Science Fiction

“Capitalism could appropriate even the most radical ideas and return them safely in the form of harmless ideologies.” Guy Debord Let me take you back to January 3rd 1993 and the first Star Trek spin-off show Star Trek was a show about a starship with a 5 year mission, and Next Generation was a reboot of that same narrative format. Even the first animated series stuck to the formula. But now Star Trek was about to re-write the episodic format of a strange new world per episode. And focus on j...

We like DREDD We do. We all like DREDD. Not the god awful Stallone attempt, which we’re not going to mention again. Not even the original comic, even though it’s “seminal” and we’re about to talk about it much more. We like DREDD. The 2012 movie starring Karl Urban’s jaw, and written by none other than auteur writer director Alex Garland and, basically, his unofficial directorial debut. We like *that* DREDD. Watch the full video essay Because… …because it’s “gritty*. Because it’...

By now it’s a pretty old joke to note Donald Trump’s resemblance to Baron Vladimir Harkonnen in David Lynch’s 1984 DUNE movie. Replace the oil spray with spray-tan and they become identical. Kenneth McMilan who played the Baron is of Scottish descent, as is Trump through his mother Mary Anne Macleod. As an English person it’s a relief that for once we aren’t the bad guys. And, like the Baron, Trump is also basically a comic book baddie. Watch the full video essay on YouTube <p...

“It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.” Mark Fisher / Slavoj Zizek / Fredric Jameson Where did the future go? It’s not just that our future looks bleak. You can’t boot-up Netflix without the latest political dystopias, civilizational collapse thriller or a “gritty” new take on the post-apocalypse punching you in the gut. Going on social media in the 2020s is like being repeatedly slapped in the face with a wet copy of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. We’re a generation trying...

My friends are worried about me. I’ve been skipping social events. Ditching familial commitments. Instead I’ve spent the last three months in a basement, drinking Red Bull and watching Rumble streams. I’ve developed a sick fascination for right-wing political influencers. And I’ve noticed one thing. These grifters are all Batman villains. Watch the full video essay on YouTube Which is why I call them The Joker Right. Because I can’t be the only one who feels that American conservatives are like a Joe...

The Paradox of Avatar The Avatar franchise idolizes the “primacy of the primitive.” It revels in the natural existence of the hunter-gatherer tribesperson, placing the most basic forms of human civilization on a pedestal as “the good.” And then it says: fuck that shit. We want high technology, we want glittering imagery, and we want the Society of the Spectacle. Watch the video essay ​The History of Cinematic Spectacle Back in 1896, the Lumière brothers released the first blockbuster: a train arriving at a station. Audiences were so flabbergasted by the moving imag...

You know, nobody understands Eyes Wide Shut. Nobody. Every time it gets mentioned people look at you like they’re remembering the trauma of their one attempt to read Das Kapital. Watch the full video essay Because Eyes Wide Shut is one of those films that, despite…or even because…of  being very obviously about *something*, has become a kind of cultural Rorschach test for people who don’t want to see uncomfortable truths. So Eye Wide Shut has generated a proliferation of bullsh*t interpretations. “Ah, yes, Tom Cruise repr...

Warning : the following essay contains the most terrifying prediction made by science fiction… …you might be happier not knowing. Watch the full video essay on YouTube So. This is one of those good news bad news situations. This is an exponential growth curve. A graph of a positive feedback loop, where a process feeds back into itself…positively. EXAMPLE : as a fire grows more material becomes combustible creating more fire and … repeat. Or … technology. The more technology you create, the more technology you can create, inciting an exponentia...

Watch the full video essay on YouTube What is it with people? Why do people choose comforting fantasy over real literature? BOOK SIGNING CLIP Why is the lowest common denominator so very low? TAXI CLIP Why don’t people think for themselves? CLIP Why are people just so f*cking dumb??! This churning, pulsating mass of mediocrity. The mob. The collective. This is what humanity looks like to the rugged individualist. Or to an American. Vince Gilligan’s shows do what they say on t...

It’s darkest night and you’re lying under the sparkling dome of stars And what you’re feeling is…awe? Wonder? Maybe even terror? There are no words for this fleeting moment when we grasp the numinous, the transcendent The sublime So we try to capture the sublime in a story As you gaze up into the black what story do you see? Do you see the void of space, the atomic fire of infinite suns, the laws of gravity, energy and matter? Or do you s...

# Alien has always been a story about… …go on…take a guess… …the alien. The xenomorph. The terrifying other. The non-human. Alien Earth is a story about the Alien finally arriving on Earth. And fighting it out with humanity 2.0 – cyborgs, synths and hybrids. If Alien was a story about the non-human. Alien Earth is a story about the posthuman. Watch the full video on youTube here Watching Marcy become Wendy We’re in the territory of characters like Motoko “T...

Awakening To The New Real The stench of lightning and charred flesh fills the air. You open your eyes to agony in a body stitched together, organs, ribs and limbs, from the bodies of the dead. You stagger to life with one question burning in your mind. A question that will launch you into the world on a journey of crime, murder, and destruction in a desperate quest for your creator. You are not a human born. You are not a child of God. You are a creature. You are Frankenstein’s...

This essay is one half of a collaboration with the Feral Historian youtube channel. You can find both videos linked below. Cricket is a game that we British invented and exported to the world, assuming that having invented the rules, we would always win by them. In fact the whole point of cricket was that it didn’t have real rules. Cricket is a game so slow and tedious that the winner is whoever can stay awake to the end. While drinking gin. But we British had a problem. We had bu...

We are in a crisis… …of crises. We are in a crisis of geopolitics as we move from a unipolar world of one global hegemon to a multipolar world of competing powers. We are in a crisis of economics as our elites hoard more and more wealth, immiserating the working and middle classes. We are in a crisis of nationalism as people turn to populists, authoritarians and fascists for simple answers to complex questions. We are in a crisis of ecology as the over-extraction of natural resources destroys the only...

It’s rare for a sci-fi writer to be famous enough, to be known enough, to be truly, deeply… hated. Robert Heinlein. Dominated American science fiction in the mid 20th century. With novels like The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress and Starship Troopers. Amazing ideas! Ideas like CHECKS NOTES Only military veterans get to vote? and Bombarding humanity with meteorites because you’re not a fan of the Deep State? Wowzers. Watch the full video essay People called him a fascist. But RA...

Fantasy fiction is about things that never happen Dragons. Unicorns. Magical portals. Science fiction is about things that might happen. Starships. Robot warriors. Faster-Than-Light travel. But the best fantasy and science fiction is about things that always happen.  Over and over again. For eternity.  Watch the full video essay Episode 1 of the new Battlestar Galactica, titled “33,” aired on October 18, 2004 in the United Kingdom.  In an act of revolutionary camaraderie, British fans obligingly served up the episode to their impatient cousins in the US, who wou...

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Calling Andor the best Star Wars ever is like calling Anakin the best Jedi ever It’s true But We’ll come back to that # If Andor season 2 has one overwhelming message it’s that *revolutionary* is a job fit only for lunatics and egotists as a career path revolution offers only long hours, great danger, shitty accommodation and an almost certain death after a long period of being tortured Star Wars is the story of those mad en...

We by Yevgeny Zamyatin is a novel written at the beginning of the future. It’s hard to remember today, after Logan’s Run, The Handmaid’s Tale and Hunger Games made “dystopia” an entertainment genre, but when Yevgeny Zamyatin was writing in the early 1920s, it was only beginning to dawn on humanity just how bad the future might be. Or how splendid. Become a member to watch to full video Members get full access to all posts and videos SubscribeSubmitting form

Wisdom. Moses climbed the mountain to talk with a burning bush and came back with the wisdom of the Ten Commandments. And ever since wise men have ascended above the material world, have climbed the highest mountain, to find wisdom. Then come back down from the mountain to bestow our gifts upon mankind. Of course before Spider Jerusalem comes back down the mountain he bazookas the dive bar where most of his “wisdom seeking” actually happened. Welcome to Transmetropolitan. WATCH THE FULL VIDEO ESSAY HERE ...