The Black Horse of the Blog World

Came across www.ethangilsdorf.com… today (off of the Boston Gamers mailing list), and became rather annoyed at it. Why does the media continuously perpetuate the perception that gaming, larping, fantasy, etc. is only an escapist pursuit? I suppose they do so because it makes a quick buck by giving the non-gamers a justifiable rationale for not trying to understand the hobby and for thinking those who engage in it are somehow deficient. I know a -lot- of gamers, and very few of them are active in the hobby as a way of escaping from real life. They’re well adjusted, productive members of society, who have the same daily problems as anyone else and deal with them the same way as anyone else. They just happen to enjoy exploring fictional adventures that are impossible to find in the non-fictional world.

I don’t hear the media calling Romance Novels escapist. Videogames have gone mainstream and are not called escapist. Community theater and improv troupes are not called escapist. What gives?

With the recent passing of David Eddings, and the not that long ago passing of Robert Jordan and Madeleine L’Engle (the two died 10 days apart) and Robert Aspirin, I’ve been thinking about authors from my childhood and wondering (perhaps morbidly)… assuming only natural causes,

1) Which of your favorite authors do you suspect will pass next?
2) Which would you be most upset to hear had passed?
3) Which would you be least upset to hear had passed?

I read mostly fantasy and ’soft’ scifi novels growing up, so here are my answers. As it was also common practice for me to read books that came in large series, these names came to mind. First, I have a nagging feeling that any day now I might read about the passing of Ursula K. Le Guin. Not given to lengthy works like some others, I’ve enjoyed much of what she has put out, not just fantasy, but poetry as well. She’s coming up on 80 this year. Second, I’d be most upset to hear about the passing of George R. R. Martin. He’s got a fantastic series in progress, and I’d be dissappointed to see it interrupted. And from everything I’ve read or seen, he’s a genuinely nice guy (his username is grrm on livejournal). Not that I think it likely. Least upset to hear about? Tough choice. Maybe Orson Scott Card. For as much as I couldn’t read Ender’s Game fast enough, and for all his worthy contributions to the Monkey Island dialogue, these days he spends less time writing quality fiction and more time writing political screeds and religious tracts that run completely counter to my viewpoints. He is welcome to have and express them, but he has shifted me more to the ‘love the art, not the artist’ perspective on things.

In one of the most fascinating applications of public domain I’ve seen in a while, I present Dracula Feed at dracula-feed.blogspot.com… . Bram Stoker’s original novel is written in the form of diary entries and letters, and someone has had the brillian insight to post this public domain material in a new form: a blog. Entries to the blog will be posted on the corresponding dates of the original material.

I land on the ‘information wants to be free’ perspective, while still respecting a healthy copyright practice. In the time since Stoker wrote his novel, copyright has been scaled. enlarged, grown, and extended beyond what many (myself included) would consider healthy. This new format for Bram Stoker’s words is an excellent example of how letting material enter public domain can actually allow the material to gain new audiences and remain culturally relevant.

Oh, and if you doubt the intrinsic academic value of Vampires, here is a brief article, as relayed to me by Elenuial, on how vibrant and interdisciplinary a topic the infamous bloodsuckers can be: io9.com…

Blackboard just bought up Angel for $95 million. The gorilla is gaining weight.

We have proper front steps again!

Next Page »