MRY
Wormwood Studios
Were I following any kind of ordinary logic (e.g., reading the most interesting, most creative, best written, most popular, etc. books), you'd of course be right. But I'm not following that kind of logic. Rather, my goal is to have as comprehensive an exposure to the genre as possible. With the more popular series, in fact, the only reason really to read them is to get a sense for the author's style and technique; after all, the actual content is pretty easy to read in summary on Wikipedia or a dozen other sites. By contrast, the more obscure ones tend not to be covered on Wikipedia or, if they are, to be covered in extreme summary.
With Vinge, I think A Fire Upon the Deep is a magnificent creative work (albeit rather longwinded), and I think the singularity-type AI threat and the pack-mind aliens were both wonderful inventions (I believe he also had some near-light-speed planet-killing projectiles). My sense from reading the summary of A Deepness in the Sky is that it's somewhat less inventive, even if better plotted; but plot doesn't really matter for what I'm doing, except at a high level. (Which is to say, I'm interested in archetypes of plots more than in the detailwork of execution.) In some ways, I could simply outsource my work to TV Tropes, and I do look at TV Tropes from time to time, but doing my own work is important from my own productive standpoint (I won't call it "artistic" or "creative" because it's really a kind of scavenging and reconstitution).
A couple other things are that I am generally interested in older works that have had a more significant impact on the "culture" of space opera, because what I'm trying to do is situate myself squarely in the heart of the genre, not forge new ground. I certainly would never skip over an important series, but I'm willing to give more time and attention to Heinlein and E. Hamilton, for example, than their works probably merit simply because those are foundational books.
Anyway, by no means do I think my approach is defensible -- I'm sure you could annihilate it and make my million hours of labor seem absurd -- but it's the approach I've adopted, for better or worse.
I will say that a couple things that have nearly crushed my spirit are: (1) FTL essentially copying the same concept I was copying when I was three years into designing Star Captain (although FTL's combat is far cleverer than anything I could come up with), and (2) discovering that Bioware basically took the same approach with Mass Effect that I'm taking here. Between FTL and ME, I'm sure by the time I'm done, my game -- which wasn't particularly original to begin with -- will seem even more derivative.
[EDIT: While I'm at it, I will say that the "undiscovered gems" for me were: Armor (an interesting "third take" in the Starship Troopers / Forever War "conversation"); A Talent for War (I guess the best I could describe it as is The Daughter of Time meets space opera, but an expected treat); and The Dragon Never Sleeps (which essentially preempted what I thought was a really original idea of mine, namely, what would happen if the good guys never became lax after defeating the Ancient Evil). Those aren't the best of the bunch, but they're ones that didn't show up on many lists of great space opera, despite being really good, and which I'm sure I never would've found -- despite being a fan of Cook's and of both SST and FW -- but for this crazy effort.]
With Vinge, I think A Fire Upon the Deep is a magnificent creative work (albeit rather longwinded), and I think the singularity-type AI threat and the pack-mind aliens were both wonderful inventions (I believe he also had some near-light-speed planet-killing projectiles). My sense from reading the summary of A Deepness in the Sky is that it's somewhat less inventive, even if better plotted; but plot doesn't really matter for what I'm doing, except at a high level. (Which is to say, I'm interested in archetypes of plots more than in the detailwork of execution.) In some ways, I could simply outsource my work to TV Tropes, and I do look at TV Tropes from time to time, but doing my own work is important from my own productive standpoint (I won't call it "artistic" or "creative" because it's really a kind of scavenging and reconstitution).
A couple other things are that I am generally interested in older works that have had a more significant impact on the "culture" of space opera, because what I'm trying to do is situate myself squarely in the heart of the genre, not forge new ground. I certainly would never skip over an important series, but I'm willing to give more time and attention to Heinlein and E. Hamilton, for example, than their works probably merit simply because those are foundational books.
Anyway, by no means do I think my approach is defensible -- I'm sure you could annihilate it and make my million hours of labor seem absurd -- but it's the approach I've adopted, for better or worse.
I will say that a couple things that have nearly crushed my spirit are: (1) FTL essentially copying the same concept I was copying when I was three years into designing Star Captain (although FTL's combat is far cleverer than anything I could come up with), and (2) discovering that Bioware basically took the same approach with Mass Effect that I'm taking here. Between FTL and ME, I'm sure by the time I'm done, my game -- which wasn't particularly original to begin with -- will seem even more derivative.
[EDIT: While I'm at it, I will say that the "undiscovered gems" for me were: Armor (an interesting "third take" in the Starship Troopers / Forever War "conversation"); A Talent for War (I guess the best I could describe it as is The Daughter of Time meets space opera, but an expected treat); and The Dragon Never Sleeps (which essentially preempted what I thought was a really original idea of mine, namely, what would happen if the good guys never became lax after defeating the Ancient Evil). Those aren't the best of the bunch, but they're ones that didn't show up on many lists of great space opera, despite being really good, and which I'm sure I never would've found -- despite being a fan of Cook's and of both SST and FW -- but for this crazy effort.]
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) and resorted to a walkthrough on gamefaqs (yes, I am still ashamed) to see them all. The only endings I managed to reach by myself were those of Horatio killing himself, getting killed or joining MetroMind.
