Here's an idea-ette I'll shoot out there: MMORPGs are the apotheosis of interactive dystopian fiction. They posit worlds where everyone is some kind of physical ideal (or if they aren't, it's by aesthetic choice), and don't need to pay for food and lodging or other basic necessities, and where they can't actually create anything really new that hasn't been imagined by the game developers. Within that context, all the inhabitants have to do is acquire stuff and power, and beat the "other guys" senseless.

In World of Warcraft, there are two factions (Horde and Alliance) but no clear reason why one might be "good" and the other "evil." The two sides fight because they (a) can't talk to each other, and (b) you can only attack players of the other faction. This results in lots of inter-faction combat, basically, because you can. It's very Lord of the Flies.

Not that I'm complaining; I find the player vs player combat a lot of fun, just like I find deathmatch fun in more "traditional" first person shooters. I just find the dystopian elements interesting. I also find it interesting when people from the opposing factions manage to effect diplomatic solutions despite the fact that they can't talk to each other.

Now even given the limited and dystopic nature of the world, it's interesting to see that a real economy manages to flourish (since many crucial player items can only be created by other players) and that through the mechanism of guilds, you see players banding together to help other fellow players out (both by providing backup in the face of opposing faction raids, and in helping to raise gold and provide supplies to the lower level players, or players who have complementary professions). Also, the static game content is rich enough that it's difficult to see it all with one character, so exploration (and player discussion about that exploration) is a really compelling element.

And yeah, I know A Tale in the Desert attempts to take another path on this, and someday I should try it out to contrast and compare.

P.S. Alliance on Spinebreaker uber alles!  11:28:36 AM  (comments [])   

On that note, I'm looking for recommendations for fantasy books -- I have a craving. I'm looking for a couple of different things:

• Good characterizations
• Fun sword & sorcery action
• A certain degree of light-heartedness, but not out & out "hey I am a funny book"
• Epic struggles, quests, big journeys, exploration, discovery
• Interesting politics
• No young boys who discover that they are the heir to a magical land of ponies and have a coming of age
• Not a lot of "hey, let's have this internal dialogue again in case you didn't catch it last time!"

Some of these are obviously conflicting, but I'm just riffing here. Really, I'm just looking for suggestions in the fantasy genre that you guys think are smart & interesting & don't run out of things to say by the third chapter. I'm not opposed to cliches; in fact, I'd kind of enjoy a book that plays on the genre cliches but in smart ways. Both singleton books and series welcome, although I'm leery of anything that manages to last longer than three books.  11:17:59 AM  (comments [])   

I'd written up this big post about books I'd enjoyed recently, but then I lost it for reasons too tedious to enumerate. So here's a short version: The Tales of the Otori series (Lean Hearn, ninja love story with plenty of politics and adventure as well), The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (Mark Haddon, a coming of age story about an autistic 15 year old, told from this point of view, heart-breakingly good), and The Stupidest Angel (Christopher Moore, black black humor about Christmas, brain-eating zombies, and a warrior babe).

I also just finished re-reading Ventus (Karl Schroeder), which has a really nice blend of sci-fi (themes of nanotechnology, distributed systems, and galactic civilizations) and at least one pseudo-fantasy setting. I'd forgotten just how much I'd liked this book. Permanence, by the same author, wasn't quite as good, but still enjoyable. And I just started reading Ilium by Dan Simmons (who also did the Hyperion series, one of my favorites), and so far I'm liking it a lot.

Ghost in the Shell 2: Man-Machine Interface is also pretty great, although it goes in a totally different direction from the TV series and the second movie. Shirow's story is pretty much coherent, this time, and the art and ideas are great (only occasional forays into "whaaaa?????" territory).  11:08:43 AM  (comments [])