I have read some stupid assertions about Science Fiction and Fantasy over the years. As I have internet access, this is inevitable. People say idiotic things occasionally. Then I read this from the Daily Kos, and watched as the bullshit reached such a density that the article collapsed through it’s Read more…
So SF Signal led me to a review of a rather odd play with the provocative title (review title, not play title) “Why Are So Many Fictional Utopias as Terrifying as Dystopias?” This is a subject I’ve touched on before. But the review’s author hits on something I haven’t touched on, Read more…
Two things converged in my head recently. I didn’t comment about the whole Game of Thrones rape kerfuffle last month. Mostly because I don’t watch Game of Thrones. But the controversy about it seemed (to me) to spring from a deep conflict between the contemporary ethos of sexual morality and a fiction portraying a Read more…
So Charlie Stross has posted a lament about the dearth of Utopias in SF of late. If you follow my blog, you may already have a good idea of what I think about that. There are several issues I have with his post. (Probably all having to do with us Read more…
So Scalzi opines on Atlas Shrugged (which I’m currently reading for the first time, via a 64-hour long audiobook. If you’re curious, the book that filled the Atlas Shrugged slot in my teenage-reader political awakening was the Illuminatus! Trilogy. Yeah, I’m weird that way.) and while I don’t have a Read more…
Elizabeth Moon upset a lot of people over the week and a half by posting about citizenship, the 9/11 attacks, and the proposed Cordoba cultural center a few blocks from Ground Zero. As she said about building the cultural center, she “should have been able to predict that this would Read more…
I tend to write libertarian-themed Space Opera, which means that when I read this recent blog post by Charlie Stross, I had a bit of a reaction. Here’s the money quote: “In other words: space colonization is implicitly incompatible with both libertarian ideology and the myth of the American frontier.” Read more…
Thought that, instead of my normal rant on current events, I’d go and post a little bit about some first principles. This is by way of explaining why my friend Maureen calls my politics “weird.” Usually, a preface like that leads to some moral calculation of why this system is Read more…
Anyone following my blog should realize I have a strong libertarian streak, which may in fact confuse some people who’ve read my Hostile Takeover books and/or Prophets. The planet Bakunin plays a central role throughout, and while it has a functioning anarcho-capitalist society, its not portrayed as a shining Heinleinesque Read more…
Prepare yourself for the great Libertarian/Transhumanist cage match. And here you can read about the resulting internet kerfuffle. Sort of the philosophical equivalent of a flame-war between furries and trekkies.