mantis,
I co-wrote Zork I, Zork II, Zork III, and Enchanter with Marc Blank. I wrote Starcross, Spellbreaker, Suspect, The Lurking Horror, and Shogun on my own. All were published by Infocom (which I was a founder of).
I'm glad you liked Starcross. I had a lot of fun writing it, and tried to get the physics right. The ship in it was a lot smaller than the Whorl, though. Other than end-cases like ringworlds and Dyson spheres, I think the Whorl is the largest generation ship I know of.
alga,
If I read you correctly, you think my quote from Marble supports mantis's triune M/M/R. I think it's just the opposite, but shows how thoroughly mixed Marble and Rose are, like a left brain/right brain thing. Marble is saying, "without you I would have been left alone with Rose," and Rose is saying, "without you I would have been left alone with that chem." It gets mixed together so she says both, and adds "We'd have gone mad!" You have to work to tease out what's a Marble thought from what's a Rose thought.
There's a surprising amount of Multiple Personality Disorder going around. I think Henry Rathvon is right when he says Long Sun is about Mind (among other things). There's a very interesting comment (in
Exodus, I think) where Silk wonders if chems actually do have souls (they obviously have Minds), and there's the ongoing dichotomy between chems, who are very humanlike, and taluses, who are less so.
-vizcacha
(david_lebling at avid.com)
Questions or problems to whorl-owner at lists.best.com