Com Truise Has Seen Blade Runner 300 Times, Will Out Sci-Fi Your Ass

Charles Bergquist

What attracted you to science fiction in the first place, and what's kept you attached to it after all these years?
I think sometimes you're automatically born with something that you can't really explain. I've always been into computers from growing up and stuff like that. I lived in a small town, and my best friend got a computer a long time ago. We didn't have a computer as a family [until] a couple of years after he did so I would always go over to his house and come play on his computer. I just got really into computers that way, and when we finally got our own, you could barely get me off the thing. I think just doing that kind of stuff got me into science fiction for the most part.

I can just remember seeing movies on TV like Alien and Terminator and stuff like that, and I felt like that was me. That was something that I could really relate to for the most part, as it made me feel normal to like, you know what I mean? I never had a problem with telling people science fiction is my favorite genre. The exact moment when it started, I'm not sure. When I first really got into music, the first band I ever really loved was Nine Inch Nails. I consider it industrial kind of music. The sounds in that music and the correlation between the sounds in those types of films connected themselves, and I just was automatically drawn towards it from listening to that kind of music. I can't really pinpoint what got me into it, [but it involved] watching films and playing Nintendo. We had this NASA game. I don't remember the exact title of it. It might be in the house somewhere. It's literally the hardest game ever.

It was a strategy game for the first Nintendo system. I don't know if it was NASA, but it was a space shuttle game. When I think back, it was the most boring game probably ever, but for some reason, I loved it. I don't think I ever made it past, like, level five. The shuttle would launch and you had to do all the pitching and rolling. You had all these lines that would go across the screen; you had to stop exactly in the middle, but they were moving so fast. It was not fair, but it just kept me sucked in 'cause I always wanted to get further and see what the game was all about, but you always had to do all that space shuttle stuff. I can't remember the exact title.