The Cambias Digression

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

  • Tales From the Archive: The City of Tomorrow!

    This is another old Space: 1889 adventure which ran in Challenge magazine. I wanted to write a scenario which captured some of the feel of 19th Century Utopian science fiction, in which the bulk of the story is a tour of the wonderful new society. William Pene DuBois's The Twenty-One Balloons is a note-perfect pastiche…

    jamescambias

  • Ozblogging: The Marvelous Land of Oz, Part 4

    Episode Four:  Thrilling Air Adventures! The heroes gather up a weird assortment of junk — sofas, a broom, leaves from the royal Palm Tree, and the stuffed head of a deer-like animal called a Gump. They bind all this stuff together with clothesline and then Tip uses the remaining Powder of Life to animate it.…

    jamescambias

    ,

  • Ozblogging: The Marvelous Land of Oz, Part 3

    Episode Three: There and Back Again The Scarecrow and company seek refuge with the Tin Woodman in Winkie Country, then attempt to reconquer the Emerald City. Most people in a situation like this would raise an army, call up the CIA, maybe see if other powerful regional rulers in Oz might want to help restore…

    jamescambias

    ,

  • Tales From the Archive: The Explosive Saga of DOC TOLTEC!

    This isn't a published story. In fact, I wrote it as character background for a roleplaying campaign Brian Rogers was putting together. Brian was trying to create a superhero campaign with the feel of a real-world "all-stars superteam" comic book like JLA or The Mighty Avengers. These teams differ from groups like The Fantastic Four…

    jamescambias

    ,

  • Ozblogging: The Marvelous Land of Oz, Part 2

    Episode Two:  The Scarecrow and Jinjur Tip and Jack Pumpkinhead leave Mombi and travel south, aiming for the Emerald City for no very good reason. It turns out to be pretty close: they spend a day hiking through the countryside and then come to the main road only nine miles away from the city. This…

    jamescambias

    ,

  • Ozblogging: The Marvelous Land of Oz, Part 1

    Episode One:  Tip L. Frank Baum published The Marvelous Land of Oz in 1904. His publisher wanted a new Oz book for Christmas and he obliged. Because Baum was so pleased with the success of the stage play based on The Wizard of Oz, he wrote the new book with an eye to adapting it…

    jamescambias

    ,

  • How I Did It #3: Return to Skull Island

    This story has a complicated history. By rights it ought to have been the first entry in the "How I Did It" series, because I originally wrote it back in 1995, but it didn't actually get published until 2001. It's written in the form of an article for a low-budget movie magazine — an article…

    jamescambias

    ,

  • Shakespeare As She is Spoke

    I normally save the science posts for Science Made Cool, but this one seems more appropriate to this Web log instead. Ever wonder what Shakespeare's plays actually sounded like? Some language scholars at the University of Kansas have done their best to reconstruct Elizabethan pronunciation and accents for our amusement. The result sounds like a…

    jamescambias

  • Ozblogging: The Wizard of Oz, Part 6

    Episode VI: The Long Slog Home In the movie, once the Wizard is off the scene, Glinda the Good drops down out of the fly gallery to send Dorothy home and wrap everything up in the last five minutes. In the book we still have six chapters to go. Dorothy and her three companions set…

    jamescambias

    ,

  • Are We Helping?

    I've lately been reading about the Inklings — C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkein, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams, and their buddies, who used to hang out together in Oxford to drink beer, eat ham, and talk about literature and religion. They functioned as a writers' workshop, not unlike the redoubtable CSFW which tolerates my presence. But lately…

    jamescambias

    ,

The Worldbuilding Index