Planning for May 2022

Planning for May 2022

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April came down to the wire, but on the last day of the month I was able to both post a book review and push out the first section of the Atlas of the Human Protectorate.

For the month of May, I think the Top Priority item is going to be Architect of Worlds again. There’s one more section of the book I need to write from scratch, and the “special cases” section needs more love. I suspect between those two items I’ll have plenty of new material, so a combination of them is likely going to be a charged release for the month of May.

The remarkable thing is that if I can hit that mark this month, that will mean that Architect of Worlds will be more or less complete, at least in an initial rough draft. That’s quite a milestone! I think if all goes well, June may see a release of a full rough draft of Architect, all in one document, a true v1.0 for the entire project. That will be a free release for my patrons, since they’ve already seen all the individual pieces.

The book won’t be anywhere close to finished at that point – I anticipate a lot of polishing, production of diagrams and graphics, and layout before I can even consider trying to publish it – but that’s still a big step forward. I begin to think there’s a chance Architect may arrive on virtual store shelves before the end of calendar year 2022.

All that being said, here’s the formal planning list for May:

  • Top Priority:
    • Architect of Worlds: Write a section describing the structure of the galaxy and of interstellar space, and providing guidelines on how to make maps for interstellar settings. Also carry out further additions and revisions to the “special cases in worldbuilding” section. These two tasks are expected to give rise to a charged release, assuming they amount to at least 10,000 words of new material.
  • Second Priority:
    • Architect of Worlds: Further additions and revisions to the “working with astronomical data” section. May lead to a free v0.2 update, or may simply be integrated into v1.0 of the complete book.
    • Human Destiny: Continue compiling material for the eventual Atlas of the Human Protectorate.
    • Human Destiny: Design additional new rules systems for the Player’s Guide and add these to the interim draft.
    • Krava’s Legend: Review and possibly rewrite the existing partial draft of The Sunlit Lands, and write a few new chapters.
  • Back Burner:
    • Human Destiny: Begin work on a new Aminata Ndoye story.
    • Human Destiny: Finish the novelette “Remnants” for eventual collection and publication.
    • Krava’s Legend: Write the second short story for the “reader magnet” collection.
    • Scorpius Reach: Write a few new chapters of Second Dawn.
    • Scorpius Reach: Start work on a third edition of the Game of Empire rules for Traveller (or Cepheus Engine).
Review: Legends & Lattes, by Travis Baldree

Review: Legends & Lattes, by Travis Baldree

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Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree

Overall Rating: ***** (5 stars)

Legends & Lattes is light fantasy, set in a tabletop-game-inspired fantasy universe that’s reminiscent of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld.

Viv is an orc warrior who has been living as an adventurer: delving in dungeons, slaying monsters, wielding a named sword of legend, the whole package. Unfortunately, age and old wounds are starting to get the better of her, so after one final big score she’s looking to reinvent herself wholesale. She moves to the big city of Thune . . . where she plans to open the first coffee shop ever seen there.

That’s it. That’s pretty much the whole story. And it is delightful, a slice-of-life tale that pulls the reader in and doesn’t let go.

The subtitle of Legends & Lattes is “A Novel of High Fantasy and Low Stakes,” and Mr. Baldree isn’t kidding there. There are a few tropes borrowed from more high-stakes stories: a mystery connected with Viv’s last great adventure, a conflict arising from her old dungeon-delving party, another conflict with local gangsters. Still, those elements of the plot are secondary. The real meat of the story is about Viv’s quest for a quiet, peaceful way to live out the rest of her life.

Viv has planned her move very carefully. She selects just the right location for her new venture, hires a contractor to renovate the building, sets up her gnome-designed coffee machine, and opens her doors. Of course, even with all her planning, she had no prior experience as a small-business owner or as a barista. Some things don’t work entirely as expected. As with all startup ventures, she soon suffers the “valley of death” in which all the money is going out rather than coming in. Still, some of the locals soon begin to discover the delights of well-made coffee.

Watching the mechanics of Viv’s startup is certainly fun. She encounters problems, places where her careful planning failed, and she must find ways to overcome them. Watching how Viv reinvents her social style is even more engaging. She quickly discovers that she can’t succeed on her own, any more than she could when she was slaying monsters for a living. Her encounters with potential customers, with business partners, and with new friends are worth the price of admission on their own.

Travis Baldree has a very clean prose style, and the editing here is top-notch. The story structure is very straightforward. Mr. Baldree sticks almost exclusively to third person close viewpoint and a single perspective, and the plot unrolls at a carefully measured pace. A very workmanlike debut novel here.

I fully enjoyed Legends & Lattes, and while I left with the sense that Viv’s story had come to a satisfying conclusion, I certainly wouldn’t object to discovering the existence of a sequel or three. Very highly recommended if you enjoy light Pratchettian fantasy.

Status Report (16 April 2022)

Status Report (16 April 2022)

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I’ve had some ups and downs so far this month, but at about the midpoint I do seem to be on track to reach some good milestones.

I spent the first week or so of April doing an overhaul of parts of the Architect of Worlds design sequence. I started out just trying to add an alternative mechanism for producing gas giant planets, but that ended up carrying so many implications that I eventually had to overhaul most of Steps Nine through Eleven. I’m still not happy with the smoothness of the revised text, although the model seems to be working well enough.

Once that was done, I went back to an extended test run for Architect, generating planetary systems for a reasonable cut of the stellar population near Sol. I’m working with the data set associated with the paper The 10 parsec sample in the Gaia era – this is probably the best census of the solar neighborhood available at the moment. As of this evening, I’ve gotten about to the five-parsec radius.

I started out systematically generating planetary systems for every star on the list. Mostly this was to verify something I suspected about red-dwarf and brown-dwarf systems – that they are very unlikely to generate planets where humans can comfortably settle. So far I think I’ve confirmed that suspicion. I don’t think it’s impossible to find an Earthlike world in a red-dwarf system, but those stars have so many factors stacked against them that such cases are probably quite rare. Scientific and mining outposts, maybe, but not prosperous colonies. So after I generated 19 red-dwarf and brown-dwarf systems, I dropped those and concentrated on the brighter stars, spectral type K and up.

I now have 13 planetary systems for those brighter stars, and I’m encouraged to see that Architect is doing a decent job of generating Earthlike worlds (generously defined) for them. If we want air with sufficient free oxygen in it to breathe without too much artificial aid, that doesn’t seem to be a problem.

Counting Earth, I have six habitable worlds within five parsecs of Sol:

  • Sol III (Earth)
  • Alpha Centauri A-III (a super-Earth with a helium-nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere)
  • 61 Cygni B-III (tide-locked)
  • Epsilon Indi A-II (tide-locked)
  • Groombridge 1618 III (tide-locked)
  • 70 Ophiuchi A-III (a true Earth-analog, no helium, not tide-locked)

Not bad. Looks like Architect is going to give us a fair number of tide-locked Earthlikes, and the occasional super-Earth with weird but breathable atmosphere. The variety even in this short list is nice to see.

Eventually I plan to work all the way out to the ten-parsec radius, but this will do for now as a stress test for Architect. For the bottom half of April I’m going to switch to writing up some of these worlds and planetary systems, as a first installment in the rough draft of the Atlas of the Human Protectorate.

So for my patrons and readers, here’s the likely release schedule for this month.

I do have a new interim draft (v0.9) of the main section of Architect of Worlds, but I think I’m going to hold off on pushing that out to everyone until I’ve had a chance to go through and polish up the text a bit. I think I also want to get to the long-delayed project of cleaning up all the mathematical formulae so that I’m using more standardized variable names and formats. You may see a v0.9 draft next month sometime.

On the other hand, I’m pretty confident I can have a first interim draft of the Atlas of the Human Protectorate ready by the end of April, with at least 10,000 to 12,000 words of material in it. That v0.1 draft will be a charged release for my patrons. I may charge for further additions to that draft, as I have with new sections of Architect or other book-length projects, but only if and when there’s enough genuinely new material to justify it.

More updates as things develop, as always.

New Models for Gas Giant Formation

New Models for Gas Giant Formation

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Protoplanetary disk of the young star AB Aurigae. Notice the distinctive spiral-arm-like structures. One of these appears to be associated with the formation of a massive gas giant planet, at an unusually large distance from the protostar.

I’ve spent the first few days of April working with the current version of Architect of Worlds, building planetary systems for nearby stars. Almost immediately, I’ve run into an issue which may be connected to recent scientific results.

It’s ironic that the process of writing Architect has been a little like doing original scientific research. The book’s main design sequence, when you get right down to it, is a big elaborate model that I hope will have predictive value, in that it will generate planetary systems that resemble what we’re seeing in the real universe. The goal is fictional plausibility, not true explanatory power, but the process of development is often the same. If I start comparing the model to the real universe (that is, to known exoplanetary systems) and the model seems unable to mimic the visible results, then there’s a problem and I need to adjust the model.

The immediate issue is that the current (v0.8) draft of the Architect design sequence assumes the core accretion model for planetary formation. That is to say, we assume that planets form in certain regions of the protoplanetary disk, when solid particles clump together and form protoplanets massive enough to start quickly accreting more material. We expect smaller rocky planets to form inside the “snow line,” in a region where water ice isn’t available. We expect gas giant planets to form outside, with the largest gas giant preferentially forming close to the line. We also play with planetary migration and the so-called “Grand Tack” model, so that the largest gas giant may move inward or outward from that initial position, but only within reasonable limits.

Our own planetary system seems to fit that model reasonably well, as do many of the other exoplanetary systems we’re aware of. There’s a catch, though. In some cases, we find what appears to be the largest gas giant forming far outside the snow line. Much further than the core-accretion model can account for, even with a generous “Grand Tack” hypothesis thrown in. Here are some examples I’ve pulled together over the past few days:

StarPredicted Snow LineInnermost Gas GiantRatio
Wolf 3590.15 AU1.85 AU12.3
Proxima Centauri0.17 AU1.49 AU8.8
Lalande 211850.56 AU2.85 AU5.1
Groombridge 340.59 AU5.40 AU9.2
Gliese 8320.75 AU3.46 AU4.6
Epsilon Indi1.75 AU11.55 AU6.6
HR 87998.10 AU16.25 AU2.0
AB Aurigae23.30 AU93.00 AU4.0

Of all these cases, only HR 8799 is one that the current version of Architect could easily handle, and even that planetary system is problematic – because we know of four exoplanets there, and the one on this table is only the innermost of the four. Most of these gas giants are much further out than my current “Grand Tack” procedures could possibly account for.

Meanwhile, the masses of most of these exoplanets are a lot higher than we would normally expect for their primary stars. For example, several of these stars are low-mass red dwarfs – we wouldn’t normally expect them to generate gas giant planets at all. Some of the others have planets several times as massive as Jupiter, approaching masses more typical of brown dwarfs.

Notice the first few rows on this table are several of the stars closest to Sol. If I’m running into difficulty this quickly, that means I’m not seeing rare special cases here. There’s some way in which planetary formation just isn’t (always) working as I expect. Not the first time this has happened during the development of Architect of Worlds, and it won’t be the last.

Fortunately, there’s a new model that seems to help. That’s the so-called disk instability model for the formation of gas giant planets. Apparently, at least in some cases, gas giants don’t form close to the snow line via a well-behaved process of core accretion. Instead, especially if the protoplanetary disk is unusually dense, or if gravitational interaction from nearby stars stirs things up, the disk becomes unstable. Simulations of the process show that much of the disk can form “spiral arms” rather like those of a galaxy . . . and the result can be the rapid formation of unusually massive planets much further out from the protostar than expected.

We’ve actually imaged an example of this happening, as some very recent results show. The very young star AB Aurigae appears to be in the process of forming a massive gas giant, over 90 AU out from the protostar (the last line of the table above covers this case). This, along with some other observations, seems to lend some credence to the disk instability model for at least some planetary formation.

What this means for Architect of Worlds is that I’m probably going to need to add some material to the current Steps Nine and Ten, in which the structure of the protoplanetary disk and the arrangement of the outer planetary system are determined. I think I’ve already worked out some of the details, so I may be able to make the necessary revisions to my working (v0.9) draft within another day or two. Then I should be able to get back to the test run on which I had planned to spend the month of April.

All of which means that my patrons and other readers can reasonably expect a free v0.9 update to the main Architect document this month, along with anything else I produce.

Planning for April 2022

Planning for April 2022

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For a while, I was afraid that March would be yet another month without any big block of new material to share, but then I had a remarkably productive week and was able to produce a first interim draft for the “special cases” section of Architect of Worlds. So March ended on a good note, and now I need to think about April.

I think I’m going to restructure my priority list, starting this month. Instead of listing several projects as all being “Top Priority,” I’m going to restrict myself to one project that’s going to get the lion’s share of my time in the coming month. That’s the project that seems to me most likely to produce a block of new material suitable for sharing with patrons and other readers. Everything else is going to get pushed down to “Second Priority” (projects that may get some time, but probably won’t lead to a big block of new material) or “Back Burner” (projects that I’m keeping on the docket but don’t expect to work on at all during the coming month).

For the month of April, I think the Top Priority item is going to be to work on a rough draft of the Atlas of the Human Protectorate, a new tabletop-oriented book that describes the late-23rd-Century universe of the Human Destiny setting. Working on that project for the first time is also going to help me make progress on several items on this month’s Second Priority list:

  • Give the current (v0.8) draft of the Architect of Worlds design sequence a thorough workout, looking for possible ambiguities and bugs to be corrected, possibly leading to a v0.9 release.
  • Similarly, test and improve on the “working with astronomical data” (v0.1) and “special cases in worldbuilding” (v0.1) sections of Architect, possibly leading to v0.2 releases for those.
  • Also, work out how my particular take on the Cepheus Engine system is going to represent this kind of setting, which is kind of different from the usual representation (3D space, more detailed world writeups, and so on). If I come up with some results here, those may go into the interim draft of the Player’s Guide, leading toward a v0.5 release for that.

So, without further ado, here’s the formal planning list for April:

  • Top Priority:
    • Human Destiny: Start compiling material for the eventual Atlas of the Human Protectorate, meanwhile giving the Architect of Worlds material a good workout. Produce a v0.1 interim draft (at least 10,000 words) by the end of the month as a charged release.
  • Second Priority:
    • Architect of Worlds: Start work on a section describing the structure of the galaxy and of interstellar space, and providing guidelines on how to make maps for interstellar settings.
    • Architect of Worlds: Further additions and revisions to the “special cases in worldbuilding” section, possibly leading to a free v0.2 update.
    • Architect of Worlds: Further additions and revisions to the “working with astronomical data” section, possibly leading to a free v0.2 update.
    • Human Destiny: Design additional new rules systems for the Player’s Guide and add these to the interim draft.
    • Krava’s Legend: Review and possibly rewrite the existing partial draft of The Sunlit Lands, and write a few new chapters.
  • Back Burner:
    • Human Destiny: Finish the novelette “Remnants” for eventual collection and publication.
    • Krava’s Legend: Write the second short story for the “reader magnet” collection.
    • Scorpius Reach: Write a few new chapters of Second Dawn.
    • Scorpius Reach: Start work on a third edition of the Game of Empire rules for Traveller (or Cepheus Engine).

Status Report (29 March 2022)

Status Report (29 March 2022)

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Well, I was beginning to think March would be another month of not reaching my main goals, but the last few days have been more productive than I might have expected.

My primary project this month was to produce the initial partial draft of the “special and unusual cases” section for Architect of Worlds. At the moment, that section isn’t complete, and it probably won’t be complete before the end of the month. On the other hand, I expect it will have about 8000-9000 words of new material, which is right on the threshold of what I would consider worth sending to my patrons as a charged release.

I’m therefore about 90% certain that there will be a charged release for this month, probably appearing on 31 March, consisting of the first interim partial draft of this section of Architect. As with the other sections that I’ve been working on, especially the main design sequence, this is the only draft for which my patrons will be charged. Later additions and updates to that section will be free releases.

I should point out that this is very nearly the last section that needs to be written for Architect of Worlds. There’s still one section outstanding – the one describing how to design maps of interstellar space for a science-fiction setting – but I’m anticipating that section may be fairly short on word count. I may take a crack at that section next month . . . depending, of course, on what else might present itself as ready to spring from my brow, fully armed and with a mighty shout.

What’s really encouraging is that if that last section does get down on paper, virtually speaking, it means the book will actually be finished, at least in a rough draft. The very next step I would take at that point is to integrate all of the sections into a single coherent draft, after which my patrons and readers would be getting updates to the whole book at once. I anticipate a few months of further editing and polishing before the text gets finalized, and I move to actual layout and production.

There seems to be a reasonable chance that Architect of Worlds will actually be published before the end of calendar year 2022. After which I suspect I will be heaving an enormous sigh of relief.

Review: The Raven and the Dove, by K. M. Butler

Review: The Raven and the Dove, by K. M. Butler

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The Raven and the Dove by K. M. Butler

Overall Rating: ***** (5 stars)

The Raven and the Dove is a historical romance, telling the story of an unlikely couple amid turbulent times in the early medieval period. The story covers a little less than two years in the late ninth century, in the northern lands of the Frankish empire, a region that will one day be called Normandy.

At the beginning of the story, the Norse chieftain Rollo has established himself as the jarl of Rouen, wealthy from years of raiding deep into Frankish territory. Rollo’s raids, and those of his fellow Norsemen, have driven many of the region’s Frankish nobles into exile. Rollo sees the resulting power vacuum as an opportunity, which might enable him to create a new kingdom of his own. For now, he is still working to establish and defend his power.

One of Rollo’s officers is a shield-maiden named Halla: a fiercely independent woman, who lives by the Norse code of courage and honor. When we first meet her, she has just taken part in a raid, and fights to defend her people against a Frankish counterattack. Rollo soon sets Halla to lead an expedition toward the Frankish town of Lillebonne, which he hopes to integrate into his growing demesne.

When she reaches her destination, Halla meets Taurin, a Frankish landowner who is one of the leaders of the community. Lillebonne has been abandoned by the Frankish nobility, and Taurin fears that the town is doomed if it doesn’t make an agreement with Rollo and his Norsemen. He therefore accepts an invitation to return to Rouen with Halla, to meet Rollo and negotiate for the town’s fate. When Halla is made a chieftain in her own right, and the jarl’s representative in Lillebonne, she makes the fateful decision to marry Taurin and work with him to govern the town.

Halla and Taurin marry for pragmatic reasons rather than for love. Although they have a frank and vigorous sexual relationship, it takes a lot of time and work for them to become true partners. The obstacles in their path are considerable. Halla is a pagan, a warrior whose fortune was built on raiding and violence. Taurin is a Christian who inherited his wealth and station, a man of peace. Halla takes a pragmatic view of the world, whereas Taurin is an idealist. Norse and Frankish customs are starkly different; the two peoples regard each other as heathens and barbarians, and there is little love or trust between them. Halla and Taurin have a difficult time learning to understand one another. Yet somehow, despite external threats and the constant risk of violent rebellion, they need to find a way for two peoples to live together.

If you know the history of this period, you know the result is a foregone conclusion. In the following generations, the blended folk of Normandy will become one of the most dynamic and powerful peoples of medieval Europe. Yet here we’re seeing the very beginning of that process, at a time when Halla and Taurin could not count on success. The two of them will have to think fast, take risks, and learn to trust each other despite all the obstacles they face. The story that follows is a deeply engrossing visit to a historical period few modern readers will find familiar.

K. M. Butler has a very clean prose style, and the editing here is superb; I noticed one or two copy- or line-editing problems, but they never posed any risk of fatally distracting me. The story alternates between two viewpoint characters, but each section is labeled, and viewpoint discipline is otherwise strict. The story sometimes risks falling too deep into expository passages, but these are usually placed in the voice of one of the viewpoint characters, avoiding pulling the reader out of the story. In all, a very workmanlike novel.

The historical elements of the story are well researched. Early medieval and Norse history are not my specialties, but I found the setting and the behavior of characters quite plausible. The only quibble I had was the prominent role of “shield-maidens” in the Norse forces. The archeological evidence for Norse women warriors is patchy at best. Still, shield-maidens are prominent in the Norse sagas, and they have captured the modern imagination in creations like the Vikings TV show. It’s a perfectly viable move to center this story around one of them, especially if the objective is to tell the tale of the foundation of Normandy through a love story. In the end, I had no quarrel with the result!

I thoroughly enjoyed The Raven and the Dove, and it left me wanting more. Very highly recommended if you enjoy well-done historical fiction with a strong dash of earthy romance.

Architect of Worlds: the “Special Cases” Outline

Architect of Worlds: the “Special Cases” Outline

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A quick taste for what I’ll be working on this month. This is a section of the eventual book that will cover “special cases” in the design process, things that stand as exceptions or as extra details outside the main body of the world design sequence.

Hopefully this will end up being enough material (10-15 thousand words or more) to justify a new release for my patrons this month. Actually, now would also be a good time for any of my readers to suggest anything else that might fit into this section. Drop me a line if there’s some special topic that you want to see addressed that isn’t in this sketch outline.

Special Cases in Worldbuilding

  • Generating Stars in Unusual Regions
    • OB Associations
    • Open Clusters and Stellar Associations
    • Inter-Arm Space
    • Galactic Halo
  • Unusual Stars
    • Massive Main-Sequence Stars
    • Neutron Stars
    • Black Holes
    • Flare Stars
  • Planetary Systems for Non-Main Sequence Stars
    • Brown Dwarfs
    • Subgiant and Giant Stars
    • White Dwarfs and Stellar Remnants
  • Planetary Systems for Multiple Stars
  • Special Features for Planetary Systems
    • Asteroids and Comets
    • Planetoid Belts
    • Kuiper Belt
    • Oort Cloud
    • Rogue Planets
    • Trojan Planets
  • Unusual Worlds
    • Ammonia Worlds
    • Carbon Worlds
    • Chthonian Worlds
    • Lava Worlds
  • Fine-Tuning World Climate
    • Effects of Orbital Eccentricity
    • Effects of Obliquity
    • Effects of Daily Rotation
    • Effects of Altitude
    • Effects of Local Geography
    • Tide-Locked Worlds

Planning for March 2022

Planning for March 2022

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Well, February was at least somewhat successful – I managed a major rewrite of sections of the Architect of Worlds design sequence, and released a new interim draft of that for a wide audience. I think in March I’m going to try to keep up my momentum there, and work on some new sections of the book. It would be nice if I could have the whole rough draft finished before summer, so I could work on final polish and layout and actually get the book out at last.

There’s one new development in how I’m planning to structure these projects. I’m going to break the Human Destiny setting bible into two distinct books for eventual publication under the Cepheus Engine game rules. The core setting bible itself will get the working title of the Human Destiny Player’s Guide, and then there’s going to be a separate Atlas of the Human Protectorate that provides location data and adventure seeds. My patrons will get free updates to the Player’s Guide, since I’ve already charged them for that once, but the Atlas will likely be a charged release once there’s enough material there to justify one.

Meanwhile, I really need to get unblocked on Krava’s Legend again if I can. it’s been well over a year since The Curse of Steel was published, and it needs to start getting sequels if the series is ever going to attract an audience.

Here’s the list for March:

  • Top Priority (“this is how I’ll judge whether the month has been successful”)
    • Architect of Worlds: Start work on a section describing the structure of the galaxy and of interstellar space, and providing guidelines on how to make maps for interstellar settings.
    • Architect of Worlds: Start work on a section of special cases and additional worldbuilding material that doesn’t fit into the design sequence.
    • Human Destiny: Start compiling material for the eventual Atlas of the Human Protectorate, meanwhile giving the Architect of Worlds material a good workout.
    • Krava’s Legend: Review and possibly rewrite the existing partial draft of The Sunlit Lands, and write a few new chapters.
  • Second Priority (“work on this as time permits”):
    • Human Destiny: Design additional new rules systems for the Player’s Guide and add these to the interim draft.
    • Krava’s Legend: Write the second short story for the “reader magnet” collection.
  • Back Burner (“work on this only if everything else gets blocked”):
    • Human Destiny: Finish the novelette “Remnants” for eventual collection and publication.
    • Scorpius Reach: Write a few new chapters of Second Dawn.
    • Scorpius Reach: Start work on a third edition of the Game of Empire rules for Traveller (or Cepheus Engine)

I think the top priority for a charged release will be to get the initial draft of the “special cases and additional worldbuilding topics” material finished. The other items are more likely to give rise to free updates for my patrons.

Review: Lurkers at the Threshold, by Jürgen Hubert

Review: Lurkers at the Threshold, by Jürgen Hubert

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Lurkers at the Threshold: 100 Ghost Tales from German Folklore by Jürgen Hubert

Overall Rating: ***** (5 stars)

Lurkers at the Threshold is a compilation of ghost stories from German folklore, translated into English from German collections, many of which have never been translated before. It’s an interesting collection, covering a branch of European folk tales that will be both strange and hauntingly familiar to an American audience.

Full disclosure: The compiler and translator of these stories, Jürgen Hubert, is a long-time acquaintance, although he and I have no professional relationship and I have received no compensation for this review.

Dr. Hubert published his first collection of translated German folklore (Sunken Castles, Evil Poodles) in 2020. That effort was apparently so successful that he plans to release a series of similar books, each tied to a specific theme. Lurkers at the Threshold is the first of these, devoted to ghost stories. The book contains exactly 100 narratives, most of them rather short, each of them accompanied by translator’s notes and commentary. Just reading the stories themselves is likely the task of a single afternoon, but the supporting material is very rich and will reward closer study. Each entry is thoroughly footnoted, and the book also contains extensive contextual material on German geography and history.

Since this collection is centered on a theme, it calls some repeated tropes into sharp focus. German ghost stories are different than a modern American reader might expect. Ghosts are not translucent and immaterial; usually they are frighteningly tangible. Many ghosts are evil, others are simply unpleasant, a few are benevolent, but they’re all dangerous to encounter. They sometimes need the help of the living to escape their condition, but they’re often bad at making it clear what needs to be done to help them. You probably don’t want to attend church with a bunch of ghosts . . . and whatever you do, don’t shake a ghost’s hand!

I was surprised to find several headless ghosts, including a few Headless Horsemen. I suspect Washington Irving must have done his own reading in German folklore back in the day.

As with Dr. Hubert’s previous work, this collection has plenty of entertainment value, but it’s also valuable as a scholarly resource. Authors and game designers will find the series useful as inspiration for their own fantastic literature. Dr. Hubert continues to support such uses by placing his translations under a Creative Commons license.

I thoroughly enjoyed Lurkers at the Threshold, and I’m looking forward to further volumes in the series. Highly recommended for anyone interested in folklore and ghost stories.