Vote for A Swift, Sharp, Shark

A Web Pole for best story has been added to the bottom of the page with A Swift, Sharp, Shark on it. Scroll down to vote.
To see the rest of the magazine, go to Golden Visions.

Roller Derby! Rose City Rollers vs. Emerald City Roller Girls

On a whim (I got an announcement on MySpace from Guns & Rollers), we went off to see the Roller Derby in Portland Saturday night. We ended up sitting in the Eugene section, so we had to root for the Emerald City Roller Girls (ECRG). It was fast, fun, and loud. I saw a lot of fans wearing earplugs.

Halftime included full contact wheelchair rugby.

Unfortunately for our cheering section, the girls in green didn't win, but a good time was had by all. And I walked a way with a handsome ECRG T-Shirt.

http://rosecityrollers.com/index.php

http://www.emeraldcityrollergirls.com/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/23074074@N07/sets/72157604269978147/

My flickr pictures: http://flickr.com/photos/nojo509/sets/72157604529951251/

A Swift, Sharp, Shark

A Swift, Sharp, Shark has been published by Golden Visions Magazine. It's in the April edition, and you can find it under the Unusual Tales: For older readers section. My first fiction sale!
If you saw Babel, I had the twisted Japanese girl's image in my head when I wrote Mako/Mishiko. I'm hoping one sale will spawn many more.

Education: Biggest Long Term Threat To America?

If you've ever worked in a real successful company, you know that great success can hide a good many weaknesses. When I worked at Microsoft, it wasn't that the company was perfect or did things in a way that made sense all the time, it was the company could afford errors. A little disfunctionalism would not slay the giant.

The same thing can be true for countries. A sub-standard educational system couldn't slay the giant last century, but I'm no so sure about this one. Obama just gave his race speech, and in it, he talked about unequal opportunities to get an education. Corporate leaders regularly gripe about how hard it is to find enough well educated workers. Students spend time jumping from concept to concept without understanding the basics.

The US has a good college and a great community college system. Yet we can't teach high school students how to find China on a map, write at a 10th grade level, or do basic algebra.

It's a complex issue with many solutions, but I believe we ignore our biggest weakness, or don't want to talk about it. Local control and local funding. Failures to teach basic math, language, and cultural literacy are a roadblock to success for the entire country. Funding and developing curriculum state by state, county by county, and even town by town is absurd.

Every student should have an equal opportunity to be challenged, develop critical thinking skills, and achieve a base level of understanding of math, science, language, and culture.

Of course, that would challenge those who profit by ignorance. Those who peddle anti-science, anti-history, and all other anti-knowledge agendas are entrenched in our power structure. Of course, all of those agendas weaken our country, and it's about time we did away with them.

That's my argument. Nationalize the schools.

May all your Heresies be Dark

There is a new role playing game I’m very excited about. Besides being a great game in itself, there has been a lot of drama generated around the game.

The game is Dark Heresy. It is a science fiction game that feels very dark fantasy. It is not hard science fiction at all. The design goals seem to have been “fun, cool, and icky horror.” Forget realism. If you look at the world the game is set in, you find an inconsistent, impossible, and terribly silly world. Chainsaw swords, heretics pursuing the blasphemy of the scientific method, a 10,000 year old corpse emperor kept alive by 10,000 human sacrifices a day. Fun, cool, and icky.

But first, the drama surrounding Dark Heresy. The game, produced by Black Industries (http://www.blackindustries.com/) sold out in pre-orders. 24 hours and it was gone. Then, it, all its supplements, and its sister role playing game, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (WFRP), and even Black Industries itself, were canceled. Black Industries parent company, Games Workshop, pulled the plug on its role playing division.

However, I already had a copy of the game, and had fallen in love with it. So I found myself with an orphaned game, but still wanted to play it. However, it’s hard to get people to play a game without a publisher. Players wouldn’t be able to buy a copy of the game on their own. And this year, the mother and monster of all role playing games, Dungeons and Dragons, from Hasbro’s Wizards of the Coast, was due to release its fourth edition.

So why did I care? I’m a science fiction writer, reader, and fan. I’m a crazy gamer. And I’ve never found a science fiction pencil and paper role playing game I could really get into. Then I read Dark Heresy. Humans were spread through a hostile galaxy, propelled by technology they no longer even try to understand. Everywhere there are threats to life and sanity, threats that are put down by an inquisition. And the players are the inquisition. The catch phrase for the game is “Innocence proves nothing.” The demons of warp space are straight out of H. P. Lovecraft. Investigation and combat are easy and fun. Player can not only die, they can go insane, or get so corrupted they become the monsters they oppose. Fun, cool, and full of icky. I gushed on goodreads: (http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/149596.Warhammer_40_000_Roleplay_Dark_Heresy_Innocence_proves_nothing).

So I tried out a sample game at my friendly local game shop, Guardian Games (http://guardiangamesportland.com/). Every third Thursday is Beer and Pizza night. For $10, you get beer, pizza, and gaming. I brought Dark Heresy, and called out for players. No problem, I had to turn away players. Not bad for a game that was born dead.

We all had a blast. I got to see the face of a player who was all aglow at fighting a chainsword wielding mutant. My players got to shoot the place up and risk their lives for the emperor. Combat was fast and scary. Players played a jargon throwing kick-butt soldier, a sure footed assassin, a smarmy rogue, a licensed psychic, a hard boiled police woman, and a devious bureaucrat. All that, plus beer and pizza. Trying to game over people playing Rock Band was a bit much, but it was all good fun. Derek, who played the psychic, wrote it up on the Black Industries boards: http://forum.blpublishing.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=5387.

When I got home, I checked the gaming forums. The game was not dead. Dark Heresy had risen from the dead by Games Workshop selling the license to Fantasy Flight Games (http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/PDF/pr-2008-GamesWorkshop-Sabertooth.pdf).

Which makes me a happy gamer. I am still having all sorts of fun playing the fantasy game, so I plan on returning to Guardian Games for each beer and pizza night and playing Dark Heresy as long as people want to play.

However, the games published so far take more than one evening to finish. Playing once a month, without being able to count on the same people each time, that won’t work. I need to complete an adventure in one night. The players must be given a task by their inquisitor, they must go forth and (hopefully) conquer, and it must wrap up by 10 PM. So I’m going to write my own “one shots.” Games that can be played in one sitting. With beer. And Rock Band. We’ll just have to see how that goes.

Orycon 29

Ursula Le Guin

Today Orycon ended. I saw people hugging each other and saying things like "I wish my whole life was like this."

Well, it certainly was a good time.

I did writery stuff in the day time, gamer stuff in the evenings.

Sometimes I had an hour to kill and did random stuff.

I met Ursula Le Guin, Robert Charles Wilson, Peter S. Beagle, Mary Rosenblum (my mentor), David Goldman (from my critique group), Kirk (from my role playing group) & Cheri, and lots of people I've met at other writing events. And people in costumes. And people playing games.

Vampire Space Pirates

I tried Deadwood, a Cheapass Game on Friday night, and Arkham Horror on Saturday night.

My head's still buzzing, take a look at more pictures. If the slide show isn't working for you, here's the photo set.

Family, Zombies, Football, and a Magazine.

It was Family Weekend at the University of Montana, so Alison and I flew from Portland to Missoula to see how Connor was doing as a Freshman, and to bring him some warm clothes. We flew out Big Sky Airlines. Pros: Every seat is an aisle seat, nonstop, you can look out the front windscreen while in flight, cheap. Cons: No toilet, no tray tables, no snacks, no temperature control, and no escape from the noise. I’d do it again, but Alison won’t, so only if I’m going solo.

It was Day of the Dead when we landed (alive), so Connor came over to our hotel room and we drove out to see Katie, Connor’s girlfriend, dance as a zombie by the train station. Then the four of us went out to dinner at Ciao Momba. Big wait, but good food and a fun place. The owner remembered Alison from August and came over to say hi. Connor’s looking and doing great, Missoula agrees with him.

The next day Alison and I went to a University of Montana football game. Fighter jet flyovers, paragliders, cannons, giant helmets spewing smoke. A great show. They beat Portland State 34 – 31, a good game. We rooted for UM, as that’s where we send our tuition money. :)

However, the fans chanting "Fuck You, Portland" did get on my nerves.

I was able to prove to myself I could play World of Warcraft on my laptop from the hotel room. Honestly, it was just an experiment. Alison didn't seem to mind, after I assured her we were flying back on Alaska (bathroom, snacks, bigger plane).

While I usually bring a book, this time I brought a magazine. I have to say December’s issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction is a good one. “Who brought Tulips to the Moon” by S. L. Gilbow was so melancholy, and so compelling, and had such a nice ending. “The Bone Man” by Frederic S. Durbin was a perfect spooky story after Day of the Dead. Pacing is everything in suspense, and it ratcheted up the tension line by line, word by word. And “Finisterra” by David Moles was a great story about a Christian woman engineer in a Muslim star empire who finds herself working for frightening criminals on a gas giant where people live on top of giant floating animals. That and Soduku on my iPod took me there and back again.

Want to see more pictures? Click here.