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2011 Books 5
Jan. 14th, 2011 07:13 am5) Seaworthy, by Linda Greenlaw: For those not familiar with Ms. Greenlaw, she America's only female swordfishing captain, and moved to a modest degree of fame after her appearances in the book and movie The Perfect Storm. Since then she stopped captaining to write three highly enjoyable books on commercial fishing, co-authored a cookbook with her mom and produced two atrociously derivative mystery novels. In 2008 she accepted an offer to go back out to sea at very short notice, in part because she just wants to see if she, once the best in her field, can still cut it after a decade on land. Alas, she is stuck scraping together a highly unusual crew and discovers that her new boat is, ahem, not up to standards. Seaworthy is her memoir of that trip, and I enjoyed it. Not as strong as Hungry Ocean, but on par with Lobster Chronicles.
What most struck me, however, was how much this was a Traveller or similar semi-hard SF campaign. Make her and her crew belters rather than swordfishers and everything maps perfectly: her boat is in bad shape, requires constant jury rigging, has life threatening technical challenges, and is actually owned by someone far away whose support and advice is less than helpful; the captain has a backstory and something to prove; the crew are highly atypical for a swordboat but nicely iconic - from the new guy who proves his worth to the avuncular sixty-six (!) year old guy whose additional duties are cooking, ad hoc medicine and crew morale to the clown who skirts with insubordination but with an indispensable skill set to the huge steadfast mechanic. If I do end up running a belter game at some point I'll definitely revisit Greenlaw's books to see how much of swordboating culture I can port into the asteroids.
What most struck me, however, was how much this was a Traveller or similar semi-hard SF campaign. Make her and her crew belters rather than swordfishers and everything maps perfectly: her boat is in bad shape, requires constant jury rigging, has life threatening technical challenges, and is actually owned by someone far away whose support and advice is less than helpful; the captain has a backstory and something to prove; the crew are highly atypical for a swordboat but nicely iconic - from the new guy who proves his worth to the avuncular sixty-six (!) year old guy whose additional duties are cooking, ad hoc medicine and crew morale to the clown who skirts with insubordination but with an indispensable skill set to the huge steadfast mechanic. If I do end up running a belter game at some point I'll definitely revisit Greenlaw's books to see how much of swordboating culture I can port into the asteroids.
