The newest addition to this page is the Driving Tigers Magazine, Volume 1, Number 5. Originally, it was designated as Volume 2, Number 1, but as it was our fifth and last issue (and because of a typo on the Table of Contents page), it became known as 1/5.
What do you want? More stories? Newer stories? More links? Links that actually work? (Well, I'm always working on that one.)
Suggestions are always welcome.
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Driving Tigers Magazine was a fiction anthology, featuring stories taking place on the highways of the future, and for the most part set in the Car Wars universe of Steve Jackson Games, which was used with their permission.
It was originally conceived in 1986 and then abandoned, mostly due to lack of interest, but also because of a lack of technology. I still owned a Commodore-64 in those days, along with a nine-pin dot-matrix printer. The word-processing program that I used I had written myself and had little editing ability. Having read some other similarly-produced newsletters that stung my eyes by the end of the first page, I knew that I couldn't produce an entire magazine that way. I drew upon my high school newspaper skills at this point: I got out the typewriter. What followed after that was a Cut-And-Paste job in the literal sense -- I used scissors and rubber cement.
The first attempt at a first issue included Car Wars articles sprinkled in as filler to round out the stories. Two things then happened that altered the direction of my magazine. First, I had allowed space for a great story by Robert Garitta, but I couldn't use it just yet. You see, he had tried his luck submitting it elsewhere first and had to wait to see what the response was. The story, entitled Repo Blues, appeared in Autoduel Quarterly Volume 5, Number 4.
I quickly wrote a replacement piece to fill the gap, and that brings me to item number two. My name was on that new story. My name was on the byline of several other stories. My name occupied the space under the words "Editor-in-Chief". In short, I had produced the first issue of my new quarterly, not the Driving Tigers'. I put my college-aged ego aside for a few minutes and turned two critical eyes to my one-man project and realized that it was about as good as any one-man project could be.
It sucked.
Plain and simple. It had its good moments, but I couldn't believe that anyone would buy a second issue. I shelved the whole thing.
Well, not the whole thing. I took my favorite story, cut the word count in half, polished it a little and sent it in to Steve Jackson Games. A few months later, Autoduel Quarterly published Don't Kill the Messenger.
Moving forward, a couple of years passed and so did couple of editors at ADQ Sheer frustration led me to conspire with Rob Garitta and Laura Tripoli (who had just sold Angel of Mercy to ADQ) to revive my anthology project. Steve Jackson Games gave me the go-ahead (with a few provisos) and Chris W. McCubbin plugged it several times over the next year.
By this time, I had entered the job market. "Gentleman, I have the technology. We can make this magazine better than it was before . . ."
Well, not quite. Although I had access to a laser printer, I didn't have -- nor could I afford -- decent desktop publishing software. Most of what I could afford seem to be aimed at producing cheesy-looking greeting cards. So even though we produced the first issue with the help of Amigas and PCs and laser printers, I still used those scissors and that rubber cement to produce that first printing.
(A later, second printing, made especially for a trip to I-CON X at Stony Brook had its text portions set entirely on line. That printing, and all later issues, used 11-inch letter-size paper instead of 14-inch legal-size. We immediately liked the difference.)
Driving Tigers Magazine published quarterly (approximately) from 1991 to 1992. Only five issues were produced. About a year later, Rob, Laura and I teamed up and wrote the novella Civic Wars.
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Few copies remain from the original run. None of the First printing of the first issue. If you're really interested in a paper copy, send email, and I'll check it out.
Update: I cleaned out the basement and I have the box in an accessible place. Turnaround time on queries has improved dramatically.
Are five issues are now on the web:
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The Driving Tigers/Road Wolves rode once more when Robert Garitta, Laura Tripoli and C. J. Burke got together and produced a novella-length story entitled Civic Wars. Steve Jackson not only approved of our little tale but proclaimed "This is the kind of Car Wars story I like to read!"
(I readily admit that I asked Steve for a quote to use in the flyers I sent out to all the AADA chapters and D.T.M. subscribers, but Steve made up the quote on his own without any prodding from me. I'm quite happy that he added the exclamation point.)
We skipped the copy shop and went the book publisher route on this one. Fifty copies were printed, each numbered and signed by the authors. A few of these are still available, and if there's demand, we'll print more. But first, I have to sell out of the original stock. To this date (six years later), I still have copies, which I've occassionally put on eBay.
Civic Wars is not on the Web, nor will it be. However, if there is interest, I'll put a sample here soon to entice you to buy a copy.
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Three authors whose work graced our pages also appeared in Autoduel Quarterly. Alphabetically, they are:
Additionally, Laura Tripoli, who co-wrote Civic Wars, had two stories published in ADQ: Angel of Mercy and Road Trip.
D.T.M. also had one professional author among its contributors: P. M. Fergusson, who very graciously allowed us to reprint his "The Year the Indy Died" from Analog, circa December 1986.
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Driving Tigers Newsletter was my attempt to keep in touch with my subscribers and other AADA chapters after the demise of DTM. It featured a few Car Wars articles and automotive articles from the current papers. Two issues rolled off the press before I gave up due to lack of interest which I defined as reader feedback. I got two letters (one from NOVA, one from GHOST) after the first issue; none after the second.
The newsletter is noted for two items: first, it gave me a chance to plug Civic Wars; second, it featured a Weapons Hazards article that appeared on the old Illuminati BBS and would later be excerpted in Pyramid in a letter format.
Currently, I don't know the whereabouts of these files, if they even exist. (I had a hard drive crash in February 1996.) Likewise, if I have copies of the actual newsletters, they are buried somewhere in a file cabinet or the back of a closet.
If any reader of this page actually has a copy of either newsletter, please send me email at cjburke@io.com.
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There were several recurring characters in the five-issue run of DTM, some of whom appeared originally in Autoduel Quarterly, as well as other characters mentioned in stories that were labelled as "Driving Tigers" or "Road Wolves".
These include: Warning: if you haven't read the stories yet, some of this information could be a spoiler.
I am thankful, however, for not following up "Don't Kill the Messenger" with titles such as "Messenger of the Gods" and "Messenger of D.O.O.M.", though both were tempting.
Trivia note: Sean's original name was "Aramis", sort of a third musketeer to Lucky and Oddball (see Tinker, below). That pretty much fell by the wayside, except as a road name for covert missions.
Oddball popped up once again in my earliest drafts of "Crash Test", first written back in my Commodore 64 days. This story was to be a follow-up to "Don't Kill the Messenger" for ADQ. Rob liked the story, but had one concern. Now that we both had one real sale, he thought we shouldn't be using each other's characters in our stories. (The original draft of "Crash Test" also included Lucky.) I can't say that I blamed him for feeling that way.
Replacing Lucky took only minimum editing: no cars were repo'ed, specific characteristics were mentioned in only a couple of places. Replacing Oddball meant replacing most of the story, so I basically kept the character, adding a couple of nuances of my own, and renamed him "Tinker". The story didn't see print for a couple of years, but after it did, Rob and I realized that we couldn't have two crackpot inventors running around. Rob then asked to borrow Tinker for a story and ran with him for a couple of stories. I guess Tinker is the one that got away.
Notes and a partial outline for a second Jack Hammer story exist. Maybe someday. (Update: as of this writing, I'd say the only remaining outline is in my head -- I wouldn't even know where to begin to look for the outline now.)
Let me add that at the time "H&D" was written, I had no knowledge of the Black Asp and the other Mongoose that later appeared in NOVA's newsletter and in ADQ. I just picked up a name that I had used several years earlier.
Other recurring characters:
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As a matter of fact, Michael P. Owen (Seattle WA Autoduelling Team, current Car Wars Internet Newsletter editor) asked me to contribute something to the High Velocity Duelling Mailing List, and I brushed off that old copy of U.S. 1. Then I re-read it and cringed. I couldn't believe how bad it was -- and knew it was obvious why it was rejected besides the fact that it was way too long.
Some heavy duty polishing was in order and the ending was punched up and the final touches weren't made until after the serialization had begun.
The story was published in four parts between July and November 1997, and can be found at: http://www.serv.net/~owenmp/FICTION/us1.html.
And thanks, Michael, for archiving it. It's a little bit lengthy for me to add to my sight given the volume I have at a different page I run from the same account.
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Great! Send is to cjburke@io.com.
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This page was designed for Christopher Burke by Christopher Burke
by hand without any mechanized aids that spew forth pages.
Copyright 1996-2000 by Christopher J. Burke.