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Comment by xoxxala | Hacker News Reader

In the early 90s, I read all of the Hugo winners at the time. A Canticle for Leibowitz was one of my favorites.

A few years later, it was one of the three major influences we used when making the original Fallout (along with Road Warrior and City of Lost Children).

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Chris, I just want you to know that Fallout was the epitome of my entire gaming life, and one of the highlights of my teen years.

I played Fallout 1, 2, and Tactics with my now deceased sister's friends when I was way too young to appreciate half the humor. I cherish these memories.

... and sometimes when I end up in bad parts of various cities, certain dive bars, etc. I think about the "Cafe of Broken Dreams". :)

Thank you for playing! I appreciate your kind words.

I'm old enough that Total Annihilation is my favorite game all time. Still remember the wonder of discovering that. Thank you for all the happy memories.

TA is awesome! I'd love to take credit for it, but that's a different Chris Taylor.

:-) Sorry for the mistake. I also love Fallout, but not so much the later ones. I played Fallout 1 and 2 a lot, but never enjoyed the recent ones so much. I guess I am too old to enjoy the latest trends.

(The Canadian is an homonym! There are two in the industry. This is the Californian. Were it otherwise, Fallout would have been set in the cold and the inspiring movie would have been Fargo.)

That's quite a coincidence, two of the genre defining games when I was growing up was made by two people with the same name :-)

> A few years later, it was one of the three major influences we used when making the original Fallout

Really burying the lede here! :)

I loved that game, and I'm not completely surprised to hear that A Canticle For Leibowitz had that kind of influence. Fallout was very much its own thing, but Children of the Cathedral had that same postapocalyptic monk vibe.

Chris, why don't you write a history of how Fallout was born, from your perspective?

Of course the most passionate ones among us will have already found material from Tim Cain (the speeches). We would be grateful for your stories. Already this bit of info about Canticle for Leibowitz, Road Warrior (the sequel to Mad Max, right?) and Jeunet-and-Caro's La Cité is quite precious.

I wouldn't mind reading an autobiographical take on the development of Fallout, Icewind Dale, etc, and your life up to now.

+1!

  > "A few years later, it was one of the three major influences we used when making the original Fallout (along with Road Warrior and City of Lost Children)."

No wonder I got crazy "Canticle" vibes from the Brotherhood when playing Fallout.

That's amazing, thank you for creating that. Some of my favorite parts of the Fallout series were the little slices of frozen catastrophe hidden off in corners, piles of bones and old clothing and a suitcase full of items that told half a story. I read that book after I had played Fallout and it felt so familiar because of it.

I've been reading it recently for the first time and it didn't quite click that it was an influence on Fallout, but it makes a lot of sense. I realize I've been kind of imagining scenes from FO3 while reading. (Though I understand we're talking about Fallout 1 and 2 here, and the further games were made by different people.)

I'm doing the Hugo list now!

Just about at the end of Speaker for the Dead. A Canticle for Leibowitz was the first ones that I really enjoyed. Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead are up there too but my absolute favorite so far is Dreamsnake.

I'm really annoyed at myself for not reviewing or at least jotting down some notes about the books as I've finished them. I remember liking Canticle a lot but I would be hard pressed to summarize it without some help.

Reading all the Hugos is a fascinating tour through sci-fi across the years.

We started with Vernor Vinge's "A Fire Upon the Deep" in 1992. Tim Cain had gotten the CD-ROM version and it was the first ebook I read. Then we went back to the first Hugos and tried to read them in order. We had to go on scavenger hunts through used book stores to find some of the titles. I think we finished our book club with The Doomsday Book.

Doing the same here. You can still find most of them used on amazon. Many of them are discards from US libraries. You can usually get them for a couple of bucks.

My biggest surprise was Rogue Moon (Hugo 1961). Incredible ending, up there with Man in the High Castle (Hugo 1963).

I agree with the "fascinating tour" part. The earlier books (from the 50s and 60s) where clearly more optimistic and more realistic at the same time. The human nature was captured more accurately I believe, most of the heros were actually anti-heroes. But the human capabilities were clearly over evaluated and the social interaction a little simplistic. Also, its funny to read books were martians were still a plausible thing (Protector Hugo 1973).

If I have an advice to give you it's: don't limit yourself to the 90s onward. You are missing on gems like Rendez-vous with Rama (Hugo 1974) or Forever War (Hugo 1976).

I really enjoyed the books from the 50's before people really started thinking of computers, plastics, composite materials and so on.

They would be flying around in their spaceships using slide rulers to calculate everything, wearing their fur-lined space suits etc.

"The earlier books (from the 50s and 60s) where clearly more optimistic", I am not that sure, "Fahrenheit 451" by Ray Bradbury (1953) is far from optimistic. It didn't get Hugo at its time, though, but got "retro" Hugo later on (2004).

But maybe you are right, it didn't get Hugo because it was too pessimistic, unfortunately, this one book gets more and more up to date with its predictions...

I have a complete-but-one set of the Gardner Dozois-edited Best New SF for much the same reason. You can pinpoint the exact year everyone realised networks were going to be big, or when turgid Dune-influenced 70s SF got replaced with fast, nimble cyberpunk.

It's strange, you rarely hear it mentioned in the same breath as other post-apocalyptic literature like A Boy and His Dog or I Am Legend. I was only made aware of it while reading an article about the making of Fallout.

So, thanks for the indirect recommendation!

>It's strange, you rarely hear it mentioned in the same breath as other post-apocalyptic literature like A Boy and His Dog or I Am Legend.

Only because I rarely hear either of those mentioned at all, unlike Canticle.

I Am Legend is famous for having kickstarted the modern "zombie" trope, as pioneered in cinema by George Romero. He cited I Am Legend as his major influence; he just changed vampires to... ghouls is it? Romero didn't call them zombies.

I Am Legend has been made into a film at least 3 different times. It’s influenced a lot of people even if they never read the book.

EDIT: The Last Man on Earth (1964), The Omega Man (1971), and I Am Legend (2007), 28 Days Later (2002)…

My favorite is 28 Days Later

Given your references I feel bound to offer up:

The Road, McCarthy

And in a different sort of apocalypse:

Nueromancer, Gibson

I believe that Harlan Ellison's "A Boy and His Dog" was also a major influence behind it.

Absolutely, but we didn't refer to it as much as the other three. But besides Dogmeat, it also influenced the Vaults.

Oh, I didn't notice the "we" there. Thanks for the info!

Can you please make a WebGL version of Supreme Commander? The economy of that game, and the tech tree, were so awesome. I am so sad that the economy was dumbed down for Supreme Commander 2.

Too bad the Aeon got the Black Sun (bad name choice?)... I support Cybran and going autonomous, like what is wrong with Aeon: they are like the Illuminati from scripture but just retarded from Eastasian evil.

That's so funny. I played Fallout many many years before reading A Canticle for Leibowitz and couldn't stop thinking "So much of this FEELS like Fallout".

Since you're here - had you read Dr. Bloodmoney, or A Terran Odyssey, both by Philip K Dick? It very neatly fits the vibe but I've never seen it mentioned as a reference. And it has an idea (a guy who makes fake cigarettes, for people who won't let an apocalypse get in the way of their addiction) that seems so perfectly Fallout that I'm surprised it's not part of it. Or maybe I've forgotten that part.

I have not, but it's been added to my ever growing stack of (e)books. Thanks!

That inspiration wasn't lost in Wasteland 2, where there's a "Isaac Leibovitz" npc who accepts a canticle item : ^ )

I remember reading Canticle and thinking, "this feels just like Fallout" at various parts.

One question, is City of Lost Children the French movie by Jeunet or something else?

Thank you for City of Lost Children. Just ... thank you :)

Thank you for your work. The persona of the desert wanderer helped this shy kid feel a little more confident in high school.

Thank you for playing! Glad we could give you a boost. I'm super appreciative of all the Fallout fans I've met over the years for doing the same to me.

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