Author: Bjorn Munson

Various and Sundry

Wait! Are We the Dystopian Future We Want to Avoid?

By Bjorn Munson | by Bjorn Munson

Ray Bradbury once said he wasn’t trying to predict the future with some of his tales of a dystopian or apocalyptic future, he wanted scare people. Basically, warning society “If you don’t watch out, this is what could happen.” Well, apparently we didn’t get the memo, per Yuval Noah Harari, author of the excellent Sapiens. In his latest book, Nexus, he traces ‘information networks’ from pre-history to today… and he’s not entirely rosy about humans…

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Various and Sundry

A Moment of Closure, Star Trek Style

By Bjorn Munson | by Bjorn Munson

A new short film, using CGI technology that would make Forrest Gump blush, is making the rounds amongst the various Trek groups I frequent. It’s called 765874 – Unification. It packs in more references to more iterations of Star Trek than you might expect, involves a lot of old Trek hands, and is very emotional for a lot of Trekkers. Take 11 minutes on the biggest screen you can find and see what you think.

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Writing

Any Sufficiently Advanced Science Fiction Editor is Indistinguishable from Magic

By Bjorn Munson | by Bjorn Munson

I grew up reading scores of science fiction short stories from the Golden Age and “New Wave” of science fiction… and then went on to various fantasy and science fiction novels of the day, many of which were published by Del Rey Books, still active today as an imprint of the mammoth publisher, Penguin Random House. What I didn’t know was the role one Judy-Lynn del Rey played in the creation of Del Rey Books…

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Various and Sundry

Kurt Vonnegut has a Board Game?!?

By Bjorn Munson | by Bjorn Munson

I’ve posted about celebrated author Kurt Vonnegut a couple times this year, most recently relating to Banned Books Week, so perhaps the Internet algorithms were primed to show me this but, per Charlie Hall for Polygon, he dabbled in game design before his writing career took off and created an abstract wargame called GHQ. The article itself delves a bit more into the game, including images of the original rules and notes. You can also…

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Various and Sundry

Real World Scares: Escaping a Sinking Vehicle

By Bjorn Munson | by Bjorn Munson

Now’s the time of year where many of us muse about what we’d do when entering a darkened room, basement, or forest, especially if there’s creepy background music playing. But what to do about the very real world, very freaky possibility of being in a vehicle that’s sinking into a body of water. Whether it’s been caused by a man wearing the face of Captain Kirk or not, if you find yourself in this situation,…

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Various and Sundry

The World’s Newest Purpose-Built Capital

By Bjorn Munson | by Bjorn Munson

It could be all the games of Civ and SimCity, but I find the real-life construction of dedicated national capitals to be fascinating, from Brasília to Canberra to, oh, yeah, Washington, DC in my neck of the woods. Well, there’s a new kid on the purpose-built capital block, and its name is Nusantara. After over 70 years of Jakarta being Indonesia’s de facto and then de jure capital, the government made its first concrete steps…

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Producing Various and Sundry

When the Video Toaster was Punk AF

By Bjorn Munson | by Bjorn Munson

There’s a meme going around that generations should now be divided by “Too old to know Homestar Runner/at the right age to know and love Homestar Runner/too young to know Homestar Runner.” Admittedly, this is rather prejudiced towards knowing Homestar Runner, but seeing as I do (and seriously Stwong Bad, he’s the bee’s knees!), I don’t find this a problem. In part, because I think anyone at any age can discover the sparkling majesty of…

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Producing

Making the Most of Your Bad Film Watch

By Bjorn Munson | by Bjorn Munson

Like many a cinemaniac, I watch a lot of movies and, much to the confusion of friends and family, I will watch movies that are not only clearly bad, but are not of the so-bad-it’s-good variety. Why do I do this to myself? Well, if it’s a version of the Robin Hood legend or Treasure Island (see also my post last week), then I gotta see how they treat the story. Some folklore and pop…

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Raves Reviews

Black Sails Has Your Back

By Bjorn Munson | by Bjorn Munson

Okay, it doesn’t. Or more properly, the characters do not have your back. In fact, many of them would agree with Elim Garak that shooting a man in the back is the best way to ensure you shoot a man dead. But what is Black Sails, you ask? It’s a four-season TV series which serves as a prequel series to the events of Treasure Island aka the novel that launched countless film adaptations and continues…

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