Why the Sad Puppies are wrong

Today the winners of the 2015 Hugo awards will be announced, and whatever happens, the outcome will be controversial because of the nominations. This year's Hugo award nominations have been dominated by a few writers who received the backing of a Gamer Gate affiliated internet group known as the Sad Puppies. The Puppies believe that sci-fi awards have become dominated by a liberal elite who are more interested in rewarding women and writers of colour than good science fiction. The Puppies slate is filled with politically Conservative authors, such as John C. Wright - I have written about this before.

The Sad Puppies want to go back to a fictional past when science fiction novels were about explosions, goodies and baddies, battles and adventure, and not tackling weighty issues from our world such as gender and inequality. Science fiction has always explored issues from both a liberal and conservative viewpoint. I believe that this exploration of issues is fundamental to writing great science fiction. I want an inclusive sci-fi which comments on our world and uses political and social issues to enhance the stories being told. A regression to "white dudes in space" will damage the quality of the science fiction writing produced in the future.

To support this argument, I will start by going back to the early days of my love of sci-fi novels. The X-Wing novels by Michael A. Stackpole were my gateway to reading sci-fi. I loved the Star Wars movies and toys, and wanted more from that universe. A series of novels about daring X-Wing pilots fighting the remnants of the Empire was the perfect fix for my hungry Star Wars habit. The X-Wing novels are great space adventures, heroic rebels, evil Imperial agents and lots of excitement. I owe my love of reading and writing sci-fi to these novels.

After reading five X-Wing novels, I started reading other works of science fiction. Dune, Foundation and Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon The Deep were early favourites. My tastes changed as I went through my teenaged years and discovered other writers. When I went to university, my horizons were broadened and I became more aware of society, politics and history, as well as my own privilege and the importance of diversity. My tastes changed as well to suit this new understanding of the world. When I discovered Iain M. Banks, he quickly became my favourite writer, and this led on to many other social sci-fi novels, such as Ray Bradbury or J.G. Ballard, and eventually to reading Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice, the winner of the Hugo award for best novel in 2014.

These books have more nuanced characters, more complex stories and tackle issues from our world. They take the medium of science fiction beyond space adventure to create stories with emotional resonance and insight into the human condition. At the same time as my taste evolved towards more sophisticated novels, I also expanded from only reading novels written by people like me - straight, middle-class, white, western - to reading books by a wider range of authors. I fully admit that I have a long way to go in this regard; I still mainly read books written by white men, but I am making an effort to read sci-fi written by people of different backgrounds whose experience of the world is different to mine.

I feel this is a natural element of becoming an adult, in much the way that my taste in food has developed. When I was young, I only ate bland British food, but now I love Indian, Chinese, Thai and Mexican food. Over time, our tastes and interests become broader and more sophisticated. The Sad Puppies feel that rewarding more sophisticated and diverse writing is just pandering to political correctness and ignoring books that are entertaining in favour of books which tackle issues. However, they only evaluate a book against one criteria, its entertainment factor, rather than looking at a range of reasons why a book might be worth reading.

Why do I consider it natural for our tastes to develop this way? Let's go back to the start to look at this. The X-Wing novels were entertaining to read but the plot mainly revolved around white men having space adventures, like the Star Wars films themselves. We know that real life stories are a lot more complex than this. Any story taken from our own lives has a diverse range of different people in it. We see diversity around us every day - the majority of people I interact with are not straight, white, middle-class, cis-gendered men from the midlands - so when diversity is not represented in the stories we read, they become implausible. Surely the future will be more diverse than the present, and the events of the future are likely to be as complex and nuanced as those of the present.

Take a moment to look at any real life conflict and you will see that there are two sides, two competing arguments - that is unless you approach the world in a very reductive way. The diversity in our world means that real life stories are much more complex than the plot of an X-Wing novel, and the people who populate our world are more nuanced than the characters of the X-Wing novels. The conflict in the X-Wing novels, and Star Wars in general, does not make much sense under scrutiny. One of the reasons why episodes 1-3 are so bad is that they try to explain the politics of the conflict, which is too simple to make sense. Star Wars is a struggle of absolute good against absolute evil, but no real life struggle is that simple.

This is not a criticism of the X-Wing novels being aimed at younger readers. There are plenty of YA novels with a diverse range of nuanced characters and complex conflicts that make sense when examined. The Fire Sermon by Francesca Haig is a good example of this, but there are many others. Aiming your novel at a younger audience does not necessarily mean dumbing it down and is not an excuse for having characters and conflicts which do not make sense in a real world context.

The stories that sci-fi writers tells have to be believable and our reference frame for what is believable is our understanding of our world. Science fiction can have imaginative aliens, theoretical technology, bizarre worlds, strange cultures and anything else that a sci-fi writer can imagine but the characters, their relationships and conflicts must make sense to the reader based on their experience of our world. This means being complex and diverse, as our world is.

Conflicts, cultures, societies and relationships will be different in the future from how they are now, but they will evolve out of the present. The conflicts and characters of a sci-fi story should make sense when translated into our world or else they are too simple. For example, Iain M Banks's novel Consider Phlebas is about a struggle for influence and the clash of ideology between two great military powers, very similar to the cold war from our history. Ancillary Justice is about imperialism and would make as much sense in the context of 17th century European expansion. The characters in these stories and their relationships are similar to what the reader is likely to experience from their own lives. Ancillary Justice maybe about the relationship between an AI governing a spaceship and a lieutenant on that ship, but it is a relationship based around love and respect and is nuanced enough to be believable as a relationship. Conflicts and relationships should be informed by our world to make sense to the reader.

A sci-fi writer's work is based on his or her experience of our world and thus the writing is influenced by his or her privileges and the society she lives in. Authors need to be aware of this when crafting their stories. This is especially true when handling issues of diversity. I have said that sci-fi stories do not make sense without diversity, but when writing about diversity the author's privileges need to be taken into account. This is why I like sci-fi that explores issues, conflicts and relationships in our world through a sci-fi prism because they are informed by our world and thus their fictional world is believable. I also like sci-fi stories when the authors are aware of their own privileges and try to comment on them, or least prevent them from clouding the story.

Doing all this requires a certain amount of complex narrative, nuanced characterisation, detailed world building and issue exploration which you do not get in the white dudes in space, goodies and baddies, novels on the Sad Puppies slate. Depth, complexity and a well-informed comment on the real world are essential to good sci-fi writing, which why novels with these characteristics win awards and shallower novels do not. It is not a conspiracy by liberals, women and people of colour to suppress white men, it is the difference between good and bad writing.

I love books like the X-wing novels as they made me love the adventure side of sci-fi and they led me on to more sophisticated and diverse works. I do believe this is an essential process in order to avoid shallow stories, the author's own privileges and a lack of diversity which make stories unbelievable to the reader. If the Puppies want to go back to this kind of writing then sci-fi will become stale, uniform and filled with authors’ unexamined privileges.

Top 5 sci-fi horror movies

Science fiction and horror are natural allies. Science fiction can liberate an author's creativity to come up with new stories and this suits the horror writers’ ability to create imitative ways to scare the reader. Nowhere is the more true than in film, where sci-if concepts can be used to as to unsettle, creep out or completely terrify the audience.

Below is a selection of my five favourite sci-fi horror movies. Before we get started I want to issue a brief spoiler warning for the films that will be discussed below.

The Fly

The sci-fi concept of teleportation serves as the basis for this horror movie. Jeff Goldblum starts as eccentric scientist Seth Brundle who is secretly working on a teleportation device. After some initial failures Brundle gets the device to work with the help of journalist Veronica Quaife (Geena Davis). However when Brundle test the machine on himself he is impaired by jealousy, anger and alcohol and does not notice a common household fly has entered the device. Brundle is fused into a hybrid half-man half-fly creature and over the course the film looses his humanity.

The Fly uses our fear of our animal nature to increase tension. As Brundle becomes more fly he begins to operate under the primal drives of rage and sexual desire. The control that a human usually has over these desires are stripped away as Brundle embraces his animal side. When Quaife discovers that she is pregnant and dreams about giving birth to giant maggot, the film takes darker turn. Brundle is concerned that the child is the last remnant of his humanity and kidnaps Quaife to force her to have the child.

The Fly plays off our fear of break of the thin layer of humanity that separates us from animals. As Brundle becomes more fly he stops suppressing his basic animal desires and becomes more dangerous. In the Fly, the real monster is not the thing Brundle is coming but it is the animal within himself that has been set free.

The Mist

Cinematic adaptations of Stephen King stories have a mixed tracked record for every Shawshank or the Shining there is a Maximum Overdrive or the awful TV adaption of the Stand. However the Mist delivers as a horror movie, it is tense, claustrophobic and violent.

The Mist stars Thomas Jane who wakes up after a thunderstorm to discover a tree has fallen on his house. He takes his son and neighbour to a grocery store where a strange mist surrounds them. Whenever anyone ventures out into the mist strange creatures devour them.

The tension in The Mist comes from setting, the characters are besieged inside the shop and any escape attempt will result in certain death. Events escalate as a Christian woman forms a doomsday cult around here and inevitably some the monsters break in. The Mist keeps the suspense up by showing as little of the creatures as possible, cloaking them in the eponymous mist, but frequently reminding the audience of how much danger the characters are in.

The sense of hopelessness and impending death makes The Mist both dark as well as tense and bloody. Like most of the best horror films the worst events in The Mist are caused by humans and not the creatures that have them trapped.

The Thing

Low budget and with plenty of gore, is a winning formula for horror movies and John Carpenter is the master of this approach. Without a doubt his best film is the Thing for being both suspenseful and gory. An alien space ship crashes near an Antarctica research station and the survivor is not friendly. After killing several of the humans, the base’s inhabitants try to fight back. There is only one catch; the Thing that is praying on them can disguise itself as any of the humans.

The fear of the enemy within your ranks runs across all of humanity and the audience can engage with the sense of paranoia that grips the characters. Unlike most horror movies, the Thing is not an external enemy killed but an internal enemy that must be rooted out. As the Thing spreads and takes over more of the humans we see its true form, a disgusting mix of organs, tentacles and bodily fluid. The Thing moves between tense physiological thriller and out and out gore-fest frighteningly quickly.

A sense of isolation runs through the entire film, which adds to the tension. In Antarctica no one will come to the characters rescue so they must deal with the Thing themselves, before it makes its way to the rest of civilisation and dooms humanity.

The Thing has enough physiological tension to be interesting and enough gore to be exciting. The use of the enemy within story works with the low budget approach and means that when we do see the Thing, it is brief enough and detailed enough to be truly shocking. The Thing is a low budget gore film with an added physiological element that makes it enduringly scary.

Event Horizon

A trip to the edge of the solar system to test a new piece of wormhole technology, what could go wrong? Expect the wormhole created goes to hell and the ship becomes possessed by a violent and malevolent force. The premise of Event Horizon may sound daft but the execution is frightening.

Event Horizon works so well because the revelation of what has happened is spread out over the course of the film. Event Horizon starts with a straightforward rescue mission, which slowly gets worse and worse. Sam Neill is great in the role of the wormhole ship’s creator who goes slowly insane when he is confronted by what he has created.

The tension builds through theological horror, confined spaces, no escape in space, and through moments of gut churning gore. Director Paul W.S. Anderson makes able use of both approaches to horror.

Event Horizon starts off as science fiction and becomes fantasy as the plot develops. As the story moves away from our reality so does the tension until the audience is lost in a world of pain and chaos. When the final revaluation comes it makes perfect sense in the context of the story and is completely terrifying.

Alien

One of my favourite movies of all time and certainly my favourite sci-fi horror movie. Ridley Scott's atmospheric horror movies owes as much to the art of H.R. Giger and Francis Bacon as it does to the science fiction of Isaac Asimov. The tension builds slowly and steadily, there is little music and it is long time before the mysterious predator is revealed. When it is finally shown to us it is the stuff of nightmares, a creature that is completely alien, impossible to reason with and utterly deadly.

When the freighter Nostromo picks up a strange signal they divert to investigate an uncharted planet. When the crew lands, they discover a crashed alien spaceship and a huge horde of eggs. One thing leads to another, John Hurt sticks his face in an open egg and later an alien killing machine explodes out of his chest and starts picking off the crew. It’s left to Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) to escape the before she too is killed.

The production design of alien lays on the atmosphere, the Nostromo is all steam pipes, cramped spaces and dark places to hide. I cannot think of anywhere worse to be trapped with a monster. The tension builds as the body count rises and leads to a terrifying final confrontation between Ripley and the alien.

Those are my favourite sci-fi horror movies. Do you have any to add to the list? Let me know below.

Time is money in The Quantum Thief

One of the reasons why I love science fiction so much is the imagination that its authors show in creating the worlds in which their stories are set. I am frequently blown away by how creative sci-fi authors can be when inventing strange new worlds, bizarre aliens and ways of living. Of all the books that I have read in the last few years, none have been more interesting or unusual than The Quantum Thief, the debut novel by Finnish author Hannu Rajaniemi. The Quantum Thief surprised me with how outlandish an author’s imagination can be when creating characters, plot and sci-fi concepts to inhabit a fictional world. What I found most fascinating about the novel is that part of it is set in a moving city on Mars, called the Oubliette, where time is their currency. This made me think, how would this work and what economic issues would it bring up?

The first thing to note is that the Oubliette is not a post-scarcity society as are some in science fiction. There is resource scarcity - such as physical space, power, food and luxury items - which means a system of allocating resources amongst the Oubliette's citizens is necessary. Time is the medium through which the Oubliette allocates its scarce resources, as each citizen is given a certain amount of time which ticks away second by second but can be exchanged for goods and services. When a citizen's time expires their personality is download into a machine body known as a Quiet. The Quiet do the majority of the labour in the Oubliette, certainly all the essential jobs including keeping the city moving. A citizen serves time as a Quiet, only maintaining a fraction of their humanity, before being reborn as human and the process begins again.

We are introduced to the Oubliette through the eyes of a visitor, Jean le Flambeur, a famous thief who is looking for memories he hid in the moving city. This is an effective way of showing this strange society to the reader without the need for heavy-handed exposition. We see how time can be exchanged for goods and services, but we do not see how someone amasses additional time to spend. This would presumably be from selling goods or services to other citizens, however no one in the Oubliette appears to work. The majority of the labour is done by the Quiet. The Oubliette's economy is a strange mix of slavery and jury duty.

How would such an economy function in reality? There would probably be a problem with inflation as a citizen's money is constantly losing value. Any banks that exist would have to make the interest they offer on any savings very attractive to counter the effects of inflation. Although the natural rate of inflation built into their economy, i.e. the passage of time, would make investment more attractive than saving. However, investing your time in a new businesses to create economic growth and technological development would be risky. There is no welfare state in the Oubliette and a bad investment would be a quick ticket to the Quiet, thus most investors are likely to be risk-averse, which would hold back rapid economic growth and technological development.

Most normal economic process (such as investment, taxation, government spending, public services, importing and exporting) could not exist in the Oubliette. However, there is clearly a need for some public services as there is crime, namely the Gogol pirates, and thus a police force which must require some resources and its employees some remuneration. The citizens who provide services such as policing, and attempt to apprehend Jean le Flambeur, are presented as hobbyists who do this work out of interest rather than a means of securing an income. Most likely these people are already wealthy and thus do not need payment and therefore taxation and government spending is not necessary either. However, if most public services are provided on a voluntary basis then the Oubliette is one large economic shock away from the complete collapse of its essential services.

The lack of saving, investment, government spending, imports and exports means that the Oubliette is a static economy with a low level of economic growth. This plays into the politics of the society. The Oubliette is a secretly totalitarian society ruled over by a shadowy group known as the cryptarchs. Jean le Flambeur claims that it is a secret prison based on the idea of a panopticon, where every action is visible to those watching over it.

The main social value of the Oubliette is based around the importance of privacy, which discourages the sharing of personal experience of society and thus prevents the collective examination of social structures. In short, a ‘keep yourself to yourself’ mentality does not encourage the challenging of power structures. All of this points towards the Oubliette being a static but wealthy society, which appears to give its citizens a lot of personal freedom but below the surface it is very limiting and controlling.

Despite its static nature, there is inequality in the Oubliette. One character, the millionaire Christian Unruh, is clearly richer than the average citizen. There are also beggars, who are only a few minutes away from being sent to the Quiet, thus the Oubliette has unemployment. There must be a trade economy reassigning time from the bottom of society to the top for inequality to occur. The reader is introduced to shopkeepers, including a chocolate shop owner, which links into the point above about investment in the Oubliette being more attractive than saving due to inflation. All this points to a degree of economic dynamism thriving beneath the surface of the oppressive cryptarch regime.

There are no comparable real world examples of economies that are similar to the Oubliette. The closest example I can think of is Cuba. Cuba is a society which balances personal freedom with an authoritarian government. Cuba's currency, the National Peso, can only be used by its citizens, which prevents imports and exports, much in the same way that time cannot be exported or imported from the Oubliette. This leads to the country remaining static for political reasons. Beneath the surface of this static and controlling economy is a thriving and dynamic unofficial economy where citizens work around the government's restrictions.

The economy of the Oubliette is interesting and raises a lot of questions. Aside from analysing the implications of using time as a currency, The Quantum Thief is a really imaginative book. Its fantastic story is weaved around the setting of the Oubliette and it has interesting characters and a lot of tension. The Oubliette merely provides the backdrop for the drama of the story. The Quantum Thief is an original science fiction novel which shows a lot of creativity and I would recommend it to any fan of the genre.

My thoughts on watching films in London

On my way up the tube escalator, I stare at the posters that line the walls. Charity fun runs, exclusive estate agents, gyms offering extraordinary weight loss in an improbably short period of time. Then something catches my eye: rows of people sat in front of a cinema screen, the London skyline lit up behind them. It looks brilliant. Watching a film on a cool summer night with a spectacular view of iconic London landmarks. The magic of cinema transposed into a modern urban setting. Gone are the plain out of town multiplexes in shopping centres, instead this cinema in the heart of a global city. The event was probably very expensive, even considering the outrageous prices charged by some cinemas, but worth it for the experience.

I am the target audience for this event and others like it. I fit into the correct consumer demographic; someone who describes themselves as "passionate" about film in consumer surveys. I am young, urban, liberal, interested in culture, professional, modern, with no children and in possession of disposable income. I am someone who values experience over possessions, who thinks being well travelled is more important than owning a good car. I am a cliché of the late twentysomething, early thirtysomething Londoner, writing this blog post on an Apple product in a chain coffee shop.

A range of products and experiences have risen to cater for this lucrative demographic, one of the few that feels wealthy – or, at least, is not concerned about personal debt. These products includes secret cocktail bars, immersive zombie survival theatre and restaurants with unusual themes. All have the inflated prices that comes with urban chic. Rooftop Film Club is just another example of this.

Do not mistake any of the above for a criticism - these events are a lot of fun and usually put on with dazzling creative flair and attention to detail. They are experiences perfectly crafted to make you feel like you are a part of something exclusive, something special. Life would become boring if it only consisted of the same pubs, TV shows, books, etc, and these unusual events provide the variety which keeps life interesting. London is an expensive, crowded, noisy, dirty place to live, and these unique experiences make life in the capital worth living, they remind you how magical London can be. I feel very fortunate to be in a position (in terms of time and money) to experience some of them.

A lot of these experiences include new ways of exhibiting film. I am certainly in favour of deconstructing what a film screening is and taking it in new directions. Film screenings should not be confined to multiplexes or the basements of independent DVD shops. The ways of experiencing film should be as diverse as film itself. Also it is a great idea to combine the screening of a film with complementary experiences, from meals to immersive theatre. This process of bringing the film to life while still keeping the immersive experience intact is a fantastic new way to experience cinema.

You can probably sense a rather large ‘but’ coming in the near future. Changing the way we exhibit film is a positive thing but the films on offer are becoming increasingly generic. These new screening events typically choose successful films from the 70s, 80s and 90s - Star Wars, Back to the Future, Shawshank Redemption - great films from the heyday of blockbusters, when they were still fresh and original. Alternatively they show the most mainstream franchise blockbusters from today, the Marvel shared universe, the DC shared universe, reboots of classic films series and TV shows - Mad Max, The Avengers, The Man From UNCLE. The ways of exhibiting films are getting more interesting while the films themselves are getting duller.

This is a process we are seeing across mainstream cinema as a whole. The multiplexes are investing in new projection technology and sound systems to make the cinema experience more immersive. The range of food and drink being offered is expanding beyond popcorn and Galaxy Minstrels. New and exciting ways of watching films are starting up from curated online streaming services like MUBI, to events like Hot Tub Cinema. The multiplexes have never been shinier but Hollywood's rising levels of risk adversity means our choice of film is getting narrower. We can choose between different competing superhero franchises, actions movies into embarrassingly high number of sequels, or formulaic vehicles for stars and directors who should have retired a long time ago to make way for new wave of original cinema. There is a limit to how fancy you can make a multiplex to cover up how uninspiring the films are.

Events like Rooftop Film Club, Hot Tub Cinema or Secret Cinema rely heavily on the good films from the past. This partly due to the cost of acquiring prints of new films and the fact that if you are going to spend north of £50 on a cinema trip, most people would prefer to know they will enjoy the film. Still, this reliance of successful blockbusters of the past only underlines how humdrum modern blockbusters have become.

We are drowning in sequels, remakes and adaptations and there is barely an original film in sight. This is partly why events like Rooftop Film Club are popular, as they are a way to breathe novelty back into the cinema-going experience in an age where novelty is too risky for the big budgets of mainstream blockbusters.

There is nothing wrong with events such as Rooftop Film Club, which I have perhaps unfairly focused on in this article. The cinema experience these new film exhibitions offer is interesting and innovative. Seeing a classic film on a hot summer night with one of the world's most iconic skylines around you is a once in a lifetime experience. My source of disappointment is that events like this are necessary to keep people like me passionate about cinema because the regular cinema going experience is so devoid of passion.

I would prefer more original films in regular, boring, cinemas to boring films and original ways of showing them. I would happily make that trade to have some more variety from Hollywood. Rooftop Film Club and similar events are fantastic ways to enjoy film as well as injecting some originality into the medium. However, they are, at best, a temporary fix to the problems of Hollywood becoming increasingly risk adverse. As films become increasingly similar and fans are offered less choice, people will turn away from the medium and interesting ways of showing films will not stop this. As much as I enjoy original ways of screening films, I would prefer some original films.

How much scrutiny should your fictional world building stand up to?

Bad world building. I have spoken about it before, and how annoying it can be for a reader. Usually, I define bad world building as a fictional world which does not make sense, a world whose structures fall apart under detailed scrutiny. This leads to an important question: what level of scrutiny should good world building stand up to?

Some fictional universes stand up to detailed scrutiny, such as Hyperion by Dan Simmons, which fills in the entire history of humanity from now until the future with enormous attention to detail. Some works of fiction do not stand up to scrutiny, such as A. A. Attanasio's The Last Legends of Earth, which leaves a lot of key questions unanswered. Where did the zōtl come from? How could something like the zōtl evolve naturally?

Last week my favourite podcast, the podcast from the news magazine New Statesmen, released a special 100th episode which looked in detail at politics, economics, education and sex in the Harry Potter universe. This was approached in a spirit of both serious debate and also light-hearted fun between Harry Potter fans. What became quickly apparent is that the universe of Harry Potter does not stand up to the level of scrutiny that a newspaper gives to the politics and economics of our world.

The issues identified by several the New Statesman's writers were mainly around three unanswered practical questions about the Harry Potter universe: can wizards vote in muggle elections? do wizards vote at all? The Minister for Magic is appointed, but by means which we do not know. This does not sound very transparent or accountable.

Other unexplained issues include why are the Weasleys so poor, when their father is a senior civil servant and wizards seem to exist in a post-scarcity society? A major problem is caused by the fact that the wizarding world is closed to letting many muggles in and their population appears to be heavily skewed towards the elderly. Without the ability to bring in cheap labour who will look after all the old wizards? From the outside, the wizarding world looks on the point of collapse.

It is unreasonable to expect even a world as detailed as Harry Potter to make perfect sense when put under the same microscope that we use to analyse economic and political issues in our world. No fictional world can stand up to that level of scrutiny, as it would have to be as complicated as our world. Even enormous virtual worlds, such as Eve Online, with huge populations and millions of procedurally generated worlds, still have a simplified versions of our own political or economic systems.

While admitting that all fictional worlds fall apart when examined under a microscope, the process still raises some questions about the writing of Harry Potter. For example, why does Ron not understand some fairly basic stuff about magic (you cannot create something out of nothing), despite being in the last year of his magical education? Also why is a series of books populated by teenagers strangely sexless, and why does every character marry someone who they met in their early teenaged years? The wizarding worlds seems to have some very conservative social values.

These questions about sex and education are legitimate criticism of the writing, but it does not matter that the economy and politics of Harry Potter make no sense because that is not what the books are about. Harry Potter is about a group of characters’ difficult journey into adulthood, and the world around them exists to facilitate this story.

When examining the quality of the world building of Harry Potter, or of any other fictional universe, there are two main issues to consider. Firstly, is it a reasonably functioning world? Does it make sense to the reader? Harry Potter does make sense as a universe while you read the books. The world of the Hunger Games novels make sense – it is a simpler world than Harry Potter, but it still makes sense. The world of Divergent does not make sense: how could such a world come to exist and what keeps its strangely arbitrary social structure going?

The second issue is: does the fictional world achieve the goals that it sets itself? Does it facilitate the story? In Harry Potter, the wizarding world makes Harry's story more interesting. Its structure and power systems also reflect the theme of standing up to intolerance that is explored throughout the books. Divergent meets the second criteria but not the first. Harry Potter satisfies both criteria so it does not matter that detailed exploration of the politics or economics of the wizarding world reveals a lot of holes.

The advice I would give to writers concerned about how much scrutiny their fictional world should be able to stand up to is that it depends on what you want to achieve with your fictional world. Do you want to make a specific point about our world or the human race which will be exemplified by your fictional world? Do you want to explore a specific idea? Your world should make sense to your reader as they read the story, and it should aid the story you are trying to tell. Beyond that, it does not need to stand up to detailed dissection.

No one expects a work of fiction to be impervious to examination, so long as the story and characters are engaging. Despite the fact that any world will eventually collapse under scrutiny, the process of looking in detail at the worlds we enjoy reading about is fun and raises important issues. The New Statesman did this in a very positive way when looking at Harry Potter, and it was done by fans who are passionate about the books and wanted to talk about the issues they raise. This was not about breaking down the world of Harry Potter, but about looking at it in interesting ways. It does not matter how much examination a fictional world can stand up to, just so long as looking at it raises interesting questions.

Superbob and independent films

As film fans, it is important that we support independent films whenever we can. Sometimes this seems difficult, Hollywood is so monumentally powerful and posses such vast marketing apparatus that getting a smaller film noticed seems almost impossible. Despite this, film fans are more powerful now than they have ever been: through Twitter, Tumblr, forums and blogs, we all have a platform and we can use it to get more films that we like made. When a film fan sees a film they like it is important to make as much noise about it as possible, as through working together in this grass-roots approach we can shine a light on quality films that would otherwise be overlooked.

It is essential that film fans do this because it is through independent films that we can control how we are portrayed in the cinema. Films are immensely powerful; they create lasting cultural impressions and can even result in political change.

Not having control of how your country or subculture is portrayed in film or TV can be very damaging. Most people's impressions of Africa are based on stereotypes that are supported by Hollywood films or TV. If more people watched films made in Africa, such as Timbuktu or Fishing Without Nets, then viewers would understand that there is poverty in Africa, but the continent is much more complex than the stereotypes would have you believe. It is important to support independent film so that your country or subculture can exercise control over how they are portrayed on film and not just hand that power over to Hollywood completely.

Supporting a film is also a way to see representations of yourself on screen – that is, if you are not a middle class white American man. Recently, I saw a film that I want to make noise about so that more people get an opportunity to see it. This film is the British film Superbob, about an ordinary postman from Peckham who becomes a superhero when he is struck by a meteorite.

The film takes place in and around South London, mostly in Peckham, an area that is not usually the subject of films. If your experience of the world is only through Hollywood films, you could be forgiven for not knowing that Peckham existed, and if your only experience was through mainstream TV you would think that it was still inhabited by Del Boy and Rodney. Peckham is a vibrant, interesting part of London and it is time that this was reflected in a film. It was refreshing to see a London that is reflective of ordinary people's lives. This was not a film focused on the well-heeled Kensington or Notting Hill set, nor was it a film about hyper-cool Hoxton hipsters. This was a film about a London which ordinary Londoners can recognise.

Another reason why it is important to champion smaller films is that independent cinema showcases a wider variety of stories than the mainstream Hollywood output. Superbob is another good example of this. There are not many films focusing on British superheroes, we see a lot of super-powered charismatic Americans saving the day with witty one liners, but it was a nice change to see a superhero who was self-conscious and modest in a very British way. Superman makes proud statements on what it means to be human, whereas Superbob is concerned that he is signed up to two home energy suppliers. This humour and this type of character is absent from mainstream Hollywood movies, so we need to support it in independent cinema to see more of it.

Above all, Superbob should be championed because it is a great film. The writing is witty and clever. It has a great cast, including Brett Goldstein and Catherine Tate. The film has a warm story about love and being yourself at its core, which allows Superbob to transition from heartbreakingly sad to trouser-soilingly funny in the same scene. What Superbob lacks in budget, it makes up for in heart and wit.

Superbob is a great film because it is different, fresh and original when compared to a Hollywood output which is becoming increasingly generic. Superbob is also extremely entertaining, regardless of the wider industry context. It is a film that film fans should be shouting about because it deserves to reach a wide audience.

The roar of the Hollywood promotional machine can easily drown out a small British movie. That is why it is important that film fans make noise about the easily-overlooked independent films. Films like Superbob are great pieces of entertainment, but they are also important cultural documents and a record of the way we see ourselves. It would be extremely sad if this record was lost and it would be extremely sad if a great film like Superbob did not get the recognition that it deserves.

Sci-fi Short Films

Sci-fi short films do not get the credit they deserve. There are many brilliant, brief movies that can tell a story, make you engage with a character and transport you to a different world in under 20 minutes.

Sci-fi London has been celebrating short films at their film festival, with eight show cases of the best sci-fi shorts form around the world. I popped down to one screening to see what was on offer.

Gear

Gear is a short thriller about robotics set in the future. The world of Gear is beautifully detailed and the plot drops you straight into an already moving story without clunky exposition. There are some great performances and cool effects.

Happy Fun Room

This part comedy, part drama is set in a totalitarian future where a TV show, called Happy Fun Room, explains to children how to be safe in a police state. Sam is the host and is trying desperately to keep the show on the air despite its waning popularity. This short manages to be both funny and moving.

I Remember The Future

A sci-fi writer is in his final days and looking back on his family and creations. His story is intercut with scenes from his novels, which we are dropped into but it never comes across as confusing. This film has warmth and stunning variety of familiar sci-fi concepts.

Captcha

Captcha is a stylish film set in sci-fi version of the 1950s. Amy Beth Hayes stars as a fem-fatal who has implanted a chip in her husband, Arthur Darvill. When the chip’s owners kidnap him to retrieve it, she needs to decide which side she is on. Capcha has some great action scenes and is beautiful to look at, with a great simple love story at its core.

Shaman

This lavish part sci-fi, part fantasy film is set in a future where endless war rages. There is also Shaman, who can move between our world and the sprit world and use their powers neutralize enemies. The film has explosive action and jaw dropping special effects to rival a big budget Hollywood film. The central premise is very clever and the film ably transports the viewer to its world.

Those are some sci-fi short movies I have seen recently and enjoyed. What other shorts should I be watching? Let me know below

Are franchise blockbusters dumbing down cinema?

Last week, Simon Pegg caused a stir when he implied that cinema has been "infantilised". Like most media circuses, this one turned out to be an exaggeration and Pegg's more detailed explanation is well worth a read. Whatever Pegg's actual views, he is not alone in expressing this sentiment that cinema is dominated by adolescent fantasies at the expense of real art. This argument is as old as cinema itself but I want to examine this claim in regards to recent cinema trends, because in Pegg's own words: “Sometimes it’s good to look at the state of the union and make sure we’re getting the best we can get.”

The trend in cinema currently blamed for infantilising the medium is what I call the “franchise blockbuster”. This includes the Marvel and DC super-hero shared universes, but also the trend to bring back expired film franchises (Star Wars, Mad Max, Jurassic Park, etc) or start new franchises using works popular in other mediums (The Hunger Games, Mission Impossible, etc).

I partially agree and partially disagree with the idea that this trend has dumbed down cinema or excluded films of greater artistic metric. Although it is true that there was a brief period where artistic movies were the most commercially successful (Tax Driver, The Godfather, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, etc) this period only lasted a few years between Easy Rider in 1969 and Raging Bull in 1980. It is also important to remember that this period occurred between the collapse of one dominant commercial model in Hollywood, the studio system, and the rise of a new one, the modern blockbuster which begins with Star Wars.

Franchise blockbusters are only the most recent form of the blockbuster and I disagree with the accusation that these films are dumbing down cinema. Most often this accusation is usually aimed at sci-fi films or comic book adaptations because these are the highest profile franchise blockbusters. This argument implies that sci-fi or superhero films can never be clever or tackle important real world issues, when there are many counter examples. Sci-fi films such as Elysium or District 9 and superhero films such as Super have used the conventions of their respective genres as a prism to explore real world issues.

Science fiction films have always lent themselves to spectacle and spectacle has always dominated the box office, because film is a visual medium. There is a view summarised by Pegg that: “the more spectacle becomes the driving creative priority, the less thoughtful or challenging the films can become.”

I do not believe this is true, as spectacle based blockbusters can also be very artistic such as films like Alien, Apocalypse Now and Blade Runner. It is not a valid reading of film history to claim that the blockbusters of the 1980s destroyed the artistic credibility of the 1970s, they just changed it.

It should also be remembered creating great art was not a priority in the period before blockbusters came along in the late 1970s. In the 40s, 50s and 60s there were a lot of generic studio films, most of which have been forgotten because they were generic. One reasons why three decades look so good in retrospect is because we only remember the good films. There was no golden age of artistic integrity which we should go back to, and the idea that there was needs to be resisted.

That said I do think the desire to be innovative, challenging and emotional has been pushed out of cinema. The main reason for this is because studios are becoming more risk averse and not chancing innovative or challenging films because they could lose money. This is manifesting itself in the dominance of franchise blockbusters. As cinema goers, we are getting a lot of the same types of film over and over again which is making cinema more boring.

I do not think that franchise blockbusters are themselves to blame for cinema becoming more boring. The current wave for films tied into existing franchises are just a wave or artistic movement like any other, muscle men action movies in the 1980s or melodramas in the 1950s. The wave will break, no artistic movement lasts forever.

However there are two trends in modern cinema which I find collectively troubling. They are that cinema is becoming more boring and more franchise blockbusters are being made. The artistic movement of franchise blockbusters has produced as many good films as any other cinema movement, Guardians of the Galaxy, Iron Man 3 and Captain America: The Winter Soldier are as good as any blockbuster from the 1980s or 1990s and some films such as Tinker Taylor Soldier Spy have had both complex plots and explored complex characters in a subtle way.

The only reason that franchise blockbusters are making cinema more boring is that our cinema diet consists only of franchise blockbusters. Eventually audiences will get bored of franchise blockbusters (I predict this happen somewhere around the time of the Aquaman film) and cinema goers will stop paying to see them. When the fun has gone out of franchise blockbusters and they all become generic, this will end the movement, just as too many dull action movies like Collateral Damage killed the muscle men films. This natural process of artistic movements rising and falling will continue and another new type of blockbuster will take its place. This is not something to be worried about. If you do not like a fashion simply wait, it will change.

The excessively risk averse nature of studios could mean that cinema becomes so dominated by franchised blockbusters that the audience for cinema disappears almost completely. This will most likely happen when audiences are lured away by some other medium, such as video streaming services. It happened before - in the 1960s, the studio system was so reluctant to embrace counter culture that they kept making the same generic pictures they had been making since the 1940s. Film audiences were put off by the old fashioned Hollywood products and lured away by TV, where shows like the Monkey were reflecting cultural changes. Audience could abandon the cinema complete if the studios continue to make franchise blockbusters long after everyone is sick of them.

If this were to happen, it would be a significant event in cinema history, and we might get a brief period of creativity like we did the 1970s after the fall of the studio system and before the rise of the modern blockbusters. However, the process of movements rising and falling will continue and any artistic period will not last long before a new commercial model exerts itself.

Franchise blockbusters are a victim of the changing circumstances, namely studio's risk aversion, and not the cause of them. If cinephiles really do get bored of them then franchise blockbusters will go away as no artistic movement lasts forever. The one thing all artistic movements have in common is their belief that they are special, transcendent and permanent, when in reality they all end. Periods of change between artistic movements are the most interesting and the most creative. They are when certainties are questioned and possibilities open up. However these periods are always brief and commercial models reassert themselves quickly.

Film fans have always worried about cinema becoming too much of a spectacle and not being artistic enough. I do not think movies are dumbing down. They are just changing and they will change again in the future.

The Fire Sermon by Francesca Haig

The poor do not deserve to be poor and the rich do not deserve to be rich, this is something I firmly believe in. An individual’s economic situation owes more to chance than to hard work or intelligence. My own middle-class status is because I had middle-class parents. However, those who are wealthy justify the fact that they have more money than others by arguing that they deserve it, which implies that the poor deserve to be poor.

This applies to any oppressed group in society; those who are discriminated against due to race, gender, religion, etc. They do not deserve it, your race or gender is decided by chance, and so no one deserves to be oppressed. However, powerful social groups justify oppression through any means of excuses from pregnancy being a “life style choice” so women can be paid less than men, to it being natural for one ethnicity to dominate another - this comes up with depressingly regularity throughout history.

There are many novels which explore the idea of the undeserving oppressed: for example, The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell, or Noughts & Crosses by Malorie Blackman. A novel that I recently read which handles this expertly is The Fire Sermon by Francesca Haig. Haig’s book makes the point that the disadvantaged are disadvantaged by chance and not their own actions in a powerful, captivating and accessible way.

The Fire Sermon takes place in a dystopian future, after society has been destroyed by “the Blast”. The surviving humans eek out a quasi-medieval life, and – as in medieval times – this life is often brutal and short. One side effect of the Blast is that all pregnancies result in twins: one Alpha twin, strong and healthy, and one Omega twin, weaker and different. Omegas are missing limbs, or have extra limbs, or occasionally possess strange predictive abilities. The difference between Alpha and Omega twins forms the basis of the class division in The Fire Sermon.

Once the Omega twins are a few years old, the Alpha communities who birthed them reject them. Omegas cannot have children so they are forced to leave Alpha society and live on the edge of the Alpha world. Occasionally, Omegas band together into supportive communities, which are frequently oppressed by the Alphas. Omegas are driven to the infertile lands where their medieval subsistence-farming existence is made more brutal and even shorter. The Fire Sermon makes the point that the Omegas in society are not to blame for the situations that they find themselves in, but the Alphas blame the Omegas for their poor quality of life, when in reality they are to blame.

What is most powerful about The Fire Sermon is that the twins are forever linked. If one dies then the other dies at the same time (this is what keeps the Alphas from exterminating the Omegas), if one suffers a great amount of pain then other twin feels it too. This shows that humanity is linked together by a common bond that cannot be broken, however the politically powerful ignore this bond by taking every opportunity enrich themselves at the expense of others.

The Fire Sermon shows how the powerful blame the powerless for being powerless, when it is really the fault of the powerful. A particularly graphic example of this is a section in the novel where an Omega is whipped and the narrator (an Omega) talks about how the Alpha twin will feel the pain of the whip. The narrator comments that rather than blaming a society that whips Omegas with little cause, the Alpha twin will blame the Omega for the pain that they feel by proxy. This shows how social structures direct people’s rage towards oppressed groups instead of the system of oppression. We see this with how the wealthy turn the working poor against the non-working poor, or how rich whites turn poor whites against ethnic minorities.

Another well observed event in The Fire Sermon, frighteningly similar to real life, is when the narrator sees how even those who do not benefit from the social structure, namely poor Alphas, are in favour of it because they can look down on Omegas. The poor Alphas are oppressed by the same social structures and scarcity of resources which oppress the Omegas, but rather than fighting to change the system in solidarity with Omegas, the poor Alphas cling to their small amount of superiority of being Alphas, and look down on the Omegas even more. We see this with race and class a lot in our world. The poor should be natural allies, but they are turned against each other by the social structures that oppress them.

As you can probably tell from this article, I find The Fire Sermon most interesting from a political point of view. The Alphas are the rich and Omegas are the poor; this is both materially true in the novel, and in an allegorical sense. Alphas pretend their greater material wealth is just, when it is obviously not. They claim the Omegas bring their poverty on themselves, when it is clearly because of Alphas excluding Omegas from good jobs and lands from which wealth can be extracted. Despite the Alphas’ policies to impoverish the Omegas, the Omegas are still blamed for being poor. We see this in our world when programs to help the poor, such as state-funded education or Sure Start Centres, are cut and then the poor are blamed for being uncompetitive. How the poor are supposed to be competitive when starting from a position of disadvantage without help is never explained.

What makes the allegory of The Fire Sermon so lasting and powerful is Haig’s knowledge of real life instances of oppression. Before publishing this book, she was an academic studying the Holocaust and has cited Anne Michaels' Fugitive Pieces as a major influence. Haig has pointed out in talks that the word Holocaust means burnt offering, which is appropriate to The Fire Sermon.

Haig has weaved a sense of sadness and hopelessness throughout The Fire Sermon, which is emblematic of how a lot of people think about the Holocaust. Her knowledge of how the social structures can turn from prejudice into bare-faced oppression shows in how painfully real the social structures of The Fire Sermon are. We see many examples of oppression in The Fire Sermon echoed in our world, and these details bring the book to life and make it believable.

That the poor do not deserve to be poor and the rich do not deserve to be rich is powerful in its simplicity, as is the allegory of The Fire Sermon. The nature of the oppression of the Omegas is similar to events in our world, which gives the novel a painful resonance and makes it a powerful argument for human compassion across social divisions. It is also a stark warning about how dangerous the belief that the oppressed deserve to be oppressed can be.

Power Grid: the board game

A good board game accurately reflects how something works in reality. Some of my favourite board games are simulations of a real life situations or events. Puerto Rico models the managing of a colony during the Caribbean ascendancy, and Agricola is a simulated medieval farm. Both of these games use their mechanics to illustrate the processes involved in these situations, from growing crops to trading goods, and the cards and tokens are used to represent how these situations happen in reality. In these games, the mechanism is a simplified version of real life situations.

Power Grid is a simulation of economic forces and the game's mechanics are a simplified economy. The players have to compete in a market to buy resources (power plants), and increased competition for these scarce reassures increases their price. Similarly a decrease in competition causes the price to fall to make it more attractive to consumers. This is a simplified version of a real life economy, which is what makes Power Grid so interesting.

Power Grid has four fuel commodities: coal, oil, garbage and uranium. In each turn, players purchase some of these commodities for use in their power stations. Each commodity has its own market, and the price fluctuates from turn to turn based on the demand for a specific commodity. Power Grid also has three distinct phases, each consisting of many turns, in which the rate at which resources are replenished varies. In the early stages of the game, coal and oil are replenished in larger quantities than garbage and uranium, which means the price will be generally lower for these commodities unless competition for them is very high. Later in the game other commodities replenish more quickly which makes them more attractive to purchase.

These game mechanics simulate the price mechanism and show that it is subject to two prominent forces. Firstly, that changes in competition affect price, as increased competition for scarce resources drives the price up. Secondly, it illustrates how technological change in the long run affects supply and price. The changes in the replenishment rate of resources between game phases reflects the changes in technology. As the technology for extracting uranium improves and it becomes more abundant, the price falls. Similarly, as oil and coal deposits become rarer and more investment is needed to extract them, the price rises.

In the short run (turns), the supply of commodities is static and changes in demand control price. In the long run (phases), the supply changes and this affects price. This in turn affects demand, as some resources are now a more attractive investment prospect because of their greater replenishment rate. This changes the demand in the commodities market, and thus changes the price of resources.

As phases pass, power plants become available which can use the same resources more efficiently, and thus in turns affects the demand for goods in the commodities market. There are other long run changes such as new sites to build houses on. All of this demonstrates the effects of technological change on the economy in the long run. Power Grid uses all of its game mechanics to simulate economic forces and principals.

The objective of Power Grid is to build houses and supply them with power produced by your power stations when they are fuelled with the resources purchased from the commodities market. Power Grid has a leader-goes-last mechanism, the leader being the person with the most houses. This keeps the game from being dominated by one player and makes fairer play.

The simulated economic forces are also used to make the game fair. The leader-goes-last mechanic means they are the most affected by price changes in the commodities market and the power plant market. This system is used throughout the game when buying power plants, houses and resources from the commodities market. It ensures that no one player dominates the game from the beginning, which can happen in other similar games like Monopoly. In short it keeps the game fun and interesting.

Power Grid is a very fun board game. It is not as complex as the rules and volume of pieces makes it appear, or my explanation of the economic forces which underpin its mechanics. After one turn, each player will have an understanding of how the game works.

Power Grid is not a real economy, as this is much more complex: the price of labour, the level of overall demand in the wider economy (what economists call aggregate demand), elasticity of supply, foreign trade, government investment and many other facets are left out. However, Power Grid is a simple and very effective illustration of economic forces and principles. What I find most enjoyable about Power Grid is that the commodities market behaves like a real market, with competition and the availability of resources dictating price.

Unlike a real economy, Power Grid is fair and has built-in mechanisms to stop one player dominating from the start. These fairness mechanisms do not detract from how believable the game is as an economic simulation. Power Grid also illustrates that if checks and controls are built into our economic system to prevent a small group from dominating the economy, then everyone has a fairer shot.

The contrast with Monopoly is apt, as a few lucky rolls of the dice early on in the game can put one player ahead of the others; this player then uses this economic advantage to widen the gap, and other players cannot catch up. Not only is this not very much fun, it illustrates how a few individuals who are lucky at birth use this early advantage to remain economically ahead of the rest of the game.

Real life is a lot less fair than a game of Monopoly. If you had ten players, each representing 10% of the UK population banded by wealth, then the player representing the richest 10% of our society would start out owning ten properties. The poorest five players would have two properties between them. (The data for this came from this Guardian article.)

Unlike Monopoly, Power Grid has a built-in mechanism to make sure that the less well-off do not fall too far behind the most well off. This allows every player to compete in the commodities market and prevents all the assets being owned by one player who is lucky early on in the game. This illustrates that a greater emphasis on equality of opportunity would benefit our society.

Power Grid is a superbly designed game: the board and cards are beautifully illustrated, the game is a clever simulation of a real economic forces, and the mechanics ensure that the game is both realistic and fun to play. All of this means that I think that Power Grid is one of the best-designed board games of all time.

Avengers: The Age of Ultron

Warning this review contains spoilers

Everyone must be aware by now that there is a group of fictional superheroes known as the Avengers knocking about. There must be amoebas on Titan who know that Robert Downey Jr is charismatic as Iron Man and that Chris Evans is strangely likeable playing Captain America. The Avengers have become a part of our cinematic landscape, along with being quietly disappointed about the number of sequels/adaptations and the lack of original films.

Now the Avengers we know (Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, Black Widow, etc.) and a few new ones (Quick Silver, Scarlet Witch, The Vision) are back and have teamed up to fight a new big bad in the form of Ultron, a psychopathic machine intelligence that is intent on destroying humanity.

Avengers: The Age of Ultron is an action movie at its heart, and it certainly does not lack for gripping action scenes. There are at least five spectacular fight sequences scattered throughout the film, each one more impressive and dazzling than the last. Avengers: The Age of Ultron is a movie that makes full use of the cinematic toolbox to create a treat for the eyes.

My personal favourite action sequence is fight mid-way through the film between the Hulk, ably played by Mark Ruffalo, and Downey Jr's Iron Man in a new extra large suit of armour. Superhero crossover movies are at their most fun when the heroes fight each other, as it settles the questions teenage geeks spending hours pondering: who would win in a fight between X and Y. This kind of drama is not the basis for Shakespearian intrigue, but it does make for spectacular viewing.

As a science fiction film, it has to be said that this is a little light on the science. It is still not clear if Thor is an actual magical god-being or an alien, and characters like The Vision are more fantasy than science fiction. However, James Spader’s Ultron is a brilliant villain, an out of control AI without a care for human suffering, intent of improving the world by destroying it. This is not original writing – the basic plot is little different from Terminator or The Matrix – but I have a weakness for AI-run-amuck films and Avengers certainly delivers this. Spader excellently camps it up as the evil Ultron and clearly loves every minute of being the villain.

A film that has the combined cast of four other films is understandably overflowing with characters, and writer/director Joss Whedon ensures that they all get their moments and all get a character arc. The best of these is Quick Silver’s and Scarlet Witch's redemption arc as they both begin the movie in the service of Ultron and then go over to the Avengers when they see how evil he is. This is nimbly handled and had some great acting from Elizabeth Olsen and Aaron Taylor-Johnson in their respective roles.

Every character’s role is weaved into the plot of the film, but I was left feeling that some were not necessary. The cast is perhaps too large and the pace would have suffered under a less capable director. Hawkeye, The Vision and Black Widow could have been jettisoned and the film would have been improved, although the removal of the latter would mean that there was only one woman with a substantial role in the film.

Cutting the number of characters would have left more time to develop the ones that remained. The arcs of characters such as Thor and Captain America are rushed, and at times barely coherent. In an ensemble superhero film, less is certainly more.

This lies at the heart of what most disappointed me about Avengers: The Age of Ultron. I was left feeling that Whedon was more committed to bringing in as much of the wider Avengers franchise as possible than to making a good film. Whedon has worked with ensemble casts before and handled their arcs and characterisation much better. For example, Serenity also has an established ensemble cast, however in that film each is given several moment to shine, where as in Avengers: The Age of Ultron characters such as War Machine and the Falcon are hardly in the film, which makes me wonder why include them at all other than to give the audience a knowing nod to the other films in the Avengers franchise.

Audience love knowing nods: it makes them feel clever and part of a club, and everyone loves that, but knowing nods do not make a good film. Developed characters and interesting scenes make a good film, but clearly this was not the priority when making the Avengers: The Age of Ultron, or there would be less cameo appearances and more time spent on developing the core characters. For example, an extended segment exploring Hawkeye's domestic situation was dull and pointless, but apparently necessary. Cutting Hawkeye would have allowed more time to develop more interesting characters, such as Thor and Captain America.

Whedon does make all of this work and also brings his trademark humour to the film, which makes it hugely enjoyable to watch. Avengers: The Age of Ultron takes itself a lot less seriously than Batman and is all the better for it. Witty lines pointing out the absurdity of the whole film make it more believable than trying to earnestly sell the conflict between a man in a clown suit and a man dressed as a bat as a deep meditation on the human condition.

However I do feel that Avengers: The Age of Ultron takes itself too seriously and tries to make all the characters relatable, which is not necessary. The audience’s lives are nothing like those of Tony Stark or Steve Roger, so why do we have to relate to them via their personal lives? Avengers: The Age of Ultron is an action movie and great action movies of the past, such as Alien or Predator, were lighter on character development and better on motivation - basic survival - and they are stronger movies for it.

Despite these weaknesses, Avengers: The Age of Ultron is a brilliant rollercoaster of a film. It is funny, has good actors, great writing and amazing visuals, it will certainly be the best superhero film of the year – and maybe the best sci-fi/action movie of the year if Star Wars 7 is more Phantom Menace than New Hope. I would highly recommend that any fan of superhero, sci-fi or action movies head down to their local multiplex and see Avengers: The Age of Ultron.

Future Economies

Science fiction writers can be overly optimistic about the future. It is tempting to paint a picture of the future where science and capitalism have solved all of our economic and social problems as well as bringing advances such as interplanetary transportation and AI. Today, science is gradually solving some of the world’s problems; for example, AIDS medicine has progressed enormously and a newly HIV positive person living in the west can expect to live as long as someone who is HIV negative. However, technological progress has made some problems worse, mainly the eradication of the planet’s natural environment.

Capitalism is the driving force behind economic impulses and scientific research is governed by the need to be profitable as much as any other industry. This means the problems it is cost-effective to solve are solved and ones it is profitable to make worse are made worse. Capitalism will not solve all our problems by itself, as some sci-fi authors believe it will. For example, in Michael Cobley’s Humanity's Fire novels, humans has progressed to be a space faring civilization, which implies we have overcome our current environmental and population problems. However we are still ruled over by the same type of governments and private business is still the focus of the economy. It strikes me as unlikely that we would have changed so much technologically but remained the same politically and economically.

Capitalism will also not last forever. Too many sci-fi writers accept capitalism as a fundamental truth that will still be present in a future that has left behind the chemical rocket and the internal combustion engine. In the future, there will be different economic systems, just as there will be different political systems. At a talk given by Iain M. Banks, he complained about lazy sci-fi authors who depict a future where the technology, government and social structures have changed but capitalism remains. It is up to sci-fi authors to imagine interesting future economies and not assume that the economic systems of the present, i.e. capitalism, will still be there in the future. The best sci-fi books imagine interesting alternative economics, for example Hannu Rajaniemi's The Quantum Thief imagines a future society where time itself is a commodity and the currency.

There are plenty of sci-fi novels, with space based societies, which do not think about how the economy would have changed or evolved in the time since humanity got into space, even if it is very far in the future. Vernor Vinge's A Deepness In the Sky is set in a future where humanity has migrated so far from Earth that it is almost forgotten but the impulses of capitalism (personified by the Qeng Ho trader civilization) are still what drives human expansion. Humanity has changed enormously in the A Deepness In The Sky, technologically, politically, socially, but economically has remained the same. This seems unlikely to me.

I believe that the great economic issue of our age, which sci-fi authors should be tackling, is the massively rising level of economic inequality. The fact that future economies might bring about greater levels of inequality is overlooked in most science fiction stories. I find the film Alien and the TV show Red Dwarf very interesting presentations of the future as, unlike the gleaming world of Star Trek, they show us that in the future, there will still be people with bad jobs who strive for more money and status.

In our world, economic inequality has gotten substantially worse over the last 30 years. There were times when we were a more economically equal society, such as the period from the end of the Second World War to the end of the 1970s. In the future inequality could get better or worse. Although a lot of science fiction stories overlook the possibility that society could become more unequal, some approach this possibility in imaginative ways.

The film Gattaca is set in a very unequal future where a social elite perpetuates their power through genetic predisposition. Gattaca is world where birth, or more accurately the social class you are born into, determines the pattern of your life. In the film, we see how this rigid social structure limits the individual. This is what those of us who are concerned about economic inequality fear, a future where the economic divisions are so wide that birth determines the trajectory of your life. Gattaca explores how society’s resources might be allocated in this future and shows that, as society changes to accommodate this new technology, so too does our economic structure. This is an imaginative way of looking at what the future might be like.

Iain M. Banks’ Culture novels have a different but equally imaginative approach to the economy of the future. Culture novels are post-scarcity, where technological progress has made the resource allocation system of capitalism obsolete. The Culture is a society where technology has completely changed every aspect of humanity, its social values, resource allocation and political structures are completely different to the ones of today. The Culture is a future where everything is different.

Technological progress and capitalism will not in themselves make the future more equal. However technological changes will alter our social structures, our political institutions and our economic system. The structures which facilitate our Earth based society will have to change if we become a space-based society. Will these changes be for better or worse? Will they solve our current problems or escalate them? These are interesting topics for sci-fi writers to explore, and many interesting writers are doing so. However it is lazy to assume that capitalism or any other current social or economic structure will remain indefinitely, regardless of how much humanity changes.

Blue Remembered Earth

A good novel has an engaging plot, right? As well as relatable characters and an interesting setting, there must be a plot that the reader becomes emotionally invested in, but what makes a plot engaging? A degree of originality? Twists, turns and surprises? Cliffhangers? All these things can encourage the reader to engage in the narrative, but personally, what hooks me into a story is characters striving to achieve a goal.

I enjoy a novel where the characters have a clearly defined goal which they are actively taking steps to achieve, for example trying to complete a mission, catch a criminal, solve a mystery or steal something. This format provides a logical structure for the narrative and a clear line of progress. It is then entertaining to see characters thrown off this line of progress and struggle to get back on it. I relate to characters who are trying to achieve something, rather than passive characters who are the victims of circumstance.

A good example of this type of plot is Alastair Reynolds' novel Blue Remembered Earth, the first of the Poseidon’s Children trilogy. The plot focuses on brother and sister Geoffrey and Sunday Akinya who are following clues left by their grandmother Eunice to uncover a secret from her past. They are opposed by members of their family who want the secret, whatever it is, to stay buried. Blue Remembered Earth is set in the 2160s, and the fact Eunice was a pioneer of early space exploration means the clues are scattered across the Moon, Mars and Phobos or hidden in trans-Neptunian asteroids.

In Blue Remembered Earth, personal, inter-personal and extra-personal conflict all come from characters trying to achieve the goal of solving the mystery. Personal conflict in that Geoffrey and Sunday begin to doubt how well they knew their grandmother. Inter-personal conflict arises as the quest to find the clues causes a conflict with their cousins who want to keep the secret. Finally, extra-personal or environmental conflict as the clues are hidden in dangerous locations, including abandoned early settlements on Phobos, the Chinese sector of the Moon and an area of Mars given over to violently competitive machine intelligences.

What makes this structure lead to an engaging story is that once the characters and goal have been established, the narrative flows naturally from that point. Personal, inter-personal and extra-personal conflict have the same source, which leads to a well disciplined narrative. The source of conflicts are easily understood by the reader and the motivation of the protagonists, moving towards achieving their goal, is relatable. In Blue Remembered Earth, we become emotionally invested in Geoffrey and Sunday's struggle to solve Eunice’s riddle as the conflict of all types increases. Having an engaging narrative, with characters actively striving to achieve a goal, facilitates this.

This format works well for other books. In Iain M Banks's Against A Dark Background, the protagonist, Sharrow, must find the lost Lazy Gun before she is murdered by a cult. Sharrow is an active protagonist with a defined goal, each choice she makes brings her closer to achieving her goal which leads to an efficient and engaging narrative.

The opposite plot structure to this can be found in many sci-fi books, and that is the character who is passive, a victim of circumstances, usually just focused on trying to survive in a hostile environment. These plots are typically focused on environmental or extra-personal conflict, which is the easiest source of survival drama.

A good example of this is the sequel to Blue Remembered Earth, Alastair Reynolds’ On the Steel Breeze. In this novel, Sunday's daughter Chiku is among the first humans to travel to the alien world of Crucible. They are crossing the vast distance between stars in a hollowed out asteroid. However, the world they are heading to is not as safe as they imagined. Meanwhile, a duplicate of Chiku must survive on Earth while a dangerous AI tries to kill her.

The majority of the plot in On The Steel Breeze focuses on the two versions of Chiku trying to survive in difficult circumstances. Like in Blue Remembered Earth, characters take actions to achieve a goal, staying alive, but there is not a specific goal the character is trying to achieve other than continual existence.

On The Steel Breeze has a fast moving and eventful plot, but it is not as engaging as Blue Remembered Earth as there is a not a clear, tangible goal which a character is striving to achieve. The plot does not have the same accessible format. Giving the characters a clear goal would make the novel more engaging.

Another example of a sci-fi book with this type of plot is David Brin's Glory Season. It focuses on characters trying to survive in their home environment. Maia and Leie are vars (variants, as opposed to clones) on the planet Stratos, which means they are second-class citizens. When they reach a certain age, they have to leave their clone family and find their way in a world that is suspicious of and hostile to people who are not clones. Maia and Leie get mixed up in lots of exciting adventures, including conspiracies, pirates and humans from other worlds, but their story does not have a clear focus and drifts from situation to situation without a clear direction.

I find it is less interesting if the characters’ top priority is survival; I am interested in goals characters are willing to risk or sacrifice their lives to achieve. A lot of stories about characters trying to survive in a hostile environment shift to become stories with a clear goal in the third act. For example, in Glory Season, Maia is willing to risk her life to save Renna, the man from the stars she has met. At the end of On The Steel Breeze, Chiku risks her life to make Crucible a safe place for her children to live. Clearly defined character goals make for dramatic climaxes.

Another reason I prefer stories where the protagonist has a defined goal is that it is more interesting to see characters striving to overcome the status quo rather than support it or restore it. Stories around survival often involve character trying to keep the situation as it is, with them alive. A good example of how this change affects characters is the difference in Katniss between the first Hunger Games novel, where she is focused on her survival and maintaining the status quo, and the last one, where she has a goal of overthrowing the oppressive capital.

Having characters only focused on their own survival can lead to a tense story but also means the story can lack purpose and direction. I prefer to read stories where characters are actively striving to achieve a goal and change something about the world they inhabit.

Sad Puppies and the Hugos

Over the last year and a bit, it has been with some sadness that I watched GamerGate tear through the video game community like a hegswarm attacking everything that is not a hegswarm (that’s an Iain M Banks reference – remember it, I’ll be coming back to it later). Now the same madness is coming to the SFF community in the form of the Sad Puppies, the anti-SJW voting block that have pushed a list of their preferred nominees into every category of this year’s Hugo awards.

The Sad Puppies, much like GamerGate, claim to be against the politicising of science fiction literature and in favour of going back to a time when reading books was fun and not a political statement. They claim that a group of politically correct SJWs have dominated the award bodies and given science fiction’s top prizes to writers who share their political beliefs. The Sad Puppies are an anti-political movement, but being anti-political is a political position in itself. Opposing writers who share a certain political belief is a political position.

Sad Puppies are a political group as much as SJWs are, so let’s look at their political beliefs. They oppose the “social justice-minded community elites” as they call them. The SJW’s main goal is to increase the diversity in science fiction, diversity in terms of writers but also in terms of the types of characters and plots in sci-fi stories. If the SWJs are in favour of diversity then the Sad Puppies are in favour of the status quo, the dominance of straight, white, middle-class, cis-gendered, British and American men in sci-fi publishing.

The Sad Puppies would argue that they are not against diversity, they are against elitist cliques pushing diversity onto sci-fi against the wishes of the fans. Their solution to a supposed SJW elitist clique is to form an elitist clique. An elitist clique is what the Sad Puppies are, as the establishment in sci-fi publishing is straight, white men. For proof of this, look at this article on the number of women who have won Hugo awards, or this article on racism in sci-fi fandom or go to a sci-fi book event and see how it is mostly made up of straight white men.

So the Sad Puppies are supporters of the sci-fi establishment and in favour of the status quo. They are against cliques suppressing writing that does not conform to certain political views, so they have formed a clique to suppress writing which does not confirm to their political views.

All of this reminds me a lot of the rise of UKIP in the UK. The Sad Puppies, like UKIP, claim to be standing up for the silent majority against the overbearing authoritarian left. Like UKIP, the Sad Puppies are from the establishment and are protecting the establishment - a party with a former public school boy and banker as their leader is not against the establishment, just as opposing diversity in a genre dominated by straight, white men is not against the establishment.

UKIP and the Sad Puppies are a radical pro-establishment reaction to the establishment being threatened. Claiming they are fighting community elites and the authoritarian left is just a way to distract attention from the fact that these groups are made up by the sort of people who are in charge everywhere.

I am not against the means by which the Sad Puppies have gone about achieving their goals, they have not broken any rules and have organised themselves efficiently. I am against their politics and against their claims to be anti-political or above politics. There is nothing more political than a straight, white man claiming that their subjective political opinion is object truth and above the petty squabbling of politics.

Diversity is important in science fiction, which is what the Sad Puppies essentially oppose as these are main goals of the SJWs, lefties and feminists – or the forces of darkness as the GamerGate/Sad Puppies axis think of them. Diversity makes sci-fi fiction stronger, more interesting and more fun as a genre.

Diversity also needs recognition from the sci-fi awards bodies. For too long science fiction has been dominated by straight, white, middle-class cis-gendered, British and American men and I say this as a straight, white, middle-class, cis-gendered British man, some of whose favourite books are written by straight, white, middle-class, cis-gendered British or American men. All this stuff is great but diversity is equally important and it is something I am bad at myself but I am trying to be better at.

Years of courageous writers, journalists and fans talking about the appalling lack of diversity within sci-fi was just starting to make a difference with some great books receiving recognition recently, such as Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice. If the Sad Puppies get their way, it will be harder for women, for people from ethnic monitories, for people from the LGBT community, for writers without English as a first language to tell their stories. If the Sad Puppies get their way, authors and fans will be constantly looking over their shoulders to make sure a group of middle class white men are not following them around screaming that they are an oppressive authoritarian clique.

If the Sad Puppies get their way, they will become a hegswarm (hegemonizing swarm), devouring everything that does not look like them. The hegswarms are mentioned in several of Iain M Banks’s Culture novels, but feature most prominently in Surface Detail. They are tiny nano-machines that, due to a flaw in their tiny nano-machine brains, will not stop until they convert all matter in the Universe to be exactly like them. If the Sad Puppies get their hegswarm way, I fear they will turn the entire sci-fi genre into an image of themselves and diversity will be dead forever.

Fortunately, in Surface Detail, there are the Restoria, a group whose job is to contain hegswarm outbreaks. We need to be Restoria against the hegswarm by standing up for diversity and calling out reactionary authoritarian groups pretending to be grassroots fan organizations. It is not too late to register for a supporter’s membership for the Hugo awards and vote for the works not on the Sad Puppies list.

We cannot let the Sad Puppies get a foothold in SFF fandom the way GamerGate has in the video game community. We are a diverse group and standing up for diversity was going so well until they came along. The Sad Puppies are not a reflection of SFF fandom and they need to know it.

What can economists learn from science fiction?

Economics and science fiction are two things that you would not typically associate with each other. One is an academic discipline, and the other is a creative discipline. At a glance, there few sci-fi books that deal directly with economics – there are sci-fi books that tackle politics, sociology, religion and war, but books which look at economics are less prevalent. Is this because economics is too dry? It is too serious? Too heavily based in the real world? Is economics too reliant on data, which does not lend itself to being expressed via prose?

Recently I attended a lecture entitled ‘What can economics learn from science fiction?’, in which Cambridge economists Ha-Joon Chang argued that economics and science fiction are related. This lecture was to mark the opening of the Political Economy Research Centre (PERC) at Goldsmiths’ College in London, and featured a lively debate on issues relevant to both economics and science fiction. A podcast of the talk can be found here.

Chang argued that economics, especially neo-classical economics, is very similar to science fiction. This is because neo-classical economics - the current dominant form of economics, sometimes called free market economics - is not a science based on imperially proven laws like physics, but is instead based on the unempirical behavior of human beings. Both economics and science fiction are related to natural sciences but are not scientific themselves. Chang also argues that economists can learn a lot from science fiction, as economists lack imagination, something sci-fi writers have in abundance.

Science fiction is about imagining possible futures based on changes in institutions, technology, politics and society, and about how these changes lead to changes in individuals. He also said that individuals are shaped by the society they inhabit and that society’s technology, which sci-fi writers also explore. Changes in technology change how people live their lives; the example which Chang gave was that people in agrarian economies have a lax approach to time keeping, whereas people in industrial economies are very precise time keepers. Science fiction writers explore economic changes by looking at the type of individuals that would be produced by these changes; for example, in Iain M. Banks's Culture novels, technology has liberated humanity from scarcity, and the effect of this is the removal of hierarchy and institutions, and greater personal freedom. Banks's novels explore how social liberalism is linked to resource scarcity.

The ways in which changes in the economy will affect how people behave in the future is important ground for economists to explore. Economists and sci-fi writers can change the emphasis of the structure of the economy in the present to see how the future will be different, and then make a comment about whether this type of change should be encouraged or discouraged. An example of this from sci-fi was Aldous Huxley‘s Brave New World, an imagined society where our economic needs are met and there is no social, political or class conflict. However, by exploring this world and the people who are produced by it, we see that despite appearing utopian, we would not want to live in it.

Another example is Mad Max, which like many post-apocalyptic sci-fi stories, looks at the idea of the neo-classical rational individual set free by the collapse of society. In the world of Mad Max, the people have total economic and personal freedom with no state involvement; neo-classical economists suggest that this should bring about a perfect society, but the world of Mad Max is far from perfect. Post-apocalyptic sci-fi says when individual selfishness is set free the overall structure of society suffers, a comment on neo-classic economics. Mad Max also makes the point that total freedom of individuals from governments and institutions can only be brought about by the collapse of society.

Sci-fi writers can also learn from economists, Chang argued that better understanding of economics would lead to better world building. In David Brin's novel Glory Season, the inhabitants of the planet Stratos have adopted an isolationist and self-sufficient political ideology (similar to Juche in North Korea), which has had the effect of holding their economic development at an early industrial level; they have some railways, but still rely heavily on sailing ships. However, there also seems to be modern broadcasting technology, which is inconsistent. Another example is the Galactic Empire in Isaac Asimov’s Foundation novels: the expire exists to provide the capital world of Trantor with food and raw materials for its 40 billion inhabitants, but it is not clear what the capital exports in return, except for political tyranny. The same can be said of Suzanne Collins's ‘Hunger Games’ novels.

Chang also argued that there was a lot which science fiction writers and economists could learn from each other, as much of the work in both disciplines operates with the same underlying assumptions. Both could learn that the inevitable progress of science and capitalism is unlikely to solve all of our social and economic problems. A Star Trek-like future where scientific progress has eliminated social strife and the need for work is very unlikely; what is far more likely is a future like Alien, where there are still poorly-paid jobs in bad conditions, or Gattaca, where the benefits of technology progress are hoarded by a minority who are preselected by technology based on their genes and background. Faith in progress as a social leveler is naive – the economies of the future are likely to be as oppressive as the economies of today, and perhaps more so.

The main thrust of Chang's argument is one that I very much agree with: that science fiction and economics are closely related and they can learn a lot from each other. I certainly agree that a better understand of economics will help sci-fi writers to create more believable worlds. I also agree that science fiction is a useful tool that economists can use to see how changes in the economy might affect individuals in the future. The two disciplines are related and hopefully both will benefit from a mutually cooperative relationship in the future.

Top 5 interesting aliens

An original concept is what grabs me when reading a sci-fi novel – something clever, insightful and surprising. After reading a lot of science fiction, genuinely original ideas are becoming harder to find but when I do so, it makes a book a much more enjoyable read. The best way for a novel to engage me with an original idea is with a clever, new variety of alien. With that in mind, what follows are my 5 favourite aliens in sci-fi novels.

Affront – Excession

The Culture, from Iain M. Banks’s Culture series, meddle in the affairs of other races to make them more like the Culture. Usually there is a degree of ambiguity about whether this is wise; for example, in Look To Windward the Chelgrian class system seems unjust but in removing it the Culture create a devastating civil war. In Excession, Banks did away with the moral ambiguity of the Culture and created a civilization so awful that they were crying out for Culture intervention, this is the Affront.

The Affront are Banks's dark imagination at its best, they are unrelentingly awful. The Affront are vile and violent creatures, constantly attacking their neighbours, eating their captives and fighting each other. Perhaps their worst offense is their abuse of genetic engineering technology. The Affront have altered the DNA of all the animals native to their home world so that they have a much heighted sensation of fear and pain, and they then hunt them for entertainment.

The Affront are a sick parody of the Culture: the latter is an utopian anarchistic collective, free from hierarchy, prejudice and resource scarcity, the Affront are bigoted patriarchal and violent. They are sick but imaginative creation, the perfect offset of the Culture.

Ariekei – Embassytown

China Miéville is well known for his impressive imagination and many brilliant creations. One of my favourite is the Ariekei from his novel Embassytown. The Ariekei speak simultaneously with two mouths, the cut and the turn, which makes their language complex. What makes them harder to communicate with is that they can only understand language with thought behind it, no recordings or machines. Only special human ambassadors, consisting of cybernetically linked twins, thinking the same thoughts, and speaking the same words, can communicate with the Ariekei.

The novel develops the strange world of Embassytown and the consequences of being the guests of bizarre aliens. When a new ambassador arrives, one whose thoughts and speech are not quite in-sync, and speaks to the Ariekei it turns out their words are powerful drug capable of bringing the Ariekei to their knees.

Miéville is a linguist as well as a fiction author and he uses his knowledge excellently to bring to life a world that could have been difficult for readers to believe. Speech for aliens in a lot of sci-fi novels tends to be similar to humans (thus allowing dialogue to take place easily and the plot to move forwards) but Miéville shows how creative he can be with something as everyday as language.

Hippae – Grass

The Hippae are introduced slowly in Grass, and so when their full monstrousness is revealed it comes as something of a shock. At first the reader assumes that they are beasts of burden, referred to as ‘mounts’ by the inhabitants of the planet Grass, and ridden for sport by the gentry. However, Sheri S. Tepper slowly builds up how violent and powerful they are. When they first appear, it is revealed they are twice the size of a horse, covered in sharp spines and extremely aggressive. They also have eyes that speak not only of great intelligence but also of murderous hatred.

Tepper plays with how alien aliens in sci-fi can be, the Hippae are difficult to understand and harder to sympathise with. At first they appear to be large animals, they do not have tools or cities or anything else we would associate with intelligent life. However, their cunning and hatred are slowly built up along with the novel’s rising tension and deepening mystery.

As the novel progresses, the power of the Hippae is slowly revealed and how they not only hate humans but have a plan to wipe out humans in the galaxy. The pastoral world of Grass is turned from a gentle planet of leisure to a siege, as the humans cannot venture outside for fear of a Hippae attack. Tepper builds the tension to an explosive climax.

Tines – A Fire Upon The Deep

Vernor Vinge has created a number of interesting aliens for his novels, including the Skroderiders and the Spiders. However, a favourite of mine is the Tines from his novel A Fire Upon the Deep. The Tines are very similar to our wolves but a personality is not contained within an individual Tine but across an entire pack, consisting of several members. Packs can exchange members, which alters their personalities.

Through ultra-high frequency, members communicate and build intelligence, and so two packs cannot get too close together or else their thoughts merge. This makes fighting and sex animalistic, and the rest of their time packs keep their distance. There naming culture is also interesting as each pack member has a name and the name for the entire entity is made out of member names. As pack members change, so to does their name to reflect the new make up.

Vinge takes a familiar idea, the wolf pack, that is clearly established in the reader’s mind and produces a very alien approach to this idea. The interesting thing about the Tines is how familiar they are to us but also how very different.

Zōtl – The Last Legends of Earth

There are few aliens in science fiction that are quite so strange as the Zōtl, a spider-like, technologically advanced alien race who feed on the chemicals created by the brains of intelligent beings who are in pain. They capture humans and other intelligent creatures, and torture them to provide nourishment. The few humans who survive become their slaves.

The Zōtl are the perfect villain for a sci-fi book: strange, scary and violent, with superior technology and no understandable morals. They appear in A. A. Attanasio’s The Last Legends of Earth and torment the humans who are caught as bait in a trap set for the Zōtl but their enemies, the equally powerful Rimstalkers.

What links all these aliens is that they are not similar to other well-known aliens of science fiction or they break the model established by formulaic science fiction novels. The Zōtl are technologically advanced aliens who want to enslave humanity for nourishment, but the means and the specifics of doing so are quite unlike any other science fiction book I have read. This is what makes them brilliant and scary.

Those are my five most creative aliens in science fiction novels. Are there any I have missed off? Add your suggestions below.

Bad World Building

Science Fiction has an obsession with Empires, at least that is the case you believe readers who do not know much about sci-fi or a recent article in Time which criticised the world building in books such as Dune and Foundation. Undeniably lazy world building is a problem in science fiction and can ruin a great idea, too often authors fall back on simplistic ideas borrowed from the real world, such as Empires, rather than thinking of imaginative ways in which the societies of the future could be different.

However, to criticize the entire genre based on a few lazy authors or established classics from the past is a gross representation of the vibrant imagination of science fiction authors. Many science fiction authors have thought of creative ways in which future societies could be formed, from the autonomous anarchistic collective of the Culture, to the totalitarian military state of Starship Troopers.

The notion of a pan-galactic civilization structured around an Empire is an element of only a minority of science fiction novels. Most in fact have no pan-galactic civilization at all and imagine a future of many complex competing political entitles made up of groups of different races, see Michael Cobley’s Humanity’s Fire novels for a good example of this.

My point is that imperial science fiction novels were a feature of the 50s and 60s when classics such as Foundation and Dune were written, but sci-fi is much more diverse now. However the stereotype remains, backed up by examples from films such as Star Wars. Films have a much narrower scope than novels and thus cannot develop as complex worlds. Galactic Empires are useful short hands for a social structure that can be quickly established in the audiences mind and thus sci-fi films use them in this way. In the greater scope of a novel it is possible to develop interesting and complex imagined future societies such as the severely hierarchical matriarchal world of Glory Season or the severely hierarchical patriarchal society of The Hand Maid's Tale.

I agree with David Berri that a Galactic Empire is an unlikely structure for future society, but speculating with any degree of accuracy about the far future is almost impossible and most predictions end up saying more about the time we live in now than the future. Berri is clearly influenced by the bias of today's established economic thought, namely that there are free, prosperous and innovative societies and restrictive, poor and backwards societies. This overlooks a wide range of economic, political, geographical and social factors which influence how societies develop and are a structured.

Berri is simply repeating the common belief in the superiority of capitalistic societies over other forms of societies onto his vision of the future, this has been the case of so many science fiction authors in the past, who let their view of the present shape the future. A good example of this is Greg Bear’s Eon, which is rooted in Cold War politics and imagines a 2005 which has moon bases but still a divided East and West Germany.

The economic, political, geographical and social factors that influence a society’s development are the building blocks of an interesting science fiction world to set a story in. These are the foundation of good world building and science fiction writers frequently experiment with these to see what sort of societies altering these factors might produce. What if it was hot all the time and there was no water, you might get something like the Fremen in Dune. What if we decided that everything the land offered was wrong and returned to live in the sea, we might get something like the United Aquatic Nations in Alastair Reynold's Poseidon's Children novels.

Once a sci-fi writer has an idea or world, it is up to them to make the world believable to the reader. Even this is a centralized Galactic Empire like in Dune or Foundation, or society governed by AIs like in Dan Simmons’s Hyperion, the author still needs to find a way to make this world believable, populate it with relatable characters and weave a compelling story out of them. The nature of the world is not the issue, what the writer does with it is.

Science fiction will always be coming under attacks for being either ridiculous or not inventive enough, like in this article. What is important is that fans remember how diverse the genre is and call out clearly baseless opinions or those based on a prejudice against science fiction. Bad world building is always a disappointment in a book but having one specific feature of an imagined society (such as a Galactic Empire) does not necessarily mean bad world building. There are no bad ideas in science fiction only the bad execution of ideas.

Leonard Nimoy obituary

The 1960s were a formative time for popular culture and nowhere is this truer than for science fiction. In 1963, William Hartnell first took a voyage through time and space in the TARDIS; in 1965 Frank Herbert published Dune; in 1968 Stanley Kubrick and Author C. Clarke collaborated on 2001: A Space Odyssey. However, one of the most seminal science fiction beginnings in the 1960s was in 1966, when NBC premiered a TV show that promised to boldly go where no man had gone before. Over the years and series which followed, Star Trek has come to define science fiction, phrases like “redshirts” and "set phasers to stun” are well known to the fans of the genre because of the iconic characters which brought them to life.

Of course, one of these iconic characters were Spock, played by Leonard Nimoy. Spock was a character who on paper is difficult to relate to, cold and logical, he could have been a two-dimensional parody of non-human characters, but Nimoy brought the humanity out in him through his subtle performance. It is because of Nimoy that Spock became the character most geeks, myself included, related to the most. He was the outsider, the one who thought and acted differently to everyone else, but just as much a part of the team as the hot-blooded Kirk or the ever-exasperated Scotty. It was through Spock that most young geeks learned to believe that the future would be better, in the future we would be accepted.

Star Trek encapsulated that spirit of optimism which possessed 60s science fiction. At a time when there was civil disorder, rational strife and it looked like nuclear annihilation was inevitable, people looked to the future for a solace from their fears, and Star Trek showed them a future where humanity had not only survived but flourished in peace and harmony. Today's science fiction has a much more pessimistic outlook, from the unending grimness of Battlestar Galactica to the bloody Imperialism of Ancillary Justice and endless zombie apocalypses, we are now scared of our future. It is important to remember a time when we thought our problems would decrease in the future and not multiply.

Nimoy was born in Boston in 1931 to Ukrainian immigrants of orthodox Jewish background. Nimoy started acting at school and at community college, acting which was not stopped by service as a sergeant in the US army. When he left the army, he moved to New York where Nimoy worked a series of jobs around acting before getting noticed on TV shows like Rawhide and Perry Mason, then came his big break when he was cast in Star Trek.

The show was cancelled after three series due to low ratings, but it had already captured the imaginations of a generation and the characters at its core become some of the most loved in science fiction. It is an extremely difficult job to take a character from a script and bring them to life in a way that is believable; it is even more difficult to bring that character into the hearts and minds of millions of people. Nimoy created in Spock a character people genuinely loved, a character whose very existence made a difference to his fan's lives, this is the highest goal of any actor or writer.

As the popularity of Star Trek grew, Nimoy and co. took their characters to the big screen where they worked on some of the most iconic science fiction films of all time, most notably the sublime Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan. Nimoy remained central to the film franchise, going on to direct Star Trek 3 and 4. Some of my earliest memories of enjoying science fiction is watching these films on VHS cassettes recorded off the TV. The ones which really stick in my mind as forming a strong early impression are 1 and 3, I am not sure why. It is partly through watching Nimoy and co. playing these iconic characters in amazing space adventures that I first learned to love a genre which would come to define a lot of my life.

Nimoy and Spock have been parodied over the years. As Star Trek came to define science fiction, its mannerisms were imitated and mocked. Nimoy, I assume, had a sense of humour about this because he participated in a fair few of these parodies of his famous character, most notably in the Simpsons where he appeared several times.

Nimoy also remained attached to the serious side of Star Trek fandom, appearing at conventions and in the two most recent Star Trek films. Even well into his 80s, he was still performing, appearing recently in the music video to Bruno Mars’s The Lazy Song.

The early days of Star Trek were part of science fiction’s formative years, or at least the formation of what we popularly understand to be the genre. Great writers, actors and characters will come in the future but the adoration that has been heaped upon these early luminaries is not something that we will see again. Put simply, once a genre's worth of fans’ hearts have been captured for the first time, nothing will ever be that loved again.

Nimoy was one of the last living connections to that early days of the genre, when we were optimistic that science could solve the world's problems and science fiction could show us how it was done. Now it serves as a warning of the terrible future we are sleepwalking into. That sense of passion, of optimism, that love was something unique and special and Nimoy was not only a part of it but he was central to it. Make no mistake that he is a titan of the science fiction genre who will be greatly missed.

“Live long and prosper.”

Science fiction versus literary fiction

We all know what literary fiction is, and we all know what it is not – but coming up with a robust definition is more difficult. Some readers divide the world into literary fiction and pulp fiction, or literary fiction and genre fiction. Science fiction is definitely not literary fiction, according to these people – the type of reader who claims to be open minded, but will describe the plot of any science fiction novel as ‘stupid’ when it is described to them. These readers divide the word into books with characters in them and books with space ships in them.

However, when you ask these people to codify the difference between literary (worthy) fiction and science (vapid) fiction the best they can come up with is something close to the following definition from the Huffington Post:

‘The main reason for a person to read Genre Fiction is for entertainment, for a riveting story, an escape from reality. Literary Fiction separates itself from Genre because it is not about escaping from reality, instead, it provides a means to better understand the world and delivers real emotional responses.’

So science fiction or genre fiction is escapism, where literary fiction focuses on illuminating the real world of complex relationships, deep emotions and life experiences. I can think of several science fiction writers who deal with the latter. The work of Philip K Dick derives most of its dramatic tension from character drama, instead of environmental conflict.

Dicks novel Now Wait For Last Year focuses on the relationship between the protagonist, Eric Sweetscent, his wife Kathy (who hates him), and his employer, Gino Molinari, the elected leader of Earth. There is a wider science fiction story about an intergalactic conflict and a drug with strange powers, but these are part of the backdrop, used in the same way as literary novel might use the Russian Revolution or the Second World War as a backdrop. Now Wait For Last Year provides understanding into how relationships function under pressure, how they form and collapse. Human relationships are the substance of this sci-fi novel as much as they are for any literary novel.

This is true of many of Dick’s other novels, as well as other sci-fi works. The Man In The High Castle is another novel by Dick which is primarily focused on character relationships and interpersonal conflict, within a science fiction setting.

Literary novels can be enjoyed as escapism. Ernest Hemingway, one of the great literary writers of the 20th Centaury, can be read as escapism. Novels like For Whom The Bell Tolls and To Have And To Have Not take the reader away from their current existence and allow them to be immersed in the Spanish Civil War or smuggling rings in pre-revolution Cuba. These novels perform the same function for their readers as science fiction novels do for their readers.

From my own research into the difference between literary and genre fiction, and from the books I have read from both camps, I have come up with a list of characteristics which are generally used to separate genre fiction from literary fiction. Literary fiction is character focused with less emphasis on narrative, sometimes leaving it unresolved. The narratives also tend to be non-linear. Literary novels have a stylistic flair to their prose, where as genre novels try to be accessible. Literary fiction is generally considered to be darker, more serious in tone, and slower paced, as well as being part of the on-going academic conversation of literary novels, which is mainly achieved through influences from and references to past novels in the conversation.

Most science fiction novels are considered not to match this definition; they focus on plot over character development, have linear narratives, are fast paced and exist in the on-going conversation of science fiction novels. They do tend to be serious in tone, but most literary fiction readers believe them to not be serious because the plot is focused on aliens or space travel; this is a major point of difference between the fans of both genres.

Dan Simmons’s novel Hyperion is a science fiction novel that meets all the above characteristics of literary fiction. It has a non-linear, character-focused narrative which is very similar in structure to Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, as the novel is a series of interlinked stories developing the characters and their backgrounds. The narrative is left unresolved, and the tone of the book is dark and serious, often crossing over into horror. Simmon’s prose has flair, and he gives each section its own unique style which relates to the character whose tale is being told. Finally, it contributes to the on-going academic literary conversation through references to the work of John Keats, which are woven into the novel.

However you define literary fiction, some science fiction fits into it. The two are overlapping circles on the Venn diagram of literature, with common ground between them. They are not as separate as some literary fiction readers would have us believe.

Iain Banks is an author whose work firmly sits in the overlapping areas of literary and science fiction. This is especially true of his earlier work, before he had decided to split his writing into Iain Banks and Iain M. Banks. Walking On Glass, his second novel, has three main plots: the first is a relationship study set when the book is written, the second is ambiguous about whether it is science fiction or not, and the third is set in an alien war in the far future. This was Banks’s attempt to write a novel that spanned both genres.

Banks was more successful in this attempt with his later novel, The Bridge. This follows a man in a coma, but his coma dreams take him to a strange world with many recognisable mythological, fantasy and science fiction elements to the story, most notably the giant endless bridge the novel is set on. This novel is a great accomplishment of both literary and science fiction.

Banks’s novels which are clearly science fiction, such as his Culture novels The Player of Games or Consider Phlebas, are as much about the characters’ inner lives and their development as the dramatic events which they are swept up in. All of Banks’s novels are complex character studies, as well as having explosive external narratives. Banks also has a distinctive literary style, exemplified by the Scottish colloquialisms he uses in The Bridge. His novels, at least his non-‘M.’ novels, are considered part of the on-going academic literary conversation.

Despite his literary credentials, some readers still turn their noses up at Banks’s science fiction. It completely perplexes me why people read the Iain ‘without-the-M’ Banks, but refuse to read Iain M. Banks. A few science fiction classics like Dune or The Left Hand of Darkness are grudgingly accepted into the on-going literary conversation, while novels like The Time Machine and 1984 are not considered science fiction so that literary fiction readers are allowed to enjoy them.

Margret Atwood is an example of science fiction writer who shirks the labels of science fiction in particular and genre fiction in general . One assumes this is to preserve her standing in the academic, literary world and not to taint it by associations with less profound genres.

If the difference between literary fiction and science fiction is nothing more than hot air, then why do we not see sci-fi novels nominated for the Man-Booker prize? Ann Leckie’s novel Ancillary Justice deserves a nomination for this award, for its detailed exploration of character, serious tone, and literary experimentation (especially in regards to gender pronouns). Ancillary Justice meets the requirements of being sufficiently literary to be nominated for the Man-Booker prize, as well as having more imagination than most books which do get nominated for it, but still a genre stigma persists.

I can see no substantial difference between science fiction and literary fiction, other than an artificial classification used to separate ‘real literature’ from ‘entertainment’. Some works of science fiction fit into the classification of literary fiction, but generally the distinction is artificial and can be snobbish. Readers should be less worried about what genre or style they are reading and more whether it is an imaginative story.

Humanity’s Fire

The legacy of Iain M. Banks runs deep within modern space opera. Many typically ‘Banksian’ concepts appear in a lot of today’s space opera bestsellers: for example, there are key similarities between the Minds which Banks describes in his Culture novels and the ship AIs in Ann Leckie’s multie-award-winning Ancillary Justice.

One of the most Banksian of recent space opera series is Michael Cobley’s ‘Humanity’s Fire’, a trilogy of novels based mainly around the planet Darien, a few centuries in our future: Seeds of Earth, The Orphaned Worlds and The Ascendant Stars. These books all bear a cover endorsement from Iain M. Banks, claiming them to be ‘Proper galaxy-spanning Space Opera’.

On the surface, there are many similarities between Michael Cobley and Iain M. Banks: both are Scottish and write modern technologically-inspired ‘galaxy spanning’ space opera. Their novels have similar content: for example, both prominently feature AIs – a central character in Cobley’s Seeds of Earth is a machine intelligence with the personality of Harry Lime from The Third Man – and have characters which are drones, such as Flere-Imsaho in Banks’s novel The Player of Games.

What I find enticing about both writers is their descriptions of aliens, and this is where their imaginations come to life. Banks imagined the Dwellers, a race of anarchic manta-ray like creatures living in gas giants, whereas Cobley wrote about the Knights of the Legion of Aviators, cybernetic invaders from another universe. Both writers are also great at creating aliens that are religious zealots; the main villains in ‘Humanity’s Fire’ are the Sendruka Hegemony, who believe they are superior to other beings – similarly to the Idiran Empire, from Banks’s first Culture novel Consider Phlebas.

Where both writers’ imaginations dazzle the reader is through their description of the strange physics of hyperspace. In ‘Humanity's Fire’, hyperspace consists of layers which get progressively more chaotic and dangerous as you descend. In the Culture novels, there is intra-space and extra-space sandwiched between our universe and younger and older universes respectively. Out of these strange other realities come some very imaginative concepts, such as the Godhead, a recurring villain of ‘Humanity’s Fire’.

The Godhead is a giant ancient being dwelling deep within the layers of hyperspace. Its power is unmatched, as is its desire to dominate our universe. This reminds me of Banks’s Excession, which comes from another universe in the Culture novel of the same name. The Excession abducts the ships which probe it, possibly testing to see if humanity is ready for contact with beings from another universe. Both entities are more powerful than the novels’ protagonists, potentially very dangerous to them, and complete alien. These are brilliantly imaginative concepts, originating from an area of science fiction where authors are allowed to let their imaginations run riot.

One area where Banks and Cobley differ is in their representation of Earth. ‘Humanity’s Fire’ takes place in a universe in which Earth is a distant, but still very present, part of human society. The Culture novels barely mention Earth (apart from the novella, The State of the Art, which is set on Earth in the 1970s). Banks’s other science fiction novels either take place away from Earth or happen on an Earth so radically different from our own that it is barely recognisable.

In terms of story structure, the two writers approach narrative in a similar way. Their novels have many protagonists and multi-threaded stories unfolding in different locations across the galaxy. These stories also take place across real, hyper and virtual space in both authors’ work. The action of the ‘Humanity’s Fire’ novels takes the reader down to the deepest levels of hyperspace where the Godhead lives, where as Banks’s Surface Detail has a story which unfolds simultaneously in a virtual war and in the real world.

One of the most striking differences between the two is in narrative structure. ‘Humanity’s Fire’ is a trilogy with linear narrative, and is meant to be read in a certain order. The Culture novels do not have a connecting story - expect perhaps the story of the Culture’s history, as events in some novels are referenced in others. The difference is that the Culture books form a non-linear progression, over a broad spread of time and can be read in any order.

In terms of a science fiction narrative, the works of both authors are quite similar. The key difference between the two can be found by comparing Iain M. Banks’s novels with his Iain Banks literary novels. The exploration of drugs, sex and political themes, which are in all of Iain (with or without the M.) Banks’s novels, are absent from the works of Michael Cobley.

The way these writers envision the future is very different. This is partly because ‘Humanity's Fire’ is set in the (comparatively) near future, whereas the Culture novels take place at some unspecified point in the far future. However, the future of ‘Humanity’s Fire’ is very similar to ours, with currency, corporations, national boundaries and most people being heteronormative. Banks imagined a radically different future, a future without scarcity, without gender boundaries or even species boundaries – a future where everything was in flux and constantly evolving. One author’s future is recognisably our own world and one is a complete departure.

In terms of the sci-fi genre details, Michael Cobley and Iain M Banks are very similar writers; one is influenced and endorsed by the other, and both are part of a Scottish science fiction subgenre. They are both Banksian, with AI characters, strange aliens and stories taking place in several realities simultaneously. However, in terms of the stories they tell within this genre they are very different.

Comparisons aside, ‘Humanity’s Fire’ is great trilogy of novels in their own right, and I would highly recommend them to any fan of science fiction and especially fans of space opera. They are also great reads for Iain M. Banks fans hungry for more of his distinctive space opera style.