The Sunflowers stories are not just nodes in an epic ongoing arc stretching across deep time; they're also based on a premise for a video game that I continue to think would kick all kinds of ass. On a couple of occasions, actual game designers— Dan Ghiordanescu, Rob Berger, a ragtag team of designers disgruntled with the state of the mainstream industry (and whose names I do not know because their work was passed to me through an intermediary) took a look at actually building such a game as an indie project.

Neither effort got past the Concept Art stage— but man, what concept art.

The supremely talented Dan Ghiordanescu liked "The Island" enough to mock up a tablet/smart-phone app that, once realized, would enrich the story-reading experience with a profusion of interactive graphics and hyperlinked annotations. As far as I know it never got beyond the concept stage, but the concept was kind of awesome.

A rough outline for an animated intro to a proposed digital edition of "The Island"; concept by Rob Berger, execution by Dan Ghiordanescu. (Just keep the mouse close to the right edge of the image and click to change slides.)