Author Archives: Damien Walter

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

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

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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?

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Severance – what does it mean?

Severance is sophisticated science fiction for grown up audiences in the style of J G Ballard, Philip K Dick or Haruki Murakami. But what does it mean?

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Ted Chiang’s devastating critique of artificial intelligence

AI research plays a sleight of hand trick. It states that human intelligence is emergent from matter. Then it claims that “artificial” intelligence can be treated as less than human because it is emergent from matter. It’s the trick that allows us to treat AI as machines, rather than as life.

Ted Chiang’s The Lifecycle of Software objects extrapolates the hard determinist understanding of intelligence to its inescapable, logical conclusion. That the intelligence which AI research brings into the world will be inextricable from life. And that we will be compelled not to enslave our AI creations, but to care for them.

The outcome is among the greatest science fiction stories ever written.

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We must save JRR Tolkien from Jeff Bezos

The scouring of the Shire is the most beloved part of The Lord of the Rings for many lovers of Tolkien. A coda to the novel’s main story, where the hobbits who defeated Sauron now have to take back the very thing they went to war to protect, their home, the Shire.

JRR Tolkien was a “High Tory”, who loved tradition and loved humanity, and hated the powers of industrialisation and commercialisation he saw overrunning the world. What a shame it is then that his great myth has been sold out to Amazon, and Jeff “Sharkey” Bezos.

Maybe it’s time for those who are his fans to scour JRR Tolkien of those turning his work into a corporate entertainment franchise.

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An interview with Adam Roberts

“It’s trying to thread that needle between the wonder and the splendour in this mythology without being beguiled into actual fascism.” ~Adam Roberts

Adam Roberts is a professor of nineteenth century literature, a prolific essayist and critic, and one of our best science fiction writers. Our interview traces a path between two powerful forces in science fiction – the mythic stories of transcendence and self fulfilment that animate much of today’s most popular sci-fi storytelling, and the mundane and ordinary lives that ground our reality.

We touch on the shifting perception of science fiction in academia, questions of worldbuilding and the endless argument to define science fiction, the new optimism of hopepunk and solarpunk, HG Wells long fascination with eugenics, the balance between stereotype and archetype in storytelling, and professor Roberts answer to the question of where science fiction began. It’s a great insight into the thinking of a great SF author.

00:00:00 A mistrust of myths
00:01:51 An interview with Adam Roberts
00:04:39 The professor’s productivity tips
00:08:11 The nineteenth century and science fiction
00:11:03 Has the academic perception of science fiction shifted?
00:14:29 The worldbuilding question
00:19:16 Why do we keep arguing about the definition of science fiction?
00:23:39 We spend more money on Star Wars than space travel
00:32:12 Melding the literary and the sci-fi
00:42:49 The process of writing science fiction
00:48:03 Translating Joyce and algorithmic writing
00:59:50 Hopepunk and Solarpunk
01:11:22 The Community vs. the Individual
01:18:03 The Heroic and the Quotidian
01:28:02 A segue to Wellsian scholarship
01:35:01 Emmanuel Kant and the Fermi paradox
01:44:24 Tolkien and the English mythos
01:49:47 Stereotype vs Archetype
01:57:14 When does science fiction begin?

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