A. D. Jameson is the author of five books, most recently I Find Your Lack of Faith Disturbing: Star Wars and the Triumph of Geek Culture (FSG 2018) and Cinemaps: An Atlas of 35 Great Movies (with artist Andrew DeGraff) (Quirk 2017). In May 2018, he received his Ph.D. in English (Creative Writing) from the University of Illinois at Chicago.
More:
- my Amazon author page
- Quirk’s page for Cinemaps: An Atlas of 35 Great Movies
- FSG’s page for I Find Your Lack of Faith Disturbing: Star Wars and the Triumph of Geek Culture
- a guide to all the blogging I did at HTML Giant
- a guide to all the blogging I did at Big Other
- an inventory of all my writing on cinema
- all of my published fiction to date
- my previous books: 99 Things to Do When You have the Time, the novel Giant Slugs, and the short story collection Amazing Adult Fantasy
Note:
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Hi, Adam! Jeepers, I didn’t look at the list of this week’s Tuesday Funk participants until after it was over–I sometimes go to those, as Bill Shunn is a friend of mine. The Interconnectedness of All Things continues to amaze me!! So sorry to have missed your reading. Anyway, I have the MP3 files of Orson Welles ready for you, as promised. We have a drop/send site at work that I can use to get the files to you, if you want to e-mail me about that. Hope school is going well.
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How do I email you? I have a film article I would like your opinion on. As a filmmaker, your opinion on film matters to me. I am assuming you screen your comments, so don’t take my posting the link here an attempt at slutting the article out. Its a dissection of Ryan Phillipe’s character in The Way of the Gun. http://cargocollective.com/bpp#2500676/Bright-Ideas
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Hi Adam,
Just wanted to know if you are a New Zealander or a New Zealand writer living in the US. We want to catalogue your novel, Giant Slugs, as a NZ Fiction and need some information to confirm it. Please help!
Thanks
Yuan
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Hi Yuan,
Thanks for your interest. I emailed you. I’m afraid I’m not NZ, though I wish I were.
Cheers,
Adam
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Hi there,
I read your articles about Hail The New Puritan and I want to talk about looking for footage of other related material–i would love to get in touch.
Thanks,
Ramona
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Hi there,
I’m a filmmaker, film scholar (just submitted my PhD thesis about the long take in cinema) and Magic player, giving a lecture on Magic at uni this semester in Germany. Tomorrow I will talk about your text “An open letter to Cedric Phillips, Gerry Thompson, and the Pro Magic community at large” in my class. I really liked the way you write and was thrilled to find out that you are involved in a uni career and in film studies as well. Seems to be a rare combination, so I just wanted to say hi.
Cheers,
Martin
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Hello A. D. I wrote MtG articles for several years. I was wondering if you could share some of your sources for your essay, specifically about R&D and Hasbro, etc. I don’t write anymore, I’m just curious.
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Hi Chris, thanks for the comment! All of the sources are linked to in the article, or should be, at least. (Some of the links might have gone dead.) The rest is analysis of those public sources. E.g., Mark Rosewater would one day start speaking and writing about “resonant design,” which would make me wonder where that idea came from. I’d poke around and find that Brian Goldner, Hasbro’s CEO, had spoken somewhere about the importance of “emotional resonance.” It’s not hard to conclude that Goldner communicated his vision to Greg Leeds, who then communicated it to Bill Rose, who in turn passed it on to Aaron Forsythe, who gave it to Maro.
In general, I’ve found that the best way to figure out why the people at Wizards are doing something is to look into what Hasbro is doing, and to think about broader market trends. (I’ve never bought the conventional wisdom that so many Magic players spout, that Hasbro doesn’t tell Wizards what to, which strikes me more as wishful thinking than anything else—though, to be fair, Hasbro often communicates its goals and desires in broad strokes, not by designing specific cards or sets.) Another example: Goldner spent years trying to turn various Hasbro properties into movies, as he did with Transformers, as well as—less successfully—with G.I. Joe, Battleship, and Ouija. It’s not hard to imagine that this is why people kept asking the Wizards folk to come up with characters they could feature in movies—as Mark Rosewater put it, people kept asking him, “Who’s your Mickey Mouse?”—which is what eventually led to the creation of the Planeswalkers characters, then the Gatewatch.
Incidentally, I adapted this post from a book MS that a friend and I were working on for a while. We may never finish the book, but we are thinking about turning it into a series of podcasts. If so, those episodes will contain a lot more research, analysis, and argumentation than what I wrote here. (This is only the tip of the iceberg!) Best wishes, Adam
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I have played Vintage since around 2000, and Legacy since 2004. I studied these issues for many years from the point of view of the secondary market, the rules, development, errata, and the Eternal format banned lists. A little bit of that knowledge was put into my articles, but most of it was not published since it didn’t sell cards. The top-down pressure you discuss in your post had many consequences on the game, both obvious and subtle. I would be happy to share my knowledge of those effects if you are looking for a guest.
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I’d love to talk more about Magic, and hear your thoughts! I’ll send you an email.
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Hi, A. D. I found your article about Hail the New Puritan by chance when looking for the film and I wanted to say I really appreciate it. Firstly, your article was the most informative information I found online, as well as deeply fascinating! I’ve been wanting to find a copy for my friend who saw the film years ago on PBS (she’s the one who told me about the film) but I can’t really justify the steep rental prices. I also cannot seem to find it on the ubuweb site. Could you possibly tell me exactly where I can find it there? I think I’m just being a bit silly. Thank you! I will have to check out your other writing as I enjoyed this so much.
-Siobhan
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Hi Siobhan, I’m afraid I no longer know where to find the film! The copy that used to be at ubuweb appears to have been taken down. I wish it were available somewhere. I can’t justify the rental prices, either. If I come across another copy, I’ll certainly let you know. I have to think that one will turn up sooner or later? Adam
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Thanks so much for a fast response! I appreciate it. I’ll keep looking around, hopefully I’ll find it someday!
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Thanks so much for a fast response! I appreciate it. I’ll keep looking around, hopefully I’ll find it someday!
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Hi Mr. Jameson
I was wondering if you could tell me what your message is in the final chapter of your book I Find Your Lack of Faith Disturbing? It would really help me put all the pieces together for your line of reasoning.
Thank you
Sammy G
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Hi Sammy G,
Thanks for the comment and your question! The book as whole is concerned with the rise of geek culture, and what that demographic wants. I argue that the rise of the STEM disciplines, as well as the expansion of the internet and the so-called “knowledge economy,” has been fueling the rise of geek culture, which has gone from being underground to mainstream, as well as increasingly affluent. I also argue that geeks, taken as a demographic, favor a particular type of art. Geeks like “realist fantasy,” and their growth as a market is why so many SF, fantasy, and horror artworks have become increasingly realist over the past few decades. (Geeks also like technocratic fantasies in which they get to be in charge—for instance, the Marvel Cinematic Universe.)
That said, while the 1977 movie Star Wars is in many ways a realist film (whose success helped popularize realist fantasy), it’s also not wholly realist. In the book’s final chapter, I perform a more complete reading of the film, showing how we can’t fully understand it as a work of art if we focus exclusively on its realism.
I hope this helps! Let me know if not, or if you have any other comments or questions. Best wishes, Adam
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