Convention Report - Gamescom

Ah, I suppose I should talk about Gamescom, before PAX arrives and swallows everything in my brain whole.

Gamescom was the first big European computer game convention of the season, set in scenic Cologne. Previous years were set up in Liepzig, and though the facility was reportedly nice, the surrounding support network (hotels, restaurants) could not handle the size of the convention.

And by size, I mean 245,000 attendees. Yeah, over a quarter of a million people, spread over four majors halls, each hall capable of swallowing GenCon whole and having room for Origins for desert. Add to that a "business hall" that was about two more GenCons in space, and you have a massive, massively multiperson convention.

And the booths were huge. The old TSR castle would be considered quaint and tidy in this atmosphere. Aeon had a three story backpiece displaying a poster with media quotes, and it was neither the largest nor the most expensive of the booths. Blizzard erected a pair of huge monoliths to corral its faithful, while Bethesda erected a shanty town for its upcoming Brink, to which they restricted attendance so effectively that most people did not even know they were there.

One challenge to conventions in Germany is the rating system, such that games that are non-E-for-Everybody cannot be shown to greater populace. Solutions tended to walled-off sections that created queues, which were great for showing that people were interested (Diablo III had ones supposedly lasting three hours), but hard for mobility elsewhere in the convention (both tying fans down with nothing to do while waiting and forming fandom clots in the otherwise broad halls). One PS3 provider managed to pull off both with a booth featuring inward-facing screens that could not be seen from outside, allowing people to publicly browse without worrying about showing the game outside the confines.

NCSoft's booth consisted of a stage, a lot of terminals running the game, a bunch of huge screens, and was a great success. The terminals were continually slammed throughout the convention, and we had out own fans promoting the game by playing it. Every hour or so we would do a presentation for Aion (and for Guild Wars, debuting the trailer to the world).

And it was packed. So much so we got a warning from the convention about clogging the halls. So packed we got a complaint from the Age of Conan folk about the noise. And mind you, they had a point here - the presentations were like soccer rallies, with call-and-respond cheers and a LOT of excitement.

And when we made our presentation we were, just briefly, rock stars. This is a weird position for writers, artists, marketers and business folk. We spoke about the game, answered a few questions, and threw out T-shirts to a ravenous crowd. We even had pretty young women shouting at us in the front row. Like I said, Rock Stars. It was a nice moment.

Cologne itself, a beautiful city dominated by its cathedral, was a great venue. While the hotel was dicey on the subject of elevators and connectivity, they did a great job hosting. In addition, our badges gave us a free pass on the rail system (Seattle please take note this for PAX). The food was excellent, though after three nights of excellent German food, we rebelled and ended up at an incredible asian/french fusion place in the shadow of the cathedral itself.

All in all, we did what we intended to do - unleashed news of GW2 on the world, talked to a lot of press, and waved the flag for ArenaNet. And even now, I am still badly time-shifted, but I have to call it all a success.

And next up - PAX.

More later,

52-Year Pickup

Well, apparently I am playing with a full deck now, at least as far as years are concerned.

Long-time readers know that I try to spend my birthday away from the workflow - out of office, not checking emails, phone turned off, usually in some physically different space. I've hiked up Little Si and as far as one can up Rainier without requiring a back country pass, and flipped kayaks. Many, many kayaks.

But with all the recent travel, I really didn't want to go anywhere, and slotting this particular birthday to putter around the house, read on the back deck, and take it easy.

Then I read about some guerrilla art showing up in Gasworks Park, which motivated me on a journey to see go see sculpture:

The piece is called "Anew" and was situated at Gasworks by the artist and her friends, who ninjaed it in one night and have chosen to leave it until the rains return or someone hauls it away. Originally, the park decided to haul it away on Thursday, but gave it a reprieve until Labor Day, but already people are starting to haul off pieces.

The art itself is of several cocooned figures slowly emerging as golden humans (A very Sylvari sort of thing, for Guild Wars fans). It is brilliant and beautiful and perfectly located, and the park was filled with people seeking it out.

Once started, we had to continue. The Lovely Bride and I headed to Magnusson Park and "The Fin Project: From Swords to Plowshares" at the base of Kite Hill (site of another piece of G-Art in 2001 when a monolith appeared). The Fin Project consists of a series of dorsal fins from nuclear subs, arranged to look like a pod of whales breaking the surface. Each fin is identified by both its original sub and the name of a whale from Puget Sound. A nice installation that fits smoothly into its environment.

Then we set off looking for the "Sound Garden". Not the band, but the sculpture the band was named after. The Lovely Bride could not find it on an earlier trip, as it had been fenced off. The sculpture is on NOAA property, and in our after-11 world, security had sealed it away.

Security is still there, and after explaining ourselves at the gatehouse, we provided ID and answered some questions and got directions. We found the structure, a series of weather vanes, each tied to a long hollow pipe, sadly quiet, though if this was from the gentleness of the day's breeze or its own age is unknown. Props to NOAA for making the art available again.

And lastly the Olympic Sculpture Garden downtown. Compared to the other structures, this felt tamer and more mannered than the other locations, such that the land itself was restructured to accommodate the art. Everything was huge and monolithic but protected from the passersby by invisible watchers warning not to touch (as the Lovely Bride learned). However, there was nothing wrong with kids pulling all manner of chairs into the shade of the Calder Stabile, and they showed that you can interact with the art without provoking the wrath of the invisible watchers.

One thing worth checking out in the park is the Vivarium, a long building housing a nurse log, with controlled temperatures and rainfall to study the effects of the decay of the log on the plants that spring up around it. The transplanting of the log and its surroundings into the center of Seattle is a telling commentary on our development fever. Joni Mitchell was spotted near the exit muttering something about a "tree museum".

The day rounded up with a wonderful dinner at the Melrose in downtown Renton with John and Janice, and an early bedtime (I am still time-shifted beyond all belief). But it was nice to go on a sculpture tour of Seattle, and I suppose I will do it again, though probably not on my birthday.

More later,

Family Treasure

So the next few entries are going to come in no particular order, as I distill Pittsburgh and Cologne out all at once. But I wanted to mention this one up front.

The Heinz History Center is located in downtown Pittsburgh, between the convention center and the Strip District (which, for those outside the Burgh, does not mean what you think it does - it is the strip of rail lines where the produce traditionally came into the city, sort of like Pike Place Market in Seattle, but with the Primanti Brothers instead of tossed fish). It is an extremely nice venue for local history, and has our old-fashioned trolleys, the Steelers' Super-Bowl Trophies, and Mr. Roger's cardigan. A real Pittsburgh institution, named after the late Senator John Heinz.

Anyway, right now they are running an exhibit on Lincoln. The exhibit consists of two parts, a traveling exhibit about the man and the controversy around him (and if you liked Obama-as-Joker, you'll LOVER Lincoln-as-Lucifer), and a locally curated exhibit on the man with his stay in Pittsburgh (including the bed he slept in at the Monongahela House, the best hotel in Pgh at the time), and as well as local material published following his death, including funeral ribbons, commemoratives, and sheet music.

That last one I want you to linger over. In one of the final displays, there is a piece of sheet music, the Lincoln Funeral March. Now in the days before MP3s and even before records, sheet music was the way music could get into the homes of everyday people.

So there is this march, in the display case, and next to it is a small white card, which says the following: "A gift from Mr. and Mrs. John A. Grubb."

Yes, this particular artifact was from my family. My mom's side of the family in particular, and belonged to my mom's mom. The History Center did a great job cleaning it up (the original was very sooty, not from any particular fire but from the general air of Pittsburgh, combined with age), and now it is immortalized (well, presented) in a museum.

I think that's kinda cool. More later,

While I've Been Out

I've been away from the Home Office on Grubb Street for the past few weeks, first for the marriage of my eldest niece in Pittsburgh, and leaving there directly for Cologne, Germany and Gamescom.

My presence in Germany was to help launch the initial trailer for the upcoming Guild Wars 2 game (said trailer can be found here. (Go ahead, go play it. I'll wait.It's really good). We launched about noon local time on Thursday, followed by about fifty bajillion hours of interviews which featured the game trailer and Uncle Jeff's Story Time, a great party, several great dinners, and a long flight back to Seattle, which allowed me to watch Frost/Nixon.

But before I left on the flight, we did take a picture of the ArenaNet team in Germany. Here's our gang of unusual suspects:

(L to R: Randy, Chris, Martin, Daniel, and your Humble Narrator. Note that Daniel and I started drinking before the toast).

Horribly exhausted, but satisfied, both by the work and by the beer. More later.

Primary Results

For those of you that care about such things and DID vote, here are the early results for the recent primary:

The King County executive race will play out pretty much as expected, with crypto-Republican Susan Hutchinson against Progressive Dem Dow Constantine. The problem Ms. Hutchinson faces is that while she was the lead vote-getter, while Constantine went up against a bunch of Dems and did pretty well.

Position 9 on the King County Council will be incumbent Reagan Dunn against Beverly Tonda. The only thing that made me blink was that only 75% of the vote went to the well-known, well-financed incumbent. I mean, he was the only guy with yard signs. Perhaps one of those non-existent political parties in King County should get around to running a candidate and things would get REALLY interesting.

Also lopsided was Anne Ellington's victory over Robert Kelly in the Court of Appeals, Div 1, Dist 1. Serves Mr. Kelly right for creating all those Sentinels to hunt the X-men.

The Port will be Rob Holland versus David Doud for position 3, and Max Vekich versus Tom Albro at position 4. OK, that's good. You know you're going to hear more later on this one..

Kent School District is close enough to be considered up in the air. Tim Clark got 50% of the vote, and the remainder is evenly split between Dale Smith and Dave Watson. That will have to sort itself out.

That's it for the locals. Over in Seattle, they decided that they LIKE plastic bags (someone should do an analysis to determine how much the American Chemical Association paid per vote in the end, and how that stimulated the local economy - and by "someone" I mean "not me"). Mayor of Seattle is also waiting for final ballots, and it seems that Incumbent Greg Nickels may actually not make it to big dance. Third terms are tough. Third terms when your street gets plowed and mine doesn't are even tougher. Just sayin'.

More (as always) later,

I'd Like To Thank The Academy ...

The Ennie Awards were presented at GenCon on Friday, and several projects that I had a small contribution to took home the gold.

Kobold Quarterly won for Best Writing, took the silver in the Best Aid or Accessory and Best Website categories. The Pathfinder Campaign Setting took the gold for Best Setting.

I'm delighted by the outcomes and expect to get my slivers of the award in the very near future.

More later,

Things to Come

Yeah, I've been away from the keyboard for a few days, but I just saw this note from my friends at Super Genius Games. A small shop I designed for them a while back for Call of Cthulhu is finally seeing the light of day, along with four others designed by some brilliant people.

More later,

The Half-Price Test, Part 2

There was a surprising amount of feedback over my earlier post that there isn’t a lot of 4E at the Half-Price bookstore nearest Wizards of the Coast's offices down in Renton. A lot of people have reported in similar behavior at their local Half-Prices, but some have reported that 3 and 3.5 stuff were rare as well.

So I went back this past weekend to check out the amount of 3 and 3.5. I found it there in sufficient numbers but also more picked over than previously. The stocks were depleted but not emptied, but I found 3 and 3.5 material, including core books, at the store.

I also talked to one woman who was buying 3.5 core books, and had pulled a number off the shelves just before I got there. She was buying the books for her son, who wanted to play the game because her husband played it in the 80s. I told her about the existence of 3E and 3.5 and 4E, but she decided to go with 3.5, I think in part because it was there and because it had a lot that was closer to the game her husband played (I had the suddenly image of trying to explain 4E to someone who had broken in on the original hardbacks). The young woman ended up buying the three core books and a copy of the FR Campaign Setting.

So, as far as the Half-Price books nearest the WotC corporate offices, there were no 4E books, a diminishing number of 3.5 and 3.0 books, and a good selection of older editions, going back to original Fiend Folios and Monster Manuals. But all of the D&D material combined was still outweighed by another group of books.

White Wolf's World of Darkness. I’ll let others cogitate on why there are so many of those.

More later,

A Statue for Gygax

This is a great idea.

LAKE GENEVA — Gary Gygax, co-creator of the fantasy game Dungeons & Dragons and father of the role-playing phenomenon, gave millions of men and women a gift: husbands, wives and lifelong friends.

Gygax's wife, Gail, and his children want the local gaming giant to be remembered for his immeasurable contribution by erecting a memorial statue of him in his hometown.

I think this is brilliant. I lived and worked in Lake Geneva for many years, both at TSR and freelance, and think that a Gygaxian statue would be a very good thing. Gamers have seen Lake Geneva as a Mecca, and aside from a slew of buildings in various states of repair and repurposed to other duties scattered around the town and recognizable only to those who were there at the time, there is nothing to speak of the man or his company.

The place they are proposing the statue - Library Park, is a tree-shaded strip of land overlooking the northern bend of Geneva Lake itself. It is next to the public library, a lovely low structure that (if I remember right) was designed by one of Frank Lloyd Wright's students. There is a small and tasteful Veteran's memorial, but other than that, it is a sprawling lawn suitable for picnics in the summer, watching the ice houses in the winter.

There is a second park along the lake in town as well, Flat Iron Park, a triangular (of course) wedge that is more open and used for carnivals (during the Venetian Festival) weddings, and other large events. This park already has a statue - to the comic strip character Andy Gump. Most Wisconsin towns have a civil war soldier, we get a character from the pages of the Chicago Tribune (Gump's creator lived in Lake Geneva). It has been one of the quirky things about Lake Geneva, and bodes well for the possibility for a statue to another talented native son.

The addition of a Gygax statue would be a good thing for Lake Geneva, a good thing for gamers, and a good thing for the memory of the man who co-created the game and built the company that has given me (and a lot of other creatives) so much for so many years.

I'll keep you guys in the loop on this. More later,

Forty Eight Years

Happy Birthday to the President of the United States, who was born on Krypton and bundled into a rocket ship by his father, Kryptonian national Jor-El, and sent to earth.

What? I have the Kandorian birth certificate right here. Ignore the fact it is made with construction paper, glitter, and crayon.

(And a Happy Birthday to author and fellow Allit Matt Forbeck and artist and friend Larry Elmore. Though come to think of it, I've never seen THEIR birth certificates either).

More later,

Update The picture is from Mike Kelley's "Kandors" installation. I saw this when I was in Pittsburgh a couple years ago and thought it was a brilliant meshing of popular culture and modern art, but never had a chance to mention it until now. More photos here.

Primary

We’ve got a primary coming up in King County in a few weeks, and most of you have received your mail-in ballots now. And behold that which the will of the people has wrought – a primary in August, non-partisan positions, reducing number of districts for King County Council. And the end result is not much to brag about.

And as always I recommend you check out the Municipal League ratings (though to be honest, this year there are a couple strange outliers), and the endorsements of the Seattle Times and Stranger.

Strap in kids, I’m going try to do this in one sitting.

Let me concentrate on the stuff I can actually vote on; the big one is King County Executive. The former KCE Ron Sims is in the Obama administration now, so we need a replacement, and there has been a host of challengers. It boils down to who is going to compete with front-runner Susan Hutchinson, who is well known as a former local newscaster and less well known for supporting Republicans and conservative operations like Discovery Institute. She’s been trying to keep those connections out of the discussion since "this is a non-partisan position” and you know, you shouldn’t really, um, judge the person you vote for based on what the really believe, anyway. On the other hand, there are a number of excellent candidates in competition, including Ross Hunter and Fred Jarrett, but I am going to recommend Dow Constantine, the current King County Council Chair.

We have five King County Council incumbents seeking re-election, but only have one of them that has primary competition for their offices (Hey, you guys voted for this situation, don’t look at me). Reagan Dunn is the incumbent in position 9, and should be noted on his yard-sign. He has "DUNN" in big blog letters (his mom was the long-serving US Rep from the 8th US House District) while the “Reagan” (a name that does not play well in some parts around here) is a spaghetti-thin script in dark green (against a red background, so it vibrates to unreadability). Back before we decided to non-partisan the position, Dunn was a Republican, but now we want to hide their party, their support, and sometimes their names. Sigh.

At least he sees some competition – Perennial candidate Mark Greene (formerly of the Party of Commons, when parties still gave you a clue) and Beverly Tonda (who does not have a website, and according to the Weekly, is in the race in part due to frustrations over developing her land). I’m not a fan of hereditary political officers, but I got nothing here. At least you get a chance to vote “Throw the Bounders Out”, which is more than you get for the other districts. No Recommendation.

Court of Appeals (Div 1, Dist 1) has Anne Ellington versus Robert Kelly. Ellington walks in with a lot of experience (she’s the incumbent), endorsements, and an Outstanding from the Muni League. Since there are only two candidates, the winner of this primary election gets the job (another recent wrinkle that irritates me). So vote for Anne Ellington.

And then there is the Port of Seattle, our own local Mos Eisley, capable of producing all manner of shady deals and brewing scandals among pro-business corporate types. These pro-business corporate types then either get regularly re-elected despite the woes or retire (with lovely parting gifts) to be replaced by other corporate types. I’m going to go with Rob Holland for the 3rd and Max Vekich in the 4th. Both are strong union, strong reform types with experience on the docks.

Lastly, on a pure local level, Kent School District 415, Director District 5 has three candidates and we have to whittle them down to two. Tim Clark, Dave Wilson, and Dale Smith have their only exposure through the voting guide. All three come off as intelligent people who have children/grandchildren who were in/are the Kent District, and all use the word diverse/diversity correctly in a sentence. I'm going to pitch for Tim Clark for the three readers of this blog who happen to LIVE in Kent, and primarily because of the nod he makes to the arts.

And that’s it – I don’t get to vote for Mayor of Seattle (or rather – who gets to run against incumbent Mayor Greg Nickels) or the Referendum on charging a 20-cent fee for using plastic bags. I will note that the American Chemical Company has pumped $1.4 million into the campaign to defeat this, which works out to about $2.40 per person in the city, or the equivalent of 12 plastic bags. Wouldn’t it be simpler just to mail everyone in the city 12 plastic bags?

More later,

Update: Shelly in Seattle has her recommendations from up in Kirkland. She and I don't agree on all points. Oh, the shock!

Update Update: And the website Publicola weighs in.

Kobold Quarterly

So I got my hard copy of the most recent Kobold Quarterly, which contains an excellent interview with your Humble Commentator, along with articles from hands both old (Monte, Ed, Skip, Wolf) and new (a lot of good stuff, though I am most fond of Jonathan McAnulty's article on the gelatinous cubes and the "cubists" who love them). The magazine is available in pdf form at Drivethru RPG

And I would be remiss to point out that today is the LAST day to vote on the ENnies, and that Kobold Quarterly is up for Best Writing AND Best Aid or Accessory AND Best Website. So if you're thinking about voting, your time is running out.

More later,

4E Sales and the Half-Price Test

Let me start out by saying - no one really knows what the D&D Fourth Edition sales are except those people with direct access to the numbers backed up with internal knowledge of what those numbers mean. Everyone who makes pronouncements based on anecdotal evidence usually has their own cutlery to grind, either in favor or against it.

To this I can add only my own anecdote (and bundle of knives) - Half-Price Test.

I love to browse used bookstores. They are a place for both knowledge that has been passed on as well as knowledge that has been abandoned. I love finding some arcane reference work or history that has been out of print for years. But in addition to volumes that have been cluttering up the attic, used book stores are dumping grounds on a personal level (books you have received and don't want) and corporate level (overstocks and over-orders that can be unloaded for less than it would take to pulp them). The latter types of books show up particularly the larger chains, like Half-Price Books.

So with that in mind, a good register for the sales of 4E should be the Half-Price bookstore about a mile west of WotC itself, in Tukwilla. If books are being dumped, either by individuals or companies, we should see something there.

And... I don't. I come back in on occasion and find a lot still from the 3E glut, from WotC and other publishers, but almost nothing on 4E. This could be the result of three things (all of them good for WotC and the hobby in general).

1) 4E is selling and sticking. People are picking up the books and keeping them (and extending the assumption, playing them).

2) WotC is keeping a sharp eye on print runs. TSR (and WotC) both had a habit of printing more than they needed, just in case. With returnables and just-in-time delivery, there has usually been a lot of copies floating around in this gray area. I'm not seeing it. They may not be overprinting, and that conservatism carries into this tertiary market.

3) 4E IS coming into the Half-Price market, but has a very short shelf life, which would make the Half-Prices of the world very happy, since THAT part of the shelving is earning its keep very nicely. It also means that 4E has an additional interest among the cheapskates of the world (like, um, me).

Now, this is one more little bit anecdotal evidence, based on the Seattle area stores, which SHOULD see a solid response (when TSR was in trouble, there was a proverbial flood of brand-new TSR product in the Milwaukee stores). I'd be interested in hearing other tertiary market stories, and seeing if this bears out.

More later,

Why I Am Like I Am

I found this old New Yorker/Charles Addams cartoon the other day. I first encountered it when I was but a wee bairn -



I think it explains so much about engineers, gnomes, and the asura.

More later,

Having a Heat Wave

As you may have heard from other Seattle blogs, it is hot out here. Surprisingly, untypically, extremely hot. Triple digit territory, which would be cause for remark in other parts of the country.

Here, its a bit weirder than in most parts of the country. We aren't a place that gets this kind of heat often, and as such, we don't do a lot as far as air conditioning. When we moved out here over ten years back, we brought along the room air conditioner from Wisconsin, only to find that it would not fit in any windows in the house (they are sliders, not lifters). So right now we are spending as much time as possible in the lowest floor, and running the fans. The cats are OK so far, but are trying to emulate throw-rugs.

Work is slightly more of a challenge, in that some rooms have adequate HVAC and some don't. We're moving fans around to keep other departments cool.

It is going to be a fun week, and its only going to get hotter. Wish us luck.

More later,

On The Road Again: The Ticket II

Heckuva a way to start a week.

I got a ticket this morning. Let me spare you the drama by saying I was, um, guilty of the charge (more on that later). But what cheeses me off is not the fact that the officer was professional, personable, and younger than me, but that it blows my regular rhythm of a ticket every four years or so. Worse yet, it happens in the same neck of the woods as my LAST ticket.

OK, I've mentioned that I often use Lake Washington Blvd instead of I-5 heading north. It is calmer, more scenic, and often faster than the main drag. And, according to the highway department, perfectly cool, as long as you obey local laws. So I keep my speed down, my eyes open, and, after my previous experience, make full stops.

But Lake Washington Blvd parallels the rail line, and trains have right of way. So when a train carrying at least three airplane fuselages pulls into the crossing, I come to a stop and wait for it to pass.

And then the train stops in the crossing, blocking traffic.

I'm sitting there, and a number of cars start pulling to the left, using the Gene Coulon Park access roads as a way to get around the train. I wait for maybe thirty seconds, then follow them.

This, it turns out, is illegal - the official term is "Avoiding an Intersection". The roads in Gene Coulon are not real roads (that is, public thoroughfares) but rather access to the park, and using them to get around an obstruction is like cutting through a corner gas station to avoid a light.

Anyway, the people who cut AHEAD of me got away with it, but by the time I got around the blockage, there was a motorcycle officer who pulled me and another car off to the side. And I had to do the parking perp walk, though he gave me a municipal citation as opposed to something that would ding my insurance (which, I suppose, is something). And the fine, which stings enough to make me think twice about pulling this type of stunt again, is not excessive.

But it does leave me cranky this fine Monday morning.

More later,

The ENnies are Live

The voting booth for the ENnie Awards is now open. I will point out that I contributed a nice chunk for Worlds of Dungeons and Dragons, Vol. 2 (up for Best Regalia), and smaller chunks of Kobold Quarterly (Best Writing AND Best Aid or Accessory AND Best Website) and Pathfinder Chronicles Campaign Setting (Best Setting).

Not that I'm trying to influence you, or anything.

Oh, and Read the Instructions. This is a little more complex than the "Vote once for your favorite" style voting of most awards systems.

More later,

DOW Breaks 9000

So how did that happen?

While we weren’t paying attention, the markets have righted themselves and have moved grindingly upwards. Heck, even the investment houses, which mere months ago were threatening to throw us all into a massive depression, are now back to giving themselves massive bonuses for their executives.

I won’t say these folk were shouting wolf, but I will note that there are a lot of lupine-costumes piled up in the corporate closet for when they need them the next time.

Meantime, the rest of the country is still in the grips of the Great Recession – unemployment continues to pulse upwards, local governments can’t cover the bills, bankruptcies and foreclosures continue at a brisk pace, gas is still a Busharian levels and things are tight. But, there seems to be discussions now of whether this will be a “V” shaped recession (quick recovery) or a “”U” shaped recession (slow bottoming out, then climbing).

I tend to think that most of us are looking at a “L” shape - sharp drop and things stay here for a good while as the upper classes retrench and figure out where the next bubble in going to be.

The rest of us? Well, good luck on all this, and the L might just turn into a check-mark.

More later,

Update Heh. I had forgotten this. When the market was bottoming out, the conservative wing of the pundocracy was quick to pin it on the New Guy in the White House. Now that things have improved slightly, they are denying they ever did so. Stay classy, guys.

Mythopoeic

Good friend John Rateliff, known more often in these pages as Sacnoth* has won a Mythopoeic Award for his magnum opus, The History of the Hobbit, which is divided into two books: Mr. Baggins, and Return to Bag End (Also available as a set with the original The Hobbit).

Here's his announcement and acceptance speech.

Huzzah for Mr. Baggins!

* And yeah, Sacnoth Valley in Eye of the North? That's where the name comes from. Though originally it's from Lord Dunsany.

More later,

Forty Years

Forty years ago I am sitting on a plastic chair in the basement common room of a college dorm somewhere in the American Midwest, watching the TV with the families of teachers who are attending summer school. The TV is an ancient black and white, and the only one available in the building, mounted high in the corner, its screen about the size of my current flatscreen. The picture is awash with broadcast snow, and the image itself is a blurr of black and white - a man in white moving down a ladder, pausing, then stepping away from the lunar lander.

A picture from another world.

It has been forty years, and its anniversary has been greeted with a mix of nostalgic sadness and frustrated ambition. We have returned several times, but it has been a long time since anyone has walked on the moon, and neither the potential for new knowledge nor the celebration of such a stunt is sufficient to motivate us in cash-strapped times (and times will always be cash-strapped when it comes to such things as pure exploration). The original lunar programs were a patriotic crusade, decked out in bunting and tickertape (two other things, along with B/W TVs, which are now part of a Bradburian past). Now we turn to other matters.

On one hand, there should be frustration regarding that we have not done more - forty years after Columbus, the Spanish were already kicked around the Incas (Hmmmm hang on. Let me come up with a better example). Yet we have moved forward, in communications and low orbit technology. Our modern world is shaped by Google Earth, GPS, the Internet, and satellites, not to mention computrs, teflon and tang. Even our slow advance in space travel itself, with the shuttle and International Space Station, is a mark of comfort compared to the lash-up spam in a can that we flung heavenward over forty years ago.

Yes, I think we will be back. It may be draped with flags and national pride, or powered by pragmatic managers looking for new resources. It is only a matter of time. But still ... forty years. Sigh.

More later,

Play: Despotism Tempered By Dynamite

Utopia, Limited. Music by Arthur Sullivan, Libretto by W.S. Gilbert, performed by the Seattle Gilbert and Sullivan Society, Bagley Wright Theater, through 25 July.

Interesting day - a lovely brunch with the Lovely Bride and the Sacnoths, then up to the Seattle Center, where the Bite of Seattle has little draw for a man with a full stomach (but the music was nice and most Seattle is in better shape than I). Walked into a newly re-located bookstore (Abraxus on 1st Avenue), found a used copy of The Works of Gilbert and Sullivan, read on the lawn during a cooking demonstration of grasshoppers, then attended the performance.

Now, Utopia, Limited is considered one of the "lesser works" of the G&S canon, coming towards the end of their partnership, and indeed, everything pretty much wraps up plot-wise in the first act. The South Sea Island of Utopia is a tropical paradise with a severe case of Anglophilia, desiring to be like the greatest country in the world, Great Britain (which sometimes includes Ireland). To that end the King has a prim British governess for his younger daughters and has sent the eldest princess off to England to absorb as much Englishness as possible.

Everyone is happy on the island except the King (a clean-shaven Dave Ross), who rules only by the permission of his two Wise Men, who in turn can direct the Chief Exploder to blow up the King if his majesty errs. Such is the usual nature of the Gilbertian universe. As a result of this state of affairs, the King is at the beck and call of his wise men, who taunt him by making the King write pieces satirizing himself for the local paper (and if you ask what is a newspaper press is doing on a tropical island, just back away from the review now).

The returning daughter, Princess Zara, brings along the "Flowers of Progress" - representatives of the best of British Society. They revolutionize the island, in part by introducing the idea of the Limited Liability Corporation. The king embraces this idea, since you cannot blow up a corporation like you could blow up a person. End of Act One.

Act Two is ... there. Its a cleans things up a bit. The two Wise Men and the Chief Exploder try to ignite a revolution based on shaky ground (everything is TOO good). The King and the governess get together. The Princess and the leader of the royal guard get together Another romantic subplot vanishes without a trace. The two young girls get together with two of the ministers (which is a bit squicky when you think about the ages involved, so just don't). The revolution is foiled, and Sullivan provides the punchline of what Britain has to keep things from getting TOO perfect. Curtain.

You should see this for the same reason you should attend a good performance of King John (one of Shakespeare's weakest numbers). Utopia, Limited is backed by strong voices, good acting and excellent timing. Jennifer Elise Hauge has a powerful, beautiful voice that transcends the material. Dave Ross is the pompous put-upon monarch, by turns fool and wise man. William Darkow and Scott Bessho are the comic-opera villains (and I suppose someone has done their masters on the inherent toothlessness of G&S bad guys), and are delightful. John Brookes delivers the best explanation of an LLC that I have ever heard. And the tambourine-armed opening number in Act II , I must admit, is completely jaw-dropping (and pretty much salvages the rest of the act).

Everyone here is rising to equal or better the material. The sets are straightforward and nicely done, and the costumes (particularly once they Anglicize the island) are beautiful. And yes, they muck about with the libretto a bit, dropping Madoff in for Rothchild and mentioning the 787's outsourcing woes. This production is more than worth seeing, if only to break from the Mikado/Penzance/Pinafore troika that dominates G&S Lore.

So, three hours well spent, and a recommendation, on the strength of the performances. Worth seeing.

Kindle Ninjas Strike!

So about a year back, I published a post about what books would be like if they were more like MMORPGs, and one of the comparisons was:

- Three years after purchase, if not enough people are reading the book, ninjas break into your home and remove all copies.

Little did I realize how prescient I was.

Only a year later comes this news, from Old Gray Lady herself, about Kindle owners discovering that books they had purchased were erased from their machines. So apparently the Kindle Ninjas CAN break into your home and remove all copies.

And I had the news first. Like before it even happened.

Now, Amazon DID reimburse the purchases. AND later announced that these were unauthorized editions. AND said they would not do this again, even though they've already done it. But all this raises some interesting questions that have laid at the heart of electronic publishing. That is, as a collection of electronic bits, what keeps the contents of your Kindle library from being changed or even erased, based on the intent of its corporate parent? Who owns the book in your Kindle?

Apparently, novels have become more like MMOs, and knowledge is now more like beer. You only really rent it.

More later,

A Terrible Beauty

I don't write much about my writers' group, the Alliterates, except, of course, to brag about our recent triumphs. It is not that we are a secret society or anything, bent on world domination, but that we do enforce a polite zone of silence on our discussions. Let me lift the lid, however, on one thing about the group.

We are bar-killers. At least, the west coast team is. While the midwesterners have had a very good run at their local bar, we have gone through taverns at relatively quick rate. In one case, we have closed the same bar between four and six times (sometimes it would reopen with new owners but the same name).

The bar in question is located in downtown Renton,201 Williams Ave S. (here's the map for it under a previous name) and should by all intents and purposes be a hands-down success. The location is on the edge of where the town proper meets residential, there is ample parking, and it is situated on the haunches of the new urban townhouses that have been a part of "Rising Renton". The building is a former bank with a drive-in window and high ceilings and the original vault.

The structure had become the Cedar River Brewpub by the time our merry band first arrived, the old lobby dominated by silver tanks. With its demise, it was vacant, then replaced with The Giant's Causeway, its first Irish incarnation, which replaced the tanks with a beautiful bar supposed hauled over from the old country, keeping local and Dublin time. After that it was an Irish-lite pub called Finnegans (perhaps a couple incarnations of this) with a lot more flatscreens showing sports.

And now, in a quick turnaround where one of the former bartenders has bought the joint, it is now A Terrible Beauty.

The name itself comes from a favorite book belonging to the new owner Ireland: A Terrible Beauty, coupled with a chance remark from a friend. And it originally comes from a poem by Yeats, commemorating the 1916 Easter Dublin Uprising:

Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

(Add one more piece of fate as the color green belongs now to another uprising, half a world away from Ireland).

The bar itself is greatly improved in its latest incarnation. It has 75% fewer flatscreens, the old bar is still there, and they have resurrected some of the furnishings from its previous incarnations. Its back patio (outside the drive-in-window) has a pair of gas fireplaces (ours blew out - still a couple bugs in the system).

And the food is wonderful, most of the menu cooked from scratch, and ranges from traditional to experimental. Thick cubes of Camembert cheese deep-fried as an appetizer were delicious. I asked the waitress for a recommendation and ended up with "Death by Mac and Cheese", a five cheese and garlic dish that hit the spot perfectly on a cool Monday night.

Now here's the deal - we, the Alliterates, are not enough to keep this incarnation of our local public going on our own. We meet once a month, and face it, we're writers - that means at least one of us is between gigs at any time and therefore on salads and small beer. So it is up to the rest of the motley crew in the Renton area (including those at nearby, say, Wizards of the Coast) who are looking for an after-hours place to check it out.

"The Terrible" is not so terrible. In fact it's a beauty.

More later,

ENnies

Hot on the heels of the Origins Award for the "Worlds of Dungeons & Dragons, Vol. 2" comic collection (for which I adapted Ed Greenwood's "Elminster at the Magefair") comes news that the book has been nominated for an ENie in the category of "Best Regalia". The category of "Regalia" means "the best of a whole bunch of stuff that didn't really fit elsewhere", which is a bit of a relief, since I was worried we would be competing with the Orbs of Dragonkind and the Scepter of Law.

I am also delighted to see that a couple other projects I have made small contributions to have made the cut - Kobold Quarterly is up for Best Writing and Best Aid or Accessory, and Best Website, and Pathfinder Campaign Setting is up for Best Setting. All in all, it is a strong field, and should be a interesting set of awards this year.

Best of luck to all the nominees, and more later.

Adventure: Pulp Tentacles

Death In Luxor by Harley Stroh, an Age of Cthulhu Adventure from Goodman Games.

Reviewing game adventures is a chancy thing. Ideally, one should run them, since things that are not obvious from a read-through will become clear upon play. By the same token, running adventures pushes the usability of any review back, particularly in the case of RPG adventures. Add to this the fact that every GM and every group brings different things to the table, both in characters and in playing styles, so you have a maximum case of "your mileage may vary".

But, my regular gang completed a two-session trip through Death in Luxor, which is the first of the Goodman Games entries in their Age of Cthulhu and part of the sudden tentacular boomlet that has popped up. Here's the good, the bad, and the ugly, and remember: Your mileage may vary.

The Good: It is a well-written adventure, broken into six parts, each part a set piece in itself. The players arrive in Luxor to visit Professor Bollacher and his young wife Rose, and find that things have gone very, very amiss. I ran it as a pulp-style adventure, and it fits the entire flavor of an all-action, thrill-a-minute genre, keeping the players moving as opposed to researching in some library.

The writing is excellent as well, in particular the text read to players. Nice and eldritch in tone, it fits the era and the genre nicely, and help encapsulates the growing sense of horror. This is not metaphysical realization of man's place in the uncaring universe, but a collection of shocks that resolve in grand old CoC tradition of going up against mortal manifestations of things that should not be.

Finally, the research is on-target, dealing with Ramses III and the invasion of the Sea People. For the GM, there should be a bit more deeper research on the Wikipedia to get a full idea of what is happening. Interestingly enough, the Professor Bollacher works out of Chicago House, which was a real archeological expedition into the area (and is still apparently a going concern, though I don't know what they would think of the liberties being taken).

The Bad: That said, the timing is more than a bit off, as if this was originally a tournament module fleshed out to 48-pages. There are bits for dream visitations, but no real timing to sleep. I set up my merry band in a local hotel, and by the end of the day they moved to other digs to throw off their pursuers, but that was something I brought to the adventure. I don't know from the text if they arrive in the game at the start of the day or towards the afternoon. Since I'm playing it pulp, I can play games with timing, but it is something the GM will have to keep an eye on.

Some of the NPC rationalizations are a little muddled as well. There are rivals in their quest, but I'm not sure why they are doing it, or why they are trying to keep the characters out. I'm not sure from the text which side a particular old mystic is on (he seems creepy, but why isn't he doing more for the job of freeing the eldritch menace? If helpful, why not be more helpful? I played him both ways and had fun with him). And if you're going to have a love affair in the game, you really should give one of the lovers a first name.

And the game is quasi-linear, in that one section could happen at several places in the course of play. This is a good idea, but it creates an interesting situation of who should be there and why, and what is actually happening there. The players are questioned, but to what end? The GM may have to do some dancing, since arrival too soon or too late has its own challenges.

Ah, and the adventure requires to get hold of a number of items to make their final encounter survivable. These items are present in the adventure (which is good), though tucked away, and from the initial read I could see the PCs merrily bypassing them all on their way to their slaughter. Instead, they caught the bulk of the references and were properly armed (though the lost one to certain death, and massive sanity was lost). A good reason for playing a game before one reviews it.

On the other hand, the players never learned what they were fighting, though their meta-knowledge of the game gave them a good clue. That worked out as well for the entire pulpiness of the adventure, as I came up with more descriptive names for the monstrosities they fought.

In general, stuff that a good GM can handle, and use as a jumping off point. I most often went with the text as opposed to revising wholesale, and in the end it all fit in.

The Ugly: I call it the Curse of Cthulhu - the utter horridness of the maps, which can cause SAN loss. Part of this is in connecting the map to the descriptive test - I had an NPC listed as diving out a window when there was no window present in the room on the map. And there was an inverted ziggurat that made little sense from the art. Add to that the fact that some of the handouts had a muddy texture to begin with, printed in a dark brown ink, which gave the players even more to worry about. Again, they held up better than I could expected, but in the end I went with a googled map of Luxor that was better for their navigation than the one provided.

End result? A pretty good adventure that can run well in the hands of an experienced GM who can fill in a couple of the blanks and motivations. Well-written but stymied by its maps and repro values. A good first start to a larger series of adventures, and the survivors a looking forward to the next one (which is apparently already out).

More later,

Disaster Porn

Mystical Forest SO gets credit for first post on this one -



Now, from the first teaser trailer, it seemed like this would be a global conspiracy film, from the second it seems more of an update of "When Worlds Collide". But THIS one seems much more watchable. And I love the soundtrack.

More later,

(Oh yeah, and the whole "2012 End of the World Thing" is based on the Mayan calender, who apparently saw the destruction of the world but not the end of their own civilization. We would call that "Pyramid Fail!".)

Celebration

So how did you celebrate the Fourth?

In our house, the LovelyBbride pulls out the old vinyl disks and plays Copeland, the Fifth Dimension, and the soundtrack from "1776" (William Daniels as John Adams) while she makes waffles. A little yardwork, and then off to The Monkey King's for an afternoon of grilling (burgers, hotdogs, salmon) and general discussion with various nefarious types.

And finally fireworks down on Gene Coulon Memorial Park down in Renton. One of those mysteries in my life is still the identity of Gene Coulon, but he has a wonderful memorial park. And the Renton itself did a great job securing event parking at the landing and shutting down the nearby roads to let the thundering hordes leave. We had our normal spots, but someone had improved the sound system, so this time we could hear the music as the fireworks went off.

Now, call me a purist or a fuddy-duddy, but short of the 1812 Overture, fireworks don't really need music. The woosh of the rockets, the crackle of the ignition, the thunder of the detonation, that makes firewords so worthwhile. They don't need a soundtrack, really. Even so, I'm tolerant as they unspooled the patriotic songs - National Anthem, some Springsteen, some cheesy country bit, some Sousa, and the theme from Star Wars ...

Hang on. Star Wars? Patriotic? Yeah, it goes with blow-up-the-death-star fireworks, but somehow, the Emperor's March isn't what we signed on for. Are we so bereft of patriotic music that we are celebrating a group of rag-tag rebels and their wookiee? I mean, you probably could get the Fifth Dimension, if you really tried.

Regardless, 'twas a wondrous Fourth, to be followed by a general collapse on the Fifth. More later,

The Fourth

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

And a polite rebuttal, via Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie (and Slog)



Darn this fairness doctrine. More later,

Foe, Canada

Man, I can't believe I missed Canada Day. I had the cards bought and the decorations ready and was planning to leave cookies and milk out for when Steven Harper slides down the chimney and leaves affordable prescription drugs for good American children and then things got busy and I just forgot.

[[Homme, Je can't croient que j'ai manqué le Fete de Canada. J'ai eu les cartes achetées et les décorations prêtes et prévoyais de laisser des biscuits et le lait dehors pour quand le harpiste de Steven glisse vers le bas la cheminée et laisse les médicaments délivrés sur ordonnance accessibles pour de bons enfants américains et puis les choses obtenues occupées et moi avons juste oublié. Merci Babelfish, qui ne visserait vers le haut jamais une traduction.]]

In previous years, I have provided links to insidious and rebellious songs. This time, I will bring to you attention a nifty little sculpture up in Toronto, which made me smile.

Happy (belated) Canada Day (though it was cooler when it was Dominion Day - just saying).

More later,

All Stan Lee, All the Time

The best parts of the Marvel movies.



More later,

Sad Mac

My Macintosh is confused, and I am not much better at the moment.

I have a G4 tower, an ancient machine by today's standards, and it has served me well. There have been occasional bugs and crashes, but it has been a Volkswagon of a machine - solid, dependable, and reliable.

So this weekend, when it started up and showed flashing question marks instead of an startup volume, I knew I was in trouble.

Now, earlier in my life, this would be cause for complete panic as opposed to mild concern. We have a multi-machine household, so I got online with my PC and found the apple help site (which would have been unreachable if I had only the sick machine). It listed a few options to try before calling in the pros. First of these involved "reinserting the OS X install disk". The OS X install disk. Right.

Which I could not find anywhere in my office.

Mind you, my office is a bit of a disaster area. Disks from projects four years ago. Boxes of stuff from previous gigs. Yellow legal pads filled with notes, which I neither want to ditch or save. A limbo of knowledge, that is my office.

I spent most of Sunday looking for the disks, to no avail. I found VPN Disks for a Magic: The Gathering project that I worked on five years ago. I found the starter disks for my Mac IIvx, which I no longer HAVE (oddly, I did not throw them out). I found my unemployment benefit information. I found several earrings (all mine). ( found the pitch for a horror game WotC was going to do. I found more pens than I ever thought I could smuggle from various workplaces (and spent a half-hour seeing which ones worked and which ones didn't). And I found paperwork that may/may not have been important.

What I did not find were the startup disks. I know the G4 is now a "Legacy machine" which means that if I need to get it repaired, it will be a major process. Barring that, getting the data off the machine is a priority, as it includes all my email addresses and story ideas. In the meantime, I have the PC, but I use that in the office, and try to keep the two worlds apart from each other.

Sigh. Not panicking yet, but Sigh.

More later,

I'd Like To Thank The Academy

The 2009 Origins Awards were presented last night in Columbus, and a project to which I contributed, Worlds of Dungeons & Dragons, Volume 2, a compilation of comic stories from the series of the same name, took the Best Fiction prize. I adapted Ed Greenwood's short story, "Elminster At The Mage Fair" for the four-color page, and both Ed and I were pleased with the result. I am surprised by the win, since we were up against both Gary's last book,The Infernal Sorceress and Bob's The Pirate King.

Once we break the statue into even shares among the publisher, editor, original story authors, comic authors, and interior and cover artists, I believe that I get 1/18th of the statue. That puts me well over 50% on my personal quest to get a full Calliope of my very own.

A full report of winners is here. Particular congrats to Ken Hite for his Tour De Lovecraft: The Tales and Margaret Weis's team (including the mighty Jim Ward) for their Serenity Adventures.

Next up, the ENnies!

More later,

Tea Party

A couple months back, Oni-Anne celebrated her graduation with tea at the Queen Mary Tea Room. Here is photo of our merry band immediately afterward:



(Click to Embiggen)
FRONT ROW: Shelly, Little Elf Hat (head buried in her dad's shoulder), Wolf, Janice (Who is sane and doesn't have a blog)
BACK ROW: Anne's husband Sig, the Lovely Bride, the Humble Author, and John.
PHOTOGRAPHER: Anne

This is not news, but even I get tired of looking a Norman Rockwell portrait of Nixon after a while.

More later,

Your Art Lesson For The Day

I really like this painting:



I don't care much for the subject, though. Nixon was the first "utter rotter president" in my lifetime. And while you can pick on the post-war prezzes - FDR and HST and Ike and JFK and particularly LBJ, but Nixon was the first obvious and complete disappointment, and rattled my faith in the Presidency and left me leery of politicians for the rest of my life. Secret bombings, secret tapings, secret deals, dirty tricks, and every so often some old tapes resurface that remind us of how embarrassing he was. Plus the fact that he was anti-charismatic, a political cartoonist's dream, with continual five o'clock shadow, pinched features, beady eyes, trademark nose, and a feeling of flop sweat.

None of that is visible in this portrait, by Norman Rockwell and hanging in the National Portrait Gallery. Instead we see a relaxed man comfortable in his own skin. His sallow features are more natural, and his eyes wide, alert, and intelligent. I've seen cropped versions of the painting which just have the headshot, which is insufficient - the left-hand-to-the-chin by itself doesn't work without the relaxed right hand draped casually over the top of the couch. The empty area (negative space for those who pay attention to those things) in the upper left creates a dynamic feel for a sitting subject, and a relaxed intimacy that the man never projected in life.

And that is the power of art.

Norman Rockwell is best known for his commercial work, primarily covers for the Saturday Evening Post, and his whimsical themes and homespun Americana. Yet I've always thought he should be presented in the museums as a truly American painter with his own strengths and power. This portrait just confirms those feelings for me, and we should see more of his work in the great American art collections.

More later,

Yep, That's a Paddling

So today we went canoeing on Lake Washington. Yeah, I know, those of you familiar with my previous adventures with small craft are already backing away in horror from the machine, expecting some tale of sunken ships and drowned rats.

No such luck this time, though I will admit I preferred to being kneeling in the canoe as opposed to sitting on the seat provided. Mainly because I have a rather large center of gravity and would prefer it to be as close to that of the boat itself (similar the Spelljammer "gravity plane") as possible. As a result of my caution, there was no tippage involved. So there.

In any event, we canoed around the Lake Washington Arboretum for a couple hours. It was a warm day, not too chill on the Lake itself, and the lake was filled with families celebrating Father's Day (Hi Dad!) in aluminum boats. Far to the south a line of rare thunderstorms were marching across the horizon, but save for the occasional rumble of thunder (which caused all typical Seattlites to look that direction, amateurs that we are), there was no real threat on the lake (thank you convergent flow, which kept most of the bad weather outside of Seattle).

It was also a special day in that they closed I-520, which runs along the northern end of the arboretum. And by "along the northern end" I mean through the area that consists of Duck and Foster islands, and the area where all the canoeing/kayaking/rowboating occurred. As a result, there was a sudden ABSENCE of car noise in the area, and something that I had not heard before while visiting - birdsong.

It was like visiting one of those "After Man" specials on the Discovery Channel, particularly paddling under abandoned and partially dismantled overpasses. But in this case it was "After Cars" instead - the bridge was a ghostly structure, while the water was alive with families in boats.

And alive with other things as well - turtles, ducks, a large number of blue herons, a eagle, a beaver house, and a kingfisher (with fish). And the water lilies were in bloom, creating a Monet-like landscape, in particular where the footbridges arched over the lake itself.

All in all, a wonderful experience, and one I recommend. the 420 should close more than a few times in the next few years, as they replace and expand it. And while the fate of the arboretum end is still up in the air, now is the time to check it out.

More later,

Nerdcore

John "That PC Guy" Hodgman at the Radio & TV Correspondents Dinner.

More later,

Steampunk Dreams

With more than just a tip of the top hat to Gil Scott-Heron and the lads at Wondermark.

The Revolution Will Not Be Telegraphed
You will not be able to stay home, old mate.
You will not be able to flee the smoke, go to ground, and lie doggo.
You will not be able to lose yourself on absinthe and opium,
Skip down to the club or the public for a quick one,
Because the revolution will not be telegraphed.

The revolution will not be telegraphed.
The revolution will not be transmitted in dots and dashes
Translated by Powell’s semaphoric boys.
The revolution will not show you stereographs
Transmitted to your handheld
Or posted broadsheet-style on the street for the plebes.
Of the Great Game and Chinese Gordon and Shaka Z.
The revolution will not be telegraphed.

The revolution will not be come to you over the mojo wire,
Distant electronic discharge accumulated on the babbage,
Quoting Jules V and Herbert G and Oscar Wilde
The revolution will not expect every man to do his duty.
The revolution will not evoke God and country.
The revolution will not lay back and think of England, because the revolution will not be telegraphed, Old Bill.

There will be no pictures of you and Bertie Wooster
Cradling a policeman’s hat, rushing down the block on the dead run,
or trying to slide that suspect soup tureen into the boot of a stolen lorry.
The Beeb will not be posing updates at the top of the hour,
or results from the outer boroughs.
The revolution will not be telegraphed.

There will be no engravings of the pinks at Homestead in the dailies.
There will be no engravings of the pinks in Haymarket in the dailies.
There will be no pictures of Spring-Heeled Jack in the dock at the Old Bailey, no shots of Albert in the can.
There will be no Muybridge sequence of Doctor William Gull fleeing an angry mob of consulting forensic experts and aether-linked mediums who had come to the same conclusion at the same time.

The ink-blurred protagonists of the penny dreads will not shed their copyrighted shackles and go blinking into the public square.
Aqualunged writers will not drive by and bang on the sides of their coach and fours, shouting out the numbers and roles they need,
hoping those released from literary Newgate will trade their freedom for a chance to once more play the Palladium.
No one will give a damn about what happened to Little Nell.
The revolution will not be telegraphed.

There will be no boffins providing exposition, no suffragettes in slacks smoking, no mute servant class made of dutiful coils and springs.
Its libretto will not be written by Gilbert.
Its music will not be penned by Sullivan, and it will not be sung by Lilly Langtree, nor dedicated to Emperor Norton.
The revolution will not be telegraphed.

The revolution will not be a glass-domed ticker tape unspooling
about an iron age, iron horse, iron chancellor.
You will not have to worry about the valley of death, about jam tomorrow, about standing on the burning deck.
The revolution is not a joy forever.
The revolution will not creep in on little cat feet.
It will not look where it treads.
The revolution will be a dark and stormy night.

The revolution will not be telegraphed, will not be telegraphed
will not be telegraphed, will not be telegraphed.
The revolution will be no busker’s show, Old Nick;
The revolution will be live.

More later,

Hey, Hey, We're the Monks

Anathem by Neil Stephenson, William Morrow, Kindle version, 2008.

So here’s my history with Neil Stephenson's works:

Never read Zodiac or Big U. Thought the first fifty pages of Snow Crash were brilliant, but it trailed off after that. Loved the first fifty pages of Diamond Age, then drifted off after that, not finishing. So I had an idea that Mr. Stephenson wrote a great first fifty pages, then slacked a bit after getting the gig.

Then Cryptonomicon. Good book, filled with juicy bits, but now he no longer had to do the first fifty pages, so it started in low gear and stayed there for the duration. Great bits, but at the end, I had to fess up that I didn’t quite get a “what have we learned” sort of moment (OK, independent systems beat organized systems, but that’s kind of meta).

Loved the Baroque Cycle, but by this time I knew what I was getting into, so I was very tolerant of the (regular) digressions into British coinage and the anachronisms (turning Jack Shaftoe’s entrance into Paris into a Hollywood musical was inspired, but purely playing to the crowds). The series became my "vacation books" - to be lugged around when I knew I would have a lot of down time. I think it took me longer to read it than it took Mr. Stephenson to write it.

Now Anathem. Probably his best work to date. It is his best story as a story, in that it has a strong narrative flow. Also missing his more detailed digressions, sending his more detailed mathematical proofs to the back of the book and its appendices.

The book is a about aliens, monks, mathematics and philosophy. In an alternate world of Arbre, progress has halted for thousands of years at a particular level of technology, with advanced science being relegated to monastic organizations. Erasmus is a monk in one of those organizations, and we get a good feel for monastic life before something strange makes orbital insertion and all rolling hell breaks loose.

Stephenson builds his own jargon for a religious order on an alien word, and does a fantastic job, in that his jargon evokes both religious and scientific meanings at the same time. Erasmus belongs to a math, which evokes mathematics, mass, and myth, and is a member of a concent, a nice conflation of convent and concentration. Such words-you-almost-understand pepper the volume, and while it has a nice glossary in the back, by the time you reach it you know most of them through usage.

Stephenson also plays fair with the reader. We get to know things as Erasmus gets to know him, and his slightly out-of-it nature means we get a lot of background in the outside world as a result of his actions. The object in orbit kicks up a lot of dust in that outside world, to the point that astronomy is banned within the maths, then the panicky Saecular Powers bring in the learned brothers and sisters to solve the problem.

Erasmus and his fraas and suurs within the math are more rounded characters than I have seen before, and while I expected them to be merely replaceable viewpoints, they all developed into characters I recognized by the end. This goes for those in the outside world as well. There is a brief whiff of Hogwarts in some of the monkish proceedings, as Erasmus is just the young man to be in the right place at the right time, but it serves to keep the story humming along.

Stephenson also provides probably some of the best-grounded arguments against advanced technology I've heard. His Saeculars make sense in their embrace of a technology lower than they might otherwise have, and he comes up with a good excuse for how to keep technology at a slightly-advanced for 21st century level. They aren't bad guys, which also nice. And he explains why all that jargon sounds so similar to our own, and why Arbre is like our world but different.

It is an elegant, straightforward read. At first I credited the Kindle I was reading it on, but the fact is that the story pulls the reader through smoothly. The writing is almost sparse in places given the scope he has taken on. The ending verges on 2001-inside-the-monolith head trips, but in the end Stephenson delivers an excellent book that not only presents a good tale, but bulls its way through most of Terran philosopher, from Plato to Descartes to Schrodinger.

My one regret? It being electric bits, I cannot pass it along to someone else so they can enjoy. That's a downside of the Kindle, turning everyone into end users, but such is the nature of Saecular plots of the panjandrums.

More later,

Iran

I spent part of the weekend watching Iran unravel. Most of this has been on the net, since the networks and the print media have been pretty darn useless (the Seattle Times managed to get a Page-One-Below-the-Fold headline on Sunday, but had two more articles on the official meme of North-Korea-Ohmighod-its-dangerous).

The best combined coverage so far has been from the generally sane conservative Andrew Sullivan over at the Atlantic. Most of his sources are twitter feeds and cellphone pics from the sources themselves - notable in the lack of gatekeepers and filters.

My freshman year in college, I had an Iranian roommate, and as a result had front-row seats for the fall of Shah and the depredations of SAVAK. There is an extreme Animal Farm vibe in the current uprising, as the heirs to the previous revolution embrace the tactics of their former oppressors to keep their positions of power.

More later,

Updates: By Tuesday morning, the Times finally kicks in with the Iran story as the major story of the day. Andrew Sullivan turns his site green in support, and the site nearly collapses from the amount of traffic sent its way. And Twitter puts off a scheduled downtime in order to keep the feeds coming out of Iran.

Penguins

So the Pittsburgh Penguins rallied and took the Stanley Cup in seven games from the hated Red Wings. Bwah-hah-hah!

And in other penguin-related news, Janna has created a customized penguin for the Woodland Park Zoo's Penguins on the March exhibit. Her Cleopenguin is brilliant!

Penguin trifecta now in play. More later,

Update: Mike Selinker completes the trifecta with this Video of a penguin going shopping. Those who bet on the penguin trifecta please pick up your winnings at the window.

"...and I hope we passed the audition."

So, I will fess up. I'm not much a fan of Rock Band and its relatives. I've played it, it is an OK way to spend time, but I haven't embraced this half-way point between air guitar and real chord progression. Maybe playing REAL guitar has ruined it for me, or that I recognize this game's real ancestor.

Simon.

You heard me. Not the Pre-CBS Fender Stratocaster. Not Woody Guthrie's folk guitar, emblazoned with the sticker "This Machine Kills Fascists". Not Dylan's Gibson Nick Lewis Special (or his later Fender Strat Reissue he went electric with). The origin of the Rock Band-style game is that chirping little four-color disk that dares you to keep up with it. Heck, it even uses the same color scheme.

But anyway, I come not to praise Rock Band but to marvel at the opening cinematic for its newest version: Rock Band: The Beatles. Now being an old grump who remembers when the Beatles first landed, you'd think I'd be dubious about the entire retro operation, but I have to say it is bloody marvelous, encapsulating the groups' career, with shout-outs to the movies and public appearances.

Bloody marvelous, I say. Go check it out.

More later

Lawn Wars

There’s a hole in the middle of the yard,
There’s a hole in the middle of the yard,
There’s a hoe-ell! There’s a hoe-ell!
There’s a hole in the middle of the yard.

The Lovely Bride and I have our pied-à-terre in the exurbs between Renton and Kent, near Panther Lake. We have a nice bit of tree-shaded property, which is divided into the following sections - House, Lawn, Garden, Wilderness, and Driveway.

Maintaining the House is a team effort, while the Wilderness along the back property line is generally ignored by both. The Lawn is mostly my worry and the Garden is mostly the LB’s (The Driveway is a demilitarized zone, but that is a subject for another day).

Now changing these borders requires careful negotiation. While I hate mowing and weeding, I enjoy the wide expanse of grass behind the house, viewable from my office. The lawn itself is a motley collection of grasses, weeds, and wildflowers (current dominant inhabitant - buttercups). However, I am always wary about surrendering any of that space to the Garden division, so the Lovely B has been waging a “hearts-and-minds” approach to getting more space for her tomatoes, intent on putting them in the sun.

There are plants in the hole in the middle of the yard,
There are plants in the hole in the middle of the yard,
There’s a hoe-ell! There’s a hoe-ell!
There’s a hole in the middle of the yard.

The simple fact is that the lot is very shady, protected by maples, pines and spruces on all sides. While this makes it nice to avoid the prying lenses of photo satellites and Google Streetview, it does make it difficult to grow things. And while the Lovely Bride has been successful with her flowerbeds and with beans and asparagus, tomatoes have been a running battle. So finally, she wanted to install a pair of raised beds in the middle of the yard, right over the septic tank pipes.
Now, after mowing the lawn a few dozen times since February, I don’t mind losing a few more square feet to the garden. But the new arrangement involves more EDGES. And anyone who has had to mow knows that mowing is brute force, while edging is the real pain. So there were negotiations.

There are slugs on the plants in the hole in the middle of the yard,
There are slugs on the plants in the hole in the middle of the yard,
There’s a hoe-ell! There’s a hoe-ell!
There’s a hole in the middle of the yard.

The end result was that the two beds are going in, but leaving enough space so we could still do lawn bowling between them. And from the way she has laid them out, it looks pretty good, and does not destroy my “field of green” too much. Plus, she had to mow the lawn in order to clear the space for it all.

There are spots on the slugs on the plants in the hole in the middle of the yard,
There are spots on the slugs on the plants in the hole in the middle of the yard,
There’s a hoe-ell! There’s a hoe-ell!
There’s a hole in the middle of the yard.

So all this happened the past weekend, while I was striving against a massive head cold (and losing). And when I am sick, I tend to, um, sing. Bad songs, with lyrics of my own devising. And while she was toiling in the sun (because that is why the new beds are there in the first place), I was on my back porch, singing the above song, making up more lyrics as I went along.

There is moss on the spots on the slugs on the plants in the hole in the middle of the yard,
There is moss on the spots on the slugs on the plants in the hole in the middle of the yard,
There’s a hoe-urk!! –

And that, your honor, is when she threw a tomato plant at me. Don’t know why.

More later,

Travel Book

So since I spent a good chunk of the past month out of town, it is a good time to revisit my old friend, the Kindle, and note how it has turned into the (pretty-darn-) perfect travel book.

Good points:
Portability: Let’s not quibble about this – it is easier to carry around a kindle in its case than to lug about a Neil Stephenson epic. Add to the fact that I could (when I chose to) carry a NUMBER of books and be able to cart them all around.
Anonymity: One of the things that get you to buy a book (a colorful or interesting cover) also works against you reading it in public (You want everyone to know you read that stuff? Or worse yet, it invites others to TALK to you about the book). A simple screen is very nice, and lets you read alone in a restaurant without attracting any attention – it looks like you could be taking notes on PDA.
Expandability. Finish a book? Buy a book. Talk about your instant gratification.
Battery Life: Enough to last a week, which carries it through most business trips. If you’re going to be longer away from home base, then you should bring the charger.

Bad Points:
Air travel: It is an electronic device, so off it goes on takeoff and landing. Bit of a bummer.
Accessibility: Was reading Anathem, which has a glossary and several chapters of back matter. Referring to it is a pain from the main narrative flow.
Art: OK, let us be honest - Kindle does text well, art, not so much. The screen emulates my old Macintosh SE as far as screen graphics. Even simple drawings have a case of the jaggies.
Inadvertent button pressing: I have developed the tendency to shut everything down (not a difficult thing) when I do anything else, even to carry it about. Otherwise you may leap ahead dozens of pages. I have lost my place a number of times, and had to search through numerous identical pages to figure out where I was.
Electricity: The battery can hold out for a good week, but you still need to recharge.
Lack of Sharing: Great, you finished the book and want to pass it along. No, sorry. You just have that bundle-o-bits, deadended into your machine. Not good for infecting others with the meme of reading.

End result: Not a bad thing, all in all. I'm not abandoning the Big Pile of Books next to the bed, but it is a nice thing to travel with. I suppose the next thing is to get my portable computer shrunk down as well.

More later,

Sixty-Five Years

More later,

Enterprise

So I spent a good part of May on a starship.

No, I was not shot into space, unlike the cooler game design legends. Instead, I was in another city on long-term business and living out of a modern American hotel. And after a few days, I realized that I was living on the Enterprise-D.

Now this is the Enterprise of the Next Generation. The original Enterprise of the Kirk/Spock era was a military cruiser operating in cold war era space, much like America of the era, facing hostile rivals (Klingons serving as Russians) and more highly advanced but flawed entities (Organians, Talosians, the Squire of Gothos, the Olympic gods, all filling in for old Europe). No, this was the Enterprise of Picard and Riker, which stressed more of the floating community of families on a long-term voyage than military men on a combination exploration/patrol mission.

The Enterprise hotel, then, was filled with a large multi-cultural staff of knowledgeable specialists (front desk, chefs, hotel personnel, security). My role was that of one of those visiting scientists who showed up every other week with some personal mission that may/may not endanger the ship. I and my away team (the other members of my company) would take a shuttlecraft (rental car with keyless ignition) down to the planet (to the job at hand) and return in the evening to find the starship still parked in orbit and running smoothly.

And like the Enterprise-D, the starship hotel is broken down into private quarters (that can be accessed if need be) and communal areas (bar, pool, restaurant, holodeck – hang on – that could be cable TV). There was a replicator with illusions of endless plenty (the breakfast buffet). While on the planet surface, mysterious individuals arrived and cleaned up the place, leaving it in pristine condition afterwards.

And like the Enterprise-D, there is an amateur/enthusiast approach to art and culture. Exporting culture was a big thing in Next Generation, and so too here. The lobby was filled with copies of famous bronzes (a lot of Remington), and the evenings in the bar had a blonde pianist rolling through classical numbers and showtunes. Nothing too deep, but enough to declare that culture is here (They did not need a pianist – there was a robo-piano (Data?) in the restaurant, and I started changing when I hit the breakfast buffet/replicator because if I heard Windham Hill’s Winter into Spring one more time, I would surely go mad).

Oh, and there were other teams on board, all working on their own missions. Country musicians. Brides. The President of Taiwan. I was used to being the scruffiest person in the room until the game design nerds started showing up for E3.

For my part, as a member of the visiting science team , and did nothing to engage with any of the mysterious folk RUNNING this starship. Had to rescue something from the lost and found another team member left behind (security), and get a new electronic keycard (front desk). Had to deal with alien technology (keyless remotes, strange wake-up call systems), alien foods (a set of springrolls that nuked both myself and another member of the team) and strange cultures (what is this thing about greeting you by name, anyway?)

Yet the mission ends, the data is gathered, and we are beamed back (via Alaska Air) to the home port, but the starship exists out there, for the next time we need it.

More later.

Twenty Years

(Well, THIS blog has been dropped off Beijing's Friends List).

More later,

A Haunting We Will Go

Haunting Museums: The Strange and Uncanny Stories Behind the Most Mysterious Exihibits, is now out at your finer book shops and e-tail establishments. The book has been dedicated to the late Brian Thomsen, and this ignoble worthy contributed to the initial essay on the Carnegie Sauropods.

More later,

Round, Round, Get Around, I Get Around.

visited 47 states (94%)
Create your own visited map of The United States or Like this? try: Visited Countries

And I have stories to go with most of these locations.

More later,

I Talk to the Kobold

Readers of this journal already know I have a face made for radio. Now discover that I have a voice made for the printed page as I do a podcast with Ed Healy and Wolf Baur over at Kobold Quarterly. Yes, I'm trying out all this newfangled technology!

More later,

Omnibus

So I was pleasantly surprised to find out the one of my original books, The Brothers' War has been re-released as an omnibus edition, combined with J. Robert King's The Thran in a big bug-basher(not that Brothers' War was all that short a novel to start out with) called Artifacts Cycle 1

I had no knowledge that this was coming, but it's pretty cool.

More later,

Comics: Isn't That Special?

One more, and I will be done with kicking about Blackest Night. As I said, it wasn't a bad comic book by any means, but it shows a lot of the stresses that affect serial storytelling. We talked about Statics versus Change (or Issue versus Serial) and Backstory versus Nostalgia (noted here as the Return of the Zombie Heroes). There's one more dualism that I have that is shown in the back end of this comic.

The Unique versus the Popular.

Here's the challenge. You create a hero/protagonist. He's popular. And one of the cool things about your super-powered protagonist is that he or she is unique. At least at the start. Last survivor of a dead planet, or only individual to receive the Super-Soldier Serum. Hit by a lightning bolt spilling chemicals on him.

But then they might get a sidekick with similar powers. Or an opponent with a similar origin, and before you know it, you are hip-deep in characters with similar powers to your once-unique hero. And in attempting to deal with that strange dualism, a new cycle is created, of cutting back the kudzu of similarity, only to see it regrown over time.

Take Flash. For many years, he was pretty stable, with a super-powered sidekick (Kid Flash) and an opposite number (Professor Zoom). Yet in Barry's passing, there was a sudden uptick in speedsters. Kid Flash became the new Flash, and in turn picked up his own sidekick (Impulse) and speed-powered foes (A new Zoom). Oh, and a cult of super-speedsters worshiping a bad guy named Savitar. And the return of the original Golden Age Flash (the golden agers were confined to another earth for a while, then were moved off-stage for a few years, then brought back). And a super-powered opponent for Impulse. And couple OTHER golden-age speedsters (Johny Quick and Max Mercury (originally Quicksilver)) and a future version (XS). And a bunch of russians with super-speed. So suddenly our unique hero has bunches of competition.

Such that Flash, newly returned to his own book, now seems to be (not-so-slowly) reducing the power levels of the other speedsters, in what would be a return to uniqueness. Of course, this may be lethal to the others with those powers.

Green Lantern has it worse. For a while, he was a guy with a magical ring given to him by an alien. But soon we found he was just ONE guy with a magic ring among a bunch of OTHER aliens, all with magic rings. This was the Green Lantern Corps. And a lot of the dynamic of the series swung between Green Lantern as a member of the corps in space, and Green Lantern as a hero on Earth. Sometimes the GLC went away. Sometimes Hal as Green Lantern went away (creating MORE Green Lanterns as replacements on Earth). But the dynamic of a specially-powered individual among other specially-powered individuals was pretty established.

But now things have gone off the rails entirely. Now we have a host of lantern corps, one for every color of the spectrum. Some are logical pickups - Green Lanterns hate yellow, so Green Lantern's arch enemy, Sinestro, has a yellow ring (remember what I said before about even-matched enemies). But that was a unique item. Now he has his own yellow lantern corps, which acts on fear like the GLs work on willpower. OK, that's a logical expansion. But now Star Sapphire, another GL villain, gets HER own corps. And we add the Red Lanterns (Anger), Orange Lanterns (Greed), Blue Lanterns (Hope), and Indigo Lanterns (Beats the heck outa me). And of course the Black Lanterns (Death, not really an emotion, but neither is willpower, really).

So now we have a large percentage of the universe with color-based ring-powers. And now not only the Hal have to compete with three other human GLs and the horde of fellow corpsmen, but now a huge collection of OTHER aliens with OTHER rings. And then the challenge is how to make YOUR hero special in a universe filled with others with similar abilities.

I would put a fiver down on a massacre, with just enough survivors that will pop up over the years to keep the stories coming.

More later,