Weird coincidences

[ffutures]

I was just looking at Edwin Abbott's Wikipedia entry and realised that his father was headmaster of The Philological School (later Marylebone Grammar School), which I attended from 11 to 18 and worked at for several years thereafter. A student of a slightly earlier era was Jerome K Jerome, who of course wrote Three Men In A Boat but also edited The Idler magazine which published William Hope Hodgson's Carnaki stories, on which Forgotten Futures IV was based.

Small world, isn't it...

Comments

[lawbag.livejournal.com]

Maybe the influences were there from an early age with regards to Forgotten utures, and the role-playing game was just a manifestation of those inspirations.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Not really - the school library didn't have anything like that at all.

[w00hoo.livejournal.com]

I'd assumed you knew this (well, where he was headmaster of anyway) and didn't comment on it when I was considering suggesting talking to the school as an option to see a copy of the film (there's a chance they'd have a copy all things considered.) As an old boy too, it's probably worth the cost of a stamp/phone call...

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

The school doesn't exist any more, hasn't since the early eighties, and most of the building that existed then has been demolished - the only part that remains is the "old block", an 18th century part that's a listed building. A few years after I finished working there they got into a pissing contest with the local education authority; the authority wanted them to become a little less elitist, the school said no, expecting them to cave in, and got an unpleasant surprise.

Speaking as someone whose educational needs were badly botched by the school - they were good with high flyers, hopelessly bad with lazy sods like me - and experienced some fairly nasty bullying in my first years there I can't say I regret it much.

Last time I looked the UK branch of ID, the company that developed Doom, were based there, but I have no idea if it's still true.

[mr-wombat.livejournal.com]

On the topic of your settings, if you haven't seen this thing about dimensions, you might like to take a look. I can't remember if you mentioned it before but it involves flatlanders when describing the second dimension.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Thanks - too late to put a reference in now, but it's certainly interesting.