The gaming magazine is dead. After all, when was the last time that you were able to purchase a gaming magazine at your nearest newsagent? Games Workshop’s White Dwarf is of course the exception, but it has been over a decade since Dragon appeared in print. However, in more recent times, the hobby has found other means to bring the magazine format to the market. Digitally, of course, but publishers have also created their own in-house titles and sold them direct or through distribution. Another vehicle has been Kickstarter.com, which has allowed amateurs to write, create, fund, and publish titles of their own, much like the fanzines of Kickstarter’s ZineQuest. The resulting titles are not fanzines though, being longer, tackling broader subject matters, and more professional in terms of their layout and design.
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Parallel Worlds Issue #5 opens with ‘Priya Sharma – The Nicest Person in Horror’, an interview by Allen Stroud with the multi-award-winning author of British Fantasy Awards and Shirley Jackson Award, renowned for her short stories. Priya Sharma, does indeed, come across as a nice person, answering the interviewer’s mix of standard and more interesting questions with enthusiasm. Although short, the interview is informative and intriguing enough for the reader to find out more. However, Allen Stroud’s second interview with Elsewhen Press manages to be both long and feel longer. It explores the independent publisher’s process of selecting and developing a book and bringing it to print, along with some advice for aspiring authors. Where the interview with Priya Sharma was intriguing enough for the reader to want to find out more, this is not the case with this second interview. Not only is it less personal, but it also does not focus enough on the books published by Elsewhen Press beyond showing their covers.
The third interview inaugurates ‘Know Your Community’, a new feature in Parallel Worlds, highlighting communities dedicated to tabletop gaming. The first interview is with Dean Henry and Anthony Wright, two administrators of ‘The Dungeons & Dragons Community Group’ on Facebook. Although brief, it allows the pair to explain how they run and moderate the community they have created across various platforms as well as their policy of avoiding toxic issues which can arise in such communities. Overall, a decent start to what will hopefully be an interesting series of features focusing upon different gaming communities.
‘Aliens – Are They Out There?’ by Tom Grundy is the first to explore the theme that runs through the issue. In this ‘Thinkpiece’, he explores the question of the likelihood of there being extraterrestrial life out there in the universe. He works through the problems raised by the question, looking at the equation formulated by astronomer Frank Drake to estimate how many rocky planets there are in the Milky Way galaxy and the ‘Fermi Paradox’ which asks, if there is intelligent life out there, then where is it? The article cannot, of course, answer the question, but instead it raises numerous questions and highlights how much we do not actually know. The result is a thoughtful piece that gets the issue’s theme off to a good start.
The theme is continued by Allen Stroud’s ‘The Big Dumb Object’. The term is surprisingly modern, barely a few decades old, and describes an alien object of immense size. Stroud points to Larry Niven’s Ringworld and Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama as classic Science Fiction stories with Big Dumb Objects at their heart, but pushes the concept into other genres too, for example, pointing out that in the fantasy genre, the Big Dumb Object tends to be stationary. In roleplaying, the Big Dumb Object is best used as a mystery—just as it is in fiction—and be something to explore and be revealed to the Player Characters. It is another thoughtful article that is let down by some strange decisions. First, the article is part of the magazine’s ‘Generic Adventure Module’ series, but whilst generic, it is not a module. It is an examination of the idea and it might be used in roleplaying, not a module that can be picked up and run. The series title is misleading. Then, whilst it talks about how the Big Dumb Object can be roleplaying, it only looks to film, television, and books as inspiration. In other words, it ignores the format the article is intended for. Surely, there must be roleplaying adventures or settings which have Big Dumb Objects which could have been mentioned here, but there are none. There is, of course, A Doomsday Like Any Other, the 1986 scenario published by FASA for use with its Star Trek: The Role Playing Game,which is a terrific adventure involving a ‘Doomsday Machine’ like the planet killer encountered by the USS Enterprise in the episode, ‘The Doomsday Machine’. Lastly, the author mentions that there is actually a ‘BDO adventure module’ available to download from the publisher’s website and adapt to the Game Master’s system and setting of choice. Why not include it in the issue? There are certainly articles which could have been replaced and the issue could have been all the better for it.
‘The Big Dumb Object’ is the first of the three entries in the issue’s ‘Tabletop Games’ section. Christopher Jarvis follows it with a review of ‘The Quacks of Quedlinburg’, the Kennerspiel des Jahres award winner of 2018 and Allen Stroud’s entry for ‘Mini of the Month’. The latter is surprisingly good and not the typical waste of space that previous entries for ‘Minion the Month’ have been. Here the author expresses his love for the Genestealer Cult armies and his frustration at discovering that Games Workshop no longer supported them. That would change, subsequently, but in the meantime, the author builds his own, so there is a pleasing sense of story to this particular entry in the magazine’s regular feature. The Genestealers also being heavily inspired by the Xenomorphs of Alien means that the short article continues the issue’s theme.
‘Finding Jin Yong’ is the first of two entries in the issue’s Books section. Here Jane Clewett asks why the bestselling Chinese author of ‘Chinese Lord of the Rings’ is so little-known outside of China. Ultimately, the issue may well be that Jin Yong was too prolific an author and the length of his Condor trilogy too much of a commitment for publishers. That said, the first few books have been published in English and if the reader is ready to make the commitment to a long-running wuxia fantasy epic, they can easily be found. The article forms a good introduction to the genre and the first of the books, so again this article nicely hooks in the reader into wanting to know more. The other entry in the Books section is ‘The Infinite Hex Crawl’ by Anthony Perconti, which looks at Jorge Luis Borges’ ‘The Library of Babel’. This is a good introduction to a fascinating story which describes an infinite library whose shelves are filled with every iteration and every variation possible of every book ever written. The nearest roleplaying parallel is Dying Stylishly Games’ The Stygian Library, but this article suggests that there is more than enough in the short story which could be adapted and developed to a roleplaying situation. Or at least, simply provide a fascinating read.
The ‘TV & Film’ articles in the issue continue the discussion pieces of ‘Let’s Talk About... The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance ‘from Parallel Worlds Issue #03 and ‘Let’s Talk About... Ad Astra’ from Parallel Worlds Issue #04. The series consists of two-handers between Tom Grundy and Jane Clewett in which they talk about reactions to and thoughts on a particular film. For Parallel Worlds Issue #05, the film is Joker, directed by Todd Phillips and starring Joaquin Phoenix. The film divided audiences and so it is between the authors here. The other ‘TV & Film’ entry continues the issue’s theme. In ‘Alien: How Ridley Scott Reinvented Science Fiction’, Sam Long looks at the seminal Science Fiction horror film and its effect upon the genre, and how it has been replicated and imitated since. The article neatly places the film in the context of the period of its release and its genre, and the comparisons it draws with those other imitative films, such as John Carpenter’s The Thing and Pitch Black are more interesting than its look at the wider film franchise as it develops. Overall, this is a good introduction to and overview of what is now regarded as a classic Science Fiction film and a classic horror film.
The alien—and Alien—theme of Parallel Worlds Issue #05 comes to a close with Richard Watson’s ‘Alien Isolation’, which looks at how the 2014 computer game managed to capture the feeling of being stalked by and facing a Xenomorph, with few means to stop it and most obvious thing to do being to run and hide, scared and alone. It really sells the virtues of the computer game as a horrifying experience, one of being alone and being prey. However, its inclusion highlights a missed opportunity. If Alien can be explored via the medium of computer game, why not others? Certainly, at the time of the release of Parallel Worlds Issue#05, there had been games based on it, including a board game from Leading Edge Games in the nineties and then more recently, Alien: The Roleplaying Game had been published in 2019. Then there are obvious imitators such as the MOTHERSHIP Sci-Fi Horror Roleplaying Game,published in 2018, which would have been worth examining as a part of the issue’s theme. This is disappointing in its lack of scope. ‘Alien Isolation’ is the first of two entries in the ‘Video Games ‘section. The other is ‘Space Engineers’ by Louis Calvert. This is a Science Fiction computer game of engineering, construction, exploration and survival in space and on planets. Its focus is on building spaceships, space stations, planetary outposts, and so on, and then travelling to explore planets and gather resources to survive and build. The article brings to life the fun of playing the game and the joy of the community built up around its play, as well as charting its ongoing development. The issue is brought to a close with ‘The Purpose’, a decent piece of ‘Original Fiction’ also by Louis Calvert.
Physically, Parallel Worlds Issue #5 is cleanly and tidily presented, and on the whole, it is a bright and breezy affair. In places though, some of the articles feel stretched as their layouts could have been much tighter, an issue that hampered the first three issues.
With the fifth issue, Parallel Worlds continues to improve the magazine in terms of content and writing. The issue contains some excellent articles that are genuinely interesting and informative, that make the reader want to discover more. Above all, there is more in the issue that is actually enjoyable to read. Hopefully, Parallel Worlds Issue #5 is a sign of better things to come.
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