...In the weeks to come, a war of attrition between the two powers raged on throughout the southern territories. Within mere months, Lotka Volterra's corporate franchise was allowed to expire permanently--the once-powerful alliance had been wiped from the galactic map.

ShackNews has an interesting article about the crazy wheeling-and-dealing on EVE Online, a MMORPG space opera that feels more like a Fredrick Pohl novel than Tolkien. Back in the day when I played and ran online RPGs, the fun wasn't in leveling up and killing beasties: it was in the drama that played out in a fictional world like collaborative genre improv.

The idea of a guy sitting at his desk in a downtown DC law firm and running a clandestine trans-galactic intelligence agency is the stuff that cyberpunk is made of, really. Also amusing is the subtext of The Goons in the article. Anyone who's played a MMORPG knows these guys: the SomethingAwful Forum Goons, a roaming pack thousands strong. They're definitely a force to be reckoned with.