Tightbeam 320 May 2021 Morningtide By Angela K. Scott Tightbeam 320 May 2021 The Editors are: George Phillies [email protected] 48 Hancock Hill Drive, Worcester, MA 01609. Jon Swartz [email protected] Art Editors are Angela K. Scott, Jose Sanchez, and Cedar Sanderson. New writer: We welcome Robert Kroese, whose work appears at upstreamreviews.com and at RobertKroese.com Anime Reviews are courtesy Jessi Silver and her site www.s1e1.com. Ms. Silver writes of her site “S1E1 is primarily an outlet for views and reviews on Japanese animated me- dia, and occasionally video games and other entertainment.” Regular contributors in- clude Justin E. A. Busch, Tom Feller, Declan Finn, Greg Hullender, Rob Kroese. Jim McCoy, Chris Nuttall, Pat Patterson, Heath Row, Cedar Sanderson, Alan White, and Tamara Wilhite. Declan Finn’s web page declanfinn.com covers his books, reviews, writing, and more. Jim McCoy’s reviews and more appear at jimboss- ffreviews.blogspot.com. Chris Nuttall’s essays and writings are seen at chrishang- er.wordpress.com and at superversivesf.com. Pat Patterson’s reviews appear on his blog habakkuk21.blogspot.com and also on Good Reads and Amazon.com. Cedar Sander- son’s reviews and other interesting articles appear on her site www.cedarwrites.wordpress.com/ and its culinary extension. Tamara Wilhite’s other es- says appear on Liberty Island (libertyislandmag.com). Samuel Lubell originally pub- lished his reviews in The WSFA Journal. Anita Barrios is a former middle school ELA and Social Studies teacher. Regular short fiction reviewers Greg Hullender and Eric Wong publish at RocketStackRank.com. Some contributors have Amazon links for books they review, to be found with the re- view on the web; use them and they get a reward from Amazon. Tightbeam is published approximately monthly by the National Fantasy Fan Federation and distributed electronically to the membership. The N3F offers four different memberships. To join as a public (free) member, send [email protected] your email address. To join or renew, use the membership form at http://n3f.org/join/membership-form/ to provide your name and whichever address you use to receive zines. Memberships with The National Fantasy Fan (TNFF) via paper mail are $18; memberships with TNFF via email are $6. Zines other than TNFF are email only. Additional memberships at the ad- dress of a current dues-paying member are $4. Public memberships are free. Send pay- ments to Kevin Trainor, PO Box 143, Tonopah NV 89049 . Pay online at N3F.org. Pay- Pal contact is [email protected]. 3 TIGHTBEAM Table of Contents Art Front Cover … Morningside by Angela K. Scott Back Cover … Team Mandalorian by Jose Sanchez Letters of Comment 4 … Lloyd Penney 4 … Will Mayo Anime 4 … Backwards Into The Nasuverse, or, The B-Side Wins Again … Review by Kevin Trainor 5 … I’ve Been Killing Slimes For 300 Years and Maxed Out My Levels … Review by Jessi Silver Comics 8 … Western Comics: Capsule Reviews … by Stephanie Souders 11 … IDW’s Transformers vs G. I. Joe Volume 1 … Review by Jim McCoy Fanzines 13 … FanFaronade 10 … Justin E. A. Busch Movies 16 … Universal Picture’s Mortal Engines … Review by Jim McCoy Novels 18 … Draw One in the Dark by Sarah Hoyt … Review by Pat Patterson 18 … Karma Upsilon 4 by Mark Wandrey … Review by Pat Patterson 19 … Mary Roach’s Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife … Review by Will Mayo 19 … The Centenal Cycle by Malka Older … Review by Tom Feller 20 … Alan Britt and Silvia Scheibli's Parabola Dreams … Review by Will Mayo SerCon 21 … Leigh Brackett Bio-Bibliography … by Jon D. Swartz, Ph. D., N3F Historian 23 … An Interview with Nick Cole … by Tamara Wilhite Short Stories 21 … Sean McGuire’s Incryptid Series: The Short Stories … by Jim McCoy Video 25 … Rabid Ears: Ravings of a TV Fiend … by Cathode Ray Gourmet Bureau 28 … Eat This While You Read That: Martin Shoemaker … by George Phillies COPYRIGHT NOTICE: All material in this issue, unless expressly noted otherwise, is contributed for one-time use only in this publication in its various print and electronic forms including electronic archival libraries. All other copyrights are retained by the contributor. Other use of any other portion of this publication in any medium requires the express permission of the current (at time reproduction is to be made) President and Directorate of N3F and the original copyright holder. 4 TIGHTBEAM Letter of Comment Dear George and Jon: We have had a lot of Zoom sessions again, and again, there’s one on today, Fanac.org presents an interview with Erle Korshak. I am looking forward to that, but will have to see what my time schedule is like. We are still able to come up with activities for ourselves, although now that we are in month 13 of the pandemic, and month 6 of lockdown, it’s getting tough to keep to the schedule and diet. FanFaronade… I agree on Justin’s words on Outworlds 71/Afterworlds. The articles, locs, art- works are all a huge mass made into a masterpiece. My copy sits beside an even larger fannish tome, Warhoon 28. And, also agree on MarkTime and This Here… . All fanzines together give me the variety of printed discussions I like, and I’d take this over a Zoom session any day. I did know a few things about Edmond Hamilton, mostly because I was doing some editorial work on the new Captain Future books by Allen Steele, being issued by Amazing Stories in their Amazing Selects series. I have a couple of Hamilton’s books on my shelves, and I re-read them recently…still good fun. I wish I could do more here, but I think I have made all the comments I can for this issue. Per- haps there will be more for me in the next issue…see you then. Yours, Lloyd Penney. Thanks, George, And happy 80th birthday to everyone. It's nice to be included again. Our lives are brief here on this earth but, for a while anyway, in our writings we are led to believe that something may out- last us. Well, I'll keep it all coming. I trust you folks to do the same. Will Mayo Anime Backwards Into The Nasuverse, or, The B-Side Wins Again Review by Kevin Trainor All of the above. IIRC Fate/Stay Night started as an erotica video game, was rewritten as a light novel, and then started going off in several directions on different media. Fate/Grand Order is rel- atively new; it's only been available for a little over two years in the Anglosphere. Is this a game? Anime? Something else? All of the above? 5 TIGHTBEAM I have a habit of getting into things backwards. I didn’t discover Sailor Moon on TV, I got interested in it by reading Ranma ½ fanfic. When I was rediscovering the joy of baseball, it was because I got talked into a Pursue The Pennant league, which led me to Bill James’ Baseball Abstracts, and the next thing I knew I was taking the kids to Twins games at the Metrodome. And so it went with Kintoko Nasu’s Fate/Stay Night multiverse - first I got talked into playing the mobile game Fate/ Grand Order, then I binged Unlimited Blade Works, and then I discovered the bizarre comedy styl- ings of Carnival Phantasm, which never fails to amuse me even if I don’t get all the Tsukihime refer- ences. Now, let me begin by saying that it is almost impossible to completely grasp the full extent of the Fate/Stay Night multiverse. There are manga, games, light novels, and anime (in both movie and TV formats) and not all of them have been or will be translated into English. There are also endless arguments among fans about where to start, and in what sequence one should experience the whole thing. I’m not going to presume to tell you any of that, mostly because I’m simply not familiar with the majority of it except as Infogalactic entries or memes on Reddit. I can say that (broadly speak- ing) there are two main groups of stories: the Fate/Stay Night series and its various spinoffs, which mostly revolve around the Holy Grail Wars, and the more recent (but growing rapidly) Fate/Grand Order game with its spinoffs, which treat the Holt Grail Wars as bothersome distractions from the main task of saving the world from being destroyed in December 2018. (You’re welcome.) Fate/Grand Order’s plot is fairly straightforward. You play the role of the last master of Chaldea, an organization set up to monitor and preserve humanity which finds itself staring down the muzzle of an impending apocalypse. Along with your kouhai, Mash Kyrielight, who has been fused with a Heroic Servant but doesn’t know which one or what its powers are (her discovery of the Servant and his powers is an ongoing subplot in the game), you travel to seven Singularities in human history to find the cause of each one, recover the Grail that triggered it, and thus fold the distorted timeline back into its proper place. In addition to Ms. Kyrielight, you have the assistance of Heroic Servants, spirits from the past with skills and special abilities augmented by Craft Essence cards. There are six basic classes of servants: Archers, Assassins, Berserkers, Casters, Lancers, and Sabers, which have advantages & disadvantages against each other in combat; these are referred to as affinities. Without getting too far into the weeds of the game mechanics, suffice it to say you can summon servants through random “gacha” rolls.