Hey everybody, my name is Dr. Nic and I worked for years to earn that joke. I currently lecture in an eclectic range of subjects at Federation University Australia as well as researching popular culture, history and gamification. In addition to that, I am a game designer both on a freelance basis and for my own entity with Owlman Press, currently focusing on Skum of the Stars RPG (space opera as the bad guys). I’m going to be writing here at the Fifth World about science fiction, tabletop games and literary tropes.
I come from an odd place where my experience of science fiction and popular culture was shaped by an absence of it. For the most part growing up, anything on the television other than westerns (I actually really, really love westerns), news, sport or the dreaded Australian home renovation show was a no-go with a few exceptions. Thus my first experience of Star Wars was Return of the Jedi, which I managed to sneak home from the video store one day. It wasn’t until years later that I saw A New Hope and years again until Empire Strikes Back (gotta say, if you watch Jedi first, the ending of Empire looses its “wow” factor). Likewise, for years my first and only experience of Star Trek was the Animated Series episode “The Magicks of Megas-Tu” (you know, the one where Kirk and Spock save Satan) – which really gives you a different perspective on the whole franchise if that’s all you have to go on.
From there my interests just grew and it was a hop-skip-and-a-jump into hard core, full-frontal nerdity. Professionally, a lot of what really started to spark my interest was, ironically, still very much rooted in the westerns I grew up with. Naturally, in the 1990s, it was hard to avoid the Superhero trend in comic books or Games Workshop for tabletop games. And having the one, small, comic book store in the one, small, town meant that exposure was limited by shelf-space. But it was Timothy Truman and Joe R. Lansdale’s take on Jonah Hex that first got me thinking about science ficiton and Deadlands really got me into tabletop games. Fast-forward to university and that’s where things started to take off.
I come from an odd place where my experience of science fiction and popular culture was shaped by an absence of it. For the most part growing up, anything on the television other than westerns (I actually really, really love westerns), news, sport or the dreaded Australian home renovation show was a no-go with a few exceptions. Thus my first experience of Star Wars was Return of the Jedi, which I managed to sneak home from the video store one day. It wasn’t until years later that I saw A New Hope and years again until Empire Strikes Back (gotta say, if you watch Jedi first, the ending of Empire looses its “wow” factor). Likewise, for years my first and only experience of Star Trek was the Animated Series episode “The Magicks of Megas-Tu” (you know, the one where Kirk and Spock save Satan) – which really gives you a different perspective on the whole franchise if that’s all you have to go on.
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| Light years before Q! |
Meet Dr. Nicholas William Moll
Reviewed by Nicholas William Moll
on
Monday, October 30, 2017
Rating:
Reviewed by Nicholas William Moll
on
Monday, October 30, 2017
Rating:
