In the last episode, I showed you the Warp—the prestige economy we're forced to navigate. Now I want to talk about the only thing keeping us sane during the journey: the Gellar Field.
In Warhammer 40K, the Gellar Field is a bubble of imposed reality that protects ships traversing the psychic hellscape of the Warp. Without it, the crew doesn't just die—they're possessed, reshaped by the nightmare dimension into something no longer human.
In academia, our Gellar Field is methodology. It's rigour. It's peer review. These aren't bureaucratic obstacles—they're life-support systems. They're the institutionalization of the word "No" that protects our data from our own desperate need to survive.
But the Gellar Field runs on fuel, and that fuel is Time. When universities strip-mine time from the research process—demanding outputs faster than rigour can handle—they're not increasing efficiency. They're thinning the shield. I see it in every paper I edit: the degradation, the corners cut, the PhD students shot into the Warp with half a tank of gas.
I examine who maintains these shields (peer reviewers as the shield wall), who's dismantling them (administrators who view rigour as a cost centre), and what happens when they fail completely—the zombie concepts that can't be killed by facts because they're no longer made of facts.
This is about holding the line. Because when the reality bubble bursts, there's nothing left worth saving.
Book available here https://www.amazon.com/Emperor-Hostage-Golden-Machinery-University-ebook/dp/B0GCFWD29C
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