ThinkingSkull.com

With five more years left before the current NASA space shuttles are grounded in 2010, it’s nice to see one launch once more. If you’ve ever been a fan of NASA or rockets or even just science fiction, the Kennedy Space Center Visitors Complex is a Florida theme park for grownups who remember the “space race” and kids just finding out it. Of particular interest is the Apollo/Saturn V mission control simulator; imagine being in mission control during the first moonshot and the most powerful launch vehicle ever built rattling the blast shutters as it roars off the pad!

Wired.com news has an interesting tidbit on something I’ve always enjoyed about the game of chess: creativity instead of memorization. Sure, you can read every chess book ever written to see how all the Grand Masters won their in their day, but what if the board was a bit more random?

Bobby Fischer drove many so-called “grand masters” batty with his short-goal, no-grand-plan chess strategies. His variant form, Chess960 (or “Fischer Random Chess”), works as follows: “Pawns begin where they always do. However, the pieces behind them on the white side are arranged at random, with the proviso that bishops must end up on opposite colors, and the king dwell somewhere between the two rooks. The black pieces are lined up to mirror the white. ” In other words, there are 960 beginning board variations before play begins and book knowledge is useless.

While Fischer himself has become somewhat more eccentric, the variation he invented is finally picking up steam and breathing new life into the same ol’ game.

20 years in the making, 10 years in the planning, and 3 years in the writing and test playing. Ready or not, Kindling Moon: Rulebook & Realmbook went on sale online and at this year’s GrailQuest at the World Golf Village just south of Jacksonville, Florida. We even brought a few nice color maps from the website to show (the same maps also appear in the game book, just in black & white and MUCH smaller).

We played a few games, sold some books, met all kinds of people, and had a lot of fun! People both watching and playing had plenty of questions about how we came up with the rules and setting; more than a few who initially doubted the rules were suprised at how quickly they were using them and how effective they were. We can’t wait till next year when the game will be a three-part tourney with YOUR CHARACTER (pending game master approval); pre-gens wil be available, but wouldn’t it be fun to have your own character playing?

In other news, some lady named J.K. Rowling made $36 million on Saturday selling HER new book, but WE didn’t charge extra for a signed copy of ours.

Over at Wired.com news, there’s an interesting article concerning the rise and fall of civilizations. As the title Guns, Germs, & Steel implies, the article concerns itself with things that kill people as well as tools used to conquer other people. The author, Jared Diamond, touts the phrase “Location, location, location” as to one one people have the tools and opportunity while others do not. As far as racial factors go, those geographical opportunities, of course, must be recognized and siezed.

While finishing the re-write and expansion of Kindling Moon, this article reminded me of one of the things we’ve been trying to do with many of the factors in our updated history and breed descriptions. Even with providing a rich world full of opportunities lost, made, and taken, not everyone with an opportunity knows to take it while those who would may never have one to take. With the storylines for players starting at the cusp of a world barely renewed and still emerging, it’s nice to see a bit of theoretical fact backing up the fiction.

July 16th, 2005 is a day that muggles are unaware of. It is the day that the sixth Harry Potter book is to be released, one that supposedly carries two secrets: who is the Half-Blood Prince of the title, and which major character will die?

As a writer, plotter, and generally someone who often spends too much time thinking about unimportant things, I have to make a guess. With no actual foreknowledge nor any time spent on any website where actual bets are taking place on the subject, I must make a guess. As my wife can attest (she refers to this as “ruining it”), I can usually discern facts about a story’s conclusion based rather on the way someone writes, the feel of how the prose flows; while this talent is useless in the real world of actual police and detective work, it more often than not scores a bullseye before C.S.I.’s Grissom makes his smart comment about a grissly death (”Of course it’s him because no other characters were introduced and the show ends in five minutes!”).

That said, the following is my wild speculation, who I’d most likely cast or do in myself were my first initials J followed by K and my gender somewhat fairer: Neville Longbottom… for BOTH secrets. Why? He’s the perfect author-controlled device to upset the story without really putting the main characters in jeopardy. Consider that Voldemort once believed (possibly correctly) that Neville was the subject of a prophecy that compelled him to act; since the hand of Dumbledore has already both done terrible things and regretted more than a few of them (see Order of the Phoenix for details), why not believe that Harry Potter is quite possibly as unexceptional as Professor Snape first told him? A few clever spells to throw the Dark Lord off track and keep him occupied with a generation-spanning plot to ensure that if Voldemort had a plan to return and succeeded, he would be too focused on that which he shouldn’t be while pieces were moving against him.

Look at the facts. Harry already knows his father wasn’t the saint he once believed, and it’s possible Snapes very-public hatred of Harry runs so deep because someone (namely the bad guys) need to think Harry’s the real hero; with Snapes once in league with the Dark Lord and possibly still being monitored by him, why not keep up the pretense as a double-spy? Of course, when you push someone to the forefront as a hero, whisper for years about the great (and/or terrible) things they’ve done, then secretly ensure success by providing all the right tools and clues, one must question how deep the conspiracy goes. Is Harry Potter the hero of the books because he simply is, or is he truly the pawn of the Order of the Phoenix long since before the fateful night Voldemort was destroyed by an infant? Keep in mind that what may have been seeded all along wasn’t even suspect until “Order of the Phoenix,” so now we know just how diabolical the author can be.

Which brings us to the Half-Blood Prince and character death. What better way to take the heat of the hero than to find out they are not the champion everyone thought? This isn’t to say that Harry hasn’t risen to the occassion, but his only other choice would have been to fail. Imagine discovering that, as the hero, you were merely the decoy, given enough encouragement, privilage, and special attention to keep up the pretense; the real champion is someone who’s been there all along, suffered greatly, and that few would suspect any longer. Now imagine that when this great secret is discovered or revealed, that secret champion is struck down in a way no one suspected; Voldemort has kept his options open all along, just in case. Now the fallen decoy must really fulfill a destiny thrust upon him while dealing with the knowledge he was actually only a privilaged fraud, one that has managed to overcome before and must do so again.

Okay, so maybe it’s all a bit hopeful or over-thought or whatever, but there it is, and it’s too late to change it now if I just happened to be right. Then again, Dumbledore has been marked for death as Harry’s mentor since actor Richard Harris himself passed away; with only one book remaining of the original seven promised, ol’ Albus has done enough to evoke sympathy but likely has nothing further to give to the cause. But watch that Longbottom character… Prince or no, he’s got a big part to play in what’s coming up.