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"Maybe I am being influenced by some subliminal power from the stars..."
–William Sleator, describing his writing process
Great artists tap into the dark forces of the collective unconscious. There's a reason certain paintings and films and novels remain classics long after their authors have vanished from existence. Great art uncovers facets of what it means to be human, and some art even dares to explore the deepest mystical question of them all-- that of humanity's place in the cosmos.
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| H.P. Lovecraft - francescofrancavilla.com |
The Piggy
You may have missed out on reading William Sleator's young adult novels... even if your fingertips grazed the spines, they probably landed on a book by R.L. Stine, one of his (more than a hundred!)
Goosebumps stories. But if you were like me, you somehow found William Sleator. His books deal with real issues, particularly family dynamics, but wrapped in the guise of generic sci-fi.
House of Stairs (1974)
deals with five children (one of whom has sexual identity issues) who have been trapped in a social experiment in a dystopian future. A primary theme is authority, and its many forms.
Singularity (1985) deals with a twin facing an identity crisis, and his struggle to self-actualize. (Of course, there's also a portal to another dimension.) Finally,
Interstellar Pig (1984)... which also deals with family dynamics, a teen coming of age, and extraterrestrials vying for a... piggy. It's one of my all-time favorite books, something that has shaped my view of the world. Here's a picture I drew at age 11:
It's now 20 years later, and I still think about that book's themes a lot. It's a book about the unknown and Mankind's ultimate fate, and the fears and questions that come when a 16 year old begins to come to terms with all that.
The plot of the book is about a kid named Barney who meets some good looking and exciting adults who dote on him and give him some much-desired attention. They are obsessed with a board game called Interstellar Pig, and Barney gets drawn into the game. The game is described in quite a bit of detail. In 2005 I became friends with
Interstellar Pig's author Bill (or Billy, as he insisted I call him), and he told me a lot about the book's origins. For example, the first version of the book had no board game at all, until his editor Ann Durell suggested that the characters play a board game that explains the complex mythology that justifies the book's strange plot. Briefly, a bunch of characters are looking for a "piggy" -- an alien that will hiccup and destroy the world, but he'll take kindly on the person that posseses him. The game within the book depicts this struggle, and the struggle eventually breaks out of the game board,
Jumaji-like, into reality.
Sleator based his game-within-the-book partly off of
the game Cosmic Encounter, which was only a few years old at the time he was writing
Interstellar Pig in 1983. I am quite sure Sleator never actually played Cosmic Encounter since he seemed unfamiliar with the game when I asked him about it. Ann Durell told me in 2011 that Bill was more inspired by the
idea of the game (rival aliens of various powers facing off) than that game specifically. Bill conceived
Interstellar Pig on a beach near Cape Cod. Coincidentally, I have since met (thank you internet!) both Peter Olotka and Bill Eberle, the two original creators of Cosmic Encounter. Bill Eberle told me that Cosmic was also conceived on a beach near Cape Cod. Maybe there's something in the water.
The "thing" that everyone wants
There is a long history of the "everyone wants the same thing" plot device in fiction.
The Maltese Falcon, the briefcase in
Pulp Fiction, Ronin, and the papers in
Casablanca. Hitchcock apparently called this the "macguffin" and used the device so often there are websites devoted to his use of it:
http://borgus.com/hitch/macguffins.htm
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| The Maltese Falcon |
As a science fiction fan, some of my favorite examples include Robert A. Heinlein's story "--We Also Walk Dogs" (about a beautiful piece of art that inspires greatness in people) and Harlan Ellison's story "Grail" which is about an artifact that somehow instills its owner with a comprehension of True Love. (Or something like that!) I love the story because the protagonist makes use of special skills, including the summoning of a demon who has the power to break locks. Sounds like a really cool board game, actually....
So
Interstellar Pig is about a kid who
finds the macguffin. He is offered eternal life, great wisdom, beauty, etc. by the other characters, but knows that what he possesses is the ultimate prize. And he faces up to his dangerous rivals as a man. (And after his parent's beach house is destroyed in the ensuing struggle, he cleans up like a man!)
Chaosmos
So in 1993, at age 11, I made a board game based on the book, and when it was done my brother and I sent it to Bill, and he loved it and told us we should get it published. Bill and I became friends, and we shared ideas for science fiction movies and stories. And then he died unexpectedly in 2011. I was crushed. We had plans to make a movie together, and (I think!) I'm the inspiration for the character named Joey in his final book, The Phantom Limb.
In the year after Bill's death, I kept thinking of ways that early game could have been better. Amazingly, I've since found at least TEN people over the internet who have made, or attempted to make, versions of an Interstellar Pig board game. There are probably more of us out there, others who love that book and were inspired by it. Each prototype is actually very different; Bill never actually designed a playable game for his book, so the game in the book didn't really work.
So I started on a brand new space-themed game
, Chaosmos. Instead of a rudimentary roll-and-move mechanic, it has an action-point-allowance system. There's no player elimination. I used to make board games, and published Macintosh computer games with my friend William Tombs, so I invited him to design a mythos and a history and it sprouted into something that is really personal and powerful to me. My brother Danny moved to Los Angeles to work on the game with me. Designing our own universe is very freeing because it allows us to include elements that are deeply personal. I love the concept of treasure hunting and deception. Chaosmos retains that spark that inspires me from my favorite science fiction books–that mystical element that beckons me–and then eludes me. The game seems to "create its own mysteries," to borrow a phrase from Peter Olotka (describing his own game Cosmic Encounter).
Chaosmos... it's a word that hopefully suggests the weight of the subject-matter it addresses. The universe
is chaos on a micro level, but there's order that springs out of chaos, and life itself (as chaotic as it is) is order. And this order will eventually return to chaos. And we seek methods to control chaos. Chaosmos is a heavily thematic board game designed to be an extremely interactive experience–a
narrative game that encourages deception and leads to moments that reveal a lot about the players who are playing it. You aren't playing the
game system so much as interacting with the other players and trying to outguess them and adapt faster to each other's strategies.
So now Chaosmos is done, and even though it's different from
Interstellar Pig, I plan on dedicating the game to my friend.... Billy, I hope you have not just vanished; I like to believe you have become part of the voice of collective unconscious that calls out to artists from somewhere in the stars.
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| William Warner Sleator III (1945-2011) |
-Joey
