September 21, 2025 • 35 mins
Margaret sits down with author Alan Lea to discuss his novella, Hermetica.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media Club Club Club Club. Hello, and welcome
to cooles On Media book Club, the only book club
where you don't have to do the reading because I
do it for you and I know what you're thinking.
(00:23):
You're thinking, how has this been a proper book club
when you do the reading but then there's no discussion. Well,
this week we're going to have a discussion, and we
have on not only the author, Alan Lee of the
book that you just listened to, her Medica, but also
Hazel who helps a lot with book club, and so
that way it's an actual conversation between a bunch of people.
(00:45):
How are you Alan?
Speaker 2 (00:46):
While the star with Alan, I don't know, I'm here, Yeah,
and a variety of complex and enough ble ways.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
I love this for you, Hi, I'm also feeling complex
and enough ofble. That was an incredible description. I had
a little smoothie for breakfast. I got up early. I'm
so proud of myself.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
We are here at the crack of ten am to
record for you Eastern time. Eastern time. That's how much
we all love you. So there's a book it's called Hermtica.
We just listened to it. Well, you all just listened
to it. Well, yeah or whatever, and we want to
(01:35):
talk about it. Hey, soe, what do you got?
Speaker 3 (01:38):
Yeah, let's start off with just where the book came from.
Can you tell us a little bit about where you
found inspiration for this and maybe where you typically find
inspiration for your fiction.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Well, every writing process is different. I did the vast
majority of the writing for her Medica in a very
frenzied month early in the COVID pandemic. So the feelings
of lockdown one may have shown up a little bit
in the claustrophobia of the work. Maybe, I mean probably
not context is real, but no, it definitely is real,
(02:10):
and so that was a part of it, while also
thinking about evolving technologies of social control and surveillance. Far
more than the pandemic, I would say social media actually
really shows up in this book, the compartmentalizing, siloed effect
of social media, how it allows people's reality to be controlled,
(02:31):
how it really really limits and cuts down on people's
social interactions while giving them the illusion of having more
social interactions, when in fact these interactions could be you know,
it could be AI, it could be robots on the
other end of things, and in any case, it's not tactile.
It's not you know, olfactory, like you're so rarely actually
(02:54):
in the room with people or walking down the street
with people. And then of course always and connected to that,
a lot of thinking about different options that the state
may have for responding to the ecological crisis, to responding
to you know, these building pressures that may lead towards collapse,
and what different forms of totalitarianism might look like today.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
Is it frustrating to have been prescient so fast about
the AI thing? Where Like, because I think in twenty twenty,
twenty twenty one, it was less likely that the people
that you would be arguing with on the internet were
literally not people, right, But these days more and more,
if you're arguing with someone on the internet, there's like
(03:36):
a really good chance or just straight up arguing with
a cell phone somewhere that is like running a program.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Personally, as an anarchist, I feel like that's a part
of our lot, is being like incredibly frustrated with Like
it's not like an ego thing. It's not like anna
I told you thing. It's like seeing people that you
care about jump joyfully onto a sledge and go full
speed down a snowy hill. Right into like a trash compactor,
and at the beginning you're like, there's a trash compactor
(04:04):
right there, and you have to watch this whole beautiful
descent and then just the horror of all the blood
and gore flying, and then do that over and over
again every year, every century. I think sometimes I wake
up with like, I don't know, Emma Goldman or Alexander Berkman,
like screaming through my mouth, things that like should have
(04:25):
been obvious at the end of the nineteenth century, and
you know, we just keep diving headfirst into it, but
somehow we're surviving this trash compactor world. So yeah, it
can be frustrating and it can also be inspiring on
some dark levels that like you know, we're still here.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Yeah, Yeah, it's heavy, We're still here.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Give us another one. Let's go through the master again.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
Yeah, back onto the sled, motherfuckers.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
Yeah. Alan, you're somebody who I came across first through
like nonfiction, particularly like How to Live in the trash
Compactor World that I am. I remember you had in
me of this book, and I went, oh, my friend,
my friend writes fiction too. I'm wondering if you could
talk about like I know that fiction is important to
you in your personal life, and I'm wondering specifically if
(05:15):
you could talk about your relationship with fiction and how
the fiction that you write compliments your nonfiction work.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Yeah, so it's not really secret anymore. But I also
write a lot of nonfiction under another name, which you
know you might be able to find out any smooths
out there.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Or we've been saying it at the top and bottom
of every episode that people should check out your books.
We got permission from you to do this. I want
to be really clear.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
Oh yeah, no, I know, yeah, absolutely, But how about
we don't say that name at all during this whole
interview and then we'll force our sloths out there in
case any of them haven't to listen to the Okay book. Yeah, well,
lo bar lobar for sleuthing these days, Like, I mean,
all of the big mysteries are obvious. Yes it is genocide. Yes,
(06:00):
we're heading towards billions of deaths and matflex Lincs like
they don't even have to hide it anymore. Yeah, from
early on, I had a lot more luck getting the
nonfiction published. Some of it is luck, some of it
is also that the fiction world is way more, especially
speculative fiction is way more monopolized or kind of concentrated
into like five massive evil corporations. They control such a
(06:23):
larger share of the speculative fiction that is published than
in the nonfiction world, where you have a lot more
independent presses that have managed to hold on, and that
might be starting to change again for the better as
far as fiction is concerned. But it can be really
difficult to get fiction published. So even though I might
like my nonfiction writing is definitely way more widespread. I've
(06:45):
been writing fiction since I was a little kid, both
as a form of survival and a form of pure
unmitigated joy. When I was a teeny little kid, I
would just kind of walk back and forth in the
woods or you know, if I was stuck in the
half us, like in a house, just kind of imagining
different worlds and stories and whatnot. And also, like as
(07:05):
one becomes more and more aware of like the world
around them, I don't want to take like a utilitarian
approach either to nonfiction or to fiction. I think they
both can and should be acts of joy, of desperation,
of rage, of curiosity. But they're both, you know, tools
for understanding the world around us for interacting with the
(07:26):
world around us. And basically, the real world can't exist
without the imaginary world. And that's true on a mathematical level.
That's also true on the level of like how societies
organize themselves, like we need imagination, and imagination can also
really allow us to better understand or change the world
that we live in.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
But if that were true, then Marx's pure materialism might
not be fully correct. And so I actually think you
must be wrong because Marx said that everything is material.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
I'm probably wrong. And yeah, and though I do prefer
cash money like it seems like money, I don't know,
it's almost as though money were not that material.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
Trying to say that social constructs are real.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
I do think this is one of the great gifts
of anarchism, though, is that, like a lot of our
great anarchists are like also fiction writers, you know, like
Ursula kayle Wynn was predominantly a fiction writer. I think
this is like a thing that's really special at the
anarchist tradition is that we are so interwoven in with
fiction and with imagination, and along with exploring how big
(08:40):
themes show up in our actual lives, also exploring how
things could be different or how things could be worse.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
Yeah, I think that we kind of like missed a period.
When I first started writing fiction or like reading about
anarchist fiction, I was like, oh, where is it? And
I had trouble finding it a while ago, And that's
changed completely. And then yeah, if I look back historically,
there is so much fiction in the anarchist movement and
like the left and you know whatever more broadly, and
(09:10):
it just kind of it stopped being the thing that
people were focused on for a little while. And focus
on is the wrong word, right, I don't think we
should all like writing novels isn't the way the way
that we change the world, right, It's like one of
the ways that we influence the world and also survive
inside the trash compactor.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
But Margaret, you know how else we survive inside the
trash compactory influence the world?
Speaker 1 (09:37):
Is it the fact that our podcast is sponsored by
goods and services that people can rely on for every
single need they have, and we can rely on for
modest income.
Speaker 3 (09:48):
I do like a modest income, and I do love
the fact that I hate capitalism, with the strong exception
of anything that is plugged on this podcast.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
That's right, here's all the stuff we personally love that
we have absolutely no control over because it's just ads,
and we're back.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
I personally love to shower with that product that was
just advertised.
Speaker 3 (10:16):
Oh, especially the Internet mattresses. You love to shower with
those Internet mattresses. Well.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
The best part is that there's like a whole series
of categories of ads that we have completely banned, but
sometimes they slip in anyway. And the most famous example
of this is that a couple of years ago, school
Zone Media had some ads for joining the Washington State
Highway Patrol. Oh God, And then I was listening once
and I got an ad for become a jailer.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Oh jeez, I.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
Got an ad once for become a jailer in Ohio specifically.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
Yeah, I think I was driving through Ohio when that
happened to me. So if you're listening to Ohio, sorry, yeah,
don't do that as an exception anyway. So I want
to fuss at you about this book. I really liked
this book. I just read it for the second time
to a bunch of people. And there's a point near
(11:07):
the end of this book days is in job search,
jail and in job search jail days is like thinking through, well,
what if I go study moss but then work with
people to step outside the system. And you know, if
this was a neat simple narrative, this is what would happen. Right,
(11:29):
And I recognize that everyone has different ways of responding
to things, but that's what I would do, right, And
I think that there's this interesting thing. Right, you're presenting
this like very grand metaphor, and I think in the
classic science fiction way you're presenting this grand metaphor for
how you know all of our choices are illusory? Right,
I don't know how to pronounce that word, but it
(11:49):
turns out illusionary isn't a word, And I'm really annoyed
by that, because illusionary should be the word, because it
makes more sense than illusory illusory.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
I think illusory job as a pronounce like brings out illusions.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
Yeah, no, that makes more sense. I have this problem
where I read more than I talk, which is impressive
because I talk for a living. But you have these
illusionary choices. I'm going to try and make this fucking make.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
We're allowed to make worse. Every word was made by
a person, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
Whoa until the future and when they're all made by
robots and then we're shot if we use the wrong ones.
In this job search metaphor jail basically saying that, like
all choices that we make are totally illusionary, and you know,
illusion of freedom, right, and there is no outside. The
system is one of the main things in this metaphorical world, right,
(12:39):
But all three of us are currently alive, and all
three of us perceive ourselves as doing a complicated navigation
with a system to kind of live outside and to
try to open up the concept of an outside. So
in my mind, the metaphor of this book and the
(13:01):
actions that the character is choosing work within the context
of this metaphor and not within the real world that
it's representing. I don't have a question here. I'm just
trying to challenge you about this part.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
Yeah, so first referring really strictly to the story, and
then to get theoretical if I'm may after that. I
don't see the book as a strict metaphor. Obviously there's
a lot of metaphor in it. Like I also intend
it to be like a world that works, a world
that might be our world someday hopefully not, but might
be in addition to a reflection on the world that
(13:33):
we currently inhabit. I think Days makes the choice that
makes the most sense for them. Days is a little
bit crazy. Days is not like everyone else in terms
of how like emotionally and psychologically they relate with the
rest of the world. And instead of them being cast
as neurodivergent, which in my humble opinion is just like
a stupid, like literal synonym for abnormal, their craziness actually
(13:57):
gives them strengths that other people don't have. It also
deprives them of, like some of the resources of like
stronger human connection, where they could just soldier on, you know,
through the lies. They could soldier on through that prison
world and keep surviving. So dying or possibly dying suicide
for them is a choice. I mean there's also a
(14:19):
great sadness to it, like Days also like an habit's
like a very sad world. They can't really survive in
a prison once they realize that it's a prison. And
that's the reality for a lot of us, you know,
in this world, in the real world, like there is
always an outside, there are almost always other choices until
we end up in maximum security prison. In maximum security prison.
I mean, your choices are you know, basically eat or
(14:41):
or don't eat, like try to kill yourself or try
to survive because of like the extreme level of physical constraint.
But like you know, outside of prison, in in you know,
the rest of the world, a lot of us end
up taking our own lives as like a response to
like prison society, and that's what Days does. I did
(15:01):
bring in a couple other characters to reflect that there
were other choices, but yeah, I just I guess I
feel like that that was kind of where you know,
this character would end up based on who they are.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
No, it makes sense, and like it does make sense
as the end of the story. I just have this
like I think it was that reading the like, oh, well,
this other story would be like this, and I'm like, ah,
that's the one I would pick, right, But I also
do think it's kind of worth reflecting on. Not that
people can only write about their own experiences, but the
first time I met you, you handed me a book
(15:33):
of short stories that you had written in prison. I
can see how the experience of having like absolutely no
control might have influenced Like, I think a lot of
people would write this as like a raw thought experiment.
They're like, oh, what if I was in job search prison,
but you've been in well, I think it wasn't job
search prison that you were in, But I don't know,
(15:55):
how does this relate?
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Yeah, I was in real prison, different security levels from
maximum security to minimum security. That definitely relates. I mean,
that definitely marked an influenced to me as a person.
And at the same time, one of the most remarkable
things about it was when I went in, there was
nothing new about the experience. There was nothing that didn't
remind me about the psychiatric ward one time in high
(16:21):
school when I was hospitalized, or high school itself, or
all of these other institutions. Like, we really do live
in a prison society. That's not just a hyperbolic metaphor.
And so like I mean, being in like an actual
prison definitely like changes you and influences you. But also
it's not an other reality, it's not exceptional. It's so
(16:42):
similar to all the other institutions that make up our society.
And that kind of also brings us to this question
of like the outside of like you know, what's you know,
what's potentially outside of all of this, Like I think
a lot of radical academics will construct these really beautiful theories,
these little air tight theories almost you know, air tight,
(17:05):
like you know, certain buildings we might have just recently referred.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
To hermetically sealed.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
Yeah, these hermetically sealed theories exactly, thank you. And I
think one of the problems with that is, in a
very kind of unconsciously colonial Western way, they're confusing influence
with unfreedom. There's nowhere on the planet that is not
influenced by capitalism in the state, Like we can find
like you know, plastic trash at like the bottom of
(17:32):
the deepest trench in the Pacific Ocean. But influence is
not unfreedom. Influence is actually freedom. Freedom is not like
you know, I am an island, a sovereign island that
you know is unencroached by other islands. It's that we
are all influencing each other, but without like you know,
undue pressure or constraint from like one of the beings
or one of the forces within this overall network. And
(17:55):
so on the one hand, like it's really important to
recognize that the states in iaginary, the state's model, the
state's goal and their practice is to make sure that
there is never any outside, that there is never any
real independence or freedom from it, And at the same time,
the state always fails in that goal that there has
always been an outside. Sometimes the outside is right under
(18:18):
the state's nose. Sometimes it's in the borderlands. Sometimes it's
in the crossing of borders. Sometimes it's in the legible spaces.
Sometimes it's in huge rebellions, and sometimes it's in the
choice that a single prisoner has, with no other friends nearby,
with no other connections, to stop eating, to stop going
(18:38):
along with it. And choice is a really important part
of control. Domination works a lot better if they give
us choices, if they give us elections, But there are
always going to be more choices than the ones that
we're presented with.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
I like that. I think that that is the kind
of core of Harmonica, is the staring at the six
choices on the board, you know, being like, oh, you
can choose to wear the I don't know, Chay Gavara
shirt and become a like, you know, state sanctioned radical
or whatever. I don't know where I'm going with that.
(19:12):
Someone save me, you.
Speaker 3 (19:13):
Know what six choices this podcast offers you. So sorry,
This is like I was encountering this while we were
like going through the script of the book, I was like,
I need to put an ad pivot in here, but
this is really heavy, and I feel really good pivoting
to ads, but we all also need to get paid.
(19:35):
And I am deeply, deeply grateful in my gend deflection
for the sponsors. You make your own choices about whether
you listen to them.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
I want everyone to understand how deeply we think about
these ad pivots, and see the inside baseball of how
we think about these ad pivots and how they keep
us awake at night to make the perfect ad pivot.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
Yes, readers, listeners, if I make we just all reach
through the ether, cross the internet, the physical distance that
separates us, hold hands and genuflect to our sponsors.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
Thank you for that word, Hazel.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
Yeah, you welcome, And here they are ads and we're back.
I for one am glad we found our new God,
whatever the last sponsor was. I feel bad for all
the people who got the other advertisers, because they're not
(20:30):
our new God. It's only the last other people are
so doomed. Who Yeah, it's really just a lottery.
Speaker 3 (20:37):
At least they're not following any of the other many
products and services that aren't advertised on the show that
are shortly.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
About to become because they're not on the show, or
because we live in a fascist seal state and everything's
illegal now.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
Who knows. Let's talk about genre space instead. Okay, Yeah, Alan,
I want to chat about genre space. This is a
book to me that really reads like something from like
a classic Golden Age of sci fi novella. It's got
this like really sweeping metaphor that's not one to one.
(21:12):
It's aiming towards like bigger sociological themes. There's like whole
socratic asides about gender, and I guess like it's something
that I don't encounter very often anymore, And it was
really fun to read something that felt to me like,
what if we took kind of the tone and the
theme of something like Braving New World or nineteen eighty four,
(21:34):
something that like I really grew up in middle school on,
and then gave it a fresh like modern anarchist, anti
authoritarian twist. I don't know, I guess I'm curious, like,
you know, could you tell us a little bit more
about what was interesting to you about that tone and
like how you came to that as the tropes and
(21:57):
the frameworks that you were going to work with in.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
I love that you that you bring that out because
like for me, that was like maybe this might seem
odd like almost like unconscious or like invisible to me,
because it's just kind of like I described this earlier
as like a very feverish writing process, so like I
was like so in it that I could barely see it.
And really some of the big influential works for me
growing up, and you know, maybe also like in my twenties,
(22:22):
let's see, I think you mentioned Kurt Vonnegut, like you know,
that definitely figures also a lot of you know, the
major works of magical realism, whether it's like Gabotie America's
one hundred Years of Solitude or like Bulgako, Smaster and Margarita.
Speaker 3 (22:39):
I'll also say, like the Truman Show, Like this book
feels in a lot of ways like a reverse Truman Show.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
The sky is real, so the sky is fake?
Speaker 2 (22:50):
Yeah. Yeah. Getting even older, like before nineteen eighty four,
there's this lesser known novel by You've gain Zematin, we
early Soviet novel where you know, one of the people
to speak out around like this socialist revolution that was
quickly turning into a healthscape was a science fiction writer,
(23:11):
and he wrote something that was certainly a huge influence
on Orwell and is also you know, very much about
a surveillance society. I think a lot of those older
works were a much greater influence on me than a
lot of newer speculative fiction. Which is not to say
that the newer speculative fiction isn't there. I think there
(23:34):
have been some really amazing works coming out lately. There's
also been a lot of really mediocre stuff that gets huge, huge,
huge platforms. But the great stuff I think still really
has to generally like pass this filter, which is designed
more for the marketing of books. It's designed more for
(23:54):
the limitations of editors and agents that are looking at
you know, hundreds of manuscripts or pitches a day, and
so really like the way that, like if we differentiated
between a tool and a machine, we have more choice.
With a tool, we have more craft. With a tool,
we can use it to amplify our abilities, to amplify
(24:15):
our effect, whereas a machine we just become adjuncts to
the machine. We have to feed material into the machine
following parameters set by the machine. And I'd actually love
to hear more from you, Margaret about your experiences with
both like larger publishers and independent publishers. But yeah, I
think for me that's been I guess I've sort of
(24:35):
resisted some of the generic rules that have kind of
come up in the last like ten or twenty years
that are really set by the industry slash machine, and
I think I've kind of immersed myself more in, you know,
looking back to other works of speculative fiction from you know,
decades and decades ago.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
I do have a different take on the way that
publishing is working right now. I actually think that the
publishing world does not shy away from radical content. It
is that there's specific asks in genre around form. And
this has been true, I think forever, because genre fiction
literally by being genre fiction, has a certain commercial aspect
(25:14):
to it and a certain like popular fiction aspect to it,
which I actually think is one of its more interesting advantages, right.
I think it reaches more people than literature often, and
so yes, there is like kind of like lowest common
denominator stuff, and like the Marvel movies or things like
that right, But I actually think that the genre fiction
(25:36):
world right now is like alive with radicalism. And I
think that even at the major publishers, most of the
individual editors who are making these decisions are themselves very
radical or at least progressive, and tend to be progressive
who are open to radical ideas. This has been my experience.
I remember writing a short story about people using drones
(25:57):
to kill CEOs and how that was fine. Yeah, And
I remember being like, no one will ever touch this,
and Strange Horizons published it and did a good job
with it, and it was reasonably well received. But I
think that there are absolutely genre restrictions that change over time,
and you kind of have to play within them about
(26:21):
ways of describing characters and ways that plots work, and
like who the interiority is with and things like that
that are like larger social conventions of form. But I
do think that it is interesting and good to be
able to just also sometimes be like, but that's not
what this book is. I don't fucking care, you know.
And my other aside is it just to be really
(26:42):
nerdy about anarchist fiction. You mentioned Vonnegut, you mentioned Huxley
and or Well and Vonnegut was a pacifist anarchist. Very explicitly,
Huxley was an anarchist. Huxley specifically said in the introduction
to I Think Island, his utopian novel that I have
read since I as a teenager, he says, what the
world needs is decentralization of a krapotkinisk nature. And so
(27:07):
what he's saying is what the world is needed is anarchism,
you know, and referencing Peter Krepakin, And of course Orwell
is a very complicated figure, but was certainly willing to
throw grenades at fascists and get shot through the neck
for that process. And so I will forgive a lot
of decisions that he made based on that. And he
also specifically said, if I had gone to Spain to
(27:28):
fight again, I would have gone with the anarchists, if
I had known what I knew going into it, you know.
Instead he fought with a anti state Marxist militia, the
POM or whatever. More complicated than that. See the entire
first year of cool people who did cool stuff for
me talking about the Spanish Civil War and also my
episode about Orwell. But I think it's interesting that a
(27:50):
lot of the people that we will reference as these
sort of like grand figures of science fiction and like
speculative concepts, and even to throw one that I'm like
always sort of afraid to throw in clockwork Orange Man.
Anthony Burgess was also an anarchist, and you know, obviously
the movie of that is a very interesting, complicated edge
(28:11):
lord piece of fiction that is trying to explain a
social idea. And I am not really even trying to
say anything about that right now, but I think that's
interesting that it's coming from people who have this very
specific set of critiques where they believe in both socialism
and freedom, you know, where they believe we should take
(28:32):
care of each other but also like be in charge
of ourselves and that the state shouldn't be this massive
domineering force. And so it's like really interesting to me
that the Golden Age, I don't know if golden Age
is the right word, but all of these like classic
works of dystopia and stuff, we're written by people who
have this set of values.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
Yeah. Yeah. Publishing currently, they're kind of capturing and publishing
like a huge number of books of you know, new stories.
And on the one hand, you know they're doing this
in like a pretty harmful marketplace of ideas sort of
way where they're like algorithmically from the first day. And
so this is important for any you know, any new
authors out there, like get all of your friends, get
(29:10):
everyone you can to like help you boost your book
before it even you know, hits the shelves because oh yeah,
with pre orders, pre orders, you know, campaigns buzz like
you know whatever, because like algorithms do so much of
the decision making. Now about like a major publisher, they're
not just you know, publishing like a dozen books here,
they're publishing hundreds or thousands. And what they're doing is
(29:32):
they're scooping up intellectual property, right, so they get a
big cut. They may even be mediocre renditions of a
story they get scooped up by Hollywood and turned into
like a blockbuster film that there's like a whole bunch
of money in. And otherwise they're basically just from like
day one, up voting or downvoting a book. And so
they might be publishing like thousands of titles with the
(29:52):
hopes that they get one or two best sellers out
of it, and so all of those other books they
get published, this author feels like you they had this
amazing experience of like, hey, my stories gotten out there,
and really it's kind of buried in an intellectual property vault.
So on the one hand, you know, we have this
like really damaging marketplace of ideas. But on the other hand,
it does also really mean that the publishing industry is open,
(30:15):
just like you said, like a huge diversity of different
kinds of stories, to radical stories, to people who just
because of their gender or the color of their skin,
you know, might have been barred from like a chance
of publishing speculative fiction in the not so distant past.
Speaker 3 (30:32):
Yeah, I think that brings us into like a nice outro.
I wanted to end on just asking y'all what you've
been reading recently, anything you've been enjoying, anything you would recommend.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
Well, let's see, I have definitely been keeping up on
what Arcati Martin has been writing. That's the author of
A Memory called Empire. Also m Mieco Candon, Hillary Mantell's
historical fiction series A Mirror in the Lights. I'm currently
the last one in that trilogy. And then you know,
I always, you know, go back to some old classics. Lately,
(31:06):
I've been finding a lot of soulace in Calvin and Hobbes,
which is I think just some of the best metafiction
that's ever been written.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
One of the first zines that was ever handed when
I became an anarchist was like a big oversized zine
that was like eight and a half by eleven, stapled
in the corner, and it was Calvin and Hobbes as anarchist.
And they didn't change any of the words in any
of the Calvin and Hobbes comics. I remember that they
just like organized them by like critiques of society, critiques
(31:36):
of school, critiques of work.
Speaker 2 (31:38):
Yeah, yeah, so good.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
I finished reading a book that is coming out soon
by Carter Keen. It's called Morsel, and it's a horror
novella that's really good, and I don't know has good
like radical politics woven throughout a story about an ancient monster.
I really liked that, Hazel, you read anything good.
Speaker 3 (32:04):
I have mostly been reading things that are like cozy
and gentle, which is not quite the vibe of the
things that you both were plugging. But I've really enjoyed
A Song for the Wild Belt by Becky Chambers, which
is a novella about a tea monk who has a
like steampunk ass bicycle powered little tea cart that they
(32:27):
ride around, and then they meet this robot who like
helps them go on a journey, and it's it's very sweet.
It's about burnout and reconnecting with nature and regrowing part
of your soul. I also really enjoyed A Witch's Guide
to Magical Innkeeping by sangu Mandana, which is about a
witch who runs an inn and is trying to get
(32:48):
her magic back and has a lot about disability, grief
and also burnout and found family and what magic really is.
So that I've been enjoying. If you want something a
little bit more edgy, I did also recently reread The
Word for World as Forest by Ursula Kulin, which is
a really good novella about It's like Ursula's perspectives on
(33:12):
kind of the Vietnam War and also generally on colonialism
and exploitation. Yeah, it's good. It's violent in a cathartic way.
It's revolt. So what Star Wars ripped off it is
what Star Wars ripped off Alatar.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
Well, so Star Wars rips it off because and Or
is the name of the like city that the creatures
that are totally not Ewoks are based out of.
Speaker 3 (33:39):
They also are human, like it's important that they are.
They are kind of described as like short teddy bird people,
but they are genetically also human.
Speaker 1 (33:48):
Yeah, I think that just the like, I don't know.
As soon as I realized that their town was called
and Or, I was like, this is just literally what
the Ewoks are based off. This is just the word
for worlds. Forest is my favorite Star Wars film as
a kid. Anyway, anyone got anything to plug here at Alan?
You got anything you've been writing?
Speaker 2 (34:09):
Well? Actually so, I, like I said at the beginning,
I've been writing fiction forever. I have just manuscripts and
manuscripts that are waiting publication, and I might be getting
some good news. There's a really strong possibility that in
the next year or two you will see on the
shelves at the independent bookstore near you and certainly not Amazon,
the first in a trilogy called Mad Hatter. So yeah,
(34:31):
we're just waiting for an official announcement, but this is
a pre official announcement that yeah, my next sci fi book,
Mad Hatter, should be getting published.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
Okay, all right, Well that's it for Cool Zone Media
Book Club this week. And next week we'll bring you
more stories.
Speaker 3 (34:51):
Yay.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
Thanks, thanks y'all,
Cool Zone Media Club Club Club Club. Hello, and welcome
to cooles On Media book Club, the only book club
where you don't have to do the reading because I
do it for you and I know what you're thinking.
(00:23):
You're thinking, how has this been a proper book club
when you do the reading but then there's no discussion. Well,
this week we're going to have a discussion, and we
have on not only the author, Alan Lee of the
book that you just listened to, her Medica, but also
Hazel who helps a lot with book club, and so
that way it's an actual conversation between a bunch of people.
(00:45):
How are you Alan?
Speaker 2 (00:46):
While the star with Alan, I don't know, I'm here, Yeah,
and a variety of complex and enough ble ways.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
I love this for you, Hi, I'm also feeling complex
and enough ofble. That was an incredible description. I had
a little smoothie for breakfast. I got up early. I'm
so proud of myself.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
We are here at the crack of ten am to
record for you Eastern time. Eastern time. That's how much
we all love you. So there's a book it's called Hermtica.
We just listened to it. Well, you all just listened
to it. Well, yeah or whatever, and we want to
(01:35):
talk about it. Hey, soe, what do you got?
Speaker 3 (01:38):
Yeah, let's start off with just where the book came from.
Can you tell us a little bit about where you
found inspiration for this and maybe where you typically find
inspiration for your fiction.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Well, every writing process is different. I did the vast
majority of the writing for her Medica in a very
frenzied month early in the COVID pandemic. So the feelings
of lockdown one may have shown up a little bit
in the claustrophobia of the work. Maybe, I mean probably
not context is real, but no, it definitely is real,
(02:10):
and so that was a part of it, while also
thinking about evolving technologies of social control and surveillance. Far
more than the pandemic, I would say social media actually
really shows up in this book, the compartmentalizing, siloed effect
of social media, how it allows people's reality to be controlled,
(02:31):
how it really really limits and cuts down on people's
social interactions while giving them the illusion of having more
social interactions, when in fact these interactions could be you know,
it could be AI, it could be robots on the
other end of things, and in any case, it's not tactile.
It's not you know, olfactory, like you're so rarely actually
(02:54):
in the room with people or walking down the street
with people. And then of course always and connected to that,
a lot of thinking about different options that the state
may have for responding to the ecological crisis, to responding
to you know, these building pressures that may lead towards collapse,
and what different forms of totalitarianism might look like today.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
Is it frustrating to have been prescient so fast about
the AI thing? Where Like, because I think in twenty twenty,
twenty twenty one, it was less likely that the people
that you would be arguing with on the internet were
literally not people, right, But these days more and more,
if you're arguing with someone on the internet, there's like
(03:36):
a really good chance or just straight up arguing with
a cell phone somewhere that is like running a program.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Personally, as an anarchist, I feel like that's a part
of our lot, is being like incredibly frustrated with Like
it's not like an ego thing. It's not like anna
I told you thing. It's like seeing people that you
care about jump joyfully onto a sledge and go full
speed down a snowy hill. Right into like a trash compactor,
and at the beginning you're like, there's a trash compactor
(04:04):
right there, and you have to watch this whole beautiful
descent and then just the horror of all the blood
and gore flying, and then do that over and over
again every year, every century. I think sometimes I wake
up with like, I don't know, Emma Goldman or Alexander Berkman,
like screaming through my mouth, things that like should have
(04:25):
been obvious at the end of the nineteenth century, and
you know, we just keep diving headfirst into it, but
somehow we're surviving this trash compactor world. So yeah, it
can be frustrating and it can also be inspiring on
some dark levels that like you know, we're still here.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Yeah, Yeah, it's heavy, We're still here.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Give us another one. Let's go through the master again.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
Yeah, back onto the sled, motherfuckers.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
Yeah. Alan, you're somebody who I came across first through
like nonfiction, particularly like How to Live in the trash
Compactor World that I am. I remember you had in
me of this book, and I went, oh, my friend,
my friend writes fiction too. I'm wondering if you could
talk about like I know that fiction is important to
you in your personal life, and I'm wondering specifically if
(05:15):
you could talk about your relationship with fiction and how
the fiction that you write compliments your nonfiction work.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Yeah, so it's not really secret anymore. But I also
write a lot of nonfiction under another name, which you
know you might be able to find out any smooths
out there.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Or we've been saying it at the top and bottom
of every episode that people should check out your books.
We got permission from you to do this. I want
to be really clear.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
Oh yeah, no, I know, yeah, absolutely, But how about
we don't say that name at all during this whole
interview and then we'll force our sloths out there in
case any of them haven't to listen to the Okay book. Yeah, well,
lo bar lobar for sleuthing these days, Like, I mean,
all of the big mysteries are obvious. Yes it is genocide. Yes,
(06:00):
we're heading towards billions of deaths and matflex Lincs like
they don't even have to hide it anymore. Yeah, from
early on, I had a lot more luck getting the
nonfiction published. Some of it is luck, some of it
is also that the fiction world is way more, especially
speculative fiction is way more monopolized or kind of concentrated
into like five massive evil corporations. They control such a
(06:23):
larger share of the speculative fiction that is published than
in the nonfiction world, where you have a lot more
independent presses that have managed to hold on, and that
might be starting to change again for the better as
far as fiction is concerned. But it can be really
difficult to get fiction published. So even though I might
like my nonfiction writing is definitely way more widespread. I've
(06:45):
been writing fiction since I was a little kid, both
as a form of survival and a form of pure
unmitigated joy. When I was a teeny little kid, I
would just kind of walk back and forth in the
woods or you know, if I was stuck in the
half us, like in a house, just kind of imagining
different worlds and stories and whatnot. And also, like as
(07:05):
one becomes more and more aware of like the world
around them, I don't want to take like a utilitarian
approach either to nonfiction or to fiction. I think they
both can and should be acts of joy, of desperation,
of rage, of curiosity. But they're both, you know, tools
for understanding the world around us for interacting with the
(07:26):
world around us. And basically, the real world can't exist
without the imaginary world. And that's true on a mathematical level.
That's also true on the level of like how societies
organize themselves, like we need imagination, and imagination can also
really allow us to better understand or change the world
that we live in.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
But if that were true, then Marx's pure materialism might
not be fully correct. And so I actually think you
must be wrong because Marx said that everything is material.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
I'm probably wrong. And yeah, and though I do prefer
cash money like it seems like money, I don't know,
it's almost as though money were not that material.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
Trying to say that social constructs are real.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
I do think this is one of the great gifts
of anarchism, though, is that, like a lot of our
great anarchists are like also fiction writers, you know, like
Ursula kayle Wynn was predominantly a fiction writer. I think
this is like a thing that's really special at the
anarchist tradition is that we are so interwoven in with
fiction and with imagination, and along with exploring how big
(08:40):
themes show up in our actual lives, also exploring how
things could be different or how things could be worse.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
Yeah, I think that we kind of like missed a period.
When I first started writing fiction or like reading about
anarchist fiction, I was like, oh, where is it? And
I had trouble finding it a while ago, And that's
changed completely. And then yeah, if I look back historically,
there is so much fiction in the anarchist movement and
like the left and you know whatever more broadly, and
(09:10):
it just kind of it stopped being the thing that
people were focused on for a little while. And focus
on is the wrong word, right, I don't think we
should all like writing novels isn't the way the way
that we change the world, right, It's like one of
the ways that we influence the world and also survive
inside the trash compactor.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
But Margaret, you know how else we survive inside the
trash compactory influence the world?
Speaker 1 (09:37):
Is it the fact that our podcast is sponsored by
goods and services that people can rely on for every
single need they have, and we can rely on for
modest income.
Speaker 3 (09:48):
I do like a modest income, and I do love
the fact that I hate capitalism, with the strong exception
of anything that is plugged on this podcast.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
That's right, here's all the stuff we personally love that
we have absolutely no control over because it's just ads,
and we're back.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
I personally love to shower with that product that was
just advertised.
Speaker 3 (10:16):
Oh, especially the Internet mattresses. You love to shower with
those Internet mattresses. Well.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
The best part is that there's like a whole series
of categories of ads that we have completely banned, but
sometimes they slip in anyway. And the most famous example
of this is that a couple of years ago, school
Zone Media had some ads for joining the Washington State
Highway Patrol. Oh God, And then I was listening once
and I got an ad for become a jailer.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Oh jeez, I.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
Got an ad once for become a jailer in Ohio specifically.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
Yeah, I think I was driving through Ohio when that
happened to me. So if you're listening to Ohio, sorry, yeah,
don't do that as an exception anyway. So I want
to fuss at you about this book. I really liked
this book. I just read it for the second time
to a bunch of people. And there's a point near
(11:07):
the end of this book days is in job search,
jail and in job search jail days is like thinking through, well,
what if I go study moss but then work with
people to step outside the system. And you know, if
this was a neat simple narrative, this is what would happen. Right,
(11:29):
And I recognize that everyone has different ways of responding
to things, but that's what I would do, right, And
I think that there's this interesting thing. Right, you're presenting
this like very grand metaphor, and I think in the
classic science fiction way you're presenting this grand metaphor for
how you know all of our choices are illusory? Right,
I don't know how to pronounce that word, but it
(11:49):
turns out illusionary isn't a word, And I'm really annoyed
by that, because illusionary should be the word, because it
makes more sense than illusory illusory.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
I think illusory job as a pronounce like brings out illusions.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
Yeah, no, that makes more sense. I have this problem
where I read more than I talk, which is impressive
because I talk for a living. But you have these
illusionary choices. I'm going to try and make this fucking make.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
We're allowed to make worse. Every word was made by
a person, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
Whoa until the future and when they're all made by
robots and then we're shot if we use the wrong ones.
In this job search metaphor jail basically saying that, like
all choices that we make are totally illusionary, and you know,
illusion of freedom, right, and there is no outside. The
system is one of the main things in this metaphorical world, right,
(12:39):
But all three of us are currently alive, and all
three of us perceive ourselves as doing a complicated navigation
with a system to kind of live outside and to
try to open up the concept of an outside. So
in my mind, the metaphor of this book and the
(13:01):
actions that the character is choosing work within the context
of this metaphor and not within the real world that
it's representing. I don't have a question here. I'm just
trying to challenge you about this part.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
Yeah, so first referring really strictly to the story, and
then to get theoretical if I'm may after that. I
don't see the book as a strict metaphor. Obviously there's
a lot of metaphor in it. Like I also intend
it to be like a world that works, a world
that might be our world someday hopefully not, but might
be in addition to a reflection on the world that
(13:33):
we currently inhabit. I think Days makes the choice that
makes the most sense for them. Days is a little
bit crazy. Days is not like everyone else in terms
of how like emotionally and psychologically they relate with the
rest of the world. And instead of them being cast
as neurodivergent, which in my humble opinion is just like
a stupid, like literal synonym for abnormal, their craziness actually
(13:57):
gives them strengths that other people don't have. It also
deprives them of, like some of the resources of like
stronger human connection, where they could just soldier on, you know,
through the lies. They could soldier on through that prison
world and keep surviving. So dying or possibly dying suicide
for them is a choice. I mean there's also a
(14:19):
great sadness to it, like Days also like an habit's
like a very sad world. They can't really survive in
a prison once they realize that it's a prison. And
that's the reality for a lot of us, you know,
in this world, in the real world, like there is
always an outside, there are almost always other choices until
we end up in maximum security prison. In maximum security prison.
I mean, your choices are you know, basically eat or
(14:41):
or don't eat, like try to kill yourself or try
to survive because of like the extreme level of physical constraint.
But like you know, outside of prison, in in you know,
the rest of the world, a lot of us end
up taking our own lives as like a response to
like prison society, and that's what Days does. I did
(15:01):
bring in a couple other characters to reflect that there
were other choices, but yeah, I just I guess I
feel like that that was kind of where you know,
this character would end up based on who they are.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
No, it makes sense, and like it does make sense
as the end of the story. I just have this
like I think it was that reading the like, oh, well,
this other story would be like this, and I'm like, ah,
that's the one I would pick, right, But I also
do think it's kind of worth reflecting on. Not that
people can only write about their own experiences, but the
first time I met you, you handed me a book
(15:33):
of short stories that you had written in prison. I
can see how the experience of having like absolutely no
control might have influenced Like, I think a lot of
people would write this as like a raw thought experiment.
They're like, oh, what if I was in job search prison,
but you've been in well, I think it wasn't job
search prison that you were in, But I don't know,
(15:55):
how does this relate?
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Yeah, I was in real prison, different security levels from
maximum security to minimum security. That definitely relates. I mean,
that definitely marked an influenced to me as a person.
And at the same time, one of the most remarkable
things about it was when I went in, there was
nothing new about the experience. There was nothing that didn't
remind me about the psychiatric ward one time in high
(16:21):
school when I was hospitalized, or high school itself, or
all of these other institutions. Like, we really do live
in a prison society. That's not just a hyperbolic metaphor.
And so like I mean, being in like an actual
prison definitely like changes you and influences you. But also
it's not an other reality, it's not exceptional. It's so
(16:42):
similar to all the other institutions that make up our society.
And that kind of also brings us to this question
of like the outside of like you know, what's you know,
what's potentially outside of all of this, Like I think
a lot of radical academics will construct these really beautiful theories,
these little air tight theories almost you know, air tight,
(17:05):
like you know, certain buildings we might have just recently referred.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
To hermetically sealed.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
Yeah, these hermetically sealed theories exactly, thank you. And I
think one of the problems with that is, in a
very kind of unconsciously colonial Western way, they're confusing influence
with unfreedom. There's nowhere on the planet that is not
influenced by capitalism in the state, Like we can find
like you know, plastic trash at like the bottom of
(17:32):
the deepest trench in the Pacific Ocean. But influence is
not unfreedom. Influence is actually freedom. Freedom is not like
you know, I am an island, a sovereign island that
you know is unencroached by other islands. It's that we
are all influencing each other, but without like you know,
undue pressure or constraint from like one of the beings
or one of the forces within this overall network. And
(17:55):
so on the one hand, like it's really important to
recognize that the states in iaginary, the state's model, the
state's goal and their practice is to make sure that
there is never any outside, that there is never any
real independence or freedom from it, And at the same time,
the state always fails in that goal that there has
always been an outside. Sometimes the outside is right under
(18:18):
the state's nose. Sometimes it's in the borderlands. Sometimes it's
in the crossing of borders. Sometimes it's in the legible spaces.
Sometimes it's in huge rebellions, and sometimes it's in the
choice that a single prisoner has, with no other friends nearby,
with no other connections, to stop eating, to stop going
(18:38):
along with it. And choice is a really important part
of control. Domination works a lot better if they give
us choices, if they give us elections, But there are
always going to be more choices than the ones that
we're presented with.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
I like that. I think that that is the kind
of core of Harmonica, is the staring at the six
choices on the board, you know, being like, oh, you
can choose to wear the I don't know, Chay Gavara
shirt and become a like, you know, state sanctioned radical
or whatever. I don't know where I'm going with that.
(19:12):
Someone save me, you.
Speaker 3 (19:13):
Know what six choices this podcast offers you. So sorry,
This is like I was encountering this while we were
like going through the script of the book, I was like,
I need to put an ad pivot in here, but
this is really heavy, and I feel really good pivoting
to ads, but we all also need to get paid.
(19:35):
And I am deeply, deeply grateful in my gend deflection
for the sponsors. You make your own choices about whether
you listen to them.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
I want everyone to understand how deeply we think about
these ad pivots, and see the inside baseball of how
we think about these ad pivots and how they keep
us awake at night to make the perfect ad pivot.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
Yes, readers, listeners, if I make we just all reach
through the ether, cross the internet, the physical distance that
separates us, hold hands and genuflect to our sponsors.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
Thank you for that word, Hazel.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
Yeah, you welcome, And here they are ads and we're back.
I for one am glad we found our new God,
whatever the last sponsor was. I feel bad for all
the people who got the other advertisers, because they're not
(20:30):
our new God. It's only the last other people are
so doomed. Who Yeah, it's really just a lottery.
Speaker 3 (20:37):
At least they're not following any of the other many
products and services that aren't advertised on the show that
are shortly.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
About to become because they're not on the show, or
because we live in a fascist seal state and everything's
illegal now.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
Who knows. Let's talk about genre space instead. Okay, Yeah, Alan,
I want to chat about genre space. This is a
book to me that really reads like something from like
a classic Golden Age of sci fi novella. It's got
this like really sweeping metaphor that's not one to one.
(21:12):
It's aiming towards like bigger sociological themes. There's like whole
socratic asides about gender, and I guess like it's something
that I don't encounter very often anymore, And it was
really fun to read something that felt to me like,
what if we took kind of the tone and the
theme of something like Braving New World or nineteen eighty four,
(21:34):
something that like I really grew up in middle school on,
and then gave it a fresh like modern anarchist, anti
authoritarian twist. I don't know, I guess I'm curious, like,
you know, could you tell us a little bit more
about what was interesting to you about that tone and
like how you came to that as the tropes and
(21:57):
the frameworks that you were going to work with in.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
I love that you that you bring that out because
like for me, that was like maybe this might seem
odd like almost like unconscious or like invisible to me,
because it's just kind of like I described this earlier
as like a very feverish writing process, so like I
was like so in it that I could barely see it.
And really some of the big influential works for me
growing up, and you know, maybe also like in my twenties,
(22:22):
let's see, I think you mentioned Kurt Vonnegut, like you know,
that definitely figures also a lot of you know, the
major works of magical realism, whether it's like Gabotie America's
one hundred Years of Solitude or like Bulgako, Smaster and Margarita.
Speaker 3 (22:39):
I'll also say, like the Truman Show, Like this book
feels in a lot of ways like a reverse Truman Show.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
The sky is real, so the sky is fake?
Speaker 2 (22:50):
Yeah. Yeah. Getting even older, like before nineteen eighty four,
there's this lesser known novel by You've gain Zematin, we
early Soviet novel where you know, one of the people
to speak out around like this socialist revolution that was
quickly turning into a healthscape was a science fiction writer,
(23:11):
and he wrote something that was certainly a huge influence
on Orwell and is also you know, very much about
a surveillance society. I think a lot of those older
works were a much greater influence on me than a
lot of newer speculative fiction. Which is not to say
that the newer speculative fiction isn't there. I think there
(23:34):
have been some really amazing works coming out lately. There's
also been a lot of really mediocre stuff that gets huge, huge,
huge platforms. But the great stuff I think still really
has to generally like pass this filter, which is designed
more for the marketing of books. It's designed more for
(23:54):
the limitations of editors and agents that are looking at
you know, hundreds of manuscripts or pitches a day, and
so really like the way that, like if we differentiated
between a tool and a machine, we have more choice.
With a tool, we have more craft. With a tool,
we can use it to amplify our abilities, to amplify
(24:15):
our effect, whereas a machine we just become adjuncts to
the machine. We have to feed material into the machine
following parameters set by the machine. And I'd actually love
to hear more from you, Margaret about your experiences with
both like larger publishers and independent publishers. But yeah, I
think for me that's been I guess I've sort of
(24:35):
resisted some of the generic rules that have kind of
come up in the last like ten or twenty years
that are really set by the industry slash machine, and
I think I've kind of immersed myself more in, you know,
looking back to other works of speculative fiction from you know,
decades and decades ago.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
I do have a different take on the way that
publishing is working right now. I actually think that the
publishing world does not shy away from radical content. It
is that there's specific asks in genre around form. And
this has been true, I think forever, because genre fiction
literally by being genre fiction, has a certain commercial aspect
(25:14):
to it and a certain like popular fiction aspect to it,
which I actually think is one of its more interesting advantages, right.
I think it reaches more people than literature often, and
so yes, there is like kind of like lowest common
denominator stuff, and like the Marvel movies or things like
that right, But I actually think that the genre fiction
(25:36):
world right now is like alive with radicalism. And I
think that even at the major publishers, most of the
individual editors who are making these decisions are themselves very
radical or at least progressive, and tend to be progressive
who are open to radical ideas. This has been my experience.
I remember writing a short story about people using drones
(25:57):
to kill CEOs and how that was fine. Yeah, And
I remember being like, no one will ever touch this,
and Strange Horizons published it and did a good job
with it, and it was reasonably well received. But I
think that there are absolutely genre restrictions that change over time,
and you kind of have to play within them about
(26:21):
ways of describing characters and ways that plots work, and
like who the interiority is with and things like that
that are like larger social conventions of form. But I
do think that it is interesting and good to be
able to just also sometimes be like, but that's not
what this book is. I don't fucking care, you know.
And my other aside is it just to be really
(26:42):
nerdy about anarchist fiction. You mentioned Vonnegut, you mentioned Huxley
and or Well and Vonnegut was a pacifist anarchist. Very explicitly,
Huxley was an anarchist. Huxley specifically said in the introduction
to I Think Island, his utopian novel that I have
read since I as a teenager, he says, what the
world needs is decentralization of a krapotkinisk nature. And so
(27:07):
what he's saying is what the world is needed is anarchism,
you know, and referencing Peter Krepakin, And of course Orwell
is a very complicated figure, but was certainly willing to
throw grenades at fascists and get shot through the neck
for that process. And so I will forgive a lot
of decisions that he made based on that. And he
also specifically said, if I had gone to Spain to
(27:28):
fight again, I would have gone with the anarchists, if
I had known what I knew going into it, you know.
Instead he fought with a anti state Marxist militia, the
POM or whatever. More complicated than that. See the entire
first year of cool people who did cool stuff for
me talking about the Spanish Civil War and also my
episode about Orwell. But I think it's interesting that a
(27:50):
lot of the people that we will reference as these
sort of like grand figures of science fiction and like
speculative concepts, and even to throw one that I'm like
always sort of afraid to throw in clockwork Orange Man.
Anthony Burgess was also an anarchist, and you know, obviously
the movie of that is a very interesting, complicated edge
(28:11):
lord piece of fiction that is trying to explain a
social idea. And I am not really even trying to
say anything about that right now, but I think that's
interesting that it's coming from people who have this very
specific set of critiques where they believe in both socialism
and freedom, you know, where they believe we should take
(28:32):
care of each other but also like be in charge
of ourselves and that the state shouldn't be this massive
domineering force. And so it's like really interesting to me
that the Golden Age, I don't know if golden Age
is the right word, but all of these like classic
works of dystopia and stuff, we're written by people who
have this set of values.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
Yeah. Yeah. Publishing currently, they're kind of capturing and publishing
like a huge number of books of you know, new stories.
And on the one hand, you know they're doing this
in like a pretty harmful marketplace of ideas sort of
way where they're like algorithmically from the first day. And
so this is important for any you know, any new
authors out there, like get all of your friends, get
(29:10):
everyone you can to like help you boost your book
before it even you know, hits the shelves because oh yeah,
with pre orders, pre orders, you know, campaigns buzz like
you know whatever, because like algorithms do so much of
the decision making. Now about like a major publisher, they're
not just you know, publishing like a dozen books here,
they're publishing hundreds or thousands. And what they're doing is
(29:32):
they're scooping up intellectual property, right, so they get a
big cut. They may even be mediocre renditions of a
story they get scooped up by Hollywood and turned into
like a blockbuster film that there's like a whole bunch
of money in. And otherwise they're basically just from like
day one, up voting or downvoting a book. And so
they might be publishing like thousands of titles with the
(29:52):
hopes that they get one or two best sellers out
of it, and so all of those other books they
get published, this author feels like you they had this
amazing experience of like, hey, my stories gotten out there,
and really it's kind of buried in an intellectual property vault.
So on the one hand, you know, we have this
like really damaging marketplace of ideas. But on the other hand,
it does also really mean that the publishing industry is open,
(30:15):
just like you said, like a huge diversity of different
kinds of stories, to radical stories, to people who just
because of their gender or the color of their skin,
you know, might have been barred from like a chance
of publishing speculative fiction in the not so distant past.
Speaker 3 (30:32):
Yeah, I think that brings us into like a nice outro.
I wanted to end on just asking y'all what you've
been reading recently, anything you've been enjoying, anything you would recommend.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
Well, let's see, I have definitely been keeping up on
what Arcati Martin has been writing. That's the author of
A Memory called Empire. Also m Mieco Candon, Hillary Mantell's
historical fiction series A Mirror in the Lights. I'm currently
the last one in that trilogy. And then you know,
I always, you know, go back to some old classics. Lately,
(31:06):
I've been finding a lot of soulace in Calvin and Hobbes,
which is I think just some of the best metafiction
that's ever been written.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
One of the first zines that was ever handed when
I became an anarchist was like a big oversized zine
that was like eight and a half by eleven, stapled
in the corner, and it was Calvin and Hobbes as anarchist.
And they didn't change any of the words in any
of the Calvin and Hobbes comics. I remember that they
just like organized them by like critiques of society, critiques
(31:36):
of school, critiques of work.
Speaker 2 (31:38):
Yeah, yeah, so good.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
I finished reading a book that is coming out soon
by Carter Keen. It's called Morsel, and it's a horror
novella that's really good, and I don't know has good
like radical politics woven throughout a story about an ancient monster.
I really liked that, Hazel, you read anything good.
Speaker 3 (32:04):
I have mostly been reading things that are like cozy
and gentle, which is not quite the vibe of the
things that you both were plugging. But I've really enjoyed
A Song for the Wild Belt by Becky Chambers, which
is a novella about a tea monk who has a
like steampunk ass bicycle powered little tea cart that they
(32:27):
ride around, and then they meet this robot who like
helps them go on a journey, and it's it's very sweet.
It's about burnout and reconnecting with nature and regrowing part
of your soul. I also really enjoyed A Witch's Guide
to Magical Innkeeping by sangu Mandana, which is about a
witch who runs an inn and is trying to get
(32:48):
her magic back and has a lot about disability, grief
and also burnout and found family and what magic really is.
So that I've been enjoying. If you want something a
little bit more edgy, I did also recently reread The
Word for World as Forest by Ursula Kulin, which is
a really good novella about It's like Ursula's perspectives on
(33:12):
kind of the Vietnam War and also generally on colonialism
and exploitation. Yeah, it's good. It's violent in a cathartic way.
It's revolt. So what Star Wars ripped off it is
what Star Wars ripped off Alatar.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
Well, so Star Wars rips it off because and Or
is the name of the like city that the creatures
that are totally not Ewoks are based out of.
Speaker 3 (33:39):
They also are human, like it's important that they are.
They are kind of described as like short teddy bird people,
but they are genetically also human.
Speaker 1 (33:48):
Yeah, I think that just the like, I don't know.
As soon as I realized that their town was called
and Or, I was like, this is just literally what
the Ewoks are based off. This is just the word
for worlds. Forest is my favorite Star Wars film as
a kid. Anyway, anyone got anything to plug here at Alan?
You got anything you've been writing?
Speaker 2 (34:09):
Well? Actually so, I, like I said at the beginning,
I've been writing fiction forever. I have just manuscripts and
manuscripts that are waiting publication, and I might be getting
some good news. There's a really strong possibility that in
the next year or two you will see on the
shelves at the independent bookstore near you and certainly not Amazon,
the first in a trilogy called Mad Hatter. So yeah,
(34:31):
we're just waiting for an official announcement, but this is
a pre official announcement that yeah, my next sci fi book,
Mad Hatter, should be getting published.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
Okay, all right, Well that's it for Cool Zone Media
Book Club this week. And next week we'll bring you
more stories.
Speaker 3 (34:51):
Yay.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
Thanks, thanks y'all,
Host
Margaret Killjoy
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