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Rockets & Raytheon 2: Verein für Raumschiffahrt
The underlying theme of space and the military was not one that I set out to highlight in Debarkle. However, it runs through this story from the early chapters onwards. In Chapter 4, I discussed Sam Moskowitz’s 1954 history of fandom The Immortal Storm. In discussing international fandom, one of the groups Moskowitz highlighted was […]
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Rockets & Raytheon: A Debarkle Coda – 1
In the last weeks of 2021 I attempted to write just one more chapter of the Debarkle series. It was poor timing and that additional chapter quickly spun out of control. So I put it aside and decided to return to it later on. The reason for the chapter was twofold. The initiating issue was […]
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Debarkle Afterword: Dramatis Personae
Through this saga, several key figures have been highlighted during the narrative. In this final chapter, we will see where each of them landed at the end of 2021. People and organisations are presented in the order that they appeared in the text. Worldcon and the Hugo Awards: The famous convention was scheduled to be […]
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Debarkle: Conclusion
Worldbuilding is an important part of all fiction, the creation of imagined reality within which characters can interact and a plot unfold. While worldbuilding has a role in all genres, it is of particular importance within science fiction and fantasy where the departure from genuine reality is expected to be more profound and overt. If […]
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Debarkle Chapter 74: Meanwhile…Election 2020
[content warning: discussion of violence and murder] Robert Heinlein’s “crazy years” were a period in his extrapolation of history into the future where rapid technological change would accompany a period of cultural and social decline. The idea resembles aspects of accelerationism[1] and the sense of galloping technological change and social unrest is one the world […]
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Debarkle Chapter 73: Covid, Contrarians and Cons
The exact start of the Covid-19 pandemic isn’t known. At the time of writing this chapter (November 2021), it is believed that via some means a variant of a coronavirus found in other mammals made its way into the human population[1]. A less likely possibility (on current evidence) is that the virus outbreak was due […]
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Debarkle Chapter 72: Part 6 Overview — Pandemic 2020
In the previous parts of this story, we traced the precursors to a culture war within (primarily US) science-fiction fandom, the eruption of that culture war into a specific dispute over the Hugo Awards and then the aftermath of that dispute during the years of the Donald Trump Presidency. Historical stories do not have neat […]
Camestros Felapton
2022 Hugo Award Finalist
Camestros Felapton 