Bug-Eyed Monsters

As a life-long board game fanatic, I was happy to see Peter Laws’s article on fortean board games [ FT413:30-41]. I would just like to put in a word for a game on that very fortean subject of alien abductions – Greg Costikyan’s 1983 game “Bug-eyed Monsters”. It’s subtitled “They want our women!”, and the premise is that Earth has the most beautiful women in the galaxy, so any creature with trembling pseudopods (Google it) needs to fly to Earth (more specifically in the game, Freedom, New Hampshire) to capture women for its own purposes. One player takes on the aliens, while the other musters a human defence force. Long out of print, second-hand copies can turn up for around £90-150. Roger Musson

Edinburgh