Hammer and anvil

More from Fighting Fantasy Fest 5, and this time it's my chat with Gil Jugnot from Le Marteau et l'Enclume. Pay close attention and you'll get a scoop about the 40th anniversary of The Crypt of the Vampire -- but more of that anon.

More what you'd call guidelines than actual rules

It's always gratifying to get a review for one of my books, doubly so when the reviewer mostly liked it. Here's one for Down Among the Dead Men, the first book I wrote in the Virtual Reality series, that uses it as a design inspiration for Twine games. As James (the reviewer) points out, "Virtual Reality" was just an empty marketing title, which is why I changed the name to Critical IF when I relaunched the series.

If you just want a playthrough, there's a good one right here. (I'm "a fine old man", apparently -- thanks for those kind words, Jueri!) And below the astute, erudite and relatively youthful Mr H J Doom delivers his verdict on another Critical IF book, Heart of Ice.

While we're on the subject of old gamebooks, somebody said to me at Fighting Fantasy Fest that he thought you could only win in my 40-year-old gamebook The Temple of Flame by diving off the walkway into the shaft. I don't believe I'd have written an unbeatable path through the book, but it's a long time ago now and I might be wrong. Those who have played it more recently than 1984 may be able to shed some light on this?

And talking of FFF 5, if you weren't able to attend here's my and Jamie's talk along with discussion panels from later in the day:

Shoulders of giants

If you're a movie buff and you've played any of the Vulcanverse books, you can't have failed to notice my penchant for hommages. In The Hammer of the Sun the inspirations are mostly pretty obvious, from the skeleton warriors of Jason & the Argonauts to Eldon Tyrell's boardroom in Blade Runner -- but did you also spot the nod to Robert Eggers's The Lighthouse?

In Workshop of the Gods I should have made a list of the movies, TV shows, poems, short stories, comics and books referenced. There are so many I soon lost count. If you look closely you should be able to find the following:

• Blake's 7: "Orac" (Lorrimer, 1978)
• Breaking Bad: "ABQ" (Bernstein, 2009)
• B.P.R.D.: "The Soul of Venice" (Gunter, Oeming & Mignola; 2003)
• Dance of the Vampires (aka The Fearless Vampire Killers; Polanski, 1967)
• Dark City (Proyas, 1998)
• The Description of Greece: Book 6 (Pausanias, c.150 AD)
• Doctor Who: "The Edge of Destruction" (1964)
• Doctor Who: "Dalek" (2005)
• Don't Look Now (Roeg, 1973)
• The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (Lovecraft, 1927)
• The Eyes of the Overworld (Vance, 1966)
• Force of Evil (Polonsky, 1948; that's where the still above comes from)
• The Freshman (Bergman, 1990)
• Fury Road (Miller, 2015)
• The Iliad (Homer, c.750 BC)
• Inferno (Dante, c.1321; The Divine Comedy, Canto 26)
• Iron Man (Favreau, 2008)
• The King of Elfland's Daughter (Lord Dunsany, 1924)
• Land of the Pharaohs (Hawks, 1955)
• The Long Good Friday (Mackenzie, 1980)
• Murder, My Sweet (Dmytryk, 1944)
• Night of the Demon (Tourneur, 1957)
• On the Failure of Oracles (Plutarch, c.83 AD)
• The Revenant (Iñárritu, 2015)
• The Shadow (Mulcahy, 1994)
• Strange Tales #110 (Lee & Ditko, 1963)
• Touch of Evil (Welles, 1958; restored by Murch in 1998)

If you spot any others, let me know and I'll add them to the list.

And if you should see me at Fighting Fantasy Fest (I'm there in the morning; schedule below) and you have a copy of Workshop of the Gods, I'll find the time to autograph it. Can't make any promises about my older books, though. Mick Jagger must find it hard to scrawl his name over Black & Blue now that Hackney Diamonds is out.

Fighting Fantasy Fest

Fighting Fantasy Fest 5 is coming up in just over a week. As you may have realized, it's the 40th anniversary of my first gamebook, Crypt of the Vampire. Oh, and it's the 40th anniversary of something called Deathtrap Dungeon, which accounts for why Fighting Fantasy author Sir Ian Livingstone and artist Iain McCaig are the guests of honour.

Originally the plan was for me to be on a panel discussion with Jamie Thomson and Paul Mason, perhaps reprising some of our talk from MantiCon in 2018. (Video above if you can't make it to Ealing for FFF.) Plans changed and now I think the panel involves Paul, Steve Williams and Marc Gascoigne, while Jamie is going to give a talk and I'll be there to answer questions. So in the last six years I'll have attended conventions in Germany, Italy, France, and now Britain. At my age it might be time to slow down. Cutting out air travel would be good for the planet, too.

I'm not specifically at FFF to sign books, apart from a brief slot from 10:30 to 11:00 just before Jamie's talk, but if you happen to bring a book along and I have time then of course I won't refuse. Jamie and Paul are probably planning to be there all day, so if you have limited space in your bag I'd advise bringing Way of the Tiger or Robin of Sherwood rather than any of mine.

Now, about that 40th anniversary of Crypt of the Vampire. I ought to do something to mark that, you say? Watch this space.