Science Fiction, Fantasy,and
Role Playing Games
Science Fiction, Fantasy,I am a serious fan of science fiction and fantasy. I am also an old fan, meaning that I followed the genre before Star Wars. By the time Star Wars happened, I had already seen every episode of Star Trek at least seven times. It was my favorite show, and is still one of my favorites, more than the new Star Trek series. My favorite movie was 2001, a Space Odyssey, and my favorites on television were the Planet of the Apes movies. For both I guess I was motivated by the same theme: they present Man as an object, not as master of the Universe, and since then I have always had an outside eye for Mankind and human society. I would have, anyway, but as is, I was a psychologist before I was 12, and I am still skeptical about everything most people take for granted. These shows, the works of H. G. Wells, and other weird TV shows like Land of the Lost (remember that, anyone?) fueled a wild imagination that is still going. I have 2000 pages of role-playing notes (I think) that may spawn one novel at least, as I have a friend and fellow gamer Patrick Young who is a beautiful writer.
Star Wars was a wellspring of ideas. It was the first time that a movie producer matched me, idea-wise. I was never disappointed in the entire film, and that has only happened that one time. It was like watching NASA footage on the big screen, transformed into a completely off-world experience. Of course, it would have to be set a long time from now in this galaxy to work, but it works, largely without reservation. I was part of a group that waited in line for a total of ten days for tickets to The Phantom Menace, mostly because it is fun to wait in line with Star Wars fans. By the way, movie critics didn't like Star Wars, either. Of course, now there's a new kid on the block: The Lord of the Rings stands in clear competition to Star Wars. LOTR is my favorite book (OK, three books) and Peter Jackson actually pulled off the herculean task of making it work.
My other favorite movies include Star Trek II - The Wrath of Khan, Independence Day (really huge graphics!), and The Matrix. I have a special liking for The Matrix because for most people today it is the first introduction to the idea that Tron presented in 1982: that sentient programs might not know that they live inside a higher-order "hardware" reality. Then again, I know that according to modern physics the axioms on which reality is based are far more different from the objects we perceive than the machine city of The Matrix is from the programs running on the Matrix. It really rocked my world when I figured out that we live inside a higher-order context. Thank God I don't believe it's a computer of any kind we know of. My other favorite movie is Titanic. I shout Freedom! to everyone who feels like Rose.
Sometime around 1979, I found D&D and then AD&D. I crammed the whole thing (minus about 60 silly rules) into my existing worldview and have been running vaguely AD&D roleplaying off and on since. My latest campaign ran from 1996-1999 with probably over 1000 hours of game play total. It was the first time I had characters go all the way from 5th to 24th level in a single campaign. It's really hard, but my players were excellent. Good players are the entire secret to good RPG's. AD&D directly and indirectly introduced me to the core works of mythology and to some new fantasy series, like Elric of Melniboné and the works of H. P. Lovecraft, who may be the first author to really grasp what kind of difference there would really be between us and aliens, though he paints the contact in very sinister colors. Just to get an idea of how crazy this could get, you can read the introduction to my outline of (really) ancient history here. If you want to be more confused, you can read the unedited, barely punctuated direct transcription of many pages of adventure log from 1982 by going here. I don't know where my friend got the time to enter all that data.
Other favorite books and series are of course The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien, Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clark, the Dragonriders of Pern tetralogy and it's kin by Anne McCaffrey, the Earthsea trilogy by Ursula LeGuin, and perhaps the best of them all, Frank Herbert's original Dune.
My favorite recent TV series is Babylon Five. It's hard to get into if you're new, since the whole five-year (more like eight) series is sequential. They can be rented. If you go to the The Lurker's Guide and check out their list of episodes you can find the right order. It's worth it. Like Star Trek: the Next Generation it started out pretty lame, but then got much better. Like most things I like, I liked it because it painted a whole alien "landscape" and history, then set the tale in the center of it. Then there's Enterprise, the fourth new Star Trek series and the first that actually feels like Star Trek - because they are exploring the Galaxy again. If they keep this up, it'll be my favorite TV show, ever, before long.
TheForce.net: a site dedicated to general Star Wars information and newsmongering. They bury spoilers behind blank space, so you don't have to worry outright, though I generally stay away from such places.
The Force is With Us, a resource on collectibles and fan conventions in Texas run by friends of mine
The Lurker's Guide to Babylon 5. Includes graphics, information, and a list of plot twists and unanswered questions for each episode.
Star Trek Web: one of the best Star Trek sites I've found so far. It takes time, but it is very thorough.
The official Star Trek site at Paramount.
Many Star Trek related files can be downloaded from the Starfleet Download Databank.
The Lord of the Rings is suddenly huge again. The Tolkien Society is the oldest Tolkien "fan club." In addition to membership information, you will find links to just about everything else Tolkien on the web.
Quenalye Eldalambe? You can learn an amazing amount about Tolkien's invented languages, particularly the two Elvish languages. TolkLang, the Tolkien Language List, has information on these and other languages of Middle Earth.
The Fellowship of the Word-smiths has an online grammar of Sindarin, dictionaries of Sindarin and Quenya, compositions in both languages, information on what I am talking about (for those who don't know) and information about the LOTR movie.
Eldalamberon publishes original works on Tolkien's languages in their journals Parma Eldalamberon and Vinyar Tengwar . They also have the inside track to new information via Christopher Tolkien. If you want J.R.R. Tolkien's Quenya translation of Pater Noster, come here.
If you have a real passion for linguistics, check out Sindarin, the Noble Tongue, which has a complete linguistic analysis based only on canonical material.
The Electronic Tolkien Encyclopedia Project. This site is being crated by user submissions, and is quite extensive.
Check out the Tolkien Monster Encyclopedia, and find out what's crawling out of the deeps this week.
The Camelot Project, an internet Arthurian legends database, with original texts online, as well as commentary and other information.
H. P. Lovecraft Page: if it has tentacles, comes from outer space, creeps and crawls or is very dangerous in any other way, it'll be here sooner or later (preferably later). If you don't know who H. P. Lovecraft is, call Cthulhu.
Peta's Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Page is the best of its kind. Start here for AD&D information.
My Internet provider, Illuminati Online, is the online home of Steve Jackson Games, which produces GURPS and the collectible card game, Illuminati, New World Order. . .fnord.
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