Dan Sumption's Blog, page 8

A Middle-aged Man Returns to Viriconium

Viriconium comic, in German, by Dieter Judt

Deep in work-work and in lieu of anything new to say, I'm rehashing this passage from my personal blog. When I discovered "the OSR" 18 months ago, it astounded and pleased me to discover how much influence M John Harrison (or at least his Viriconium sequence) seemed to have over the movement. Mike Harrison's writing has significantly altered my views on literature at least twice in my life.

Ironically, I remember Mike telling me 10 or 15 years ago that h...

Learning to Draw Trees - and other news

 

While Mostly Harmless Meetings is nearly ready to go to print, I have launched a pre-launch page for my next Kickstarter project, Learning to Draw Trees, which will be part of ZiMo - #ZineMonth222.
In other news, Peakrill Press now has a Twitter account. Also, the more eagle-eyed of you may have noticed that the address of this site has now changed from peakrill.blogspot.com to blog.peakrill.com. Hopefully it all works exactly as it used to though - if not, please let me know via the comments.

Mostly Harmless Meetings: we're nearly there

I've finished writing and designing Mostly Harmless Meetings, "a zine of countryside encounters" - above is a sample spread. Kickstarter backers should already have an email telling them how to download the PDF.

After the inevitable last-minute edits, this will be going off to print in around a week. Once all of the Kickstarter backers have got their copies, I will be making it available to buy, as PDF or print copy, for anyone who missed out on the Kickstarter.

In the meantime, happy rest-of-2021...

Execution by... daffodils?

Leafing through an old notebook, I found the beginnings of a table of... something. Apart from a couple of entries (a hawthorn tree whose thorns creep up and down its twigs, and a rat which opens its mouth wide and turns itself inside-out) all of the entries came under "you are executed. Cause of death:"

Here are the ways that you could be killed:

Thrown in a river sewn up in a sack with a monkey, a chicken, and a snake.Tied to the top of the tallest tree which is then toppled. Suffocated in daffo...

The Fisher- Folk or PShhrsha

A Fisher-folk

This is the first in a series of Alternative Hominids, a family tree of human species which diverged from their common ancestor a round the same time as Homo Sapiens. Fisher-folk's specialism makes them at catching water beasts and insects, and then tend to live in the region of lakes (particularly moorland scattered with dozens of lochan) and in cave complexes around river sources.

Sketches by Dan Sumption of Peakrill, Illustrations by Sheffield's legendary poster artist Martin F Be...

The Wonderist character class

Wonderism

What is #Wonderism? It is the opposite to Terrorism. A terrorist spreads fear through society by carrying out unexpected acts of violence and outrage. A wonderist spreads joy through society by carrying out unexpected acts of love and silliness. A wonderist views optimism as a radical act of resistance (particularly in our current scary and depressing times). The wonderist's manifesto is Salena Godden's Pessimism is for Lightweights.

What would a wonderist look like in Dungeons & Dragons...

Future Peakrill Projects

Although I’m now full-steam ahead working on Mostly Harmless Meetings, I’ve also been thinking about future projects. The success of my SideQuest project has given me the confidence and inspiration to devote a large amount of my time to publishing my work (regular visitors may notice that the title and design of this blog have changed to reflect this).

At the beginning of 2021, friends of mine at Liverpool Arts Lab launched a monthly magazine called Bodge. A number of us “claimed” pages in the ma...

Kickstarter or bust?

Yesterday's news that Kickstarter are moving to become a Blockchain platform has hit the indie gaming community like a bomb. Many people I know immediately declared that they were leaving the platform, others (me included) are very confused/torn on the issue.

My just-completed Kickstarter campaign for Mostly Harmless Meetings was more successful than I had imagined possible. And it fired me up to make a fool's leap into a new life. I am currently long-term unemployed and, I feel, pretty much unem...

Magic in the Real World

Mumufication

As players of fantasy games, we are all familiar with the concept of magic, but how many of us believe that magic exists in the “real world”.

I do.

Allow me to clarify…

At university, I was taught by the amazing Professor Susan Blackmore. Sue taught me many lessons, and introduced me to the work of Richard Dawkins and Douglas Hofstadter. As a result I became what I then called a “devout atheist”, a materialist, a logical positivist. I would gleefully taunt religious types and “airy fair...

On Infinite Worlds

Beware of the Enchanted Ground by George Woolliscroft Rhead

This is a response to a recent post on False Machine about "making it feel big". I think that, to create a world that feels like it goes on for ever and ever, the trick is to create a world that starts relatively small, but has a lot of exits leading to "who knows what?"  

Here's what I wrote:

This issue of "things that feel really really really big" speaks to the most primal longing I have from my childhood, it shivers my goosespine, it's...