Some Literary Examples

The terms dark future and dystopia are often seen as coterminous. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World was a rather antiseptic and well-managed world, in contradistinction to the later gritty futures, which was nevertheless a profound dystopia because of the resultant killing of the human spirit.

Huxley’s vision is often seen as a possible endpoint of the unrelenting advance of current day corporate and social liberalism, i.e., of the managerial-therapeutic regime. George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four [allegedly influenced by Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We --ed] appears as a possible endpoint of what might have happened if Soviet totalitarianism had triumphed worldwide, and may also be read as a meditation on ideology and ideological control of enduring significance. (A rather sad commentary on American culture is the lurid, B-movie cover illustration for the book’s first American printing.) A rather overlooked classic is the highly satirical The Space Merchants (sometimes titled Gravy Planet) by Frederik Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth, a critique of 1950s-style capitalism.

Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange pointed to the dehumanized environment of a slightly later capitalism. John Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar focussing on an overcrowded, polluted world, may well be termed proto-cyberpunk. Also by Brunner is The Sheep Look Up, a critique of extreme pollution problems and public apathy in regard to these. He weighed in again with The Shockwave Rider, dangers of a computerized world. William Gibson’s Neuromancer is the definitive cyberpunk work, despite later challenges, e.g., from Jeff Noon’s Vurt . Three newer, very prominent works of William Gibson are Virtual Light, Idoru, and All Tomorrow’s Parties. French author Jean Raspail’s bitter allegorical novel, The Camp of the Saints predicts the destruction of the West under the impact of Third World immigration. David Wingrove’s mammoth Chung-kuo series (which has now reached eight thick volumes), portrays a rather dystopic future of a Chinese-dominated Earth.

Some Cinema and Television Examples

The proto-dark future film was Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (loosely based on Karel Capek’s play, R.U.R. ... Rossum’s Universal Robots), which has wielded enormous influence in many areas of society and culture. (One need only look as far as rock videos, from Madonna to the Spice Girls.)

Much of the sense of dark future is created through architecture and cityscape. The following quote illustrates certain interesting sociopolitical dimensions: “...immediately after the Russian Revolution, a new artistic and architectural style sprang up [in the Soviet Union], called Chicagizm, based on the notion of a new city in a new world without a past” (from the highly quirky book by Erik von Kuenhelt-Leddihn, Leftism Revisited.) Think of the 1920s skylines of New York and Chicago, the former which appears in Metropolis. The rise of modernist architecture and decorative art trends, typically Bauhaus, Art Deco, the International Style, and, finally, post modernism, played an enormous part in the construction of future visions.

The dark future cityscape is inconceivable without the skyscraper. As the century progresses, mediascape/soundscape is added to cityscape, and information overload/media barrage syndrome as well as sociopolitical postmodernism emerges.

Such things as style, edge, mood, atmosphere or ambience are an important aspect of this vision. (One thinks of the name of a lesser-known 1980s rock-group, Ambient Noise.) Probably one of the greatest movies ever made -- which interacts with so many of these discourses -- is Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, loosely based on Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange was controversially filmed (extreme violence portrayed in an artistic, semi-celebratory way) by Stanley Kubrick. Some prominent movies of the 1970s included Soylent Green (admittedly a travesty of Harry Harrison’s Make Room! Make Room! but perhaps its dark twist is well-aimed), Rollerball and Logan’s Run, the first two set in the gritty future genre, the latter clearly derived from a concept similar to that of Brave New World.

Ridley Scott’s original Alien movie and Outland (portraying the brutalized life on a mining colony near Saturn), could be seen as rather akin to Blade Runner. There was a wave of somewhat similar movies (of greatly varying quality) in the 1980s and 1990s, notably, Paul Verhoeven’s RoboCop; Terry Gilliam’s Brazil; Robert Longo’s Johnny Mnemonic (based on William Gibson’s early short story); Judge Dredd, based on the comic book; Freejack (with Mick Jagger as a bounty hunter); Total Recall (corporate dystopia on Mars); a portrayal of the millennial turn, Strange Daze; and Tim Burton’s new Batman epics.

Burton’s vision was largely based on the breakthrough graphic novel The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller, with Klaus Janson and Lynn Varley -- widely available in a 1986 DC Comics trade paperback edition (covering the original Books One to Four) -- with a pithy introduction by Alan Moore. The Max Headroom TV series, set twenty minutes from now, could be seen, like the others, as participating in the so-called air-conditioned nightmare of the near-future.

Ironically, Oliver Stone’s The Wild Palms TV series (derived from the comicseries in Details Magazine), was buried in popular perception by the hockey playoffs. Very few persons bought The Wild Palms Reader. Among the interesting print spinoffs of the Aliens movies, is Aliens: Colonial Marines Technical Manual by Lee Brimmicombe-Wood. Three recent movies exploring virtual reality are The Matrix, The Thirteenth Floor, and EXistenZ.

The very popular Mad Max film series made speculation about a post-apocalyptic world very widespread. The Tank Girl comic and movie is derivative of it. WaterWorld could be characterized as Mad Max on water. The surprisingly well-produced children’s TV series, Captain Power, and the Terminator movie series, showed the scenario of evil machines literally taking over the Earth. Another TV series with a cyberpunk feel was The New War of the Worlds. A clever satire on both utopia and the dark future was Demolition Man.

Finally, in the near-future, techno thriller genre, there has emerged the TV series La Femme Nikita, based on the French and (later) American movie. A somewhat earlier TV series was TekWars (based on William Shatner’s fiction-writing efforts), which tended to become increasingly light entertainment, despite the cyberpunk premise.

Dark Futures in Gaming

What are some the leading dark futures featured in gaming? It may be noted that, with its typical emphasis on planetwide disintegration and/or corporate control, as well as individual interactions, board games on anything above a tactical level are a rarity. The dark future also lends itself to miniatures gaming. Dark futures may be seen as divided into two broad categories: near future (often coterminous with cyber punk); and far future.

The best known and most successful example of this kind of far future is Warhammer 40,000 A.D., which is a self-standing system focussed on separate boardgames as well as miniatures, though it also has a role playing system based on that world.

The Warhammer universe is utterly ferocious. Earth’s stellar empire is guarded by ultra-elite, very heavily armored Space Marines who battle against all manner of hideous foes reminiscent of the Aliens movie series. Another sentient race somewhat allied to the humans is the Eldar. Indeed, despite the utter viciousness of the universe, there is an element of campiness in the whole construct. One finds, for example, Eldar warriors with Chinese Tao emblems and the Orks who talk in a combination of African-American slang and English yobbo-talk.

Not too coincidentally, Warhammer arose in Great Britain. Some have suggested that it might indeed have some degree of appeal to fascist or skin head elements. A fair number of tie-in novels placed in the universe are available. Indeed, the Warhammer universe (it also has a fantasy sector, which probably enjoys almost as much support as the sci-fi one), is a large, self-standing branch of gaming. In some large North American cities, it was able to support stores devoted exclusively to itself.

Roleplaying Systems

Cyberspace (Iron Crown Enterprises): CyberEurope: A Campaign Sourcebook for Cyberspace (1991) Principal Author: Anders Blixt, Editor: Kevin Barrett (112 b&w pages, color front/backcover, 17”x22” full-color map).

This product, put together by a group of Swedish role players, is (with some exceptions) probably the least gruesome of the cyberpunk futures. It is set in the Europe of the 2090s. Some might feel that the European national governments (with their powerful military forces) and the Roman Catholic Church hold greater power in that projected future than they do today. The authors write: “the military’s strict code of honor is based on 19th century equivalents from France and Prussia; codes that strongly stress duty, discipline, obedience and self-sacrifice. An officer must always be a gentleman ... The officers see themselves as the defenders of Europe’s culture and greatness against what they perceive as threats from Europe’s corrupt and dishonorable politicians, greedy, unpatriotic and scheming Megacorps and fanatical, incomprehensible Arabs”.

The Catholic Church is also engaged in active struggle against the Megacorps. The designers, however, could be seen to have misunderstood the internal politics of the Church. The conservative tradition as it exists in the Catholic Church (as represented, for example, by Opus Dei) is, generally-speaking, as fundamentally anti-capitalist as that of the Catholic Left. In a situation of Megacorps world hegemony, insofar as the Church had some freedom of maneuver, conservative Catholics would be just as radically in opposition to the prevalent system as the Catholic Left.

The emergence of a Russian neotraditionalist, nationalist regime in The Third Commonwealth of Independent States is a fair prediction, though it might not necessarily be any larger than current-day Russia (i.e., it would not include Belarus and Ukraine). The notion of Poles in Byelorussia fighting for reunification with Poland is an interesting, if far-fetched, concept. Poland, if it ever departed from its very pacific current-day policies, would be more likely to first claim the area identified in this sourcebook as Baltia (i.e., the area around the town of Kaliningrad - called Królewiec in Polish, and Königsberg in German).

The most gruesome aspects of the future world appear in Great Britain, where the projections are clearly meant as parodic and satirical. The aim of the exercise was presumably a bitter spoof of Thatcherite policies. Indeed, Great Britain, which has initiated a brutal occupation of all Ireland, is also the most violent, decadent and polluted of the countries described. A substantial portion of it (the Manchester-Leeds Deletion) is irradiated owing to some grotesquely tragicomic circumstances. Some might suggest that a far different view of the future of the British Isles would be better in keeping with the less obviously dystopic nature of this future. Cyberpunk 2020 (Talsorian Games) EuroSource: The EuroTheatre Sourcebook for Cyberpunk (1991) Written by Mark Galeotti (80 b&w pages, color front/backcover). This sourcebook has some rather interesting touches. Germany is very powerful and looks more traditional than today. France is also a major power. The sociological trend known as dreampainting can be seen as a trend somewhat connected to today’s Generation X. (A similar, current day phenomenon is discussed in Adrienne Miller and Andrew Goldblatt The Hamlet Syndrome: Overthinkers Who Underachieve, and in Doug Coupland’s Microserfs.

The hellholes in this region are the largely irradiated Turkey, North Africa, and Middle East (apart from Israel); the New Central Europe (a place for cheap labor, heavily-polluting industries and dumping waste); and (as in many cyberpunk scenarios) Great Britain. (One supposes that this is again an ironic commentary on the Thatcher years.) Great Britain is under a military government that uses Orwellian-sounding abbreviations (LONDURMARLAUTH for London Urban Martial Law Authority). In a rather curious twist, the military has removed both the monarchy and much of the traditional aristocracy, indeed, they have apparently murdered the royal family, and Royalists are among the numerous rebel groups fighting the military.

Northern Ireland is in a full-blown civil war, but the Republic of Ireland is largely unaffected. The British situation appears especially parodic and overdone, as is the one in NCE. The resistance movement in NCE, consisting of an alliance of the various nationalists, goes by the rather bland name of 3000. One could call it Wola - which means will or freedom in most Slavic languages. In any event, that kind of situation is now very unlikely.

Near the end of the Communist regimes, there was indeed an instance where a Polish Communist minister had been bribed into allowing the dumping of several tonnes of radioactive waste in the Polish countryside by a German company. And there was the rather horrendous environmental record of all the East-Central European Communist regimes. However, as the East-Central European economies take off, that will become increasingly unlikely. Some economists have estimated that by the year 2020, the GNP of Poland alone might be equivalent to that of Russia, if current trends continue. Presumably ever-lighter industries will replace the grimy industrial factories.

During an interview with American television, Zhirinovsky had justified his comment of fanning nuclear waste onto Lithuania by claiming that the West was dumping nuclear and toxic chemical waste throughout Russia. One wonders to what extent this is true. However, the Soviet Union throughout its history has had an absolutely horrific environmental record, which became widely known only after its fall. Eurosource Plus: The New Eurotheater Sourcebook for Cyberpunk (1995) Writers: José Ramos, Florian Merx, Steve Gill (144 b&w pages, color front/ backcover). The ink was barely dry on the previous sourcebook, and it was already in many ways out of date.

In a somewhat questionable move, the future past timeline from 1990 was continued, thereby already making the near-future an alternate history. The hellholes of this region are as in the previous sourcebook, though perhaps slightly less grim. Poland is characterized as a personal dictatorship with a crime-fighting secret police, called the Harbingers (incidentally, the likely Polish term for these would be Wici). In a rather ironic commentary on the role of the Roman Catholic Church in Poland, a major, breakaway Church of Poland is posited, in protest against the further liberalization of the Roman Catholic Church (after the death of John Paul II). Such a breakaway movement is highly unlikely.

Shadowrun: Where Man Meets Magic and Machine (FASA Corp.) The main twist of Shadowrun on cyberpunk is the introduction of metahumanity (elves, dwarves, orks, trolls), all manner of other creatures of legend (dragons, etc.), and of the possibility of magical practice for most beings including normal humans, into a high-tech, gritty cyberpunk world.

The premise for this is rather interesting, if improbable: an upsurge of magical energy which was initially conceived as cyclical. (As far as I am aware, Shadowrun has moved into the concept that these magical forces are going to be surging without end, thus introducing ever more powerful magic and monsters.) A far more interesting approach would have been to stick with a cyclical concept, e.g., that this surge last occurred, say, somewhere around 15,000-10,000 B.C. So these creatures of legend were once on the Earth, but as the magical energies that sustained them increasingly faded, they faded away (a premise similar to that in Larry Niven’s The Magic Goes Away).

Perhaps an enormous amount of magical energy had been consumed in the creation and/or destruction of the legendary Atlantis. Perhaps also some forms of technology would be inimical to magical creatures. The retreat of magic may be seen as resulting in an increasingly purely human world. Finally, shortly after the turn of 2000 A.D., the planet Earth is again bathed in this magical energy. The question for humanity (and for the representatives of traditional religions such as Christianity) would be to stand against this surge of the paranormal, weather the storm, and try to reassert a purely-human world. If the surge was indeed cyclical rather than open-ended, humanity would doubtless be able to increasingly reassert itself (as it might have done before).

Incidentally, the Shadowrun universe gives little information on how the traditional Earth religions reacted to this upsurge. One has the feeling that they would crumble utterly before such an invasion of the paranormal. Perhaps they would revive their sense of mission in fighting for the pure-human world. One indeed wonders if there have been suggestions for role playing clergy of traditional religions in the Shadowrun world. Obviously, clerical abilities would be much different from that represented in the magic system of Shadowrun, which is heavily derived from Native North American Indian forms. It should be pointed out that many persons, even in today’s world, are entirely convinced in the efficacy of prayer, holy water, images of the Virgin Mary, etc.

In the Middle Ages, it was considered that prayer alone could ward off various dread or impish creatures. Here then, could be the basis for a powerful counter magical movement in the Shadowrun world. Some might suggest that our own world today is one where man meets magic and machine. There is a burgeoning of the most fantastic occult tendencies today, combined with surreal advances in technology. Such imaginative products as Shadowrun both point to an increasingly dystopic world, as well as possibly assist in negotiating the parameters of such a future, under siege from both the hyper-irrational (the occult, conspiracy-theories, extreme forms of rock music) and the hyper-rational (hypertechnology, socio-technical controls, and bureaucratization).

London Sourcebook (1991) Writing: Carl Sargent and Marc Gascoigne (152 b&w pages, 12 full-color glossy pages, color front/back-cover). This is a superbly produced product (the glossy inserts in particular are amazing). (Incidentally, on some pages, the book is called The London/United Kingdom Sourcebook.) As in many of these cyberpunk worlds, the British Isles seem to have taken the brunt of the damage. Much of England and Scotland is covered by toxic waste areas. On the fringes in Wales and Scotland, magical forces have increasingly taken hold. Wales is a large Elven center, while Tir Nan Og (Ireland) is under the rule of the Shidhe (the elves).

There are at least four aspects of this sourcebook that could be seen as derived from certain longstanding aspects of the English character. First of all, the fact that the use of magic is tightly controlled and licensed. This parallels the fact that today and traditionally in Britain, guns are very tightly controlled. One remembers the line from Sting’s classic song, An Englishman in New York “takes more than a license to own a gun.”

Secondly, there is the Lord Protector (which seems to be an especially favored title in many sci-fi scenarios). One should be clear on this point - the term Lord Protector is not only too antique-sounding, it is invariably associated with Cromwell, who presided over the execution of Charles I and can therefore never in fact coexist with the monarchy, or with traditional aristocratic titles.

Thirdly, the British society is portrayed as one with all manner of class intricacies, and of various inter-class, inter-ethnic, and “interracial” (humanity and metahumanity) rivalries. Ironically, given the wrenching effects of hyper technology and the flux of magic, Britain has emerged here as seemingly more traditionalist than it is today. It must be said that the notion of young Elven aristocrats is a superb conceit, one perhaps that can be appreciated even more if one has had some actual contact with English notions.

Fourthly, in the fashion common among the British Left, the actual nature of the rule by privileged families (the historical condition of England for much of its history) is said to be far different than it appears on the surface. The authors of the supplement have taken great relish in revising the now-prevalent view of Elves in the conventions of fantasy, derived most obviously from Tolkien. In a sense, they are returning to a more traditional view of Elfin nature. (It is interesting that in many dictionaries, elf and goblin are listed as synonyms.) While the Shadowrun elves largely retain qualities of physical attractiveness, it is obvious that many of them are racists, and that (at the extreme) they are plotting genocide. In a not entirely resolved contradiction, the quasi-Masonic organization that is led by the English Druids is actually an advocate of pure-human chauvinism.

In the supplement, this new Freemasonry is seen as extremely powerful in Britain, far more powerful than the actual Freemasons would appear to be today. It has been argued that in Britain, as opposed to the Continent, Freemasonry has operated as a right-wing, conservative force. If the Elves are at least somewhat sinister, the picture of Orks and Trolls is also highly revisionist. The conventional view of these creatures in the fantasy genre is also derived heavily from Tolkien. In a rather striking twist on the familiar theme, while the Orks and Trolls physical appearance remains rather grotesque, they retain entirely normal intellectual and emotional traits (though perhaps being somewhat more prone to emotions). Thus, they almost invariably become an oppressed proletariat; others typically judge them by their appearance, not by their character and worth.

High Tech & Low Life: The Art of Shadowrun (1997) (120 pages, full-color, glossy, color front/backcover) Book Design by Jim Nelson and Joel Biske (Introduction by Werner Fuchs and Jim Nelson, pp. 4-5; “Black and White Gallery”, pp. 10-27; “Color Gallery”, pp. 28-117; Artist Biographies, pp. 118-119) This is a superbly rendered product, with an interesting written introduction, of obvious appeal to Shadowrun players, and sci-fi/fantasy fans in general. GURPS (Generic Univeral Roleplaying System) CYBERPUNK: High-Tech Low-Life Roleplaying Sourcebook (Austin, TX: Steve Jackson Games, 1990) by Loyd Blankenship (128 b&w pages; color front/backcover; glossary; bibliography - books and short stories, comic books and graphic novels, movies and television, magazines and electronic newsletters; index)

Despite the somewhat weaker graphics inside, this is in many ways a superlative product. (A prototype of the sourcebook and other Steve Jackson Games property was seized in 1990 by the U.S. Secret Service as part of an anti-hacker crackdown. Steve Jackson Games was eventually vindicated in court and gained a lot of publicity for its products. This raid was also one of the catalysts for the formation of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which defends online freedom of expression.)

The sourcebook benefits from its generic nature, it does not have to take place in one specified cyberpunk background. Thus, the sourcebook can experiment with various alternative concepts, and alternative to alternatives, e.g. Cross-Genre Cyberpunk, for example occult-horror, or comic-book superheroes, mixed with cyberpunk. In what is probably a typical Steve Jackson GURPS trait, large amounts of information are offered in comparatively short amounts of text, e.g., in one sidebar, Cyperpunk Soundtracks, there is a list of current music genres that can easily fit into the cyberpunk campaign. For example, New Age music is said to be evocative of floating through cyberspace.

The Politics section in World Design is outstanding, considering its shortness. Among its clever points is a quick evaluation of the type of future world in terms of how many sovereign powers there exist. The one-sovereignty model is a world-government with no competing sovereignties. There are presumably large international armed forces and any local rebellions are quickly stamped out.

The 10-sovereignty model presupposes regional blocs that could be in ferocious conflict with each other, or have minor conflicts among the blocs’ small client states.

The 100-sovereignty model (which resembles our own world) presupposes a number of larger states and a fair number of smaller entities.

The 1,000-sovereignty model could include megacorporations (such as Microsoft) as sovereign entities. It presupposes intense fragmentation of the world and suggests that once such a devolution take place, conflicts on the planet would probably become perennial, and it would be difficult to return to larger entities.

The booklet’s Glossary and Bibliography are nice touches. The sourcebook would in many ways be useful to persons interested in the cyberpunk subgenre as well as broader futurological-type endeavors. One of the most striking themes is the unnaturalism of the cyberpunk future, with all manner of mechanical and electronic interfaces and grotesque interpenetrations of man and machine, as well as the ever-accelerating dying out of Nature. Indeed, the booklet’s brief look at the future of ecological movements is fairly derisory, though this may not be surprising, given the dark premise.

The World of Tank Girl by Bill Olmesdahl and Brian Schomburg (Honesdale, PA: West End Games, 1995) (160 b&w pages; color front/backcover) Masterbook system (worldbook available separately, or sold in boxed edition with MasterBook, 2 MasterDecks, and 2d10. (Full-color image on front and back of worldbook is identical to that on the front and back of the box.)

Based on the 1995 movie (numerous stills from the movie are featured), this is an overwhelmingly parodic premise. One supposes that by the 1990s, cynicism had reached the extent where even apocalyptic situations were being played for laughs. Perhaps the real subtext of the setting is the desire to feel oneself free of any and all authority. Incidentally, the often Australian-based, combined theme of water-shortage and strong women occurs in, among other places, Charles Sheffield’s Trader’s World. However, Sheffield’s work was criticized for being in many ways a throwback to the 1950s, on the ethnocultural axis, as opposed to its decidedly more progressive attitudes in terms of the feminist axis.

Millenium’s End: GM’s Companion (Blacksburg, VA: Chameleon Eclectic Enterntainment - CEE, 1994) by Charles Ryan (144 b&w pages, Lingo, pp. 137-139, Appendix: In-Genre Film, pp. 140-143; color front/backcover). This is a superbly produced product in support of CEE’s Millennium’s End dark-tinged, near-future, technothriller roleplaying game. Millennium’s End is one of the leading technothriller RPGs.

Twilight: 2000 (GDW): Twilight: 2000 is the front-end of the GDW future-history, which now stands as twice-discredited in its near-future, in both the first and second variants. It was originally derived from the series of GDW board wargames depicting NATO vs. Soviet conflict, i.e., World War III. The premise was that, as the major powers increasingly battered themselves in a hopeless war (eventually involving nuclear, biological and chemical components), civilization in Europe itself began to significantly devolve. About the only remaining focus of authority were the remnants of military formations, using increasingly primitive equipment.

In such situations, a single tank, if it had a steady supply of fuel and ammo, could be decisive. Twilight: 2000 is a brutal, savage setting, where killing and fighting is continuous. One suspects that mostly historyless North Americans, who are actually the farthest from such a reality, derive the most vicarious pleasure from immersion in such a simulation. Persons who are more conscious of history are likely to be repelled by it.

White Eagle: The Fate of All Poland Hangs in the Balance (1990) Design: Loren K. Wiseman (48 b&w pages; color front/backcover) To begin with, the designer has a very superficial understanding of the Polish language, virtually all of the case endings are wrong, many common names of persons and places are misspelled (Wojiech for Wojciech, Wojsko Ludowa for Wojsko Ludowe, etc.) Despite an honest attempt to incorporate some aspects of the Polish spirit, the designer simply lacks the necessary historical background.

For example, Polish nationalist partisans would not name their formations after the discredited Communist-era People’s Army (Wojsko Ludowe); and their banners would have the crowned, not uncrowned White Eagle, and so forth. The premise of this near-future would be seen by many as highly offensive, without adding insult to injury by, in some very important respects, a perfunctory design effort.

Twilight: 2000, 2nd Edition East Europe Sourcebook (1994) Design: Craig Sheeley, Development: Loren Wiseman, (104 b&w pages; color front/ back cover; 17”x22” full-color map). The designers have again struck out on their description of Poland, particularly in the History section. Contrary to what the designer says, the German minority in Poland is very small today; one wonders what misleading sources were consulted. The History, even in the strictly historical part, borders on the ridiculous. Friction between Poland and Germany is a rather unlikely premise for the beginning of World War III; there are simply very few ethnic Germans in Poland, and Germany is today, it should be remembered, a thoroughly liberal, consumerist, and unmartial society.

The idea of Polish-Russian accommodation at the expense of, e.g., the Baltics, Byelorussia, and Ukraine is certainly unlikely. Poles obviously lack the ferocity to carry something like this through, whereas Russian chauvinists typically see Poland as an enemy. The most useful part of this sourcebook is probably the Vehicles section with very fine illustrations and stats.

Rendezvous in Krakow, Book One of the Vistula Epic (1995) Design: Loren K. Wiseman (48 b & w pages; color front/ backcover) Despite some spelling mistakes, this module emerges as the most competently done of the Twilight: 2000 material being reviewed here. The setting is less obviously gruesome than that typical of this game. The core of the setting is the Old Town of Krakow (with a map obviously copied from some tourist guide) which has stood since the Medieval period. This is actually a module where the body count might well remain in the single digits, apparently a rarity in this system.

Boardgames

Dark Horizon: Escape, An APE Game of Prisoner Agents vs. CorpsGuards in a Bleak Future (Magnolia TX; Advanced Primate Entertainment) 10 Future Warrior Grenadier miniatures; 5 full color floor tile sheets (45 pieces total); one sheet including 12 full-color pieces and stands; 24 Close Combat cards; 32 page rulebook; 10 UV-coated, erasable player forms; one sheet of 120 die-cut counters; one felt-tip pen; 4d6.

Game Design: Kevin Brusky Scale: Squares are 1.25” across, and represent about nine feet. Game turns are broken into a series of 15 one-second impulses. This means that four game turns make one minute of “real” time. This lavishly produced game is essentially rules for a man-to-man combat system (for no more than five combatants per side in any one general area) using the finely-crafted miniatures on the floor tile sheets, with various support sheets. The societal background (a corporate-run dystopia) appears to have been put in on a rather perfunctory basis. The main point of the game appears to be the slam-bang kind of action most often found in arcade-style computer games. The disjunction between the amount of effort put into the production of physical components, and that devoted to sketching out the background, is rather too jarring.

Cybernaut: The Duel for Cyberspace (One Small Step; Sacramento CA; 1966) Designer: Joe Miranda Appeared in Competitive Edge (formerly GameFix) no. 11 Printed, full-color cardstock sheet yielding 120 double-sided counters, requiring careful assembly; 11”x17” map; introductory essay; rules; “A Guide to NSA Strategy”.

One of the few cyberpunk board games available, Cybernaut is actually a twist on the conventions of the genre. It posits one world government called STATQUO. A small number of super hackers are challenging STATQUO’s NSA (Net Security Agency). The reappearance of German SS runes is highly gratuitous; typical one-worlders are more likely to have a dove or flower as their emblem, the better to mask their hidden agenda, some would say. In a rather sharp reversal of the subgenre conventions, this handful of individuals is said to be initiating the revolution that will topple STATQUO.

Joe Miranda should have either explained that these superhackers’ activities are simply a schematic for what is being repeated tens of millions of times over in that world (as the planetwide revolution against STATQUO begins), or have refocussed the game on the merely individual flourishing/survival of these superhackers. As currently posited, the situation has a highly naive optimism about the possibility of revolutions in a dystopian world, as well as a grossly overexaggerated inflation of the one, resisting, individual hacker. The message of cyberpunk appears much different: the individual is thrown into a rather inhuman technological system of which he or she understands little, on which he or she can have little impact, and where their personal flourishing/survival is the paramount question. Serious politics is dead.

Supremacy: The Game of the Superpowers (Buffalo NY; Supremacy Games; 3rd Ed. 1992; 1st Ed. 1984) Game Design Robert J. Simpson 30”x20” gameboard; 65 cards; six charts; 370 plastic playing pieces (armies, navies & mushroom clouds); 260 bills of game money; banker tray; rulebook; 4d6.

This game, in some ways a derivative of the simple, abstract conquer-the-world wargame Risk, would be a highly dystopian world, if one were to take it as a literal projection of the future. The main game, and its various supplements and extensions (of which there are too many to list here) is full of really savage weapons systems running the full NBC (Nuclear Biological Chemical) spectrum as well as space-based systems such as orbital laser satellites. It gives a whole new meaning to “victory at all costs.”

Many of these games end with the sprouting across the planet of nuclear mushroom clouds. Shattered States: The Game to Reunite the United States (Vienna VA; Engelmann Military Simulations; 1990) Designers: Karsten Engelmann and David Spencer. 22”x34” full-color map; 400 die-cut counters; 75 National Cards; 150 Foreign Cards (30 Canada, 30 Europe, 30 Mexico, 30 Japan, 30 Caribbean); 28 area cards; four player-aid sheets; Gold Points in various denominations (42x ‘1’; 22x ‘5’; 21x ‘10’); one 8-page rules booklet; 4d6.

The initial premise is that a nuclear explosion carried out by Arab terrorists in Washington DC takes out virtually the entire American political leadership, a theme also raised in a Tom Clancy novel. Clancy, among others, has pointed out the security dangers around the concentration of American political leadership during the State of the Union address. (Some might find it amusing that during one of Clinton’s addresses, the person who stayed at the White House was Donna Shalala.) However, some might well question if America would necessarily fracture in the face of such a decapitation.

A hugely critical issue would be whether this was an act of foreign or domestic-based terrorism (the former presumably far more likely). What might be expected is that some of kind of military government (with a few nominal civilians) would emerge, presumably to direct the massive retaliation against the country or group of countries that were implicated in such a Pearl Harbor. The situation would be seen as one of war time, and a whole plethora of security measures which today would be considered authoritarian or fascist might well become standard procedures for decades. In the case of domestic origins, whatever grouping was identified as the instigators could be expected to be remorselessly hunted down, with no quarter shown. So the net effect of such an attack might well be to highly conservatize and unify America, rather than to send it spiralling into separatist devolutions.

Indeed, such a savage strike from a foreign source might be seen as ultimately leading to the strengthening American society. A philosopher like Hegel would appreciate the dialectical irony of a vicious attack on America, actually resulting in the long-term strengthening of America. It may also be pointed out that today, Americans are often galvanized by their politicians in opposition to the terrorist threat, usually focussing on Islamic terrorists from abroad or the notorious right-wing militias at home.

The setting in Shattered States (were it to be taken seriously), is highly dystopic. Americans in different regions of the country have so little fellow-feeling for their former countrymen, that they are willing to use nuclear weapons against them. Separatist devolution scenarios in the United States, if they actually ever take place, are far more likely to occur along much different lines. They are more likely to be played out in terms of political, social, and economic conflicts. The use of military force, particularly of a high-intensity nature, would almost certainly not come into play. In many states of the Union, what many persons pejoritized as separatists or devolutionists desire, is simply what they believe to be the original intent of the truly federalist U.S. constitution, as against the current-day Federal Government behemoth. That so-called states’ rights has often been pejoritized as merely a defence of white Southern bigotry, should not allow one to avoid discussion of the issues of the proper balance of local, state, and federal government functions in the U.S.