V_V_Lev: переводы

→Here are some of the ideas we've been kicking around for new artifacts:

→• Pirate's Gold (retrieved from mysterious Oak Island)

→• Mars Rock (Curiously pyramidal crystalline mineral, returned to Earth by crew of Scorpio-5)

→• Sports Almanac from the Future: Obviously this is from the film which I would say is the best time travel movie ever made: "Back to the Future Part 2". But how you could pack so many statistics into a book that thin? That's why our version of such a book is so much thicker. Also, I changed the spelling of Gray's Sports Almanac to suit the way my friend Grey Dutton spells her name.

→• The Videotape of Day One: Journeying back to the beginning of time is another popular theme... but how to include it in the game without actually providing an answer to the question of what you'd discover on Day One? Of course, the perfect solution was a videotape in a format you can't use. As I like to say when I show off this card during a demo, "Now all you need to do is get back to the universe when Betamax won the videotape format war!" (Another joke everyone loves is the helpful label that says "Don't Erase!")

→o "For Us, The Living," by Severin & Elder, from Weird Fantasy July 1953 (a twist on the usual trying-to-save-the-president theme, in which the traveler accidentally *causes* Lincoln's death, having traveled back in time merely to meet and greet the great man. The only proof he had of the utopia he came from was the travel sticker on his suitcase, reading "Visit the Tomb of Abraham Lincoln, Founder of the Republic of Earth, in the Capitol of the World, Paris".)

→o "The Assassin," by Robert Silverberg (featured in Travels Through Time)

→If you really want to have your eyes opened about the 1963 linchpin, I recommend watching a documentary called "The Men Who Killed Kennedy." Keep an eye on the History Channel... they show it fairly often.

→But there are other lessons in the story of the Titanic. Icebergs loom, yes... but when trouble starts, the key to getting into a lifeboat often lies in watchful attentiveness and thoughtful preparedness. When the sirens go off and the call to action is heard, those who are paying attention and act with alacrity are typically the ones who survive.

→But as long as I'm yammering about the Titanic, I have more to say. One of the reasons I myself find the tragic story of the Titanic so fascinating is the object lesson in life which it provides. It's the source of what I refer to as the problem of Icebergs. Sometimes bad stuff just happens to people, without any warning, and through no fault of your own. There you are, cruising across the Atlantic in perfectly calm weather, perhaps even traveling First Class, on-board what has been touted as the safest ship ever, heading off to the rest of your life in America... and suddenly, you're in icy water, freezing to death in the night, for no good reason. It was just an iceberg, and you were on an "unsinkable" ship! What happened?

→• Killing Hitler: Trying to kill Hitler is a staple in time travel stories. But where, and when? I chose the Olympics as my Hitler pivot point, not because of any previous story I know of, but because that was Earth's first TV broadcast -- a major turning point in our history in and of itself. (That also makes this a reference to "Contact.") I also wanted an event that would have had massive dramatic impact.

→• I couldn't think of any actual references to it, but I wanted to mention the excellent Steve Jackson Games book called GURPS Time Travel. It's a great reference work for anyone studying the literature of time travel.

→• It could be argued that the name itself is a reference to the series "Seven Days", which uses the term "chrononaut"... but I feel I thought of the name myself before I ever saw an episode of that show.

→• In the final sections of the rulebook, I make mention of the politics of the present being changed by squishing a prehistoric insect. This is a nod to the Bradbury classic, "A Sound of Thunder" (and indirectly, that great Treehouse of Horror episode of the Simpsons)

→New TimeLines:

→• Of particular note is a slim collection of classic short stories, published by Raintree Publishers in 1981, called Travels Through Time. It features an introduction by Isaac Asimov and color illustrations by Thomas Leonard. I re-read this little hardbound book several times while working on the design, and the five short stories it contains are all referenced in some way in the game. It's like a Chrononauts reader.

→General:

→Chrononauts is filled with little references and homages to other noteworthy time travel stories. This is a list of the stories I found inspirational as I worked on my own time travel opus. I'm breaking this section down into 4 parts: General, Characters, TimeLine, and Artifacts.

→What would the world be like if John Lennon's life hadn't been so tragically cut short? It's a question I've thought about a lot. Obviously, had Lennon lived, there'd certainly be other music in our lives... perhaps even some masterpieces. And since the rest of the group finally re-united in '95, he too might have been willing to finally get back together for a reunion special on the David Letterman show, just for fun if nothing else.

→Alert civics students will recall that we only have 27 amendments to the Constitution at this time. The truth is, I never really decided what that 28th amendment was, I just figured it would be intriguing to drop the hint that some other amendment got passed. As a kid, I remember expecting the Equal Rights Amendment to pass, so my first thought was that John somehow helped make that become a reality. Or perhaps it was something more visionary, like a Personal Freedom Amendment, which asserted each individual's right to control his or her own body and that which does and does not go into it. (This would nullify drug prohibition AND solidify a woman's right to choose.)