{"id":42932,"date":"2024-10-15T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-10-15T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/?p=42932"},"modified":"2024-10-08T14:06:32","modified_gmt":"2024-10-08T21:06:32","slug":"flying-saucers-are-real-frostgrave","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/flying-saucers-are-real-frostgrave\/","title":{"rendered":"Flying Saucers Are Real \/ Frostgrave"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Books That Belong On Paper<\/strong>\u00a0first appeared on the web as Wink Books and was edited by Carla Sinclair.<\/em>\u00a0Sign up here<\/a>\u00a0to get the issues a week early in your inbox.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A CATALOGUE AND HISTORY OF ONE OF THE MOST PERVASIVE SUBCULTURES \u2014 UFO BELIEVERS<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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Flying Saucers Are Real<\/em>
by Jack Womack
Anthology Editions
2016, 288 pages, 11.0 x 8.5 x 1.0 inches, Paperback<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Buy on Amazon<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am not that interested in speculation on whether aliens have ever visited the Earth. What I am excited about, however, are all the ways we have imagined them, from the earliest grainy photos of saucer shapes in the sky to the orchestral-minded, big-eyed aliens from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. In the 1950s and 1960s, UFOs became ubiquitous in the pulp magazines and cheap popular paperbacks. With their lurid cover and claims that \u201cFlying Saucers Have Landed,\u201d these publications would set the popular consciousness afire. They also opened up theories of ever sort as to the origins of UFOs and what role the government might play in covering them up. From the hollow Earth, to Mars, to other dimensions, the UFO myth could contain almost any form of conjecture. Jews? Maybe. Men in black? Most certainly. Spiritual avatars leading us to a new age? Let\u2019s hope so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFlying Saucers Are Real\u201d by Jack Womack collects the science fiction author\u2019s personal collection of UFO-related ephemera, and reveals what William Gibson describes in the book\u2019s introduction as the \u201csource code\u201d of the UFO idea that has been programmed into all of us. Womack introduces the popular UFO myth as starting with what is known as the Shaver mystery, the strange tales of Richard Shaver who claimed to have visited the great civilization that lives in the hollows of the earth. Their brethren fled our planet on spaceships, but those left behind\u2014the Dero\u2014seek to kidnap and enslave human beings for the own (usually sexual) means. The editor Ray Palmer published these in \u201cAmazing Stories\u201d in the 1940s, and he would soon go on to make a career of publishing the most garish stories about flying saucers and invading aliens. His magazine \u201cFate\u201d and books like \u201cThe Coming of the Saucers\u201d lead the way for decades to come.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Womack\u2019s collection is startling in its variety: \u201cThe White Sands Incident\u201d by Dr. Daniel Fry in which the authors claims to have been inside flying saucers; \u201cMen From the Moon in America\u201d by W.V. Grant explains that the devil lives on the moon and the space race with the Russians is a race to the power of evil; and \u201cCeto\u2019s New Friends\u201d by Leah Hadley that teaches children not to be afraid if they are ever abducted. Womack\u2019s collection contains book covers with all manner of saucer-shaped craft, amateur drawings of aliens, and those ubiquitous grainy photos. If the images weren\u2019t enough to recommend this book, Womack\u2019s discussion and examination is a smart and funny travelogue through the forest of this wonderful material.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 Peter Bebergal<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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THE POPULAR FANTASY SKIRMISH GAME GETS A DEVILISHLY-GOOD SUPPLEMENT<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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Frostgrave: Forgotten Pacts<\/em>
by Joseph A. McCullough, Dmitry Burmak (Illustrator)
Frostgrave
2016, 64 pages, 7.6 x 0.2 x 9.6 inches, Paperback<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Buy on Amazon<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last year, I had the pleasure of exploring<\/a> \u201cthe Frozen City\u201d of Felstad, aka Frostgrave<\/em>, the ridiculously fun, retro-friendly fantasy miniatures game from Osprey. Designer Joseph McCullogh and Osprey have followed up the highly-successful Frostgrave<\/em> book with a series of excellent supplements. The latest of these is Forgotten Pacts<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Frostgrave<\/em> is a very psycho-geographical game, where the ancient, ruined and magic-saturated city of Felstad is really a central character in the game. One of the things each follow-up book does is shine a light in some new corner of that dark and ruined city. And with that light is also illuminated new stories of the city\u2019s past, new wizard and warband types, new magic, treasures to unearth, and new monstrous adversaries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Forgotten Pacts<\/em> accomplishes two goals in advancing the game and setting of Frostgrave<\/em>. It introduces a new region, the northern reaches of Felstad, and the barbarian tribesmen who have moved down from the hills to plunder and explore there. The book also introduces a new magical discipline for courageous wizards to attempt: demonic summoning using pacts. This region of the city is where demon summoning was de rigor during the city\u2019s heyday and the barbarians have re-rediscovered the art of summoning among the temple ruins and incorporated the practice into their way of life. Venturing into this region, the players\u2019 wizards get the opportunity to find a demon\u2019s True Name (basically an unpronounceable name rendered as a sigil) among the ruins, and with that name, attempt to conjure and make a pact with a demon. These demons can grant all sorts of fabulous advantages to wizards who successfully bind them, but they come at a cost. Players must choose sacrifices that have to be made to the demon for as long as the pact remains between wizard and \u201cextra-planar entity.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Forgotten Pacts<\/em> is done in the same style as the Frostgrave rulebook and features more stunning full-page fantasy art by Frostgrave<\/em> court artist, Dmitry Burmak. The book includes background on the northern region, the barbarian tribes, their magical practices (including demonic tattooing, called Mystic Branding, which grants the wearer certain favors), summoning spells, sacrifices and \u201cboons,\u201d demonic attribute tables (for creating more diverse and colorful entities), and advanced summoning rules for between-game demon dealing. There are also new soldier types, new treasures, and new beasties (including the barbarians). A series of scenarios, some linked, allow you to explore the northern reaches, search for demonic sigils, and battle barbarians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As with the main book and previous supplements, Osprey has teamed with North Star Military Miniatures to create a companion line of plastic and metal miniatures for Forgotten Pacts<\/em>. The boxed set of multi-part barbarian minis<\/a> are compatible with all of the previous boxed sets, giving Frostgrave<\/em> modelers a staggering amount of variety in how they can customize their wizard\u2019s warbands and the city\u2019s dark adversaries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 Gareth Branwyn<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Books That Belong On Paper Issue No. 36<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13684,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[31],"tags":[2398],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42932"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13684"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42932"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42932\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42949,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42932\/revisions\/42949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}