shock: – Page 9 – xenoglyph

Shock: now in Real Thing format!

I understand why some women have a thing for guys in uniform. Sometimes that uniform is brown, and sometimes when that uniform is brown, the dude brings you the proof of Shock: Social Science Fiction.

There are a couple of tweaks to do and my editor (i.e. Carrie Bernstein, i.e. my wife) is going to give it a once-over. And I have to lean a bit on my printing rep to do the last piece of the job (it’s supposed to have a matte finish and it doesn’t — it looks kinda nice this way, but decisions are decisions.) Then it ships to Brennan and me, then to you!

Excellent minutiæ

Oh, man. Check out this site full of unusual and futuriffic vehicle designs. It’s a huge repository of Minutiæ for futuristic Shock: games.

Hoo fucking ray!

These are the final two illustrations from Shock: Social Science Fiction. I put them here as a way to mark my triumph, for it has taken to the air and is on its way to press as we speak. I should have proofs in a few days. Barring proof-revealed disaster, it should be on the way to mailboxes two weeks after that.

The Casbah in the Company Town.

A mind “hops” from its atrophying birth body into its newly purchased sports model.

Last chance for pre-order

Shock: Social Science Fiction will be heading out to press tomorrow, Monday. That means that all those who have pre-ordered should be getting your hot orange square sometime in the next couple of weeks. That also means that this is the last chance to pre-order Shock: Social Science Fiction.

The back of the book reads:

Science Fiction with Meaning
The glint of flexing steel skin and the challenges it brings to its owner. An alien language, whispered in a dream telling truths no one wants to know. Towers a thousand miles tall populated by coarse corporate overlords and surrounded by its impoverished workers.
Explore the hopes and dreams you have for science and technology. Plumb the depths as they go awry and turn on their masters.
Shock: Social Science Fiction is a fiction game that gives you the tools to tell those stories, to build a world and people it with the characters that make it work the way you want it to.
Author Ben Lehman’s original story Who Art in Heaven, taken from an actual game of Shock: is included with running rules explanation.
Grab that raygun and put it in the service of your ideas.
For 3 to 5 players.

I can’t wait to get this thing out the door.

Back in the saddle.

Block Island

OK, I’ve mooned over my honey, and now I’m out of money. So I’m back from Block Island and back in the saddle.

I’ve got a couple of graphic design jobs going on — a landscape architect who seems like a really good guy, and a woman whose company makes baby slings. The second is an ongoing, large-scale (for me) corporate identity. The first, I dunno; I’ve only met with the guy a little bit for a tangentially related project.

But, of course, that’s not what I’m hot about (though I am excited to get paid). This is what I’m excited to do:

I’ve got some illos to do for Shock: and then it’s done. I think I’ll do three more. One, I managed to start on our trip to Block Island and needs a few more hours. I’m not sure what to do for the rest.

I’m working on a top-secret project with Clinton R. Nixon (probably one of many over the next year or so). The Eisner-nominated Jennifer Rodgers has already done the cover illo and it’s beautiful.

I’m also working on a collection of Japanese ghost stories with Timothy Kleinert, as a sorta-supplement for The Mountain Witch. This project is exciting to me because I love these stories. They’re sort of a Mother Goose of Japanese folklore, assembled by a relative outsider, Lafcadio Hearn, who eventually became an unlikely Japanese citizen. The book will be largely stories from Kwaidan, his major collection, with some others Tim feels are appropriate and full of Japanese ghost creepiness.

Shock: illustrations, hot off the drawing board!

The following are the two extant illustrations for Shock: They’re both from Who Art in Heaven, the game fiction written by Ben Lehman.

A vacuumorph, laid out for dissection by company trainees.

The Revolution starts and blood is spilled.

In process is a drawing of the town in a nameless game played with Vincent and Carrie. The town is a company town, based around a space elevator on an alien planet. I’ll probably do another from Trash in the Hopper, played with Judd Karlman, Shawn DeArment, and Stephan Edelson. Most likely the scene where Judd’s character’s body is craving intimacy.