No essay yet. Two reasons:
- I have copy-edits on The Taint due in a few days, and I haven’t event started yet.
- I’m going to write about Octavia Butler’s Seed to Harvest books, which I haven’t finished reading yet. But that should wrap up at about the same time as the copy-edits, so, you know, Real Soon Now.
In the meantime, you can amuse yourself with this interesting analysis of the construction of gender in gamer nomenclature.
J.S. Bangs 
oh the background art for that article is both hilarious and apt! I’ve never gotten into games much over the years. I was more into them in my teens and early twenties but mostly gave up on them after I realized that I was channeling creative energy into something someone else made up for me to buy. Of course gaming can be a useful channel for creativity for people so I wouldn’t discourage them from playing games if that’s fun for them but it does sometimes seem (to me) as though the problem of games is that to play a game means you limit yourself to the strictures of what other people decide ought to be done. Ironically I’m still single while other people who learned the game of mating have mated. As much as people in my situation and others may be tempted to see gaming as a waste of time we know there are types of play that are socially constructive, just maybe not in the hardcore gaming world? 😉