The Gaming Philosopher

If you haven't participated in the Interactive Fiction Top 50 yet, and you still mean to do so, stop procrastinating! The deadline is five days from now: September 30. You can post your games in that topic, email them to me, or even post them as a comment to this blog entry.

Under the influence of Tolkien, fantasy moved towards the creation of secondary worlds. Let me define that term: A secondary world is a fictional world which is neither a geographical nor a temporal part of our world; and is not connected to it as a dream world, a realm of Faerie, a space of Ideas, a land-beyond-a-portal or anything of that sort. Furthermore, the secondary world should be a real world , not just an allegory. For instance, the tall tales that Odysseus tells in the Odyssey are fictional and fantastic, but are not set in a secondary world, because they are supposed to have happened on our Earth. On the other hand, modern fantasy writers like Martin and Jordan do use secondary worlds: no explicit or implied relation exists between their fantastical realms and the world we inhabit. My question is, what was the first book that introduced a secondary world? I haven't managed to think of any clear examples that predate The Lord of the Rings by more than a few years. T...

I don't own a Kindle because, well, closed platform, right? But if you do own a Kindle, have access to the Kindle app store, and have even the smallest interest in interactive fiction, I would like to point you to The King of Shreds and Patches . The King of Shreds and Patches is a very good game; in fact, it appeared in my recent top 10 interactive fiction games ever. It is long, well-written, well-researched, not difficult, and a lot of fun. Because of its length, accessibility, and quality as a page-turner, it is perhaps the single piece of IF which I would have most liked to see ported to an e-reader. So, highly recommended. P.S. I wrote a long analysis of the game here , but you really shouldn't read that until you have finished the game.