Author Archives: Damien Walter

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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The cognitive science of science fiction – an interview with John Vervaeke

John Vervaeke is one of the world’s most esteemed cognitive scientists, and a colleague of Jordan Peterson at the University of Toronto. He was born into a fundamentalist Christian family, and experienced an awakening to science after reading a science fiction novel – Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny.

I interviewed John Vervaeke in October 2020 to explore the cognitive science of science fiction. We dig into the modern mythos of Star Wars, why scifi fans like to dress as their icons, the “bleed” from RPGs into real world experience, and the relationship between science fiction and Vervaeke’s concept of the meaning crisis.

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What is science fiction?

Look at a list of the 20th century’s most important artistic and cultural movements and you won’t find science fiction listed. Why not? We need a better definition of science fiction to help reclaim it…from itself.

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FOUNDATION Isaac Asimov’s prophetic vision of future humanity

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The Marvel Metanarrative: how to tell giant stories

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My new collaboration with Academia.edu

YouTube recently reminded me that it will be five years (on 7th May) since I uploaded my first video and began my journey into making online courses for writers and storytellers. Since then my courses on Udemy and Skillshare have had over 35,000 enrolled students worldwide. That success has also brought new opportunities. This weekContinue reading “My new collaboration with Academia.edu”

I’ve never shouted so loud

The first clue was mud all over the floor. Then I saw the doors of my wardrobe were open. The wardrobe where I keep my camera equipment. The camera equipment which was now gone, gone, gone. I stomped around my house for the next five minutes searching for my obviously stolen camera equipment. Honestly, I’veContinue reading “I’ve never shouted so loud”