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May. 14th, 2013
Nicked from the 2300 FB group
May. 14th, 2013 09:14 amAn idea for an SF campaign (although it could be adapted to a lot of other genres)
A lot of the campaigns I've been in have been either law enforcement or demonstrations of why law enforcement is needed (ah, fond memories of the town that thanked the party for its help with the raiders and then firmly pointed us down the road so we could be trouble-magnets somewhere else). It occurs to me there's at least one other group that has an excuse for traveling from location to location and even better, has a reputation for the sort of behavior that attracts plot.
Musicians. The band and their roadies, traveling from one venue to another. You'd need the right kind of band, the right mixture of personalities and interests: Strange Fruit, the Commitments, the Hong Kong Cavaliers...
A lot of the campaigns I've been in have been either law enforcement or demonstrations of why law enforcement is needed (ah, fond memories of the town that thanked the party for its help with the raiders and then firmly pointed us down the road so we could be trouble-magnets somewhere else). It occurs to me there's at least one other group that has an excuse for traveling from location to location and even better, has a reputation for the sort of behavior that attracts plot.
Musicians. The band and their roadies, traveling from one venue to another. You'd need the right kind of band, the right mixture of personalities and interests: Strange Fruit, the Commitments, the Hong Kong Cavaliers...
A new peak
May. 14th, 2013 09:32 am
"the rate of new [Near Earth Asteroid] formation for large (>1km) asteroids appears to be on the order of 1 / 10^4 to 10^5 years. in very very round numbers, there are about a thousand large NEAs"
In any setting where humans are exploiting space resources, the NEA are going to be targeted first. I know it sounds absurd to worry about running through a thousand mountain-sized chunks of material but suddenly I wonder how quickly we could go from "there are enough NEAs to satisfy our demand at current rates - speak not of this 'growth rate' thing - for centuries" to "So, about those main belt asteroids...." When would Peak NEA occur?
Speaking of Scooby Doo: Mystery Inc
May. 14th, 2013 10:49 amIf you have not seen it, skip the final episode of season two. Although I will say it had a much higher on-screen death toll than I expect from a show like Scooby Doo
If you have ( Read more... )
If you have ( Read more... )
2013 Campbell and Sturgeon Finalists f/m
May. 14th, 2013 02:28 pmThe current Sturgeon jury consists of Elizabeth Bear, Andy Duncan, James Gunn, Kij Johnson, George Zebrowski, and Nöel Sturgeon, Trustee of the Theodore Sturgeon Literary Estate.
The Campbell Award jury consists of Gregory Benford, Paul Di Filippo, Sheila Finch, James Gunn, Elizabeth Anne Hull, Paul Kincaid, Christopher McKitterick, Pamela Sargent, and T.A. Shippey.
The nominees for the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award (honoring the best short science fiction story published in 2012) and John W. Campbell Memorial Award (honoring the best science fiction novel of 2012) are as follows:
( Read more... )
The Campbell Award jury consists of Gregory Benford, Paul Di Filippo, Sheila Finch, James Gunn, Elizabeth Anne Hull, Paul Kincaid, Christopher McKitterick, Pamela Sargent, and T.A. Shippey.
Award Total Female Male Mu Sturgeon 12 7 5 0.58 Jury 6 2 4 0.33 Campbell 13 1 12 0.08 Jury 9 3 6 0.33
The nominees for the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award (honoring the best short science fiction story published in 2012) and John W. Campbell Memorial Award (honoring the best science fiction novel of 2012) are as follows:
( Read more... )
R.U.R.
This is the famous play from which we get the word "robot" (although the robots in this are actually androids). A brilliant man works out how to create artificial life (or rather, how to exploit a replicating chemistry unlike ours that he stumbled over to create analogs of existing lifeforms), his son works out how to apply that to the problem of how to produce cheap labour and we go on from there. There's a female lead who is vaguely concerned about the exploitation of the robots but she is quickly bribed with the chance to marry a man she just met and does not do much for the next decade. Probably for the best because what she does do is arguably highly counter-productive.
The robots rebel, of course, and the humans prove utterly incapable of producing a useful reaction to this. Instead, they spend the time as the robot hordes gather speculating why the robots rebelled just now and if they could have prevented it.
It actually goes on for a surprisingly long time after the fall of the humans and the ending is, to use a technical phrase, a complete ass-pull. I kept expecting it to be over and then it wasn't. I found the script uneven (although again, great technical qualities and the actors were good) but there were some good lines and I don't regret having listened to it.
This is the famous play from which we get the word "robot" (although the robots in this are actually androids). A brilliant man works out how to create artificial life (or rather, how to exploit a replicating chemistry unlike ours that he stumbled over to create analogs of existing lifeforms), his son works out how to apply that to the problem of how to produce cheap labour and we go on from there. There's a female lead who is vaguely concerned about the exploitation of the robots but she is quickly bribed with the chance to marry a man she just met and does not do much for the next decade. Probably for the best because what she does do is arguably highly counter-productive.
The robots rebel, of course, and the humans prove utterly incapable of producing a useful reaction to this. Instead, they spend the time as the robot hordes gather speculating why the robots rebelled just now and if they could have prevented it.
It actually goes on for a surprisingly long time after the fall of the humans and the ending is, to use a technical phrase, a complete ass-pull. I kept expecting it to be over and then it wasn't. I found the script uneven (although again, great technical qualities and the actors were good) but there were some good lines and I don't regret having listened to it.