Meredith Talbot reviews hard science fiction, older philosophy of science, and long, complicated board games from Asheville, North Carolina, plus the occasional personal dispatch, at Sorbit & Spine.https://meredithsorbit.com/en-UShttps://meredithsorbit.com/articles/frosthaven/https://meredithsorbit.com/articles/frosthaven/Everything Gloomhaven did, plus a fort-building outpost phase, plus about forty percent more time per scenario than I budgeted for.Sat, 15 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTFrosthavenMeredith Talbothttps://meredithsorbit.com/articles/what-a-humidity-log-teaches-you-about-patience/https://meredithsorbit.com/articles/what-a-humidity-log-teaches-you-about-patience/Part of my job is writing down a number twice a day that almost never changes, and I used to think that was the boring part.Wed, 05 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayMeredith Talbothttps://meredithsorbit.com/articles/cloudspire/https://meredithsorbit.com/articles/cloudspire/A tower-defense MOBA hybrid from the Too Many Bones people, which tells you everything you need to know about the rulebook you're about to spend an evening inside of.Sun, 02 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTCloudspireMeredith Talbothttps://meredithsorbit.com/articles/teaching-naomi-a-game-she-picked-apart/https://meredithsorbit.com/articles/teaching-naomi-a-game-she-picked-apart/My friend Naomi came to game night for the first time in months and spent the whole session finding the exploit in a game I've played thirty times without noticing it.Sat, 01 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayMeredith Talbothttps://meredithsorbit.com/articles/the-case-for-playing-games-alone/https://meredithsorbit.com/articles/the-case-for-playing-games-alone/There's a specific judgment reserved for someone who plays a board game solo on purpose, and I'd like to push back on it a little.Thu, 30 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayMeredith Talbothttps://meredithsorbit.com/articles/the-kickstarter-i-finally-said-no-to/https://meredithsorbit.com/articles/the-kickstarter-i-finally-said-no-to/I backed three big box games in one year, opened none of them within six months of arrival, and had to have an honest conversation with myself about what I actually enjoy.Wed, 08 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayMeredith Talbothttps://meredithsorbit.com/articles/rereading-anathem-and-changing-my-mind/https://meredithsorbit.com/articles/rereading-anathem-and-changing-my-mind/I gave Anathem four stars the first time through. Halfway into a reread I'm not sure the ending earns the same complaint I made about it a year ago.Fri, 05 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayMeredith Talbothttps://meredithsorbit.com/articles/the-comic-shop-thats-not-there-anymore/https://meredithsorbit.com/articles/the-comic-shop-thats-not-there-anymore/The game store two blocks from my apartment closed in March, and I still catch myself walking toward it out of habit.Thu, 04 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayMeredith Talbothttps://meredithsorbit.com/articles/out-of-control/https://meredithsorbit.com/articles/out-of-control/Kevin Kelly's 1994 tour of hive minds, ecosystems, and self-organizing systems is dated in exactly the way you'd expect and still rewired how I look at a beehive.Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTOut of ControlMeredith Talbothttps://meredithsorbit.com/articles/the-ledger-i-keep-for-my-own-books/https://meredithsorbit.com/articles/the-ledger-i-keep-for-my-own-books/I log every book I finish in a paper notebook instead of an app, and yes, I know how that sounds coming from someone whose day job is basically logging things.Fri, 15 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayMeredith Talbothttps://meredithsorbit.com/articles/the-night-the-tuesday-group-nearly-ended/https://meredithsorbit.com/articles/the-night-the-tuesday-group-nearly-ended/Four adults, one card, and a genuinely tense twenty minutes over whether a triggered ability could be triggered twice in the same round.Tue, 12 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayMeredith Talbothttps://meredithsorbit.com/articles/guards-of-atlantis-ii/https://meredithsorbit.com/articles/guards-of-atlantis-ii/A tabletop translation of the MOBA genre that I went into skeptical of and came out of teaching to everyone in my group within a month.Thu, 07 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTGuards of Atlantis IIMeredith Talbothttps://meredithsorbit.com/articles/annihilation/https://meredithsorbit.com/articles/annihilation/Four unnamed women go into a quarantined wilderness that used to be a coastline, and the book gives you exactly as much as you need to know, which is to say, not much.Tue, 28 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTAnnihilationMeredith Talbothttps://meredithsorbit.com/articles/we-have-never-been-modern/https://meredithsorbit.com/articles/we-have-never-been-modern/This is not science fiction and I read it anyway, mostly because the central idea, once you actually get it, is the kind of thing you can't stop applying to everything else you read.Sun, 19 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTWe Have Never Been ModernMeredith Talbothttps://meredithsorbit.com/articles/superintelligence/https://meredithsorbit.com/articles/superintelligence/Bostrom opens with a fable about sparrows raising an owl to protect them and never once addresses how they plan to control it. Then he spends 300 pages being right about how hard that question actually is.Wed, 08 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTSuperintelligenceMeredith Talbothttps://meredithsorbit.com/articles/earthborne-rangers/https://meredithsorbit.com/articles/earthborne-rangers/An Arkham Horror-shaped card game where the whole point is coexisting with the world instead of fighting it, and I'm still thinking about that choice weeks later.Mon, 06 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTEarthborne RangersMeredith Talbothttps://meredithsorbit.com/articles/what-rehousing-a-ledger-taught-me-about-inserts/https://meredithsorbit.com/articles/what-rehousing-a-ledger-taught-me-about-inserts/Spent a week at work deciding how a hundred-year-old account book should be stored so it survives another century, then went home and sleeved four hundred cards for the exact same reason.Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayMeredith Talbothttps://meredithsorbit.com/articles/blood-on-the-clocktower/https://meredithsorbit.com/articles/blood-on-the-clocktower/The single fix that actually matters, that dying doesn't remove you from the game, changes a social deduction night from a spectator sport into something everyone stays leaned into.Fri, 20 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTBlood on the ClocktowerMeredith Talbothttps://meredithsorbit.com/articles/permutation-city/https://meredithsorbit.com/articles/permutation-city/Egan asks what happens if you can copy a mind onto a computer, then keeps pulling that thread until the universe itself starts to look optional.Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTPermutation CityMeredith Talbothttps://meredithsorbit.com/articles/race-for-the-galaxy/https://meredithsorbit.com/articles/race-for-the-galaxy/Every card is covered in tiny symbols that look like nothing until, three or four plays in, they suddenly look like everything.Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTRace for the GalaxyMeredith Talbothttps://meredithsorbit.com/articles/the-old-kings-crown/https://meredithsorbit.com/articles/the-old-kings-crown/This came in through Kickstarter and lived on Tabletop Simulator for me for over a year before I ever touched a real component, and it was worth the wait for the art alone.Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMTThe Old King's CrownMeredith Talbothttps://meredithsorbit.com/articles/forbidden-stars/https://meredithsorbit.com/articles/forbidden-stars/Warned everyone going in: this is a four-hour game, and it was still somehow shorter than I expected once we actually sat down to it.Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMTForbidden StarsMeredith Talbothttps://meredithsorbit.com/articles/too-many-bones/https://meredithsorbit.com/articles/too-many-bones/A gorgeous, dice-chucking RPG in a box that punishes you for not already watching a rules tutorial video first.Sat, 21 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMTToo Many BonesMeredith Talbothttps://meredithsorbit.com/articles/the-player-of-games/https://meredithsorbit.com/articles/the-player-of-games/A professional game player gets sent to an empire that runs its whole government through a single game, and somehow that premise earns every bit of the tension it spends 400 pages building.Thu, 12 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMTThe Player of GamesMeredith Talbothttps://meredithsorbit.com/articles/solaris/https://meredithsorbit.com/articles/solaris/Everyone's seen a version of the movie and thinks they know this story. The book is colder, drier, and much more interested in an alien that has no interest whatsoever in being understood.Sun, 08 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMTSolarisMeredith Talbothttps://meredithsorbit.com/articles/the-word-for-world-is-forest/https://meredithsorbit.com/articles/the-word-for-world-is-forest/Everyone's going to say Avatar. Fine, say Avatar. This is the version where nobody floats about on a low-gravity planet and the ending doesn't let anyone off easy.Fri, 30 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMTThe Word for World is ForestMeredith Talbothttps://meredithsorbit.com/articles/the-study-of-instinct/https://meredithsorbit.com/articles/the-study-of-instinct/This one's not science fiction, it's a 1951 ethology textbook, and I read it on a whim and then couldn't stop thinking about stickleback fish for a week.Sat, 10 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMTThe Study of InstinctMeredith Talbothttps://meredithsorbit.com/articles/gloomhaven-jaws-of-the-lion/https://meredithsorbit.com/articles/gloomhaven-jaws-of-the-lion/The 16-kilogram original always intimidated me off the shelf. This one gave me an actual on-ramp, and I finished the campaign, which is more than I can say for the big box.Fri, 19 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMTGloomhaven: Jaws of the LionMeredith Talbothttps://meredithsorbit.com/articles/anathem/https://meredithsorbit.com/articles/anathem/Stephenson makes you learn a language before he'll tell you a story, and for two hundred some pages I resented him for it. Then the ship shows up.Sat, 13 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMTAnathemMeredith Talbothttps://meredithsorbit.com/articles/why-i-dont-trust-a-five-star-anything-anymore/https://meredithsorbit.com/articles/why-i-dont-trust-a-five-star-anything-anymore/A five star rating tells you almost nothing useful, and I say that as someone who slaps one on every review I write.Wed, 03 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayMeredith Talbot