liberty sci fi

[BobRobertson]

...or am I gonna have to bittorrent the whole damn series?

That's getting harder to do. Mininova just shut their gates.

The world is ready for more Pirate Parties. Maybe it's time to start advertising the "libertarian" (used as a general term, Ian) opposition to copyright/patent.

[AL the Inconspicuous]

I love Babylon5 and watched a good bit of it when it aired back in high school. Is there any station or site like hulu that airs this fine program or am I gonna have to bittorrent the whole damn series?

P2P is always the best way: it weakens those who rely on government force, and strengthens those who resist it.  Downloading individual episode torrents may get you faster download speeds, but there's more clicking involved, and that listing seems to have some gaps so additional searching may be required.  This 48 GB torrent containing all episodes and movies [2] currently has 95 seeders.  It will take a long time to download, obviously, but most half-decent BT clients will let you set priority of the files, so you can set the one you want to start watching first to high, a few subsequent ones to normal, and the rest to low / none.  You can also delete an individual episode after you watch it if you want to free up space, but some BT clients make it easier than others.

[BobRobertson]

P2P is always the best way

Thanks for the pointer to btjunkie.

On topic, L. Neil Smith had this to say today:

   Last week may have seemed slow here at _The Libertarian Enterprise_
and Big Head Press (at least my parts thereof), but that's only because
I was busy elsewhere, my every waking hour filled the necessity of
finishing my project on time for National Novel Writing Month
(NaNoWriMo) 2009.

    And I did.

    _Sweeter Than Wine_, in, many ways, is the story of the vampire next
door. It will become publicly available as soon as I can make it so.

    As a consequence, we tried an experiment, posting the following both
at BigHeadPress.com and in _The Libertarian Enterprise_:

_CERES_, a novel by L. Neil Smith
 Chapter Thirty-Seven: "Convergence"
"Barsoom go boom!"
http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2009/tle546-20091129-02.html
or
http://www.bigheadpress.com/lneilsmith/?page_id=348

Also:

_Atlantea the Beautful_ by Rex F. May and L. Neil Smith
"The perfect Aryan woman!"
http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2009/tle546-20091129-08.html

And don't forget:

_Phoebus Krumm_ by L. Neil Smith
Illustrated by Scott Bieser and ~3~
" ... soon we'll have air to breathe."
Current page: http://www.bigheadpress.com/pk
Beginning page: http://www.bigheadpress.com/pk?page=1

Enjoy!
--

=====================================================================
"It's not your mother. It's just a big rock." -- L. Neil Smith
http://www.zazzle.com/rexfmay/gifts

The Webley Page: http://www.lneilsmith.org

The Libertarian Enterprise: http://www.ncc-1776.org

LNS at Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership
http://www.jpfo.org/filegen-a-m/lneilsmith.htm

Arc Manor/Phoenix Pick: http://www.phoenixpick.com/

Big Head Press: http://www.bigheadpress.com


____________________________________________________________

[spicynujac]

Thanks a million for the torrent.  With utorrent you can download individual episodes, so I am d/ling a season at a time and watching.  Do the movies all take place after the series ended? (with the exception of the pilot The Gathering)  Where does the sequel fit in?

[AL the Inconspicuous]

There's a crude time-line on the right side in the WP entry under Plot Summary.

Strangely enough, the B5 movies aren't as good as the series itself in my opinion, because they tell stand-alone stories that are supposed to be easily digestible by new viewers.

[spicynujac]

I just watched episode 5 (season1) and there is a cool part where each race presents their religion and then commander Sheridan says ok, come see why Earth has the best religious belief of them all, and all the aliens show up and he introduces them 1 by 1 to dozens of humans: "Sheila is an Atheist, John is a Roman Catholic" etc.  Really cool stuff.  I remember really liking Sheridan and the guy who replaces him wasn't bad but I still preferred Sheridan for some reason as a teen..  I guess time will tell but what is the new guy like?  I guess one thing I like about Sheridan is that he won't hesitate to jump in a ship and fly off on a patrol just on a whim, and often risks his life.

[ElGuapo]

I found firefly to be a quite liberty-oriented series - not the movie though.

I used to watch B5, and just found it to be boring and preachy; but when the Archangel Michael or Gabriel, or whoever it was, came out of the spaceship - I couldn't watch anymore. The idea that all aliens have french accents and the exact same haircut bothered me (I'm just focusing on one group of aliens - but all the groups were very cookie-cutter according to my rememborizing), but the religious stuff turned me the rest of the way off. To be honest; I watched the show back when I was still a brainwashed liberal, prior to becoming an intellectually superior conservative, way before I understood any concept of liberty.

But I was just wondering, did nobody else find the firefly story to be very liberty oriented? It was such an awesome series - I'm still pissed off that they canceled it, and that the movie turned some of the characters into violent, petty criminals.

[Harry Tuttle]

I found firefly to be a quite liberty-oriented series - not the movie though.

I used to watch B5, and just found it to be boring and preachy; but when the Archangel Michael or Gabriel, or whoever it was, came out of the spaceship - I couldn't watch anymore. The idea that all aliens have french accents and the exact same haircut bothered me (I'm just focusing on one group of aliens - but all the groups were very cookie-cutter according to my rememborizing), but the religious stuff turned me the rest of the way off. To be honest; I watched the show back when I was still a brainwashed liberal, prior to becoming an intellectually superior conservative, way before I understood any concept of liberty.

But I was just wondering, did nobody else find the firefly story to be very liberty oriented? It was such an awesome series - I'm still pissed off that they canceled it, and that the movie turned some of the characters into violent, petty criminals.

Firefly is pretty universally recognized as liberty oriented and widely believed to be the best sci-fi show ever.

I don't think I really know what you mean about the movie changing the characters. They all seemed pretty-much the same to me. They hated the government and just wanted to live their lives free. They overlooked laws where those laws were inconvenient, but had their own code of ethics and would not rob or hurt innocent/honest people. Jane, of course, was a violent thug. But the rest were pretty decent and just did their own thing.

The one thing I really noted about the movie was that it bent toward the conspiracy theory mindset. You know, the kind of fantasy where you just need to get the whole truth out to the masses and then the super-powerful overlords will finally get what is coming to them.

[AL the Inconspicuous]

I used to watch B5, and just found it to be boring and preachy

That's just the first season.  Season Two is about 3x better, Season Three is 10x better, Season Four is 15x better, and Season Five sucked except the last few episodes, because Straczynski was told the show would be cancelled 1 season short so he squeezed the planned storyline into the previous season.  Seasons 3-4 is where all the brilliance is, but you do have to watch it from the beginning to appreciate it.

but when the Archangel Michael or Gabriel, or whoever it was, came out of the spaceship - I couldn't watch anymore.

Powerful forces demanding obedience by brainwashing people to think they were gods...  He could have made the "angel" look like Lincoln to some, but that would be too obvious and turn off the mainstream the audience too much - the show still had to make a buck ya know... 

The idea that all aliens have french accents and the exact same haircut bothered me  [...]

Hey, the show had a shoestring budget, and they still managed to have the best CGI effects of their era.  The whole "dozens of humanoid alien races" idea comes with the genre, like curtains come with the theater - the viewer is expected to suspend one's disbelief just a little bit.  The foreign accents (European for colonist races, Middle Eastern for the colonized, etc) only add yet another layer of depth to the drama, and what the show lacked in make-up budget it more than made up for in excellent acting.

But I was just wondering, did nobody else find the firefly story to be very liberty oriented?

Yeah, Firefly was clearly the #1 unapologetically-libertarian show on television - that's so obvious everyone must have assumed this thread was meant for other libertarian sci-fi, like a "liberty podcast" thread would assume something other than Free Talk Live.

[ElGuapo]

Harry;
I was living in South America when the series was on the telly, so I missed it - I moved back to the U.S. the same month that Serenity came out on DVD; a friend had it and I eventually borrowed it, just because there was a spaceship on the cover. I instantly loved the movie, and had no idea that a series preceded it - nobody I knew beyond the friend I borrowed it from had ever even heard of the movie. I learned of the series when the Boxed set became available - the cover art let me know instantly that this was a series based on that awesome movie that I had seen - I didn't know until I began watching the entire series in a single weekend that it was the other way around.

Regarding the changing of the characters from the series to the movie; I feel like they turned Mal into less-principled criminal, more prone to violence - I can't put my finger on exactly why, but the opening bank robbery really didn't feel right to me, stealing a payroll from a company that will not report the payroll's theft - even though those who will go unpaid are contractors working for the government - they're not government. It just felt wrong, and I would have preferred if it were handled differently, but I don't necessarily have any suggestions. Maybe it's just the fact that I'm a contractor, working for the government bothers me about it.

It is the best sci-fi show ever - but I've never met anyone else who had even seen it, and I've never heard it mentioned anywhere, to include in relation to liberty - so I wasn't sure if anyone had ever seen it - maybe it was just unique to my own little 'verse.

Alex;
I'll have to give B5 another shot - my Mother has everything that's come out on DVD thus far, so I'll borrow it and check it out. Generally, I'll watch sci-fi no matter what the message, because it's fun and the stories are usually pretty decent. When it's on, I still watch the most anti-liberty sci-fi show ever; Star Trek - because I like the characters and the plot is usually pretty good - I wasn't a fan of DS9 or Enterprise though.

I really wasn't sure if anyone but myself had ever heard of firefly - I have no liberty-oriented friends, and when I say things liberty-oriented around family, they get all "worried" about me, but my Dad's starting to understand what I'm talking about. Prior to posting on this topic; I couldn't be sure if anyone on the planet, other than my wife and I, had seen firefly.

I've only broken away from my intellectual superior conservative mind-set in the past 6 months or so, so I'm still re-interpreting the world around me, and though I loved Serenity from the very first viewing, it was just a good story-line, with no other significance until earlier this year when I watched it again and saw something more.

[sillyperson]

It is the best sci-fi show ever - but I've never met anyone else who had even seen it, and I've never heard it mentioned anywhere, to include in relation to libert

You really should come to NH, just to check shit out.
I love the series intensely, but by now I am tired of all the Firefly-watching parties at peoples' houses...

[spicynujac]

I enjoyed Firefly, but it didn't have enough subplot going on from episode to episode.  The first episode sets up a lot of questions, and most of the big ones are never addressed through the series.  Now, given it was only 1(?) season and if you compare it to other series like B5 or BSG, many of the big questions aren't answered until later, but still I felt like Firefly, although I loved it, was just a bunch of unrelated individual episodes.  However, I think that's pretty much a trend in tv today with our ever-dumber populace.

I am absolutely loving B5 again, although my fav sci fi series has to be Battlestar Galatica.  What I loved about BSG is that while it wasn't really liberty oriented per se (although it did deal realistically with issues like rebellion and anarchy) it did a great job of playing devlis advocate.  It also did address issues like torture and the Iraqi occupation in season (2?) with the Cylons attempting to control the humans living together in planetary existance.  But I often found myself siding with the commander on individual issues even though normally I am very anti-state / anti-collectivism.  He often stifled dissent or other voices and just did what needed to be done.  I think the main differences between him and modern leaders are (a) He actually was a wise, intelligent guy who usually chose the correct path and (b) there was eminent, real danger that didn't really afford the humans the luxury of freedom.  Sort of like "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" LIFE comes first, so as long as that is threatened liberty is set aside.  But I often questioned myself .. wait why are you supporting this guy when if you replace George W Bush with him what he is doing sounds evil?

[Harry Tuttle]

I'm gonna disagree with you on the subplot thing. There were a few subplots set up, such as delving into the past of the characters and their motives. The preacher guy was interesting and little pieces of his past would hint at more. The dynamic between Mal and Jayne seemed to always be building up to something - or not. The relationship between Mal and Inara was interesting and comical. I think the subplots were dealt with in small pieces, slowly over time. They also could have done more with the relationships between the ship crew and occasional business partners, as well as troubles with the alliance. If the series had lasted several seasons this would have added depth and made for a better story long-term. The reason it led to a sort of letdown is that it got canceled after one season so there was no time to resolve any of that. The movie sort of goes back and tries to answer a few questions, but only awkwardly because that's all you can do in one film.

[BobRobertson]

The preacher guy was interesting and little pieces of his past would hint at more.

I think Book was an operative who caught religion. The Operative from the movie "had no name", so it leads to it being reasonable that he picked his name from the Good Book.

Anyway, that was something I was really looking forward to. Oh well.

[spicynujac]

Talia Winters is flippin SEXY!

by the way google image found a nude pic of her but I don't know if its real