A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

(C) 2016 Bantam Books, an imprint of Penguin/Random House LLC The United States Navy is currently the world’s largest and most capable navy in the world. No other nation – including the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation – has as large a fleet – 282 warships, including 11 aircraft carriers in service, with two Gerald R. Ford carriers being built – or can project naval air power (3,700 deployable aircraft, second only in size and striking power to the U.S. Air Force, the world’s mightiest air force) as the American Navy. It’s worth remembering, though, that until World War II, this wasn’t always so; America’s mother country, Great Britain, started the war as the world’s premier naval power; in 1939 the Royal Navy’s 1,400 warships ensured that Britannia did, indeed, rule the waves. But after the United States entered the war – having restarted its naval construction program in 1937 to modernize a badly-neglected fleet, create jobs, and deter aggressor nation...

Silent Service II torpedo-firing cutscene. (C)1990 MicroProse Software In 1990, the now-defunct video game and computer simulation publisher MicroProse Software released Silent Service II, a submarine simulation game set in the Pacific Theater of Operations during World War II. Developed by MicroProse’s in-house MPS Labs, the game is a sequel to 1985’s best-selling Silent Service. It is a single-player game that puts you in command of a U.S. Navy submarine during America’s war with Japan in various areas of Earth’s largest ocean. The game’s design team – led by the project’s main designer Arnold Hendrick and programmer Roy B. Gibson – took advantage of improvements in computer technology (such as more powerful CPUs, better sound cards, and VGA graphics) to create a more realistic and enjoyable gaming experience that took its cues from Sid Meier’s original game but was a bigger and better simulation. In Silent Service II , players can: Choose Boats from Nine Dif...

Avatar (2009) Written and directed by James Cameron Starring: Sam Worthington, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Zoe Saldana Although writer-director James Cameron didn't exactly vanish into thin air after his 1997 boffo hit  Titanic  earned a roomful of Oscars and a small bank's worth of box office "take," it seemed that the guy had gone off into a Howard Hughes-like state of reclusion, at least artistically speaking. Of course, Cameron did  not  retire to some Pacific Ocean island to sip mai-tais and bask on a sun-soaked beach; he has been quite active making documentaries, producing TV series ( Dark Angel ) and prepping quite a few movie projects, including two sequels to Avatar. His 2009 science-fiction movie,  Avatar, was Cameron's first feature film in 12 years.  Like Titanic , it was very expensive to make ($230 million), partly because Cameron had to develop new computer graphic techniques, and partly because of the ambitious s...

Screenshot of the "Main Title" game-is-loading screen from Silent Service II. (C) 1990 MicroProse Labs In the late 1980s and early 1990s, around the same time that I started working as a freelance writer and writing consultant in Miami, I spent much of my free time playing computer games. I went out with friends to the movies or to eat at inexpensive chain restaurants such as Denny's or Ruby Tuesday's, but I mostly stayed at home and spent countless hours at my computer desk playing my favorite games and simulations.  This era was also the Golden Age of the now-vanished MicroProse Software, a company co-founded by Sid Meier and retired Air Force Col. William "Wild Bill" Stealey in 1982. Based in Hunt Valley, Maryland, MicroProse was one of the first companies to publish easy-to-play yet challenging strategy games ( NATO Commander, Crusade in Europe, Conflict in Vietnam ) and simulations with a military flavor to them ( F-15 Strike Eagle, Gunship ). ...