I imagine him:
Blade-creased,
Face a well-kept well-used axe,
Attendants tongueless, carved-backed,
Walking signs of wealth and viciousness.
(They brush his clothes.)
(They bring him wine.)
One lethal eyebrow raises:
Someone out of sight screams.
Someone stops screaming.
I imagine him:
Squinting, open-mouthed
Through steaming viscera,
Fingernails jammed with gore and shit.
Here is a chart in charcoal, urine and blood;
Here is an ill-tempered entourage:
Casks of burnt cedar, groaning camels,
Ointment, clinking sacks, armed men,
Come to bow before
Innocence and squalor.
Identikit one-name FHM pinup singer? Check*.
Doing the sexy office drone thing? Check.
Getting a sexy cyborg upgrade in a lift? Check.
Branded to all buggery (”Energiser™ Playboy™ Bunny,” anybody)? Check.
Crappy “Street” rapper to appeal to the urban demographic? Check.
Veneer of shiny efficiency, no soul allowed? Check.
Vast carbon footprint (check out the exhaust on the suggestive motorbike)? Check.
Unintentional glass ceiling misogyny? Yeah, I think so.
“If you work hard for your money, you’s a go girl.” Quite.
________________________________
*This is Ciara, like it matters.
Greg Costikyan is one of the original designers of Paranoia, which is a massively entertaining RPG that a lot of people like, and he has been in this game designing game for more than twenty years. Anyway, he reviewed MSG™ a couple of days ago. on playthisthing.com, which is a site that looks at all sorts of games. It was a very positive review. Which is nice.
In a traditional RPG, players are expected to cooperate with each other with the GM as a neutral arbiter; Paranoia turns that on its head by encouraging players to betray and backstab each other. MSG does something similar, but subtly different; it pits the “gamemaster” at the players’ throats, balancing things by having each of the players act as GM in turn. That’s an interesting and novel approach, as are several other elements of the game — the fact that it comes to a definitive ending in a single session, and that there are winners and losers. In short, it defies many of the characteristics we normally ascribe to a tabletop RPG — in the context of a very cynical, and very cool, cyberpunky future where even the minimal constraints on corporate action that currently apply are removed, and any residual ethical norms for businessmen are considered the domain of chumps.
When I retired the MSG™ Free Promotional Edition, I found that 2,120 people had downloaded it. I’d call that a success. But that’s it. It’s gone now.
The Beta Playtest version is still out there for £3.99 print, £1.99 PDF. I finished the Executive Edition last night, and it’s now in proofreading, hopefully. More on that later.
The successful applicant smiled
Brightly, said, “Of course not, no,
Silly,” could not hide her excitement,
Still tightly clutched the mobile while
I tried to confide these doubts I had:
“Don’t let it overtake you, please
Don’t allow them to make you
A slave.”
She hugged me, ruffled my hair.
She arrived there prompt, Monday, nine.
Oriented, one day turned into a month,
I come to her office to see her for lunch today.
At reception, hand on pencil hip,
Her smiling shining lips say
“How may I help you?”
“Are you free?”
I see the light they put by the socket
At her temple flick on,
Her eyes flick out;
“I have pressing work commitments.
Next time, make an appointment.”
Smiling she turns on a spike, clatters
To the lift, resculpted, fully trained,
Supplied with the best equipment.
A vital associate announcement, courtesy of BEKI80.
This is going to be in the typo-free, expanded, corrected and Nu-Improved Executive Edition of MSG™, which, when I have inserted some promised illos from my friend Zara, is coming soon.
Because the new version is coming so soon, I’ve extended the limit on downloads of the free version until December 9th.
The atheist bus and the rainbow bus
Arrive by chance at the same time
In this same town square.
“We’ve got a live one here,”
Says the man selling copies
Of The God Delusion
As penal substitution
Gets explained to him a third time
By a smiling beard with a Bible.
Relations between the rival
PSVs grow cold; the Rainbow
Crew sing their praise songs louder.
An atheist lady says, “This is
Really getting old.” She crosses
The line, says, “The singing is annoying,
It’s really annoying, and we know
Why you are doing it.”
And a Christian smiles sweetly,
Says, “But do you know Jesus?”
She punches the man out,
Thwack, someone pulls her back.
The shouting brings her mates.
The Christians counterattack;
NIVs and Dawkins hardbacks
Make equally effective weapons;
Screamed invective in a torrent, the exchange
Of vicious but not obscene names
Draws a crowd. They watch the two
Buses go up in flames.
The police end the fray, make arrests,
Gather up the dead.
And later all that can be said
By either side in the dock:
“They started it.”
io9.com is on the Gawker network. It get stupid numbers of hits. It is a website that promotes and discusses all things science-fictional and almost science-fictional. And all things geek, really.
On the one hand, it’s really not kosher to give out people’s phone numbers and the names and ages of their kids on the web. Whoever did this should — rightly — go to prison for it.
Here we go, then. This is what I have been working on recently. MSG™ is a game of negotiation and conscience for three to six adults, what I wrote, designed and illustrated myself, with help from my ubiquitous partner in crime Becky Lowe and my genius colleague Benjamin Baugh. It’s the genetically modified bastard child of Naomi Klein, Chris Morris and Dilbert.
It’s an 88-page illustrated paperback book, and it’s £5.99 in print, and £1.99 for the pdf.
But for one week only, it’s available on PDF format for free.
Do not name him, please;
Leave him gazing from the print,
All trust.
Do not allow him to pitterpatter
In my imagination.
Let the people who care grieve,
Let the people who did not be punished,
Let me find my children and
Hold them,
So very tightly.
You might catch your breath at the idea,
Grasp the boat’s side, knuckles
Not as hard nor as pale as this
Wall of sea-borne scales
Glimmering in cold crystalline mist.
Your stomach might harden
At the premonition of hell
In the smell of sulphur and charred meat,
In the sight of bobbing, half-finished meals:
Lost men, brave men, men like you.
The dawn might darken
In the opening of this single slitted eye,
Wider than your height
And you might rise to your feet,
Barely trusting the creaking unsteady wood,
Raise your ancestral spear,
Fear that the moon-bright blade
Will not be good
Enough
To end the serpent that girdles the earth:
But since you know its hit point total,
Instead you just kill it and steal its stuff.
Tell my kids the old, old story
With the torture. And the dying.
If it isn’t spectacularly gory
I tell you, you’re clearly not trying
Hard enough. Tell them the truth
About the agony. Don’t hide it
On account of their extreme youth;
It only counts if you’ve crucified it.
Pile on the gratuitous violence –
Innocence is over-rated.
If they sat there in shocked, wide-eyed silence
At the vicious facts you stated
And screamed in the dark, well, they should.
A bit of misery and fear will do them good.
She closes her eyes, falls to her knees
Hands raised, eyes teared up, sings
Love, love, love, need, longing, love.
The boy standing next to her empty seat
Sings in a voice no less loud
And wonders if when they’re married
And he can finally get her to bed
She will be thinking of Him.
They used to make them out of marble
Which, granted, had its advantages,
They didn’t move, were built to last.
The problem with making them out of marble:
You have to contend with the real thing.
(Here’s Ruskin on his wedding night,
Recoiling from goods not made out of marble,
From a growth of hair, unexpected shapes,
Thighs that give, breasts that sag.)
Now you can make them out of flesh,
Convert the actual goods, problem solved
With knives and electric shocks
And paralysis in needles
And taut little bags of rubber,
Make the parts look good,
Make sure they don’t work.
I would run my fingers
Across those petal-soft stomach scars,
Close my eyes,
Think on the things your body knows,
The consequence of your sex,
The lives you have made.
I would brush my lips
Over the experience on your face,
Whisper between
The signs of past smiles, complete loves:
If they do not see you now,
I see you. I want you.
They sorted me out with an attractive deal
A manageable repayment period,
A decent APR
A gradual but not too steep
Increase in
Gentler words,
An extra kiss perhaps
As a premium.
But we have to start talking in code
Avoid touching, avert our glances.
Our friendships strain under the load
But we have to start talking in code:
Our families must never explode
Into infidelities, selfish romances.
But we have to start talking in code
Avoid touching, avert our glances.
Wood is, though. He's a freelance writer, based in Wales. He writes for magazines and things, and even edits one. His work has appeared in something like thirty books for a very well-known publisher of tabletop role-playing games, the ones with the funny-shaped dice and everything, but that doesn't make him a bad person. His driving licence says he's called Howard.
Some other people write here, too, sometimes. Some of them are real.
We started this as a fiction project, and although we've descended into the world of blogging, our regular bite-size serials still persist, if only for the sake of our sanity.
Recently, we started publishing. Here's our storefront.
