Ben Lincoln - About The Lost Worlds - Legacy of Kain: The Lost Worlds

Ben Lincoln

I am the "I" being referred to in most cases when something is written in the first person on this site. The Lost Worlds is one of my many hobby projects, of which most or all are very nerdy (e.g. multispectral imaging).

I've worked in the technology industry since 1994, when I was in high school and got a job doing Macromedia Director work for a small company in my hometown which produced multimedia CDs. I've also worked as a UI developer at an internet startup before they were called dot-coms (Intermind, for those with long memories), a systems admin for a student newspaper at Simon Fraser University (where I studied electronic music composition), and most recently as a systems engineer for a large retail corporation in Seattle (where I was born).

You can read about how I was introduced to the Kain series in 'An_Interview_with_Ben_Lincoln'. In addition to being (obviously) a huge fan of the games, I've also used them as an excuse to learn a variety of technical skills including C#, MIPS assembly, HTML, CSS, PHP, MySQL, and PostgreSQL. One unintended consequence of creating TLW was that I was forced to practice my writing skills as well. Although I am certainly no Oscar Wilde, it was shocking to look back at the early articles during the 2007 update and see just how awful I used to be at it.

Aside from my duties as a computer dork, I like to explore the real world (I posted quite a few pictures from my 6500-mile drive in 2006 on another site). I enjoy a lot of music - particularly industrial, darkwave, and metal. Some of my favourite bands are The Birthday Massacre, Psyclon Nine, Skinny Puppy, Collide, Switchblade Symphony, Front Line Assembly, a whole slew of late 80s/early 90s industrial bands, and Evanescence.

I like the sort of out of control drum and bass that groups such as Orange Dust produce, and consider breakcore projects like Duran Duran Duran (three "Duran"s, not the 80s band - not linked from this article because most pages about Duran Duran Duran are NSFW) to be the modern equivalent of 80s/90s industrial such as Skinny Puppy. I also have a soft spot for classical/symphonic/soundtrack music and hardcore hip hop/gangsta rap (as long as its of the more modern kind that incorporates some sort of melodic component).

I have three tattoos - a barcode on my right forearm, Kain's clan symbol on my left upper arm, and Schröedinger's wavefunction equation on my left forearm. I think of them as reminders to myself and advertisements to others of particularly strong aspects of my personality - I am very interested in science (and particularly the eerie aspects of quantum physics), I am clearly particularly fond of Legacy of Kain, and was strongly influenced by cyberpunk fiction like Neuromancer and Blade Runner.

Speaking of books, although I haven't had much time to read recently I quite enjoy William Gibson (particularly the aforementioned Neuromancer), Greg Bear (especially Anvil of Stars), Neal Stephenson, Alastair Reynolds (probably the best modern hard science fiction author), Pat Cadigan, and Bruce Sterling. For non-fiction, I recommend David Deutsch's The Fabric of Reality and anything by Brian Greene.