April AMA (Ask Me Anything Session) Coming Up Tomorrow Noon Central

Every month I hold an online AMA - an Ask Me Anything - session for my viewers, listeners, readers, supporters, and other fans. They're hosted on YouTube Live, and I record each session so that people who would like can go back through them.

The next one is coming up tomorrow at Noon Central Time  If there's a question you've been wanting to ask me, pop in to the session and I'll do my best to provide an answer for you. You'll want to get your questions in early, since these sessions tend to draw a lot of viewers, and many of them ask questions.

Since some people ask a lot of questions in these sessions, I prioritize people who haven't yet had a question answered, rather than just answering multiple questions by the same person.

If you click on the video link here, you can go right to the YouTube page. There you can get a question into the queue ahead of time, and you can also set a reminder for when the session starts, if you'd like.

If you'd like to watch and listen to any of the earlier AMA sessions - you can also see what all the questions and comments were for that session by looking at the chat replay on the left side of the screen - here's a link to a playlist containing all of them.

The work involved in these free online events are underwritten by my Patreon supporters. Their pledges help me earn a living for myself and my family doing work I love - making philosophy accessible to people of all walks of life, all over the world.  If you'd like to become a supporter, here's where you can do that.

I hope to see you there, and look forward to an engaging conversation!

Worlds of Speculative Fiction Session 50 - R. Scott Bakker's The Darkness That Comes Before

This Saturday, we will host the first of our three sessions in the Worlds of Speculative Fiction series focused on R. Scott Bakker's Prince of Nothing trilogy (which is part of his larger Second Apocalypse series).  The session will start at Noon Central Time on Saturday, March 13.

As always in covid-19 times, the session is entirely online, and consists of two parts:

• At 12 PM Central, the video I produced on The Darkness That Comes Before will premiere in my YouTube channel.  I'll be engaging in live chat with viewers as they watch and listen to the video.  Here's the link for that.
• At 1:40 PM Central, viewers who are interested are invited to hop on to a Zoom session to continue the conversation about this great book and the series.  Here's the link for that.

We'll be continuing on the next two months with the second and third book in the series, The Warrior Prophet and The Thousandfold Thought.  If you're a fan of this eminently philosophical fantasy writer and worldbuilder, I hope you can join us for these sessions!

Switching up Authors and Books in the Worlds of Speculative Fiction Series

We're in year six of the Worlds of Speculative Fiction series - which moved from in-person to entirely online due to covid-19 - and I've decided to switch things up a bit.  I had put together a full list of 12 authors and their works (two of which we've done already - Liu Cixin and Philip K. Dick), but as I have been rereading to prepare for the third session, it has struck me that some changes are in order.

The third session was to focus on R. Scott Bakker's Prince of Nothing trilogy - The Darkness that Comes Before, The Warrior Prophet, and the Thousandfold Thought - and we'd try to cover all of that in one single 90-minute video, followed by the usual 90-minute Zoom session.  There's two main obstacles to that.

One is that it's a LOT of reading.  Bakker's books are quite readable, but there's a number of characters, many connected sub-plots, and a ton of world-building revealed in each of them.  They come in at about 600, 640, and 540 pages.  So, just a bit under 1,800 pages for participants to read before the session.  Well. . .  that's a lot to expect of people to plow their way through!

The second consideration is that, upon my second read of the first volume, there is so much content to cover in these rich works that, in order to do justice to them, I think we'd need more time. Between the magic system, the back-history, the different races, the religions, the geography, the philosophy there is so much packed into these books that there's no way that we can cover enough of this in 90 minutes.

What I've decided to do is pretty simple.  We're going to spend the next three sessions - March, April, May - discussing Bakker's trilogy.  This is like what we did last year when we covered  Ursula K Leguin's six Earthsea books (each of which was 140-200 pages long) in two sessions.  Looking at the schedule, I've also decided to break the Philip Jose Farmer session, focused on his six World of Tiers books, into two sessions as well.  So that means that someone's gotta go!

Here's what I'm envisioning now:

March - R. Scott Bakker's Prince of Nothing trilogy

• The Darkness That Comes Before

April - R. Scott Bakker's Prince of Nothing trilogy

• The Warrior-Prophet

May - R. Scott Bakker's Prince of Nothing trilogy

• The Thousandfold Thought

June - Philip Jose Farmer's World of Tiers novels

• The Maker of Universes
• The Gates of Creation
• A Private Cosmos

July - Philip Jose Farmer's World of Tiers novels

• Behind the Walls of Terra
• The Lavalite World
• More Than Fire

August - A.E. Van Vogt's Weapon-Makers novels

• The Weapon Shops of Isher
• Weapon Makers

September - Stanislaw Lem's Ijon Tichy stories

• The Star Diaries
• The Futurological Congress
• Peace on Earth
• Observation on the Spot

October - Neal Stephenson's Anathem

• Anathem

November - J.G. Ballard's modern dystopias

• Crash
• Concrete Island
• High Rise

December - Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy

• Northern Lights
• The Subtle Knife
• The Amber Spyglass

Year Six Of Worlds of Speculative Fiction Begins Today!

We announced the lineup for the Worlds of Speculative Fiction monthly series this year a bit earlier in the week.  You can see the full schedule here, if you'd like to.  Today, we kick year six of the series off with our session on the Chinese science fiction author, Liu Cixin!

We start at Noon Central Time with my discussion of Liu Cixin's Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy of novels.  That will take place as a video premiere on my YouTube channel, and we'll be engaging in live chat on that video page.  So you can watch, ask questions, make comments, and I'll reply as the video runs.

Then immediately following - around 1:40 PM Central Time - those who want to have a more intimate, in-depth conversation about the texts, the writer, the ideas, and the key themes will shift over to Zoom for a videoconferencing session.

Here are the links for those two parts of the event:

• 12:00 PM - 1:40 PM - YouTube Video Premiere with Live Chat
• 1:40 PM - 3:00 PM - Videoconferencing Discussion and Q&A

The trilogy we'll be focusing upon are:

• The Three Body Problem
• The Dark Forest
• Death's End

I look forward to seeing you there and to some excellent conversation about this author and this excellent series of works!

Worlds of Speculative Fiction Selections Set For 2021

After soliciting viewer, subscriber, and supporter suggestions for the final three slots in the monthly Worlds of Speculative Fiction series for this new year, and then having a run-off vote for the final slot, we now have a full line-up for the series.

Each month - usually the second Saturday - we will focus on one specific author, the narrative world of some of their works, and philosophical themes found in their writings. These events we're holding online -until it is completely safe to return to the face to face setting - have two parts.

Part 1 is a video premiere, with live-chat between me and viewers - of me discussing the author, their narrative world, their biography, and some selected philosophical themes.  Those usually run about 90 minutes, and the videos are then added to the series playlist

Part 2, immediately following, is a videoconferencing conversation, carried out by Zoom, where we get to go a bit more into depth about anything that the viewers found particularly interesting. We usually have some great conversations about the works in those sessions.

You don't have to have read the author or the specific works in order to get something out of these sessions.  But obviously, it certainly does help to have done so.  Here's the list of the authors and the recommended books for each session this year.

January - Liu Cixin's Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy

• The Three-Body Problem
• The Dark Forest
• Death's End

February - Philip K. Dick's stories of Colonization and Insanity

• Martian Time-Slip
• Clans of the Alphane Moon
• We Can Build You
• The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
• A Maze of Death

March - R. Scott Bakker's Prince of Nothing trilogy

• The Darkness That Comes Before
• The Warrior-Prophet
• The Thousandfold Thought

April - Margaret Atwood's Gilead dystopia stories

• The Handmaid's Tale
• The Testaments

 
May - Philip Jose Farmer's World of Tiers novels

• The Maker of Universes
• The Gates of Creation
• A Private Cosmos
• Behind the Walls of Terra
• The Lavalite World
• More Than Fire

June - A.E. Van Vogt's Weapon-Makers novels

• The Weapon Shops of Isher
• Weapon Makers

July - Octavia Butler's Parable novels

• Parable of the Sower
• Parable of the Talents

 
August - J.G. Ballard's modern dystopias

• Crash
• Concrete Island
• High Rise

September - Stanislaw Lem's Ijon Tichy stories

• The Star Diaries
• The Futurological Congress
• Peace on Earth
• Observation on the Spot

October - Neal Stephenson's Anathem 

• Anathem

November - Jorge Luis Borges - theme TBD

• selected stories, TBD

December - Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy

• Northern Lights  
• The Subtle Knife 
• The Amber Spyglass

May AMA (Ask Me Anything) Session at Noon Central Today

Each month I hold an online AMA - an Ask Me Anything - session for my viewers, listeners, readers, supporters, and other fans. They're hosted on YouTube Live, and I record each session so that people who would like can go back through them.

I have one coming up at Noon Central Today.  If there's a question you've been wanting to ask me, pop in to the session and I'll hopefully have an answer for you. You'll want to get your questions in early, since these sessions tend to draw a lot of viewers, and many of them ask questions.

Since some people ask a lot of questions in these sessions, I prioritize people who haven't yet had a question answered, rather than just answering multiple questions by the same person.

Here's the link to the session. You can click on it and go right to the YouTube page. There you can get a question into the queue ahead of time, and you can also set a reminder for when the session starts, if you'd like.

If you'd like to watch and listen to any of the earlier AMA sessions - you can also see what all the questions and comments were for that session by looking at the chat replay on the left side of the screen - here's a link to a playlist containing all of them.

The work involved in these free online events are underwritten by my Patreon supporters. Their pledges help me earn a living for myself and my family doing work I love - making philosophy accessible to people of all walks of life, all over the world.

If you'd like to become a supporter, here's where you can do that.

AMA (Ask Me Anything) Session Coming Up Today

Each month I hold an online AMA - an Ask Me Anything - session for my viewers, listeners, readers, supporters, and other fans.  They're hosted on YouTube Live, and I record each session so that people who would like can go back through them.

I have one coming up a bit later on today, so if there's a question you've been wanting to ask me, pop in to the session and I'll hopefully have an answer for you.  You'll want to get your questions in early, since these sessions tend to draw a lot of viewers, and many of them ask questions.

Some people ask a lot of questions in these sessions.  I try to prioritize people who haven't yet had a question answered, rather than just answering multiple questions by the same person.  That seems fair to me.

Here's the link to the session. You can click on it and go right to the YouTube page.  There you can get a question into the queue ahead of time, and you can also set a reminder for when the session starts, if you'd like.

If you'd like to watch and listen to any of the earlier AMA sessions - you can also see what all the questions and comments were for that session by looking at the chat replay on the left side of the screen - here's a link to a playlist containing all of them.

The work involved in these free online events are underwritten by my Patreon supporters. Their pledges help me earn a living for myself and my family doing work I love - making philosophy accessible to people of all walks of life, all over the world.

If you'd like to become a supporter, here's where you can do that.

I'm hosting another online AMA (Ask Me Anything) session tomorrow.  It starts at noon Central Time, and runs for about an hour-and-a-half.  (I started out scheduling them for an hour, but they've always ended up running over due to the number of questions and comments that I end up getting).

Here's the video page for the session - if you click through to it, you can set yourself a reminder so that you don't miss the event.


If your goal is to get one of your questions asked and answered, you'll probably want to get there early in the session.  As the time goes on, the comments and questions start to come in faster and faster, and when I realize we're close to the end of the session, I start looking for ones I can answer fairly easily to cap it off.  I've never succeeded in getting to all of the questions and comments in any given session.

If you'd like to watch and listen to any of the earlier AMA sessions - you can also see what all the questions and comments were for that session by looking at the chat replay on the left side of the screen - here's a link to a playlist containing all of them.

The work involved in these free online events are underwritten by my Patreon supporters. Their pledges help me earn a living for myself and my family doing work I love - making philosophy accessible to people of all walks of life, all over the world.

If you'd like to become a supporter, here's where you can do that.

Wouldn't It Be Cool? An Idea For A Classic Metal and Philosophy Conference

I posted a picture of my mother-in-law and me earlier today, in Judas Priest t-shirts, and it sparked an interesting conversation with a friend and colleague who is equally appreciative not only of that band, but of classic heavy metal more generally.  He jokingly wrote:  "At some point, I’d like to hear your thoughts on whether evil ever dies." 

For those who aren't up on their contemporary classic metal, "Evil Never Dies" is not only a controversial philosophical claim, but also the title of one of the songs on Judas Priest's most recent album, Firepower.  He clarified that he was asking me about the metaphysical and moral issue.  And that got me thinking.

Classic heavy metal songs often raise, play with, and even explicitly reference philosophical doctrines, problems, concepts, and perspectives.  Bands, musicians, albums, songs, tours, and all the other things connected with them can be looked at through philosophical lenses (I do that sporadically over at another blog, Heavy Metal Philosopher).

Wouldn't it be cool to put together a conference specifically devoted to conversation about those sorts of issues?  I think it could be done in such a way as to combine rigorous thinking, collaborative and critical conversation, with die-hard love of metal.

Set up the right way, it could attract professors and practitioners who have devoted years to reflection (and perhaps even research) about various aspects of heavy metal, but also - I expect - appeal to a much broader general audience.  So then the big question becomes how to bring it off.  Maybe at first it would need to be a virtual conference, i.e. carried out through online platforms.  Then, of course, the trick is to find ways to make it as interactive and participatory as possible.

As a side-note, while I wouldn't exclude the much more specialized genres of metal that have developed as their own little sonic universes in the last three decades, I think I'd want the central focus to be what's often now called "traditional heavy metal", or what I prefer to call classic 70s-80s metal.  That's what was - and remained - at the core of the heavy metal community as I grew up in it and experienced it. 

There's obviously a LOT of fleshing out that would be required - even just as an idea - but there it is.  Wouldn't it be cool?