Robert Heinlein’s first novel has finally been published.
A review by John Clute (who wrote an excellent novel of his own) is here.
I just finished Cory Doctorow's new book, Eastern Standard Tribe, this evening. I liked this one quite a bit but I have a feeling that it will only really appeal to the geeky set. Lots of stuff about artificial tribes of interest, which really already exist today, organized by time zones because it is a natural affinity. The main character is a user experience guy, which was amusing. The whole book was actually rather short and I read almost all of it this evening.
I should sit down and read Singularity Sky by his buddy, Charles Stross soon as well. I have a copy here. This book by him looks like it will be a doozy as well.
I'm finding that I enjoy reading the current crop of science fiction authors who are also computer geeks and professionals.
Since Wikipedia is open to the public in order to make entries, would it be truly evil to make up, say, a spurious nation, history, language, etc. and then add it to the encyclopedia? I bet Prester John's kingdom could use a long and detailed history in the wikipedia… Anyone up for a project? heh.
In my younger and slightly geekier years (yes, it is possible), I did Live Action Rolepalying before it was called LARP. This was about 16 years or so ago.
A bunch of us would run around in one of the major wooded areas (Ravenna and Discovery Parks in Seattle were a favorite) playing these recorded characters that we had made using a set of home-cocked rules. There were probably 50 or 60 people in this organization which was called “Games of Adventure” or “GOA” (back before trance music too!). We had our padded weapons made from shaped foam covered in duct tape and our plastic armor. The bows and arrows were actually intelligently done though they used rolled up strips of naga hide wrapped in duct tape for arrows. In retrospect, we should have used paintball guns but I digress…
I did this for a couple of years before basically getting bored of running around looking like a complete fucking idiot and not even always having a great time doing it. Some of my other friends, like Raoul St. Pierre, did it for a couple of years more.
I and some other played magic uses as often as anything else. You had more of a chance for fun, in my opinion, doing that. I played a Necromancer so we’d “kill” some poor guy and then I could chant a spell a few times an adventure and raise him as my undead slave to command in simple sentences. I remember a particularily memorable incident where I raised this big guy as a zombie and told him to kill a particular player. That zombie and player could be observed for the next 30 minutes or so running, one in front of the other, up and down the sides of the ravine that forms Ravenna Park. That was a particularily athletic zombie driven to kill. I didn’t usually have that good of luck.On other spell notes, in order to cast magic missle, you had to make up a consistant 10 syllable incantation to use and then you could throw the magic tennis ball at people and it would damage them like a normal in-game weapon. Pretty good for those of us who could throw a ball though the fighter types always bitched and moaned.
One of my friends used the incantation of “yo-baby, yo-baby, yo-baby, yo!” for his magic missle spell. You’d be amazed how fast you can say that when some 280 pound geek is barreling down on you from the side of a ravine.
True Story though I don’t think I’d ever told any of my previous girlfriends or my fiancee’ this one. heh.
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