Well, do you?
Welcome to the first edition of the FullGlassEmptyClip Weekly (insert free stuff of the week) Contest Giveaway Extravaganza!
A contest you say? What do I have to do to get free stuff? What free stuff is there? Is it really free? Why are you being so nice to me?
I’m glad you asked. Read on!
All you have to do is follow the rules. Each week I will decide what to give away: could be a game, maybe some gaming gear, who knows it might even be a Metafilter membership (which which is the gateway drug to our NOT-SO-SEKRIT clubhouse: The Mefight Club).
Decisions of the judge — that’s me — are irrevocable and final.
The rules and prizes will change after each giveaway, at which time a winner or winners will be announced, and a new prize will be offered. Make sure you use your real email with your comment (which will never be shared or published) so we can get in touch with you to arrange your Amazing Prize Package!
Enough explanation, now for some free stuff:
This week I will be giving away 1 (one) Good Old Games copy of Freespace 1 + The Silent War Expansion, and 1 (one) copy of Freespace 2 to 1 (one) lucky winner.
You’ve seen mine, now show me yours. To win this week’s contest, all you have to do is leave a comment with the name of your favorite spaceship on this post, and tell us (preferably amusingly) why it’s your favorite. It can be from a game, a movie, a TV show, a book… or one you just plain made up. I will pick a winner on Thursday July 15th, and announce it Friday the 16th of July, 2010. Now, get to it!
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My favorite’s probably got to be The Heart of Gold, from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, because anything powered by an Infinite Improbability Drive, which in turn can be powered by the brownian motion in a good hot cup of tea, well, that’s aces in my books.
Also, quantum indeterminacy and all the stuff that comes along with it makes my brain feel nice.
My favoritest spaceship of all time is definitely the lego one I built. It looked almost exactly like this one. Except it was white with blue rockets on the side, obviously.
My ship and I traveled all over the galaxy together. We didn’t care about faster than light travel not being possible, we did it anyway! Usually we’d stop by the moon first thing in the morning to say hello to the little green men that lived there. Sometimes we’d blow them up, but I’d always feel a little bad about it afterwards. Anyway, next stop would be Mars cause come on, how cool is that? We were on friggin’ Mars! As the morning wore on, our journey just got more and more fantastic. We’d hop from Mars to Jupiter, flying straight through the big red dot (since the ship was invincible, this was no problem), then we’d weave through the rings of Saturn, then on past the no-longer-a-planet Pluto, out into the galaxy proper.
Here is where we had our best adventures (after our afternoon nap, of course). We’d run into all sorts of trouble and adventure, like the time we battled the five legged horn-shoggle, or the time we just barely escaped the clutches of evil snagglefirth. Luckily I always had my trusty ship to save me from trouble and get me back home to earth in time for dinner!
Man, I wish I could find that ship, I haven’t played with it in weeks! Must be under the couch cushions or something.
Well the obvious answer is the Millennium Falcon. But I will not use that as my submission. Instead, I give you the INTERSTELLAR QUEEN.
This boxy beauty was a favorite of mine as a kid and came from this book.
I’m not really entirely sure what it was about this particular ship, but I think it had something to do with it being birdlike … like it was maybe somehow a living thing.
Hmm, favourite ship name, or favourite ship?
If it’s the name, I like just about all the starship names from Iain M Banks’ Culture novels, with Gray Area probably my favourite – or more accurately, it’s nickname – Meatfucker. Xenophobe, A Frank Exchange of Views, I blame my mother and I blame your mother are honourable mentions.
Favourite ship? Damn near impossible to pick one, but one of the shortlist has to be the Serenity, the Firefly-class transport from, well, Firefly (and the movie Serenity). She really comes across as a character of her own in the TV series (and the movie, to a lesser extent), not like the cold sterility of Star Wars or Star Trek ships…
It is on the more obscure side, but because of the story attached to it, my choice is Captain’s Fancy from Stephen Donaldson’s book The Real Story (with a nod to the other important ship in that story: Bright Beauty.)
This book is one of my favorite SciFi stories of all time. It is short but very harrowing. Without giving too many details away Donaldson begins the story with three principle characters who fill the three classic archetypes:
1. A very, very wicked villain named Angus. He does some truly horrific things in the beginning of this book, but the worst is reserved for…
2. The damsel in distress, Morn. Again, without too many spoilers, Morn becomes Angus’ captive in Bright Beauty and because Angus is a wicked man, evilness ensues.
3. The swashbucking hero named Nick Succorso. He is a natural leader with the shiny ship called Captain’s Fancy and is the classic hero type.
What makes this book so great is that by the end of the story each of the characters has taken on the role of a different archetype. Morn, the victim to begin the story, has become something else. Does she become The Hero? The Victim? I’m not gonna tell. Donaldson does a great job getting inside the characters head and the transformation is entirely organic from the events that unfold.
Even without the macro appreciation of the book the story itself is great, exciting SciFi stuff. Donaldson, because he set out to write a shortish novel keeps the story moving at a brisk page-turning pace (something he didn’t always do in his more famous Thomas Covenant fantasy trilogies). The book is the first in a 5-part series called The Gap Into Conflict, which is reasonably good space opera stuff (his broader goal in the series was to recreate Wagner’s Ring Cycle in space). However the first book, The Real Story really can stand on its own and is by far my favorite book in the series. I have re-read it more than any other book.
I think my favourite spaceship is the Botany Bay from Star Trek. Is it all that interesting? No, and I think the remastered version is ugly. Here’s why: if you scroll down to the bottom of this memory alpha article, you’ll see it gets used in a Bajoran religious symbol as the ‘spoke’ of the wheel. Awesome! I will always support re-using art assets, especially in such a creative way. I love that symbol.
The ‘NOSTROMO’.
Why? Because a ships computer called ‘Mother’ relaying news like was more creepy and cold than any alien.
Duh, that’s easy. Spaceball One. Not only can it go plaid at Ludicrous Speed, it can turn into a giant robot maid that both sucks AND blows.
My favorite ship is the Battlestar Galactica, the most cursed ship in science fiction. What other spacefaring vessel has had to suffer the presence of Richard Hatch in TWO LIFETIMES? None, I say!
Battlestar Galactica, misery is thy name.
The space shuttle. I grew up in Houston in the 80s, and as a result spent a lot of time immersed in NASA culture. Due to lots of trips out to the Johnson Space Center, I knew about the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions. I’d seen the tiny Redstone rockets next to the behemoth Saturn V at the Redstone Arsenal when I attended Space Camp there.
All of that stuff was cool – but none of it was a SPACE PLANE that could launch satellites, send astronauts on EVAs and park at the space station. That was the real-life stuff of my childhood adventure fantasies. Even after the Challenger disaster cast a pall on the whole operation, and NASA sank into a pit of self-preservation and budget cuts, nothing could take away that spark of adventure and possibility from the shuttle program.
I never did have a specific favorite, but I was always a little more interested in Columbia and Endeavour. Columbia because it was the first and Endeavour because I participated in a NASA contest to name it. (I don’t remember what name I wanted, probably the Awesome or Enterprise II – Now With Engines.) I was so sad when Columbia burned up, because even as a kid I had thoughts about going to see it once it was retired.
A lot of people malign it as an over-cost dinosaur, good for little and great at nothing – the result of a compromised design. All of that may be true. But it’s still a goddamn SPACE PLANE, and we should be so lucky to have it.
(Also, no need to consider me for the contest, as I already have both games. Just a little childhood geek indulgence.)