Answering some of the repeat objections to my Three Body Problem video This Is Clickbait — there’s a huge amount of uncritical coverage of 3BP, very few people have taken the time to question the pro-authoritarian stance of the book. …

Us.

Andor has Marxist ideology baked into its core —

With its stark insight into the financial world of post 2008, Billions is a Great Gatsby for our age. — Tv shows do what they say in the title. Friends is a show about friends. Star Trek is a show about a trek through the stars, and Breaking Bad is a show about a man breaking to bad. Billions is a show about Billionaires. …

I don’t consider myself a true fan of many things, but I am an unapologetic Iain (M) Banks fanboy. Which is an easy thing to be. Banks is a brilliant, brilliant writer. A storyteller in the class of Neil Gaiman, with the muscular prose abilities of J G Ballard, and…

The Player of Games by Iain M Banks makes a powerful argument for peace as the ultimate strategy. — Incredible thanks to my patrons for making this essay possible. And to my beta readers, in particular Sarah Imrisek and Joshua Newman, for challenging my arguments. Games have always been seen, to a greater or lesser extent, as models of life. Monopoly makes its social metaphor explicit; he who owns…