A Man of Means by No Means
Storm of Dust (Crossroads Adventures, volume 2)
By Neil Randall
23 Jun, 2017
A Year of Waterloo Region Speculative Fiction
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Neil Randall is an associate professor at the University of Waterloo, perhaps the finest university in Waterloo west of Philip Street1. To quote his UW bio:
I am a long-time faculty member in the English department at the University of Waterloo, Canada, and the director of the Games Institute (uwaterloo.ca/games-institute).
I confess I did not look closely at Randall’s 1987 book Storm of Dust when I bought it last year, except to note that:
- it was by a local author whom I knew back in the 1980s and 1990s;
- it was related to one of my favourite David Drake books.
What I was to discover is that Storm of Dust is an interesting artifact of ancient times, an artifact based on effectively obsolete tech. Who would have thought that interactive game books would ever die?
If you are younger than twenty or so, you may be wondering: what the heck are those?