Category: Uncategorized

Me: Hey, Old-School-Games-Publisher: I’d like to license your old game X for a new version. Money for you!

OSGP: Meh! We don’t license for things like game books — we can do those ourselves!

Me: Yes, but…

OSGP: If you want to write the new version, we’ll publish it….

Me: Well, thanks, but you see —

OSGP: But keep in mind that we really only do one or two books, at best, per year… and there are other people ahead of you with projects.

Me: Huh? If your capacity is limited to that few books, why not license? Seems like it would be a no-brainer: Money for you!

OSGP: Get offa my lawn! Meh!

Somebody please remind me why I still work in this business…..

Bruce Sterling (one of the authors of the seminal steampunk novel The Difference Engine), has a new essay about the movement online. Well worth reading.

Money quotes:

“Steampunk has become popular now because it is no longer just fiction. It is an international design and technology effort. Steampunk is a counterculture arts and crafts movement in a 21st century guise. […]

Steampunk’s key lessons are not about the past. They are about the instability and obsolescence of our own times.”

The essay is possibly the best examination I’ve ever read explaining the explosion in popularity of steampunk, and why it has widened beyond the historical-SF literature underpinnings.

Instead of a straight bailout for the Big Three automakers, I’d like to see a bailout contingent on switching production over to 21st-century options like this:

Click to visit website.

If a boutique auto company can produce an all-electric roadster that gets 240+ miles per charge, and does 0-60 in 3.9 seconds, and can sell that car for $109,000 — imagine what could be done with the mass production abilities of the Big Three.