Conversations in the Book Trade: November 2025

Saturday, November 29, 2025

Saturday, November 15, 2025

Corporate magnates trying to repackage the human….

From my comic What Is The Source of Insane Ideas?, published as a standalone project in 1991 (under the pen name Seekorum), and then incorporated into my illustrated mega novel manuscript Plastic Millennium.

In this scene, Prof. Walt Whitman meets with corporate magnate Contrat Lindl. Whitman tells Lindl that military fear of nuclear wears has turbocharged research into building a super intelligent computer that has the capacity to monitor and shape human affairs.

Lindl listens to Whitman with thinly concealed impatience, countering that nuclear weapons have succeeded “in keeping the peace” for 45 years. Whitman becomes disconsolate and says fatalistically that the existence of nuclear weapons has taken on a life of its own, and is the primary factor driving research into artificiality (eg., artificial intelligence). Whitman tells Lindl that if humanity is to survive, then it must relinquish nukes.

As soon as Whitman leaves Lindl’s office, Lindl rejoices and walks to a small shrine he’s built to Friedrich Nietzsche. Lindl is in the habit of having feverish monologues with his portrait of Neitzsche. He says the existence of intelligent computers means there now exists on Earth a “Super-Being”, and this implies that it will now be possible for humans to develop an “uber-mensch” — that is, an Overman or Superman who is a technology-driven evolution beyond the human race.