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Jim Cambias

I am a writer, game designer, New Orleanian, cook, parent, and cat-slapper.

Recent Activity

Work In Progress: Corsair (Part 4)

Well, it's done. I beefed it up by nearly a third and sent it out to my agent. I hope it finds a home. One thing which expanding Corsair has allowed me to do is to give the minor characters more spotlight time. One of them -- Anne Rogers --... Continue reading

Posted Jun 8, 2013 at Just The Caffeine Talking

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Movies I Want (Part 1)

Science fiction has won the battle. Until the 1980s, big-budget science fiction films were few and far between. Now SF movies make up a significant fraction of the movies released by Hollywood. It's a safe, dependable genre, like romantic comedies or thrillers. Legions of effects creators, makeup artists, and prop... Continue reading

Posted Jun 5, 2013 at Just The Caffeine Talking

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A Message To Rock Musicians Everywhere

I have a particular handicap: I listen to song lyrics. Now, don't get me wrong -- I'm not one of those people who thinks long and hard about the profound and secret meaning of song lyrics. (No, Charles, I don't think that's what "Helter Skelter" is supposed to be about.)... Continue reading

Posted Jun 3, 2013 at Just The Caffeine Talking

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Top Three Cartoon Moments

I've been a fan of the classic Warner Brothers Looney Toons cartoons since I was about six years old, sitting in front of the old black and white television on Saturday mornings. There are plenty of people who have compiled lists of the greatest cartoons, but this is a little... Continue reading

Posted May 23, 2013 at Just The Caffeine Talking

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I don't want to get into the habit of acting like a poor man's Roger Ebert and reviewing every movie I see. I'm not a moviemaker, I'm not a particularly representative moviegoer, and my eyes start to glaze over when I see the word "cinema." But I do want to... Continue reading

Posted May 6, 2013 at Just The Caffeine Talking

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Work In Progress: Corsair (Part 3)

In my previous posts about Corsair, I mentioned that I have to expand my first draft to make it a proper book-sized book. Doing that revealed a structural problem. The original short story "The Barbary Shore" had extensive flashback sections, since it was simultaneously about Captain Santiago of Orbital Command... Continue reading

Posted Apr 22, 2013 at Just The Caffeine Talking

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Battleship (Part 3): Aliens

I write science fiction. A lot of my stories have alien beings in them. I like to think I'm pretty good at creating aliens and alien civilizations. Which is why I am developing an irresistible urge to drive out to California and shout at every screenwriter who has used aliens... Continue reading

Posted Apr 17, 2013 at Just The Caffeine Talking

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Battleship (Part 2): What Could Have Been

I'm going to continue posting my reactions to watching the movie Battleship. Today I want to talk about a startling thought I had when it ended: It could have been a good movie. In fact, I have a strong suspicion that it began as a much better movie than it... Continue reading

Posted Apr 11, 2013 at Just The Caffeine Talking

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Battleship (Part 1): Not Stupid Enough

My family recently rented the awful big-budget action movie Battleship, which of course was based on the board game. I learned a great deal from watching Battleship, mostly about things that I don't like. Today I'll talk about the first thing that bugged me: stupidity. Battleship was stupid -- in... Continue reading

Posted Apr 9, 2013 at Just The Caffeine Talking

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Getting Rid of Books

This week my wife and I tackled the hardest task for any family of readers: getting rid of books. Our house has about 200 feet of shelves, some of them packed two layers deep with books. We also have stacks of books in the office and the bedroom waiting to... Continue reading

Posted Apr 5, 2013 at Just The Caffeine Talking

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Movie Review (sort of): Forbidden Planet

Last Sunday the Crack Team went to see a showing of the science fiction classic Forbidden Planet at Popcorn Noir in Easthampton. I had never seen it on a big screen, and it's definitely better than watching it on television. I'm not actually going to write a review. It's a... Continue reading

Posted Apr 1, 2013 at Just The Caffeine Talking

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Spelling Bee After-Action Report

My talented wife Diane and I were recruited by a friend to join her team in the Northampton Education Foundation's annual spelling bee. We agreed, so last night the three of us turned up in yellow sweaters to battle the other teams. Funds were raised, somehow. When we agreed to... Continue reading

Posted Mar 28, 2013 at Just The Caffeine Talking

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Why Comedians Aren't Funny

Lately I've been watching a lot of standup comedy bits on YouTube, and as a result my thoughts drifted to the question of why so few comedians are able to make the jump to film. I'm sure we all know about the Saturday Night Live curse -- where movies starring... Continue reading

Posted Mar 26, 2013 at Just The Caffeine Talking

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Ozblogging: Oz the Great and Powerful Review

I saw Oz: The Great and Powerful earlier this week with my wife and my 10-year-old son. He liked it a lot, we . . . liked it less than he did. Oz: The Great and Powerful isn't a bad movie. It's a perfectly fun children's movie that adults can... Continue reading

Posted Mar 21, 2013 at Just The Caffeine Talking

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I do most of my writing in coffeeshops. Fortunately, I live in an area with a good assortment of places. In Greenfield I can go to Greenfield Coffee, which is a dedicated coffeehouse so I don't have to feel guilty about occupying a table during lunchtime. The chief drawback is... Continue reading

Posted Mar 18, 2013 at Just The Caffeine Talking

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Ozblogging: The Patchwork Girl of Oz, Part 5

Beyond the Tottenhot village the team enters some rocky mountains, and immediately start seeing warning signs: "LOOK OUT FOR YOOP" and "BEWARE THE CAPTIVE YOOP." Eventually they come to a huge cage carved into a cliff, in which is imprisoned the ferocious giant Mr. Yoop. Yoop is fierce and hungry,... Continue reading

Posted Mar 13, 2013 at Just The Caffeine Talking

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Ozblogging: The Patchwork Girl of Oz, Part 4

Our heroes have a couple of random encounters on their way out of Munchkin country -- a weird spacetime distortion, a giant porcupine, and an illusionary wall -- but with the help of the Shaggy Man they get past all of them. As in Road to Oz, these sequences strongly... Continue reading

Posted Mar 11, 2013 at Just The Caffeine Talking

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Ozblogging: The Patchwork Girl of Oz, Part 3

We have a chapter of blatant filler in which the travelers seek advice from a Foolish Owl and a Wise Donkey. The Wise Donkey is apparently an immigrant from one of Baum's other books, and provides the opportunity for some wordplay while the Owl recites nonsense verse. I haven't seen... Continue reading

Posted Mar 8, 2013 at Just The Caffeine Talking

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Ozblogging: The Patchwork Girl of Oz, Part 2

The three heroic questers set off searching for the plot coupons, and discover a problem which the Crooked Magician really should have thought of: none of them has the faintest idea where they're going. Ojo has lived his entire life in a remote cabin in the woods with a man... Continue reading

Posted Mar 6, 2013 at Just The Caffeine Talking

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Ozblogging: The Patchwork Girl of Oz, Part 1

At the end of his previous novel, The Emerald City of Oz, L. Frank Baum brought the series to what he thought was its end. Threatened by the possibility of discovery by aeronauts, the kingdom of Oz had been cut off from the rest of the world by a powerful... Continue reading

Posted Mar 4, 2013 at Just The Caffeine Talking

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Gamemaster Appeal

There are any number of books and Web sites providing aspiring roleplaying game referees with hints on how to make a campaign appealing to players. The best is probably Robin's Laws, even though the author had to overcome being Canadian. But just recently I was jotting down some ideas for... Continue reading

Posted Feb 28, 2013 at Just The Caffeine Talking

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Five Stories That Changed Everything: My Picks

A bit more than a week ago I drove to Boston in order to attend the venerable Boskone convention, which celebrated its 50th anniversary this year. As always, I spent a lot of my time either being on panels discussing things, or watching other people on panels discussing things. This... Continue reading

Posted Feb 25, 2013 at Just The Caffeine Talking

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Boskone 50, Featuring ME!

This coming weekend I'm heading back to the idyllic Westin Waterfront Hotel in Boston for the second of New England's two big wintertime science fiction conventions, Boskone. Here's my schedule: Friday, 9 p.m.: "The Monster in the Maze" -- I get to moderate a high powered panel (Darrell Schweitzer, Paul... Continue reading

Posted Feb 11, 2013 at Just The Caffeine Talking

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Sweringen and Spaceships

This past Thanksgiving I ventured to southern Maryland for a big family dinner. My host happened to live just up the road from St. Mary's City, the site of Maryland's first colonial capital. It's a very interesting site: there are reconstructions of some of the original buildings and some excellent... Continue reading

Posted Feb 5, 2013 at Just The Caffeine Talking

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Work In Progress: Corsair (Part 2)

As I mentioned previously, Corsair had its origin in a short story for a pirate-themed anthology. So when I began to expand it into a novel, one of my guiding principles was that it had to remain a pirate story -- even though it's about a nerdish spacecraft hijacker 17... Continue reading

Posted Jan 31, 2013 at Just The Caffeine Talking

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