Just Finished Reading: Battlestar Galactica and Philosophy edited by Jason T Eberl

How could I possibly resist a book on two of my favourite subjects? Well I did – for about 3-4 weeks. It was coming up to my Birthday when I spotted it and I didn’t dare buy it immediately just in case someone else had bought it for me. No one had, so I bought it on my Birthday itself – I was out shopping as I never work on my actual birth day.

Anyway, was it any good? Indeed it was. BSG is, of course, oozing with philosophical issues and this book hits all the highlights. One of my favourite chapters was on the Cylon ‘slave morality’ as outlined by Nietzsche (in his case talking about Christianity). Other chapters covered fleet politics with reference to Machiavelli, Cylon ‘personhood’ and identity in the face of multiple copies of the same ‘person’ and ‘resurrection’, trans-humanism and the emergence of intelligent machines and the ethics of resistance to repressive occupation. A whole section was given over to the Cylon and Colonial interpretations of the idea of God(s) together with a discussion of destiny, providence and the idea of Free Will.

This is certainly a book for anyone interested in the deeper meaning behind some of BSG’s most challenging ideas. It’s also an easy way for a fan of the series to start to get their heads around some of the basic philosophic ideas. I have uniformly enjoyed the pop-culture/philosophy books I’ve come across so far and recommend them to those who, like me, are interested equally in both. This was an excellent and thought provoking book.