where, in the cocktail lounge of the Righa Royale, Matt Costello and I pitched our concept for an interactive CD-ROM called DNA Wars to Linda Rich of Media Vision.
See, back then there were video games and interactive CD-ROMs. Space Invaders and Tetris were video games played on game consoles, like PlayStation. Interactive CD-ROMs were games too, but more cerebral and with better graphics—like The Seventh Guest and Myst —and played on computers. Nowadays they’re all called video games.
In 1993 interactive media was hot, it was the future, and everyone in publishing and software development wanted in. Alliances were being formed willy-nilly, crazy amounts of money were being thrown about.
As designer and scripter of The Seventh Guest, Matt was considered a go-to guy for interactivity. He pulled me aboard and we rode the interactive ground-swell. The most fascinating years of my writing career lay just ahead.
“ARYANS AND ABSINTHE”
Early in the summer of 1993 Douglas E. Winter called to tell me about his idea for an anthology that would consist of a novella for every decade of the century, each story centering on some apocalyptic event. He said pick a decade. I picked the 1920s—Weimar Germany, specifically. The arts were flourishing but the economic chaos and runaway inflation of the times were so surreal, so devastating to everyone’s day-to-day life that people—Jew and gentile alike—were looking for a savior. A foppish little guy named Hitler came to prominence presenting himself as that savior.
I did extensive research for “Aryans and Absinthe.” Charles Bracelen Flood’s remarkable Hitler: The Path to Power (Houghton Mifflin, 1989) was a major source. I wanted to get the details right so I could make you feel you were there . I finished in August and was pretty high on it. I thought I’d captured the tenor and tempo of the times, felt I’d conveyed an apocalyptic experience.
But I’d have to wait four years before seeing it in print. The anthology, Revelations, wouldn’t appear until 1997.
Aryans and Absinthe
Today it takes 40,000 marks to buy a single US dollar.
—Volkischer Beobachter, May 4, 1923
Ernst Drexler found the strangest things entertaining. That was how he always phrased it: entertaining . Even inflation could be entertaining, he said.
Karl Stehr remembered seeing Ernst around the Berlin art venues for months before he actually met him. He stood out in that perennially scruffy crowd with his neatly pressed suit and vest, starched collar and tie, soft hat either on his head or under his arm, and his distinctive silver-headed cane wrapped in black rhinoceros hide. His black hair swept back sleek as linoleum from his high forehead; the bright blue eyes that framed his aquiline nose were never still, always darting about under his dark eyebrows; thin lips, a strong chin, and tanned skin, even in winter, completed the picture. Karl guessed Ernst to be in his mid-thirties, but his mien was that of someone older.
For weeks at a time he would seem to be everywhere, and never at a loss for something to say. At the Paul Klee show where Klee’s latest, “The Twittering Machine,” had been on exhibition, Karl had overheard his sarcastic comment that Klee had joined the Bauhaus not a moment too soon. Ernst was always at the right places: at the opening of Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler, at the cast party for that Czech play R.U.R., and at the secret screenings of Murnau’s Nosferatu, to name just a few.
And then he’d be nowhere. He’d disappear for weeks or a month without a word to anyone. When he returned he would pick up just where he’d left off, as if there’d been no hiatus. And when he was in town he all but lived at the Romanisches Cafe where nightly he would wander among the tables, glass in hand, a meandering focus of raillery and bavardage, dropping dry, witty, acerbic comments on art and literature like ripe fruit. No one seemed to remember who first introduced him to the
See, back then there were video games and interactive CD-ROMs. Space Invaders and Tetris were video games played on game consoles, like PlayStation. Interactive CD-ROMs were games too, but more cerebral and with better graphics—like The Seventh Guest and Myst —and played on computers. Nowadays they’re all called video games.
In 1993 interactive media was hot, it was the future, and everyone in publishing and software development wanted in. Alliances were being formed willy-nilly, crazy amounts of money were being thrown about.
As designer and scripter of The Seventh Guest, Matt was considered a go-to guy for interactivity. He pulled me aboard and we rode the interactive ground-swell. The most fascinating years of my writing career lay just ahead.
“ARYANS AND ABSINTHE”
Early in the summer of 1993 Douglas E. Winter called to tell me about his idea for an anthology that would consist of a novella for every decade of the century, each story centering on some apocalyptic event. He said pick a decade. I picked the 1920s—Weimar Germany, specifically. The arts were flourishing but the economic chaos and runaway inflation of the times were so surreal, so devastating to everyone’s day-to-day life that people—Jew and gentile alike—were looking for a savior. A foppish little guy named Hitler came to prominence presenting himself as that savior.
I did extensive research for “Aryans and Absinthe.” Charles Bracelen Flood’s remarkable Hitler: The Path to Power (Houghton Mifflin, 1989) was a major source. I wanted to get the details right so I could make you feel you were there . I finished in August and was pretty high on it. I thought I’d captured the tenor and tempo of the times, felt I’d conveyed an apocalyptic experience.
But I’d have to wait four years before seeing it in print. The anthology, Revelations, wouldn’t appear until 1997.
Aryans and Absinthe
Today it takes 40,000 marks to buy a single US dollar.
—Volkischer Beobachter, May 4, 1923
Ernst Drexler found the strangest things entertaining. That was how he always phrased it: entertaining . Even inflation could be entertaining, he said.
Karl Stehr remembered seeing Ernst around the Berlin art venues for months before he actually met him. He stood out in that perennially scruffy crowd with his neatly pressed suit and vest, starched collar and tie, soft hat either on his head or under his arm, and his distinctive silver-headed cane wrapped in black rhinoceros hide. His black hair swept back sleek as linoleum from his high forehead; the bright blue eyes that framed his aquiline nose were never still, always darting about under his dark eyebrows; thin lips, a strong chin, and tanned skin, even in winter, completed the picture. Karl guessed Ernst to be in his mid-thirties, but his mien was that of someone older.
For weeks at a time he would seem to be everywhere, and never at a loss for something to say. At the Paul Klee show where Klee’s latest, “The Twittering Machine,” had been on exhibition, Karl had overheard his sarcastic comment that Klee had joined the Bauhaus not a moment too soon. Ernst was always at the right places: at the opening of Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler, at the cast party for that Czech play R.U.R., and at the secret screenings of Murnau’s Nosferatu, to name just a few.
And then he’d be nowhere. He’d disappear for weeks or a month without a word to anyone. When he returned he would pick up just where he’d left off, as if there’d been no hiatus. And when he was in town he all but lived at the Romanisches Cafe where nightly he would wander among the tables, glass in hand, a meandering focus of raillery and bavardage, dropping dry, witty, acerbic comments on art and literature like ripe fruit. No one seemed to remember who first introduced him to the
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