It looks like the slickest open world AAA video game ever made, but have CD Projekt Red found new meaning for old cyberpunk metaphors? Damien Walter writes on culture, politics and sci-fi for The Guardian, WIRED, BBC, Independent, Buzzfeed and Aeon magazine. The girl in the black vinyl minidress, shit-kicker boots and neon hair braidsContinue reading “Why am I worried that Cyberpunk 2077 will suck?”
Category Archives: Weird Things
How can we make AI less like the Terminator, and more like the Culture?
It’s only March and already we’ve seen a computer beat a Go grandmaster and a self-driving car crash into a bus. The world is waking up to the ways in which a combination of “deep learning” artificial intelligence and robotics will take over most jobs. But if we don’t want our robot servants to riseContinue reading “How can we make AI less like the Terminator, and more like the Culture?”
The ominous ordinary: horror writers finding scares in the everyday
Some of the very best work in this genre comes from writers who embed their terrors into strikingly everyday settings. Long-lived short fiction magazines are a rarity today. And ones that have had a real impact on the wider landscape of storytelling are even rarer. So issue 50 of Black Static marks a important milestoneContinue reading “The ominous ordinary: horror writers finding scares in the everyday”
The awesome power of science fiction’s megastructures
The imaginary constructions of science fiction fill us with awe at their alien vastness. Which have you explored, and what was the most overwhelming? Sci-fi fans call it “sensawunda”, that awe and amazement that the best science fiction stories can inspire in us. The entire world felt it recently when scientists declared that observations ofContinue reading “The awesome power of science fiction’s megastructures”
The Reengineering of Fantasy
Look. I like Conan. If stories let us play out our secret fantasies in widescreen technicolor, then clearly there’s a part of me that longs to be a muscular barbarian, crushing my enemies and hearing the lamentation of their women. While Robert E Howard’s original Conan stories aren’t quite as good as the epic JohnContinue reading “The Reengineering of Fantasy”
A sci-fi history of Mars
Mars has always been, as cosmologist Carl Sagan wrote, a “mythic arena onto which we have projected our Earthly hopes and fears”. For the ancient Greeks, the red dot in the night sky was an aspect of Ares, god of war, who unleashed conflict when the balance was lost between Apollo – god of reasonContinue reading “A sci-fi history of Mars”
The next publishing craze? Weird Westerns.
It’s a little-known fact that one of the all-time bestselling writers of westerns lived most of his life in the English market town of Melton Mowbray. JT Edson, who died in 2014, wrote more than 137 novels, most of them westerns, and claimed in all seriousness “never to have even been on a horse”. AContinue reading “The next publishing craze? Weird Westerns.”
Tolkien’s myths are a political fantasy
It’s a double-edged magical sword, being a fan of JRR Tolkien. On one hand we’ve had the joy of watching Lord of the Rings go from cult success to, arguably, the most successful and influential story of the last century. And we get to laugh in the face of critics who claimed LotR would neverContinue reading “Tolkien’s myths are a political fantasy”
Are video games the end for sci-fi novels?
The megastructure is one of science fiction’s most enjoyable guilty pleasures. There is no other genre of literature that takes quite such glee in describing buildings, whether made by the hand of man or alien. Arthur C Clarke’s Rendezvous With Rama is little more than a guided tour of the titular spacecraft through the eyesContinue reading “Are video games the end for sci-fi novels?”
Science fiction’s utopias are built out of wilful ignorance
Project Hieroglyph challenges SF writers to move away from dystopian stories, but while the optimism is refreshing, real-world questions go unanswered Science fiction, for most of the 20th century, celebrated the idea that a competent man could build better machines to help make a better world. In recent years that prediction seems to have comeContinue reading “Science fiction’s utopias are built out of wilful ignorance”
Why we’re all reading young adult fiction
It’s an easy win for a book critic. Harry Potter, then Hunger Games, and now Divergent have dominated not just book publishing but popular culture for more than two decades. So after telling adult readers they should be ashamed to read children’s books, all Ruth Graham had to do was sit back and watch theContinue reading “Why we’re all reading young adult fiction”
The New New Space Opera
Science fiction is not a genre. The most successful literary tradition of the 20th century is as impossible to neatly categorise as the alien life forms it sometimes imagines. But “sci-fi” does contain genres. The rigorous scientific speculation of Hard SF. The techno-cynicism of Cyberpunk, or its halfwit cousin Steampunk. The pulp fictions of PlanetaryContinue reading “The New New Space Opera”
Damien Walter 