Either I've Suddenly Developed Amnesia...

[ffutures]

...or someone else's work has been published under my name

...or someone has reprinted something I wrote without my permission

It's a Traveller adventure called Starfire published in 2016 by Star Quest Games, who apparently reprint old magazine adventures etc. I know nothing about this company - does anyone have any contacts, or know anything about them? I can only find one dealer selling it.

https://www.nobleknight.com/P/2147686312/Starfire

I've asked them for any info they can give me - we'll see what happens.

Anyone got this in their collection?

Later - I'm reliably informed that they did a bunch of Traveller in the early 90’s, including authors like Garth Nix and James Cambias. They were a small press operation run by James L. Shipman. The 2016 date on the page I linked to is probably an error.

Later still - someone selling a copy on eBay took a look inside for me - apparently the publisher (now deceased) adapted it from a Star Trek RPG scenario I wrote. I vaguely remember the adventure, but I can't for the life of me remember which magazine it appeared in - a lot of it was a big fight around a mining mass driver on an alien world. Ring any bells with anyone?

Comments

Shipman

[bigjackbrass]

Anything Shipman published was very likely to have been stolen. I don't know if you are familiar with his history in Tunnels & Trolls circles, but essentially he started as an active fan, became a publisher, began to bring back all sorts of out of print items apparently with the author's/publisher's consent, but then the truth emerged: he used art stolen from people like Jon Hodgson, republished Flying Buffalo material without permission and dared anyone to try to stop him. The fact that he called his company Outlaw Press should probably have told us something.

A thoroughly vile sort. He is apparently now deceased (although it must be said that his reputation was so poor that not everyone believed it wasn't merely another con by him).

Re: Shipman

[ffutures]

I hadn't heard of him before, but I soon got the idea when I started looking into him - especially when the authors he published included some biggish names from SF whom I strongly doubt would write for a small gaming press.