‘Ultra Minion’ by Kowalczuk and Czapiewski: Episode Six
Episode six of a dark sci-fi tale by Łukasz Kowalczuk and Maciej Czapiewski. Ultra Minion runs every Friday at We Are the Mutants…
‘Ultra Minion’ by Kowalczuk and Czapiewski: Episode Five
Episode five of a dark sci-fi tale by Łukasz Kowalczuk and Maciej Czapiewski. Ultra Minion runs every Friday at We Are the Mutants…
Games Workshop’s ‘Warlock: The Game of Dueling Wizards’, 1980
When it was first published in 1982 by Puffin Books, the children’s imprint of Penguin Books, copies of adventure gamebook The Warlock of Firetop Mountain came with a bookmark announcing “The Great Warlock of Firetop Mountain Competition.” The book’s authors were Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone, the co-founders of Games Workshop…
Miniaturizing the Monster: Sid Sackson’s ‘Acquire’ and the Capitalist Board Game
By Ben Schwartz
Ultra-prolific board game designer Sid Sackson made his first game when he was six years old; he militarized Uncle Wiggily, a 1916 children’s game based on a series of children’s books. In it, players race from the titular rheumatic-yet-cheerful rabbit’s house to Dr. Possum’s office, for reasons not elaborated upon in any rulebook I can find. It’s cute, in a turn-of-the-century, butterscotchy kind of way—calming, quaint, woefully unbalanced, and entirely luck-based…
From Galaxy Explorer to Galactic Enforcer: The Evolution of Lego Space
By Tom G. Wolf
Few Lego themes have infiltrated the wider public’s consciousness in the same way as Space. A mainstay of the company’s range since the 1970s, Space has captured the imagination of millions of children across multiple generations and made numerous appearances throughout pop culture. Most notable in recent years is the character Benny from The Lego Movie…
‘Ultra Minion’ by Kowalczuk and Czapiewski: Episode Three
Episode three of a dark sci-fi tale by Łukasz Kowalczuk and Maciej Czapiewski. Ultra Minion runs every Friday at We Are the Mutants…
Days of the Dolphin: Cetaceans in Cold War Science and Science Fiction (Part Three)
Dolphins, of course, were not the only cetaceans that were of concern to environmentalists in the ’70s and ’80s. Whales, the victims of a mass, human-engineered extinction since the Age of Sail, were also being studied, the intelligence in their massive brains quantified…
Days of the Dolphin: Cetaceans in Cold War Science and Science Fiction (Part Two)
From the 1960s on, we saw a kaleidoscope of depictions of dolphins and whales in novels, films, and television as wise, immanent intelligences: co-existing on a planet with the rapacious homo sapiens, yet somehow more worldly and wise than the “superior” species…
Usborne’s ‘World of the Unknown: UFO’s’, 1977
The mandate of British publisher Usborne Books was to produce beautifully illustrated children’s publications, designed and written by its in-house team. The first wave of books Usborne released in 1975—which included the popular Spycraft—had sold well, and in 1977 the company followed it up with the World of the Unknown series: a triptych that included Monsters, Ghosts and UFO’s…
“There Is No Advantage to Thinking”: Leon Festinger’s ‘When Prophecy Fails’
By Daniel Cecil
Once people believe something, they want to keep believing it, even if they are presented with incontrovertible evidence that their belief is incorrect. In fact, being confronted with contradictory evidence can make them want to express their questionable belief with even more conviction. In our current perpetually appalling discourse…
‘Ultra Minion’ by Kowalczuk and Czapiewski: Episode Two
Episode two of a dark sci-fi tale by Łukasz Kowalczuk and Maciej Czapiewski. Ultra Minion runs every Friday at We Are the Mutants…
