It Could Happen Here - CZM Book Club: "The Nine Billion Names of God" by Arthur C. Clarke

Episode Date: April 14, 2024

Margaret reads Gare a classic sci-fi tale about the divine possibility of computers.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and

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Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. Calls on Media. I think we should drop the book club chanting because it's a sort of funny bit but I only go so far what's your plans to replace the chanting I think you should start by chanting and then I'll chastise you for how that doesn't work and why are you doing that I'm against chanting in general just because I find it kind of obtuse and conformist and a whole bunch of other bullshit reasons mostly because I don't like talking loudly which is the real reason I don't like chanting it just makes me uncomfortable okay well let's do it the

opposite I will start chanting and you will refuse to join in and then chastise me how's that sound or we could have already started it with my rant about why I don't like chanting well then I guess you're listening to Cool Zone Media Book Club. Book Club. The podcast in which Gare and Margaret discuss how to start podcasts. Pardcasts? Pardcast. Pardnercast.

That's my new country western cast. Cool Zone Media Book Club is a weekly book club where I read you stories. And in this case, you will be played by Gare. Hi, Gare. Hi.

Hello, audience surrogate. Okay, so half the book club is like new, cool, exciting stories. And then the other half is that I'm like, I want you all to know some classics of science fiction and where everything comes from. And this is one of those episodes. This episode. You all probably guessed because the name and the title, Arthur C. Clark, is a name you all might have heard of. Like, Garrett, have you heard of Arthur C. Clark? I have heard of Arthur C. Clark.

Yeah, that's enough. He's one of those people where if you dig in too much, start being like do i actually want to read this guy well i mean isn't that like all like male authors more or less yeah like don't type in arthur c clark controversy into google okay i will not do that there's some Anyway, he is one of the classic science fiction writers. He's from England. He wrote the screenplay for 1968's 2001 Space Odyssey. Oh, this guy. Okay. Yeah. All of the bad stuff in 2001 comes from him and all the cool stuff comes from Kubrick. Oh, interesting. Based on my diving into the development of that story. But that's just my personal opinion. That's up to interpretation. Many people disagree with me. Well, I love 2001. I need to rewatch it. The idea that in space,

there are things that just don't conform with our idea of reality that will like break our brains. Is that a him or is that a Kubrick? That's mostly Kubrick because him and Kubrick worked together to write the screenplay and then Arthur C. Clarke wrote the book based on the screenplay from him and Kubrick. So it wasn't actually his original idea. Most people have that reversed. People think that the movie is an adaption of Arthur C. Clarke's book but it's

not. The book itself is an adaption of a story that mostly came from Kubrick. So a lot of the more Nietzschean or existential stuff in 2001 mostly came from Kubrick. Okay. So a lot of the more Nietzschean or existential stuff in 2001 mostly comes from Kubrick. Okay. And if you read any of the sequels to 2001, you can very clearly see what type of stuff came from Arthur C. Clarke.

It's just an interesting experiment. So that's really interesting to me because of the story that we're about to read. I'm excited to hear it. So I first ran across this story when I was probably a young teen. There's this book called the Science Fiction Hall of Fame Volume One, and it was put together by the Science Fiction Writers of America, the SFWA, which is kind of the closest thing that we have to a union as speculative fiction writers in the US. thing that we have to a union as speculative fiction writers in the u.s i was about to say i'm a member of sfwa but i don't know if i'm up on my i don't know if i renewed my membership i believe in the sfwa and have been a member in the past and will probably be a member now that i've shamed myself into remembering to send in my you know yearly fee or whatever but they're the group that's me and the iw yeah exactly they're the group that is primarily the reason that speculative fiction

short fiction is actually something that you can make a little bit of money at compared to other things other types of writing that's cool because they declare what counts as pro rates and they raise it all the time to match inflation and so outside of speculative fiction you have all these places paying like one cent a word you know and then within science fiction or speculative fiction more broadly most magazines want to be professional magazines and so they therefore have to pay the current professional rate which i don't remember what is because I haven't submitted short fiction to magazines in a while. My little brag about how they come to me. No, I've just been busy writing other stuff. Yeah, you're busy writing a lot of novellas from my understanding.

A lot of novellas and now a book, but I'll plug that at the end. So I found this book on my dad's shelf and I read it and there's two stories I remember from it. And the other one was a man invents a machine to be able to hear in the frequencies that plants communicate. And then he like cuts a tree and then can never live with himself again and realizes that like everything alive can feel pain and he just suffers. He just absolutely suffers with that realization. There's a couple other stories from there. There's another one where a guy invents a thing where he doesn't have to sleep, and then he...

A lot of stuff that Futurama has ripped off of comes from this book. That makes sense. But this story in particular stuck with me as a kid. And it's called The Nine Billion Names of God. And it's about the nine billion names of God. And I'm going to read it. This story was originally published in 1953 or 1954. So for understanding of when they're talking about computers, that's what they're talking about.

This story absolutely plays with Orientalist tropes and not in a self-conscious way. Ori absolutely plays with Orientalist tropes and not in a self-conscious way. I want to point that out and I will chalk that up to the style at the time, but you don't need to. Well, you can also very easily blame the Theosophists as you can for many, many things for introducing this style of like Tibetan Orientalism. Just blame the Theosophists. It easy it's free it's cheap it's fun just blame them they can take the heat they've taken the heat for decades it's fine okay so with that disclaimer the nine billion names of god by arthur c clark this is a slightly unusual request said dr Wagner, with what he had hoped was commendable restraint. As far as I know, it's the first time anyone's been asked to supply

a Tibetan monastery with an automatic sequence computer. I don't wish to be inquisitive, but I should hardly have thought that your, uh, establishment had much use for such a machine. Could you explain just what you intend to do with it? Gladly, replied the Lama, readjusting his silk robes and carefully putting away the slide rule he had been using for currency conversions. Your Mark V computer can carry out any routine mathematical operation involving up to ten digits.

However, for our work, we are interested in letters, not numbers. As we wish you to modify the output circuits, the machine will be printing words, not columns of figures. I don't quite understand. This is a project on which we have been working for the last three centuries, since the Llamaseri was founded, in fact. It is somewhat alien to your way of thought, so I hope you will listen with an open mind while I explain it. Naturally. Well, in order to run this podcast, we need to interject classic and important stories with advertisements for ads and services, said Margaret, the host. Here's some ads. Hey guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about. It's a

chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. You know that rush of endorphins you feel after a great workout? Well, that's when the real magic happens. So if you love hearing real, inspiring stories

from the people you know follow and admire join me every week for post run high it's where we take the conversation beyond the run and get into the heart of it all it's light-hearted pretty crazy and very fun listen to post run high on the iheart radio app apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. as your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people.

I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez.

Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba.

Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back.

It is really quite simple. We have been compiling a list which shall contain all the possible names of God. I beg your pardon? We have reason to believe, continued the Lama imperturbably, that all such names can be written with not more than nine letters in an alphabet we have devised. And you have been doing this for three centuries? Yes, we expected it would take us about 15,000 years to complete the task. Oh, Dr. Wagner looked a little dazed. Now I see why

you wanted to hire one of our machines. But exactly what is the purpose of this project? The llama hesitated for a fraction of a second, and Wagner wondered if he had offended him. If so, there was no trace of annoyance in the reply. Call it ritual, if you like, but it's a fundamental part of our belief. All the many names of the supreme being, God, Jehovah, Allah, and so on, are only man-made labels. There is a philosophical problem of some difficulty here, which I do not propose to discuss, but somewhere among all the possible combinations of letters that can occur are what one may call the real names of God.

By systematic permutation of letters, we have been trying to list them all. I see, so you've been starting at A-A-A-A-A-A-A and working to Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z. Exactly, though we use a special alphabet of our own. Modifying the electromagnetic typewriters to deal with this is, of course, trivial. A rather more interesting problem is that of devising suitable circuits to eliminate ridiculous combinations. For example, no letter must occur more than three times in succession. Three? Surely you mean two.

Three is correct. I'm afraid it would take too long to explain why, even if you understood our language. I'm sure it would, said Wagner hastily. Go on. Luckily, it will be a simple matter to adapt your automatic sequence computer for this work, since once it has been programmed properly, it will permute each letter in turn and print the result. What would have taken us 15,000 years, it will be able to do in 100 days. Dr. Wagner was scarcely conscious of the faint sounds from the Manhattan streets far below. He was in a different world, a world of natural, not man-made mountains. High up in the remote areas, these monks had been patiently at work, generation after generation, compiling their lists of meaningless words. Was there any limits to the follies of mankind? Still, he must give no hint to his inner thoughts. The customer was always right. There's no doubt, replied the doctor, that we

can modify the Mark V to print lists of this nature. I'm much more worried about the problem of installation and maintenance. Getting out to Tibet in these days is not going to be easy. We can arrange that. The components are small enough to travel by air. That is one reason why we chose your machine. If you can get them to India, we will provide transport from there. And you want to hire two of our engineers? Yes, for the three months that the project should occupy.

I've no doubt that personnel can manage that. Dr. Wagner scribbled a note on his desk pad. There are just two other points. Before he could finish the sentence, the llama had produced a small slip of paper. This is my certified credit balance at the Asiatic Bank. Thank you, it appears to be adequate. The second matter is so trivial that I hesitate to mention it,

but it's surprising how often the obvious gets overlooked. It appears to be adequate. The second matter is so trivial that I hesitate to mention it, but it's surprising how often the obvious gets overlooked. What source of electrical energy do you have you? A diesel generator providing 50 kilowatts at 110 volts. It was installed about five years ago and is quite reliable. It's made life at the Llamissary much more comfortable. But of course, it was really installed to provide power for the motors driving the prayer wheels. Of course, echoed Dr. Wagner, I should have thought of that. The view from the parapet was vertiginous, but in time, one gets used to anything. After three months, George Hanley was not impressed by the 2,000-foot swoop into the abyss or the remote

checkerboard of fields in the valley below. He was leaning against the wind-smooth stones and staring morosely at the distant mountains, whose names he had never bothered to discover. This, thought George, was the craziest thing that had ever happened to him. Project Shangri-La, some wit back at the labs had christened it. For weeks now, the Mark V had been churning out acres of sheets covered with gibberish. Patiently, inexorably, the computer had been rearranging letters in all their possible combinations, exhausting each class before going on to the next. As the sheets had emerged from the electromagnetic typewriters, the monks had carefully cut them up and pasted them into enormous books.

In another week, heaven be praised, they would have finished. Just what obscure calculations had convinced the monks that they needn't bother to go on to words of 10, 20, or 100 letters, George didn't know. One of his recurring nightmares was that there would be some change of plan and that the High Lama, whom they naturally called Sam Yat-Jah-Fay, although he didn't look a bit like him. Reader's note, I had to look that up.

That's an actor who people would have recognized in the 50s. Which suddenly announced that the project would be extended to approximately AD 2060. They were quite capable of it. George heard the heavy wooden door slam in the wind as Chuck came out onto the parapet beside him. As usual, Chuck was smoking one of the cigars that made him so popular with the monks, who, it seemed, were quite willing to embrace all the minor and most of the major pleasures of life. That was one thing in their favor. They might be crazy, but they weren't blue noses. Those frequent trips they took down to the village, for instance.

Listen, George, said Chuck urgently. I've learned something that means trouble. What's wrong? Isn't the machine behaving? That was the worst contingency George could imagine. It might delay his return, and nothing could be more horrible. The way he felt now, even the sight of a TV commercial would seem like manna from heaven. At least it would be some link with home.

And who would I be to not take that opportunity to offer you this, the modern version of the TV commercial, the podcast commercial. Hey guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post Run Run High is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. You know that rush of endorphins you feel after a great workout? Well, that's when the real magic happens. So if you love hearing real, inspiring stories from the people you know, follow, and admire, join me every week for Post Run High.

It's where we take the conversation beyond the run and get into the heart of it all. It's lighthearted, pretty crazy, and very fun. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zetron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose.

This season I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to leading journalists in the field and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong though, I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. Check out betteroffline.com.

On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. His father in Cuba. Mr. González wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation.

Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. No, it's nothing like that. Chuck settled himself on the parapet, which was unusual because normally he was scared of the drop. I've just found what all this is about. What do you mean? I thought we knew. Sure, we know what the monks are trying to do, but we didn't know why.

It's the craziest thing. Tell me something new, growled George. But old Sam's come clean with me. You know the way he drops in every afternoon just to watch the sheet rolls out? Well, this time he seemed rather excited, or at least as near as he'll ever get to it. When I told him that we were on the last cycle, he asked me, in that cute English accent of his, if I'd ever wondered what they were trying to do. I said, sure.

And he told me. Go on, I'll buy it. Well, they believe that when they have listed all his names, and they reckon there are about 9 billion of them, God's purpose will be achieved. The human race will have finished what it was created to do, and there won't be any point in carrying on. Indeed, the very idea is something like blasphemy.

Then what do they expect us to do? Commit suicide? There's no need for that. When the list's completed, God steps in and simply winds things up. Bingo. Oh, I get it. When we finish our job, it'll be the end of the world. Chuck gave a nervous little laugh.

That's just what I said to Sam. And do you know what happened? He looked at me in a very queer way, like I'd been stupid in class and said, it's nothing as trivial as that. George thought this over for a moment. That's what I call taking the wide view, he said presently. But what do you suppose we should do about it? I don't see it makes the slightest difference to us. After all, we already knew they were crazy. Yes, but don't you see what may happen? When the list's complete and the last trump doesn't blow, or whatever it is they expect, we may get the blame. It's our machine they've

been using. I don't like the situation one little bit. I see, said George slowly. You've got a point there. But this sort of things happened before, you know. When I was a kid down in Louisiana, we had a crackpot preacher who once said the world was going to end next Sunday. Hundreds of people believed him, even sold their homes. Yet when nothing happened, they didn't turn nasty as you'd expect. They just decided that he'd made a mistake in his calculations and went right on believing. expect. They just decided that he'd made a mistake in his calculations and went right on believing. I guess some of them still do. Well, this isn't Louisiana, in case you hadn't noticed. There are just two of us and hundreds of these monks. I like them, and I'll be sorry for old Sam when his life work backfires on him. But all the same, I wish I was somewhere else.

I've been wishing that for weeks, but there's nothing we can do until the contract's finished and the transport arrives to fly us out. Of course, said Chuck thoughtfully. We could always try a bit of sabotage. Like hell we could. That would make things worse. Not the way I meant. Look at it like this. The machine will finish its run four days from now, on the present 24 hours a day basis. The transport calls in in a week. Okay, then all we need to do is find something that needs replacing during one of the overhaul periods. Something that'll hold up the work for a couple of days. We'll fix it, of course, but not too quickly.

If we time matters properly, we can be down at the airfield when the last name pops out of the register. They won't be able to catch us then. I don't like it, said George. It will be the first time I ever walked out on a job. Besides, it would make them suspicious. No, I'll sit tight and see what comes. I still don't like it, he said seven days later, as the tough little mountain ponies carried them down the winding road. And don't you think I'm running away because I'm afraid. I'm just sorry for those poor old guys up there, and I don't want to be around when they find out what suckers they've been. Wonder how Sam will take it. It's funny, replied Chuck, but when I said goodbye, I got the idea that he knew we were

walking out on him, and that he didn't care because he knew the machine was running smoothly and that the job would soon be finished. After that, well, of course, for him, there just isn't any after that. George turned in his saddle and stared back up the mountain road. This was the last place from which one could get a clear view of the lamissary. The squat angular buildings were silhouetted against the afterglow of the sunset. Here and there, lights gleamed like portholes in the side of an ocean liner. Electric lights, of course, sharing the same circuit as the Mark V. How much longer would they share it, wondered George. Would the monks smash up the computer in their rage and disappointment, or would they just sit down quietly and begin their calculations all over

again? He knew exactly what was happening up on the mountain at this very moment. The high lama and his assistants would be sitting in their silk robes inspecting the sheets as the junior monks carried them away from the typewriters and pasted them into their great volumes. No one would be saying anything. The only sound would be the incessant patter, the never-ending rainstorm of the keys hitting the paper, for the Mark V itself was utterly silent as it flashed through its thousands of calculations a second. Three months of this, thought George, was enough to start anyone climbing up the wall. There she is, called Chuck, pointing down into the valley. Ain't she beautiful? She certainly was, thought George.

The battered old DC-3 lay at the end of the runway like a tiny silver cross. In two hours, she would be bearing them away to freedom and sanity. It was a thought worth savoring like a fine liqueur. George let it roll around in his mind as the pony trudged patiently down the slope. The swift night of the high Himalayas was now almost upon them. Fortunately, the road was very good as roads went in that region, and they were both carrying torches. There was not the slightest danger, only a certain discomfort from the bitter cold. The sky overhead was perfectly clear and ablaze with familiar, friendly stars. At least there would be

no risk, thought George, of the pilot being unable to take off because of weather conditions. That had been his only remaining worry. He began to sing, but gave it up after a while. This vast arena of mountains gleaming like whitely hooded ghosts on every side did not encourage such ebullience. Presently, George glanced at his watch. Should be there in an hour, he called back over his shoulder to Chuck. Then he added, in an afterthought,

Wonder if the computer has finished its run. It was due about now. Chuck didn't reply, so George swung round in his saddle. He could just see Chuck's face, a white oval turned toward the sky. He could just see Chuck's face, a white oval, turn toward the sky. Look, whispered Chuck. And George lifted his eyes to heaven.

There is always a last time for everything. Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out. That's the story. Apparently, at some point, the Dalai Lama wrote Arthur C. Clark and said, I read your story and found it very amusing. That's fun. Yeah, it got a pass from the people. It was weirdly appropriating, I guess. Yeah, I feel like that's all pretty self-contained. It's overall self-contained, but I have a few thoughts about it. One that I didn't get until this last reading. It's really funny to me that the last Trump is used instead of the last trumpet, like as the way of signaling the end of the world. And apparently that would be a way that you would have said that in the 50s.

And I just find that very amusing based on the current state of the political world or whatever. Yeah. The actual thing that I've been thinking about about the reason that i wanted to do this episode is that i just did a piece on cool people did cool stuff about ada lovelace and you know early software and mechanical computers and things like that right yeah and she talked very explicitly about how computers are not capable and would never be capable of creating things, but instead responding to the inputs and things like that.

It's gone on to be like, I don't have it in front of me, but Ada's objection or something was coined by the gay British man who defeated the Nazis, the computer guy who invented computing. Oh, that guy. Yeah, the guy that was killed competing. Oh, uh, uh, uh, that guy. Yeah, the guy that was killed for being gay, essentially. Yeah, he was like chemically castrated and it didn't go well for him. The enigma machine guy.

Yeah, that guy that we know everything about except the name of because we're professionals. Yeah, exactly. So, half of the listeners at least are now shouting this man's name in frustration at us. You know what the cool thing is, though, is that this is a podcast and I cannot hear them. Yeah, that's true. I won't hear however many people is yelling his name at me at the moment.

Yeah. So that man who we're going to call George, he wrote Ada's Objection. And it was about how computers do with it what you have them do, you know, rather than being like themselves a creative force. Okay, so this is the wing nuttiest thing. This is why I wanted you to be the guest for this. I've been thinking a lot about how AI is like running through all possibilities of creative things. Yeah. Like systematically rather than like creatively.

It's just like like what if all possible images are made and so it's kind of like i think i don't know if i really think this but i've been thinking about it it's like running us towards the death of culture because everything will have been like there's sort of an infinite possibility of combinations of words. Like there's an infinite creative output that could be made. But AI is like trying to run through them as fast as possible. And we've been kind of even before AI kind of doing that as like culture speeds up. I don't know where I'm going with that, but I just wanted to run that past you as relates to this story. Yeah, now that I've heard the story, i can also see the large number of influences it's

had throughout culture like using computers to like pinpoint god it is also like weirdly like lovecraftian story as well and yeah it's like initiating an apocalypse by like naming by coming up with all of the utterances of god um oh you're totally right and this is years after lovecraft so yeah oh interesting okay i also just really like the turn of phrase the stars are going out it's like someone's like flicking off the lights i find that to be fun it's one of the best lines in literature overhead without any fuss the stars were going out yeah very good and like how it changes on a dime this like you know earlier i said that it was like not self-consciously Orientalist.

Your two computer programmers consider themselves clearly enlightened compared to these backwards people, even though all they want to do is get back to TV. And there's even kind of this thing. I have a feeling that the author didn't specifically intend this, but I like reading this kind of thing into it.

The thing that is going to carry them away from this backwards place is a silver cross they refer to the plane as a silver cross and we assume we know better but we don't yeah like humans own hubris is kind of i guess a recurring trend and work kind of like this and i always have the impulse to compare something like this to the other biggest case of tibetan orientalism in fantasy and science fiction uh which would be twin peaks were also i think one of the main cruxes is one of the main characters own hubris and his inability to leave well enough alone so now you're going to destroy all of my goth cred. No, Margaret, are you serious? I have only seen like an episode of Twin Peaks.

Oh my God, no. I have seen so many movies by that man. Jesus fucking Christ. And I have no idea why I haven't seen Twin Peaks. And now I have lost 30% of my friends. I'm showing Twin Peaks currently to like five different people. I'm at so many different points in this series right now because I'm watching it with so many other people to give them the experience. I have half my apartment turned into a Twin Peaks set.

Oh, yeah. No, and I'm very... It's been part of like the culture I've been in for a very long time. I think that's what it is, is that I hit this point where I was like i sat down to watch it once point of no return it didn't immediately catch me but yeah i i hit the point of no return where i was like too embarrassed to admit it so don't tell anyone gare it's just between you and i i won't this is a secret yeah i'm yeah i will not spread this around we don't want to damage your rep no no we can keep this contained yeah irreversible damage i would recommend giving it a watch i i will it has a lot of good tibetan

stuff a lot of good like existential stuff not in terms of computers but otherwise a lot of thematic similarities to the short story um and i would not be surprised if the co-writer mark frost was intimately familiar because he pulls from a lot of science fiction mythological stuff. In fact, the ending of this story essentially happens at kind of multiple points in Twin Peaks. It's quite good. It's quite good. I think I wouldn't have been ready for it when I first sat down to watch it because I needed my weirdness to be overtly gothic and weird like it needed to be like absolutely in a castle instead of like in the mundane world which is the beauty of that guy Twin Peaks guy Lynch Lynch is that he creates

that sense within the everyday you know yes yes and there's a few specific moments especially in Firewalk with me and season three that are like very like american gothic like extremely very condensed but the rest of it there's actually an interesting juxtaposition between like american gothic versus like pacific northwest new weird which are like two sister genres but they're not always the same thing yeah and twin peaks likes to kind of mix between the two. And for the original series, probably more often ends up being in like PNW,

new weird, as opposed to some of the American Gothic sensibilities it kind of grows into. There's certainly some science fiction elements, similar to kind of how this story kind of blends that sort of like Orientalism with science fiction elements right well and actually this also ties in a lot if you're talking about arthur c clark in 2001 there's also a lot of carryover from 2001 into twin peaks as well a lot of that does come from kubrick because kubrick and lynch were contemporaries but some that certainly would

also stem from arthur c clark stuff but yeah the ending of season two is very similar in some ways to one part of the ending of 2001. There's a part that's very similar to the Stargate sequence. There's a decent amount of crossover. You can definitely read in some Arthur C. Clarke undertones across some of the more cosmic elements of Twin Peaks. Well, that's what's so interesting about it. Overall, Arthur C. Clarke's reputation as a science fiction author.

He's like a scientific realist in a lot of cases. Exactly. He's specifically a scientific realist. And so this sort of mystical element, like people talk about this story as being like outside of his traditional wheelhouse. So that was why, you know know at the beginning you were like oh arthur c clark wrote the sciencey boring bits of 2001 and kubrick did the like but what if it's like drugs in space part and that's what makes this sort of interesting to me is a kind of a

a gate into that there is like a certain level where if you write about space and it's not fundamentally weird, you're doing it wrong. Yeah, totally. And like, it's kind of part of the betrayal of Star Wars and shit. Absolutely. I like Star Wars, but. I mean, space is like, it's literally right on the outside. You have to incorporate a certain amount of outsideness into it or else it won't feel correct. And I mean, that goes all the way back to Lovecraft.

And you can incorporate that into like the ccr use cultural theorist stuff in terms of how they view science fiction but no it has to have an element of outsideness and that's something i think this story gets to really well especially you have an almost like a character of arthur c clark within the scientists being like oh they're to be so bad with this mystical mumbo jumbo computer stuff doesn't end up working. And then it still does. So there's that little fun part. And then it kind of introduces that element of outsideness, which otherwise I think the story would not be good at all if it just if it just exactly if it just ended with the thing not working. And it was like an examination of like the failures to use technology to like incorporate some kind of spiritual enlightenment like that does not sound like a very interesting short story no it would have not passed down through the generations to you listeners today

no no yeah well and then continuing on to 2001 and then even twin peaks like having that element of outsideness is what has made these things like cultural touchstones for so long and the emphasis on not trying to explain everything with a scientific rationalization gives these things a sense of like immortal intrigue that keeps lingering on our mind for so long when it's like i went and saw totality last week you know same as a lot of people and as the second time i got to see it and the first time i saw it i was like oh i have now looked into the eye of god i know what's happening i know that the moon went in front of the sun right like but it doesn't make it not i am now looking at the thing that controls all life on earth that we can't look at you know if like you were to just describe the sun

being like oh there's this thing in the sky that you can't make eye contact with or it'll fuck you up. Yeah, it's God. Humans have known this is God for a long time. Almost all of our gods are sun gods. We're very aware. Yeah. And so I went and saw a star go out. And obviously I knew it was going to come back.

It's so freaky though i really like the fact that knowing the science doesn't take away its power its interest it's all yeah all is the right word quite literally like it is like it is like a divine awe yeah no it is great to watch when everything goes dark at 3 p.m in in the afternoon and shadows start creating little cameras and your animals go crazy because they are confused for what's happening. It is like a very divine experience. Anyway, that's going to do it for us here

at Cool Zone Media Book Club. If you enjoyed this podcast on the Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff feed, you should check out the It Could Happen Here feed that Gare is a guest of. Gary, you just did a good Project 70 Million. Agenda 47.

Agenda 47. Which is the secondary highest number of synchronicity after 23. So, watch out for that folks. And if you're listening to Something Could Happen Here here you can check me out on cool people did cool stuff i talk about history and i also have a book that will be going into

pre-order soon it is my first novel i've been as mentioned earlier i've written an awful lot of novellas including very long novellas that whatever all categories are social categorization i have decided that this is my first novel and A Country of Ghosts is a long novella. And this book is called The Sapling Cage and it comes out on September 24th from the Feminist Press. And you can check it out closer to then

if you pre-order it. See you all next week. Alan Turing! is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening.

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