Category: Books
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Game Mechanics (Part 2): Why They Don’t Matter
In my last post on the subject, I wrote about how important it is for game mechanics to replicate the reality of whatever the game is about. And then I left on a cliffhanger by saying that isn't actually true. It's not true because games depend on the players. A game is not a novel or…
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Sandbox or Quest? Yes.
The style of a game campaign mirrors the fictional genres it is based on. The original Dungeons & Dragons was inspired by two strands of fantasy. The first was the fantasy adventures of Robert E. Howard, Jack Vance, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Fritz Leiber — tales of roguish wanderers more or less stumbling across situations…
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Congratulations Dragon Award Winners!
For several years now I've been telling everyone who'll listen that the major awards for science fiction and fantasy were in danger of becoming too obscure. The Nebulas are selected by the membership of SFWA, but don't get much publicity because (sadly) the organization isn't well-known outside the fraternity of SF professionals. The Hugo Award…
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Greetings, Fellow Cyborgs!
I write science fiction, and one enduring trope of science fiction is the idea of combining humans and machines — "cyborgs," to use the term popularized in the 1960s. The notion is far older, going back to Neil R. Jones's "Professor Jameson" stories, if not to Edgar Allan Poe's "The Man That Was Used Up."…
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MidAmeriCon II, Day 3!
Saturday was a light-schedule day for me. I had a swim and a reasonably-priced breakfast at the Silver Spoon Diner across the street from my hotel, then went to the convention center to do a reading. I read two stories, "Parsifal (Prix Fixe)" which ran originally in F&SF, and "A Right Jolly Old . .…
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MidAmeriCon II, Day 2!
I got up early and had a swim in the hotel pool and a substantial breakfast (the breakfast menu at the Kansas City Marriott Downtown is an exact duplicate of the breakfast menu at the Boston Westin Waterfront hotel, which implies they both buy from the same food-supply company). Then off to the convention center…
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Spanning The Globe!
My master plan for global science fiction supremacy now enters Phase Two. Having put my first two novels into the hands of North American SF fans, through the efforts of my faithful minions at Tor Books, Amazon, and bookstores everywhere, I've taken the next step. This month you can now read my books in German and Japanese!…
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Awarding Kipling Points
I'm a huge fan of Rudyard Kipling and his works. As I've mentioned elsewhere, I think he's one of science fiction's unacknowledged founders. So, when one member of the Crack Team asked to go see the new live-action/computer-animated Disney film of The Jungle Book, I agreed — though not without some skepticism. While there have been…
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My Other Hat
I wear two hats, professionally. One of them is a propellor beanie, and is my Science Fiction Hat (if you win a Hugo award, you get to wear double propellors on your beanie). The other hat is my Game Design Hat (which probably looks like this). I wore my Science Fiction Hat when I wrote the…
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The Only Award That Matters
You all can squabble over Nebula nominations and Hugo award slates. Corsair just won the only science fiction award that really matters: The Atomic Rockets Seal of Approval! Gaze upon it in envy and despair.
The Cambias Digression 