The Cambias Digression

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

  • Out for Pizza, Day 6

    On the final day of our visit, we got breakfast, paid our bill, and dragged our bags through the drizzle down to Sorrento's harbor for the boat ride to Naples. It wasn't quite as dramatic as the previous day's voyage, for which we were grateful. The weather was maddeningly changeable: sun one minute, showers the…

    jamescambias

  • Out For Pizza, Day 5

    After our visits to Pompeii and Herculaneum we wanted to see some of the actual art treasures from those cities, all of which were taken away in the 18th and 19th centuries as the sites were excavated. Most of the good stuff is nearby, at the National Museum of Archaeology in Naples. Accordingly, we got…

    jamescambias

  • Out For Pizza, Day 4

    On the fourth day it wasn't rainy! In delightful partly-sunny weather we boarded the train for Ercolano, where we planned to ascend Mount Vesuvius by bus and then explore the ruined city of Herculaneum. Ercolano, it must be said, is a dump. I hope nobody reading this is a proud native of the town, but…

    jamescambias

  • Out For Pizza, Day 3

    We made sammiches, put on our rain ponchos, and boarded the train for Pompeii. Pretty much everyone else aboard the Circumvesuviana rail line was also going to Pompeii, though we didn't learn why until we got there. Turns out we were very lucky in our choice of week to visit Italy. It was Culture Week,…

    jamescambias

  • Out For Pizza, Day 2

    The rain continued on our second day. Not a hard rain, but an annoying rain, especially since our supply of clothing was limited and the only way to dry things was to hang them up in the sunshine. If there had been any sunshine, which there wasn't. So staying dry and keeping dry clothes became…

    jamescambias

  • Out For Pizza, Day 1

    We decided to go out for pizza. Pizza originated in Naples, so that's where we went. The four of us (me, Diane, Emily, and Robert) set out on our trip to southern Italy on the 14th of April. Drove across Massachusetts after lunch, deposited the car at Alewife and rode the T to Logan Airport.…

    jamescambias

  • How I Did It #10: Parsifal (Prix Fixe)

    I remember the moment I got the idea for this story very precisely. I was in a car, driven by Gavin Grant, heading eastward on the Massachusetts Turnpike bound for the Boskone science fiction convention in the February of 2005. Kelly Link was the third person in the car; she and Gavin had recently moved…

    jamescambias

  • Posthegemony Shows Why Rules Don’t Matter

    Game systems are overrated. Roleplaying game designers spend a lot of time and effort trying to create rules which replicate a specific fictional reality — or they take on the impossible task of creating rules which replicate real reality. They do research on the probability of hitting your target with an unaimed pistol shot at…

    jamescambias

    ,

  • The Power of Pictures

    Since I'm a writer, I naturally think that all the writer-stuff is important in a work of fiction: the story, the plot, the setting, and so forth. When I gripe about movies that bother me, my complaints are usually about writer-stuff (and music; I pay attention to music). So it's humbling to realize that one…

    jamescambias

    ,

  • Evil Characters

    There's an interesting post up at Sarah Hoyt's blog about motivations for villainous characters. She takes the position that no one is consciously evil, and evil behavior is usually motivated by a desire to do good or to fit in. This is a very common view in science fiction; it's practically the default. With some…

    jamescambias

    , ,

The Worldbuilding Index