PARANOIA

English novelist Martin Amis, doing publicity ahead of next week's publication of his new novel The Pregnant Widow, spoke to the Sunday Times of London. At the end of a long interview, Amis predicted an imminent demographic timebomb, a "silver tsunami" of old demented boomers. His suggested solution provided the grabber headline "Martin Amis calls for euthanasia booths on street corners":

“There’ll be a population of demented very old people, like an invasion of terrible immigrants, stinking out the restaurants and cafes and shops. I can imagine a sort of civil war between the old and the young in 10 or 15 years’ time.”

Amis, himself 60 and a grandfather, added: “There should be a booth on every corner where you could get a martini and a medal.”

The writer says his support for euthanasia has deepened since the deaths of Lord Kilmarnock, his stepfather, and Dame Iris Murdoch, the writer. Amis said: “My stepfather died very horribly last year ... He always thought he was going to get better. But he didn’t get better and I think the denial of death is a great curse.”

Murdoch died in 1999, aged 79, two years after her husband revealed that she was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. Amis said: “I’d known her a very long time, a friend, I loved her. She was wonderful. I remember talking to her just as it started happening, and she said, ‘I’ve entered a dark place’.” [...]

“There should be a way out for rational people who’ve decided they’re in the negative. That should be available, and it should be quite easy. I can’t think it would be too hard to establish some sort of test that shows that you understand.”

Would he kill himself? “There’s a certain point where your life slips into the negative. If you can recognise that point . . .”

In later comments to The Guardian, Amis clarified his comments were meant to be satirical rather than glib:

"What we need to recognise is that certain lives fall into the negative, where pain hugely dwarfs those remaining pleasures that you may be left with. Geriatric science has been allowed to take over and, really, decency roars for some sort of correction. [...] Of course euthanasia is open to abuse, in that the typical grey death will be that of an old relative whose family gets rid of for one reason or another, and they'll say 'he asked me to do it', or 'he wanted to die', Amis said. "That's what we will have to look out for. Nonetheless, it is something we have to make some progress on."

Answering critics who said his comments were "offensive' to older people, Amis, a grandfather, said: "Well, I'm not a million miles away from that myself."

He added: "I had a friend who was desperately ill and she wanted to go to Switzerland, to Dignitas, but she was defeated by bureaucracy at this end. And, I think it is existentially more terrifying to feel that life is something you can't get out of.

"Frankly, I can't think of any reason for prolonging life once the mind goes. You are without dignity then."

Interesting, if not exactly supportive, discussion at Skeptic Exchange.

(Hat tip to GRWatson on Twitter.)

Long-long-longtime gamers may remember talk throughout the 1990s of a forthcoming comedy-fantasy RPG called FRUP. A brainstorm from British gentleman game designer James Wallis (The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen) and his company Hogshead Publishing (which published many licensed Warhammer FRP books), FRUP made you laugh from the moment you heard the premise:

Come with us into a strangely familiar world of warriors and wizards, elves and dwarves, character sheets and combat rounds, dungeons and… what do you call those big lizard things? This is the land of Frup, where three enormous RPG rulebooks fell from the sky and were proclaimed as a Message from the Gods. Two thousand years later the holy rules contained in the Great Books have become the foundation for Frup’s entire religion and law. Breaking the rules is heresy. Heretics get burned at the stake.

So you’re in a world where everybody absolutely believes that they’re characters in a huge campaign of a certain market-leading RPG, being played by the Gods of Frup. Everyone has a character chart with their attributes (Brawn, Agility, Stamina, Influence, Cunning and Sagacity and morality (from Evenly Nice to Oddly Naughty) on it, plus their Career and Stage if they’re a PC. Anyone found without a character chart is clearly a monster, and will be butchered for career points. The same treatment is usually given to NPCs, and PCs a few stages lower than yourself. Stay alert. Keep your longsword handy.

Though long forthcoming, FRUP never came forth. But now James Wallis's FRUP may be rising! He has started a What is Frup blog, where he reprints the original 1995 FRUP preview article distributed as a handout at Hogshead convention tables.

Let's hope some sort of Frupping is imminent!

On the Paranoia-Live.net fan forums, loyal and hard-working Citizen No. 5127 has once again posted several helpful indices of interesting topics discussed in 2009. For instance, his Information Booth forum topic list includes everything from A Great Big List of Uncommon, Unlikely, and Unhealthy skills to Ready to Buy: XP or Troubleshooters?

No. 5127 has also compiled a 2009 Rec Hall topic index and (accessible to those cleared for the Gamemaster-only forum) an annual GM Meeting Room topic index. For your sterling efforts, Citizen No. 5127, accept with gratitude and grace this shiny commendation point!

Tangential to PARANOIA, but interesting in its own right, is this Times (UK) review of George Orwell's diaries by Orwell biographer D. J. Taylor.

The Computer's loyal servants in Housing Preservation & Development and Mind Control report greatly increased happiness metrics associated with Year 214 across all polled sectors. Congratulations to all sector entities that achieved performance review ratings of Acceptable or higher, and best wishes to the successors of those that didn't. Following recommendations by the HPD&MC Committee for Applied Social Tranquility Resource Allocation and Technical Optimization (CASTRATO), The Computer has instructed all service groups to repeat Year 214 until further notice.

The first edition of PARANOIA, from West End Games, debuted at Gen Con in August 1984. In 2009 Mongoose Publishing marked PARANOIA's 25th year in high style with two new anniversary rulebooks: Troubleshooter, for RED-Clearance missions (a "point-one" revision of the 2004 edition), and Internal Security, for BLUE-Clearance missions. For each of these rules sets, Mongoose issued a companion mission collection: Treason in Word and Deed for Troubleshooter, and Termination Quota Exceeded for Internal Security. Soon the new year will bring another Troubleshooter mission collection, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Termination Booth, and -- ta dahh! -- the third and final anniversary rulebook, High Programmers (for ULTRAVIOLET-Clearance missions). The companion High Programmers mission collection, None of This is My Fault, will include a partial adaptation of Sam Shirley's 1987 West End PARANOIA adventure, The Iceman Returneth.

These fine books were all written by one gifted designer -- Mongoose's ever-industrious staff writer Gareth Hanrahan. Gareth also wrote Citizen's Guide to Surviving Alpha Complex, published this past spring for Free RPG Day. All told, in 2009 Gareth wrote or adapted over 700 pages of PARANOIA -- around 400,000 words! He also found time to write Aslan and Scoundrel for Traveller and an ongoing webcomic, Fish for Fish. We are fortunate Gareth has chosen to use his powers in the cause of good.

At this writing PARANOIA ranks #14 of 1,422 core rules systems in the RPG.net Gaming Index, and #18 overall of 13,550 products. Among RPGs originally published in the 1980s, only King Arthur Pendragon, Call of Cthulhu, Talislanta, and Warhammer Fantasy rank higher, with Fantasy Hero close behind. Fine company!

Labels: yearinreview