Book Fight

As we continue our Spring Forward season--in which we're reading forward-looking books, stories, and essays--this week we checked out four famous Ray Bradbury stories and talked about Bradbury's visions of the future. The stories we read include one about a sentient house, one that introduced the idea of the butterfly effect to the world, one about a veldt (and some evil children) and one about a man out for an evening walk in a future society in which that kind of behavior can get you locked up.

Also: Ray Bradbury fun facts! And an early-20th-century plan to give New York City a central vacuum system.

If you like the show, please consider subscribing to our Patreon, which helps us make a bit of money each month and keep the show going. For just $5 a month, you'll get access to a monthly bonus episode, Book Fight After Dark, in which we visit some of the weirder, goofier corners of the literary world. Recently, that's involved reading a paranormal romance novel, the debut novel of Jersey Shore's Snookie, and the novelization of the movie Battleship (yes, based on the popular board game).

Direct download: Ep279_Bradbury.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

Since we're doing an entire season on future-looking books, stories, and essays, it seemed like it would be a real oversight to not consider at least one utopian novel. Ernest Callenbach wrote Ecotopia while living in Berkeley and working as an editor for the University of California Press. He couldn't find a publisher, but managed to get the money together to self-publish the novel (a more expensive, and more difficult proposition in 1974 than it is today). The book built up a cult following, and after an excerpt appeared in Harper's Magazine, Ecotopia was picked up by Bantam and given a wider release. Now, more than forty years after its release, it's a book that's still taught at universities and discussed in environmental circles.

The novel is set in 1999, a few years after the Pacific Northwest and Northern California have seceded from the United States. The book's narrator is the first journalist to visit and report from inside Ecotopia; the book alternates between his newspaper dispatches and his personal journals. We talk about the book's utopian vision, and to what degree it still feels environmentally relevant. We also talk about utopians more generally. We live in a time when dystopian stories are everywhere--in novels, on movie screens, and on television. Is there room in our current world for utopian storytelling? And what might that look like?

If you like the show, please consider subscribing to our Patreon, which helps us make a bit of money each month and keep the show going. For just $5 a month, you'll get access to a monthly bonus episode, Book Fight After Dark, in which we visit some of the weirder, goofier corners of the literary world. Recently, that's involved reading a paranormal romance novel, the debut novel of Jersey Shore's Snookie, and the novelization of the movie Battleship (yes, based on the popular board game).

Direct download: Ep278_SpringForward_Ecotopia.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

In October 1951, Collier's Magazine gave over an entire weekly issue to imagining a possible war with the Soviet Union and its aftermath. Perhaps in the midst of American Cold War anxiety, this issue seemed less patently insane. But to a modern reader it's hard to fathom how Collier's got more than twenty authors to embark on a project that feels like one part anti-communist propaganda and one part teenage war fantasy.

Also this week: a special issue of Penthouse that imagined sex in outer space (while also previewing the launch of OMNI Magazine).

Direct download: Ep277_Colliers_vs_Russia.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

This week we read a science fiction story by someone you probably don't associate with science fiction. In 1909, E.M. Forster wrote a story called "The Machine Stops" that imagines people living in isolation, in apartments under the earth, and communicating to each through technology that looks a lot like Skype. Also this week, we talk about futuristic stick-shaped foods. 

If you like the show, please consider subscribing to our Patreon, which helps us make a bit of money each month and keep the show going. For just $5 a month, you'll get access to a monthly bonus episode, Book Fight After Dark, in which we visit some of the weirder, goofier corners of the literary world. Recently, that's involved reading a paranormal romance novel, the debut novel of Jersey Shore's Snookie, and the novelization of the movie Battleship (yes, based on the popular board game).

Direct download: Ep276_TheMachineStops.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

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