Doug “Droog” Sharp’s Ego Page

I write computer games and just finished a novel – Channel Zilch – about kickstarting the Singularity by stealing a space shuttle. I live in a remote lakeshore cabin in Wisconsin with two horrible dogs.

I taught myself programming with Apple IIs borrowed from school when I was a 5th-grade teacher in the late 70’s. I wrote two hit games in the mid-80s:ChipWits and Cinemaware’s The King of Chicago.

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I coded and managed in Microsoft Research’s Virtual Worlds Group in the mid-90s. I gave talks on my Dramaton interactive narrative system at the Spring ‘95 American Association. of AI Symposium on Interactive Story Systems at Stanford and at the 1987 Computer Game Development Conference.

I am partners with my beautiful but criminally insane daughter Margaret Sharp in the art byproducts syndicate Channel Zilch Studios. Margaret draws the ultragroovy webcomic Space Explorer.

I attended “speculative fiction bootcamp” – Clarion West Writing Workshop – in 2002.

I blog about my art and cabin life on Walden 3.0. I store my photos on Flickr and videos on YouTube. I scrobble my music on Last.fm.

My tentacularly sensual Shakespearean space opera The Flying Squids of Zondor will be published this summer in Panverse Publishing‘s anthology Eight Against Reality:

My next project is Palin/Cheney 2012, a scurrilous tour of a nightmare future:

My life has been punctuated by years of downtime due to recurrent epilepsy/Central Pain Syndrome which I “affectionately” call Brainrot. Exotic cognitive states are commonplace in my fiction. I am an involuntary hermit. The quiet of the North Woods allows me to work. I have developed neuroplastic techniques to relieve my pain.

Further Random Droogcentricity:

A playthrough of The King of Chicago on Youtube:

Margaret drew this for my 56th Birthday! Coolest birthday gift ever. Mika, Me, Travis, and a Flying Squirrel

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One winter when Margaret was living at the cabin an ermine moved into her closet for a couple of weeks. She caught Herman the Ermine on video:

I keep two aquariums of native American Fish from my lake. The Iowa Darter is my favorite:

Wearing my Birthday Helmet, made by Margaret for my 47th:

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Margaret and I make cool Birthday Helmets for friends.

I had a wonderfully happy childhood even though I went to 12 different schools before college. My Dad was in the Air Force, a meteorologist and programmer, and we moved a lot.