Forbidden Island, Universe Sandbox, and Falling Pianos

George, Alex and I played a game of Forbidden Island last Saturday night. This is a very good game in which all the players must work together to a) retrieve four treasures from the island, and b) escape the island together. Meanwhile, the island is trying to kill you by flooding!

The cooperation aspect is unusual and a nice change of pace from most games. As in real life, however, even well-meaning teammates can occasionally grind each other's gears, especially under the pressure of imminent death. It can be remarkably intense -- but very fun! -- for a cooperative game that lasts maybe a half hour.

One thing we've learned in about ten different sessions: We always discover a new rule or detail of the game. I'll admit that the rules aren't super simple, but neither are they a complex web. Nevertheless, we've never failed to be surprised by some little feature. For example, we just realized that each treasure can be picked up at either of its two possible locations in any given game, even though there is only one treasure figurine of each type. We've dubbed this "quantum entanglement of treasures." We didn't exploit this feature, and Alex hates it, but it's there and we'd always missed it before. Maybe we're just dense.


A couple of years ago I bought the Universe Sandbox astrophysical simulator. I also purchased Newton's Aquarium, and another program whose name I can't recall at the moment. U-Sandbox is my favorite. I'm a physics geek so I'd have wanted them anyway, but I specifically went looking for easy software to help me work some problems in The Other Side of Space. I did so when I was first outlining the book, and it gave me a good jump start with the plot. Now that I'm closing in on completing the first draft of the novel, I've had to dive into the sandbox again. (Things change during writing.) I won't spoil anything of the book here, but I just crashed a 500 kiloton teapot onto the Moon, multiple times! If you have clear skies, you might see the impact craters next time you look.

One interesting observation I made is that your initial velocity doesn't have as much affect on your impact velocity as one might think. For example, suppose you start from the radius of the Moon's orbit and you drop a tungsten piano onto the Earth, maybe with the Coyote as your target. When it hits his head, it will be traveling about 11.1 kilometers per second. This is almost enough to kill him. (By the way, this is just slightly less than escape velocity for Earth.) On the other hand, suppose you throw the piano down really hard, at 5 kilometers per second? The Coyote is done for, right? It must hit him at 16.1 kilometers per second. Except it doesn't! It brains the poor slob only doing about 12.2 kilometers per second.

I leave it to the student to think about why this should be the case. Don't worry about details, unless you're really interested, just the general concept. I'll offer this hint: A constant acceleration (or an accelerating force) operates on an object to change its velocity. Near the Earth's surface this acceleration is 9.8 meters per second per second toward the Earth's center. What that means is (ignoring air resistance) that  for every second that an object falls near the Earth's surface, it goes 9.8 meters per second faster. You drop a hamster hammer and it starts falling. At the end of the first second it's falling at 9.8 meters per second. At the end of the second second it's falling at 19.6 meters per second, and so on. The same basic idea is true even if the acceleration isn't constant, such as starting far away from the Earth's surface and falling for a long time.

No animals were harmed in the writing of this blog entry. All coyotes and hamsters were simulated. Teapots and Tungsten pianos were real.

Happy Birthday to the United States Marine Corps!

Maybe it's time for me to re-read Chesty's biography, Marine!

"We’ve been looking for the enemy for several days now. We’ve finally found them. We are surrounded. That simplifies the problem of getting to these people and killing them.”
—Col Lewis B. “Chesty” Puller, Chosin Reservoir, Korea 1950

Willingham, Correia, and space opera: Oh, my!

Item 1) I received my "Greetings from Fabletown, NY" postcard from Bill Willingham. You only get one if you write a real, paper letter to Bill. Remember those? One swell piece of news from him is that he's planning on returning to GenCon next year, along with a significant comic book writers track that he and Marc Tassin are working on. That's not what I write, but I'll be in the front row anyway. Bill's a great panelist.

Item 2) I've now read the first two Monster Hunter novels (Monster Hunter International and Monster Hunter Vendetta), the first Grimnoir novel Hard Magic, and I'm a third of the way through the second, Spellbound. Larry Correia sure knows how to make you turn a page!

One thing he sometimes does that violates conventional wisdom, or at least oft heard admonition, is "head hopping." That's switching point of view from one character to another mid-chapter if not mid-scene. The worry is that it can confuse the reader. So far, however, Larry seems to do it pretty seamlessly. I've not had the chance to study his technique yet because I've been too engrossed and turning those pages, but I'll try to back up sometime and analyze.

Item 3) I've completed about three fourths of the first draft of The Other Side of Space, and I can see the finish line. What a terrific feeling! I'm in that groove now where you've got all the parts laid out on the table, and you think you know how they're all going to fit together to make a beautiful, purring mechanism. Well, maybe not that beautiful for a first draft, and maybe growling instead of purring, but at least functional, and doing kind of what you'd visualized at the start. If you squint hard, and don't look at your original notes.

More Scrabble poetry

George Daley, Tom Redding and I play Scrabble and Boggle regularly. Tom's game has definitely improved over time, although victory usually belongs to me or George. Nevertheless, I was prompted to write this next poem with Tom as the hero. It came about years ago during the infamous "Scrabble Poetry War" between me and George. I think this might have been the last barrage that finally overwhelmed Dr. Daley.

Inspired by The Charge of the Light Brigade:

Happily! Happily!
Happily onward!
All holding their breath,
while Tom played for six hundred:
Forward past the others he played,
Charging with the mighty word he made,
still holding their breath,
as Tom played for six hundred!

Forward, past the others he played,
Was there a man dismay'd?
You bet!!!
'Til someone noticed he'd blunder'd:
There's not a FASH in the book,
There's Tom with a phony hook,
There's nothing like it, why even look?
All letting out their breath,
when Tom played for six hundred!

Challenge to the right of Tom,
Challenge to  the left of Tom,
Challenge in front of Tom
voluble they thundered
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
But Tom said, "Oh, what the hell."
Huffing out a breath,
with confidence he tried to sell,
Tom played for six hundred

FASH would be there, they'd all see
FASH as George turned past letter E
While Spencer giggled, "Tee hee hee"
Charging into F he paged
All the table wonder'd:
Plunged into the book,
Bella barked, the table shook,
Coffee and Pepsi spilling,
Then reeling from the brilliant stroke,
Shattered and sunder'd, George spoke:
"It's in there!
Tom scores six hundred!"

Challenge to the right of Tom,

Challenge to the left of Tom,

Challenge in front of Tom

voluble they thundered

Storm'd at with shot and shell,

But Tom had said, "Oh, what the hell."

Huffing out a breath,

with confidence he played so well,

Tom wins with six hundred!

And then he woke, from fever'd dream,

To find no tiles on the scene,

He looked around and wonder'd:

"They really were a pack of cards",

or… something like that old canard.

No honor for such skill with lingo,

No Triple, Triple, Triple bingo,

No awesome score of six hundred.

"But next time I'll take all your damn ears!"

So... I guess I'd better get back to work.

GenCon 2014 continued: Westerfeld and Deadly, Unna?

I got to meet and chat with Scott Westerfeld after one of his panels. [BTW: His Q&A session was terrific. Scott was smart, and wise, and very funny. Alex was surprised at how funny. And Beth Vaughan did an excellent job moderating!] Fortunately I had something besides, "I love your books" at hand to open the conversation.*

The Other Side of Space (TOSS) includes a character who is an Aboriginal Australian. During my research, mostly on slang phrases, I ran across a few blogs and bulletin boards with some truly vile, racist diatribes against the Aboriginal people. Really virulent stuff. I mentioned this to Scott, and asked how the racism in Australia compares to the U.S. [Scott was born and raised in the U.S., but has lived in Australia for the past 12 years.] I couldn't imagine similar comments about blacks in the U.S. surviving for long. Maybe I don't hang out at bad enough water coolers.

Scott told me that in some rural areas where a mostly white town was near an Aboriginal reserve or former reserve, things still could get pretty awful. Not to say that the cities are racism free, but the kind of stuff I'd mentioned was more likely to be found in the sticks. He then recommended a YA book titled Deadly, Unna? by Phillip Gwynne. Even though it was first published in 1998, Scott felt it was reasonably up to date for my purposes, and a good read. He didn't say so, but it was chosen by the Children's Book Council of Australia as "Book of the Year: Older Readers."

As Nadia Wheatley of the Sydney Morning Herald wrote, "Combining humour, politics, fine writing and football, it's pretty hard to beat."  It's a very good book. The first five paragraphs had me hooked on the main character's voice. I'd be willing to hear any story from Blacky.

So I learned a few things about Nungas and Goonyas (blacks and whites) in the book's world, spent many very enjoyable hours, and now I'm looking forward to reading more of Mr. Gwynne's work.

Thanks, Scott!

*Note to my Future Fans, if any get created: I won't ever mind hearing this!

GENCON 2014

Blogging once a year is equivalent to not blogging. Sigh.

Yet failure has rarely daunted me. During the early years of my optics company Light Works I came so close to crashing and burning so many times that I stopped counting. It didn't matter. Punch me in the mouth and knock me down? Just clear a little space and I'll be back on my feet in a minute. Now things are going swell, and Cool Hand Luke is still one of my favorite movies. (Go watch it!)

So learn from past failures and keep moving forward. Excelsior! Or sumfin' like that. On to the talking about the subject:

This was my second GenCon, and this time I brought my son Alex. We both had a wonderful time, despite our having very different purposes. His was for what I suspect the majority of attendees came for -- games and the spectacle and having fun. Mine was primarily for the Writing Symposium.

For this entry, I'm only going to offer snippets. My thinking is that this will force me to come back soon and expand. Also, my middle grade space opera WIP The Other Side of Space is thrusting along well and I don't want to let the engines cool too long.

Jim Butcher, Scott Westerfeld, and Larry Correia? Holy Toledo is that a power line-up of writer guests! Of course there were many others, but those were the big three names at quarterback, wide receiver, and running back.

Bill Willingham was perhaps my favorite writer panelist. I got the impression that his sensibilities most closely paralleled my own. I also loved the "Bible hair" story he told about when he was a kid and he met Johnny Weissmuller. He's funny, and direct, and clear, and wise, but in no way does he seem self-important. Now I'ma have to go read his Fables mags.

William Alexander made a good comment about scaring kids in literature ("being scared can be a vaccination"), which led to a great discussion, and quoting of Sherman Alexie that I'd never heard before. "I don’t write to protect them [kids]. It’s far too late for that. I write to give them weapons–in the form of words and ideas-that will help them fight their monsters."

Of course fiction in general is really good for preparing people for life. Read, damn yer eyes!

My friend and fellow writing group member Marc Tassin did a truly spectacular job of putting the whole symposium together. I've glimpsed the shadow of the mountain of work he put in to pull this off, and I remain astounded. Even more amazing is how well everything turned out. Lots of people can simply work hard. It's another thing to get things done. I know he had boo coo help, but he's the one who gathered, trained, and led his forces. My box of 'atta boys' just ain't big enough.

Finally (for now), Alex and I had the best time just goofing off and gawking, and talking about stuff. I do have to mention one game we played in particular: Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes. OMFG was that fun! I hope these folks are successful, because we need more of this in the world. Check it out, and support them!