical romance set in the late nineteenth/early twentieth century that was published in 1987, Fionna’s Will, by Lana McGraw Boldt. And oh, oh, dear. I had originally read it back in that era—it was published by a big mass market paperback company (though that wasn’t all they did), and it has a few nice but positive ratings (which are on the old side). But. Oh, oh, dear. Speaking of the Suck Fairy….
Don’t get me wrong. Mc Graw Boldt possesses a good command of language and the book is eminently readable from that respect. I did spot some typos but that’s normal.
However.
I wasn’t too far in before my developmental editing/beta reading fingers started itching, BAD. The book is a product of its era in many ways, including the sprawl of character arcs and story threads that…sigh. Could have been written tighter or had scenes/threads cut entirely. Look, I like me a nice twisty plot, and Fionna’s Will definitely has that. I like strong-willed female characters who Do Stuff, and Fionna’s Will has piles of that happening. One of the major plots involves Fionna’s love and relationships with two men, simultaneously, and that’s a bit spicy and fun.
All sorts of fun juicy stuff, BUT.
The book is thin when it comes to crucial elements, while suffering from bloat—482 pages in mass market paperback format, and even though it’s a fast read, it’s a LOT. The characters are a mile wide and an inch deep, plus Fionna comes off as the more-than-competent Mary Sue character. Oh, she’s interesting enough, no question about it. She goes through a lot. But she is so. darn. competent in an over-the-top way. She manages to juggle babies by different men in such a way that the man she eventually marries never finds out that the boy he thinks is his eldest surviving son…isn’t. How that works out significantly impacts my willing suspension of belief.
Gotta say, though, I like that Fionna’s an abolitionist, helped slaves on the Underground Railroad, and possessed fairly enlightened attitudes for the time. All the same….
Then there’s the nice neat way where all the loose threads end up tying together. At one point I was thinking dear God, why doesn’t she just put up a sign saying that dang near every incidental encounter is a Chekov’s Gun scenario? So many pat endings to walk-on characters that don’t really add any significance to the story. SO SO MANY.
Plus the utterly unrealistic description of a nineteenth century wise woman/herbalist/midwife stopping bleeding from a miscarriage in…arrgh, let’s just say that if I had been the editor, it’s one piece that would have been cut. It didn’t advance the plot to go into the graphic detail that had nothing to do with how female biology works in real life (shoving a fist up the vaginal channel to stop excess bleeding??? Huh???). We’d already seen the impact of the miscarriage on the characters. It wasn’t needed. That piece was just…I have to wonder if a male editor insisted upon it, OR SOMETHING.
As I said before, however, the book is a product of its time. I can think of other historical romances that I read back then that were equally as thick, and if I revisited them, probably have even greater Suck Fairy visitations. This was one of the best stories of its time—I thought so then and I doubt my impressions have changed. If I stumble across them in a freebie situation, I’d probably reread them.
However. Beverly Jenkins and Courtney Milan (to name two of my favorites) do it better these days, with the same degree of period-appropriate enlightened attitudes that appeal to the modern reader, with tighter plotting and pacing, much leaner prose, and deeper characterization.
Still, I don’t regret the reread. Working my way through some other books, and waiting for the latest library ebook holds to be ready. Might be one week for the next book summary, might not. Got stuff happening, so…that’s it for now.
If you like what you’ve read, please feel free to check out my books at https://www.joycereynolds-ward.com/books or drop a tip at my Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/joycereynoldsward
I’ve had some issues with sleep and back pain this last week, so you get a week’s worth of writing this time.
First off is a reread of a book which has had a significant influence on my life with horses—Alois Podhajsky’s My Horses, My Teachers. This book is Podhajsky’s memoir about specific horses that he recalls very well, along with a dose of his horse training philosophy, crowned with the simple phrase—“I have time.”
This book was my introduction to the world of dressage. Until then, considering the time (early 1970s) and the location (south Willamette Valley), and my lack of exposure to any professional training or schooling, my best resources had been writers like Margaret Cabell Self and the Western Horseman magazine. Most nonfiction horse books available either in the school library or the Springfield Public Library were either generalist or specifically Western-focused. I was wrestling with a difficult mare to train and handle, and Podhajsky gave me some useful insights that have carried over to my attitude toward training horses. Besides “I have time,” his assessment of how he needed to change up his training based on the differing temperaments of the horses he worked with made me realize early on that “one size fits all” absolutely did not work for horse training. As a result, I learned some techniques that later served me well with my Mocha mare and now with my Marker boy. These days I also have a little thrill when I recognize significant names in dressage, such as General DeCarpentry. I didn’t know who he was back in the day, but now….
Next up is a read inspired by my past reading of Starry and Restless, Emily Hahn’s The Soong Sisters. Alas, it was a bit disappointing (not surprising, given the history of the book as related in Starry and Restless). While there are some good insights about the nature of China in the era of pre-World War Two and the early days of the war, there are a lot of passages taken from writings by the sisters’ husbands. No doubt these three ladies had a significant influence on Chinese political development, not only given who they were married to (Sun Yat-Sen, Chiang Kai-shek) but the role each woman played behind the scenes. I had expected a little more, but still…on the other hand, I’ll be checking out other Hahn writings. She wrote this at a fraught time in her life (a fraught moment in a life full of them) and it was a piece pushed out quickly.
Do Admit by Mimi Pond was a fun read, being a graphic book interpretation of the history of the Mitford sisters. The cartooning style works very well for this particular history, and Pond’s callback to not just Charles Addams-style drawings but the stylings of assorted political graphics of the era adds depth to the history. Not just that but Pond made it a fun read, plus she picked up on some additional historical pieces that I hadn’t seen elsewhere. Definitely worth checking out!
Then there’s the reading inspired by a social media exchange about women reading Sword and Sorcery fiction with one writer who, frankly, looking at the credentials she has in her bio, should probably not be making broad statements moaning about the lack of female presence in S&S and the lack of female writers just yet in her career. I pulled out Joanna Russ’s The Adventures of Alyx, where the title character—female—goes on assorted adventures, eventually getting pulled into a science fictional time travel story. But before then…Alyx is a pick-lock, and has multiple adventures (including sexual escapades). There’s a shoutout to Fritz Leiber and his character Fafhrd which is somewhat amusing since he’s one of her conquests but she can’t remember whether his name is Fafnir or Fafhrd but she definitely has fond memories of him.
Even better, the Suck Fairy hasn’t visited Alyx, which is rather nice to encounter. Alyx is witty, fun, and a quick study when it comes to interesting magical stuff.
Finally, a wee bit of a rant. I picked up a historical romance set in the late nineteenth/early twentieth century that was published in 1987, Fionna’s Will, by Lana McGraw Boldt. And oh, oh, dear. I had originally read it back in that era—it was published by a big mass market paperback company (though that wasn’t all they did), and it has a few nice but positive ratings (which are on the old side). But. Oh, oh, dear. Speaking of the Suck Fairy….
Don’t get me wrong. Mc Graw Boldt possesses a good command of language and the book is eminently readable from that respect. I did spot some typos but that’s normal.
However.
I wasn’t too far in before my developmental editing/beta reading fingers started itching, BAD. The book is a product of its era in many ways, including the sprawl of character arcs and story threads that…sigh. Could have been written tighter or had scenes/threads cut entirely. Look, I like me a nice twisty plot, and Fionna’s Will definitely has that. I like strong-willed female characters who Do Stuff, and Fionna’s Will has piles of that happening. One of the major plots involves Fionna’s love and relationships with two men, simultaneously, and that’s a bit spicy and fun.
All sorts of fun juicy stuff, BUT.
The book is thin when it comes to crucial elements, while suffering from bloat—482 pages in mass market paperback format, and even though it’s a fast read, it’s a LOT. The characters are a mile wide and an inch deep, plus Fionna comes off as the more-than-competent Mary Sue character. Oh, she’s interesting enough, no question about it. She goes through a lot. But she is so. darn. competent in an over-the-top way. She manages to juggle babies by different men in such a way that the man she eventually marries never finds out that the boy he thinks is his eldest surviving son…isn’t. How that works out significantly impacts my willing suspension of belief.
Gotta say, though, I like that Fionna’s an abolitionist, helped slaves on the Underground Railroad, and possessed fairly enlightened attitudes for the time. All the same….
Then there’s the nice neat way where all the loose threads end up tying together. At one point I was thinking dear God, why doesn’t she just put up a sign saying that dang near every incidental encounter is a Chekov’s Gun scenario? So many pat endings to walk-on characters that don’t really add any significance to the story. SO SO MANY.
Plus the utterly unrealistic description of a nineteenth century wise woman/herbalist/midwife stopping bleeding from a miscarriage in…arrgh, let’s just say that if I had been the editor, it’s one piece that would have been cut. It didn’t advance the plot to go into the graphic detail that had nothing to do with how female biology works in real life (shoving a fist up the vaginal channel to stop excess bleeding??? Huh???). We’d already seen the impact of the miscarriage on the characters. It wasn’t needed. That piece was just…I have to wonder if a male editor insisted upon it, OR SOMETHING.
As I said before, however, the book is a product of its time. I can think of other historical romances that I read back then that were equally as thick, and if I revisited them, probably have even greater Suck Fairy visitations. This was one of the best stories of its time—I thought so then and I doubt my impressions have changed. If I stumble across them in a freebie situation, I’d probably reread them.
However. Beverly Jenkins and Courtney Milan (to name two of my favorites) do it better these days, with the same degree of period-appropriate enlightened attitudes that appeal to the modern reader, with tighter plotting and pacing, much leaner prose, and deeper characterization.
Still, I don’t regret the reread. Working my way through some other books, and waiting for the latest library ebook holds to be ready. Might be one week for the next book summary, might not. Got stuff happening, so…that’s it for now.
If you like what you’ve read, please feel free to check out my books at https://www.joycereynolds-ward.com/books or drop a tip at my Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/joycereynoldsward
One determined man struggles to save humanity from the mutant scheme to avert doomsday.
Ring Around the Sun by Clifford D. Simak
13 books new to me, and save for one mystery, all fantasy. Man, fantasy is just eating SF's lunch. Not that that will be reflected in what I actually review.
Books Received, March 14 — March 20
Poll #34393 Books Received, March 14 — March 20
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 41
Which of these look interesting?
View Answers
The Siren by Tomi Adeyemi (October 2026)
8 (19.5%)
Twined Fates: Tangled Hearts, Book Three by K. Bromberg (October 2026)
0 (0.0%)
Light of the Song by Joyce Ch’Ng (September 2025)
9 (22.0%)
The First Flame by Lily Berlin Dodd (November 2026)
1 (2.4%)
A Destiny So Cruel by Amanda Foody & C. L. Herman (November 2026)
1 (2.4%)
Find Me Where It Ends by Cassandra Khaw (October 2026)
12 (29.3%)
Bad Company by Sara Paretsky (November 2026)
7 (17.1%)
The Kings’ List by Jade Presley (May 2026)
2 (4.9%)
My Unfamiliar by Mara Rutherford (December 2026)
8 (19.5%)
Ghosted by Talia Tucker (November 2026)
3 (7.3%)
The Mystic and the Missing Girl by Vikki Vansickle (September 2026)
6 (14.6%)
The Scarlet Ball by Nghi Vo (October 2026)
13 (31.7%)
Chosen Son by Adrienne Young (November 2026)
2 (4.9%)
Some other option (see comments)
0 (0.0%)
Cats!
32 (78.0%)
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If you love dice-rolling and superheroes, you're in for a treat...
Four New Superhero RPGs to Watch Out For
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John Maraintha wanted to rebuild his life. Instead, he was marooned on a backwater world in the middle of a first contact crisis.
What We Are Seeking by Cameron Reed
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Would it be possible to "Wrongfully Attributed" added to my entry?
.