Recently I was invited to attend as a guest speaker at a Los Angeles regional Science Fiction and Fantasy convention, which I am very pleased to announce I will be attending, as my professional work schedule is finally slackening off enough that I can consider not only doing that, but also posting on this blog on a more regular basis again. It has been months since I have had time to myself, gather my thoughts and write about personal development and becoming a better mastermind, criminal or otherwise. So if you have been wondering where I have been, thank you for your patience, and thank you for coming back to read more.

Interestingly, upon several friends hearing that I was invited to speak at the convention, they questioned why I was invited at all “But you don’t even read SF! You hate the stuff!”

Not quite true.

It seems that humans have an awful narrow perceptive field of what someone does or does not like, or is good or bad at, based on exact statements of truthfulness. However, that is a topic for another post.

I don’t follow or keep up with much of what is published in Science Fiction and Fantasy today, for the simple fact that there are so many other great books, dealing with Science Fact, that are worth reading.

I am one of those readers who measures their personal library, not in numbers of books, but in linear feet, like all good fans of the printed word usually do. Having moved a number of times in the past two decades I have given away many books, and if the books are especially bad, given them away as gifts to people I do not like.

My personal library, much diminished unfortunately than it was when I was still in college, though these days bolstered by many “digital download” books for my SONY ebook reader and even more so by downloaded audio books held on my laptop or iPod, covers two walls in my home. Eight feet high, 40 feet long, with ten shelves in each vertical book case provides 400 linear feet of printed books, small by most of my friend’s collections, but still too much to be dragging around the country.

But also, again, lacking many modern works of Science Fiction and Fantasy, for one very simple reason.

I grew, but SF & F did not grow with me.

I grew tired of the same hackneyed plots, the same shallow characters, the very same, endlessly repeating, gaping plot holes, the same treadmill of Western philosophies and jingoism, and as one very famous writer is known to have quipped, “not more flipping elves.” Only he didn’t say “flipping.” You can tell I was recently watching Inspector Lewis by that quote.

In many Science Fiction works you can read fine examples of “and magic happened here” to explain away what would be, in any other context, a gross oversight of plotting and world cohesion, the mysterious “willing suspension of disbelief.”

Similarly, in many Fantasy books you can hear the dice rolling in the background, or as is usual, the dice are forgotten and the whim of the author takes hold, not because of any logical progression of the story, or because the characters are emotionally involved in what happens to them, but because “this happens because I am the Dungeon Master and decreed it so.”

The major problem I have had with Science Fiction and Fantasy is that we are still in the green cheese phase of both genres with very few classic works. “Ninety percent of everything is crap.” to misquote Theodore Sturgeon. But you can add to that, “but in some things, that applies doubly so.” 80’s computer games, comic books, Science Fiction and Fantasy, modern music, blogs. When the barrier to entry is low enough, the sheer amount of crap doubles.

No, the real reason that Science Fiction and Fantasy are no longer a major part of my life is that Science Fiction is still stuck with the belief that the moon is made of green cheese, and in Fantasy, it actually is.

However, it is going to be a great convention, because we can actually get to talk about that sort of stuff and sort it all out so that the next round of books that get published will be much better, right?

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I attended Westwood College on Saturday, June 11th, to give a short talk about "becoming a success in the games industry" and also judge the Westwood College 3rd Annual 2D Game Competition, and I now have the details about the various category winners.

And the winners are:

• Best Cross-Platform: Stupid Robot
• 3rd Place: Stupid Robot
• People’s Choice: BioLancer
• 2nd Place: BioLancer
• Most Innovative Use of Flash (Adobe Award): Catch a Wav
• 1st Place: Bio

Overall I was pleased with the results, but personally felt that Stupid Robot deserved a much higher placing (it was also my personal favourite), as it offered a complete casual game experience, full tutorial and reasonable graphics. I will admit that the game play was not innovative, but it was reasonably well executed in the time available to the team.

Each of the categories received a very nice award designed and created by GROW it 3D, a rapid fabrication and prototyping company that uses various technologies for creating physical representations from 3D models in a semi-automated fashion.

This technology really is cutting-edge and part of our future, think of a printer that prints in three dimensions, and the actual devices themselves are coming down in price, whilst the capabilities are increasing.

The $50 multi-format CD/DVD recorder in your computer that records on DVD costing pennies was once the size of my full-tower workstation, recorded only CD’s at 1x speed and cost around $8,000, not including the $2,000 software package to layout the discs. Each disc took about an hour to record, and if you messed up, you started over with a new $50 blank CD-R. The progress from the early 1990’s to today in CD and DVD recording technology, and the commensurate reduction in price to sub-$100 levels is exactly what will happen with these 3D fabrication devices in the next 20 years.

Unfortunately I did not have the presence of mind to take pictures of the award, and looking through my SenseCam images I cannot find a good shot of the individual awards. Hopefully somebody over at Westwood College will officially announce the winners along with photos of each team and their awards.

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