Caliban

“One never… asks is it a novel,” wrote John Cheever in 1977. “One asks is it interesting.” Definitely not a novel – whatever its publishers say – but definitely very interesting is Jack Hilton’s 1935 book Caliban Shrieks, equal parts autobiography, political screed and artful rant, now reissued in hardback by Vintage Classics and lauded last week as a lost literary masterpiece in the New Yorker.Channelling Shakespeare’s monstrous Caliban (“the red plague rid you for learning me your language”), Hilton’s narrator uses…

Things rarely go well in the grimdark universe of Games Workshop’s Warhammer 40,000 setting. It’s kind of there in the grimdark moniker: things either start bad and get worse, or every victory is wrenched from the jaws of defeat, sometimes literally, at great cost. As the game gears up for a major relaunch, that’s not changed.The Woman Who Would Be PhotonGames Workshop recently announced its plans to launch the latest edition of its beloved tabletop miniatures game Warhammer 40K, the 10thofficial update to its ruleset,…