Upcoming Short Stories, and My Favorite Books/Games from 2023

Those who do not learn from history will end up trapped in a time loop

Image by Midjourney, all text human-written by me

2023 in review

Last year:

• I wrote two Detective Manse short stories: The Infallible Oracle and the Paperclip Maximizer, each of roughly novella length

• I serialized the novel-length fantasy murder mystery follow-up to the Library of Eristat, The Seven Suitors

• I wrote five sci-fi vignettes interspersed with five written by ChatGPT/GPT-4 trying to copy my writing style, and asked people to guess which were which. I'll post the results in the comments if people are curious: a few people got it perfect, and 9/10 vignettes were evaluated correctly by the majority, which hopefully means I’m staying ahead of the AI wave.

• My most popular story (the Library story) grew from 1K to 8K views, and my subscribers grew from 78 to 378! Excited to be a presence in each of your inboxes, and to find out if this growth is linear or exponential.

Upcoming Short Stories/Writing

1. The next Detective Manse story. There are more eldritch horrors and warped thought experiments out there in the universe, and I have plans to sling metaphors at all of them. I have an outline for an encounter with a classic public domain Lovecraftian horror, and one for the manifestation of another thought experiment that has allegedly driven men to madness.

2. The sequel to The Seven Suitors, in the Library of Eristat continuity. I have a draft complete for the next book, but I want to take a deep re-write before starting to serialize, as I think this helped improve the last book a lot.
   
   I plan to start serializing it weekly once the whole thing is ready, but would also be open to figuring out a simultaneous e-book release or something if people want it badly enough or prefer more reading options.

3. I have some additional stand-alone short stories backlogged, follow-ups to other stories I mentioned last year, and board game strategy simulations I want to try. But since 90% of you subscribed for #1 and #2 above, I'll probably focus my energy on those as the richest veins of story ore I've found, and the ones for which my plans run the deepest.

If you have an area you're particularly interested in or just want to make my year by sharing your thoughts, I'd love to hear from you! Seriously, clicking that button below and weighing in might give me as much joy as whatever you read that motivated you to subscribe.

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My Favorite Books Read in 2023

My favorite books I read in 2023! With a brief description of each from me, and a quote.

Tabletop Games:

1. Seven Games: A Human History by Oliver Roeder

   1. I found the deep dives for these seven tabletop games fascinating, showing what peak human achievement used to look like, and how AI conquered each one, where human players now learn from AI rather than the other way around. This may be a precursor for trends in how AI is on the precipice of reshaping a number of fields, and the post-AI world may look very different.
      
      A quote: “The seven games in this book belong to a rough hierarchy; each game on the list adds a strategic feature and, therefore, more closely hews to some aspect of the “real world.” The aspects of each game crystallize a specific and potent form of agency. And when taken together, these aspects form a rough menu of intelligence. Computer scientists and their algorithms have been making their way through the list, on their way, perhaps, to truly general artificial intelligence.
      
      Checkers allows you to practice basic strategy—but its canvas is limited and its moves often rote. Add different pieces with more complex movements and you produce chess, a game that for centuries has been associated with intelligence itself. Or increase the number of pieces and the size of the board—like managing not just a small tribe but a giant civilization—and you have Go, the mathematically richest game played by humans. But life is random and is always throwing you some unexpected new development; practice for that with backgammon, which relies on chance. Poker models a world of hidden knowledge and deceit. Scrabble demands that a player make intertemporal trade-offs between satisfying desires today and saving up for tomorrow. Bridge, perhaps the most “human” of all the games in this book, offers a world of flourishing language, alliances, communication, empathy—and cheating.”

2. Everybody Wins: Four Decades of the Greatest Board Games Ever Made by James Wallis

   1. A history of board games, told through write-ups of Game of the Year winners for an award that the author frankly admits got it wrong a significant percentage of the time. I learned about and picked up a few new games in reading about the history of the medium, and the book also charts the rise of some of the modern classics like Catan, Ticket to Ride, and Carcassone.
      
      There are some minor sidebar print issues that should be fixed in an upcoming paperback edition (nothing that prevents readability), but I have no regrets in having a hardcover copy.
      
      A quote: “There are two types of awards: those that shotgun hundreds of trophies across the cultural landscape, and those that give a single, prominent prize to one winner once a year. The Grammys are a good example of the former, the Nobel Prize the latter, and the Oscars sit somewhere in the middle. For most of its life, the Spiel des Jahres has given one award annually, and even today restricts itself to a modest three.”

Psychology:

1. Psych: The Story of the Human Mind by Paul Bloom

   1. Yale’s intro to Psychology course in book form, at a considerably cheaper price than tuition. I enjoyed the book a lot: it serves as a history of what people have gotten wrong in understanding the human mind, and what the best evidence currently indicates.
      
      A quote: “You are on your way to getting in shape if your exercise routine is automatic; you’re failing if you struggle every day to figure out what to do. The first thing you will hear if you talk to a therapist for insomnia (and I speak from experience) is to go to bed and wake up at regular hours. I advise my graduate students to set aside the same block of time for writing every day, so that they fall into the practice without rumination. Mornings are best for this not just because it’s when most people are psychologically best attuned for deep work (though it is) or because it is usually the time with the fewest distractions (though it is), but rather because it’s the easiest time to build in a thoughtless routine—get up, go to the bathroom, make your double espresso, and walk to your desk and get to work. (And indeed, this is how I’ve been writing this book—one hour every morning, when I wake up.)”

2. Free Agents: How Evolution Gave Us Free Will by Kevin Mitchell

   1. A book I decided to read for a deep dive on neuroscience despite being uninterested in the free will question, and was pleasantly surprised by some of its insights into free will and how to think about agents which are in a sense controlled by their parts, but which also control the organization of their parts. The book goes in depth on how simple to complex organisms come to understand the world and make decisions, scaling up to what we best understand about humans, and possible implications for artificial intelligences based on digital neurons.
      
      A quote: “Life is thus like a storm or a tornado or a flame: none of those things is made of the physical atoms or molecules contained in it at any moment. Those elements will be replaced in the next moment. The storm is the ongoing process that is organizing or constraining all those molecules into a higher-order pattern. It’s the physical relations between all the elements that is maintained. The difference is that storms or flames fairly quickly blow or burn themselves out, but life does not: life goes on.”

Misc/Storytelling:

1. The Anatomy of Genres by John Truby

   1. I enjoyed this book despite having a different perspective on much of the material it covered, like listening to a passionate professor who’s interesting even when you think they might be wrong. The book explores some of the underlying structure and tropes that feed a number of genres, concepts like the monomyth and hero’s journey utilized in Star Wars, and tries to analyze what makes different genres resonate with people. I found it an interesting exposition into patterns of storytelling that have persisted for some time.¹
      
      A quote: “The hierarchy of genres is based on three things: the primary character flaw the hero must overcome, the quality of the life philosophy the form expresses, and the major art/story form it explores.”

My Favorite Games Played in 2023

Weird story-driven games:

1. Alan Wake 2.

   1. If you consume one cultural export from Finland this year, make it Alan Wake 2. The highest compliment I can pay this game is that even though the survival horror aspects of it forced me to wrestle with a level of fear that made me physically uncomfortable, I was riveted and had to follow it all the way through to the end.
      
      Like Sam Lake’s Max Payne 1 & 2, the game draws on a noir aesthetic, mixes mediums (with live action footage rather than a graphic novel this time), and goes heavily meta and weird while still having an underlying logic to it. My own Detective Manse series swims in similar waters (even hitting some convergent themes to this game), although Alan Wake is much more dream-like and Lynchian. The game is innovative and surprising throughout, and it deserves all the accolades it’s gotten: the interactive musical segment alone is excellent.

2. Card Shark.

   1. A card-cheating simulator, where you use pre-arranged signals to tip off cards to your confederate, run rigged shuffles, and exploit card tricks to gain an edge. Impressive both as a story and as a simulator of actual cheating at cards.

3. Slay the Princess.

   1. A branching-path story-telling game like The Stanley Parable where the Narrator sends you on a quest to slay a princess, but you decide how the story plays out. Unlike The Stanley Parable, this game doesn’t just explore inconsistent branching storylines for their own sake, but wraps the stories in another layer to make more of a traditional game out of the experience. It’s short, it doesn’t demand that you explore all its routes, and it may make you feel things.

4. Master Detective Archives.

   1. Worth playing if you like the idea of a visual novel where you solve murders by playing minigames and making key choices, but I would say to play Danganronpa by the same creator first. My main critique is that the cases and culprits are less interesting than Danganronpa since most of the mysteries are stand-alone, and you don’t build up as much context around the suspects. It’s still satisfying to figure out a mystery on your own before the big reveal, and I'm glad they're still making games like this.

Role Playing Games:

1. Super Mario RPG Remake

   1. A high-fidelity remake of the Super Nintendo classic, this is a story-driven Mario game where Mario and Bowser become reluctant allies, with a number of shenanigans my 5 year old found really funny.
      
      If you know the original game, this adds a number of quality of life improvements and new content, and if you’ve never played an RPG before, this is probably the most accessible one you’ll ever find.

2. Chrono Trigger

   1. Another 90s RPG, but played on Steam in its classic form with my 5 year old spectating and weighing in with opinions. I would guess that a remake is coming given all the other titles that have gotten that treatment recently, but it still holds up.
      

      Gene Park of the Washington Post considers this one of the best games of all time and I don’t think he’s wrong; the music is still excellent, and the game has a tight time-travel story across multiple eras where not a moment is wasted.

3. Final Fantasy XVI

   1. Final Fantasy is a series still trying to find its identity in the modern era and doing something different every game; I would give this game massive credit for a strong opening and some quality characterization, some of the most impressive boss fights and cinematic moments I’ve seen, and an accessibility mode that can automate a complex combat system for you. I’d take off some points for having a bit too much (admittedly optional) filler of lower quality given the scale of the game, and for not quite sticking the landing at the end.

4. Octopath Traveler 2

   1. A retro-inspired game tracking the stories of 8 characters with excellent music and environments, a leveling/random encounter system I think is a little dated, and some great peak moments.

Mainstream/Action:

1. Super Mario Wonder

   1. A polished co-op enabled Mario platformer where every level has some unique gameplay-altering gimmick, with a number of accessibility options while still keeping some optional stages with high challenge.

2. Armored Core VI

   1. A fast-paced mech combat game that reminds me of older Star Fox games, with trash-talking enemies and levels themed around a gimmick.

And a bonus board/tabletop game:

1. Blood on the Clocktower

   1. A Werewolf-style hidden identity game that avoids some of the weaknesses of Werewolf: after death, players can still talk and participate by casting one last vote, no one but the moderator knows what roles are in the game to defeat role call strategies and allow for abilities to be used in secret, and there are no generic Villagers, everyone has an ability or handicap of some kind.
      
      The game doesn’t have the strategic depth of Avalon; it’s high chaos where you get false information sometimes when people are mistaken about what they think they know, and the game rests a little too heavily on whoever gets the role of the Demon in my opinion, but it’s a fun ride.

That’s all I’ve got! If you’ve read/played any of the above, or have thoughts on what you’d like to see from me next, I’d love to hear them!

1. If you are one of my subscribers (and I know there's at least one) who is sworn to a monastic code of ignorance regarding Game of Thrones TV show spoilers, and awaits the second coming of George RR Martin to finish the books so their finale can be relished in the format it was intended for…you should know that this book dissects what the author thinks went wrong with the Game of Thrones ending, and you'll need to skip a portion of the Fantasy chapter.

The statute of limitations on spoilers may not protect you here, but I'm doing my best.