April 14, 2024 • 35 mins
Margaret reads Gare a classic sci-fi tale about the divine possibility of computers.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Whole Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
I think we should drop the book club chanting because
it's a sort of funny bit, but can only go
so far.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
But what's your plans to replace the chanting?
Speaker 2 (00:17):
I think you should start by chanting, and then I'll
chastise you for how that doesn't work and why are
you doing that.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
I'm against chanting in general, just because I find it
kind of uptoce and conformist and a whole bitch of
other bullshit reasons, mostly because I don't like talking loudly.
There's the real reason I don't like chanting. It just
takes me uncomfortable.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Okay, well let's do it the opposite. I will start
chanting and you will refuse to join in, and then
chastise me. How does that sound?
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Or we could have already started it with my rant
about why I don't like chanting.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Well, then, I guess you're listening to cool Zone Media
book Club Club, the podcast in which Gere and Margaret
discuss how to start podcasts, podcasts, hard Cast, hardener Cast.
That's my new country Western cool Ze Media book Club
is a weekly book club where I read you stories,
(01:08):
and in this case, you will be played by gear
Hi Gre.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Hi, Hello, audience, surrogate.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
Okay, so half the book club is like new, cool,
exciting stories, and then the other half is that I'm like,
I want y'all to know some classics of science fiction
and where everything comes from. And this is one of
those episodes. This episode you'll probably guessed because the name
in the title, Arthur C. Clark, is a name y'all
(01:40):
might have heard of, Like Garre, have you heard of
Arthur C.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Clark? I have heard of Arthur C. Clark.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Yeah, that's that's enough. He's one of those people where
if you dig in too much, you start being like,
do I actually want to read this guy?
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Well? I mean, isn't that like all like male authors
more or less?
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Yeah, Like, don't type in Arthur C. Clark controversy into Google.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Okay, I will not to do that.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
There's some allegations anyway. He is one of the classic
science fiction writers. He's from England. He wrote the screenplay
for a nineteen sixty eight two thousand and one space Odyssey.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
Oh this guy Okay. Yeah, all of the bad stuff
in two thousand and one comes from him, and all
the cool stuff comes from Kubrick. Oh interesting, Based on
my diving into the development of that story. But that's
just my personal opinion. That's up to interpretation. Many people
disagree with me.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Well, I love two thousand and one, I need to
rewatch it. The idea that in space there are things
that just don't conform with our idea of reality that
will like break our brains. Is that a him or
is that a Kubrick?
Speaker 1 (02:43):
That's mostly Kubrick because him and Kubrick works together to
write the screenplay, and then Arthur C. Clerk wrote the
book based on the screenplay from him and Kubrick, so
it wasn't actually his original idea. Most people have that reversed.
People think that the movie's an adaptation of Arthur C.
Clerk's book, but it's not. The book itself is an
adaptation of a story that mostly came from Kubrick. Okay,
(03:06):
So a lot of like the more like Nietzschean or
like existential stuff in two thousand and one mostly comes
from Kubrick. Okay, And if you read any of the
sequels to two thousand and one, you can very clearly
see what type of stuff came from Arthur C. Clark.
It's just an interesting experiment.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
So that's Actually, that's really interesting to me because of
the story that we're about to read.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
I'd excited to hear it.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
So I first ran across this story when I was
probably a young teen. There's this book called the Science
Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume one, and it was put
together by the Science Fiction Writers of America the SFWA,
which is kind of the closest thing that we have
to a union as speculative fiction writers in the US.
I was about to say, I'm a member of SFWA,
(03:49):
but I don't know if I'm up on my I
don't know if I renewed my membership. I believe in
the SFWA and have been a member in the past,
and will probably be a member now that I've shamed
myself into remembering to send in my you know, yearly
fee or whatever.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
But they're the group that's me and the IWW, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
They're the group that is primarily the reason that speculative
fiction short fiction is actually something that you can make
a little bit of money at compared to other things
other types of writing. That's cool because they declare what
counts as pro rates and they raise it all the
time to match inflation, and so outside of specula fiction,
(04:27):
you have all these places paying like one cent a word,
you know, and then within science fiction or speculative fiction.
More broadly, most magazines want to be professional magazines, and
so they therefore have to pay the current professional rate,
which I don't remember what is, because I haven't submitted
(04:49):
short fiction to magazines in a while. My little brag
about how they come to me. No, I've just been
busy writing other stuff.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
Yeah, you're busy writing a lot of devellos from my
a lot.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Of novellas and now a book. But I'll plug that
at the end. So I found this book on my
dad's shelf and I read it, and there's two stories
I remember from it, And the other one was a
man invents a machine to be able to hear in
the frequencies that plants communicate, and then he like cuts
a tree and then can never live with himself again
(05:22):
and realizes that, like everything alive, can feel pain, and
he just suffers. He just absolutely suffers with that realization.
How there's a couple other stories from there. There's another
one who a guy invents a thing where he doesn't
have to sleep, and then he a lot of stuff
that Futurama has ripped off of comes from this book.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
That makes sense.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
But this story in particular stuck with me as a kid.
And it's called the Nine Billion Names of God, and
it's about the nine billion Names of God, and I'm
going to read it. This story was originally published in
nineteen fifty three or nineteen fifty four, so for understanding
of when they're talking about computers, that's what they're talking about.
(06:02):
This story absolutely plays with orientalist tropes, and not in
a self conscious way. I want to point that out,
and I will chalk that up to the style at
the time. But you don't need to.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
Well, you could also very easily blame the Theosophists, as
you can for many many things, for introducing this style
of like Tibetan orientalism. Just blame the theosophists. It's easy,
it's free, it's cheap, it's fun. Just blame them. They
can take the heat. They've taken the heat for decades.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
It's fine, okay. So with that disclaimer. The Nine Billion
Names of God by Arthur C. Clark. This is a
slightly unusual quest, said doctor Wagner, with what he had
hoped was commendable restraint. As far as I know, it's
the first time anyone's been asked to supply a Tibetan
(06:57):
monastery with an automatic sequence computer. I don't wish to
be inquisitive, but I should hardly have thought that your
establishment had much use for such a machine. Could you
explain just what you intend to do with it, gladly,
replied the Lama, readjusting his silk robes and carefully putting
away the slide rule he had been using for currency conversions.
(07:18):
Your Mark five computer can carry out any routine mathematical
operation involving up to ten digits. However, for our work,
we are interested in letters, not numbers. As we wish
you to modify the output circuits, the machine will be
printing words, not columns of figures. I don't quite understand.
This is a project on which we have been working
for the last three centuries since the Lamissary was founded.
(07:41):
In fact, it is somewhat alien to your way of thought,
so I hope you will listen with an open mind
while I explain it naturally well. In order to run
this podcast, we need to interject classic and important stories
with advertisements for ads and services, said Margaret. The host,
(08:02):
here's the mess, and we're back. It is really quite simple.
(08:23):
We have been compiling a list which shall contain all
the possible names of God. I beg your pardon. We
have reason to believe, continued the Lama in imperturbably. That's
totally how you pronounced that that all such names can
be written with not more than nine letters in an
alphabet we have devised, and you have been doing this
(08:44):
for three centuries. Yes, we expected it would take us
about fifteen thousand years to complete the task. Oh, doctor
Wagner looked a little dazed. Now, I see why you
wanted to hire one of our machines. But exactly what
is the purpose of this project? Lama hesitated for a
fraction of a second, and Wagner wondered if he had
offended him. If so, there was no trace of annoyance
(09:06):
in the reply. Call it ritual if you like, but
it's a fundamental part of our belief. All the many
names of the Supreme Being God, Jehovah, Allah, and so
on are only man made labels. There is a philosophical
problem with some difficult to hear, which I do not
propose to discuss. But somewhere among all the possible combinations
(09:26):
of letters that can occur are what one may call
the real names of God. By systematic permutation of letters.
We have been trying to list them all. I see,
so you've been starting at A and working to zzzzzzz exactly.
Though we use a special alphabet of our own. Modifying
(09:48):
the electromatic typewriters to deal with this is of course trivial.
A rather more interesting problem is that of devising suitable
circuits to eliminate ridiculous combinations. For example, no oh letter
must occur more than three times in succession three. Surely
you mean two three is correct. I'm afraid it would
take too long to explain why, even if you understood
(10:10):
our language. I'm sure it would, said Wagner hastily. Go on. Luckily,
it will be a simple matter to adapt your automatic
sequence computer for this work, since once it has been
programmed properly, it will permute each letter in turn and
print the result. What would have taken us fifteen thousand years,
it will be able to do in a hundred days.
(10:32):
Doctor Wagner was scarcely conscious of the faint sounds from
the Manhattan streets far below. He was in a different world,
a whirl of natural, not man made mountains high up
in their remote areas. These monks had been patiently at work,
generation after generation, compiling their lists of meaningless words. Was
there any limits to the follies of mankind? Still? He
must give no hint to his inner thoughts. The customer
(10:54):
was always right. There's no doubt, replied the doctor, that
we can modify the mark five to print lists of
this nature. I'm much more worried about the problem of
installation and maintenance. Getting out to Tibet in these days
is not going to be easy. We can arrange that
the components are small enough to travel by air. That
is one reason why we chose your machine. If you
(11:15):
can get them to India, we will provide transport from there.
And you want to hire two of our engineers, Yes,
for the three months that the project should occupy. I've
no doubt that personnel can manage that. Doctor Wagner scribbled
a note on his desk pad. There are just two
other points. Before he could finish the sentence, the lama
had produced a small slip of paper. This is my
(11:38):
certified credit balance at the Asiatic Bank. Thank you. It
appears to be adequate. The second matter is so trivial
that I hesitate to mention it. But it's surprising how
often the obvious gets overlooked. What source of electrical energy
do you have? You a diesel generator providing fifty kilowotts
at one hundred and ten volts. It was installed about
(11:58):
five years ago and is quite reliable. It's made life
at the lamissary much more comfortable. But of course it
was really installed to provide power for the motors driving
the prayer wheels. Of course, echoed doctor Wagner. I should
have thought of that. The view from the parapet was verticenuous,
but in time, one gets used to anything. After three months,
(12:21):
George Hanley was not impressed by the two thousand foot
swoop into the Abyss or the remote checkerboard of fields
in the valley below. He was leaning against the wind
smooth stones and staring morosely at the distant mountains whose
names he had never bothered to discover. This thought, George
was the craziest thing that had ever happened to him.
(12:42):
Project Shangri La, some went back at the labs had
christened it. For weeks now the mark five had been
churning out acres of sheets covered with gibberish patiently inexorably.
The computer had been re arranging letters in all their
possible combinations, exhausting each clasp before going on to the next.
As the sheets had emerged from the electromatic typewriters, the
(13:05):
monks had carefully cut them up and pasted them into
enormous books. In another week, Heaven be praised, they would
have finished just what obscure calculations had convinced the monks
that they needn't bother to go on to words of ten,
twenty or one hundred letters. George didn't know. One of
his recurring nightmares was that there would be some change
(13:26):
of plan and that the hi Lama, whom they naturally
called Sam Jaffe, although he didn't look a bit like him.
Reader's note, I had to look that up. That's an
actor who people would have recognized in the fifties, would
suddenly announced that the project would be extended to approximately
eighty twenty sixty. They were quite capable of it. George
(13:46):
heard the heavy wooden door slam in the wind as
Chuck came out onto the parapet beside him. As usual,
Chuck was smoking one of the cigars that made him
so popular with the monks, who it seemed, were quite
willing to embrace all the minor and most of them
the major pleasures of life. That was one thing in
their favor. They might be crazy, but they weren't blue
noses those frequent trips they took down to the village,
(14:08):
for instance. Listen, George said Chuck urgently, I've learned something
that means trouble. What's wrong? Isn't the machine behaving? That
was the worst contingency George could imagine. It might delay
his return, and nothing could be more horrible the way
he felt. Now, even the sight of a TV commercial
would seem like manna from heaven. At least it would
(14:31):
be some link with home. And who would I be
to not take that opportunity to offer you this the
modern version of the TV commercial, the podcast commercial, and
(14:57):
we're back. No, oh, it's nothing like that. Chuck settled
himself on the parapet, which was unusual because normally he
was scared of the drop. I've just found what all
this is about? What do you mean? I thought we knew, sure,
we know what the monks are trying to do. But
we didn't know why. It's the craziest thing. Tell me
(15:18):
something new, growled George. But old Sam's come clean with me.
You know the way he drops in every afternoon just
to watch the sheet rolls out. Well, this time he
seemed rather excited, or at least as near as he'll
ever get to it. When I told him that we
were on the last cycle, he asked me, in that
cute English accent of his, if i'd ever wondered what
(15:38):
they were trying to do. I said sure, and he
told me, go on, I'll buy it. Well, they believe
that when they've listed all his names and they reckon
they're about nine billion of them, God's purpose will be achieved.
The human race will have finished what it was created
to do, and there won't be any point in carrying on. Indeed,
(16:02):
the very idea is something like blasphemy. Then what do
they expect us to do? Commit suicide? There's no need
for that. When the list completed, God steps in and
simply winds things up. Bingo, Oh, I get it. When
we finish our job, it'll be the end of the world.
Chuck gave a nervous little laugh. That's just what I
(16:22):
said to Sam, and do you know what happened? He
looked at me in a very queer way, like I'd
been stupid in class, and said, it's nothing as trivial
as that. George thought this over for a moment. That's
what I call taking the wide view, he said, presently,
But what do you suppose we should do about it?
I don't see it makes the slightest difference to us.
(16:44):
After all, we already knew they were crazy. Yes, but
don't you see what may happen when the list's complete
and the last Trump doesn't blow or whatever it is
they expect, We may get the blame. It's our machine
they've been using. I don't like the situation one little bit,
I see, said George slowly. You've got a point there.
(17:08):
But this sort of thing's happened before, you know. When
I was a kid down in Louisiana, we had a
crackpot preacher who once said the world was going to
end next Sunday. Hundreds of people believed him, even sold
their homes. Yet when nothing happened, they didn't turn nasty
as you'd expect. They just decided that he'd made a
mistake in his calculations and went right on believing. I
guess some of them still do well. This isn't Louisiana,
(17:29):
in case you hadn't noticed, there are just two of
us and hundreds of these monks. I like them, and
I'll be sorry for old Sam when his life work
backfires on him. But all the same, I wish I
was somewhere else. I've been wishing that for weeks. But
there's nothing we can do until the contract's finished and
the transport arrives to fly us out. Of course, said
(17:50):
Chuck thoughtfully. We could always try a bit of sabotage,
like how we could That would make things worse, not
the way I meant look at it. Like this, the
machine will finish its run four days from now on
the present twenty four hours a day basis. The transport
calls in in a week. Okay, then all we need
to do is find something that needs replacing during one
(18:12):
of the overhaul periods, something that'll hold up the work
for a couple of days. We'll fix it, of course,
but not too quickly. If we time matters properly, we
can be down at the airfield when the last name
pops out of the register. They won't be able to
catch us. Then I don't like it, said George. It
will be the first time I ever walked out on
a job. Besides, it would make them suspicious. No, I'll
(18:36):
sit tight and see what comes. I still don't like it,
he said seven days later, as the tough little mountain
ponies carried them down the winding road. And don't you
think I'm running away, because I'm afraid. I'm just sorry
for those poor old guys up there, and I don't
want to be around when they find out what suckers
they've been. Wonder how Sam will take it. It's funny,
(18:57):
replied Chuck. But when I said goodbye, I got the
idea that he knew we were walking out on him,
and that he didn't care because he knew the machine
was running smoothly and that the job would soon be finished.
After that, well, of course, for him, there just isn't
any after that. George turned in his saddle and stared
back up the mountain road. This was the last place
(19:19):
from which one could get a clear view of the lamissary.
The squat angular buildings were silhouetted against the after glow
of the sunset. Here and there lights gleamed like portholes
in the side of an ocean liner electric lights, of course,
sharing the same circuit as the Mark five. How much
longer would they share, it, wondered George. Would the monks
smash up the computer and their rage and disappointment, or
(19:42):
would they just sit down quietly and begin their calculations
all over again. He knew exactly what was happening up
on the mountain at this very moment. The High Lama
and his assistants would be sitting in their silk robes,
inspecting the sheets as the junior monks carried them away
from the typewriters and pasted them into their great volumes.
No one would be saying anything. The only sound would
(20:03):
be the incessant patter the never ending rain storm of
the keys hitting the paper. For the Mark five itself
was utterly silent as it flashed through its thousands of calculations.
A second three months of this, thought George, was enough
to start anyone climbing up the wall. There she is, called, Chuck,
pointing down into the valley. Ain't she beautiful? She certainly was,
(20:25):
thought George. The battered old Dasey three lay at the
end of the runway like a tiny silver cross. In
two hours she would be bearing them away to freedom insanity.
It was a thought worth savoring, Like a final liqueur.
George let it roll around in his mind as the
pony trudged patiently down the slope. The swift night of
the high Himalayas was now almost upon them. Fortunately, the
(20:49):
road was very good, as roads went in that region,
and they were both carrying torches. There was not the
slightest danger, only a certain discomfort from the bitter cold.
The sky overhead was perfectly clear and a blaze with familiar,
friendly stars. At least there would be no risk, thought
George of the pilot being unable to take off because
(21:10):
of weather conditions. That had been his only remaining worry.
He began to sing, but gave it up after a while.
This vast arena of mountains gleaming like whitely hooded ghosts
on every side did not encourage such ebuliance. Presently, George
glanced at his watch. Should be there in an hour,
he called back over his shoulder to Chuck. Then he added,
(21:32):
in an afterthought, wonder if the computers finished its run.
It was due about now. Chuck didn't reply, so George
swung round in his saddle. He could just see Chuck's face.
A white oval turned toward the sky, look whispered Chuck,
and George lifted his eyes to heaven. There is always
(21:54):
a last time for everything. Overhead, without any fuss, the
stars were going out. That's the story. Apparently at some
point the Dali Lama wrote Arthur C. Clark instead. I
read your story and found it very amusing, So that's fun. Yeah,
(22:16):
it got a pass from the people it was weirdly appropriating.
I guess. Yeah, it's overall self contained. But I have
a few thoughts about it. One that I didn't get
into this last reading. It's really funny to me that
the last trump is used instead of the last trumpet,
like as the way of signaling the end of the world.
And apparently that would be a way that you would
have said that in the fifties, and I just find
(22:38):
that very amusing based on the current state of the
political world or whatever.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
Uh huh. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
The actual thing that I've been thinking about the reason
that I wanted to do this episode is that I
just did a piece on cool people did cool stuff
about Ada Lovelace and you know, early software and mechanical
computers and things like that, right, Yeah, and she talked
very explicit about how computers are not capable and would
never be capable of creating things but instead like responding
(23:09):
to the inputs and things like that. It's gone on
to be like I don't have it in front of me,
but like Ada's objection or something was coined by the
gay British man who defeated the Nazis the computer guy
who invented computing.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
Oh that guy, yeah, the guy that was killed for
being gay essentially.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
Yeah, he was like chemically castrated to the machine guy. Yeah,
that guy that we know everything about except the name
of because we're professionals exactly.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
So half of the listeners at least are now shouting
this man's name and frustration at us.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
You know. What the cool thing is, though, is that
this is a podcast and I cannot hear them.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
I won't hear how for many Yeah, people is yelling
his name at me at the moment. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
So that man who we're gonna call George, he wrote
Objection and it was about how computers do with it
what you have them do, you know, rather than being
like themselves a creative force. Okay, so this is the
wing nuttiest thing. This is why I wanted you to
be the guest for this. I've been thinking a lot
about how AI is like running through all possibilities of
(24:20):
creative things. Yeah, like systematically rather than like creatively. It's
just like what if all possible images are made? And
so it's kind of like I think, I don't know
if I really think this, but I've been thinking about it.
It's like running us towards the death of culture because
everything will have been like there's sort of an infinite
(24:42):
possibility of combinations of words that there's an infinite creative
output that could be made. But AI is like trying
to run through them as fast as possible. And we've
been kind of even before AI kind of doing that
as like culture speeds up. I don't know where I'm
going with that, but I just want to run that past.
As relates to this story.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
Yeah, now that I've heard the story, I can also
see the large number of influences it's had throughout culture,
like using computers to like pinpoint God. It is also
like weirdly like lovecrafting and story as well. Yeah, like
initiating an apocalypse by like naming by coming up with
all of the utterances of god.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Oh, you're totally right, and this is years after Lovecraft,
so yeah, oh interesting, Okay.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
I also just really like the turn to phrase the
stars are going out. It's like someone's like flicking off
the lights. I find that to be funn.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
It's one of the best lines in literature overhead without
any fuss. The stars were going out.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
Yeah, very good.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
And like how it changes on a dime this Like
you know earlier I said that it was like not
self consciously orientalist. Your two computer programmers consider themselves clearly
enlightened compared to these backwards people, even though all they
want to do is get back to TV. And there's
even kind of this thing. I have a feeling that
the author didn't specifically intend this, but I like reading
(26:02):
this kind of thing into it. The thing that is
going to carry them away from this backwards place is
a silver cross. They refer to the plane as a
silver cross, and we assume we know better, but we don't.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
Yeah, like human's own hubris is kind of I guess
a recurring trend in work kind of like this, And
I always have the impulse to comparison like this to
the other biggest case of Tibetan orientalism in fantasy and
science fiction, which would be Twin Peaks. We're also I
think one of the main cruxes is one of the
(26:37):
main character's own hubris and his inability to leave well
enough load.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
So now you're going to destroy all of my goth cred.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
No, Margaret, are you serious?
Speaker 2 (26:48):
I have only seen like an episode.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
Of Takes God.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
No, I have seen so many movies by that man,
Jesus fucking Christ, and I have no idea why I
haven't seen Twin Peaks, And now I have lost thirty
percent of my friends.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
I'm showing Twin Peaks currently to like five different people.
I've met so many different points in this series right
now because I'm watching it with so many other people
to give them the experience. I have had my apartment
turned into a Twin Peaks set.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
Oh yeah, no, and I'm very It's been part of
like the culture I've been in for a very long time. Yeah,
I think that's what it is. Is that I hit
this point where I was, like, I sat down to
watch it once Wait of No Return. It didn't immediately
catch me, but yeah, I hit the point of no
return where I was like too embarrassed to admit it.
So don't tell anyone, Garet, it's just between you and I.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
I won't. This is a secret. Yeah, I'm yeah. I
will not spread this around. We don't want to damage
your rent. No, no, we can keep this contained.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
Yeah, irreversible damage.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
I would recommend giving it a watch.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
I will.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
It has a lot of good Tibetan stuff, a lot
of good like exontential stuff, not in terms of computers,
but otherwise a lot of thematic similarities to this story.
And I would not be surprised if the co writer
Mark Frost was intimately familiar, because he pulls from a
lot of science fiction mythological stuff. In fact, the ending
(28:11):
of this story essentially happens at kind of multiple points
in Twin Peaks. It's quite good. It's quite good.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
I think I wouldn't have been ready for it when
I first sat down to watch it, because I needed
my weirdness to be overtly gothic and weird, like it
needed to be like absolutely in a castle instead of
like in the mundane world, which is the beauty of
that guy Twin Peaks.
Speaker 1 (28:35):
Guy Lynch.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
Lynch is that he creates that sense within the every
day you know.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
Yes, yes, And there's a few specific moments, especially in
Firewalk with Me and Season three that are like very
like American Gothic, like extremely very condensed. But the rest
of it, there's actually an interesting juxtaposition between like American
Gothic versus like Pacific Northwest New Weird, which are like
two sister genres, but they're not always the same thing. Yeah,
(29:04):
and Twin Peaks likes to kind of mix between the two,
and for the original series probably more often ends up
being in like P and W New Weird as opposed
to some of the American Gothics sensibilities it kind of
grows into. There's certainly some science fiction elements similar to
kind of how this story kind of blends that sort
of like orientalism with science fiction elements right well, And
(29:27):
actually this also ties in a lot if we're talking
about Arthur C. Clark in two thousand and one, there's also
a lot of carryover from two thousand and one into
Twin Peaks as well. A lot of that does come
from Kubrick, because Kubrick and Lynch were contemporaries, but some
that certainly would also stem from Arthur C. Clark's stuff.
But yeah, the ending of season two is very similar
(29:47):
in some ways to one part of the ending of
two thousand and one. There's a part that's very similar
to the Stargate sequence. There's a decent amount of crossover.
You can definitely read in some Arthur C. Clark undertones
across some of the more cosmic elements of Twin Peaks.
Speaker 2 (30:04):
Well, that's what's so interesting about is overall Arthur C.
Clark's reputation as a science fiction author.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
He's like a scientific realist in a lot of cases.
Speaker 2 (30:11):
Exactly, he's specifically a scientific realist, and so this sort
of mystical element, Like people talk about this story as
being like outside of his traditional wheelhouse. So that was why,
you know, at the beginning, you were like, oh, Arthur
C. Clark wrote the science e boring bits of two thousand works,
(30:31):
and Kubrick did the like, but what if it's like
drugs and space part And that's what makes this sort
of interesting to me is a kind of a gate
into that there is like a certain level where if
you write about space and it's not fundamentally weird, you're
doing it wrong. Yeah, totally, and like it's kind of
part of the betrayal of Star Wars and shit, absolutely
(30:55):
I like Star Wars, but I mean space.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
Is like it's literally right on the outside. You have
to incorporate us certain amount of outsideness into it or
else it won't feel correct. And I mean that goes
all the way back to Lovecraft, and you can can
incorporate that into like the cciu's cultural theoristic stuff in
terms of how they view science fiction. But no, it
has to have an element of outsideness, and that's something
I think this story gets to really well, especially you
(31:19):
have on almost like a caricter of Arthur C. Clark
within the scientists being like, Oh, they're gonna be so
bad with this mystical mumbo jumbo computer stuff doesn't end
up working, and then it still does, so there's that
little fun part and then it kind of introduces that
element of outsideness, which otherwise I think the story would
not be good at all if it just if.
Speaker 2 (31:38):
It doesn't exactly, if it just ended.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
With the thing not working, then it was like an
examination of like the failures to use technology to like
incorporate some kind of spiritual lightment like that does not
sound like a very interesting short story.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
No, it would have not passed down through the generations
to you listeners today.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
No, No, yeah, well, and then continuing on to two
thousand and one and then even twin peaks, like having
that element about sadness is what has made these things
like cultural touchstones for so long, and the emphasis on
not trying to explain everything with a scientific rationalization gives
these things a sense of like immortal intrigue that he
(32:14):
keeps lingering on our mind for so long.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
When it's like I went and saw totality last week,
you know, same as a lot of people, and as
the second time I got to see it, and the
first time I saw it, I was like, oh, I
have now looked into the eye of God. I know
what's happening. I know that the moon went in front
of the sun right like, but it doesn't make it not.
I am now looking at the thing that controls all
(32:37):
life on earth that we can't look at. You know,
if like you were just described the sun being like, oh,
there's this thing in the sky that you can't make
eye contact with or you'll it'll fuck you up.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
Yeah it's God, you know, Yeah, like humans have known
this is god for like a long time. Almost all
of our gods are sun gods, Like we're very aware.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
Yeah, and so I went and saw a star go out,
and you know, obviously I knew it was gonna come back,
and like freaky though, I really like the fact that
knowing the science doesn't take away its power. It's interest.
Speaker 1 (33:12):
It's awe.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
Yeah, all is the right.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
Word quite literally, like it is like it is like
a divine awe.
Speaker 2 (33:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
No, it is great to watch when everything goes dark
at three pm in the afternoon and shadows start creating
little cameras and your animals go crazy. Yes, they are
confused for what's happening. It is like a very divine experience.
Speaker 2 (33:33):
Anyway, that's gonna do it for us Here at Cool
Zone Media book Club. If you enjoyed this podcast on
the Cool People Did Cool Stuff Feed, you should check
out that it could happen here feed that Gere is
a guest of Gary. You just did a good What's
it project seventy million Agenda forty seven Agenda forty seven,
(33:54):
which is the secondary highest number of synchronicity after twenty three,
So watch out for that, folks. And if you're listening
to something that can happen here. You can check me
out on Cool People Did Cool Stuff. I talk about
history and I also have a book that will be
going into pre order soon. It is my first novel.
(34:15):
I've been as mentioned earlier, I've written an awful lot
of novellas, including very long novellas that whatever all categories
or social categorization. I have decided that this is my
first novel in the country. It goes as a long novella.
And this book is called The Sapling Cage and it
comes out on September twenty fourth from the Feminist Press
(34:36):
and you can check it out closer to them if
you pre order it. See y'all next week, Alan Turing.
Speaker 1 (35:00):
It Could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
find sources for It Could Happen here, updated monthly at
coolzonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.
Whole Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
I think we should drop the book club chanting because
it's a sort of funny bit, but can only go
so far.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
But what's your plans to replace the chanting?
Speaker 2 (00:17):
I think you should start by chanting, and then I'll
chastise you for how that doesn't work and why are
you doing that.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
I'm against chanting in general, just because I find it
kind of uptoce and conformist and a whole bitch of
other bullshit reasons, mostly because I don't like talking loudly.
There's the real reason I don't like chanting. It just
takes me uncomfortable.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Okay, well let's do it the opposite. I will start
chanting and you will refuse to join in, and then
chastise me. How does that sound?
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Or we could have already started it with my rant
about why I don't like chanting.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Well, then, I guess you're listening to cool Zone Media
book Club Club, the podcast in which Gere and Margaret
discuss how to start podcasts, podcasts, hard Cast, hardener Cast.
That's my new country Western cool Ze Media book Club
is a weekly book club where I read you stories,
(01:08):
and in this case, you will be played by gear
Hi Gre.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Hi, Hello, audience, surrogate.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
Okay, so half the book club is like new, cool,
exciting stories, and then the other half is that I'm like,
I want y'all to know some classics of science fiction
and where everything comes from. And this is one of
those episodes. This episode you'll probably guessed because the name
in the title, Arthur C. Clark, is a name y'all
(01:40):
might have heard of, Like Garre, have you heard of
Arthur C.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Clark? I have heard of Arthur C. Clark.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Yeah, that's that's enough. He's one of those people where
if you dig in too much, you start being like,
do I actually want to read this guy?
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Well? I mean, isn't that like all like male authors
more or less?
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Yeah, Like, don't type in Arthur C. Clark controversy into Google.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Okay, I will not to do that.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
There's some allegations anyway. He is one of the classic
science fiction writers. He's from England. He wrote the screenplay
for a nineteen sixty eight two thousand and one space Odyssey.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
Oh this guy Okay. Yeah, all of the bad stuff
in two thousand and one comes from him, and all
the cool stuff comes from Kubrick. Oh interesting, Based on
my diving into the development of that story. But that's
just my personal opinion. That's up to interpretation. Many people
disagree with me.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Well, I love two thousand and one, I need to
rewatch it. The idea that in space there are things
that just don't conform with our idea of reality that
will like break our brains. Is that a him or
is that a Kubrick?
Speaker 1 (02:43):
That's mostly Kubrick because him and Kubrick works together to
write the screenplay, and then Arthur C. Clerk wrote the
book based on the screenplay from him and Kubrick, so
it wasn't actually his original idea. Most people have that reversed.
People think that the movie's an adaptation of Arthur C.
Clerk's book, but it's not. The book itself is an
adaptation of a story that mostly came from Kubrick. Okay,
(03:06):
So a lot of like the more like Nietzschean or
like existential stuff in two thousand and one mostly comes
from Kubrick. Okay, And if you read any of the
sequels to two thousand and one, you can very clearly
see what type of stuff came from Arthur C. Clark.
It's just an interesting experiment.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
So that's Actually, that's really interesting to me because of
the story that we're about to read.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
I'd excited to hear it.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
So I first ran across this story when I was
probably a young teen. There's this book called the Science
Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume one, and it was put
together by the Science Fiction Writers of America the SFWA,
which is kind of the closest thing that we have
to a union as speculative fiction writers in the US.
I was about to say, I'm a member of SFWA,
(03:49):
but I don't know if I'm up on my I
don't know if I renewed my membership. I believe in
the SFWA and have been a member in the past,
and will probably be a member now that I've shamed
myself into remembering to send in my you know, yearly
fee or whatever.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
But they're the group that's me and the IWW, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
They're the group that is primarily the reason that speculative
fiction short fiction is actually something that you can make
a little bit of money at compared to other things
other types of writing. That's cool because they declare what
counts as pro rates and they raise it all the
time to match inflation, and so outside of specula fiction,
(04:27):
you have all these places paying like one cent a word,
you know, and then within science fiction or speculative fiction.
More broadly, most magazines want to be professional magazines, and
so they therefore have to pay the current professional rate,
which I don't remember what is, because I haven't submitted
(04:49):
short fiction to magazines in a while. My little brag
about how they come to me. No, I've just been
busy writing other stuff.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
Yeah, you're busy writing a lot of devellos from my
a lot.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Of novellas and now a book. But I'll plug that
at the end. So I found this book on my
dad's shelf and I read it, and there's two stories
I remember from it, And the other one was a
man invents a machine to be able to hear in
the frequencies that plants communicate, and then he like cuts
a tree and then can never live with himself again
(05:22):
and realizes that, like everything alive, can feel pain, and
he just suffers. He just absolutely suffers with that realization.
How there's a couple other stories from there. There's another
one who a guy invents a thing where he doesn't
have to sleep, and then he a lot of stuff
that Futurama has ripped off of comes from this book.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
That makes sense.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
But this story in particular stuck with me as a kid.
And it's called the Nine Billion Names of God, and
it's about the nine billion Names of God, and I'm
going to read it. This story was originally published in
nineteen fifty three or nineteen fifty four, so for understanding
of when they're talking about computers, that's what they're talking about.
(06:02):
This story absolutely plays with orientalist tropes, and not in
a self conscious way. I want to point that out,
and I will chalk that up to the style at
the time. But you don't need to.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
Well, you could also very easily blame the Theosophists, as
you can for many many things, for introducing this style
of like Tibetan orientalism. Just blame the theosophists. It's easy,
it's free, it's cheap, it's fun. Just blame them. They
can take the heat. They've taken the heat for decades.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
It's fine, okay. So with that disclaimer. The Nine Billion
Names of God by Arthur C. Clark. This is a
slightly unusual quest, said doctor Wagner, with what he had
hoped was commendable restraint. As far as I know, it's
the first time anyone's been asked to supply a Tibetan
(06:57):
monastery with an automatic sequence computer. I don't wish to
be inquisitive, but I should hardly have thought that your
establishment had much use for such a machine. Could you
explain just what you intend to do with it, gladly,
replied the Lama, readjusting his silk robes and carefully putting
away the slide rule he had been using for currency conversions.
(07:18):
Your Mark five computer can carry out any routine mathematical
operation involving up to ten digits. However, for our work,
we are interested in letters, not numbers. As we wish
you to modify the output circuits, the machine will be
printing words, not columns of figures. I don't quite understand.
This is a project on which we have been working
for the last three centuries since the Lamissary was founded.
(07:41):
In fact, it is somewhat alien to your way of thought,
so I hope you will listen with an open mind
while I explain it naturally well. In order to run
this podcast, we need to interject classic and important stories
with advertisements for ads and services, said Margaret. The host,
(08:02):
here's the mess, and we're back. It is really quite simple.
(08:23):
We have been compiling a list which shall contain all
the possible names of God. I beg your pardon. We
have reason to believe, continued the Lama in imperturbably. That's
totally how you pronounced that that all such names can
be written with not more than nine letters in an
alphabet we have devised, and you have been doing this
(08:44):
for three centuries. Yes, we expected it would take us
about fifteen thousand years to complete the task. Oh, doctor
Wagner looked a little dazed. Now, I see why you
wanted to hire one of our machines. But exactly what
is the purpose of this project? Lama hesitated for a
fraction of a second, and Wagner wondered if he had
offended him. If so, there was no trace of annoyance
(09:06):
in the reply. Call it ritual if you like, but
it's a fundamental part of our belief. All the many
names of the Supreme Being God, Jehovah, Allah, and so
on are only man made labels. There is a philosophical
problem with some difficult to hear, which I do not
propose to discuss. But somewhere among all the possible combinations
(09:26):
of letters that can occur are what one may call
the real names of God. By systematic permutation of letters.
We have been trying to list them all. I see,
so you've been starting at A and working to zzzzzzz exactly.
Though we use a special alphabet of our own. Modifying
(09:48):
the electromatic typewriters to deal with this is of course trivial.
A rather more interesting problem is that of devising suitable
circuits to eliminate ridiculous combinations. For example, no oh letter
must occur more than three times in succession three. Surely
you mean two three is correct. I'm afraid it would
take too long to explain why, even if you understood
(10:10):
our language. I'm sure it would, said Wagner hastily. Go on. Luckily,
it will be a simple matter to adapt your automatic
sequence computer for this work, since once it has been
programmed properly, it will permute each letter in turn and
print the result. What would have taken us fifteen thousand years,
it will be able to do in a hundred days.
(10:32):
Doctor Wagner was scarcely conscious of the faint sounds from
the Manhattan streets far below. He was in a different world,
a whirl of natural, not man made mountains high up
in their remote areas. These monks had been patiently at work,
generation after generation, compiling their lists of meaningless words. Was
there any limits to the follies of mankind? Still? He
must give no hint to his inner thoughts. The customer
(10:54):
was always right. There's no doubt, replied the doctor, that
we can modify the mark five to print lists of
this nature. I'm much more worried about the problem of
installation and maintenance. Getting out to Tibet in these days
is not going to be easy. We can arrange that
the components are small enough to travel by air. That
is one reason why we chose your machine. If you
(11:15):
can get them to India, we will provide transport from there.
And you want to hire two of our engineers, Yes,
for the three months that the project should occupy. I've
no doubt that personnel can manage that. Doctor Wagner scribbled
a note on his desk pad. There are just two
other points. Before he could finish the sentence, the lama
had produced a small slip of paper. This is my
(11:38):
certified credit balance at the Asiatic Bank. Thank you. It
appears to be adequate. The second matter is so trivial
that I hesitate to mention it. But it's surprising how
often the obvious gets overlooked. What source of electrical energy
do you have? You a diesel generator providing fifty kilowotts
at one hundred and ten volts. It was installed about
(11:58):
five years ago and is quite reliable. It's made life
at the lamissary much more comfortable. But of course it
was really installed to provide power for the motors driving
the prayer wheels. Of course, echoed doctor Wagner. I should
have thought of that. The view from the parapet was verticenuous,
but in time, one gets used to anything. After three months,
(12:21):
George Hanley was not impressed by the two thousand foot
swoop into the Abyss or the remote checkerboard of fields
in the valley below. He was leaning against the wind
smooth stones and staring morosely at the distant mountains whose
names he had never bothered to discover. This thought, George
was the craziest thing that had ever happened to him.
(12:42):
Project Shangri La, some went back at the labs had
christened it. For weeks now the mark five had been
churning out acres of sheets covered with gibberish patiently inexorably.
The computer had been re arranging letters in all their
possible combinations, exhausting each clasp before going on to the next.
As the sheets had emerged from the electromatic typewriters, the
(13:05):
monks had carefully cut them up and pasted them into
enormous books. In another week, Heaven be praised, they would
have finished just what obscure calculations had convinced the monks
that they needn't bother to go on to words of ten,
twenty or one hundred letters. George didn't know. One of
his recurring nightmares was that there would be some change
(13:26):
of plan and that the hi Lama, whom they naturally
called Sam Jaffe, although he didn't look a bit like him.
Reader's note, I had to look that up. That's an
actor who people would have recognized in the fifties, would
suddenly announced that the project would be extended to approximately
eighty twenty sixty. They were quite capable of it. George
(13:46):
heard the heavy wooden door slam in the wind as
Chuck came out onto the parapet beside him. As usual,
Chuck was smoking one of the cigars that made him
so popular with the monks, who it seemed, were quite
willing to embrace all the minor and most of them
the major pleasures of life. That was one thing in
their favor. They might be crazy, but they weren't blue
noses those frequent trips they took down to the village,
(14:08):
for instance. Listen, George said Chuck urgently, I've learned something
that means trouble. What's wrong? Isn't the machine behaving? That
was the worst contingency George could imagine. It might delay
his return, and nothing could be more horrible the way
he felt. Now, even the sight of a TV commercial
would seem like manna from heaven. At least it would
(14:31):
be some link with home. And who would I be
to not take that opportunity to offer you this the
modern version of the TV commercial, the podcast commercial, and
(14:57):
we're back. No, oh, it's nothing like that. Chuck settled
himself on the parapet, which was unusual because normally he
was scared of the drop. I've just found what all
this is about? What do you mean? I thought we knew, sure,
we know what the monks are trying to do. But
we didn't know why. It's the craziest thing. Tell me
(15:18):
something new, growled George. But old Sam's come clean with me.
You know the way he drops in every afternoon just
to watch the sheet rolls out. Well, this time he
seemed rather excited, or at least as near as he'll
ever get to it. When I told him that we
were on the last cycle, he asked me, in that
cute English accent of his, if i'd ever wondered what
(15:38):
they were trying to do. I said sure, and he
told me, go on, I'll buy it. Well, they believe
that when they've listed all his names and they reckon
they're about nine billion of them, God's purpose will be achieved.
The human race will have finished what it was created
to do, and there won't be any point in carrying on. Indeed,
(16:02):
the very idea is something like blasphemy. Then what do
they expect us to do? Commit suicide? There's no need
for that. When the list completed, God steps in and
simply winds things up. Bingo, Oh, I get it. When
we finish our job, it'll be the end of the world.
Chuck gave a nervous little laugh. That's just what I
(16:22):
said to Sam, and do you know what happened? He
looked at me in a very queer way, like I'd
been stupid in class, and said, it's nothing as trivial
as that. George thought this over for a moment. That's
what I call taking the wide view, he said, presently,
But what do you suppose we should do about it?
I don't see it makes the slightest difference to us.
(16:44):
After all, we already knew they were crazy. Yes, but
don't you see what may happen when the list's complete
and the last Trump doesn't blow or whatever it is
they expect, We may get the blame. It's our machine
they've been using. I don't like the situation one little bit,
I see, said George slowly. You've got a point there.
(17:08):
But this sort of thing's happened before, you know. When
I was a kid down in Louisiana, we had a
crackpot preacher who once said the world was going to
end next Sunday. Hundreds of people believed him, even sold
their homes. Yet when nothing happened, they didn't turn nasty
as you'd expect. They just decided that he'd made a
mistake in his calculations and went right on believing. I
guess some of them still do well. This isn't Louisiana,
(17:29):
in case you hadn't noticed, there are just two of
us and hundreds of these monks. I like them, and
I'll be sorry for old Sam when his life work
backfires on him. But all the same, I wish I
was somewhere else. I've been wishing that for weeks. But
there's nothing we can do until the contract's finished and
the transport arrives to fly us out. Of course, said
(17:50):
Chuck thoughtfully. We could always try a bit of sabotage,
like how we could That would make things worse, not
the way I meant look at it. Like this, the
machine will finish its run four days from now on
the present twenty four hours a day basis. The transport
calls in in a week. Okay, then all we need
to do is find something that needs replacing during one
(18:12):
of the overhaul periods, something that'll hold up the work
for a couple of days. We'll fix it, of course,
but not too quickly. If we time matters properly, we
can be down at the airfield when the last name
pops out of the register. They won't be able to
catch us. Then I don't like it, said George. It
will be the first time I ever walked out on
a job. Besides, it would make them suspicious. No, I'll
(18:36):
sit tight and see what comes. I still don't like it,
he said seven days later, as the tough little mountain
ponies carried them down the winding road. And don't you
think I'm running away, because I'm afraid. I'm just sorry
for those poor old guys up there, and I don't
want to be around when they find out what suckers
they've been. Wonder how Sam will take it. It's funny,
(18:57):
replied Chuck. But when I said goodbye, I got the
idea that he knew we were walking out on him,
and that he didn't care because he knew the machine
was running smoothly and that the job would soon be finished.
After that, well, of course, for him, there just isn't
any after that. George turned in his saddle and stared
back up the mountain road. This was the last place
(19:19):
from which one could get a clear view of the lamissary.
The squat angular buildings were silhouetted against the after glow
of the sunset. Here and there lights gleamed like portholes
in the side of an ocean liner electric lights, of course,
sharing the same circuit as the Mark five. How much
longer would they share, it, wondered George. Would the monks
smash up the computer and their rage and disappointment, or
(19:42):
would they just sit down quietly and begin their calculations
all over again. He knew exactly what was happening up
on the mountain at this very moment. The High Lama
and his assistants would be sitting in their silk robes,
inspecting the sheets as the junior monks carried them away
from the typewriters and pasted them into their great volumes.
No one would be saying anything. The only sound would
(20:03):
be the incessant patter the never ending rain storm of
the keys hitting the paper. For the Mark five itself
was utterly silent as it flashed through its thousands of calculations.
A second three months of this, thought George, was enough
to start anyone climbing up the wall. There she is, called, Chuck,
pointing down into the valley. Ain't she beautiful? She certainly was,
(20:25):
thought George. The battered old Dasey three lay at the
end of the runway like a tiny silver cross. In
two hours she would be bearing them away to freedom insanity.
It was a thought worth savoring, Like a final liqueur.
George let it roll around in his mind as the
pony trudged patiently down the slope. The swift night of
the high Himalayas was now almost upon them. Fortunately, the
(20:49):
road was very good, as roads went in that region,
and they were both carrying torches. There was not the
slightest danger, only a certain discomfort from the bitter cold.
The sky overhead was perfectly clear and a blaze with familiar,
friendly stars. At least there would be no risk, thought
George of the pilot being unable to take off because
(21:10):
of weather conditions. That had been his only remaining worry.
He began to sing, but gave it up after a while.
This vast arena of mountains gleaming like whitely hooded ghosts
on every side did not encourage such ebuliance. Presently, George
glanced at his watch. Should be there in an hour,
he called back over his shoulder to Chuck. Then he added,
(21:32):
in an afterthought, wonder if the computers finished its run.
It was due about now. Chuck didn't reply, so George
swung round in his saddle. He could just see Chuck's face.
A white oval turned toward the sky, look whispered Chuck,
and George lifted his eyes to heaven. There is always
(21:54):
a last time for everything. Overhead, without any fuss, the
stars were going out. That's the story. Apparently at some
point the Dali Lama wrote Arthur C. Clark instead. I
read your story and found it very amusing, So that's fun. Yeah,
(22:16):
it got a pass from the people it was weirdly appropriating.
I guess. Yeah, it's overall self contained. But I have
a few thoughts about it. One that I didn't get
into this last reading. It's really funny to me that
the last trump is used instead of the last trumpet,
like as the way of signaling the end of the world.
And apparently that would be a way that you would
have said that in the fifties, and I just find
(22:38):
that very amusing based on the current state of the
political world or whatever.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
Uh huh. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
The actual thing that I've been thinking about the reason
that I wanted to do this episode is that I
just did a piece on cool people did cool stuff
about Ada Lovelace and you know, early software and mechanical
computers and things like that, right, Yeah, and she talked
very explicit about how computers are not capable and would
never be capable of creating things but instead like responding
(23:09):
to the inputs and things like that. It's gone on
to be like I don't have it in front of me,
but like Ada's objection or something was coined by the
gay British man who defeated the Nazis the computer guy
who invented computing.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
Oh that guy, yeah, the guy that was killed for
being gay essentially.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
Yeah, he was like chemically castrated to the machine guy. Yeah,
that guy that we know everything about except the name
of because we're professionals exactly.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
So half of the listeners at least are now shouting
this man's name and frustration at us.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
You know. What the cool thing is, though, is that
this is a podcast and I cannot hear them.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
I won't hear how for many Yeah, people is yelling
his name at me at the moment. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
So that man who we're gonna call George, he wrote
Objection and it was about how computers do with it
what you have them do, you know, rather than being
like themselves a creative force. Okay, so this is the
wing nuttiest thing. This is why I wanted you to
be the guest for this. I've been thinking a lot
about how AI is like running through all possibilities of
(24:20):
creative things. Yeah, like systematically rather than like creatively. It's
just like what if all possible images are made? And
so it's kind of like I think, I don't know
if I really think this, but I've been thinking about it.
It's like running us towards the death of culture because
everything will have been like there's sort of an infinite
(24:42):
possibility of combinations of words that there's an infinite creative
output that could be made. But AI is like trying
to run through them as fast as possible. And we've
been kind of even before AI kind of doing that
as like culture speeds up. I don't know where I'm
going with that, but I just want to run that past.
As relates to this story.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
Yeah, now that I've heard the story, I can also
see the large number of influences it's had throughout culture,
like using computers to like pinpoint God. It is also
like weirdly like lovecrafting and story as well. Yeah, like
initiating an apocalypse by like naming by coming up with
all of the utterances of god.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Oh, you're totally right, and this is years after Lovecraft,
so yeah, oh interesting, Okay.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
I also just really like the turn to phrase the
stars are going out. It's like someone's like flicking off
the lights. I find that to be funn.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
It's one of the best lines in literature overhead without
any fuss. The stars were going out.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
Yeah, very good.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
And like how it changes on a dime this Like
you know earlier I said that it was like not
self consciously orientalist. Your two computer programmers consider themselves clearly
enlightened compared to these backwards people, even though all they
want to do is get back to TV. And there's
even kind of this thing. I have a feeling that
the author didn't specifically intend this, but I like reading
(26:02):
this kind of thing into it. The thing that is
going to carry them away from this backwards place is
a silver cross. They refer to the plane as a
silver cross, and we assume we know better, but we don't.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
Yeah, like human's own hubris is kind of I guess
a recurring trend in work kind of like this, And
I always have the impulse to comparison like this to
the other biggest case of Tibetan orientalism in fantasy and
science fiction, which would be Twin Peaks. We're also I
think one of the main cruxes is one of the
(26:37):
main character's own hubris and his inability to leave well
enough load.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
So now you're going to destroy all of my goth cred.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
No, Margaret, are you serious?
Speaker 2 (26:48):
I have only seen like an episode.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
Of Takes God.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
No, I have seen so many movies by that man,
Jesus fucking Christ, and I have no idea why I
haven't seen Twin Peaks, And now I have lost thirty
percent of my friends.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
I'm showing Twin Peaks currently to like five different people.
I've met so many different points in this series right
now because I'm watching it with so many other people
to give them the experience. I have had my apartment
turned into a Twin Peaks set.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
Oh yeah, no, and I'm very It's been part of
like the culture I've been in for a very long time. Yeah,
I think that's what it is. Is that I hit
this point where I was, like, I sat down to
watch it once Wait of No Return. It didn't immediately
catch me, but yeah, I hit the point of no
return where I was like too embarrassed to admit it.
So don't tell anyone, Garet, it's just between you and I.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
I won't. This is a secret. Yeah, I'm yeah. I
will not spread this around. We don't want to damage
your rent. No, no, we can keep this contained.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
Yeah, irreversible damage.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
I would recommend giving it a watch.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
I will.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
It has a lot of good Tibetan stuff, a lot
of good like exontential stuff, not in terms of computers,
but otherwise a lot of thematic similarities to this story.
And I would not be surprised if the co writer
Mark Frost was intimately familiar, because he pulls from a
lot of science fiction mythological stuff. In fact, the ending
(28:11):
of this story essentially happens at kind of multiple points
in Twin Peaks. It's quite good. It's quite good.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
I think I wouldn't have been ready for it when
I first sat down to watch it, because I needed
my weirdness to be overtly gothic and weird, like it
needed to be like absolutely in a castle instead of
like in the mundane world, which is the beauty of
that guy Twin Peaks.
Speaker 1 (28:35):
Guy Lynch.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
Lynch is that he creates that sense within the every
day you know.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
Yes, yes, And there's a few specific moments, especially in
Firewalk with Me and Season three that are like very
like American Gothic, like extremely very condensed. But the rest
of it, there's actually an interesting juxtaposition between like American
Gothic versus like Pacific Northwest New Weird, which are like
two sister genres, but they're not always the same thing. Yeah,
(29:04):
and Twin Peaks likes to kind of mix between the two,
and for the original series probably more often ends up
being in like P and W New Weird as opposed
to some of the American Gothics sensibilities it kind of
grows into. There's certainly some science fiction elements similar to
kind of how this story kind of blends that sort
of like orientalism with science fiction elements right well, And
(29:27):
actually this also ties in a lot if we're talking
about Arthur C. Clark in two thousand and one, there's also
a lot of carryover from two thousand and one into
Twin Peaks as well. A lot of that does come
from Kubrick, because Kubrick and Lynch were contemporaries, but some
that certainly would also stem from Arthur C. Clark's stuff.
But yeah, the ending of season two is very similar
(29:47):
in some ways to one part of the ending of
two thousand and one. There's a part that's very similar
to the Stargate sequence. There's a decent amount of crossover.
You can definitely read in some Arthur C. Clark undertones
across some of the more cosmic elements of Twin Peaks.
Speaker 2 (30:04):
Well, that's what's so interesting about is overall Arthur C.
Clark's reputation as a science fiction author.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
He's like a scientific realist in a lot of cases.
Speaker 2 (30:11):
Exactly, he's specifically a scientific realist, and so this sort
of mystical element, Like people talk about this story as
being like outside of his traditional wheelhouse. So that was why,
you know, at the beginning, you were like, oh, Arthur
C. Clark wrote the science e boring bits of two thousand works,
(30:31):
and Kubrick did the like, but what if it's like
drugs and space part And that's what makes this sort
of interesting to me is a kind of a gate
into that there is like a certain level where if
you write about space and it's not fundamentally weird, you're
doing it wrong. Yeah, totally, and like it's kind of
part of the betrayal of Star Wars and shit, absolutely
(30:55):
I like Star Wars, but I mean space.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
Is like it's literally right on the outside. You have
to incorporate us certain amount of outsideness into it or
else it won't feel correct. And I mean that goes
all the way back to Lovecraft, and you can can
incorporate that into like the cciu's cultural theoristic stuff in
terms of how they view science fiction. But no, it
has to have an element of outsideness, and that's something
I think this story gets to really well, especially you
(31:19):
have on almost like a caricter of Arthur C. Clark
within the scientists being like, Oh, they're gonna be so
bad with this mystical mumbo jumbo computer stuff doesn't end
up working, and then it still does, so there's that
little fun part and then it kind of introduces that
element of outsideness, which otherwise I think the story would
not be good at all if it just if.
Speaker 2 (31:38):
It doesn't exactly, if it just ended.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
With the thing not working, then it was like an
examination of like the failures to use technology to like
incorporate some kind of spiritual lightment like that does not
sound like a very interesting short story.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
No, it would have not passed down through the generations
to you listeners today.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
No, No, yeah, well, and then continuing on to two
thousand and one and then even twin peaks, like having
that element about sadness is what has made these things
like cultural touchstones for so long, and the emphasis on
not trying to explain everything with a scientific rationalization gives
these things a sense of like immortal intrigue that he
(32:14):
keeps lingering on our mind for so long.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
When it's like I went and saw totality last week,
you know, same as a lot of people, and as
the second time I got to see it, and the
first time I saw it, I was like, oh, I
have now looked into the eye of God. I know
what's happening. I know that the moon went in front
of the sun right like, but it doesn't make it not.
I am now looking at the thing that controls all
(32:37):
life on earth that we can't look at. You know,
if like you were just described the sun being like, oh,
there's this thing in the sky that you can't make
eye contact with or you'll it'll fuck you up.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
Yeah it's God, you know, Yeah, like humans have known
this is god for like a long time. Almost all
of our gods are sun gods, Like we're very aware.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
Yeah, and so I went and saw a star go out,
and you know, obviously I knew it was gonna come back,
and like freaky though, I really like the fact that
knowing the science doesn't take away its power. It's interest.
Speaker 1 (33:12):
It's awe.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
Yeah, all is the right.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
Word quite literally, like it is like it is like
a divine awe.
Speaker 2 (33:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
No, it is great to watch when everything goes dark
at three pm in the afternoon and shadows start creating
little cameras and your animals go crazy. Yes, they are
confused for what's happening. It is like a very divine experience.
Speaker 2 (33:33):
Anyway, that's gonna do it for us Here at Cool
Zone Media book Club. If you enjoyed this podcast on
the Cool People Did Cool Stuff Feed, you should check
out that it could happen here feed that Gere is
a guest of Gary. You just did a good What's
it project seventy million Agenda forty seven Agenda forty seven,
(33:54):
which is the secondary highest number of synchronicity after twenty three,
So watch out for that, folks. And if you're listening
to something that can happen here. You can check me
out on Cool People Did Cool Stuff. I talk about
history and I also have a book that will be
going into pre order soon. It is my first novel.
(34:15):
I've been as mentioned earlier, I've written an awful lot
of novellas, including very long novellas that whatever all categories
or social categorization. I have decided that this is my
first novel in the country. It goes as a long novella.
And this book is called The Sapling Cage and it
comes out on September twenty fourth from the Feminist Press
(34:36):
and you can check it out closer to them if
you pre order it. See y'all next week, Alan Turing.
Speaker 1 (35:00):
It Could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
find sources for It Could Happen here, updated monthly at
coolzonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.
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