My latest article is up at Secure Immaturity. It is on early, pre-graphic games and their modern descendants.
I’ve closed comments here to encourage responses at the Secure Immaturity site.
Tags: Geek, podcasts, retrogasmic, Video Games, writing
Posts Tagged ‘writing’
Visit the Secure Immaturity site to read my latest article on early Ameritrash board games and the geek who loved them.
As usual, please comment at the Secure Immaturity site.
Tags: board games, Geek, retrogasmic, writing
I’ve posted a new article for the Secure Immaturity podcast and website. This one is about life online pre-World Wide Web.
Tags: Geek, podcasts, retrogasmic, writing
My first column for the Secure Immaturity podcast and website is now online
Tags: Geek, podcasts, retrogasmic, writing
23
08/08
Left to His Own Devices
Here is a flash fiction piece I wrote this morning and serialized on Twitter.
—-
Ever the precocious child, Anton used the teleporter in many ways other than its intended purpose.
Cleaning his room, for example, was a trivial task now that he had a save state for it.
Anton’s meticulously arranged ZOMG!icons vs. Blazaroids diorama could swiftly return to its pristine state after each invasion.
And, with the Doppler circuit he created, Anton no longer had just one Amazium-plated AnnihiLord shock trooper. He had twenty-seven.
Twenty-seven incrementally fragile Amazium-plated AnnihiLord shock troopers, but nevertheless many more than Paige McAllister, who had only three.
Saturday mornings weren’t as fun without his brother Dmitri.
Anton rode the train into the city every afternoon. He inserted the same token each time. Only plebs and precocious children still used the trains.
He sat next to Dmitri’s hospital bed and read his twin the latest manga. He held up the slate so Dmitri could see the explosions.
The hospital staff had seen his father’s movies. They never troubled Anton with questions. They assured him Dmitri would wake up one day.
It would be a few days before they noticed that Anton’s parents had stopped visiting.
His mothers were always in the lab and his father filled the weekends with chute-less skydiving and BASE jumping.
Anton wished they stayed home more often.
Although a bright child for his age, he often lacked common sense, particularly when it came to mass conservation vs. lossy molecular compression algorithms.
The nurse saw Anton showing Dmitri his three new Blazaroid pilot action figures. “How lifelike they are,” she remarked.
Unfortunately, for Anton’s parents, nothing was further from the truth.
The End.
Tags: writing
4
05/08
Shuddering beside you
With the advent of cheap, ubiquitous public teleportation, casual inebriation has reached an all time high. When there’s a perfectly preserved saved state of yourself waiting back at the home terminal, there is no such thing as heroin addiction. In the clubs, amputation is already yawn-inducing performance art. Only your grandmother knows anyone who has seen an abortion clinic, let alone visited one. Tokyo is only as far away as Starbucks.
But you still arrive two hours late to all of my parties.
16
04/08
Poisoned!
“Poisoned!” cried Lord Sauding, hurling the bowl away. It arced through the room before getting caught in the sagging badminton net and sloshing its contents in orange glops. The net relaxed and the crockery shattered into jagged bits as it hit the floor. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: writing
16
04/08
Sakurasou
“Boatswain, have you seen my Felix? He was just here.”
Bastian’s hand found some wooden protrusion and steadied himself, and he spat an oily wad of phlegm onto the deck. But he didn’t retch this time. He felt his atrophied skills most profoundly in his limbs, heavy and distant, like a stranger’s. Braced by the brittle sea air, he soon had command of his senses once more. A gull shrieked above him, its wings frozen by memory. Bastian wondered how long it would hang there. Until there is no one left to remember. Or longer.
He turned to face her. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: writing
16
04/08
Oubliette
I’m archiving some of my entries from a now defunct collaborative writing project, the entirety of which can be found here: http://collectiveinventioncontention.blogspot.com/
—-
Bondmistress Oubliette herself had come to find him. The sputtering bulb in the elevator shone through the wide moth eaten brim of her hat, dappling her pale face with sodium-colored light. Of all the caretakers, Bastian considered Oubliette’s face the most well maintained. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: writing
8
10/07
The Dark Tower
Somehow, no matter how long I read, the last centimeter or so of pages left in the book did not diminish. I guess I didn’t want it to end. I’ve been reading this story over the course of, what, ten years now?
I stopped just before the end. Between the epilogue and the coda was a warning from Stephen King saying that the story was over, but, for those who needed it, he had written an ending. I suddenly realized the distinction he was making and that he was speaking to me directly. So I closed the book and placed it on my shelf.
When Stephen King dies I will read the coda, making that day a little more or less sad.