Yoon Ha Lee's Blog, page 3

Two gamers bond over a mysteriously animated unicorn miniature. Thanks to Rachel Brown for her comments.

This story appears in Her Magical Pet, a self-published charity benefit anthology on Amazon.

Play the roles of interstellar soldiers relying on each other to survive after they’ve escaped from the war. Entropy Soldiers is a GM-less narrative RPG that uses found texts like magazine pages to prompt your creativity. (Some sample texts drawn from public domain books have been provided for your convenience.)

All proceeds from this game will be donated to the ACLU.

Available for free or pay-what-you-want here.

A quirky GM-less narrative mini-TTRPG for 2-5 players in which you travel to a mysterious city and become entangled with each other. The game’s key mechanic involves folding each other’s character sheets and telling stories about the words that the folds pass through. Available for free/pay-what-you-want at itch.io.

Former Academician Anna Kim’s research into AI cost her everything. Now, years later, the military has need of her expertise in order to prevent the destruction of their AI-powered fleet.

Thanks to David Gillon, Isis, and Sonya Taaffe for the beta.

A GM-less narrative tabletop roleplaying game in which players create a dungeon, explore it, and uncover each other’s secrets.

Thanks to Sam Kabo Ashwell and Yune Kyung Lee for the comments.

Thanks to Arabelle Betzwieser and Joseph Betzwieser for playtesting.

Special thanks to Chris Chinn for mentoring me in game design.

A gardener at the end of the universe, a raven engineer, a cat who has forgotten how to fly—these wonders and more appear in Yoon Ha Lee’s collection of flash fairy tales gathered from the last few years of his Patreon.

Available for free/pay-what-you-want as a mobi or epub ebook at itch.io.

Thanks to Ellen Million for the gorgeous cover art and the copyediting.

A GM-less narrative TTRPG in which you play the roles of both the survivors of an attack by alien drones, represented by a paper airplane, and the survivors’ descendants in the aftermath.

Also, f*** COVID-19.

Free/pay what you want at itch.io.

Thanks to Sam Kabo Ashwell and David Gillon for the comments.

The story of a mermaid who wanted to be an astronaut, and her devoted sister.

Thanks to Mel Melcer, Ellen Million, and Yune Kyung Lee for the beta.

Dedicated to Yune Kyung Lee, best of sisters.

Phoenix Extravagant is a standalone fantasy novel forthcoming from Solaris Books in June 2020. It’s about a nonbinary painter teaming up with a pacifist mecha dragon against the evil empire, and it’s set in a magical version of Korea during the Japanese occupation.

Thanks to my beta readers: Marie Brennan, David Gillon, Helen Keeble, Yune Kyung Lee, Mel Melcer, Vass, and Ursula Whitcher.

Dedicated to artist and inspiration Stephanie Folse.

I’ll be in Dublin for WorldCon this year! Here’s my schedule:

Kaffeeklatsch: Yoon Ha Lee

Format: Kaffeeklatsch

17 Aug 2019, Saturday 11:00 – 11:50, Level 3 Foyer (KK/LB) (CCD)

Reading: Yoon Ha Lee

Format: Reading

17 Aug 2019, Saturday 15:30 – 15:50, ECOCEM Room (CCD)

I’ll be reading from Phoenix Extravagant, which is set in not!Korea during the not!Japanese occupation with bonus automata, a collaborationist painter having second thoughts, a rebel mecha dragon, and, of course, bonus genocide. As one does.

What I read when I was young

Format: Panel

18 Aug 2019, Sunday 10:00 – 10:50, Second Stage (Liffey-B) (CCD)

The books we read in childhood often have a lasting influence. In this panel, finalists for the Hugo Award for Best Novel discuss the books that had a profound effect on the people they became. How did these works change them? Was this influence a good or a bad one? Is there a book they think everyone should read at least once in their life?

Mur Lafferty (M), Mary Robinette Kowal, Catherynne Valente, Rebecca Roanhorse, Becky Chambers, Naomi Novik, Yoon Ha Lee

Things that SFF writers often get wrong: logistics

Format: Panel

18 Aug 2019, Sunday 14:00 – 14:50, Wicklow Room-4 (CCD)

That’s not how it really works! Organisational planning and logistics often get overlooked or written wrong – whether it’s the time needed to hunt and cook an animal in the forest, or to develop the cure for a disease. Timing, availability, and coordination of things often get pushed into a grey area where good logistical planning goes to die. What does it take to get these details right? When the details don’t work within the story, how does an author work around them? Our panellists share their own experiences, including what they have got right and wrong along the way.

D.A Lascelles (Zig Zag Education) (M), Ginjer Buchanan, Brian Smith, Yoon Ha Lee

I think I’m going to be the person on the panel who gets logistics wrong…