The Cambias Digression

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

  • Albacon 2017, Featuring ME!

    On Friday and Saturday, March 31-April 1 I'll be a guest at Albacon 2017, the long-running convention in New York's capital city. There's a really impressive lineup of people attending: Charles E. Gannon, Stephen Hickman, Lawrence M. Schoen, Ken Altabef, Ken Burnside, Debra Doyle, Jim MacDonald, Chuck Rothman, Ryk E. Spoor, Ian Randall Strock, and…

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  • Ozblogging: Tik-Tok of Oz, Part 8 (whew!)

    Having finished the story several chapters earlier, Mr. Baum piles anticlimax on anticlimax by cutting away from the adventurers in the Nome Kingdom to the magical fairyland of Oz, where Ozma has been watching the whole thing on her Magic Picture. I have to say Ozma is a little uncomfortably voyeuristic here. It's one thing…

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  • Ozblogging: Tik-Tok of Oz, Part 7

    When last we left Our Heroes, the villainous Nome King had just transformed the Shaggy Man into a dove, transformed the Rose Princess Ozga into a fiddle (not that anyone really cares), chained up Quox the dragon, and was preparing to force Polychrome to marry him and stay in the underground kingdom forever! How will…

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  • Ozblogging: Tik-Tok of Oz, Part 6

    Queen Ann Soforth's invasion of the Nome Kingdom gets off to a rocky start. (Get it? Rocky? It's funny because the Nome King rules a kingdom of minerals. That's kind of like rocks, see? Laugh, damn you!) The Nome King tries to capture the Army of Oogaboo in a pit trap (Challenge Rating 1, according…

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  • Ozblogging: Tik-Tok of Oz, Part 5

    Betsy Bobbin et al appear before Tititi-Hoochoo the next morning to hear his decision. Fortunately for them, the Jinjin is a Reasonable Authority Figure and thus is willing to overlook their involuntary passage through the forbidden Hollow Tube. (Why an all-powerful Jinjin never thought of simply closing the Tube, or piling up some logs and…

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  • Ozblogging: Tik-Tok of Oz, Part 4

    And now we meet the great arch-villain of the Oz books once again: Ruggedo the Nome King — alias Roquat, as he was originally known. I don't know why L. Frank Baum changed the Nome King's name; the in-story explanation is that Roquat forgo his original name upon drinking the memory-erasing Water of Oblivion in…

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  • Ozblogging: Tik-Tok of Oz, Part 3

    Chapter Seven begins with a nice bit of Baum's own particular fairy mythology. The Rain King gets too much water in his basin and it spills over, causing rain on Earth. Then the Rainbow arrives, and the Rainbow's Daughters dance on the bow, daring each other to touch the ground. And — as happens so…

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  • Ozblogging: Tik-Tok of Oz, Part 2

    In Chapter Four the scene shifts to a ship caught in a terrible storm. Betsy Bobbin is introduced and falls overboard in one sentence, followed by a thin, sad-faced mule named Hank. Then the ship explodes and sinks (well, it is 1914 . . . ). Betsy and Hank climb onto some floating wreckage. Betsy…

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  • Ozblogging: Tik-Tok of Oz, Part 1

    It has been nearly four years since my last Ozblogging effort, but since Oz is a timeless fairyland we can pick up where we left off as if nothing had happened. Tik-Tok of Oz (first published in 1914) has a rather complicated history: it's an Oz book based on a stage show written by L.…

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  • Where’s My Flying Journalist?

    This is slightly more serious-and-thoughtful than my usual posts, but it's something that has been bothering me more and more of late. It has become a rather tired joke, since 2000 came and went, to ask "Where's my flying car?" Or, more generally, to wonder why this or that gee-whiz prediction about Life In The…

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