Bear, Greg - Strikes & Spares by Bear Greg

Author:Bear, Greg [Bear, Greg]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-10-30T15:42:16+00:00

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A B B YY.c Magazine (and, for reasons unknown, not printed by them) I had speculated on the coming "Visual

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Typewriter," when computer graphics creation systems would be on everyone's home computer, allowing cheap at-home production of high-quality motion-pictures. (The article begins, "'Dinosaurs!'

The artist spreads his arms as if to embrace them. 'I need the exact specifications-gridwork layouts of bones, muscles, scale patterns'... 'If I have these, I can put them into a computer. We can program each muscle, make the skin ripple over the muscles. Tell the computer how they took a step, how they fought...'" The artist was Ron Cobb.)

But as to the detailed nature of all this... At the time, I couldn't give him a clear answer.

Subsequently, we focused our inquiry on what future interactive fiction would be like. Microsoft invited a number of SF writers, myself included, to participate in a symposium on the future of entertainment.

The Microsoft participants were way ahead of most of us on this topic, and the seminar was inconclusive.

Three years ago, Nathan scored a real coup by bringing his one-time colleague at Cambridge, Stephen Hawking, to Vancouver and Seattle to deliver a pair of lectures. To my astonishment, Nathan invited my wife, Astrid, and me to a dinner for Hawking, at Rovers restaurant. To our great honor, we were seated at the same table with Hawking, Bill Gates, Nathan, and a small number of key Microsoft folks, many of whom I had met before. It was quite an evening...

Bribed so magnificently, and thoroughly inspired, within a few days, I came up with an answer to Nathan's questions: a clear picture of the nature of interactive fiction, delivered over the Net. A week later, I pitched my speculations to Nathan in his office. The pitch took ninety minutes, and after it was over, Nathan and I stared at each other, a little amazed. I said, "But of course, Nintendo and Sega must be aware of all this stuff!"

Nathan shook his head. "Not at all. They really have no idea!" he told me.

I also mentioned that he should look at the (then current) issue of Cinefex magazine devoted to the CGI (computer graphics imagery) special effects in Jurassic Park. "Look at the ads," I said. "Some of those companies will be the real movers and shakers in the future of entertainment."

Within two months, Microsoft purchased Softimage, one of the CGI software companies advertising in that issue of Cinefex. And ever since... Well, it seems to me that Microsoft has been following a strategy that leads to the scenarios laid out in my pitch.

Every now and then, I return to Microsoft and see some of what they're working on.

It's good stuff. And somehow parts of it look familiar to me... and other parts, I could never have guessed.

Here's the original article, "The Machineries of Joy," from 1983, and then, the pitch delivered to Microsoft, as I wrote it up a few weeks later, with some explanatory notes for its recent publication in THE SFFWA HANDBOOK, 1995 edition.

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