Category Archives: Columns

Playing Our Way To the Future: Consumer Science and Technology goes Military

Last month, I spoke at a United States Army Training and Doctrine Command event billed as a mad scientist conference. That was actually quite an honor, and I enjoyed it more than I expected to, even though it was hard to spend three days thinking about threats based on new technology. I’ve got a blog entry up at my regular site that talks more about the conference, but suffice it to say I’ve been thinking about the military and science/science fiction. In the way of all attractive coincidences, I was also recently asked to write a military science fiction story. All that, and I’m basically a pacifist! Continue reading Playing Our Way To the Future: Consumer Science and Technology goes Military

We are all sheep: Avatar, Bayonetta and the hypnosis of low-brow culture

Blasphemous Geometries by Jonathan McCalmont

###

I say this without having actually seen it, but James Cameron’s Avatar (2009) is an interesting film. This is because its success has had the same effect upon film critics and cultural commentators as pissing on an electric fence… people are sore, jittery and annoyed at pretty much everyone, themselves included. Continue reading We are all sheep: Avatar, Bayonetta and the hypnosis of low-brow culture