I just wrote a proposal to do a presentation at a conference called "Demanding the Impossible: 3rd Utopias Conference," which will happen in December at Monash University, in Victoria, Australia. I came across it because I was considering applying to Monash to do my PhD. I recently got a paper accepted for publication, on utopias in Melville’s early novels, so I thought I ought to put my recently acquired knowledge of utopian thought to use. Also, it would be nice to check out the university in person.

My presentation aims to look into the moral questions raised by Iain M. Banks’ novel, The Player of Games. Haven’t read it? Right, off with you, then–go find a copy and read it. I’ll wait.

OK, so as you now know, the first part of the novel is set in Banks’ "Culture," his anarcho-communist utopian SF society that he has written several novels about. Only in this one, the Culture has come up against an aggressively imperialistic society that might prove a threat someday. So they pull a bunch of strings to destabilize it and cause it to come crashing down. This dangerous society sounds suspiciously like a combination of the USA and Iraq, though the novel was written almost 20 years ago, near the beginning of the end of the Cold War.

I wanted to examine the morality of a beautiful utopian culture basically destroying an ugly hierarchical culture that does not pose any threat to it, at least not for centuries to come. Sounds like a fun way to spend my free time, anyway.