San Francisco Meet-Up, December 26th: Meet A Ferrett (And A Gini)

As mentioned in a previous post, my mother has given me leave to play for a day while I’m visiting her, and so we have decided on a place where I can see all my West Coast friends – both the ones I’ve met in person, and the ones I hope to meet!
Kai Chang has generously donated the use of his house for the Get-Together With Ferrett.  So the details are:
Jack London Square Waterfront neighborhood
Oakland, CA 94607
December 26th, 6:00 p.m.

Jack London Square Waterfront neighborhood in Oakland CA

Does An Adaptation Have To Be Faithful? And If So, To What?

There’s been a lot of hubbub about how The Hobbit isn’t a real adaptation of Tolkien’s work – the light-hearted tone of the original work is submerged under a lot of Serious Battle Scenes, there’s a lot of shoehorned-in references to Lord of the Rings to lend if gravitas, and why the fuck does it have to be three hours long?
Yet Jay Lake posted an interesting link today: Dislike Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit? Then You Don’t Know Tolkien.  This essay basically says that Peter Jackson’s knowledge of Tolkien is far superior to yours, and the only reason that The Hobbit is viewed as a light-hearted adventure is because Bilbo and company were ignorant of all the dark machinations going on around them.  Jackson, he argues, is actually putting The Hobbit into the proper context.
Which is interesting.  Because both sides are correct: Peter Jackson is more accurate at depicting all the political and personal pressures that led Gandalf to yank Bilbo out of his comfy little hobbit-hole.  But the tone that Jackson takes is not what most people come away from the book with.  It’s as though someone decided to adapt The Shining like this:

Full disclosure: I’ve seen The Hobbit twice, and I quite liked it.  But I don’t think an adaptation has any obligation to the source material except to be entertaining.  Planet of the Apes is nothing like the book, but it’s good.  Same with The Birds.  So if The Hobbit is a good movie on its own, then I don’t really care how faithful it was – and though the Hobbit is a flawed movie, I think it suffers both from people who wanted it to be LotR 2.0 (which it isn’t) and The Hobbit: the Book (which it really, really isn’t).
Which is not to say that I don’t get upset by bad adaptations.  Tim Burton fucked over two of my favorite movies.  But I’m not mad because they diverged from the source material, but because they diverged from the things I was most entertained by in the original films.  And I reacted in the way I always do to something I’m sure I won’t enjoy; I didn’t watch it.  (Having heard my friends go on at length about the differences, though, I feel fairly justified.)
As it is, I don’t think fidelity is a truism – there have been some mighty faithful adaptations that fell flat, because to turn a book into a film, you have to play to each medium’s strengths.  The Hobbit isn’t really what Tolkien wrote.  But is it good on its own, if you had no prior expectations?  I think it’s decent – not the slam-dunk of Lord of the Rings, but a B, not too bad.  And I think that’s a much nicer way to see it without getting bogged down in the geek wars over what kind of Tolkien-geekery should have made it into the film.
After all, this is the same Tolkien who wrote Tom Bombadil.  I’m quite happy to see his stuff wind up on the cutting-room floor.

Wanna Meet Me In San Francisco, The Day After Christmas?

Whenever I visit my mother in Vacaville, California, I feel guilty.  I have so many good friends in the San Francisco area, but my mother is protective of my time; she only gets to see her son six days a year, and those days are hers, goddammit.  So I have to disappoint many people who are like, “Oh, you’re in California?  Let’s meet up!” and I have to tell them that my Mom won’t let me.
However, since we have an extra-long trip this time, I’m free to play for one day.  But I have so many wonderful people in the area, I couldn’t meet them individually if I tried, and the last-minute scheduling would doubtlessly be chaotic and stressful.
So I’m going to try what Jay Lake does, which is to say, “I will be here, at this time, for dinner.  You are welcome to join me.  Even if we’ve never technically ‘met,’ I’d love to hang out.”
This time will be the evening of December 26th, somewhere in San Francisco.  I don’t know where yet, because I don’t know what restaurants are good for this sort of crazy meet-up, particularly the day after Christmas, so if you have any suggestions I’d love to hear them.  I’ll finalize the details later.
But basically, I’m letting you know that if you’d like to catch up with me, reserve the date of December 26th if it’s not already taken.  I miss you all.  Lots.  If you think you’re gonna be there, leave a comment or hit me up at theferrett@theferrett.com.
(EDIT: Yes, Gini will be there.  Of course she’ll be there!  I wouldn’t spend the holidays without my sweetie.)

California Dreamin'

So I’m in California, visiting my mother for the holidays, and yesterday we had a delightful stop on the way to the Hearst Mansion: we found a farm that did honey tastings!


These are the three honeys we bought. And then these jellies were just beautifully colored:

Sadly, shitty iPhone photos don’t capture the beauty of the California coast:

Our hotel has a fireplace with the employees’ names over the mantelpiece…

…and our room comes with its own fireplace!

And a gigantic bath!

Today’s the Hearst Mansion (“Rosebud”), and we’ll be making our feet sore today. I can’t wait.

SolForge: The Canonical Early Review

I have played more games of the SolForge iPad beta than any non-developer on the planet right now, thanks to being stuck in an airplane for ten hours and then driving for five.  The good news is – obviously – it’s an entertaining game, even in beta format.
SolForge is the latest collectible card game to rival Magic: the Gathering, with a twist – it can only be played on computers, which means the game can keep track of niggling bits that a human player could not.  This is most evident by the levelling system: play a card once, and when it dies, it “Levels up” and the next time you draw it, it’s stronger. If it dies again, it comes back as a Level III card, as strong as it gets.
This immediately makes for an interesting set of tactics.  In Magic, if there’s a creature that’s hurting you, you kill it.  In SolForge, it might be better to leave that creature on the board, because the next time it comes back it’ll be even more of a pain in the ass.  The cards we’ve seen in the beta – about 15% of the card pool – have fascinating level components.  Some cards are vicious in the early game as a Level I threat, requiring two cards to take out, but don’t increase that much as they level up.
So let’s say you go all-in on these early-but-potent guys, forcing your opponent into a corner to use all of his good cards to hold them back.  Well, that means all of his cards come back considerably increased in power at their Level II, but your guys’ Level II increases are negligible.
On the other hand, you have cards that are near-useless in a Level I state, but become behemoths if you can survive long enough to get them to Level III.  So there’s a nice balance between a quick rush and slow control.
The game is fascinating because on many levels, it’s about knowing who to kill and when.  I’ve often found that the best strategy is to make quote-unquote substandard trades: yes, I could put this guy on the board and have him survive.  But I will instead put this substandard mook out to die, planning on him coming back, like Obi-Wan Kenobi, stronger than ever.  You’re constantly balancing board position against future development.
One problem is that the game is so deep I’m honestly not sure what the best strategies are.  Sometimes I lost and had no idea why – was it luck, or just my bad plays?  I’m getting a handle on what factors define a game, but there are so many options I’m often struggling to figure out what the correct move is.  Which is both a glory (I can play this game for a long time!) and a hindrance (what the fuck was I supposed to do?).
(What I do know is that effects that reduce a creature’s power are a lot stronger than they look in Magic.  Since toughness doesn’t regenerate at the end of the round, a -5 to power can clog your opponent’s lane and save your creatures from a lot of damage.)
There are some irritations: you start at 100 life, and while it’s possible to come back when you’re at 30 and your opponent’s full up, it’s unlikely.  There’s not a lot of swinginess, in that often if your opponent (well, at least the opponent AI) takes an early lead, it’s hard to come back.  And like Magic, there are certain overpowered cards that seem ridiculously unfair; two-for-ones are thin on the ground, which makes it hard to lose a game when you get the Wisp-guys out in the early game.
Most annoyingly, there’s no concede button.  Are you dying?  Don’t want to go through the next four turns to the inevitable?  Well, you need to actually quit the game, then answer “Cancel” when it asks you to take up where you left off.  Even for a beta, that’s just bad design.
I’m also not quite sure of the logic of why or when cards level.  There’s a green bar on the right side of the screen, and something happens when it fills, but how it fills or what happens when it does are not intuitive.  I’ve made guesses, but I’m not sure I’m correct.  (EDIT: Apparently, I’m not.  But man, it’s not intuitive when you get your cards back, and in what state.)
Still, it’s free for the iPad, and it’s entertaining.  I’d advise you to check it out asap, particularly if you liked Ascension, which was also made by the same guys.

The Annual Gift O'Cow

Every year, for Christmas, we make a donation to Heifer International.  I give to various charities over the year, of course, but Heifer gets the big Christmas donation in part because it feels like an actual gift: you don’t just donate money, but you buy a llama for a small village, or a flock of geese, or you send a girl to school.
(I’m reasonably sure the money’s just wadded up and doled out as Heifer sees fit, but it’s a clever way of making your donation seem more tangible.  And Heifer’s efficiency rating in terms of how much money it actually passes on to the people in question is reasonably high.)
This year’s gift, in honor of my new heart-healthier living, was a full gardener’s gift basket.  (Appropriately enough, this included a hive of bees.)  But if you’re lucky enough to have some spare dosh hanging about this year and feel like giving to those in need, I’d recommend you take a look at their gift catalog, which has donations for all price ranges.
And if it’s not to them, give to someone.  In the welter of expensive gifts, it’s easy to forget just how much a little gift means to those who are truly bereft.  It doesn’t take much for you, but it means so much to them.

Would You Like To Help Me Make Money From Professional Masturbation?

…well, if that’s not a zinger of a headline, I don’t know what is.
In any case, I wrote a humor tale for Alex Shvartsman’s “Unidentified Funny Objects” science fiction humor anthology, which is now available on Amazon in e-book and paper format.  I’ve read some of the tales there, and they’re funny – he’s got some damn good authors, from Mike Resnick to Ken Liu to Jake Kerr to Lavie Tidhar… and yet somehow, among all this talent, he made a mistake and included me!
Fortunately, my tale is suitably bizarre.  If you’ve enjoyed some of my crazy sex stories in the past, this one’s the looniest.  It’s called “One-Hand Tantra”  – and like all porn, first I have to give you a sample:

“The path of most wizards is solitary,” Loefwyn’s father had told him when his power had first manifested itself.  “Your path, my dearest and only child, is more solitary still.”
To this day, Loefwyn wished he had never become a masturbatician.
As his father had promised, Loefwyn’s singular sex magic had given him a decent living.  He’d just scraped up enough cash to build the obligatory wizard’s tower, a ribbed rock column jutting up to advertise his unique talents.  Masturbaticians were rare, effective ones even more so… and both Loefwyn and his spells were potent indeed.  Intrigued merchants dropped by to witness the town’s newest oddity — even as they hesitated to shake his hand.
Now, royalty — minor, vicious royalty, but royalty still — had hired him.  Enspell Griselda the One-Eyed, and Loefwyn’s success was all but guaranteed….

If you’d like a fair amount of funny for your holiday season, I’d recommend this book even if I wasn’t in it.  As I said, it’s available at Amazon for a mere $5.99, or you can cut the middleman and buy it directly from their site.  Either way, I don’t think you’ll regret it.