Up a Tree

-For the amusement of weegoddess, an icon based on this news snippet. Share and enjoy.

(Even better would be an animated icon, that slowly panned down from the bear to the cat, but I don't have the time or tools.)

Books: Sword Worlds and Mars

GURPS Traveller: Sword Worlds

-I find it fascinating that the Traveller RPG universe is detailed enough (or, where not already detailed, amenable enough to expansion), that SJGames can produce a 144-page book on one subsector (one-sixteenth of a sector, of which there are there are over a hundred that have been spec'd down to the Universal Planetary Profile level). An interesting read, though I would have thrown some more organization at it. A blocked-out timeline of the various empires that have come and gone in the Sword Worlds would have been nice. (Also, for an SJGames product, the editing wasn't so hot.) Still, recommended to space opera gamers.

The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury

-A classic of the genre, which I admit I hadn't read before. It's Bradbury, so you know what to expect — poetic writing, and a nigh-fetishistic worship of early-20th-century small-town America. A quick read on the topic of how humanity will keep making the same mistakes over and over. Doesn't contain any of my favorite Bradbury stories. Mildly recommended.