Sky Captain

Just back from the pictures, and like everyone else I know who's seen it I'm more or less in awe. It's wonderful; a few plot holes, but the whole thing is very much what I've had in mind for much of the Forgotten Futures RPG.

So much so that I came VERY close to writing a scenario with more than a little resemblance to it about three years ago. It's outlined in Forgotten Futures VII, and if I'd written the whole thing it would have had H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard as the evil masterminds behind a plot to steal the secret of flight (the monopoly of the benevolent world government) to power their rocket ship. Lots of differences of course, such as a whole "Apocalypse Now" vibe that was less obvious in Sky Captain, but if I'd written the damn thing there would have been people thinking that I'd ripped off their ideas, or vice versa. That isn't the case, of course, it takes a lot longer than that to make a film like Sky Captain, but it's one of those odd missed opportunities. Trouble was that there was another mad scientist adventure in FF VII, and I really didn't want to write too.

Of course the person who is really gnashing his teeth right now is heliograph, who pressed very hard for me to write that version of the adventure, and might have had it in print just as the publicity for Sky Captain started if things had gone exactly right. Sorry...