Was that from a recent /. thread? After reading that I'm convinced there's now like ten rabid fandoms of sci-fi tv that have nothing to do with Star Trek. Which would make 11 series I'm out of the loop on...I actually would like to see this Dr. Who redux though. I saw a bit of BG on American network tv and what I saw (with Baltar apparently) played like something from a Steve Martin movie where Lily Tomlin shared his brain.

The new BG is OK, though I've only watched a few episodes. I admire the manifesto I quoted, especially the part about ridding the world of obviously-just-another-type-of-human-bumpy-headed-aliens (we could try learning a thing or two about other human cultures before inventing our own crap ones). I've always disliked Star Trek and its variants, and I don't watch rubbish like Stargate. There are a few other fandoms etc. out there (I think), but I tend to think that people are too able to convince themselves a random product is worthy of obsession these days.

Would you consider Firefly to follow the spirit of the quoted paragraph?

I've never watched it, but given the character of other Joss Whedon creations, I'd say it's unlikely. Could be wrong though.

That reminds me- wanted to ask your opinion on something. In the sci-fi I write, I tend to use a lot more aliens and artificially evolved beings than AIs or sentient robots. The reasoning in the story (not that I think the future will necessarily bear this out) is that past a certain point, (basically where they get smart enough to be useful) machine intelligences develop wills and motivations of their own which inevitably, though not necessarily lethally, do not match those of their creators. A 'weak|strong Cylon' Syndrome, as it were. And the kicker is that this is something all species eventually figure out, not just humans. I try to use this as a sort of justification for B.E.M.s and as a way to explore the newness of things like uploaded personalities, when from the point of future I write from (least a couple thou. yrs to come), one would think they'd be quite common. What say you? Perhaps a bit too easy of a cop-out device?

*shrug* I don't tend to like aliens as humans-in-makeup is the main thing ... e.g. Star Trek, where all *human* races get along fine but suddenly there are all these alien races running around who just happen to share racist-stereotypical traits with non-Caucasian races, and have conflicts with humans.

If you're going to have an alien race, make it properly alien so you can do something interesting with it. It's supposed to be the "literature of ideas" after all. Same goes for A.I.s - for example, your theory that all sufficiently advanced artificial intelligences eventually come to vary ideologically from the intelligences that created them would be an interesting premise or sub-premise for an sf story. Just having A.I.s running around acting human is OK, but it's better then not to foreground them so much in the story e.g. the bitchy, whiny self-interested drones in Iain M. Banks' sf ...

*ramble, ramble*

Anyway Greg Egan's probably written most interestingly on digital consciousness out of the writers I can think of, you should check his stuff out if you haven't already. Plus he comes from my home town *grin*.