The Dead City and the Giant Crocodile

In my teenage years I mentally crafted my own computer game. My mind’s eye envisioned this game to be set within the limitless confines of a city, whether contemporary or archaic was not set in stone. Certainly it would be the sort of city whose buildings blossomed with cracked plaster sconces and ivory-framed windows, and maybe a Victorian lamp post would occupy a street corner or two. The player would have absolute free reign of this built-up utopia – none of the invisible walls prohibiting entry to certain alleyways would exist, neither would the sudden cut off points at which the gaming universe simply stops. The protagonist could not suddenly have a spasm in an oddly angular doorway, limbs jigging out like a demented clockwork toy. What appealed to me was the ability to go absolutely anywhere (this was at a time when computer game cities could only handle one painted frame at a time, as in the Resident Evil series, and all notions of freedom were a designer’s pipedream).

This unnamed city would perhaps be entirely empty.

Save for the crocodile. 

I envisioned a giant crocodile the width of a New York street and easily the height of a double-decker, roaming free.

So all-encompassing would the gaming world be that you might not even come across this crocodile for days or even weeks of playing the game, the same as if you were to roam a real life city the size of a small island in search of your favourite adversary (an ex lover, say). You may feel his padded feet trembling the earth a few miles off, or come upon a damaged section of street in which the crocodile had apparently wreaked havoc and over-turned a few cars. His suggestion, his pervading threat, would be everywhere. 

Should you swivel round a corner and find yourself face to face with the beast – and here was a joyful thing to my teenage mind – you could duck into a little kiosk and cower behind a frozen dessert stand and wait, enduring that tense moment in which you observe a scaly foot stomping past the dusty windows. 

Now, the player would automatically assume the goal of the game was to somehow destroy this giant crocodile, and he/ she would scavenge the shops and apartments in search of weapons, ammunition, anything that might accomplish the killing. I imagined it would be possible to injure or wound the crocodile, maybe to even knock him out for a bit and witness him collapse in a quaking eruption of concrete and dust. 

But the crocodile WOULD NEVER DIE. You could shoot or blow him up or throw as many things at him as possible, but he could never be killed, and upon realisation of this the player would experience a terrible uncertainty, as in life when we step for a missing stair. Suddenly all direction and hope would dissolve, and they’d offer up their controllers and ask But what am I supposed to do? Well, I wouldn’t tell them. The point of the game would never be dictated, or told, or even hinted at, but remain a mystery, possibly forever. The player would simply have to find his/ her own point to the game.

Poetry Review: Neptune Blue by Simon Barraclough

It’s strange how a book can give off a certain feel, one that assures you instantly you are going to enjoy it. Perhaps it is the quick blurb you skim read before purchasing the book, the cover art, the author’s peculiar name, the titles of the stories or poems themselves … probably all of these things contribute, to be accurate. The first entry in this collection, We’ll always have CGI Paris, is typical of the kind of thing you can expect from a denizen of Salt, in that it is contemporary and playful, with a nod toward specialist terminology loose enough so as not to exclude the reader. Cartoonish is not quite right; it’s more that Salt poets feel as though they live in a big bold The Sims world in which even serious concepts are layered in colourful pixels (most definitley not a criticism; any allusion to computer games or any imagery to evoke them in my mind will excite me). With every page turn the ideas come thick and fast, exploring space and each of the planets in turn, comparing Earth to a giant gobstopper, Mars to a pilotless craft, and Saturn to a supermodel. There’s also time for a Hitchcock poem along the way; indeed, it becomes clear, via further references to North by Northwest, that old movies and the tragi-comic terrorized heroes of film are particular loves for Barraclough.  However, the most effective aspect to this collection, for me, is the recurring “Heart” poems. Hearts and their volatile emotions here are expressed through stark imagery including magpies, anti-personnel mines, characters from literature like Ms Havisham, pizzas and chewing gum. What strikes you most having read the final poem is the relentless sense of inventiveness, energy and the abundance of ideas.