Author: Alexis Kennedy

4th January 2022
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The Next Feast and the Last Duel

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26th October 2021
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Just a Jump to the Left

A wild site appears!

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6th October 2021
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Cultist Simulator: Holometabolous Incipience

As you know, holometabolous metamorphosis is one of the most ghastly things in nature.

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1st October 2021
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Why the Unterzee eats ships

The sea frightens me. I know I’m not alone in this.

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26th July 2021
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‘The Rarer Action’

An update on the controversy of 2019, and an open letter to Failbetter Games.

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25th June 2021
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The Confusion of Tongues

Linguistics quiz! Everyone loves a linguistics quiz.

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3rd June 2021
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‘Against Worldbuilding, And Other Provocations’: Bonus Material

Matt teaches Classics at St John’s, Oxford, where I’m delighted to say that he specialises in the study of ancient literary parody.

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21st April 2021
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“Hee-hee-hee-hee, wipeout!”

Work has been getting on top of me over the last six months. Then I had a passle of family miseries and an unrelated health scare.

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2nd April 2021
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Gravity

16.01.16 The ‘unusual uncle’ I mention below was David Insall, a fascinating man who at different times had been a sheep farmer, an environmentalist, and a contract officer in Oman. My mother assures me he once brought a wolf pup to her dinner party.

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31st March 2021
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/kəˈbal/, Part 3: The Society of Simon

The following is an extract from an article Alexis wrote decades ago, in 1996, for British roleplaying magazine Valkyrie. It’s juvenilia, and some bits make him wince – but it’s an insight into his early style and fiction which later became Fallen London, Sunless Sea and Cultist Simulator. [ Part 1, Part 2 ]

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19th March 2021
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Three Reviews of Games from the Year 2035

‘Press X to Cure Cancer’ was a much more topical gag in 2015, though not really a very good one even then. I probably shouldn’t try to be down with the kids.

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5th March 2021
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Three Reviews of Unreviewable Games

I borrowed the idea for this from Stanisław Lem, who wrote every entertaining and faultlessly straight-faced critical essays about nonexistent books he’d invented. Ramon Llull was real, though I’ve never been sure how to pronounce him.

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19th February 2021
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Building the Frontier

I didn’t talk about my own time in LambdaMoo, because that wasn’t really the point, but since you ask, I built a house in a very large mostly-dead dragon.  

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5th February 2021
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The Labyrinth

What’s the difference between a labyrinth and a maze? The original, primal Labyrinth – the first in human history – the one from which all others derive – is of course Jim Henson’s 1986 David Bowie vehicle.

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22nd January 2021
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How It Happened To Happen

Jack Cohen is a reproductive biologist who gives talks on speculative xenobiology. I once heard him explain how we had happened to evolve from a species of fish that kept its reproductive organs next to the pipes it used to eliminate waste from its body.

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27th November 2020
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/kəˈbal/, Part 2: The Denied

The Denied are a small cult – perhaps two hundred in all, including children – most of whom live in a sizeable but remote village in Kurdistan.

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18th September 2020
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September #1: IS THIS THING ON?

MAYBE A PUBLIC ALPHA OF BOOK OF HOURS?! Also, our August newsletter goes out.

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28th August 2020
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/kəˈbal/, Part 1: The Caldecotts

The following is an extract from an article Alexis wrote decades ago, in 1996, for British roleplaying magazine Valkyrie. It’s juvenilia, and some bits make him wince – but it’s an insight into his early style and fiction which later became Fallen London, Sunless Sea and Cultist Simulator. [ Part 2, Part 3 ]

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