Nit-picking

[ffutures]

I very rarely take exception with posts from sjgames but I'm afraid that today is something of an exception...

SJ's off to Chattacon this week, to show off new releases, playtest some designs, and generally wave the company flag. He'll also be speaking at a couple of panels, including one with David Weber, on the topic of tanks.

That's right, the author of Bolo! and the designer of Ogre in one room, talking about giant armored war machines. Does it get any better?

As any fule kno, while Steve Jackson wrote the game Ogre, David Weber did not originate the concept of the Bolo robotic tank. That honour belongs to the late great Keith Laumer. Bolo! is a book set against the background that Laumer originated, but as far as I can tell on a cursory look doesn't add much that's new to the setting.

I'm prepared to concede that Weber probably knows a lot more about this setting than I do - but the implication of sjgames post is that Weber invented the idea, and that simply isn't true.

Comments

[draconin.livejournal.com]

Damn straight! I have quite a few of his books and greatly enjoyed Bolo. :-) That short he wrote with the aging soldier riding the radioactive last of the Bolos off into the wastes as its power slowly runs out is one I still remember many, many years later.

[orangemike.livejournal.com]

You are of course correct. I hope you put some kind of comment on their webpage (I can't access it, even during lunch, due to filters).

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Don't think there's any way to do that, but I'll check.

[vincentursus.livejournal.com]

Well, the post says that David Weber was the author of "Bolo!"

David Weber was in fact the author of a book titled "Bolo!" (http://www.amazon.com/Bolo-David-Weber/dp/0743498720)

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

My point is that Steve Jackson's Ogre was an innovative new wargame that became a classic. Bolo! is just yet another shared world book based on the work of an author who I suspect would have moved on to other things if he were still alive. I have a good deal of respect for Weber's earliest books, but Bolo! isn't innovative or new - it's a reworking of a very tired theme.

[vincentursus.livejournal.com]

That is a reasonable point.