Sunday 21 June 2015

This Weekend

Thank you for many page views this weekend despite no new posts since Friday evening. Yesterday was a day trip to London - a long way from Lancaster. Today was an afternoon drive to view private gardens temporarily opened to the public. Despite this activity, two very brief posts have been published on other blogs. See here and here.

For this blog, the next action is to finish rereading Poul Anderson's and Gordon R Dickson's "The Adventure of the Misplaced Hound." I had forgotten that the title of this story refers to the Baskerville Hound. Also, our heroes are tracking down a quadrupedal criminal, which seems appropriate for a story featuring the Hound.

Two further points:

on Thursday, we visited a nearby stately home where a TV dramatization of "The Dancing Men" was filmed;

although the Hoka series is humorous, Anderson's serious treatment of role-playing games is, of course, "The Saturn Game."

Addendum: Old Mars has arrived.

3 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Welcome back from your trip! I hope you had a good time. I'll soon be sending you another note to publish on your blog, if you agree.

Yes, Poul Anderson's "The Saturn Game" is a serious, hard SF treatment of the idea of role playing games. As distinct from the more humorous treatment of role playing we see in the Hoka stories he co authored with Gordon R. Dickson. Altho I could argue that in their novel STAR PRINCE CHARLIE we see Anderson and Dickson using Hoka imaginativeness and role playing in both humorous and serious ways.

Sean

Paul Shackley said...

Sean,
Your new note will be welcome. I do not have to agree with its content, of course. The more diverse the views expressed here, the better.
Still tired from traveling all that way and back yesterday, I will soon turn in.
Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Thanks! And, oops, I perhaps should have waited till tomorrow before sending you my new note.

Sean