We’re pleased to have Wyrd Science back on our shelves, including the latest Issue 8. It’s one to try if you’re interested in games in all their forms, from role-playing games and war games to more traditional board games. We spoke with editor John Power to find out what goes into bringing Wyrd Science together.

Let’s start by introducing the mag!  If Wyrd Science were a person, how would you describe them at a dinner party?

What do you wish people could see behind the scenes of making an issue?

What question does Wyrd Science keep trying to answer (even if imperfectly)?

What games can tell us about ourselves and the world we live in.The central conceit of Wyrd Science is that games, tabletop games, are just as much a part of our culture as music, films, literature etc, and just like them they reflect the world around us, are influenced by and can in turn influence that world themselves.There’s a great example of that in our seventh issue where Dr Malcolm Craig, senior lecturer in American History at Liverpool John Moores University, wrote a great essay for us introducing his current project, using roleplaying games released during the Cold War to further our understanding of that period.I don’t think anyone would seriously dispute that films or novels set in and around the Cold War aren’t useful texts for making sense of our cultural and social histories and I genuinely believe games are just the same. There’s loads that you could write about a game like Warhammer and what its early years can tell us about 1980s Britain. Or for that matter what a game released today, say for example something like Triangle Agency with its focus on mind bending corporate cosmic horror, says about life in the workplace in the early 21st century (spoiler: it’s not good).

Who do you imagine reading Wyrd Science and where are they when they do?

What’s a small detail in the magazine that most people might miss, but means a lot to you?

What do you know now that you wish you’d known before you started.

Too much, but then if I had known it then I probably wouldn’t have got that first issue out. Technology has made it possible for one person to produce a magazine like Wyrd Science in their spare room but it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s a sensible thing to do.Honestly there’s certainly a lot of good business practices that would have been very handy to know about rather than having to learn them on the job in a hurry. Still, as it happens almost every week I learn something new doing this that would’ve been good to know before, but that’s just the way it is, you just have to move on, incorporate what you’ve learnt going forward, and be prepared to learn something new the next week during the next crisis.