Quote:
Originally Posted by Kaemaril
Those are some surprisingly low scores (Style 1? Really?) for a product where in the review you say that the most negative thing you can say about it is that it 'lacks cohesion'.
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Hi,
I was actually re-looking at the points which I gave. I could have actually been more generous and given it a score of 2/3. But I have to say Lagos was overall an interesting city, but I really felt I had to force myself to read through near 50 pages which lacked continuity and cohesion, and you can even notice where different writers have written parts of it and at different times.
Chicago had more cohesion, but it too I felt lacked continuity. To be honest, I felt that the whole book was to actually give fanservice to Chicago (near 60 pages of material) and to continue the much vaunted metaplot of Shadowrun. Lagos (roughly 50 pages of material) was added to give it meat and the other cities were added as trimmings (3-4 pages each).
Oh and Karavan is most likely based on Archigram's Instant City project(1), but instead of being a technological marvel, it is the more feral version of the same. Still the meme does echo in numerous sci-fi books of its time and can still be found in the 1980s, but shifted to include large convoys of cars and trucks with an emphasis on the idea of the independence of the car and interdependency of a convoy.
1. 1968 The Instant City project funded by the Gaham Foundation, Chicago explores the concept of a ‘travelling city’ airship with the entertainment and educational resources of a metropolis.