Tag: games and gaming

New Call for Proposals: Play

CfP Vector 304 – Play 

The Three-Body Problem (Netflix, 2024)

Enfolding world-building, community-making, and problem solving, the act of play is itself a powerful act of speculation. It can offer entertainment or education. It encourages, or sometimes sidesteps, empathy. It draws attention to the ways that stories are constructed and how we experience them. 

In the context of video games, the recent announcement by Sony that it will halt production of physical game discs by 2028—and the attendant backlash from the gaming community—encourages us to think about physical vs. digital media and legacy access, and how economics factors into how we play, and for how long. Some games, like That Dragon, Cancer and The Final Exam, may barely be said to be ‘played’ at all: more experienced, and learned from. Play can inspire joy, flow states, immersion—or desolation. 

This special issue of Vector invites contributors to engage with the act of ‘play’ in its most expansive definition, including but not limited to: 

  • Tabletop RPGs 
  • Collectibles 
  • Video games 
  • VR/AR 
  • Physical media 
  • AI and game creation (backlash, adopters) 
  • Educational games
  • Citizen science games
  • Gamification of labour
  • Games in speculative fiction
  • Games as forms of art or activism
  • Affect 
  • Materialist/new historicist readings  

Please submit your proposal by September 30th to vector.submissions@gmail.com, including:

  • a 150-500 word proposal, including estimated length;
  • something about yourself, either a 50-100 word bio or a CV.

Articles should be between 1,000 and 8,000 words. Please let us know your estimated word count. We seek articles that are carefully grounded in scholarly research, while also being clear, engaging, and suitable for a broad audience (including non-academics). Articles will be due by November 30th

Please also feel free to make queries about other formats, e.g. reviews, interviews, curated reading lists, roundtable discussions, unusual / innovative formats. 

Living Among Leviathans: An Interview with Stewart Hotston

A science fiction and fantasy author with a background in physics and finance, Stew Hotston is something of a Renaissance man (right down to the sword-wielding bit). Vector sent Robert S. Malan for a friendly duel of words …

Tell us a little about your work to date – are there distinct strands linking the stories you tell?

Yes, for sure. Despite moving around across SF, fantasy, horror and the just plain weird, there are a couple of themes which recur. One theme is family. Not always blood, but always who we choose to be vulnerable with, who we choose to have by our side when we’re facing challenging times. I think asking who those people are and what we’d do for them are interesting questions, no matter the setting. 

The other recurring theme for me is worlds on the edge of collapse. I like returning to the idea of how times and places, which at first appear idyllic, have nearly always required bad decisions to get there, and these will lie in wait, festering until their time comes again. It’s a little of dealing with the past, but also about asking what price we are willing to pay in order to get what we want. 

Finally, you’ll see a lot of dreams in my books. Not in an ‘it was all a dream’ kind of way! But as ways of characters processing what’s going on, as ways of communication and, even in the hardest SF, to remind us there’s more out there than we’ve dreamed of (literally).

What motivates you when it comes to storytelling, which can be a hard and lonely craft at times?

Continue reading “Living Among Leviathans: An Interview with Stewart Hotston” →