California Extreme – Looking Back, Looking Forward

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caextreme_2001_collage

Last year I found out about California Extreme, an event in the Bay Area where people get together to show off, discuss, and of course to play old video games and pinball machines over the course of two days. This has been running for 16 years, and its to my shame as a geek that I took so long to discover it.

So needless to say this year I went, if only because I felt a near-moral obligation to do so. This is pure applied geekery – a historical and social event that also contains some people who do or did make a living in involved industries, and a ton of hands-on experiences.

Here’s what I saw. Short form – it was great. But dive in longer – there’s a lot to share.

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Way With Worlds: Sex And Worldbuilding – Gods, Spirits, Sex, Magic

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Stonehenge

So we get to what is in theory the last Sex and Worldbuilding column more or less. OK maybe one more or something, but this covers most of what I wanted. That was certainly one hell of a rewrite over the original – there’s probably a column in itself on all the reasons I had to cover more.

So we’ve covered biology, psychology, society, and how they tie to sex. My fundamental thesis is that sex is best viewed as a primal form of communication for life, and thus logically infuses all aspects of said life. Life, in short, transmits.

But there’s one more element of sex and your setting to consider beyond these – then come the metaphysical, mystical, and divine. If your world has a supernatural (or perhaps “metanatural”) component, then sex is going to impact that too. Sex is part of living beings, living beings deal with metaphysical realities, ergo it’s going to be something you have deal with as a world builder.

Got spirits and sorcery?  Sex is going to come into the equation as your sentient races interact with such things.

Now this goes into so many potential areas I’m just going to cover the basics – since your worldbuilding will doubtlessly have its own elements that are unique to your work. I’m just trying to get things going here.

But first . . .

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Geek Job Guru: In Defense Of Remakes

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Whirlpool

Back when I was writing on nostalgia, Jason Sacks had commented that we should be aware remakes provide constraints and constraints can be virtuous creatively.

That idea got me to stop in my mental tracks and think this over. Now I’m not fundamentally opposed to remakes, but I’m getting a bit tired of seeing them so often. But his comment made me think that, yes constraints are valuable and indeed I’ve been a bit (only a bit) unfair to remakes in our modern culture.  Certainly there are ones I like, agree are good, or want to see.

So I think it’s time that I, geek job guru, culture commentator, and creative guy, give some thought to when I think remakes are legitimate and even good. It may give you some food for thought, inspire you, or make you think “He’s full of it” and ignore me – but at least you’ll ignore me for a reason.

So without further ado, Steve’s List Of When Remakes Are A Good Idea.

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