Suppressed Transmission: The First Broadcast

Suppressed Transmission

by Kenneth Hite

Of Course You Know About the Suppressed Transmission . . . Of course. But do you know about the Philadelphia Experiment, the Antarctic Space Nazis, the Ancient Astronauts, the Great Pole Shift, and the Esoteric Truths encoded in Shakespeare's plays? Kenneth Hite does. "Suppressed Transmission" was the wildly popular column of conspiratorial musings and High Weirdness, appearing in the weekly HTML version of Pyramid magazine. This anthology of the first year of "Suppressed Transmission" contains 34* of those original columns and more, including annotations, "stuff Ken left out," and an extensive bibliography. This book is required reading for anyone interested in the Secret History of our world – or any other. Read it soon, before it becomes a Suppressed Transmission, too . . . (This reprint is a recreation of the original printing, and looks slightly different. Although superior to a scanned production, it was not created using our usual digital-export process, owing to challenges with the original source files.)

Genres: Role Playing Games, History, Alternate History, Essays, Games, Mythology, Humor

128 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1999

About the author

Kenneth Hite (born September 15, 1965) is a writer and role-playing game designer. Author of Trail of Cthulhu and Night's Black Agents role-playing games, Hite has been announced as the lead designer of the upcoming 5th edition of Vampire: the Masquerade.

Reviews

[STIMBOT5000 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Invaluable bathroom book number ONE. Bursting with ideas and creativity, 99% of which I could never use but love reading nevertheless. If insane conspiracies, alternate timelines and theosophical hooks interest you then pick it up and delve in a bit at a time. It's tremendous, witty and intelligent throw-away fun.

[Loki · Rating 5 out of 5]

Keep gaming weird!

[Derek Pennycuff · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of essays taken from Steve Jackson Games' Pyramid magazine where Ken Hite starts with some example of real world "high weirdness" — such as numbers stations — and approaches it from various angles / genres of storytelling. They are especially aimed at people looking for inspiration for table top role playing games and Ken takes lots of opportunities to plug various GURPS supplements (also from Steve Jackson Games).

I find the essays enjoyable in their own right. But they are fairly specialized and Ken has his thumb in several rather obscure pies that appeal to me personally. I probably wouldn't recommend these books for general audiences. But if you engage in creative storytelling, either at a keyboard or with the help of some dice and a rule book, you can probably find both inspiration and entertainment here.

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kenneth Hite does a fantastic job of finding the miniscule bits of the fantastic in the midst of the everyday, and relating those things to eachother in new and interesting ways.

The only downfall of this book in my mind is the continual attempts to relate everything back to the GURPS Roleplaying Game of one flavor or another, but since this is really just a collection of columns that he wrote for a GURPS magazine, it's certainly forgivable.

[Jon · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are two books in this series and they're both excellent. Hite has an amazing mind for facts and can synthesize ideas like no one else. At times the ideas and the writing is a bit obtuse and makes for difficult reading, but overall this is a great reference for the truly weird things that have happened in history -- or that _could_ have happened if the stars were right.

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

A collection of articles on a large array of topics, it's an excellent read. The articles were for a gaming magazine, so there's generally a tone of tying it to gaming, but nonetheless, fascinating stuff. The list of quality books to read alone is well worth the price of admission.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Suppressed Transmissions are the best collection of gaming, and weird, writing I have ever had the blessing of reading and they are, if not the corner stone, then the greatest thing I have ever read.