POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAY: Near Future SF OFTEN Ignores Human Education

Using the Programme Guide of the 2020 World Science Fiction Convention, ConZEALAND (The First Virtual World Science Fiction Convention), I will jump off, jump on, rail against, and shamelessly agree with the BRIEF DESCRIPTION given in the pdf copy of the 2020 Program Guide. I will be using the events to drive me to distraction or revelation – as the case may be. 

The Day After Tomorrow: Near Future SF

What are the challenges of SF set in the near future? What are good examples?

Shiv Ramdas: panelist, writer
Karl Schroeder: author and futurist, love his world, CANDESCE!
Glen Engel-Cox: writer
Caren Gussoff Sumption: writer, mental health professional
SB Divya: author, co-Editor of Escape Pod, data scientist

The vast majority of my professionally published work has been, much to my dismay, based in the Near Future. (I love ALIENS!!!) Most often, the story revolves around genetic engineering – or gengineering. Four of my published pieces deal with aliens, three are historical, and thirteen others deal with us messing around with our Human genetic code.

In one set of stories, Humans mess with the DNA so much that another part of Humanity has splintered off in protest and has narrowed Human to being someone with 65% or more unaltered Human DNA as documented in the 2023 version of the completed Human Genome Project [It was declared complete on April 14, 2003, and included about 92% of the genome. Level "complete genome" was achieved in May 2021, with a remaining only 0.3% bases covered by potential issues. The final gapless assembly was finished in January 2022."

 So, anyone with fewer Human genes than that is, by definition NOT Human; though at the same time, they aren’t ALIENS, either. I’ve had two stories published that take place in that universe.

So what else will happen the day after tomorrow?

How about changes in EDUCATION? One of my biggest pet peeves is that for some reason, many SF writers appear to insist that “In the 23rd Century, children will sit in desks while being taught by a Human teacher – with (of course) the obligatory tools of computers…remind you of another century in which computers were integral parts of a classroom? Does “Twentieth” ring a bell? The writers of STAR TREK have kids sitting in desks aboard the FREAKING FLAGSHIP OF THE FREAKING UNITED FEDERATION OF PLANETS! Oh, and the children are members of a variety of species of aliens – all of whom, apparently, learn the exact way Humans do.

AS IF ALL HUMANS LEARN THE SAME WAY!!!!

OK, I’ll try to tone down the shouting. The thing is, no one seems to want to look at the future of education. Is it because they believe that how we educate our children today reached its absolute pinnacle in 1950 and there was nothing else to add? Close the book. End of entry. Bye-bye…

Has anyone ever wondered if it a profound limitation of the Human brain that the ONLY way we can learn is by sitting in desks and allowing OTHER people to teach our children, ones who are TRAINED to do it in the CORRECT manner?

I call “Hooey” on that one! If that were actually true, then Abraham Lincoln as well as Edison, Teddy Roosevelt, Agatha Christie, Alexander Graham Bell, Alexander Hamilton (of recent musical fame), MacArthur & Patton, DaVinci, both Wyeths, Brigham Young, John Phillip Sousa, Alex Haley (who, of course, wrote ROOTS), and William F. Buckley (plus several OTHER presidents beside Lincoln and Roosevelt)…would have been uneducated louts because they were HOME SCHOOLED.

“Ah, but that was in the OLDEN DAYS!!! EVERYTHING IS DIFFERENT NOW, the 21st Century is so incredibly more complex. We KNOW (and have been repeatedly told by the Education Machine) that parents are in NO WAY, SHAPE, OR FORM QUALIFIED TO TEACH THEIR CHILDREN!!!!” Students ALL need to have access to computers (Note: I originally wrote this before the Educational Fiasco of the Pandemic Years...though I'd like to note that the biggest issue there was that teachers, schools, and other paraprofessionals had to INVENT curriculum and methodologies while the rest of the world pretended that even though everything else had changed, education had not. Many parents assumed that the SCHOOLS would continue to educate students as they always had -- with minimal parental input. The schools on their part, made the assumption that all parents "automatically" knew how to educate their kids. We all know exactly what happened all around the world...)

OK, I’ll pick up the gauntlet you’ve tossed down to tell me that the pandemic has conclusively proven that parents can’t (read: didn’t realize their kids were so DIFFICULT to teach) possibly provide an effective education to their children (read: and pursue their own lives and careers) – [(please keep in mind that I was a middle school and high school science teacher (all levels, grades 6-12; astronomy to zoology; special education; English Language learners; and International Baccalaureate/Honors program) for 31 years; followed by ten years as a counselor; mostly at a near-inner-city high school which drew ten percent of its population FROM inner city families whose intent was for their children to get the best education they could – and I’ve taught at private religious, a public charter school, a summer school program for Gifted and Talented student; as well as homeschooling our own children from K-4th grade and 1st to sixth grade…]. Oh, I'd like to throw a few other homeschooled names out: the first woman confirmed as a US Supreme Court Justice, Sandra Day O’Connor. The Jonas Brothers were all home schooled. So was Simone Biles (you know, that Olympic Gold Medalist in Gymnastics…); Tim Tebow, Serena and Venus Williams, Ryan Gosling, Emma Watson (yeah the one who had a small part in those little-known movies about some kid named HARRY POTTER…), Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Condoleeza Rice (66th US Secretary of State (as well as first woman, and first African American (under a REPUBLICAN PRESIDENT no less!) to be so appointed. Speaking of which, a fair number of other presidents were homeschooled…)), and mathematics genius Erik Demaine. I’m sure there are other people who have “survived” being homeschooled and who contribute to society in meaningful ways. Oh, and the objection that, “Homeschooling will not give my kids the essential SOCIAL skills that they need to SURVIVE in the world and get a job!!!!!!!!!!!!!” Yeah, too bad Teddy Roosevelt was such a shy wallflower. Put him and Tim Teboe and Emma Watson in a room and no one would say a word because they haven't been properly socialized...

I’d be willing to bet money that the subject this panel did NOT discuss changes in education (please enlighten me if you were there! The video wasn't available when I tried to watch it...).

However, just adding technology to do the same stuff Humans have been doing at least since 1642 is NOT a paradigm shift. [a fundamental change in approach or underlying assumptions.] (“The first compulsory education law in this country was enacted in 1642 in the Massachusetts Bay Colony…by 1918, all states had passed school attendance legislation…”) Formal education was initiated in Egyptian history during the Middle Kingdom, around 1040 BCE. So, science fiction writers telling me that public education won’t change in the future (except that we’ll add computers…) is quite honestly ridiculous! I call “Hooey” on that attitude!

I’ll also call, “Where EXACTLY is the creative, forward thinking that made science fiction the ‘literature of ideas’…” I’ve worked on it and I think I have a fascinating and advanced way to teach…and have been regularly and silently rebuffed in my attempts to present OTHER ways that Humans might effectively learn. Can anyone link me to an SF story that actually proposes something that is more than a reiteration of a system that is well over 5000 years old…

(BTW: direct "brain download" isn't something we can do today. Besides, if I simply downloaded all of the data a typical 8th grader learns, followed by the data and textbooks 9th-12th have to receive in order to graduate from High School in Minnesota...THAT WILL GIVE ME A STUDENT WITH A HIGH SCHOOL EDUCATION?" A brain implant would suffer the same problems -- education requires some sort of matrix onto which "facts" can be hung; as well as a neural network of emotion and context that can integrate the facts... 

I wish I could say I’d expect a challenge or response to this suggesting that there’s been SEVERAL stories and novels that show novel, creative ways of teaching. In fact, I am EAGERLY WAITING TO BE SO GIFTED!!!!

…but I sadly doubt that I will.

Reference: https://www.homeschoolacademy.com/blog/famous-homeschoolers/
Program Book: https://sites.grenadine.co/sites/conzealand/en/conzealand/schedule
Image: https://elearningindustry.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/online-education-is-the-future.jpg

Read More

Return to the Moa by Bruce Bethke, October 09, 2017

And here I am, back at the Mall of America again. Twenty-some years ago, when the MOA was shiny and new and I was a promising young writer with both a new novel out and an American publisher who actually put some promotional effort behind such novels by such writers, I got booked to do a signing at the MOA, at what was then the flagship store of a now-defunct bookstore chain.

Let me tell you, I was excited to do this signing! A week or two before Colin Powell had done a book signing at the same store, in the same time-slot, and it was a major media event, covered by all the local papers and TV stations. The line for him was out the door and halfway down to the next food court. I figured, if I could get just half the turnout he got; a quarter, even...

On the day of the signing I took extra care to shave, shower, brush and floss, make sure my hair was perfect, dress in my sharpest suit, pack a couple of spare signing pens (always bring your own pen) and a small tin of Altoids -- I even put on aftershave, which I almost never do, and showed up well in advance of the appointed time. The staff in the store were happy to see me and eager to accommodate me. They'd set me up with a table and chair and nice signage, and neat stacks of about 200 copies of my new novel, in a location where it was impossible for people to enter or leave the store without walking right past me.

Which is exactly what they did: walked right past me. I sat there with my "accessible and approachable" smile pasted on my face and pen in my hand, ready to sign and personalize books, watching people walk past... and walk past... and walk past...

And after about fifteen minutes, I decided this was stupid. I'd worked in sales before -- been quite successful at it, actually. You don't make sales by sitting there and waiting for customers to approach you. You get out from behind the counter and approach them. Confidently and assertively, but without crossing over into aggressive and obnoxious, which is where most sales people blow it, especially in the used car business.

So I got out from behind that table, and I worked that sales floor, approaching and engaging people and selling my book, one customer at a time. When my assigned time was up I got permission from the store manager to keep going, and I wound up staying there until the store closed. By the end of the evening my voice was shot, my feet were killing me, and I had sold...

Exactly sixty-four books. I made a point of remembering that; wrote it down, even. I was making roughly ten cents a copy on that one, so all my work that evening had contributed a glorious $6.40 towards earning out my publisher's advance. I was depressed.

The store staff were thrilled, though. "This is the best book signing we've ever had!" But, but, Colin Powell?

Someone explained. That wasn't a book signing. That was a publishing event. People weren't showing up to buy Powell's book and read it. They were there to get a signed copy so they could display it, and start conversations by saying, "I was talking to Colin Powell the other day..." They figured the people who bought Powell's book might read a chapter or two, or look at the pictures, but eventually they'd get tired of having it taking up space in their house. Then they'd try to sell it, and discover it wasn't a valuable collector's item after all, whereupon they'd dump it at a garage sale or donate it to Goodwill.

"But you," another someone said, "you actually wrote your book. The people who bought your book are going to read it. This is the best turnout we've ever had for a real novel by a real writer!"

Well. That was some consolation. And definitely food for thought.

...the thinking process continues to this day. Twenty-some years later, the book business remains a strange and dynamic space, where the only constant is change and what worked well even a year ago no longer works now. For too long I have been sitting behind the table, with my "accessible and approachable" smile pasted on my face, waiting for book sales to magically happen. For a time, that seemed to work. We sold thousands of copies of Scout's Honor and The Fugitive Heir, among other titles.

But this year: the market tectonics have shifted again. What was working for us then isn't working for us now. Meaning it's time for me to get out from behind the table and start making things happen. And that, my friends, is what I'm already in the process of doing, and will be expanding on doing in the upcoming months.

Fair warning, though: the reason I got out of sales in the first place is that my salesman persona -- well, he's not exactly the most patient and nurturing of people. In fact, he really got on my wife's nerves, which is why I shut him down and changed careers. Once he's online, I have a lot of trouble switching him off.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

As we're changing our sales positioning and marketing strategy, one of the things I'm doing is consolidating the SHOWCASE and Stupefying Stories websites. SHOWCASE was a nice idea, and it had a pleasant if erratic four-year run, but our focus now must be on our core business, which is selling books. Ergo, SHOWCASE will carry on, but as a feature of this site, not as a semi-independent (and money-losing) entity. As we're winding up and shutting down the existing SHOWCASE site, though, I'll be running a sort of "best of SHOWCASE" feature here, with plugs and links to some of my personal favorites out of the 170-some stories we've published on that site over the past four years.

Guy's Note: As HEADCRASH (1995), REBEL MOON (1996), and WILD, WILD WEST (1999) were all published around the same time, this could have been written for any one of the books. My money is on HEADCRASH, though. So, unless Bruce corrects me, let's go with that! 

Read More

The Seemingly Obligatory Christmas Column; "Christmas Eve, 2017,” by Bruce Bethke

(This 2017 photograph of Queen Elizabeth II is here because she was amazing, engendered a sense of  good cheer, good sense, and stability...some qualities ~brb shares)

I had a column I used to recycle every Christmas Eve. It was a mopey, sentimental thing about my Dad and the 8mm movie camera he used to take to every family gathering when I was a kid. The technology of the times required that he use a battery of photoflood lights if he wanted to shoot color film indoors, so we have a lot of footage of my relatives raising their hands and cringing before those floodlights, like vampires cowering at the first rays of sunrise.

Sometime in the late 1960s my Dad got the idea to edit all those Christmas clips together into one reel, although for reasons he never explained he decided not to put them in chronological order. The result is a fascinating home movie that skips back and forth in time between the early 1950s and the late 1960s, and shows the members of my extended family going from being young children, to having children of their own, and back and forth again.

Some years back, when DVD was new, I got the idea to transfer that movie to DVD, dub in a soundtrack of period Christmas music, and then make VHS copies of the result and send them to all my living relatives. The tapes were a hit. But... VHS.

A few days ago I was talking by phone with my brother in Texas, and the subject of that tape came up again. Yes, he still had it—somewhere—but couldn’t remember how long ago he’d junked his last VHS deck. Yes, he thought it would be a great idea if I was to redo it, this time on DVD, and for a few minutes, I was excited about the idea. With the software tools I have now, I could do a much better job of transferring the images, cleaning up the frame sync problems, tightening the editing, and layering in a new soundtrack.

But then I realized: the number of people now living who would recognize any of the people in that film has gotten much smaller since I did the VHS version, and it’s getting smaller every year.

Time travel is one of the grand old ideas of science fiction. When we’re young, we love to imagine things like, “What if we could go back in time to December 6th, 1941, and take along the U.S.S. Nimitz?” Or, “What if we could travel into the distant future, and then come back to now with everything we learned there?”

A little later in life, it becomes more personal. We start to imagine, “What if I could go back in time just a few years, and fix just one terrible mistake I made when I was younger?”

When you get to be my age, you start to realize that actually having time travel would be a nightmare, and the worst nightmare of all would be to travel into the future and get stuck there, in that strange world where no one speaks your language. Our world is already full of time travelers who are traveling into the future at 1X speed and getting stuck there. We call them ‘old people,’ and at our best, we tolerate their continued presence.

This year, we are the grandparents our children are taking time from their busy schedules to come visit, and we’re grateful for their company. But every year, the roll call of our fellow time travelers gets shorter, and Thornton Wilder’s Our Town becomes more poignant.

“Thornton Wilder?” the youngest asked. “Our Town? The class play my senior year was that old classic, The Rocky Horror Show.”

The. Rocky. Horror. Show.

Yes. Please. Just one more time.

Let’s do the time warp again.

Image: https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/gettyimages-898156782-1514231571.jpg

Read More

Movies: The Problem with Back To The Future • by Ray Daley

 

Back To The Future still holds up well, for a movie made in 1985.

HOWEVER! It’s not perfect, and I’m about to tear some holes in your beloved film.

If you haven’t seen it (HOW?), Back To The Future is the story of slacker Marty McFly and inventor Emmett Brown, AKA Doc. Doc is an inventor with numerous failures to his name but he doesn’t know the meaning of the word quit.

That’s fine, I don’t know the meaning of the word antidisestablishmentarianism but they made me learn how to spell it at school. Anyway, Doc manages to perfect time travel and performs two successful tests, the second throwing Marty back to the year 1955, 30 years before the movie is set.

Marty discovers his father is a pervert and accidentally manages to ruin the moment when his father met his mother, ultimately unraveling the thread of his existence.

AND THIS IS WHERE WE HAVE OUR FIRST PROBLEM—THE PHOTOGRAPH!

In his pocket, Marty is carrying a photograph of himself, his older sister, and their older brother. Who suddenly start vanishing from the picture. From this point onward, the movie is on a ticking clock. If Marty can’t get his mother and father to fall in love again, he’ll fade out of existence. forever.

“So, what’s the problem, Ray?” I hear you all shouting? (What’s that? You’re not shouting? Okay, I’ll just wait here until you do. I’ve got all day. Okay, you’re all shouting now? On we go!)

The photograph is the problem. Ignoring the sheer fact it shouldn’t exist at all because it hasn’t been taken yet (which the writer glosses over without a moment’s thought) Marty’s siblings vanish in the order they were born in. Only they shouldn’t.

As the youngest, Marty should vanish first on that photograph. It’s a massive continuity goof that almost no-one notices until it’s pointed out to them. Marty’s oldest brother should be last to vanish. He should be the protagonist of this movie. Again, we’ll gloss over the fact that he isn’t. Now, if Marty was the eldest, the photograph would make sense. IT DOESN’T.

I’ve probably just blown your mind there.

Okay! Now let’s talk about an alternate reality.

Michael J. Fox wasn’t the first actor cast as Marty McFly. Oh, no. Eric Stoltz (of Cher movie Mask fame) was originally Marty. Eighty-percent of the movie was shot before someone decided he just wasn’t working out as they’d hoped. He is still in one scene. Go check the 1955 cafe scene where George punches Biff. That’s Eric Stoltz’s arm! Neither Eric or his arm get a credit, which sucks. If my arm was in a movie, I’d want a credit for it. And ice cream, but I always want ice cream.

TIME FOR THE SECOND BIG PROBLEM

The stupid, wrong photograph isn’t the only big problem with Back To The Future. It’s an issue that should be addressed in ALL time travel movies. I can tell you all about it with three simple words.

THE EARTH MOVES. 

Apart from spinning at roughly 1000 miles an hour on its axis, the Earth is also moving in space, around the sun. It’s why we have seasons. Where we were in 1985 is certainly not where we were in 1955, or where we will be in 2015. If you traveled into the past, you’d have to not only account for the rotation of the Earth, you’d also have to factor in our orbit around the sun. Otherwise, if you were able to travel in time, you would almost certainly end up floating in space, and certainly not on Earth.

[Editor’s Note: Which is why having a T.A.R.D.I.S. instead of a DeLorean would be quite useful, hmm?] 

Even if you were freakishly lucky and somehow managed to land on Earth (and trust me, compared to space, Earth is a tiny target to hit!), the chances of it being exactly where you’d left from would be slim to none. Chances are, you’d most likely end up in the ocean.

Time travel to the past is possible, right now. You can jump on a jet plane and travel both backwards and forward in time by a few hours. Sure, it’s merely crossing time zones, but you can leave Europe, fly to America and arrive before you left. Tell me that isn’t time travel!

Back To The Future asks some difficult questions. It asks us to believe the butterfly effect is a thing.

As far as Science Fiction goes, the butterfly effect was first shown in the Ray Bradbury story “A Sound of Thunder,” in 1952, in which a time-traveler steps on a butterfly in the Late Cretaceous era, altering the future. Back To The Future shows us both positive, negative and neutral outcomes of the butterfly effect.

Neutral effects with Twin Pine Mall becoming Lone Pine Mall, positive effects with Goldie Wilson encouraged to run for Mayor and George McFly stepping out of the shadow of his school bully, Biff, with the negative effects obviously being Marty initially ruining his parents first meeting.

Personally, I don’t believe in the butterfly effect. I believe in causality. This means whatever happens, happens, regardless of if you were there or not. I’m fine with the concept of traveling back to the moment you left, which is the present.

I don’t believe traveling to the far future (anything beyond more than 12 hours) is even remotely possible. Why? One simple fact.

IT HASN’T HAPPENED YET.

Something is only an event once it’s taken place. Until it has, there is nothing. The future is the present, eventually. The present happens, a second passes, we’re in a new event, a new future, a moment which is currently taking place but is yet to physically happen as it’s happening. I know, it sounds crazy complex, so here’s an easy breakdown.

Take a piece of paper and something to write on. That paper is the present and the future. It’s blank, there’s nothing there until something happens. So you write your name on it. That’s an event, once you’ve finished writing your name happened in the past. Unless you have an ink eraser or you wrote in pencil, what’s done can’t easily be undone.

By writing on the paper, you’ve changed its timeline. It went from always being blank to now having your name written on it. However, you can’t go from a moment when it was blank, to a time when your name is already written on it, not without performing that action yourself.  You’ve got to make the future, you can’t just move into it.

So we’ve dealt with the stupid science of Back To The Future.

Bruce asked me to talk about cultural appropriation. Specifically, Marty becomes a white saviour. He gets the dance going, brings Mom and Dad back together so they have kids, setting the timeline back to as it should be. And in the process, steals another man’s thunder.

Chuck Berry.

I need to say a thing first. I checked, Marvin Berry was real, he was Chuck’s cousin. However, Marty did not invent or inspire rock and roll. Before he plays Johnny B. Goode, he instructs The Starlighters that it’s ”a blues riff in B, watch for the changes”. If they’ve never heard any rock and roll style music before, they would have no clue what Marty was saying or his intended meaning.

HOWEVER…

As Blues music had been around since the start of the 20th Century, Marvin and his band would have been well aware of the style. Bill Haley had already been number 1 with Rock Around The Clock in 1954 and Chuck Berry had a hit with Maybellene. Marty didn’t inspire anyone. Rock and roll already existed. That phone call was unnecessary, Chuck Berry was already famous. Probably not a fact the casual watcher is aware of. You are now.

You’re welcome.

I’m not going to mention one of the most uncomfortable plot aspects, which is someone thought incest was funny. Mostly because it’s not.

I will say this in closing though.

Whilst Fox’s portrayal of Marty makes the part, the ensemble cast truly makes the movie. Without Thomas F. Wilson, Lea Thompson, Christopher Lloyd, Crispin Glover and Donald Fullilove there would be no Back To The Future. It’s a fine and enjoyable movie, and if you haven’t seen it yet, I would encourage you to do so.

Nostalgia is always going to be popular, and while Back To The Future isn’t perfect it comes pretty close in places.

____________________

 

Ray Daley was born in Coventry and still lives there. He served six years in the RAF as a clerk and spent most of his time in a Hobbit hole in High Wycombe. He is a published poet and has been writing stories since he was ten. His current dream is to eventually finish the Hitchhiker’s Guide fanfic novel he’s been writing since 1986. Tweet him @RayDaleyWriter or check out his web site at https://raymondwriteswrongs.wordpress.com/

Read More

The Spooky Season: Let's Talk About Zombies! • by Ray Daley

 

 

While I'm mostly known for writing science fiction, one of the other hats I wear is that of a horror writer. I love me a good horror film, be it haunted houses, undead armies, crazed slashers or whatever. There's nothing like a damn good scare.

I saw my first X-rated horror film when I was 13—The Sword & The Sorcerer. Let me tell you this, a guy gets his head shoved into a working grindstone and another man de-crucifies himself. It's got quite a decent amount of gore sprinkled over what is essentially a dark fantasy film. Worth a look if you like gory movies, some good demons, dark magic and a frankly amazing triple-bladed sword.

However. That's not what I've got you here to talk about this time. I wanted to discuss zombies.

The undead, shambling, reanimated corpses who frequently hunger for brains.

Most folks should be familiar with the King of zombie films, George Romero. The man who coined the line, "When there's no more room in Hell, the dead will walk the Earth."

That's probably what most people think of when asked to form a mental picture of a zombie.

Originally, zombies came from Haitian voodoo culture, using black magic to reanimate a dead body, although the word can be traced back to West African roots where it meant god or fetish (an object which has supernatural powers). In English, the word zombie (spelt zombi) was first recorded in 1819. We've been curious about them for a damn long time!

So what is wrong with movie zombies?

READ MORE ► 

Read More

Movie Review • “DUNE: It's Got a Lot of Problems..." by Ray Daley

 

WARNING: HERE BE SPOILERS!

So I recently got to see the new version of Dune. I'd seen all the trailers. I was looking forward to it but had a few reservations.

Reservation 1 - The Star

Timothée Chalamet as Paul Atreides. He looks about fourteen and is so skinny it appears he’d probably snap in half in a brisk breeze. He does not look like the saviour of a planet, not by a country mile.

Reservation 2 - The Length

It was fairly widely known we weren’t getting the entire first book of Frank Herbert's Dune in this movie, despite the fact it's longer than the 1984 version, which managed to do that.

So, with a couple of reservations, I watched the film. And it's got problems. Well, if you're watching with a critical eye, it certainly has.

I'll go ahead and hope you're already vaguely familiar with either the book or the 1984 movie. The 2000's miniseries is actually Children Of Dune, so can be ignored. Dune is essentially the story of a white saviour coming to free indigenous people. It's also a serious case of cultural appropriation, which everyone seems to gloss over as well.

So what are these problems?

Dune falls down hard in a couple of fairly important places.

Read More