There is a single narrative technique that connects almost every multi-billion dollar science fiction franchise ever made. It is the invisible engine powering the most successful stories of the last century. And yet, if you ask ten working Hollywood screenwriters what it is, nine of them will give you a blank stare—and the tenth willContinue reading “You don’t understand science fiction”
Author Archives: Damien Walter
The First Dystopia
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. OrContinue reading “The First Dystopia”
Terminator 2 isn’t only the greatest action movie
Terminator is an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie Arnold’s physique is the star of the film The progressive decay of the Body into the Machine is his co-star With the special effects that animated the Terminator as best supporting actor Or watch on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfbNARASn9Y Imagine if Ron Perlman had passed his audition for Terminator? You can’t.Continue reading “Terminator 2 isn’t only the greatest action movie”
Chani vs Chani
So. Why are the fanboys enraged about Zendaya’s performance as Chani? Sean Young’s Chani in Lynch’s Dune is an archetypal “anima”. Basically, she’s the princess that the young adventurer meets on his Hero’s Journey. Zendaya’s Chani ain’t that at all. Put aside all the complex systems fiction stuff, Frank Herbert’s Dune was a bestseller becauseContinue reading “Chani vs Chani”
HG Wells vs Vladimir Lenin
The year is 1920. The Empires of Europe have spent the last half decade blowing each other up with bombs, guns and heavy artillery. As World War 1 burns itself out, men who survived the fighting begin to wonder if a better world, a world without empires and wars, is possible. These working class menContinue reading “HG Wells vs Vladimir Lenin”
What is the difference between fantasy & myth?
What is the difference between fantasy & myth? A common response to our discussions of PHM as MPF was “all fiction is fantasy”. One commenter angrily insisted that “Shakespeare is fantasy”. Incorrect. Fantasy fulfills a psychological need for power, eros, status. A lot of fiction is fantasy, but far from all. Shakespeare is the oppositeContinue reading “What is the difference between fantasy & myth?”
A note for listeners of the Science Fiction podcast
We are in a war on podcasting. Podcasts are one of the last survivors of Web1.0, the era that gave us cool things like Wikipedia and the Blogosphere, back when “information wanted to be free”. Today information wants to generate clickthrough ad revenue. The Science Fiction podcast is hosted on damiengwalter.com on an RSS feed.Continue reading “A note for listeners of the Science Fiction podcast”
Project Hail Mary is a Male Pattern Fantasy
It’s Scifi. It’s Romance. It’s Fantasy.
It’s SciMANtasy 😱
Let’s see if we can make Gary an Amazon bestseller so he doesn’t ask for his money back.
🔗👇
The Last Sysadmin in Sector 7 : a SCIMANTASY novel
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The Ultimate Male Pattern Fantasy
What if the greatest science fiction dream isn’t discovering alien life or saving the human race, but simply being left completely alone in a room to do math?
Andy Weir’s Project Hail Mary is a masterpiece of hard sci-fi engineering, but beneath the astrophage and the orbital mechanics lies a deeply comforting psychological trope. We are looking at the “Male Pattern Fantasy”—the idea that the ultimate hero is just an ordinary, highly competent guy who solves the universe’s problems in absolute, blissful isolation (and somehow looks exactly like Ryan Gosling while doing it).
Whether you find this trope to be a lovely, optimistic vision of human competence or a pathetic retreat from social reality, it is currently dominating modern science fiction.
Is God better than the alternative
It’s worth noting that Project: Hail Mary is called Project: Hail Mary. After the Hail Mary (American) football pass thrown in the final seconds to a catcher a loooong way down the pitch in a desperate attempt to win the game. Which is the basic plot of Project: Hail Mary but with a starship insteadContinue reading “Is God better than the alternative”
Reviews vs Critique
Critique and reviews are not the same thing. Reviews are marketing for the corporate entertainment complex. Telling you if something is “good” or “bad” is a way of focusing attention on it. Reviews are from the mass media age, when publishers did reviews to attract ad-soend from entertainment corps. I don’t have any interest inContinue reading “Reviews vs Critique”
Becoming K1
It seems likely that humankind does not survive World War 3 It also seems likely that, with war in Ukraine and Russia, Iran and America, Israel and Gaza and more that we have been in WW3 already for some years. In this episode of the Science Fiction podcast recorded in the early days of Russia’sContinue reading “Becoming K1”
Death Star vs Enterprise
It’s in no way a coincidence that the two biggest scifi mythoi of the 20th century both feature a mythic representation of the same aircraft carrier. The Death Star is the nuclear powered American super-carrier CVN-65 that served in the Vietnam war, launching over 13,000 missions in the war that inspired George Lucas to baseContinue reading “Death Star vs Enterprise”
Damien Walter 