Luna Orbit: 001
Of Gods and Men
I’ve done a bad bad thing. I’ve left you unattended for far too long.
That last four-week sprint to publish four chapters and four radio-plays for my debut novel From the Stars was a doozy. I needed a break, which in my attention-deficient vernacular means another project. And that came in the form of a documentary.
So I flew out to Las Vegas on invitation of the Enhanced Games (the Peter Thiel MAGA endorsed sports-doping competition) and spent time with former Olympic athletes and their “drug dealers”. I momentarily published an account of my first-hand experience called ‘Fear and Longevity in Las Vegas’ but I decided to de-publish it while some formal matters play out in the background. More will be revealed soon…
On that note. After years of foraging in fiction I’m finally getting back to my non-fiction roots. And it fits like an old velvet glove. But why I particularly feel so emboldened to deal with “the burden of truth” now when I successfully avoided it for two decades – is that WE as storytellers, artists, news media, scientists, philosophers, experts, pundits, etc. have done such a shit job at distilling and expressing the tectonic shifts that are playing out at fundamental levels across science and technology, politics, economics, ecology, culture and humanity itself. In the last five years yoga moms have graduated from breath-work to plant medicine to debating which brain interface is best for their unborn child. In fact, this hits on the topic of my next film shooting in 2026 called The Procreators – parents playing God.
Now the time “of Gods” is upon us. Like with all cycles we’re entering a new phase. And that phase is categorised by a spiritual and technological renaissance. Two seemingly opposing forces dovetailing towards the same outcome; call it sublimation, awakening, singularity, annihilation. The methodology is different. The energy is all the same. Or is it? That is the question I ask in From the Stars, which we will have more of in August (I promise) with a slight name change to Ex Astra. It’s Latin. It’s cool. It’s on brand. (And takes up half the typeface).
Now with that done, I’m curating my best-of reading list from the last few weeks:
WIRED – The Definitive, Insane, Swimsuit-Bursting Story of the Steroid Olympics
A full play-by-play of the fledging start-up the Enhanced Games: from destroying Gawker to disrupting the Olympic Committee to the trials and errors of bulking up swimmers, the Enhanced Age is upon us.
Financial Times – How a little-known French literary critic became a bellwether for the US right
This article tracks Peter Thiel’s early philosophical inspiration in René Girard. I read some Girard for my philosophy degree. But it was the phalanx of French post-modern philosophers that Girard let loose on American Academia in the 80s that I read more of, eg. Foucault, Derrida and Deleuze. Thiel’s main takeaway was Girard’s idea of ‘mimetic desire.’ That humans desire not what is good or what is pleasurable but what other’s have. My gut reaction is that like with a lot of the post-modernists, what they diagnosed as moral relativism has been taken for prescription.
NYTimes – Peter Thiel and the Anti-Christ
This interview has done the rounds but it begs repeating. Peter Thiel is a more intriguing tech-billionaire than Elon Musk. Less outspoken. But more impactful IMO. The Internet took him to task for pausing on the question: “should human beings exist?” It begs the question when the very definition of what is human is being brought into question. There needs to be more space for better dissection of the world views of the techno-optimist-libertarian Accelerationists that have amassed more power than God on Earth, and are invoking said-God in order to enact and consolidate said-power.
Phys.Org – Einstein's dream of a unified field theory accomplished?
Scientists have been unable to reconcile the two pillars of modern physics: General relativity and Quantum mechanics. One theory holds up for macro. One holds for micro. No one can get the math to add up in between. Einstein had tried to reconcile these difference through a geometric theory of space-time. Theorists today propose an update. If correct it would seem the Ancient Greeks, and notably the Pythagoreans, got it right. The universe emanates from point, line and rotation. In fact geometry plays a fundamental role in the cosmology of all ancient religions: Egyptians built pyramids on the Golden ratio, Vedics made mandalas, Islamic architecture erected arabesques. Kabbalah grew the Tree of Life. A Theory of Everything could, should provide mechanics for the whole system. At that point Bob’s your uncle.
DJMag – NASA Transforms Black Hole Date Into Music
Everything is energy, wave and frequency. Merging my love for a good beat with all things space, NASA is now releasing chamber music produced through “sonification” of black holes and supernovae captured by the telescope-triptych of the Chandra X-ray Observatory, James Webb Space Telescope and Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer. It sounds magical, MIDI and retro like a crystal shop in Zelda.
The Booker Prize Winner - Orbital by Samantha Harvey
I was recommended this novel by a few people who had started reading From the Stars. It’s simplistic in form but majestic in stride. An account of the day to day lives of several astronauts aboard the International Space Station. It’s dreamy and evocative if slightly plotless. Booker Prize-winning material.
