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Ep 2.11- Round Hatches Are Scarier
30 Plays4 months ago
We're back! Took an unexpected break, but we're back with a new episode, which is great for us, and Murderbot is back on the planet, which is terrible for it! Ryn and Sam discuss the first half (minus 4%) of System Collapse, delving into such important topics as whales, petty data analysis, how bananas relate to far-right death squads, PTSD, and the paradox of free will!
Covers chapters 1-5 of The Murderbot Diaries: System Collapse (2023) by Martha Wells
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Transcript
Weekend Cabin Retreat
00:00:00
Speaker
I want to be back in the woods. Me too. i have been thinking about it every day since we left. That's just a new mental happy place to go to.
00:00:11
Speaker
Listeners, Sam and I went on a little, little long weekend out to Yeah. In a cabin that looks like it was decorated by like a late 90s, early 2000s witchy mom.
00:00:28
Speaker
And the Airbnb host was also kind of that type of person. And it was amazing. it was very cozy.
Wedding Reflections and Public Speaking
00:00:36
Speaker
And we got to like eat really good food and go on really fun little hikes and ah have lots of talks about love. And then, of course, got to do lots of also more big love things the next weekend because we got to go to our two of our very good friends wedding.
00:00:54
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Where we both gave speeches and we both did fine. i guess having a podcast is a form of public speaking because it is talking that we release to the public.
00:01:05
Speaker
And I actually, in general, am very comfortable with public speaking. But it's been a long time. There was some events in the 2020 kind of area that made being in public really not a thing.
00:01:20
Speaker
So I don't think I've done any public speaking since college, which was longer ago than I like to admit. i have to do stuff like in like work meetings occasionally.
00:01:32
Speaker
But even that is like, look at this graph. Look at this graph. No, exactly. That's basically my mental image the whole time.
00:01:46
Speaker
I am Nickelback in the lab meeting. But frankly, being able to ah give a speech about one of your oldest friends of 22 years is much more fun than talking about deliverables.
00:02:03
Speaker
I would say so, just a bit. I should hope so. It certainly is. We also just got the pictures back. And they were very flattering to all of us. we all just I mean, obviously, our friends were beautiful and amazing, and there were many good shots of their dog.
00:02:17
Speaker
But there were also just nice pictures of us, which was really great. That's what we get for being in the wedding party. Yeah, that's our prize. Besides, you know, just eternal friendship with the two coolest people ever. When I would tell people about this wedding, I would be like, yeah, it's my two, like, two my best friends.
00:02:33
Speaker
They're amazing. They're just the chillest people in the whole world. And it's going to be perfect. And then afterwards, I was like oh they're the chillest people in the whole world. And it was perfect. It was so good. They're so aggressively chill.
00:02:45
Speaker
Yeah, they're delightful. And one of them made the art for this podcast. Indeed. Yes, she did. You could find more of her work.
00:02:54
Speaker
Won't do the end sign-off right now, but if you want to listen to the end sign-off, you can find out where to find more of her work. And maybe we'll have a stinger. I've been putting extra deranged little bits of banter after the end credits for those ultra-dedicated listeners who listen to the whole thing.
00:03:10
Speaker
We are truly extra deranged. Oh, you know what's
Book Club Theme Proposal: Omegaverse October
00:03:15
Speaker
also deranged? This is not pivoting into the podcast content at all. But we are subjecting our book club to my idea for a month.
00:03:28
Speaker
Which was, yeah I said, wouldn't it be funny if we did Omegaverse... Oh, you're doing a finger... No, i was I was just going to like, we haven't explained this.
00:03:41
Speaker
Just every month we have a different theme in book club. Right. And so this year I've been really putting in effort to make all of the themes alliterative.
00:03:54
Speaker
We had fantasy February, space opera September, artistic August. That one was your idea. is just to just to give credit where it's due.
00:04:05
Speaker
But then we were talking about it and you brought up Omegaverse October, which I know this will be coming out in a month that is after October. So we will already know how it went.
00:04:18
Speaker
But I was like, oh, ha ha, we won't really do this. But imagine if we did Omegaverse October. And then you, because you're perfect, enabled me and said, actually, yes, we should do this.
00:04:32
Speaker
And I believe you described the reaction from Book Club when we announced this as stunned silence. But I had to text one of our weirdest, horniest friends and say, hey, the people need a shepherd. They need someone to guide them.
00:04:48
Speaker
They're scared. They're not ready to welcome Omegaverse into their hearts. I need someone one who's not afraid to be weird and horny. And they said, I'm honored to be considered.
00:05:00
Speaker
You are the weird and horny friend. this This is what comes of running a book club for as long as we have, is we have just gotten ridiculously comfortable with these people.
00:05:13
Speaker
But then, and you know, sometimes in the same way that we will admit when we don't get each other's jokes, book club is also comfortable enough with us to say, hey, I'm happy for you, but I'm not doing this.
00:05:27
Speaker
Which a couple of people have already said to me, and I'm like, that's so fair. But then other people reveal themselves to be the exact same brand of stupid. Yeah, because nobody's nobody's like been like, this but this is out a line.
00:05:41
Speaker
yeah Nobody's saying that it's out of line, just that it's not for them. Okay, so pivoting to ah our favorite Aero Ace construct. Yeah.
00:05:53
Speaker
Oh.
00:06:09
Speaker
Hello everyone, and welcome back to another episode of The Fanon Apprentice. My name is Rin, I'm one of your hosts. I'm a lifelong nerd and reader of sci-fi.
00:06:24
Speaker
I have delighted in finding various sci-fi properties throughout my life to foist upon my friends so that I have somebody to yell about them with.
00:06:36
Speaker
Hello, I'm Sam. I'm the other one. i am receiving the foisting of this series, which we are almost done with. The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells. This is our first part on the second full-length novel, System Collapse.
00:06:53
Speaker
Is there another novella after this or is this everything that's out right now? This is everything that is currently out.
Exploring 'The Murderbot Diaries'
00:06:59
Speaker
I believe the one that's scheduled for next year is the next installment.
00:07:05
Speaker
That makes sense. That one is going to be called Platform Decay. It's giving space western vibes. Martha Wells has described it as family road trip from hell, which I'm very excited for, but we are not there yet.
00:07:18
Speaker
We are starting a new book today. We are. System Collapse picks up like right where Network Effect left off. So if you either haven't listened to our Network Effect episodes or you haven't read Network Effect, maybe go back and do one of those things.
00:07:34
Speaker
Honestly, they're probably about the same length in terms of audio. That's what I was about to say that I don't know if you're saving any time listening to our version, but hey, you know, you do you.
00:07:45
Speaker
But System Collapse is shorter. I've read this one the least, obviously, because it came out the most recently. Mm-hmm. I bought a copy when I was visiting a friend of mine who lived in Toronto at the time up at a Canadian bookstore and like saw it. It had come out like a couple of weeks before, I want to say.
00:08:07
Speaker
i saw it, gravitated towards it and was like, yes, absolutely ah need to get this. And the there was a sticky note, like the you know bookseller recommends type sticky notes on there. And it just said,
00:08:21
Speaker
ah like ah like screaming screaming screaming new murder bot screaming screaming screaming and i was like that is correct yes that is the correct response to which the uh proprietor of the bookstore was very pleased to tell me that martha wells was coming in to do a talk in a couple weeks and i was like tragically i am in toronto for three days and Yeah.
00:08:51
Speaker
That like when we were on our trip mentioned to the introduction and we came out of a hike and this poor sweet a senior citizen who was a volunteer for the conservation area wanted so bad to tell us all about how to navigate the trails and events they had coming up and stuff. And we were like, I'm so sorry. Not only did we just finish our hike, we are emerging from the trail So the navigation advice is not really useful.
00:09:21
Speaker
We don't live here. We're on vacation. We're going home right after this. Like, this is literally our stop before we hit the road. won it so bad. like I'm so sorry. I'm really glad you're passionate about nature, if we are not the target audience for this spiel.
00:09:38
Speaker
But yeah, this is the one I've read the least, and I kind of like this one the least. Mm-hmm. Tell me more. I feel like I'm i feel like i'm the least invested in what Murderbot and crew are doing in this one. Mm-hmm.
00:09:54
Speaker
I care about what's going on in Murderbot's head. Yeah. But I feel like the what's actually happening is kind of not relevant. I feel like it's a very clear, you know, obviously continuation of network effect.
00:10:10
Speaker
And maybe we see a little bit of the weakness of this series starting as novellas and then transitioning into novels. And that you kind of could put both books together and make just one super long narrative. So it's like, where do we split it up? how does How do we pace this? How do we make one...
00:10:34
Speaker
cohesive story that but that still keeps sort of the snappy beat i feel like this one is slower paced than the other ones because we're just lingering in like kind of the same conflict i like it i have also reread this one the least out of all of them but it does have a slightly different feel than the first couple i feel like i do think we are still once again at least for this first five chapter section we are still firmly in sci-fi horror isn But this time, so, you know, we mentioned in our Network Effect episodes that usually we're obviously in sci-fi horror, but Murderbot is the only one that knows it.
00:11:15
Speaker
And because Murderbot knows it's in a horror movie, it can, you know, turn the tropes on its head and become the monster. During Network Effect was the first time that Murderbot, even knowing it was in a horror movie, still fell victim to it.
00:11:33
Speaker
Yeah. And now we're seeing the fallout from that. That's also making me think that as an enormous horror fan, which I've mentioned on the podcast before, I read a shit ton of horror. I should do some research into like.
00:11:48
Speaker
principles of horror or like common themes and ideas in the same way that we've done for sci-fi and fantasy because because I feel like that would be very helpful in our analysis maybe at the end of next time we'll just put a pin in that for the future but is there anything else before we get into the specific plot summary that you want to touch on or should we just get right into it no I think we can get into it So, like we said, we are picking up right where we left off, on the recently rediscovered terraformed planet, then flashing back immediately 47-ish hours to Murderbot on the planet's surface, unwillingly, dealing with a rogue agricultural bot that has trapped some of its humans.
00:12:35
Speaker
Secuna is extremely off its game due to redacted, which is why the humans promised that it wouldn't have to go back down there, but it's back down there anyway, and it's grouchy about it. There's a big fight during which we meet the Barish Estranza backup squad that has been sent since last time as reinforcements, and Murderbot hobbles away with some shred of dignity, maybe. Yeah. Yeah.
00:12:58
Speaker
Yeah. I feel like the thing that we get immediately, and this is makes a lot of sense following network effect, is that Murderbot is very, very scared of alien contamination. This will continue to be a theme, but more than anything else, I feel like that's the subject of its ruminations and panicking.
00:13:21
Speaker
Yes, pretty pretty constantly. And I think specifically it's it ties back into its main central fear over the entire series, which has been losing control, isn't becoming an object again. Mm-hmm.
00:13:40
Speaker
And so it has worked so hard to not give in to its more violent impulses, learn about humans, make sure it can't be controlled by combat override modules or, you know, its governor module is fully gone and disabled.
00:14:01
Speaker
Alien contamination it can't really protect against. Yeah.
Art's Finances and Relationships
00:14:05
Speaker
It doesn't understand how to protect against it because alien contamination is kind of inherently unknowable.
00:14:12
Speaker
isn' um And Rati gives ah really interesting explanation of sort of why this all happens later. We can get into that in a couple of chapters. Yeah. And I feel like starting with the ag bot fight, in addition to just being cool and exciting, since it's a big, scary, weird robot, is a very nice parallel. Because in Network Effect, SecUnit mentions that agricultural bots look the scariest out of all bots but are actually by far the least dangerous but now we've taken this very peaceful farming robot and because of alien contamination it has become this reckless killing machine kind of the opposite of what murder bot has worked so hard to become of heartless killing machine to question mark
00:14:57
Speaker
Well, and Murderbot points out that, like, you know how I said that Agbots weren't actually dangerous? ah I was wrong. yeah And we will put a pin in the whole redacted situation. It will continue to come up. There will be an explanation in this episode of the podcast.
00:15:15
Speaker
There's also a couple of really fun just little character moments in this chapter that I enjoyed tremendously. We find out that art has secret money. There's some talking about just things that people are doing on the ship and corporate billing and fighting about money stuff.
00:15:35
Speaker
And we learned that Turi does all of the accounting for art with this explanation. According to Martin, ART is of course capable of doing its own accounting, but it always ends up with extra numbers that no one can trace.
00:15:47
Speaker
So now Turi does it and has to keep a hard copy ledger because otherwise ART would alter their data. No one knew if ART was making up numbers for the hell of it, or if these numbers represented actual credit balances that ART was hiding somewhere.
00:16:00
Speaker
so What I am getting from this is art doesn't have debt. It doesn't owe people. It is generating money somehow that no one knows where it comes from.
00:16:13
Speaker
Art clearly doesn't respect corporates. And so like that and that's sort of the main use for money. So is it making up the money? Is it like, but also it fully would just fuck with people.
00:16:28
Speaker
isn't And in this super advanced sci-fi society, it is such a force of chaos that they have to keep a paper ledger because it's unhackable. That's very good.
00:16:40
Speaker
And honestly, the only reason that that probably succeeds Art decided that it wasn't worth the effort to continue fucking with them. isn Because it's been stated that Art has drones.
00:16:54
Speaker
This is very true. And Art's drones have fine manipulation skills, like clearly enough to do major surgery. they they would definitely have enough fine motor manipulation skills to change numbers in a paper ledger if they so desired.
00:17:14
Speaker
We also see some similarities between Iris and Art. um Iris is interfacing with the corporates and doing some good sassy back and forth. She is very skilled at, as Arata would say, corporate power peeing.
00:17:29
Speaker
There's another line of background from Martin. Martin told me that Iris and Art had been interacting since Iris was a new human baby and Art was a new whatever the hell it is. And sometimes that is not surprising at all.
00:17:43
Speaker
Iris and her hyper intelligent machine intelligence sibling. hmm. Other than that, I didn't really have a ton for this first chapter because it's just kind of getting us back up to speed on last time. i don't know if you had anything else.
00:18:02
Speaker
To be honest, I don't have a lot like chapter specific, but yes, we can continue. Cool. So then we'll just cruise through the chapters. So chapter two, the big question starting out chapter two is, are these new Bearish Restranza guys actually the scheduled reinforcements that the last BE guys claimed they were?
00:18:21
Speaker
or were they sent there in response to a distress beacon from the last book? Who's to say? and Regardless, they now have a supply shipped and an armed explorer, which is more than our guys have, which is not great.
00:18:35
Speaker
The current plan with a capital P is neatly outlined for us in Two parts and one subpart. Part one is get the colonists decontaminated. It's very important. Part two is the legal case to keep Bear Shastranza from claiming ownership of the planet and more importantly, everyone on it.
00:18:52
Speaker
And then subpart one of part two is asking the colonists what they want to do. And that is very difficult because the politics among the colonists are very divided and delicate And it would be nice if they could stop fighting long enough to get off the damn planet, but that is kind of a big ask.
00:19:12
Speaker
Karime, who is one of the members of Art's crew, has a meeting with representatives from two of the human factions. And they drop the bomb that there's a third colony site, which fucks up that entire whole plan that we just outlined.
00:19:28
Speaker
They are apparently, this third site, is up at one of the planet's poles and hidden in this fog of signal static. So we can't really contact them and we don't know what their status is vis-a-vis alien contamination.
00:19:43
Speaker
Third site or I guess second adamantine? Yeah, second site, third group. Because there's two groups... At this site, there are two like distinct factions.
00:19:56
Speaker
And then there is a third group of people who is up at the other side. So I guess technically a second site. Well, and and now, of course, there's now like multiple sub factions to each of the first two groups.
00:20:11
Speaker
remember I don't remember which crew member it is that says that it makes sense that they're sort of so fractured and spreading out that, you know, even though they all know that their actions and their fight was the result of alien contamination and network effect, the more contaminated folks...
00:20:34
Speaker
Ended up doing some things to people that they say cannot be easily forgiven. You know, when it was going to take time to sort of I assume, one come to terms with the fact that like, yes, these people did these things to you, but they weren't in control.
00:20:49
Speaker
And for the people who are actually doing these terrible things, that like, do they remember their time under alien contamination control? Mm-hmm.
00:21:02
Speaker
And if they don't, how traumatic is that whole gap? And if they do, how traumatic is that understanding that basically you weren't you for however long?
00:21:18
Speaker
And Sec Unit, of course, has a lot of empathy for them in that situation because it knows how it feels to be compelled to do terrible things. Besides the plot bomb drop of there being another group of people, I also didn't really have a ton for this chapter. My only little character observation was Murderbot saying that Iris is Art's Rati, which I thought was cute, just being the one who sort of translates and advocates for it when it's maybe behaving in a way that the humans don't understand or approve of. And Iris goes, what Art actually means to say is this?
00:21:55
Speaker
And I love that only Art's sibling can handle art the Art's bullshit. Meanwhile, Rati has kind of self-assigned himself the role of interpreting for Murderbot.
00:22:14
Speaker
And now Murderbot's like, okay, well, don't stop. Like, fine, if you're gonna do it, I guess it's fine. Chapter three.
Colony Exploration and Character Dynamics
00:22:20
Speaker
The humans have one of my favorite phrases in all of these books. And argue cushion.
00:22:28
Speaker
That's a combination of an argument and a discussion. Argue cushion applies to so many things. I love it so much. Is it in the argument lounge? You know, it is not in the argument lounge, but the argument lounge would be a great place to have an argue cushion. Absolutely. Absolutely.
00:22:43
Speaker
They are going to have to visit this other colony site, which is totally unmapped due to the scanner blackout zone. They have no idea what the conditions are like up there, no idea what they're going to find.
00:22:54
Speaker
Mensa, who is kind of conferencing in remotely, assures SecUnit that it doesn't have to go, but Murderbot insists... Art downloads itself into a drone so it can come along, and Murderbot uses the travel time for a little panic spiral.
00:23:09
Speaker
They get there, they find the entrance to an underground structure, and Murderbot does not want to go in due to redacted. Yeah, this is when we sort of start getting a sense that Redacted is most certainly related to Murderbot's time in captivity and attack by the alien contamination central system.
00:23:33
Speaker
There were a couple of pieces in Chapter 3 that I had minor thoughts on. The first was the line, Preservation Party Sparkler. Yeah, I noticed that too. That was cute.
00:23:45
Speaker
That's a little of emoji that Rathi sends in the chat at one point. Yeah, I love that there is a specific preservation party sparkler. Does this imply that, like, there are different types of party sparklers in the corporation rim?
00:24:02
Speaker
does Is the preservation one shaped differently? Or is that the only one that Murderbot knows about? Or is it, like, a specific one for, like... celebrations that occur on preservation was it you know some sort of revamped like ship piece of ship equipment that they had on the on the colony ship like what does a preservation party sparkler entail i love that i would have never thought to as to ask those questions but that's delightful And i I thought about this specifically because my my work group chat, one of our supervisors will pretty frequently react to things with like the little like confetti emoji. Party, popper, yeah. Yeah.
00:24:46
Speaker
And so I was like, is that it? Is it like the like, you know, sparkler, like like the fire sparklers that you play with on the 4th of July? Mm-hmm.
00:24:57
Speaker
For non-Americans, these are literally little like sticks that you light on fire and then they throw off sparks and children run around with them.
00:25:08
Speaker
Very safe. If you ever wonder, to our non-American listeners, if you ever wonder why we're all like this, that's why. It's pretty far down the list of reasons we're like this, honestly.
00:25:23
Speaker
True. The other piece that I was noticing in this chapter was a lot of discussion of how Murderbot and Art are working together to analyze the a terrain to try and find the location of this other colony site.
00:25:42
Speaker
Because, one this is up at the pole, so it sounds like it's basically all covered under, like, snow and ice and rocks, and it seems like it's pretty rocky. It seems like there's...
00:25:58
Speaker
it's It's all really close to the terraforming engines for the planet, which is why there's signal interference somehow. That's what's causing the signal interference. But also it seems like a fair amount of like storms almost in the area. hmm.
00:26:15
Speaker
Terraforming and how it works is not explained, which is fair. But I was thinking about Murderbot describes at one point when they're looking through map data, it's all based on contours of the land,
00:26:33
Speaker
It and art take out basically all of the visual inputs and they're just focusing on the spatial data. How do things relate to each other? And I started thinking about two things.
00:26:47
Speaker
at Well, so I mentioned on this podcast before, my one of my minors in college was in archaeology. And one of one of the big tools that gets used frequently in archaeology is GIS, Graphic Information Software.
00:27:00
Speaker
People actually very frequently will interact with GIS. Google Maps or Apple Maps is a form of GIS software. Ooh, I didn't know that. That makes sense now that you pointed out, but... the The point of graphic information software is to analyze spatial data.
00:27:20
Speaker
What is spatial data? Spatial data is any type of data that is specifically, either directly or indirectly, referenced to specific geographic areas or locations, right?
00:27:35
Speaker
So I took a GIS class at one point. Um, and i you, I was using a form of analytical GIS, ARC GIS, which is a company to, I was mapping specific marine protection zones, which are zones in U S territorial waters and expanding out a little bit, I believe into international waters as well. It's been several years since I took this class in which there are certain regulations on how fast boats can go, like noise that they're producing to reduce whale strikes, ship strikes.
00:28:18
Speaker
It generally is supposed to so go along with like calving season or migration seasons. And I used that and mapped that onto shipping lanes and onto ah citizen science reports of whale sightings.
00:28:38
Speaker
because some of the protection zones are for specific species. um So there's like one zone where it's specifically just for humpbacks.
00:28:52
Speaker
And so I went, okay. and And it like is only in effect from like October to May. And I went, okay. So what are are the whale species we're seeing in this zone?
00:29:04
Speaker
When are we seeing those whale species there? And where are the shipping lanes traveling in comparison to the whale species? And in comparison, it at what times of year are they going?
00:29:17
Speaker
What times of year are they most prevalent? um And so I was also using temporal data for that too. But basically, my the goal of my project was to analyze how effective these protection zones were.
00:29:30
Speaker
Were they actually achieving the goal of protecting the species they supposedly set out to protect, right? and Because if you're not seeing humpback whales in that area in October to May, then the protection zone is kind of irrelevant.
00:29:48
Speaker
Yeah. And what did you find? Because now I'm invested in knowing if the protection cells were effective. Oh, God. See, this was the thing is some of them were. Some of them, particularly along the East Coast, when you got further south, when you got further north or you got further out, and there was one along the Chesapeake Bay area that weren't particularly effective. They were either wrong for the type of year or the wrong species, there one...
00:30:16
Speaker
That if I'd had more time, i would have tried to map ocean temperature currents and maybe go back into historical data of whale migration routes and see if there had been changes because they're all of the whale sightings were like along the side of this protection zone.
00:30:36
Speaker
They were not actually in the zone. So I have to wonder whether or not... And they were like right types of gear, right species. So... My question there for further research was, okay, has this shifted?
00:30:52
Speaker
Was this established with data saying, yes, the whales are in this area, and have they shifted with changing ocean currents or temperatures or what have you?
00:31:04
Speaker
Or have they shifted in response to human activity? what What's the possible change? What's the associations here? Mm-hmm. The other piece that this made me think of was a walk that I took in England with an archaeologist talking about reading the land.
00:31:20
Speaker
Mm-hmm. We walked up on this ridge. We were outside of Bath. And he starts pointing out, oh, that was a hill fort. There's an old Iron Age road. You can tell because of, you know, how straight this is.
00:31:35
Speaker
You know, where these couple of standing stones are. The way that this hill looks now, even though there's no evidence left of the Iron Age fort,
00:31:46
Speaker
You know, it has this dip and then it goes up again. It's the way that this was built. You can see, you know, the changes that humans have made to the land hundreds and thousands of years later.
00:32:00
Speaker
That's wild. you know I have not done this for archaeology, but this is something that you can do with GIS. You can use it with LIDAR, which is stands for Light Detection and Ranging, or Laser Imaging Detection and Ranging.
00:32:16
Speaker
And you can map... like What it does is map distance from from the surface. So if you are looking at... I remember one of my professors was telling me...
00:32:30
Speaker
about its usage in jungle settings, right? Because you you fly a plane with LiDAR equipment over, and if you're taking any sort of visual imagery, you're not gonna be able to see through the tree cover.
00:32:48
Speaker
But with LIDAR, you can identify, well, here's the ground. Oh, but there's this interesting straight section here that's different, clearly carved differently.
00:33:01
Speaker
That might be a road. Oh, there's these, you know, clearly raised structures here. Oh, that's, that's clearly a site that we should now go and investigate.
00:33:14
Speaker
There's been extensive LIDAR mapping, I believe, in Honduras and Guatemala, and in southern Mexico, of ah Maya sites.
00:33:25
Speaker
That's really cool. And I know there was, yeah, I know there was um some LIDAR mapping done in ah Cambodia and Laos, I believe, as well.
00:33:37
Speaker
I know it's been done all sorts of places, but those are those are sort of two instances that I'm aware of. The last piece that this compared that this you know brought up in my mind was the opening of the movie Prometheus,
00:33:54
Speaker
Which not seen. Which is, is a prequel in the Alien series. And there's at one point when they're flying over ah site looking for, you know, potential evidence of habitation.
00:34:10
Speaker
And, you know, it looks like a barren desert. And then they spot something and one of the people goes there. Nature does not build in straight lines.
00:34:21
Speaker
That's a road. Go down there. Mm-hmm. So those were those were all of the thoughts swirling around. That's what Art and Murderbot are doing, looking at all yeah all of these data.
00:34:32
Speaker
Also, the word data is plural. It's weird. So it's these data, this datum, singular. and don't like it. Yeah, I know.
00:34:45
Speaker
Don't worry, very few people in my lab know. do it correct use it correctly i usually don't either so but when i'm thinking about it i try to but that's what art and murderbot are doing with these data they're looking for specific patterns in association with the rest of the natural patterns that you're seeing in this space does anything stand out as markedly different okay that's what tada that's that's what i got for that
00:35:18
Speaker
I love it. I don't have too much to add other than just thinking about functions and what they're doing, that we have just this little bit of art in the art drone.
00:35:29
Speaker
And we learned that different partitions of art have slightly different personalities and behavior depending on what their function is. So for example, art drone is not currently protecting a ship full of its important humans.
00:35:43
Speaker
So it's less likely to blow things up and ask questions later. So we get a slightly more, if not chill, then not in protective mother research transport mode.
00:35:57
Speaker
We don't have aggressive mama bear art in this situation. It's more just like, hey, hey, sec unit, why are you zoning out? Stop it. Stop it. Cut that shit out right now. Iris, wear your seatbelt.
00:36:08
Speaker
But it is fun. And i feel like maybe this is just me being hyper attuned to details and audio because of being a podcaster. But I do feel like Kevin R. Free does a slightly different voice for Art Drone than for Art Prime. And I enjoy it tremendously.
00:36:26
Speaker
i i think that's true. It's just it's just the slightest bit different, but I can tell. We also get a lot of the humans arguing about Sec Unit taking unnecessary risks because it wants to hop out of the shuttle or hopper whatever the fuck it's in at a ridiculous height for vaguely good reasons. It sends some video footage of the one time in All Systems Red where Rathi almost got eaten by the worm thing that was shooting up from the ground.
00:36:56
Speaker
But most of the humans are not buying that bullshit and saying, no, you cannot risk your life unnecessarily. Let us fly slightly closer to the ground before you inspect it. I also forget if Rati and Tariq fuck in this book, but I think they might.
00:37:12
Speaker
I'm feeling... was reading this like, oh my god, these two these two fuck, don't they? They talk a lot, and this is ah how you know the type of people that we are, that we recognize this.
00:37:25
Speaker
Because really all they're doing is just having long conversations about pre-corporation rim civilizations. They're just, you know, going off at each other about their special interests. I'm like, ooh, they're trying to get it on, which is maybe not readable to everyone in the world as flirting. But to me, obviously, like, oh, they're talking about archaeology. They're going to bone. Like, duh.
00:37:50
Speaker
So putting a pin in that, because I don't know for sure. What does that about what I just said? but Listeners, our email is thefandomapprenticeatjishmail.com.
00:38:03
Speaker
Oh, no, you're blushing. I flirted with GIS information. Please send email.
00:38:11
Speaker
You didn't respond. i sent you my yeah GIS information. You didn't respond. Okay.
00:38:24
Speaker
um So I have read this whole one i whole i have read this whole book i know ah recently. I know that you stopped at the end of our section. Do you want me to tell you whether or not Rati and Shreve fuck? are do I think they do, but go for it.
00:38:38
Speaker
They do, in fact, fuck in this book. And then they have... And fight about it. An awkward breakup and fight about it because Tariq is in a relationship with Mateo. And I guess I don't remember the exact details, but didn't talk to Rati or Mateo about it. And, you know, we know that polyamory is the norm yeah in this world. But, like, clearly Tariq has some assumptions that and Rati was expecting some sort of discussion. Yeah.
00:39:10
Speaker
Ahead of time. It's almost like being non-monogamous doesn't immediately make you good at relationships and communicating. No, it certainly fucking doesn't.
00:39:22
Speaker
um Chapter four? Chapter four. So, chapter four. We are into this underground site that we found through a cool mapping technology.
00:39:34
Speaker
Murderbot is petrified that it might be connected to some pre-corporation rim structure. Unfortunately, doesn't take long to figure out that it is right. It is a pre-corporation rim structure. Oops.
00:39:47
Speaker
And now we catch up to where we were before the flashback in chapter one. If you recall, we had like One paragraph and then flashback. Now we are back to the current point on the timeline.
00:40:00
Speaker
don't know that we needed that flashback. It feels it contributes to a lot of I feel like the there's a lot of jumping around in time and space in this book. I feel like it contributes to sort of overall confusion as to where everyone is at any given moment.
00:40:15
Speaker
Yeah, it's, you know, you could take or leave the flashback. it's doesn't make that much of a difference to your comprehension of the plot. But here we are. We have Iris, Tariq, Murderbot, and Art Drone exploring and Rati back in the ship.
00:40:30
Speaker
And the biggest thing revealed in this chapter is Iris tells us that Tariq used to be in a corporate combat squad. And Murderbot has a lot of feelings about that.
00:40:42
Speaker
I don't know if you had anything anywhere specific you wanted to start
Corporate Death Squads and Real-World Implications
00:40:46
Speaker
there. um I don't know whether we want to do this now or later. Do we want to talk about corporate death squads? We can talk about corporate death squads.
00:40:54
Speaker
Okay. So we're all familiar with the term banana republic. Yes. Although we may not familiar with its origins.
00:41:06
Speaker
ah So Banana Republic specifically, according to Wikipedia, a politically and economically unstable country with an economy dependent on export of natural resource.
00:41:17
Speaker
And specifically, it relates primarily to ah nations that are being more or less taken advantage of by large corporations who are exploiting them for their natural resources.
00:41:32
Speaker
You can very strongly relate a banana republic nation to state capture, um which is the action of um corrupt political interests or corrupt private interests influencing state interests or crony capitalism, cronyism, in which businesses and capitalist interests are exercising influence over state power and over state decision-making.
00:42:04
Speaker
This has been very, very common ah with U.S.-based corporations in Central and South America from the late 1900s and further, you know, definitely still today to to many extents.
00:42:19
Speaker
But we can discuss in in bringing up corporate death squads. But one of the one of the corporations that was behind the founding of this but term, the Banana Republic, was United Fruit.
00:42:35
Speaker
The United Fruit Company was founded the late 1800s and exercised huge amounts of influence over Honduran politics.
00:42:50
Speaker
It was the single largest landowner in Guatemala in the 1930s and eventually either was bought or grew into ah Chiquita Brands International.
00:43:05
Speaker
Which, if you are not familiar with the Doe vs. Chiquita Brands International case, I highly recommend reading that Wikipedia page at the very least. Mm-hmm.
00:43:16
Speaker
But it has come to light through that case and through several other civil cases, both in the U.S. and outside of the U.S., that Chiquita Brands International, in addition to potentially the Dole Food Company, Fresh Del Monte Produce, the Hyundai Motor Corporation, and several other large international conglomerates, funded far-right companies.
00:43:41
Speaker
paramilitary death squads, which they used as security on their plantations and used to execute union organizers or people that owned land that the corporation wanted to buy.
00:43:57
Speaker
Chiquita also, it's been shown that they also funded far left groups in an effort to basically mean maintain instability in Colombia.
00:44:09
Speaker
Jesus Christ. By funding both far right and far left groups um because an unstable government is much easier to manipulate. Capitalism is bad.
00:44:21
Speaker
Very bad. is is really, really bad. And when I was reading through some of these cases, one of the results was a $25 million dollars settlement that Chiquita paid to survivors, ah like family surviving family members of people who were murdered by Chiquita.
00:44:42
Speaker
the AUC, which is a far-right paramilitary death group in Colombia. And I can't speak to necessarily the total worth of Chiquita Brands International, but I can tell you that $25 million, dollars not a lot.
00:45:00
Speaker
they They're taking that as just the cost of doing business. Also, like, you know, it sounds a little trite to be like, what is the worth of a human life? But... You know, is to families of multiple victims to be like, hello, you're incomprehensible, sudden violent loss of your loved one.
00:45:19
Speaker
Here's some money. Like. That's, it's nothing. It's fucking nothing. This also makes me think of two books that cover kind of similar angles of this stuff in the real world, if people are curious.
00:45:34
Speaker
How to Hide an Empire by Daniel Imroir is very long, but very, very good about the history of U.S. imperialism and the present current state of U.S. imperialism.
00:45:46
Speaker
Absolutely fascinating. Highly, highly recommend, especially if you are from the U.S., And then on the more kind of corporate side, Careless People by Sarah Wynn Williams, who used to be very high up at Meta, aka Facebook, whatever.
00:46:01
Speaker
The things that Facebook has done, the atrocities that it has enabled. Ah! ah very Neither of these are bright and cheery reads, but they are very illuminating about how, you know, Martha Wells didn't have to make up too much. The real world provides a lot of fodder.
00:46:23
Speaker
The incorporation rim is a terrifying place. But companies here on Earth, in the here and now, and in our history, have been either attempting to or actually getting away with almost everything that she mentions.
00:46:42
Speaker
Every horror, every atrocity that she brings up is analogous to something that has actually happened in real real life labor history.
00:46:54
Speaker
And this is something that happens in sci-fi a lot and something that I think ah people tend to misunderstand. And that they will look to a piece of sci-fi from the past and say, oh my god, this thing from the past is coming true.
00:47:08
Speaker
Which, you know, sure, like technology develops in somewhat predictable ways. Sometimes we get specific gadgets or whatever. But like in terms of social commentary, is commenting on things that were happening at the time that it was written.
00:47:22
Speaker
You know, there's, the world has always been a complicated and dark and messy place. And sci-fi has always commented on the state of things. um And it's, it's a very interesting way to put stuff like that in perspective to be like when it's aliens and corporates and things, it's shocking. But when it's on our,
00:47:47
Speaker
own actual planet in our real actual lives it's just normal you know it's like how would we react if we lived in the corporation rim well we live in it how are you acting now you know Mm-hmm.
00:48:01
Speaker
Yeah. the The difference, I guess, one of the, in part, I suppose, the difference here is that Tariq had no choice than to be part of this a corporate death squad.
00:48:17
Speaker
And there are many people on this planet part of organizations like that who have made that choice. And then there are others who have made that choice because of other circumstances. But it did it all it did also make me think something I was reading years ago about child soldiers and about how...
00:48:37
Speaker
Abusers, ascent more or less, would would utilize you know fear and just repeated atrocities against them or and in their sight to basically desensitize them to violence and slowly mold them into a
00:49:03
Speaker
Makes me think of, um I had this pulled up, I brought up the musician Phil Oakes before. One of the lines in his song, I Ain't Martian Anymore, is United Fruit screams at the Cuban shore.
00:49:16
Speaker
um United Fruit, of course, had interests in Cuba prior to the Cuban Revolution. But one of the lines earlier in the song is it's always the old to lead us to the wars. It's always the young to fall.
00:49:28
Speaker
Fortunate Son by Credence Clearwater a Revival brings up, In Amy, I ain't no millionaire's son. i ain't no fortunate one. Basically, ah you know, it's always the poor, it's always the disenfranchised who are actually forced to actually do the fighting to benefit the rich, the prosperous, who don't have to to experience the horrors. They just move their pieces on the chessboard.
00:49:57
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. ah Capitalism bad. Yeah. And tying it back to the chapter, Sekhuna is, of course, pissed that it didn't know this in advance about Tariq, so it's kind of an important piece of information.
00:50:11
Speaker
And Art obviously did know this, Nayef, a little back and forth, where Art says, you know, I had serious reservations. I think it was maybe Martin also had serious reservations about Tariq, but other people convinced them to take him on, and he is working out on the team so far.
00:50:30
Speaker
And... Sec unit is kind of freaking out thinking okay Tariq has been here for the equivalent of like an earth a year and if he's still a so far if he's still on kind of a probationary status then what the fuck does that make me?
00:50:44
Speaker
You know, he worked for a corporate debt squad, but he's a human. i was literally created for one job and I've been here for a couple of days. You know, what's going to happen here? And then Art has to reassure SecUnit that they are not in equivalent positions and sort of...
00:51:04
Speaker
assure it that its relationship with art is secure, its membership on the team is not the same as Tariq's, and so it doesn't need to panic. But of course, it is panicking very much. And there is one just kind of funny little thing in this chapter where it's spinning out about ah alien contamination and this is where we get that more detailed description from rathi that you were talking about earlier which basically reads to me and i think we might have made this comparison before that it's similar to like nuclear radiation
00:51:40
Speaker
And that it's not intentionally malicious, you know, alien contamination. It's not this malicious, aggressive force that's out to get you. It is just fundamentally incompatible with humans and their technology.
00:51:57
Speaker
And if you interact with it, weird stuff will happen to you. And Rothera is trying to explain this to comfort Murderbot. And it's thinking about trying to give itself a pep talk and saying, okay, not all pre-CR sites are alien contaminated. Obviously, some of them are fine. Some of them are normal.
00:52:12
Speaker
And as it's going through all of this information that it knows, it cites a source. It cites an academic paper talking about pre-CR structures.
00:52:23
Speaker
Page 57, paragraph 6, Introduction to the History of Human Expansion, Volume 1, Editors, Bartheme de la Vega, I don't know how to pronounce the other person's name, Sean McGum, et al., Cloud Sun Harbor University Press, close parentheses, which...
00:52:39
Speaker
Love that it has a single citation this whole time. Yeah, it has never done that. As far as I'm aware, never does that again. It'll occasionally reference if there's a specific episode of a show that it's trying to emulate. It'll say, oh, it's from this episode. But this was a citation, which to me just tells a little story about finding this in arts archives. Yeah. And Art just looming over its shoulder going, did you format that correctly, sec unit? That better be an APA format sec unit.
00:53:11
Speaker
yeah Okay, fine, fine, I'll do it. That takes a little vignette in my mind that is just utterly delightful. But I think that ah puts a cap on chapter four unless you had anything else.
00:53:23
Speaker
Just the alien contamination, the long the you know effects of alien contamination, there's there's a clear reference to the like long-term nuclear waste warnings. The ways that we have tried to leave information for future cultures um in case all information is lost, in case we die out and you know aliens show up, in case...
00:53:52
Speaker
We're obliterated in a nuclear war and 5,000 years from now, somebody happens upon this nuclear nuclear waste remains. But what happens when you can't even interpret the warnings, when the warnings don't even register to you? You know, SEC Unit brings up, maybe this was something dangerous that we've accidentally touched and that's why it's harming us.
00:54:18
Speaker
And maybe it's just like in Mass Effect, the two of the species have a different chirality to their amino acids. So they're just folded a different way, not folded or reflected over the main line.
00:54:31
Speaker
my My chemistry knowledge, but they have a ah different chirality, which makes them utterly incompatible with things some of the other species are using.
00:54:42
Speaker
So like they can't eat the same food. It is poison. Human diseases can be very, very dangerous to them. And that's not like an intentional piece of harm.
00:54:57
Speaker
That's just, oh, our biology is just fundamentally different. Yeah. It's like the newts that produce tetrototoxin.
00:55:07
Speaker
You know, it's good. It's great for them. It protects them. It kills us. Although I guess that is kind of the whole point of the Chordotoxin is to kill predators. Anyway, chapter five.
00:55:20
Speaker
Yes, chapter five. So the gang continues mapping. Murderbot has a theory about what's going on with this group of people that maybe Adamantine had had a warning about the impending takeover ages ago.
00:55:34
Speaker
and sent some of its people to this place to hide out, maybe. The gang banters while Murderbot explores on its own, and we learn what the redacted thing was. We'll talk about it.
00:55:47
Speaker
Murderbot gets a transmission from another central system, similar to the one that we interacted with in Network Effect, which asks about that other central system, and Murderbot has to break the news that that one is offline, and talks the new system into trusting it to reveal its humans so that they can talk.
00:56:05
Speaker
But if that wasn't all bad enough, Barish Estranza has beat our crew to this location. And when we get the video feed of the humans, they are already talking to people in BE uniforms.
00:56:17
Speaker
So things are real, real bad. Do you want to talk about what the redacted thing was? I have talked a lot this episode. Do you want to talk about redacted? Sure, I would love to talk about redacted.
00:56:29
Speaker
So basically what happened... is SecUnit had PTSD-induced false memory catastrophic shutdown incident.
00:56:45
Speaker
It was thinking about when it was down in the central control room with the weird alien human hybrid body thing connected to the central system and imagine that the body had leapt up and attacked it basically and like bitten off its leg and there's a one-off line earlier in the book where rati makes some comment about humans being dead or undead and everyone shuts him up very quickly he's like don't make comments about dead bodies jumping up and coming back to life
00:57:18
Speaker
And this is very upsetting that it just causes this random, complete failure, shutdown. Nobody knows what causes it at first. Was this some alien contamination that caused it?
00:57:31
Speaker
Was it some other reason? Art digs around in Murderbot's memory and is able to figure out what happened. Even comparing... its memory that it has created of this being coming up and attacking it, to the actual facts and its actual recording, knowing that that is not how things happened, that doesn't take away from the emotional impact of the thing that its brain has created to make sense of this threat and make sense of what it experienced.
00:58:02
Speaker
And to make matters worse, all of this happened in front of 11 humans. and art. So it doesn't even have the dignity of privacy in this incredibly vulnerable moment, and also everyone knowing that it's emotionally compromised.
00:58:19
Speaker
And so throughout all of these chapters, it is going into situations very hesitantly. It's super off its game. It doesn't feel confident in doing its job.
00:58:29
Speaker
There are responsibilities that it hands off to other people because it can't handle it, That's why 3 goes down with Karime to the meeting with the colonists instead of SEC unit going.
00:58:41
Speaker
In the very, very beginning at the Agbot fight, things go so badly because Murderbot agreed to a plan that humans made. Humans made the plan of how to improvise a weapon with some tool that art had, and then it only realizes once it's down there that it's never going to work and it has to pivot.
00:59:00
Speaker
But it is making choices that it otherwise never would have made, because and everyone is Not trying to think of the right word. Everyone is treating it extremely delicately and it hates that, but it also can't deny that it's seriously affected by the things that happen to it and is just very severely compromised and is not able to perform its function, which also just adds to its anxiety.
00:59:28
Speaker
Well, and it only allows us to know about Redacted because it happens again. isn it shuts down. It has another little flashback and shuts down again, but it shuts down again for like three seconds or something like that, as opposed to however long it shut down for the first time.
00:59:48
Speaker
Which just leads it to second guess itself more. isn' We don't know why this is happening other than, you know, it does say that there is there are no studies of trauma on constructs, the effects of trauma on constructs. We don't know how that would affect it.
01:00:05
Speaker
But once again, we've mentioned before, once again, Martha Wells writes a very convincing mental health crisis. Mm-hmm. Murderbot one of the things I noticed about this.
01:00:16
Speaker
It's swearing a lot more isn throughout this book, and it's being a lot more argumentative with everyone, including itself.
Murderbot's Mental Health Journey
01:00:25
Speaker
Yeah. It is much more aggressive about its interactions with people.
01:00:31
Speaker
Mm-hmm. In its own head, it's more cautious, but when it's actually talking, it's much more aggressive. It's much more likely to brush things off. You know, it's more sarcastic. it's It's more of an asshole.
01:00:46
Speaker
Yeah. You know, and to get slightly real on the podcast, you know, had a mental health episode earlier this year, and one of the symptoms of that was I was just angry all the time.
01:01:00
Speaker
yeah That is something that happens sometimes. When you are severely depressed or, you know, when you're severely anxious, that's just one of the ways it can manifest is just angry at everything and not really knowing why.
01:01:17
Speaker
And so seeing seeing that from Murderbot, along with the way that I feel like this book is written a little less organized, feel like we're jumping around quite a bit.
01:01:30
Speaker
You know, we'll linger in a scene and then all of a sudden we're somewhere else. We are... So much of this takes place in the feed and in different, and in you know, over comms in different locations, but people are still talking as if they're next to each other.
01:01:46
Speaker
So sometimes it's hard to sort of pinpoint where are people and what's happening when. Yeah. And that in combination with Murderbot's attitude, I guess, and I feel like that word has like negative connotations, but with the way Murderbot is acting and the insight we get into Murderbot's brain by having it as the narrator, it's a very convincing three-day-long anxiety attack.
01:02:10
Speaker
Yeah, basically. And I like all of the, you know, maybe liking it is you know it's bad. Mernabah's having a bad time, but I appreciate the craft of writing of how Martha Wells is using, like you said, so much that's happening in the feed and the combination of organic and inorganic parts and having a video record of the thing that it experienced, knowing objectively what happened and still also having the emotional experience and the things that
01:02:43
Speaker
our organic brains cook up that we can't really explain that is an experience that's wholly unique to a construct and it isn't going to be able to just talk about what happened and get over it it needs art to go into its files and pick through its data I say all the time, I wish that I could run diagnostics on myself.
01:03:07
Speaker
And that would answer a lot of questions and save me a lot of trouble. And just saying, okay, let me just check in and see what's happening with my body and brain. Can I just get some reports real quick? That would be great. But having access to all of that doesn't solve all of SecUnit's problems. It just adds more layers and makes it feel more isolated because there's so few beings that can understand what it's going through.
01:03:33
Speaker
And we do have three running parallel to SecUnit this whole time. And it's having a comparatively chill experience. There's a lot does comparatively chill experience there's a lot of Rather cute little anecdotes about Three sitting on a couch for the first time or awkwardly trying to offer Sec Unit its armor and Sec Unit not wanting its armor because it doesn't want to take one of Three's personal possessions, but Three doesn't understand that it has personal possessions yet.
01:04:08
Speaker
Mm-hmm. So I think we will see more of three as the book goes on. But right now it's just being kind of charming in the background. But I'm sure that it is also having its own powerful internal turmoil.
01:04:20
Speaker
The one funny bit that I really enjoyed from chapter five was wasting processing space on the hatch shape. yeah Rati points out they find the hatch that leads into the pre-corporation rim site and it's round and has columns on either side.
01:04:38
Speaker
And Rati says, why are round hatches always scarier than square hatches? And Tariq is like, is that actually true? And Rati's like, yeah, this is known. Everybody knows this. And SecUnit comes up with a little report to confirm it and examples of scary hatches in media. And turns out 87% of the scary hatches were round.
01:05:03
Speaker
Which, and Art goes, you wasted processing space on that? To which my response was, yeah. Yeah, obviously. Obviously, i have absolutely done statistical analyses out of spite or for fun or just for like, I was trying to find an example and I couldn't find anything. The only spreadsheet that I found, um which unfortunately doesn't have any statistics on it, that I did just for random bullshit was the cheese dilfs.
01:05:32
Speaker
Oh my god, I forgot about the cheese dilfs. That was really Yeah, we're going to not explain any more of that. That's just for everyone. The cheese dilfs. I know that I did some of this in college occasionally, was to be like, ah, yes, I am now taking, you know, these bits these bits of data and telling you that you're wrong in the most mathematical way I possibly can.
01:05:59
Speaker
It's the real-life applications of learning. There is also a cute little bit that I want to say is in chapter three or four, where Secunit doesn't know the definition of a word.
01:06:11
Speaker
And in previous books, it will just kind of spitball, trying out a sentence, trying out a turn of phrase, if it's not entirely sure what it means. It'll say, note to self, look up definition of metaphor. look up definition of acronym.
01:06:26
Speaker
And then in this one, it's saying, Art, define this word. So instead of being alone with its uncertainty about what words mean, it now has this little buddy. And you say, Art, what does this word mean?
01:06:37
Speaker
And then Art's like, is this a mission critical question? I love Art so much. I love we i love their relationship so much. There are, you mentioned too, that Murderbot is annoyed that people are coddling it.
01:06:55
Speaker
You know, gets annoyed with art as it always gets. But, you know art is covering for Murderbot while also not coddling it. while also you know still continuing the mission and helping Murderbot continue the mission in spite of Murderbot's fears and PTSD moments, while also yeah making sure that Murderbot is not floating alone in its in its anxiety. Mm-hmm.
01:07:27
Speaker
right And when Murderbot waits a little too long for whatever's happening, Art will give it a nudge, or Art will explain something to Iris and Tariq, or explain something to Rati, or poke Rati to explain something for Murderbot.
01:07:50
Speaker
even in ways where Rati's treating Murderbot with kid gloves. yeah But art understands Murderbot. They're not the same. that you know They're not fully in each other's motherboards.
01:08:05
Speaker
But art has enough understanding of Murderbot, more about what it needs to get through this. I feel like that's a theme of all of these books, is how to...
01:08:18
Speaker
Be in a relationship with someone of any kind of relationship and give them the things that they actually need as opposed to what you think they need and how many different barriers of species or inorganic consciousness or having been enslaved by corporations versus living in the most naive human society in existence.
01:08:43
Speaker
You know, how your background and your personal experience affect people. how you're able to bridge that gap. And sometimes people's well-intentioned attempts at caring, making things worse, sometimes needing a push that's uncomfortable. It's all very messy. And some characters are able to just fundamentally get each other on a different level. Like would say Mensa and Art are probably the two who get Murderbot the most for different reasons.
01:09:12
Speaker
But even they aren't perfect. And they occasionally will misstep or overstep, but they're still able to, because they have the foundation of a strong relationship, they're still able to move forward after that.
01:09:27
Speaker
and so you know, just not, especially I think from sec units perspective, not just give up on either of them and be like, okay, fuck you. You did a bad. It's like, no, actually I will continue to be in a relationship with you and we will continue to figure this out together.
01:09:41
Speaker
It's very messy and it's very real. And these books explore that in a lot of interesting and complex ways. And I think also in this book, we're starting to get, especially after this catastrophic shutdown,
01:09:54
Speaker
With the people covering for SecUnit and sort of passing knowing glances at each other, some people starting to get on board and starting to see SecUnit in a different way now that they've seen this more vulnerable experience.
01:10:08
Speaker
it's all It's all good stuff. It's all good mushy feeling stuff. Mushy organic parts. Yeah. That's it. that's That's the end of my notes. Same. I forget how the rest of this book goes, but I am very excited to continue
Podcast Logistics and Listener Engagement
01:10:23
Speaker
reading because I was listening to it and then I had to stop and I was so grouchy. was like, this is my media. I want to keep listening to my media. But if I kept going, I would have gotten confused and I had to prep for the episode. So now I can finish the book and then do more prep, which is great.
01:10:38
Speaker
So the next time we are going to finish System Collapse, chapters 6 through 13. We were chatting at the wedding this weekend because what else do we do at our wedding reception but talk about podcast logistics?
01:10:57
Speaker
we were i have i have to frame this a little bit more. We, you, me, Miles, and one of our other friends had walked away from the main reception area to cross the street and go look out over this beautiful harbor.
01:11:10
Speaker
It's the skyline of the city at night. It was so nice. Miles was talking to our other friend. You and me were sitting on a bench having, you know, objectively from the outside, like a very sweet little moment.
01:11:21
Speaker
And then later, like we were coming home from the wedding and Miles was talking and they were like, oh, like, did you and Rin have, like, a good little chat on the bench by the water? and I was like, we talked about podcast logistics.
01:11:33
Speaker
We talked about scheduling. We talked about we're breaking down this book. ah Because I was, you know, thinking about this, like, network effect, thinking it had, like, 20-some chapters or something, and it um doesn't.
01:11:46
Speaker
So we are 46% of the way through, according to my audiobook percentage tracker, and we'll cover the other 54% next time.
01:11:58
Speaker
In the meantime, you can read the second half and ah additional 4% of System Collapse. You can listen to our very large backlog of episodes, both for Murderbot and for Lord of the Rings and for all of the other random little things that we've done in there. Beowulf and Tolkien's poetry and general discussions on queer literature. There's something else in there, at least, i think.
01:12:28
Speaker
Anyway, you can follow us on our social media, on any social media app that we are on. We are at fanapppod, F-A-N-A-P-P-P-O-D, on any of our social media apps.
01:12:41
Speaker
You can send us an email at thefandomapprentice at gmail.com. You can leave us a comment on wherever you're listening, if the podcast platform you're listening on allows that.
01:12:53
Speaker
you can go to our YouTube channel and leave a comment on the YouTube videos. You can, you know, Spotify lets you leave comments. You can leave us a five-star review. You can leave us a written review, depending on the po platform you're listening on.
01:13:06
Speaker
You can talk us up to up to your friends. And then, much like I get to yell about various science fiction with Sam, you can yell about us yelling about science fiction with your friends. Yeah. It gets a little meta at that point, but you know, you do you.
01:13:23
Speaker
I'm just going here. Do you have anything else? No, I think that's about it. I think it's our bedtime. So thanks for listening and we'll see you all next time. We'll see you next time. Thanks so much for listening.
01:13:37
Speaker
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 Baeruz, B-A-E-R-U-Z.
01:13:50
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.
01:14:38
Speaker
You know who wishes he would be allowed in the uncharted wilderness is poor fucking Rati. he is just stuck in the hopper in every scene while everyone else goes out and have an adventure.
01:14:51
Speaker
Like, I'll be here watching the hopper. You almost get eaten one time and then suddenly every everyone's all paranoid.