The Goth Club

Not actually a stand up comedy gig

Normally, I try to keep myself out of this blog. My own personal life is not as entertaining (well, with the exception of my standup comedy featuring tentacles) as my inane ranting.

But I figure this may well be of interest to many of you, my dear readers. You see, you may have pegged me as something of a nerd. A geek. As socially graceful as my wardrobe is filled with bright colours and matching patterns. Frankly, I’m not sure what gave it away. The constant science fiction references, that I currently run the Melbourne Anime Festival, the collection of vintage calculators and Atari 2600 cartridges… Aren’t these the trappings of normal people?

I digress… The point is that I’ve recently acquired the SF&F bookstore Of Science & Swords. (more…)

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It should come as no surprise to anyone living in a major urban centre that overcrowding is going to be a massive problem in the future. The very near future if you live in Melbourne. One of the huge issues here is that people in Western countries are simply not willing to give up their “quality of life” (read: massive mansions that are far too large for their actual needs and only serve to live out fantasies put upon most people by 1960s sitcoms, and current Hollywood dramas), and live in places that are actually of a suitable size to their needs. Everyone needs a mansion, but there’s not actually enough land for everyone to have one.

The Cyberpunk genre gives us two solutions to this quandary:

1. Massively unchecked urban sprawl, leading into megacities that span multiple state boundaries, and have impressively large buildings situated in the middle, where all the work is done by an underclass of artificial humanoid life that totally doesn’t resent us like in Appleseed; or
2. Arcology type structures. (more…)

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Cyberpunk is one of those genres that is clearly defined by it’s elements. It’s always got some form of post humanism, some form of technology corrupting society, some form of secret cabal that controls the rest of the world, some form of societal degradation, and always, always there has been a massive shift in the economy to either total collapse, or brink of collapse with everything controlled by the aforementioned secret cabal.

I know that most of these posts on cybperunk have been concentrating on technology that already exists, and me calling out the scoffers who claim bullshit on the tech. Well, what about the societal concepts as well? Having been paying attention to the crap that’s going down both here and abroad lately, it’s beginning to make me seriously think that perhaps Ben Elton, William Gibson and Masamune Shirow were onto something. (more…)

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For starters, no, this blog is not abandoned… I’m just having real trouble being motivated enough to do things for it lately. However, today strikes me as a day for procrastination, so I’m writing numerous articles and scheduling them. My apologies to people if they’re out of date by the time they post.

There are two parts to this review: There’s my rant about why, from an organisational perspective, this is a bloody shambles and could be done way better. There will also be the part where I go on about it as someone that attended it and had a bloody good time. Please keep in mind that one is my professional opinion, as an events manager, and the other is personal, and the two should be treated separately. (more…)

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