PBM | The Wandering King

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Thus reads a section of the book jacket copy on my new novel, Chipped: A Beyond the Stellar Empire Adventure. (The image at the top is an alternate book cover.)

How did I go from writing about ancient Greece to science fiction? Well, like a lot of people today, I can’t help but read about AI, robotics, and genetic research, and wonder where it is all going?

Though it is frightening to imagine a company or the government implanting a microchip in your brain, one hundred years from now, I can’t help but think they’ll be as common as today’s smartphones. Imagine having a computer in your head with unlimited memory. Never again will you utter the phrase, “I forgot.”

Imagine what comes after email and texting: cyber telepathy. Everyone has a Wi-Fi hotspot on their chip. Instead of texting, you’ll communicate by having conversations with other people or groups of people inside your head.

Imagine no longer having to go to school to learn a profession. Like in the Matrix, you just get the weapons or hand-to-hand combat download, and presto, you’re a martial artist, pilot, engineer, physician, etc.

Genetics: Introducing the Beautiful People

Chipped also imagines where genetic research is taking us. It postulates that in the future people will be able to pick their child’s DNA. You want a daughter with blonde hair, blue eyes, and perfect skin? You want an athletic son with perfect grades that never gets cancer? It’s all in the gene code.

Unlocking it will have a serious ripple effect on society. Who would want to a child the old-fashioned way, what the ‘genetics’ of the future call ‘birthers?’ We, the birthers of today, are suddenly in the minority. We are looked down upon and treated with disdain as a race of outdated, inferior humans.

Just as the chip changes the way we communicate; genetics have a drastic impact on relationships. Marriage goes away, as bearing children the old way is considered medieval. It’s unfair to the child, who could be born with birth defects, and only lives to an average age of 78 when genetics live to 130.

All of which gives rise to an entirely new form of prejudice. You think the beautiful people of today are narcissistic, self-absorbed snobs. You haven’t seen anything yet.

Which gets to the book’s theme. All new tech comes at a price. You see it in today’s teens. Studies have shown that if they spend too much time on their smartphones, there is an increased risk of anxiety, stress, and depression. For every step forward, there is a step back.

Robotics is another issue that is going to become commonplace in 100 years, but I’m going to skip that area of the book. You get the general idea. The tech we are developing today is going to have a seismic impact tomorrow.

A Modern Retelling of an Old Classic

The plot of Chipped is loosely based on Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic adventure, Treasure Island.

The chip, genetics and robotics form the backdrop of the story. In the foreground, the plot follows Jim Hawkins’ alter ego, Pax Hawkins. Like Jim, Pax finds a treasure map, or in this case, a dead man’s chip containing a treasure map, or in this case, a discovery as potent as Captain Flynt’s buried treasure.

Without revealing too much of the plot, suffice it to say that many of Treasure Island’s characters like Jim Hawkins get a sci fi makeover. The most famous among them, Long John Silver, returns as the cyber pirate Hacker Jack Sterling. Instead of stealing your gold, Hacker Jack is able to break into your chip, steal your thoughts and maybe even plant some new ideas that affect your behavior.

While the first two chapters take place on an Earth-like planet named Utopia, the majority of the book takes place onboard several spaceships. In Treasure Island it was the HMS Hispaniola. In Chipped it’s the SMS Hunter’s Moon. In Treasure Island the crew was made up of sailors and pirates. In Chipped it’s made up of 25 genetics, 5 birthers, and one pirate, all of whom have conflicting goals.

More Chipped or The Wandering King 3?

People are already asking me if there will be a second Chipped book. As the BSE universe (see blog below) is so rich and its characters so diverse, it would be easy to turn this into a series. Will I? I have no clue. At the moment, I am back to working on the third installment of The Wandering King.

My profuse apologies to readers of my first two Greek historical novels. I posted here several years ago that I was working on book three. That was not a lie. I have about 30% of it written. You’ll just have to forgive me, because after spending seven years with the ancient Greeks, I needed a change of scenery.

I spent 2017-2018 writing a contemporary novel, which shall remain unidentified as I wrote it using a pen name. It’s a story about and for my hometown that has made me a local celebrity, and I want to leave it at that.

When will book three in The Wandering King series be done? Currently, I’m working with a marketing company on Chipped, but as soon as that is done, I am eager to get back to Euryanax and his adventures.

In book one Eury went south to Africa. In book two he went west to Italy and Sicily. In book three he wanders east to Thrace, Scythia and Ionia where ultimately, he will take part in the Ionian War against the Persian Empire.

PBM and BSE: Play-by-Mail and Beyond the Stellar Empire

The subhead of my science fiction novel Chipped is: A Beyond the Stella Empire Adventure.

Beyond the Stellar Empire or BSE is a play-by-mail (PBM) game that I took part in during the 1980s and 1990s. Never heard of PBM? Not surprising because it’s a gaming genre that died out around 2000 with the release of bigger and better computer games.

A little history. Before the age of home computers, everyone played games face to face. Chess, checkers, Scrabble, Monopoly, Dungeons & Dragons. If you wanted to get fancy, you could play games like chess by mail. Sure, it took longer, but players didn’t mind waiting to receive their opponent’s move. Prior to the rise of our instant gratification society, anticipation used to be part of the fun.

In the 1980s, chess by mail exploded into an entirely new type of gaming: PBM. It lasted about 20 years and was supported by magazines like Paper Mayhem, Flagship and Gaming Universal.

My BSE review appeared in the March 1987 issue.

I played my first PBM game, Feudal Lords, run by a company called Graaf Simulations in 1984. A medieval game, you competed against 15 players to become the King of England. With the simple rule book came a card that you filled out with your moves that you mailed in once a week. Turns cost $2.50.

After about 20 moves someone eliminated the other players. I won my first Feudal Lords game. Not that I am a tactical genius. I did it because Graaf supplied you with a list of the other players and their addresses. Playing as the Earl of Lancaster, I wrote to the Earl of Cornwall, a fellow in Pittsburgh named Tim Enright, and we teamed up. Tim supported my moves, and in the next game I supported him, and he won.

We did this before the invention of email. We did it communicating primarily through letters with the occasional call using a phone with a cord.

In 1985, Tim told me about a game he was playing called Beyond the Stellar Empire. It was run by a company out of Cohoes, NY, named Adventures by Mail. Like Feudal Lords, you submitted turns once a week, at the end of which you received a computer print-out of your results. Companies owned computers, but not individuals, so receiving a custom print-out in the 1980s was quite a thrill. According to ABM, the game was “hand moderated with computer assistance.”

BSE was not a game that could be won in 20 moves. It was known as a ‘space opera,’ the granddaddy of today’s Massively Multiplayer Online Games. For your $5 turn, you ran a single starship. Ever want to play Capt. Kirk and explore the vastness of space? Here was your chance.

I am not the brainchild that invented the universe where Chipped takes place. ABM did. Specifically, Robert Cook and Jack Everitt. ABM employees Mike Popolizio, Marti Popolizio and Liz Leblanc ran the turns and interacted with the players. They created a world that was like playing pen ‘n paper D&D in a space aged Middle Earth that spread across 100+ unexplored star systems.

The events in Chipped are loosely based on things I experienced while playing BSE from 1985-88. I say all of this to give credit where credit is due. ABM provided the backdrop, into which I’ve inserted my own creations, like the chip, cyber telepathy, Pax Hawkins, Hacker Jack Sterling, genetics, and birthers.

Some of the people populating the novel are based on player-run characters I met while playing BSE. For instance, I knew the pirate king Sean O’Brien’s player Greg Stafford of Massachusetts, and the scientist Lord Retief’s alter ego, Chip Charnley from Michigan.

I am hoping that if Chipped finds its way into the hands of BSE’s players, they are not offended by what I did with their character, and that they will take my story in the spirit intended, as fan fiction inspired by a unique era in gaming that is long gone.