
Big Companies and the Military Are Paying Novelists to Write Sci-Fi for Them - anthotny
http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/better-business-through-sci-fi
======
tzs
Companies commissioning stories has gone on for a long time.

For example, the Isaac Asimov story "My Son, The Physicist" was commissioned
by an electronics company to run in an ad in "Scientific American".

Another Asimov example. "Think", IBM's in-house magazine, commissioned Asimov
to write a story based on this quote from J. B. Priestly:

> Between midnight and dawn, when sleep will not come and all the old wounds
> begin to ache, I often have a nightmare vision of a future world in which
> there are billions of people, all numbered and registered, with not a gleam
> of genius anywhere, not an original mind, a rich personality, on the whole
> packed globe

Asimov write the story "2430 A.D." about a world where Priestly's nightmare
had come true. (The title comes from his estimate of when human population at
its current growth rate would reach the point where the Earth had so many
people that there were no resources left for non-human animals).

The funny thing about this story is that "Think" rejected it, because they
wanted a story that _refuted_ the quotation. So Asimov wrote another story,
"The Greatest Asset", that refuted Priestly, and sent that to "Think".

"Think" then decided they liked the first story better and ran "2430 A.D."!

I'm pretty sure that there was at least one other similar case with Asimov.

~~~
Ntrails
I always remember my Grandfather suggesting that Michael Crichton (sp?) wrote
a bunch of stuff to order by the government. I was never entirely sure I
believed him, but then never entirely dismissed it (as evidenced by this
comment).

~~~
specialist
Huh. I now totally believe Crichton wrote agitprop for hire.

------
bbctol
Reminds of this story from a while ago: the head writer for Call of Duty
switched to working at a think tank, given his experience imagining the future
of warfare. [http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/09/22/call-of-duty-star-
video-...](http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/09/22/call-of-duty-star-video-game-
director-takes-unusual-think-tank-job/)

~~~
hammock
It's the opposite of when Valve hired a Chief Economist in 2012[1]. We've come
full circle.

[1][http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/06/18/yanis_varoufa...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/06/18/yanis_varoufakis_becomes_chief_economist_for_valve_software.html)

~~~
Bartweiss
CCP (the EVE Online people) have a whole team of economists also.

My favorite story, though, is still epidemiologists studying the Corrupted
Blood plague in WoW for real world lessons on bioterrorism.

~~~
alasdair_
Hopefully they don't come to the conclusion that "rebooting" is the best way
to solve the problem.

~~~
thevardanian
It's ok just because C-173 got Cronenberged there are still plenty of
dimensions left. Sometimes rebooting is the only option.

~~~
doc_gunthrop
Bit of a nitpick, but it's actually
[C-137]([http://rickandmorty.wikia.com/wiki/Dimension_C-137](http://rickandmorty.wikia.com/wiki/Dimension_C-137))

------
rahulpandita
We proposed something similar for the field of software engineering research.

[http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2983986](http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2983986)

Pasting abstract here

"Software engineering researchers have a tendency to be optimistic about the
future. Though useful, optimism bias bolsters unrealistic expectations towards
desirable outcomes. We argue that explicitly framing software engineering
research through pessimistic futures, or dystopias, will mitigate optimism
bias and engender more diverse and thought-provoking research directions. We
demonstrate through three pop culture dystopias, Battlestar Galactica, Fallout
3, and Children of Men, how reflecting on dystopian scenarios provides
research opportunities as well as implications, such as making research
accessible to non-experts, that are relevant to our present."

~~~
TeMPOraL
Interesting. I didn't realize this could be a paper material. Also, whatever
includes BSG in it, I'm an instant fan :). Thanks for mentioning it; it was a
good read.

In your paper, you cite an interesting piece about the optimism bias of
people[0]. Skimming through it, it seems to somewhat support my current belief
that we need _more_ , not less utopias and optimistic visions. To quote from
the ending of the text:

"Overly pessimistic predictions may be demoralizing if these predictions are
believed and, if these predictions are fulfilled, the outcomes that are
obtained may not be very satisfying. Overly optimistic predictions, however,
may confer benefits simply by symbolizing a desired image of success, or more
concretely by aiding people’s progress to higher achievements. Given that
predictions are often inaccurate at least to some degree, it is possible that
people may derive benefits from shifting the range of their predictions to the
positive, even if this means introducing an overall higher rate of error into
the prediction process. Countering optimistic biases in the name of accuracy
may undermine performance without achieving the accuracy that was intended,
whereas the maintenance of optimistic predictions may serve to align us, both
in thought and in action, more closely with our goals."

Evaluating dystopias can be useful to avoid disastrous failure modes, but I
feel we shouldn't dwell _too_ much on them, and instead focus on trying to
achieve the optimistic goals the best we can.

\--

[0] - [https://sci-hub.cc/10.1017/CBO9780511808098.021](https://sci-
hub.cc/10.1017/CBO9780511808098.021)

------
divbit
I honestly don't care if there is a "sinister" purpose behind the good scifi
I've read. Fund the next Iain banks please. In fact - throw me $50k to live
for a year and you've got yourself a book - or I can at least guarantee some
words on pages mentioning spaceships / robots, etc.

~~~
detritus
Speaking of whom - a friend and I were the other day wondering Just Why On
Earth none of his SciFi appears to have been optioned for conversion to other
media. I can imagine scope, complexity and presumably huge budget leaving
prospective optioners with slightly soiled breeks, but all the same — not even
a hope of one of the tales in The State of the Art?

~~~
tzs
Same question for a ton of science fiction and fantasy. Some things that could
be excellent on the silver screen, or as a television series:

• Fritz Leiber's "Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser".

I've not seen anything indicating anyone has ever even started development on
a movie for this.

• Richard and Wendy Pini's "Elfquest".

Warner Brothers announced this in 2008, but canned it because they thought it
might compete with another project of theirs, "The Hobbit".

• Larry Niven's Known Space series.

One Known Space short story made it to TV: "The Soft Weapon" was adapted to
the Star Trek universe and became the Star Trek: The Animated Series episode
"The Slaver Weapon", with Mr. Spock taking the place of Nessus the Puppeteer.

Ringworld has been in planning as a movie or miniseries at least three
separate times, but never got past development.

• Anne McCaffrey's Pern series.

This actually got so far as casting and set building, and was within a few
days of starting shooting for a pilot for a TV series for Warner Brothers
Network, but when the showrunner presented the final pilot script to Warner
Brothers for approval, they sent it back with so many changes it no longer
resembled Pern (the changes have been described as turning it into something
like a cross between Buffy and Xena). The showrunner, Ronald D. Moore, was a
fan of the books and quit rather than accept the changes, and the project
died.

There have been a couple of announcements since then, but as far as I know
none ever went past announcing hiring a screenwriter and maybe an executive
producer and then never being heard from again.

~~~
detritus
I've had problems with Niven — his scope is grand and majestic, but I've often
found his narrative a little bit clunky and paint by numbers, if that makes
any sense?

I've jotted down your other suggestions for further reading, thanks!

~~~
carapace
Niven was once my favorite Sci-Fi author, but I think I know what you mean.

Have you read "The Book of the New Sun" by Gene Wolfe? It is really _really_
good.

~~~
jessaustin
It would be difficult to do Wolfe justice in a film? Maybe something self-
contained like _Pirate Freedom_ or _The Fifth Head of Cerberus_ , but
everything in the "Solar Cycle" has such bizarre complications and connections
to everything else that a movie couldn't avoid making many cruel cuts.

~~~
carapace
Yeah, I agree with you.

But I dream about making a graphic novel out of New Sun...

Wolfe's work is very literary, for lack of a better word. ;-)

------
jermaustin1
I do something similar. I pay writers to write me sci-fi and fantasy stories
based on my prompts! It allows me to read what I want to read!

~~~
jff
Seems like it would put you in a position to publish a, say, quarterly
collection of the results. Combine that with a Patreon or something similar if
other people enjoy the stories that come from the prompts, and you might break
even while still getting the stories you like :) Seems like most short story
publishers run in a deficit so if you're accepting that from the start you're
in a better position than most.

~~~
jermaustin1
I'm actually contemplating doing this. I am a technical person with no time or
energy on my hands to build shit in my personal time. So I'm putting together
an RFQ for someone to build the site to automate a weekly writing competition
with amazon gift cards for prizes. So I was thinking a semi-monthly issue of
8-10 of the top rated stories with royalties (if any sales) to the writers.

------
legohead
Interesting they mention and get quotes from the author of the Three Body
Problem series. I just finished reading that series, and the whole time I had
the feeling that it was written more to convince people of something than to
actually entertain the reader.

The ideas in the books were pretty amazing, unique, and imaginative; but the
story and writing itself was quite sub-par.

edit: I listened (audio books) to the English versions. I thought the
translation was excellent. I don't want to spoil anything, but the author has
a very dark vision of mankind and kept having his characters ostracized to the
extreme which got old pretty quick. I didn't feel like the books were missing
anything descriptive from lack of translation.

~~~
QuercusMax
Did you read it in the original Chinese, or the English translation? I haven't
read either, but it's possible that the English version misses a lot of nuance
from the original version.

(It's also quite possible the original is crap, and the translation is doing a
very adequate job.)

~~~
monochromatic
I actually thought the translator did a pretty good job (not to say that I can
read Chinese or do a direct comparison). My only complaint was that I wish
they'd westernized the names--they all sound too similar to my American ears.

~~~
mattmanser
I felt the translation felt very awkward at times. Just scanning some articles
about Ken Liu, it was his decision to try and stick to the original literary
style, I think a lot of it came from that.

In a lot of ways I liked it because the entire thinking behind the book was a
different cultural thinking.

But the resulting style is definitely a bit awkward in English and sometimes
it was a little bit of a slog.

------
samstave
Wasn't there something about Clancy being working with the CIA to massage
their image?

Military and intelligence and politics have always manipulated media...

Also, recall "Americans army" was being ostensibly used as a
recruiting/psyche-molding tool...

\---

Finally: look at cyberpunk, and the top five writers in that category, as well
as anime (ghost in the shell, etc) which have in-formed modern reality with
all the millions of tech-workers from around the globe have worked since their
childhoods to create aspects of those worlds into current reality...

Is the totalitarian police-surveillance state an emergent feature of such a
reality?

All crazy military capability comes from able-minded imaginations saying
"wouldn't it be cool if..." without the discernment of the far-reaching
implications...

~~~
djrogers
There’s a big difference between paying for speculative fiction about your own
industry as a form of long-term brainstorming (what the article is about) and
paying authors to publicly produce works that further your political agendas.

As I understand it, the works discussed in the article aren’t published in the
traditional manner, and are for the use of those who commissioned them.

~~~
samstave
There may be a difference - but they are in the same mental theatre,
regardless... plus don't you think they'd be at least a bit specific about the
direction they are interested in the speculation heading???

------
vinayak
Microsoft had released Future Visions Sci-fi series after inviting several
sci-fi authors to their research labs - New Link -
[https://news.microsoft.com/features/future-visions-
anthology...](https://news.microsoft.com/features/future-visions-anthology-
brings-together-science-fiction-and-science-fact/)

The book itself can be downloaded at
[https://news.microsoft.com/futurevisions/](https://news.microsoft.com/futurevisions/)

------
schlipity
This is actually part of the plot of the movie (Three Days of the Condor) and
book (Six days of the Condor). The protagonist works at a CIA site where they
read basically everything released and break down the plots to see if it has
any strategic value and/or state secrets.

If I had to guess, this still goes on at the state level, but this article is
about making this sort of data (minus the state secrets awareness) available
to the corporations able to afford it.

I'd also say that I think this might be an amusing reversal of the old mantra:
Ideas have no intrinsic value. This business is pretty much about the
expression of ideas. Maybe they have value because they are writing them down
and marketing them.

~~~
MattSayar
Yeah this reminds me a lot of Michael Crichton's Sphere, which starts with a
professor, funded by the military, who was tapped to analyze in great detail
how to deal with first contact with aliens.

------
cpete
I posted something similar on HN nearly a year ago:
[https://www.fastcompany.com/3063187/scifutures-probes-
your-c...](https://www.fastcompany.com/3063187/scifutures-probes-your-
companys-dystopian-nightmares-and-dreams-up-solutions)

It's a nice complement to this New Yorker article :-)

~~~
DocSavage
It's a more detailed article. I've only done a couple of stories for
SciFutures. The topics are interesting. Unfortunately we usually don't get to
see what other writers wrote.

~~~
cpete
Out of curiosity, did you have any published writing prior to working with/for
SciFutures? I'm quite interested in contributing...

~~~
DocSavage
Yes. I had a previously published sci-fi story that won an award. You'll have
to be eligible for SFWA membership with at least one pro sale.

------
tabtab
"How I used Microsoft Cloud 365 to escape Darth Vader and blow up the Death
Star! Uplinking R2D2 was totally seamless."

~~~
smilbandit
rebels use Teams

------
zitterbewegung
Reminds me of a quote from Alan Kay: "A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ
points."

------
KineticLensman
If you want to read a concrete example rather than the generic relevant novels
mentioned in the article the Directorate of Land Strategic Concepts, National
Defence Canada, commissioned Karl Schroeder [1] in 2005 to write an SF novel
to help explore them future doctrine and concepts. PDF is available at [2]. He
wrote a second (post 2010) but I don't have the reference now (a 'friend'
never returned it). I recall that it involved a CAF unit operating in a trans-
national mega city (somewhere in Asia) having to subvert the all pervasive
city AR so that they could complete their mission. I was impressed!

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Schroeder](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Schroeder)

[2] [http://www.kschroeder.com/foresight-consulting/crisis-in-
zef...](http://www.kschroeder.com/foresight-consulting/crisis-in-zefra/Crisis-
in-Zefra-e.pdf)

------
fencepost
Visualizing and communicating how things will be used is very powerful and
important.

My memory may be faulty, but I think it's Alan Cooper's "About Face" that
basically advised not just describing the interface and how it'll be used, but
how Bob the 73 year old luddite who hates all computers is going to interact
with it (context in flight movie systems). Creating characters and having them
interact with technology that doesn't exist yet is what SF writers DO.

~~~
EliRivers
I have a copy of About Face on my desk that I keep meaning to read, but I have
read Alan Cooper's "The Inmates Are Running The Asylum" which definitely
discusses an in-flight entertainment system to be used by, amongst others, an
elderly gentleman who really has got better things to do than burrow through
menus and directories to find a movie to watch. Could you be thinking of that?
Maybe they both used that example (although I think for Cooper, it was
personal history rather than example).

~~~
Animats
I had an online discussion with him about that inflight entertainment system.
I suggested just putting a channel selector knob on the thing. Flip through
the movie posters, and if you stay on-channel for a few seconds, the movie
starts. Then it turns out it has pay-per-view channels and has to have a whole
payment interface, something he doesn't mention in the book.

------
wodenokoto
Kinda funny to think that maybe, just maybe, the social network was sponsored
by Google or Twitter as an attempt to make the competing platform less
desirable.

------
pvaldes
Last days the defcon issue, and this week for some particular reason we have a
few similar articles here and there talking about how fabulous and great would
be for a 'good nerd' to work for the military, government, etc...

Can we spot a pattern here? PR damage control?

~~~
KGIII
I used to take some employees to Defcon. Though, technically, I had no _good_
reason to go, personally. I just thought it was neat.

Anyhow, two games we used to play:

 _Spot the Fed._

 _Name That Influence._

The first was to see who looked like, and acted like, a federal agent. We'd
sometimes do some work to confirm it, but we usually discussed it at the bar.

The second was trickier, and often just conjecture - again, over drinks. Who
paid for the research, what did they say, what did they not say, and what does
it imply?

We weren't the only ones to play these games. I'm going to guess they're still
playing them.

------
rurban
"Sweet Tooth" Ian McEwan: CIA, MI5 and MI6 are sponsoring many writers, such
as some companies sponsor open source devs

~~~
travmatt
the intelligence community has had a very long history of writing fiction
novels as ways to communicate some of their realities. see john le carre

------
charlieo88
From the article: >> Companies that market directly to >> A.I. software,
rather than to humans, >> might gain a competitive advantage."

I don't know why, but this is really disturbing.

"Hey Siri, find me a widget"

"I've found three locations with widget in your area. Would you like me t...
WHOA! Check out the bytes on that ad!"

------
Gotperl
This is part of the plot by Armada by Ernest Client (which was also heavily
influenced by Ender's Game)

~~~
rglovejoy
Also Footfall by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. It even has a Robert
Heinlein cameo.

~~~
marktangotango
That's such a great book, seems like also influenced the movie Independence
Day, I don't have a source for that though.

------
lolive
Funny (alternate) facts :

\- Amiga is behind the novel "Ready Player One" (so they will make a craaaazy
comeback)

\- Trump paid GRRM for ASOF&I (so the people enjoy the mix of politics and
mental illness)

\- Hollywood is highly connected with cigarette manufacturers, liquor
manufacturers and (of course) the US army.

------
stcredzero
Back in the late 80's, I ran across a statistic that just the amount amount
the military spent supporting its _bands_ was as large as the entire budget
for NPR. I think this is also covered in _Manufacturing Consent_. I remember
flipping channels as a grade schooler and running across US military
propaganda on the nearest independent TV station. (Which is now Fox,
unfortunately. Sad, because this is the station that introduced me to anime.)
That stuff gave me nightmares! An 80's era Soviet land assault is basically
some nightmare perfection of the Blitzkreig. The whole horizon turns black and
rolls at you like a wave, as rank after rank of smoke generating tanks charges
you at high speed.

------
viach
Interesting read, somewhat related:

A 19th-Century Vision of the Year 2000

[https://publicdomainreview.org/collections/france-in-the-
yea...](https://publicdomainreview.org/collections/france-in-the-
year-2000-1899-1910/)

------
dctoedt
My wife watches police "procedural" stories (Law & Order, CSI, NCIS, etc.).
I've long thought that some of their plot lines would make for interesting
"what if" training cases for real cops.

~~~
thefalcon
Aren't something approaching 100% of those stories pulled from the headlines?
(Not disagreeing with you that they would also make good training cases.)

~~~
CodeAndCuffs
I don't know about 100%, but it is quite a common thing. That said, even if
you make a crime/situation/scenario up entirely, there is a good chance it has
happened somewhere.

Case studies of actual investigations - what worked, what didn't, what the big
break was, etc - are not uncommon in law enforcement academies and training.

When you watch stuff like CSI and Law & Order, their criminal investigation
stuff is often about as accurate as their high tech and computer science
stuff.

------
exhilaration
Hey, the article mentions HN-favorite Ken Liu, author of the Three-Body
Problem.

~~~
pinewurst
Ken is the translator (but a writer of other things), Liu Cixin is the author.

~~~
markatto
Ken is a great writer in his own right though; The Paper Menagerie might be my
favorite book.

------
AdmiralAsshat
Not terribly surprising. People forget that Neuromancer was a commission.

~~~
Bartweiss
Eh? I thought it was commissioned by a book publisher, which is pretty
different - they're buying it as a product, but these companies seem to be
hiring authors as consultants. Or am I missing some interesting history on
_Neuromancer_?

------
runevault
Based on the article about Neil Stephenson that was posted here not long ago
I'd been thinking along these lines, didn't realize someone already made a
business out of it. Interesting.

~~~
arnioxux
Neal Stephenson is working at Magic Leap (an augmented reality company) now. I
think it actually makes a lot of sense. If a product manager's main job is to
define product vision, this guy has a 25 year head start thinking about it!

~~~
runevault
Yup, mentioned in the article I referenced and linked below. Sounds like he
got a lot of offers but ML finally made him one that made sense.

------
vonnik
The US Army Lab has solicited sci-fi stories and awarded grants to build the
tech they describe.

~~~
LanceH
The Marines have hired historians to write manuals on how their great works.

------
remarkEon
Anyone read Ghost Fleet? It wasn't commissioned, as far as I'm aware, but it
so spooked the Pentagon they hired the authors as consultants.

------
whyzoidberg
Finally some good work for writers! But seriously artists have been kept alive
by the state for millennia, no shock here

------
podiki
Did no one else immediately think about the plot to Watchmen (the graphic
novel, not movie)?

------
mmaluff
This is the worst story I've read all week. Capitalism is destroying our
culture.

~~~
mac01021
What's bad about this?

~~~
ZenoArrow
You can use sci-fi novels as a way to normalise actions. Take drone warfare
for example. If we actually thought about what that meant, it's pretty
terrifying, but we've been conditioned by our media to find it fairly
ordinary.

~~~
aeorgnoieang
Terrifying is ordinary tho; just look at every other living creature ever.

~~~
thinkfurther
Terrifying is _you_ seeing your mother being bombed to shreds, not you
handwaving it away with some generalized blah. Terrifying is actually _you_
being in a concentration camp, not others being in a concentration camp while
you say "oh well, just like anything else". For a story about sci-fi, there's
a lot of professed lovers of it who would make someone like Isaac Asimov or
Frank Herbert outright _puke_. You have no imagination, you have no guts, you
have no sense of your own responsibility. You're someone great people write
about, not for. Take it personal, but divide it up by dozens of people in this
thread, all of whom warrant no more words than these.

~~~
aeorgnoieang
Your reply imputed beliefs to me that I don't hold. I wasn't handwaving
anything away. I was pointing out that, especially for non-humans, life
already is terrifying and that, e.g. drone warfare, isn't more terrifying than
say any other kind of warfare, of which there are numerous instances occurring
now and that the idea that "if we actually thought about what that meant, it's
pretty terrifying" isn't _obviously_ correct.

I, or anyone else, can't be terrified of seeing an animal eaten alive by
another?

Anything short of witnessing someone die in a bomb blast isn't 'terrifying'?

What I did _not_ write that you claim I did – "oh well, just like anything
else" – seems like something you're pushing in your reply. Are you not
claiming that drone warfare is terrifying, just as much as "seeing your mother
being bombed to shreds" or of "being in a concentration camp". My comment that
"terrifying is ordinary" was _because_ of, e.g. concentration camps, i.e.
drone warfare isn't any _more_ terrifying than lots of other terrifying things
and that because of those facts, living in a state of constant terror is
defeat.

How do you even presume to know what I've personally witnessed?

> For a story about sci-fi, there's a lot of professed lovers of it who would
> make someone like Isaac Asimov or Frank Herbert outright _puke_. You have no
> imagination, you have no guts, you have no sense of your own responsibility.
> You're someone great people write about, not for. Take it personal, but
> divide it up by dozens of people in this thread, all of whom warrant no more
> words than these.

Fuck you too.

------
leoc
There was a rash of initiatives of this kind after 9/11 as well.

------
lowglow
I wonder if Neal Stephenson gets paid to do this. He's predicted parts of
where we're headed with Diamond Age and Snow crash.

------
fundabulousrIII
Congrats. The .mil & .biz folks have been acknowledged in what has been
implicit in every advancement I've seen in the last 40 years. sci-fi pop
fiction postulation and conjecture based on the science community brain trust.
Most of these guys were consultants or engineers anyway and empowered to
write. There are iconoclasts like Ellison and the visionaries but the hard
science guys always get paid for their visions.

~~~
Retric
IMO, Science fiction is less about new ideas as it is spreading those ideas to
a wider audience. The average NASA scientist may come up with an interesting
idea, but unless it's directly relevant within a decade few people are going
to hear about it.

~~~
fundabulousrIII
Edited original to provide idea ancestry.

------
igorgue
The author of this novel works at Magic Leap:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash)

------
dogruck
I wonder what the annual revenues are. I'm skeptical.

------
elorant
And destroyed the Greek economy. Which speaks volumes about his competence as
an economist.

~~~
RodericDay
Someone clueless speaking confidently is always a joy to read.

~~~
elorant
Well I happen to live in Greece so I witnessed first hand the results of his
reign. You probably have no idea how it is to live in a country that has
capital controls so let me enlighten you. The first months, until the system
was somewhat stabilized, in order to pay for servers and such we had to ask
for favors from Greeks who lived abroad. Imagine having half a dozen servers
to pay and not knowing if you will manage to find someone/someway to send
money abroad.

So yes, the guy was a fucking disaster. But you have the luxury to judge him
without living the consequences of his actions and for that I can't blame you.

~~~
Trundle
Being directly affected by a situation should absolutely not be a point for
being more knowledgeable on it. Emotional appeal is the refuge of the
ignorant.

~~~
elorant
Capital controls are real dude, they're not a figment of my imagination. Try
operating an online business while you can't transfer funds abroad and then we
can talk about sentimentalism.

------
cryoshon
i'd kill for opportunities like this.

but maybe we have to make our own opportunities, so: how about a startup that
provides science fiction writing thought leadership as a service?

dibs on founder

