Fan Theories volume four

Fan theory four:

Science fiction television programmes featuring humanoid aliens are all set in the same universe as the Culture. The difference is that these programmes portray aliens as humans would imagine them to look like. The events portrayed are after the Culture makes contact with Earth but Humans can't take there being other humans "out there" that look just like them so, in their minds collectively, aliens look a lot different.

This theory also allows for the Drakh and Vorlons to be offshoots of the Culture, or that Babylon 5 is actually anti-Culture propaganda. This reflects the policies of the two races and the mobile nature of their civilisations.

Ready, Player One?

How to start a review of "Ready, Player One" without saying (repeatedly)...



























................................................Simpsons did it?








SIMPSONS DID IT

SIMPSONS DID IT

SIMPSONS DID IT

SIMPSONS DID IT

SIMPSONS DID IT

SIMPSONS DID IT

SIMPSONS DID IT

SIMPSONS DID IT

SIMPSONS DID IT

SIMPSONS DID IT

SIMPSONS DID IT

SIMPSONS DID IT

SIMPSONS DID IT

SIMPSONS DID IT

SIMPSONS DID IT

SIMPSONS DID IT

SIMPSONS DID IT

SIMPSONS DID IT

SIMPSONS DID IT

SIMPSONS DID IT

SIMPSONS DID IT

SIMPSONS DID IT

SIMPSONS DID IT

SIMPSONS DID IT
















and South Park






and American Dad!,



                                but Simpsons "did it" in an episode which Marge joins an online gaming community consisting entirely of avatars of Springfield residents. It soon transpires that the online fantasy role-playing version of Springfield is terrorised by a particular player. Of course, that player is Bart.

When Marge's character/avatar is killed, Bart gives his avatar's life force to resurrect her. Of course, his reign of terror is soon over when the residents of the fantasy Springfield join up to eliminate their, now weakened, spiky-haired oppressor.


South Park "did one" in which the boys (and Stan's dad) try to take down a cheating, unbeatable World Of Warcraft player.


But "Ready Player One" 's plot of beating the game, finding the Easter Eggs, become a multi-billionaire-and a world obsessed by a fantasy world based on 1980's pop and geek culture references-is almost a straight port of Iain M. Banks' "Player of Games".

Beat the game without dying (for real) and become Emperor of the Azadian civilisation.

But what would I do if I won the novel's $360 billion?
1. Hide
2. Rip off "Live and let die" by flooding America with free heroin and crack cocaine
3. Build a massive bunker
4. Carpet bomb sub-Saharan Africa with condoms
5. Buy up all the world's armaments factories-especially the ones which produce ammunition-and immediately demolish them!

For the purposes of 1 I would do 3.
The result of 2 would (hopefully) mean an end to drug-related crime and violence and dealers being pushed out of business.

Atlas didn't Shrug

Been trying mostly successfully to read Atlas Shrugged this last week or so.
I would absolutely with no shadow of a doubt say that Ayn Rand is the worse person who has ever lived. Yes, worse than Idi Amin, Pol Pot, Hitler and Fritzl.
No-one quotes Idi Amin to justify being a pimp for child prostitutes.

Reading AS is like reading Palpatine's diary or Lex Luthor's biography. Repeat: The. Worst.

Seriously, read Red Son by Mark Millar. Yes, it's a Superman comic but basically it's about Kennedy surviving to old age and Milton Friedman being president of the United States of America.

Or read Look To Windward.
It's about a society with only one real law and no taboos to speak of but it's main characters (three aliens and an Avatar of an AI war veteran) have so much more Humanity than the sexually-weird non-characters Rand came up with and people are allowed to live by their own moral code.
The problem with Rand's philosophical justification for unrestrained capitalism is that one could use the same or similar arguments to justify child slavery, murder or political autocracies. In fact if anything a dictatorship would be the only form of government logically acceptable to Rand if one goes by her justification for allowing capitalist monopolies.