The Cambias Digression

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

  • Favorite Science Fictional Worlds, Part 2

    Science Fictional Worlds I'd Like to Live In This turned out to be a much more difficult list than the previous one. The reason is pretty simple: settings that are interesting to read about are often horrible places to actually live in. I don't actually want to share my neighborhood with alien conquerers, reality-devouring cosmic…

    jamescambias

  • Favorite Science Fictional Worlds, Part 1

    I've been working on revisions for Star HERO lately, and my editor, the brilliant Steve Long, asked me to contribute lists of my favorite SF films, short stories, and novels for the bibliography. As I made up my lists it struck me that a lot of stories take place in settings which aren't very good…

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  • Gibberish

    Submitted for your approval: The Postmodernism Generator. It generates a new postmodernist critical essay. Compare with the real-life postmodernist critical writings. This is the primary reason I have no interest in pursuing an advanced degree in either of the subjects I love — literature or history. I can't make myself write in the accepted academic…

    jamescambias

  • Ozblogging: Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz, Part 5

    The End of the Story But Not the Book After getting away from the Gargoyles, our heroes have a curiously un-exciting encounter with a room full of dragons. You'd think that a cave containing an unspecified number of dragons — even baby ones — would be a tough level for the player-characters to get through.…

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  • How I Did It #6: The Ocean of the Blind

    "The Ocean of the Blind" is a long story about a group of scientists in a station on the bottom of the ice-covered sea of a moon called Ilmatar, in a distant star system. They mean well but get into trouble. The main character is Rob Freeman, a young technician who gets recruited by the…

    jamescambias

  • Random Thoughts on Horror

    Recently I was casting about for something to write next, and it struck me that I've never written a horror story. Some of my work has elements of horror — I wrote a Hellboy story about a vampire — but usually my goal is something other than scaring the reader. (The Hellboy story was a…

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  • Moby Blogging: The Plot Arrives

    In Chapter 36 of Moby Dick, the slow start ends abruptly when Ahab finally makes up his mind to go ahead and let everyone know how awesomely crazy he really is. He calls the crew together on the deck to hear one of the greatest insane rants in literature. Ahab begins by nailing a Spanish…

    jamescambias

  • Ozblogging: Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz, Part 4

    Elemental Trouble From the Valley of Voe our heroes climb another long staircase up to the land of the Gargoyles. Along the way they have a couple of odd encounters. The first is when they pass a rift in the wall which looks out over another cavern, and a very strange place it is. The…

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  • Ozblogging: Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz, Part 3

    Un-Player-Character-Like Behavior The Black Pit isn't actually a pit, it's more of a tunnel. The Mangaboos wall our heroes into it with glass boulders, so Dorothy, Zeb, Jim, Eureka and the Wizard follow the tunnel to see where it leads. They go up for a long way and finally emerge in a "delightful valley" with…

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  • More Moby Blogging

    My son and I have gotten up to about Chapter 35 of Moby Dick; he's still interested, although Melville's language sometimes mystifies him completely. I had forgotten how much of a slice-of-life realistic novel Moby Dick is. We remember Captain Ahab's mad quest and the high-school English essay allegories, but we forget how much of…

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The Worldbuilding Index