Paper Cuts

Now that we're properly underway on our journey to mars, let's get distracted by the moon real quick! Let's be entirely fair, though, if I were handed a ticket to wander around space carte blanche, even in the here and now, if I had the time before my intended destination, I would definitely check out what's going on on the moon before heading anywhere else. I mean, it's right there! It's been a g...

This book really occupies a fascinating niche, to me. In the day and age we're in, the role of unauthorized sequel, if only for copyright law reasons, is most often firmly filled by a fanfiction author. You've got to file the serial numbers if you wanna publish that, buddy! However, in the realm of the public domain (and, by extension, the relatively loosey goosey copyright rules of the late 1800s...

Well then! Dana learned quite a powerful lesson from this book, I'd say. I suggest you take some of what we've heard to heart, too, yknow? The planet will thank you, even if some of that thanking will have to be done indirectly. I really loved reading this book on stream, and re-hearing the story as I was editing the episodes down for the podcast was quite the delight. It's got me motivated in a m...

To be honest with you, this final act that's going on in this week's episode and the next really nails home how crushing it can feel to know there could be solutions to the sort of problems we've been experiencing of late. Well, that, and the commentary being made about the ins and outs of copyright and the importance of using that carefully! (Unstartlingly, the author is quite an advocate for Ope...

We inch ever closer to the answer of WHY the city does things like this in this episode, and man, does Stephens really nail the sheer confusion of someone introduced to these concepts from step one just right with the way Dana does things. There's a pervading sense of "Well if there's a better way, why aren't we bothering?" throughout this section of the book, sometimes to the point of almost feel...

We're finally getting some resolution on what was set up out front, and hoo boy, it's getting TENSE in a MAJOR WAY this time, folks! I mean, you knew it was gonna be difficult the second she decided to keep the Particular Item from the Fringers, but wow, we really have that drop at perhaps the worst possible time, not to mention just how difficult things are getting with the general conflict betwe...

It's really interesting, especially from my perspective, the real glory given to what amounts to subsistence farming in solarpunk tales like this. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm a known enjoyer of that sort of thing, I have a garden in my backyard for a reason (and it's not just that I have a mighty need for the best feasible tomato for my various tomato needs)! But in my humble opinion, the angl...

The kite generator mentioned here is actually some really neat tech! I kinda accidentally hit on how they work when we're talking over the potential approaches to a turbine in the kite generation system, essentially, these things take pre-established data on how the windspeed changes based on altitude, and then autonomously pilots it in a neat-looking figure eight pattern, in order to pull a tethe...

Phew! We made it out of the city! Luckily, now that we've got that place well behind us, we're able to see the true thrust of the world that made me fall in love with the genre as a whole, and Arcadia in specific. The technology on display being so, so close to what we've got these days is remarkably motivating, at least, in my humble opinion. I do go on in the show itself about it, most especiall...

The return of author permission happens pretty quickly, turns out! Welcome to Arcadia, a world in which the years and years of using copyright law as a bludgeon to stop people from doing the easy solutions to save the planet has been taken to its logical extreme. Well, that's the perspective of our protagonist, Dana, intially anyway. However, when she can't afford the utility rates on her inherite...

Despite my immediate nitpicking of the science that goes on in this particular story, this is actually quite the fun little tale! I mean, it's got everything you'd want from an alien invasion story, random alien nonsense stumbled upon by a put-upon scientist, a random dame that has dubious high society connections, and most of all, the wild threat to New York, dispelled by hastily-thrown-together...

To be honest, as much as Murder Madness here dragged its feet in getting to the point, I really enjoyed the story as a whole! It's a bit formulaic from a modern perspective, but what isn't in our usual milleu around here, you know? That's kinda a function of the public domain stories we read around here, just for the sheer factor of how many stories build off of the bits and pieces we're finding,...

What do you think is the deal with these Gnomes? I mean, it's not really unpacked in the story very far, but it's kinda gently implied there's a sort of queen-and-workers sort of vibe going on. Sure, it's probably just there to give Sarka a target for this whole superiority schtick, but I'm the type of person to wonder about the ecology of a foreign planet after we've read the story they're set on...

If you're a bit lost on what's happening in Earth, the Marauder, I'd heartily suggest checking out the previous issue of Astounding, the July Issue! We did indeed read that in a previous episode of the show, just check the titles, I always title the first episode of a given thing with the title of the book, so that should make the July issue pretty easy to find!  Well, hopefully anyway. Even if no...

You never know what you'll happen to find beneath the earth in these oddball little pulp stories we read here on the show. Could it be some sort of monster? Perhaps a whole society of people we've been missing out on interacting with? Maybe, even, depending on the day, some sort of giant aeomeba that just wants to burble about for a while!  That's not even to mention the absolutely madcap volume o...

Don't let my sleepy, dozy demeanor fool you here, gang, I had just had a long day at the time! This tale is quite the ride, a whole second planet just hanging out within the easy reach of an airplane? Wild!    I mean, the physics of something like that would be turning the world upside down, but who needs physics when you've got a waterworld full of frog-men who seem to subsist on the blood of the...

Indeed, we do stumble into quite the bevy of delights as we delve farther and farther into the past with this particular issue of Astounding Stories. Sure, it's already quite the delight to discover a new saga in the tale we've heard previously in Earth, the Marauder, but in addition to that, we're well on our way to finding other short stories that boggle the mind!  As an aside, I mention a more...

As I've been known to mention a great many times, I absolutely love the wonderful short stories on hand in these old pulp magazines. Sure, they're not exactly always a hit, but when the author nails what they're going for? It's really going to shine! I mean, picture just how many incredibly famous pieces of what forms not only the english class "canon", but also those works that prove definitional...

Welcome, welcome welcome, to season 3 of Paper Cuts! As you heard in the opening of the podcast, we're shifting our release model. Rather than innundating you with approximately eight hours of material all at once, that you then have to sort out how to listen to, we're instead cutting the stream down into managable, bite size even, 1 hour and 30 minute chunks. You're still getting the same great L...

Ah, the very last episode of this season! We start to get into the lush world of Arthur Conan Doyle's most popular (non-sherlock) writing, and discover that HOO BOY does that professor have some feelings on the matter of the people he met and the places he went. Well, that, and he really doesn't care for the press. He just wants to be right and have people know he's right, without all the fuss of...

Unsurprisingly, I really breeze through books I know well here on the show, but unfortunately, that also means a goodly sized number of my favorites really are here today, then gone next week. So, while we really did have a blast reading The Time Machine, it's all over now. Well, that is, if it ever even happened? The book is sure insistent on being unsure. Either way, there's so much to enjoy abo...

Once again, I return to a personal favorite of mine, this time in The Time Machine, by H.G. Wells. As I note in the episode, I absolutely fell in LOVE with h.g.'s writing as a kid, there's just so much to enjoy, even divorced of context as I originally read it. The Time Machine in particular, though, really shines if you learn more of the context this book was written in. It's actually quite a bit...

First off, major points to the wizard of oz movie, not only is it the delightful classic we all love to see, they really didn't miss much in the way of adapation, in my humble opinion. Sure, sure, they cut the porcelain people, but they're not really of much consequence to the story at large. My only real complaint proper was cutting the expansion on the backstory of the flying monkeys, which, to...

We're off on a journey into what the author, L. Frank Baum, calls a modern fairytale, to see another one of the real hits of the public domain, this time digging into the antics of not just Dorothy, but all her delightful friends, besides! Well, really, we meet her major enemy as well, and what most people would call (and I'm putting this charitably here) a charlatan! A con man, even! Well, I mean...

With a name like The Forgotten Planet, you immediately wonder what's going to cause someone to forget a WHOLE PLANET, but this particular tale really takes us on some twists and turns before we find out just what's going on, there. As I say, a lot of these old short story collections from the public domain have a surprising quantity of solid concepts, writing, and even execution! Aren't you glad I...