Feral Historian
Published 12 Dec 2025While The Doomed City isn’t the last book Boris and Arkady Strugatsky wrote, it is arguably the end of their journey from idealism to cynicism with regards to the whole Soviet project and serves as an almost spiritual history of the period. Let’s meander through it to look at some things not covered in a literary review.
00:00 Intro
03:12 New Jobs
04:45 Aside – Facts and Theory
05:42 Laws and Mentors
09:36 The Experiment
10:50 Regime Change
13:25 Aside – Maps
15:45 Status and Power
18:22 The Ground Beneath Our Feet
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May 8, 2026
The Strugatskys’ The Doomed City and the Soviet Experiment
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May 1, 2026
“Second Dawn”, Childhood’s End, and the Nuclear Age
Feral Historian
Published 5 Dec 2025A quick look at two Arthur C. Clarke stories from the early 1950s that pair well as allegories for the still-new Cold War fears of the time.
00:00 Intro
03:03 Psychics and Nukes
03:37 “Second Dawn”
09:13 The Phileni
11:50 New World, New DangersAudio note: On the previous vid (Riddick) I used some new tools for post-processing the audio. It was much cleaner, removed almost all the noise … and the response has been entirely negative. It seems people don’t miss the wind and the birds until they’re gone. So I’m back to the old approach of using essentially raw sound.
EDIT: If you’re not seeing a link to the old Childhood’s End video on the pop-up card or the end screen, here’s the link. • Childhood’s End (Youtube Copyright Edit)
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Still plugging Ninti’s Gate
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April 17, 2026
The Chronicles of Riddick: a Treatise on Political Machinery
Feral Historian
Published 28 Nov 2025The Chronicles of Riddick probably isn’t on anyone’s “top 10 science fiction” list, but it’s a remarkably astute study of how ideologies lead to systems, and how those systems co-opt people within them.
And of course it has a great cast that seems to have had fun with their roles.
00:00 Intro
01:04 Perception of Enemies
03:12 The Underverse
04:59 Plotting and Scheming
07:47 Superposition
08:20 Institutional Inertia
(more…)
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March 26, 2026
Plur1bus: First Impressions
Feral Historian
Published 21 Nov 2025EDIT: The sound is bad. I should have known better than to edit it on a laptop in-transit, but here we are.
After a few recommendations I started watching Plur1bus, and a few things strike me two episodes in. Let’s see how off-base I end up looking when the season is done.
Also I bounce off a few points raised by Damien Walter in his recent video on the show, which you can find here: • So. What’s PLUR1BUS all about then?
00:00 Intro
00:45 Mind Virus
02:28 Mrs. Davis and the End of the World
04:18 Mandatory Happiness and Self-Delusion
07:08 Commodification
09:02 Stopping the Machine
(more…)
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March 19, 2026
District 9 and the Story of “Race”
Feral Historian
Published 14 Nov 2025Modern society has become a bit obsessed with the idea of race. District 9 subverts some of these assumptions and points at some of the ways that the entire concept of race is a product of the modern era. This one meanders a bit, but I suppose there’s no way around that.
00:00 Intro
02:45 Meet Wikus
05:42 Subverting Race
08:35 Bacon’s Rebellion and Trans-Racial Wikus
12:32 Let’s Talk About Rhodesia
14:48 Perspectives and Narratives
(more…)
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March 8, 2026
Star Trek – Section 31
Feral Historian
Published 7 Nov 2025Star Trek: Deep Space Nine introduced a dark undertone to the optimistic vision of the Federation with Section 31, a secretive organization doing dirty deeds behind the scenes. For some its a much-needed dose of Realpolitik to Trek, for others its a cynical ploy that has no place in Roddenberry’s vision. Either way, Section 31 is one of the most interesting pieces of Star Trek lore.
00:00 Intro
02:20 Backstories
04:09 DS9
06:30 Existential Threats
08:08 In The Pale Moonlight
10:43 Limits of Idealism
12:54 Enterprise
March 2, 2026
Ghostbusters: Ignore the Rules, Save the World
Feral Historian
Published 31 Oct 2025It’s a comedy classic, and even funnier when you realize that it’s about shady small-businessmen saving the world by ignoring government regulations.
(more…)
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February 27, 2026
Footfall and Cultural Blindspots
Feral Historian
Published 24 Oct 2025Niven and Pournelle’s tale is one of the classics of the alien invasion genre and is deserving of more attention these days than it gets. Space elephants, asteroid strikes, and Orion battleships. Let’s get to it.
This one has been sitting in the WiP folder since early spring. There’s not much Footfall art out there and for whatever reason … I can’t seem to draw elephants.
00:00 Intro
03:25 The Herd(s)
07:13 The Foot and Michael
10:13 Flushing the Story
12:33 Launch and Negotiations
15:50 Takeaways
18:06 Rounding Corners
(more…)
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February 20, 2026
Sci-Fi, Satire, and the Post-WWII Mythos
Feral Historian
Published 17 Oct 2025The caricature of fascism as the arch-evil, born in WWII propaganda and endlessly re-imagined in popular entertainment ever since, has served both as an inoculation against that particular brand of tyranny and blinders to many others. Is it still relevant? Or has it become one of our culture’s foundational archetypes that will live on for centuries disconnected from its roots? Let’s explore a bunch of facets and ask some odd, sometimes difficult questions along the way.
00:00 Intro
03:02 Myth of Singular Evil
06:06 Andor and Now
09:18 Fading Narratives
12:01 Iron Sky
16:21 What Comes Next?
(more…)
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February 7, 2026
The Probability Broach: L. Neil Smith’s libertarian fever-dream
Feral Historian
Published 6 Feb 2026Equal parts political manifesto and wacky adventure story, The Probability Broach is usually not the first title people think of when they hear “libertarian sci-fi” but it almost always makes the list after further reflection. While ideologically-motivated fiction tends to preach more than entertain, L. Neil Smith makes his world so bonkers and whimsical that we almost can’t help seeing our own in a similar light, and in so doing reminds us that things are as they are ultimately because we chose to make it this way.
There’s some jumpcuts in this due to lack of good b-roll, but I suspect that most people who make it past the half-way point on this one are just listening anyway.
The artwork is from the graphic novel adaptation from Big Head Press https://www.bigheadpress.com/tpbtgn
I ordered a copy but the government-run postal system didn’t get it to me in time to use its illustrations of later chapters.00:00 Intro
01:05 The Setup
03:15 Whiskey Rebellion
05:36 Confederacy
07:50 Property, Culture, and Capitalism
15:01 Cultural Assumptions
19:20 Interventionism
21:04 Choices, not Systems
(more…)
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February 6, 2026
Star Trek: The Maquis
Feral Historian
Published 3 Oct 2025Whether you see the Maquis as a great story thread, a break from Roddenberry’s vision for Star Trek, or a missed opportunity; the story of Federation colonists cut loose for political expediency is one of the most interesting elements of 1990s Trek both for what it shows and what it merely implies.
00:00 Intro
02:19 Learning Curve
09:11 Self-Image
16:00 Turning Point
(more…)
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February 5, 2026
The Mote in God’s Eye: A No-Win Scenario
Feral Historian
Published 26 Sept 2025For whatever reason books by [Larry] Niven and [Jerry] Pournelle always end up being a lot harder to cover than I expect. It’s not that the core ideas are buried in dense convoluted storytelling or unusually compelling characters (often quite the opposite) but rather I think that the core ideas are always a little uncomfortable to face head-on. And Mote is great example.
Niven and Pournelle create a scenario not only of the cyclical rise and fall of a civilization, but one that through a combination of biological and cultural factors points to the impossibility of long-term coexistence between Humanity and the Moties.
00:00 Intro
01:26 Aristocracy and Contact
04:11 The Moties
08:48 Crazy Eddie
10:18 The Middle Path?
12:53 The Gripping Hand
(more…)
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January 29, 2026
Starship Troopers: Service Isn’t The Point
Feral Historian
Published 5 Sept 2025There’s a long-running argument over whether Heinlein’s book describes military service as the exclusive path to citizenship, or if “federal service” is a much broader basket of enfranchisement. While a close read of the book makes it unquestionably clear which is correct, it misses the greater point. Heinlein was writing about the role of civic virtue in the stability of a republic, his citizenship-through-service framing is the literary conceit for discussing that larger question.
For a more detailed examination of the nature of Federal Service, I recommend James Gifford’s essay on the subject: https://www.nitrosyncretic.com/rah/ft…
00:00 Intro
00:45 What is Federal Service?
02:18 An Exploration of Enfranchisement
03:13 Expanded Universe
05:38 But Why?
06:59 Starside R&D
09:07 “Unreasonable Facsimile”
10:54 Filtering Civic Virtue
(more…)
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January 22, 2026
D’Joan, C’Mell, and the Rediscovery of Man
Feral Historian
Published 29 Aug 2025Cordwainer Smith, through short stories and novellas, tells a sprawling history spanning thousands of years and an entire galaxy. In this one, I’m looking at a single narrative thread of that world, the gulf between man and animal and the partnerships that make humanity whole again after a long span of cultural stagnation and loss of vitality.
00:00 Intro
02:19 Partners and Divisions
05:15 Heading Down to Clown Town
15:53 Mans’ Other Friend
19:22 NorstriliaThe first month’s ad revenue from this video will be donated to 2 animal rescues. https://pauseforpawsaz.com/ and https://sites.google.com/site/catalli…
(more…)
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