anarchySF - an anarchist, science fiction podcast

We talk about how to critique the Fascist sentiments in Warhammer 40k, without worrying too much about the degrees of intent or satire behind it.

We talk about Ammonite, a somewhat under-the-radar excellent sci-fi book about a virus killing all the men in a far-off planet and exploring indigenous lands as a colonizer anthropologist

Themes explored:

- Anthrophopolitics and diversity within identity

- Biopolitics and virology

- "Going Native" (TM)

- Some Ursula LeGuin themes

Eden's ep of death-sentence about The Dawn of Everything:

https://soundcloud.com/death-sentence-pod/david-wengrow-and-david-graeber-the-dawn-of-everything

We talk about the sci-fi strategy game Ixion and its somber adventure through space.

Some topics discussed:

- Shameful space

- Space is silence and death

- Gravestone science

- Accelerating the flows

- The eternal recurrence of the same

- Middle management euphemisms

Referenced Some More News video 'Jeff Bezons Learned Nothing in Space':

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7TQFFH9gj8&ab_channel=SomeMoreNews

This is an especially rambly episode of us talking about the excellent kitchen sink space romp movie Spacesweepers.

Topics discussed:

- Billionaires hate humanity

- The limits of Villainry

- What internationalism looks like

- The ethics/politics distinction

We read Brooke Bolander's short and painful novelette and spoke about:

- Nuclear semiotics

- The uses of violence

- The master's tools

- Being pushed to the corner

Citizen Sleeper is touching and optimistic without being saccharine and might be just what we need in these trying times.

The podcast opens with us venting our feelings and thoughts about another demonstration of incredible violence from Israel against the Palestinian people. Free Palestine!

Then we talk some themes. Here's what you can expect:

• Gaming under capitalism
• Vicious and virtuous cycles
• Refugee experience
• Care ethics - A softer world is possible)
• Intra-class struggles
• Radical embodiment (Yes, Eden talks about the body some more)

We talk about Corey J White's modern vision of Cyberpunk: Repo Virtual, reimagining the genre and its radical potential.

Topics discussed:

- Data creep

- Radical potential of games

- Firearms in smart cities

- Cyberpunk's questionable beginnings

- Opting in / Opting out

- Identity politics and data dystopia

Referenced pieces:

- Video discussing (among other things) how youtube manufactures identities:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41B5YonixBs&ab_channel=F.DSignifier
- Watched over by machines of loving grace:

https://allpoetry.com/All-Watched-Over-By-Machines-Of-Loving-Grace

We discussed the role-playing game Spire, with its different ways of representing oppression and the struggle against it.

- Epistemic vice and epistemic resistance

- Construction of knowledge and infrastructure space

- Adevnturism and the challenge of struggling in a hopeless fight

- Good weird and bad weird

Links:

Eden's podcast appearance about magical realism and much more:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/inner-experience-62792132?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copy_to_clipboard&utm_campaign=postshare

Eden's essay on the topic:

https://www.notthesky.com/posts/essays/on-becoming-a-god/

Mordew is a down-to-earth, complex fantasy world, and a promising beginning to a promised trilogy. We talk about:

- Realist fantasy

- Materialist morality

- Knowledge and Protagony

- Mark Fisher's Red Plenty

See much more anarchist science fiction at anarchysf.com

External links:

Protagony, by Innuendo Studios:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R943_eAvnWw&t=75s&ab_channel=InnuendoStudios

We dive deep into "The Matrix (1999)" and a little bit into the sequels. No Resurrections here as this was recorded before it came out.

Topics discussed:

- What is the Matrix?

- Snooty philosophers vs. the Matrix

- Abolishing everything

- The Messiah Complex

- Do we want to escape to the Desert of the Real?

- Fighting together

Editing took a while, so references to current events are referring to about a month ago, including the sad discussion of Charles Mills' death.

Charles Mills' NYT obituary (many more exist):

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/27/us/charles-w-mills-dead.html

CCK Philosophy's video on Baudrillard and the Matrix:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bf9J35yzM3E&t=804s&ab_channel=Jonas%C4%8Ceika-CCKPhilosophy 

We talk about a medley of Kurt Vonnegut books, how they play around with cynicism and sentimentalism, how they're anarchist and humble and absurdist.

Near the end Eden mentions this paper by David Graeber and David Wengrow:
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/62756/1/__lse.ac.uk_storage_LIBRARY_Secondary_libfile_shared_repository_Content_Graeber%2C%20D_Farewell%20to%20childhood_Graeber_Farewell%20to%20childhood_2015.pdf?fbclid=IwAR1tVc7d35wbjGhGmH-L2VnhDqUHEMaSiMH0ubzQEaUhZlJcxSX-f4_H80w

We talk about the video game franchise Dishonored. Topics discussed:

- The means of magical production

- Sociological storytelling

- Resentiment

- Hypocritical opiate (of the masses)

- What good is an individual?

- What to do after a revolution

We had a great time talking about Oval, by Elvia Wilk. It's a complicated little story about being an artist in Berlin and watching as the world around you burns, or turns.

Discussions:

- Leftism's "call to action"

- Reciprocity vs. Transactions

- The Relationship Between Hi-Tech and Art

- How Tech Falls Apart

- Human Nature and Economics

References:

"Hauntology" is discussed in Derrida's "Spectres of Marx"

We mention a video by the great youtube channel space commune, about art and gentrification:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJqBAqM-8KU&ab_channel=SpaceCommune

We talk about a cool little action movie that didn't do well in theatres but has its own little place in our hearts with its scathing critiques of bad environmentalism, bad identity politics, and bad cyberpunk. 

Paper on design fiction (though it doesn't use the term):

https://www.hellofosta.com/writing/the-future-mundane

We talk about the Rivers Solomon's thought provoking and gut punching "An Unkindness of Ghosts". But we promise there are no spooks! Some rough discussion topics though (Body manipulation, sexual assault and rape).

Topics discussed:

- The pneumatics of power

- The revolutionary potential of food

- Afropessimism

- Racialization

- Midwives

- Gendered Racism

External reading referenced:

- Article about Afropessimism:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/07/20/the-argument-of-afropessimism

- More critical view on Afropessimism:

https://www.academia.edu/44499560/Nick_Mitchell_The_View_from_Nowhere_On_Frank_Wildersons_Afropessimism_Spectre_November_2020_

- Desert:

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/anonymous-desert

We talk about the incredible film adaptation to the early 20th century epic poem Aniara. Pretty depressing stuff, but we refuse to be doomers.

Discussion topics:

- Why are the people who cause calamity in charge of fixing it?

- Why do we obey?

- Why do we work?

- How do temporary hierarchies become permanent?

- Opium for the masses

- The complicity of scientists 

Lindsey Ellis video essay on three act structure:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0QO7YuKKdI&ab_channel=LindsayEllis

Oliver Thorn's video essay on airport security:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyzd_a6vLWY&ab_channel=PhilosophyTube

On "efficiency" compromising the readiness of hospitals for a pandemic:

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2020/09/gambling-with-your-health

We talk about Jeff Vandermeer's New-Weird book - Annihilation, a book about climate horror and accepting uncomfortable changes.

Issues discussed:

- The horror of climate change

- Unintelligible politics

- The failure of facts and logic

- Doing better than Lovecraftian racism

- Becoming other

- Permeable boundaries

We talk about the excellent solitary space adventure that is Moon (2009). Topics discussed:

- How exploitation is marketed to white men

- Foucault's "Care of the self"

- How space capitalism is an especially risky form of exploitation

- How space can be an opportunity to organize

- The race between capitalist exploitation and worker organization

- Capitalism's obvious failures

Links:

Innuendo Studio's discussion of the right's obsession with cucks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQjVbk6JSck&ab_channel=InnuendoStudios

The Ethics of the Care of the Self as a Practice of Freedom: https://pages.uoregon.edu/koopman/events_readings/cgc/foucault_ethics_concern_for_self.pdf

PhilosophyTube and Mexie's video on the housing market: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qihG6AGjkRk&t=1059s&ab_channel=PhilosophyTube

Current Affairs' Fake Nerd Boys of Silicon Valley: https://www.currentaffairs.org/2020/07/the-fake-nerd-boys-of-silicon-valley 

We talk about Ada Palmer's "Too Like the Lightning", how it portrays the enlightenment, gender, politics, all the goodness.

It's a challenging read, but it delivers on its promises

Themes discussed:

- How the social contract makes a new person

- What was the Enlightenment?

- Confusing gender roles

- Fabricating consent

- Ideology

We talk about the pen and paper role playing game Shadowrun, focusing on the themes it allows its players and storytellers to explore. Shadowrun is a troperific mix of sci-fi and fantasy that takes everything that's wrong about the world and blows it up at the same time.

Subjects discussed:

- Accelerationism and the Frankfurt school's influence on it

- Reclaiming Cybernetics

- Meaning in postmodern works

- Mosaicism

- Exceptionalism

- Radical infrastructure space

We talk about Jack Womack's "Random acts of senseless violence" - a "minute into the future" dystopia told from the perspective of a 12 year old girl. It's gritty and depressing, just our speed.

Topics include:

- How this is a horror story for the Bourgeois

- The atomization of daily life

- Hobbesian themes

- Derrida and the duality between center and periphery

- The merits of a political book with no obvious villain

- The violence/mundanity barrier

We discuss one of science fiction's titans: Ursula K. Le Guin, in one of her slightly less read books: The Telling, offering a radical perspective on religion, colonialism and reason. Some themes:

- Center-based vs. non-center-based epistemology

- Decolonialism

- Non-ideal anthropology

- Multiple views on religion

- Ways of life as resistance

Audio on my (Yanai's) side is a bit rough due to a recording issue, sorry about that!

For more information on Decolonialism I would, from my limited experience, recommend Serene Khader's "Decolonizing Universalism" and Vrinda Dalmiya's "Caring to Know" (tangentially related)

We discuss Philip K. Dick's "Flow My Tears the Policeman Said". 

Some themes discussed:

- Kant's metaphysics in Philip K. Dick's writing

-  Power's will to knowledge

- Radical embodiment

- The danger and potential of drugs

- The transparency of police

- Self identity as a source of stability