The Entropy Pump

by Matt Barton

An excellent overview of the history of computer RPGs, that attempts to arrange RPGs into certain ages, like gold, silver, platinum and modern. He starts out with the origins and then follows with the dark age, describing a time from which not much information has survived, the earliest RPGs on big mainframes. While I questions the choice of naming this age, I think dawn age would have been a much better choice (dark age implies a backslide from some heigh), to me it’s the most interesting chapter, as I never heard about most of those games he mentioned or that the history of RPGs reaches that far back. What follows are the bronze age and so on. For each age he mentions a big number of games, low points, high points and others, to give a good overview.

While I started playing RPGs in what he classifies as the golden age of CRPGs, I knew enough about earlier games to find not much new information in these chapters. Which is not a criticism, rediscovering some of those games I had not thought about for years or never played for one or another reason was tremendous fun. I envy younger players who discover some of the gems that are mentioned for the first time, if they can overcome the biggest obstacle to playing old games, obsolescence, rightfully mentioned in the book near the end. One criticism I have is that I felt at times a time table with each mentioned RPG at the end of the book would have helped, since the games are not always discussed in complete chronological order.

Despite that, it’s probably the best chance to get an overview of CRPG-history in one neat package. As is the nature of this medium, not every CRPG is or could have been mentioned. I miss the excellent shareware roguelike Mordor: The Depths of Dejenol, or some german RPGs, like Amberstar or Ambermoon, or more than just a mention of Wizardry 8, which is one of the best CRPGs of recent times and should have gotten some space.

The book ends with some thoughts on where CRPGs are going, and while I agree that a strong narrative is something that the likes of WoW can’t compete with, it still has to be balanced by strong RPG mechanisms in the background (extensive skills systems, turn-based combat), or you’ll just have another action-adventure or FPS on your hands. Who can be fun, but don’t provide the same gameplay I want from an RPG.

by Fred Adams and Gregory Laughlin

As humans had to readjust their world view over time by incorporating new insights, our place in space was more and more delegated to leave the center of the universe to become only a tiny speck in space among countless others. But while the newer cosmological models showed us that we weren’t even at the center (or that there wasn’t even a center), this loss of importance was compensated by the fact that with every new fact and insight in our universe it became a much more complex and interesting place, a place of wonder that even today surprises and delights scientists with new mysteries and findings.

This books shows that the same holds true for our place in time, the other side of the coin. We aren’t in any special or even important age. Laughlin and Adams laid out a possible, based on the state of knowledge when the book was published, biography of the universe, divided in five ages, each increasingly longer than the preceding one. For that they introduced the cosmological decade, not a linear model of addressing time gone by, but a logarithmic timeline. And again we find out that our place in time is equally less important than our place in space. But again we find out that this just means that there are many wonders to behold, that there is more time for interesting things to occur.

Laughlin and Adams give detailed descriptions of every of the five ages, which significant astronomical processes taking place and characteristic properties of each age. It’s a fascinating tour de force through time, that is, if you have the right mindset, a place of wonder and astonishment. They even allow themselves speculations of how live could exists in any of those ages, a tiny bit of science fiction. All in all, a truly marvelous book.

by Ulrich Schiller
not translated, german title: “Macht außer Kontrolle”

This is part biography and part contemporary history, a look at political developments from 1960 to 1990 in three nations (in the context of the cold war and later of its end). By it’s very nature, the author tells from his personal experiences from over ten years working as a foreign correspondent and combines that with added background information, it’s not as objective and exhausting as a history book on the same decades would be. On the other hand, since Ulrich concentrates only on three targets, Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union and the USA, he has enough room to explore some of the events and people who were in power then and there in-depth, and makes some interesting observations on why history turned out the way it did, and what legacies those developments had and still have in the present.

by Warren Ellis, Art by Jacen Burrows
collects Bad World 1-3

Bad World is not really a comic, even if it’s sold in that format. It’s more like an illustrated essay by Ellis on the coping mechanisms of people. And with that I don’t mean normal coping mechanisms, but those of people who create elaborate fantasies to deal with the randomness and unpredictability of reality. Ellis lists them all, the conspiracies nuts who try to make sense of the world by integrating every past event and their own personal misery (and the sodden state of the world, as they perceive it) into a vast conspirational framework where everything makes sense. Sure, it’s often not a nice world they believe in, but at least they KNOW why everything is so rotten. There’s the other side, people who, for example, believe in the rapture that will come and save us all. Aliens in spaceships who’ll take us to heaven. And more. Engaging the real world without any protective illusions can be a frightening and daunting task. Sometimes it’s easier to make shit up to make the world a less random place, to feel safe.

This is Ellis’s voice pure and undiluted. And as strange and out there as some of the things that he mentions are, even more interesting are Ellis comments and reflexions on them. On one side he shows some wonder and awe at the complex illusions some of these people have created. And sadness, since these people have, for one reason or other, capitulated from dealing with the real world. They are lost, imprisoned in their own make-believe worlds. Living side-by-side with everyone else, looking at the same world, but seeing something completely different.

by Michael Swanwick and Gardner Dozois

This is a book lenght interview of or a discussion with Dozois by Swanwick, where they talk about every short story Gardner has written until the book was made. The book has a very limited appeal, namely only those people who have in fact read the short stories discussed (okay, it might also appeal to people who secretly stalk Gardner Dozois and want to know everything about him, but I think that group is even smaller than those people who read his short stories). But for those who have, the book is a real treat, its just fun to follow those two writers talk about writing and the stories, and even funnier when you see that Gardner tries to be realistic and modest about his stories (and at times very critical of his own writing), while Swanwick clearly admires the writer Dozois and tries to find even the good part of a bad story. Funny, informative and just plain entertaining.