Brian Aldiss, Total Environment (1968) **
Grim, pervy dystopia from the era of Star Trek.
Frederik Pohl, The Merchants of Venus (1972) ****
Ancient alien archaeology makes a good tease for the series. I'd read it before, but only just got the Shakespearean pun.
Gene Wolfe, The Death of Doctor Island (1973) ****
I remembered this being a surreal classic, but it was less mind-blowing the second time.
Robert Silverberg, Sailing to Byzantium (1985) ***
Frittering away eternity doesn't sound so bleak to me, though the billennia could start to drag.
The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain: A Fancy for Christmas-Time (1848) ***
More emotionally complex than A Christmas Carol, though not as good. None of them were, predictably, though I'd read The Chimes again. Now I'll have to come up with a new tradition.
Nurse's Stories (1860) ****
A celebration of literature's power to inspire and traumatise kids.
The Bagman's Uncle (1837) ***
Ghosts or time travel, either way fairly mundane.
2000 / PC action roleplaying game / 1-8 players
*****
I thought it would be fun to play a PC game cooperatively with my daughter, using her parents' laptops over a local network, and my knowledge of the medium was so limited that I resorted to this inappropriately scary and relentlessly violent classic. The terror was mitigated by her inexperienced Bowazon having a vigilant Paladin bodyguard who levelled up and hunted for useful items in his spare time when she was at school. You're welcome. If she starts having nightmares about Corpulents regurgitating our bones, it's back to Barbie makeover apps.
2014 / iPad sport/simulator game / 1 player
****
More dynamic and a bit naughtier than her unicorn flight simulator, I knew she'd have fun making messes, knocking people down and blowing shit up in the restricted free trial environment, even if she found some of it creepy.
2024 / DIY deduction card game / 2 players
**
The regular game's a bit wordy for a five year old (even for a thirty-nine year old), but she enjoyed this flawed improv variant of guessing the two Keepers/Creepers on the chosen Goal card, which could be roughly sorted by category and traits that are variably difficult to explain. She insists the 2001 monolith is a phone.
My Little Pony: Tails of Equestria – Melody of the Waves
*****
Maybe even better than the Halloween one, this (relatively) free-roaming adventure on the high (and musical) seas required less advance preparation while also encouraging improvisation as we sailed between various islands and dealt with other diversions according to a five-year-old's whims. We're both players and games masters at this point.
She was also fully on board with the musical aspect, an authentic touch that I hadn't realised had been lacking in previous adventures.
My Little Pony: Tails of Equestria – One Good Turn Deserves Another
**
**
Carcassonne: Bridges, Castles and Bazaars
2010 / Tile placement board game partial expansion / 2-6 players
**
The only appealing part of an otherwise negative-interest expansion set, the pop-out castle tokens were also more amenable to pirating than the usual thick card stock tiles, so we didn't have to miss out on this optional rule for making a two-tile city more attractive, if not much more interesting.
2010 / Cooperative board game / 2-4 players
****
This widely-recommended family-friendly cooperative game was going to end up on the shelf eventually, but it got there a little prematurely when I spotted it for under £10. Still a few years shy of the target age, she got bored as expected, though earlier than hoped, just when the incrementally-rising flood water was getting exciting, but unlucky cards and inexperience would have spelled a soggy defeat anyway.
Hopefully it'll be something we can enjoy together one day (even if it'll still be mainly for me), but for now, the creepy chaos of Atmosfear is her big-kid game of choice.
Knightmare of Equestria
**
You won't find this amateur unauthorised RPG mashup in the shops, or even typed up neatly in a PDF, as it was all scribbled down on a notepad per tradition as my daughter's 5th birthday book. Along with supplementary printed templates to better visualise the perilous honeycomb paths and Corridor of Blades. That's one way to traumatise them into learning their left and right.
With no playtesting or proofreading, it was a little less smooth than I'd imagined, but I left space on the rule pages for inevitable troubleshooting. Keep arriving in the same damned place? Roll again. A descriptive Eyeshield passage is inappropriately scary, even though you wrote it and knew who you were writing it for? Improvise.
Oh well, the notebook's still mostly empty for drawing in, so it wasn't a completely duff present.
1966 / Physical skill game / 2-4 players
***
She's used to ill-advised stretching from her ballet class, so this poses little challenge, until she has to stretch all the way from red to green. That's probably why the box says 6+. Though I notice it's missing an upper age limit, probably somewhere around 32.
2018 / Speed card game / 2-6 players
**
Screen-free Snake, bought for a cheap, unicorn-featuring birthday stuffer. Overlaying transparent cards is a novelty, but we're not into competitive games, she can just let the unicorn out for a leisurely flyabout now and then. She made me be the goblin.