I grew up reading scores of science fiction short stories from the Golden Age and “New Wave” of science fiction… and then went on to various fantasy and science fiction novels of the day, many of which were published by Del Rey Books, still active today as an imprint of the mammoth publisher, Penguin Random House. What I didn’t know was the role one Judy-Lynn del Rey played in the creation of Del Rey Books…
I’ve posted about celebrated author Kurt Vonnegut a couple times this year, most recently relating to Banned Books Week, so perhaps the Internet algorithms were primed to show me this but, per Charlie Hall for Polygon, he dabbled in game design before his writing career took off and created an abstract wargame called GHQ. The article itself delves a bit more into the game, including images of the original rules and notes. You can also…
Now’s the time of year where many of us muse about what we’d do when entering a darkened room, basement, or forest, especially if there’s creepy background music playing. But what to do about the very real world, very freaky possibility of being in a vehicle that’s sinking into a body of water. Whether it’s been caused by a man wearing the face of Captain Kirk or not, if you find yourself in this situation,…
It could be all the games of Civ and SimCity, but I find the real-life construction of dedicated national capitals to be fascinating, from BrasÃlia to Canberra to, oh, yeah, Washington, DC in my neck of the woods. Well, there’s a new kid on the purpose-built capital block, and its name is Nusantara. After over 70 years of Jakarta being Indonesia’s de facto and then de jure capital, the government made its first concrete steps…
There’s a meme going around that generations should now be divided by “Too old to know Homestar Runner/at the right age to know and love Homestar Runner/too young to know Homestar Runner.” Admittedly, this is rather prejudiced towards knowing Homestar Runner, but seeing as I do (and seriously Stwong Bad, he’s the bee’s knees!), I don’t find this a problem. In part, because I think anyone at any age can discover the sparkling majesty of…
SimCity was a delightful timesink for me throughout the 90s, so I’ve always kind of wondered how actual city designers tackle problems, seeing that they can’t drag and drop things with ease. In another of Wired’s [TOPIC] Support series, urban designer Alexandros Washburn covers a cost of city planning questions you didn’t know you have.
Like many a cinemaniac, I watch a lot of movies and, much to the confusion of friends and family, I will watch movies that are not only clearly bad, but are not of the so-bad-it’s-good variety. Why do I do this to myself? Well, if it’s a version of the Robin Hood legend or Treasure Island (see also my post last week), then I gotta see how they treat the story. Some folklore and pop…
Okay, it doesn’t. Or more properly, the characters do not have your back. In fact, many of them would agree with Elim Garak that shooting a man in the back is the best way to ensure you shoot a man dead. But what is Black Sails, you ask? It’s a four-season TV series which serves as a prequel series to the events of Treasure Island aka the novel that launched countless film adaptations and continues…
Not being from, or not having any occasion to pass through, St. Louis, I’ll admit I haven’t thought much about the Gateway Arch to the extent that I had no idea who designed it, who built it, and when (I mean, besides the reasonable premise that it was post-WWII and probably before Tom Hanks played Forrest Gump). So I found myself captivated by this roughly 15-minute animation by Jared Owen that explains how the Arch…
It’s October 9th, which means it’s Leif Erikson Day here in the United States, which you’ll be forgiven for not knowing exists, unless you, say, grew up in a household full of history buffs with Scandinavian heritage. Then, you bite your thumb, sir, at Columbus Day. It’s a Viking thing. But is it, really? Enter Cat Jarman to give us all some much needed Viking Support: