SF author Ken MacLeod on his lifelong friend Iain Banks.Become a member of the Science Fiction community to continue the discussionWebsite - https://damiengwalter.comYouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/DamienWalter/membershipPatreon - https://www.patreon.com/DamienWalterSubscribe to the Science Fiction podcast feed for long-form commentaries on the…

Does it matter that the Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin is a work of propaganda? I think it does. But it's going to take 2 hours to explain.Become a member of the Science Fiction community to continue the discussionWebsite - https://damiengwalter.comYouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/DamienWalter/membershipPatreon - https://www.patreon.com/DamienW…

Dune is the Star Wars killer - https://youtu.be/JPOsoph3TCYBecome a member of the Science Fiction community to continue the discussionWebsite - https://damiengwalter.comYouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/DamienWalter/membershipPatreon - https://www.patreon.com/DamienWalterSubscribe to the Science Fiction podcast feed for long-form commentaries on …

00:00:57 Introduction 00:03:39 Professor Elana Gomel 00:09:55 Charles Dickens as scifi writer 00:14:17 Stanislaw Lem and The Other 00:18:59 Anti-Humanism 00:22:46 Lem vs the SFWA 00:26:27 Beyond Humanism 00:28:12 LEM and Posthumanism 00:33:37 Fear of the Posthuman 00:38:00 Lem's criticism of non-existant novels 00:40:41 Lem on AI 00:47:08 Philosoph…

Members OnlyBy Damien Walter

00:00:00 Introduction 00:01:50 Is Iain McGilchrist a scifi fan? 00:07:05 Iain McGilchrist's work and philosophy 00:17:34 Reason vs Rationalisation 00:22:30 Kubrick's 2001 and the hemispheres 00:27:14 Why do we take everything literally now? 00:34:41 The myths that form us 00:43:22 How do we reconnect to the mythos? 00:49:36 Campbell, Jung and the s…

Become a member of the Science Fiction community to continue the discussionWebsite - https://damiengwalter.comYouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/DamienWalter/membershipPatreon - https://www.patreon.com/DamienWalterSubscribe to the Science Fiction podcast feed for long-form commentaries on these video essayshttps://damiengwalter.com/podcast/Join th…

Olga Yakimenko is a filmmaker who sometimes answers questions in the Science Fiction community https://www.facebook.com/groups/324897304599197/Become a member of the Science Fiction community to continue the discussionWebsite - https://damiengwalter.comYouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/DamienWalter/membershipPatreon - https://www.patreon.com/Dami…

BUY MERCHhttps://my-store-ef7a8e.creator-spring.comBecome a member of the Science Fiction community to continue the discussionWebsite - https://damiengwalter.comYouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/DamienWalter/membershipPatreon - https://www.patreon.com/DamienWalterSubscribe to the Science Fiction podcast feed for long-form commentaries on these vi…

Watch J G Ballard's Towering Infernohttps://youtu.be/XYjjaalZHlYMusic 'Sensula' by Ralph Cree https://soundcloud.com/ralphcree/sensulaThe Techno-Optimist Manifestohttps://a16z.com/the-techno-optimist-manifesto/Become a member of the Science Fiction community to continue the discussionWebsite - https://damiengwalter.comYouTube - https://www.youtube.…

PS - man with midlands accent is Alan MooreThere is an ancient English ritual, performed in the grey and rainy times (which is the entire year save 2 weeks in July), when the tribes people gather around a glowing screen and politely pretend that whoever is playing Doctor Who is a great actor.They never are. But it's not their job to be. The Who act…

Become a member of the Science Fiction community to continue the discussionWebsite - https://damiengwalter.com/members/YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/DamienWalter/membershipPatreon - https://www.patreon.com/DamienWalterSubscribe to the Science Fiction podcast feed for long-form commentaries on these video essayshttps://damiengwalter.com/podcas…

Listen to the full podcast episode by becoming a member and adding the members RSS feed to your appBecome a member of the Science Fiction community to continue the discussionWebsite - https://damiengwalter.comPatreon - https://www.patreon.com/DamienWalterSubstack - https://damien.substack.com/By Damien Walter

Become a member of the Science Fiction community to continue the discussionWebsite - https://damiengwalter.comYouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/DamienWalter/membershipPatreon - https://www.patreon.com/DamienWalterSubscribe to the Science Fiction podcast feed for long-form commentaries on these video essayshttps://damiengwalter.com/podcast/Join th…

Read Flight of the Siren by Brendan Myers https://amzn.to/453bTKZBecome a member of the Science Fiction community to continue the discussionWebsite - https://damiengwalter.comYouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/DamienWalter/membershipPatreon - https://www.patreon.com/DamienWalterSubscribe to the Science Fiction podcast feed for long-form commentari…

Support the Ocean of Story on Kickstarter https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/damiengwalter/the-ocean-of-story-season-1By Damien Walter

Learn more about workshops and 1-2-1'shttps://damiengwalter.com/2023/07/24/sailing-the-ocean-of-story/Support the Ocean of Story on kickstarter https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/damiengwalter/the-ocean-of-story-season-1By Damien Walter

Support the Ocean of Story on Kickstarter - https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/damiengwalter/the-ocean-of-story-season-1By Damien Walter

Support The Ocean of Story on Kickstarter - https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/damiengwalter/the-ocean-of-story-season-1By Damien Walter

Watch the Interstellar video essay https://youtu.be/6fZh-mBttMABecome a member of the Science Fiction community to continue the discussionWebsite - https://damiengwalter.comYouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/DamienWalter/membershipPatreon - https://www.patreon.com/DamienWalterSubscribe to the Science Fiction podcast feed for long-form commentaries…

Philip K Dick's The Man In The High Castle is a novel about one of the most complex ideas in our world. The way stories shape perception, and the war between narratives. This long-form audio commentary builds on ideas in the video essay Lady Gaga in The Man in the High Castle. Members of the Science Fiction community can listen to the full commenta…

Become a member of the Science Fiction community to continue the discussionWebsite - https://damiengwalter.comYouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/DamienWalter/membershipPatreon - https://www.patreon.com/DamienWalterSubscribe to the Science Fiction channel for the short video essayshttps://youtu.be/AQG3UVaR2cwJoin the Science Fiction community on Fa…

What would a metamodern Batman movie look like? Find out in this audio commentary to accompany the Incel Batman video essay on the Science Fiction channel.Become a member of the Science Fiction community to continue the discussionWebsite - https://damiengwalter.comYouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/DamienWalter/membershipPatreon - https://www.patr…

Watch the video essay on the Science Fiction channelhttps://youtu.be/CYDpD5skkvMSubscribe to the Science Fiction podcast feed for long form commentaries on these video essayshttps://damiengwalter.com/podcast/Join the Science Fiction community on Facebook to continue the discussionhttps://www.facebook.com/groups/324897304599197/Become a member of th…

Follow the the Science Fiction podcast and become a memberhttps://damiengwalter.com/podcast/Advanced Scifi & Fantasy Writinghttps://damiengwalter.com/advanced-scifi-and-fantasy/The Rhetoric of Storyhttps://damiengwalter.com/the-rhetoric-of-story/Join the discussion on the Science Fiction community https://www.facebook.com/groups/324897304599197…

We’re in a civilisational war between the pre-modern, the modern, and the post-modern. Or to give them their “culture war” names – the Reactionary, the Neoliberal…and the Woke. We need a better future for our civilisation. A future some people are starting to call the Metamodern.In this episode of the Science Fiction podcast I think about what a Me…

Follow the the Science Fiction podcast and become a memberhttps://damiengwalter.com/podcast/Access the full podcast archive and all my courses as a member for ANY monthly donation...Advanced Scifi & Fantasy Writinghttps://damiengwalter.com/advanced-scifi-and-fantasy/The Rhetoric of Storyhttps://damiengwalter.com/the-rhetoric-of-story/Join the discu…

There's a reason why Neil Gaiman is the most famous writer scifi, horror & fantasy ever made. That rockstar reputation didn't start with appearances on The Simpsons.By the age of 32, when most writers are just getting started, Gaiman had already written a masterpiece of fantasy. The 75 issues of The Sandman are a tour through the mythos of humanity…

Psychohistory is among the most important ideas born in science fiction.A science that allows us to predict the future of human civilisation.It's tempting to ask...could Psychohistory be real? Algorithms can control masses of humankind. Complexity science and agent based modelling are already predicting mass human behaviour.And as we face our civil…

Transhumanism makes grand claims about the future of humankind, from genetic engineering and artificial wombs to immortality and uploading humanity to the cloud.Lead by pseudo-scientific thinkers like Ray Kurzeil, Transhumanism has become a popular ideology among Silicon Valley tech leaders including Elon Musk and Peter Thiel.In recent years it has…

When did Superman get so "Dark"?He's as American as apple pie, coca-cola and black-ops interventions in the politics of other sovereign nations.Superman is the symbol of all that is best about the United States of America. An indefatigable powerhouse, an Apollonian sun deity, child of the gods but raised by mortal man, and the archetype of post-WW2…

Why does science fiction not get the respect it deserves...from literary fiction?It’s the East coast vs West cost gangster rap rivalry but fiction writers (except without the drive-by shootings…that I know of?) An ancient feud between the Realists and the Fantasists.But beneath the surface of the LitFic vs SciFi argument is a more serious issue, ab…

Batman. Luke Skywalker. Conan. Paul Atreides. And now The Northman. Just a few of the Unfathered men that dominate our storytelling. Why are we obsessed with the Unfathered man?Follow the the Science Fiction podcast and become a member https://damiengwalter.com/podcast/Advanced Scifi & Fantasy Writinghttps://damiengwalter.com/advanced-scifi-and-fan…

It's Arthur C Clarke's greatest novel and a classic of "hard" science fiction. The Fountains of Paradise is a brilliantly realized story of humankind's ascent to the stars, not on rockets, but by building the first space elevator. Clarke predicted the discovery of carbon super materials with the "diamond hyperfilament" that is strong enough to stre…

“With Jules Verne and the publisher Hugo Gernsback, H.G. Wells invented the genre of science fiction.” Tweet by @nytimesbooks, November 2021A badly worded tweet by the New York Times revealed a deep anger at the false history of science fiction. Written out of that history were hundreds of women writers of the 1800s who created what today we call s…

Fascism lures people in with a fantasy of return to older, better times. A golden age before the modern world. Nazi Germany had the fantasy of the Third Reich and the Ubermensch. Today the Russia of Vladimir Putin has a fantasy of a Eurasian Empire and the Return of the Tsar.Critics of Lord of the Rings sometimes compare JRR Tolkien's fantasy to th…

Humankind had it within our grasp to become a K1 civilization, the first stage of the Kardashev scale. But we allowed K1 to slip through our fingers. As the scientist Carl Sagan argued, much of 20th century history can be understood as the effort, and failure, to achieve K1. Today that failure has returned us to the threat of World War 3, as Russia…

Severance is sophisticated science fiction for grown up audiences in the style of J G Ballard, Philip K Dick or Haruki Murakami. But what does it mean?Follow the the Science Fiction podcast https://damiengwalter.com/podcast/Join the discussion on the Science Fiction community https://www.facebook.com/groups/324897304599197Read my top science fictio…

“It’s trying to thread that needle between the wonder and the splendour in this mythology without being beguiled into actual fascism.” ~Adam RobertsAdam Roberts is a professor of nineteenth century literature, a prolific essayist and critic, and one of our best science fiction writers. Our interview traces a path between two powerful forces in scie…

This episode of the Science Fiction podcast is re-published from an original video essay first published in September 2018.I spent years searching, after I first read the Culture novels of Iain M Banks, for other space opera novels that equalled them. And this is what I discovered. Nothing else in the space opera genre even comes close to the Cultu…

Solarpunk is the newest genre of science fiction, a joyous and optimistic vision of a future where humans and our technology live in balance with nature. Solarpunk is an artistic, cultural and political movement that encompasses the arts, architecture, fashion and technology.But optimistic visions of the future are never all that they seem. From HG…

We are living in strange times. Politics. Society. Culture wars. Things have gone weird. We're looking for knowledge and wisdom to guide us in strange times.I can think of no better guide to the year 2022 than Philip K Dick.The author of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, the inspiration for Blade Runner, is best known as a science fiction writer…

We are 21 years into the 21st century. What better time to look at the century we are living in...the century of science fiction.A special double episode of the Science Fiction podcast. Part 1 of 2.00:00 The science fiction century 03:07 Welcome to new listeners. 04:59 The best scifi and fantasy of the 21st century 06:46 Why science fiction and fan…

There's a question about The Matrix I've been asking myself since the franchise established itself in the collective unconscious of humanity back in the early 00s.What is Sigmund Freud doing in these movies?00:00 What's Sigmund Freud doing here? 02:21 Welcome the the Science Fiction podcast 04:01 Freud vs Jung 09:05 Good vs Evil 13:00 Carl Jung's l…

Science fiction is fighting a doctrinal war. Between those who believe that humankind's future is still the stars, and those - like Kim Stanley Robinson - who believe interstellar travel is a fantasy of religious belief. The science is clear, travel to other stars may well be forever beyond us. So why do we keep telling this story?A response to Kim…

Rick Deckard is a Replicant. And Rick Deckard is also not the hero of Blade Runner...but is the villain. But the obvious questions about Blade Runner are also the least interesting. Empathy is the core of the Blade Runner story. Why we feel it, who we feel it for, and who we choose to exclude from our empathy. Blade Runner is an empathy test...for …

Stories that last through the ages aren't just great storytelling, they also serve the power structures of their time. Powerful people have always patronised great stories. The epic poem Beowulf, The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, the plays of William Shakespeare, were all supported by powerful patrons. Now the most powerful corporation in the w…

If science fiction is a gateway to the psychedelic, then DUNE is a portal to...awakening. Frank Herbert's seminal novel and David Lynch's baroquely weird movie are both powerful works of art on the theme of human awakening. Denis Villeneuve's 2021 adaptation is a masterpiece of worldbuilding. But is it a kick in the third eye for would be seekers o…

It's more than a little ironic that the motion picture widely called the greatest science fiction story ever told was made by an artist who hated science fiction. Stanley Kubrick thought science fiction was a failure at myth making, and set out to make a new myth for the modern world, and the only great science fiction movie.Watch the full video es…

It's logical that the best science fiction being written today has its origins online and in collaborative forums. There Is No Antimemetics Division began life as part of the SCP Foundation wiki, a collaborative writing project with thousands of participants.There Is No Antimemetics Division - https://amzn.to/3AcTDPxDiscuss the book on the Science …