What has a superbly detailed technical description of an interstellar megastructure and no characters or story?

Denis Villeneuve's latest film project.

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He smells terrible. He never has any money. And he's a violent killer.

There are a lot of reasons not to like Geralt of Rivia. But we do like Geralt of Rivia.

Why is that?

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Science fiction is fighting a doctrinal war. Between those who believe that humankind's future is still the stars, and those - like Kim Stanley Robinson - who believe interstellar travel is a fantasy of religious belief. The science is clear, travel to other stars may well be forever beyond us. So why do we keep telling this story?

A response to Kim Stanley Robinson's interview for the Science Fiction Talks club on Clubhouse. Find his full interview here: https://www.clubhouse.com/room/xe65rroG

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I'm resisting the temptation to throw it all in and disappear down the Unreal Engine rabbit hole. Forget outer space, the future of humankind lies in the infinite exploration of inner space and the realms of the human imagination. But don't worry....the world-building AI will always need storytellers.

00:00 The Unreal Engine rabbit hole

04:44 Humans are never going to outer space

08:23 J G Ballard's take-down of outer space

10:12 The future of inner space

15:35 We are all science fiction creators

17:16 Even the gods of world-building still need storytellers

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On the surface Lord of the Rings and 1984 look very different. But JRR Tolkien and George Orwell were men of the same generation, the same class, and the same culture, writing about the same matter - power.

00:00 Tolkien & Orwell

04:24 Surface Exterior vs Deep Interior

07:12 Symbols vs Symbols

12:14 Class & Communism

13:18 1984 is the future where Sauron won the Third Age

15:09 Meaning vs Nihilism

16:40 We would use power for good...but can we resist using our One Ring?

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Denis Villeneuve's Dune opens with a sentence that is not in Frank Herbert's DUNE. "Dreams are messages from the deep". What do these words mean? And why does Denis Villeneuve choose to open his movie with them?

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Science fiction is a strange beast. A exploration of the hard edged future of science and technology, fused with the transcendent hunger for imagination and self-transformation. Can science fiction be a bridge between the two "non-overlapping magisteria" of Science and Religion?

This episode of the Science Fiction podcast is a crossover with my series commenting on the "Intellectual MMA" of YouTube philosophy. The Four Horsemen of Atheism - Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett VS The Four Horsemen of Meaning - Jordan Peterson, Jonathan Pageau, John Vervaeke and Bishop Barron. Who is who? And who won?

00:00 Science fiction bridges religion and science

01:04 What happens when Science meets Fiction?

02:21 The era of Intellectual MMA

03:43 Horsemen of Meaning vs Horsemen of Atheism

05:09 The rise of the YouTube intellectual

07:19 Which Horseman is which?

12:01 The Meaning Crisis

14:58 The problem of Self-Deception

20:52 So...who won?

22:12 We need a participatory philosophy

24:59 Religious dogma? BAD! Religious debate? GREAT!

The worst thing any adaptation of a science fiction classic can do is be less intelligent than the original. Apple's FOUNDATION is dumbed down so far that readers of Isaac Asimov's original novels can barely recognise it. But can rewrites, reshoots and some smart recasting help Apple recoup some of the $500M the show is reported to have cost?

00:00 Apple's Foundation is dumbed down

03:48 The Science Fiction podcast with Damien Walter

05:09 $500 million is a lot of money

08:15 The most expensive flop in tv history

09:21 Could Foundation be salvaged?

10:42 Get rid of David S Goyer

11:52 The central character of Foundation is...Foundation.

14:11 Foundation is SOCIAL science fiction

16:16 The Empire is a technocracy

18:19 Hari Seldon - a prophet of science

19:34 Cast Lee Pace as Salvor Hardin

22:52 Hire science fiction writers

25:25 Culture is the intelligence of human civilisation

27:02 We are in a Seldon crisis

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The great project of science fiction has been the translation of science and its discoveries into our shared understanding as human beings. But what happens to science fiction if and when the science itself...changes? We're in the midst of a paradigm shift in the understanding of physics driven by computation. And at the cutting edge of this new kind of science is Stephen Wolfram. In a recent podcast interview with Lex Friedman, Wolfram wondered if science fiction was the way to understand what it would be like to be a 'cellular automata'. Is science fiction ready to answer the challenge?

Listen to the full Lex Fridman podcast with Stephen Wolfram: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-SGpEInX_c

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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.

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/qWpLcC7QaSA

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