Why Is Sci-Fi Such Hot Garbage?

  • 6 months ago
Philosopher and novelist Stefan Molyneux takes apart Dune, Star Wars, the Terminator, and all other sorts of nonsense!

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Transcript
00:00 Why is sci-fi such hot garbage? Such as Star Wars, Dune, Three-Body Problems, Star Trek, etc.
00:05 I've always loved the idea of the genre, but it rarely lives up to the hype.
00:09 Artists are propagandists, and therefore they're usually susceptible to propaganda.
00:15 Artists are very easy to program, so that you can program others.
00:18 And artists don't understand the free market.
00:22 Artists don't understand the free market.
00:25 It's been a long time since somebody came from the free market, or the remnants of it, to the art world.
00:30 Artists are generally in socialist, artistic paradise situations,
00:35 or they require so much money that they have to surrender their integrity.
00:41 Now, Star Wars isn't even science fiction. Star Wars is magic with robots.
00:46 It's King Arthur with... I mean, even half the characters are covered in metal,
00:51 whether they're C-3PO or Boba Fett or whatever, right? It's just Arthurian crap.
00:56 I mean, it's got swords, it's got magic, it's got a princess stolen by an evil warlord.
01:01 I mean, it is... Star Wars is not science fiction. It's just magic.
01:12 It's just D&D on a desert planet. I mean, it's not... And so is Dune, right?
01:19 Dune is the most hilarious non-sequitur known to filmmaking.
01:23 I mean, it's ridiculously bad, the first Dune.
01:27 Honestly, it's like, not only is it incredibly slow, I get it.
01:31 The desert is the writer's depression, and he was very depressioned.
01:37 He was very depressed, and the desert is just his depression, right?
01:42 But this is a science fiction universe with interstellar travel,
01:52 and when there's an attack, there's literally a rain of giant missiles that come down.
02:00 But people fight with swords. People fight with swords.
02:11 Oh my gosh. Oh, hey, I wrote my own science fiction book, right?
02:15 You can call it The Future, right? You can... Let me get it for you.
02:20 Let me get it for you. Let me get it for you.
02:25 Because it's really good. It really is a great... great book.
02:32 I will get it for you.
02:39 And if you're listening, rss.com/podcast/thefuture. You should...
02:48 Well, and Dune is also, you know, you have words of command,
02:54 and it's all magic mind control, and it's all just anti-scientific garbage.
03:00 And they have... there's a corporation that has a big giant spice factory
03:07 that's on these sands where these sand dune things come and eat.
03:11 And apparently the sand dune things don't eat anyone or anything.
03:14 They eat tiny krill or whatever, like humpback whales,
03:17 but apparently they're drawn to rhythmic sounds because Lord knows that's what...
03:20 Krill set up a 60-cell drum fest, you know? Krill, these tiny little sand creatures,
03:26 because the only thing you ever see on Dune is a tiny worm,
03:29 which wouldn't sustain a 300-meter-long giant worm for, you know, a billionth of a second.
03:33 So apparently these giant worms, they don't hunt anything big,
03:38 but they're drawn to very loud thumping sounds, which would make absolutely no sense.
03:43 And apparently they could just swallow entire refineries, and they're totally fine.
03:46 Doesn't do any harm to them. You know, like swallowing a license plate can kill a shark,
03:51 but they can swallow... like, it's just too ridiculous.
03:54 And you have this corporation that has this giant spice refinery thing,
03:58 and there are constant attacks from sandworms to eat them.
04:03 These things cost billions of dollars. There's 20 people on board.
04:08 And so they have this balloon that comes out and lifts them up out of the sandworms' way,
04:13 and apparently they don't even check whether they work or not.
04:18 So, can you imagine? You're a corporation, or, you know, some sort of money-making entity,
04:23 and they say, "Oh, well, this stuff was left over, and it was bad," and so on.
04:27 And you're like, "But you would check it before it goes out."
04:29 And so the big gas balloon thing comes and tries to pick up the giant refinery from the sand,
04:36 where there's 20 people, and it doesn't work, and they have no backup plan.
04:41 They don't send two out because they know that the stuff's all broken.
04:44 They just send one out, and one of the clips that goes on the refinery breaks,
04:48 and then everyone's going to die, and it's all going to get swallowed by sandworms.
04:55 Oh, my God, it's just so absolutely terrible.
04:59 The explanation is that the energy shields make most ballistic weapons useless.
05:03 However, slow-moving swords can go through the shields.
05:08 That doesn't make any sense, because they have technology that can disable the shields.
05:13 So just disable the shields and nuke everyone.
05:19 LOL, I thought that as well about the hole in the refinery and the lack of working parts.
05:23 Yes, we have a multi-billion-dollar rescue operation with highly trained personnel
05:29 for the most valuable substance in the known universe,
05:32 this drug/interstellar fuel called the spice.
05:36 It's the most valuable substance. We desperately need it.
05:41 Oh, it broke.
05:43 We're going to lose everyone.
05:46 It broke.
05:48 Oh, dear.
05:50 Can you imagine?
05:53 It's the most valuable--the unobtainium of the universe,
05:56 the most valuable thing in the entire universe.
05:58 We're just going to send one half-broken rickety machine out
06:01 to save this massively expensive, massively profitable refinery.
06:07 Oh, it broke. Oh, no, everyone got eaten.
06:14 I mean, these are the people you're supposed to be rooting for.
06:17 They couldn't run a fucking 7-Eleven, let alone the most expensive refinery
06:20 of spice planted in the known universe.
06:25 Oh, my gosh. Have you read C.S. Lewis's Space Trilogy? No, no, I haven't.
06:31 Oh, no, like, I was just looking at that.
06:33 I'm like, this is a fucking retarded author who's never worked a day in his life
06:38 and has certainly never worked with any machinery
06:40 and has never talked to anyone who's worked with any machinery, right?
06:46 Like, oh, my God.
06:48 I can't even tell you just how completely insane all of that is.
06:56 I don't know.
07:00 I don't know. There are no words.
07:04 This is just somebody who's never worked an honest day's labor in his life
07:08 trying to imagine how machinery and markets work.
07:12 Like, it's embarrassing.
07:14 It's really, really embarrassing.
07:16 While I admire the filmmaking, the story is stupid.
07:20 Just because it's stupid doesn't mean it wasn't entertaining.
07:23 Okay, I'm happy to hear.
07:25 Who did you like in Dune? Let's get it on, man.
07:27 Maybe I'm wrong about this.
07:29 Who do you like in Dune?
07:31 The petty, pouty, whiny kid?
07:33 Do you like him? Right?
07:36 How about the father who doesn't protect his family?
07:38 Do you like him?
07:40 The fat, oily guy in the well water. Do you like him?
07:44 How about the mother who just stares and cries all the time?
07:48 Do you like her? Like, who do you like?
07:50 Who are you rooting for?
07:52 I mean, this is about as—it's on the moral level of Game of Thrones.
07:55 Tolkien hated Dune, supposedly.
07:57 The sandworms?
07:59 Even they don't make any sense.
08:01 They make no sense.
08:03 What do they eat?
08:05 What do they eat?
08:07 I mean, you've got to put some basic—
08:11 you've got to put some basic biology—
08:13 "Oh, there are these giant worms."
08:15 It's like, okay, I get it.
08:17 You've got suppressed sexual impulses, and you're depressed.
08:19 Because, I mean, Franz Herbert or whatever his name was,
08:22 the guy's wife was dying of cancer for ten years.
08:24 I mean, he had a pretty shitty time of it, and I sympathize with that.
08:28 But there's no humanity, there's no humor, there's no people.
08:32 There's no people.
08:34 Nobody has any humor, nobody has any loyalty, nobody has any joy.
08:37 Nobody has to go to the bathroom, nobody dances, nobody—
08:40 there's no people.
08:42 It's all just grim, stupid, metronome, political crap.
08:47 I only like the desert princess because she is indifferent in the first one.
08:51 Oh, really? You had a character without a lot of emotional strength or base or humanity?
08:55 Wow, never heard that before in science fiction.
09:01 "Oh, yes, and all the bad guys are white and bald."
09:05 Hmm. Hmm.
09:07 All the white guys are bad and—are white and bald.
09:11 Because that's just it. Oh, no.
09:13 Did we have somebody born with hair?
09:15 We'll have to kick them out of the hairless bad guy thing.
09:19 Oh, my God.
09:25 "Dune characters are NPCs."
09:27 No, NPCs. I mean, have you seen Astarian in Baldur's Gate 3?
09:31 Oh, it's so predictable.
09:34 Oh, God, it's so boring. It's so predictable.
09:36 So, you know, the Asian—sorry, spoilers, blah, blah, blah—
09:39 but the Asian guy who betrays the family.
09:41 Well, first of all, everybody knows this is a world built on betrayal, right?
09:45 The Dune world is—everyone's built on betrayal, right?
09:48 Everything's built on betrayal.
09:50 So, of course, they're not going to have one doctor who can take down the whole place, right?
09:56 Everything's built on betrayal.
09:58 Everyone's compromised.
09:59 Everyone's going to have their wives stolen and sold off for parts.
10:03 And so you're going to have massive amounts of redundancies,
10:05 and there's no way one doctor is going to be able to destroy the entire clan
10:09 because his wife gets kidnapped because this kidnapping shit's happening all the time.
10:13 Oh, my God.
10:17 So, the doctor—oh, it's so boring and predictable.
10:22 Maybe it wasn't in the '60s, though. I think it was even then.
10:24 But you've got to mix it up, right?
10:26 So, the doctor who betrayed—well, I just want to get my wife back because I love her so much.
10:30 Yeah, because people who are court doctors to evil warlords,
10:34 yeah, they're totally in love with their wives.
10:37 It's like, "I said that I was—I would—you would join your wife."
10:42 And you just know, yeah, he's going to kill the guy.
10:45 Because everyone who betrays their leaders gets killed by the other side.
10:51 And it's like, you know, that doesn't work in life.
10:54 Like, that doesn't work in life.
10:56 Didn't like Game of Thrones?
10:57 Game of Thrones was like having a medieval priest throw up in my mouth repeatedly for about an hour.
11:02 Game of Thrones was absolutely appallingly nihilistic and vile and horrible in every conceivable way.
11:09 So, you can't get people to betray others if you always kill them, right?
11:23 Do you understand?
11:24 Yeah, of course he's not getting his wife back.
11:27 Why? Because they're—
11:29 "Ah, you know what I'm going to do?
11:31 I'm going to set up characters, the Harkonnen, who are unbelievably, mindlessly, NPC, black hole, void evil.
11:39 But then I'm going to trust them to give my wife back to me so we can live in life and love."
11:44 Yeah, sure. Absolutely.
11:49 You know, like, even the Mafia keep their deals, right?
11:52 I mean, the entire political system runs on hidden donations and favors and handshakes, but it runs. It works.
11:59 Right? It's the argument I made in Everyday Anarchy, that we know we don't need the state to enforce contracts
12:04 because the state runs on contracts called corruption which can never be enforced.
12:08 Right?
12:10 So, it's like, "Well, they're the most evil people in the known universe.
12:13 They've betrayed everyone they've ever done a deal with, but I'll do a deal with them."
12:20 Oh my god. It was just terrible.
12:23 Did the fucking writer or director—have they ever met an actual human being?
12:28 At all? Or is it just, like, complete, empty, stupid science fiction stereotypes?
12:33 "I'm an evil guy, so I'm bald, and I talk like this."
12:40 And it's like, you know evil guys don't do that, right?
12:43 Like, evil guys don't do that.
12:45 I mean, I wrote an entire evil guy for my novel The Future, who's incredibly charismatic and witty.
12:49 And engaging.
12:51 Right?
12:52 Like, you know the evil guys, they don't fucking look like orcs.
12:57 They're not flying around bald and gravel-voiced and depressed.
13:01 Right? Who are the evil guys?
13:03 The most dangerous ones are the ones who are friendly and charismatic and engaging and funny.
13:08 And, like, come on.
13:10 You're literally teaching people to not know what evil is.
13:16 What?
13:17 Oh my god.
13:22 It's—oh god.
13:29 I mean, I sat through it. I'll maybe do a proper review or something, but—
13:33 Oh my god.
13:35 Oh, what was the other one?
13:38 Oh, there was another one in there.
13:42 Oh yes, the Fremen.
13:44 Oh boy.
13:46 There's some fine writing.
13:48 You know, they're both free.
13:50 And they're men.
13:52 I could call them Freemen, but that might be a bit too obvious, so I'll call them Fremen.
13:59 I could call these group the bad guys, but I'm gonna call them the bad-da-da guys.
14:08 We have the good-da-da guys and the bad-da-da guys.
14:11 And we have the people who are really free. I'm gonna call them the Fremen.
14:15 Yes, that's some fine fucking writing.
14:22 The bad guys are—and the good guys are the Fre-men.
14:26 Free? Fremen.
14:28 Oh, and by the way, the Fremen who live in the desert have giant manufacturing plants that can produce complex machinery called the Thumpers.
14:37 Isn't that amazing?
14:38 I remember, obviously, when the British first engaged with the Bedouin, I remember that.
14:43 And the Bedouin had time travel and hovercraft.
14:46 Oh!
14:50 Oh my gosh.
14:52 Oh, that's hilarious.
14:54 They're the Fremen.
14:56 You know, we really need a beautiful lady.
15:02 What should we call her?
15:03 Beautiful lady.
15:05 Beautiful.
15:07 Can we make her have a big butt?
15:08 Well, it says that right there.
15:09 Beautiful.
15:11 Beautiful.
15:12 Beautiful lady.
15:13 We got free men.
15:15 What should we call them?
15:16 Fremen.
15:17 Oh my god.
15:20 Oh, but the lore is incredible.
15:22 It's like—this is like watching somebody not write a novel but smear shit on the wall and call it a Picasso.
15:30 Well, actually, shit on the wall is obviously an improvement to Picasso.
15:35 But it's like somebody wiping boogers on the glass and saying, "I'm Rembrandt."
15:43 It's just absolutely terrible.
15:46 Oh my gosh.
15:49 Oh yeah.
15:51 Oh yeah, the guy too.
15:53 Timothy Chalamet.
15:55 Why is it that this started with the Star Wars and that spiky-haired Hayden Christensen.
16:02 Acting is just fucking pouting.
16:05 That's all it is.
16:06 Just being vaguely pissed off and pouting the entire time.
16:09 That's just it.
16:10 That's it.
16:11 And then mysterious maturity shows up, right?
16:13 So at the beginning, the kid is engaged in some bullshit combat with the older guy.
16:19 The older guy.
16:20 Such a cliche.
16:21 So just older guy.
16:22 And the older guy is trying to toughen up the young guy.
16:24 But the young guy is like, "Well, I just don't feel it today."
16:27 And the older guy is like, "You don't have to feel it.
16:29 Combat comes to you and you least expect it."
16:32 I mean, so the fight scenes are all so predictable and so boring.
16:36 And they don't make any sense.
16:38 None of it makes any sense.
16:39 Again, you have ways of disabling the shields.
16:45 EMPs would disable the shields.
16:46 They're electrically powered.
16:48 So it's just because they want cool knife fights and it's got nothing to do with anything real.
16:57 In Star Wars, you have weapons that can destroy entire planets.
17:01 But no, laser swords are the way to go.
17:06 It's like somebody with some giant space laser.
17:11 "No, no, no. I have a butter knife.
17:13 We're evening it out."
17:17 Oh, God.
17:18 It's painful.
17:19 I mean, it's almost literally painful.
17:22 So anyway, so the whiny, complaining kid, which is like the young thing, right?
17:35 The whiny, complaining kid, he's with the Fremen.
17:40 And the Fremen want to fight him so that he'll join them, which makes no sense either.
17:46 Why would you want to fight?
17:48 I guess he's the--
17:49 Oh, the one.
17:50 Oh, God.
17:51 Oh, please.
17:52 Oh, no, if I see another movie.
17:55 He is the one.
18:00 He is the one.
18:02 He is Neo, which is just an anagram for the one.
18:06 Oh, God almighty.
18:07 I just--
18:09 I'm kind of a whiny, annoying, nasal teenager, but apparently I'm also--
18:12 The one.
18:15 The one.
18:19 Sure, yeah, absolutely.
18:20 How do we know he's the one?
18:22 The one is whiny and very skinny and has no facial and/or body hair of any kind.
18:30 He also has very poofy hair.
18:34 He is a dandelion of slender, nipply skinniness with mystery powers that he must master because
18:43 he is the one.
18:45 Oh, my God.
18:46 Have you had an original thought since 5000 BC?
18:52 No.
18:53 Absolutely not.
18:56 Anyway, so he is fighting a guy, the black guy.
19:02 He's fighting a Furman.
19:06 He's fighting a Furman on their own turf in their own environment, and they're using their
19:15 own weapons, right?
19:19 So, I mean, yeah, they've given him some training, right?
19:22 Okay, fine.
19:23 They've given him-- He's had some training.
19:25 Kid's never been in a real fight, right?
19:28 The kid has never been in a real fight.
19:31 Now, the Furman, the black guy, looked to be about 40 or 45, right?
19:35 And so he's been living out there in the desert, and he's been fighting to survive for a quarter
19:40 century, which seems to be about 10 years longer than the kid's even been alive, right?
19:45 So the kid's never been in a real fight before, that we can see.
19:48 He's had some training or whatever, right?
19:50 But the trainer's gone easy on him, and now he's with a guy who's got 20 to 25 years experience
19:56 with actual fighting, and he wins.
20:02 Sure, absolutely.
20:03 He wins.
20:04 Yeah, of course, because that's just the way shit works, right?
20:07 If I've had no practical experience in fighting, but I've had some training, and I go up against
20:12 a guy who's been literally fighting for his life for 20 to 25 years, I'm gonna win.
20:24 Well, it's true that I am going up against a grandmaster chess champion who's been winning
20:30 in the most brutal competitions of chess for 25 years, but I've taken some chess training.
20:34 I'm sure I'll win.
20:36 You see, there's a chess grandmaster who beat Bill Gates in like 14 seconds.
20:43 No, he wasn't practicing with Aquaman, it was the other guy, right?
20:47 And it's just like, what the fuck reality are people living in here that anybody believes
20:54 this even remotely, even a tiny, tiny bit?
20:58 What insane reality is the writer living in?
21:03 I mean, this is a writer who's never been in a fistfight.
21:07 God!
21:08 Okay, if you think this is true, fine, go take some fucking jujitsu and then go get
21:15 into a street fight with a guy who's been fighting on the streets for 20 years.
21:19 I'm not saying you would do that, but imagine that shit, right?
21:23 No, he is the one.
21:27 And it's like, it's always the same way, too.
21:29 He cannot master his powers until, until he is in the greatest possible stress and about to die.
21:35 Yeah, because that's the way shit works.
21:37 You can't master anything until you're about to be pushed out a giant fucking plane.
21:41 Yeah, then you're totally, you can relax into it, you can master it, you can do it.
21:45 When the stress is the highest, the things that you're bad at suddenly become fantastic.
21:50 You become fantastically good at them.
21:52 Oh my god.
22:00 Oh, God, it's horrifyingly terrible.
22:06 It's horrifyingly terrible.
22:12 And also, also, also, the Harkonnen and whatever they are, right?
22:19 They are the most brutal fighters in the known universe, but don't worry.
22:23 Jason half-shaped eyebrow, Mamoa Aquaman can take on 10 of them at a time and still somewhat win.
22:29 Also, these most brutal fighters in the known universe, the personification of inhumane and unjust evil doing,
22:38 they disable an opponent and don't even check to see if he's dead.
22:46 They're not evil.
22:47 They're such competent fighters.
22:52 They disable a guy and then go about their business and turn their backs to him, and then he rises up and kills some more of them.
23:00 Because, you know, that's what really competent people do when they're trying to kill someone,
23:04 is they just kind of knock him out and then just go about their business.
23:15 Sure, absolutely.
23:19 They are the most competent fighters in the universe, but they don't kill a guy they've disabled.
23:26 They just let him kill more of them.
23:28 And it's like, oh, fuck off.
23:30 Like, please.
23:31 Like, oh my god, this is just beyond terrible.
23:35 But we have the fight scene of slow death and bitingness.
23:40 And it's like, oh, no, no, no, no, no.
23:42 Come on.
23:43 Come on.
23:45 I mean, the first thing you do if you disable someone is you shoot them through the head.
23:50 Yeah, I've seen police gun down a man in a hail of gunfire and then handcuff the corpse.
23:54 Of course.
23:56 So it's just, it's ridiculously terrible.
24:01 It's beyond awful.
24:03 Like, I literally was, people, the people I was watching the movie with could barely hear it over my endless groans.
24:15 Just terrible.
24:17 Like, the dad literally says, all the machinery we have is terrible.
24:22 So, yeah, let's just send out one thing to rescue one of the most expensive things that we own,
24:27 producing the most valuable spice, valuable product in the known universe.
24:34 Oh, god.
24:36 Honestly, I was just, the pain, the pain was just unbearable of how, look, I don't mind the suspension of disbelief,
24:47 but I'm not in for the suspension of sanity.
24:50 Right?
24:51 There's no logic to any of it, and they don't even pretend to have any science at all.
25:02 They are the most brutal killers in the universe, but they're not gonna kill their prisoners.
25:09 They're gonna just throw them out of a plane.
25:11 Now, they don't gag them, even though apparently this spoken command thing,
25:18 this "I'll make you do shit by saying it in a growly voice, donate to freedomain.com/donate."
25:26 So, if they would have heard about these powers, they'd be pretty hard to hide, right?
25:32 And so they're just chatting away.
25:37 Why don't they just open the door and throw them out?
25:39 Because they say, well, we want to be able to tell the truth if they say, did you kill them, right?
25:44 Which is also retarded.
25:46 If apparently it was bad for them to kill their prisoners, right,
25:48 if they were to get in trouble for killing their prisoners, right, they would say,
25:52 did you kill your prisoners or cause them to die?
25:56 Or cause them to have a reasonable chance of dying, right?
25:59 That's a--
26:00 No, we're gonna fool them because we just pushed them out of the plane into a desert that would kill them.
26:06 We didn't kill them, we just pushed them out of the plane.
26:08 Can you imagine that?
26:10 You push some guy out of a plane, he falls to his death, and you're charged for murder,
26:13 and you say, no, I didn't kill them, I just pushed them out of the plane.
26:15 And people are like, okay, let's go.
26:18 Oh, God.
26:20 It was like a brain worm that was eating up reality.
26:27 We won't get in trouble because we just pushed them out of the plane, and we didn't kill them.
26:34 Oh, and also, they're the most ferocious killers in the known universe,
26:39 and we're gonna put in charge of the prisoners that we need to get them to kill a deaf guy.
26:44 That way, he can't hear what they're saying, and can't hear them if they sneak up on him,
26:50 and he can't hear them plotting because he's a deaf guy, because that's what we do.
26:55 You know, your most high-value prisoners, you put in charge--
26:58 you put them under the care, custody, and control of a guy who's pretty severely disabled
27:03 when it comes to soldiering because he can't hear anything.
27:08 Can you imagine some guy stabs a woman to death, and he's like, "You killed him."
27:13 "No, no, the knife did."
27:20 They're the most fearsome killers in the known universe, and they're deaf and retarded.
27:26 No, no, no.
27:29 You gotta work harder as a writer.
27:32 You gotta work harder as a writer.
27:36 And I get it.
27:39 "Iraqis" sounds like Iraq, and it's the desert, and the spice is the oil,
27:43 and, "Oh, it's so deep, man. It's so deep."
27:46 Because, you know, like, you can sniff gasoline, so it's kind of like a psychoactive substance,
27:52 and also, like, oil powers airplanes, which is like the spice being both a drug
27:57 and powering interstellar-- right?
28:03 Oh, my God.
28:06 Yeah, these people could bend space and time, but they couldn't get that guy a hearing aid.
28:10 Yeah, for sure. I mean, it's all just--
28:13 And, of course, there's no market anywhere. It's like Star Wars.
28:17 I guess Star Wars has Mos Eisley or whatever, right?
28:19 Star Trek. There's no trade, there's no free market, there's no capitalism.
28:23 So where the fuck does all of this technology come from?
28:26 Well, it's basically the Mongols.
28:30 Yeah, because the Mongols had really advanced technology.
28:33 I mean, they could barely figure out anything beyond the bow. Why?
28:36 Because it's a centrally planned bullshit non-economy.
28:39 Remember all of that wonderful stuff that came out of the Soviet Union and Cuba
28:43 and other communist countries.
28:46 "Well, no, but the Soviet Union just stole all of their stuff.
28:49 You've got to read this book, 'East Minus West Equals Zero.'
28:51 You've got to read-- They just stole everything."
28:54 Like the Rosenbergs were put to death for selling atomic secrets.
29:03 No, I just said to the Soviets, "It's just appalling.
29:07 It's just appalling."
29:13 It's somebody who doesn't understand science, doesn't understand biology,
29:16 he does not understand the economics, he doesn't understand combat,
29:20 he just doesn't understand anything.
29:23 And it's dangerous shit too.
29:25 I'm opposed to this at a fundamental level.
29:28 It's dangerous shit.
29:29 First of all, the idea that you can take on really experienced fighters
29:33 when you've just done some training and not get anything other than killed
29:37 is ridiculous.
29:40 It's really, really, "Hey, man, I've taken some jujitsu.
29:43 I can take on a trained street fighter."
29:46 I mean, oh God, the pain.
29:50 And also it's a way of, "Well, you can't create your own destiny.
29:53 Why?
29:54 Why?
29:55 Why can't you create your own destiny?"
29:56 Because destiny chooses you because you're the one.
30:01 And if you think that this is not dangerous--
30:03 Do you remember Oprah talking about Barack Obama?
30:06 What did she say?
30:07 "He is the one."
30:10 And that has a resonance.
30:12 People are programmed to bow down before the one so that culture can designate
30:17 someone as the one and you feel yourself automatically bowing down before them.
30:26 Oh my God.
30:31 This is crazy.
30:35 And the only place--
30:36 It's all military industrial fetish worship because the only place
30:40 where there's a market is like some pathetic quasi-Middle Eastern bazaar
30:44 where people are hawking shit for coins.
30:50 Go to a Tesla factory, right?
30:51 And that's technology.
30:53 Nothing like that exists.
30:54 And that technology and that factory only exists because of the free market.
30:58 So what you're doing is you're taking the products of the free market
31:01 and drafting it onto some Mongol bullshit where you have--
31:05 The movie was all about just looking cool.
31:08 It's got about as much substance as a supermodel's fucking belly.
31:14 Because you know we're going to have rains of fire fly down
31:18 and then there's a guy in oil and then he flies a little bit
31:21 and then we're going to have sword fights.
31:23 And it's just about looking cool with absolutely no reality.
31:26 And this cool shit, I can't stand it.
31:28 I did a whole show I hate cool some years ago.
31:31 I hate this shit.
31:33 I just hate it.
31:34 I just hate it.
31:36 It's cool, man. It just looks cool.
31:39 That is programming you.
31:43 It's programming you.
31:47 I mean, didn't they want to kill off this kid?
31:51 So they would just send down--
31:53 Like they have as many rockets as they want.
31:55 They would just send all the rockets in a 20-square-mile radius
31:58 and they would kill them.
32:01 And they don't even explain this.
32:03 Like at least in Alien 2, right,
32:05 the guy says, "Why don't we just get up and nuke it from orbit?"
32:08 What science fiction have you felt was acceptable?
32:11 I mean, I haven't read--
32:15 I haven't read science fiction in forever.
32:18 But I will remind you, it's free.
32:20 You should check out my work of science fiction.
32:23 And it's really good.
32:26 It's called The Future.
32:28 I will give it to you again.
32:29 rss.com/podcast/thefuture
32:33 Fantastic sci-fi.
32:36 Oh, no, it's just--
32:44 Firefly?
32:48 Well, Firefly was just--
32:49 I mean, it was entertaining, and Nathan Fillion's a fine actor,
32:52 and they were all relatively engaging in that,
32:54 and the characters were good.
32:56 But, I mean, space western.
32:58 You know, it was a western, but in space.
33:02 It's--
33:03 None of it really--
33:04 And it's always like in the outer planets, the wild west, you know,
33:07 where the hand of the government doesn't reach and all that kind of stuff.
33:11 Asimov, I never got into him.
33:13 I read a couple of his short stories,
33:14 but I tried reading Foundation like three times,
33:16 and I just--
33:17 I mean, he puts me to sleep.
33:19 I just--
33:20 And then once I found out about his son,
33:22 I was like, "I'm never touching this shit again."
33:24 Like, this is a completely corrupt bloodline.
33:26 Just monstrous.
33:27 You can go and look up what happened with Isaac Asimov's son
33:31 and what he was arrested for,
33:33 and by the by, who was in charge of that prosecution.
33:36 And, no, Isaac Asimov was just a--
33:41 I mean, in my opinion, one of the worst parents who's lived in the modern world
33:45 when you look at what occurred with his son.
33:48 So, yeah, I just--
33:49 I can't get past that stuff, and I don't have any desire to.
33:52 All right.
33:53 Any other last questions?
33:54 Or--
33:55 Yeah, second Alien movie was very good.
33:56 Yeah, because it tried to have some logic in it, right?
33:58 [silence]
34:08 Oh, and the idea that you can swim through sand?
34:11 [laughs]
34:12 [silence]
34:14 You can't swim through sand.
34:17 I mean, the worms don't even have any--
34:20 Doctor Who?
34:21 No.
34:22 Doctor Who was like time travel and weird shit, right?
34:25 So, I mean, whales go--
34:27 like, the closest analogy would be whales, right?
34:29 So, whales go through water with flippers, right?
34:32 What do the sand worms do?
34:34 They have little--
34:35 I guess they have little scales, maybe?
34:36 Like, what was the meaning of the hand in the box?
34:40 [silence]
34:44 When New History--
34:45 Episode History of Philosophers, I don't know.
34:47 What was the meaning of the hand in the box?
34:49 Oh, it was just stupid drama, right?
34:51 It was just stupid drama.
34:52 [silence]
34:54 It was just stupid drama.
34:56 [silence]
35:01 I mean, it's the same thing that goes on in Fight Club with the acid, right?
35:06 [reading text on screen]
35:21 Have you ever seen a sand viper?
35:23 Do they--
35:25 Do they swim under the ocean?
35:28 Maybe.
35:29 I mean, do they--
35:30 Sorry, do they swim under the sand?
35:31 Is that right?
35:33 Sand viper, let's see.
35:35 [silence]
35:38 Lives in the deserts.
35:40 All right, what does it say here?
35:44 I mean, I assume that they pretty much live on the surface, don't they?
35:48 [silence]
35:50 A sand viper's burrow into the sand and strike directly from their hiding place.
35:53 Yeah, you can dig into the sand.
35:55 I accept that.
35:56 Come on, man.
35:57 But you don't swim through the sand for miles, right?
36:00 [silence]
36:02 So, yes, I get that they go into the sand.
36:05 So do wolf spiders and other things, right?
36:08 Gophers dig into the sand.
36:10 I get you can go--
36:11 But do they swim through the sand?
36:14 No, of course not, right?
36:15 They just burrow into the sand and wait there.
36:18 How about the new 2000s Battlestar Galactica James Edward Olmos good show or no?
36:22 I actually find that was quite good.
36:24 I watched it many years ago.
36:25 But I didn't watch all of it, but I thought that was pretty good.
36:29 I thought that was pretty good.
36:30 Again, I don't know what it is with science fiction writers in the military-industrial complex.
36:35 It's like this nerd worship of the warrior.
36:38 [silence]
36:40 It's like, well, humanity's in grave danger.
36:46 But what saves them is the military.
36:50 The government military is our savior.
36:53 Yeah, right, government military.
36:55 Yeah, that hasn't gotten hundreds of millions of people killed over the last couple of centuries.
36:59 Yeah, totally.
37:01 So there is just--
37:02 It's all--
37:03 Nothing can flourish if it doesn't praise the military-industrial complex, right?
37:07 [silence]
37:10 So I assume that the writers were beaten up by the aggressive guys,
37:17 and the last quarter was dumb and the ending was stupid and ruined any rewatch.
37:22 Yeah.
37:23 You know, in general, I like shows where the stories are more self-contained.
37:26 When the story arc goes over a whole season, I usually find them kind of ridiculous.
37:29 That's the nip-tuck problem.
37:31 And burnout is a little bit as well, so.
37:33 [silence]
37:35 40K is military-oriented,
37:37 but it also highlights the absolute horrors of the military-industrial complex.
37:41 But you can't have a military-industrial complex
37:43 unless it's preying off the jugular of the free market.
37:45 So I bet you it's all about just--
37:47 [silence]
37:49 It's all just about magic technology that shows up without a free market to deliver it.
37:54 I don't know.
37:56 And it's cool.
37:58 Warhammer is like the guys in the big giant suits, right?
38:01 Anyway, I don't know.
38:03 I mean, I write fiction because--
38:05 [silence]
38:09 I write fiction because I think the fiction that's out there
38:12 blows into galactic chunks.
38:16 Right?
38:17 So I very much wanted to write a science fiction novel
38:23 because I just got sick of science fiction.
38:26 So--
38:28 And I went truly--
38:31 I mean, what was great about science fiction is you can go truly wild in your imagination.
38:35 And so I did.
38:37 I mean, certainly my most imaginative work is The World of the Future.
38:40 And it also has a free market, and it explains how we got to paradise.
38:46 So anyway, I mean, whether you like it or not, I hope you do,
38:49 but you should definitely check it out.
38:51 So I have--
38:52 "Oh, you do better!"
38:53 It's like, well, I really have aimed to do that, right?
38:55 I mean, you don't have to do better to criticize stuff that's shit,
38:58 but I like to think that I have, so.
39:02 All right.
39:03 Well, listen, guys, thank you so much for dropping by.
39:05 If you have any last tips, freedomand.com/donate.
39:08 If you're listening to this later,
39:10 2001 Space Ozzities by Stanley Kubrick.
39:13 Good, bad, trash, or not?
39:15 I mean, it's trash.
39:16 Yeah, it's trash.
39:18 I mean, even they didn't know what the hell they were doing.
39:20 It's a vaguely science-y start that just turns into pure LSD,
39:26 mystical bullshit.
39:30 I mean, I remember watching that in the theater, and it's like,
39:34 "Oh, this is interesting. It's kind of science-y.
39:36 Oh, that's cool. They can walk on the ceiling.
39:38 Oh, that's interesting."
39:39 And then it's just like--
39:41 And the bit with Hal on the spaceship?
39:43 Yeah, it's very interesting and well-acted by Keir Dullea
39:45 and all of that, and then they don't know how to end it.
39:50 And so it just becomes a completely bizarre drug trip
39:58 that is meaningless and chaotic and insane.
40:02 2001, the movie, is insane.
40:06 And not like insanely great or insanely good or wild.
40:09 It's a mental institution masquerading as science fiction.
40:12 I knocked over my glass.
40:17 I'm very old.
40:18 I'm a space baby.
40:19 The fuck?
40:21 Terminator?
40:23 I mean, time travel is obviously complete nonsense,
40:26 but it's an interesting action movie.
40:28 Terminator 2 was fun and all of that.
40:31 My next book I'm going to read is going to be the future.
40:33 I've had it loaded on my Kindle for a while.
40:35 Yeah, you should. You should.
40:36 I mean, that's science fiction with a real purpose
40:39 and a very, very creative plot,
40:43 very creative scenario and plot.