Author's Note

Nature, Nurture - Danger Future is a work of illustrated adult fiction. I know, duh, but that's just how I classify it. Readers can choose their own labels and interpretations. Most of the scientific principles mentioned and used in the story are real and make fascinating non-fiction reading. Several of the themes are borrowed from classic Science Fiction tales written by men and women who have been my heros since I was a young person.

If it isn't obvious enough, know that I am not a professional writer or graphic artist for that matter. I am a hobbyist. Computer Programmer was my job description at one time, but not in gaming or anything cool like that. All of the games and stories I have put out there through the courtesy of Shark's Lagoon have been learning exercises for me. In the technical arena I learned Flash Actionscript 3, the RAGS game engine and scripting language and a few new HTML techniques. My static and animated 3D renders of characters and scenes have improved with each project I took on. I also learned, among other things, how hard it is for me to consistently write narrative in the present tense! There was enough positive reaction to my work to keep me going for the past many months but it is time for me to move on. HTML 5 seems like it has the most promise of becoming a common development framework for multimedia across most if not all hardware and device types and is my next learn-it-on-my-own hobby project. The folks on this site have been great and I'll keep checking things out every so often.

Goodbye, and thanks for all the fish.

Cugel The (Relatively) Clever

P.S. The pen name "Cugel" is taken from a wonderful book series by the late great Social Science Fiction writer Jack Vance called The Dying Earth in which Cugel is the colorful protagonist.