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I’m looking forward to Posthuman Studios’ upcoming role playing game Eclipse Phase, a science fiction game with lots of transhuman and cyberpunk elements.

Eclipse Phase’s universe is a conglomerate of sci-fi memes such as transhumanism, singularity, AI, virus, post-apocalyptism and domestic 3D nano printing. While this could be somewhat confusing, I guess it would be possible for a game master to downplay some of the aspects. My experiences are that the more tech you supply your players with and the more these players know the possibilities of it, the harder it gets to challenge them.

The setting is somewhat like this: (Trans)humanity has been plagued by international conflicts and cyberwars. A group of military AI’s known as the TITANS have reached sentience and started to enhance their own intelligence and turned against humanity, thus turning the conflicts into “man versus machine”. This wiped out most of humanity and turned the Earth into a “toxic and strange hellhole”.

Just as quickly as they came, the TITANS disappeared, taking millions of uploaded minds with them, leaving behind a network of wormhole gateways. Known as Pandora Gates, these poorly-understood devices allow instantaneous teleportation to distant star systems—often one-way and/or fatal. Though only a handful of Pandora Gates are known to exist—each highly contested—the foolish, brave, curious, and desperate are already risking certain death to enter and explore what lies beyond.

The transhuman world resembles a three-circled Dante’s Inferno: the center is the suppressive police state where high technology is banned, the periphery consists of societies structured after all the different ideas imagination can conjure up and the fringe is lawlessness and chaos.

To top it all off, a mutating bio-, info- and nano-virus, known as the Exsurgent virus, runs rampantly through humanity, turning its victims into unspeakable reality-altering monsters(!)
The system, as far as I can see, is a basic d100 percentile one, my favorite since its simple and therefore helps keep the players’ minds in the game.

Even though the game eventually will get published as an actual physical book, it’s licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License, meaning you can share and remix (expand, develop etc.) the game as long as you: give attribution, don’t use it commercially and share it under the same license.

Now, as said previously, even though I’m looking forward to the publication of Eclipse Phase, I can’t really wrap my head around all the different trajectories explained on the web-page. It’s like they’ve just looked at the contemporary futuristic jabber and thrown it all into the mix; I’m worried that might be too much to get a coherent universe. If I were to create a campaign in Eclipse Phase, I’d probably shave some of the elements off. Then again, all the above information is very concisely written and maybe the source book will help illuminate how this all is supposed to make sense on a deeper level.

But the people at Posthuman Studios deserve respect for this project. I will give the game a fair chance once it’s published.

No Comments | In: Cyberpunk, science fiction | tags: Cyberpunk, postapocalyptic, science fiction. | #

My brain is still trying to re-acclimatize after tumbling through Laroquod’s webcomic Hypothesis. Hypothesis is the brain child of Paul Laroquod, a “time walker, lost in the here and now” (according to himself) from Toronto who dabbles in photography and, of course, comics.

…follow the story of my experiments in your world, conducted with graphic and cinematic techniques you’ll recognise at first, and then increasingly with tools

UNLIKE ANY YOU’VE SEEN BEFORE

Hypothesis is divided into three episodes. In the first episode, the time traveler awakes on earth in a time distinct from his own. During this episode, the traveler tries to make sense of why he’d make a note to himself which says “Shoot Everything”. In the second episode, the time traveler explores the uses of the “desktop TV” and tries to get something to eat, preferably something with gravy.  The third episode deals mostly with the time traveler’s attempt to understand a scrambled news feed and to triangulate a  non-dimensional “New Resonance”.

I still quite haven’t figured Hypothesis out yet. It seems the traveler has had a similar experience; in the third episode, he asks Doug aka. the Oracle:

No answering of plot-related questions, like – why am I here? Why do I have skills I’ve never learned?

WHAT WAS UP WITH THE LITTLE DUDE?

Et cetera?

I don’t lament the fact that I don’t completely understand Hypothesis because I think it’s one of its most seducing qualities. I see the story as a homage to near future science fiction, it’s almost Burroughsian in its style. And those of you who follow this blog know I dig surreal stories where the reader is kept in hesitation. If I was able to “understand” the story, I think it would have been too simple for my taste.

Perhaps one of the most astounding aspects of Hypothesis is the graphic side which is an eclectic mix of edited (for lack of a better non-proprietary word) photography, screen dumps and illustration. Laroquod has also made some experimentation with regard to the layout of text-boxes, supplying them with their own distinct graphical expressions, a feature, he’s revealed, partially inspired by Frank Miller.

Hypothesis is in the Public Domain, making it possible for anyone to use it as they see fit: remixing, sharing, copying, capitalizing, tattooing. However, attribution is still the least you could do if you want to do any of the above things with/to “Hypothesis”.

3 Comments | In: Comics, science fiction | tags: public domain, science fiction, webcomic. | #

Holy Dingo! According to CreativeCommons.org, Ridley Scott, the director behind numerous awesome movies like Alien and Bladerunner, is going to do a webseries called “Purefold” under the free copyleft license.

The licence basically means that anyone can download, share and remix the material of the series without having to fear prosecution. It will be very interesting to see both what the series will be like and also what users of the Internet will do to it.

Although not completely related to Bladerunner, the series will still be “based on the same themes” - as BitsBlog @ New York Times quotes David Bausola (one of the production company Ag8’s creators) saying.

Via: Creative Commons .org

No Comments | In: science fiction | tags: science fiction, web series. | #

I’ve known about this film since it was shown (and won a competition) at Breakpoint in 2008 because I know some of the guys in JUNK. And now the time has finally come to mention E.T.A, an animated short film.

Like everything Nemobay blogs about, E.T.A. can be downloaded and/or watched for free. However, if you intend to use it for anything else than watching, be it screenings, remixing etc., be sure to contact them and hear what they have to say before doing so.

Overall, it took JUNK four years to complete E.T.A. and I have no idea whether that’s normal so I wont comment on it.

‘Nuff said, so I’ll leave the final words to JUNK:

“Marvin has the most boring job - ever. But all is not as it seems…”

No Comments | In: science fiction | tags: animated, science fiction, short. | #

They’re playing a crazy robot board game (the name of which I’m only prepared to disclose against the humble fee of a thousand starships) in the living room, but I don’t wanna play, I wanna blog and no blog is an island, so on to the juicy part…

I admire Chris G.’s “Robots with Stuff“. First of all because the title includes both the words “robots” and “stuff”. Secondly because his style resonates within my heart like a thousand jack hammers (or maybe that’s just the caffeine… but I like them both). Thirdly because they’re really funny.

Here is for instance

Apparently, the deal is that Chris has claimed that he can draw three robots per week for at least a year, a challenge Shoebox Blog has taken him up on. Right now he’s at number forty three, so there’s still a long way to go. Go Chris Go!

(The story does not reveal whether Chris takes requests)

Via BotJunkie.

No Comments | In: comedy, science fiction | tags: Comics, robots. | #

Posthuman Blues recently brought the short movie World Builder by Bruce Branit to my attention. The description reads:

A strange man builds a world using holographic tools for the woman he loves.

World builder is a very beautiful and emotionally loaded movie. As audience, we follow this “strange man” preparing a holographic world for somebody. When he’s done, a woman appears. As she is enjoying this platonic world, the strange man secretly follows her, reacting strongly to her expressions. My words cannot describe exactly how well this is acted out in the movie, so you’ll have to go and see it.

Okay, so I know this still looks like we’re talking about a shampoo commercial here, but trust me; we’re not.

The graphic side is just as beautiful as both script and acting. And you can’t help feeling drawn to a future where world building this easy is a actually possible.

The movie is somewhat reminiscent of Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain, although this in no way is a critique. It is only the “feel” of the movie and not the basics of it which indicate that Bruce might have been inspired by Aronofsky’s movie.

Posthuman Blues originally got the hint from Bruce Sterling’s blog on Wired.

Image: from crasch’s Flickr stream

No Comments | In: Comics, science fiction | tags: hologram, sci-fi, science fiction, scifi, short movie. | #

io9 just directed my attention to this blog post on Tom Ellard’s blog by “former astronaut” Vincent T Grant. In this post, Vincent goes through four kinds of science fiction and how to write in these particular genres. He does so in a humorous and “no BS” way.

The sub-genres are: Traditional Science Fiction, New Wave, Alternative Realities and Dystopian Worlds.

It’s a quick but worth your time read, mostly because of its humorous qualities (that is: don’t expect to be enlightened and finally become the Philip K. Dick v2.0 you always wanted to be).

Although Charlie Jane Anders‘ (from io9) favorite part is on New Wave, I think my tastes are more to his advice on Dystopian Worlds:

“So there was a line up at the local DMV the other day and when I finally got to the end they say that at 90 years old I shouldn’t be driving anyway. And no they don’t care if I had flown three shuttle missions I was too old. Well what if the whole world was like the DMV and if you were too old you couldn’t get a license?”

While his post is really good, I’m not sure he exists. I tried Googling Vincent T Grant and found nothing on him, maybe he doesn’t exist? Maybe he’s a robot? According to a comment from Belabras to io9’s article, “There is not now, nor has there ever been, a Vincent T Grant that was an astronaut”.

2 Comments | In: science fiction, writing | tags: sci-fi, science fiction, scifi, writing. | #

Just realized I had this old bookmark waiting for me to come around. We’ll I did, because seeing it, I remembered that it’d looked neat.

The comic takes place in New York City a good hundred years from now. Manhattan has been hit by a tsunami, the consequences; riots, rampant crime and trafficking from the surrounding area, a martial law has been declared and a giant wall erected to normalize Manhattan once again.

This is a society in which hash is legal, in fact you can’t buy a pack without it containing a bit of hash (for your pleasure, of course). Anything open source is illegal, especially open source drugs such as “M6″ (which is actually licensed under GPL).

The language is tough but poetic and there’s a realistic feel to it, I can’t help feeling.

“It made their fashion mods look like cheap costumes. You had to be hard-core to let them open up your skull and stick the gear into your brain.”

The graphic side of the comic is monochrome but of course spiced up with vivid colors where appropriate.

There are six issues up and even though I’ve only read the first one, I definitely look forward to reading the next five. You can read them online either on your computer or your PSP.

Because the series is licensed under a Creative Commons licence, you can also download the files in zip’s if you’d like.

With all this and more, it most definitely is one of those precious pearls one too rarely finds on the Internet.

2 Comments | In: Comics, Cyberpunk, science fiction | tags: Comics, Cyberpunk, sci-fi, science fiction, scifi. | #

All day I’d been looking forward to a seminar with Jakob Stegelmann (one of the great genre and game ‘enthusiasts’ of Denmark) and Malene Flagga (quantum physicist and science journalist). They were going to venture into the future, both of science fiction and reality (as the title for the seminar so concisely expressed it).

I’d brought my notebook and a pen (because it was that kind of notebook) with me in hopes of getting inspiration both for my thesis and this blog. But, alas, throngs of nerds, geeks and other kinds of sci-fi hooligans had decided to spend their monday night in The Black Diamond which meant not only chaotic shambling verging on a state of civil war, but also that yours truely was not appointed a seat in the great halls of The Black Diamond.

So here I am now with a familiar bitter taste in my mouth, a mouth that wants to speew profanities at Students Only! for being an elitist extension of the military-industrial complex by only allowing people who are students to their seminars and for accepting sponsored beer.  And not least for ensuring that corporate censorship will saturate the once pristine waters of academia. I want to tell them that I never ever ever ever will try to attend one of their events ever again… ever. And then we’ll see who drops the last tear!

But truth is that I’m a student, I like free beer and without sponsorship, it would probably be impossible for them to do what they do (as far as I know anyway). I just feel miserable because I didn’t get in, they tried all they could to get as many in as possible and even though it was chaos, they kept cool.

So because I did not get to see this seminar and because I feel like I owe you, here is something much better, the Amazing Dancing Baby Skeletons of Bologna!

3 Comments | In: Me, science fiction | tags: Me, sci-fi, science fiction, scifi. | #

The last couple of weeks, I’ve been watching the first Season of Battlestar Galactica again. The first time I saw the first season, I was impressed with how well areas of conflict between politics and military were portrayed. This time around, I’m still impressed, but I noticed that it is seriously messy.

Take Bastille Day forinstance. A substantial part of the episode is devoted to Apollo’s having to pick a side, whether he’s on Roslin’s or, his father, Adama’s. Here Roslin represents civilian politics and Adama military considerations such as strategics and security.

The fleet has found water, but extracting it from the planet is dangerous business indeed which is why it is decided to make the convicts on the Astral Queen do it. For this work they will receive “freedom points” so that they may be able to slice some time of their sentenses. The prisoners decline, lead by Tom Zarek; “a freedom fighter convicted of terrorism 20 years earlier” (link).

Suddenly, the prisoners revolt and take the Galactica crew as hostages. The prisoners demand that Roslin step down from office and call for a new election because no one elected Roslin president, she was just the only surviving minister of the old administration.

On board the Astral Queen, Apollo reveals that he read Zarek’s forbidden book in college and found it inspiring. The whole thing ends in a mess where Zarek and the prisoners agree to get the water if an election is called within a year (which, apparently, would have been the case anyway).

The problem is not one of black and white; who’s wrong and right, but rather what the fuck is at stake here. Why does Zarek habour these negative feelings about their political system and why the system considers him a threat. Sure he blev up a government building once, but did anybody die? Or was it a V for Vendetta thing? Are we siding with a semi-fascist regime as we weep and cheer for Adama and Roslin or are we siding with the terrorists when we nod to Zarek’s contentions about democracy and equal rights?

It seems like there’s something at the bottom of this conflict which is never explained. There’s no question that both Roslin and Adama are leaders in the conservative sense of the word. Adama almost shows nothing but disaffection towards civil society and Roslin is guided mostly by her feelings. Ultimately these are both potentially facsist thought patterns since Adama’s way is deaf towards happyness and Roslin’s is blind towards the long run. Yes, we may say they represent two sides of human concsiousness and therefore perfect the way their society is run, but the fact remains that this makes each of them insanely dangerous speaking from a democratic point of view.

And Zarek? Maybe he’s a psychotic terrorist, using the rhetorics of democratic thought to obtain his goal which really is power. Still, this does not hold water (no pun intended). We’re left wondering how exactly this society functions politically. I may just be a nerd for pointing this out, I may be way of the track here.

But I have a distinctive sentiment that these times require us to be familiar with democracy and know what principles it is based on and why. Because the last 10 years or so, democracy seems to have been eroding all over the world simply because voters have forgotten why our court systems were made the way they were and why we have equal rights and so on. This is not a criticism of Battlestar Galactice, it’s just because I’m a little disappointed that a series showing the kind of insight into political science as Battlestar Galactica does, doesn’t do more to explain the checks and balances of democracy.

Yes, Battlestar Galactica is not ‘our world’. But it is clear that the writers are constantly commenting on our world. They should have done so too here is what I say.

Bottom line is that I think that the political consequences of the situation in Battlestar Galactica aren’t stressed enough, there clearly is a lot here that has gone amiss.

No Comments | In: science fiction | tags: Battlestar Galactica, sci-fi, science fiction, scifi. | #