IF in pop culture and back again (guest post at sub-Q)
Tuesday, June 26, 2018
Tagged: culture, interactive fiction, anchorhead, if, lifestyle, sub-q, cragne manor
I wax slightly rhapsodic over at sub-Q Magazine.
I just noticed an amusing synchrony. In the late 1970s, when Crowther and then Woods were writing the first parser game, a New Wave SF writer named George R. R. Martin was writing short stories about far-future humanity among the Thousand Worlds. I, very young, was a fan of both. (Nightflyers, 1980, is still a favorite story of mine.) Heliopause was inspired, in part, by Martin’s sense of unbounded human potential set against even vaster, time-swallowing depths of space.
Another bit of news: Ryan Veeder and Jenni Polodna are organizing a collaborative IF game in honor of Anchorhead.
A strong female character wanders the halls of a decrepit mansion. Her husband is in danger. She has to help him. Each room into which she points her flickering flashlight teems with arcane danger and unspeakable history. Each room has been designed and written by a different author.
They note that the initial response has been "very very positive", so why not make their life even harder by volunteering to write a room yourself? Sign up by July 6th.
You can, of course, buy Anchorhead itself on Steam or Itch.
Finally: remember, as if you could forget, that Meanwhile and Hadean Lands are both on sale on Steam (and also on Itch.io) until July 5th.