Infested Valerian: Another Idea for How I Would Do SC2 (SPOILERS)

Here's another idea I had pursuant to how I thought StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm should have gone. In a discussion on my message-board, the user whose handle is yorel said that Arcturus Mengsk would not deliberately kill Valerian. If Valerian were sent in to negotiate Arcturus's surrender, he might imprison him or use him in some kind of scheme (like sending him back with Nova and other Ghosts on his tail). I went and edited my post accordingly just to have Valerian die, possibly by accident, so the Terran Dominion would splinter into civil war and much of it would follow Arcturus into service of the undead Xel'Naga Amon, the Dark Voice.

Valerian doesn't have to die, but he could be mortally wounded and to save his life require Sarah Kerrigan to infest him. Since in my scenario involves Mengsk fleeing to the Dark Voice with the Xel'Naga artifact as a potential genocide weapon against both the Zerg and Protoss, this can't be undone once Valerian has physically recovers.

Now any attempt to set up Valerian as the new emperor of the Terran Dominion is going to kick off a civil war. Not only are Raynor and Valerian blatantly in cahoots with the Zerg, but now Valerian is for all intents and purposes a Zerg himself. Even if Kerrigan's infestation preserves his mental independence, people will think he's under her control. And Kerrigan is the Dominion's public enemy number one. Rather than a revolt against a tyrant, it's become the Zerg taking over the Dominion. However, Raynor has enough following that there are many people who would side with him, especially since he revealed that Mengsk Sr. was responsible for the Zerg obliteration of Tarsonis.

However, this leaves Valerian alive rather than killing him off. Although he appears in other Starcraft media, Starcraft 2 ( in particular, Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty) is his first game appearance. He's too important to bring him in briefly and then kill him, as ends up happening to General Horace Warfield. It could also sow conflict for Arcturus in the upcoming Protoss story Starcraft 2: Legacy of the Void--if he realizes his son is still alive and infested, he might be tempted to use the Xel'Naga artifact to de-infest him rather than whatever the Dark Voice wants him to do with it.

How I Would Have Done "Heart of the Swarm" (SPOILERS)

Something I've come to believe over the years is that it's easy to criticize, but more difficult to suggest viable alternatives. My last post was a critique of StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm; this post will be how I would have handled the storyline if I were writing it.

(For the record, all I know about the story comes from cinematics and TVTropes. All errors are my own.)

*The beginning of the campaign is awesome as it is. The TVTropes "Funny" page references a couple really amusing exchanges between Jim Raynor and Sarah Kerrigan (one pertaining to zerglings and the other to their different types of hair) that are really clever. And Arcturus Mengsk attacking the Hyperion even when Matt Horner has broadcast that his son is aboard does a good job showing just how vindictive Daddy Mengsk is--Valerian says, "My father will take any piece off the chessboard to get the queen" or something to that effect.  And when Kerrigan thinks Raynor is dead, that and its consequences are well-done.

My only beef is that everyone on the bridge seems too relaxed when Kerrigan rumbles in during the escape from the Umojan facility. The core of Raynor's Raiders were people who deserted Mengsk over Kerrigan's betrayal in the first game, but she's been the terrible overlord of the Zerg for the last five years, the Zerg they'd fought in a battle from hell only a few weeks ago (I don't know the length of time the novel StarCraft II: Flashpoint covers between Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty and Heart of the Swarm). I would expect some more mistrust, especially given how in Flashpoint, Kerrigan accidentally killed one of the Raiders while fighting the Dominion.

*However, I would have avoided the return to Zerus, the whole goofy "Primal Zerg" story, and Kerrigan voluntarily re-infesting herself. Given how Zeratul had returned to Aiur at some point prior to Wings of Liberty and communed with the shade of Tassadar near the Overmind's corpse, it would be better if he had told Kerrigan she had to go to Aiur to find out what she needs to know to face the Dark Voice, the undead Xel'Naga Amon. That'd also set up a fight with the Protoss, returning en masse to reclaim their Zerg-ravaged homeworld. They could assume Kerrigan is there to reinforce the Zerg occupation forces or simply refuse to believe that she's there with Zeratul's blessing and try to kill her to avenge Aldaris and Raszagal from Brood War. If there's some need to remove the "taint" of the Dark Voice from Kerrigan herself (dubious as other than the hair she's not Zerg anymore and could control the Zerg even as a full human in the back-story), this could be done via some psychic thing with the dead Overmind and the ghostly Tassadar rather than reinfestation.

*The confrontation with Samir Duran can come as it did in the game. That was fun. How Kerrigan could win it without being reinfested (she ultimately used her extra Zerg limbs to kill Duran even after he had impaled her on some kind of energy blade) I'm not sure. If she's not reinfested, Duran can't momentarily shock her by shifting into her human form, so perhaps he can simply use the fact he's got thousands of years of combat experience (and non-"Primal" Kerrigan isn't as powerful) to knock her around for a bit before she manages to turn the tables.

*The rescue of Raynor from the prison and the war with the Dominion can go roughly the same as before. Raynor will not abandon her because she hasn't voluntarily re-infested, but if the "Zerg only" dynamic needs to be preserved, maybe the Raiders (and Valerian) mount a big diversionary attack somewhere else, allowing for Kerrigan to destroy the hybrid-creation facilities and march on Korhal. This is where we could work in my idea from a couple years back about Kerrigan finding Raynor's son in the Dominion Ghost program. Or, if the Ghost Academy doesn't get destroyed, maybe she finds him being used in the hybrid-creation program somehow. He is a psychic, after all.

*Like in the game, everyone comes together for the final assault on Korhal. Maybe the remnants of the UED expeditionary force can join with the Raiders for the human part of the attack, acknowledging the UED's remaining presence in the sector. And since how some of the Zerg campaign missions mirror Terran missions from Wings of Liberty (according to what I've read), Mengsk's recapture of the Xel'Naga artifact allows for a reversed version of the last Terran missions from Wings of Liberty. The artifact could be used to blunt individual Zerg attacks or used to wipe out massive numbers of Zerg a la the end of Wings of Liberty, forcing the human troops to bear more of the burden.

Given how much of Kerrigan's "I'm not a monster anymore" comes from her desire to avoid civilian deaths even if it puts her at a military disadvantage, maybe they send Valerian to negotiate Arcturus's surrender rather than face an extended bloodbath on Korhal. They might think him being the Dominion heir will mean something to the old man, or Valerian himself might volunteer out of some sense of duty. Instead Arcturus takes Valerian hostage to try to force Raynor and Kerrigan to surrender or something like that. Raynor and Kerrigan try to stage a commando mission (maybe just the two of them, like at the beginning of the game) to rescue Valerian and it all goes south. Valerian is killed (perhaps by accident) and Arcturus flees with his most psychotic loyalists to the Dark Voice, perhaps thinking that he'll be able to take Duran's place as the Dark Voice's Antichrist.

Although the later stages of the campaign are more hopeful and sunny than canon (no reinfestation and breach with Raynor), it all goes to hell at the end. Valerian would have represented a chance to hold the Terran Dominion together after Mengsk's overthrow--now there's only Raynor, a known collaborator with two different species of aliens, and Kerrigan, who most of human space views as a monster. And thanks to Kerrigan mistakenly thinking Raynor was dead, there's no respected General Horace Warfield to back them up.

Although the Dark Voice will not be able to use the Zerg to exterminate the Terrans and Protoss like in Zeratul's vision, instead human space will be disunited and at least parts of the splintered Dominion might be willing to ally with the Dark Voice instead of a pair of (to them) species-traitors. And with Mengsk taking the Xel'Naga artifact to the Dark Voice, the enemy now has a potential weapon of genocide against both the Zerg and apparently the Protoss.

(Got to give credit where it's due. The idea that Mengsk might ally with the Dark Voice and the Terrans would be "meat shields" for the hybrids instead of the Zerg during the coming uber-war might have come from someone else on Battle.net discussions.)

Thoughts on "Heart of the Swarm" (MAJOR SPOILERS)

As you all know, I'm a big fan of the computer game StarCraft. I bought the original game when it came out when I was in middle school, I've read some of the novels set in that universe, and although the computer I had at the time couldn't handle it, I at least took a stab at Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty.

I plotted out a novel I could pitch to Blizzard that would take place between Wings of Liberty and StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm, a novel that would have stood in the place of StarCraft II: Flashpoint. Although gameplay is always fun, my major interest has been in the storyline. It was for that reason that last night, before the game even came out, I watched the uploaded cinematics on YouTube.

So how does Heart of the Swarm come out story-wise? Well...

*They didn't kill off Jim Raynor, which would have a major downer. Instead they let Sarah Kerrigan think he was killed, which certainly pushed her in a very dark direction for awhile. That scene was well-done. Flashpoint began with Raynor abandoning his longtime friend Tychus Findlay on Char after shooting him to protect an de-infested and semi-catatonic Kerrigan and I was afraid some infested undead Tychus would show up and kill Raynor. Earlier SC material had UED commander Alexei Stukov, who was killed in battle, infested by the Zerg, and later de-infested, so there's precedent. If Tychus didn't immediately die from Raynor's bullet, it would have been even easier to have him returning "from the dead," since the Zerg could have prevented him from dying in the first place. Unfortunately this meant the death of Horace Warfield, who didn't really deserve it.

*I liked the second round between Kerrigan and Zeratul. The timing of Zeratul grabbing her by the face and mind-melding with her was actually quite funny.

*However, I didn't like the idea of "primal Zerg" on the Zerg homeworld of Zerus and how they were especially adaptable. The Zerg have always been especially adaptable. There was no need to have the return to Zerus in the first place, especially since the Zerg left it hundreds if not thousands of years before and it's likely EXTREMELY far away. Plus any Zerg left behind would probably be second-stringers the Overmind figured wouldn't be that useful for its campaigns of conquest and assimilation across the galaxy. Kerrigan could simply sail around looking for new life-forms to incorporate into the Swarm, have a protracted war with the Dominion or Protoss who don't buy Zeratul's theory that she's needed to save the universe, or go to Aiur to commune with the dead Overmind and the shade of Tassadar to learn more about the Dark Voice, the "real enemy."

*And the "primal Zerg" thing ties into her voluntarily being reinfested, in order to better control the "primal Zerg." Although this was hinted at from very early on (how she was building her powers "through mutations"), there's tinkering with your DNA to be faster or stronger or have retractable claws or something and there's turning yourself back into the monster that killed millions if not billions of people, including your boyfriend's Protoss battle-buddy Fenix. I did like the confrontation between Raynor and re-infested Kerrigan though, in which long-forgotten Fenix is finally brought up.

*Samir Duran is dealt with. That fight was a fun one, especially when Duran confronts her in the guise of Raynor. Yikes. We also learned who or what the Dark Voice actually is--apparently it's an undead Xel'Naga. The idea that the Zerg had not completely wiped out the Xel'Naga and they'd be back for revenge was circulating in the fan community as early as Wings of Liberty and possibly as early as the Zeratul bonus mission in Brood War in which he learns Duran is creating Protoss-Zerg hybrids.

*The ending. That SOB Arcturus Mengsk gets what he deserves at long last, although I was hoping he'd bug off with the hybrids he and Duran had created in the face of a coup by his two bitterest enemies and his own son in hopes of immortality, supernatural powers, etc. from the Dark Voice. That way he can stay a dangerous threat to the Dominion, our heroes, etc. well into Legacy of the Void. Power-mad near-psychopath (or full psychopath) that he is, that'd be in-character. And the big difference from the leaked trailer from over a year ago and the canonical ending is that Mengsk had the Xel'Naga artifact that de-infested Kerrigan in the first place, something that Raynor and friends have now. That's actually a "Hope Spot" in TVTropes terms, since it allows for her to get de-infested again later on. Raynor and Kerrigan's last conversation is also rather touching.

(Yes, as far as Raynor and Kerrigan are concerned, I'm a hopeless romantic. Sue me.)

*It looks like they didn't go with the idea I had where Kerrigan liberates the Ghost Academy and finds Johnny Raynor, Raynor's son from his first marriage who was strongly implied to be taken by the Ghost program during the days of the Confederacy. Darn--that could have been used to create some additional depth and flesh out Raynor's back-story some more. I posted the idea on Blizzard discussion forum (here and possibly other places) and some people actually really liked the idea. However, I remember reading somewhere that companies are very careful with ideas they find online for fear of getting sued. And apparently one can only join Blizzard's creative team if someone dies or retires, so good luck with me getting hired.

*Kerrigan's last speech as the Zerg leave Korhal sets the stage for the next game. Having learned from Duran who the "real enemy" is, she's going to fight him (it?) with the full might of the Zerg. Since the last part of SC2 is the Protoss campaign, I'm assuming the player will be fighting alongside her against the Dark Voice in the last game. And scuttlebutt is we'll see Raynor again...

New "StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm" Trailer: "Vengeance"

This afternoon, a new trailer for StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm went online. For your convenience, I'm posting it here:



Jeez, this one looks dark. Among other things, it strongly implies that over the course of the game, Sarah Kerrigan will turn herself back into the Queen of Blades, this time of her own free will. No wonder Jim Raynor sounds upset. There's also a scene where it looks like the Terran Dominion has Raynor's Raiders in a bad spot.

Hopefully the trailer is cut to make things look worse than they are to get attention, but I think there's a pattern than the middle campaign in a trilogy is darker than the rest. In the original StarCraft, for example, the Zerg Swarm invested the Protoss homeworld of Aiur and the Overmind physically nested on its surface, while in WarCraft III: Reign of Chaos, the Undead overran most of the known world and physically summoned the Burning Legion.

We'll have to see...

"Heart of the Swarm" Opening Cinematic

Got on Facebook a bit earlier than usual this morning and this is what I found. The opening cinematic for Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm in all its glory.



We see just how terrifying and destructive a Zerg assault on a human world can be. We also see just how large the Terran battle-cruisers actually are. Based on their depiction in-game, I didn't think they'd be that big.

Enjoy!

A Sneak Preview of a Post To Come...

Sometime in the next few days, I'm going to post the short synopsis of my abortive Starcraft novel, the one that would have filled the gap between Wings of Liberty and Heart of the Swarm. The short synopsis, since the long synopsis would be rather, well, long.

Maybe I'll post the long synopsis as well, but it wouldn't be text on the page due to its length. Instead, it would probably be a PDF one could link to. I'll need to figure out how to do that though.

There might be a sequel post where I compare and contrast my vision for the "bridge" between the two stories and that of Christie Golden, whose novel StarCraft II: Flashpoint played the same role my story would have.

Book Review: "Starcraft 2: Flashpoint" (Spoiler-Free)

Found out the other day that a new novel StarCraft II: Flashpoint by Christie Golden had come out. It serves as a bridge between the end of Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty and StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm, the latter of which is slated for release in March 2013.

Given how I had prepared to pitch a similar novel concept to Blizzard, it got my attention and so I bought a copy while getting some birthday presents for friends. Here's my review...

I read the whole thing in perhaps two or three hours. It's certainly a quick and entertaining read. Even though I'd accidentally spoiled myself massively (I found out most of what happened from the Starcraft Wiki's article on Sarah Kerrigan, which I was posting into my message-board for a dicussion), it was still a pretty good book. And the Wiki article didn't include some surprising plot twists.

We get to know Valerian Mengsk rather well throughout the story. It's good they didn't simply make him Arcturus Mengsk 2.0. It's also good that they don't make him a prissy wimp either. Although he's a prince of the Terran Dominion, his upbringing was anything but coddling.

The book has some very good descriptive language. I had gotten six pages in and found the following description of a hydralisk:

"A maglev train-wreck combination of insects with scythelike arms, snake bodies, teeth that never ended, and neosteel-penetrating spines they fired from their backs."

There's also some amusing bits, including one flashback depicting Jim Raynor constantly thinking his lieutenant Matt Horner's name is actually Jack and another to Raynor and Kerrigan going to a honky-tonk on an actual date. Sarah Kerrigan, one of the most dangerous women in existence even before being turned into a scary bug queen with dreads, in a dress. On a date. Take that in for a moment. There's also a scene where Raynor and friends are on a crippled dropship heading for his flagship and all they can do is see if the Hyperion maneuvers in such a way to "catch" them in its hangar. Or else they die. Raynor's reaction to the whole situation is amusing.

Also, although some people have complained about the ending of Wings of Liberty reducing one of the most iconic female video game characters into a damsel in distress needing rescuing by Raynor (which it really doesn't), that complaint is answered massively by what happens when Kerrigan gets her groove back. Do not threaten Raynor. Ever.


That being said, the novel wasn't perfect. For starters, the cover is rather misleading. It depicts Raynor and Kerrigan fighting together on the battlefield, with Kerrigan having her normal human red hair. Since this is supposed to be set after the events of Wings of Liberty, they should have depicted her with that funky Zerg hair that somehow survived the deployment of the Xel'Naga artifact that obliterated the primary hive cluster. It would have certainly gotten attention. To be fair, the book does contain some flashbacks to the two of them fighting together against the Confederacy, but that's not the bulk of the story and the cover should have reflected this.


Also, a character is revealed to be a traitor, but there's no foreshadowing. It would have been better if we'd gotten an early POV from him that shows him resenting Raynor for not paying the crew, resenting him for risking all their lives to rescue his old girlfriend (who in the state she was in didn't want to be rescued), etc.

Overall, it's a fun way to spend an evening and get up to speed for Heart of the Swarm. I'd recommend waiting for the paperback, but the paperback won't be out until after the game. 8.5 out of 10.

My Top Traffic Sources and Lessons Thereof

Was checking the stats on my blog this morning and took a look at the top traffic sources since the blog began in 2010.

My single biggest source was www.alternatehistory.com, with 5,379 hits. Meanwhile, alternatehistory.com has 753 hits. Given how my blog has 60,000 hits total, this represents around 10% of my total traffic. Also, I've noticed my blog traffic has gone down during the recent months I've had myself blocked from posting on the message-board to avoid being distracted from my personal writing. This indicates my strategy of putting blog links in the signature of every post I make has been a successful traffic draw.

(For the record, this is the alternate-history forum I often mention in conversation.)

Meanwhile, google.com has brought in 5,043 hits, with google.co.uk bringing in 437, google.ca 408, and google.au 169. That's combined around 6,000 hits, another 10% of my traffic total. This shows the power of the Google search engine and possibly why putting one's blog on Blogger (which is part of Google) is a good idea.

Facebook brought in 1,496 hits. I typically post blog links on my profile page and on my Facebook fan page Matthew W. Quinn, Speculative Fiction Writer. Although this doesn't seem to have been the hit-getter I thought it was, I do recall getting a lot of hits on my recent post on why I'm voting Libertarian this year. I'm going to keep this strategy up.

A surprisingly large source of hits was the Starcraft Wikia, with 1,302 hits. Here's how it happened. In the summer of 2011, I bought some Facebook advertising (I can't remember how much) and after some trial and error, decided to narrowly target it to a certain few things. One of those things was Starcraft, since I had been blogging a fair bit about Starcraft II, a tie-in novel I outlined and planned to propose to Blizzard, and some suggestions I had for the future of the Starcraft storyline. Some of these links ended up in the Starcraft Wikia and have been bearing fruit since. Lesson: Facebook advertising is good, as is narrowly targeting it. I considered buying some Facebook advertising for my two short stories available on Amazon.com, but I'd need to move some very large numbers in order to break even (for $50 worth of advertising, I'd need to sell 150 copies).

Last of these outside traffic sources is Wikipedia, with 158 hits. After DragonCon one year (I can't remember if it was 2011 or 2010), I put some links to my DragonCon blog posts there, in particular those relating to S.M. Stirling and his Draka, Island in the Sea of Time, and Emberverse novels. I think one of the links got purged, but others are still there.

Finally, last of all traffic sources period is the blog itself, with 149 hits. This seems to indicate that visitors to the blog visit one page or another but don't go from page to page very often.

One of the sources not listed at all was my personal Twitter feed. I have definitely gotten blog hits from tweeting my blog posts (t.co being the source listed), but it doesn't seem like I've gotten very many. I also haven't been getting many blog hits from guest blog posts. However, I haven't done very many of those and I haven't done those until recently, so that should be expected.

Update on the "Wastelands" Projects

Here's an update on the projects set in my "Wastelands" universe...

Battle for the Wastelands-I have received critiques on the finished manuscript from two of my five beta readers, with comments from one slated for later this week.  One beta largely enjoyed the work, although on his recommendation I have switched the order of some scenes at the end and will look for opportunities to add descriptive language.  The second beta pointed out some inconsistencies, namely a character with a wounded leg being able to jump around a lot in a fight scene.  I'll need to fix those too. 

The third beta told me that although he liked the story overall, there are some instances of dialogue being unintentionally funny, the same swear words being used in succession by different characters, and people repeating things they think.  I'll need to see the critiqued manuscript before I know which ones are which, but I could potentially cut a some writing flab there.  This'll give me room for more description without reducing the overall word count (some publishers actually want above 100K words) or allow me to have a leaner manuscript (better for other publishers).

I was also hanging out with a steampunk enthusiast friend Memorial Day and he said a hydrogen airship would not explode like the Death Star.  I watched old newsreels on YouTube about the Hindenburg disaster and confirmed it.  A burning airship will sink flaming to the ground, but not go off with an explosion so large it momentarily blinds the protagonist.  He also pointed out that antagonists with half a brain wouldn't have one airship floating directly atop another one.  So I spent most of last night, when I wasn't distracted by pointless debates on my alternate history forum, rewriting that scene.  We'll still have "airship demolition derby," but it's better this way.

"Son of Grendel"-Over Memorial Day weekend, I finished the first draft of "Son of Grendel," although I'll need to go back and elaborate on some things.  Right now, it's just under 17,000 words.  Once I've sent the last half or so to my Lawrenceville group in early June and make changes based on earlier Lawrenceville recommendations, I will cycle it through my Kennesaw writing group in two 8,000 word chunks, much like how James R. Tuck sent his novels and novellas through.

Escape from the Wastelands-Not a whole lot, although I did include this along with the revisions of Battle and "SOG" to differentiate more between the standard weapon of the world (something resembling a Sharps rifle) and the "Old World rifles" (essentially modern assault weapons left over from the pre-apocalyptic world).  A lot of my reading about the Pacific Theater of World War II will show up here, including enemy infiltrators and some of the awful "little details" of war like digging foxholes in formerly enemy territory and accidentally digging into enemy graves, being unable to leave foxholes due to artillery bombardment and having to throw one's waste out of the hole with a shell canister, etc.

Now that Battle and "Son of Grendel" are (mostly) done, it's time to start writing query letters.  I don't intend to start sending them out until after the final revisions are done in case they get back to me faster than the standard eight weeks and catch me flat-footed, but I should at least start planning them.  I have written queries and synopses before, back when I wanted to pitch a Starcraft novel.  It turns out Blizzard doesn't accept unsolicited material--something I could have found if I'd done a bit more digging on their website--but I think this was good practice.  Hopefully I've still got the letter and synopsis hidden away somewhere.  I've also requested a library book on the publishing process from contacting an editor/publisher to contract, which will help as well.

(If "Son of Grendel" is critiqued by the Kennesaw group in June/July and Battle by the novel-writing spinoff group in August, everything should hopefully be ready to go by DragonCon.  There are a lot of publishers there, although I don't recall many agents.)

Bigger "Heart of the Swarm" Trailer

The other day, I found a new trailer for Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm.  Apparently it was revealed at BlizzCon.



Looks like the Dominion has shown itself untrustworthy, on a much larger scale that just sending in a bunch of Ghosts to kill Kerrigan like the earlier, smaller teaser trailer revealed.  Like, attack-by-capital-ships untrustworthy.  And Valerian and Warfield might not be coming out of that treachery alive....

(Sucks for Warfield, as it seemed he was on the level and even made Rayor commander of the entire Dominion force while he was having his arm fixed.  But if Valerian went into this intending treachery from the beginning, to hell with him.)

Some of the promotional material makes what's going to happen in HOTS sound really GrimDark.  Raynor has gone missing, while some artwork on the Blizzard web-site depicts Kerrigan with a reinfested arm. 

I hope they don't kill off Raynor and then have Kerrigan go totally insane and reinfest herself or, worse, have her think Raynor is dead, reinfest herself, and then have Raynor show up alive again and think Kerrigan is truly irredeemable even with the use of the Zerg-purging artifact.  Heck, with the dialogue snippet "the girl you knew is dead," this makes it sound like despite being forcibly de-Zerged, Kerrigan is still evil.

Wings of Liberty was a lot more optimistic than the first Starcraft and Brood War, with the Dominion public rioting upon learning of Mengsk's true evil nature and the Swarm decapitated and Kerrigan returned to human form.  That was pretty refreshing, considering how dark the first games really were. 

One can hope they took the darkest quotes and scenes from Heart of the Swarm out of context and strung them together to make the story sound a lot more GrimDark than it actually will be--some of the promotional material describes Kerrigan only remembering some of what she did as Queen of Blades and not liking it, which shows there's hope for her.  She does look pretty angsty when she's loading her rifle, while the Queen of Blades would have probably been joyfully homicidal.  Raynor is only missing, not confirmed dead.  And the new trailer depicts a lot of human-on-human warfare, including what looks like a military drop on a human planet. 

Ending the Second Great War with Kerrigan's Zerg and Raynor's Raiders holding Arcturus Mengsk to account for his many sins would be awesome, with the Dark Voice and his Protoss-Zerg hybrid army over the horizon.  However, some stuff I've read on Battle.net indicates the hybrids will be entering the sector en masse and they'll put the hurt on the player, so punishing Mengsk might not in the cards for a bit...

BTW, the soundtrack in this trailer is just awesome.

If a Facebook Ad Brought You Here, Sound Off!

I recently bought $50 worth of Facebook advertising to promote my blog.  According to Facebook, the ad reached close to 40,000 people and got 25 clicks.  Facebook charged me $9.05 for those clicks, so I imagine by the time the $50 runs out, I'll have gotten 125 to 150 clicks. 

I initially cast a very wide net that got little attention, so based on the advice of my little brother and some half-remembered journalism school lessons about narrowly-focused advertising being more effective, I reworked the ad to include Harry Potter, Starcraft, and Transformers in the actual ad and for it to focus on people who have indicated interest in those three topics (and science fiction, writing, etc).

Thing is, I've seen Facebook links (that aren't blog-links I've posted on my wall or other people's walls) with URLs like apps.facebook and the like on the blog's list of traffic sources, but I haven't seen that many of these clicks.  The Facebook ad redirects people to http://www.accordingtoquinn.com/, so clicking on the advertisement should bring one straight here.

Setting up an ad on Facebook was fairly easy and I checked it twice to be sure it's directing to the right site, so I don't think I've made a mistake in the ad itself.  So, if you're coming here because you clicked on a Facebook ad, I'd like you to comment on this post so I can be sure everything's working.

Any help you all could provide would be greatly appreciated.

It's Nice To Be Noticed, But...

I logged on this morning and found I was getting traffic from the Starcraft Wiki, this link in particular.

http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/Johnny_Raynor

The link basically states that Johnny Raynor, Jim Raynor's apparently-dead psionic son who is only mentioned in the novel Liberty's Crusade (and I think some of the comics as well) would have appeared in the novel I would have pitched to Blizzard had the company been willing to accept unsolicited submissions.

Thanks for the publicity, but that isn't accurate.

What I was suggesting on the earlier page was separate from my novel.  For the sake of clarity, I will explain both:

*My proposed novel would have taken place after Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty and set the stage for Heart of the Swarm.  As I imagined it, the events of Wings of Liberty decapitated the Zerg Swarm and caused a lot of political instability within the Terran Dominion as Mengsk's greatest crime--calling down the Zerg on the Confederate capital of Tarsonis and obliterating it--was revealed.  Without Kerrigan, the Zerg Swarm was breaking apart and going wild and Raynor, Prince Valerian, and Valerian's General Warfield were going to liberate threatened worlds--and taken them from Valerian's evil, embattled father at the same time.  Meanwhile, Sarah Kerrigan, the Zerg Queen of Blades now restored to humanity, was dealing with the colossal guilt being the worst war criminal in human history brings as well as the hostility of Raynor's crew and the threat of revenge by another formerly-infested Terran freed from the Swarm.

I wrote a synopsis, a treatment, and all the other stuff for my submission and wrote William Dietz, author of the novel Starcraft II: Heaven's Devils, about how to proceed.  Unfortunately, I learned that Blizzard operates on a "don't call us, we'll call you" policy re: tie-in fiction.  My friend Matt Schafer later found this policy had been posted on Blizzard's web-site too.  No unsolicited fiction.

Darn.  In any event, the trailer for Heart of the Swarm and some early bits of the storyline show my predictions as to what would happen were off-base.  The Dominion appears to betray Raynor and company early on, Kerrigan escapes to take control of the Swarm, and Raynor has gone missing.  Ouch.  I hope he survives the whole experience.

*The scenario with Raynor's son was something I posted on the Battle.net forum as something I wanted to see in Heart of the Swarm.  My scenario was that Kerrigan's assault on the weakened Terran Dominion using Zerg she has brought under her control would take her to the Ghost Academy.  There, she would find  Raynor's son, who it turns out really didn't die in a "shuttle accident" soon after being taken by the Confederate government and had been part of the Ghost program ever since.  One fellow thought this was awesome and that he'd never imagined Kerrigan as being a stepmother before.

This scenario would have been a mission in the actual game (Kerrigan attacks the Ghost Academy), not part of the proposed book.

Could someone who is a member of the SC Wiki correct this?  Feel free to link to this page as well as the first one.  :)

"Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm" Trailer Is Up

I found a Blizzard newsletter in my Spam box the other evening and it sent me to the following link.

http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/game/heart-of-the-swarm-preview/

That link in turn sent me to this trailer, which is also posted on the Blizzard web-site.



So much for the grand idea I had for an interquel novel taking place between the human campaign and the Zerg one. 

(I actually wrote a query and a long and a short synopsis, and e-mailed William Dietz, the author of Starcraft II: Heaven's Devils, to see if he could get me the hook-up with Blizzard.  He said with Blizzard, it's "don't call us, we'll call you."  And there was something on the site I overlooked that Matt Schafer found for me that describes how they don't accept unsolicited content.)

It seems the Zerg campaign begins immediately after Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty with a backstab by Dominion forces--Nova and a bunch of Ghosts bust in and try to kill or capture Kerrigan while she's still recovering from being, as some Battle.net people have put it, "fumigated."

Raynor at the very least survives to see Kerrigan obliterate her would-be assassins, but some of the promotional material asks the question "Where is Jim Raynor?"  Hopefully he'll survive.  Maybe I'm just being a hopeless romantic, but I'd like to see a happy ending for both of them.

Based on what we see so far, it doesn't seem like there's a lot of conflict between the Zerg and the humans.  Kerrigan apparently makes war on the Dominion forces seeking to cleanse Char and later wages "genocidal" wars with the Protoss (given how the Protoss exterminate the Zerg whenever they find them, it might not be the Zerg being the bad guys this time), but the campaign looks like she's reuniting the Swarm and assimilating dangerous wildlife to use their genes to create new Zerg war-breeds.  Something tells me it'll be primarily Zerg-Zerg and Zerg-Protoss combat, with the only anti-human fighting being at the beginning of the campaign.

Drat.  I was hoping she and Raynor would team up and take down the Terran Dominion once and for all.  I even had a scenario I suggested on Battle.net for a campaign mission where she brought down the Dominion Ghost Academy and found Raynor's son, who was taken as a child into the Ghost program, and brings him back to his father.  It would be a good tie in with the books--little Johnny Raynor is mentioned in Liberty's Crusade--and would tie the expanded-universe in with the actual games.

(Blizzard, if you do intend to use this plotline, don't junk it because someone else came up with the idea and you fear lawsuits.  I promise here, in view of the world, that I didn't suggest the idea to you.)

Nothing definite on the release date, just the usual "we've got high standards and we'll release it when it's ready."  Not that there's anything wrong with not releasing products prematurely--far from it--but I would like to know when it comes out.

(My computer can't run the first game as it should be run, let alone this, but I could always play it elsewhere.)

Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm Ending? (SPOILERS)

http://kotaku.com/5709838/ending-leaked-for-starcraft-iis-next-chapter

Found this online today.  Supposedly it's the cinematic ending for the Heart of the Swarm.  I can't copy the embed HTML to post the video here and in any event, given how Activision has yanked it from elsewhere due to copyright, they'd make me take it down sooner or later anyway.

If it's genuine, it must be an early version due to how crude the graphics are.  It does correspond with the information released early on about how Kerrigan, de-infested at the climax of Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty, rebuilds her power over the Zerg Swarm via mutations, since she is essentially back to being the Queen of Blades.  She sounds like Tricia Helfer, who voiced her in both her human and Zerg incarnations in Wings of Liberty, only without the scary buzzing aspect to her voice.

I'd rather this not be the ending, or at least the final ending. 

For starters, Kerrigan is infested once again, which isn't really necessary for her to control the Zerg.  In some of the canonical material taking place earlier, she was able to control individual Zerg telepathically while a Confederate Ghost.  Her removing the last of the psionic inhibitors the Confederates installed in her during the first game should be enough for her to control great numbers of them without turning her back into a bug.

Her leaving human space, and thus Raynor, behind, is also rather sad.  There's enough sadness in this world as it is.

Furthermore, what exactly is going on with the naked Kerrigan clone in the tank?  Unless whatever is being done to her causes her to psionically attack Kerrigan, cloning doesn't work that way.  If someone cloned somebody, they'd be identical genetically but a lot younger and attacking them wouldn't hurt the original genetic donor a la stabbing a voodoo doll.

Of course, she could be a "Chekhov's Gun" if Blizzard ultimately wants a happy ending for Raynor and Kerrigan.  Bug-Kerrigan could be killed or mortally wounded in, say, the final battle with the Dark Voice (which would be in the Protoss campaign, which takes place after Heart of the Swarm) and telepathically transfers her consciousness into the clone, which given her circumstances, might not have a mind of her own and could serve as a nice backup body.

Good to see Arcturus gets his, although I figured given his cunning and selfishness, he'd flee his crumbling empire with his hard-core loyalists and ally with the Dark Voice for revenge, the promise of supernatural powers, etc. and wouldn't be punished for his many crimes until the absolute end of the game.  Still, this is a fairly cool death--Arcturus cursing his enemies ("choke on the ashes") and Kerrigan gets a really nice "THIS IS JUSTICE!" death-scream coupled with (I assume) some kind of psionic attack to finish him off.

I'm wondering if this is a fake designed to mislead people, though, as some people seem to think.  Blizzard could release an abandoned ending or even cook up something entirely new to generate buzz and keep people talking during the long wait until Heart of the Swarm is released.  Some people on Battle.net seem to think it's an older ending for Wings of Liberty that got scrapped due to the whole "Kerrigan must save the universe from the Dark Voice" story element, which does not appear to be accounted for in this video.  One person even claimed it dated back to August of 2009, close to a year before Wings of Liberty was released, which if true, would be a strong argument in favor of it being an abandoned ending for the first game.

I did post some video here a few months back from Blizzcon 2010.  There's a piece of production art depicting Kerrigan as a human (wearing Ghost armor no less) summoning an Ultralisk with what looks like a swarm of Zerglings underneath it.  If I remember right, Ultralisks are fairly high on the tech tree, so she'd be well on her way to regaining control of the Swarm if she was able to control them.  And she isn't a bug again, at least superficially.

Another Blizzard leak seems to indicate Heart of the Swarm's release date will be during the "holiday" period (I'm assuming Christmas-ish) in 2011, which makes commercial sense.  I guess we'll have to wait until then to find out.

"Starcraft: Heart of the Swarm" Concept Art (spoilers)

Visited battle.net for the first time in awhile the other day and across across the following video.


Of particular interest is the following image, which was posted individually at the Starcraft Legacy site.

http://sclegacy.com/images/uploaded/blizzcon10/screencaps/sc2_art/sc2_art111.jpg

Looks like Kerrigan's post-deinfestation Zerg dreads are gone, although her hair seems colored somewhat differently (it's duller and more brown/orange than red) and in a different style.  She is wearing Ghost armor, though.  Some of the early discussion of "Heart of the Swarm" described Kerrigan "building her power through mutations," but at least in that image, that does not appear to have been the case.

(Let's hope it stays that way.  Her turning back into the Queen of Blades would be entirely too GrimDark and sad.)

The scuttlebutt about what "Heart of the Swarm" is going to be about involves Kerrigan building her power and regaining control of the Swarm.  The image looks like she's taking control of an Ultralisk, with what looks like some Zerglings nearby (all those little eyes beneath the Ultralisk).

No Pretteh Zerg Babiez! (Starcraft 2 Spoilers)

This blog entry is adapted from a post I made on Battle.net a few days ago.  Posting it here because I found on Google Analytics that at least one person came across my blog while searching "Raynor and Kerrigan child" or something like that.  The lolcats-esque title comes from something I saw on SCArmory, another Starcraft forum, about this topic.

On other Starcraft forums and to a limited degree on Battle.net itself, there are some people (probably the hardest-core Raynor/Kerrigan supporters) who think the two of them ought to have a kid now that Kerrigan has been de-infested (or "fumigated," as someone cleverly called it).  At least one person said this hypothetical kid would play some kind of messianic role in defeating the Dark Voice.

Is it just me, or would that be a really bad idea, both logically-speaking and story-wise?

Several reasons:

1. They're not married. Moral considerations aside, it would also be out-of-character for Raynor. Little Johnny Raynor (Raynor's son who died in what was in all likelihood the Ghost program, mentioned in the novel Liberty's Crusade) was born in wedlock, after all.

2. If they were ever officially a couple prior to New Gettysburg, it wasn't that long. Rushing into things of this nature is a very bad idea. Especially since going back to the way things were before Kerrigan was captured by the Zerg at New Gettysburg would be impossible (see below).

3. One word: Fenix. That's a really big elephant in the room. Plus, if something resembling Kerrigan's human personality is in charge post-deinfestation, she's going to be a mess.  She felt bad about calling the Zerg to attack the Confederates at Antiga Prime and objected strongly to Mengsk calling a much large group of Zerg in to attack the Confederate capital of Tarsonis.  She's going to look at what she did as the Queen of Blades and be thoroughly horrified. I imagine Raynor would be willing to be try to work this out, but still.

(And the "Queen of Blades" is in my opinion Kerrigan's unrestrained dark side, not some usurper entity using her body. Some aspect of the Queen was always there and will always be there--and it might well be stronger than it was before.)

4. They both have more important things to do right now.  Mengsk is still on the throne (and due to the revelations about Tarsonis, he's probably weakened enough to kick off it) and the first Hybrids have already arrived in the Sector. The End of Days is coming and it's coming soon.

5. Per my comment about coming soon, there won't be time for some red-headed telepathic redneck to become the Savior of the Sector.

6. Pregnancy would sideline Kerrigan, who (assuming she's on the side of the angels again) would be one of their most powerful fighters, at least in its later phases.

7. Both characters are intelligent enough to realize how tremendously impractical this would be.

Now, I did make comments in my earlier posts on Starcraft 2 that I would like to have a happy ending for both of them and brought up the notion of them retiring to Mar Sara and having red-headed telepathic kids who play with Zerglings like most kids play with puppies.

However, that's for later, as in, after Mengsk is overthrown and the Dark Voice and its army of Protoss-Zerg hybrids is defeated.  Right now, there's a war on.

Lead Me Not Into Temptation... (Starcraft 2 Spoilers)

I said I wasn't going to write anymore fan-fiction when I was finished with The Revenge of the Fallen Reboot, but an idea has occurred to me that would make a nice post-Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty story.

It's extremely derivative of the ending cinematic of the human campaign of WarCraft III: Reign of Chaos, but that's part of what makes it awesome.

So here goes...

On Korhal, capital of the Terran Dominion, we see that the army has returned from the great victory over the Zerg at Char.  Ranks of Marines, tanks, fighters overhead, etc. form a gigantic victory parade headed by Prince Valerian Mengsk, General Horace Warfield, a Marine in black armor, and a Ghost.  The common folk of the capital cheer, throw flowers, etc.

The four of them lead the parade to the doors of the palace of Emperor Arcturus Mengsk and go inside, where the Emperor receives them in his throne room.

Then Valerian orders the doors to the throne room closed.  Daddy Mengsk starts looking a bit nervous.

Then the Marine and the Ghost remove their helmets.  It's Raynor and Kerrigan respectively.  Mengsk's Marine guards raise their guns, but Warfield orders them to stand down.  They do so.

Kerrigan gets a funny look on her face and snaps her fingers.  Two Ghosts who were hiding in-cloak around Mengsk's throne, fall down, de-cloaked and psionically-immobilized.  It turns out one of them is Nova.

"You're out of your league, little girl," Kerrigan says.  "Stay out of this."

"What are you doing?" Arcturus asks Valerian.

"Succeeding you," Valerian says.  He turns to Raynor.  "Commander?"

Raynor steps forward and draws the pistol he intended to kill Mengsk with but ended up using his one bullet to kill Tychus Findlay instead.

"I want you to see this coming," he says.

CRACK!

Given that there are hints in SC2 that both Mengsk Sr. and Mengsk Jr. are involved with Duran and his creation of an army of Protoss-Zerg hybrids, I don't think Arcturus will go down that easily.  Also, since in the first game, he said he would rule the Koprulu Sector or see it burn around him, I can easily imagine him and whatever loyalists he's got going over to the Dark Voice and its hybrid army if Valerian or Raynor looks like they're going to unseat him.

Still, the tyrannical SOB certainly deserves something like the above scenario happening to him.

However much fun it would be to write that, I should probably focus more on Escape from the Wastelands and other projects that could make me some money.  I've got maybe a fifth of Escape done after all.

Some Interesting Fan-Fics (Starcraft 2 Spoilers)

I've come across some interesting fan-fics lately and I figured I ought to share them.  Two of them take place in the aftermath of Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty, which some of my friends haven't played yet, so I'm putting the spoiler tags in the title so they don't read this article and get spoiled for the ending of the game.

The first one is Emergence, a crossover of the Draka and Mass Effect fictional universes in which some Prothean artifacts are discovered on Draka-settled Mars in the 1980s.  I do like many of the places it goes, even though, with a divergence from the canon timeline 18-odd years before the Final War (and some major consequences of the divergence, like the early deaths of Yolande Ingolffsson and Marya LeFarge), the Final War goes very similar how it did in the The Stone Dogs, the only major difference being the continued survival of Ceres (the Alliance for Democracy's capital in the asteroid belt) and the Stone Dogs-induced destruction of the Alliance submarine that, in the canon timeline, nuked Cape Town.

Despite this, there are some really awesome moments, like the evacuation of the surviving Alliance spatial forces through the mass relay on Pluto or the fact that on Samothrace, the Earth-like planet colonized by the Alliance survivors, they use old-school airships as a low-tech and cheap means of transportation, ironically like how the Draka used them to colonize hostile Africa early in their history.

This second one is entitled A Healing of Hurts and was written by JamesP81, who posted on some of my Starcraft-related blog entries.  It takes place after the scourging of the Zerg on Char and the de-infestation of Sarah Kerrigan.  I didn't like how he made the Queen of Blades some separate entity holding the human Kerrigan a prisoner in her own mind--the way Kerrigan behaves in StarCraft: Brood War indicates the Queen of Blades is essentially "evil Kerrigan," complete with her grudges (Mengsk, Duke, the Protoss) and her attachments (Raynor).  As a result, Kerrigan is a lot more responsible for her actions as QOB than, say, Captain Picard was for his actions as Locutus of the Borg.

(That being said, given the fact her altered mental state was brought about by being forcibly infested by the Zerg and the massive contrast in ethics between human-Kerrigan and the QOB, one could make a good case for temporary insanity.)

Zeratul showing up to essentially play psychiatrist also comes off as really deus ex machina, although to be fair, it is entirely possible he was on the Hyperion the entire time between him warning Raynor of the coming Armageddon Kerrigan will be necessary to stop and the victory on Char.

That being said, he did a good job depicting the probable psychodrama that will take place in Heart of the Swarm (Kerrigan's guilty feelings for the murders committed as the Queen of Blades, for example).  There's so much opportunity for character stuff taking place in HOTS; I hope Blizzard doesn't drop the ball.

The third one is Next Steps, which also takes place after WOL.  This one isn't as well-written as "A Healing of Hurts" and it also depicts human-Kerrigan as being asleep the entire time and not even remembering her actions as QOB until Zeratul probes her mind to see if she's really reformed or if she's indulging in some backstabbing scheme like she spent most of Brood War doing.  I also didn't like it's portrayal of Valerian Mengsk as betraying Raynor soon after the victory on Char (although he's manipulative like his father, he isn't evil like he is), the return of Fenix from the dead, Stetmann having some medical-ethics problems, and the author making Nova Mengsk's illegitimate daughter rather than using her canonical back-story.

That being said, there are some fun moments in this one, like a catfight between Nova and Kerrigan, Zeratul flat-out telling Raynor he historically has not been a very good judge of character when he wants to probe Kerrigan's mind, an extended confrontation between Raynor and Tychus prior to Raynor shooting him (in which Tychus points out how much he's sacrificed for Raynor and Raynor's acknowledgement of that), the possible ways Mengsk could secure his position in the aftermath of the revelation that he deliberately brought the Zerg down on Tarsonis, and an angsty Kerrigan using action figures to replay her torture and killing of General Duke.  Plus, although the author hasn't said so in his replies to my reviews, it seems like he is foreshadowing Kerrigan using her psionic power to take control of the Zerg again.

(Nova suggesting Kerrigan "call" the Zerg on Aiur and her angry response, the fact that creep tumors infesting humans respond to psionic attempts to slow their growth, and the fact that a gigantic Zerg attack that the joint human-Protoss forces intent on reclaiming Aiur might not be able to fight off is coming indicate something could happen relatively soon.)

An Interesting Piece of Starcraft Fan-Art (Spoilers for "SC2")

I visited the Battle.net site yesterday and a new batch of fan-art had been posted.  Most of it had to do with Sarah Kerrigan and most of the individual pieces depicted her as being the Queen of Blades (the infested ruler of the Zerg).

However, I did find one post-deinfestation piece that I thought was really interesting.  The artist is named Marco Kunardi.  I'd post the image itself, but I'm not sure if that'd be legal (the site's submission guidelines state that they're granted Blizzard non-exclusive use, but I would still need to ask permission from the author, I would imagine).

So here's the link:

http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/community/fanart/index.html#1067

Basically it depicts Kerrigan, as a human, wearing customized Ghost armor that has a lot of spikes and a pair of bladed robotic limbs attached.  It mimicks her Zerg carapace and extra limbs from when she was Queen of Blades.

That reminded me of some speculation as to where Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm was heading.  Someone on battle.net theorized that since it's similar to a role-playing game and is centered around Kerrigan, her version of the Terran campaign's "research path" could center around either improving her Ghost abilities or Zerg abilities, with the latter path possibly leading to her once more becoming the Queen of Blades (and making all the other characters hostile).

The artwork seems to depict one permutation of option #1.  She's a Ghost again, but with the biological weaponry of the Zerg replaced with robotics.  Such a configuration would make sense, if she'd gotten used to fighting with the extra limbs her Zerg infestation gave her.

(There's a post-Wings of Liberty fanfic that depicts her in a sparring match with Nova, another female Ghost, and she instinctively tries to use her former "wings," only to find them not there.  She ended up on her behind in that one and in a real fight, could have been killed.)

That'd be an interesting option for Blizzard to include in Heart of the Swarm.  One could even get some storyline drama out of it--someone might see her mimicking her previous incarnation, using technological instead of biological means, and get freaked out.

Plus it'd be really awesome--she'd have her Ghost weaponry, cloaking ability, psionic attacks, etc. and a really awesome melee attack too.

Another News Article Round-Up

Got a bit behind blogging because I've been chatting on the Starcraft 2 section of the Battle.net forums, workling on my planned pitch to Blizzard, reading Windmaster's Bane and Liberty's Crusade, and working on my book, so I'll post all the interesting news articles I've found over the last few days:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/huffpost/685071

The imam who wants to expand the mosque two blocks from the World Trade Center has apparently been very helpful in U.S. counter-terrorism efforts.  This is one reason why I've been a big defender of allowing the Muslims of Lower Manhattan to expand their facility--needlessly irritating American Muslims is going to make them less likely to cooperate in anti-terrorism efforts and might encourage cultural separatism rather than assimilation.

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/08/wind-power-industry/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Index+3+%28Top+Stories+2%29%29

This is very interesting.  Although I'm a staunch free-trader, I recognize the usefulness of an industrial base.  Widespread adoption of wind-power is something that would keep factory jobs here (and maybe even expand them) because they're difficult to outsource due to the transportation costs.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/08/mars-farming/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Index+3+%28Top+Stories+2%29%29

On my alternate-history forum, we had a big debate about the morality and practicality of space colonization.  This is something that's really interesting, as the ability to farm on another world is important for long-term viability.