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The Galactic Empires are aging

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Paul Di Filippo is the author of many science fiction books, among them Steampunk Trilogy, Ribofunk, and WikiWorld. His new novel Summer Thieves it’s a picaresque adventure based on the work of Jack Vance.

“I always like to challenge myself with new areas of fiction writing,” says Di Filippo in section 480 Guide to the Geek Galaxy podcast. “I realized that I had never done a traditional space opera, so that was the way I decided to try it.”

Di Filippo likes the classic space opera, but thinks it tends to fall unexpectedly. “In most space operas, you have a very retro setup, like the famous Star Wars Empire setup, or you have a Star Trek setup where modern liberalism spreads across the stars,” he says. “I understand that people stick to this because they are iconic and archetypal ways of organizing. But I think if you want to speculate, you have to try to break new ground. “

In Summer Thieves, Di Filippo represents a galaxy ruled by Quinary, a group of organizations that control five vital industries — information technology, biotechnology, nanotechnology, real estate, and security. “Quinary is an existing word, but I’ve used it again,” he says. “It’s not quite a government, it’s not a set of NGOs, it’s not corporations. It’s a body that mixes them all up. “

Di Filippori finds Quinary quite compelling, as the modern world seems to be controlled by only five companies, Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft. But he says readers will have to judge the construction of their world themselves. “I don’t have a degree in poly-science or economics or any of those wonderful, heavy disciplines,” he says. “I’m a major uninsigned Englishman, so I’ve come out of my reading and my mind and experience. So we’ll see if people buy in a way that’s credible.”

Listen to the full interview with Paul Di Filppo in section 480 Guide to the Geek Galaxy (above). And see some notable points in the discussion below.

Paul Di Filippo Mirror shadows anthology:

“We were 11 or 12 Mirror shadows anthology, and one member, Tom Maddox, has left. He doesn’t write fiction anymore, and we’ve lost touch with him. But I would have constant communication with my peers as the need arose. But then I said, ‘We all never interview,’ and we had a shared past and we got something. So I make a list of CCs, and from time to time I or someone else will see an important article and send it to the 10 or 11 on the right side of the earth. … We all still have some kind of career and we are still writing. John Shirley’s new book Storm territory it was great. Bruce Sterling has just released a collection of stories this year. And William Gibson, of course, no one needs to report his achievements. So I think we’re all hanging out together for the last 40 years and we’re still fruitful. “

Paul Di Filippo on “Ribofunk: Manifesto”:

I said, “Let me do this half-serious, half-tongue controversial page, and circulate and see what people think.” So I went to Kinko, after producing this in my point matrix. [printer], and literally cut and pasted a couple of illustrations, and xeroxed 100 copies and sent them to various people. It was republished in several sources at the same time, and seemed to touch the instincts of a few people because there was a small flourish of that fiction on that side. If you look under Wikipedia ‘biopunk’—What is the name that has come to dominate this subgenre of science fiction — I think they have a line that says something like, ‘Paul Di Filippo tried to call everyone’ ribofunk, ‘but no one did.’ So it was not a 100 percent successful revolution. “

About Paul Di Filippo’s condemnation:

“I’m not a fan [deplatforming]. I’m old school “the cure for bad speech is more speech”. That is the classic belief that has informed our country from the beginning. For me, a lot of voices will be the best technique to drown out crazy or bad or destructive voices. Squelching never works. You try to silence something and take it to the ground, and it is reinforced by harassment. For me, the kind of disagreement we live in today is not a good thing. … There is a blow caused by such interventions, which allow us to really use them very little, and we need to use a little more wisdom than in the past. ”

Paul Di Filippo The Internet of Things:

“In the story ‘The Dish Ran Away with the Spoon’ based on the famous kindergarten, I looked at the Internet of Things and how it could be a hacking challenge to talk to a smart fridge with a smart cleaner. The machine, and what could happen in those circumstances. the thinking around him was great Robert Sheckley, a name that is not on everyone’s tongue today, but Sheckley was the lead writer of the 50s and 60s. … His fiction always included a lot of devices that were too clever for his own good, like Philip K. Dick, where a robotic taxi cab is debating where you want to go. So you continue to see that this is the kind of lineage of ideas. I’m here, after 50 years of these guys, still trying to make sense of those ideas. ”


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