The Cambias Digression

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

  • 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…

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  • 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,…

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  • 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…

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  • 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.…

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  • 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…

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  • 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…

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  • 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…

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  • 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…

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  • Eckener SPEAKS!

    My story "The Eckener Alternative" is now available via podcast, on the venerable Escape Pod audio webzine (or whatever the kids are calling them this week). Download it and listen on your next boring commute through time!

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  • The Editing Paradox

    At the moment I have a lot of editing and rewriting to do. I'm finishing up the first draft of a novel and I know I need to go back and make some improvements. And at my last writing workshop the group gave one of my short stories a thorough working-over, so now there's that…

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The Worldbuilding Index