KMO Show, episode number 30, Sunday, March 23rd,
2025. You're listening to the KMO Show. I'm KMO.
And I am joined by somebody who approached me
via Substack, which is my only social media really
these days. And I'm not sure how he wants to
be identified. So I will just say, guest, please
speak about yourself for a bit. Sure. So thanks
for having me on the pod. My name is Kevin, and
I currently co -host a podcast of my own called
Synthesize Sunsets, which has an accompanying
Substack. And on the podcast, we talk about a
lot of stuff related to speculative fiction and
also the evolution of popular culture and kind
of like where we see that going. And also what
we talk a lot about what sorts of media may rise
and fall as we kind of just like, you know, hurdle
into this new world of AI and algorithms. Our
most recent, let's see, I would say that the
articles that we write are usually along those
lines, but we also have a lot of articles that
are sort of like reflecting on childhood. So
it'll be about some childhood experience and
how that relates to some more suspected fiction
we'll be reading or something along those lines.
I would say that we're still kind of trying to
find our identity as a publication and a podcast,
but it's been pretty fun so far. And so we're
interested to see how it's going to go. And you
were one of the people to restack one of our
more recent posts. And so I just thought it'd
be a good opportunity to kind of talk about that
and also other things. Well, what post was that?
That post was 17776 by John Boyce and the slow
cancellation of the future. And just in very
brief terms, what's the topic there? What is
that long number? Right, sure. So 17776 is a,
in my opinion, actually, one of the more significant.
One of the most significant works of science
fiction in the 21st century. And it's this book
by, well, book is a stretch. It is this narrative
by a, like a sports writer named John Boyce that
is like. very multimedia so when you when you
read it on the internet it starts off as like
this article and then it turns into like a calendar
and then it turns into almost like this play
script and you just have all these things like
gifs and videos and text interacting in this
very crazy way that wouldn't have really been
possible that long before it was published and
i remember reading it and i i really thought
that it was a sign of what was to come um in
the in the landscape of speculative fiction like
i was like okay this is the sign that we have
moved beyond just like the paradigms of of text
and video and the new science fiction is going
to be stuff that's you know in in like these
multimedia forms that we're not familiar with
and and some stuff that's going to have to develop
as we get more familiar with it but uh you know
since that work came out which i believe was
in 2017 I would say that the opposite has happened.
We've kind of just, as a society, doubled down
on text and video as a society on the internet.
And I think this has been a real shame because
I just feel like the internet is not as explosive
and vibrant and novel as it used to be. And in
this article... um and try to tie this into um
the ideas of mark fisher who is this um this
left -wing sociologist um and who and his um
his main idea was called the uh the slow cancellation
of the future which is basically this idea that
in the 20th century especially the first half
of the 20th century people had all these different
novel ideas of what future they want to live
in and what society might look like you know
decades centuries down the line Whereas in the
latter half of the 20th century, and especially
the 21st century, the future has sort of unceremoniously
faded away. And now when people think about the
future, they kind of just imagine a similar sort
of dystopian world that hasn't really changed
much. And there's been a lack of vision in terms
of imagining what comes next. And he has a lot
of different reasons for this, but to me, these
two topics are just very intimately related.
Well, the crossover audience between my podcasting
efforts and those of Doug Lane, who's a friend
of mine and somebody who's a ideological leftist,
but somebody who criticizes the left from the
left, they will definitely recognize the name
Mark Fisher. In addition to the slow cancellation
of the future, he's, I think, best known for
the notion of capitalist realism. I think he
had a book by that title. And also exiting the
vampire castle. He was one of the first people
on the left to criticize leftist cancel culture.
And the people that he was criticizing, you know,
responded unkindly and with such intensity and
just unbroken, you know, relentlessness. I don't
know. I can't draw an exact causal connection,
but he did kill himself after that. So, yeah,
Mark Fisher, definitely a name worth knowing
if you don't already. So early on, like when
you first approached me, you mentioned your age
as a basically an enticement for talking to you.
You probably don't talk to many Generation Z
guys. And no, I don't. I mean, I have two sons
of mine, but they don't tell me everything. And
well. You mentioned your childhood. My childhood
was in the 1970s and my adolescence and most
of my teen years were in the 1980s. Actually,
all of my teen years were in the 1980s. And the
70s and the 80s have distinct characters. Like
you wouldn't confuse one for the other. Just
the visual images that go with each decade are
unique. You know, they don't overlap much, even
though, of course, there is a transition between
one to the next. And yet that pattern of decades
having distinct characters seems to have broken
down in the 21st century. Like 2006, my mental
images of it are not that different from 2016.
And as a Gen Z man, I wonder what your perspective
on that is. Right. Yeah. I think this is a really
interesting point. I would say that I'm definitely...
less of that view than most people, but this
is definitely a common thing that people bring
up. One of my favorite discussions of this particular
idea, Mark Fisher, there's this podcast called
by a guy named Joshua Citarella, who's just sort
of like this interesting leftist thinker who
has pretty heterodox people come onto his show.
um and he had this discussion with um actually
pretty famous musician maddie healy of the 1975
and i did not expect like i generally don't have
a high opinion or like very high expectations
for what some musician is going to think about
you know politics and culture but it was actually
just a really really high level of discourse
and they spent a lot of time on this topic in
particular um like maddie healy was contending
that you know decades don't have this distinctive
identity anymore and kind of just everything
doesn't have this distinctive identity anymore
um like he was talking about how in the past
like you know 70s 80s and 90s subcultures were
sort of just People in certain subcultures were
just sort of visually recognizably of that subculture.
Like if you were to kind of see a group of punks,
you're just like, oh, yeah, you know, or like
a group of goth kids or a group of like, I don't
know. I mean, I'm too young. I don't really know
the stock subculture super well. But like if
you saw a group of kids out, you would kind of
just. know like what sort of subculture they're
a part of whereas nowadays you see a group of
kids like i don't know they're kind of just like
dressing whatever and they they act like whatever
um and he saw this as like a great loss um i
i would say that um to me like different you
know different decades definitely have um like
a different aesthetic but I feel like the visual
aspect of this aesthetic is so much less pronounced,
especially in the real world. So something that
Maddie Healy talks about is how Like in each
decade of music, like just the paradigm shift
from like, you know, an electric guitar to like
synthesizers was crazy. Like nothing, like there
were just a lot of things that you couldn't translate
and just entire new things that had to be invented.
And just like even visually, like going from
like the electric guitar to like the computer
and like machines was just like a big step. But
now all the paradigm shifts occur within this
frame of the computer. So you might have some
interesting new paradigm shift related to the
sounds that are used in your music. But it's
just going to be like, oh yeah, this one computer
thing to this other computer thing. And so when
you have all these things being mediated within
the frame of computers, I feel like it's harder
to take in those distinct aesthetic impressions.
When it comes to music, I don't really have the
vocabulary to describe this in much detail, but
it is my understanding that in the music world
today, in terms of very popular music, there
is just a handful of producers who are producing
everything. And any given pop song is going to
have a whole team of producers who assembled
it. Each has their own specialty, crafting little
pieces of hooks and little tiny snippets of dialogue.
And one reason why there's just not that much
distinctiveness is there are fewer people actually
producing the creative element. It is a very
closed shop, much like the internet has become
a very closed shop in a lot of ways. Um, yeah,
I would say that's, um, I would say it's a mostly
accurate at, well, it's hard to say because I
feel like music has always been pretty like,
um, kind of like a, like an oligopoly. Um, I,
I will say that, like, I think a, probably a,
um, something that's more pronounced and they're
being less producers is that there are, there
are less labels. Um, you know, like you have,
um, Like, it used to be that the music that was
popular on the radio would come from this, you
know, wide array of labels. You know, you have,
like, Polidor and Republic and Interscope, but,
you know, these are kind of just all being congealed
into, like, you know, three or four different
gigantic megacorps that, yeah, you know, are
kind of just not really... like that's gonna
have an effect you know bringing all these different
labels under one roof even if they're supposed
to have their own different feel and vibe um
and so yeah there is a certain sameness in pop
music um i mean i would just uh i would i just
want to say that i i'm like a pretty big admirer
of pop music in the sense that I see pop music
as kind of like this cultural technology that's
being improved every year. Like, I think it's
just kind of being more and more and more optimized
towards this ideal. And this is sort of like
technologically cool to me, even though on some
level, I think there are some levels on which
it's kind of like, you know, repulsive, but it's
like engineered to this degree. But just kind
of from like a more technological sci -fi perspective,
I find it to be very cool. You know, the notion
that, decades would lose their distinctiveness
seems at odds with the fact that technology changes
quite a bit. It's, you would think that you could
look for technological clues to a particular
decade and you can, but it's just, they don't
jump out. Like, did you ever see the first Zoolander
movie with Ben Stiller as the fashion model?
And not, unfortunately. Well, it's a parody.
And in it, he's a very shallow fashion model.
And this was before smartphones came out. And
the trend in the pre -smartphone, you know, mobile
phone era was for smartphones to get increasingly
smaller. And Zoolander's phone was like... a
prize out of a Cracker Jack box. It was a tiny,
tiny little thing. It was impossibly small. You
know, there were no phones that small at the
time, but that was the gag, you know, that this
New York fashion model has got the latest phone
and it's tiny. That doesn't happen anymore. I
mean, iPhones. It used to be that, you know,
you could look at a movie and you would be shocked
at how big somebody's phone was. And that's because,
oh, yeah, that's from five years ago, you know,
when phone technology was very different than
it is now. And an iPhone from today, you know,
at a glance, doesn't look much different from
an iPhone from five years ago. So that those
sorts of distinctions don't leap out like they
used to. But at the same time, it's weird. Because
particularly with AI, I mean, technology is moving
quite a bit, but particularly in science fiction
for the screen, you know, where you don't, you
have less scientific rigor and less speculative
emphasis. And, you know, it's more just sort
of tropes and visual markers of science fiction
that TV and movie writers employ. They don't
seem to be keeping up with AI. And also there
is, you know, a two, three, sometimes four and
five year production pipeline. So people are
writing things who, you know, might understand
how. AI as it's manifesting in the world now
is different from how science fiction authors
had imagined it in the past. They might be incorporating
that into their scripts now, but we won't see
those scripts for a while. And so, you know,
by the time that updated information about how
real AI works filters into science fiction entertainment,
AI will have moved on considerably since then.
And yet I kind of anticipate that this lack of
distinction between time period will continue
i wonder what your thoughts are on that um yeah
i mean i i definitely agree um i think that uh
especially in the domain of movies it's just
kind of striking how much recycling happens um
you know like i think that if you're not as plugged
into sci -fi literature in particular then it's
maybe not as visible but just more and more and
more like every single sci -fi property on screen
is just adapted from some you know pretty old
property or just recycling these tropes that
should be common to any like big consumer sci
-fi or both um like i remember um i recently
saw mickey 17 in theaters and it was just like
so striking to me how many elements of these
films are just recognizably of other science
fiction properties like these these aliens show
up who just look incredibly similar to the aliens
in nasca of the valley of the wind from like
the 1970s and then you know it's based off of
this pre -existing novel and you know it's about
this guy who just like dies a bunch of times
and comes back to life it's just like wow i've
never seen that before um and i think that uh
i do wonder like is the movie industry going
to like eventually there's gonna they're gonna
stop running out of these big sweeping sci -fi
narratives to adapt right there are only so many
dunes um and so i i kind of wonder like will
that happen you know or will people just kind
of be satisfied to kind of just get these um
sci -fi films that are just regurgitated forms
of everything else that has already come before
it Well, there's a lot of different ways to go
with that. But for the non -film geeks, I want
to point out that Mickey 17, which I have not
seen, is directed by Bong Joon -ho, who directed
Parasite and Snowpiercer and an older, really
fun horror movie called, what was the one with
the monster in the bay? What was that? Not familiar.
I think I've only seen, yeah, I've only seen
Memories of Murder and the ones you mentioned.
Oh, okay. Well, anyway, he's visually a very
creative director, you know, a bold director.
Oh, he also did a movie for Netflix called Okja,
which was about... Oh, right. I've seen Okja
as well. Well, for those who haven't, it's about
a genetically engineered, like, hippopotamus
that is being raised for meat, but it's cute
and smart and it's, you know, don't eat meat.
propaganda sort of film. And what I've heard
about Mickey 17 is that it is pretty heavy handed
in terms of the, the progressive messaging, which
is required in Hollywood films today. And because
of the long production pipeline, it does not
reflect the recent vibe shift. And so it really
stands out as being, you know, sort of oppressive
and heavy handed in that way. I wonder if that.
uh vibes with your impression of the film yeah
i mean the social commentary like i was just
so underwhelming to me like i mean okay like
in fairness this movie was supposed to come out
two years ago um even two years ago though i
think a lot of the social commentary would have
felt dated um but like i'm just like man it's
it's 2025 and we're still like i mean i don't
want to like spoil the film but it was just so
so on the nose and that was something i was pretty
disappointed by because i feel like in in most
of bong's films the the social commentary is
pretty like you know like kind of interesting
and subversive um certainly in parasite but also
memories of murder like the takeaway is is not
is not so simple but you know after mickey 17
i was kind of just like okay yes this is this
is what the director wants me to think well it's
funny you know that we're we were just a few
minutes ago, we're talking about how the different
decades don't look or sound all that distinct.
And yet when it comes to political messaging
and films, it's like, Oh man, that's so five
years ago. You know, like there are distinct
eras and, and distinct shifts in, you know, in
how people are thinking and communicating and
articulating themselves. Oh yeah. Yeah. For sure.
I mean, I think that, um, just, just like on
a meta level, like, i do think that um it puts
you in like a weird um it puts you in a weird
rhetorical position when you're kind of like
you know on the left but you just kind of disagree
like you disagree with um like you know even
like the didactism of it all or just like or
just like anything really um because like I just
feel that there's a lot there, like there's kind
of like a lot to attack. And so I think that
it's if someone is kind of like on the left,
it's very easy for them to kind of slide into
this role of just like only criticizing the left
or just like, you know, them criticizing the
left being a big chunk of what they do. And it's
like if you're in that position at a certain
point, it's sort of just like. okay but but but
like what are you what are you trying to accomplish
like what what is the goal of this and i think
this is often met with suspicion and so i think
that the um like the second order effect of this
is that i think people are um i'm going to be
charitable here and say that i do think part
of um modern left -wing cancel culture is a product
of the fact that um that like people are um like
are suspicious you know of of your intentions
because there are like a lot of people who are
kind of like purportedly left -wing but as like
the years go on and on and on you kind of see
that it was just like all a farce um and so i
think that um if if you sort of have like you
know these these like left -wing bona fides people
are are would be a lot less likely to kind of
like you know question your intentions like that
Although, you know, I'm certainly not going to
go to bat for cancel culture or anything. Well,
some of my favorite Substack accounts are like
postcards from Barsoom by John Carter, Library
of Salino or Saleno, Tree of Woe, Walt Bismarck.
I mean, these are people that I would have described
as alt -right, but now they're more dissident
right, I guess is the current term. Alt -right
was more sort of shock. and transgressive for
its own sake, whereas the dissident right is
more intellectual and nuanced. And, you know,
for somebody on the left who wants to present
themselves, you know, as a public intellectual,
yeah, you can criticize the left from the left.
In a way, it's easier because you're already
familiar with the left. To criticize the right
from the left, you either have to pay attention
to what the right vanguard is doing, which...
As far as I can tell, there is very little appetite
for doing so. Or you just criticize a caricature
of the right, which people who are on the right
recognize as, you know, being completely, you
know, just irrelevant to their actual concerns.
But if you're going to, you know, make the effort
and actually follow and internalize nuanced arguments
by people that you expect to disagree with, you
know, you've got to know going into that that
very few of your intent and audience members
are going to follow you in that. So I just don't
see any real interesting criticism of the actual
right from the left. I actually think that like
for me, I see cancel culture in its modern form
as more of a product of like, I guess what you
would call in. Well, like, I mean, this term
has become so loaded now, but like liberalism,
you know, like modern, modern liberalism. I think
that the left. Pause for a moment and unpack
your use of that, because that is a very big
term. Right. OK, sure, sure, sure. So, I mean,
there's you can use the phrase you can use the
phrase liberal in many senses. There's sort of
like this idea of the classical liberal. And
then I feel like also you could use liberal in
like the institutional sense, someone who's very
pro -institution. But I think in modern American
political discourse, liberal usually means like,
you know, someone that's like on the left, but
they're not quite a leftist. You know, I guess
sort of like the modal Democratic Party member.
And I think that when you compare someone who's,
I guess, self -identifies as liberal versus someone
who self -identifies as a leftist, because leftists
are kind of very reluctant to identify with the
liberal label at all, in my experience. I would
say that those on the left are definitely much
less wedded to cancel culture, much more willing
to engage with the right in a substantive manner.
of course this has this dynamic has changed a
bit as left -wing thought has become like way
way more mainstream like i think that just naturally
as a movement becomes more mainstream its ideas
become less nuanced and diluted um but um i i
guess i wouldn't have ever like i don't think
i identify um like I guess this reluctance to
engage with, with like leftist specifically.
Um, I feel like if you, like, I don't know if
you're familiar with the, are you familiar with
like the dirt bag left at all? Like, um, I'm
familiar with the term. I never have been a,
uh, an appreciator of Chapo trap house, but yeah,
I, I interviewed, uh, Angela Nagel several years
ago. I think she was, uh, considered a member
of the dirt bag left, but yeah, I'm, I'm familiar
with some of the names and some of the, uh, the
personalities, but it's, it's not something I
consume regularly. yeah right i mean i i wouldn't
say that i consume the dirtbag left regularly
either but i think it's just kind of an example
of i feel like there has always been this tradition
of of engaging with the right and i i generally
have seen that i feel like the right or the left
like you know i think the far left engages with
the right usually in like a more kind of nuanced
and informed way than like the than like the
center left um i guess also um Yeah, like I would
also say that because like the right has kind
of been like almost like sort of counterculture
for a while, maybe not anymore. But I think that
the movement that is in the counterculture is
always going to be more intellectually generative.
You know, like there's not really this institutional
vision of what being on the right is. And like,
I think that. there are so many currents in the
right wing but it's hard to know what's going
on unless you're really plugged in and so i think
that honestly um especially after watching mickey
17 i think there are a lot of liberals who still
operate under this like you know 90s early odds
paradigm of what like what conservatives are
and what republicans are and what they stand
for that just really isn't true anymore um science
fiction We're getting kind of political here.
And while I certainly have political opinions,
it's not my main ballywick these days. I write
about science fiction and I say futurism, you
know, with sort of tongue in cheek, because I
think predictions of the future are, you know,
accurate ones are quite rare and probably don't
show up often in futurist discourse. They're
more likely to show up in like economic discourse.
Somebody always calls it right. So let's go back
to sci -fi. A big frustration of mine is that,
you know, as a teenager, I read a lot of print
science fiction. Loved it. And I work in a library
now, and I see that, you know, in your generation,
at least people who depend on public libraries
to get their books, young men don't read. They
come in and they get on the computers or they
check out DVDs or video games, but they don't
check out books. Young women do check out books,
and... The science fiction, like the mainstream
publishing end of science fiction has shifted
hard over into romanticy, graying into like,
you know, erotica and what a fellow librarian
calls book porn. Because, you know, it doesn't
have the stigma of full on audio visual porn
that you'd get from the Internet. So, you know,
they can read it at home in front of their parents
or read it wherever. And, you know. It's created
an ugly feedback loop in that young women read
books, young men don't. So the publishing industry,
it has its ideological side, but just market
forces alone would cause them to tailor their
output for the people who are already spending
money on their product, which is going to drive
it further in the direction of appealing to women
and driving away men. So I've been saying that
on my blog quite a bit. So I'll stop and get
your perspective. Right. So, yeah, I mean, there's
kind of, yeah, there's a lot of stuff to respond
to here. I mean, I think that you have this,
like, I mean, first of all, it's certainly true.
Like, less men are reading books. And I guess,
like, not to sound like a suburban mom, but I
think a large part of it is the video games.
You know, for, like, you know, for sci -fi and
fantasy in particular. I think that... A lot
of men who would have been reading about these
literary adventure fantasies in the past are
now getting that same narrative feel from or
that same narrative experience from video games.
Only it's even more awesome because they get
to partake in this narrative themselves. Like
they don't just have to kind of imagine themselves
in that world. And so I think that a lot of the
narrative energy in terms of entertainment targeted
towards men has moved towards video games. But
I think that. It's also true that there are other
things that work, you know, like there are all
of these complicated feedback loops when it comes
to publishing. um yeah publishing has definitely
moved in a more um like you know a more like
female direction and there's many different stories
you can tell about this right like one is you
could say that it's like this ideological um
you could you'd say it's ideologically motivated
and the result of these like woke publishing
houses another angle you could take is that it's
um it's market forces and then there's another
there's other takes you take as well or you could
say it's a combination of all of them um and
I guess I'm pretty sympathetic to the argument
that it's a combination of market forces, but
then also there just being so many fewer publishing
houses. I mean, the consolidation of publishing
has just been like a complete disaster in my
opinion. There's just like basically four or
five publishing houses that publish essentially
all the books that are popular in the United
States. And I think that... when you have that
situation, you're more likely to have these market
inefficiencies. If you were to have a healthier
ecosystem of medium -sized to small publishing
houses that were writing books for other demographics,
then I think that you would be less likely to
see it as extreme as now. But because there's
only four companies that just really care about
their bottom line, you just see a lot less variation
in what's getting published. I do expect that
to change, but I do think that you know, it is
to some degree a product of like the consolidation
of these, of these like large corporations. Apologies
to whoever's argument I'm about to steal. Somebody
presented this to me and if I could remember
who it was, I would credit them. But there's
a, what's the phrase? A principal agent problem
in publishing in that books tend to come to the
attention of publishers via agents. And agents
don't take the same financial risks that the
publishers do. So while they are supposed to
be representing the publisher's interests, in
fact, they're really primarily engaged in managing
their own social reputations amongst their peers.
And so, you know, there came a point a few years
ago when it was beyond not cool. It was simply
just not done to buy the work of. you know, and
this is from agents, you know, to buy or champion
the work of emerging white male writers. You
know, if your new protege was not in some consecrated
demographic, you know, it just, in terms of the
social standing of the people in that world,
it just... You know, that didn't fly. And the
fact that it was damaging the sales, you know,
the financial returns of the publishers didn't
affect the agents directly. That's the, you know,
the principal agent problem where the agent is
supposed to be representing the interests of
the principal and they don't. They represent
their own interests. And I think, you know, the
industry has adapted to that by leaning hard
into book porn, you know, aimed at women. And
part of it is in science fiction. And then, you
know, part of it is just romance. This is kind
of off topic, but there's a disturbing trend
that I see just as a librarian. And it's that
these very sexually explicit romance novels aimed
at young women have covers that would be very
appealing to children. You know, they're very
cutesy, very simple looking covers, which is
weird. And part of it is. Some of these authors
started out writing young adult fiction, which
was not sexually explicit, but the authors have
aged, their audience has aged, and they are now,
they and their audience are more interested in
sexually explicit material. And so that doesn't
explain why the publishers, because it's not
the writer's choice to put a cutesy cover on
a sexually explicit book, but it does explain
the shift. in in content by the writers and readers
although not the behavior of the publishers i
mean i'm i think the simplest explanation is
they've market tested things and that's what
sells yeah but but yeah i like i i just feel
like this is a pretty clear i i think this is
a case where there is a pretty strong like you
know i think there's a pretty strong case to
be made that publishing could be best improved
through like you know like a left -wing frame
you know like i think that it would be i think
it's hard to argue against the idea that the
consolidation of publishing into these gigantic
mega corporations has been a big contributor
into like the flattening of the literature landscape.
Because like, yeah, I mean, if there were kind
of like these more of these smaller publishers
that could get work out there, then I think that
the market would respond, you know, like people
would, there would be a market for those books.
It wouldn't be as big as the market for like,
you know. erotica with cutesy covers but it would
still have a way of getting out there but now
that pretty much the only way to get your stuff
out there is through these large mega corporations
then it is kind of just up to the like it's much
more sensitive to I guess vibe shifts as you
could say well one thing we haven't mentioned
is that We've been talking about changes in the
publishing industry, but there are people who
love science fiction from the 70s, 80s, 90s and
aughts, and they're still writing it, but the
big publishers aren't publishing it. But you
can go on Kindle Direct Publishing and put your
novel out. I've done that. I've talked to many
other people who have done that. Amazon doesn't
help with discovery. They don't show your book
to anybody. So you can sell copies to whatever
business you can drum up yourself. They will
deliver. They will print and deliver the books,
but they're not going to help you with marketing.
And there's a couple different scenarios that
can play out from this. You mentioned what happens
when Dune has been remade four times and all
the good sci -fi properties from the past have
been totally milked and the publishing industry
isn't providing anything new that is suitable.
There's a couple different things that can happen.
Hollywood studios can send their AI agents out
into the Internet and find all the stuff that
people have been publishing, you know, outside
of the mainstream publishing apparatus for the
past decade. And, you know, option those those
books for films and TV and such, which would
be great news for the people. who have been struggling,
you know, outside of the mainstream to keep their
favorite genre alive and vital. Or the AI can
just go out there, sample all the stuff that
was never published and never really recognized
and just mine it for bits of vitality to take
back to the Hollywood studios and not reward
the people who struggled in, you know, in isolation
and in, you know, under hard circumstances with
no, you know. no feedback no encouragement and
and no you know significant paycheck yeah i mean
that would certainly be kind of a dystopian outcome
um but not i think um yeah but but certainly
not surprising um yeah i don't know it's like
interesting i feel like this is the case in both
music and literature like on some level it's
never been easier to release things out into
the world but also at the same time it's just
you know never been harder to get like it's it's
very hard to get like a medium number of eyeballs
on something if that makes sense like you're
either you're either big or you're small and
i think that the age of the medium record label
the medium publishing house is over you know
it's about like yeah either going to the mainstream
channels or getting your um you know unexpected
shot at virality i saw actually a um a pretty
interesting take on substack recently i i really
can't speak to um like how true it is. But this
person was basically hypothesizing that they
think that people perceive reading books as even
more feminine than it actually is because a lot
of women have become very good at sort of marketing
like books as lifestyle, if that makes sense.
You know, like both authors and readers being
able to treat a brand around their engagement
with literature and like... posting about it
on social media in a way that that's enticing
and gets people excited to also partake in this
activity whereas if you think of of guys like
i mean the ratio of like i guess female literary
influencers to male literary influencers is probably
like ridiculously high um and like i mean it
just it just kind of makes sense like i feel
like it's um like it's harder for me to imagine
a guy doing that sort of thing are you familiar
with book talk Yeah, I'm familiar. So for those
who are my age or older, the talk there is T
-O -K, not T -A -L -K. It's a subculture on,
it's a channel, but also a, it's an account,
but also a subculture on TikTok. And basically
it is, it's a pipeline for amplifying, you know,
the personalities in the book porn world. And
again, book porn not being the sort of imagery
that pornography, you know, the word pornography
brings to mind, but the evolution of what used
to be called the bodice ripper, which was basically
rape fantasies for women that starred, you know,
relatable women and hunky men as personified
by a model from the 80s, a guy named Fabio. Do
you know about Fabio? Yes, I do know. Anyway,
the genre has moved on from there and fused with
some science fiction, but mostly fantasy. And
also the Fifty Shades of Grey turning point has
really just shifted the whole thing in a very
BDSM direction. You know, it's far more prevalent
in book porn and book talk than it is. Then you
would imagine, like looking at the covers or
just reading, even reading summaries of these
things, the summations from the publishers are
often, you know, there's a wink and a nudge or
there's some coded language. I mean, they don't
present themselves to the uninformed the way
they do to people looking for a particular experience
from their books. It is an odd phenomenon. Yeah,
I mean, I don't want to dunk on Romanticy too
hard because I feel like... Don't worry, I'll
do it. Kind of easy to do. But I think that there
is variation within Romanticy. Not all Romanticy
is just part erotica. I would also say that this
is not a new phenomenon at all. These sort of...
like trashy romance books have always been popular.
But like you said, what is different is that
they have a much more like, you know, innocuous
like presentation to person doesn't know much
about it. And. i think especially like as um
as different demographics drift apart you know
in terms of what they consume people are way
less tuned in into what this stuff actually is
you know like i um like we we know like peop
i i assume people on substack you know surely
know all about romanticism and its perils after
the last discourse cycle. But if I talk to my
average guy friend who has just not cracked open
a book for fun in a while, they're not going
to know what A Court of Thorns and Roses is.
They're just not going to know anything about
this. And yeah, I mean, I think this is not such
a good precedent. I think that we should be honest
about what it is that we're reading. And of course,
people can enjoy things, but Yeah, I think that
there should definitely be more stigma towards
this sort of thing. Like, I remember I, like,
yeah, yeah. I mean, that's basically all I have
to say about that. I have nothing against people
reading what they want to read in order to get
a particular sensation that they're looking for.
That's fine. I mean, that's what everybody does.
You know, some people have, they're searching
for something that I appreciate, and some people
are searching for something that I don't appreciate.
irritates me is that science fiction and fantasy
have been joined at the hip my whole life, and
the fantasy, and in particular fantasy aimed
at women, portion of that genre is crowding out
everything else. So if Romanticy didn't grow
at the expense of speculative fiction, I would
say, you know, go with God, I wish you well,
enjoy. But given that it's a zero -sum competition
with my genre, uh, I'm antagonistic towards romantic.
Yeah. This is something that I've been thinking
about a lot. Um, because I think like on some
level, I think that, um, having this blend of
fantasy and science fiction makes sense. Like,
I mean, if you've ever read Ursula K. Le Guin,
it's just like, yeah, it makes sense that you
can join fantasy and science fiction these interesting
ways. But I do agree, you know, like we're kind
of in this, we're kind of in this golden age
of fantasy in terms of popularity. I don't think
like. I don't know if fantasy novels have ever
been as popular as they currently are. I mean,
it's one of the last genres that people still
read a lot of. I would certainly say that fantasy
is the most widely read genre in my age group,
besides maybe some form of nonfiction. But yeah,
at the same time, the sort of really hard conceptual
science fiction has kind of been pushed to the
side. And I feel like it's not even about like
a lack of works, but it's sort of a lack of institutional
support. Like if you look at, you know, the mainstream
sci -fi awards, for example, it used to be that,
yeah, these awards were given to speculative
fiction. You know, they could theoretically be
given to fantasy or science fiction or whatever,
but they used to award a very particular type
of novel. I would say nowadays the types of novels
that they award are quite different. You know,
like it used to be that they would award books
that were more kind of like coming out of this
more pulpy magazine scene and often had these
like crazy novel ideas that like nobody had seen
before. Whereas nowadays it's much more common
for just kind of like a like, you know, the hot.
like the hot fantasy book of the year to be nominated.
Um, and I think that's fine and great, but like,
like for fantasy to get that kind of recognition,
but there isn't really like a counterpart, you
know, like where, where is, where, like, where
is the award for the more hard sci -fi, um, like
publish it or that publication of the year? Like,
where is the, where is the magazine that focuses
on this type of science fiction? Where's the
publishing house. Um, and. The consolidation
in publishing is really prominent in the Hugo
Awards. If you look at the Hugo Awards for Best
Novel, it's basically just the tour, which is
a sci -fi publishing house that is itself part
of another bigger publishing house that just
basically pats itself on the back and wins over
and over and over. I think it's been quite a
long time since the winner of Best Novel has
not been a product of tour. And I think that's
sad. I think that there should be this diversity
in publishing and this diversity in what sorts
of genres get awarded by both awards and the
market. But I see it as an institutional problem,
first and foremost. Well, I directed us away
from politics into science fiction, and we've
talked about the politics of science fiction.
So let's redirect even harder into the science
fiction territory, just science fiction for its
own sake. You read it on the page. You are you
haven't been doing it as long as I have. So you
have a you know, the things that you have read
and which have made a strong impression on you
are probably going to be different. But also
I'm imagining some overlap. So what are the big,
big names, you know, either titles or authors
for you in print science fiction? In print science
fiction? Yeah. So let's see. I mean, I think
that for me. Asimov is probably the most influential,
sort of. But I see Asimov's greatest achievements
as being more of a curator, community figure
type person. Honestly, I would say that when
I look at... When I look at the course of science
fiction, I find myself being much more drawn
to people who played a sort of like, like curator
or editor role. I think that like, to me, those
are the people who really shaped the direction
of science fiction, you know, like Campbell,
and like, like, Bova and Allison, you know, people
who were trying to intentionally direct science
fiction in a certain direction. But I feel like
that's not exactly what you were asking. I think
in terms of the more foundational authors, I
mean, Ursula K. Le Guin, certainly, Neil Stevenson,
Frank Herbert. I wish I had some kind of list
in front of me. I'm glad you don't. I'm glad
that, you know. The titles you're naming are
having to struggle to the surface. Right, right.
I mean, certainly Ray Bradbury. I mean, maybe
Ray Bradbury more than anyone else. Arthur C.
Clarke. In the 2010s, I would say definitely
Shishun Liu. Definitely, definitely, I think
definitely The Broken Earth deserves mention,
even though it's sort of half fantasy by N .K.
Jemisin. Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe stands
out to me as being important. I would also say,
I mean, William Gibson, obviously, although I
haven't really read that much of his work. I
would say that I probably know more about like
the relative reputations of authors and like
why they're significant than I am having like
firsthand experience reading their novels, which
I think is kind of something that should be fixed.
most of the engagement that i've had with reading
science fiction has been either short stories
or reading web fiction which i would definitely
consider to be part of science fiction but it's
it's certainly like a much different territory
and not really related as related to the question
that you're asking so Yeah, I don't know if that's
exactly the response you were looking for, but
that's what I could think of so far. A lot of
people that came out of the Pacific Northwest
as well, you know, like Greg Baer, Octavia Butler,
Ted Chiang, Ken Liu. I mean, Ken Liu's from Boston,
but forgot Ted Chiang. Yeah, I mean, I think
Ted Chiang is probably one of the most significant
science fiction authors writing today. Ursula
K. Le Guin as well was from Oregon, or at least
she lived in Oregon late in her life. Right,
right, for sure. But must have been earlier too,
because like The Lathe of Heaven. I think it's
set in the Pacific Northwest. So, yeah. I didn't
have an answer in mind. I just wanted to have
you name some things. You mentioned Asimov up
front, and I read and enjoyed Asimov's, you know,
his robot novels and short stories. But there's
an unfortunate phenomenon of, you know, people
who consider themselves to be erudite science
fiction aficionados. When other people ask them,
you know, where do I start? They say, oh, you
got to read the Foundation Trilogy. The Foundation
Trilogy is just so boring and dry. And I just,
I cringed at the thought of people who were willing
to give science fiction a chance. And somebody
said, yeah, start with this. And they read like,
you know, three or four chapters and they're
like, eh, I don't think so. You know, when you
could, you could have given them Greg bear, you
know, you could have given them William Gibson.
Go ahead. Oh yeah. I mean, I certainly wouldn't
recommend Asimov as the first science fiction
novel to read. I mean, I think that, you know,
nowadays I think that Asimov's like, I think
Asimov's shortcomings as a writer are more apparent
nowadays. Like, I think that. you can say what
you will about the changes in science fiction,
but I think that it's fair to say that since
Asimov wrote, science fiction writers are now
expected to be much better character writers.
Like there are very few characters in Foundation
that I can really remember in any way. And I
think that they are also incentivized to be like...
you know, much better prose stylists. Maybe not
much better than they were in, like, the 80s
or 90s, but certainly better than when Foundation
was coming out. And I think if you read Foundation
now, like, especially if you're someone who kind
of just, like, you know, pines for the glory
days of science fiction, it's kind of a reminder
that, like, okay, well, but there are also some
ways in which this genre has improved. I actually
didn't find Foundation to be, well, I mean, okay,
the later books are not as interesting, but I
found Foundation to be pretty interesting. But
I mean, yeah, it's certainly not something that
I would recommend at first to anyone. Well, you
mentioned that his characters aren't that memorable.
Part of that is just the structure of foundation.
There are jumps of hundreds of years where the
characters from the previous chapter are dead.
You know, they live their whole lives and died
a natural death. And now you've got new people
and you've got recorded messages from Harry Seldon,
you know, addressing people in ways that are
increasingly detached from the reality of their
situation as his prognostications have gone off
the rails or, you know, how reality has gone
off the rails from his mathematically pure prognostications.
And when Apple TV turned that series into a TV
show, you know, a big budget prestige TV show,
they had to fix that. You had to have recurring
characters that, you know, you would cast for
multiple seasons and would bring people back,
you know, to see what happened to those characters.
So you couldn't do this. Hey, yeah, we're going
to. We're going to jump ahead to the next crisis,
and it's a whole different cast of characters
who are dealing with it. You know, so they've
introduced longevity and time travel and uploaded
minds and, you know, all of these tricks, basically,
to have the same four or five characters interacting
with each other over many centuries. Oh, and
also the cloned emperors, which is not from the
books, but I thought that was the best. addition
for the tv show was the uh the tripart emperor
who is child's adult and old man simultaneously
um yeah i mean the foundation adapting foundation
was certainly an interesting choice um i was
pretty into the first few episodes of the tv
show especially with the clone emperor thing
like you mentioned but yeah i mean i kind of
did lose some interest um i think that um like
Yeah, it was always going to be difficult. I
mean, I guess I do appreciate the effort. I think
it's cool that someone tried to adapt Foundation,
as difficult as that seems. And understanding,
I mean, I cannot fault them for departing from
Asimov's method of just scrapping your entire
cast of characters with each vignette. That just
doesn't fly in prestige TV. You can't spend as
much money as they've spent visualizing something
that doesn't have a recurring cast. For sure.
Well, since we're on prestige TV and I'll say
sci -fi, I'm not sure if what I'm thinking of
now counts as speculative fiction, but I've been
watching Severance. And just from a sociological
or economic perspective, severance has got a
fascinating premise. There's an operation that
somebody can undergo that splits their personality
in two, and the personality that is at work doesn't
remember what happened at work when they go home,
and the person at work doesn't really know the
details of their life outside of work. So if
you agree to undergo this procedure, You know
that you're either going to wake up at work and
you can never leave. Or if you do quit and leave
work, then you're you effectively die or you're
going to be on perpetual paid vacation. You know,
what a choice. But really, both things are going
to happen. You know, both experiential branches
will be taken. And maybe, you know, does the
does the question which one will be me make any
sense? Is it even, you know, a viable question?
So these are like speculative. This is the meat
for speculative experimentation, like thought
experiments. But it doesn't feel like science
fiction to me. I wonder, first, have you seen
it? And two, you know, where would you place
it in terms of its relation to the science fiction
genre? I've seen a few episodes of Severance.
It's been a little bit of time. I mean, I would
certainly classify Severance as science fiction,
although I would say that as a general rule,
I'm pretty liberal with assigning genre labels.
I'm pretty willing to assign a wide range of
genre labels to many things. But yeah, I guess
what made it feel not science fiction to you?
Well, it just seems to have a whole lot more
in common with, say, Twin Peaks than it does
with... altered carbon you know it's it's just
it's very interested in style and tone and there
other than the severance um procedure there is
no technological difference between the worlds
of that show and our world except that when the
characters go to work they're using very very
old technology like they have computers but they're
big fat crts you know and big clicky keyboards
and um do they even have mice Not sure. But it's,
you know, it's old tech, like, you know, phones
with cords. And so in terms of just visualizing
how the world would be transformed by scientific
and technological advancement, Severance isn't
really interested. It's got its one thing that
it's interested in. It's kind of like, what was
that movie? Brainstorm, which kind of got remade
as Strange Days. The idea that you can record
experience. on hard media and then share it with
other people. And, you know, if that happened,
so many other technological developments would
go hand in hand with that. And these films are
just not interested in exploring, you know, a
systemic upgrade of technological capabilities.
They're just interested in this one tweak. But
the tweak is impossible because it involves,
you know, a huge leap in technological capabilities
that isn't spread around, you know, that the
implications of that leap are not explored. And,
you know, this is, to me, the difference between
Hollywood writers dabbling in science fiction
concepts and people who, you know, are primarily
science fiction authors who might get the chance
to do big budget TV and movies. Right. I mean,
it kind of reminds me of this one time on the
podcast, we were talking to one of my friends,
and he was basically saying that the thing that
most distinguishes hard science fiction, so to
speak. is the degree to which it takes its premises
to its logical conclusion rather than deploying
a certain level of like technological specificity
and i thought that was like an interesting way
to frame it like he was saying that you know
a um like a story a fantasy story that takes
its um like economics very very seriously um
is it's much more hard to him than just like
a very kind of loose story that just happens
to be set in space with spaceships um and i do
think that this style over substance is a point
of tension in a lot of things but but yeah like
i think that um science fiction nowadays has
become more of a like more of an aesthetic than
than like a vision i guess like i think people
are more interested generally in adopting a science
fiction aesthetic than imagining the then then
using it as a tool to imagine the future i think
they're both present but i think that in some
sense the people who created the foundations
of science fiction were too successful they created
an aesthetic that was they created a wide array
of aesthetics that were so compelling that they
kind of became compelling on their own without
like a speculative component. And so I think
that's where questions of genre start to get
really interesting. Like if you have a story
that is really grounded in the aesthetics of
science fiction, like it has spaceships and has
like robots, but at the same time, it just has
all the trappings of like a fantasy novel or
a fantasy adventure. Like, is it sci -fi? Is
it fantasy? Who knows? Yeah. And to some extent,
The distinctions between science fiction and
fantasy, they're arbitrary. But when it comes
to speculative fiction, yeah, you can have speculative
fiction in a high fantasy setting if you are
really going to drill down on the implications
of, say, your economic system. Or if you want
to be like... I've seen YouTube videos examining
the military implications of dragons in Game
of Thrones. Like you have a medieval setting,
but you have air power and you have the ability
to bombard, you know, fortified positions from
the air with fire that is so hot it melts stone.
totally changes the way that you deploy military
force or you project military force. And if only
one side has dragons, you know, then there's
I don't know that George R .R. Martin or even
more so that the TV producers, Benioff and Weiss,
really had that in mind and were, you know, rigorously
drilling down on it. But you could you could
and you could have some speculative fantasy,
although I haven't seen much of it, you know,
to be honest. One of my favorite series is The
Book of the New Sun. So I was happy to hear you
list it as being prominent for you. How old were
you when you first read it? And what was your
experience of getting into it? I mean, I first
read The Book of the New Sun very recently, like
in the past year. I would say that, well, The
Book of the New Sun was recommended very highly
by pretty much every critic of science fiction
and fantasy, as well as a couple of my friends.
I would say that it's not really my type of book.
I think that the amount that I thought it was
good was much better than the amount that I enjoyed
the reading experience. But I did just really
appreciate the sheer... ambition required to
produce such a work like i mean sometimes i was
just reading it and i was just like man i'm kind
of i'm kind of surprised this uh this ever was
written at all um or published i mean yeah or
published um but i you know i mean it was a different
time um i i think that honestly um Yeah, I did
actually write an article about Book of the New
Sun on the Substack, where I was basically contending
that Book of the New Sun, one of the reasons
that it's not really remembered as much today
in the mainstream mainstream, even though it's
so highly regarded within sci -fi circles and
fantasy circles, is that the culture is just
sort of... Moving away from the sort of culture
in which Book of the New Sun would have been
the most relevant, I think Book of the New Sun
even came out a bit late if we're trying to assess
when it would have had maximum impact. I think
if Book of the New Sun came out around the time
that Lord of the Rings was being published and
Narnia was being published and was just sort
of embedded in this more scholarly Christian
culture, I think it really could have had a much
bigger impact. But I think that... in a world
where we are just so much like less literate
about christianity in particular as a culture
and there's not as many of these like cultural
anchors that we can reliably point to a lot of
the book of the new sun just kind of is confusing
or or unknowable um like i i think that something
that i think about a lot is that so much of consuming
media is related to these sorts of um cultural
anchors that you have as a society at a given
time and there are many works in the past that
we can understand on some level we can never
truly understand the same degree that someone
reading it in that time would have because there
are certain cultural anchors that are just implicit
and unknowable and i think that we can kind of
see that happening to the book of the new sun
where i feel like every decade that passes, we
move further away from, like, the culture that
would have best understood what this novel was
trying to say. And you can obviously study these
things, but I think that, yeah, the further we
move away from it, the more difficult it is to
kind of, like, understand it without a serious
work on the reader's end. So the last thing you
said there is very important about Book of the
New Sun. It is a high -effort read. It asks a
lot of the reader. And not all of Gene Wolfe's
fiction is like that. He wrote a series of books
about a Roman soldier in ancient Greece who,
you know, it's basically memento, but in a, you
know, antique setting. And so this character,
his name is Latro, and he forgets. What's happened
to him. And the book that you're reading is his
diary that he's writing for himself to remind
him of who the people around him are and what
the currents in his life is and what he's supposed
to be doing. And he can't reread the whole thing
every day. So it's it's gotten so long. So it's
it's inconsistent with itself. You can see that
he's. He's making errors, like he's reporting
things as fact, which you, the reader, know are
not true. But it doesn't have the recondite vocabulary
of Book of the New Sun, and it doesn't hide its
setting like Book of the New Sun does. I've talked
to people who said, yeah, I started to read that,
but I don't like fantasy, so I didn't stick with
it. And it's like, Book of the New Sun is, I
don't know if you could call it hard sci -fi.
It's definitely science fiction, though. I mean,
it takes place. Possibly millions of years in
the future. The sun is going out, but it's definitely
a high -tech setting. It's just most of the people
don't understand the technology or really have
access to it. You've mentioned it in the context
of Christian literature. And Gene Wolfe, he came
to his Catholicism late in life. He converted
after he married. And you can read the Book of
the New Sun and never know that it's Christian
literature. It's certainly not. You know, it's
not Narnia. It doesn't have Aslan. You know,
it doesn't have these these obvious stand ins
for Christian characters, although almost all
of the characters that you meet are named after
Catholic saints, but probably Catholic saints
you've never heard of. But it's it is a very
dense and layered book. And I read it the first
time in the late 90s when I was in my late 20s.
And, you know, reading it at first, the first
few pages were kind of off putting. But then
something clicked. It's like, oh, this is real.
There's a reality being described here that it's,
you know, there's a reason for this impenetrability.
And if I push through it, you know, it's not
James Joyce, but it's certainly not, you know,
like Frederick Pohl or Robert Heinlein. I mean,
it takes some work to get at it. But I read it
to myself. And then a couple of years later,
I read it aloud to the woman who would become
my wife. And then I read it again several years
after that. And then in the last few years, I've
listened to the audiobooks because there's some
excellent productions of it available on Audible.
And then I'd listen to a podcast series about
it. I mean, I've delved into it in different
ways, you know, coming at it from different angles
over a course of decades. And I think I've gotten
to the point where I've pretty much gotten out
of it what there is to get. But you're not going
to get it on one read for sure. I mean, you'll
get something. There's a lot there. But you won't
really unpack the Book of the New Sun on one
read. And you probably won't unpack it on two
reads unless there's many years between and some
additional work done. Not to go off on such a
tangent in terms of Gene Wolfe and the Book of
the New Sun. I think the thing I most want to
get to with it is that when I first read it,
there was an experiential payoff that... You
know, I've looked to other books to try to recreate
and haven't. But, you know, I don't want to bring
it back to romanticism in any lasting way. But
if somebody got a particular feeling from a book
that they, you know, that feeling was rewarding
and they wanted to get it again from a different
book, go with God. You know, good luck. I totally
understand and approve of your quest and I wish
you the best. I'm probably not going to read
the books that you're going to read, but I wish
you the best. Yeah. I think that honestly, I
would say that G like book of the new song was
probably less novel to me than it was for you
in that two of my favorite sci -fi, I guess these
were both science fantasy works. I would say
do borrow from it. Like they are similar in some
sense. What are they? I mean, the biggest example
is like the Broken Earth trilogy by M .K. Jemisin.
Have you read this before? I have not read any
M .K. Jemisin. I've seen her books on the shelf
of the library, but I have not delved into them.
Right. So the Broken Earth, it's definitely like
less ambitious, but it is set in this world where
people, are like living on the bones of these
dead civilizations and don't really understand
the technology that has made their world and
as you go through the universe of the novel you
realize the truth of some of these technologies
um it tells you things a lot more like it's a
much more accessible novel i mean it's hard to
not be more accessible than the book of nissan
i think um but like You know, you do capture
some of that novel feeling of, like, having the
feeling of seeing, like, this dead... like this
dead civilization. And then this more modern,
like a modern, more primitive one sitting on
the top of it is just this really novel experience.
I remember when I first read this story, I was
just like, wow, this is so cool. I want to see
how much other dead civ literature there's out
there. And there's really not that much of it.
Like I was kind of expecting this to be this
whole booming genre that's not really there.
But I would say that the, so I would highly recommend
that series. But I think that the other, The
other book that it did remind me of somewhat
is this very kind of pulpy web serial, like this
web serialized novel called The Flower That Bloomed
Nowhere, which is just very like, I don't exactly
know how to describe the similarity, but it does
give you the similar sense of being like weirdly
suspended in like time and space and things happening
on like these, drastic time scales that are difficult
for you to comprehend um it's a very interesting
novel if you can call it that but i would say
those are those some similar feelings as well
um and these were just like so resonant for me
in core to my experience of reading science fiction
that like yeah i couldn't help but be reminded
of those things but i think that the component
that i did get from book of the new sun um was
actually this um Like the Christian component,
honestly. I feel like the subtlety with which
the Book of the New Sun treats Christianity is
part of what makes it so much harder to read
in the modern age. If you don't have a pretty
strong background in not only Christianity, but
just Christian scholarship, I feel like you're
going to get a lot less out of it. And it's not
even necessarily obvious. what you should be
looking to learn you know it's like you can't
really just you're not going to learn that much
cultural information for the sake of just reading
like one book right um and um i guess if you'll
allow me um i want to read like this interesting
thing that gene wolfe wrote about um the uh the
book of the new sun that sort of gets at like
what i'm trying to say um he wrote It has been
remarked thousands of times that Christ died
under torture. Many of us have read so often
that he was a humble carpenter that we feel a
little surge of nausea on seeing the words again.
But no one ever seems to notice that the instruments
of torture were wood, nails, and a hammer, that
the man who built the cross was undoubtedly a
carpenter too, the man who hammered in the nails
as much a carpenter as a soldier, as much a carpenter
as a torturer. Very few seem even to have noticed
that although Christ was a humble carpenter,
the only object we are specifically told he made
was not a table or a chair, but a whip. And if
Christ knew not only the pain of torture, but
the pain of being a torturer, as it seems certain
to me that he did, the dark figure is also capable
of being a heroic and even a holy figure. And
like that sort of stuff, like it's just so, like
it's very interesting, very, very interesting
and insightful, but so much of it hinges on the
premise the reader is very familiar with Christianity.
Like there's this part where, He says, yeah,
many of us have read so often that he was a humble
carpenter that we feel a little surge of nausea.
I think there are plenty of people in Gen Z,
like in the US, who just like haven't, like aren't
that familiar with that phrase. But like he's
asserting that like, oh yeah, you've heard this
phrase so much, you must be tired of it. And
a lot of things in the book of the Nissan are
like that, I think. Like it assumes a level of
engagement with Christianity from the reader
that is becoming increasingly rare. Have you
seen The Last Temptation of Christ? I have not
seen The Last Impatient Christ. For those who
don't remember, it's a film from the 80s. It's
by Martin Scorsese. Gosh, who played the Green
Goblin? I just got a blanket on this guy's name.
He was in The Lighthouse. I mean, he's been in
a million things. Willem Dafoe. Yeah, Willem
Dafoe plays Christ. And in the very beginning
of the film, he is working on a cross for the
Romans. And Judas, played by Harvey Keitel, comes
to tell him, you know, why are you making crosses
for the Romans? You're a disgrace! The Romans
can't find anybody to make crosses except for
you. You do it. You're worse than them. You're
a Jew killing Jews. You're a coward. This is,
you know, the idea that Christ built implements
of torture and was later, you know, executed
using them is not something that is unique to
Wolf. But as you say, yeah, it is an idea that
is not current in contemporary, you know, pop.
culture or literary fiction that you know people
under say the age of 35 would be familiar with
yeah and i think that it's not just about the
decline of christianity but the particular way
in which christianity has declined like i think
that you know in the in the mid like in the mid
20th century, there was just a lot of brain drain
out of Christianity. You know, like a lot of
the people who were, who might've been like theologians
or religious scholars in like a past era were,
you know, drifting more towards like the sciences.
And so I feel like the way in which Christianity
declined was, was most pronounced among like,
you know, the. like the scholars and the elite
and i think this really affected the perception
of christianity for for people like myself who
are older who have like only really who like
primarily engaged with christianity and like
it's sort of like less scholarly more like rural
based form which is just like a lot less intellectually
compelling and i think that um honestly i think
this is starting to change a bit like i do think
you're starting to see a little bit of like you
know intellectually inclined young people turning
towards christianity at the grassroots but i
think you know even now i think that the mainstream
impression of christianity in um in america is
just the sort of like you know brain -drained,
less intellectually vital one, because it's just
been so long since we were in the era of Tolkien
and C .S. Lewis and G .K. Chesterton. Have you
read any E .N .M. Banks? I've read The Algebraist
only. Oh, that's a good one, I have to say. The
Algebraist, it's not one of his culture novels,
but it takes place in the same setting, pretty
much. At one point, there's a reference to different
types of... you know, social and political forms.
And he mentions cultures, plural. But yeah, it
is a, you know, it is space opera. Main character
is, he goes to a lot of different places, has
a lot of very, you know, strange experiences,
exotic experiences with aliens. Like, you know,
some of the aliens in the algebraist live inside
of gas giants like Jupiter. And he wears like
a space suit that is also a spaceship. You know,
that he goes down and it's like a one, it is
like an Iron Man soup. It's sort of like manta
ray -ish. And he spends a lot of time inside
a gas giant interacting with these, what do they
call them? Delvers? What were the gas giant?
Oh, dwellers. Yeah, the dwellers. Yes. But he's
written a whole series called the Culture Series,
which is basically, you know, the notion of fully
automated luxury communism. is embodied in the
culture series. Like the culture is this enormous,
like trillions of citizens. It's run by minds,
which is to say artificial intelligences, which
are wholly benevolent to the culture citizens,
but which are pretty Machiavellian and morally
gray when it comes to dealing with outside, you
know, polities and forces. And most of the books
involve their version of the CIA, which they
call special circumstances and special circumstances.
People get up to some very, you know, unculture
like activities, but there is material abundance.
There is maximum freedom, minimal rules, absolute.
total gender equality. Culture citizens can change
gender at will. It takes a few months, but there's
no operation. It's not like it's something being
done to you. You just decide and your body transitions
over to the other sex for as long as you care
to. And so, you know, culture citizens can both
father and mother children. They probably could
clone themselves. I mean, the options for how
you want to live your life are, you know, they're
huge. It's a myriad of options. So he's extremely
left and progressive, but he was writing in the
80s and the 90s before the current era of totalitarian
progressivism, where there's nothing obnoxious
about his presentation of a very far left worldview.
Whereas if somebody tried to write this from
a left or progressive perspective for the left,
for a left audience. it would be very heavy handed
today. And just, you know, from my perspective,
unreadable. But even though I'm not progressive
and I'm not on the political left, I still absolutely
love the culture novels and everything really
that I've read from Iain M. Banks, even though
his politics are not my politics. So it seems
like there's a way of engaging politically in
a very substantial way that Iain M. Banks had
mastered, which is... either beyond the capabilities
or just beyond the desires of the current crop
of writers and i guess publishers as well i i
think i think really it's kind of beyond beyond
the crop of desires i think that's that's really
more of the the problem um like i think that
if you write a novel like that is countercultural
you know like the culture was at the time you
can't afford to be didactic. No one would read
it. I actually have a post on this very subject.
It was one of the more recent posts about The
Broken Earth, actually, by N .K. Jemisin. And
it was talking about how this is actually a pretty
good example of someone using a novel series
as a vehicle for progressive ideology without
being overly didactic. But I think that Since
then, I don't think N .K. Jemisin continued to
write in that direction, really. And I think
it's partially because I don't think that's what
audiences want. Like, I don't really think that,
like, I mean, like, honestly, like, a lot of
people, like, and I'm not even trying to knock
this necessarily, but I think a lot of people
try to read. novels for escapism and catharsis
and a lot of people just want their current views
to just be validated in a very heavy -handed
way like a lot of people really enjoyed watching
mickey 17 because it kind of just gave very like
uncomplicated voice to their concerns and so
i think that in order for that type of style
to like in order for that um for people to write
in this way i think that the novel either needs
to be less of the mainstream culture Or there
needs to be an appetite for engaging with stuff
like that. And I think that, yeah, I think that
there isn't really a ton of appetite for nuance
in this way. I think it's less that authors are
unable to do so, and it's more like they don't
really have an incentive to. Do you know the
history of how E &M Banks got published? I do
not, actually. That's pretty funny. He wanted
to write science fiction, and he didn't have
any luck breaking into science fiction, so he
decided to write literary fiction. And he wrote
a novel called The Wasp Factory, which is not
science fiction. And it did very well. And he
used his newfound success and celebrity as a
literary author to write science fiction. And
he didn't write, you know, ponderous, weighty,
speculative fiction. He wrote fun space opera.
But, you know, his culture books. Maybe by now
they've outsold his literary works, but when
he was writing them, he could have been making
a lot more money and selling a lot more books,
writing stuff for the New York Times bestseller
list. And he was taking a hit in terms of his
earning potential by writing space opera, but
it's what he loved. yeah that's pretty funny
i i certainly respect that well we are pretty
near the end here so let me just uh throw it
open to you is there anything that you wanted
to talk about or any subject that you wanted
to touch on that we haven't gotten around to
right um yeah so thanks for having me on i guess
like a kind of theme that we've been dancing
around is that i i really think that the current
vibe shift against wokeness or whatever you want
to call it, has paradoxically led to a much greater
appetite for genuine diversity. I think that
a lot of media that's being pushed today is like
fake diversity. You know, like it's diverse in
the sense that, you know, people may be like.
eating different types of food or something like
that. Like, you know, modern day authors love
to talk about different kinds of like ethnic
food, but it doesn't actually involve like any
real sort of like intellectual diversity. And
I think that like, you know, the vast majority
of stuff that's published today is the ideology
of people who do like MFA programs at Ivy league
schools. Like that, that is just the worldview
that happens and it's not really shared by. the
vast majority of the culture. And so when you
read books like the book of the new song, it
really gets you thinking about like, wow, what
would a really vital literary landscape look
like where you have this true intellectual diversity,
like people that really just have a totally different
worldview for how the thing should be and how
the world works. I think that is actually what
makes Sishun Liu. the, uh, the Chinese author.
So important. Have you, have you read Sishinli
before? Three body problem? I, I watched both
the Chinese and the Netflix adaptations, you
know, TV adaptations of it, but I've not read
the original novels. I would highly recommend
the Three -Body Problem series, in particular
the last book. It's very heady and hard sci -fi.
But I think that another thing to appreciate
about it is that it is truly from a different
culture. It was published originally in Chinese,
and it was just not written for American audiences.
And you can tell. There are just certain things
and assumptions that there may be, like, hard
to put your finger on exactly but you read the
book and you're just like yeah i can tell this
came from someone who has like a totally a totally
different non -western worldview and that is
quite interesting you know it's it's much more
genuine diversity than like you know a chinese
american who was raised in the suburbs and did
an mfa at yale you know um and so i think that
um like i guess as an example of what i'm talking
about um there's a there's a pretty strong focus
on this idea of like humanity's oneness, you
know, like the importance of not having humanity
be split up into these separate parts. And I
think this is like a pretty integral component
of like the Chinese worldview and like how China
is to be and how civilization is to be. This
is really difficult to articulate to like a Westerner.
It's something that I still haven't quite. wrapped
my head around and i think this is also central
to the taiwan question and stuff like that um
but it's just like it was something that i don't
think i understood quite well enough to articulate
to someone but i understood it well enough to
be like okay this is why this particular focus
is there um so anyway i think that i i really
hope that we see like you know a greater like
a proliferation of intellectual diversity in
in media which i don't know i could go either
way on whether i expected this to happen i'm
not particularly optimistic but i think it could
happen um and yeah i think that with greater
intellectual diversity like better science fiction
will follow so here's a hopeful note on which
to end um andy weir wrote the martian and it's
excellent but it's it's definitely very you know
a nerdy white guy uh science fiction as as physics
problem solving exercise and no publisher would
touch it. So he self -published on Amazon, sold
a bunch of copies and publishers decided, you
know what, we'd like to make money from this
thing, which is already selling. So let's, let's
buy it. And it, you know, got made into a film
directed by Ridley Scott. So it happens, you
know, you can call it a Horatio Alger story,
which is the exception, which, you know, makes
the unpalatable rule acceptable to the hopeful,
but you know, it is possible. it is possible
for good science fiction to get through the filters
yeah for sure and like honestly like i think
that the points that are being brought up right
now are just like they would have been most salient
and urgent like 10 years ago i think you know
there's like a process by which these things
trickle down and i think now like the direction
of these things has already kind of shifted you
know and so i think that um I feel like this
is something that I don't feel particularly like,
I guess, sort of like, um, gerotanical ideology
in publishing. It's like something that I'm not
as pressed about because I just feel like things
are already moving with the culture that it's
just not going to be as salient as it once was.
And I also think that market forces are going
to shape things in a similar way. Like I ultimately
think that market forces. basically determine
all of the actions of these conglomerates like
almost all of them and so i think that because
we're seeing this vibe shift i don't really expect
this to be like nearly as much of a concern as
it was in in the past like you know five or ten
years or so although i could certainly be surprised
i could certainly be surprised so we'll have
to see what happens the personnel in publishing
aren't going to shift as rapidly as you know
the vibes of the culture in general uh they're
They're kind of like the Supreme Court. They're
they're an ideological anchor that is going to
lag. Well, I mean, they could be fired by the
like, you know, the Wall Street CEOs and said
giant megacorps. Yeah, but, you know, it is it
is like BlackRock and other private equity and
financial institutions that are allowing companies
like Disney to lose money hand over fist year
after year in pursuit of ideological purity.
So, I mean, the. The progressive orthodoxy has
significant financial backing, which is it is
not as susceptible to supply and demand and profit
as you might think in a society like ours, which
is so aggressively capitalistic. Right, right.
I mean, yeah, I certainly think that like, you
know, these sorts of the sort of the media will
continue to come out. But I think that, you know,
I think the market will respond. to like an appetite
for these other things. I mean, I just, I've
been pretty struck by just how quickly things
have shifted, at least it's seeming to me, just
like, you know, from my, just like anecdotally
from being like on the ground, I guess, how people's
views have changed, how in particular, how young
people's views have changed. So I don't know.
I think it's hard to say what will come next,
but I think that the flashpoints in like, Yeah,
the culture war, I suppose, are definitely going
to be much different in the near future. Oh,
yeah. Absolutely. Well, Kevin, your Substack
and podcast again are what? SynthesizedSunsets
.substack .com. All right. Well, thank you very
much. It's good talking to you. Yeah, for sure.
All right. That was Kevin of the Synthesized
Sunsets. Magazine, Substack, and Podcast. And
reading from the description of the Substack,
it says, Synthesize Sunsets is a Seattle mag
about speculative fiction and the future of pop.
Every quarter will bring a new season of the
magazine, which will feature a print edition
and an aesthetic theme to guide the articles
for that season. Speculative fiction is meant
in the broadest possible sense. Anything involving
future visions or distant worlds is fair game.
Each issue will cover a wide range of media,
including literature, film, and web fiction.
In addition to critical content, we will also
publish short fiction written by Seattle writers.
If you would like to submit a piece, please send
an email to synthesizesunsets at substack .com
with the subject line, Fiction Submission. Anyway,
it goes on, but rather than read it to you, I
will just direct you to that sub stack. If you
are listening to this via sub stack, well, then
it'll be very easy to find. But if not, you're
going to have to do some typing. Again, it is
synthesized sunsets. And of course, we were talking
about science fiction, and I should, if I know
what's good for me at every opportunity, remind
people that I have written a science fiction
novel. It is called Fear and Loathing in the
Kuiper Belt. Gen X science fiction. It is available
exclusively from Amazon, either as a Kindle or
as a paperback. And to thank somebody, I don't
know who it is. They identify themselves only
as Amazon customer. I'm going to read a five
star review of the book. Amazon customer writes
fiercely inventive. Uninhibited hard sci -fi
that destroys old limits. Really great book.
I lost a lot of sleep staying up late to binge
on this. First part of the book had riveting
and uninhibited world building. What would life
on a long -term spaceship actually be like? And
how would behavioral and sexual mores develop
to fit the isolated community of a starship?
How might AI change human society, and how might
humanity split into different subspecies? The
main characters are well -developed and thankfully
not repeats of familiar tropes. But this book
really kicks in when the ship reaches its destination
and new, ancient life is discovered and interacted
with. Brilliant writing. I'm eager for a follow
-up. Well, I'm writing a follow -up, but it is
a prequel rather than a sequel. I have no promised
date for it, but... I am working on it consistently.
All right, that is all. I would direct you to
my substack. That is where the bulk of my effort
goes these days that isn't fiction writing. The
fiction writing is happening behind the curtain,
as it were, only to be revealed when it is ready
for consumption in large chunks. All right, I
will talk to you again soon. Stay well.