Which future from the past haunts your now? If you’re alive and watching this in 2026 you are likely haunted by one of two great stories of the future. The future of the space rocket, the warp drive, the starship. Human technology will take us to the stars, to strange new worlds, to meet theContinue reading “Hauntology”
Author Archives: Damien Walter
Why do Leftists always lose? A (partial) defense of Contrapoints
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Talking sh*t
How did Ursula K Le Guin become the most famous science fiction writer of her generation? I have a theory. By the 1960s science fiction had decided that the future was in space, and the Space Race sealed the deal. A generation of SF writers focussed all their attention on how space exploration would becomeContinue reading “Talking sh*t”
The Toilet MEMBER PREVIEW
Last year a member of the Science Fiction community jokingly asked my opinion of Skibidi Toilet, a Gen-Alpha brainrot “kids show” on YouTube with billions of views. And by far the most watched science fiction narrative of the 21st century. “Good” and “bad” don’t have a place in critical thinking about culture. Skibidi Toilet is.Continue reading “The Toilet MEMBER PREVIEW”
The myth that made Interstellar
Longterm members of our community know about myth, but new members might be scratching your heads. Myth is old stories about why the sun rises etc. Science fiction is the extrapolation of scientific FACT. They are NOT the same. Let’s talk. In fact that idea about myths being stories to explain the sun rising (etc)Continue reading “The myth that made Interstellar”
2026 : the year World War 3 begins
To my Gen-X compatriots, to the Boomers and Millenials, and to Gen-Z who will have to clean up this mess we all made… …can we agree that Star Trek is the future we would all like? A future in which poverty is eradicated, disease is a mere curiosity of the past, humanity has put asideContinue reading “2026 : the year World War 3 begins”
Woke Marxist Social Justice Warrior Space Hippies….With Guns
I don’t remember if the Culture was my first experience of trans charcters, but it must have been close. I read the books at around the same time as The Sandman when I was about fifteen. So it was probably one of those. Trans characters barely existed in UK media of the early 90s. TheContinue reading “Woke Marxist Social Justice Warrior Space Hippies….With Guns”
The Accusations Against Me
I am sometimes accused of “click-bait” Which is entirely false. Every video on the Science Fiction channel does exactly what it says on the tin. “But. DAMO. This picture of God Emperor Elon carrying Joe Rogan carrying infant Donald Trump fighting Skibidi Toilet’s Titan Cameraman is CLEARLY CLICKBAIT!!!” Nope. This video essay will entirely fulfillContinue reading “The Accusations Against Me”
Military Industrial Complex invites nations to “volunteer” as war zones
ARLINGTON, VA—Citing a “distressing lack of economically expendable geographies,” a coalition of top defense contractors issued an urgent plea Tuesday for any nation with a negligible impact on the S&P 500 to “selflessly volunteer” to host a massive, high-tech kinetic conflict. The joint statement, signed by CEOs from Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and Boeing, noted thatContinue reading “Military Industrial Complex invites nations to “volunteer” as war zones”
The problem is not AI
I keep saying it. The problem is not AI, the problem is AI under Capitalism. 50 years of neoliberalism mean some basic lessons of labour have been forgotten. In volume I of Das Kapital, Marx makes a critique of the Luddites – that the workers who famously smashed the machines were confusing the means ofContinue reading “The problem is not AI”
You don’t understand science fiction
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”
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”
Damien Walter 