Octavia Butler argued that science fiction was unique because it could draw on ideas from any area of knowledge. The only rule was that if the ideas where scientific, the science should be accurate. Science fiction is a playground for all of humankind's best, worst, weirdest and most wonderful ideas. Join writer and storyteller Damien Walter on an exploration of the world as seen through a science fiction lens.

In 1973's Soylent Green, Charlton Heston discovers the miracle food is made of people. In 2026, we're being sold something similar. There is nothing artificial about artificial intelligence. The name was a branding exercise, invented at Dartmouth in 1956 by a man who didn't want to argue with Norbert Wiener about cybernetics. Strip out the god and what's left is the accumulated cognitive labour of humanity, compressed and sold back to us for twenty dollars a month. Not artificial. Collective. Which changes the question from "will the machine wake up" to "who enclosed the commons this time?" On Dartmouth, the Enclosure Acts, Marx's Fragment on Machines, and Vince Gilligan's Pluribus. PKD made me make this tshirt - https://damosays-shop.fourthwall.com New to the channel? Start here - https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLc7I2hzudyX-dUh7nGMt19sNUVHihRaBl&si=ShXxZXGkPOOHFjd_

This is how a god dies, not with a cosmic explosion, not with a descent into eternity, but with the face of a pissed off Englishman calling it a big pile of bollocks. If five years ago you had asked me for a single symbol to express the first meeting of Humanity and AI, IContinue reading "Ed Zitron killed the god of AGI"

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“A government of the billionaire class, by the billionaire class, for the billionaire class.” — Bernie Sanders What does it mean when Apple CEO Tim Cook makes a personal donation of $1 million dollars to Donald Trump's inauguration? Or when Disney CEO Bob Iger comes out to virtue signal that the hypercapitalist entertainment corporation reallyContinue reading "“F*** you, pay me.” Welcome to techbros feudalism"

Silicon Valley billionaires like Peter Thiel are obsessed with living forever, making transhumanism the unspoken ideology of the 21st century. From the cyberpunk dystopias of Altered Carbon to the real-world data empires of Palantir, the push to upgrade our biology and upload our consciousness isn't just science fiction—it's the blueprint for a techno-feudal nightmare. As the technocratic elite increasingly treats the human body as a depreciating asset to be engineered away, what is the ultimate, mind-expanding philosophical answer to the transhumanist trap? Get your PKD tee here - https://damosays-shop.fourthwall.com Become a member of the Science Fiction community to continue the discussion Website - https://damiengwalter.com Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/DamienWalter Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/groups/324897304599197/

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After 42 years we have 1 minute and 10 seconds of Neuromancer on a screen. What does it tell us? Now on the Science Fiction channel

Science Fiction with Damien Walter is a search for the 21st century mythos. You can watch some of the channels best episodes here : https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLc7I2hzudyX-dUh7nGMt19sNUVHihRaBl&si=q4g0mW6s9sVbPzHv

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It's 1990. This morning I found an open door in the shopping centre of the dull commuter town I live in. Beyond the door are a series of large empty rooms, poorly lit, with large boxes. Backrooms. I phoned my friend Matthew Woods. Woodsy. He pedaled over his BMX and together we're going to exploreContinue reading "Backrooms is avant-garde art for normies"

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It's Scifi. It's Romance. It's Fantasy. It's SciMANtasy

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

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Buy the books here Book One - https://amzn.to/4nTetfw Book Two - https://amzn.to/3KqhLsa Book Three - https://amzn.to/3IzCMjK Book Four - https://amzn.to/46JyjTA Book Five - https://amzn.to/42iDbh8 Book Six - https://amzn.to/3WclWKJ Book Seven - https://amzn.to/4pHYgLS Immanentize the Eschaton with a scifi tee here - https://damosays-shop.fourthwall.com Become a member of the Science Fiction community to continue the discussion Website - https://damiengwalter.com Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/DamienWalter Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/groups/324897304599197/ Subscribe to the Science Fiction podcast feed for long-form commentaries on these video essays https://damiengwalter.com/podcast/ Follow Damien on Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/damiengwalter.com

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Watch Feral's case for NO - https://youtu.be/hj_lBPRcMoU?si=KlZbmWjTNAFcARd3 Get your Psychohistory tees here - https://damosays-shop.fourthwall.com Become a member of the Science Fiction community to continue the discussion Website - https://damiengwalter.com Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/DamienWalter Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/groups/324897304599197/ Subscribe to the Science Fiction podcast feed for long-form commentaries on these video essays https://damiengwalter.com/podcast/ Follow Damien on Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/damiengwalter.com

We are in a crisis… …of crises. We are in a crisis of geopolitics as we move from a unipolar world of one global hegemon to a multipolar world of competing powers. We are in a crisis of economics as our elites hoard more and more wealth, immiserating the working and middle classes. We areContinue reading "Psychohistory : Isaac Asimov’s greatest idea"

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Terminator is an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie Arnold's physique is the star of the film The progressive decay of the Body into the Machine is his co-star With the special effects that animated the Terminator as best supporting actor Watch the full video essay Subscribe to the Science Fiction podcast for the extended audio commentary LINKContinue reading "The De-Terminator : free will vs determinism in the Terminator"

We by Yevgeny Zamyatin is a novel written at the beginning of the future. It's hard to remember today, after Logan's Run, The Handmaid's Tale and Hunger Games made “dystopia” an entertainment genre, but when Yevgeny Zamyatin was writing in the early 1920s, it was only beginning to dawn on humanity just how bad the future might be. OrContinue reading "The science fiction novel that destroyed socialism"

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Why do we love science fiction movies? Sometimes it's because they take us to strange new worlds. Other times they just have the best effects, the biggest explosions, or the most guns. But when science fiction movies become legendary it's often because they tell us something deep, true and meaningful. Then there are the science fiction movies that step up to bat for legendary status take a big swing and miss and sometimes, as much as we love the hits, we love those misses # Become a member of the Science Fiction community to continue the discussion Website - https://damiengwalter.com YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/DamienWalter/membership Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/DamienWalter Subscribe to the Science Fiction podcast feed for long-form commentaries on these video essays https://damiengwalter.com/podcast/ Join the Science Fiction community on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/groups/324897304599197/

Watch the FULL video version on the new Science Fiction (video) Spotify channel : https://open.spotify.com/show/7lMNsoZctViqbqv8atqpK2?si=9a474bb8a9d74147 Why was the 1970s a classic era for science fiction cinema? I'm guessing many 1970s scifi movies are forgotten, by anyone who wasn't there to see them. Dark Star. Silent Running. Rollerball! The 70s produced so much great scifi cinema it's hard to list it all. And even when it wasn't great, it was still interesting. It's like every scifi movie in that decade was a unique experiment, always different, always new. And then one movie came along that ended the golden decade for strange, cool scifi movies. After Star Wars every science fiction movie was trying to be a scifi blockbuster. And Hollywood's search for the next big corporate entertainment franchise meant that everything would eventually get a reboot. Sometimes that worked. And sometimes it didn't. And it didn't work enough times that, I for one, live in dread of Hollywood rebooting another 70s science fiction classic. But. There is one movie from that golden decade which, the more I think about it, actually does need a reboot. # Watch the FULL video version on the new Science Fiction (video) Spotify channel : https://open.spotify.com/show/7lMNsoZctViqbqv8atqpK2?si=9a474bb8a9d74147 Become a member of the Science Fiction community to continue the discussion Website - https://damiengwalter.com YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/DamienWalter/membership Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/DamienWalter Subscribe to the Science Fiction podcast feed for long-form commentaries on these video essays https://damiengwalter.com/podcast/ Join the Science Fiction community on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/groups/324897304599197/

SF author Ken MacLeod on his lifelong friend Iain Banks. Become a member of the Science Fiction community to continue the discussion Website - https://damiengwalter.com YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/DamienWalter/membership Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/DamienWalter Subscribe to the Science Fiction podcast feed for long-form commentaries on these video essays https://damiengwalter.com/podcast/ Join the Science Fiction community on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/groups/324897304599197/