Writing Classes Personal

Finalist, 1994 Lambda Literary Award

The free-port world of Burning Bright is a nexus of trade, balanced economically and politically between the human and Hsai empires, and also the center of the Game, a virtual-reality-based extravaganza that is played throughout settled space. When Quinn Lioe, a space pilot and game designer, finds herself unexpected stranded on Burning Bright, she takes this as her opportunity to float a new Game scenario where it will be most appreciated. But when her scenario becomes part of the complex real world politics also played on Burning Bright, she is forced to learn that new game before it destroys her.

Reviews

Publishers Weekly
"An intelligent, engaging, and memorable book."
Locus
"an almost magical experience, an involving tale of art and intrigue"
Library Journal
"Scott skillfully weaves a tale of labyrinthing politics and complex, fragile relationships in [an] SF adventure in which virtual and actual realities combine to send shock waves into the future."
Science Fiction Chronicle
"An intricate and cleverly developed and resolved plot."

Where did this one come from? Well, for once not from books I was reading, but from my long-standing love of role-playing games, coupled with a visit to the Iowa Playwrights Festival where my partner was one of the critic/responders. Listening to playwrights, actors, and directors talk about the collaboration that goes into making a play sounded like some of the same things that go into making a role-playing session work, and brought me back to RPGs. So I read a lot of them (didn't get to play many, alas): GURPS and its supplements, Cyberspace, Pendragon, Shadowrun, AD&D, Space 1899, Vampire, etc. I also read John Julius Norwich's massive History of Venice as well as rereading something I'd read in graduate school, Guido Ruggiero's The Boundaries of Eros: Sex, Crime, and Sexuality in Renaissance Venice, which influenced both the setting and the societies.

I remember listening to Johnny Clegg and Savuka - the first 2 albums - a lot while I was working on this book, but I'm not sure how, or if, that affected it. That, and Miranda Sex Garden's Madra.

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