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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8238998" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 51: January 1990part 5/5The Living Galaxy: The living city columns have been doing pretty well for themselves for several years. Now they're going to see if the fanbase is there to support a similar sci-fi setting. No word on what it'll be like yet, or even what system it'll use, but it took a good 2 years go from the basic idea to the fully laid out Raven's Bluff so that's not too surprising. In the meantime, Roger Moore kicks things off with a rather long column about one of the big differences between sci-fi and fantasy settings. Search Engines! You don't have to read everything yourself, you can just input a word or phrase into the computer and pull up all the instances of it from millions of pages of information. Ironically, this is one of those cases where real world advancement over the past 30 years has outstripped the imagination of sci-fi writers. Google and the internet have made general knowledge available on a scale, update speed and efficiency that's completely changed how the world functions. There are still limitations, but not many of the ones given here to keep having access to all this knowledge from solving all your problems. Instead, they've been replaced by a vast excess of false positives, adverts slowing everything down and social media that tries to maximise engagement and distract from ever leaving the virtual world to go out and accomplish things. It's not what most people thought the future would be like. So this is interesting, but also very dated and most of the plot ideas here would need retooling to be credible to a modern audience. Can't be having our sci-fi less technologically advanced than the real world, can we?Spy School: The Top Secret article this issue is very 80's cartoon indeed, providing Orion members with a sample school where they can gain new skills between missions that leans right into all the spy stereotypes. You can only get there by flying in a plane without windows so they have no idea where in the world you are. All the teachers are given no names, only titles,  and are obvious stereotypes. The shouty drill sergeant who does heavy weapons. The inscrutable japanese martial arts teacher. The over-the-top Oirish one who's all four-leafed-clovers and whiskey. The cool dude driving instructor who's, like, totally bodacious and radical, maan at all times. The mechanic who's literally a human version of Gadget from Rescue Rangers. It's all very cringy & uninspired and also moderately racist. Once again this is stuff that really hasn't aged well, albeit for different reasons. Another thing the internet has done is made it so much easier to talk to people around the world, and see that while they might be different in some ways, they're more complex and nuanced ones than the old stereotypes. We can get more information, faster and easier, and the things we create in response reflect that. Like many of the more obscure 80's cartoons, this article really does not deserve rebooting for the modern era.Bloodmoose & Company find a secret trap door that leads them to some zombies. Hopefully they'll be guarding treasure and it's not just a dead end. With a beginning stuffed with low-content promotion, a middle filled with distinctly unfunny humour, and an end that dives right into casual racism, this issue manages an impressive trifecta of badness, making it one of the most all-round awful issues in this entire series. It's interesting and noteworthy for all the wrong reasons, and even the bits that would have been useful for a group back then have aged unusually poorly in multiple ways. Definitely not a good way to start a new decade. One to move swiftly onwards from and hope the next one is better. Although given that it's humour season again, I'm not optimistic. If they'll put this much goofiness in a regular issue, imagine what they have planned for April Fools. :shudders:</blockquote>

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