James L. Cambias's Blog, page 36

Random Encounters: The Golden Age of Deimos

In the 22nd Century, Deimos is the Solar System's hub of trade and finance. Linked to Mars by an orbital elevator, and occupying an enviable position requiring very little energy expenditure to reach both Earth orbit and the outer planets, Deimos is fantastically rich. Its wealth draws in talented people from across the Solar System ��� and opportunists hoping to siphon off a little of that wealth for themselves. The tightly-knit Deimos Community tolerates outsiders as long as they remember they are temporary guests, and ignores any behavior which doesn't threaten the safety or profits of the Community's members.

  ENCOUNTERS INSIDE DEIMOS

(Roll 1d20 when moving around inside Deimos, 1d10 when stationary.)

Roll Twice and Combine.
Plot-Advancing Encounter: Something related to whatever caused you to visit Deimos.
Gene-Collector: The Deimos Community is always working to improve its genome, and you've gained a reputation as a person of unusual qualities. The gene-collector would like a sample of your genetic material in exchange for a small fee. She won't give up easily.
Meteor Strike! Something big just hit Deimos ��� alarms are going off, all the pressure doors are sealed shut, and emergency crews are rushing to stop leaks and repair damage. Wherever you are, you're stuck there for a while.
Micromegas: An android body controlled by the artificial superintelligence which runs all of Deimos's systems. It can answer any questions, but will probably learn as much as it tells.
Military Contractors: Better known as mercenaries, these are the people who run the robots that fight Deimos's commercial wars across the Solar System. They are smart and tech-savvy, but without power armor are no tougher than anyone else.
Recruiter: Deimos always needs operatives, agents, and military contractors to go off across the Solar System to do the dirty jobs the Community requires. Are you in?
Security Drone: No bigger than a hummingbird, it's keeping an eye on you.
Space Squid: Genetically-modified squids patrol Deimos's zero-gravity environment, grabbing trash, hunting vermin, and cleaning every surface. But this one seems to be following you around.
Swindler: A temporary resident with a sure-fire business venture that just needs a little liquid capital to launch. The only thing being launched is the swindler, on the next Cycler ship to Earth.
Art Project: A surreal nightmare come to life, this edgy artwork could easily be mistaken for a deathtrap, an attack, or a supernatural occurrence.
Deimos Community Members: They act like they own the place, because they do. All are physically-perfect geniuses, shareholders in the wealthiest enterprise in human history. If they want something from you, they'll get it.
Flood! A twenty-meter globule of water got loose from one of the reservoirs, and now it's wobbling slowly through the corridors and open spaces of Deimos. It fills narrow passages, and in large open areas it's a floating sphere. People or objects may be swept along inside.
Holdouts: Some temporary residents try to stay beyond their allowed visit. Living in hiding, surviving on the underground economy, they are ripe for exploitation and quickly become ruthless survivors. You're either prey, or a rival.
Hopeful Applicant: A smart, talented, or physically-perfect individual who has crossed millions of miles of space to get here, and hopes to get accepted as a permanent member of the Deimos Community. He'll do anything to be accepted.
Martians: Deimos has their world on a string, and they aren't happy about it. These Martian guest-workers are feeling exploited and angry, and could easily be recruited for anything which will piss off the Deimos Community.
No Visitors: The area you're trying to enter is off-limits to anyone who isn't a member of the Deimos Community. If you go in anyway, polite but implacable robots will remove you.
Strangers' Club: A saloon catering to off-worlders and outsiders ��� though there's always a few Community members "slumming." Anything goes here, and usually does.
Vacant Sector: A series of tunnels and spherical caverns ready for the Community's next expansion. Lighting is dim and scattered, the air is stale ��� and there are no security monitors watching.
Tracks/Aftermath: Reroll to see what you just missed.

SITUATIONS INSIDE DEIMOS

(Roll 1d6 to see what the situation is, then roll on the table above to find out who the parties involved are.)

A desires B
A wants to capture B
A wants B dead
A wants to go somewhere
A wants to solve a mystery
A wants X

If you like stories which aren't set inside Deimos, check out my ebooks Outlaws and Aliens and Monster Island Tales!

Thurber's List

I've recently been reading a collection of essays and reviews by James Thurber, Collecting Himself: James Thurber on Writing and Writers, Humor and Himself (which has got to be one of the most unwieldy titles of the past half-century). One interesting snippet is a reading list Thurber compiled in 1949 for his daughter. It's specifically for entertainment and inspiration: "This is not, needless to say, my selection of the Great Books; it is merely intended as a stimulation to a young lady . . ."

Here's the list (drumroll):

Babbitt, by Sinclair Lewis

Daisy Miller, by Henry James

Gentle Julia, by Booth Tarkington

Linda Condon, Java Head, and Wild Oranges, by Joseph Hergesheimer

The Wanderer, by Alain-Fournier

The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway

Invitation to the Waltz, by Rosamond Lehmann

This Simian World and God and My Father, by Clarence Day

The House in Paris, by Elizabeth Bowen

A Lost Lady and My Mortal Enemy, by Willa Cather

A Handful of Dust and Decline and Fall, by Evelyn Waugh

Heaven's My Destination and The Cabala, by Thornton Wilder

February Hill and The Wind at My Back, by Victoria Lincoln

Blue Voyage, by Conrad Aiken

The Bitter Tea of General Yen, by G.Z. Stone

Lady Into Fox, by David Garnett

How to Write Short Stories, by Ring Lardner

The Return of the Soldier, by Rebecca West

Miss Lonelyhearts, by Nathaniel West

Now some shocking confessions. I've never heard of two thirds of these books, and even a third of the authors were unfamiliar to me. I've only actually read three of the books on the list ��� anyone who has passed through an American high school or college has probably read both The Great Gatsby and The Sun Also Rises, and I also read Decline and Fall by Waugh.

To save my reputation, I would like to point out that I have read books by half the authors. I've read Henry James, Clarence Day, Willa Cather, Thornton Wilder, Ring Lardner, and the two Wests ��� just not Thurber's selections. I know Booth Tarkington wrote The Magnificent Ambersons, and Alexander Woolcott was a huge fan of Gentle Julia, but I've never even seen a copy of anything by Tarkington.

I looked up the seven authors whose names I didn't recognize. Most of them were Thurber's contemporaries. Joseph Hergesheimer was well-known in the 1920s, but apparently his reputation declined steeply after World War II. Alain-Fournier was a French author who died in World War I, and The Wanderer (Le Grand Meaulnes) was his only novel. Rosemary Lehmann was a British writer on the fringe of the Bloomsbury Group during the 1930s. Elizabeth Bowen was an Anglo-Irish writer, also part of the interwar British literary scene.

Victoria Lincoln was harder to track down; she was a little younger than the others, but had a hit with February Hill in the 1930s. G.Z. Stone was Grace Zaring Stone, who also wrote as Ethel Vance. David Garnett was another Bloomsburyite, and Lady Into Fox was a popular allegorical fantasy of the 1930s, and was even made into a ballet.

It does make one wonder: which contemporary authors will be obscure footnotes eighty years from now? Last year's New York Times bestseller list has 27 authors on it, about the same number as Thurber's list: John Grisham, Michael Connelly, Danielle Steel, W. Bruce Cameron, James Patterson, Lisa Gardner, J.D. Robb, Jonathan Kellerman, William P. Young, Greg Iles, J.R. Ward, David Baldacci, John Sandford, Paula Hawkins, Nora Roberts, Daniel Silva, Debbie Macomber, Sandra Brown, Sue Grafton, Louise Penny, Ken Follet, Nelson DeMille, Stephen King, Dan Brown, Lee Child, Janet Evanovich, and E.L. James.

Of that entire list, only Paula Hawkins stands a chance of being remembered past her own lifetime, and even that's a long shot. Writers are dancing monkeys, and when a monkey stops dancing people forget about it quickly.

(Wild horses couldn't make me opine about which contemporary science fiction and fantasy authors will still be read in 2098. You'll just have to wait and see.)

 

For a mix of stories which will undoubtedly stand the test of time, check out my ebooks Outlaws and Aliens and Monster Island Tales!

The Magic Wand

There's a custom among science fiction writers that a story ��� a "hard SF" story, anyway ��� should only contain one element of "magic." By magic we mean some effect which is impossible under our current understanding of the universe. Or, if you're really strict, some effect which would be impossible to create with any technology we know of.

So nanotech medical robots are not magic, because we can already make simple autonomous robots and we're starting to do engineering at very small scales. Medical nanobots are speculative technology and may not become available for many decades, but it would be hard to find anyone who considers them impossible.

Faster-than-light travel, teleportation, time travel, and antigravity are magic. They all violate various natural laws, or require materials like "negative matter"* which nobody has the slightest idea how to create. They're about as scientifically plausible as Harry Potter's magic spells.

If those things are magic, what are they doing in science fiction stories, especially so-called "hard SF" stories? Well, there's two reasons for that.

The first reason is that sometimes the magic turns real. When H.G. Wells wrote about atomic power in The World Set Free (1914), nobody had any idea how to actually go about causing a self-sustaining nuclear reaction. "Splitting the atom" was almost a byword for something impossible. (Any Greek classicist would nod in approval.) Thirty years later, nuclear fission was a proven technology.

There are other examples. Semiconductors would have been magic in the 1930s. Rockets shouldn't have been magic, as the basic physics is pretty straightforward, but the New York Times pooh-poohed Robert Goddard's proposal to launch rockets beyond the Earth's atmosphere in 1921, and didn't get around to printing a retraction until 1969.

But of course that's a pretty thin justification, really. "Our understanding of the universe might change and this magic stuff I made up could come true." It happens, but it's not the way to bet.

The second reason to use "magic" is a bit more practical: a touch of magic in a science fiction story allows the author to tell stories that would otherwise be impossible.

Take faster-than-light travel. I'm writing a novel right now about a starship crew visiting a distant star system using an FTL drive I worked out. It follows sciencey-seeming rules, but it's basically magic. Why'd I do it? Why not send my space voyagers off in a relativistic spacecraft instead?

Well, there's some problems with that. While the mad geniuses of the Tennessee Valley Interstellar Workshop want to launch probes to Alpha Centauri some time this century, they're talking about something with a mass measured in single-digit grams. Even the lunatic optimists at JPL envisioned launching something no bigger than one ton. There's no way I could send a crew of humans on a mission like that.

I don't anticipate relativistic spacecraft for several centuries, at least. And by the time they become feasible, all the other changes going on will make human society ��� and even human anatomy and psychology ��� unrecognizable to present-day humans. So I have the choice of either assuming an unrealistically static society over the next four or five hundred years, or of using magic to send some near-future characters (who think and act in a way that I and my readers can understand) off to the stars.

It gets worse if you want to tell stories about time travel. Right now the only even theoretically possible way to travel in time is to pass very close to a rotating black hole. Which means any time travelers have to be those super-advanced post-human space travelers from the previous paragraph. Which means the story would be about hard-to-understand future people interacting with hard-to-understand people in the past. Which means present-day people won't want to read it.

So: magic. But I try to limit myself. In the present book FTL travel is the only wave of the wand, and I want to stick to that.

 

*Not the same thing as antimatter. You can buy antimatter right now if you have a few billion dollars to spare. It's not magic, just pricey.

 

For a mix of stories with and without magic, check out my ebooks Outlaws and Aliens and Monster Island Tales!

A Reminder

I'm going to be at Boskone this weekend. My schedule is here.

Random Encounters: Occupied Honolulu

When secret Japanese superweapons caught the American carriers unprepared at sea just after Pearl Harbor, the Pacific was defenseless. Imperial Marines landed on Oahu a few weeks later and the Rising Sun flag now flies over Hawaii. America's still in the fight, but it will take time to rebuild the fleet. The people of Honolulu aren't sure if they can endure that long.

ENCOUNTERS IN OCCUPIED HONOLULU

Roll 1d20 for players moving around the city and environs, 1d10 if they're holed up in Honolulu.

Roll twice and combine.
Plot-advancing encounter: someone or something connected to whatever mission the player-characters are trying to accomplish in occupied Honolulu.
Air raid! American carrier-based planes make a night attack, trying to hit the airfield and Japanese ships in the harbor. But bombs sometimes go astray.
Black marketeer: he's got cans of genuine Spam, cigarettes from Ecuador, Japanese rifles that fell off a truck . . . and he knows a guy who has anything else you might need. For a price. A steep price.
Downed pilot: his reconnaissance plane had to fly low because of cloud cover, and anti-aircraft guns brought it down. The rest of the crew were killed but he parachuted to safety. If the Japanese catch him he's doomed.
Historical figure: any real-history person who might have been in the Pacific during World War II. What they're doing in Honolulu is probably a very interesting story.
Kenpeitai investigators: 1d6 officers of the Japanese internal-security police force, looking for spies and subversives. They carry pistols and are very persistent.
Phantom Eagle: a mysterious figure in a red-white-and-blue costume who stalks the rooftops and back streets of Honolulu, battling crime and the Kenpeitai with fists and super-science. But who is under that mask?
Raid! 1d4 truckloads of Japanese soldiers (8 men per truck) armed with rifles, led by a Major and some junior officers. They're here to round everyone up and shoot anyone trying to escape.
Typhoon! For the next 2d10 hours, the whole island is lashed by heavy rain and 100-mph winds. The power is out and everyone including the Japanese garrison are indoors waiting for the storm to pass.
Gangsters: 1d6 crooks who value money above anything else. (Roll 1d6 ��� 1-2: Yakuza moving in, 3-5: Pre-war Honolulu syndicate, 6: Shanghai Triads.)
German sailors: 2d8 German U-boat crewmen, having a ball on shore leave in Paradise and in no hurry to leave.
Giant Robot (Dai-Tetsujin): a menacing armored giant 30 feet tall, armed with 37-millimeter autocannons on each forearm.
Gill-men: 1d6 scaly amphibious humanoids fighting for the Emperor. Some say they're the product of bizarre experiments, others claim the Japanese made contact with them on a remote island. Whatever they are, they're very strong and seem to view all humans as prey.
Japanese soldiers: 2d6 soldiers armed with rifles and bayonets, led by a junior officer wearing a sword. They are hostile to just about anyone not in an Imperial Army uniform.
Labor detail: 3d10 prisoners doing repair work under the eyes of 1d6 Japanese guards carrying submachine guns. The prisoners are a mix of American POWs, civilians arrested on vague charges, and petty crooks from the jails.
Marine commandos: 1d6 U.S. Marine commandos who have slipped ashore from a sub in a rubber dinghy to gather intelligence and make contact with the Resistance. They are armed with submachine guns and pistols.
Neutral sailors: civilian seamen off of an Argentine-flagged freighter, though none of them have ever set foot in Argentina. Are they spies, smugglers, or something stranger?
Resistance cell: a dedicated group of 2d6 people doing intelligence-gathering, sabotage, and assassination while they prepare for the day the Marines hit the beach. (Roll 1d6 ��� 1: Communist Party of Hawai'i, 2-4: U.S. Loyalists, 5: Mormon Underground, 6: Hawai'ian Monarchists.)
Tracks/aftermath: reroll to see what passed recently.

SITUATIONS IN OCCUPIED HONOLULU

Roll 1d6 for each situation, and use the table above to determine who is involved.

A desires B
A wants to capture B
A wants B dead
A wants to go somewhere
A wants to solve a mystery
A wants X

 

For stories which will occupy your attention, check out my ebooks Outlaws and Aliens and Monster Island Tales!

Kitchen Report: Chinese Braised Pork Belly

Warning: if you are interested in healthy, low-fat recipes, GET OUT NOW!

I discovered this dish, or something very like it, at the Ginger Garden restaurant in Amherst. When I first moved to the area at the dawn of the new millennium, Ginger Garden was a very ordinary Chinese food joint, with a big all-you-can-eat buffet of General Tso's chicken and Hunan beef and lo mein and fried chicken fingers. I sometimes took my daughter there after school when I couldn't face Friendly's yet again. When she stopped going to school in Amherst, I stopped going to the restaurant.

A couple of years ago I went back and was astonished at how much the place had changed. Apparently it's under new ownership and they did a major overhaul of the menu ��� and the cooking. It's good now. One even sees Chinese students from the local colleges eating there, which wasn't true before.

One of the new dishes on the menu was an amazing dish of pork and green onions, deliciously rich. I enjoyed it immensely and it quickly became one of the things I looked for on the menu at Chinese restaurants. A few other places have it.

I hadn't really thought about making it myself until a specialty butcher shop called Sutter Meats opened in Northampton. It's full of artisanal sausage and free-range pork and locally-sourced chicken and home-schooled beef and the like. It has become my main connection now for things like pigs' feet and duck confit. And one afternoon I noticed that they sold . . . pork belly.

Hmm. I know a pork belly dish I'd like to make, I thought. How hard could it be?

So I bought a couple of pounds and hunted up a recipe on-line, then cooked it for the family. Just recently I made it again for company, so the following account is sort of a hybrid of the two cooking experiences.

First of all, the big confession: if you can get three pounds of pork belly and have all afternoon to spend in the kitchen, this dish is actually very simple. Pig-easy, one might say.

Get three pounds of pork belly with the skin removed. Dice the pork into one-inch by one-half-inch pieces. Put it in a pot of water and bring to a boil, then pour off the water and put the meat aside. (I'm not 100 percent sure if this stage is necessary if you're using good-quality pork belly from a selective butcher, but it doesn't seem to do any harm.)

Then chop up about 1 cubic inch of peeled ginger. Cut half a dozen green onions into three-inch segments (for the bigger ones I cut them in half lengthwise. Use a little oil in the pot and saut�� the ginger and onions for just a minute, then add 1 cup of soy sauce, 1 cup of water, 1/4 cup of dry white wine, and some black pepper. Bring the mix to a boil and add 1/3 cup of packed brown sugar. (I've been tempted to try a little molasses in place of the sugar.) Then put the meat in, get it just barely simmering, and let it cook.

For FOUR HOURS.

Stir occasionally.

When it's done, the meat has shrunk a good deal, because of course pork belly is about 75 percent fat and a lot of that is rendered out. Scoop off the layer of clear liquid fat and put it aside. If you can't find a use for a couple of pints of rendered pork fat flavored with ginger, you're just not applying yourself.

The texture was described by my youngest guest as "melty." Yes, you're basically eating cubes of soy-flavored fat, and it's wonderful. Serve over rice or noodles, and for God's sake have some kind of vegetables with it so your gall bladder doesn't try to crawl up your esophagus and run away from home. Cabbage is always good with pork. (The restaurant version had more green onion on the plate. Since the onion cooked with the pork completely disappears into the sauce, I'm betting they stir-fried some more onion and added it at serving time. I may try that, too.)

Verdict: yum.

 

For stories which are also good with pork, buy my ebooks Outlaws and Aliens and Monster Island Tales!

Random Encounters: Fantastic Egypt (Part 2, The City)

Assuming you made it past the desert, the ribbon of black earth and green vegetation hugging the banks of the Nile is studded with grand cities. They are filled with whitewashed brick houses, grand palaces and temples of stone, and busy markets. As the richest kingdom in the ancient world, Egypt is renowned for luxuries, learning, and magic.

ENCOUNTERS IN A FANTASTIC EGYPTIAN CITY

Roll 1d20 when moving around the city, 1d10 when staying in one place.

Roll Twice and Combine
Plot-advancing encounter: Someone or something related to whatever brought you to a city in Fantasy Egypt.
Beggar With a Fantastic Tale of Woe: A poor unfortunate who claims he is actually a wealthy merchant whose house and goods were stolen by a wicked magician.
Crocodiles: 1d4 vicious Nile crocodiles looking for food along the riverbank. You qualify as food.
Flies! For 1d6 hours the city is blanketed in a dense swarm of biting flies. They're so dense you can only see a few yards. Anyone venturing outside takes damage from their bites, and risks disease.
Ghost Cat: A pure-black cat with golden eyes seems to want you to follow her.
Gossipy Barber: Amenhemen has a quick razor and a quick tongue, and he knows everything going on in town. He's your source for news, rumors, job openings, directions, and a smooth shave.
Greedy Officials: 1d4 bureaucrats in linen kilts, demanding fees and/or bribes from the player-characters. They can be placated with 10 pieces of gold each, but if you cross them, the officials can throw innumerable obstacles in your path as long as you remain in the city.
Runaway Chariot! The horse drawing a nobleman's chariot has bolted, dragging the chariot and a panicky nine-year-old child on a wild course through the streets. If you can stop it without harming the animal, you'll be richly rewarded.
Undead Sorcerer: A mummy wearing mostly-convincing human disguise. She is a very powerful magician and is looking for some loyal and well-trained agents to serve her mysterious plans.
Bored Aristocrat: The lady Rahepshet is bored, and you've been selected to entertain her (you don't get a vote). She offers you gold to perform a series of increasingly ridiculous tasks, most of which involve public humiliation and/or the risk of bodily harm.
Crime in Progress! A band of 1d6 thieves armed with short swords are robbing a money-lender.
Foreign Quarter: This part of town is inhabited by non-Egyptians ��� Greeks, Jews, Nubians, Elves, whatever. They are suspicious and fearful of Egyptians, and even more suspicious and hostile toward non-Egyptians who aren't their own kind.
Gang of Thieves: A gang of 2d6 thieves armed with clubs and knives try to rob you. They pretend to be harmless idlers, then strike by surprise.
Haunted Palace: An old palace by the river-side, surrounded by overgrown gardens and crumbling walls. It is said no one can spend a night there and survive.
Nest of Ghouls: A dry well hides the entrance to a network of tunnels inhabited by 2d6 ghouls. They try to snatch passers-by when no one is looking.
Singing Statue: A great stone statue of a seated king, which sings at dawn.
Temple: You come upon a temple to the city's tutelary deity. It's a big complex, and serves as a center for learning, charity, and business as well as worship. Some of the priests are well-versed in magic. Evil creatures fear to enter.
Wall Collapse! As you pass through a narrow street the wall of a house under construction collapses on top of you. Only the most agile can avoid getting hurt. Was it an accident ��� or did someone arrange it on purpose?
Tracks/aftermath: Reroll to see what you just missed.

SITUATIONS IN AN EGYPTIAN CITY

Roll 1d6 to determine the situation, then roll on the table above to figure out who is involved.

A desires B
A wants to capture B
A wants B dead
A wants to go somewhere
A wants to solve a mystery
A wants X

For more stories about encounters in exotic places (or not so exotic), check out my ebooks Outlaws and Aliens and Monster Island Tales!

The Inertia of Stereotypes

My family and I are fans of the past decade's amazing string of Marvel superhero movies. In the film Captain America: Civil War, the villain (not really a spoiler, here) is an eastern European military man named Zemo. What's interesting is that in the comic books, Zemo was always Baron Zemo, a Teutonic villain of the Nazis-in-Paraguay school.

Why is that interesting?

It's interesting because it shows something about the shelf life of stereotypes. In comic books published in the 1960s, Baron Zemo was a Nazi bad guy because of World War I.

Here's how it works. World War I was the first conflict I know of in which the democratic governments of the West engaged in large-scale, government-controlled propaganda aimed at their own citizens. (During the American Civil War the newspapers on both sides were notorious for their editorial independence, and even during the Spanish American War the jingoistic press coverage was not coordinated by Washington.)

One of the stock figures in First World War propaganda was, of course, the villainous Prussian aristocrat. It wasn't really surprising: the real German leadership was packed to the rafters with Barons, Counts, and Princes. While armies commanded by guys like Von Kluck, Von Hindenburg, Von Bulow, Von Falkenhayn, and Von Lettow-Vorbeck grappled with the allies on the ground, in the air the Red Baron and Count Zeppelin showed off German techological might. Especially in egalitarian America, a bunch of Teutonic toffs with funny mustaches and spiked helmets made perfect villains.

Fast forward a generation to World War II. The National Socialists were in charge of Germany. Now, the Nazis weren't fond of aristocrats ��� mostly. Hitler was willing to team up with the old-guard Prussian officer class (until they took up trying to assassinate him) but in general the NSDAP leadership were lower-middle-class or self-proclaimed "artists" like the Fuhrer himself.

But in America, wartime propaganda resolutely ignored the realities of Nazi internal politics and instead resurrected the evil monocled Prussian for another round in the ring. Wartime comic book heroes fought any number of titled German bad guys. And when Stan Lee and Jack Kirby decided to resurrect a World War II superhero, Captain America, they naturally gave him a Rogue's Gallery of old Nazis to fight, including the aristocratic Baron Zemo.

It took the fall of the Berlin Wall, the formation of the European Union, and the death from old age of nearly all Nazis to finally put Baron Zemo to rest. An aristocratic Prussian bad guy in 2016 would have been dreadfully dated, so the moviemakers moved him to the Balkans.

In short, the stereotype of the evil Prussian nobleman took about a hundred years to finally slide out of the public consciousness. Other stereotypes have had a similar shelf life. How many Frenchmen wearing berets and striped shirts just like they did back in the 1920s still crop up in film and cartoons?

It works the other way, too. When I was touring Europe as a college student in the 1980s, whenever I mentioned that I was attending the University of Chicago, the response was inevitable: "Ah, Chicago! Bang-bang-Al-Capone!" (At that point Mr. Capone had been dead for forty years.)

This points up an under-appreciated problem with stereotypes: they get obsolete. But precisely because they are things "everybody knows," we don't notice how out-of-date they're getting, and consequently make decisions based on inaccurate information. That's not just morally wrong, it's stupid.

 

For stories which are neither wrong nor stupid, check out my ebooks Outlaws and Aliens and Monster Island Tales!

 

Random Encounters: Fantastic Egypt (Part 1, The Desert)

Even historical Egypt was like a fantasy kingdom to ancient historians like Herodotus or Pliny. In a fantasy setting, all you need to add is a few monsters. This table covers the wilderness beyond the valley of the Nile ��� which visitors will have to cross in order to reach the rich Black Land of Khem.

ENCOUNTERS IN THE DESERT OF FANTASY EGYPT

Roll 1d20 when traveling, 1d10 when camped.

Roll Twice and Combine
Plot-advancing encounter: The heroes run into someone or something connected with whatever has sent them out into the desert in the first place.
Baboon Troop: 2d4 baboons, armed only with their fearsome teeth and claws. Against a large group they will be sneaky, trying to steal food and escape, but if they outnumber a party of travelers, they will attack.
Caravan: 2d20 camels loaded with goods, escorted by 1d6 mounted guards and 1d6 priests of Amun (their temple sponsored the trading venture). The goods on each camel are worth 1d10 times 100 gold pieces per camel, so the guards are alert.
Desert Raiders: 1d12 nomadic tribesmen riding camels, armed with spears. They will definitely rob travelers, but may be persuaded to share water and give directions. Raiders have their weapons and some loot from the previous batch of unhappy travelers they encountered.
Gnolls: 2d8 Gnolls, with spears and shields. They serve dark gods of chaos and try to isolate travelers or break up large groups before attacking. These Gnolls have a pair of Hyenas as hunting animals.
Hyenas: 2d6 hyenas, which will trail prey until dark, then strike.
Meteor! The party sees a bright meteor flash across the sky and crash to earth just beyond the nearest line of hills. Others may have seen it, and a lump of meteoritic iron is worth its weight in silver.
Sandstorm! A tempest of hot wind and flaying sand, lasting 1d4 hours. It's impossible to see in the storm, and without protection everyone risks damage from windblown grit. Trying to travel in the storm will get you lost, and when it passes the landscape is altered and tracks are erased.
Winged Serpents: 1d8 venomous serpents six feet long, with leathery wings, come soaring out of the eastern sky to prey on anyone they spot out in the open. They have a poison bite equivalent to a cobra's.
Cobras! A nest of 2d4 deadly cobras in a rocky hollow that you just stepped in.
Dunes: You have wandered into an area of shifting windblown sand. There's no track here, and the loose sand slows progress to half speed. Check every hour to avoid getting lost.
Foreign Spies: 1d6 foreigners ���Assyrians from the east, Meroeans from the south, or barbarians from beyond the Mediterranean ��� up to no good in the wilderness. They're observing caravan traffic, taking note of patrols and fortifications, and making contact with desert tribes. They are well-armed and accompanied by 1d8 guides and servants.
Giant Scarab: A beetle the size of a Volkswagen erupts from under the sand, snapping at you with its huge mandibles! Its den under the sand contains 1d6 enormous hungry grubs (which fear the sunlight), and the scattered belongings of a dozen unlucky travelers.
Haunted Tomb: A forgotten desert tomb, which proves to connect to a whole warren of catacombs and tunnels. 2d10 Ghouls live down there and will come seeking prey. There is quite a lot of treasure hidden in the tunnels.
Mirage: It looks like dark shrubs and the glimmer of water in the distance. You'll need to use your willpower to resist going in search of the nonexistent oasis, and the longer you've been in the desert the harder it is to fight the urge.
Oasis: It's too small to support a settlement, but there's a small spring among some boulders ahead. Though the water's bitter-tasting and muddy, it'll keep you alive, and there are bushes and tough grass for your mounts to eat. Animals come here to drink so there's a 1 in 4 chance of gazelles or birds every hour.
Shattered Colossus: It's a statue half-sunk in the sand, and the face has a sneer of cold command on it. Nearby there's the original base of the statue, but you can't read what's carved on it.
Sphinx: It's cunning and likes to attack travelers by stealth. If it cannot surprise its victims, the Sphinx offers them a contest of riddles instead. It knows a lot of riddles. It knows a lot of other things, too, and clever opponents can trade information as long as they keep their guard up.
Tracks/Aftermath: Reroll to see what you just missed, or what missed you.

SITUATIONS IN THE DESERT

Roll 1d6 for the basic situation, then roll on the above table to see who's involved.

A desires B
A wants to capture B
A wants B dead
A wants to go somewhere
A wants to solve a mystery
A wants X

For more stories about strange encounters, check out my ebooks Outlaws and Aliens and Monster Island Tales!

Boskone 55, Featuring MEE!

On the weekend of February 16-18 I'll be at Boskone, the grand old New England science fiction convention, now in its 55th year. My schedule is below ��� stop in at the Westin Waterfront in Boston and join me!

Friday, February 16, 4:00 p.m.: Kaffeeklatsch ��� Join me for a cup of coffee and discussion of my works, forthcoming projects, science fiction, games, science, and anything else that comes to mind.

Friday, Feb. 16, 8:00 p.m.: Cambridge SF Workshop Group Reading ��� The members of the mighty CSFW (Heather Albano, Me, F. Brett Cox, Gillian Daniels, Alexander Jablokov, Steve Popkes, Ken Schneyer, Sarah Smith, and Cadwell Turnbull) get together for a rapid-fire group reading. I'll be reading about 10 minutes' worth of . . . something.

Saturday, Feb. 17, 10:00 a.m.-1:00 p.m.: Basic Dungeons & Dragons ��� I'll be running a game session using my forty-year-old copy of Basic D&D. Come see how we did it Old School!

Saturday, Feb. 17, 2:00 p.m.: About Airships ��� Jeffrey Carver, Frank Wu, and I will talk about the history, fiction, and future possibilities of lighter-than-air craft.

Saturday, Feb. 17, 3:00 p.m.: Autographing ��� As always, bring anything and I'll sign it.

Sunday, Feb. 18, 11:00 a.m.: The Future of Work ��� A panel discussion on the future of work and how technology creates and eliminates jobs. Featuring Mark Olson, Karl Schroeder, Jeff Hecht, B. Diane Martin, and myself.

Sunday, Feb. 18, 1:00 p.m.: Weird Science and Odd Inventions ��� Join panelists John Murphy, Julie Day, David Shaw, and myself as we talk about some of the strangest twists and blind alleys in the history of science and technology.

And remember: program events are FREE on Friday before 6:00 p.m. (No charge for your first hit . . .)