Just for grins, I searched for my name on Amazon.com, and it turns out I show up in the index of two books. So I bought them. One of them just mentions me along with the other Rogue creators, but the other, Twisty Little Passages by Nick Montfort, actually has a paragraph quoted from my Brief History of Rogue. The book looks pretty interesting, and I'm looking forward to reading it.
But wow, this Nick Montfort guy. In 2002, he wrote a tale, called 2002, which contains 2002 words exactly. And the whole story is a palindrome. I'm just in awe. Given the incredible constraints he laid out for himself, the story is remarkably coherent.
I mean, okay, it doesn't seem all that coherent at first blush. You have to twist your brain around to accept the awkward syntax. But, there's an actual story with characters and things that happen, and there's an introduction and a conclusion. The story is about how the year 2002 played out for our hero, Bob. If I pull this creative triathlon off completely, it still will not be as cool as Nick's story.
Go look at it!
About Me
- capmango
- I represent approximately 1 eight-billionth of the part of creation that reflects the image of God. I am not the most interesting of us creatures, but I'm probably above average. I travel around a lot, looking for some place that feels like home. I'll let you know if I find it.
3 comments:
My god, just read a little bit in your blog again and saw you mention "Cybertext" by Espen Aarseth. I used this book for my masters thesis and damn, you are indeed mentioned on page 102. You're famous ;) And you wrote an article for _my_ little unimportant magazine. That's so cool *laughs* ;)
I think your magazine is very cool, and you could argue that it's the most important magazine in the world for roguelike developers :)
Also, if you can even understand Cybertext, let alone do a master's thesis on it, then you are a genius. I couldn't get past the first two sentences before my brain started to hurt.
Aarseth's cybertext concept is very interesting, as it does not only apply to games, but to texts in general. Although he uses the terms "texton" and "scripton" in a strange way; for some reasons it would be better if he swapped their meaning; I did that in my thesis. Perhaps I will hold a course about cybertext and text-based games (i.e. roguelikes) in the next semester (but have to ask the boss of my department first, as my courses get more and more untypical for my department ...)
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