Where Worlds Collide

When I was a child, the cities of the future were filled with monorails. But the idea never caught on outside of theme parks and the like, and things like this.

Meanwhile, who would have though that we’d see the revival of what was then thought a completely obsolete technology, the tram? But these are not your grandfather’s trams; the new trams in Nottingham look as sleek and futuristic as any of the monorails we dreamed of in the sixties. So maybe the future did happen, only not quite as we expected?

(Links from Live from the Third Rail and Transport Blog)

I’ve heard of wierd RPG game ideas, but this has to be one of the strangest ideas I’ve seen. This guy even makes Ken Hite look normal.

Almost 200 killed by a ten bombs on four commuter trains in Madrid. For us in Britain it seems awfully close to home. There’s a real feeling that is a matter of when rather than if we’ll see scenes much like these, only instead of the red and white RENFE commuter trains, the mangled coaches will wear the liveries of Stagecoach, Silverlink or First Great Eastern.

Was it really the Basque terrorists ETA, who still seem to be the prime suspects? Or does the scale of the carnage and co-ordinated attacks indicate the real culprits are Al-Queda? Or is it the nightmare scenario; some form of cooperation between the two. Or, as Ken MacLoed says:

It makes a practical difference, yes, but ETA has become so nihilistic and pointless it might as well be part of Al-Qaeda already.

The viscereal reaction is to wish bloody revenge on the people that did this. ETA, if it is indeed them, must certainly must be destroyed; there’s little evidence that they have any widespread support amongst the Basque people nowadays, it’s been reported that there are probably only about 250 active members. What’s frightening is that the Spanish government believed they’d got ETA on the run.

If it was Al Queda, that’s even more frightening.

Although it’s still a month away, I’ve now written up the adventure I hope to run at Gypsycon over Easter. Makes a change from writing the adventure the night before, as some GMs have done in the past. Unlike some people, I’ve never mastered the art of running entire adventures completely off the cuff making up everything as I go along.

Unlike last time, when I made up all the NPC stats on the fly, this time I’ve even got outline stats for all the significant NPCs in the game. I’ve statted them up in Fudge, although I may end up running the adventure using GURPS (I’ve got the pre-gen player characters in both systems).

No spoilers, because some potential players might be reading this. All I can say is that the scenario features genetically modified turnips.

It’s a while since I splurged on CDs; but since two of the albums were cheap in HMVs sale, all three cost me less than the Fleischmann Sgns that I decided not to buy.

Two of them were by Yes, Fragile, which I only had on vinyl, and Tormato which I didn’t own at all. Fragile, from way back in 1972, is as good as it ever was, one of the classics of 70s prog rock. No other band quite matched Yes at their peak; a quite frightening instrumental complexity topped by Jon Anderson’s choirboy-on-acid vocals, with his wonderfully surreal nonsense lyrics. Of course, after a generation of hippies tried and failed to find the deep and profound meaning, it wasn’t until years later they admitted that the words were nothing more than stream-of-consciousness gibberish.

Tormato on the other hand is really an album for completists only. It’s the sound of a band in the throes of disintegration; five talented musicians all pulling in completely different directions. A few decent songs emerge from the murk, such as the single “Don’t Kill the Whale” and “Onward”, but overall the album pales in comparison to it’s predecessor, “Going for the One”. It’s hardly surprising that the band split after a year later.

The third album I bought is by a band who I don’t think were even born when Fragile first appeared. De-Loused in the Comatorium by The Mars Volta is an album I’ve read several good reviews on Blogcritics, so I thought it worth the risk. It’s what I would call “Nu Prog”. It’s got a lot of the good elements of progressive rock; instrumental complexity, lengthy tracks, one clocking in at 12 and a half minutes, soaring vocals, and song titles like “Drunkships of Lanterns”. But it’s not the straightforward pastiche of 70s Yes, Floyd and Genesis you find in many other ‘neo prog’ acts. In some parts, the aggressive guitar based sound is reminiscent of Muse. Other parts echoe mid 70s King Crimson; one guitar solo in particular sounds very Fripp-like. But there no Mellotrons in sight.

What does this mean? Has some loathsome blasphemous entity that Man Was Not Meant To Know taken up residence in the stygian gloom of the disused Woodhead tunnel? Or does it simply mean that Dodgeblogium?

The March edition of DREAMSCRIBE is out, featuring some convention reviews by yours truly.

Local businesses may run rural railway lines

More than 1,300 miles of rural rail lines could be handed over to local businesses or voluntary groups in an effort to reduce their current Treasury subsidy of £200 million a year.

The Government’s Strategic Rail Authority published plans yesterday for “community development” of 60 loss-making branch lines across England and Wales, but refused to exclude the possibility that some might close.

More on this on the SRA’s own site here.

I think this is an idea whose time has come. On my visits to Switzerland I’ve travelled on many of the ‘private’ railways that aren’t a part of the Swiss Federal Railways network. Many of these are short local lines in rural areas, but some are quite extensive networks including some busy commuter lines. One (the BLS) even includes a section of a major international through route. Like all Swiss railways, they’re efficiently and smartly run.

The advantage of these little local lines is that they’re under local management, and local people feel enought of a sense of ownership they wouldn’t have if their line was an remote part of a large network . They also control their own resources (staff and rolling stock) So they don’t have gaping holes in the timetable at what should have been a busy time of day because someone at the other end of the country decides the unit and crew need to be used on a commuter run on another line. (Link from Transport Blog)

Like something out of those really cheesy horror novels by hack writer Guy N Smith, hordes of gigantic crabs are on their way to invade Europe. And Joseph Stalin is to blame! As Ken MacLoed says, those fifties B-movies got their subtexts right after all.

GURPS Atomic Horror, anyone?

So, the dire predictions that the Academy would never give the best film award to something made by a fat bloke from New Zealand whose main audience is ‘engineers called Dave’ turned out to be wrong. Still, had anything else won the ‘best film’, the Oscars would have ended up with roughly the same credibility as the Mercury Music Prize.

It’s the first time a fantasy or science-fiction film has won the Best Film award. 2001, A Clockwork Orange, ET and Star Wars all managed to get nominated, but never won anything but consolation prizes like ‘best special effects’. It’s a belated recognition that these genres are now part of the cinematic mainstream. It’s a contrast to the world of books where sadly SF is still confined to the ghetto.

You don’t want to see the alternative timeline, where they gave the award to ‘Seabiscuit’. Those Los Angeles Nerd Riots were a terrible thing.