Avsnitt
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Once again we come to a great historical turning point, acolytes of adventure, with the arrival of our fourth season finale! We're once again discussing Terry Pratchett with our friend James "Ing" Reilly-English, and this time it's the "Industrial Revolution" books about how technological and cultural change comes to the Discworld. At the center of it all: Moist Von Lipwig, con artist turned renaissance man, the guy who's destined to be a historical figure whether he wants to be or not. And with this epic discussion we will leave you once more for a few months, but please take care of yourselves, and remember: the future is what you make it...
Engineer/Producer: Alex Ross
Theme song by Jack Feerick
Additional Music: [Saloon Rag by Jason Shaw] (https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=2GdNTygRbM4)
Used under a [Creative Commons Non-Commercial Attribution 3.0 International License.](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)
(c) 2024 Adam Prosser and Philip Rice. Music (c) its respective creators.
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Episode Notes
Oh, for a simpler time, when men were men, women were women, and everyone had PTSD from World War One. We hearken back to that time with The Ship Of Ishtar, by A. Merritt, a pulp fantasy (exactly 100 years old this year!) that may have influenced the likes of Robert E. Howard and dabbles in philosophy and mythology, as well as revealing some weird dark subconscious strains in both the author and American society in the 1920s.
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Engineer/Producer: Alex RossTheme song by Jack FeerickAdditional Music: Desert City" by Kevin MacLeod(c) 2024 Adam Prosser and Philip Rice. Music (c) its respective creators.
Used under a Creative Commons Non-Commercial Attribution 3.0 International License.
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Saknas det avsnitt?
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Who needs that Harry Potter jerk?!? Terry Pratchett dipped his toe into the "YA series about a kid learning magic" pool a few years later in his Discworld series about teen witch Tiffany Aching. We're joined once again by pal Ing to dissect this series, which includes Pratchett's final novel.
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Engineer/Producer: Alex Ross
Theme song by Jack Feerick
Additional music: "Danse Macabre" by Camille Saint-Saens
(c) 2024 Adam Prosser and Philip Rice. Music (c) its respective creators.
Used under a Creative Commons Non-Commercial Attribution 3.0 International License.
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Pulp genre fiction has produced some monumental successes (from a financial POV), and today we're tackling probably the second-biggest after Stephen King: Michael Crichton. His career as a novelist of the Campbell "hard Sci-fi" school got started in properly in 1969 with the first novel released under his real name, The Andromeda Strain. We look at this particular book and the movie that adapted it in the latest episode, and examine when "hard SF" becomes a gloss over...something else.
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Engineer/Producer: Alex Ross
Theme song by Jack Feerick
Additional Music: Cinematic Atmosphere Score 2 by Musictown
(c) 2024 Adam Prosser and Philip Rice. Music (c) its respective creators.
Used under a Creative Commons Non-Commercial Attribution 3.0 International License.
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Episode Notes
Historical adventures with swashbuckling, alternate identities, and criminals with a heart of gold seem to have been inescapable in early 20th century pulp, and Georgette Heyer's "The Masqueraders" is a fine example of the form. This one adds another common trope: cross-dressing!
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Engineer/Producer: Alex Ross
Theme song by Jack Feerick
Additional music: Franz Schubert's Piano Trio In E Flat
(c) 2024 Adam Prosser and Philip Rice. Music (c) its respective creators.
Used under a Creative Commons Non-Commercial Attribution 3.0 International License.
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We've talked before about how plainly world events have informed the subtext (and sometimes the regular-text) of classic SF, and The Moon Maid, a late-career offering from Edgar Rice Burroughs, proves that in spades. The politics that engulfed the world in the mid-1920s are on full display here in this seemingly escapist pulp fantasy, in which thinly-disguised Moon Communists invade America. Choose your side, citizen!
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Engineer/Producer: Alex Ross
Theme song by Jack Feerick
Additional music: "The Planets: Mars" by Gustav Holst
(c) 2024 Adam Prosser and Philip Rice. Music (c) its respective creators.
Used under a Creative Commons Non-Commercial Attribution 3.0 International License.
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Continuing from last week's theme of "advanced mutants walk amongst us", we're looking at an entirely different take on a similar premise, one that's entirely more sympathetic to the supposedly non-human subjects. In Wilmar Shiras' "Children of the Atom", the super-intelligent kids are more benign...mostly. Though the perils of raising kids who might someday conquer the world comes with its own pitfalls. Is the answer psychology and superior educational practices? The future will tell...
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Engineer/Producer: Alex Ross
Additional Music: "Sacred Church Organ" by Jay Man, Our Music Box
Theme song by Jack Feerick
(c) 2024 Adam Prosser and Philip Rice. Music (c) its respective creators.
Used under a Creative Commons Non-Commercial Attribution 3.0 International License.
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They're everywhere! They're better than you! They can tinker with your brain! They'll inherit the Earth! And trying to stop them makes you into a monster! It's a common assortment of tropes from SF, with a subtext touching on everything from a Freudian fear of your children to even darker, frequently racist conspiracy theories. Slan, by A. E. Van Vogt, seems to be ground zero for popularizing these ideas in Science Fiction, and today we're diving into it, so listen before it's mysteriously deleted from the timeline...
CW: Anti-Semitism, sexual assault, statutory rape and inappropriate relationships with minors, incest, mind control, and headgames.
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Engineer/Producer: Alex Ross
Theme song by Jack Feerick
Additional Music: "Lost in Space" by Jupiter Wave
(c) 2024 Adam Prosser and Philip Rice. Music (c) its respective creators.
Used under a Creative Commons Non-Commercial Attribution 3.0 International License.
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Sometimes you just want to take a break from it all and find solace in some booze...and more importantly, good company. Of course, it doesn't help if your watering hole is constantly being invaded by aliens, vampires, talking dogs, and fairies...or does it? It certainly keeps things interesting. Spider Robinson's long-running Callahan's Place series, starting with Callahan's Crosstime Saloon in 1977, posits such a bar, and turns it into the kind of place you'd probably love to visit, even if you're not a raging Sci-Fi nerd. Come on in, friend, first drink's on the house!
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Engineer/Producer: Alex Ross
Theme song by Jack Feerick
Additional music: "The Entertainer" by Scott Joplin
(c) 2024 Adam Prosser and Philip Rice. Music (c) its respective creators.
Used under a Creative Commons Non-Commercial Attribution 3.0 International License.
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We're back for another look at Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, this time focusing on The Watch series. It's a social satire and police procedural in a fantasy setting, which means it has dragons, dwarves, trolls, and police who actually serve the public trust...you know, a fantasy.
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Engineer/Producer: Alex Ross
Theme song by Jack Feerick
(c) 2024 Adam Prosser and Philip Rice. Music (c) its respective creators.
Used under a Creative Commons Non-Commercial Attribution 3.0 International License.
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It's interesting to consider which characters fall into obscurity and which remain relevant. Johnston McCulley's most famous creation, Zorro, is of course still a household word. His other creations, Thubway Tham and The Crimson Clown, have been completely forgotten, even though they were nearly as popular in their day. Both thieves, albeit of two very different sorts, the two even met in the crossover novel Thubway Tham Meets the Crimson Clown, and it's that we're looking at today!
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Engineer/Producer: Alex Ross
Additional music: "Undercover Spy Agent" by David Fesliyan
Theme song by Jack Feerick
(c) 2024 Adam Prosser and Philip Rice. Music (c) its respective creators.
Used under a Creative Commons Non-Commercial Attribution 3.0 International License.
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Fandom! The word sends chills up the spine of anyone who's spent any time in Fantasy and Science Fiction spaces...for a pretty wide variety of reasons. But what if fandom turns...to murder? Actually, that seems pretty plausible. Sharyn McCrumb explored this very idea in the murder mystery Bimbos of the Death Sun (published by TSR!) and we're joined in this episode by our pal Filbi to talk about it!
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Engineer/Producer: Alex Ross
Theme song by Jack Feerick
Additional Music: "Rhythmic Comedy" by Alayan10
(c) 2024 Adam Prosser and Philip Rice. Music (c) its respective creators.
Used under a Creative Commons Non-Commercial Attribution 3.0 International License.
Used under a Creative Commons Non-Commercial Attribution 3.0 International License.https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/(c) 2024 Adam Prosser and Philip Rice. Music (c) its respective creators.
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Langwitch, its syurly a confuzement! Whut wud Inlish luk liek inna thousand yeers? These are the questions asked by Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban, a post-apocalyptic meditation on culture, storytelling, religion, and language. It's a tricky read but a fulfilling one.
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Engineer/Producer: Alex Ross
Theme song by Jack Feerick
Additional music: "War and Peace" by Jamie Evans
(c) 2024 Adam Prosser and Philip Rice. Music (c) its respective creators.
Used under a Creative Commons Non-Commercial Attribution 3.0 International License.
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This is the story of Edwardian-era European explorers traveling to the north pole in an airship, only to find a strange land unknown to mankind, and populated by an alien yet advanced race of intelligent non-human beings. The encounter holds up a mirror to western society, colonialism, and the dark side of human nature, and things go badly for the protagonists. It's such a perfect encapsulation of this "Vernean" subgenre, so self-aware about its tropes, and so much in sync with modern day critiques of classical adventure fiction, that you'd swear it was a modern-day pastiche, but no: the book is The People of the Pole, written in 1907 by Charles Derennes. It's a great lens through which to talk about classic "exploration" SF.
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Engineer/Producer: Alex Ross
Theme song by Jack Feerick
Additional music: "In the Hall Of The Mountain King" by Edvard Grieg
(c) 2023 Adam Prosser and Philip Rice. Music (c) its respective creators.
Used under a Creative Commons Non-Commercial Attribution 3.0 International License.
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In the best of all possible worlds, this podcast would always be on time...but we're not there yet, are we. You know what comes close, though? The Culture, the star-spanning utopia depicted in Iain M. Banks's novels such as Consider Phlebas and The Player of Games. In this episode, Philip and I take a dive into the possibilities of benevolent godlike AI, post-scarcity economies, stellar-level constructs and utopian societies, and ask...can we truly conceive of a better world?
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Engineer/Producer: Alex Ross
Theme song by Jack Feerick
(c) 2023 Adam Prosser and Philip Rice. Music (c) its respective creators.
Used under a Creative Commons Non-Commercial Attribution 3.0 International License.
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This week, wayfarers, we go WAY back, to 1666, and the first European work of feminist Science Fiction--in fact, one of the first works of Science Fiction as we know it--Margaret Cavendish's The Blazing World, a travelogue, pontification, and philosophical potboiler.
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Engineer/Producer: Alex Ross
Theme song by Jack Feerick
Additional music: "The Sorceror's Apprentice" by Paul Dukas
(c) 2023 Adam Prosser and Philip Rice. Music (c) its respective creators.
Used under a Creative Commons Non-Commercial Attribution 3.0 International License.
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We aten't dead! In fact we're back in 2024 for a new chapter in a series...a series within a series, you might say...on Terry Pratchett's Discworld! In this one we're joined by pal Ing to talk about the Granny Weatherwax books and witchcraft vs. wizardry.
(Update: I'm really sorry, the wrong audio was uploaded for this. It should be fixed now.)
Support us on Patreon and listen to the show a week early!
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Engineer/Producer: Alex Ross
Theme song by Jack Feerick
Additional Music: "Dark Space" by Alayan10
(c) 2023 Adam Prosser and Philip Rice. Music (c) its respective creators.
Used under a Creative Commons Non-Commercial Attribution 3.0 International License.
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'Tis darkening days, fair ones, and as we approach the end of the year of our lord 2023, What Mad Universe?!? has been, we confess, erratic of late. But take heed! We return with a look at an obscure but excellent fantasy series from the early 20th century, the Neustrian Cycle by Leslile Barringer. Is it a lost tome, or the wellspring for much later fantasy stories? Harken unto us and all shall be revealed!
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Engineer/Producer: Alex Ross
Theme song by Jack Feerick
Additional Music: The Medieval Banquet by Shane Ivers
(c) 2023 Adam Prosser and Philip Rice. Music (c) its respective creators.
Used under a Creative Commons Non-Commercial Attribution 3.0 International License.
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Support us on Patreon and listen to the show a week early!
Adam's PatreonPhil's Patreon
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Engineer/Producer: Alex Ross
Theme song by Jack Feerick
(c) 2023 Adam Prosser and Philip Rice. Music (c) its respective creators.
Used under a Creative Commons Non-Commercial Attribution 3.0 International License.
This podcast is powered by Pinecast.
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As we all know by now, the WWII period saw the blossoming of ASTOUNDING magazine, which set the pace for the so-called "Golden Age" of Science Fiction, launching the careers of storied names such as Asimov and Heinlein. They also hosted a short series of satirical space westerns about a near-immortal doctor and his staunch companion, the Ole Doc Methuselah stories, penned by an obscure writer named L. Ron Hubbard. I wonder what happened to that guy.
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Engineer/Producer: Alex Ross
Theme song by Jack Feerick
Additonal music: Rythmic Comedy by Alayan-10
(c) 2023 Adam Prosser and Philip Rice. Music (c) its respective creators.
Used under a Creative Commons Non-Commercial Attribution 3.0 International License.
This podcast is powered by Pinecast.
- Visa fler
