An Academic starship, about a year before arrival, lighting the night sky ever brighter as it approaches a colony.

Over at the new Shock:Human Contact forum, Malcolm Craig asks,

Are the Academy always overt when they arrive at a planet?

The answer is, “It’s hard not to be, but there are ways, when the circumstances are right.” Join the conversation and help form the Academic Contact Best Practices document!

This is really charming, in part because of the fanboyish naïveté of the interviewer, and in part because it still applies so well. I’d be proud to have that kid around. It would be nice to still have John around, too, I think.

Big-ass crater in the Democratic Republic of Congo

According to this article, this crater some 40 km across may have been caused by the impact of a 2km asteroid several tens of millions of years ago. The prevailing thought is that it was mid-Creatceous — that is, sort of in the middle of the Age of Dinosaurs. The scientists that discovered it are planning on going and taking field observations. If it’s what they think, it’s one of 25 known on Earth, so it’s not like it’s wholly unique.

Anyway, what’s neat to me is that I found it on Google Maps.

I’ve got just a handful of copies of the Shock:Human Contact Dreamation 2010 Preview left. I’d love to see them in the hands of some fans of Ian Banks’ Culture, Ursula LeGuin’s Ekumen, and Asimov’s Foundation.

If you’re one who lives in the US, paypal me $9 + $4 s&h.

If you’re one who lives elsewhere on Earth, paypal me $9 +$6 s&h.

You can send it to orders@glyphpress.com.

I will send you one!

It’s 18 pages long, heavily illustrated, and full of excellent Minutiæ for Shock: It requires the full Shock: game to play, so you might want to get a copy of that, too.

[Edit! Sold out! Look for a new edition at PAX East, though!]

There’s always time for art. Especially when you’re stuck somewhere.

40:30 long & 37.1 MB big

In this episode, Robert Bohl (designer of Misspent Youth) and Joshua A. C. Newman (designer of shock: social science fiction) end it all. Just in time for your Dreamation 2010 drive/flight!

- You can’t cut a piece off something living unless it wants you to, like one of those happy cow-like aliens from Resturant at the End of the Universe or a German suicide
- The TV show Dollhouse by J.J. Abrams
- Rob’s a bad designer and Joshua doesn’t like people
- Game Chef
- Shock: Human Contact by Joshua, and In a Wicked Age…. and Apocalypse World by Vincent Baker of Lumpley Games
- Meguey Baker of Night Sky Games
- Behavior-based questioning in interviews, and how it relates to game design
- John Wick and Ed Healy also are doing a project like Oo!
- AXE COP
- Another project: Ludic Jibber Jabber (no link yet)
- The Podge Cast shows up on iTunes when you search for Oo!
- Our negative review on iTunes
- Our requisite Radio Lab reference
- Sons of Kryos, Science Times, Brilliant Gameologists
- HOW TO FAIL!!!!!
- An NPR story referencing public administration and dead horses
- Kevin Smith’s The Mountain Witch

You can subscribe to the show (if you still want to) by plugging the RSS feed URL into your preferred podcatcher. You can also use the one-click iTunes button thingie:

The intro music is “Gotta Whizz” by Boris the Sprinkler, from the album Mega Anal. The outgoing music is a live version of “The End of the Tour” by They Might Be Giants from the album John Henry.

Join the forum discussion on this post - (6) Posts

A New Island resident enjoys the surf

Lee “Rusty” Mothes has been working on depicting New Island, a tiny fictional place in the Indian Ocean, for many years now. What he makes is quite lovely.

For 800 years the Academy has been slowly bringing the humans of Earth back from the brink of extinction to enlightenment. For the last 300, it has looked in wonder at the faint signals from the stars, knowing that humans had fled their home deep in its terrible past and may now be struggling without aid. Only now, with its powerful wormhole technology, can the Academy bring its light to the rest of the galaxy.

This special Dreamation 2010 preview includes material about the Academy and limited rules specific to its mission of exploration.

You need a copy of Shock: to play.

The Dreamation 2010 Preview of Human Contact is at the printer as we speak. I’m running two official sessions of it on Friday and Saturday night and anyone who goes will get one.

I’ve got a bunch of extras printed that are helping me pay my way at the con, too. I’ll be running games off the schedule, too, so pick up a copy and corner me if you weren’t able to get a slot! We’ll sit down with your and your friend for a couple of hours and see what happens where the Academy goes next!

Doug Williams thinks he can get Neill Blomkamp to love him. But no one loves Neill like I do. NO ONE YOU GOT THAT BITCH

It looks like I’m not the only one vying for Neill Blomkamp’s attention. This is a blog filled with adoration of all the right stuff, by a artist who makes nice things. I’m gonna have to step up my game.

I just found this while looking through old illustrations for materials for Human Contact. It’s not related, but I remember being really proud of this drawing. The original’s about 4″ tall.

If I recall, the deal is that these guys are herd animals, but their herds stretch really far apart. They stay in communication with natural radio that run along the top of their bodies inside their carapaces. They’re not naturally highly intelligent, but because of their distributed observational standpoint, have a complex communication system for predicting the weather on the barren, storm-ridden surface of their planet. As herbivores, they spend most of their time snuffling through the soil for little fungus-things, but they occasionally gobble up a little animal that secretes a toxin that has psychoactive effects on the enormous creatures. This pushes their nervous system into full-fledged creative intelligence, which they can only participate in when they’re large enough to not be poisoned by the toxin. Children are therefore little herds, incapable of creative thought. Only adolescence brings creativity.

They have a single eye, but it’s evolved to give them a limited form of depth perception.

They also have started realizing that, if they all point their antennae up, they hear some really weird stuff.