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GURPS Atomic Horror is one of Steve Jackson Games' series of genre books. This one covers science fictional B-movies from the 50's and 60's ranging from Godzilla and The Fly to such wonders as Plan 9 From Outer Space. It includes a sample setting, extensive details on the 50's, monsters and adventure seeds.

Atomic Horror has stats for all the the atomic monsters in demand (albeit in a generic way), complete era descriptions, detailed information on five alien races that observe/hide among/eat humanity, and excellent film references. It completely covers the era of the 50's, and attempts to deal with the genre.

Unfortunetly, in a book titled GURPS Atomic Horror and not GURPS 1950's, I expected it to cover the genre completely and cover the relevant parts of history in just enough detail. The parts of this book that cover the genre are intersting and well written; the original setting descriptions are average; the 50's information is useless and boring. Most of us have some access to an encyclopedia; we don't need paragraph biographies of real-world figures. The film list is one of the most interesting and useful parts of the book.

The authors seem to disagree with me on the aim and title of the book. In addition to real world 50's information sometimes overwhelming the atomic horror, cross-over discussion centered on using the 50's with other genres, not the atomic horror genre with other genres.

I really did not enjoy and can't recommend this book. It's boring and not that useful. Even those looking for new rules will find the couple found in this book are also found in Compendium I. However, it is the only book I've ever heard covering this genre. Also, if you're running a roleplaying game in the 1950's and are looking for roleplaying resources, this book offers a fairly complete description.

(Cover art by John Zelenik; courtesy of SJ Games)

Style: 3 (Average)
Substance: 2 (Sparse)