Charles Stross’s award winning Accelerando is worth it just to get to page 338 for the line:

The Rapture of the Nerds has been followed by the Resurrection of the Extremely Confused, except that they’re really not resurrectees - they’re simulations based on their original’s recorded histories, blocky and missing chunks of their memories, as bewildered as baby ducklings as they’re herded into the wood-chipper future.

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In Stross’s future singularity event, the sins of the present - the effluvia of our societies’ politics, laws, politeness and evil we perpetrate on each other - are the jailcells we built for ourselves. In today’s literature of transhumanism and singularity, The Rapture of the Nerds is envisioned as either utopic and dystopic. Stross tackles that duality and creates a believable construct to weave his multi-generational story on.

I measure the success of books by the amount of times I’ve given them away. I don’t believe in lending things - if something is good enough to posess, to have and to hold, the best thing to do is to give it to someone you care for - or give it to someone who has the potential to enjoy it. I’ve given away Snowcrash, Crytonomicon, Lord of the Rings, Amber series, Brust’s Jhereg series books many times. I look forward to giving away Accelerando and other Stross’ stories to friends and enemies alike.

You can download Accelerando for free here. I would encourage you to buy it only because it’s $7.99 (aka “cheap”) and giving your money to an author and publisher is better than 2 cups of Starbucks. It’s not an easy read - as a singularity is the point where tractable changes occur so fast the rate of change is inifinite - the background of the story is constantly changing. That fact alone had me re-reading sections for the fun of it keeping the point of change in my mind.

At the same time - the first (of two three scenes - feh, with the number of children, you’d think these characters would have more fun propigating) - was one that really blew my mind, only for the reference of insect mating.

Other books that inspire me along these lines are: Joe Haldeman’s Forever War and Walter Williams’ Aristos. Please add to the comments those you recommend as well.

OK, pen and paper design is done. I don’t like it only because it doesn’t capture the image I have of the game and some of the details are very kerblewy.

The goal: Grab Power, Brainwash Followers, Spend Power to Risk Gaining More Power, Sacrifice Followers, repeat until you meet your secret goals.

It’s a strategy game in the fact you have to manipulate or control map resources, with an RP twist.

Power comes in various resources - basically money, politics, and “manifestation”. Players can choose their manifestations or create their own.

First prototype will be via the web. Long term goal is to migrate to a client-server architecture, but a website prototype is good enough.

Anyways, more later…