The Cambias Digression

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

  • Ozblogging: The Patchwork Girl of Oz, Part 2

    The three heroic questers set off searching for the plot coupons, and discover a problem which the Crooked Magician really should have thought of: none of them has the faintest idea where they're going. Ojo has lived his entire life in a remote cabin in the woods with a man who says about two words…

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  • Ozblogging: The Patchwork Girl of Oz, Part 1

    At the end of his previous novel, The Emerald City of Oz, L. Frank Baum brought the series to what he thought was its end. Threatened by the possibility of discovery by aeronauts, the kingdom of Oz had been cut off from the rest of the world by a powerful magic spell, and there could…

    jamescambias

  • Gamemaster Appeal

    There are any number of books and Web sites providing aspiring roleplaying game referees with hints on how to make a campaign appealing to players. The best is probably Robin's Laws, even though the author had to overcome being Canadian.  But just recently I was jotting down some ideas for campaigns I'd like to run,…

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  • Five Stories That Changed Everything: My Picks

    A bit more than a week ago I drove to Boston in order to attend the venerable Boskone convention, which celebrated its 50th anniversary this year. As always, I spent a lot of my time either being on panels discussing things, or watching other people on panels discussing things. This year one of the most…

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  • Boskone 50, Featuring ME!

    This coming weekend I'm heading back to the idyllic Westin Waterfront Hotel in Boston for the second of New England's two big wintertime science fiction conventions, Boskone.  Here's my schedule: Friday, 9 p.m.: "The Monster in the Maze" — I get to moderate a high powered panel (Darrell Schweitzer, Paul Tremblay, and Christopher Golden) as…

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  • Sweringen and Spaceships

    This past Thanksgiving I ventured to southern Maryland for a big family dinner. My host happened to live just up the road from St. Mary's City, the site of Maryland's first colonial capital. It's a very interesting site: there are reconstructions of some of the original buildings and some excellent exhibits about how archaeologists combine…

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  • Work In Progress: Corsair (Part 2)

    As I mentioned previously, Corsair had its origin in a short story for a pirate-themed anthology. So when I began to expand it into a novel, one of my guiding principles was that it had to remain a pirate story — even though it's about a nerdish spacecraft hijacker 17 years in the future. This…

    jamescambias

  • City Life

    In my after-action report on the Arisia convention I mentioned that the "Future of Cities" panel had crystallized some ideas that had been floating around inside my head. The panelists spent a lot of time discussing problems that afflict modern cities, particularly the metropoli of the northeastern United States. Congestion, sprawl, and the need for…

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  • Post-Arisia Report

    I arrived at the Westin Hotel in Boston on Friday the 18th just as the convention was getting underway, and spent some time checking out the dealer room and saying hello to new arrivals. I did manage to attend one panel: "The Man Who Sold The Moon," featuring Cambridge Science Fiction Workshop stalwart Steven Popkes…

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  • Game of Thrones

    Some members of the Crack Team have become devoted fans of the HBO series Game of Thrones, based on George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series of fantasy novels. Consequently I've seen my share of episodes. It's a good show, with great actors.  It also reveals something very interesting about a change in how people…

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