I’ll let you decide your own list of three, but I’d submit Trekkies as one of them. Wired has a piece on a phenomenon that will be more than familiar to most readers of this blog – the “oh no, this brilliant piece of literature/cinema isn’t sci-fi; it’s too good for that” reaction, which often comes from the creators of a successful work just as much as their marketing people.

Personally, I’ve started to stop worrying about it in recent months. As a long-standing rock music fan, I’m accustomed to being mocked and denigrated for my cultural choices, and I figure a bit of personal pride in our underdog status is definitely the way to go. Stand up for your bookshelves, brethren! Say it loud – we’re geeks, and proud!

Tobias Buckell seems to agree, though for slightly different reasons. I really like his idea of marketing science fiction to kids as “the stuff your parents, pastors, teachers and straight arrow khaki-wearing friends don’t want you to [read]“ - because I’m positive it would work extremely well.

(Thanks to long-standing VCTB habitue Trollop23 for the Wired tip-off.)

Continue reading “Book Review: ‘The Dispossessed’ by Ursula le Guin”

Okay, so why did I feel the need to post up details of my own personal history with science fiction stories, beyond the self-gratification factor? Because I think it shines a light on the way I define what science fiction is – the corollary of which is that everyone else’s definition is a product of their own experiences and preferences, too.

Continue reading “Science fiction: fragmentation, definitions and perspective”

Definitions, descriptions, genres and sub-genres … it looks like the sf blogosphere is unearthing more evidence to demonstrate that the harder you try to put things in a box, the more likely you are to find that the box doesn’t fit.

Continue reading ““Beer-money hard-pulp cyber-opera”, or “Defining the indefinable””

Second Life is really starting to hit the news properly now – it’s been a 1337-geek blogosphere darling for a little while, but some of the more mainstream outlets are picking it up. And as usual, they’re blowing it out of all proportion as it stands at the moment. But what about in a few decades’ time? Continue reading “A second chance at life”

ADHD is a pretty controversial topic at the best of times; throwing the Singularity into the mix only adds to that. Continue reading “ADHD and the Singularity”

If you read this site regularly, you’ll know that I do tend to be a bit wide-eyed and ZOMG!!! about new technologies and gadgets. I also describe myself as a futurist, which is a word with a highly contentious set of meanings, but can be broadly described as a person who tries to peer ahead into the coming years to see not only where we are heading as a species, but hopefully what obstacles (or power-ups) lie around the next corner, too. Continue reading “Looking beyond the gadgets”

Kind of following on from this week’s mega-rant on the state of subgenres, some further thoughts on cultural diversity in entertainment have raised their heads. Continue reading “Dude, where’s my subculture?”

So, yesterday I laid out the framework for my comparison of science fiction and rock music as subcultures with similar relationships to culture at large. In essence, my point was that the people within the fences of these subcultures see themselves and the other inhabitants in a very different and far more pluralist light than people beyond the borders. Today I want to go into more detail about how the subcultures interact with the general culture — to talk about ‘what crosses the barbed wire’, I suppose.

Continue reading “Science fiction and rock music – a cultural comparison; part 2″

Is there an age beyond which parenthood is no longer an option? Science is increasingly saying no, although culture has a panoply of different opinions, which are not all as positive. Continue reading “New horizons for motherhood”