Steampunk Office Suite

Links like this are why you should be reading brassgoggles . . .

Books: Subs, Drow, and Sirius

The Dragon in the Sea by Frank Herbert

A neat little SF submarine warfare tale, rather like Red October with more psychology. The hero is from the psych ops department of the Navy, and is placed aboard a four-man oil-stealing sub to figure out why so many have gone missing lately. Along the way they encounter more problems than, well, than the Red October. (And, like the RO movie, the only female characters appear on the first page and the last. Of course, the bulk of the book is about just those four guys.) Interesting, if a bit fraught, and recommended.

Drow of the Underdark for D&D, by Marmell, Pryor, Schwalb, Vaughan

As opposed to what? Drow of the Mountaintops? Drow of the Fluffy Bunnies? D&D's latest "monsterbook" is about the ebon-skinned, silver-haired, evil elves of the lands underground. While it lacks the imagination of the earlier books on aberrations and undead, it's serviceable, exhaustive, and has some nice crunch. (Some. Not a lot.) Mildly recommended.

(What do you want to bet a certain DEB started contemplating a "Drow of the fluffy bunnies" costume the minute she read that?)

The Sirius Mystery by Robert Temple

A nominally non-fiction book about ancient alien contact. I picked it up a few years ago when I was working on an RPG book proposal related to the Bermuda Triangle, and never got around to reading it until now. I got a few dozen pages in before remembering that I have a very low tolerance for certain kinds of, umm, "untraditional theories" (to be polite), when presented seriously. Just not my cuppa.