featured – Damien Walter

Project Hail Mary is a Male Pattern Fantasy

It’s Scifi. It’s Romance. It’s Fantasy.

It’s SciMANtasy 😱

Let’s see if we can make Gary an Amazon bestseller so he doesn’t ask for his money back.

🔗👇

The Last Sysadmin in Sector 7 : a SCIMANTASY novel

https://amzn.to/4lXiqjF

The Ultimate Male Pattern Fantasy

What if the greatest science fiction dream isn’t discovering alien life or saving the human race, but simply being left completely alone in a room to do math?

Andy Weir’s Project Hail Mary is a masterpiece of hard sci-fi engineering, but beneath the astrophage and the orbital mechanics lies a deeply comforting psychological trope. We are looking at the “Male Pattern Fantasy”—the idea that the ultimate hero is just an ordinary, highly competent guy who solves the universe’s problems in absolute, blissful isolation (and somehow looks exactly like Ryan Gosling while doing it).

Whether you find this trope to be a lovely, optimistic vision of human competence or a pathetic retreat from social reality, it is currently dominating modern science fiction.

How the Matrix reclaimed the Red Pill

The best way to understand the broken, crazed, indulgent filmography of the Wachowski’s is as a quest to make the Matrix movie the Matrix would never make. Time. Is money. And in the cold unfeeling eyes of Hollywood a “movie” is just a business strategy to convert two hours of your time into shareholder value.Continue reading “How the Matrix reclaimed the Red Pill”

America forgot that Judge Dredd is a satire of fascism

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Become a member of the Science Fiction community to continue the discussion

Website – https://damiengwalter.com

Patreon – https://www.patreon.com/DamienWalter

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Subscribe to the Science Fiction podcast feed for long-form commentaries on these video essays

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They want to make DUNE real

Get your CHOAM tee here – https://damosays-shop.fourthwall.com

Become a member of the Science Fiction community to continue the discussion

Website – https://damiengwalter.com

Patreon – https://www.patreon.com/DamienWalter

Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/groups/324897304599197/

Subscribe to the Science Fiction podcast feed for long-form commentaries on these video essays

https://damiengwalter.com/podcast/

Follow Damien on Bluesky

https://bsky.app/profile/damiengwalter.com

How does M John Harrison enter a story?

M John Harrison is one of the all time greats, a “science fiction writer’s science fiction writer”, a creator of weird tales in the horror tradition, and a powerful weaver of fantasy. The Viriconium stories defined political fantasy in the 80’s, as the Light trilogy redefined literary SF in the 00s. As editor of NewContinue reading “How does M John Harrison enter a story?”

The remarkable Neal Stephenson interview

Neal Stephenson – legendary author of speculative fiction – on Elon Musk and geek culture, the NSA revelations of Edward Snowden, how negative cultural narratives are killing big science – and the upbringing that made him the writer he is. IN LATE 2013 I had the opportunity to interview the author Neal Stephenson. Some Remarks,Continue reading “The remarkable Neal Stephenson interview”

The 8 Tribes of SciFi

Calling sci-fi a genre in 2016 is about as accurate as calling the United States one nation. In principle it’s true, but in practice things don’t work that way. While crime, romance and thrillers all remain as coherent genres of fiction, it’s been decades since sci-fi could be comfortably understood by any shared generic criteria.Continue reading “The 8 Tribes of SciFi”

What does a nomad writer pack for 4 years on the road?

Hello! My name is Damien Walter, and I am the nomad writer. I’ve been travelling since November 2013, across Thailand, India, Malaysia and Indonesia. I’m a slow traveller, staying at least two months wherever I go. My main base of operations is Chiang Mai, the “digital nomad” capital of the world. Read Slouching Toward Nimmanhaemin:Continue reading “What does a nomad writer pack for 4 years on the road?”

One very useful thing to know about depression

Through the month of September 2017 I fought a small scale conflict, against an army of negative thoughts and emotions that had claimed the territory of my mind. I recognised this mental state well. It was what we commonly call depression. To win this fight, I needed strategies. I went back and reviewed the bestContinue reading “One very useful thing to know about depression”

Only a creator culture can save us

We’re trying to rebuild a failed consumer culture. We need to make a new creator culture instead. Published in Culture – A Reader for Writers, editor John Mauk, Oxford University Press. I arrived in Leicester in the late ‘90s as a student, a year after losing my mother to cancer. Having little support, I workedContinue reading “Only a creator culture can save us”

Writing Practice: why it’s time to stop thinking of writing as a profession

If you go to a good art school (and yes you STEM readers out there, such places do exist) they teach you to think of your art as a practice. And to think of yourself as a practitioner. There’s a purpose to this tradition. Admittedly, it takes most art students – myself included – untilContinue reading “Writing Practice: why it’s time to stop thinking of writing as a profession”

A Game of Egos

Originally published on guardianbooks.co.uk A wealthy dynasty brought to its knees by popular revolt, the highest in the land caught in a web of corruption, and at the heart of it all a powerful woman with remarkable hair. If you see the Murdoch clan, Chipping Norton set and Rebekah Brooks in these archetypes then you have clearlyContinue reading “A Game of Egos”