Was the story influenced by things you had previously read??

Yes. Ray Kurzweil's Age of Spiritual Machines and Orwell's 1984 are my "standard" replies.

There are other influences from all kinds of media, however - some are more, others less obvious. I won't reveal too much of it, because it has turned out that it's fun for some players to guess certain references.

I read 1984 in my teens and loved it

I noticed the two reviews I just checked (both very flattering to MoS, I might add) mentioned the 'Orwellian' touch, but the premise reminds me more of another dark favorite of mine, Terry Gilliam's "Brazil". Are you familiar with that work at all?

Come to that, what are your own views on the future? Are you anticipating something that grim or, hoping, as Orwell did, that by living in in fiction we can avoid the reality.

Susan

Hi Susan,

of course I know Brazil, and yes, that's an influence too. MOS makes a reference to it that is quite explicit: Oswald's door is fixed by "Central Services".

About the future: The scary thing about the future is that it cannot be predicted. The great thing is that it can be influenced by what we do in the presence.

I'm of course hoping for a better future than the one I have layed out in MOS - and MOS is my tiny addition to make people think about what the future could be like if they don't do anything but playing computer games all day (heh.)

Which leads me to the second part of the question: fiction can of course be escapism, but it doesn't have to. I didn't write the game to make people forget about reality, but rather to make them look at reality through the glasses of fiction.

an excellent answer I hope your work encourages folks to think about the choices they/we make.