Free Republic

Yesterday when I saw the picture of the first fully 3D printed gun (I realize the firing pin is a nail and was not printed) I almost wept for joy. This is a first important step away from the dominance of the state over their citizens in many parts of the world. Americans enjoy the protection of Second Amendment, but many places that purport to be free countries have banned all guns outright or have made ownership so restrictive that getting a firearm is almost impossible. Other parts of the world are not so free as even that. Firearm ownership...

Yesterday when I saw the picture of the first fully 3D printed gun (I realize the firing pin is a nail and was not printed) I almost wept for joy. This is a first important step away from the dominance of the state over their citizens in many parts of the world. Americans enjoy the protection of Second Amendment, but many places that purport to be free countries have banned all guns outright or have made ownership so restrictive that getting a firearm is almost impossible. Other parts of the world are not so free as even that. Firearm ownership...

This week the Enquiring Hitchhiker has several new interviews. The first of these is with  Dr. Gregory Benford. Dr. Benford is one of the leading authors of hard science fiction working today. His novel In the Ocean of Night was one of my first introductions to the idea of artificial intelligence.

David Parker in his article, “The Rise and Fall of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz as a ‘Parable on Populism” looks closer at the many interpretations of the Wizard of Oz and gives us his opinion that sometimes a book is just a book and that interpretations pulled out of thin air are often just as ephemeral.  I have always been very interested in what adults think about children’s literature. More often than not they read into the stories political, religious, and even topical themes of their own time or the time in which the story was written.

This article is going to make many people angry. I don’t care because it needs to be said. Doctor Who has become fan wank. I am not slamming the performance of Matt Smith who I think is brilliant as the Doctor. I am slamming this current season’s writing staff and their inability to craft a believable Doctor Who story.

By any honest measurement Barack Hussein Obama has been a dismal failure as a President. Few if any Presidents have been given as much power in their first term as Obama and done so little. In fact for two years he had an unassailable super majority in congress and still his administration has been unable to do something as simple as craft a budget much less control runaway unemployment, a crippling deficit, and the terrorist overthrow of the middle east. While contemplating how anyone could do much worse than Obama, it came to me: Obama is such a failure that...

This week we are proud to bring you an interview with Daniel Knauf. You may remember Daniel as the creator of the hit HBO show Carnivàle. He is currently working to recreate the story telling genre with his Bxx internet format. Bxx presents a non-linear method of telling a story in which the viewer can follow the story from multiple angles, out of sequence, or even follow specific characters through the story.

...The one thing modern education does not do very well is teach critical thinking and this needs to change. In my own life, it was the hall way bull sessions of high school and college that probably did more along this line than any class. In Space Cadet, this took the form of the hall way bull session, but in Starship Troopers it was an actual class called History and Moral Philosophy...

This is a rough excerpt from the introduction of a book on Victorian werewolves I am writing right now. It should be finished sometime around March 2013. (I have way too many projects to give it my full attention this year) Introduction It has been suggested that the Vampire legend, largely created by Bram Stoker, is the most enduring and famous creature mythos to emerge out of popular Gothic literature. While this may be true the lowly werewolf must also be given a place of distinction. The literature of the Victorian era werewolf has nowhere near the enduring popularity of...

H.G. Wells may be known as one of the first writers of science fiction but his novel The Island of Doctor Moreau is one of the first modern horror stories and hits upon four of the greatest fears of the Victorian age. His work does this in such a subtle and inventive way that we may need to reevaluate Wells and name him one of the modern fathers of horror fiction as well. The four fears that Wells so intricately weaves into his story are the fear of science, the fear of internal corruption, the fear of reverse colonization, and...

Watch the video nothing more needs to be said other than this must be answered. http://thefreehold.us/?p=1086

... The first question about life is “Is it a process or an entity, an activity or a thing?”. Is life a substance or force permeating living beings which is not present in non living entities? Or is life the activities that go on in living beings? ...

The Hugo Awards! Nothing does the heart of a sci-fi, horror, fantasy fan more good than to see his favorite author or movie win a Hugo or look on past glories of Hugos gone by. Personally, as I looked through the winners old and new, I began to reflect on how much many of the winners and nominees affected my life and influenced my thought. I felt I had to get this down of digital paper for my own benefit. There may be other authors and movies you as a reader hold dear, but these are the ones that...

I have long been fascinated by the idea that the universe is not actually a singular object but made up of a multiverse of infinite universes. Each of these Universes is seemingly branch off at every possible action or inaction. This idea is staggering in it’s immensity. It seems like science fiction and it has certainly been a staple of science fiction for at least forty years. It may have remained science fiction but fortunately I am not alone in believing this might in fact be possible.

We had the pleasure to interview J. Neil Schulman last week. He is the author of the Novel Alongside Night and has twice won the Prometheus award for his work. Currently Mr. Schulman is working on a movie based on Alongside Night.

This week we interview author John Ringo. He has had several books on the New York Times best seller list and he has over two million books in print. Ringo’s specializes in military science fiction. The Hitchhiker asks… Question 1- After reading There Will Be Dragons I had a sense that Heinlein had influenced your writing. Are you a fan of his work? Very much so. Heinlein is the absolute sine qua non of science fiction authors. While I haven’t read all of his works, I’ve read most and he’s definitely my favorite SF author influencing both my writing and...

Larry Niven is one of the old guard of hard science fiction writers. His ringworld Novels are some of the most widely read science fiction novels of all time. It was our pleasure to interview him for the site.

... what then makes for good entertainment and what qualities does that entertainment have? What causes me to like something when I watch it? What excites me enough to drop money on something and go watch it? ...

One of the great tragedies in the history of science fiction was the premature death of the writer Stanley Weinbaum. His death in 1935 at the age of just thirty-three cut short his writing career which had barely lasted for a year and a half. Even sadder still is that he is nearly forgotten today when in a just world he would continue to be remembered as one of its great authors. Although his first story, “A Martian Odyssey”, remains an oft-anthologized classic, the rest of his oeuvre remains largely inaccessible to contemporary readers. This is almost criminal, for while...

My first love will always be archaeology and the study of what makes us human.This article is speculation. This is my personal musing on the development of certain psychological and physiological human traits. This is not to be taken as anything but my personal opinion. I have no evidence that there was an Asperger’s man. This article was also written several years ago and since then more evidence for the possibility of interbreeding with other hominids has come to light in Russia and in Africa that may support my original idea... Part 1Part 2