Intro to Camping Calls
Hello my survivor friends, today we have a great show for you.
Note: if you are new to the podcast don’t start here – go to season one, episode one and start there. We are currently between season three and season four, it is July of 2023 and I we are listening to some listener contributed stories while we wait for Season four to start in a few weeks.
But, Today we have a short story by listener Walter called “Camping Calls” Read professionally by our friend Steve. It’s short and I think you’ll dig it. It’s a ghost story that you might tell around the camp fire.
After the story, there will be a quick chat with Walter about it.
And after that Steve and I will present dueling write ups of our experience reading “The Stars my Destination” by Alfred Bester.
It’s like one of those old variety shows that they had on T.V. in the 60’s and 70’s.
A real entertainment extravaganza!
Enjoy, I’ll talk to you after.
The stars my destination by Alfred Bester
Funny story:
And by ‘funny’ here I mean ironic, or coincidental, where the universe spontaneously resolves into cognition patterns, and you think ‘huh’.
If you’ve spent any time roaming around the musty, dusty corners of my brain you’ll know this already, but…I am always looking for classic science fiction to read. As prolific a reader as I am, and as many of the classics of the genre that I have managed to read, there are always seminal works that have evaded my consumption. (Like crafty space cockroaches)
It was in this way that I found Bester’s 1956 novel.
In our Facebook group I had asked a simple question: ‘What's your favorite Sci-Fi book ever and why?’
Of the thoughtful responses, fellow survivor Joe recommended ‘The Stars my Destination’.
And, on further consideration it seemed like the sort of thing that was directly in the center of my wheelhouse.
I jaunted out to the internet to buy a used copy.
That’s not the funny part of the story.
That’s just a random Tuesday in my life where someone mentions some dusty, old, Sci-Fi content and I go engage with it.
That’s not ironic or coincidental at all.
That’s as funny as getting out of bed.
The funny part of the story starts by the pond.
“The pond?” you ask.
“Yes. The pond.” I respond.
Specifically, that section of the trail behind my house, across the road, on the other side of the AT&T tower hill that runs along the pond.
It’s about 3 miles out from where I start my runs.
Down by the pond the trees are thick. The bushes in the summer crowd in. It’s a single path – twisty and just wide enough for one person.
I need to watch where I’m stepping because the roots are high, and rocks stand out from the old fisherman’s walk like sullen hermits intent on my humbling. Waiting to grab a lazy footfall and dash my old bag of bones into the brush.
It was a humid, overcast day and the dog was slowing down in front of me in that way Border Collies do. He gets right in your line of sight, blocks your view of the perilous hermit rocks, and forces me to yell, “Move it Dog! I’m going to break an ankle.”
But again, there is nothing ironic or coincidental about me running this section of trail with my dog. That’s as common as the crumbs from the bread that fall to the plate as I munch my avocado toast in the morning.
The funny part has to do with what I was listening to.
You see, I have, what these days would be called, a neurodivergent brain.
My brain is always on. It’s always thinking, worrying, creating, and flitting from thing to thing.
My brain demands to be fed.
On this particular humid day with the dog I was feeding it an old friend.
Well, not in the direct munchy, crunchy, cannibalistic sense. No. In the listening to an old friend talk on his podcast sense.
My friend Steve was one of the original podcasters back when it all started in the early 2000’s. He predated my entry into the sport of podcasting by a couple years.
Steve doesn’t drop content very often these days, so when he does, I give it a listen to see what he’s up to.
On this particular humid day, down by the pond, with the dog, trying not to fall down, listening to Steve, he off-handedly mentions that he is reading a book.
And that book is “The Stars my Destination” by Alfred Bester.
The same same book I had just received in the post from Thriftbooks.
<Queue the ironic, coincidental music.>
Fast forward the to 4th of July.
I am throwing random stuff into bags to bring with me to our summer house on Cape Cod. My neurodivergent brain taps me on the shoulder and says, “Hey, Bubba. You’d better bring a book to read!” And I tuck “The Stars My Destination” into the side pocket of my computer bag, where I keep books to be read on trips.
Two days alone with my wife at the Cape and I tear through Bester’s novel. And as I sit wondering about what I have read, I remember Steve.
Ok. Ok. I made that part up. It was actually as I was running a humid 8 miles with the dog on the rail trail in the morning – that the thought of Steve came back to me.
When I get back and stop sweating enough to hunch over my laptop, I send Steve an email.
“Had an odd though Steve, would you write and record a review of Hester’s novel for my apocalypse podcast?”
To wit he quickly accented.
And here we are.
We have tied all those ironic and coincidental threads nicely together and my brain doesn’t need to fret about them anymore.
…
Included in today’s show are Steve’s thoughts on The Stars My Destination.
For corroboration, or perhaps comparison, here are my thoughts on the novel.
I won’t say ‘review’ because reviews are an artform in their own right that I proffer no claim to.
Thoughts are all I have.
Thoughts are all you’ll get.
…
The edition of the novel that I acquired was a 1996 printing with an introduction by Neil Gaiman. Gaiman, in his introduction notes how The Stars My Destination is, in many ways, a proto-cyberpunk novel.
And I did see that correlation.
You get definite whiffs of Neuromancer or The Golden Age in how it starts small but grows to range across time and space and bigger themes.
Overall experience-wise, It is a great read.
I was not able to put it down and I looked forward to spending time with it.
The arc of the protagonist and the arc of the whole story is well constructed and pulls you along.
It’s got that one good idea at its core that everything else revolves around. That idea is that humans can transport instantaneously from place to place by just engaging a latent talent of the brain. This talent is discovered when someone is in so much danger or pain they ‘will’ themselves away to somewhere else.
Sort of like how Deadpool got his power.
A less ambitious author would have left the story here, revolving around the one good idea.
But, Bester does not and there is so much more.
It’s got a McGuffin to drive the motivation, but that is really a side show.
The main driver is the growth and flowering of the combined arcs of story and character.
The arc of the protagonist from illiterate thug to expander of the universe is paired with the evolution of mankind and the universe itself. The theme of one man’s becoming paired with the universe’s becoming.
These skillfully developed larger themes keep the novel from being just “Ian Flemming in Space”. And pockets of it do remind me of “The Stainless Steel Rat”.
The courage to keep building the arc beyond the storyline, beyond the action to something that questions the meaning of life itself is this novel’s brilliance. The slow build and the different arcs are like so much foreplay to the eventual, wonderful, thoughtful, and transcendent payoff.
I can’t wait to hear Steve’s thoughtful thoughts on this story as well.
But, my thoughtful thoughts are that “The Stars My Destination” should be part of every science fiction lover’s library.
…
Steve’s Bio
Steve didn’t provide a Bio, so I’ll take the liberty of writing one for him…
Steve Writer is a creative space arthropod circling peacefully in the Kuiper Belt. (The Kuiper belt, by the way, is a donut shaped region of leftovers from the solar system's early history).
Occasionally Steve takes human form to deliver audio magic.
When not writing and recording, Steve is the Grand Partitioner of the Pastafarian religious movement and spokesperson-on-Earth for the giant Flying Spaghetti Monster.
(“Pastafarian”, by the way, is a portmanteau of “Pasta” and “Rastafarian”.) A portmanteau is a made-up word that results from combining two other words. Like “Podcast”, which is a portmanteau of “iPod” and “Broadcast”.
These are all things that you would know if you listened to Steve.
Here are Steve’s and my reviews of “The Stars my Destination:
Outro Comments
OK my survivor friends, that will do it for this week’s show – thank you for sticking around during the break. I have started working on Season 4 and we will be kicking that off in the next few weeks.
I do have a couple other apocalyptic podcasts to share with you – to fill your dead spaces.
The first is called the End of all Hope from 7-Lamb productions. I’ve listened through the end of season 2 and it looks like there are 5 total seasons. Which is great for those of you who like to binge listen, because you can get through the whole story in one go without having to wait for lazy, uninspired writers to ‘get around to it’. 7-Lamb is a production company that has quite a few shows of different genres that you may like.
It is a full-on audio drama with all the sound effects etc. It is about an alien apocalypse. Season one is a bit rough, and you need to get through it. It takes them a few shows to get the voice acting right. The first few are flat and emotionless, but by the 2nd season thy figure it out.
The second one is called “Hidden Signal: Evergreen” from Qcode – it’s a bit of a Survivor type tale of scientists and industry moguls being trapped in a underground facility during an asteroid strike that may or may not have happened. The acting is good, it is topical, it’s one of those shows that is recorded in stereo – so you need both earphones to hear everything.
QCode is also a production company that has many other audio dramas on offer.
Links in the show notes and on the blog post at Oldmanapocalypse.com
That should keep you busy for awhile.
It may occur to you to ask, “Chris, why are you advertising other podcasts? Don’t you compete for listeners with them?”
It’s a good question.
Right or wrong, I choose to look at things with an abundance assumption. I would rather share in the expectation that by sharing we make the pie bigger instead of fighting over who gets more of the pie.
I also believe in giving. In that you reap what you sow, even if it’s only karma.
And I’ve lived long enough to not really care if I’m right or wrong, but just to do what makes me happy, what feels right.
And so I share.
There are a lot of forces in our modern culture that would like you to consider the universe through a lens of scarcity. Don’t do it. Assume abundance. You’ll be happier and more fun at parties.
So act with abundance and keep surviving.
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