GAMES

from Fancyclopedia 2

Fanationalism demonstrates itself in our urge to invent in this field and thus give a stfnal tinge even to our gafia-type activities. Barsoomian chess ("jetan") as described by John Car -- sorry, I mean ER Burroughs -- was obvious and is our oldest table game, many boards and pieces having been made. SF crossword puzzles, also, appeared long ago. In the 40s Fairy Chess was known in California; it involved, among other variations, pieces of a fantastic nature. One could travel in time; one could split, like an amoeba; one could make only a single move during the course of a game. Of games involving chance John Baltadonis invented Cosmic Monopoly; Ted Tubb, Viną Clarke, Ken Bulmer and a couple other British fen invented something called The Game, which was incredibly complicated but involved both chance and skill; Boskone III tested Art Widner's game Interplanetary. (An effort to commercialize Interplanetary was unsuccessful.) All of these involve trading in an interplanetary market with hazards such as space pirates, meteors, and like that. There are commercial Buck Rogers and other games which are beneath our dignity to note. It should be observed that all these games are really just adaptations of games currently popular in the Macrocosm, given a stfnal flavor. Interplanetary, as invented by Widner and brought up to date by Metchette, Evans, Pavlat and White, is the most original of the bunch. Speer would like to see a board game invented which would center about fannish references; the brainstorming sessions at the Seattle WesterCon came up with moves and hazards such as "Join N3F, go back three spaces", and "Be chairman of world convention; remove one year from life and take ten years off life."