Author Archives: Damien Walter

The hidden meaning of Blade Runner 2049 + Extended Addendum

Many creators have contributed to the Blade Runner mythos. Philip K Dick’s original novel and the directorial talents of Ridley Scott and Denis Villeneuve are widely recognised. But the screenwriter of the Blade Runner movies provided their mythic magic – Hampton Fancher.

Fancher encoded the Blade Runner mythos with psychological symbols drawn from the work of Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud. The first Blade Runner uses Freud’s concepts of the Doppelganger and the Other. Blade Runner 2049 is structured around the Persona, Shadow, Anima and Self – Jung’s Archetypes of the Unconscious.

This episode of the Science Fiction podcast re-publishes The Hidden Meaning of Blade Runner 2049, with an extended addendum on archetypal storytelling, answering some of the most frequently asked questions arising from the original essay.

00:00 An addendum to my most questioned essay
01:56 Thank to members of the Science Fiction podcast
04:42 Why archetypes?
06:43 Where does Gandalf live?
09:10 All of these stories are within you
12:29 Switching of the psychological architecture of our self
15:00 Mapping the Unconscious
23:16 Story is the gateway to the Unconscious
26:42 The Archetypes of the Unconscious
34:39 Blade Runner and BR 2049
39:30 The spiritual experience of stories

Watch the original video essay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5fbQ4hf068

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Listen to the storytelling of Clarissa Pinkola Estes: https://amzn.to/36Njm81

The light cycles of TRON still look like the future

In retrospect, TRON was the moon mission for CGI. A project of questionable value in itself, with the real aim of advancing the technology. Honestly, I can’t remember much about the story of TRON. But boy, those light cycles! Those are seared into my long-term memory from childhood. And they still look amazing 40 years on.

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The true history of science fiction

“With Jules Verne and the publisher Hugo Gernsback, H.G. Wells invented the genre of science fiction.” Tweet by @nytimesbooks, November 2021

A 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 science fiction.

The true history of science fiction is deeper and richer than many fans and readers know. It reaches back to the Enlightenment and the collapse of belief in the Christian mythos. It is the search for a new mythos for the modern world, that continues into the 21st century.

00:00 The forgotten authors of science fiction
02:30 Welcome to the Science Fiction podcast
07:07 The true history of science fiction…why does it matter?
09:21 Commercial Genre vs Creative Movement
17:12 The Problem : the collapse of the Christian mythos
23:36 All science fiction is myth, not all myth is science fiction
26:38 The seeds of science fiction
29:01 The Novel Experiment
36:20 Birth of Genre
38:41 The ideological capture of science fiction by John W Campbell
43:47 The New Mythic
50:01 The process of genrefication
54:44 Writing the 21st century myth

Follow the the Science Fiction podcast and become a member https://damiengwalter.com/podcast/

Join the discussion on the Science Fiction community https://www.facebook.com/groups/324897304599197

Read my top science fiction to rewire your consciousness https://amzn.to/3gQqfGR

Pre-1950 Utopias and Science Fiction by Women https://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/_collections/utopias/utopias.html

Murakami’s scifi homage to Marcel Proust

There aren’t many science fiction novels with the nerve to riff on Marcel Proust. In fact I think 1Q84 might be the only one. Part of Haruki Murakami’s success is his skill at reworking science fiction concepts – alternate realities, secondary worlds & mumbling sheep men – via the toolkit of literary fiction. Yes…it’s trueContinue reading “Murakami’s scifi homage to Marcel Proust”

Rendered Reality : further thoughts on the Unreal

What is reality?

For tribal societies reality was birthed from a great mother. For agrarian peoples it grew from a seed. And for our modern, industrial world reality started with an explosion.

Now as our society transforms into a post-modern, post-industrial world our model of reality is changing again. To a reality made of data, information and computation.

And at the heart of this new model of reality is…you! The render engine of your own reality.

Watch the video version of this episode here https://youtu.be/4TFSu_db7fg

Follow the Science Fiction podcast https://damiengwalter.com/podcast/

The work of Marco Di Lucca https://www.artstation.com/marcodilucca

Follow the Science Fiction podcast https://damiengwalter.com/podcast/

00:00 Real or rendered?
02:13 The work of Marco Di Lucca
04:20 Mata 3D, Unreal Engine, Metahuman
09:07 Isn’t this what art has always done?
12:27 Crossing a threshold into the Unreal
15:33 Welcome to Rendered Reality
17:31 The reification of reality
19:25 What is rendering?
24:00 The cultural mythos of reality
33:53 Our new digital mythos
40:04 The mythic cycle
49:01 You are the render engine of reality

Lord of the Rings and the fascist fantasy

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 the fantasies of fascism. Is Lord of the Rings a fascist fantasy? Or did Tolkien create a mythos beyond the understanding of his critics?

00:00 An alternate history of England
03:59 Welcome to the Science Fiction podcast
07:17 The rise of a fascist fantasy
10:09 Is LotR a fascist fantasy?
11:54 Premodern, Modern, Postmodern
13:45 The pre-modern fantasy
17:15 The synthetic fantasy of fascism
21:51 The fascist fantasy in 2022
27:22 The Return of the King
33:22 The bit people who are angry at the title should listen to first
34:23 The modern vision of scifi
38:51 The postmodern vision of transhumanism
43:22 A mass retreat to the premodern
47:24 LotR as integrated mythos
52:33 LotR as a call for WISDOM
56:16 LotR as path into the Unreal

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On the reification of science fiction

Originally posted to the Science Fiction community on Facebook One important factor to think about in the arguments around “what is science fiction?” is how SF was reified into concrete form in the 30s and 40s. The real creators of science fiction from Mary Wolstonecraft Shelley to H G Wells had no concept of scienceContinue reading “On the reification of science fiction”

Rebel Wisdom with Damien Walter – Dune and the deeper meaning of scifi

The excellent Rebel Wisdom invited me to discuss science fiction and the meaning crisis and the release of Denis Villeneuve’s Dune. We take a super deep dive into the mythos of science fiction and the wider role of stories in modern society.

John Vervaeke with Damien Walter – the cogsci of scifi

In October 2020 I was fortunate to get two hours of time with the cognitive scientist John Vervaeke for a full discussion of cogsci, scifi and the meaning crisis. We talk about how science fiction both helps, and sometimes gets in the way of, the complex task of finding meaning in our lives, the addictivenessContinue reading “John Vervaeke with Damien Walter – the cogsci of scifi”

A science fiction history of World War 3

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 invades Ukraine. How did we miss our chance at K1? And how can we still become a K1 civilization?

Follow the the Science Fiction podcast https://damiengwalter.com/podcast/

Join the discussion on the Science Fiction community https://www.facebook.com/groups/324897304599197

Read my top science fiction to rewire your consciousness https://amzn.to/3gQqfGR