Feral Historian
Published 30 Jul 2024The 2015 adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End has a lot going on. But Youtube won’t let me use clips from it, so here’s a stills-only recut covering the major points. A far superior cut is available at my Patreon page, along with a few other exclusives in what will surely be a growing collection of Youtube no-nos.
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December 30, 2025
Childhood’s End (Youtube Copyright Edit)
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December 14, 2025
A Fire Upon The Deep and the Identity Gradient
Feral Historian
Published 8 Aug 2025Vernor Vinge’s A Fire Upon The Deep would take a two-hour video to completely dissect. This is not that video. Instead, I’m looking just at the recurring ideas of collective identity and distributed consciousness. And all without a single mention of Skroderiders.
This one has been sitting around for about a year, due to lack of b-roll to cover the numerous jumpcuts due to my rambling and the rather persistent flies on that particular day. It’s a little rough, but let’s just roll with it.
(more…)
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December 12, 2025
Starships and Walls : Which Shall We Build?
Feral Historian
Published 25 Jul 2025While faster than light travel may be impossible, proclaiming absolutes based on the understanding of a particular time has a spotty record. But even if we are limited to sublight travel by the fundamental nature of the universe, we as a civilization have several macro-level choices to make, one of the most significant being which foundational concept do we want to build a future on: Ships? Or walls?
00:00 Intro
01:50 The Athenian Sailor
05:25 Frontiers
06:00 Assuming it’s Impossible
07:26 Picard Without Starfleet?
09:40 Culture over Economics
15:28 Founders of Worlds🔹 Patreon | patreon.com/FeralHistorian
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December 5, 2025
Star Wars and Aliens: A Look at Interstellar Communications
Feral Historian
Published 2 Feb 2024I’ve said before that Star Wars originally appears to not have real-time interstellar communications. Many have disputed that, with several good points. Here I finally explain my reasoning with a solution that fits everything we observe in the film without requiring convoluted excuses for why they have to fly an Astromech droid around. Think of this as off-week bonus content.
00:00 Intro
00:53 Taking It Seriously
02:10 Dantooine
03:43 They Tell Two Ships …
06:56 Is the Falcon Really that Fast?
07:50 Delegation🔹 Patreon | patreon.com/FeralHistorian
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November 29, 2025
The Manhattan Project (1986 film) and Deterrence
Feral Historian
Published 8 Sept 2023This film reminds me of several topics from nuclear deterrence to the impact of social media to that kid I went to high school with who tried to build a reactor in his mom’s shed. Yeah, this is a rambly one.
00:00 Intro
01:02 Summary
02:25 Social Media
04:35 Deterrence
06:51 Radioactive Boy Scout
09:50 Modern Security State🔹 Patreon | patreon.com/FeralHistorian
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November 19, 2025
Julia: A Feminist Retelling of 1984?
Feral Historian
Published 11 Jul 2025Julia, a 2023 novel by Sandra Newman, does more than just retell Orwell’s 1984 through Julia’s eyes. That perspective switch presents an Oceania that is both more mundane and more familiar. It’s certainly a companion piece more than a stand-alone work, but it does have something to offer both in how it examines Orwell and a few times, how it contradicts him.
00:00 Intro
02:18 a Different Perspective
09:30 Caught in a Trap
12:45 Backstory
15:40 Departures
20:18 Endings and Beginnings
(more…)
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November 13, 2025
I, Robot: The Ellison Script
Feral Historian
Published 4 Jul 2025Harlan Ellison’s screenplay adaptation of Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot is arguably the best sci-fi movie never made. Let’s take a look at the script itself, why the film was never made, and how it might have altered science fiction cinema in the wake of Star Wars.
00:00 Intro
01:59 Robbie
04:32 A Little Detour
06:18 A Lifetime and a Galaxy
12:12 Liar
14:06 A New Theory
16:29 The Rapid Rise of the Federation
21:01 Obstacles and Ellison
(more…)
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October 26, 2025
Biggs and the “End of History”
Feral Historian
Published 30 May 2025The “Biggs Edit” isn’t just a contentious question of Star Wars arcana, but an example of some of the problems historians face trying to reconstruct the past. Problems that are only going to get worse in the age of AI.
00:00 Intro
01:12 Not So Easy
05:02 A Slim Hope
05:50 Not Equal Claims
06:46 Memory and AI🔹 Patreon | patreon.com/FeralHistorian
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October 19, 2025
Forever War: Becoming the Enemy
Feral Historian
Published 8 Mar 2024The Forever War is a great piece of post-Vietnam social critique, not least in its depiction of a society that deserves to lose the war that its chosen to fight. Here I talk about the story through that lens, meandering toward a point in the usual Feral Historian manner.
Also I wanted to get this one out because I’m going to make some Forever War comparisons in an upcoming video.
Most of the B-Roll is from the Forever War comic adaptation, both the original black and white version and the later color release. Also threw in some clips from Starship Troopers: Traitor of Mars just to mix up the visuals a bit because there’s already too much of me sitting on a rock.
00:00 Intro
00:53 The Draft
03:25 It’s so Army …
06:54 No Civilization
09:35 War’s Over. My Bad
13:14 Parting Thoughts
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October 13, 2025
October 6, 2025
Fatherland: Alternate History with a Point
Feral Historian
Published 11 Oct 2024The 1992 novel by Robert Harris is a great example of the otherwise generally mediocre “Germany won WWII” alternate history premise. By removing the regime from its current almost mythologized status as a unique and singular evil, instead portraying it as merely a repressive state in a Cold War, Fatherland illustrates an uncomfortable truth about realpolitik and atrocities.
00:00 Intro
00:55 The Case
02:20 Out of Myth, into the Mundane
06:13 Detente and Bureaucracy
09:11 HBO’s Adaptation
10:01 Ignoring Inconvenient TruthsCORRECTION: Somehow I put up a picture of Bormann when I was talking about Buhler.
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🔹 Ko-Fi | ko-fi.com/feralhistorianAnd my own book, not alternate history, Ninti’s Gate is available on kindle and in paperback,
🔹 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CYXH9BWD
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September 29, 2025
The Galactic Empire and a (Revised) Generic Model of “Fascism”
Feral Historian
Published 29 Sept 2023While we can classify significantly different regimes as “communist” based on their key similarities, we don’t have the same taxonomy for “fascism” as a political category. The term is either used so broadly it becomes meaningless, or defined so narrowly that it’s only relevant to Mussolini’s Italian Fascism.
But we can identify three key factors that, when all are present together, result in a system we can define as “fascist” in a sense that’s both historically based and general enough to be useful for analysis. In addition to laying out a simple model defining fascism, this video also dives into some history of Fascism and National Socialism, mixed with the kind of sci-fi analysis you’ve come to expect here.
00:00 Intro
00:35 Palp, Dolf, and Communists
04:05 Old Republic vs Weimar Republic
04:55 Party and State
08:57 Three-Point “Fascist Minimum”
09:24 “Third Way” Economics
15:12 Totalitarianism
19:19 Unifying Myth
22:53 Umberto Eco
24:46 Franco
26:25 Closing Miscellany🔹 Patreon | patreon.com/FeralHistorian
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September 24, 2025
Zardoz: A Technocratic Parody
Feral Historian
Published 30 Jun 2023After another viewing, I now think of Zardoz as an unintentional parody of the technocratic mindset that was congealing in the 1970s. It’s a strange film, a sometimes tedious film, but it’s worth a look if only because there’s nothing else quite like Zardoz.
I keep saying “Immortals” when I mean “Eternals” and I had to recut this one a bit due to some semi-random copyright issues so I apologize for any perceptible jank.
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September 17, 2025
Dark Forest Deterrence: Bureaucrats are Destroying the Universe
Feral Historian
Published 2 Sept 2022A quick look at a minor and neglected detail of Cixin Liu’s Three Body Problem series. I trust that everyone has done the reading.
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September 10, 2025
Space Nazis! Evil Empires and Historical Memory
Feral Historian
Published 30 Jun 2022A brief look at the echo of Nazi Germany and its impact on American sci-fi, with a focus on Star Wars because it’s endured for nearly half a century.
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