Revisiting Philip K. Dick, JG Ballard, Hunter S. Thompson, Kurt Vonnegut, Ursula K. LeGuin. Something about the vibe of that era of sci-fi rhymes with the 2020s.
One thing about them, with the exception of HST, they were all kids or teenagers during the Great Depression. The rise of fascism and totalitarianism. Of state-sponsored mass-delusion. And they saw (sometimes firsthand) the resulting horrors.
Inspired by this episode of El Hilo, about the attempt to build a technolibertarian dystopia that exists beyond the nation state in Honduras.
https://elhilo.audio/podcast/millonarios-isla-honduras-archivo/
Which, like all I Heart Radio podcasts, is unironically prefaced with the disclaimer "Guaranteed Human"
The redeeming outcome of this story is going to be all these ultra-wealthy dudes trying to cheat death by creating a regulation-free bubble so they can attract a bunch of quacks and fraudsters to administer unproven longevity therapies with unknown side-effects that end up killing them early.
