Stackpole gave a seminar titled, "Writing in the post-paper era," at the Origins Game Fair in Columbus, OH a week ago. His feelings on the subject were made clear immediately when he pointed out that he was the first author to make short stories available through the iPhone App Store. Stackpole is convinced that both established and fledgling authors need to embrace new content delivery methods or fade into irrelevance. In fact, he offered evidence that digital publishing will not only be necessary for authors, but that it will work in their favor.

From Stackpole's perspective as an established author (more than three dozen published novels, eight of them Star Wars novels), digital publishing offers more control and direct, reliable payments. Selling stories directly though his website generates a payment before the buyer has even finished downloading the story, and the profit margin on even a short story is far higher than on a paper novel. By comparison, the lag time on payments for sales of a hard copy novel is six to nine months, and even then he pretty much has to take the publisher's word for it that the accounting is accurate.

A lot of writers are worried about online piracy, but Stackpole dismissed those concerns. "People downloading my stories from the big torrent sites were never going to buy them anyway. It's no money out of my pocket." He even admitted to downloading some of his own books from bittorrent sites if he didn't already have a digital copy, saying it was far easier than scanning it in himself.

Writers still trying to break into the publishing world have an unprecedented chance to start their own websites, build an audience and create a market for their work without relying on major publishers at all, said Stackpole. Posting short fiction or even a serialized novel on a website won't cause problems if a writer tries to sign a publishing deal at a later date because mainstream publishers don't see digital publishing as a serious threat.

Rather than simply changing the method of delivering stories to readers, Stackpole believes digital formats will change the nature of the stories themselves. At the very least, authors should tailor their work to these new mediums. He cited what he referred to as "the commuter market," people who read two chapters per day on their half hour train ride to work. It's an ideal market for fiction broken into 2,500 word chapters, and could presage a resurgence of serial fiction. "It's kind of like a return to the Penny Dreadfuls," he said. "But the readers today are more sophisticated, so we as writers need to put more work into it."

It was interesting to hear the formulaic way Stackpole approaches writing. He described how the method of writing old pulp stories could easily be adapted for modern audiences by eliminating certain ubiquitous but unecessary subplots and adding a bit of character development. A serial detective story should be, "70 percent case, 30 percent soap opera," with a little more soap in a later story to satisfy readers interested in a character's developing personal life.

Even amidst all this embracing of change, Stackpole reassured his audience that digital formats were not sounding the death knell for paper books. "Cars did not kill off horses. Digital publishing will not kill off books. It _will_ change the way they are written and retailed."

If nothing else, it's nice to hear an optimistic note among all the doom and gloom about genre fiction these days.

Virtual Worlds was on hand with a dozen MechWarrior simulator pods. These surprisingly sophisticated sims let players climb into the cockpit of an 80-ton walking war machine for just $6 per mission. Read about it here.

An upcoming starship tactical battle game called With Hostile Intent was on display. Although the official rules haven't been released yet, publisher Ninja Magic had some great looking painted ships to show off. There's a gallery of them over at Robot Viking.

Twilight Creations debuted their new invasion game, Martians!!! Based on the same game design as their popular and venerable Zombies!!! series, the game pits the human players against a horde of conquering alien greys. Watch out for the crop circles.

I also got a chance to try out Race for the Galaxy, an interstellar empire building card game. It has some interesting and elegant game mechanics, and the card art features some cool space stations, aliens and futuristic weapons.

Finally, while it's not strictly sci-fi, a new mass combat miniatures game called Arcane Legions generated a lot of interest. The game is based on an alternate history in which Egypt, Rome and the Chinese Han Dynasty battle in a world filled with living mythology, and it has one of the coolest game mechanics I've seen in a long time.