Every week, we’ll build a tank out of something…
The A-Team. You know you watched it. I know I did. I don't remember all the seasons. It was back in the time when what happened one show to another was pretty much separated from all the rest of the shows around it, but I liked it. It was cool. And they built a tank at the end of every episode. Or at least that's the way it seemed to me.
Murdock, he got to be the comic relief, and could fly the helicopter. (How did they ever afford the fuel?) Face, he was the pretty boy (Though I frequently imagined that he was really Starbuck in disguise, living on earth...) who was actually a master of disguise on the show. There was Hannibal, who always loved it when a plan came together, and B.A. (Mr. T.) who was the muscle. Together they would usually take the case of some hot guest star, and off they'd go being all noble and clever, like little vigilantes.
Then, between the commercial break that split the last two acts, they would build a Frankenstein monster of a tank out of some poor sedan or Jeep, and be ready to take it into battle against the enemy. I could almost count on it.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Text Adventure
One of the greatest inventions in the history of time and space has, and always will be the text adventure game. I love them. I think that they allow the player to have such a wonderful and imaginative role in the enjoyment of their entertainment. True, they are not that flashy, but it's like reading a choose-your-own adventure that can really keep up and react to you. My first experience with one was related to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a book that I loved, and still do to this day (Yep, it's in my kindle right now, so yes... to a certain extent I have a real Hitchhiker's guide now. All I have to do is put the words Don't Panic on the cover in large friendly letters, and I can start hitching like a pro.)
I have Infocom to thank for this wonderful game, a game that I enjoyed to the last joke, even if I did eventually need to get the hint book to understand the massively strange and complicated story that it told. I'd love to write one of these one day, and maybe I will. Inform is a pretty good product.
Infocom had such a wonderful idea. To package props and key game elements as physical objects with their games made them that much more engaging even without graphics. You might have creepy letters and a guide book for a castle complete with murder mystery (Moonmist) to a glow-in-the-dark rock for Wishbringer, to complicated coding wheels in A mind Forever Voyaging. Many of them were fantastic methods of copy protection as well in a time when all their games could fit on a single floppy disc.
Although I think Adventure was the initial ground breaker here, Zork will always be the #1 for me. The one that started it all.
It is dark. You are about to be eaten by a Grue.
- http://www.douglasadams.com/creations/infocomjava.html
- http://www.douglasadams.com/creations/infocom.php
- http://infocom.elsewhere.org/gallery/hhgttg/hhgttg.html
Vengance of the Kilrathi
Wing Commander II was my introduction to the space flight simulator genre. I'd tried the Microsoft flight simulator and other real-world style games like it, and never cared for them. Later there would come others, the X-Wing and Tie-Fighter franchises, but Wing Commander, with it's grumpy Admiral, and the giant cat people, were where it started for me. After Wing Commander II, I actually went back in time to play Wing Commander before Heart of the Tiger came out, with Mark Hamill in it.
Wing Commander gave me an interesting perspective on the mystery in space, what happens between the missions is almost as important as what happens during the missions. I've always thought it would be an interesting story to tell where the lead characters were all space pilots of some kind, and actually give them something, a war or some set of mysteries to get through on their way through a book series. You see that kind of thing in the confines of a game like this, or a book series like Rogue Squadron, but even stories like Battlestar Galactica seem to lose this element after a while. I thought that when Wing Commander became a movie that they'd make sure this wasn't lost, but I think they totally lost their minds on that one. There wasn't nearly enough space-style dog-fighting in there for me.
It's worth it sometimes, to take it easy and keep it in mind, the original draws of action in a series.
I've always liked the idea of a series that followed the exploits of a company of star fighters around, one mission at a time, with all of the drama that happens between missions, maybe occasionally having an episode from the point of view of the villains, or maybe taking a two-parter or something here and there and have the hero go off on a secret mission or something similar. Maybe I'll write one of those one day. Maybe it's a series of short stories. Time will tell
Titles that contain the words “And The”
Does it seem odd to you that so many of the movie and book titles we cling to involve the term "and the" to connect a person with the action going on in it? Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, all of the Harry Potters really, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom are the ones that I can first think of off hand.
These words are so innocuous, that they are totally ignored by search engines. Looking up the term "and the" on Amazon, even restricting it to the Books section in the drop down returned to me a bunch of Samsung phones. Yahoo returned Beauty and the Beast, but not much more than that. It's such an integral part of so many titles that are important to us, but it's almost impossible to find a reference to the numbers and kinds of books and stories that employ the usage. Alvin and the Chipmunks?
I think that "and the" is the glue that holds stories to the characters that inhabit them. I think that every story title, even the clever ones, can be boiled down to one of these. Luke Skywalker and the Empire Strikes Back? Maybe Buttercup and the Dread Pirate Roberts? What about Arthur Dent and the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy? I know, way too long, even for a title that though I love it, is already way too long. The thing I'm getting at is that since every story is really about a person in a place with a problem, can't all stories be boiled down this way?
I'm not even sure that's my point.
What I am sure about is that it's an interesting way to stitch stories together.
Titles that start with the word “The”
'In the world of science fiction there lives a huge number of titles that start with the word "The." I'm considering starting a story or series with The as the title, and nothing else. That way, I figure it'll be on the beginning of all of those lists of books that come out every year with the in the title.
The Illustrated Man, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Fellowship of the Ring, The Diary of a Wimpy Kid, The Princess Bride, as examples, all too often the "The" is moved to the end of the title and appended with a comma, which never made much sense to me except that it would make the T section in the book store much too far out of proportion with the rest of the world of literature. I suppose there's also cause to think about the use of the phrase "and the" to attach a title to a character's name, but that's another thought for another day.
Something that I've often wondered when naming my own works, was should I leave "The" out of the picture? Should I avoid all the confusion that arises from where to place the word in question, to ignore it and categorize it with everything else, to include it only to see it dropped off at some point and attached with a comma to the end?
Is it worth even worrying about as an author?
It's a conundrum.
I still like the idea of titling something with just the word "The" at some point. What would that story be like?
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- The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Text Adventure
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- Titles that contain the words “And The”
- Ever frozen on the job and lived to tell the tale?
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