Radio Active goes temporarily political with a review of Alan Moore and David Lloyd's V for Vendetta graphicnovel. But before I launch off on that tangent, I've got news about the flu that ravaged Nuketown, updates on some of my freelance projects, and a bunch of new sites of note, including the Battlestar Galatica wiki, the Liberty & Culture blog, an excellent conversation about "Common Sense" gaming via UncleBear.com and a cool write-up on virtual desktops for GMs from TreasureTables.org.
Getting the Podcast
You can get the podcast in two ways:
- Download the MP3 directly
- Subscribe to the podcast rss feed using an aggregator (you only need to do this once; subsequent shows should download automatically)
Show Notes
- News & Happenings
- I fought the flu and the flu won: Well, actually I won in the long run, but it definitely kicked my ass for a few days.
- New SFW reviews up on scifi:
- Firefly Soundtrack review: I've got a review of the soundtrack for Joss Whedon's space western on Nuketown.
- Nuketown Forums removed
- Need more promos! Got 'em? Send them to nuketown@gmail.com
- Dragon's Landing Podcast
- Sites of Note
- Searching for new podcasts Been slacking on podcasts lately, mostly because I haven't been walking to work or exercising when I get home, thanks to the flu. But the time is coming to repaint the gaming room and transform it into Jordan's, so I should be caught up in no time. Looking for recommendations -- send 'em to nuketown@gmail.com
- Battlestar Galactica Wiki
- http://www.battlestarwiki.org
- Chronicles the original Battlestar, the abomination that was Galactica 1980, and the new SciFi remake.
- Includes comprehensive episode guides, extensive character writeups, and a collected faq of official speculations and comments on the series.
- Includes 1,137 content pages and 952 registered users.
- Liberty & Culture
- http://firebringer.blogspot.com/
- A blog by Anders Monsen, editor of Prometheus, the newsletter of the Libertarian Futurist Society (which I really need to rejoin).
- A mix of general geekiness (he just installed a MySQL-based program to generate reports about music usage on his Mac), science fiction and occasional posts about libertarian authors.
- UncleBear.com
- Berin's been running a great series of posts called "Common Sense: The Roleplaying System" in which he discusses his plans for a rules-light, story-heavy, player-intensive play-by-blog campaign. It's a great series of reads, and its spawned some excellent follow-up conversations in the comments
- Common Sense: The Roleplaying System
- Common Sense, Part 2: Task Resolution, Combat and Death
- Common Sense, Part 3: What's Out There
- Common Sense, Part 4: The Right Tools for the Job
- TreasureTables: Virtual Desktops
- Cool article on the Treasure Tables blog about using virtual desktops such as Protopage to organize and collaborate on a campaign.
- Long-time listeners will remember that back in the early days of Radio Active I'd longed for a virtual desktop like Hiro Protagonist had in Snow Crash -- this brings us one step closer to that. And prior to this article, I had no idea such things existed.
- Virtual Desktops for GMs
- Science Fiction Podcast Network Promo
- Book Review: V for Vendetta
- by Alan Moore and David Lloyd
- DC Comics/Vertigo
- Publication Date: 1981 (graphic novel republished in 2005 under Vertigo)
- ISBN: 1401207928
- Buy it from Amazon.com
- V is one of those series I've been meaning to read for years, along with Moore's The Watchmen.
- Finally got to it in February, when a friend lent me the 2005 graphic novel version. I wanted to read the original before seeing the film later this month.
- In the series, England is one of the few safe havens after an early-1990s nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union. Unfortunately for the surivors, the political force that pulled the country through its near apocolypse is a fascist one, and after it gets the trains running on time again, it promptly uses them to start shipping undesireables -- gays, non-whites and various "deviants" off to concentration camps.
- Most of the country is cowed by its beloved leader and tricked into believing that their salvation is being orchestrated by the perfect logic of a computer named Fate.
- One man, named V, remembers another way. Dressing up as a variation of Guy Fawkes (who once tried to blow up the British Parliament), he wages a personal war against the fascist state, destroying the symbols of its power while murdering man of its leaders
- He also saves a young girl named Eve from rape and murder at the hands of the state's secret police, and later trains her as a sort of protegee.
- Greatly enjoyed the book, though it is a bit of a date read now that its future is firmly in our past. As a character, V is the perfect enigmatic warrior-philosopher, allowing his actions reinforce his words.
- The dystopian future Alan Moore depicts holds few surprises -- its basically regurgitated early-20th century fascism, with the Fate computer replacing some of the Nazi mysticism. Would have liked something more imaginative there, but traditional fascists make good bad guys.
- Says something about my place on the political spectrum that I had few problems with the aspect of the book (and the movie its spawned) that generated the most contraversy: namely the use of violence against the government.
- The argument seems to be that violence is never the right answer.
- Personally, I'm with the U.S. founders on this: sometimes violence is necessary to perserve freedom, and when you're living under a fascist state -- a true, totalitarian fascist state, not the watered down 'he's a fascist!' crap you see on the political left and right -- in which the government is rounding up and executing hundreds of thousands of people, you have the right to defend your life and take up arms against the state.
- Besides, V specifically targets areas that are either empty shells that retain political significance (like Parliament) or directly attacks members of the murderous fascist regime.
- Definitely worth reading -- should be a part of any comic book fans collection.
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