Outro S4 E13
Good Morning, Good evening, Good Afternoon – my survivor friends.
How are we doing?
I’m feeling that winter cabin fever. This time of year, I don’t know whether it’s the cold weather, the snow and ice, or the lack of sunlight, but it gets to me. I feel like some blanched and withering creature huddled underground waiting for better days.
It’s not natural. Humans need to run free and breathe the air of the endless savannah.
I can’t help thinking, metaphorically, about the SciFi stories where a character is in a spaceship, or a deep-sea facility or a small survival bunker. Some of these stories play with the claustrophobia and dehumanizing nature of the constrictions, some ignore it.
This time of year I think I’d fall on the side of Jack Nicholson in the Shining!
Another fine Stanley Kubrik movie by the way.
We’ve been having quite the conversation on our Facebook group about these outro comments.
It’s great to have the conversation and get some feedback, because podcasting is a bit of one-way medium. I get the fact that if your bingeing, or just here for the story, having to cross a deep river of words to get to the next one can be a pain. Like I said, I get that.
I listen to a pile of podcasts and the narrative ones I like to binge through during workouts. This makes it difficult to get to my phone to skip the commercials and such – so I feel your pain – especially when it’s poorly targeted (I’m talking to you cosmetic ads) or repetitive.
But, it is part of my creative process and helps me digest all the work I’m doing.
I value the conversation.
I’m gong to keep doing it, but I promise to keep it 1,000 words or less and relevant.
…
This week I’m going to share a really good series of short story collections about the apocalypse that editor Dave shared with me. It’s called Wastelands 2 – More Stories of the Apocalypse, edited by John Joeseph Adams.
He found it in one of those little free libraries that are popping up all over the place. Which, just so you appreciate my restraint, I am not going to go off on a 500 word rant about how books used to be so valuable they had to be shackled and chained to the shelves and now people are buying $400 windowed boxes on polls just to get rid of them…
I’m not going to do that…
1,000 words…
OK
Back to the story.
Dave told me I had to read a story called ‘The Postman” by David Brin.
I thought to myself, ‘the Postman? Wasn’t that a movie in the 90’s with Kevin Costner?’ Yes, the one and the same. The Postman is more of a novella than a short story. It plays on the theme that certain ideas are powerful enough to shove the direction of the apocalypse future.
Ideas have power. Dave, being one of my editors, knows that this is one of the themes for season 4 – conflicting visions of the future.
Anyhow, I’ve been plowing through these stories, and they are, for the most part, really good. I even found and bought the Wastelands 1 book.
I do remember watching the Postman movie back when it came out. It was ok. I remember it had
Tom Petty in it, (may he rest in peace).
But more importantly, this is not my first brush with the author, David Brin. We have spoken about his Uplift series on this podcast before. I have read Sun Diver and Startide Rising from that series.
But, writing award winning SciFi is a hobby for him. He’s a bona fide practitioner with a degree in astronomy, a masters in electrical engineering, a doctorate in philosophy and astronomy and has worked with JPL and NASA among others.
So, David, if you’re listening, thanks for your work!
Wish I was in San Diego this month, instead of in New England trying to warm my hands enough to type in the morning.
Alrighty, brothers and sisters of the apocalypse. Links to everything I talk about are in the show notes. If you like what we do and want to support the show there are plenty of ways – just go to our website at oldmanapocalypse.com.
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Be sure to chip the ice from the bunker’s antennae so the wasteland winds don’t crumple our only source of communication with the outside world, and keep surviving.
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