It’s like LimeWire for the world.  Blogger and author Cory Doctorow’s new novella, "After the Siege" (it’s free), explored an impoverished country transformed by the ability to copy everything.  Not just movies and music, but buildings, medicine, and technology.  This leads to a huge war where the rich countries demand royalties; royalties most of the poor countries can’t afford to pay.

Clive Thompson writes in praise of After the Siege recognizing not only the novella’s present day relevance, but highlighting the sci-fi genre as the last bastion of philisophical ideas.

If you want to read books that tackle profound philosophical questions, then the best — and perhaps only — place to turn these days is sci-fi. Science fiction is the last great literature of ideas.  From where I sit, traditional "literary fiction" has dropped the ball. I studied literature in college, and throughout my twenties I voraciously read contemporary fiction. Then, eight or nine years ago, I found myself getting — well — bored.

Thompson’s speaks to the strength of science-fiction, a genre while uncredited for its thought or artistic merit is often the most revealing genre of human nature and potential.  Thompson continues:

Here’s my overly reductive, incredibly nerdy way of thinking about the novel: Consider it a simulation, kind of like The Sims. If you run a realistic simulation enough times — writing tens of thousands of novels about contemporary life — eventually you’re going to explore almost every outcome. So what do you do then?

You change the physics in the sim. Alter reality — and see what new results you get. Which is precisely what sci-fi does. Its authors rewrite one or two basic rules about society and then examine how humanity responds — so we can learn more about ourselves. How would love change if we lived to be 500? If you could travel back in time and revise decisions, would you? What if you could confront, talk to, or kill God?

Doctorow’s novella presents the complex intellectual property quagmire in the simplest fashion - from a child’s perspective.  The allusions aren’t hidden.  An epidemic of zombiism has spread around the country with governments trying and failing to negotiated lower priced cures.  It was only when the government pirated (or file-shared) the drugs that they could afford to cure all those sick, dying people.  That really is a work of fiction.

1926 introduced the geek world to some never before seen Amazing Stories.  Amazing Stories Magazine was the first all-science fiction magazine.  Creator Hugo Gernsback is even credited with coining the name scientifiction, later known as science fiction.  The magazine is even known for innovating the shrinking text logo frequently duplicated.  The popular magazine lasted for more than 75 years, being put on hiatus in 2005, but its many firsts and classic stories will be forever remembers…by the really geeky who read it.

Isaac Asimov’s classic sci-fi series tells of the predicted downfall of the Galactic Empire.  Hari Seldon devised a system of mathematics to predict the future.  Called psychohistory, Seldon found you could predict history over huge timespans.  Individuals are unpredictable but the masses can be predicted.  Seldon formed the Foundation to lessen the dark ages after the fall of the Galactic Empire, but Seldon’s millennia worth of predictions could be destroyed by one unpredictable individual.  The powerful psionic the Mule was that individual.  Able to control the emotions of others, the Mule formed a massive empire to defeat the Foundation.  The Mule can be remembered as one of the scariest and most twisted villains in science fiction, from his freakish look to some of his bizarre traits (like infertility).  It easy to say the Mule is the greatest infertile super-villain in geek history.  And that’s something to be proud of.

For sci-fi fans looking to take a break from their Klingon studies, I recommend checking out Geekend’s excellent 75 words every sci-fi fan should know.  The list includes staples of science fiction, from replicant to Dyson Sphere to important theories like Clarke’s Laws, and simply important vocabulary like kiloyear and megayear.  Check out Geekend’s full list with definitions and find everything left off the list.

Children were the only one in need of imagination and fantasy.  In 1953, the BCC released the Quatermass Experiment, the first sci-fi series aimed at adults.  The story follows Professor Bernard Quatermass, head of the British Experimental Rocket Group, who investigates two astronauts who went missing on the first manned space mission. The one survivor is sick and apparently infected with an alien organism that could destroy the planet.  The revolutionary series was an immense success. Journalist Geoffrey Wansell wrote about the finale:

"Westminster Abbey undoubtedly dominated television during the summer of 1953 but it was not just the Coronation of the Queen that sticks in my mind now. It is also the memory of Professor Bernard Quatermass grappling with the pulsating giant plant that threatened to destroy the world from its rooting place in the Abbey’s nave… The Quatermass Experiment frightened the life out of a vast new generation of television viewers whose sets had been acquired in order to watch the Coronation… Quatermass was one of the first series on British television to make life seem potentially terrifying."

The series not only locked the British to their televisions, but inspired decades of science fiction, especially Doctor Who and Red Dwarf.  Not too shabby.