H.G. Wells | Karavansara

I first saw First Men in the Moon, the 1964 movie when I was a kid of six or seven, and I enjoyed it enormously. I was after all a kid of the Apollo generation, and stories about journeys to the moon were in the news back then.

In case you missed it, First Men in the Moon is a Nigel Kneale adaptation of an H.G. Wells novel published in 1901, directed by Nathan Juran featuring special effects by Ray Harryhausen, and the original novel (that you can download for free from Project Gutenberg) was an inspiration to both C.S. Lewis and Edgar Rice Burroughs.
It’s the story – you guessed it – of an Victorian mission to the moon, courtesy of the inventions of professor Joseph Cavor.

Now it turns out the actual Apollo moon landing will provide the theme for this years’s Play gaming fair in Modena – and there will be a selection of moon-themed goodies. including not one, but two Hope & Glory… things.

Moon-things, if you will.

And yes, I am currently doing four writing jobs at the same time, one of which is a brief Hope & Glory scenario about the first men in the moon.
That old movie I first saw as a kid will provide some ideas, but there’s a lot more brewing.

Stuff like a secret volcano base and a moon-gun ready to shoot a band of courageous adventurers on a one-way trip to our pale-faced satellite.

My weekend just turned a lot more strange than it was.

THE world is undergoing immense changes. Never before have the conditions of life changed so swiftly and enormously as they have changed for mankind in the last fifty years. We have been carried along—with no means of measuring the increasing swiftness in the succession of events. We are only now beginning to realize the force and strength of the storm of change that has come upon us.(H.G. Wells, The Open Conspiracy, 1928)

40651289_1844226848964225_7031900626594299904_n The first full review of Hope & Glory is in and it is just great – you can read it here, on the Ars Rolica blog. It’s in Spanish, but as usual Google Translate is your friend.

The review really made me happy and I was particularly happy of the fact that the reviewer started out cautious and a little diffident, but finally was captivated by the setting.

All the elements are perfectly interwoven with each other and, as I said before, once that initial caution is saved, it is very easy to get carried away by the exciting combination of genres that Hope & Glory presents.

… and I thought, we made it!

I am extremely grateful to Ars Rolica for their great and in-depth review of our game; I am sure I can speak for my long-suffering partner in this adventure – Umberto Pignatelli, that had to put order and numbers on my somewhat sprawling world – and the guys that did art and graphics. Thank you, Ars Rolica!

There was also a bit that caused me to pause, and laugh, and then an idea for a post, and here I am… Continue reading →