#ken-macleod — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #ken-macleod, aggregated by home.social.
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@Pixels_Perspective
"The darker the night, the brighter the star".
Russian proverb I'm told.
#SciFi : appears in #KenMacleod 's novel #CosmonautsKeep (first of a #trilogy Recommended, for people who like SF -
@Ambulocetus
#SciFi #KenMacleod in a recent trilogy #Lightspeed introduced a national #AI the nature of which was empathic anticipation.He doesn't write that as you pulled up to the drive-through the order you were about to ask for would be ready - or at 5 seconds readiness ahead of you.
Possibly with some fragment of green fibrous veg. added free at the point of use in accordance with national health service guidance.
Have a nice day.
Yes you could say no, order and wait, waste green.
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@glynmoody
#SciFi Clarke suggested we need 3 communication satellites. #GEO
#MurrayLeinster wrote "Space station" suggesting one would be launched in #LEO
#StanleyKubrick showed us one big wheel in #2001#Computronium is a #trope A solar system becoming concentric shells and rejecting waste heat as infrared.
#KenMacleod posited a green tinge spreading from a point as stars were surrounded by orbiting habitats, bubbles with airtrees.
I think Bezos may be premature and excessive.
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@SecondUniverse
Not my area, but logically, dont you need to disclaim _all_ biological components, to deprived the phrase you don't like of any meaning?
Which implies you've removed biological from "human thing" as well.#SciFi writers have been exploring the edge cases of humanness and biological elements for several generations, and Hollywood and Tech bros have caught a distorted idea of that recently.
eg #KenMacleod in The Stone Canal inter alia remarking that Gynoids will precede Androids. -
@jwildeboer
And a touch of Ken Macleod's Fall Revolution. The Cassini Division, is not the earliest, but might be a good place to start for the shock of the strange. -
Fantastic Fiction: Fascism: We live in worrying times. Fascism is on the rise across Europe and America, according to the consensus of many commentators. In this post, I will highlight SF that has speculated on the rise and acti… (#Babylon5 #ClaireNorth #KenMacLeod #LorraineWilson #LucyFerris #MarghanitaLaski #MarisaCrane #MurrayConstantine #NanaKwameAdjeiBrendan #OctaviaButler #PhilipKDick #SJGroenwegen #UptonSinclair #WardMoon)
Full post: https://seattlein2025.org/2025/04/18/fantastic-fiction-fascism/
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We live in worrying times. Fascism is on the rise across Europe and America, according to the consensus of many commentators. In this post, I will highlight SF that has speculated on the rise and activities of fascism. In a later blog post, I’ll discuss science fiction that has thought about ways to resist.
Science fiction in the 1930s had its fair share of authoritarian dictators. Upton Sinclair’s It Can’t Happen Here is a famous warning novel that feels all too relevant. In Sinclair’s vision, a populist demagogue takes power on the promise to halt immigration and make America great once more. But there is a lesser-known standout work that tried to warn the world of what was to come. Published under the alias Murray Constantine, Swastika Night (1937) projects a future in which the Nazis and Japanese won and have divided the world. Jews have been eradicated, Christians live in reservations, women are reduced to a voiceless and a near-invisible drudge caste, and the world is ruled by Teutonic knights. One aspect of the book that jumps out is the degree to which women have collaborated in their own oppression—a scenario that looked ridiculous to me on first read, but isn’t as funny in a world of “trad wives.”
Immediately after the Second World War, in the UK, people were trying to envisage a better future. Others were pushing back. In Marghanita Laski’s Tory Heaven; or, Thunder on the Right (1948), the ultra-right wing launch a coup and re-create their “natural order.” On a desert island, five people have constructed a meritocracy. When they are rescued, protagonist James Leigh-Smith (think Jacob Rees-Mogg) prays, “God, let it be as it might have been. Alter the clock, fix the election, do it any way you please, but let me see the England of all decent Conservatives’ dreams.” He finds himself in a country in which everyone is assigned to their correct social class, with the aristocracy and gentry given fixed incomes and told what to think, what to enjoy, who to marry, etc. It doesn’t end well. James discovers that while he has been given a place, it is conditional on his absolute support. He isn’t, as he thought, one of the rulers.
After the war, there were a slew of alternative history novels warning that “it could have happened here,” of which my favorites are Ward Moore’s Bring the Jubilee (1953) about a Confederate America, or Philip K. Dick’s Man in the High Castle (1962), one of the works from the 1961-1962 era being celebrated in Seattle. However, these books are consolatory in that it didn’t happen here. I’m more interested in texts that say, “If this goes on, this is where we are heading.”
Recent examples of warning novels include Octavia Butler’s Parable (or Earthseed) series, where the second book tracks the rise of right-wing fundamentalist Christians. In the television series Babylon 5, the space station becomes one of the holdouts against a fascist earth, but the series neatly ignores that the station is not a democracy. It is at best a benevolent military meritocracy. Lucy Ferris’s The Misconceiver (1997) is told through the voice of an underground abortionist in a world in which the right has rolled back all freedoms for women, gay people, and non-whites. Most recent warning books are focused on race and sexual freedoms, but some take up fundamental and systemic issues that warn of rising facism. Ken MacLeod’s Corporation Wars series (2016-17) envisages bitter war around the fundamental ideological differences between fascism and humanism, a future divided between those who see only themselves as truly human and those who still feel humanity is (or should be) structured around collectivity and the acknowledgement of others’ realities.
Since the 2016 U.S. election, and the extreme behaviour of the (many) British prime ministers in the past decade, fascism has felt ever more threatening in the Anglosphere. Lorraine Wilson’s This Is Our Undoing (2021) is set in a fractured and fascist Europe and explores the interrelationship between the personal and the political. In Marisa Crane’s I Keep My Exoskeleton To Myself (2023) and Chain-Gang All-Stars (2023) by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, the carceral state has found new ways to abuse and exploit the underclass. In The Disinformation War (2023), SJ Groenwegen takes on the disinformation that has infected the landscape of social media. Claire North’s Notes from the Burning Age (2021) explores the rise of authoritarian nationalism in a post-collapse future after a time of rebuilding and prosperity.
We have been warned. This time round we know what’s coming.
With thanks to Facebook friends for suggestions.
Farah MendlesohnFarah Mendlesohn is a con-runner, a retired history professor, a charity manager, co-editor of the Hugo Award-Winning Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction, author of the Hugo-nominated The Pleasant Profession of Robert A. Heinlein, and is currently working on a short book about Joanna Russ’s The Female Man (preorder Considering The Female Man by Joanna Russ, or, As the Bear Swore). Farah has chaired three Eastercons, has served in various capacities in Worldcons and Eastercons, and is part of the World Fantasy 2025 team. (Farah/they/she)
https://seattlein2025.org/2025/04/18/fantastic-fiction-fascism/ #Babylon5 #ClaireNorth #KenMacLeod #LorraineWilson #LucyFerris #MarghanitaLaski #MarisaCrane #MurrayConstantine #NanaKwameAdjeiBrendan #OctaviaButler #PhilipKDick #SJGroenwegen #UptonSinclair #WardMoon -
Latest in my series of blogposts on Ken MacLeod's fiction. Here, I look in detail at the Engines of Light trilogy, a key work. Also some notes on the Dialectic, Historical Materialism, and the Scottish Programme.
#sf #sff #scottishsff #kenmacleod #RoadtoGlasgow2024 #Glasgow2024 #worldcon #enginesoflight -
I've started reading the Ken MacLeod anthology A Jura For Julia. Already liking Nineteen Eighty Nine, in which Winston Smith finds himself caught up in the overthrow of Big Brother. A good story to read in the 75th anniversary year of 1984's publication.
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Ken MacLeod is one of the Guests of Honour for the Glasgow Worldcon so I'm rereading and blogging on his novels. Here are my thoughts on Intrusion (2012) which I think is his best novel and one of the best British novels of the 21C.
#sf #sff #sciencefiction #RoadtoGlasgow2024 #Glasgow2024 #worldcon #scottishsff #kenmacleod #intrusion #bookstodon -
Next in my #RoadtoGlasgow2024 blog series: Ken MacLeod's The Night Sessions (2008).
#sf #sff #sciencefiction #kenmacleod #worldcon #Glasgow2024 #bookstodon -
Continuing my series of blogposts on Scottish SFF and the novels of Ken MacLeod in particular, here are my thoughts on The Corporation Wars.
#sf #sff #scottishsff #worldcon #Glasgow2024 #RoadtoGlasgow2024 #kenmacleod #thecorporationwars #bookstodon #bookreviews -
From the 2024 Cymera Festival - @amendlocke on stage in the Pleasance Theatre https://www.flickr.com/photos/woolamaloo_gazette/53771053282/in/photostream/
#Edinburgh #Edimbourg #Cymera2024 #photography #photographie #books #livres #KenMacLeod #author #auteur #portrait #Pleasance
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From the weekend's Cymera Festival : @starkholborn in conversation with Oliver Langmead , @aptshadow & @amendlocke in the Pleasance Theatre https://www.flickr.com/photos/woolamaloo_gazette/53772171528/in/dateposted/
#books #livres #Edinburgh #Edimbourg #photography #photographie #Cymera2024 #OliverLangmead #StarkHolborn #KenMacLeod #AdrianTchaikovsky #author #auteur #bookstodon
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Rereading the novels of Ken MacLeod in the run-up to the Worldcon in Glasgow, where he is GOH. Starting with Newton's Wake (2004).
#sciencefiction #sf #sff #worldcon #Glasgow2024 #RoadtoGlasgow2024 #kenmacleod #book #bookreview #newtonswake -
Taken this day, 2022, @amendlocke reading at Shoreline of Infinity's Event Horizon evening https://www.flickr.com/photos/woolamaloo_gazette/52555361184/
#Edinburgh #Edimbourg #books #livres #ScienceFiction #photography #KenMacLeod #author #auteur #ShorelineOfInfinity
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Taken this day, 2021, @amendlocke book launch with @cymerafestival https://www.flickr.com/photos/woolamaloo_gazette/51714286634/
#Edinburgh #Edimbourg #photography #books #livres #KenMacLeod #Author #auteur #ScienceFiction #Cymera
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Taken this day, 2017, Farrah Mendelsohn, @arrroberts Jo Walton & @amendlocke forming a science fiction barbershop quartet at the Edinburgh Book Festival
https://www.flickr.com/photos/woolamaloo_gazette/36608310966/in/photostream/#Edinburgh #Edimbourg #books #livres #photography #FarrahMendelsohn #JoWaton #KenMacLeod #AdamRoberts #author #EdinburghInternationalBookFestival #bookfestival #ScienceFiction
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Taken this day, 2016, @amendlocke signing books for one of my chums at @edbookfest https://www.flickr.com/photos/woolamaloo_gazette/28387056794/in/photostream
#books #livres #EIBF #Edinburgh #Edimbourg #photography #KenMacLeod #ScienceFiction #author #EdinburghInternationalBookFestival #EIBF
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Taken this day, 2014, @nnedi & Ken MacLeod in conversation with Stuart Kelly for @ScottishPEN at Summerhall https://www.flickr.com/photos/woolamaloo_gazette/14422508405/
#Edinburgh #Edimbourg #books #livres #photography #NnediOkorafor #KenMacLeod #ScottishPEN #ScienceFiction #Summerhall
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Terrific evening at final Event Horizon of the year, organised by #Edinburgh based Scottish science fiction journal Shoreline of Infinity, including Ken MacLeod among others. Not cent catch up with chums and be among my peeps.
#ScienceFiction #books #Pleasance #Edimbourg #ShorelineIfInfinity #author #writer #livres #KenMacLeod #Scotland #Ecosse
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CW: CW: Scottish Politics, Mastodon.Scot Moderation
I do wonder how things will work out with instance blocking.
Whether it's all going to go all a bit #KenMacLeod with multiple micro-federations instead of micro-states with some intermittent linking between them.
Which could be a good thing as it allows for each to become increasingly weird in their own way.
Kinda tempted to run my own instance to get a better feel for how the integration works.