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Season 2 Intro- Sufficiently Advanced Podcasting is Indistinguishable from Magic
14 Plays7 days ago
Hello everyone, and welcome to the next phase of the Fandom Apprentice! If you're new to the pod, this is a great place to start- get (re)introduced to us as the hosts, our background with sci-fi, and our plans for season 2, focused on Martha Wells' Murderbot Diaries! If you're a regular, come on in and get cozy with some new media!
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Transcript
Updating Storygraph and Winning Giveaways
00:00:00
Speaker
I need to like sit down and update my story graph because I haven't in like two months. Oh yeah, you should. i like creeping on story graph. Go into like the friends tab and I see what people are doing. So I want to know.
00:00:13
Speaker
Yeah. Granted, I've been reading just like rereading SM Sterling bullshit. That's fair. But then I finished like three other things in the last like two days. So I need to. Did you see that I won two giveaways?
00:00:25
Speaker
I did. Nicely done. a day for me. I always have like 10 of them going at a time. I cast a pretty wide net. So I finally got one after years.
00:00:36
Speaker
Nice. i I should do some Storygraph giveaways again. i need to I need to open Storygraph for once. that's That's fair. That'd do it. But yeah, listeners, if you didn't know, because this is such a pro Storygraph podcast. Did they repost us to their Insta story one time?
00:00:55
Speaker
They might have. I think they did. We love you, StorygraphXOXO. But much like Goodreads, they have giveaways of ebooks, physical books, and audiobooks. I won two that were both audiobooks. They're both I think horror or thriller. One of them is definitely just a straight up horror novel.
00:01:18
Speaker
The other one, i think it's like half rom-com, half murder mystery. It's called Nobody Was Supposed to Die at This
Transition from LOTR to New Topics
00:01:27
Speaker
Wedding. So very excited to see what that's about.
00:01:29
Speaker
I have been on Storygraph for so many years and I finally won some giveaways, which is very exciting for me. Good. I think we just get into it. Unless you have other banter to go through, but I think i think we just get into it today.
00:01:44
Speaker
Yeah, I was just going to say, speaking of reading new things. Reading new things. And new both to us in the podcast and new in terms of not being however many years old.
00:02:01
Speaker
Oh.
00:02:19
Speaker
murder pot sorry i'm throwing off your intro i'm just so fucking amped to talk about murder pot i we're gonna it's gonna be a second
00:02:33
Speaker
i'm keeping this in the episode hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of the phantom apprentice or alternatively if this is your first time with us welcome to the phantom apprentice Hello,
Podcast Introduction and Host Backgrounds
00:02:47
Speaker
welcome! We are so glad that you're here.
00:02:49
Speaker
We're starting on a new journey, which hopefully people who have been with us for Lord of the Rings are also interested in continuing. But if Lord of the Rings is not your thing, which is totally understandable, then welcome to a new chapter, book pun intended.
00:03:06
Speaker
Yeah. and So if you if you've been listening to our token coverage, if you know who we are, you can skip ahead a little bit. But we figured since we're embarking on a new phase of our journey here,
00:03:18
Speaker
we thought it would be prudent to reintroduce ourselves to our audience and reintroduce the podcast and just get everyone up to speed. I think that's an excellent idea.
00:03:30
Speaker
This is The Fandom Apprentice. It's a podcast where for almost two years, we've been working our way through the Lord of the Rings trilogy, which was a story that meant a lot to me personally and was a huge part of my childhood and a huge part of developing the love of fantasy that I've had since I was a kid.
00:03:46
Speaker
And for you, it was your first time through and what a time it has been. Yeah, this is continuing the pattern that has always existed in our very long friendship, where you will either just offhandedly mention something or really campaign to get me to read or consume some form of media. It depends. There's a spectrum.
00:04:06
Speaker
But I will just latch onto it. I will sink my teeth in like a fucking piranha and just consume it completely. And then we will just go back and forth and talk about it in extraordinary detail.
00:04:21
Speaker
This led to us starting a book club, which has been going for almost four years now. It's fourth birthday. May have already happened by the time this episode comes out. It's fourth birthday is next month.
00:04:33
Speaker
Yeah, so it's it's coming out, or coming up, rather. But talking about media has been a longstanding thing for us, and we enjoy bringing other people into the fold because we need to inflict our opinions on others as well.
00:04:50
Speaker
Yeah. So who are we? My name is Rin. I use she and they pronouns, and I'm one of your hosts. I'm Sam. My pronouns are she, her. I'm the other one.
00:05:03
Speaker
By day, I'm a mild mannered biologist, and by night, I'm a crime-fighting super frog living in the sewers of Miami.
00:05:09
Speaker
That's not true. I would never be caught dead in Florida. I'm too trans for that.
00:05:15
Speaker
should I say ribbit?
00:05:18
Speaker
No, but in all seriousness, my day job is in the sciences. i am a biologist by training. i also, in my undergrad, minored in archaeology and music.
00:05:29
Speaker
So i bring those interests into the podcast as well. I'm a liberal arts nerd and I've been a nerd my entire life. I've been into sci-fi and fantasy since before I can remember.
00:05:41
Speaker
um I've been playing D&D since I was probably 10. hen So we're almost at two decades. Goddamn. Which is frightening.
00:05:52
Speaker
And, you know, I was a really heavy reader as a child. and then fell off it in high school and college, as so many of us do. And since graduating from college just before the pandemic, I've gotten back into reading very heavily. And like Sam said, we run a queer book club together, and I love all things queer literature, from rom-coms to politics and history to spec fic.
00:06:15
Speaker
But yeah, as we mentioned, the premise of this podcast sort of runs off of my lifelong nerdery and the need to share that, or more accurately, to force that on my friends.
00:06:27
Speaker
And I have shared a lot of media with my dear friend, Sam. Hello! I'm Sam. My day job is in childcare, which does not really have much bearing at all on the podcast. But I have a degree in religion and in gender studies. it was a double major because I'm cool like that.
00:06:47
Speaker
So that informs a lot of my queer analysis of the things that we read and also occasionally bringing in random Buddhist concepts as well, because why not?
00:07:00
Speaker
I am also a lifelong reader. didn't realize how much of a science fiction fan I was until I started reflecting on it for this intro bit, because I was thinking,
00:07:12
Speaker
I did some sci-fi, but it wasn't that big of a deal to me. And then I started making a list going, oh, it actually was a huge force in my childhood, but my identity was much more wrapped up in the fantasy element of things, my warrior cats roleplay days, you know, dragon forums, all that good stuff.
00:07:31
Speaker
Similar to you, I also fell off reading after college. But then because of our friendship and because of Book Club, I am now back at it in full force. And how do we know each other, Sam? Why are we friends?
00:07:45
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Why are we friends? um Because i am very lucky, very blessed that my wonderful spouse, who I am celebrating my 10-year anniversary with, not of marriage, but of just generally being together. i'm not that old.
00:07:59
Speaker
came preloaded with many wonderful, delightful friends, including you, because you two have known each other since forever, since middle school, question mark?
00:08:11
Speaker
Elementary school. Elementary school, yeah. we, the two of us got to know each other because of our D&D group, which has also been going for an ungodly number of years at this point.
00:08:24
Speaker
Five and a half, six and a half, something like that. i Something like that. At a certain point, we stopped counting. Yeah. But we also discovered that we shared a brain cell was the running joke. It was we we'd have the exact same thought or say the exact same thing or be doing the exact same thing or eating the same type of weird imported cheese or like weird i was uncanny shit like that.
00:08:50
Speaker
yeah like uncanny shit like that, like within seconds or minutes of each other. Or like we'll type the same message and hit send at the exact same moment. And we'll do this in public servers. There's receipts of us saying the same thing at the same time. It is uncanny. And it took us a long time to realize this because we've known each other in some form vaguely for that entire 10 years of Miles and I relationship.
00:09:17
Speaker
But it wasn't until we started playing D&D and d in getting to know each other better that we realized, oh shit, we are the same person. and now we're just a menace. Yeah, and I think, I mean, that speaks to the kind of person that your spouse likes to spend time around.
00:09:32
Speaker
That's so true. Is they just found two of the exact same human. And we're like, i'm going to be best friends with this one and marry the other one.
00:09:45
Speaker
but so valid. And then we learned about queer platonic relationships and then it was just over for everybody. Yeah, no, it's great. But yeah, we've been very, very good friends for many years now. um And I'm very blessed to have been very good friends with ah your spouse for longer.
00:10:06
Speaker
long, long time. a long long time But yeah, we bring our friendship and our love of nerdy media and are relentlessly queer bullshit to this podcast.
Upcoming Themes: Queer Relationships and Non-Monogamy
00:10:23
Speaker
Yes. if If we have not made that abundantly clear. Abundantly queer. we are We are dykes with mics. Yeah, we we will be we will definitely talk about, especially with this upcoming mini-season, I guess, be talking lots about queer relationship structures and non-monogamy and cripplatonic love, and this will be great. I'm excited.
00:10:51
Speaker
Yes, there's there's so much.
Sci-fi vs Fantasy: Definitions and Discussions
00:10:54
Speaker
In a typical episode, you can expect us to have some sort of intro banter and then go into a section of the story that we're talking about, whether that's a few chapters, an episode or two, or an entire book.
00:11:07
Speaker
We'll talk about story choices, references to other media, make some dirty jokes, and just try and have a good time with it. So if you know that's your thing, we would love to have you along for the ride.
00:11:21
Speaker
You could probably see, based on your podcast feed, we have a major backlog. So if you like what you're listening to and want to delve back into our nearly two years of Tolkien coverage, you can absolutely do that.
00:11:36
Speaker
But for now, we're going to shift gears from Fantasyland and talk about sci-fi. And before we do that, we wanted to do this little intro and interlude episode and discuss sci-fi in general, because we're going to be at this for a little while.
00:11:53
Speaker
Spoiler alert, we're discussing The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells. one of our favorite series of all time that I'm just, I'm vibrating with energy to talk about Murderbot.
00:12:04
Speaker
It's so good. um But we have more sci-fi coverage planned after we finish with the Murderbot Diaries. So we think considering we're going to be in sci-fi for a little while before we dive face first into the corporation rim job.
00:12:18
Speaker
but What episode of Leverage is that?
00:12:23
Speaker
um Since we've spent so much time in fantasy, we wanted to talk about what is science fiction. um So Sam, what is sci-fi to you and what would you say differentiates it from fantasy?
00:12:38
Speaker
I did a little thought exercise, a little writing exercise to see what my gut reaction was to that question before I googled and researched and saw what people smarter than me had to say about it.
00:12:53
Speaker
So what I initially thought, what I initially put down there is that sci-fi is about or centers around Harnessing forces in the world through technology beyond what exists in our universe. So stuff like time travel, teleportation, replicators, et etc.
00:13:13
Speaker
There may also be an element of variant human or sentient non-human biology. that allows people to interface with their technology, but that technology exists outside of their own inherent abilities. So like anyone with the humanoid form and the proper training can fly the Starship Enterprise, for example. It doesn't require a specific type of being to make it work.
00:13:37
Speaker
And then in my mind, fantasy has some kind of magical or supernatural element. Characters might need special training, innate abilities, or tools to interface with that magical supernatural force.
00:13:52
Speaker
But it exists independently of the characters. A random deep cut thing from my childhood that this made me think of was the Spiderwick Chronicles. I don't know if you ever read those or watched the movie.
00:14:03
Speaker
Oh, I did. ah The movie yeah was not good, but the books were, I liked the books. Yeah, I think that's a good example. It's a contemporary fantasy. Normal children get the ability to see fairies and other magical creatures by looking through a stone with a hole in it. So the stone didn't create the fairies, didn't create the magic, but it allows the characters to access that world.
00:14:26
Speaker
So those were like my two main thoughts. And then cursory Googling made me want to add like two more little things. So like sci-fi... according to the people, including one website, differencebetween.net, which you know I had to click with a yeah URL like differencebetween.net saying, what is the difference between sci-fi and fantasy? Click.
00:14:50
Speaker
It says that sci-fi is generally... plausible and explains why things are the way they are to some extent whereas fantasy is completely imaginary and it doesn't have to explain why things are a certain way as long as it has an internal logic and that internal logic doesn't have to obey any of the constraints of our universe so those are my thoughts and difference between dot net's thoughts what about you bestie
00:15:21
Speaker
Sci-fi and fantasy are subgenres of speculative fiction. o And that's kind of the only thing I can say with certainty.
00:15:33
Speaker
um That's fair. It's because you're a scientist. You know how much you don't know. i i know how much I don't know. And more to the point, I'm a biologist. And I am aware that ah categorizing things we're We're entering literature's own species problem, which if you're not familiar with Darwin's species problem, ah the species problem says that it's it's basically impossible to define where one species ends and another species begins.
00:16:04
Speaker
If you took you know middle school biology, you know that you know a species is that which can interbreed and produce fertile offspring. bye but Then you get into funky, weird genetics shit where like species that have millions of years of evolutionary separation and different numbers of chromosomes can breed and have fertile offspring, technically speaking.
00:16:33
Speaker
But then species that diverged much more recently can't. So, and then also when you're developing a new species, when there starts to be a separation via behavior or via geography, where does that one species end and and the new species begin, right?
00:16:55
Speaker
Where do we define the lines? And I think that same thing happens in the subgenres of speculative fiction, which is really just the... um it's It's the umbrella genre that encompasses, from Wikipedia, all the subgenres that depart from realism or anything that strictly imitatees departs from imitating everyday reality, instead presenting fantastical, supernatural, futuristic, or other imaginative realms.
00:17:29
Speaker
i I went and looked to it like what have different sci-fi authors said about sci-fi. And this is, this is hard. This is difficult.
00:17:41
Speaker
You know, I think we can pretty easily say that like Star Trek is sci-fi because spaceships and aliens and future, but like steampunk, diesel punk, alternate history, Frankenstein, um like that's all sci-fi too. Yeah.
00:17:58
Speaker
Right? So there's a couple of quotes. Damon Knight, who's a science fiction author and critic, said that science fiction is what we point to when we say it. And Arthur C. Clarke, who's one of the big three science fiction authors, along with um Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein, said, attempting to define science fiction is an undertaking almost as difficult, though not so popular, as attempting to define pornography.
00:18:25
Speaker
In both pornography and science fiction, the problem lies in knowing exactly where to draw the line.
00:18:32
Speaker
Norman Spinrad said, there's only one definition of science fiction that seems to make sense. Science fiction is anything published as science fiction. So true. I think my, like, gut definition of science fiction fits similarly with yours.
00:18:49
Speaker
It's sci-fi, to me, is that... is to the author, what they're writing lies within the realm of possibility, more or less.
00:19:00
Speaker
There's something of an explanation to why things are the way they are, or why things work the way they work. um Whereas fantasy is much more likely to be fantastical.
00:19:13
Speaker
The things that occur outside of the realm of possibility. They're outside of our scientific explanations.
00:19:23
Speaker
They defy explanation. Ray Bradbury, who is another famous science fiction writer, wrote Fahrenheit 451, said, I define science fiction as the art of the possible.
Philosophical Inquiries in Sci-fi
00:19:35
Speaker
Fantasy is the art of the impossible. Science fiction, again, is the history of ideas, and they're always ideas that work themselves out and become real and happen in the world. And fantasy comes along and says, we're going to break all the laws of physics.
00:19:51
Speaker
Most people don't realize it, but the series of films which have made more money than any other series of films in the history of the universe is the James Bond series. They're all science fiction too. Romantic, adventurous, frivolous, fantastic science fiction.
00:20:04
Speaker
So, you know, i I also tend to think that like sci-fi frequently asks more questions of its reader or its viewer than fantasy does.
00:20:17
Speaker
I feel like whether it's an explicit question or implicitly, it's like, what led to this? Why is our society this way? What does it mean to be human? What if this happens?
00:20:29
Speaker
What if we built things a different way? And that's, again, not universal because there is nothing universal about the definition of science fiction.
00:20:44
Speaker
Isaac Asimov, another one of the big three writers of of science fiction, says science fiction can be defined as that branch of literature that deals with the reactions of human beings to changes in sciences and technology.
00:20:56
Speaker
Ooh, that's a snappy one. i like that one. Yeah, I think it's a little let it's a little more concrete than some of the, you know, it's anything published as science fiction or it's what we say when we point at it.
00:21:09
Speaker
Is it necessarily always true? Sure, maybe. I do think if we'd tried to define fantasy while we were talking about Tolkien, we'd have as much trouble defining fantasy on the whole.
00:21:24
Speaker
Yeah. So it's it's not easy to come up with a ah base definition of what is sci-fi. We'll be pointing at what we're looking at as sci-fi because it is.
00:21:37
Speaker
For folks new to the podcast, over the course of our Tolkien discussions, we've established The Phantom Apprentice's definitely universal rules of fantasy, which are as follows.
00:21:48
Speaker
Rule number one, magic makes you dramatic, which leads to corollaries 1.1 and 1.2. 1.1 being the level of drama is directly correlated to magical power.
00:22:00
Speaker
And 1.2, magical characters speak first in service to the plot and second in service to character. Rule number two, if there's a tavern, there will be plot. Rule number three, time responds to story. Story doesn't respond to time.
00:22:14
Speaker
Rule number four, it all comes back to Beowulf. Rule number five, friendship is magic and community is strength. And corollary 5.1, by the transitive property, therefore, friendship makes you dramatic.
00:22:26
Speaker
Will these be applicable to sci-fi? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe we'll establish some new rules of sci-fi or some definitely universal differences between sci-fi and fantasy.
00:22:38
Speaker
I also think as we as we dive into sci-fi, we can keep in mind Arthur C. Clarke's Three Laws. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right.
00:22:54
Speaker
When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong. Hmm. Two, the only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
00:23:06
Speaker
And three, this is the main reason I wanted to bring up the three laws. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. I've heard that line before, and now I know where it's from.
00:23:17
Speaker
Right. And so I think that law, specifically the third one, is going to allow us to apply magic. rule one magic makes you dramatic to sci-fi.
00:23:32
Speaker
Yes. I mean, I've already gone ahead and started working on my notes for our first full Murderbot episode. And I have things to say about the magic of friendship. Don't you worry.
00:23:45
Speaker
So where did we come to sci-fi from? Like, where is our sci-fi background? Yeah. Mine personally, when I say I've been a lifelong nerd, I include sci-fi in that.
00:23:58
Speaker
I have watched many, many hour hours of Star Wars, Star Trek, Doctor Who, all of the 2004 Battlestar Galactica reboot.
00:24:11
Speaker
SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis where mike were some of my quarantine watches. I watched ah Primeval, Terra Nova, Fringe, Red Dune, Foundation, 2001 A Space Odyssey, 1984, Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, Clockwork Orange, the Young Jedi novels, Animorphs.
00:24:31
Speaker
Like, all of this is sci-fi. Yeah. Right? um And then, you know, in my adult reading life...
00:24:42
Speaker
I have read, you know, things like A Memory Called Empire, A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, Monk and Robot, Two Like the Lightning, the Star Wars High Republic novels, This Is How You Lose the Time War, and not least the Murderbot Diaries.
00:25:01
Speaker
Where did you come to sci-fi from? Yeah. i was a much more low-key, low-volume sci-fi fan as a child. It was more influenced by the older adults around me and the things that people were referencing in other media that I consumed. When I was a teenager, I really liked the Incomparable Podcast Network, which is just kind of a catch-all thing.
00:25:26
Speaker
nerdy culture stuff. They've grown a lot since when I was a young teen when it was just one podcast called The Incomparable. And so I was interested in the things that they were referencing on the show.
00:25:38
Speaker
So that led me into watching Doctor Who. That led me to watching Red Dwarf, which is an old British space show that I absolutely fucking love.
00:25:49
Speaker
ah Quantum Leap I was a huge fan of. Random little... deep cut things bubbling up from my childhood memories, there was a podcast that launched, I think in 2004, called The Radio Adventures of Dr. Floyd.
00:26:04
Speaker
If anyone in the audience has listened to The Radio Adventures of Dr. Floyd, besides my brother, who is also a listener of the podcast, hello. Please DM us because I need to know that I didn't hallucinate this.
00:26:16
Speaker
But it was just like a little radio drama about a kooky scientist doing stuff with his inventions and it was a great. And then as an adult, I've really come into my own opinions and my own tastes in sci-fi, not just based on what other people are reading basically most of the things that you just mentioned I also really like Memory Called Empire Ancillary Justice Monk and Robot Time Murderbot many others there's also as another thing that people who are new to the show need to know
00:26:49
Speaker
I am on record as a known monster fucker. Okay. Oh, yeah. New to the show. This is an explicit podcast. Don't put us on the aux at work, maybe.
00:27:00
Speaker
yeah Headphones recommended if you're ah one of those under 18s. Yeah. I'm not your mom, but don't make me responsible for you. But- That being said, I was looking through my story graph history to see what other things I had read recently.
00:27:16
Speaker
Kimberly Lemmings, I got abducted by aliens and now I'm trapped in a rom-com. Also science fiction. Also really good. if you like rom-coms, you should read it. But it's an extreme, like we've been talking about, it's an extremely expansive subgenre.
00:27:32
Speaker
There was also when I was looking at my story graph history and I just saw it was tagged as sci-fi. There were some things that I disagreed with or that I questioned, like the Broken Earth trilogy is listed on there as sci-fi. I would call that fantasy by my own definition.
00:27:47
Speaker
So depending on how wide of a net you cast, I would say that I am literate. I am literate in sci-fi. I am not an expert, but I know enough.
00:27:58
Speaker
Yeah, I think i think same.
Introducing 'Murderbot Diaries'
00:28:01
Speaker
I've read a lot of science fiction and watched a lot of science fiction. But as we dive into Murderbot, Murderbot is not a foundational text, unlike Isaac Asimov's Foundation.
00:28:18
Speaker
But see, I haven't read that one, so I didn't get the joke. I'm sure there are listeners who are laughing, though. I honestly don't remember a single thing about it.
00:28:29
Speaker
That's fair. My dad gave me all three of them. I read all three of them. as ah As a youth, don't remember a single thing. Oh my god, I just had a fucking brain blast. More things bubbling up from my childhood.
00:28:42
Speaker
Stephanie Meyer wrote a sci-fi book called The Host, and I remember it being like 800 pages long. And it's about like an alien who invades this woman's mind. Oh, my God.
00:28:55
Speaker
i just remembered the host. Yeah. So there's all kinds of sci-fi that I probably read as a kid and just forgot. Oh, my God. How did I forget Firefly? Oh, my God. Yeah. I also watch Firefly. See, it's just it's everywhere.
00:29:08
Speaker
But we're going to be focusing in for now. on The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells. And we love these books. If you are coming to us now, ah whether or not this episode releases before the show ends its first season run, or whether right after it ends its first season run, regardless, if you are coming to us from the show or you're coming to us from the books, we're going to start with talking about the books. We'll we'll talk about the show eventually, don't worry.
00:29:38
Speaker
But we're going to start with talking about the books and How did we get to Murderbot? Well, I think the real question is how did you get to Murderbot? Because unsurprisingly, because of the premise of our show, I was introduced to it through you.
00:29:54
Speaker
You had given a copy to Miles for Christmas years ago and they read it. But then i was digging through our DMs to see when i or or when one of us first mentioned it.
00:30:06
Speaker
And in June of 2022, i told you that I needed something mindless to put on in the background while I played Stardew Valley. And then that I just immediately got totally sucked in and started doing my patented line by line reports.
00:30:23
Speaker
Where I would just type out every single quote, basically just transcribing most of the book, along with my commentary on it as I went through. And I think that my first reaction to it really sums up a lot that you need to know about Murderbot, which is, the killing machine just wants to watch Space Netflix.
00:30:47
Speaker
Yeah. But how did you find it? Because I don't, you've definitely told me, but I've forgotten. i I've been trying to remember. And you know what I think it was?
00:30:59
Speaker
It was like a Libby, like Lucky Day copy. Like one of those things that you like, I needed something. so I was missing sci-fi. I hadn't read a lot of sci-fi lately.
00:31:12
Speaker
And I like looked at some, anything that was available on Libby and just found All Systems Red. And I don't know whether this was in 2020 or 2021, but I remember reading at least three of the novellas in audiobook format one afternoon while I was off work baking because they are so short and so quick to read.
00:31:44
Speaker
You know, they're they're like, what, between three and four hours maximum audiobooks if you listen at 1x speed, which I never do. So fair. They're also, for those who are fans of Welcome to Night Vale, Kevin R. Free, who played Kevin from Desert Bluffs, does an incredible job with the audiobooks. They are so, so, so good.
00:32:06
Speaker
If you are a person who likes audiobooks, highly recommend experiencing them that way. But anyway, they're just, they're bite-sized. They're delicious. They're wonderful. Welcome to Night Vale. Sci-fi.
00:32:19
Speaker
True. Yeah. And i think I think that's how I got to it. I know that on our first D&D retreat, sort of after we were all vaccinated in December of 2021, gave it to Miles and one of our other players um as ah as a gift.
00:32:41
Speaker
the Just the first one, All Systems Red. And i have slowly been trying to spread the gospel of Murderbot since then. And it's been really nice to see it like explode into public consciousness.
00:33:01
Speaker
You know, I think when I first read it, I was like, please tell me there's more of this. And there just, there wasn't Like there was there was the books, but like there wasn't like an online community around it.
00:33:13
Speaker
And then within a year or two, bam, there it was. And we both have aggressively evangelized the Murderbot Diaries. I have pushed so hard for multiple people in my life to read these books.
00:33:27
Speaker
And every single person who has then read them has come back and said that they loved it and then just immediately binge read the entire series. It's so profoundly lovable and smart.
00:33:41
Speaker
And Martha Wells, who to our knowledge... is not queer. As far as we know, we will not speculate. As far as we know, not a queer person wrote the most beautiful queer story that we see so much of ourselves in.
00:33:59
Speaker
And that was just so completely unexpected. That was not what I thought I was going to get out of this series. But now it is something that I recommend to queer people specifically saying, you need to read Murderbot.
00:34:11
Speaker
We'll get to it. We will dive so deep into of the surprisingly nuanced ways. that this series deals with gender, sexuality, relationship structures, all of it.
00:34:23
Speaker
It's so good. It gets me in the heart. Gets me in the art.
00:34:29
Speaker
Yeah, that too. Yeah. So i like we said, this isn't a foundational text of science fiction. This isn't ah in the same way that Tolkien's works are a foundational text of modern fantasy.
00:34:44
Speaker
yeah, You know, while in our Tolkien episodes, we might have done deep dives into like the influences that Tolkien was pulling from the sagas and the Eddas and poetry and all of that.
00:34:58
Speaker
And yeah, and and like where it's resonating out into the world. That's not going to be as much of for our focus for for these books. But like Sam said, we still have a lot to talk about with these and how how queerness is represented in the world of Murderbot, how capitalism is the villain always.
00:35:23
Speaker
And I think one of the central questions of a couple of different sis pieces of sci-fi media that I've viewed or read in the past is What makes us human?
00:35:40
Speaker
And if not human, what is humanity? I would also add or amend that Murderbot specifically asks what is personhood? And how is that different from humanity?
00:35:53
Speaker
Because we will talk about the differences because those are very important to the titular Murderbot. They are important to other characters. They're important to us in our world. There, that's that's a better way of putting it.
00:36:06
Speaker
Yes. So next time, we're going to be talking about All Systems Red, which came out in 2017, which is the first novella.
00:36:19
Speaker
um We have a specific reading order, and we're planning to do one episode per novella. There are four novellas, five novellas, and two novels.
00:36:31
Speaker
The first four novellas tell sort of an overarching story. The fifth one builds off of that and bridges a gap. And then the two novels tell an overarching story as well.
00:36:44
Speaker
The reading order to us is... different from the release order in that you read fugitive telemetry before reading network effect, even though fugitive telemetry came out after network effect, because it takes place there in the chronological order.
00:37:06
Speaker
So over the next few episodes, we're going to be going through all systems read, artificial condition, rogue protocol, exit strategy, fugitive telemetry, and then network effect and system collapse.
00:37:20
Speaker
These are going to be very spoiler heavy episodes. So if you haven't read the books and you'd like to read along with the podcast, I would recommend reading the associated book before you listen to that particular podcast episode.
00:37:36
Speaker
They are so short and fairly easy to get through in an afternoon. and of course, there will still be more to discover. We can't quote every single one-liner as much as we would like to, but we will be exposing a lot of the magic. So experience the magic for yourself if that is something you are even vaguely interested in.
00:37:57
Speaker
it is very rewarding. And then you can come join us in our in our habitat pod.
00:38:05
Speaker
Our cubicle. Our repair cubicle. We can be your comfort media. Murderbot has changed are like the way we talk to each other so much.
00:38:18
Speaker
It has. um and We'll dive more into that too in the in the like the sci-fi terminology in the Murderbot universe.
00:38:30
Speaker
But yeah we'll go through the murder plot of every Murderbot book and don't know, make more really bad jokes about it.
00:38:42
Speaker
We'll find ways to be horny. If Murderbot will not be horny, we will fill that vacuum. Don't you worry. We'll find ways to fill the gaps. Thank you.
00:38:54
Speaker
i set it up, you knock it down. So is there anything else? Dr. Rafi can knock me down. in Interesting choice. I mean, i don't know. who wouldn't He's so sweet. He's lovable.
00:39:06
Speaker
Is there anything else critical that we need to impart on our friends, old and new, before we start the next phase of our journey? System critical initiating shutdown sequence.
00:39:18
Speaker
Oh
00:39:22
Speaker
no! No, I think we will leave you all here and just say once again, welcome to Friends Old and New. As we transition away from fantasy, if you were just here for Tolkien, we encourage you to stick around.
00:39:40
Speaker
Not least because, you know, we like the numbers. But also because I do think that even if even if you're not a sci-fi person, I think there's a lot to love ah about these books specifically. and And about science fiction in general.
00:40:00
Speaker
But I think these books have meant a lot to us in the last few years. And I'm excited to talk about them.
Engagement and Social Media Wrap-up
00:40:08
Speaker
Yeah, me too. In the meantime, if ah folks have thoughts that they need to communicate directly to us, or if they want to see what we are up to next, where can they find us, Bestie?
00:40:20
Speaker
um They can hit us up in the feed.
00:40:24
Speaker
ping ah any social media site that we are on We are on it as at fan app pod, F A N A P P P O D. Our most active social media sites are Tumblr and our Instagram.
00:40:41
Speaker
You can always send us an email at the fandom apprentice at gmail.com. You can leave a comment on our episodes here on Spotify if you're listening there, or I don't know if other podcast platforms allow that.
00:40:57
Speaker
You could leave it on our YouTube. You can ah leave us a five-star review if you like what you're hearing. You can leave a written review if the platform you're listening on allows that.
00:41:09
Speaker
If you have gotten this far in the episode and you're not subscribed, please do so. We release episodes every other week. They are pretty long and we have our substantial backlog, so there will be plenty to keep you occupied in the meantime, but then you will be up to date as things are coming out.
00:41:27
Speaker
Yes. So I guess until we next meet on a barren planet with very large hostiles, unexpected, stay safe, have fun, and reach for the stars.
00:41:49
Speaker
We'll see you next time. bye See you next time. The Phantom of Brentis is produced and edited by Rin and Sam. Our music is composed and performed by James. You can find more of his work on Spotify and Bandcamp under Beiruz, B-A-E-R-U-Z.
00:42:05
Speaker
Our art is by Casey Turgeon. You can find more of her work at KCT Designs on Instagram. The content discussed is the property of the original copyright holders and is used here under fair use.