July 7, 2016 • 59 mins
It's a summer tradition, so once more the hosts of Stuff to Blow Your Mind share their fiction and nonfiction reading recommendations with listeners. That means science, science fiction, horror, children's books and more -- all with a distinct STBYM flavor.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from housetop work
dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb, and I am Christian Sager
and I am Joe McCormick. And today we are going
to be doing one of our annual summer Reading episodes. Yeah,
(00:25):
this is just kind of a casual get together here
where we're just coming to the studio, bring a few
listening recommendations for our listeners, share some things that we've
been reading, uh, hope to read in the future, et cetera. Yeah,
a lot of listeners right into us, both on social
media and through email to recommend books and movies and
(00:48):
all kinds of things to us. And I feel like
this is our chance to to give back. Although I
mean probably every given episode we dropped some variety of
things that we've been reading or movies we've been watching,
or TV or something like that. But this is all
about Hey, it's summertime, right, let's go to the beach
and read some books. Why is that a thing people
(01:09):
do with the beach because you, well, in my experience,
is because you you break free from your normal patterns
um and you suddenly find yourself creating all this new
time in a new space, craving John Grisham, No, no,
I mean I thought some people like to go with
the more mainstream books that are available in the beach House.
But but no, I've always found it a good you
(01:31):
can excuse you just really dive into something, uh, you know,
entertaining or or really heavy. Robert, what what was that you?
You went to the beach I think within the past
couple of years and uploaded to the internet some pictures
of the library on the shelf at the beach House
where they had a they had a book about a
werewolf spy. I guess um was it was? It went
(01:51):
and Robert mccommon um came in. Is that his name? Um? Gosh,
I can wish you remember which author that was. Yeah,
but I was surprised to find some cool old genre
stuff because generally you just find Tom Clancy John Grisham, uh,
some various uh you know, my all romance novels. It's
always Tom Clancy. The kind of people who owned beach houses.
(02:13):
They like to know how nuclear submarines were. Well. I
hope that the werewolf spy had some love in his life.
Pretty sure he did pretty cud good good. Well that's
a good segue into my first book, which is a
document that looks at the entire history of supernatural horror
and fiction. WHOA, yeah, So this is my nonfiction pick
(02:35):
this this year, guys, and it is by a past
stuff to blow your mind, guest. Mr St Joshi h
He was on a previous episode that Robert and Julie
did about HP Lovecraft in the Science behind his Works,
and I believe you interviewed him, right, Yeah, yeah, I
chatted with him on the phone and uh, we used
to interview on the episode. So those of you who
(02:57):
are unfamiliar with him maybe go back and listen to
that EPI. So, but I'll give you a little primer here.
St Joshy. He's like a literary critic and an academic.
He's primarily known for very close examinations of weird fiction.
So HP Lovecraft and all the writers that preceded him,
like Algernon Blackwood, m R. James Are, Arthur Macon and
(03:18):
those who have followed him to like Ramsey Campbell, Ray Bradberry, Clark,
Ashton Smith. He's written tomes on all of these people. Uh,
and he has I guess what can be described as
an acerbic style of writing about the genre. He's a
little he's a little pointed in some of his criticisms.
I feel like he's kind of a horror fiction horror
(03:39):
literature ment at. Yeah, yeah, his lips stained purple. Yes,
that's how you know. Ellen Datlow is um a really
prominent editor in the horror field. She edits the best
Horror of the Year books that come out at the
end of every year. She described St. Joshy as the
(04:00):
nastiest reviewer in the field. So, um, I'm giving you
this warning ahead of time. This book is great. But
he doesn't pull his punches. When he doesn't like something,
he lets you know about it, and when he loves something,
he celebrates it in all its glory. It's weird because
I think I don't I can't remember offhand an example
of him tearing something up like I tend to read Joshi.
(04:23):
He does a lot of introductions two books and uh,
and certainly puts together as at its compilations of things
that he likes. So I've certainly encountered the loving as
t Jo, not so much the hammer. Wouldn't it be
great to read a book though that had an introduction
that ripped the very book you're reading to shreds. Well,
here's an example. I've got one for you. Publishers Weekly
(04:46):
did a review of this book, and they said Joshi
reserves his sharpest judgments for contemporary horror writers, especially popular bestsellers,
dismissing Stephen King as quote a schlockmeister, just the literary
equivalent of all the b movie and comic books he
digested in his youth. So so there's that. Um, this
is a great book, though, Like, if you are looking
(05:08):
to really dive into the horror genre and to find out,
like what's the best of the best, what's the history
behind it, what's the stuff I should go out and
look for. This is it. I mean. He starts with
the Greek and Latin literature that includes supernatural elements, moves
up to the Gothic era, has a whole huge section
(05:29):
on Poe, and then talks a lot about the weird
horror writers at the end of the nineteenth century. That's
just the first volume. Originally, this was published in two
separate volumes. In the second volume covers the development of
horror literature through the twentieth century, with sections mainly on
those people I just mentioned before, Makin Blackwood, Lovecraft, etcetera. Uh,
(05:49):
Shirley Jackson has her own whole chapter all the way
up to Peter Straub, Stephen King and people who are
writing today like that. Well they're all writing today, but
like Kately and R. Kiernan, who's like a relatively recent
writer comparatively to the rest of this stuff. So I
I really recommended if you're just looking to just play
around and see what's out there in horror literature and
(06:12):
what you like and what you don't like. Yeah, he's
definitely one of those those uh, those great authoritative um
experts on the field where you can always just get
a few at least a few ideas of authors you
need to check out and try. Yeah, I'm loving it,
especially the egg Allen post section has been really illuminating
for me so far. And now, would you say his
(06:33):
his survey of the field is more exclusively literary, just
like looking at the authors and their works and the
relationship to each other. Or does he do historical and
other cultural contextual stuff too. Uh No, it's primarily literary. Yeah,
I don't think he not so much unless he's like
previously written about an author like so, for instance, in
(06:54):
the post section, he already had like a lot to
gather from, so he could provide you with some context
about like what was going on imposed life at the
time that he wrote I don't know, murders in the room,
morgue or something like that, and that provided some context,
but but not for everything. Yeah, so yeah, I mean,
I highly recommend it. I know from talking to some
of our listeners, they always like it when we bring
(07:15):
up the weird horror literature that we've been reading, and uh, man,
this is it. This is the book if you you know,
you don't have to read the whole thing. You can
just get it, flipped through it and kind of find
like the area that you're looking for and and dive
in and you will come out with just a treasure
trove of authors to go looking for. Then I gotta ask,
last time we did a summer reading episode, y'all convinced
(07:37):
me to read The Great God Pan by Arthur Makon,
who is one of the writers you mentioned that he
gets into. I went and read it, loved it. It's amazing.
What does he think about it? I haven't gotten to
the section yet where he talks about making. But if
I know Joshi, I would imagine that he thinks it's awesome. Yeah,
he probably like sets up a shrine at its feet. Well,
I know a lot of a lot of critics trashed it,
(07:58):
didn't they back then? Yeah, I mean a hundred and
twenty years ago when nobody knew anything. Yeah, and no,
I think, And certainly it's not for everybody, Like I
can imagine plenty of people would maybe not dig it today.
Give men maybe a little bit stuffy, a little bit
the prose style is yeah, is definitely of its time,
and it's How does our friend H. E. C. Steiner
(08:18):
refer to it? He talks about it as being like
yet another one of those stories of like learned gentleman,
like just sitting around by fire talking about something horrific. Right,
but it's awesome. It's one of the best horror stories
I think I ever written. You would not comprehend my horror?
When all right, Joe, what do you have? What do
you have from the nonfictional bucket here for us? Well,
(08:39):
I've got it. I've got one fiction book and a
few nonfiction books, but all I'll start with one that
if you are a regular listener, to the show. This
probably is not going to come as a surprise to you,
because I think I've gushed about it on at least
one episode before, maybe multiple episodes. But my first nonfiction
pick is the Invention of Nature Alexander von Humboldt's New
World by Andrea Woolf. And that's a book published by
(09:02):
NOTAP and it's about the German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt,
who lived from seventeen eighteen fifty nine. And this guy
has a lot of things in the world named after him.
There's the Humboldt Current, the Humboldt Glacier in Greenland, Humboldt
Bay in California, the Humboldt Range, Humboldt Falls, Humblet Mountains,
(09:23):
Humbolt penguin, Humboldt squid, uh tons of other animal species.
He's all over the map in the natural world. They
should all get together and full formed like a Humblet
super team, right like, and turn into a giant robot.
Yeah exactly, huh. And so I I think, in fact
that this is my favorite. I think he's even got
(09:43):
a sinkhole named after him. Now, once you've got a
sinkhole named after you, you you have made it squad goals.
But so he traveled all over the world during his
lifetime making observations of nature. He was one of those
classic nineteenth century naturalists, kind of like dar Win, but
preceding Darwin, and so his influence in his own time
(10:04):
was pretty much incalculable. But I don't think I ever
learned a single thing about this guy in school, And
after reading this book, I think I'd say von Humboldt
might be the most historically influential intellectual of the past
millennium who is just completely forgotten by history. Why is that,
I don't know, But reading Andrea Wolfe's book on him
(10:26):
is just wonderful. I I absolutely loved it. So to
give a little context about what's going on in Humboldt's lifetime,
I want to read a quote from Thomas Jefferson that
sort of reflects the attitude toward nature one might encounter
in the learned gentleman, as you say, of the of
the nineteenth century. Turn of the nineteenth century. So Jefferson
(10:47):
had put the mammoth on this chart he made of
extant European mammals, and obviously some people were like, why
the mammoth, and so he said quote. It may be
asked to why I insert the mammoth as if he
still existed. It may be asked in return, why I
should omit it as if it did not exist, such
(11:10):
as the economy of nature, that no instance can be
produced of her having permitted any one race of her
animals to become extinct, of her having formed any link
in her great works so weak as to be broken.
I mean today, that's obviously extremely wrong in multiple ways.
But this was sort of the climate in which Humboldt's
(11:32):
view was revolutionary. So in many ways Humboldt is responsible
for the way scientists came to see nature as they
do today, not as a static created order with everything
in its right place and nothing really changing over the
long term, but as this dynamic, changeable, massively interconnected system
(11:54):
of ecology and biological and chemical webs of relationships between
all the things on Earth, the elements, and its life forms.
So in Humboldts of view, habitats could be altered and destroyed,
species could go extinct, and changes in one place could
have far reaching effects and others. And Humblet began to
use the analogy of the world as sort of one
(12:16):
unified organism, whereas you know in an organism, if you
get gang green in one part of your body, it
will affect other parts of your body. So, Uh, I
loved this book. It's just full of really fascinating stories
about humblets travels around the world and his experiments. I
think I used it as one of our sources in
the episodes Robert and I did about the early days
of electricity experiments where uh one of the ones I
(12:39):
related with Humbldt's quest to collect the bodies of lightning
strike victims so he could examine the burns to their
to their body hair and see exactly what that could
tell us about animal electricity. Another one was humbldts experiments
with bom Blonde about the electric eels of South America,
collecting eels by causing horses to stay impede over a
(13:00):
pond full of them, and then once he finally got
some eels. Uh like touching the eels a lot, and
it's weird, but he was a very interesting, very smart,
very cool guy for his time. He was like the
ig Nobel Prize winner of his time. Like, instead of
taking bees and holding them to his body, he just
touched electrical kind of but more of a more of
(13:22):
a scientific superstar. Yeah, he was absolutely a rock star
of his time, like more than Stephen Hawking or any
celebrity scientists today. He's like dead to history now. I
don't know if they don't talk about him in school
or or you know, I guess just in the science
community in general. I don't know. It's it's a good question, um,
because his his influence was absolutely huge. A big part
(13:45):
of the book is just showing how big his influence was,
like their chapters focusing on contemporaries of of Humboldts like Gerta.
Darwin's Thorau, so artists, politicians, other scientists, and how they
all revered him and got lots of ideas from him.
And so I really don't know exactly why it is
(14:07):
that his legacy is mostly forgotten. Well there's penguins and
glaciers and sinkholes at least. Well it sounds like you
really need to push the Humboldt renaissance here. I mean, yeah,
everyone behind and pushed Tesla back to the forefront. So yeah,
I think humbold more interesting than Tesla. Whoah, you heard
(14:27):
it here first folks. Yeah, but anyway, this should we
name a car after him. Well, if you want to
find out for yourself, for yourself, you should read this book.
So it's really really wonderful. It's not only a pleasure.
It covers this massive blind spot I didn't even know
I had in sort of the Western history of scientific thought. Uh.
So that's Andrea Wolf Alexander von Humboldt's New World. Uh
(14:52):
check it out. Big, big thumbs up from me. All right, well,
um from my part um. You know, we a lot
of scientific books, especially the mainstream general scientific books across
our desk, and of the ones that have come out
in the past year, I really have to say that
(15:14):
mar j Hart's Sex in the CEA our intimate connection
with sex, changing fish, romantic lobsters, kiki squid, and other
salty erotica of the deep, it's probably the one that
right at the top of my list. Yeah, that's a
great book. And we talked about it in our Osadas
bone Worm episode. We didn't talk to her with Ma
and there and and we're planning to do another interview
with her later this summer. Uh. She was delightful down
(15:37):
to Earth and really is into the kinky stuff between
marine life. Yeah, like she does. I thought she did
just a fabulous job, not only you know, in the book,
but in the interview as well. I mean, just really
conveying I love for these creatures, but also a great
willingness to enjoy the ridiculousness of totally inhuman weird nous,
(16:00):
of the sense of humor about it. The way that
um she frames each of her chapters. Yeah, yeah, I
enjoyed that. It reminded me of Mary Roach. I'd love
to see more come out from Marra sort of along
the same lines as how Mary Roach has got this
series of books over time. Yeah, she has a similar voice,
but but coming from you know, more of a devoted
(16:20):
expert background, because this this is her her area of expertise,
and she really brings across a clear passion for ecological preservation. Uh.
And it it's probably would say it's a perfect scientific
beach read for obvious reasons. You're going to the beach
and not better than the werewolf spot. Then you go
swimming around in the ocean and have all the various
(16:41):
fluids of marine life spawning just flowing around over your body. Now,
this gives me an idea has anybody ever tried to
create a wear bone worm story? Well, you know, it
would be hard because you'd have to swim all the
way to the bottom of the ocean near a whales
carcass and then be bitten by a bone worm. So
(17:02):
it starts like the abyss. Yeah. Well, but then I
don't see how I don't think think see how they
would be a threat to anybody. Like basically they'd be like, oh, well, Carl,
he caught this bone worm illness, and now he just
he keeps to himself a lot because he goes down
the whale car because we'll remember we were talking about
in that episode though about maybe it was just me.
But but like how it would be great if you
(17:25):
could use bone worms as like a weapon, like in
BioShock or something like that, and you just throw them
at people and they immediately start drilling through. So they
could be like that. You could just you could just
change into a ware bone worm. But but a spy
took Uh. The other book that I thought i'd mentioned
this is another one that I've definitely mentioned on the
(17:46):
podcast before, uh, and that is a Chinese mythology and
introduction by and Beryl. I found this to be just
a first of all, it's it has provids a great
overview of mythology as it's studied in general. So even
if you're going into it without a whole lot of
religious studies in your past or you know, mythological understanding,
(18:07):
she provides just a great introduction to just what mythology
is now it works, and then then a wonderful overview
about what's distinct about Chinese myth cycles uh, compared to
the West, compared to even other Asian myths cycles UM.
And there's just also a cool arrangement of themes, so
she she groups everything and to for instance, they'll be
(18:29):
at there's a section on on miraculous births, section on heroes,
the section on immortality, on strange creatures, etcetera. So I
feel like the the information is very well presented. Uh.
You know, it's more of a more of a scholarly
textbook for sure, compared to U to to my my
previous recommendation. But if you were at all interested in
(18:51):
Chinese culture, if we were all interested in UM in
Eastern mythology, I think it's a great book to pick up.
And I picked up a few different Chinese mythology texts
found a few of them a little a little harder
to engage with, So of those books, I feel like
this is the this is the best, And this was
a resource that I'm guessing that you turned to for
(19:11):
a couple of different things that we've done over the
last few months, Right, like the mythology episode that you
and I did. You guys did an episode on the Zodiac.
Did it come into play there? Um? I picked up
the book after the Zodiac, So I think I actually
stopped this one out when I was working on that
How Stuff Works Now piece of Superhero that was going
to be the next thing I mentioned. Yeah, there was
one particular story, um from Chinese folklore conserving concerning the
(19:34):
seven to ten brothers, however many you want to count,
and I was just determined to find a good scholarly
resource on this. As it turns out, it's not really
dealt with in this book, but it ended up acquiring
it anyway, And after I got it, I realized, well,
this is not really gonna help me with this particular assignment.
But then the more I started reading it, everyalized it
was just a faculous text and couldn't put it back down.
(19:55):
Cool that sounds great. I hope we get more out
of it too, don't Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's tons of
inform in there. So if if you guys want to hear, uh,
you know, anything else concerning mythology from us, if we
have not filled our quota from based episodes, because we've
had a couple of them, right, we've had the the uh,
the overall look at mythology and then Joe, didn't we
(20:16):
just record one dealing with myth as well. Yeah, we
did one with on a mythical creatures mythology. So yeah,
we we we have a couple of us feel like
really strong myth based episodes. In mythology of course continually
comes up in our episodes. Anyone, we don't bust myths.
Here is stuff to blow, all right, we embrace them,
we build them. Okay, so we're gonna take a quick break,
(20:36):
but when we get back, we're going to delve into
our fiction picks for the year. Okay, so we're back, guys.
I have been talking about this book, probably to you
off air, but to pretty much everybody in my life
for the last year. It is Jeff Vandermere's Annihilation. Uh.
(20:59):
This is the first first book in his trilogy of
the Southern Reach story. Have I have I torn your
ears apart yet? Oh? Yes, I I pushed hard for
it to for its inclusion in a book club that
I'm in it and it was it was just I
guess too, Sci five. This is the stuff to blow
your mind book. I'm telling you, like it's all like
(21:21):
all the things we're going for with this podcast are
in this book. UM. So, if you don't know who
vander Meer is, he's a weird fiction, sci fi horror
author together with his wife, and he's compiled a lot
of just excellent anthologies as introductions to those genres that
he writes within. Um. In fact, last year, his book
The Weird was on my list and I've probably talked
(21:43):
about it on almost every single episode since then because
I just loved that book. Um and so you've probably
heard me mention it a lot of times. But Annihilation
is his book. It is a novel. Uh. And if
you're a fan of what we do on the show,
really I can't recommend you have to check it out.
Combines weird science with this haunting prose in a great mystery. Uh.
(22:05):
In fact, this is a description of the book just like,
and I'm going to just give you a bare bones
summary because I don't want to spoil anything. It describes
a team of four people therefore women, a biologist and anthropologist,
a psychologist, and a surveyor, and they are sent into
an area known as Area X, and this area has
been completely abandoned and cut off from the rest of civilization.
(22:28):
All they know is that they're the twelfth expedition to
go into this area. All of the other expeditions have
met with disappearances of their members, suicides, aggressive cancers, or
mental trauma when they get back, so pretty much everybody
who goes there either dies or comes back and dies
or goes crazy. Um. It's narrated by the biologist, and
(22:52):
as such, Vandermuir does this really good job of giving
it an eye towards the field of biology, and the
character explores this weird setting, and it makes use of
the flora and the fauna both within the setting of
the story in this Area X, but also in the
book's narrative. It's it's just wonderful at that. I don't
want to spoil it any more than that, but there's
(23:13):
some there's some weird stuff in Area X. Uh annely
Knew It's give a great review of it over at
I O nine, and she referred to it as the
tale of an ill fated scientific expedition to a piece
of coastline that has developed strange new physical properties that
defy explanation, and it will make you believe in the
power of science mysteries again. Uh. It is currently being
(23:37):
adapted into a film by Alex Garland, who most people
know because he directed X Makina last year. I know,
I'm from writing The Beach, which I read in high school. Yeah,
he's well, he's done a bunch of great stuff. Twenty
twenty days later. Um believe Judge Dred, Judge Dread he wrote,
and I don't. I don't know if he directed Judge Dread,
but yeah, Alex Garland's great. So I'm psyched that he
(24:00):
is making a movie version of this, and Natalie Portman
and Oscar Isaac are both going to be in it,
so I'm really looking forward to it. I don't want
to say too much more about it other than that
it's the first part of a trilogy. There's two more books,
and I I hear those are good too. There on
my list. Awesome, Well, I am going to get into
my fiction pick now, and it is also a science
fiction book. In fact, I actually just finished reading this
(24:23):
book this week. Earlier this week or a couple of
weeks ago. I guess I didn't know what my fiction
pick for this year was going to be, but now
I know. I absolutely loved this book. It's called Aurora
by Kim Stanley Robinson and it's it was published by
orbit In and it was just absolutely excellent, powerful, smart, thrilling,
(24:46):
deeply researched, a very emotionally resonant and a lot of fun.
And I again, I have a similar problem with you.
I don't want to spoil too much about the plot.
Uh So I guess I'll keep my synopsis very brief,
but the the story begins on a Generation starship, Robert.
Have you ever in the back Yes? That's what No.
(25:07):
I mean. Have you ever done an episode in the
back catalog about like arc ships? Um? No, you know,
it's one of those things that comes up. It has
come up, been passing before, but never devoted episodes. That
would be Yeah, I think that'd be a good thing
to focus an entire episode on someday. But generally the
idea is um is that if you were planning on
going to colonize an extrasolar star system in the galaxy,
(25:30):
the limits imposed by physics say that, well, okay, you
can't actually travel faster than light or anything like that.
So it's gonna be a multi hundred year journey at
the at the very least. Um, So what's gonna happen.
What happens if you need to make a you know,
three hundred year journey to a star system, Well, you
basically have to take enough of earth bio diversity with
(25:52):
you to uh to create a self sustaining atmosphere and
ecology on a ship. Um. And that's by a challenge.
I mean, we we find we found significant challenges just
creating uh, like the biospheres here on Earth. Yeah, I
mean I believe one of the episodes we've done we
talked about dirt. Didn't we about like the challenges of
like how much dirt you would need to bring? Yeah?
(26:15):
I don't remember this, but yeah, I can imagine that
absolutely features into this novel. So it's the novel starts
on this this generation ship with multiple generations of passengers.
I will say it starts into the journey. So all
the characters are people who did not choose to embark
on this journey. They were all they were all born
on the way, which is a strange position to imagine
(26:38):
yourself in because you didn't sign up for this, right,
the original generations and their descendants and their their children
and their grandchildren are all dead. Uh. Well, in a way,
you have to recycle all biological matter within these systems,
so sort of, I mean, they don't directly cannibalize the flesh. Yeah,
but I was imagining that in their atoms, their atoms
(27:01):
and energy go back into the ship system. But so, yeah,
they're they're bound for this extrasolar star system known as
Tao STI. And I think I can safely say that
this is the most deeply and thoroughly scientific science fiction
book I have ever read. Uh. And I will say
that because the plot is one of fundamentally it's a
(27:23):
plot of scientific discovery, and that most of the conflicts
in the plot are not like you know, your standard
energy weapon battles, but they are scientific and engineering conflicts.
It's uh, coming from smart people trying to struggle with
the limitations imposed on them by physics, chemistry, and biology.
(27:44):
And this is one of those books that I think
I knew I was gonna like it once I saw
what the negative reviewers had to say. Do you ever
have that experience? This got a lot of positive reviews,
but when I saw what the negative reviews said, there's
just a certain kind a negative review that makes me
know I'm gonna love something. So I'm guessing this isn't
(28:04):
something that the sad puppies would vote for a Hugo on. No,
I don't think so. Well. Some people didn't like it,
I think because it had certain environmentalist themes. And then
also I think some people found it boring because there
wasn't enough like fighting and killing in it. Yeah exactly, okay, um,
but there. But I thought it was just absolutely wonderful.
(28:25):
I I fully, holly loved this book. Cool alright, Well
for my fictional choice, UM, I'm definitely gonna give you
the Cannibals that you wanted. Thank you. Question. I find myself.
I found myself in the in the first half of
this year. Um, not reading a lot that I ended
(28:46):
up really loving. Like I read, I've read some good books.
I mean I read The Fixer by Bernard Malamud, which
is which is great and it actually ties into some
stuff I've written about for stuff to play your mind
having to do with the blood, libel and person and
Jewish persecution of the Jews. I also read The knee
On Bible by John Kennedy Tool, which is about the
(29:08):
most impressive thing you'll ever read read by a sixteen
year old if you really want to, really want to
depress yourself about your your your teenage writing ability. Sixteen
year old? How old was he when he wrote Confederacy
of Dunces? Oh not, what was he older? You know,
he was definitely older, lived tremendously long since the killed himself.
(29:30):
But this one came out after the Confederacy of Dunces
because it was one that his mother had published, was
written before then. I mean, they both came out after
his death. But it's a I mean it's a very
it's a very advanced book for a sixteen year old
um and I enjoyed it, but I also I didn't
just absolutely love it. And it's hard to really, you know,
(29:53):
pick a science the ankle on it. Um. So really
the book that's uh in aged me the most this
year was a book of titled Off Season by Jack
Ketch um Um and it wasn't it. It's kind of
an infamous publication and I wasn't even really going to
mention it, but because it's extremely graphic, it's an extremely
(30:15):
nasty piece of nineteen eighties horror fiction. And in fact,
I think I edited out a mention of it on
a previous show. Yeah, but but I figured, hey, it's
the book that that sucked me in the most, so
I should probably mention it with the caveat that it
is not for for you, for young people, It is
not for anyone who's squeamish. It has a lot of
a lot of extreme violence in it. Um it is,
(30:38):
but it's a It's a real page turner. It's exceptionally
well written. You care about the characters, and you hate, hate,
hate all the debased villains, which are all essentially It's
about some individuals on a vacation, so it's a great
vacation read obviously, who are attacked by marauding cannibals that
live in the hills and I go west Craven move
(31:00):
turned into it. It sounds like the Hills have I Yeah,
it's my understanding that hills have ice. Was was kind
of an inspiration on it. Like that, that, and a
few other things. Um, but it's just it's really well executed,
especially after you get the initial character development stuff out
of the way. Once thing awful things start happening, it's
just impossible to put it down. And uh, it's ultimately
(31:21):
the book about normal folks who have to be who
who are beset by bloodthirsty savages and then have to
become bloodthirsty savages to survive. And you find yourself becoming
kind of a bloodthirsty savage reader as you cheer them
on against these awful, awful people. So it's a it's
an extreme read, uh, but not to the point where
(31:41):
I ever felt like the author was just tormenting me
or the characters just for the sake of all the sufferings,
because I've certainly encountered haror like that before where it
just leaves me feeling a little gross with the roth. Yeah,
and that being said, there is still plenty of bad
stuff in here. So again I stressed that this this
(32:04):
one is only for the dedicated horror fans out there,
but it wouldn't be fair not to mention it since
it was such a an engaging read, such an addictive read. Hey,
so we need to take a quick break, but we
will be right back with some more selections from our
summer reading list, and we're back. Okay. So you guys
(32:31):
know me and I am a comics fan. So I
wouldn't be able to bring and do a summer reading
list if I didn't at least mention a couple of comics. Um.
So I tried to narrow it down from my usual
huge list to stuff that I think really resonates with
our show and our listeners. On the first one that
I have to recommend is called Junction True and it's
(32:53):
a graphic novel by Ray Fox. Uh. And it's illustrated
and watercolored by Vince Locke, and it's just gorgeous water colors,
really beautiful book, very uh, you know, has very painterly
quality to it. Uh. And it is about a near
future where subculture involves transhumanist body hacking, which just right
(33:15):
up our alley right. Uh. It's this weird, twisted love
story about S and M rebellion, alienation, and body modification
where the main character really has to ask himself how
far he's willing to go for love, and by go,
I mean modify his body for what his lover wants
him to be. Uh. It is strange and kind of
(33:38):
creepy and horrifying, but the characters just really feel real,
and Uh, I just applauded it. Ray Fox is a
very smart writer. He takes a lot of risks that
pay off in his storytelling and in the theme. So
I recommend this book immensely. I believe it is put
out by Top Shelf Productions. The second one that I
would recommend, and this will come as no surprise to
(33:59):
be who have listened to me talk about things on
the show before. Warren Ellis has a new comic that's
been out for the last year together with Declan Shelvey
and Jordie Blair, called Injection, and Uh, it really takes
that old Arthur C. Clark quote to heart. Any sufficiently
advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. So you can't really
(34:23):
tell is it is there magic in this book or
is it's, you know, some kind of sci fi technology
that's just beyond our understanding. And he's not willing to
hold your hand and let you know. If you haven't
heard me babble about Warren Ellis on the show before. Uh,
last year I recommended his nonfiction book Cunning Plans during
our summer reading list. He's known for doing comics like
(34:44):
trans Metropolitan, Global Frequency, Planetary, Freak, Angels, and a lot
of other superhero, video game and TV work. I went
back and read the first volume of trans Metropolitan this
year on your recommendation. I really liked it. Yeah, it's
pretty cool, it was funny. I love it. Spent a
long time since I've read it. Yeah, that Spider Jerusalem, right, Yes,
Spider Jerusalem is his Like sci fi Hunter s. Thompson,
(35:07):
it's it's fun. Injection is about a team that consists
of a secret agent, a scientist, a hacker, a shaman,
and a detective and they make a mistake and they
kind of think they're smarter than they are and they
let something weird loose into the world, and subsequently they're
all traumatized by this experience, but they're also trying to
(35:29):
make things right. Uh. It doesn't hold your hand with
narrative structure. Ellis is definitely trying out some interesting like flashbacks,
flash forwards, jumping from character to character, not really showing
you all the pieces at once, But it comes together
and it's it's excellent. The artwork is stunning. This team
is great. Declan Chalvey and Jordie Blair are a couple
(35:51):
that work together. He does the illustration and she does
the colors, and so it's just, you know, you can
see that teamwork in the art that really flows well together.
And the storytelling is superb for comics. If you like
stories that deal with the following things, this is for you. Madness, weird,
incursions into reality, the history of magic, especially in the
(36:13):
British Isles, and government conspiracies. Injection has all that and more.
Now are both of these that you've mentioned? Are these
complete things? Are the ongoing Injection is still ongoing? Junction
True is a complete work? That's cool? I uh so.
I actually this year have been embarking on a project
of going back and reading basically all the great like
(36:34):
classic graphic novels that I've never read before. So I've
been reading a lot of as far as superheroes go,
you know, the ones that everybody had read except for me.
I read The Dark Knight Returns for the first time
this year, and uh some other Batman stuff. Have you
done Alan moore Swamp thing run yet? I haven't, but
I did read concerning Alan Moore I finally went and
(36:55):
read From Hell, which is another one along your lines, Robert,
that I certainly wouldn't recommend for our younger listeners because
it is extremely graphic in terms of sex and violence.
But it's also a really, really well researched and interesting
dark graphic novels. Excellent. It's one of my favorite graphic
novels of all time, and it has been a huge
(37:17):
influence on my own work in the field. And don't
let the movies do from it. Yeah, but my next pick.
I had a couple more nonfiction books that I read
this year that I wanted to mention because I thought
they were great. So another one concerning science is a
book about black holes, and it is called black Hole Colon.
(37:39):
How an idea abandoned by Newtonians, hated by Einstein, and
gambled on by Hawking became loved by Marcia Bartouschek Yale
University Press. So I have to say, points deducted for
having a sixteen wordlong subtitle that is obnoxious. You think
it should be crunched down and yeah, point of infinite
(37:59):
and city and zero volume black hole colon spaghettification, But
points deducted for that points awarded for everything else. I thought,
this is just a really superb and concise piece of
science writing. Um and uh so Marcia Bartoschik, I think
she is ahead of the head of a science writing
program at M I T. And you can see why
(38:21):
she has that post. She she is a really really
top notch science communicator. And there's a very breezy, readable,
compact style to this book. Uh and so Bartschik tells
the story of our knowledge about black holes, how they're
first theorized, how violently physicists oppose them, and how they
eventually came to be accepted and uh. Bartosik is very
(38:45):
true to the difficult astrophysics behind black holes, but she
makes the concepts involved, like really very easy to understand
for non scientists. I was am I'm not a physicist,
I'm not even a very math inclined person, but I
was following her the whole way. Uh and A lot
of this is made possible simply by the way she
narrativises the subject. It's easier to understand the ideas she
(39:07):
presents because she tells the story historically, where she tells
the story of each scientist interacting with the ideas of
the other one. So you can see the logical progression
of how people understood black holes. But one of the
most interesting things about the book to me is how
it shows this long, painful battle between our scientific theories
(39:27):
and our common sense. So for about a hundred years now,
any physicist who cared to look would be able to
work out that black holes are a consequence of Einstein's
general relativity. But scientists across the generations just they allowed
their common sense to rebel against the idea. It's like, wait,
how can the mass of many stars be compressed down
(39:49):
to infinite density? That's just absurd, That can't happen. Uh.
There's even one story in the book, how about Sir
Arthur Eddington, who is one of the most respective physicists
of the time, Just vicious Lee mocked the then young
physicist Supermannia and Chandra Shaker after he gave a conference
presentation in nineteen thirty five about the inevitability of black holes.
(40:09):
Apparently Eddington just got up after Chandra Shaker had finished
giving his talk, and he said, surely nature has some
way of preventing this nonsense more or less. Uh. And so,
of course, in the end, we learned through decades of
painful back and forth that our common sense about black
holes is completely wrong, and these objects do in fact exists.
(40:30):
They're they're not theoretical anymore. They're a fundamental part of
our picture of the universe. Um. But the every piece
of common sense in our brain just rebels against it.
It doesn't make any sense. How could there be something
like that? Everything I know about black holes comes from
the movie Interstellar. When you go when you go into
did you guys know when you go into them you
(40:50):
travel back in time? You see? Now, everything I know
about Disney's the black Hole, So I know that when
you go into them, you fused with a row about
and rule over hell man, Was any of this stuff
covered in the book? No? That's uh, that's pretty cool.
You've seen the black Hole? Right? No, I haven't. In
(41:12):
case anyone's misunderstanding, maybe the science is ridiculous and I
met the same I was being ironic Interstellar as well. Yeah,
black Hole is one of those like a super dark
Disney sci fi fantasy movies that they did in like
the late seventies. Yeah, like a robot disembowels Anthony Perkins
in it. It's one of the What's What's the Witch
Mountain movie? As part of that, There's there's another one anyway. Yeah,
(41:35):
oh that sounds pretty good. So there's a lot of
crazy dark movies that came out to round that time.
In Black Hole was one of them. To check that. Great,
it's a go into it with you know, realistic expectations.
It's a pretty fun, right, especially if you're ten. Yeah, well,
I will definitely be looking into that. I always wanted
to know how I could summon the dark powers of
(41:56):
of of infinite density to do my bidding. Uh. A
couple other quick mentions, I guess of of books I
read this year, one is, uh, The Confidence Game by
Maria Knakova of Viking. You got a copy of that,
didn't you write? Yeah? I saw her speak at the
World Science Festival this year. She was on a panel
that also included Mary Roach talking about about science writing,
(42:20):
and yeah, I was really impressed with everything she had
to say. Um, and that's why I also shared an
article about that. She wrote about whether or not Trump
Donald Trump is a con man on artists and I
shared that on our Facebook feed, and some people did
not like it, even though it was an objective scientific
approach look at what the Trump phenomenon is. Yeah, but
(42:41):
I was really impressed with everything she had to say
at the conference, and so I had to grab a
copy of the book as well. I haven't read it yet,
but I'm looking forward to uh reading through it. Yeah,
it's it's a good book. And so it's about con artists.
About half historical narrative about some of the most interesting
cons in history, and then the other half is science
about psychological rea search on why humans are vulnerable to
(43:02):
cons in general, and then particular tactics used by con
artists and sort of the cognitive biases that they take
advantage of. Uh. And I think it would be fun
to discuss this book for for a whole episode of
the show sometimes, especially if we could get con of
COVID to come on and join us. I've touched based
with her her agent and so do that. Well, that'd
be great. Yeah. I did find it interesting, And we
(43:25):
have to like set it up as if we're going
to do the show, but then don't actually call it.
We just take all our money, yeah, exactly because oh
DoD the audience not know that we get paid to
do interviews. Um. Two things that She mentioned um in
in her talk that I'm wondering, you know, to what
extent there there in the book. She mentioned that she
was inspired by David Mannett movies. Really writing this book,
(43:47):
I don't know. She didn't mention that in the book,
and she also mentioned that she was inspired by like
It's it's one thing we hear, we hear talk of
con games and con artists, and it's easy to think, oh, well,
that poor stupid person. But but in her talk at
the World's Nice Festival, she mentioned that one of the
things that really got are interested in this topic was
that you have very smart people, very intelligent people, who
(44:09):
end up getting sucked into these things. Yeah. One of
the stories in the book is about a physicist, a physicist,
like working physicist, brilliant guy who gets conned by an
Internet person pretending to be a I think like a
check model, who wants fished, who wants to marry him,
(44:30):
and they trick him into being a drug mule. Oh yeah,
so you don't have to be dumb to fall for
a con. They exploit biases that are that are there
in all of us, even even physicists like check models. Uh.
Then there's one last nonfiction book I want to mention. Uh,
and that is something I think it might have come
out in an episode before. But it's Our Mathematical Universe,
(44:53):
My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality. By Max
teg Mark, not for Robert. Did you read this? Why?
I didn't read it, but I've I've read that Tegmark
stuff before. He's always great, He's awesome. And I get
the feeling that tag Mark is sort of a polarizing
figure in the modern astrophysics and cosmology community. And I
think this is because he does very important and relevant
(45:13):
mainstream research. Like he's not some crazy crank, but he's
also not afraid to go out on a limb and
explore radically strange hypothesis like the idea that there's a
physical way to quantify consciousness if you think about consciousness
is a state of matter, or that the entire universe
at bottom is made of math, not figuratively or metaphorically,
(45:35):
but literally. We're not described by math. We are mathematical objects. Uh.
And so I think some scientists and scientifically literate people
don't like it when otherwise respected scientists stick their necks
out and speculate about such weirdness. Basically. Uh, But I
I guess they think that it causes some confusion about
what sciences. You hear people say this sometimes, like some
(45:58):
people in the skeptic community. Uh. And with those people,
I I cannot agree, because I think it's wonderful when
productive mainstream scientists are also free to play at the
edges of what can be known about the world, as
long as you're not confusing one type of intellectual exercise
with the other. But ultimately, this book concerns the mathematical
universe hypothesis, and it's also just a very good introduction
(46:22):
to many other ideas in physics and cosmology today. One
example is the multiverse. I like the way Tagmark Tagmark
tackles this idea, so, uh, the multi versus the idea
that other universes exist and they're causally disconnected from our own.
So if you if you follow like the cosmological debates,
you'll know that a lot of people don't like this
idea either. And one reason is that if another universe
(46:45):
is causally disconnected from us, there's no way you could
design a test to see if it's really there. So
what's the point in talking about whether it's there? Or not.
By definition, there's no way to know, and I think
that could be a very valid criticism. But in this book,
teg Mark Uh makes an interesting case. He tries to
make a case for why the multiverse is not a
(47:06):
hypothesis to be tested on its own, but instead it's
a prediction or a consequence of theories for which we
do have experimental evidence. So you know, we have evidence
that X theory is true. If X theory is true,
you would expect there to be other universes. Um. So
for that alone, I think this book is worth reading Uh,
(47:26):
and also be sure to check out some of the
criticisms of tech Mark's ideas online. I remember at the
time I read it, I came across a bunch of
blog posts and reviews by other physicists who had a
lot of disagreements with him, and they made interesting points
as well. And you know, as a non scientist, it's
exciting to read a science book that's not just a
presentation of established facts, but that's part of an ongoing
(47:49):
debate where you know, the ideas are not have not
been settled yet. Okay, So Robert, I think you're gonna
close this out right, and you're gonna close this out
with something for every buddy. Yeah, certainly for the younger,
I'll read about the science of black holes and cannibal
uh destroyers. But well we got here. Well UM. As
(48:12):
a lot of you know, I am the father of
a four year old, so a lot of my reading
these days involves reading books four or four year old
and reading the same ones over and over and over again.
I imagine many of our listeners I try and hide
the ones they don't like to read UM or certainly
return them to the library. But I thought I mentioned
just three quick ones here that I that I find
(48:32):
to be very good books that my my son really
engages with um and the and they're able to to
cover science topics to varying degrees. The first one is
a book titled Octopus. This is by Evelyn Shaw with
the illustrations by Ralph Carpentier, and this came out of
one This is long out of print, but luckily with
(48:55):
Amazon it's so easy these days to get out of
print book, so you can pick up a copy of
this hardback for like a dollar or two online, and
I think it's really worth it. Basically, it's um. It
is the story of an octopus with some wonderful kind
of watercolor illustrations. But it's the story of an octopus
from basically her early life to her death. And she
(49:18):
goes out, she finds a new home, she at some
point mates, so that kind of happens off camera. You're
just told that that occurs. Um she finds food, then
she lays her eggs, and then she dies at the end.
So it's the the life cycle of an octopus. It's
not it's not presented in any kind of a cute
see way. She's not like personified, right, She's kindling to
(49:41):
tie into a previous discussion we've had on this show before.
Does she cannibalize other octopuses? No, but she gets in
a fight with an octopus. So yeah, I'm not saying
it's like a complete, no hold barred look at an
octopus's life, but it is a refreshingly realistic, refreshing le
naturalistic look at an animal. Uh. And so I enjoyed
(50:03):
reading it, and my my son is really into hearing it.
And and it doesn't shy away from the fact that
at the at the end of the book she dies,
that she she walls herself up in her little cave
and spins the last of her energy looking after eggs,
which is, you know, kind of beautiful. Another one that
he's really into is one called all about Scabs, Bige
(50:23):
and Eat. I would have loved that if I was
a kid, Yeah, because it's all about nasty scabs. What
are they? What are they not getting into that body?
Horror early Yeah, and this is this one is children's
That is a little bit. I mean, there's talk of
in the book of do you eat scabs? Is a scab?
(50:44):
Is it poop? Is that what it is is the
body pooping out the scab. If you eat scabs, do
you get ancient power? Depends on who who depends? A
boy turns into a pig. At one point, I'm going
to go on the record and say that my scabs
when I was a kid did great. But I don't
know what was in them, but they gave you the
strength of the wind to go. Another great thing about
(51:07):
this one, and this is something that I think should
resonate with any parents out there who read books, is
that it has a couple of different levels of depth
you can get into. So there's some stuff later on
in the book where you can really get more into
what skin is and how skin heels. That's cool and
you can sort of read to whatever is appropriate for
your child's engagement. So it's a great one. I believe
(51:28):
this was. This one is in the same book series
as the Everybody Poops book. Oh yeah, okay, I'm well
familiar with that one. And finally I have one. This
one makes seem like a strange choice, but it's the
Barrenstein Bears on the Moon by stand and Jan Berenstein.
From this one came out what in ve um. You
(51:48):
probably wonder how space he could this be? How how
informative could this be about our solar system? This is
what led all those people to write the manifesto about
the Case against Space. Maybe it's a for me though.
Basically in this story you have a couple of the
barn steamed bears and they go to the Moon with
their dog on a rocket, and that's about all that happens.
(52:09):
They go there and they come back. But I found
this to be pretty helpful and just explaining to my
son what the moon is and where it is, because
you know, I want to share all this great stuff,
all this wonderful information about the about the Solar system,
in the universe and what what what's happening on other planets.
But initially I had to get over that hurdle of
(52:29):
how do I explain to him what the moon is,
That it's far away, that there's such an abstract constah,
that there's nobody on it. But yes, people have been
there in the past, but only a handful and only
white men, two bears and their dogs, and two bears
and their dogs. So it basically just as a it
works as a nice illustrative adventure to say, hey, this
(52:51):
is what the Moon is, and this is how it
relates to the Earth. Yea, that's neat very surface level,
but you gotta start somewhere, and I found this to
be a good starting place. Now, is it the book
that that movie Apollo eighteen with the Moon Spiders was
based on. I didn't see that with it Moon Moon
Spiders the Amne. I actually didn't see either, but I
watched the trailer several times because I found it funny.
(53:13):
It's actually a prequel to Transformers three. Dark of the Moon.
The Barrenstein Bears find the Transformers buried on the Moon.
All right, Well, that's those are the three that I have.
I guess the best way to close it out here
is if there there are any books that you're looking
forward to, or you know what's next on your plate
that you're excited about. Well, I have a huge queue
(53:34):
in my kindle right now of weird horror literature that
I've picked up from reading that st JO sheet book.
So Brian Evanson is sort of a newish like last
ten years horror writer that I'm really enjoying and reading
a book by him called A Collapse of Horses. I'm
going through Ramsey Campbell's back catalog. Um, those are the
(53:58):
big ones that I can remember right now. Oh, we
should I should throw this out there. A friend of
the show, Michael we Hunt, has a collection of his
stories out that are really good and it is called
Greener Pastures. Yes, I read this as well. Um, I
highly recommend anyone pick this up who's interested in contemporary
horror fiction. Um. Yeah, there two stories in their in
(54:20):
particular the title tale Green Pastures and then the first one.
Oh nannon is that it. It's the one with the
mountain and the women. Uh. Anyway, the first story, it's
one of those collections that kicks off on a really
strong note, really knocks it out of the park. Yeah.
So this is a young horror writer at the top
(54:40):
of his game. Go check it out. Speaking of friends
of the show, there's a comic that I'm excited about
that had just started up called Cryptocracy, and that's why
our friend Van Jensen, who lives here in Atlanta, and
it's illustrated by Pete Woods up from Dark Horse. It
is really cool at the first two issues. And uh,
I believe and at some point is going to be
(55:01):
making an appearance with the conspiracy guys on their post.
I hope. So, because his book is all about it's
basically the pitches what if every conspiracy theory was true? Yeah,
and it's also from the point of view of the
conspiracy perpetrator, it's not from the people who are trying
to solve the mystery. It's fun. I like it a lot. Yeah. Interesting. Okay,
how about you, Joe, what are you looking forward? Dude?
(55:22):
What's what's the next big review? I think it's probably well,
actually I already started it, so I know it. I
don't know why I was hedging like that. It's uh.
The first novel in a trilogy, a science fiction trilogy
by the Chinese author lu check Chen called The Three
Body Problems but my list as well. I have not
read it yet, but yeah, I I just started it
and so far it's very good, so I'm very excited
(55:45):
to continue with it. Well, for my part, I am
extremely excited that our Scott Baker is the Great Ordeal.
Book three of his Aspect Imperor trilogy is coming out
next month. Um. I've talked about this author in this
series a lot the past. This is the dark fantasy
series that has a tremendous amount of philosophy and even
(56:06):
neuroscience in it. Um. I've heard nothing but good things
about this series. I'm looking forward to catching up on it.
And this reminds me of a book that you let
me borrow that I should mention on the show as well.
Michael Shay, who we've talked about before because he my
all time favorite horror story so far is written by him,
The Autopsy, And when you heard that, you let me
(56:27):
borrow a book of collection of his short fiction that
The Autopsy is within. But then you also just let
me borrow the Nift series, and so I'm getting into
that as well. That niff Leen in in one episode
we did recently, Yes, probably something with bugs because he's
um or mine. Maybe it had to do with giant bodies,
(56:48):
that's right, yeah, giants, because yeah, because he's a very
biologically or he was sadly passed away a year or
two ago, but he was a very biologically literate author,
and there was it all. There was always a lot
of biological and body horror and creature heart insect horror
in his work. Yeah, his work goes all over the place,
and it's the autopsy is definitely that. It's like alien
(57:12):
body horror. But the nip the lean stuff is like
if you're a fan of like sword and sorcery style
kind of fantasy worlds, maybe Game of Thrones style stuff,
this is that. But then incorporating all of this just
absolutely weird aberrant, uh life forms and body horror. Yeah, yeah,
I believe he took a lot of inspiration early on
(57:32):
from Jack Vance dying our stories and then really took
it into this. Uh this weird directional is alright. So
there you have it. Uh, some of some examples of
stuff that we have read, that we are reading, that
we plan to read, and of course we would love
to hear from everyone out there. What are we missing?
What what do we need to check out at all costs?
(57:53):
What are your thoughts and some of the titles we've
mentioned here. Yeah, we've got twelve more months before we
do another summer reading, unless summer comes earlier next year.
But in the meantime, and let us know the way
to get in touch with us social media. We are
on Facebook, we're on Twitter, we're on Tumbler, we're on Instagram.
You can take pictures of your books, send them to
us on Instagram, put them on Tumbler, however, or you
(58:17):
could just write us a message. How do they do that? Well,
of course they can email us at blow the Mind
at how stuff works dot com. Well more on this
and pathans of other happens. Is it how stuff Works
dot Com
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from housetop work
dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb, and I am Christian Sager
and I am Joe McCormick. And today we are going
to be doing one of our annual summer Reading episodes. Yeah,
(00:25):
this is just kind of a casual get together here
where we're just coming to the studio, bring a few
listening recommendations for our listeners, share some things that we've
been reading, uh, hope to read in the future, et cetera. Yeah,
a lot of listeners right into us, both on social
media and through email to recommend books and movies and
(00:48):
all kinds of things to us. And I feel like
this is our chance to to give back. Although I
mean probably every given episode we dropped some variety of
things that we've been reading or movies we've been watching,
or TV or something like that. But this is all
about Hey, it's summertime, right, let's go to the beach
and read some books. Why is that a thing people
(01:09):
do with the beach because you, well, in my experience,
is because you you break free from your normal patterns
um and you suddenly find yourself creating all this new
time in a new space, craving John Grisham, No, no,
I mean I thought some people like to go with
the more mainstream books that are available in the beach House.
But but no, I've always found it a good you
(01:31):
can excuse you just really dive into something, uh, you know,
entertaining or or really heavy. Robert, what what was that you?
You went to the beach I think within the past
couple of years and uploaded to the internet some pictures
of the library on the shelf at the beach House
where they had a they had a book about a
werewolf spy. I guess um was it was? It went
(01:51):
and Robert mccommon um came in. Is that his name? Um? Gosh,
I can wish you remember which author that was. Yeah,
but I was surprised to find some cool old genre
stuff because generally you just find Tom Clancy John Grisham, uh,
some various uh you know, my all romance novels. It's
always Tom Clancy. The kind of people who owned beach houses.
(02:13):
They like to know how nuclear submarines were. Well. I
hope that the werewolf spy had some love in his life.
Pretty sure he did pretty cud good good. Well that's
a good segue into my first book, which is a
document that looks at the entire history of supernatural horror
and fiction. WHOA, yeah, So this is my nonfiction pick
(02:35):
this this year, guys, and it is by a past
stuff to blow your mind, guest. Mr St Joshi h
He was on a previous episode that Robert and Julie
did about HP Lovecraft in the Science behind his Works,
and I believe you interviewed him, right, Yeah, yeah, I
chatted with him on the phone and uh, we used
to interview on the episode. So those of you who
(02:57):
are unfamiliar with him maybe go back and listen to
that EPI. So, but I'll give you a little primer here.
St Joshy. He's like a literary critic and an academic.
He's primarily known for very close examinations of weird fiction.
So HP Lovecraft and all the writers that preceded him,
like Algernon Blackwood, m R. James Are, Arthur Macon and
(03:18):
those who have followed him to like Ramsey Campbell, Ray Bradberry, Clark,
Ashton Smith. He's written tomes on all of these people. Uh,
and he has I guess what can be described as
an acerbic style of writing about the genre. He's a
little he's a little pointed in some of his criticisms.
I feel like he's kind of a horror fiction horror
(03:39):
literature ment at. Yeah, yeah, his lips stained purple. Yes,
that's how you know. Ellen Datlow is um a really
prominent editor in the horror field. She edits the best
Horror of the Year books that come out at the
end of every year. She described St. Joshy as the
(04:00):
nastiest reviewer in the field. So, um, I'm giving you
this warning ahead of time. This book is great. But
he doesn't pull his punches. When he doesn't like something,
he lets you know about it, and when he loves something,
he celebrates it in all its glory. It's weird because
I think I don't I can't remember offhand an example
of him tearing something up like I tend to read Joshi.
(04:23):
He does a lot of introductions two books and uh,
and certainly puts together as at its compilations of things
that he likes. So I've certainly encountered the loving as
t Jo, not so much the hammer. Wouldn't it be
great to read a book though that had an introduction
that ripped the very book you're reading to shreds. Well,
here's an example. I've got one for you. Publishers Weekly
(04:46):
did a review of this book, and they said Joshi
reserves his sharpest judgments for contemporary horror writers, especially popular bestsellers,
dismissing Stephen King as quote a schlockmeister, just the literary
equivalent of all the b movie and comic books he
digested in his youth. So so there's that. Um, this
is a great book, though, Like, if you are looking
(05:08):
to really dive into the horror genre and to find out,
like what's the best of the best, what's the history
behind it, what's the stuff I should go out and
look for. This is it. I mean. He starts with
the Greek and Latin literature that includes supernatural elements, moves
up to the Gothic era, has a whole huge section
(05:29):
on Poe, and then talks a lot about the weird
horror writers at the end of the nineteenth century. That's
just the first volume. Originally, this was published in two
separate volumes. In the second volume covers the development of
horror literature through the twentieth century, with sections mainly on
those people I just mentioned before, Makin Blackwood, Lovecraft, etcetera. Uh,
(05:49):
Shirley Jackson has her own whole chapter all the way
up to Peter Straub, Stephen King and people who are
writing today like that. Well they're all writing today, but
like Kately and R. Kiernan, who's like a relatively recent
writer comparatively to the rest of this stuff. So I
I really recommended if you're just looking to just play
around and see what's out there in horror literature and
(06:12):
what you like and what you don't like. Yeah, he's
definitely one of those those uh, those great authoritative um
experts on the field where you can always just get
a few at least a few ideas of authors you
need to check out and try. Yeah, I'm loving it,
especially the egg Allen post section has been really illuminating
for me so far. And now, would you say his
(06:33):
his survey of the field is more exclusively literary, just
like looking at the authors and their works and the
relationship to each other. Or does he do historical and
other cultural contextual stuff too. Uh No, it's primarily literary. Yeah,
I don't think he not so much unless he's like
previously written about an author like so, for instance, in
(06:54):
the post section, he already had like a lot to
gather from, so he could provide you with some context
about like what was going on imposed life at the
time that he wrote I don't know, murders in the room,
morgue or something like that, and that provided some context,
but but not for everything. Yeah, so yeah, I mean,
I highly recommend it. I know from talking to some
of our listeners, they always like it when we bring
(07:15):
up the weird horror literature that we've been reading, and uh, man,
this is it. This is the book if you you know,
you don't have to read the whole thing. You can
just get it, flipped through it and kind of find
like the area that you're looking for and and dive
in and you will come out with just a treasure
trove of authors to go looking for. Then I gotta ask,
last time we did a summer reading episode, y'all convinced
(07:37):
me to read The Great God Pan by Arthur Makon,
who is one of the writers you mentioned that he
gets into. I went and read it, loved it. It's amazing.
What does he think about it? I haven't gotten to
the section yet where he talks about making. But if
I know Joshi, I would imagine that he thinks it's awesome. Yeah,
he probably like sets up a shrine at its feet. Well,
I know a lot of a lot of critics trashed it,
(07:58):
didn't they back then? Yeah, I mean a hundred and
twenty years ago when nobody knew anything. Yeah, and no,
I think, And certainly it's not for everybody, Like I
can imagine plenty of people would maybe not dig it today.
Give men maybe a little bit stuffy, a little bit
the prose style is yeah, is definitely of its time,
and it's How does our friend H. E. C. Steiner
(08:18):
refer to it? He talks about it as being like
yet another one of those stories of like learned gentleman,
like just sitting around by fire talking about something horrific. Right,
but it's awesome. It's one of the best horror stories
I think I ever written. You would not comprehend my horror?
When all right, Joe, what do you have? What do
you have from the nonfictional bucket here for us? Well,
(08:39):
I've got it. I've got one fiction book and a
few nonfiction books, but all I'll start with one that
if you are a regular listener, to the show. This
probably is not going to come as a surprise to you,
because I think I've gushed about it on at least
one episode before, maybe multiple episodes. But my first nonfiction
pick is the Invention of Nature Alexander von Humboldt's New
World by Andrea Woolf. And that's a book published by
(09:02):
NOTAP and it's about the German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt,
who lived from seventeen eighteen fifty nine. And this guy
has a lot of things in the world named after him.
There's the Humboldt Current, the Humboldt Glacier in Greenland, Humboldt
Bay in California, the Humboldt Range, Humboldt Falls, Humblet Mountains,
(09:23):
Humbolt penguin, Humboldt squid, uh tons of other animal species.
He's all over the map in the natural world. They
should all get together and full formed like a Humblet
super team, right like, and turn into a giant robot.
Yeah exactly, huh. And so I I think, in fact
that this is my favorite. I think he's even got
(09:43):
a sinkhole named after him. Now, once you've got a
sinkhole named after you, you you have made it squad goals.
But so he traveled all over the world during his
lifetime making observations of nature. He was one of those
classic nineteenth century naturalists, kind of like dar Win, but
preceding Darwin, and so his influence in his own time
(10:04):
was pretty much incalculable. But I don't think I ever
learned a single thing about this guy in school, And
after reading this book, I think I'd say von Humboldt
might be the most historically influential intellectual of the past
millennium who is just completely forgotten by history. Why is that,
I don't know, But reading Andrea Wolfe's book on him
(10:26):
is just wonderful. I I absolutely loved it. So to
give a little context about what's going on in Humboldt's lifetime,
I want to read a quote from Thomas Jefferson that
sort of reflects the attitude toward nature one might encounter
in the learned gentleman, as you say, of the of
the nineteenth century. Turn of the nineteenth century. So Jefferson
(10:47):
had put the mammoth on this chart he made of
extant European mammals, and obviously some people were like, why
the mammoth, and so he said quote. It may be
asked to why I insert the mammoth as if he
still existed. It may be asked in return, why I
should omit it as if it did not exist, such
(11:10):
as the economy of nature, that no instance can be
produced of her having permitted any one race of her
animals to become extinct, of her having formed any link
in her great works so weak as to be broken.
I mean today, that's obviously extremely wrong in multiple ways.
But this was sort of the climate in which Humboldt's
(11:32):
view was revolutionary. So in many ways Humboldt is responsible
for the way scientists came to see nature as they
do today, not as a static created order with everything
in its right place and nothing really changing over the
long term, but as this dynamic, changeable, massively interconnected system
(11:54):
of ecology and biological and chemical webs of relationships between
all the things on Earth, the elements, and its life forms.
So in Humboldts of view, habitats could be altered and destroyed,
species could go extinct, and changes in one place could
have far reaching effects and others. And Humblet began to
use the analogy of the world as sort of one
(12:16):
unified organism, whereas you know in an organism, if you
get gang green in one part of your body, it
will affect other parts of your body. So, Uh, I
loved this book. It's just full of really fascinating stories
about humblets travels around the world and his experiments. I
think I used it as one of our sources in
the episodes Robert and I did about the early days
of electricity experiments where uh one of the ones I
(12:39):
related with Humbldt's quest to collect the bodies of lightning
strike victims so he could examine the burns to their
to their body hair and see exactly what that could
tell us about animal electricity. Another one was humbldts experiments
with bom Blonde about the electric eels of South America,
collecting eels by causing horses to stay impede over a
(13:00):
pond full of them, and then once he finally got
some eels. Uh like touching the eels a lot, and
it's weird, but he was a very interesting, very smart,
very cool guy for his time. He was like the
ig Nobel Prize winner of his time. Like, instead of
taking bees and holding them to his body, he just
touched electrical kind of but more of a more of
(13:22):
a scientific superstar. Yeah, he was absolutely a rock star
of his time, like more than Stephen Hawking or any
celebrity scientists today. He's like dead to history now. I
don't know if they don't talk about him in school
or or you know, I guess just in the science
community in general. I don't know. It's it's a good question, um,
because his his influence was absolutely huge. A big part
(13:45):
of the book is just showing how big his influence was,
like their chapters focusing on contemporaries of of Humboldts like Gerta.
Darwin's Thorau, so artists, politicians, other scientists, and how they
all revered him and got lots of ideas from him.
And so I really don't know exactly why it is
(14:07):
that his legacy is mostly forgotten. Well there's penguins and
glaciers and sinkholes at least. Well it sounds like you
really need to push the Humboldt renaissance here. I mean, yeah,
everyone behind and pushed Tesla back to the forefront. So yeah,
I think humbold more interesting than Tesla. Whoah, you heard
(14:27):
it here first folks. Yeah, but anyway, this should we
name a car after him. Well, if you want to
find out for yourself, for yourself, you should read this book.
So it's really really wonderful. It's not only a pleasure.
It covers this massive blind spot I didn't even know
I had in sort of the Western history of scientific thought. Uh.
So that's Andrea Wolf Alexander von Humboldt's New World. Uh
(14:52):
check it out. Big, big thumbs up from me. All right, well,
um from my part um. You know, we a lot
of scientific books, especially the mainstream general scientific books across
our desk, and of the ones that have come out
in the past year, I really have to say that
(15:14):
mar j Hart's Sex in the CEA our intimate connection
with sex, changing fish, romantic lobsters, kiki squid, and other
salty erotica of the deep, it's probably the one that
right at the top of my list. Yeah, that's a
great book. And we talked about it in our Osadas
bone Worm episode. We didn't talk to her with Ma
and there and and we're planning to do another interview
with her later this summer. Uh. She was delightful down
(15:37):
to Earth and really is into the kinky stuff between
marine life. Yeah, like she does. I thought she did
just a fabulous job, not only you know, in the book,
but in the interview as well. I mean, just really
conveying I love for these creatures, but also a great
willingness to enjoy the ridiculousness of totally inhuman weird nous,
(16:00):
of the sense of humor about it. The way that
um she frames each of her chapters. Yeah, yeah, I
enjoyed that. It reminded me of Mary Roach. I'd love
to see more come out from Marra sort of along
the same lines as how Mary Roach has got this
series of books over time. Yeah, she has a similar voice,
but but coming from you know, more of a devoted
(16:20):
expert background, because this this is her her area of expertise,
and she really brings across a clear passion for ecological preservation. Uh.
And it it's probably would say it's a perfect scientific
beach read for obvious reasons. You're going to the beach
and not better than the werewolf spot. Then you go
swimming around in the ocean and have all the various
(16:41):
fluids of marine life spawning just flowing around over your body. Now,
this gives me an idea has anybody ever tried to
create a wear bone worm story? Well, you know, it
would be hard because you'd have to swim all the
way to the bottom of the ocean near a whales
carcass and then be bitten by a bone worm. So
(17:02):
it starts like the abyss. Yeah. Well, but then I
don't see how I don't think think see how they
would be a threat to anybody. Like basically they'd be like, oh, well, Carl,
he caught this bone worm illness, and now he just
he keeps to himself a lot because he goes down
the whale car because we'll remember we were talking about
in that episode though about maybe it was just me.
But but like how it would be great if you
(17:25):
could use bone worms as like a weapon, like in
BioShock or something like that, and you just throw them
at people and they immediately start drilling through. So they
could be like that. You could just you could just
change into a ware bone worm. But but a spy
took Uh. The other book that I thought i'd mentioned
this is another one that I've definitely mentioned on the
(17:46):
podcast before, uh, and that is a Chinese mythology and
introduction by and Beryl. I found this to be just
a first of all, it's it has provids a great
overview of mythology as it's studied in general. So even
if you're going into it without a whole lot of
religious studies in your past or you know, mythological understanding,
(18:07):
she provides just a great introduction to just what mythology
is now it works, and then then a wonderful overview
about what's distinct about Chinese myth cycles uh, compared to
the West, compared to even other Asian myths cycles UM.
And there's just also a cool arrangement of themes, so
she she groups everything and to for instance, they'll be
(18:29):
at there's a section on on miraculous births, section on heroes,
the section on immortality, on strange creatures, etcetera. So I
feel like the the information is very well presented. Uh.
You know, it's more of a more of a scholarly
textbook for sure, compared to U to to my my
previous recommendation. But if you were at all interested in
(18:51):
Chinese culture, if we were all interested in UM in
Eastern mythology, I think it's a great book to pick up.
And I picked up a few different Chinese mythology texts
found a few of them a little a little harder
to engage with, So of those books, I feel like
this is the this is the best, And this was
a resource that I'm guessing that you turned to for
(19:11):
a couple of different things that we've done over the
last few months, Right, like the mythology episode that you
and I did. You guys did an episode on the Zodiac.
Did it come into play there? Um? I picked up
the book after the Zodiac, So I think I actually
stopped this one out when I was working on that
How Stuff Works Now piece of Superhero that was going
to be the next thing I mentioned. Yeah, there was
one particular story, um from Chinese folklore conserving concerning the
(19:34):
seven to ten brothers, however many you want to count,
and I was just determined to find a good scholarly
resource on this. As it turns out, it's not really
dealt with in this book, but it ended up acquiring
it anyway, And after I got it, I realized, well,
this is not really gonna help me with this particular assignment.
But then the more I started reading it, everyalized it
was just a faculous text and couldn't put it back down.
(19:55):
Cool that sounds great. I hope we get more out
of it too, don't Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's tons of
inform in there. So if if you guys want to hear, uh,
you know, anything else concerning mythology from us, if we
have not filled our quota from based episodes, because we've
had a couple of them, right, we've had the the uh,
the overall look at mythology and then Joe, didn't we
(20:16):
just record one dealing with myth as well. Yeah, we
did one with on a mythical creatures mythology. So yeah,
we we we have a couple of us feel like
really strong myth based episodes. In mythology of course continually
comes up in our episodes. Anyone, we don't bust myths.
Here is stuff to blow, all right, we embrace them,
we build them. Okay, so we're gonna take a quick break,
(20:36):
but when we get back, we're going to delve into
our fiction picks for the year. Okay, so we're back, guys.
I have been talking about this book, probably to you
off air, but to pretty much everybody in my life
for the last year. It is Jeff Vandermere's Annihilation. Uh.
(20:59):
This is the first first book in his trilogy of
the Southern Reach story. Have I have I torn your
ears apart yet? Oh? Yes, I I pushed hard for
it to for its inclusion in a book club that
I'm in it and it was it was just I
guess too, Sci five. This is the stuff to blow
your mind book. I'm telling you, like it's all like
(21:21):
all the things we're going for with this podcast are
in this book. UM. So, if you don't know who
vander Meer is, he's a weird fiction, sci fi horror
author together with his wife, and he's compiled a lot
of just excellent anthologies as introductions to those genres that
he writes within. Um. In fact, last year, his book
The Weird was on my list and I've probably talked
(21:43):
about it on almost every single episode since then because
I just loved that book. Um and so you've probably
heard me mention it a lot of times. But Annihilation
is his book. It is a novel. Uh. And if
you're a fan of what we do on the show,
really I can't recommend you have to check it out.
Combines weird science with this haunting prose in a great mystery. Uh.
(22:05):
In fact, this is a description of the book just like,
and I'm going to just give you a bare bones
summary because I don't want to spoil anything. It describes
a team of four people therefore women, a biologist and anthropologist,
a psychologist, and a surveyor, and they are sent into
an area known as Area X, and this area has
been completely abandoned and cut off from the rest of civilization.
(22:28):
All they know is that they're the twelfth expedition to
go into this area. All of the other expeditions have
met with disappearances of their members, suicides, aggressive cancers, or
mental trauma when they get back, so pretty much everybody
who goes there either dies or comes back and dies
or goes crazy. Um. It's narrated by the biologist, and
(22:52):
as such, Vandermuir does this really good job of giving
it an eye towards the field of biology, and the
character explores this weird setting, and it makes use of
the flora and the fauna both within the setting of
the story in this Area X, but also in the
book's narrative. It's it's just wonderful at that. I don't
want to spoil it any more than that, but there's
(23:13):
some there's some weird stuff in Area X. Uh annely
Knew It's give a great review of it over at
I O nine, and she referred to it as the
tale of an ill fated scientific expedition to a piece
of coastline that has developed strange new physical properties that
defy explanation, and it will make you believe in the
power of science mysteries again. Uh. It is currently being
(23:37):
adapted into a film by Alex Garland, who most people
know because he directed X Makina last year. I know,
I'm from writing The Beach, which I read in high school. Yeah,
he's well, he's done a bunch of great stuff. Twenty
twenty days later. Um believe Judge Dred, Judge Dread he wrote,
and I don't. I don't know if he directed Judge Dread,
but yeah, Alex Garland's great. So I'm psyched that he
(24:00):
is making a movie version of this, and Natalie Portman
and Oscar Isaac are both going to be in it,
so I'm really looking forward to it. I don't want
to say too much more about it other than that
it's the first part of a trilogy. There's two more books,
and I I hear those are good too. There on
my list. Awesome, Well, I am going to get into
my fiction pick now, and it is also a science
fiction book. In fact, I actually just finished reading this
(24:23):
book this week. Earlier this week or a couple of
weeks ago. I guess I didn't know what my fiction
pick for this year was going to be, but now
I know. I absolutely loved this book. It's called Aurora
by Kim Stanley Robinson and it's it was published by
orbit In and it was just absolutely excellent, powerful, smart, thrilling,
(24:46):
deeply researched, a very emotionally resonant and a lot of fun.
And I again, I have a similar problem with you.
I don't want to spoil too much about the plot.
Uh So I guess I'll keep my synopsis very brief,
but the the story begins on a Generation starship, Robert.
Have you ever in the back Yes? That's what No.
(25:07):
I mean. Have you ever done an episode in the
back catalog about like arc ships? Um? No, you know,
it's one of those things that comes up. It has
come up, been passing before, but never devoted episodes. That
would be Yeah, I think that'd be a good thing
to focus an entire episode on someday. But generally the
idea is um is that if you were planning on
going to colonize an extrasolar star system in the galaxy,
(25:30):
the limits imposed by physics say that, well, okay, you
can't actually travel faster than light or anything like that.
So it's gonna be a multi hundred year journey at
the at the very least. Um, So what's gonna happen.
What happens if you need to make a you know,
three hundred year journey to a star system, Well, you
basically have to take enough of earth bio diversity with
(25:52):
you to uh to create a self sustaining atmosphere and
ecology on a ship. Um. And that's by a challenge.
I mean, we we find we found significant challenges just
creating uh, like the biospheres here on Earth. Yeah, I
mean I believe one of the episodes we've done we
talked about dirt. Didn't we about like the challenges of
like how much dirt you would need to bring? Yeah?
(26:15):
I don't remember this, but yeah, I can imagine that
absolutely features into this novel. So it's the novel starts
on this this generation ship with multiple generations of passengers.
I will say it starts into the journey. So all
the characters are people who did not choose to embark
on this journey. They were all they were all born
on the way, which is a strange position to imagine
(26:38):
yourself in because you didn't sign up for this, right,
the original generations and their descendants and their their children
and their grandchildren are all dead. Uh. Well, in a way,
you have to recycle all biological matter within these systems,
so sort of, I mean, they don't directly cannibalize the flesh. Yeah,
but I was imagining that in their atoms, their atoms
(27:01):
and energy go back into the ship system. But so, yeah,
they're they're bound for this extrasolar star system known as
Tao STI. And I think I can safely say that
this is the most deeply and thoroughly scientific science fiction
book I have ever read. Uh. And I will say
that because the plot is one of fundamentally it's a
(27:23):
plot of scientific discovery, and that most of the conflicts
in the plot are not like you know, your standard
energy weapon battles, but they are scientific and engineering conflicts.
It's uh, coming from smart people trying to struggle with
the limitations imposed on them by physics, chemistry, and biology.
(27:44):
And this is one of those books that I think
I knew I was gonna like it once I saw
what the negative reviewers had to say. Do you ever
have that experience? This got a lot of positive reviews,
but when I saw what the negative reviews said, there's
just a certain kind a negative review that makes me
know I'm gonna love something. So I'm guessing this isn't
(28:04):
something that the sad puppies would vote for a Hugo on. No,
I don't think so. Well. Some people didn't like it,
I think because it had certain environmentalist themes. And then
also I think some people found it boring because there
wasn't enough like fighting and killing in it. Yeah exactly, okay, um,
but there. But I thought it was just absolutely wonderful.
(28:25):
I I fully, holly loved this book. Cool alright, Well
for my fictional choice, UM, I'm definitely gonna give you
the Cannibals that you wanted. Thank you. Question. I find myself.
I found myself in the in the first half of
this year. Um, not reading a lot that I ended
(28:46):
up really loving. Like I read, I've read some good books.
I mean I read The Fixer by Bernard Malamud, which
is which is great and it actually ties into some
stuff I've written about for stuff to play your mind
having to do with the blood, libel and person and
Jewish persecution of the Jews. I also read The knee
On Bible by John Kennedy Tool, which is about the
(29:08):
most impressive thing you'll ever read read by a sixteen
year old if you really want to, really want to
depress yourself about your your your teenage writing ability. Sixteen
year old? How old was he when he wrote Confederacy
of Dunces? Oh not, what was he older? You know,
he was definitely older, lived tremendously long since the killed himself.
(29:30):
But this one came out after the Confederacy of Dunces
because it was one that his mother had published, was
written before then. I mean, they both came out after
his death. But it's a I mean it's a very
it's a very advanced book for a sixteen year old
um and I enjoyed it, but I also I didn't
just absolutely love it. And it's hard to really, you know,
(29:53):
pick a science the ankle on it. Um. So really
the book that's uh in aged me the most this
year was a book of titled Off Season by Jack
Ketch um Um and it wasn't it. It's kind of
an infamous publication and I wasn't even really going to
mention it, but because it's extremely graphic, it's an extremely
(30:15):
nasty piece of nineteen eighties horror fiction. And in fact,
I think I edited out a mention of it on
a previous show. Yeah, but but I figured, hey, it's
the book that that sucked me in the most, so
I should probably mention it with the caveat that it
is not for for you, for young people, It is
not for anyone who's squeamish. It has a lot of
a lot of extreme violence in it. Um it is,
(30:38):
but it's a It's a real page turner. It's exceptionally
well written. You care about the characters, and you hate, hate,
hate all the debased villains, which are all essentially It's
about some individuals on a vacation, so it's a great
vacation read obviously, who are attacked by marauding cannibals that
live in the hills and I go west Craven move
(31:00):
turned into it. It sounds like the Hills have I Yeah,
it's my understanding that hills have ice. Was was kind
of an inspiration on it. Like that, that, and a
few other things. Um, but it's just it's really well executed,
especially after you get the initial character development stuff out
of the way. Once thing awful things start happening, it's
just impossible to put it down. And uh, it's ultimately
(31:21):
the book about normal folks who have to be who
who are beset by bloodthirsty savages and then have to
become bloodthirsty savages to survive. And you find yourself becoming
kind of a bloodthirsty savage reader as you cheer them
on against these awful, awful people. So it's a it's
an extreme read, uh, but not to the point where
(31:41):
I ever felt like the author was just tormenting me
or the characters just for the sake of all the sufferings,
because I've certainly encountered haror like that before where it
just leaves me feeling a little gross with the roth. Yeah,
and that being said, there is still plenty of bad
stuff in here. So again I stressed that this this
(32:04):
one is only for the dedicated horror fans out there,
but it wouldn't be fair not to mention it since
it was such a an engaging read, such an addictive read. Hey,
so we need to take a quick break, but we
will be right back with some more selections from our
summer reading list, and we're back. Okay. So you guys
(32:31):
know me and I am a comics fan. So I
wouldn't be able to bring and do a summer reading
list if I didn't at least mention a couple of comics. Um.
So I tried to narrow it down from my usual
huge list to stuff that I think really resonates with
our show and our listeners. On the first one that
I have to recommend is called Junction True and it's
(32:53):
a graphic novel by Ray Fox. Uh. And it's illustrated
and watercolored by Vince Locke, and it's just gorgeous water colors,
really beautiful book, very uh, you know, has very painterly
quality to it. Uh. And it is about a near
future where subculture involves transhumanist body hacking, which just right
(33:15):
up our alley right. Uh. It's this weird, twisted love
story about S and M rebellion, alienation, and body modification
where the main character really has to ask himself how
far he's willing to go for love, and by go,
I mean modify his body for what his lover wants
him to be. Uh. It is strange and kind of
(33:38):
creepy and horrifying, but the characters just really feel real,
and Uh, I just applauded it. Ray Fox is a
very smart writer. He takes a lot of risks that
pay off in his storytelling and in the theme. So
I recommend this book immensely. I believe it is put
out by Top Shelf Productions. The second one that I
would recommend, and this will come as no surprise to
(33:59):
be who have listened to me talk about things on
the show before. Warren Ellis has a new comic that's
been out for the last year together with Declan Shelvey
and Jordie Blair, called Injection, and Uh, it really takes
that old Arthur C. Clark quote to heart. Any sufficiently
advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. So you can't really
(34:23):
tell is it is there magic in this book or
is it's, you know, some kind of sci fi technology
that's just beyond our understanding. And he's not willing to
hold your hand and let you know. If you haven't
heard me babble about Warren Ellis on the show before. Uh,
last year I recommended his nonfiction book Cunning Plans during
our summer reading list. He's known for doing comics like
(34:44):
trans Metropolitan, Global Frequency, Planetary, Freak, Angels, and a lot
of other superhero, video game and TV work. I went
back and read the first volume of trans Metropolitan this
year on your recommendation. I really liked it. Yeah, it's
pretty cool, it was funny. I love it. Spent a
long time since I've read it. Yeah, that Spider Jerusalem, right, Yes,
Spider Jerusalem is his Like sci fi Hunter s. Thompson,
(35:07):
it's it's fun. Injection is about a team that consists
of a secret agent, a scientist, a hacker, a shaman,
and a detective and they make a mistake and they
kind of think they're smarter than they are and they
let something weird loose into the world, and subsequently they're
all traumatized by this experience, but they're also trying to
(35:29):
make things right. Uh. It doesn't hold your hand with
narrative structure. Ellis is definitely trying out some interesting like flashbacks,
flash forwards, jumping from character to character, not really showing
you all the pieces at once, But it comes together
and it's it's excellent. The artwork is stunning. This team
is great. Declan Chalvey and Jordie Blair are a couple
(35:51):
that work together. He does the illustration and she does
the colors, and so it's just, you know, you can
see that teamwork in the art that really flows well together.
And the storytelling is superb for comics. If you like
stories that deal with the following things, this is for you. Madness, weird,
incursions into reality, the history of magic, especially in the
(36:13):
British Isles, and government conspiracies. Injection has all that and more.
Now are both of these that you've mentioned? Are these
complete things? Are the ongoing Injection is still ongoing? Junction
True is a complete work? That's cool? I uh so.
I actually this year have been embarking on a project
of going back and reading basically all the great like
(36:34):
classic graphic novels that I've never read before. So I've
been reading a lot of as far as superheroes go,
you know, the ones that everybody had read except for me.
I read The Dark Knight Returns for the first time
this year, and uh some other Batman stuff. Have you
done Alan moore Swamp thing run yet? I haven't, but
I did read concerning Alan Moore I finally went and
(36:55):
read From Hell, which is another one along your lines, Robert,
that I certainly wouldn't recommend for our younger listeners because
it is extremely graphic in terms of sex and violence.
But it's also a really, really well researched and interesting
dark graphic novels. Excellent. It's one of my favorite graphic
novels of all time, and it has been a huge
(37:17):
influence on my own work in the field. And don't
let the movies do from it. Yeah, but my next pick.
I had a couple more nonfiction books that I read
this year that I wanted to mention because I thought
they were great. So another one concerning science is a
book about black holes, and it is called black Hole Colon.
(37:39):
How an idea abandoned by Newtonians, hated by Einstein, and
gambled on by Hawking became loved by Marcia Bartouschek Yale
University Press. So I have to say, points deducted for
having a sixteen wordlong subtitle that is obnoxious. You think
it should be crunched down and yeah, point of infinite
(37:59):
and city and zero volume black hole colon spaghettification, But
points deducted for that points awarded for everything else. I thought,
this is just a really superb and concise piece of
science writing. Um and uh so Marcia Bartoschik, I think
she is ahead of the head of a science writing
program at M I T. And you can see why
(38:21):
she has that post. She she is a really really
top notch science communicator. And there's a very breezy, readable,
compact style to this book. Uh and so Bartschik tells
the story of our knowledge about black holes, how they're
first theorized, how violently physicists oppose them, and how they
eventually came to be accepted and uh. Bartosik is very
(38:45):
true to the difficult astrophysics behind black holes, but she
makes the concepts involved, like really very easy to understand
for non scientists. I was am I'm not a physicist,
I'm not even a very math inclined person, but I
was following her the whole way. Uh and A lot
of this is made possible simply by the way she
narrativises the subject. It's easier to understand the ideas she
(39:07):
presents because she tells the story historically, where she tells
the story of each scientist interacting with the ideas of
the other one. So you can see the logical progression
of how people understood black holes. But one of the
most interesting things about the book to me is how
it shows this long, painful battle between our scientific theories
(39:27):
and our common sense. So for about a hundred years now,
any physicist who cared to look would be able to
work out that black holes are a consequence of Einstein's
general relativity. But scientists across the generations just they allowed
their common sense to rebel against the idea. It's like, wait,
how can the mass of many stars be compressed down
(39:49):
to infinite density? That's just absurd, That can't happen. Uh.
There's even one story in the book, how about Sir
Arthur Eddington, who is one of the most respective physicists
of the time, Just vicious Lee mocked the then young
physicist Supermannia and Chandra Shaker after he gave a conference
presentation in nineteen thirty five about the inevitability of black holes.
(40:09):
Apparently Eddington just got up after Chandra Shaker had finished
giving his talk, and he said, surely nature has some
way of preventing this nonsense more or less. Uh. And so,
of course, in the end, we learned through decades of
painful back and forth that our common sense about black
holes is completely wrong, and these objects do in fact exists.
(40:30):
They're they're not theoretical anymore. They're a fundamental part of
our picture of the universe. Um. But the every piece
of common sense in our brain just rebels against it.
It doesn't make any sense. How could there be something
like that? Everything I know about black holes comes from
the movie Interstellar. When you go when you go into
did you guys know when you go into them you
(40:50):
travel back in time? You see? Now, everything I know
about Disney's the black Hole, So I know that when
you go into them, you fused with a row about
and rule over hell man, Was any of this stuff
covered in the book? No? That's uh, that's pretty cool.
You've seen the black Hole? Right? No, I haven't. In
(41:12):
case anyone's misunderstanding, maybe the science is ridiculous and I
met the same I was being ironic Interstellar as well. Yeah,
black Hole is one of those like a super dark
Disney sci fi fantasy movies that they did in like
the late seventies. Yeah, like a robot disembowels Anthony Perkins
in it. It's one of the What's What's the Witch
Mountain movie? As part of that, There's there's another one anyway. Yeah,
(41:35):
oh that sounds pretty good. So there's a lot of
crazy dark movies that came out to round that time.
In Black Hole was one of them. To check that. Great,
it's a go into it with you know, realistic expectations.
It's a pretty fun, right, especially if you're ten. Yeah, well,
I will definitely be looking into that. I always wanted
to know how I could summon the dark powers of
(41:56):
of of infinite density to do my bidding. Uh. A
couple other quick mentions, I guess of of books I
read this year, one is, uh, The Confidence Game by
Maria Knakova of Viking. You got a copy of that,
didn't you write? Yeah? I saw her speak at the
World Science Festival this year. She was on a panel
that also included Mary Roach talking about about science writing,
(42:20):
and yeah, I was really impressed with everything she had
to say. Um, and that's why I also shared an
article about that. She wrote about whether or not Trump
Donald Trump is a con man on artists and I
shared that on our Facebook feed, and some people did
not like it, even though it was an objective scientific
approach look at what the Trump phenomenon is. Yeah, but
(42:41):
I was really impressed with everything she had to say
at the conference, and so I had to grab a
copy of the book as well. I haven't read it yet,
but I'm looking forward to uh reading through it. Yeah,
it's it's a good book. And so it's about con artists.
About half historical narrative about some of the most interesting
cons in history, and then the other half is science
about psychological rea search on why humans are vulnerable to
(43:02):
cons in general, and then particular tactics used by con
artists and sort of the cognitive biases that they take
advantage of. Uh. And I think it would be fun
to discuss this book for for a whole episode of
the show sometimes, especially if we could get con of
COVID to come on and join us. I've touched based
with her her agent and so do that. Well, that'd
be great. Yeah. I did find it interesting, And we
(43:25):
have to like set it up as if we're going
to do the show, but then don't actually call it.
We just take all our money, yeah, exactly because oh
DoD the audience not know that we get paid to
do interviews. Um. Two things that She mentioned um in
in her talk that I'm wondering, you know, to what
extent there there in the book. She mentioned that she
was inspired by David Mannett movies. Really writing this book,
(43:47):
I don't know. She didn't mention that in the book,
and she also mentioned that she was inspired by like
It's it's one thing we hear, we hear talk of
con games and con artists, and it's easy to think, oh, well,
that poor stupid person. But but in her talk at
the World's Nice Festival, she mentioned that one of the
things that really got are interested in this topic was
that you have very smart people, very intelligent people, who
(44:09):
end up getting sucked into these things. Yeah. One of
the stories in the book is about a physicist, a physicist,
like working physicist, brilliant guy who gets conned by an
Internet person pretending to be a I think like a
check model, who wants fished, who wants to marry him,
(44:30):
and they trick him into being a drug mule. Oh yeah,
so you don't have to be dumb to fall for
a con. They exploit biases that are that are there
in all of us, even even physicists like check models. Uh.
Then there's one last nonfiction book I want to mention. Uh,
and that is something I think it might have come
out in an episode before. But it's Our Mathematical Universe,
(44:53):
My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality. By Max
teg Mark, not for Robert. Did you read this? Why?
I didn't read it, but I've I've read that Tegmark
stuff before. He's always great, He's awesome. And I get
the feeling that tag Mark is sort of a polarizing
figure in the modern astrophysics and cosmology community. And I
think this is because he does very important and relevant
(45:13):
mainstream research. Like he's not some crazy crank, but he's
also not afraid to go out on a limb and
explore radically strange hypothesis like the idea that there's a
physical way to quantify consciousness if you think about consciousness
is a state of matter, or that the entire universe
at bottom is made of math, not figuratively or metaphorically,
(45:35):
but literally. We're not described by math. We are mathematical objects. Uh.
And so I think some scientists and scientifically literate people
don't like it when otherwise respected scientists stick their necks
out and speculate about such weirdness. Basically. Uh, But I
I guess they think that it causes some confusion about
what sciences. You hear people say this sometimes, like some
(45:58):
people in the skeptic community. Uh. And with those people,
I I cannot agree, because I think it's wonderful when
productive mainstream scientists are also free to play at the
edges of what can be known about the world, as
long as you're not confusing one type of intellectual exercise
with the other. But ultimately, this book concerns the mathematical
universe hypothesis, and it's also just a very good introduction
(46:22):
to many other ideas in physics and cosmology today. One
example is the multiverse. I like the way Tagmark Tagmark
tackles this idea, so, uh, the multi versus the idea
that other universes exist and they're causally disconnected from our own.
So if you if you follow like the cosmological debates,
you'll know that a lot of people don't like this
idea either. And one reason is that if another universe
(46:45):
is causally disconnected from us, there's no way you could
design a test to see if it's really there. So
what's the point in talking about whether it's there? Or not.
By definition, there's no way to know, and I think
that could be a very valid criticism. But in this book,
teg Mark Uh makes an interesting case. He tries to
make a case for why the multiverse is not a
(47:06):
hypothesis to be tested on its own, but instead it's
a prediction or a consequence of theories for which we
do have experimental evidence. So you know, we have evidence
that X theory is true. If X theory is true,
you would expect there to be other universes. Um. So
for that alone, I think this book is worth reading Uh,
(47:26):
and also be sure to check out some of the
criticisms of tech Mark's ideas online. I remember at the
time I read it, I came across a bunch of
blog posts and reviews by other physicists who had a
lot of disagreements with him, and they made interesting points
as well. And you know, as a non scientist, it's
exciting to read a science book that's not just a
presentation of established facts, but that's part of an ongoing
(47:49):
debate where you know, the ideas are not have not
been settled yet. Okay, So Robert, I think you're gonna
close this out right, and you're gonna close this out
with something for every buddy. Yeah, certainly for the younger,
I'll read about the science of black holes and cannibal
uh destroyers. But well we got here. Well UM. As
(48:12):
a lot of you know, I am the father of
a four year old, so a lot of my reading
these days involves reading books four or four year old
and reading the same ones over and over and over again.
I imagine many of our listeners I try and hide
the ones they don't like to read UM or certainly
return them to the library. But I thought I mentioned
just three quick ones here that I that I find
(48:32):
to be very good books that my my son really
engages with um and the and they're able to to
cover science topics to varying degrees. The first one is
a book titled Octopus. This is by Evelyn Shaw with
the illustrations by Ralph Carpentier, and this came out of
one This is long out of print, but luckily with
(48:55):
Amazon it's so easy these days to get out of
print book, so you can pick up a copy of
this hardback for like a dollar or two online, and
I think it's really worth it. Basically, it's um. It
is the story of an octopus with some wonderful kind
of watercolor illustrations. But it's the story of an octopus
from basically her early life to her death. And she
(49:18):
goes out, she finds a new home, she at some
point mates, so that kind of happens off camera. You're
just told that that occurs. Um she finds food, then
she lays her eggs, and then she dies at the end.
So it's the the life cycle of an octopus. It's
not it's not presented in any kind of a cute
see way. She's not like personified, right, She's kindling to
(49:41):
tie into a previous discussion we've had on this show before.
Does she cannibalize other octopuses? No, but she gets in
a fight with an octopus. So yeah, I'm not saying
it's like a complete, no hold barred look at an
octopus's life, but it is a refreshingly realistic, refreshing le
naturalistic look at an animal. Uh. And so I enjoyed
(50:03):
reading it, and my my son is really into hearing it.
And and it doesn't shy away from the fact that
at the at the end of the book she dies,
that she she walls herself up in her little cave
and spins the last of her energy looking after eggs,
which is, you know, kind of beautiful. Another one that
he's really into is one called all about Scabs, Bige
(50:23):
and Eat. I would have loved that if I was
a kid, Yeah, because it's all about nasty scabs. What
are they? What are they not getting into that body?
Horror early Yeah, and this is this one is children's
That is a little bit. I mean, there's talk of
in the book of do you eat scabs? Is a scab?
(50:44):
Is it poop? Is that what it is is the
body pooping out the scab. If you eat scabs, do
you get ancient power? Depends on who who depends? A
boy turns into a pig. At one point, I'm going
to go on the record and say that my scabs
when I was a kid did great. But I don't
know what was in them, but they gave you the
strength of the wind to go. Another great thing about
(51:07):
this one, and this is something that I think should
resonate with any parents out there who read books, is
that it has a couple of different levels of depth
you can get into. So there's some stuff later on
in the book where you can really get more into
what skin is and how skin heels. That's cool and
you can sort of read to whatever is appropriate for
your child's engagement. So it's a great one. I believe
(51:28):
this was. This one is in the same book series
as the Everybody Poops book. Oh yeah, okay, I'm well
familiar with that one. And finally I have one. This
one makes seem like a strange choice, but it's the
Barrenstein Bears on the Moon by stand and Jan Berenstein.
From this one came out what in ve um. You
(51:48):
probably wonder how space he could this be? How how
informative could this be about our solar system? This is
what led all those people to write the manifesto about
the Case against Space. Maybe it's a for me though.
Basically in this story you have a couple of the
barn steamed bears and they go to the Moon with
their dog on a rocket, and that's about all that happens.
(52:09):
They go there and they come back. But I found
this to be pretty helpful and just explaining to my
son what the moon is and where it is, because
you know, I want to share all this great stuff,
all this wonderful information about the about the Solar system,
in the universe and what what what's happening on other planets.
But initially I had to get over that hurdle of
(52:29):
how do I explain to him what the moon is,
That it's far away, that there's such an abstract constah,
that there's nobody on it. But yes, people have been
there in the past, but only a handful and only
white men, two bears and their dogs, and two bears
and their dogs. So it basically just as a it
works as a nice illustrative adventure to say, hey, this
(52:51):
is what the Moon is, and this is how it
relates to the Earth. Yea, that's neat very surface level,
but you gotta start somewhere, and I found this to
be a good starting place. Now, is it the book
that that movie Apollo eighteen with the Moon Spiders was
based on. I didn't see that with it Moon Moon
Spiders the Amne. I actually didn't see either, but I
watched the trailer several times because I found it funny.
(53:13):
It's actually a prequel to Transformers three. Dark of the Moon.
The Barrenstein Bears find the Transformers buried on the Moon.
All right, Well, that's those are the three that I have.
I guess the best way to close it out here
is if there there are any books that you're looking
forward to, or you know what's next on your plate
that you're excited about. Well, I have a huge queue
(53:34):
in my kindle right now of weird horror literature that
I've picked up from reading that st JO sheet book.
So Brian Evanson is sort of a newish like last
ten years horror writer that I'm really enjoying and reading
a book by him called A Collapse of Horses. I'm
going through Ramsey Campbell's back catalog. Um, those are the
(53:58):
big ones that I can remember right now. Oh, we
should I should throw this out there. A friend of
the show, Michael we Hunt, has a collection of his
stories out that are really good and it is called
Greener Pastures. Yes, I read this as well. Um, I
highly recommend anyone pick this up who's interested in contemporary
horror fiction. Um. Yeah, there two stories in their in
(54:20):
particular the title tale Green Pastures and then the first one.
Oh nannon is that it. It's the one with the
mountain and the women. Uh. Anyway, the first story, it's
one of those collections that kicks off on a really
strong note, really knocks it out of the park. Yeah.
So this is a young horror writer at the top
(54:40):
of his game. Go check it out. Speaking of friends
of the show, there's a comic that I'm excited about
that had just started up called Cryptocracy, and that's why
our friend Van Jensen, who lives here in Atlanta, and
it's illustrated by Pete Woods up from Dark Horse. It
is really cool at the first two issues. And uh,
I believe and at some point is going to be
(55:01):
making an appearance with the conspiracy guys on their post.
I hope. So, because his book is all about it's
basically the pitches what if every conspiracy theory was true? Yeah,
and it's also from the point of view of the
conspiracy perpetrator, it's not from the people who are trying
to solve the mystery. It's fun. I like it a lot. Yeah. Interesting. Okay,
how about you, Joe, what are you looking forward? Dude?
(55:22):
What's what's the next big review? I think it's probably well,
actually I already started it, so I know it. I
don't know why I was hedging like that. It's uh.
The first novel in a trilogy, a science fiction trilogy
by the Chinese author lu check Chen called The Three
Body Problems but my list as well. I have not
read it yet, but yeah, I I just started it
and so far it's very good, so I'm very excited
(55:45):
to continue with it. Well, for my part, I am
extremely excited that our Scott Baker is the Great Ordeal.
Book three of his Aspect Imperor trilogy is coming out
next month. Um. I've talked about this author in this
series a lot the past. This is the dark fantasy
series that has a tremendous amount of philosophy and even
(56:06):
neuroscience in it. Um. I've heard nothing but good things
about this series. I'm looking forward to catching up on it.
And this reminds me of a book that you let
me borrow that I should mention on the show as well.
Michael Shay, who we've talked about before because he my
all time favorite horror story so far is written by him,
The Autopsy, And when you heard that, you let me
(56:27):
borrow a book of collection of his short fiction that
The Autopsy is within. But then you also just let
me borrow the Nift series, and so I'm getting into
that as well. That niff Leen in in one episode
we did recently, Yes, probably something with bugs because he's
um or mine. Maybe it had to do with giant bodies,
(56:48):
that's right, yeah, giants, because yeah, because he's a very
biologically or he was sadly passed away a year or
two ago, but he was a very biologically literate author,
and there was it all. There was always a lot
of biological and body horror and creature heart insect horror
in his work. Yeah, his work goes all over the place,
and it's the autopsy is definitely that. It's like alien
(57:12):
body horror. But the nip the lean stuff is like
if you're a fan of like sword and sorcery style
kind of fantasy worlds, maybe Game of Thrones style stuff,
this is that. But then incorporating all of this just
absolutely weird aberrant, uh life forms and body horror. Yeah, yeah,
I believe he took a lot of inspiration early on
(57:32):
from Jack Vance dying our stories and then really took
it into this. Uh this weird directional is alright. So
there you have it. Uh, some of some examples of
stuff that we have read, that we are reading, that
we plan to read, and of course we would love
to hear from everyone out there. What are we missing?
What what do we need to check out at all costs?
(57:53):
What are your thoughts and some of the titles we've
mentioned here. Yeah, we've got twelve more months before we
do another summer reading, unless summer comes earlier next year.
But in the meantime, and let us know the way
to get in touch with us social media. We are
on Facebook, we're on Twitter, we're on Tumbler, we're on Instagram.
You can take pictures of your books, send them to
us on Instagram, put them on Tumbler, however, or you
(58:17):
could just write us a message. How do they do that? Well,
of course they can email us at blow the Mind
at how stuff works dot com. Well more on this
and pathans of other happens. Is it how stuff Works
dot Com
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