Tobias Buckell event on Metaplace

 Posted by (Visited 4246 times)  Game talk, Reading
Jun 152009
 

Toby Buckell, author of Crystal Rain, Sly Mongoose, Ragamuffin, and the sixth Halo novel, The Cole Protocol, and lots of other work, will be live on TheStage in Metaplace tomorrow at 2pm Pacific as part of our Creative Series. I’ve written before about his books, so you know I am excited about this. 🙂

Here is his blog post about it.

To attend, just click this link (register first, so you don’t go through the newbie tutorial at the last minute). TheStage is linked off of the theater in Metaplace Central.

Tobias S. Buckell is a Caribbean-born speculative fiction writer who grew up in Grenada, the British Virgin Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. He has published stories in various magazines and anthologies. He is a Clarion graduate, Writers of The Future winner, and Campbell Award for Best New SF Writer Finalist.

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Paul O. Williams, RIP

 Posted by (Visited 4517 times)  Reading
Jun 142009
 

Locus reports that Paul O. Williams has passed. Seems like many of the authors I read as a teen are leaving us. He’s best known for The Pelbar Cycle, which is a seven book post-apocalyptic series that can be somewhat hard to get into, but was still kind of mindblowing for me when I was a kid. It’s rather obscure now, but well worth reading. They are set in a clearly recognizable America well after some sort of nuclear holocaust, and are remarkable for their characters and the emphasis on describing cultures and rebuilding, rather than destructive aftermath.

Start with The Breaking of Northwall, and work your way through all seven. Heck, I remember building a Lode Runner level based on The Fall of the Shell

He apparently only wrote one more SF book (though many of poetry), which I now have on order.

Doing live music in Metaplace

 Posted by (Visited 5785 times)  Gamemaking, Music  Tagged with:
Jun 132009
 

Yesterday I had a real urge to play some guitar for people. It used to be that I’d get to do a few hours of playing songs for people at every Cub Scout camp-out — but David is into Scouts proper now, and I don’t go on the camping trips. So I left the office saying, “I might do a concert thing in Metaplace this weekend…” A few folks said to let them know if I did.

Which just added to the pressure! I had never tried it before! So I figured that I should do a dry run first. And I did it last night, and you know, it was a heck of a lot of fun — but also pretty different. So here’s what I did and what it felt like. I am sure some of this is old hat to those of you who have done lots of this in Second Life, but it was new to me. 🙂

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WebWars out of stealth

 Posted by (Visited 5860 times)  Game talk  Tagged with: , ,
Jun 102009
 

WebWars has gone public, finally. It is another entrant into the “web overlay” space, sort of a cross between the game stuff in The Nethernet (formerly known as PMOG) and the “layered web” tech used with Weblins or RocketOn. It has a very soft anime look to it, and the fiction is cute: little faeries keep the Internet humming along – gotta catch ’em all.

You can sign up for beta testing here.

The moment the first human connected to online space, a spark flickered in the vast emptiness and the first Webling was born. Though we have always been oblivious to their existence, all of the uncountable communications that make up our Internet experience are only possible thanks to the Weblings. They are the guardians and shepherds of online information. Fueled by everything from fashion gossip to current affairs, the Weblings change and grow, influenced by the information they carry.

As the Internet has grown, what was once a wilderness has become a war zone. Bugs, viruses, and other malevolent creatures have free rein on the Internet, where they attempt to distort and destroy information online. Even worse, they have created a way to imprison the Weblings forever – trapping them within mirror gates, then shattering and spreading the mirror shards throughout the Internet. The Weblings need our help to find the scattered shards, reassemble the mirror gates, and help them become strong enough to defeat their foes forever.

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