Alternate Names - looking back at this blog.
The Name
The name for the blog comes from a novel called The Night Land by William Hope Hodgson. Written in 1912, it is an at times somewhat overwrought adventure tale, set up as the dream of a Victorian era gentleman dreaming of meeting his true love again in the very, very distant future.
It is arguably one of the earliest examples of the “dying Earth” genre that I am aware of, and for its weaknesses, it not only tells an interesting tale, but it also is full of haunting descriptions of this bleak, and frankly terrifying future, where humanity’s last redoubt is a massive pyramidal structure - what would later be called an arcology - that houses energy sources from deep within the earth, as well s factories, farms, and of course, what is left of humanity.
The world about is not a mere wasteland.
It is utterly dark. The sun is dead, the oceans are gone, what atmosphere exists lies only on what were once the deepest chasms that existed as the air bled off. Worse, are things, and spiritual threats. There are the watchers, massive beings, that slowly advance inches each year, year after year from many of the major compass points. There is the place where the silent ones kill, and the country whence comes the great laughter. Perhaps the creepiest, there is the house of silence.
Even if the earth, the universe, and humanity are to be extinguished in a final heat death, it nevertheless stands as a holdfast for preserving humanity and its’ culture.
And yeah, at the time I named my blog before coming to Substack, there was an element of that in 2016. Youtube and the major platforms were taking people offline for the wrong opinions, and we’ve yet to have the eventual pushback of the normies as the progressive weirdoes overextended themselves. So yes, a holdout, a place to try to preserve and present the truth insofar as I can. And I wanted to talk games too.
Did I justify it?
I think so. Part of my move to Substack was to spend less time discussing or replying about current events, and more time on games, and the philosophy underlying my worldview. Perhaps use recent events to elaborate on principles, but to minimize current-day bait.
While this last year especially has had more posts on current or recent events, and bluntly, I’ve not posted as much this last year - and thank you to each and every one of you who have subscribed - I think that even in those posts that weren’t related to wargames and were more culture/politically related, I was able to use them more as examples than simply ragebait about whatever the event was.
What would I call it Now?
While I wouldn’t change the name now, if I had to start now, there may be a more appropriate name to use: “Models of the World.” I think it fits both of my main themes - the models of the world involved in games and gaming - see my series covering both the Classic Traveller and Mongoose-Traveller based Cepheus rules - and the writing I do on everything else.
No model is perfect or complete. OK - maybe one is. what was that Stephen Wright gag? I’ve got a scale model of the united states… one inch equals one inch…..
In either case, no model is complete. But some are more useful or true than others. Even as I write here to clarify my own thoughts, I also hope I can clarify things for others as well.
Fascinating how The Night Land's arcology concept precedes so much modern post-apocalyptic fiction. The proposed rename to Models of the World actually captures somethign really elegant about both gaming and philosophy. Back in college we used to say models are like maps, fundamentaly incomplete but still invaluable for navigation.