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Stick it Out
Nov. 1st, 2006 07:38 amInsight shifted around the music channels. Will have to learn a whole new set of numbers now.
6 days until elections. I'm hopeful.
I'm digging deeper with T2013. It's coming along, and seems to be gathering momentum as I write. I'm looking forward to having this completed and out of my way; there are other things I'd rather be writing.
This may not make a whole lot of sense, but 2013 just isn't my kind of post-apocalypse setting. In some very real ways, for PCs in this game, at the formal start time, the war is still going on. Of the three games I have in mind for upcoming conventions and short-runs, two are post-apoc, but they're so very different from T2013. They're set years after the Big Oops, instead of a handful of months. While the human death toll in both of them is much, much higher than what we're planning for 2013, in both cases, mankind has been either mostly replaced by or complemented with Something Else - robots/AIs or, well, monsters. Cultures and civilizations are evolving in a whole new environment, rather than just dealing with the shock of seeing things obliterated a little while ago.
I'm going to sound terribly like a metalinguist or something here. Settings like T2013 (and Jericho, to get a little more mainstream) are probably more apocalyptic than post-apoc. The changes are still happening. The world has not yet Moved On, as it's catching its breath from what just happened. The rules for this new world haven't yet been determined; in Reign of Steel and Hell on Earth, rules are in place, lines are drawn, and sides have been chosen. The massive change happened far enough in the past that it's history, not just-out-of-current events.
Three of the biggest literary influences on my writing this time around are Whitley Streiber's Warday, Pournelle&Niven's Lucifer's Hammer, and Walter Jon Williams' The Rift. The latter two are the more exciting reading, as the apocalypse in question (a comet impact and massive earthquake, respectively) are happening right effing now, but Warday interests me more, as it's a travelogue of the United States five years after a limited nuclear exchange. While things are different (boy-howdy, are they), there is a new culture built on the old one. Hard choices are being made, but there's more to life than day-to-day survival. There's hope - that shows up towards the end of Lucifer's Hammer, and it's a massive stack of points in that book's favor (do feel free to scream about the racism that some people see in it if you want).
I guess that's it. If I'm interested in stories of just surviving to the next standard timepart, I'll throw Silent Hill into the PS2. For something more, something more stirring and hopeful and ultimately more appealing to me, gimme FF7 or FFX. Less The Day After, more A Canticle for Liebowitz.
6 days until elections. I'm hopeful.
I'm digging deeper with T2013. It's coming along, and seems to be gathering momentum as I write. I'm looking forward to having this completed and out of my way; there are other things I'd rather be writing.
This may not make a whole lot of sense, but 2013 just isn't my kind of post-apocalypse setting. In some very real ways, for PCs in this game, at the formal start time, the war is still going on. Of the three games I have in mind for upcoming conventions and short-runs, two are post-apoc, but they're so very different from T2013. They're set years after the Big Oops, instead of a handful of months. While the human death toll in both of them is much, much higher than what we're planning for 2013, in both cases, mankind has been either mostly replaced by or complemented with Something Else - robots/AIs or, well, monsters. Cultures and civilizations are evolving in a whole new environment, rather than just dealing with the shock of seeing things obliterated a little while ago.
I'm going to sound terribly like a metalinguist or something here. Settings like T2013 (and Jericho, to get a little more mainstream) are probably more apocalyptic than post-apoc. The changes are still happening. The world has not yet Moved On, as it's catching its breath from what just happened. The rules for this new world haven't yet been determined; in Reign of Steel and Hell on Earth, rules are in place, lines are drawn, and sides have been chosen. The massive change happened far enough in the past that it's history, not just-out-of-current events.
Three of the biggest literary influences on my writing this time around are Whitley Streiber's Warday, Pournelle&Niven's Lucifer's Hammer, and Walter Jon Williams' The Rift. The latter two are the more exciting reading, as the apocalypse in question (a comet impact and massive earthquake, respectively) are happening right effing now, but Warday interests me more, as it's a travelogue of the United States five years after a limited nuclear exchange. While things are different (boy-howdy, are they), there is a new culture built on the old one. Hard choices are being made, but there's more to life than day-to-day survival. There's hope - that shows up towards the end of Lucifer's Hammer, and it's a massive stack of points in that book's favor (do feel free to scream about the racism that some people see in it if you want).
I guess that's it. If I'm interested in stories of just surviving to the next standard timepart, I'll throw Silent Hill into the PS2. For something more, something more stirring and hopeful and ultimately more appealing to me, gimme FF7 or FFX. Less The Day After, more A Canticle for Liebowitz.