This is scraped of facebook, and presented mostly without comment (and translation).
I also have a distinct lack of memories over quite a lot of those.

Things that were read

First book of the year: Foods for the Gods by Cassandra Khaw (Gods and Monsters).
The story of Rupert Wong, chef for a dynasty of ghouls and minor bureaucrat in the field in service of the Diyu, and how he ended up in a major cross-pantheon conflict.
While not particularly remarkable, I liked it. However, if “chef for a dynasty of ghouls” isn’t enough of a warning already: this book involves generous amounts of gore and cannibalism.

Second book of the year: Revenger by Alastair Reynolds (Revenger I).
I am reasonably I have found my book of the year.
This is an amazing science-fiction novel. Strong Firefly-vibes in an inherently victorian-ish setting, pretty hard on the science, with sunjammers. Yes, as in “space sailing ships”.

Third book of the year: We Are Legion (We Are Bob) by Dennis Taylor (Bobiverse I).
[This year will probably be one full of series.]
Get a Bob, have him killed, frozen, the Brainicle digitized and used to bob a von-Neumann-probe and send said probe on a journey where no Bob has gone before.
Great read, quite a lot of potential for the sequel.

Fourth book of the year: Deep Navigation by Alastair Reynolds.
A collection of short stories, all set in different settings, but all of them delightfully weird.
Also, with Monkey Suit (in the book) and The Last Log of the Lachrimosa (available online), I have now finally caught up with all the Revelation Space-stories. At least until the end of the month, when Elysium Fire comes out.

Fifth book of the year: Robots vs. Fairies by Dominik Parisien and Navah Wolfe (Editors).
A short story collection centered around – who would have guessed – robots, fairies, or both kinds of creatures.
Put into a wide variety of different settings, all of the stories told are at least okay. The one things standing out as not-quite-fitting is the introduction for over-reliance on a joke barely picked up by the authors…

Sixth book of the year: Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie.
Oh boy. This did so very much not age well…

Seventh book of the year: White Trash Zombie Gone Wild by Diana Rowland (Angel Crawford V).
Contrary to the title a bit slower paced than the previous one, and with a cover design made by someone who clearly never read the book xD

Eighth book of the year: Elysium Fire (Inspector Dreyfus II) by Alastair Reynolds.
Another story in my beloved Revelation Space-universe, in the pre-Melding Plague Glitter Band around Yellowstone, and as such dealing with another threat to the Demarchist society. If nothing of this makes sense to you: that’s okay.
Also, as all Revelation Space-material this is a clear recommendation, but then I might be a little bit biased.

Ninth “book” of the year: Little Wars by H. G. Wells.
Someone had linked an article about the tabletop-ruleset written by Wells some time ago, the whole thing is on Project Gutenberg, and it’s about 80 pages with the history of the system, the rules, and an illustrated play session. Clearly a product of its time (some parts did NOT age well), the for me most interesting aspect of the whole thing is that is does away with dierolling and is instead played with toy cannons, as in “shooting actual projectiles”-toy cannons.

Tenth book of the year: The Armored Saint (Sacred Throne I) by Myke Cole.
Myke’s first (published) foray outside the field of military fiction is first of all too short. Besides that it is a promising start into a female-fronted fantasy trilogy in a properly grimdark setting, and I am very confident that the other books of the series will make good use of the foundation laid here.

Eleventh book of the year (finally): Futu.re by Dmitri Gluchowski.
What kind of consequences will happen if you give immortality to a whole continent? Spoiler warning: it gets ugly.

Twelveth book of the year: The Bare Bones Course for Film and Video by Tom Schroeppel.
It is exactly what it says on the tin.

Thirteenth book of the year: Das Problem der Befahrung des Weltraumes by Hermann Noordung (Herman Potočnik).
It’s a german book about how-to-space-travel, and it was written 1929. It is mostly Not Wrong (1), as physics doesn’t change, but it is chock-full of very, very optimistic assumptions. “Oh my sweet summer child”-level of overly optimistic. It is, in my opinion, still quite good at explaining some basics, and it is just utterly delightful.
(1) In some matters it is very wrong (better: outdated – see comments). Venus for example later turned out to be Hell, and interstellar travel very much suffers from relativistic effects. Also, some predictions were just shattered by later scientific progress

Fourteenth book of the year: Off With Their Heads (Alice in Deadland 0.5) by Mainak Dhar.
The prequel to Alice in Deadland and Through the Killing Glass, Off With Their Heads tells the story how the world went to shit and became the eponymous deadland of the later novels (which tell a vaguely Alice-themed zombie story – who would have guessed).
It was also an interesting case of book deja-vu: I was completely convinced I hadn’t read that one before, and couldn’t have told you what’s going on in it, but while reading it it was just a string of “oh right, that happend” and “next this-and-that should happen”. It was… strange.

Fifteenth book of the year: The Child Thief by Brom.
It’s a better Peter Pan-Story than Peter Pan. Or rather: it’s a delightfully dark modern fairy-tale about everyone’s favourite asshole fae-boy, loosely based on and heavily inspired by the aforementioned story, while also heavily borrowing inspiration from other parts of european mythology.
And also the illustrations. I’m seriously tempted to get this in print.
(Beware though: it’s a fantasy tale in a fantasy world, lest you too start screaming about the historic misplacement of potatoes into 600AD Britain *cough*.) [The origin of the infamous potatogate.]

Sixteenth book of the year: Faerie Apocalypse by Jason Franks.
A story in which several mortals bring doom to the land beyond the veil (and sometimes to themselves), and ultimately tear it down.
Working strong on the Fae-are-bound-by-stories aspect, it is a good read with a devious structure of more-but-shorter-chapters, strongly encouraging the “just one more”-syndrom.

Seventeenth book of the year: Wild Trash Zombie Unchained (Angel Crawford VI) by Diana Rowland.
The as-of-now last entry in the series ups the stakes massively, brings back a major asshole from previous books and ends on a very end-y note that wraps up the series well. Also, Zombie-Gators.
As of now, further Crawford-books are neither planned nor ruled out by Rowland, but if a seventh book ever comes out, I will sure as hell come back.

Eighteenth book of the year: Broken Angels (Takeshi Kovacs II) by Richard K. Morgan.
In which an impromptu mission to repossess an archaeological find in a planet-wide warzone does not go sideways at all.
What I really like in the series so far is that while most things are somewhat sorted out at the end, things are not well.

Nineteenth book of the year: Woken Furies (Takeshi Kovacs III) by Richard K. Morgan.
The as-of-now last entry of the series is best described as a cascading clusterfuck of clusterfuck, with about everything going sideways that probably can.
Maybe I should try the netflix-thing at some point.

Twentieth book of the year: An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon.
A… space-fantasy, I’d say, aboard a Generation Ship where a lot of things went very wrong, and are not going to get any better.

The twenty-first-to-twenty-sixth books of the year were Sin du Jour II-VII by Matt Wallace, namely:
Lustlocked
Pride’s Spell
Idle Ingredients
Greedy Pigs
Gluttony Bay
Taste of Wrath
In his seven-novellae-series, Wallace follows the misadventures of the eponymous and very specialised catering agency that serves the non-human population.
The novella-format makes each of the book a handy bite-sized delicacy, easily consumed on a lazy afternoon. For those inclined in the genre of urban fantasy, this series is very much a recommendation.

Twenty-seventh book of the year: Turtles, Termites and Traffic Jams – Explorations in massively parallel microworlds by Mitchel Resnick.
Finally a non-fiction piece again. The book largely deals with the author’s fascination with self-organising systems and his experience in exploring those using StarLogo, the simulation language developed by the author.
It’s a good book I’d say for people who want to get a first grip on the whole concept of self-organising systems and emergent behaviour, but given that the recommendation for it that I read on twitter was along the lines of “total revelation, changed my entire way of thinking” I can’t help but feel a bit disappointed.

[We are missing the entry for book twenty-six, which was For We Are Many (Bobiverse II) by Dennis Taylor.]

Twenty-ninth book of the year: The Calculating Stars (Lady Astronauts I) by Mary Robinette Kowal.
What to say about this. Alternative history-fiction in which the US beat the USSR in the space race, a short-term-extinction-level-event, and the moon race reimagined against the ticking clock as humanity needs to get off the planet.
Oh, and also a female protagonist, and lots of said protagonist crashing against the 60s/70s society while trying to join the astronaut corps. Not neccessarily a comfortable read.

Thirtieth book of the year: All These Worlds (Bobiverse III) by Dennis Taylor.
In which the trilogy following our ragtag band of von Neumann-probes comes to a conclusion. I really cannot say anything else without going into spoilers.

Thirty-first book of the year: A Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe (The Salvagers I) by Alex White.
Actual, honest-to-god Space Fantasy, with magic and space travel, and it works surprisingly well. (It would probably have worked just as well on a planetary scale as ‘just fantasy’, but hey: space travel.) The beginning of the book actually had me wondering if somehow the wrong text ended up inside the cover.
Plot-wise it is the common situation of people being in the wrong place at the wrong time, ending up on a heroic quest to [redacted]. It is a solid and self-contained story (two more books are announced), and if Space Fantasy as a genre is your thing, you should go and read this.

Thirty-second book of the year: The Kissing Booth Girl and Other Stories by A.C. Wise.
As one might have guessed, it is a collection of short stories.
To be more precise, it is a collection of delightfully weird tales.

Thirty-third book of the year: Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman.
Which is exactly what it says on the tin.

Thirty-fourth book of the year: Record of a Spaceborn Few (Wayfarers III) by Becky Chambers.
In which the author once again delivers an excellent piece of slice-of-life space fiction, this time from the human homesteaders of the Exodus Fleet.
Once again the stories told are utterly and delightfully mundane, and in that incredibly human. I do not know how Chambers does it, but she keeps scratching a very specific itch, and once again I cannot recommend her books enough.

Thirty-fifth book of the year: Kraken: A Novel by China Miéville.
In which a kraken gets stolen, and things go downhill from there.
While I like the plot and the vision of London this book draws (not to mention that there is probably a LARP-character in the whole cult-collector thing), oh boy this was a cumbersome thing to read.

Thirty-sixth book of the year: The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States by Jeffrey Lewis.
In which Lewis spins a tale from a hopefully fictional 2023, when a government report is released that tries to detail how the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States in 2020 came to happen. It doesn’t become much more “what it says on the tin” than this.
The story, a classic connection of unfortunate incidents spun together to form a catastrophic failure, could use a bit more meat in places, but all in all it is a quite chilling piece that hopefully stays what it says on the cover: a speculative novel.

Thirty-seventh book of the year: Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente.
This was a capital-W, capital-R Wild Ride. Seriously, this book reads like an acid trip. But to be a bit less unspecific:
SciFi always dealt with the question of “what if”. In Space Opera, Cat’s “what if” is “what if humanity needs to prove to the galactic public that they are actually sentient (and do not need to get wiped out), and the way to answer that question is ‘do not lose the Galactivision Song Contest’?”
There is much goodness in this book, but I have to say that the ending felt a bit like a crash. But don’t let that stop you.

Thirty-eigth book of the year: The Moons of Barsk (Barsk II) by Lawrence M. Schoen.
In which we return to Barsk, the world of the uplifted elephants, and mostly follow established guidelines for a sequel. More history, more revelations, upped stakes for our protagonists. Upon actually typing that I realise how underwhelmed this will read, but if Barsk: The Elephants’ Graveyard was Your Thing, this one will be too.
It also ends on both one hell of a cliffhanger and a massive bang, and I want Barsk III now thank you very much.

Thirty-ninth book of the year: The Fated Sky (Lady Astronaut II) by Mary Robinette Kowal.
In which we skip the establishment of both the Space Station and the Moon Base and go straight forward to the trip to Mars. Some of you might remember that book I opened with a short term extinction level event, so we’re still working on evacuating the planet. Things go rough, as otherwise this book would be boring.
And as is its predecessor, this book is rather uncomfortable when it comes to period-appropriate displays of racism and sexism.

Fortieth book of the year: The Queen of Crows (Sacred Throne II) by Myke Cole.
The second installment of Cole’s shot at grimdark fantasy is about as much a page turner as the first one was. The story follows our heroine and unintentional saviour figure through… basically another brutal headbutt against seemingly overwhelming odds, and again Myke is *not nice* to his characters. I am very much looking forward to part three.

Fourty-second book of the year: The Sea Rover’s Practice: Pirate Tactics and Techniques, 1630-1730 by Benerson Little.
A detailed account of pirate life and actions, going over the who, the how and the what of marine wealth liberation.
I am currently fighting the urge to order at least half of the sources.
(Also, I was chewing on this since the beginning of the year, before anyone thinks I did it in a day xD)

Fourty-third book of the year: Breaking the Chains of Gravity: The Story of Spaceflight before NASA by Amy Shira Teitel.
As often the case in nonfiction writing, this book is exactly what it says in the subtitle. A history of the (American) space programs, from the Verein für Raumschifffahrt and their early experiments up to the Sputnik-shock, Explorer and the founding of the NASA.
Also, check out the author’s youtube channel for a wide variety of space history coverage: The Vintage Space

Fourty-fourth book of the year: Why Buildings Fall Down by Matthys Levi and Mario Salvadori.
As it is common in nonfiction work, we have another case of “exactly what it says on the tin” here. It’s a book about common ways for buildings to fail, illustrated by famous and/or large desasters, and how to avoid them. It is written for those who are not structural engineers, so if you have some interest in this field, this is a good thing to read. However, if you tend to paraniod fits about your surroundings, maybe stay away.
At some point in the future I might also read this books predecessor, “why buildings stand up” – after which the author apparently got the “but why do they fall down”-question so often that he wrote another book.

Fünfundvierzigstes Buch dieses Jahr: Die Känguru-Apokryphen von Mark-Uwe Kling.
Viel schönes dabei.
Die nächste Känguru-Veröffentlichung hole ich wieder als Hörbuch, da ist das Konsum-Gefühl einfach ein deutlich besseres…

Fourty-sixth book of the year: Tuf Voyaging by GRR Martin. Yes, that guy.
[Someone] recommended this a while ago and was persistent enough that I finally took it from the list of shame.
This is a damn good space opera, in which a free trader aquires a McGuffin that leads to all kinds of shenanigans around the various planets-of-the-chapter. I highly recommend it.

Fourty-seventh book of the year: Great Military Blunders by Geoffrey Regan.
Which is exactly what it says on the tin, eerily disturbing and quite okay.

Fourty-eigth “book” of the year: Transmetropolitan by Warren Ellis (re-read).
Yes, all of it. Go read this comic. It is most glorious.

Fiftieth book of the year: Illegal Aliens by Nick Pollotta and Phil Foglio.
Described best as first contact comedy, this is a Very Very Eighties SciFi.

Fifty-first “book” of the year: a complete reread of Questionable Content by Jeph Jacques.
I forgot a great many things that apparently happened over the years.

Fifty-second book of the year: Legion versus Phalanx by Myke Cole.
In which the author proves that he can write nonfiction as well as he can write fiction.
It’s a hard-and-fast ancient-warfare-for-the-clueless story, telling the story of the clashes between the Hellenistic phalanx and the Roman legions in six battles while going after the question how and why the Romans ultimately stood victorious over the Greek.

Fifty-third book of the year: Resist: Tales from a Future Worth Fighting Against by Hugh Howey (Ed.).
A short story collection full of delightful little dystopias.

Fifty-sixth book of the year: The Labyrinth Index (Laundry Files IX) by Charles Stross.
In which the New Management sends a bunch of operatives on A Nice Vacation overseas, and Nothing Goes Wrong 😐

Fifty-seventh book of the year: Dirty Old London: The Victorian Fight against Filth by Lee Jackson.
It is exactly what it says on the tin: a high-level nonfiction work about the different kinds of dirt that plagued London in the 1800s, and what was done about it.
It is also a great read, and I highly recommend it.
Not excuse me while I violently restrain myself from buying half the bibliography.

Also: the fifty-eighth book of the year, and most likely the last one, is A Bad Deal For The Whole Galaxy (The Salvagers II) by Alex White.
All the way down as good as the first one, and as much of a page turner, this space-opera-with-magic was a blast, and do I look forward to the third part.

Things that were seen

Finally got around to watch Solo.
Somewhat decent heist movie actually, that one. Could probably have been cut some twenty minutes shorter, but then you’d have lost all the in-universe placing of the titular character, and that was obviously not an option.

I just, for a lack of a better word, subjected myself to the Ready Player One movie.
As the prophecy foretold, it’s a bad movie based on a terrible book.
Thanks, I hate it.

Phantastische Tierwesen 2. Ich fühlte mich unterhalten.
Irgendwann muss ich noch den ersten sehen.

The Death of Stalin.
Now that was a ride.

Other things thinged

Roughly 80 hours and I am finally free again xD
Ghost Recon Wildlands. Quite good tactical shooter, very bland (but effective) Open World sandbox, Clancy-story.
Oh, and as Ubisoft gonna Ubisoft, a glitched out ending. Or maybe they just expect 110% completion.
(The mission missing is the Predator hunt-movie tie-in-bonus mission which in no unclear words is marked as “does not count towards progression”.)¹This was accompanied by a screenshot showing the games’ conspiracy board with all targets taken out, stating 100% completion, and another screenshot showing the ending screen saying “you’ve only destabilized 100% of the cartel, complete 100% for an alternative ending.

Sooo… ButtCreed: Rogue.
It’s an okay AC-game, a ‘meh’ open-world-game and if you play it like I play most open world games (1. satisfy map completion compulsion, 2. do mainquest) the story feels quite short. The point-of-view from outside the order was nice, though.
Also, the metaplot-game was at its weakest point so far, and the difficulty-distribution in the Abstergo-puzzles felt completely random.

Tales: Inside.
Now that was, as one might say, A Thing.

[My first ever Knutpunkt happened that year! Sweden! That’s been A Thing!]

Watchcon 2018, in the hills east of Madrid.
Inofficially also Local Man Ruis Everything II.
Ingame on I-have-no-idea-how-this-place-was-called-and-it-does-not-matter-anymore-more-thanks-a-lot-Tuco.
With that landscape, not-taking-pictures would have been a punishable offense. [Pictures not migrated (yet?).]

[It was also the year of the Toulouse-venture, which I will likely put in its own post some day.]

Das wäre dann Super Mario Odysee gewesen, zumindest der Story-Teil. Ein durchaus gutes Spiel, mein bislang einziger größerer Kritikpunkt ist die teilweise etwas magere/absurde Verteilung von Speicherpunkten grade in dezidierten Sprungpuzzeln.
Mein innerer Completionist wird sicher noch auf Mondjagd gehen, aber mal schauen wie intensiv mich das hält – oder ob ich damit warte, bis ich wieder einen großen Bildschirm habe.

Joa. Das war ein Resistopia, recht kurzfristig geplant und verbracht im Magazin.
Ich stelle fest, unironisch und ohne Sarkasmus: ganz nett.
Der Plan sieht vor, das ganze im nächsten Jahr nochmal zu versuchen, mit mehr Leuten und gescheiter Ausrüstung.
[Ha. Hahahaha. Yea.]

[Einen Mittelpunkt gab’s damals auch.]

Methodisch Inkorrekter Tourauftakt. Kann man schonmal machen.

Meh Effect: Andromeda.
It’s a fun enough game to keep me enganged for the ~80 hours it took me, the core gameplay loop is mostly okay, character interactions are fine-ish, and at the current patch state there are no too-wonky animation issues left. If you liked previous ME-games and get a discount, get Andromeda. It will probably work out. I mean… I guess I kinda mostly liked it, but.
Way more critical opinions (“incoherent rambling because this time I didn’t take notes”) in the comments, which are UN-sanctioned spoiler territory, so enter on your own risk.

In einem Anfall von “die Stelle da juckt wieder” habe ich Ghost Recon: Wildlands wieder installiert. Mir fehlte da noch ein Ausflug in den Fallen Ghosts-DLC.
Die Beschreibung verspricht “wie das Hauptspiel, aber diesmal gegen Profis”, und holy fuck das ist nicht gelogen. Statt gegen Kartellschläger und gelegentlich mal die Armee geht es diesmal direkt gegen Unidad und eine professionelle Söldnertruppe mit neuen Gegnertypen (gepanzert, Sniper, Tarnmantel). Der erhöhte Anspruch an die Gun-Puzzle gefällt mir ja gut, aber in (mindestens) zwei der neuen Nebenmissionen steht man plötzlich einer großen Gruppe kompetenter Gegner gegenüber, und ich sehe mich diesen DLC noch nicht zuende spielen…
[Ist auch nie passiert.]

Being just a little late to the party, I just finished Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice.
And oh boy, was this a great one. Environmental design, soundscape, puzzles, fighting… and despite being utterly creepy no fuckin’ jumpscares ♥
(Play with headphones.)

Das war ein Congress. Also der 35ste. Aber halt mein erster. Die erste Erkenntnis im Zug gen Süden: auf dem Zugboden klirren umfallende Mate-Flaschen nicht so schön.
Es war definitiv ein Erlebnis. Es war sehr schön, einige Leute mal wieder zu sehen, es gab viel zu sehen und zu tun, und Erkenntnisgewinn kam aus teilweise doch unerwarteten Richtungen.
Ich habe auch vor, wieder hinzugehen, so sich Urlaub und Ticketverkauf gnädig zeigen – und ich weiß auch schon ein paar Sachen, die ich anders angehen würde.
Und jetzt sitze ich im Zug und versuche, das alles irgenwie zu verdauen.

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  This was accompanied by a screenshot showing the games’ conspiracy board with all targets taken out, stating 100% completion, and another screenshot showing the ending screen saying “you’ve only destabilized 100% of the cartel, complete 100% for an alternative ending.