@SupaChupacabra: Checked this article just to make sure someone had posted this quote. Well done.
@jetRink: I grew up playing D&D in the late '80s/early '90s, and wasn't really aware of Chick et al. at the time.
Looking back, all I can see is this:
Chick et al. ACTUALLY BELIEVED MAGIC WAS REAL, and I liked to pretend it was. So clearly, I was the disturbed one.
I've been playing for close to 20 years now, and I still haven't figured out how to cast a damn cantrip. Because it's pretend.
I think this is really just a case of a lazy journalist looking for an angle on an over-covered storied, and finding a piece of information to latch on to. Well, that, and a paper with the poor judgment to publish it. In any case, I'd like to think it doesn't necessarily say anything about the zeitgeist.
But then, this does come on the heels of that court decision in Wisconsin (right in the Cradle of Gygax, I'd add) that ruled a prisoner couldn't have his D&D books because they encouraged gang behavior and escapist fantasies. To me, it's much more alarming to see a medical expert convince a judge that D&D is a destructive influence than it is to see some journalist spew her own preconceptions in a crappy newspaper.
Dracula 3000. It's like someone pulled the 'racism' 'sexism' 'vampire' and 'space' cards out of a hat and said... "Do I really have to make this movie?"
It "stars" Coolio, features a lot of Soviet decor for a movie released in 2004, and contains a line about "Comptonian weed." See, they got the weed on Comptonia, so...
I'd nearly forgotten about that PKD story. Now I wish I had a copy around here somewhere.
