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Jan. 18th, 2006 02:50 amThere's been a lot of good PKD stuff linked from BoingBoing over the last couple of days, but my favorite is this eight-page R. Crumb comic adaptation of an interview he gave near the end of his life. I guess I didn't quite realize that the events he wrote about in "Valis" actually happened to him, at least according to his own perception. These included his conviction that the Holy Spirit or Elijah or A Pink Space Laser or something had zapped him and given him powers, such as the ability to live in A.D. 50 Rome and 1970 California at the same time, or to mishear Beatles lyrics as an alarming medical diagnosis regarding his son (which turns out to be accurate and saves the boy's life).
I would have so liked to meet this man. I think that among my little fantasy worlds is one where he survives his stroke. Years later he meets my brother Ricky and they become close friends, and his family with our family. Creepy, jmac.
It's interesting timing coz I was thinking with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
daerr how much I'd love to help plan a PKD-themed mystery hunt, specifically one that blended a lot of tropes from his earlier fiction.
It would start by welcoming all the new colonists to Mars, and assigning them to their workgroups in the mining company's information sector. As the teams worked on their initial task units, the company president would issue frequent video updates and its staff would make occasional personal visits to make sure that everything was running smoothly. But soon enough, the workers' perception would start to change...
I have some more specific ideas which I think I'll hold off on writing about for now. Suffice to say that I really likeradiotelescope's notion of putting an actual story, a real narrative, around the hunt. Sure, it wouldn't be as smooth as a better IF game: it would still be a frame around siamese cryptics and duck conundrums and so on. But I love the idea of hunting not just to unlock more puzzles but to see what happens next, and maybe even feel like the team (being, as a whole, a character in the story) is making choices to guide the story forward, despite knowing that the story's necessarily on rails.
I also have some ideas making these "narrative interfaces" work in a puzzle-hunt setting, and tried sharing them only to decide upon writing them down that they wouldn't actually work, and instead just annoy the players. It would be really tricky thing to do right. But I'm sure it's possible. Indeed, it's probably already been done; what the hell do I know about this stuff, I'm a newbie. If that's the case, I'd love to hear about it.
I would have so liked to meet this man. I think that among my little fantasy worlds is one where he survives his stroke. Years later he meets my brother Ricky and they become close friends, and his family with our family. Creepy, jmac.
It's interesting timing coz I was thinking with
daerr how much I'd love to help plan a PKD-themed mystery hunt, specifically one that blended a lot of tropes from his earlier fiction.It would start by welcoming all the new colonists to Mars, and assigning them to their workgroups in the mining company's information sector. As the teams worked on their initial task units, the company president would issue frequent video updates and its staff would make occasional personal visits to make sure that everything was running smoothly. But soon enough, the workers' perception would start to change...
I have some more specific ideas which I think I'll hold off on writing about for now. Suffice to say that I really like
radiotelescope's notion of putting an actual story, a real narrative, around the hunt. Sure, it wouldn't be as smooth as a better IF game: it would still be a frame around siamese cryptics and duck conundrums and so on. But I love the idea of hunting not just to unlock more puzzles but to see what happens next, and maybe even feel like the team (being, as a whole, a character in the story) is making choices to guide the story forward, despite knowing that the story's necessarily on rails.I also have some ideas making these "narrative interfaces" work in a puzzle-hunt setting, and tried sharing them only to decide upon writing them down that they wouldn't actually work, and instead just annoy the players. It would be really tricky thing to do right. But I'm sure it's possible. Indeed, it's probably already been done; what the hell do I know about this stuff, I'm a newbie. If that's the case, I'd love to hear about it.