Life inspires art inspires life: the anime

So some very recognisable music started playing when the Japanese figure skating duo of Suzaki Miu and Kihara Ryuichi started their routine:



It’s well know that Yamamoto Sayo was inspired by Olymic figure skating to first create Endless Night for the Nihon Animator Mihonichi project and then direct Yuri on Ice, so to see the main theme the protagonist used to skate to being used by an actual Olympic figure skating pair is brilliant.

Hack into the mooframe

So much for all those visionary cyberpunk authors of the eighties and nineties. They never so much as hinted that in the 21st century, the brave new hacking elite would consist of Nebraska farmers desparate to repair their John Deere tractors:

Not to be too disparaging, it’s hard to predict things, especially the future. But still. Reading that American farmers are buying Ukrainian software to hack their tractors really gives me the feeling of living in one of Bruce Sterling’s novels, which is not necessarily a good thing…

Heinlein talks



I came across this video thanks to File 770, following the bread crumbs back from a post about the latest rightwing sf writer making an arse off himself. Heinlein is arguably the ur-Puppy, in that most of their beliefs can be traced straight back to them. Heinlein would’ve known better than to insult sf readers on social media or pick public fights with other writers willy-nilly though. He could actually write, had to be able to write stories that everybody — rather than just those who ideologically agreed with him — could enjoy, or he would’ve had no income. Johnny come lately coat tail riders like Jon Del Arroz on the other hand seem to want to sell books as a way to stick it to the libs, rather than on their own merits. Buy this book and annoy Mike Glyer or something.

The problem with any of the Puppy authors is of course that everything they’ve done was done before and better by writers like Pournelle, Niven and especially Heinlein. If I wanted to read a rightwing tract masquarading as science fiction, I’d read them and still get a chance at a half decent story too. No wonder the Correias and Torgersens of this world are so salty: they can’t even buy the respect they feel is theirs even if they have the sales, because nothing they do is all that interesting or novel. They’re just copies of copies of copies of Heinlein. You’re better off reading the real thing.