Book Review – Memory by Linda Nagata
Memory by Linda Nagata My rating: 4 of 5 stars I very much enjoyed this and there is a real sense of both the characters and the setting developing over the course of the story. The back cover blurb describes it thus: "A quest, a puzzle, and multiple lives: On an artificial world with a forgotten past, floods of "silver" rise in the night like fog, rewriting the landscape and consuming those caught in its cold mists. Seventeen-year-old Jubilee knows that no one ever returns from the silver--but then a forbidding stranger appears, asking after her beloved brother, lost long ago to a silver flood. Could he still be alive? And why does the silver rise ever higher, threatening to drown the world? Jubilee pursues the truth on a quest to unlock the memory of a past reaching back farther…
A215 Poetry – Coffee Cravings
Having done the section on fiction (and written a 2,200 word short story, or rather four of them, two of which were way too long) the next part of the course is on Poetry. For six weeks or so I'll be trying to write some poetry. I was finding poetry rather baffling, I've never had a problem writing prose, it just sort of rolls off smoothly. The first chapter in the Big Red Book about it, Chapter 12, wasn't really that helpful for me, I didn't think it was offering anything new over what we've already covered at the beginning of the course. Mainly it was a series of writing prompts and exercises on inciting creativity. There was nothing about what made this stream of text poetry as opposed to prose. However, Chapter 13 is quite different, and while reading it I've…
A215 On Reflective Commentaries
In finishing off TMA2 for the Open University A215 Creative Writing course I had a lightbulb moment. This was in response to some discussion on a student forum about how the marking didn't necessarily follow the quality of the submitted piece of writing. This was attributed to the subjectiveness of 'good' writing. Or rather, that it is hard to mark the qualitative aspects of stories, poetry etc on an absolute scale. Accepting that, and taking it from the university perspective. You need tutors to be consistent, and that leads to robust marking guidelines that are completely objective. This then avoids valid criticism and legal challenges that could be successful. Both of the last are a bad thing from an organisational perspective, especially a university. So what do you base these robustly objective marking guidelines on? The course materials. As a…
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Mysterious Missing Merchandise
On Monday we had a (failed) delivery from Amazon Logistics. The card below was posted through our door. As you do, my wife checked with the woman at number 18. Although she often gets parcels left, she hadn't had any left with her that day. Being thorough my wife also checked with the other nearby neighbours just in case the delivery chap had got the wrong house number. None of them had a parcel for us. After reading the web link at the top of the form my wife called Amazon on the phone number on the card earlier today. This was a frustrating call for her, the person on the other end didn't seem to care about the missing parcel. The call operator even claimed that we'd not had anything delivered from a wish list since last summer.…
Game Design Notes: World War One Strategic Battles
This was originally written as a game design session prompt for a session at Chestnut Lodge Wargames Group back in April 2004. A discussion thread on about this excellent blog post lead me to dig it out and post it here. World War One Strategic Battles Turn structure Three turns per year, March – June (Spring), July to September (Summer) and October to February (Winter). Actions Small offensives can be prepared and launched within one turn. Large offensives take a turn of preparation and then take a whole turn of offensive action. Small offensives can be carried on into large offensives. Battles are fought in phases. Preparation: divisions are allocated to the line, first wave, second wave, exploitation, training and reserve tasks Bombardment Assault Counter-attack Continuation phases if appropriate Resolution Fighting is resolved at Army level, with Divisions as the…