Tag Archives: featured

The Three Body Problem

Posted on by tjkopena

The Three Body Problem. Liu. High concept science fiction about the search for extraterrestrial intelligence and the consequences thereof.

Though massively hyped, this is a fairly bland novel. The first quarter or first third or so are interesting. From an American perspective it’s refreshing to have a story set in recent Chinese history, especially in the countryside, rather than modern-to-near-future urban cyberpunk, triads, and/or espionage. There is also a lot of nuance in that aspect, as the book is clearly critical of the Cultural Revolution and the Communist Party but also endorses basic tenets we would consider communist and even authoritarian. These sections of the book also have a number of potentially very interesting characters and relationships between them.

The later sections of the book though mostly shunt all that aside in favor of long expository monologues expounding on a combination of vaguely scientific ideas and the history of an alien race. Unfortunately we’re not given much reason to care about that race and the science-y mumbo jumbo is less than captivating. In some aspects the book reminds me of Andy Weir’s novels to date—The Martian, Project Hail Mary, Artemis—which range in that order from fine to meh to atrociously bad but all “feature” way too much made up technical greebling and science-y-ness. But even more so, The Three Body Problem feels like reading “golden age” science fiction from the ’40s & ’50s (roughly speaking), most of which is… not good. That literature similarly expends great time conducting lessons on various science concepts that are then stretched too far in application, almost always at the expense of character development. A lot of it also hinges on singular premises that ultimately just come across as silly. Specifically, The Three Body Problem feels very much like a Chinese version of Arthur C Clarke’s Childhood’s End, an ostensibly classic 1953 novel also about first contact that also has some interesting ideas but reads pretty flat and to my taste is overwhelmed by a mostly unnecessary but very goofy plot conceit.

All in all, I didn’t hate reading The Three Body Problem, but it’s definitely not on my recommended list and I’m not particularly motivated for the rest of the trilogy.

R10 Solar Warrior

Posted on by tjkopena

After a tremendously long hiatus, I finished production and released my latest micro-rocket kit: The R10 MX Solar Warrior.

R10 Solar Warrior

This is a 38% downscale of an Estes kit from the early to mid ’90s that I loved the look of but never actually owned.

R10 kit contents.

A considerable part of the delay was simply settling on a paint scheme I really liked. Eventually it hit me that it should be a tribute to Ukraine and my Ukrainian friends & colleagues. There’s some literary connection there in that Ukraine is the world’s largest exporter of sunflowers and sunflower products. From there it took a while for inspiration to hit and the scheme you see here to develop. As a bonus, the R10 works well visually with the American-themed R5 MX Hawkeye.

BFFs Solar Warrior and Hawkeye.

Given the tiny size, the only realistic way to enable most people to replicate that fin pattern was to do a print sticker. That’s as opposed to a spray mask or layers of vinyl. That in turn meant though that I had to either significantly increase the precision of my kiss cutting or have people do so themselves. The latter would be reasonable for these shapes, sizes, and quantities, but I went for the first one. That in turn introduced more delay and demotivation as I had to swap out cutting equipment, develop new templates, establish new parameters, and so on toward overhauling the workflow. The end result was worth it though.

The original prototype from early 2022.

Relicblade Gladiator Arena

Posted on by tjkopena

“TWO MEN ENTER, ONE MA—err… three pigmen, an ogre, two soldiers, a barbarian, a sabretooth cat, a lizardman, a samurai, and another barbarian… <double checks> ENTER, … <counting> FOUR OF THEM LEAVE!”

The local Lord of Darkness and his Aug-Suul henchtrolls have captured several parties of adventurers and thrown them into the arena to battle for their freedom! Also, the visiting ~~̶G̶a̶n̶d̶a̶l̶f̶~~ err ~~̶F̶i̶z̶b̶a̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶F̶a̶b̶u̶l̶o̶u̶s̶~~ err White Wizard Numero Uno is horrified yet intrigued to discover the evening’s entertainment is NOT simply a skeleton cabaret as he had let himself be led to believe.

A scenario made up on the fly to utilize this ~~̶a̶w̶e̶s̶o̶m̶e̶ ̶P̶l̶a̶y̶m̶o̶b̶i̶l̶ ̶c̶h̶i̶l̶d̶r̶e̶n̶’̶s̶ ̶t̶o̶y̶~~ very serious historical wargaming terrain. A rack of powerful relic weapons is at arena center. Captured adventurers start chained to rocks, with one party member waiting in the entrance tunnel to be permitted in as reinforcements. Monsters appear every turn from underground entrances around the circle. Disabling a monster grants a favor thrown from the crowd (small items, potions, etc). Killing a monster is one point, destroying a character two points, and the party with most points at game end earns the appreciation of the Lord of Darkness and is granted their freedom.

Mechanically we could maybe tweak this a little. Two of the three players (Jesse and I) just wound up in a huge scrum in the middle. Though, to be fair, the other player (Jake) simply walked carefully around avoiding the scrum to kill monsters, gain points, and win the scenario. So maybe the mechanics worked great and the two scrummers are just stubborn and dumb?

Thematically it was pretty cool. To paraphrase Jesse: “Time for all those Latin classes to shine! <starts discoursing at length on the layout and construction of the Colliseum>”

In any event: <SPOILER ALERT> The Lord of Darkness lied (!!!) and at the end sent all the warriors down into the pits anyway because THEY ARE THE MONSTERS NOW.