Piers Anthony on Gaming

I'm a workaholic, more properly writeaholic, living to write my fiction. But I do take brief breaks along the way. Such as by playing computer cards. The game I'm currently on is FreeCell, which I think is the best of them because it's playable; you can win every time of you do it right, but the doing is not necessarily easy. And that's the point of this blog: I see it as an analogy of life. On my Linux system the game has hints, and undo, and an indication whether the game remains viable. I use them all. When I play a card and the Winnable indication changes to No Longer Winnable or to Lost, I back off and try something else. Without that indication I would lose many games, because sometimes the mistake is not clear. What is obvious is not necessarily right. Sometimes I play a red 3 on the Foundation, which ascends from Ace to King, and that's an obvious move, but it's a loser. It seems I need to save that 3 to play a black 2 on, farther along. Okay, we don't have a Winnable indication in real life, so we can make obvious moves that turn out to be losers. Think how much better it would be if you had such a warning! The light turns red for cross traffic, green for the pedestrians, and you are about to step out and cross the street. But then a rogue car careers through in plain violation of the law and public safety, and takes you out. If you had had warning you would have waited and not done the obvious, and saved your life. This example is taken from the experience of Jenny, my paralyzed correspondent, who was taken out in just such an “accident” by a drunk driver. If she had had a little magic warning, maybe just an app on her watch that would flash red when she was about to go wrong, she would be in full health and motion today, instead of confined in a paralyzed body. Maybe if my daughter Penny had had such a warning she could have overruled her doctor and insisted on getting that patch on her shoulder cut out now, instead of waiting until it metastasized and killed her. If someone were about to put his money down on a house, a magic warning could stop him even if he didn't know that he was about to lose his job in the recession and the First National Scrooge Bank would foreclose. So many ways such a little warning could really help. But this is Mundania, where magic is frowned upon if not actually outlawed, and no such devices are on the market. So I guess the handy warnings and undo features will remain restricted to things like computer card games and we will have to continue to muddle through on our own. It's really too bad. But I do enjoy the games.