This is an update on a really old story about our least favourite but oft-talked-about publisher, Castalia House. The publisher of extremist far-right works and bad science fiction has been quiet for some time but it has put out a new work recently.

"The Minarian Legends represent the collected stories about the many great kingdoms and celebrated heroes of Minaria, a continent of epic adventure. In these pages are presented the histories of the many kingdoms, heroes, and tribes that comprise a fantasy world full of merciless war, powerful magic, and intrepid adventure, the world of the classic 1979 TSR wargame, Divine Right."

https://web.archive.org/web/20220224074001/http://www.castaliahouse.com/castalia-house-new-release-the-minarian-legends/

"So what?" you might ask and that's not an unreasonable question — a crappy publisher putting out a new book is a thing of little consequence. However, this book pertains to an unsolved mystery, the case of the vanishing New, New, Heinlein.

In 2016, Castalia House promoted its newest talent, Rod Walker. The probably pseudonymous writer released a series of science fiction novels for younger readers intended to emulate the influential "juvenile" stories of Robert A. Heinlein. However, sometime in 2018, Rod Walker vanished...

"Rod Walker's last blog entry appears to have been in July 2018. After that point, the mysterious Mr Walker appears to have disappeared and at least some of his book scrubbed from Amazon. The trilogy of novellas appear on Goodreads but no links to the books themselves function."

https://camestrosfelapton.wordpress.com/2018/10/19/the-mystery-of-the-new-new-heinlein/

The connection between Walker's disappearance and this new book was the unpublished work of Rod Walker. Before he vanished, his next set of books was supposed to be (according to Vox Not-a-Nazi Day) "an as-yet-untitled fantasy novel set in Minaria, the world of Divine Right". The novel didn't appear even though a fantasy novella from Walker appeared briefly on Amazon before Walker's strange disappearance.

Over five years later, Castalia is now publishing a book set in Minaria, the world of Divine Right. However, this new book has been written by (one of) the creators of the original war game, Glenn Rahman.

As Wikipedia explains:

"Since 1997, J. McCrackan edited the game for Glenn Rahman, developing a deluxe edition of Divine Right. On 5 May 2020, McCrackan announced on BoardGameGeek.com that he had resigned from the development team in response to Rahman's decision to allow alleged white supremacist Vox Day to publish the new edition."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_Right_(game)

Sure enough, there's another layer here. One of Day's various side-gigs is the "DevGame" site. It's not one I think I've covered before because it's not very interesting. Back in 2020 (which is either yesterday or 50 years ago) Vox Day posted the new cover for the game https://web.archive.org/web/20201115223238/https://devgamecourse.blogspot.com/2020/11/war-leader-cover.html

But what about Rod Walker? Was he secretly Glenn Rahman? I doubt it. I assume Walker is just another pseudonym for Vox Day and Day's obvious interest in the game points in that direction. Rahman's book is only available in hard copy and I believe (but haven't confirmed) that it may be a collection of stories originally published in gaming magazines.

Anyway, that's the article you get when I went to look and see what pro-Putin far-right nationalists were saying about the invasion of Ukraine by Russia.

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