The war drags on...

Just one game of Risk last night, but it was a pretty long one. Rolling to see who goes first, it was me with a 6, followed by 2 5's and 2 3's. I should mention that we were using two dice. Pretty sad, but I'll take it. I picked the Mutants, who are now clearly I think the most powerful faction (though not the lead faction).

( very spoilery )

Wireless, by Charles Stross

Wireless collect a number of Stross' fiction, with an emphasis on a number of longer works, bookended by the Locus Award winning novella "Missile Gap" and the Hugo winning novella "Palimpsest". These are definitely the best of the bunch, and some of the middle is on the mediocre side, though it's hard not to like "A Colder War" with the Mythos making geopolitics even worse, as usual. The longer novellas take on some big themes, and to my mind, hearken back to a more Asimovian SF style of pursuing the logical consequences of a big science fictional twist. The novella is a tough length, and these do have that strange feeling of both too much and not enough, but still pretty durn good stuff.