First chapter of Forgotten Futures XI on line

I've put the first chapter of Forgotten Futures XI: Planets of Peril on my web site. This consists of the front cover etc., table of contents for the first chapter, and the first chapter, which is A Martian Odyssey with some sidebars on various things.

Because I really don't want this circulating before I have the game finished it's in a password-protected directory. It will eventually be on line as a free download, of course, but not until it's complete.

If you'd like to take a look and let me know if you run into any problems, or spot anything that seems a bit off, please email me at marcus dot rowland at gmail dot com and I'll tell you how to access it.

If you're already on my reviewers list, the file is

http://www.forgottenfutures.com/review1/perilous.pdf

Use the user name and password I've given you before. I'll probably be emailing you to remind you pretty soon.

More cosmic catastrophes

I've decided to make my picture and description of the formation of the Solar System a little more like the version of a near-collision event that doesn't involve a mutual exchange of matter between stars.

( Words and pictures )

Both the pictures will be small on the page - the first one is in a sidebar that's 6cm wide, the second is about 10cm wide.

I think that the repetition is worthwhile - the first part is in a section on Weird Science that explains why things are different in this solar system, the second is an introduction to the main chapter on Weinbaum's solar system which takes everything at face value and doesn't point out where it goes non-factual.

Snooze...

I really like the FireFTP add-on for Firefox.

Lots of reasons, but the one that just made me laugh is that the last line of its log, after the file transfer I was using it for was complete and it was left with nothing to do, was "Zzz..."

The Three Musketeers / The Four Musketeers

I was reminded of these films by something in the latest Plokta, and realised that I only have them on fairly crap tapes. They're available pretty cheaply as a DVD compilation, but none of the sites selling it seem to say if it's widescreen, letterboxed, or standard format.

I suspect standard format and copied from a video release, since there's a widescreen version of The Three Musketeers available that's considerably more expensive. Anyone know for sure?