The Cambias Digression

Notes and thoughts on everything from what I had for breakfast to the fate of the Universe.

  • “Smart” Cities

    First read this article, a summary and critique of some current "smart city" projects. The author unfortunately kind of skates around the main, fundamental problem with most of the projects he describes. They're completely antithetical to the way cities actually grow. Quite simply, you can't build a city. Maybe if your name is Stalin and…

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  • Random Encounters: Elizabethan London

    The Virgin Queen is on the throne, Drake harries the Spanish at sea, and Walsingham counters their plots at home. Somehow, England is becoming a superpower, and London is at the heart of it all. In the narrow, filthy streets, noblemen rub elbows with footpads, while spies and poets drink together in the taverns. You…

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  • What Should Have Been

    I think enough time has passed since the movie Avengers: Infinity War came out that I can reveal this thought I had, without getting in trouble for revealing things people haven't seen yet. Spoilers away! You may recall at the very end of the film, after the credits, there's a sequence involving Nick Fury and…

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  • Random Encounters: Monster Island!

    No one's exactly sure where Monster Island lies. Those secretive government men in sunglasses made sure it's omitted from the charts. It may be off Siberia, or in the Indian Ocean. It may even be a peninsula. Nobody knows for sure. What we do know is that it had a thriving native ecosystem of giant…

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  • Mars Cops!

    Here's a neat article in (of all places) The Atlantic, about "How Mars Will Be Policed." I wish I'd had this when I was writing GURPS Mars, although it's fun to see that my own wild-ass guesses reasoning pretty much matches the conclusions of experts.

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  • Random Encounters: Aboard the Generation Ship

    Travel between the stars takes a long time. Your ship has been voyaging for centuries, and centuries remain before it reaches the destination world. Unfortunately, over that kind of timespan, things can break down: ship systems, information storage, civilization . . . The ship is huge, with vast habitat areas containing transplated ecosystems from Earth.…

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  • Those Movies We Love

    Who does Star Wars belong to? Well, legally, the answer is "The Walt Disney Company," because they paid George Lucas four billion dollars for his company Lucasfilm, which owned the Star Wars trademarks and copyrights. End of story. Except . . . One of the reasons Lucasfilm was worth four billion dollars to the mighty…

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  • Dragon Awards!

    Congratulations to this year's Dragon Award winners: Best Science Fiction Novel: Artemis by Andy Weir. Best Fantasy Novel: Oathbringer by Brandon Sanderson. Best Young Adult/Middle Grade Novel: Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi. Best Military Science Fiction or Fantasy Novel: A Call to Vengeance by David Weber, Timothy Zahn, and Thomas Pope. Best Alternate History Novel: Uncharted by…

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  • Random Encounters: Aboard the Alien Saucer

    You managed to slip out of the lab before they could do whatever it was they were planning — and then erase all your memories of the event. Now you're wandering around the alien spaceship in your pajamas, trying to find a way back to Earth. The inside of the saucer is a maze of…

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  • Good Guys, Bad Tactics

    If you're interested in military history, you start to notice something: in any discussion of motion pictures, you're the one critiquing the battle scenes. You're the one asking "Why didn't they . . . ?" Or saying "That couldn't happen." Or simply "That's not right!" You're also the one nitpicking the details in historical films.…

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The Worldbuilding Index