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I suppose I should not be surprised that transhumanist ideas, mutilated in a fascist form, would start to reach breakthrough point. Slightly late in the day as this was noted in September, but drinking wine and trawling Stross is one way of dealing with Saturday's ennui..

So it's probably not surprising that Italy is the source of a new political meme that I [Charlie Stross] hadn't heard of before this week: overhumanism:

The new tech is going to foster discrimination and differentiation. This will be enthusiastically taken up by those in power to maintain control. It will probably have a short shelf life as all such attempts to limit the (trans)human spirit do; measured in decades rather than centuries now. No doubt the kleptocratic elites of many countries will jump on this bandwagon to paint their already black rule a darker shade. Tempted enough by shiny power to create closed systems, too stupid to realise that they just shortened the life of their political schemes, by curbing their ability to adapt and change. In the long run, they will either die out or be bought out.

My only prediction: by the end of this century, we are going to be sick and tired of the suffix, -humanism.

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There you were, in a world of pedants, clergymen and golfers…and here was this wonderful man who could tell you about the inhabitants of the sea, and who knew that the future was not going to be what respectable people imagined

- George Orwell on his discovery of the writing of H.G. Wells, as quoted by Cynthia Crossen of the Wall Street Journal, in a context that is quite worth reading, as is the follow up discussion at io9. Come to think of it, these sorts of "respectable people" (along with those who believe that housing is not a high risk investment and therefore expect to be bailed out with my savings when this turns out not to be so, those who are in favour of the television licence fee, and...) may be what I have in mind when I proclaim how much I despise the middle class, as I am prone to do.

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Via the David Thompson blog - which has a weird and wonderful collection of oddball stuff every Friday, I came across this aspect of science fiction movies.

Some nifty photos and links on this website as well.

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Dominic Lawson tears into the moral cant and dubious economics of those who want to festoon the UK with windmills as a solution to so-called man-made global warming. As he says, other countries, such as Germany, have spent large sums on such alternative technologies but have not, yet, been able to retire conventional power stations at all.

I am quite a fan of tidal power, as alternatives go (although I think that no serious energy policy that sidelines nuclear power is worth considering as a practical one). Unlike the wind, which is dependent on weather, tides are as regular as the orbit of the Moon. Reversible turbines could be powered by the regular, big currents that sweep to and fro in the coastal waters of countries such as the UK, France, Germany and Spain. And unlike windmills, they would not, hopefully, create a bloody great eyesore or hazard, either.

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"Where are they?" is a question I would rather had remained unanswered, Mbotu mused. The stone-like bench, lost in the giant and austere entry hall, was cold and uncomfortable. It grew more so as time passed. He had been punctual. One does not keep ones God King waiting. The reverse, however, is a given. Mbotu had once done so himself. Was it only a year? Just one year since he had held the highest office there was: Secretary General of the United Nations of Earth. It might as well have been a millennium ago. The now redundant world government had succeeded beyond the wildest imaginings of its 20th century founders. After three centuries, war and everything associated with it had been abolished. No one was hungry; there were no rich, no poor; the environment had been saved and the excesses of unfettered capitalism had been reined in by the gentle power of the institution to which he had given over his life. Mbotu's thoughts were interrupted by the echoing footfalls of an approaching functionary.

"You will be seen now."

By the time the elderly Mbotu rose aching from the bench, the figure was already in motion. Instant and unquestioning obedience was simply assumed. No further words were exchanged and he followed as quickly as he could.

A lift took them to the top of the five kilometre 'palace', if that was the right term for the new seat of government. When the door opened it was as if he had crossed light-years to another world and in effect he had. This was the private residence of the alien warlord who now claimed the once peaceful and unarmed Earth for his own.

"Sit", said an imposing alien figure. "Be comfortable". As if realizing Mbotu's thoughts, he added "There is no need for formality here. You are fully aware of your place and it is time to integrate you into the Imperial Government. You will be assigned quarters here. You will be restored to your former position and will retain it for so long as you are obedient and successful in carrying out our wishes. Earth must begin to pay its own way in the Empire and repay our investment in it. Our requirements are simple enough. You have advanced technology and global infrastructure. You will convert it to production to support our fleet and invasion forces. If all goes well, in a century or so you will supply troops as well.”

"But... we have no knowledge of arms and war", interjected an appalled Mbotu, "We have expunged even the basics of dangerous technologies from our libraries and archives. They have been outlawed for generations!"

"We know. That is in fact why I am here and you are there." After a pause he continued. "Perhaps I should explain the realities of the wider universe. Most civilizations travel a path similar to yours. They go from warlike tribes to larger and larger conglomerates hacking and beating at each other with primitive weapons. Then comes the first technological transition and wars which become more and more terrible. Those who survive become a single global state by one path or another. Since there is no longer a threat to be met, defences atrophy. There is no need for advanced arms, nuclear weapons or standing armies. Most societies degenerate to the point where they have only small special units for solving problems for the supreme ruler of the planet."

He continued. "A few, like you, are more extreme. You have eliminated your military entirely. You have destroyed traditions which reached far into your past and once allowed the training of effective soldiers. Even if we had allowed you ten years warning you could not have fielded a fighting force worthy of respect. You blocked the development of nanotechnology, advanced spaceships, nuclear power, directed energy weapons, force fields and a hundred other things you deemed too dangerous. Your population became coddled and addicted to a safe and easy, if somewhat impoverished, life. The concept of self-defence, even if you still allowed so much as a sharp blade to be manufactured or kept, have become as alien to your population as invaders from another planet.”

"You believe you had a golden age, but soon enough your population will be taught the lie and will support our rule. By our standards you accomplished a global and equal poverty for all but the ruling class like yourself. We will return adventure to your decadent and risk averse populace. We will give you the option of thousand year lifespans and travel to the stars. Your children will be will be our willing adventurers and soldiers."

Mbotu, steeled by life as a bureaucrat, diplomat and politician, stayed calm. "You say most. Obviously you are an exception."

"Yes. A very small number of civilizations follow the path to Empire. From time to time we fight each other at the edges of our vast catchments, but for the most part we take the easier path. There are so many like you that it would be a waste of resources to spend our time locked in bloody combat and destroy the very planets and populations we seek."

Mbotu changed the subject. "How long have you known of us?"

"Space is vast and the stars are like dust. Occasionally we stumble upon a pre-technological species, but for the most part we just listen. By the time we hear the first radio broadcast your sort are already into the endgame of the nation state. When we first arrived your Europeans were nearly ready for harvesting but there were still many capable of causing us annoyance. Your United States had the technology and fight to give us big problems. A deadly challenge to their supremacy might well have pushed them into developing some of the now proscribed technologies and made invasion too costly for us. Others like China and India had populations whom we would have had to mostly wipe out to stop them from fighting."

"Over the millennia we have learned the virtue of patience. A few centuries is usually enough. Once you are decadent, disarmed and centralized..." the alien did what could pass for a shrug, "We arrive with a show of overwhelming force and you surrender without a shot. There are usually a few hold outs, but they are easily dealt with and turned into object lessons without wrecking what we want: a developed planetary civilization that will supply us the tools for the next conquest. You were not able or willing to fight for your freedom.” He paused for effect. “And now you are ours.”

[Copyright 20090712 Dale Amon, all rights reserved]

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Like many people, I thoroughly enjoyed the new Star Trek film, which seeks to "re-boot" the series by going back to the early days of Messrs Kirk, Spock, Scotty and the rest in much the way that the makers of Casino Royale tried with some success to do with 007. I liked the paciness, humour and action of the ST film a lot; some of the cast were great. I thought the fellow who played Spock stole the movie with such brio that he should be probably up before a court for grand larceny. But I have a reservation: I thought that the guy playing Kirk was often a total jerk, albeit with some redeeming qualities, and it was wildly improbable that a starship would have employed him as a commander at that point. Yes, I know that the very premise of the movie is fanciful, but there has to be enough credibility and character development to make it work at even the level of fantasy (that is why Lord of the Rings triumphed as a movie series, for instance).

And this guy thinks the same way. But even so, Stark Trek is well worth the money and far more enjoyable than a lot of SF films I have seen in recent years.

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Io9 lists their ten best sci-fi libertarian stories: and the mix is an interesting combination of the obvious and the outliers. The anarcho-socialist tradition, mostly British, is referenced, revealing some surprises on the influences that could be fictionalised as libertarian utopias. My own favourites are that hoary old goat, the fabian Wells, providing a counterpoint to his scientific socialism, and Eric Frank Russell with his homage to Gandhi.

Some would criticise the absence of L. Neil Smith, Ken McLeod and others, but lists are always a springboard for discussion, an opportunity to find works that did not blip the reading radar.

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You might find this initial pilot for an animated not so far off future, 'Tranquility Dome', a lot of fun. The author, Chip Prosser, asked me to take a look and now I am wondering how soon the next episode will be available!

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There was coffee. Life would go on.

- William Gibson. The Winter Market.

In truth, the anthology Burning Chrome contains some very fine short stories. I tend to think that it is a shame that Gibson gave up publishing stories pretty much immediately after he published his first novel, however iconic that novel might have been.

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Oh my God! Jeanette Winterson has written a science fiction novel, The Stone Gods, as a speculation. Nor has she taken the marketing escape of disguising her presence by the addition of the cunning initial. There she is, in plain sight, unadorned, investing the enterprise with the gravitas of her literary reputation. As Ursula K Le Guin remarks, Winterson commits genre.

The story appears to involve a parable of our own world, allowing Winterson to derive her own dystopia from Orwell's tradition of extrapolation. Unleavened by reality or experience, the future is a hell of advertising and reality television. Did she read Pohl and Kornbluth? Whilst Winterson's themes of abandoned childhood and the nature of adoption inform much of her fiction, this departure allows us to see how literati react to the symbols of ecological disaster and despair.

The banal title invokes the destruction of Easter Island as symbol for the future of this Island Earth. What limits the visions of the future that mainstream writers depict as a simplistic outlier. The acceptable vision of the future is the resource crisis, the one that swamps our media daily, and forms the backdrop of Winterson's love story.

The choice of future does not negate the quality of the story, and Winterson serves up a provocative narrative. Yet, does her painted future display a certain narrowness. The degrading and deserving darkness that many prophecy as the outcome of the civilisation they revile is easier to write than the complex and enriched society that few foretell and fewer understand.

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Okay - it's like this. There's a tribe living by a river, and in the river there are crocodiles. The tribe has one particular piece of wisdom passed down through the generations. It goes like this: if you happen to meet a crocodile, don't stick your head in its mouth. Every now and then - and who knows the reason - people ignore this advice. Which is sad. Because they die. But very stupid because they were warned. They had a choice. The moral of this story is - you can't afford to be stupid. There are crocodiles.

- The words of Steven Moffat, as spoken by Julia Sawalha, in the final episode of Press Gang. Few things recently have pleased me as much as the announcement that Moffatt will be the new showrunner of Dr Who. The rumour today is that Neil Gaiman will be writing for the show, too, so there is lots to look forward to.

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Bryan Appleyard has some interesting things to say about science fiction (hat-tip, Glenn). As a commenter said in the Times' letters section though, Bryan focuses a little too much on the dystopian side of SF, on science-out-of-control. There are some nice touches though: he is right to examine how SF has affected the course of science, as well as the other way round.

The problem with a newspaper article like this, unfortunately, is that you can only really skim the surface of the subject. SF is pretty vast - hey, like the universe itself! There are bound to be vast tracts of land that get overlooked. Appleyard does not mention the more positive, life-affirming side of hard science fiction in the works of people like John Varley or Vernor Vinge, for instance (two of the best writers of the lot, in my opinion). And he barely mentions Arthur C. Clarke, Neal Stephenson, Ken MacLeod and R.A. Heinlein. Mention of the latter, of course, brings us onto the fact that SF has often been quite daringly political; it has used imagined futures to play around with cultural, social and ideal political scenarios (regular readers of this blog will know what I mean, such as The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, or Stephenson's Snow Crash, etc).

But, to be fair to Appleyard, he takes SF seriously. As he points out, there seems to be more interest in fantasy instead: the enormous popularity of Lord of the Rings, Terry Pratchett, being just two examples. Maybe I am missing something, but I have never been interested in that side of the genre. My wife keeps badgering me to read Pratchett. Another sub-genre is what one might call "techno-military" SF; Heinlein wrote some of this in things like Starship Troopers; a good current example are the writings of John Scalzi.

Here's a pretty good dictionary of science fiction.

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"I like Canary Wharf. It is where Dr Who fought against the Cybermen."

A friend of mine, who as you can tell, is a Dr Who fanatic. I will never be able to think of London's new financial district in quite the same way again.

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I am an avid reader of science fiction, and the use of futuristic fiction as a source of ideas is a welcome development. The best science fiction is that which explores the boundaries of our concepts whether in the mind, the computer or how we relate to each other. This is one of the advantages of defending the freedom of the mind, the expression of which is usually described as freedom of speech

Anti-terror chiefs in the United States have hired a team of America's most original sci-fi authors to dream up techniques to help them combat al-Qaeda.

Ideas so far include mobile phones with chemical weapons detectors and brain scanners fitted to airport sniffer dogs, so that security staff can read their minds.

The writers have also put government scientists in touch with Hollywood special-effects experts, to work on better facial-recognition software to pick out terrorists at airports.

The Department of Homeland Security has set aside around $10 million - one tenth of its research budget - for projects dreamt up by the best brains in futuristic fiction.

Whilst DARPA is a useful channel for futuristic ideas, ten percent of a research budget handed over to any project is not such a good idea. Once the institutional apparatus is set up, with a secretariat to flesh out the innovative ideas, and the bureaucratic accretions which turn gold to mud, what will be left. A few nuggets from the civil service quicksand.

More useful is the Sigma organisation set up by Andrew Arlen some years ago, if it survives the seductive sirenic call of the public sector:

Mr Pournelle said the facial recognition plan was one of a number that aimed to replicate ideas seen on television shows such as CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and NCIS, a similar show. "In real life, the computers are still nowhere near as good as they are on TV," he said. "It's just one of several high risk, high pay-off projects we have suggested.

He is a member of Sigma, a group set up by fellow writer Arlan Andrews to pursue "science fiction in the national interest. Mr Andrews, who predicted handheld, electronic books long before they became a reality, said: "We spend our entire careers living in the future. Those responsible for keeping the nation safe need people to think of crazy ideas."

How unusual that CSI, paraded as an authentic and naturalistic program, can be classified as science fiction, on the grounds that the technology deployed is probably three or five years ahead of our current capabilities. Yet, the same confusion may dazzle the Department of Homeland Security. The politicians will reach for science fictional solutions when actual success probably stems from incremental graft on current processes and clear procurement and privatisation.

Research is often touted as a PR solution for public sector problems. Treat this with scepticism.

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"My word, I'm not even a hundred yet." The last line of Robert A. Heinlein's masterpiece - arguably his finest book - The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Much has been written about the science fiction maestro. Well, a lot is going to be said and written about the man at the upcoming conference to mark the centenary of his birth. The guest-list is pretty damn impressive, including one of America's hot science fiction talents, John Scalzi. It seems sadly ironic that Heinlein, a man who wrote memorably about longevity and characters like Lazarus Long, is not still with us.

But his ideas and wonderful stories most decidedly are.

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Don't worry, I'm not gonna start any sword fights. I'm over that phase.

- Captain Malcolm Reynolds, one of the many fine characters in the television series, Firefly.

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A great secret has been revealed. Personally I think it explains a lot. Brian Micklethwait is really Gully Foyle.

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John Scalzi, a science fiction writer whom I admire and learned about via the blogs, is giving free copies of his books to servicemen and women in Afghanistan and Iraq. Now, leaving aside what one thinks of either military campaign, I think this is a grand idea, and I hope and trust that authors, film-makers and musicians do the same. These armed forces personnel are risking their lives and deserve a bit of comfort and support, particularly now when so many people, even "moulting hawks" like me, are doubting the wisdom of military intervention in the Middle East. We put them there, God help us.

Scalzi's first book, Old Man's War, is definitely worth a read, and the successor, The Ghost Brigades, is also pretty good. If you like Robert Heinlein or Peter Hamilton, for example, you will like Scalzi. I hope he is around for a long time to come. He writes hard science fiction with characters you believe in, can like and admire, warts and all.

(Thanks to Alex Knapp for the tip).

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If reality contradicts your thoughts, that's delusion. If your thoughts contradict your actions, that's madness. If reality contradicts your actions, that's defeat, frustration, self-destruction. And no sane being wants delusion, madness and destruction.

- From the Golden Transcendence, John C. Wright, page 212

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US blogger Jim Henley has some interesting thoughts about the politics of ace science fiction adventures series Battlestar Galactica. In my typically languid British way, I have just about started munching my way through series 2, which I find rather dark and depressing compared to the excellent series 1, but I am savouring the programmes even so, and looking forward to the third series, already now showing. My addiction to this series is worse even than Babylon 5 or, to roll back the years and to a very different genre, to Blackadder. The acting and the plots are consistently enthralling and entertaining.

It got me thinking about drama and storytelling more generally. If you tell a certain type of person that your favourite television show is Battlestar or Firefly, you are sometimes put in the 'geek' category, but it seems to me that in terms of quality and ability to describe the human condition, SF television shows can hold their own with the most pretentious dramas. In some ways, they are the final redoubts of romantic realism in drama.

Now, I wonder if that guy on the Tube was a Cylon...

[Editors note: for some previous thoughts on Battlestar Galactica on Samizdata, see here]

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"It had always bothered him to see waste; to see Gas Giant atmospheres not mined for their wealth in hydrogen; to see energy from stars spill into the void, without a Dyson Sphere to catch and use it; to see iron and copper and silicates scattered in a hundred million pebbles and asteroids, instead of a smelter or nanoassembly vat."

- The Golden Age, by John C. Wright, page 261.

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In whatever shape England emerges from the war [...] The intellectuals who hope to see it Russianized or Germanized will be disappointed. The gentleness, the hypocrisy, the thoughtlessness, the reverence for law and the hatred of uniforms will remain, along with the suet puddings and the misty skies. It needs some very great disaster, such as prolonged subjugation by a foreign enemy, to destroy a national culture

But we live further from Orwell than Orwell from Bismarck. The current rulers of England are keen on uniforms, inspectors, permits and controls. (In 48 hours: "Ports and airports to get to discipline young offenders: Home secretary considers community work uniform." The replacement for the Child Support Agency [not authoritarian enough], "will wield extra powers to punish parents who fail to pay, including evening curfews to prevent fathers going out after work, and having their passports confiscated to stop them taking foreign holidays, and even the threat of prosecution and prison".) Law is treated with contempt if it gets in the way of the state's priorities. (Last week the Home Office revealed its ideas for Serious Crime Prevention Orders, to be used to control the activities - such as telephone, travel, banking or internet use - of "known criminals" without the evidence necessary for an actual criminal prosecution.) The prohibition of suet puddings has yet to be 'put out to public consultation' (which is how we would know the matter had been determined). But it can only be a matter of time.

I saw Terry Gilliam's Brazil again last night. I had not for a long while. Seen just now, its aptness to New Britain is shocking. More surprising, I think than the utter submergence of Orwell's gentle, un-Prussian England. We knew, in petto, we had lost that.

How long before we see official signs pronouncing "Suspicion breeds confidence" and "Help the Ministry of Information help you"? Eh?

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I am just having a relaxing weekend out of London. Dublin (and Ireland in general) is a delightful place, and is perfect for a relaxing weekend. The absence of immigration controls between Britain and Ireland means I do not have to spend an hour and a half in the non-EU nationals queue when I get back to London, which is also good. I have been to other parts of Ireland, but somehow I find I have not been to Dublin since 1997, which is far too long. I am presently in a cafe just off Grafton Steet, which has properly civilized free WiFi, and I have been reading Vernor Vinge's Rainbow's End in cafes and bars and airports. It is good, but not as overwhelming as A Deepness in the Sky. Vinge is amongst the greatest sf writers currently writing, but I do not think it is quite one of his major works. I will reserve judgement on that until I reach the end of the book.

An episode of Dr Who last year was based on the idea that there was some sort of cosmic energy source in Cardiff, and the Doctor and Rose (as well as the villain of the story) went to Cardiff to in some sense feed on the Energy source. This idea that some places are special, and have deep religious significance and healing properties, or special magical powers, or are the locations of gateways between universes or similar, is of course one which exists throughout religion, mythology and fiction. But when I wander around a city looking for a WiFi hotspot I am struck by the sense that it has become in some ways literally true. WiFi hotspots are places where the magic of the modern world works in a way that it does not in other places. I am fully connected to the world, whereas when I am outside one I am restricted to using cellular networks, which have bandwidth restrictions and pricing systems that are generally so clueless that I am unable to use them in the way that I would like (well, if they are not clueless they are so determined to not lose their voice revenues that there are lot of services and pricing schemes they simply will not consider). This gets much worse when I am outside my own country and I have to pay idiotic roamng charges. Recent studies have actually tended to suggest that for people paying their own bills, reducing roaming charges actually increases revenues rather than reduces them, because halving the cost causes to speak to people for more than twice as long. However, there is again a "We do not want to lose existing revenues" factor, as the majority of revenues presently come from business users who do not pay their own bills.

Of course, it is not an original observation that computers and magic are similar in peculiar ways. Programming a computer is almost literally the same thing as casting a spell. You write down words, and things happen in a real world as a direct consequence of the words you utter. A program is an incantation. You get the words even slightly wrong, and bizarre and unpredictable things happen, just like in so many magical stories and legends. Computer hacker lore is full of references to wizards, and demons, and gods.

Arthur C Clarke wrote a long time ago that "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", but I think even he failed to predict the extent to which this has, almost literally, become true (Vinge of course understood this before anyone).

I can not imagine that WiFi hotspots being special places will last for long though. We are going to have ubiquitous and fast wireless data networks almost wherever we go before long, just as we already do for voice networks. Finding a place without the equivalent of a hotspot is going to be like finding a place without cellular coverage - not all that uncommon, but annoying.

By the way, I am in an outlet of a chain called Cafe Java, which in addition to free WiFi and what looks like rather good food, has a fine tea selection as well. There gets a point where I have had enough coffee, and switching to green tea (which is what I am drinking now) or similar is my preferred approach. I wish someone would open one of these near where I live, or indeed a chain of them all over London.

Also, what in the name of Allah is that giant vertical silver thing that has been erected in the middle of O'Connell Street?

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As a bit of a diversion from fretting about Britain's slide into a police state, take this quiz and see which sci-fi series you would be most comfortable in. Perhaps not surprisingly, Firefly turned out to be the one for me, followed closely by Battlestar Galactica. I feel comfortable about that. Thank goodness it was not Star Trek.

(Thanks to Glenn Reynolds for the pointer).

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Captain America is probably remembered as one of the worst films spun off the Marvel franchise. Whilst the film wrought untold damage to the origins of Steve Roger's alter ego, it did strike one historical chord. In the comic book, Steve Rogers is a sickly individual, denied the chance to demonstrate his patriotism, until he takes the serum that transforms him into a super soldier. In the film, Steve Rogers is a polio victim, perhaps the only plot device that provides some insight into the historical context of Captain America and the rise of the superhero.

The definition and origins of the superhero are traced back to the nineteen-thirties even though there are a number of forerunners in the pulps. The genre coalesced around costumed heroes with a variety of powers, often enhanced beyond human norms, who had strong moral codes, a secret identity and fought off evil in a variety of guises, usually the enemies of World War 2. The cultures that informed the origins of superheroes came from both contemporary sources and Judaeo-Christian narratives.

Superman's backstory was Biblical in tone. Richard Donner, director of Superman, recognised the parallels between the Man of Steel and Christ, as referenced by Anton Karl Kozlovic, in his paper, "Superman as Christ-Figure: The American Pop Culture Movie Messiah", published in the Journal of Religion and Film.

However, many years later, Donner gladly admitted to the Christic subtext: �It�s a motif I had done at the beginning when Brando sent Chris [Reeve] to Earth and said, �I send them my only son.� It was God sending Christ to Earth.� It was a dramaturgical decision that made good sense, for just as Superman was literally a super-man, Jesus was �the ultimate Super Jew of his day,� the �Christian super-hero,� the pop culture �God with us� (Matt. 1:23). Indeed, many Jesus-Superman parallels exist within S1 and S2 because both films were planned, scripted and partially shot back-to-back.

Whilst Superman bundled biblical myth into a new package, Steve Rogers as Captain America transformed another demographic. We forget the large numbers of the debilitated and disabled who suffered from a young age with consumption or polio during the interwar period. The sickly Steve Rogers is a recognisable figure from the Depression, and his transformation acts as the inclusion of suffering invalids into the superhero myth and the war effort. Superman is an alien but Captain America is drawn as an everyman, and a patriot.

It is possible that superheroes would never have acquired their longlasting popularity without the war. The diverse backdrops that authors used to appeal to as many readers as possible proved an important innovation. Yet, just as the new pulp genre of science fiction showed that the horizons of plausibility were widening, the Macguffins deployed by the creators of superheroes hinted that such transformations were not too far away for humanity itself.

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One of the oldest themes in science fiction writing has been the idea of eternal youth. Robert A. Heinlein wrote arguably the definitive book on the subject, Time Enough For Love, which I have read several times. Poul Anderson's The Boat of a Million Years also takes eternal youth as a driving theme. And in recent years techniques such as cryonics have been in movies and books such as the interesting crime thriller Chiller, by Sterling Blake.

One of the most recent treatments of the issues of anti-ageing and its impact on society is Peter F. Hamilton's Misspent Youth, which like a lot of his books is set in the near future in deepest Cambridgeshire, where he lives. I rather like that. He projects an age, set about 20-odd years from now, where our understanding of genomics and nano-delivery of medicines has partly halted the ageing process and also made it possible for some very rich folk to have decades removed from their lives. It also raises issues that are extremely relevant now: such as what happens to tax-funded state pensions if people live for far longer.

Hamilton nicely shows how a father - in his 70s in Earth-time - has decades wiped off his physique and how this affects his relationship with the rest of his family and friends. I love the twists and turns of the plot, showing how the main character, Jeff Baker, has troubles dealing with his teenage son and family. The story works so well since the technology is kept to a minimum in order not to intefere with the human story.

Hamilton also holds up a picture of an England now totally absorbed in a Euro-superstate, while much of human life is now subject to draconian environmental laws regulating things like transport and energy use. There is a violent British separatist movement and culture dominated by fear of risk and danger. Yes, it does not become all that long before one realises that Hamilton ought to be writing for this blog. If he is not a free-market libertarian then I would be very surprised.

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No prize for now guessing why not much blogging got done today...As Paul Marks got his review up first, I will content myself with just a few observations about Joss Whedon's magnificent Serenity.

It is what the last three Star Wars movies were trying to be but failed. Serenity has an engaging story, good direction and brilliant writing (it is a tour de force of quips and memorable one liners) and as Paul points out, it is extremely sound politically.

It is also very well cast, with Nathan Fillion truly marvellous as the charismatic Captain 'Mal', playing it every inch the Wild West hero (for this movie is nothing if not a Western which just happens to be set in outer-space). Also convincing is the bizarrely named Summer Glau, whose strange looks and lithe moves are well suited to the demented character she plays.

Highly recommended! Run, do not walk, to your nearest cinema. Do not wait for the DVD!

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When first hearing of the film Serenity, people are most likely to say something like "it is made by Joss Whedon, the man who made Buffy the Vampire Slayer".

This is true and the film does indeed have some touches that are in tune with this - for example a young women with unusual fighting ability, and characters who sometimes talk in a flippant way at very serious moments (although, of course, people sometimes do talk that way at very serious moments).

However, Serenity is rather different from "Buffy". It is a serious science fiction film (yes there are such things) rather than a fantasy work (although I have nothing against fantasy works).

Serenity is based upon Joss Whedon's short lived science fiction series "Firefly".

It is about a group of people aboard a space ship named "Serenity" after the battle of Serenity Valley in which the Captain of the ship fought - on the losing side.

The ship is a borderline economic case, often in need of repair and the Captain undertakes jobs that are semi-legal or downright criminal.

The crew are a ragbag of people of different backgrounds and temperaments, brought together by a mixture of their own choices and force of circumstances.

In the film many of the questions raised in the series are resolved.

The film is also a good piece of work, well plotted, well acted and well filmed.

It does have some of the problems that plague so many Hollywood productions today - such as a tendency for people to say too much and too quickly (this may be hard for a British audience especially as many of the characters, unusually for an American film, speak with southern-western accents indeed more than accents, they use different words than people in the metropolitan areas of the English speaking world normally do now - although one of the experiments that Mr Whedon makes is to try and explore how ways of speech would change, and change back, over time).

However, what is interesting from a political standpoint is the basic story of the film.

The characters are lead, for a variety of reasons, in to a head on clash with the government - "The Alliance" its Parliament and those who serve it.

They are not fighting the government because it does not spend enough on welfare or education, or because it does not issue enough fiat money (indeed many people in the outer planets do not accept the government's credit money, it has to pay in cash even some of the security forces who work for it), nor are they fighting the government because it is a selfish or corrupt dictatorship.

No, in the end, the characters are fighting the government because it wishes to create a better, more civilized world (or rather worlds) and because it is prepared to violate the nonaggression principle in order to achieve this objective.

Of course the film is not "realistic" all the time (even if one accepts the existence of technology that we do not have yet and people who hate science fiction will not do that - although there is less "high tech" stuff in this film than in most science fiction films). Some of the characters, sometimes, win fights that they most likely would not win.

However the basic feel of the film is realistic and good people die. The "baddies" have noble motives, and some of the "goodies" are far from saints.

The characters do not destroy "The Alliance" but they try and do what they can, and the film shows they are right to try.

Joss Whedon is sometimes considered a baddie because he does not like President Bush, and I certainly doubt whether he would call himself a libertarian (although there are not many reasons why a libertarian should like President Bush), but Mr Whedon could call himself a Maoist for all I care - he has still made a libertarian film.

And every libertarian (and non-libertarian for that matter) would be well advised to go and see Serenity.

(11)

"I've had enough of running...It's time to misbehave".

"Mal" Reynolds, captain of the very excellent Serenity.

(16)

Take my love, take my land, take me where I cannot stand.
I don't care, I'm still free. You can't take the sky from me.
Take me out to the black. Tell 'em I ain't comin' back.
Burn the land and boil the sea. You can't take the sky from me.
Have no place I can be since I found Serenity
But you can't take the sky from me.

- Joss Whedon

(36)

I just saw Revenge of the Sith with a group of chums and I must say it was interesting to see how varied the reactions were. For me, anyone looking for profound meaning in a George Lucas movie is well and truly in the wrong place. With that in mind I went expecting breathless fights, awe inspiring battles between vast starships and Padmé Amidala (Natalie Portman) wearing interesting outfits. And that is exactly what was delivered.

Lucas is at his best when the battlecruiser starships are blowing the crap out of each other whilst the heroes weave their nimble fighters in and out with guns blazing in cheerful disregard of the laws of physics. He also knows a thing or two about choreographing some pretty nifty lightsabre duels. The Yoda vs. Palpatine showdown is a particular eye-popper... who would have thought a 2 foot high gremlin could actually look plausible in a swordfight!

But, and you knew there was going to be a 'but', when it really comes down to it, George Lucas is just not that skilled a director. He does fine until it requires people to actually interact other than when they are trying to slice each other in two. At which point he proves that he can produce weak performances even from a splendid actress like Natalie Portman (who was from good to great in everything else I have ever seen her in) and Ewan McGregor (who is debatably my favourite actor). The 'doomed romance' between Natalie Portman (Padmé) and Hayden Christensen (Anakin Skywalker) is central to the whole story of the creation of Darth Vader and yet I could not escape the impression that neither of them really cared for each other, for which I mostly blame Lucas' leaden hand more than the actor and actress in question. Ewan McGregor is a splendid Obi Wan Kenobi when it comes to laying waste to the bad guys with his lightsabre but again, when it comes to his relationship with Anakin, it all seemed a bit unengaged. Only Ian McDiarmid (Palpatine) really managed to transcend the stilted feeling of much of the dialogue and sound like he really meant when he said.

And although I said one does not go to a George Lucas movie to seek profundities, there was one rather splendid line uttered by Padmé whilst in the senate chamber listening to the delegate enthusing whilst Palpatine seizes power to ensure 'justice and security':

"This is how freedom dies. To thunderous applause."

Pity the rest of the movie did not have more such memorable lines. 7.5 out of 10, mostly for the sheer spectacle.

(6)

How do scientists work? Do they spend a lot of their time holed up in big buildings with lots of fancy equipment, work in large teams or mostly alone, with rumpled air and just a blackboard and lump of chalk trying to figure out the laws of physics? What sort of social lives do they lead and how do they handle the political, business and personal demands that come their way? How do they deal with hostility from jealous colleagues, skeptical review boards and college principals worried about expanding their budgets?

If you ever wanted to know some of the answers to these questions as well as have a rattling good yarn told, then this book, an old classic by Gregory Benford, fits the bill. I have been engrossed in it for the last few days and I won't spoil for any would-be readers by giving the ending or basic plot away. Let's just say that this book actually gave me the feeling of actually working and living in a science lab, of hanging around scientists in the early 60s and later, in a sort of crumbling, environmentally troubled 1990s. Strongly recommended.

(53)

It would be fair to say that when I heard that 70's space opera 'Battlestar Galactica' was going to be remade, I was dubious: face it, the original made Star Trek seem like Shakespeare. Moreover when I later discovered that a leading character in the original series called 'Starbuck' (well before the term became synonymous with coffee) was going to be 're-imagined' as a woman, I became downright contemptuous: "Oh gawd, another sickeningly politically correct bit of drivel spewing forth from Hollyweird". Moreover womanising hard drinking cigar smoking Starbuck was one of the few engaging characters from the original series.

In a sense I acquired the DVD of the mini-series more as something to blog about, so I could actually say I had seen a piece of science fiction that was worse than that hymn for a limp-wristed California vision of 'inclusive transnational socialism' (well, maybe not all that inclusive), called Star Trek, a series which hit its nadir with the execrable Enterprise. So yes, I fired up this disc with extremely low expectations.

The show starts slowly, setting the scene in some detail, such as the fact we foolish humans were the ones who actually created the Cylons, the show's homicidal robotic bad guys, and that Battlestar Galactica itself (more or less an aircraft carrier in space) was an obsolescent relic of a pervious war against the Cylons some 50 years earlier and was due to be retired from service after many years of peace. We see the back story of Gauis Baltar, who in the original series was a comical pantomime style 'villain' and arch-traitor, and who is this time 're-imagined' as a deeply flawed genius (sort of a cross between Albert Einstein and Bill Gates, brilliantly acted by James Callis) who is psychopathically self-centered and thus tricked by an all too human looking 'female' Cylon into unwittingly dooming humanity. All better acted, better directed and far better written than I expected but only Baltar was particularly engaging initially.

But then the Cylons make their move...

Wow. A show which truly, truly, truly does not pull any punches and proffers a middle finger to the sugar coating of so much of Hollywood's offerings that are aimed at the mainstream. We see nothing less that genocide: the steady nuclear annihilation of the human race. We see men women and children (yes, children) killed pitilessly in one of the darkest bits of sci-fi TV drama I have ever seen: the Götterdämmerung on 12 planets. Moreover we see the handful of dazed and traumatised survivors on the Galactica and the refugee fleet which forms around this last remnant of the human military, act like, well, people who have just seen their entire civilisation and 99.9% of their species exterminated by an implacable enemy.

In many ways this is a story that owes much to the dramas set in World War II that were made in the 40's and 50's and posit that there is a great deal more to being in command than saying "Make it so". Even the look of the Galactica itself is a million miles away from the antiseptic interiors of Star Trek's spaceships: it has manually opened pressure doors, old fashioned wire cable intercoms and chinagraph pencil plotting tables that would not have looked out of place on USS Yorktown during the Battle of Midway. As in that earlier genre of movies from a less timid era, heart rending decisions are forced on characters, and not just the military commanders (who I am pleased to say actually act like real military commanders in Battlestar Galactica) but also the new president of the colonial government (very well played by Mary McDonnell), who is faced with desperate no-win life and death choices. The biggest surprise for me however was the character of Starbuck, who I was simply determined to hate. Actress Katee Sackhoff plays Starbuck as a hard drinking cigar smoking tomboy and does so with an almost feral gusto and real panache. Her hard bitten mocking grin, snappy dialogue and the almost maniacal gleam in her eyes had me won me over within about 15 minutes.

I have no idea if the series following the mini-series will live up to its potential but damn, it is nice to see such a refreshing bit of drama in the science fiction genre.

(25)

Arthur C Clarke has stated via Jose Cordeiro, roving ambassador for the World Transhumanist Organisation, that he is safe and well. Here is his brief message on the catastrophe, including websites for providing aid in Sri Lanka.

I am enormously relieved that my family and household have escaped the ravages of the sea that suddenly invaded most parts of coastal Sri Lanka, leaving a trail of destruction.

But many others were not so fortunate. For over two million Sri Lankans and a large number of foreign tourists holidaying here, the day after Christmas turned out to be a living nightmare reminiscent of The Day After Tomorrow. My heart-felt sympathy goes out to all those who lost family members or friends.

Among those who directly experienced the waves were my staff based at our diving station in Hikkaduwa, and my holiday bungalows in Kahawa and Thiranagama � all beachfront properties located in southern areas that were badly hit. Our staff members are all safe, even though some are badly shaken and relate harrowing first hand accounts of what happened. Most of our diving equipment and boats at Hikkaduwa were washed away. We still don't know the full extent of damage -- it will take a while for us to take stock as accessing these areas is still difficult.

This is indeed a disaster of unprecedented magnitude for Sri Lanka, which lacks the resources and capacity to cope with the aftermath. We are encouraging concerned friends to contribute to the relief efforts launched by various national and international organisations. If you wish to join these efforts, I can recommend two options.

- Contribute to a Sri Lanka disaster relief fund launched by an internationally operating humanitarian charity, such as Care or Oxfam.

- Alternatively, considering supporting Sarvodaya, the largest development charity in Sri Lanka, which has a 45-year track record in reaching out and helping the poorest of the poor. Sarvodaya has mounted a well organised, countrywide relief effort using their countrywide network of offices and volunteers who work in all parts of the country, well above ethnic and other divisions. Their website, www.sarvodaya.lk, provides bank account details for financial donations. They also welcome contributions in kind -- a list of urgently needed items is found at: http://www.sarvodaya.lk/Inside_Page/urgently%20needed.htm

There is much to be done in both short and long terms for Sri Lanka to raise its head from this blow from the seas. Among other things, the country needs to improve its technical and communications facilities so that effective early warnings can help minimise losses in future disasters.

Curiously enough, in my first book on Sri Lanka, I had written about another tidal wave reaching the Galle harbour (see Chapter 8 in The Reefs of Taprobane, 1957). That happened in August 1883, following the eruption of Krakatoa in roughly the same part of the Indian Ocean.

Arthur Clarke
29 December 2004

(14)

I must say I am quite a sucker for the recent spate of films based on comic strips. I liked the Spiderman films, the Hulk, and even quite enjoyed the Batman films (the one with Michael Keaton, anyway). Well, another one off the conveyor belt is Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.

It has been panned by the critics, which is usually a promising sign given the nature of most snarky film reviewers these days, and I hugely enjoyed it. It has numerous fine qualities: WW2 fighter planes which can go underwater; futuristic aircraft carriers in the sky with great big Union Jacks on them; spiffy uniforms with Angelina Jolie wearing them; hot female journalists in classic 1930s garb with rakish hats and wavy hair (Gwyneth Paltrow), and big, biiiiiiig metal robots that do not talk but stomp menacingly around New York.

The film has no great 'message', I suppose, apart from showing how in the middle of the 20th century mankind, or at least the western bits of it, dreamed of a mechanised, high-tech future. The vision appears a bit comical to us now, but perhaps our age, with our interests in the Web and so on, will appear no less bizarre to generations hence.

But never mind all that highfalutin' stuff. Go and see the film and have a feast of art deco kitsch with two of the most ravishing actresses now working. What's not to like?

(22)

This is without a doubt the movie I have most anticipated seeing since spotting a certain trophy in the background of a few frames at the end of Predator 2 back in 1990.

Oh yeah. I mean, OH YEAH!

(22)

The BBC are broadcasting a series of documentaries purporting to show crises that could affect Britain over the next two to three decades. It is already clear from the subjects tackled: the dangers of gated communities, the bankruptcy of pension systems, the rise of obesity and the superiority of women, that they were written from a left-wing viewpoint that hypes up the modish problems of the would be regulators. The striking omission is the nightmares conjured up by the Greens but they will no doubt form the subjects of a second series.

If you do catch these, then try to spot the technological innovations that spice up the world of the future.

As part of this conversation, the BBC asks for views of the world in 2020 and I thought that it would be rude not to oblige.

By 2020, we will no longer have to pay the licence fee to watch substandard populist rot that masquerades as quality TV, notably, the series of poor documentaries called If.

If Iran or Al Qaeda obtain weapons of mass destruction, then we can expect them to unleash a second Holocaust, in order to remove Israel from the Middle East. Half of Europe will revile this, half will be relieved.

One or more countries will withdraw from the European Union due to its institutional inflexibility and inability to compete with the United States or the Far East.

There will be further wars in the Middle East involving the West (without a UN mandate) due to the threat of Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism in oil producing areas.

It was an antidote to some nauseating missives extolling peace in our time and a World Union (based on the European Union). One would have thought the barbarities of twencen would have extinguished this Fabian and Wellsian nonsense.

(18)

The naming of planets is a difficult matter. Sedna may have strong references for the Inuit, but it means nothing at all to most of us. You could argue that Sedna is more thrilling than the planetoid's original designation, 2003 VB12, but it doesn't conjure up a fitting title for inclusion in Holst's The Planets.

However, the sinister appearance of a red planet (and possible moon) reminds me of Dr. Who's deadly enemies, cursed to wonder the frigid spaceways, enshrined in their tombs. Is this not the tenth planet, home of the Cybermen? And surely there can be no more fitting name than Mondas.

Prepare for child-like logic, silver suits and a puzzling vulnerability to gold.

(19)

...which is seldom a bad thing.

Spiked-online is generally an interesting site, with challenging articles which often hit the nail (more or less) on the head. And sometimes not. In The geek shall inherit the Earth, I think that it would be best to say 'your meta-context is showing'. I have met Sandy Star, and so can attest the author is a bright agreeable person, but I find myself questioning the thrust of this article even though agreeing with many of the specific points.

In essence Sandy is saying that the 'mainstreaming' of SciFi and Fantasy films suggests a retreat from reality and the stagnation of society, though he does not actually blame the science fiction/fantasy genres for causing this.

I would say some aspects of civil society are not just stagnating but are actually decaying in many ways, and it seems to me that one need look no further than the growth of regulatory statism to see the reason why this has happened. However it strikes me that Sandy's characterisation of fans of the science fiction/fantasy genre too broad as obsessives can be found in all walks of life and as most of the people I know seem to like SciFi/fantasy, and none seem to exhibit the desire to retreat into fantasy obsessed atomised isolation, I do not think it is a reasonable generalisation. But I would suggest maybe it is actually a sign of an entirely countervailing current to the one represented by 'real world' politisization/desocialisation.

The prevailing democratic statist meta-context takes as an un-stated axiom that the political process is there to alter the form and incidence of as much personal interaction as possible, replacing them with politically derived formulae of behaviour, be it the way you can act towards then people you work with way you can interact with your children, what your house must look like, etc. etc.

But perhaps the fact so many folks want to read and watch stories of people (or werewolves/elves/vampires/daleks) operating within utterly different context and sometimes even meta-context quite removed from the one they see around them, indicates not stagnation or a rejection of reality, but rather a resistance to the intellectual stasis of the mind that modern political structures are trying to impose on civil society. It is nothing less than a willingness to think in other terms, based upon other axioms. Science fiction/fantasy authors often inform how we see the real world and it is no accident that Heinlein is so popular with libertarians and libertarian oriented conservatives. And I never found enthusing over Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light got in the way of me doing likewise about Karl Popper's Open society and it's enemies.

And as for the internet making us less social, that is quite incorrect. I have found that the contrary is true. The internet (and particularly the blogosphere) is about establishing networks that have huge implications in the real world... and these bring people together, in the real world. That is what brought me to a blogger bash in the Hollywood Hills a few months ago and will hopefully lead to me meeting up with a Czech blogger in Prague in a few weeks. It is what lead me to meet, face to face, all manner of people I have never met before and most likely never would have.

Oh and Sandy, if the science fiction/fantasy genres lead to 'individuation', how is that a bad thing? Why is differentiating yourself from society undesirable? If so, as you are a fellow science fiction/fantasy geek like myself, I take it you think the Borg in Star Trek are the good guys then? Must be a flashback caused by that dormant Marxist nano-virus in the air-conditioning in the Spiked offices. Whilst I am rather partial to Seven of Nine, I do not think many people would agree with you.

(17)

I have mentioned before that I am a great fan of the movie Resident Evil... well the sequel of which I spoke is going to hit the cinemas soon and a tantalising teaser can be found here!

(29)

Natalie Solent has some striking gun-control analysis from Night Watch by Terry Pratchett, Here's a bit of the bit she quotes:

There had been that Weapons Law, for a start. Weapons were involved in so many crimes that. Swing reasoned, reducing the number of weapons had to reduce the crime rate.

Vimes wondered if he'd sat up in bed in the middle of the night and hugged himself when he'd dreamed that one up. Confiscate all weapons, and crime would go down. It made sense. It would have worked, too, if only there had been enough coppers - say, three per citizen.

Amazingly, quite a few weapons were handed in. The flaw though, was one that had somehow managed to escape Swing' and it was this: criminals don't obey the law. It's more or less a requirement for the job. They had no particular interest in making the streets safer for anyone except themselves. �

Natalie concludes her comments thus:

I suppose Pratchett might say that Vimes' opinons are not his own, but, even so, Vimes is not just a one-off hero but a much loved character who stars in several books: this shows at the very least that Britain's best selling living novelist sees where we're coming from.

I guess it's a case of read the whole thing.

(12)

In these times of EU corruption, Blair government corruption, and generally just Prodeus Romanus, the ancient latin God of Corruption, having a whale of a time all over the place, I thought today I might have a day off from being Disgusted, of Henley-on-Thames. After all, it is Friday. That, and I'm on holiday next week, though only, I may hasten to add, stripping off bathroom wallpaper, organising children's birthday parties, and wandering down to Henley library to re-invigorate my audio book collection. (Hey, I've paid the poll tax. I may as well get my money's worth!) And just to lighten my mood even further, and to set the stall out on what is going to be a great weekend ahead, I saw this headline this morning in the Daily Torygraph:

Doctor Who ready to come out of the Tardis for Saturday TV series

Fantastic news! After having spent one of the most memorable moments of my childhood cowering in total abject fear literally half-behind the sofa at the sight of that Sea Devil, as it strode out from the surf, it's about time too.

Doctor Who will be back in 2005, and I for one can't wait. Let's just hope the new scriptwriters can find room for Tom Baker to play some senior Time Lord, or other, maybe even a portly grey-haired version of The Master? Though I must warn these scriptwriters, in advance: if the first series isn't about the Daleks, or the Cybermen, or some kind of evil giant arachnid, then there'll be trouble. And not the kind of trouble you have when the plumbing goes wrong, but serious Davros-style trouble. Indeed, the fate of the Universe may hang on it.

Photo: D. Amon, all rights reserved

(7)

Like much of the rest of the blogosphere, many of the Samizdatistas have been waiting for months, weeks, even years for Neal Stephenson to finish writing Quicksilver, his prequel of sorts to Cryptonomicon. We were promised a romp through scientific and other society of the early 18th century, meeting Newton, Leibnitz, Benjamin Franklin, and other luminaries of the time, in a doorstop length tome full of other characters curiously connected to the 20th century characters of the earlier novel. And we waited, waited, and waited some more, as the publication date kept getting put back. It was getting almost as bad as waiting for Godot Vernor Vinge.

But now, hallelujah. The book is here. Eugene and Glenn are happy. We can all get down to some serious reading, and perhaps find out what is in Enoch Root's cigar case. (I think it is actually fairly obvious, although perhaps it is less so to readers of the American editions of the Harry Potter books).

And that's the problem. <expletive> American editions. The American edition of Quicksilver has been out since Tuesday. The British edition is not out until October 2. We have to wait another whole week.

Well, if we are desperate, actually we don't. The Murder One specialist bookshop in Charing Cross Road had a few copies of the American edition for £20 when I was there this afternoon. However, they were going fast. And to tell the truth I don't have time to read the book now, and the 27 hour plane trip to Australia I will be subjecting myself to in just over a month will likely be a perfect opportunity (plus, somehow, sitting on a 747-400 at 38000 feet while flying in and out of Tokyo seems a somehow approriate place for reading a Stephenson novel. Not quite as good as sitting reading Snow Crash for the first time in 1994 in an emergency hut on a mountain in Hokkaido while waiting out a tremendous rainstorm with lots of Japanese people with much higher tech looking trekking gear than I did but who were somehow just as wet, but still good).

For now I need to be doing other minor things like finding a job. (If anyone feels the need to employ a telecommunications/technology or possibly even media analyst who is also capable of doing just about any quantitative financial job if need be, plus many quantitative jobs in other fields, please let me know. I am presently in London but would be also interesting in working in the US if anyone was willing to sponsor a visa for me).

In any event, I can also save a few pounds by waiting for the British edition: Amazon is selling that for £11.89, which means, as a true overcaffeinated Virginia Postrel devotee, I can have The Substance of Style as well. Or, I could wait and buy a copy at Neal Stephenson's signing at Forbidden Planet on October 21. (On the other hand, maybe not. I have met Stephenson on previous book tours, and in person he is exactly the classic introvert he says he is. Which means he is great to listen to at a reading, lecture, or Q&A session, but he is rather withdrawn if you try to talk to him one on one. But this is okay. He writes wonderful pooks. However, the signing in London is just a signing).

Or I could just go back to Murder One, buy the book, and then sit down and enjoy Stephenson's wonderfully unique take on the Baroque period, and his lengthy and fascinating digressions, and his absurdly complicated puns, and his exquisitely nerdy in jokes.

I.......Must......Resist.......

(11)

I recently saw the latest instalment of the X-Men saga, named rather unambiguously X-Men 2. I rather liked the first X-Men, which was rather a surprise given that I think the history of translating comics into movies or TV is not a happy one.

Although Batman proved rather good in its first few outings, it then got progressively more dreadful... Judge Dredd was a travesty, I despised the entire Superman series, loathed Spawn, hated The Phantom and Daredevil had nothing to commend it other than the fact it had Jennifer Garner in it. Ok, The Shadow was almost rather good� almost, Tank Girl was in parts so surreal as to be fun and in other places so bad it was good, and Spiderman was really quite good indeed� but clearly the odds are that comic-based productions will prove to be turkeys.

So X-Men 2 would not have surprised me if it had been far less impressive than the first one, but that is far from the case. The excellent cast remained rock solid and the story, whilst hardly Tolstoy, was entirely adequate. Although like the first movie, Hugh Jackman's Wolverine stole the show, it would be hard to fault anyone else's performances. The whole thing sticks with what worked last time and adds some nice touches, such as an angst-filled German teleporting mutant who looks like the devil but turns out to be one of the good guys. And then there is the always superb Ian McKellen's Magneto, who this time... ah, but then I don't want to give away the whole plot.

Go see it... well worth your popcorn money.

(26)

On Thursday, February 06, 2003, Paul Marks of Northamptonshire wrote on Samizdata some views on the history of modern science fiction that I found very interesting (especially since they mentioned me). The following is not so much to correct him, as to add to what he said.

Modern science fiction began as little more than another way to popularize left wing socialism. Both H.G. Wells and Edward Bellamy wrote socialist Utopias, and Wells wrote allegorical attacks on capitalism and individualism. Ironically, they (and Ayn Rand) inspired me to do what I do.

I generally exclude Rand as a science fiction writer only because she didn't know that Anthem and Atlas Shrugged are science fiction -- and that science fiction is the "literature of ideas" that she erroneously believed detective fiction to be.

Anthem and Atlas Shrugged are science fiction, all right. But Rand -- at least consciously -- was not a science fiction writer. I realize I may be splitting hairs. For that matter, I've never been sure whether Kurt Vonnegut is a science fiction writer, more because of the way he's marketed than anything else.

On the other hand, Frank Herbert was definitely a science fiction writer who, after many years of unspeakable struggle (after being rejected by every American house: Dune was eventually sold to an English publisher, for an advance of $1000) was finally published in the mainstream.

But I digress, as usual.

There was also a separate literary strand that had begun with Jules Verne that wasn't very political, but was primarily technophilic and even became technocratic when it got around to politics. Doc Smith (who was nobody's libertarian and was, in fact, one of the earliest of the drug warriors) and John W. Campbell were involved in this sort of thing. I'd call them "right wing socialists". I'm not certain, but I believe Ben Bova sorts into this category.

In the 1950s and 1960s, when I was a young reader of skiffy (the correct way to pronounce "sci-fi"), socialist views were predominant in the genre. The whole "Milford Group" (named after a town in Pennsylvania where I believe they held writers' workshops) in which Judith Merrill and others were involved, were blatantly collectivist, although I'd bet they'd call it "liberal". Some famous science fiction writers of the day -- or so I'm told by those who'd know -- were communists.

In fact, it represented something of a revolution that they made room (reluctantly and grudgingly, I'd guess) for protolibertarians like Poul Anderson and possibly Gordon R. Dickson. This was probably on account of Campbell's power as editor of Astounding/Analog. On the other hand, H. Beam Piper killed himself because he believed his works weren't selling and he didn't want to go on welfare or borrow from friends. Of course Heinlein was always a phenomenon unto himself -- although as we now know, New York book publishers censored his more libertarian ideas.

I'm not the first modern, openly libertarian science fiction writer -- I believe that honor goes to F. Paul Wilson -- but possibly I'm the loudest. It has not come without its costs, as members of the Ceres Project know. In fact I'm now soliciting articles for The Libertarian Enterprise, discussing the heretofore unasked question of whether there's a deliberate blacklist against libertarians in book publishing and in Hollywood.

That'll be 800-1000 words, if you please. Send them to editor John Taylor at EditorTLE@triad.rr.com.

L. Neil Smith

Three-time Prometheus Award-winner L. Neil Smith is the author of 23 books, including The American Zone, Forge of the Elders, Pallas, The Probability Broach, Hope (with Aaron Zelman), and his collection of articles and speeches, Lever Action, all of which may be purchased through his website "The Webley Page". Autographed copies may be had from the author at lneil@lneilsmith.com.

L. Neil Smith writes regular columns for The Libertarian Enterprise, Sierra Times RoadHouse, and for Rational Review.

(29)

In the 'classical age' of science fiction, most American writers seemed to be limited or even minimal statists (Heinlien, Piper, "Doc" Smith and so on).

Most writers tended to support a strong military defence - but not very much more government (indeed they were hostile to welfare statism).

These days science fiction writing seems to have changed. A minority of writers (such as L. Neil Smith) are actual anarchist (real anarchists - not people who do not like the word 'government' but still want a collective power to control everything), but most other writers are welfare state - interventionists writing 'feminist science fiction', 'environmental science fiction', 'psychological science fiction' or even straight science fiction -�but with the normal statist slant of main stream literature.

Perhaps the problem started when science fiction began to be 'taken seriously' (studied at universities, taught in writing classes and so on). Or perhaps the general statism of our culture just flows in everywhere eventually.

However, whatever the cause the old classical view of science fiction (fairly strict limited statism - tending towards minimal statism) is gone and has been replaced by a few anarchist writers and a mainstream of welfare statists.

This is even getting into fantasy writing. Again I am not referring to modern�British writers (I do not expect much from writers beloved by the B.B.C. - such as Mr Pullman), but even best selling American fantasy writers seem to be coloured by statism.

For example Mr Jordan (of the highly successful ten book Wheel of Time series) seems to assume that good government involves all sorts of interventions (hence his hero, oddly enough called Rand, keeps ordering people about in their economic life), and there are the normal signs of mainstream literature - wealthy businessmen are dodgy, the utopian society of the 'Age of Legends' was an interventionist welfare-state and so on.

Actually modern fantasy writing in Britain started out as broadly anti-statist. Tolkien (for all his Catholic distaste for people who were obsessed with money making) was no statist - and neither was C.S. Lewis. And the American fantasy writers followed them in the their belief that a good government was one which protected the nation against other powers and did not do many other things.

In short there was similar political outlook�among the fantasy writers and the science fiction writers.

This reflected itself in role-playing (when this grow up), the�format of most role playing was an individual or group of individuals opposing evil (evil being defined as forces, human or other, who came to rob-kill-control). External invaders, internal corruption, tyrannical government - it was all basically the same thing (force attacking people).

People who were socialists in 'real life' never thought of setting up welfare states in fantasy or science fiction games - because that was not the nature of things (and games did have an effect on "real life" beliefs over time).

Sadly this all seems to be ending.

(16)

Not me, that is for sure. Even harder to figure out is the film going public... and after a chat with Hollywood film producer and blogger Brian Linse the other day, I get the impression from him that even Hollywood cannot figure out the film going public.

Take two movies, both based on computer games. Firstly, Tomb Raider, staring Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft.

Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft: striking a Lara-ish stance

The Tomb Raider series of computer games were massive and more or less redefined the genre. I thought they were all quite gripping and am very eager to get my paws on the latest episode of Lara Croft's adventures, Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness.

Angel of Darkness: Lara Croft in all her pixellated glory!

As you might expect, I was rather keen to see Tomb Raider: The Movie, directed by Simon West. It had everything going for it: Angelina Jolie is an interesting looking woman and without doubt a technically skilled actress. Although she is not quite ready to challenge Gwyneth Paltrow for her crown as 'Best-Yank-Actress-who-can-do-a-perfect-British-accent', she is pretty damn good nonetheless.

The film clearly had a truly humongous budget, was adequately acted and tolerably directed in parts (with a couple startlingly bad scenes: it takes a certain perverse skill for a director to make a gratuitous shower scene with Angelina Jolie laughable for all the wrong reasons). Unfortunately the story line was weak, convoluted and confusing. Worst of all, the production was dire: it was almost as if it was three separate movies, casually spliced together, differently paced as if styled by three sets of completely unconnected film makers, then finally so badly edited as to make some parts of the story incomprehensible. Although Tomb Raider: The Movie was not utterly without merits, the overall effect was shockingly disappointing.

And yet, due to the Tomb Raider/Lara Croft brand name and massive marketing, this clunker rode out the appropriately scathing reviews and was by no means a commercial failure in spite of costing a great deal to make. A sequel is in the pipeline.

And then let us look as the second movie, Resident Evil staring Milla Jovovich as Alice.

Milla Jovovich as Alice: about to demonstrate how unhappy she is with her ex-boyfriend

The game that the movie is based on, similarly called Resident Evil is a big name in the Playstation console world, but it does not have anything like the brand recognition of 'Tomb Raider' and 'Lara Croft' with the general public.

Killer pixels: Veronica from the Resident Evil - Code V game

The Resident Evil movie, directed by Paul Anderson, clearly has a far smaller budget, it was marketed poorly to put it mildly and with the exception of Milla Jovovich (Fifth Element, Zoolander, Blue Lagoon, Two Moon Junction etc.) had a cast of more or less unknowns. Resident Evil had a simple but nearly flawlessly executed story, was artfully directed, skillfully produced and very atmospheric. It was well cast and Milla was excellent as the killer amnesiac conspirator known simply as 'Alice'... and unlike the jarring T&A scene in Tomb Raider, the opening shower sequence with dazed Milla worked perfectly, setting the deliciously ill-at-ease tone for the whole movie.

In short, this movie rocks... vastly superior to 'Tomb Raider: The Movie' on every level. It has no pretensions to be high art or intellectually challenging, but it does exactly what it sets out to do with considerable flair.

And yet unlike the dismal Tomb Raider, Resident Evil almost immediately vanished off the screens and onto video/DVD. Fortunately, because it cost so little to make, the picture seems to have still made a profit and thus in this case too, a sequel is in the pipeline called Resident Evil: Nemesis (which will no doubt cause confusion with the impending Star Trek movie called 'Nemesis'). Movie making is a very strange business.

Go out and buy or rent Resident Evil: The Movie on DVD or Video, it is destined to be a cult classic. Avoid Tomb Raider: The Movie like it was smallpox.

Update: The Resident Evil follow-up movie has been retitled Resident Evil: Apocalypse, presumably to avoid confusion with the recent Start Trek movie flop called 'Nemesis'

Seeing a reference to the marvellous children's programme Thunderbirds over on the Brothers Judd sent me off on a rare bout of nostalgia.

Thunderbirds was far and away my favourite programme when I was young and this was long before I appreciated the shows astonishing libertarian political message... These guys were like the real world RNLI only with guns and spaceships!

'International Rescue' were shown as a benevolent but armed covert high tech para-military search and rescue organisation, privately controlled and funded by a philanthropic American businessman's multinational company (Tracy Construction and Aerospace Industries), run secretly by his family and loyal friends. IR was completely independent of any government! What is more, International Rescue's 'muscle' was provided by British aristocrat Lady Penelope Creighton-Ward, cruising in a pink six-wheeled armoured Rolls Royce, capable of travelling at 200 mph complete with a hidden front grill mounted auto-cannon. No anti-capitalist or anti-private ownership of weapons vibe here!

Now that is a splendid role model for children rather than the usual dreary assortment of statist lawyers, severe cops and government spies who are trotted out to pass for heros!

Hooray for the new Star Wars film, Attack of the Clones. I haven't seen it yet, it comes out in London on 16th May, but as a fan of the most successful film series of all time I already know that it will be about the increasingly cruel and devious Senator Palpatine, President of the Galactic Senate, who creates a false enemy � the clones � as an excuse to seize more power for himself.

This is excellent news for libertarianism. Why? In an age when classic fairytales, of the read-to-you-at�bedtime sort have become nearly extinct, the Star Wars trilogy, quite deliberately, filled that vacant space in the minds of children (and adults, I might add) with incredible success. The Star Wars films have been the most sociologically successful stories of all time - the characters, the underlying plot and the universe it depicted have become universally recognisable stereotypes of our age.

An entire generation has grown up, especially in the United States, taking much of their basic morality from these films. That morality, despite being simple and unoriginal, has become part of that generation's meta-context. The new films are likely to be just as popular and influential with today's children. This is the good news because any child growing up on the new "Star Wars films will absorb the basic idea that the most dangerous enemy of them all is a slick politician, who promises to make the world better by taking more power for himself, whilst being publicly apologetic about the necessity to do so. Years from now, when little Jimmy comes to cast his first vote, in the back of his mind will be the memory from the most powerful fairytale of his childhood - you can't trust politicians, especially the ones who want more power. No matter what they say. And whilst that may not be enough to create a libertarian wonderland just yet, it certainly goes straight for the meta-contextual jugular.

And if that's not good enough to make you love the new Star Wars film, let's face it, Attack of the Clones is just too good a title to bash Britain's New Labour with to resist.

It would seem that evil retreats when forcibly confronted.
- Yarnek of Excalbia, "The Savage Curtain", stardate 5906.5

Hey, even that fountain of marxist science fiction, Star Trek occasionally gets it right

There is an interesting article about a meeting of libertarian science fiction writers over on Hollywood Investigator. The splits between libertarian thought (and libertarian 'thought') are made very clear by the views on parade at this dinner.

That careless person, Happy Fun Pundit, was so inattentive to the proper order of things as to post a lovely mini-rant on Star Trek & Socialism on his own blog rather than here on Samizdata where everyone knows such posts belong.

I do not know why I do it to myself. I watch Enterprise, the latest and by far the lamest of the Star Trek series and have to restrain myself from throwing things at the television. In the latest idiotic episode, the crew of a freighter starship which has been repeatedly attacked by non-human pirates finally captures one and tries to strong arm information out of the prisoner to gain a tactical advantage in order to retaliate effectively against their tormentors. However we are shown that the virtuous Star Fleet crew of Enterprise do not approve of this. Not just the fact the freighter crew are trying to beat information out of the captive but the very fact they are holding him at all, we are lead to believe, is bad. I wonder what Captain Archer of the Enterprise would have to say about Guantanamo Bay?

Many TV shows have fantastical settings and an implausible premise underlying them, but this is not in and of itself a bad thing. It is fiction after all. The socialist future for humanity posited by Star Trek is implausible but sadly by no means impossible. The technology theorised for the future is likewise as good a guess as any other. All that is okay. What is not okay is the fact that the human characters simply do not act like humans. They are utterly implausible as future examples of homo sapiens: people simply do not act that way when in life threatening situations. We are shown that tracking down and attacking the people who have been repeatedly attacking you is bad. I wonder what Star Fleet would do if some alien species hijacked a starship and flew it into the 23rd Century equivalent of the World Trade Centre? Well they certainly would not a George Bush style "smash the Taliban" on them, that is for sure! Any culture that demanded such behaviour would simply not survive contact with less squeamish cultures or more rational disaffected members of its own culture. Star Trek is truly TV with rocks in its head.

Then look at Alias, the new spy-drama with the superb Jennifer Garner. It too has fantastical settings and a highly implausible underlying premise (a college girl/spy-commando).

And yet whereas the dismal Enterprise fails miserably to convincingly portray human interaction within its given premises, Alias does so triumphantly. Quite apart from the fact Jennifer Garner can act the socks off any of the current Star Trek cast, the show is superbly written and the characters plausibly drawn. Within the extraordinary fictional settings in which the show occurs, the people act like humans. They act the way you or I might act is suddenly plunged into the scripted situations. Jennifer Garner's character, Sydney, was shown being tortured (none of the namby pamby crap of many shows... we actually see her being electrocuted and Garner makes it look very unpleasant indeed). Later in the episode, she escapes and in doing so takes an electro-prod from a guard. We see her standing over the man who had earlier presided over her torture and, if this had been Star Trek, we would have been treated to a brief sermon on the importance of non-violence or some disdainful grimace as she asserts her moral superiority as 'New Socialist Woman' over her ex-captor. But fortunately it was not Star Trek. Sydney steps over to the prone helpless man, jabs him with the electro-prod and as he screams says words to the effect, "Yeah, it hurts, don't it?"

So which do you think makes for a more engaging story? Alias rocks!

Jennifer Garner as 'Sydney Bristow' in Alias

Ace bloggista Alex Knapp of Heretical Ideas points out that somewhere between the original Star Trek of Jim Kirk (23^rd century) and the Star Trek of Jean-Luc Picard (24^th century), something went horribly wrong... but it didn't start out that way.

Now, it's hard to defend the namby-pamby neo-liberal Federation of Star Trek:TNG, (though there's a good case to be made from DS9 that the Feds aren't as bad as TNG makes them appear to be), but I'm not concerned with them.

Let's talk about real Star Trek. I'm talking about the NCC-1701, which cruised around the cosmos not only exploring new worlds, but finding new tyrannies - and crushing them. Is your world controlled by an over-intelligent super-computer? No problem--Kirk and co. will destroy it. Been trapped in a never-ending cycle of war because you fight by computer instead of the real way? Kirk and co. takes care of it. Are Klingon's arming your rival clan's? Not to worry--Kirk will give you guns, too, so you can protect your families. Benign interventionism, favoring democracy.

But hey, the original Trek wasn't just about freeing enslaved peoples. It was about mutual tolerance--so you can make a few bucks. Case in point: "Devil in the Dark." A strange creature is killing miners? Klingons would've just killed. Not the Federation. Kirk and Spock learn to talk to the creature, which ends up contracting with the miners--enabling them to make a greater profit. And the 23rd century Federation wasn't cashless, either. It's clear that Kirk and co. were paid for their work, and they spent their money in very non-PC ways. (My, I do love the green-skinned dancers...)

But in addition to bringing democracy to Third Galaxy worlds and making the universe safe for capitalism, the 23rd century Federation had a tough-minded foreign policy. When the Romulans developed a new cloaking device, did the Feds beg for a non-proliferation treaty? Did they impose economic sanctions? Hell no! They had the Enterprise go in and just steal the damn thing with a beautiful deception.

Somewhere between the 23rd and 24th centuries, maybe the Federation lost its way. But don't forget that at the beginning, the Federation was composed of tough-minded freedom fighters who enjoyed the finer things in life (like alien babes) and appreciated money. But they weren't just decadent--they were devoted to liberty. Don't forget that Kirk gave up his one great love in order to prevent the Nazis from winning World War II. And, as the movies showed, they recognized the great truth of individualism--"The needs of the one outweigh the needs of the many." Because only by focusing on the individual do you prevent him from being trampled by the demands of the mob.

Alex Knapp

Continuing in the same spirit of the last few posts, a tip of the space helmet to Samizdata reader Neil Eden for providing us with two excellent essays located on The Proceedings of the Friesian School website:

The Fascist Ideology of Star Trek: Militarism, Collectivism, & Atheism

Star Wars: Episode I, The Phantom Menace, A Response to Critics

Like most of the Samizdatistas, I have my critiques of the Star Trek universe. I particularly like Lagwolf's comment about it containing a lot of the 1960's without the good bits, eg Sex, Drugs, Rock&Roll and Revolution for the Hell of It.

But all that aside - I suspect the lot of us watch and enjoy them. Critique is not a dismissal. And for myself, if faced upon a winter's night with the choice between BBC News and an old episode of Star Trek...

Lagwolf writes in to sound off about Star Trek as well

Star Trek is an odd combination of secular multi-culturalism and happy-clappy-ism. The overwhelming belief is that the Federation can solve all the universe's problems. Its "let's all be friends" mentality even when sometimes confronted with naked aggression is political correctness at its worst. Of course they have some temperance elements as well as there is no booze, drugs or tobacco around. Trek represents everything bad about the 60s and "boomer" generation without the fun bits.

Babylon 5 however makes a point of establishing that humans and earth are not the centre of the universe. In fact, truth be told, humans are the equivalent of a pimple on a knat's bum. We are so insignificant that there are species in the universe who can even be bothered to acknowledge our existence. Bab 5 was more a "space-opera," having plots that went over several episodes and series. There is none of the "we can right it all in a hour" ethos as there is in Star Trek. So threatened were the producers of Star Trek that they pinched several of Bab 5's writers to work on DS9. Of course, Bab 5 makes use of Cthulhu themes in its plot lines.

The vitriol that one gets from trekkies upon criticising the show is a sign of religious-like fervor that surrounds Star Trek and its followers. No doubt a bunch of trekkies will try and launch an attack on Samizdata for blaspheming their blessed show.

Lagwolf

[Editor: with one exception the e-mails have been fairly temperate so far]

Perry left out the best bit of Ken Layne's comments, namely:

"I also want to blow up that planet of Furbies who ruined the third Star Wars movie ... before PETA gets over there. The PETA ship will come out of hyperspace and find nothing but pelts floating around."

I find that so inspiring.

I had forgotten how popular critiques of science fiction are, but reader responses via e-mail have just reminded me of that fact following my less than flattering remarks about the politics of Star Trek! Here are some earlier articles on the same subject that produced much the same response:

The trouble with the Federation

Star Trek: the Post-Christian Generation!

More on Star Trek: An amuzing/alarming suggestion

Star Wimps

I am a great fan of both pugnacious blogger Ken Layne and Sci-Fi afficionado King Abdullah of Jordan, as both are anti-idiotarians who have excellent taste in women by all accounts. However both the worthy King and Ken seem to have a misplaced affection for Star Trek.

It's like Star Trek -- and notice that the Star Trek universe is multiracial and multicultural and the whole deal is based on getting it together, exploiting science, taking the good stuff from every culture and leaving behind the stupid, racist, sexist, totalitarian nonsense. (No Saudi science officers in Star Fleet).

Roddenbery's 'utopian' United Federation of Planets is a vision of the future in which society is starkly homogenised, with para-military governance and a total state allocated command economy the likes of which have thankfully never yet come to pass (even the Soviet Union did not completely abolish money as a medium for low level allocation of resources). How many gay characters crop up in Star Trek's Federation? How many non-conformist extroverts? Any sign of a counter-culture? How often is an internal voice of political dissent heard in the Federation? The only dissidents shown, the Maquis, were forced into armed conflict with the Federation when it betrays them to the fascist Cardassians. The only attempts at political change shown were a couple failed attempts at a coup d'état by elements of the Federation's own military, neither of which had liberty as their objectives. The Star Trek Federation is a dystopian nightmare: smiley face totalitarianism with a California "liberal" vibe, complete with attractive telepathic political officers ('councellors').

A similar vision of a fascist future existed in Babylon 5, but unlike Star Trek, they were the bad guys (and had much cooler uniforms)!

Oh, and Ken is also totally wrong about Spanish food.

Prankster Samizdata reader James Bennett wrote in with a suggestion that was alarming and amuzing in equal measure:

Excellent post on Sammy's Data (as I think of it) about the Star Trek Federation. I think Rodenberry and the original Star Trek writers didn't think very much about the future they were creating; they just took some cliches from pop science fiction that ultimately go back to H.G. Wells and Things to come. I have always thought of, as a prank, submitting a script for a show involving the Ferengi (which is, by the way, an Arabic term for "Westerner") which would be a straight steal from some Nazi anti-semitic story from the 30s, maybe "The Jew Suss", substituting one stereotyped money-loving minority with a oversized facial attribute for another. Then if it got produced, reveal the source. The Ferengi meet almost every element of the Nazi stereotype about Jews, they even lust after our women.

Now that is funny. Pulling that off would be a superb cultural 'hack' of the highest order.

Just the other day I saw a Next Generation episode and already in my mind I am seeing cringing, hand wringing Ferengi runts (Nazi 'Jew' image) contrasted with tall lithe Tasha Yar (Denise Crosby: Nazi Aryan 'superwoman' image) along with broad shouldered small brained Will Riker (Johnathen Frakes: Nazi Aryan 'superman' image) declaiming about the Federation's cultural superiority (kulturkampf) to the capitalist Ferengi (Jew).

Appalling. Damn you, Bennett, I will never be able to see that show again without feeling rather uncomfortable.

Natalie is quite right that there is a noticeable lack of real religions in Star Trek. The only two sets of religious beliefs seem to feature prominently:

First there are the Bajoran in Deep Space 9, who follow an (invented) organised national religion that, it must be said, is presented extremely plausibly and without either sentimental support or anti-religious bias: some of their religious leaders are shown to be wise and honourable, yet others (Kai Winn) are portrayed as venal and corrupt. Significantly, the Bajorans are not, however, part of the Federation.

Then there is Chakotay (Robert Beltran), whose ultra-PC North American Indian spiritualism must appeal to the California 'liberal' (meaning socialist) sensibilities of the script writers. It is useful to note, however, that Chakotey is not in fact a member of Star Fleet even though he has been co-opted by it. Quite the contrary: he is an anti-Star Fleet Maquis rebel! There is an interesting subtext there for sure.

I would not include the Zen-like Vulcan philosophy shown in the shows as 'religion' as it is little more than a sophisticated and somewhat ritualised form of self-control with a set of attendant logic based ethics.

Yet I must disagree with Natalie that Star Trek's lack of religion in the Federation will cause "less sympathy with the Samizdata crowd". Libertarian views are in no way antithetical to religious ones and I find the complete absence of overt Christian, Jewish, Muslim or Hindu influences (let alone obvious adherents) indicative of a society that must surely be suppressing them. Even an atheist such as myself must accept that the religious impulse will not completely disappear quietly into the night unless forced there at the point of a loaded phaser...hardly something calculated to bring the smile of reason to libertarian lips. As evidence of it is completely absent in what is posited as mankind's sole military service, the implications are clear.

Even if Star Fleet is aggressively secular 'at work', in many episodes we are shown the private quarters of crew members...can anyone recall an episode in which a crucifix is seen on someone's table or a mezuzah by the door? You do not have to be religious yourself to find seeing religion completely edited out of the human experience more than a little sinister. As Natalie points out, Babylon 5 had a great deal of fun with real world religion, even to the extent of showing peevish squabbling between the leader of the resident Catholic monks and a prominent Jewish scholar. Likewise, Commander Susan Ivanova (Claudia Christian) on several occasions referred to her Jewish identity in various episodes. Although religion was not central to the show, it did not deny its very existence.

Next time I see a Star Trek show, I will scrutinize the credits for any references to Leon Trotsky.

Lots of high octane posts on Samizdata today, covering many issues of topical importance. That's why I'd like to talk about a thirty year old TV show. According to Phil Farrand's Nitpicker's Guide, these top 10 reasons for violations of the Prime Directive include No. 10 "The Stupid Machine that ran the planet didn't allow any touching and kissing", No. 6 "The inhabitants were using a bunch of stupid computers to fight their wars like pantywaists", culminating in No. 10 - Kirk's personal No.1 - I noticed my hairline receding that day."

I knew I had become a real hard-core libertarian when I started getting genuinely outraged on behalf of the right of the inhabitants of gangster-obsessed Sigma Iotia II not to pay protection money to the Feds in "A Piece of the Action." I reckon that episode indicated subliminal acceptance by Rodenberry of the Federation's real nature, that of a protection racket that breaks its own rules whenever convenient.

Farrand also takes Star Trek (both Classic and Next Gen) to task in a way that will find, perhaps, less sympathy with the Samizdata crowd: their attitude towards religion, which is that it will have no place in their nice clean universe (unless it's PC American Indian religion, that is. There are no Christians, Moslems, or Hindus to be seen - and nearly all the alien religions turn out to be covers for a ruling elite of some sort *. Babylon 5, though written by an agnostic, treats the subject far more plausibly.)

* = That'll get the comments coming about present day religions.

You may be wondering 'which Federation is that?' Russia? Mexico? No. Star Trek's Federation. What is more, my problem is more with the Star Trek shows than their fictional interstellar political entity.

It is not the stories I object to, which are adequate though often highly derivative. It is not the acting, which is generally satisfactory and occasionally quite good. It is not the dialogue, which is adequate for the most part with only intermittent trips into the creative quicksand. It is not the special effects, which are seamless and superior (no, not the first series). All these things are okay for the various Star Trek shows such as Next Generation, DS-9, Voyager (I have not seen Enterprise yet), which are collectively the Sci-Fi 'franchise' that more or less defines the qualitative median line through the genre.

Like any long running series, the Star Trek shows have had their ups and downs: The first few Next Generation were embarrassingly badly acted but they eventually pulled together as a company of actors. Voyager was for quite a while the 'lemon' of the franchise (Trek Fan One: "You wanna hear a Star Trek joke?"   Trek Fan Two: "Sure"    Trek Fan One: "Voyager"). Yet once they added the sublime Jeri Ryan and gave their script writers a firm kick up the arse, it belatedly became quite a good show (yes, I admit it: Jeri Ryan's unusually named '7 of 9' pushed pretty much all my buttons in all the right ways).

Other shows do the genre better for sure (Stargate absolutely, Babylon 5 for the most part, Farscape & Earth: Final Conflict intermittently) whilst still others do it worse (Andromeda) or far worse (SeaQuest DSV)...and of course there is the demented Lexx (imagine Voyager, but while stoned on peyote) which is in a class all its own that transcends mere notions of 'good' or 'bad'.

So what do I have against the Federation? Well simply put, it is an authoritarian collectivist quasi-communist society (the government is clearly paramilitary) with a totally non-monetary command economy. That they have invented a state like that is not my grouse. I do not doubt there will be authoritarian states in the future just as there are now and so why not posit them? Fine... my problem is that somehow the Federation are held up to be the good guys!

There is little sign of any counter-culture within the Federation and what there is are mostly shown as being violent unreasonable terrorists (the Maquis, who in reality are just fighting to prevent their land being occupied as a result of a Federation sell-out). Also, aspects of their military culture are frankly beyond belief (particularly when compared to shows like Stargate or Babylon 5, which actually understand the essential logic underpinning the military mindset). Do these guys ever fire first? And how often has Jean Luc Picard surrendered his ship in various episodes? That is the Star Fleet Flagship we are talking about! Likewise it seems that insubordination, even under fire, is almost the norm! Sorry but with a culture like that, the Klingons, the Romulans , hell, the Tellytubbies, would have smashed the Federation long ago.

Yet it is clear that the Federation's agents are the very essence of violent interaction under other conditions. Most striking was one episode of Next Generation called Unification, Part II. Commander Riker (Jonathan Frakes) enters a saloon seeking information. He encounters a female piano player whom he suspects might know what he needs to discover. She suggests he might like to 'make it worth her while'. In a voice dripping with disdain, he says "I don't carry money". He then falls back on sweet talking her and eventually she reveals a Fenegi merchant nearby may actually have the information (the Ferengi are little arch-capitalist gargoyles with large ears. Good little Von Mises fans that they are, they insist on payment in 'gold-pressed latinum', none of this fiat money crap for them!) . As charm is not going to work on a Fenegi merchant, Riker roughs the puny unarmed merchant up and threatens him in order to extract the information. Now keep in mind that we are being told to regard Riker as the good guy. A Feregi will sell anything yet rather than even try to buy or barter for the information, Star Fleet's armed uniformed thug just resorts to violence. This is just one of the more stark examples of why it really bugs me to hear Sci-Fi fans hold Star Trek's Federation up as some sort of 'better society' in the future.

And yes, I really do always cheer for the Klingons.

I love Star Trek and its' derivatives as much as anyone else who is a part of (as opposed to accidentally existing in) the Twenty-First Century. I grew up with it. As one of the old space radicals of the L5 Society I highly respect Gene Roddenberry, Majel Barrett and Nichelle Nichols for their pro-space work off stage as well as their marvelous original TV series. I've even met some of them at ISDC's (International Space Development Conferences), the premiere meeting place of the space community.

Tonight I saw my first episode of the newest series. I admit that if I had seen it before 9-11 it would not have grated (as much) on me. I was not expecting a "huggy feely they are misunderstood and are just like us" Political Correctness lesson masquerading as a story line.

I can't be the only one who shed all semblance of tolerating these inane attitudes two months ago. I watched the story and knew pirates are bad people. You kill them. They aren't poor misundersood sentients who would be nice if you just sent them a Christmas pudding. Pirates are nasty, brutish scumbags who go out on the spaceways and make a living by stealing. You would rob a vessel in space the same way pirates did it in the 17th Century ... and still do in Southeast Asia... you kill people. Pirates don't pull up alongside and say, "Would you be jolly good chaps and give us your cargo and valuables? We'd be ever so appreciative. Ah, now that's a good fellow! Would you be so kind as to not tell anyone what we look like? Ta ta now!"

It got worse. I nearly gagged when a black character admitted he knew what it was like being treated as "other" on Earth. This was a total farce. He grew up on a slow cargo ship that spent months and years between the stars. He probably never even saw anyone outside his ship family until he was nearly an adult.

Even that is beside the point. Given another two centuries of global travel, communications and capitalism Earthmen will be a polyglot in race and culture. We'll all be part African and part everything else as well. Visit New York City and see the future for yourself if you don't believe me. It would require a victory of "multiculturalism" over human nature to preserve races, let alone racism, that far into the future. The lines were gratuitous and given that a black actor was forced to deliver them, real racism. Why do black professionals have to be singled out for the "victim" mantle? Isn't the Colin Powell/Condelezza Rice image a hell of lot more positive for kids? Screw the victimhood. Teach kids that they CAN, not that they can not try and then blame someone else.

The traders of the story are supposedly rugged individualists who "solve their own problems". But the First Officer was just an unlikeable strawman for the PC story line and was certainly no Signy Mallory. The Second Officer was just a wimp who'd have been tossed out the airlock by age 10. He spent most of the episode looking like he needed a diaper.

The political subtext was so blatent I couldn't abide by it. The Free Traders are attacked by alien pirates. They beat the shield frequency codes out of one they capture. Fair enough. Pirates are pirates. I have no problems there. They should have dumped him out the airlock after they got the codes. But it was all done as a set up so the Captain of the Enterprise could pontificate about how the pirates were just misunderstood. The Enterprise arrives just in time to save the traders, negotiate a settlement and show that Law'n'Order and the Great State now Rules The Spacelanes. None of that naughty self-defense now! Then everyone gets out their teddy bears and has a hugfest. Roll Credits.

I really hope the producers notice attitudes have changed. Perhaps they should invite Virginia Hienlein to advise them. If they did the Enterprise crew would just space the pirates next season instead of talk to 'em.

Now... the question that might have occured to some of the more observant readers: how did I see this episode in Europe already when it won't air here for some time? Well kiddies, that's another bedtime story. In the next chapter Uncle Wiggly will... oops! Wrong lifetime!