Damien Walter

The most powerful scene in scifi cinema Blade Runner’s Tears in Rain

Rick Deckard is a Replicant. And Rick Deckard is also not the hero of Blade Runner…but is the villain. But the obvious questions about Blade Runner are also the least interesting. Empathy is the core of the Blade Runner story. Why we feel it, who we feel it for, and who we choose to exclude from our empathy. Blade Runner is an empathy test…for the audience…to see if you and I are human. All too often, we fail the test.

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The Green Knight wants you to die

It’s interesting to realise that audiences today for The Green Knight, director David Lowery’s adaptation of the medieval poem, struggle to understand a story that would have been clear and obvious to audiences seven centuries ago. For all our knowledge and science – or perhaps because of them – the epic poem created by an unknown author as a kind of Arthurian fanfic now seems cryptically mysterious to us. But the deep meaning of The Green Knight is exactly why the movie has become a surprise hit. More than ever modern audiences are hungry for the gift of The Green Knight – death.

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The failure of Foundation is a lost opportunity for Apple

Stories that last through the ages aren’t just great storytelling, they also serve the power structures of their time. Powerful people have always patronised great stories. The epic poem Beowulf, The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, the plays of William Shakespeare, were all supported by powerful patrons. Now the most powerful corporation in the world has decided to patronise a $500 billion production of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation saga, a story that represents the values of our technocratic elite better than any other.

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Savior Stories – workshop 7 from Writing the 21st Century Myth

Savior stories are at the core of many of the most powerful science fiction and fantasy. Neo in the Matrix. John Connor in the Terminator. Superman in all his manifestations. And of course Paul Atreides in DUNE.

The seventh workshop in Writing The 21st Century Myth explores how scifi saviors all have their origin in the original Savior to save them all, the central character of Christian mythology – Jesus of Nazareth. And how scifi stories can be shaped around the stages of transformation, to take audiences on their own personal journeys of Salvation.

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Thoughts after watching Denis Villeneuve’s DUNE (2021)

If science fiction is a gateway to the psychedelic, then DUNE is a portal to…awakening. Frank Herbert’s seminal novel and David Lynch’s baroquely weird movie are both powerful works of art on the theme of human awakening. Denis Villeneuve’s 2021 adaptation is a masterpiece of worldbuilding. But is it a kick in the third eye for would be seekers of truth? If the 13 year old me could see this Dune afresh, would the sleeper awaken?

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Relax – The Matrix Resurrections is going to be great

Phew. Matrix Resurrections is going to be great.

This is the shot in the trailer where I knew it. There’s so much that works here. Not swapping out your 54 year old leading actress for a younger model, is just a start. This is a gang of older, wiser creatives than the bunch who got rushed into the early sequels. Everything in this trailer says self-reflective, smart, a clever play on the original…with upgraded CGI.

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Is science fiction our modern mythology?

In August 2021 I was invited to speak at the 20th Indian Science Fiction Conference, on the theme of science fiction as modern mythology. Scifi as myth is the core thesis of my critical writing on the subject, and of my course in Advanced Scifi and Fantasy storytelling. It’s a thesis that does of course get pushback from some people. So in this episode of the Science Fiction podcast I take a deep dive into why mythology is the best lens through which to understand scifi.

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Why is the Prime Directive so important?

As the United States withdraws from Afghanistan, leaving behind it chaos and despair, the Science Fiction podcast looks at why the Prime Directive is such an important idea – both in Star Trek and in reality.

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The true meaning of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 A Space Odyssey

It’s more than a little ironic that the motion picture widely called the greatest science fiction story ever told was made by an artist who hated science fiction. Stanley Kubrick thought science fiction was a failure at myth making, and set out to make a new myth for the modern world, and the only great science fiction movie.

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JRR Tolkien vs. Jeff Bezos

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There Is No Antimemetics Division – an interview with Qntm

It’s logical that the best science fiction being written today has its origins online and in collaborative forums. There Is No Antimemetics Division began life as part of the SCP Foundation wiki, a collaborative writing project with thousands of participants.

There Is No Antimemetics Division – https://amzn.to/3AcTDPx

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DUNE: the 7 levels of meaning in Frank Herbert’s science fiction masterpiece

Dune is a weird story in all senses of the word. It is on one hand a story about men in rubber suits who drink their own pee – an aesthetic that has deterred more than a few readers. It is on the other hand a story that has lasted in our culture for six decades, surviving multiple questionable adaptations, as we now await the latest from Denis Villeneuve. In this episode of the Science Fiction podcast we ask – why?

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