The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret - 11: The Long Mars Pt 2 (Fluttering Ominously)

Episode Date: December 2, 2025

The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret is a podcast in which your hosts, Joanna Hagan and Francine Carrel have emerged from Discworld and are now exploring the worlds of speculative fiction. This week, The Long Mars Part 2!Strange creatures! Space elevators! Barbershop quartets!Find us on the internet:BlueSky: @makeyefretpod.bsky.socialInstagram: @TheTruthShallMakeYeFretFacebook: @TheTruthShallMakeYeFretEmail: [e-mail]: www.patreon.com/thetruthshallmakeyefretDiscord: https://discord.gg/29wMyuDHGP Want to follow your hosts and their internet doings? Follow Joanna on BlueSky @2hatsjo and follow Francine @francibambi Things we blathered on about:Modiphius announces Terry Pratchett Discworld board games and RPG Kickstarter for 2026  The Be-Sharps - Baby On Board Chesley Bonestell - Summary Bibliography (Internet Archive)The Art of Chesley Bonestell (Internet Archive)Classics of Science Fiction Art  Edison's Conquest of Mars - Wikipedia Space elevator | KimStanleyRobinson.infoThe Skimmington Ride – Montacute House, South Somerset | Exploring Building History Music: Chris Collins, indiemusicbox.com

But fingers crossed, I'll have two working ankles this Christmas. I think I have a Discworld's news for the first time a little well. Modifus. Modifis. They're doing the TTRP. Yeah. See, I thought I knew that already, but I've got a new news story on it. Today, Modifius has announced that it's developing new games for Terry Practice Discworld set to be launched in 2026. Breed is Digested will be a licensed edition of Blue Moon City, a game by Rainer Nizia, who is best known for his Eurogame title designed for two to four players.

the game has been carefully re-skinned with Discworld theming and features brand new extension content. Excellent. Which is fun. I have the TG RPG because my D&D group have sort of got plans to rotate different people running different games alongside some of our D&D. So at some point I'm going to make the guys play it.

Oh, and there's a second RPG campaign in the final part of 2026 planned. Yes. And there's going to be a card game coming to market called Kill Sandbind. Well, we'll have to get that. card games also seems like at less of an entire day's commitment

Yeah, TTRPG I feel like You can do like a I would say like two hour sessions If you're willing to kind of drag it out a bit But you have got to at least commit to that length of session Oh yeah yeah So it's a full afternoon or evening for sure Yeah

Whereas Kill Sandbinds I feel like maybe we can play at a pub I do like even can play at a pub Thud is nice for that I've taken that on a couple of drips And I have by a fire in a pub Oh very nice Very nice very sophisticated somehow. The little travel

set you can get that comes in a little cloth bag is very nice. And even though it's dwarfs and trolls, it feels classes like I'm playing chess, but without having to learn anything more than the horsey goes in an L shape. Trolley goes in big clump shape. I'm bad at

it, though. Yes, me too. That's all right, isn't it? I think that's fine. I'm not great at a lot of board games, to be fair. It depends what we're playing and how many steps ahead I need to think. Yeah, fair enough.

I can't think ahead either. Yeah, I can do Catan because there's an element of randomness that means there's no point thinking more than a few steps ahead. Right. But the very big, complicated games, like fucking scythe,

I'm still like learning the rules by the time we've got to the end of the game. Yeah. Which, consider my board game friends are also the kind to, are quite willing to spend 20 minutes checking the rule, book for every little detail. Yeah.

So if I half-handedly go, I'm doing that, I think I can do this. They're like, right, get out the tome, page through. Yeah, the to tomb. Every turn takes 45 minutes. I've just decided to not be good at those games, and I'm fine with it. And I think that's fine, yeah. So, would you like to make a podcast? Yeah, let's make a podcast.

Hello and welcome to The Truth Show Make You Forat, a podcast in which we were, reading and recapping every book from Terry Pratchett's Discord series, and how we're strolling down the corridors of speculative fiction. I'm Joanna Hagan. And I'm Francine Carroll. And this is part two of our discussion of the long Mars, going from Chapter 25 all the way to the end. Yep.

Several million Marses. There are quite a lot of Marses. Plural of Mars. Are we going Mars or Marses? I like Marses. I do like Marses out loud. I don't like writing down Marses. No, I don't like writing down Mars even though as a plural.

I think iterations of Mars. you'd have to be real clumsy about it. How have they put it? I don't think they ever actually... No, because you can say things like Mars 3 million, can't you? If you'll be stepwise about it, yeah. It doesn't come up much, I suppose. No.

In our day today, in this book it comes up quite a lot. I've not had to pluralise Mars before this. No on spoilers before we crack on. Heavy spoilers for the book, The Long Mars, obviously, because as I said, we're going all the way to the end. We won't be spoiling future books in the long earth cycle because we can't remember what happens in them and we'll also avoid major

discord spoilers which is quite easy to do because we're not talking about the disc world so you dear listener can come on the journey with us in a rocket pocked glider rib a couple of bits of follow-up from wonderful Ellen in Patreon slash Discord

lots of thoughts first can't really imagine Larry Niven arch conservative working with Terry I brought, after Adam commented this, I dugged him up or his political views for the first time. Jesus Christ. I haven't asked up and I'm, I've not really actually read Larry Niven. I know I really should, as a Pratchit scholar, have read Ringwald. He once suggested as a partial solution to, like the oversubscription to the healthcare industry, spreading rumours amongst the Latino community that organs were being illegally harvested in hospitals. Oh, cool, one of them.

Sounds like a lovely chap. This is quite some time after he'd met Pratchett, by the way. So I feel like I've been like Pratt had known that kind of thing. The conversation wouldn't have happened. Yes, that is quite impossible. Also, from Ellen, the person who attacks Lobbseying is a definite reference to the Pink Panther movies. Inspector Cluso is attacked inopportune movements by his man-servant Cato, played by Bert Quuck. I didn't check out to pronounce that

and I should have done and every time he attacks Cluise and shouts not now, Cato and Lob sang shouts not now, Cho J. So, yeah. Also, there's a reference in the second part of the book, which we're talking about now

to 250 million worlds as good old quarter billion, which is the American meaning of billion as opposed to the English because for American it's a thousand million, whereas for English it's a million million. Yes, and I think pretty much everyone's settled into the American

definition now. largely because they've kind of got NASA that they do have NASA and so much economy oh also I miss this but Ellen's comment on the Frankenstein episode which is Icarus Prometheus and Frankenstein the ultimate fuck marry kill go on there

I'm going to go with Kill Frankenstein and then I think I'm going to go with fuck Prometheus Mary Icarus yeah because Icarus quite short-lived I can kind of of do the whole glamorous widow thing. Sure. Sure. And we are assuming all of these people are a marriage.

Yes. Yes. Well, it doesn't really matter if Frankenstein is, I suppose, because he's built as an adult and you're killing him. Oh, wait, no. I took Frankenstein to mean like Dr. Frankenstein. Oh, Dr. Frankenstein.

I'm so sorry. Yes. No, you're quite right. Yes. Still kill, obviously. Yeah. See, I made the mistake we talked about. Yeah.

See, if it was the creation, the answer might be kind of different. I'm going to leave that. That's it. I'm not editing that silence out. Let's go. Wait, you have to answer as well. Oh, yeah, no, same. Oh, okay. Does it being the creation effect your decision in any way? No.

Okay. All right. No, I mean, possibly a slight pang of remorse. All right, well, we found where are two roads. Depending on what stage in the book, I have to kill him. That's fair. Well, that's where R2 roads diverge. Francine, do you want to tell us what happened previously on the Long Mars? Absolutely. Previously, on the Long Mars, in the aftermath of Yellowstone's datum destruction, our familiar protagonists find new missions. Sally Lindsay reunites with her father, Willis,

and long-budding astronaut Frank Wood, to take a trip to the titular planet. Maggie Kaufman leads a diverse crew across the long earth aiming for the old quarter billion. Joshua Balliente's headache is getting bad enough that he's just about willing to listen to Lofsang again. Meanwhile, the next iteration of humanity is starting to make it. self-known. Ooh. How about this time? What about this time?

What happened to the second half? This is kind of a lengthy summary because quite a bit happens. It's a whole half book as well. Yeah, diverging threads. This is Chapter 25 all the way to the end. The Mars expedition continues as Sally Frank and Willis glide over a ruined city

and come across old tech, monoliths induce headaches, and Willis trades tech with the natives to uncover ancient inscriptions, but something big interrupts. Eleven weeks in, three million steps from the gap, and Willis finally finds what he was looking for all along, a space elevator.

The route of the cable goes down into a pit, and Sally and her father follow. There's an underground microclimate remnants of an older investigation and a frayed cable. An interruption falls in the form of a piece of Woden, the glider left behind. I made this hard for myself. The crab prince, which is what I dubbed him in my notes, and it stuck. Cars come to seek revenge for stepper-based embarrassment. Sally and Willis just about make it out, but poor Frank falls. stepping through soft places they return to the gap to brick moon and to something like home

and sally gets a phone call from joshua meanwhile the armstrong travels on while josh seeks out paul wagner paul introduces josh to a tribe of the next the hyperintelligent advancement of humanity unfortunately captors come close behind and josh is arrested right alongside them hundreds of millions of steps away the armstrong two finds the wreck of the armstrong one and apparent survivors treachery is in the air among these charismatic exiles and a captured sam allen tells the truce. These five are actually members of the next and they waged war in happy landings, was shipped away on the first Armstrong mutiny, killed most of their captors, and were heading back to the datum until Sam made them crash, and Maggie Ops for exile, again, at least for now.

Looking a bit ragged, the Armstrong pushes on, 250 million, proves anticlimactic, but on the way home, Black gets off, joined by a small contingent to start a new life, sorry, gets off the ship, joined by a small contingent to start a new life on a distant low-gravity earth. Nelson, meanwhile, plays chaplain to the next kept captive on the datum. Nelson and Roberta watch on as the people in charge make plans to eliminate the next. Joshua, Sally and Nelson get involved in an evacuation to happy landings. The very place, the Armstrong and Sernan are headed with weapons. And Nelson and Roberta knew this.

This is a stupid idea. Sorry, I'm really annoyed by that. Maggie overhead wrestles with a nuclear dilemma and ops for disarmament and finally Lobzang and Agnes rescue two lost boys learn the next have absented themselves

and an asteroid takes care of what's left of happy landings yeah sorry I couldn't wait any longer to say it why did they take them to happy landings Nelson and Reversa were in the meeting and they knew about the nuke

I don't think they knew about the nuke but they knew about two ships being sent to happy landings that had weapons that was said in the meeting and they went yeah we've got to get these kids out of here because they're probably going to kill them here we'll take them to where they're going to kill them but it wasn't

it was where they were going with weapons yeah no I thought about that I was I was too wrapped up in the stupidity of considering meoking happy landings yeah that was also just a really dumb idea lots of stupid ideas in that chapter.

Right, helicopter and loincloth watch then. Oh yeah, exciting one. We've got the streamlined flying tree steak, which is described as kind of like a flexible helicopter blade. And a distinction for a snake to get this award in a half of book, which does have actual flying machines in. It does. It was the most like a roller blade.

Exactly. And there's no arguing with that, really. I'm going to do something different. Rather than going for a loincloth, because I couldn't cram this anywhere else into the episode, and I wanted to look up some etymology. In place of loincloth this week, we have scuttlebutt, and bums are near loins, so it still counts. Go on, go on. Scuttlebutt is sort of a town that means gossip. I just, because I've heard the word a lot recently because it's one, like, offers ladies use the term scuttlebutt a lot on their podcast.

Yeah, it's sort of the chatter, the gossip, what's being talked about. And I thought, I haven't looked up the etymology of scuttlebutt. And it comes from a scuttled butt, which is a cask that has been scuttled, that has a hole in it. Scuttling, sinking a ship by opening holes in its home, you scuttle a ship. Oh, similar to scupper, I suppose. Yes. So a cask that has been scuttled is set up for immediate drinking. So it's a scuttled butt on the ship so that sailors can go and fill up their water.

And it would be a place where sailors would gossip and chat, just like water cooler gossip. It's a water cooler. It's the original water cooler to go. gossip around. So I thought there was a delightful bit of etymology and that could take the place of this week. It is delightful. And just in case it doesn't come up elsewhere, the slowly drifting piece of fabric that was what was left of the woden. I did think about making that. It was. And I did think about making that the loin cloth, but I thought it was too depressing considering what happens immediately after that. Well, you're welcome. I'm glad we got that in there.

Right, quotes Quotes, you first I believe I've got a short one And this is Frank He imagined a sky full of threads of long worlds Like broken necklaces Drifting in some dark ocean Lovely

Really great line, great image What if all the planets are long What if they're long I've gone for another group of people This is from Maggie Kaufman's voyage And the sky was dominated by the primary, a nameless world that had no counterpart in the solar system of datum earth. This too was a rocky world, more like Earth than a gas giant like Jupiter, say,

but many times more massive than Earth itself. It was a big, angry ball that hung unmoving in the sky, though the sun wheeled beyond it. The Earth's moon was so close to the primary that it was tidily locked, with one face turned forever to the giant world. I love it. I just love that kind of epic alien planet description. Yes, very much so. And it looming out of nowhere when you really don't expect it. Yeah, yeah. You're like, oh, no, I'm the moon. But if I'm on the moon, then who... Who's that?

Oh, I can't remember if we find out, but I hope so. I hope so. Right, should we go to characters? Yes. Who are we starting with? I thought we'd start with Sally. Yeah, all right. And her and Willis obviously overlap quite a lot. Yeah. She's having a time of it.

just sort of we'll do the blanket statement right up the top here which is Willis is a dick and I don't like him yeah even more so than you think at the beginning eh it's not even like the you know emotionally a detached father figure and you eventually become a bit closer with he just nukes the rest of their relationship at the end there very much so I do like Frank kind of diving into Sally's psyche whenever he gets a minute alone

with her sort of like starts to unravel her a little bit interesting. He's sort of weirdly fascinated by her in a way I really like. It's because it's not aggressive. He's not trying to wrong foot her. He's just actively trying to understand her and almost just doing it out loud where she can also hear it. Yeah, yeah.

Like you can see it's a very, it's an empathetic thing. Yes. And he points out, you know, step day, where she had grown up with stepping as this thing she could do and her family were really sensible about it. And he's like, oh yeah, and then step day and idiots are out and they're all drowning and freezing to death and the idiots took all of their petty stuff

into the Long Earth as well and it kind of explains why you're antisocial and hate people. Yeah. And now we're going to Mars. And now we're on Mars and you sort of have a playground again but it's not very nice and there's large sandhills. It's a very good one.

Go back to Earth, I say, yeah. I think Earth might be better than this. It is a more realistic look, I think. Willis and Lindsay's relationship at the kind of relationship one can expect with that particular flavour of detached scientist asshole

that is quite common in history to the fact where it's almost a real-life trope but in fiction is often polished a bit to be like eventually you get the nice bonding Yeah all the sort of throw away Of course I fucking respected you and think you're clever

Anyway let's get on with this And they did a nice little bluff with this one where Willis although he has to think about it picks up his daughter instead of Frank, but then it turns out it's just because she's more useful. Yeah, because the soft places and he won't be able to get the glider home. What really bugs me as well is Sally has this internal personal warning system honed through years of travelling the long earth by herself. Yeah. Yeah. The alarm start going off and in her head a small alarm sounded softly and continually and she'll remember that light she's thought

she's seen. But it's like she's lost confidence in that because she's so distracted by her father. Yeah. This combination of him not really seeming to respect her and seeming to know exactly what he's doing on Mars makes her not listen to herself. Yeah. And he like physically undermines her precautions, gets rid of the weapons that would have saved them. Yeah. Oh, the bit where he's thrown out the crossways and he's like, I don't hold with weapons. And it's like, surely you can hold with your daughter, who is very sensible and trustworthy, having a crossbow. If nothing else, it's a useful bit of kit. Yes.

And if there was anyone I would, I personally would trust with a crossbow, it's Sally Lindsay. Same, yeah. I wouldn't trust a lot of people with a crossbow. Sally and Frank, maybe. So now just Sally. Yeah, so now just Sally. Thanks, Paul. I do like that she gets the big moment of awe, though, when they find the space elevator.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Also, and that's nice. Yeah. The bit of her description from her perspective and the wonder of it hit her, the strangeness of the situation as bit goes on and says at the end, here was that final moment, their last legacy with everything else about them worn to dust.

Yeah. I feel like we need to start having an Aussie Mandias counter on the podcast. But that's a, nothing else remains. Especially all of our notes are probably the same. Very same. I sent you a screenshot of my real. helpful note about the You're also my father, grow up

exchange, which mine just says Jesus. Yeah, mine said Dick, I went back in church. It's real media commentary here. Yeah, yeah, we're really, really subtle on this. Any more specific Sally thoughts before we start nudging towards Willis?

I like how she's immediately on board with the new plan. since she's time, been through all this trauma, when she's like, okay, yeah, no, I'll come help, sure. Yep. It doesn't seem like we don't really see it from her perspective from that point, but it doesn't seem at any point like it's a natural consideration from her.

It's also interesting to see her in contrast, or not in contrast to, but against the background of Willis, Lindsay, because you see how human she is. Yeah, and I think in the first couple of books, she is so putting herself separately from humanity. Frank has a good line where he's talking about the sort of Willis's

deadless comparison again and says you know you both treat mankind like it's an unruly kid Sally slaps us around the back of the head when she thinks we're misbehaving and you hand us a loaded gun and let us learn by trial and error but in Sally's case

yeah you see her kind of hold herself apart from humanity a bit and then in this you do get reminded actually she's very human and it's well yeah but even I don't think she seems that different in this. It's just that when you compare her with Willis. Yeah, it's like when you have a shade of grey, it's two different shades of grey,

and you don't realise they're the same colour because one's next to white and one's next to black. It's that. Exactly that. Optical illusion, Sally. Optical illusion, Sally. And in this half of the book, she just had a fucking hell of a time, didn't she? You can't, you can't falter.

You really can't fault anything she does. You can't falter for her separating from humanity when you realize what she grew up with. The worst bit of it is the book kind of skips over, you know, there's huge chunks of time are passing in this. One of the things the book kind of shifts over is, yes, they soft place back to the Gap Mars. And then they have that 10 week journey on the Galileo back to the break. I mean, 10 weeks alone with this one fucking guy. It's interesting how that entire scene is described. and I think this is probably deliberate rather than reasons of space or repetition

is that as soon as they get out of their, you know, Frank's dead. They make the decision on how they're getting back. Yeah. That whole bit which is very detailed in it's like here are our conversations with the Russians on the way out. Here's how we strapped in this, that and the other. It's just a blur of we're getting through this. Very traumatised. Yeah, it's almost like the character is disassociated.

So there's no point us seeing it from the character. as point of view. Yeah, exactly. Because thinking about points of view, because this is something we pay attention to, with Discord a lot. We're in Sally's point of view a lot. We're in Frank's point of view a lot.

We're never in Willis's point of view. No. So he has held separate for us, much as he holds himself separate from Sally. Good point. And side point. Is Roberta the only next who we get point of view from? So far, yes.

Yeah. I imagine that will probably change in future books. Yeah. But yeah, at the moment, Robert has been kind of the only one. But yeah, despite that, the one sort of interesting thing I'll say about Willis is it takes a very unique mind

to come to the logical conclusion that there will be a space elevator on the long Mars. Yes. And that that is a necessary thing for humanity. And I don't disagree with him that a space elevator would be very handy for humanity. Well, that's the thing.

Again, as with the real-life trove, these dickad scientists, a lot of them do a lot of good for the world. Yes, that doesn't mean they're not dickets. Yeah, it is almost a necessary. necessary evil to have these people around and that they do think differently. I should say as well, and they get people on the way. Yeah. From what I remember the end of the first Science of Discworld book has the space

elevator where they realize they've found the civilization too late and the civilization we're trying to get out via space elevator. So it's obviously like a, I mean, I know it's a very popular sci-fi concept. It's particularly a concept that Pratchett is interested in. Oh yeah. If you've read it any, any... like hard sci-fi there's a fucking space elevator in there somewhere and it's nice that he's already done and Baxter has as well like they've got that in their mind as like I know what it's maybe going to be made of and look like and we've both done this yeah when frank sees it and says Arthur C Clark you should be seeing this yeah yeah um because frank is our like

sci-fi nerd aspect of this little trio yeah and therefore the most relatable one. Yes. And then, yeah, also, well, it's just his absolute lack of remorse about not just Frank dying, but just what he has done. Because he has very directly caused that death.

This isn't like the steppers. He gave the crab society those steppers and it had an overall negative on their society. It is he gave them that technology and that directly leads to Frank's death within weeks. And he threw away the crossbow and he made this decision and that decision. And yeah. And he says

Sally's kind of challenging him on it and he's like well yes this is worth more than the life more than Frank's life you know the rights of an individual and nothing compared with the value of a technology like this and it's just like there's just nothing

there I was like yeah that really made me hate the character more than anything yeah it's very good writing the thing is he didn't tell either of them

what they were looking for for a start usually when you get the you know this the net good to human humanity will be worth the sacrifice to this character. Frank didn't sacrifice himself for this. No. Frank was sacrificed. Frank died because of Willis's decisions on it. And he didn't get the chance to decide to do it for the good of humanity. Also, at that point, it wasn't for the space elevator. No. It was for the inscriptions on the monoliths. Yes. That was what Frank died for. He did not die for the space elevator. They could have gone, we can't get to the monoliths keep going because it wasn't what we were looking for anyway. Yeah.

Yeah, we'll come back for this another time. This was a fuck-around and someone else found out, and that's not fair. Yes. At least you got to see a space elevator. He did, and speaking of Frank, just, we said Arthur C. Clark, you should be seeing this. And he describes it, a beanstalk, Jacob's Ladder, the world tree, a stairway to heaven. Sally has the practical answer, which is space elevator. But Frank sees all the possibility of what a space elevator means.

Yeah, yeah. Beanstalk, nice to see, as a little fairy tale in amongst the... Lacking in a... I like the comparison to a beanstalk, and I know it's been made before, but I just think it's charming. And ties into what we were talking about last week. Yeah, oh yeah, yeah. And the world tree as well, this idea of Idrasil and connecting the different realms. Yeah, just anything infinitely tall like that is just like...

evokes a sense of awe, doesn't it? Like, even just imagining it, seeing something in the sky like that. And also this idea of it connecting you to places you never imagined you could be connected to before. Yeah. In such a physical, tangible, it's right their way. Yeah, it's different than, like, gliding or stepping or taking a rocket or any of those because there is a physical line. Yeah.

Yes. There is also, I forgot to note down the, quote now, but there is a line when they're talking about how the space elevator work, and Franks sort of jokingly says something like, and how that works will be left to the reader. Yeah. Which is a reference

to like a common line in textbooks and things of the proof of that is for the reader and it's the idea as it makes you engage critically with learning because you have to figure out the proof of that thing before it's moved on. Oh cool. I don't know. But here it's being used as a sort of cheeky throwaway with sci-fi writers. We don't have to explain

all of the actual science. Don't worry about it. Fine. Anyway. But yeah, sorry, I keep space elevatoring. No, it's so cool. Yeah, that when they really go into detail about how long it must have taken to, Sally says, erode everything to invisibility.

And this is still standing. Yeah. But anyway. It's very cool. Is Frank the first main or major character we lose to violence? I would He's the first main character Well yeah you can make an argument for Monica

In that she Had the cancer complications And that was because of the nuke But yeah direct violence, yes Frank Which speaking of Monica Sally going to tell Monica Yeah It was very sad

But I also thought it was sweet That Sally remembered and acknowledged that connection And did something about it Also very sweet But despite her You know constant mask, that is where Joshua knew where to find her to send a message. Yes.

That was quite impressive. They know each other a little better than they didn't get to each other. Well, Sally does not want to be knowing where this is two people who have managed to find her very elusively by knowing where she will be at a certain point. No, it's fine. You're not predictable. I sent this to everywhere. Yeah, definitely. Don't worry about it. Frank was great. Frank was great. F5 in the chat for Frank.

And then Maggie. Yep. How do you feel about Maggie at the end of this book? I mean, if I'd started forgetting about the time I disliked the last episode, I remembered it at the end here. The fact she even considered nuking happy landings. I will say in Maggie's defence, I think there's a read of that of she never seriously considered it,

but she felt like other people, there should be a conversation about it. And she went with, yeah, and she went with, well, let's go with the two most rational people I can find. And let's put on the arguing for the thing I really don't want to do. Let's put someone who is good at logic, but also absolutely does not want to win this argument. Yeah. And then let's put on the not side, the guy who is actually quietly just really fucking good at caring for humanity, even if he'll never admit it.

Yeah. I know, end of the day, Maggie's very military. She's a very well-constructed character, but she's the kind of person I wouldn't like very much. And that's fine. In a book capacity, that's fine. I think there's an interesting comparison to be drawn as well.

Agnes, right at the end of the book, thinks about how, kind of you can't take the Catholic out thing. You carry your own inquister with you. And I think Maggie's got a similar relationship with the Navy of she can never take the military out of her. Yeah, yeah. I'm glad Cutler didn't get the joy.

I'm very glad Cutler didn't get the joy. I'm not he's still fucking scuttling around. No, scuttle butting. Scuttle butting. What I scuttle butt. I will say, though, to Maggie as well, I do kind of, I find it quite impressive that this mission gets so fucking ragged and she manages to keep it all together.

and kind of will power them to that 250 mark. She's good at her job. She is good at her job. Unfortunately. She's good at her job and I'm sure she's a lot nice than almost anyone else would be put in that job. Yes. To get to that stage in the military, you probably just need personality traits that I find a parent. That is fair.

And yeah, just speaking of Cutler, I just want to point out a couple of the really dicker moments. Because again, kudos to the writing for creating a character that makes my skin. crawl. Yeah, it's so few paragraphs too. Shout to 27 when they're on the planet with the snake and it's the acid-based planet. Do you ever pay attention to the science briefings from your officers? Not if I can help it, said Cutler defiantly. Yeah. I know, guys. I know men like this.

Yeah. They sort of take being given any kind of educational or extra explanation as a personal affront to their freedoms. Yeah. Yeah. So you're somehow restricting my free speech by educating me how dare you he's very that and then immediately after he says that he shoves the gun in the airlock to shoot the fucking steak yeah um and then glowing with self-righteousness and the sheer pleasure of fulfilling his covert orders when he's delivering

the fucking nuke yeah grim the word dick came up in my notes more than once for this book um and then moving on we got i actually don't have a ton of joshua thoughts he's not super reactive in this section. It's not superactive in the book, really. No, he's definitely not a protagonist, like comparatively. Yeah. But, oh, I had written this in my notes here as well. Why take the next out of the prison two happy landings?

That didn't really need to be in Joshua. I'm just still annoyed about it. I really like when Shimi recognizes him, though, and he recognizes Shimi, and he just immediately picks her up and starts giving her a bit of a stroke. Nice little moment. Makes me happy. It is nice. Yeah, he's got a few.

He's just wandering around being a good guy, really, isn't he? Yeah, which fair play to him. Yeah. I hope his son's doing all right. I hope his son's all right. I hope he's, you know, got some kind of visitation

and then can go on another sabbatical where he doesn't get a headache. And then Lob sang. Lopsang, headache and carnet. That's not fair. Not in much of the book, but obviously his end section is really quite important. His disappointment that the next don't

consider him an equal and treating him as a messenger, effectively. Interesting to see how reduced in power he seems just from that, doesn't it? Like, he's been almost omnipotent. And suddenly he is, well, his argument is often he's not omnipotent. He's close to omniscient. And I think he is, so omnipotent, omniscient, omnipalent, are kind of treated as three traits of God. And then in some philosophical arguments, it's impossible to have all three traits

and for the earth to be the way it is. Sorry, we're busting out my A-level philosophy and ethics here. Well, no, I'd just mean it's like the inquisitor within, isn't it? Yes, just somebody yelling at you at all times? Yeah, pretty much. But yeah, I'd say Lob Sang's omnibenevolent, and he's close to omniscient. Yeah. But he's not, well, as close as he can be, maybe closer to the datum,

depending on where all of his servers are at a given time and how easily they can upload to each other. But, yeah, he's definitely not omnipotent. That's the point he makes quite a lot. Yes, but he's very, very powerful. And the point is it seems very reduced all of a sudden when there's something he wants and has no way of getting within the parameters he's set for himself, I suppose.

Yeah, and this adds to his continuing existential crisis that he's having because I think the existential crisis might calm down if he's got something very specific to give him purpose, like shepherding the next being a bit of a guardian towards them the way he treats himself as a guardian of humanity and the fact that he is effectively not on their part but he feels rejected by them

is not going to help that existential crisis he's been having Yeah, Agnes might the moments with Agnes are very sweet They are sweet Especially when she gives him a hug and as he held her she could have sworn she had the smooth running of the Twain's engines miss a beat

It's nice And they watch the moon. Yes. I think Agnes was a very good choice for him. He did definitely need an Agnes. I support his choice of Agnes. And she moves from conscience to companion when she notes he needs it. Yes.

And also it's very sweet to remember just how much she, her inner life revolves around trying to help other people. And she's like, I need a sabbatical in which. I am in a horrible place. And now we've also, also we appear to have adopted some children. Yes, yes.

Yeah. I think we're keeping them. What are you just meteored their landing place. Yeah, what's that? How do you think about that one? That's the end, the end bit of violence for the book. I understand the logic,

but meteoring happy landings and the settlement that was there is not going to stop it from being a soft place sinkhole where more people go to. No. I guess the idea is also that trolls aren't going to hang out there now, so it won't have the same necessary effect on people. But people are going to end up there again. Also, I'm a bit upset by it because they talk about the fact that, you know, some of that architecture there were so old, people have been landing there for centuries.

So I'm quite upset about the historical destruction. I think from what they were saying, they were going to try and build some kind of, like, processing point at least rather than just allow orphans to pile up. Yeah, I issue. Sorry, I'm just imagining one of those like kind of automated process like mail games or something with just a stack of orphans because no one's put a conveyor belt there. Oh, no, the label machine's broken. They're all fine in this comedy imagination, by the way, readers. I can see what Joanne is saying, much like the internal inquisitor. I've got a window into this mind.

I'm not sure anyone... What about the benevolence? Well, the benevolence is why we organise the orphans. Thank you. Yes. But yeah, what are your thoughts on the destruction of happy landings? Oh, I don't know. It's a bit much, isn't it?

But I suppose he knows better than me. I feel like maybe there were choices other than fucking asteroid. It also feels very wasteful. It does feel wasteful. I feel like I liked the idea of the trolls getting to dismantle it. but then I suppose you don't want to put the trolls in harm's way for any length of time. Yeah, and if they're worried that, you know, humans are going to come for it? Are they going to go for the trolls?

I suppose at least it does, it removes it from the grasp of people who, oh, shit. Yes. It does feel a little bit like burning your house down as you leave so the invaders don't get it, which I understand the compulsion. Yeah, no, fully. I mean, I've considered burning my house down because I've seen a particularly large spider. Yeah, yeah. More than once.

Settled for salting the earth and then worrying about the hydrangees. That's why I don't have hydrangeous. Speaking of Happy Landings, locations. Locations. I like, you've been very specific here, Joanna, with the bullet points. Yes, Mars, various, and Earths. We go to some cool places. I want to talk about them quickly.

The ruined city, about half a million steps east on Mars. Again, with the like impossibly tools. things, just being immediately cool. Yeah, right. From the air, it looked like a chess set, and now from down and dirty, those towers look like cracked teeth, butt taller than anything you build on Earth because of the gravity. Yeah. Love an impossibly tall thing.

And then little bits of metal spider, which is possibly just the obvious thing to have as a little warlike robot or crustacea caraphase, but also does pop up in a few sci-fi books. It's like, this is what you're going to get on Mars. It is a really great visual. And then also the monolith Mars, as much as obviously I'm not a fan of, but this idea of this thing that Joshua has of reacting to certain flavours of minds and the way the trolls react to it, and that somehow being weaponised on a giant scale.

Yeah, it's so powerful that even people who aren't particularly sensitive to it. Think of the poor Joshua's headache if he ever went there. Yeah, exactly. But also, it kind of thoroughly establishes, that that is a latent human ability, Joshua just happens to have it more strongly. Yeah, definitely, yeah. The fellas crafting around on their little sand yachts remind me a little bit of the opening of Dark Side of the Sun.

Yes. That's what he has, isn't it? Yeah. I really remember much other than that. It was many years ago now that we did, many years ago. I've also read more than one, like, fantasy book and fantasy TV and things that have some kind of people can power the wind and then float around on cool sand. Do they do that in June?

That seems like something that might do in June. I think it might be a thing in June. I should really read June. We should read June, do Anna. Oh, watch it. You know, I'd rather read it than watch it. I'll read it. You watch it.

We'll meet in the middle near the sandworm. The watching it involves... Not too near the sandworm, I suppose. The watching it involves Zendaya that is sort of what's nudging me in that direction. I am thinking the newer ones More than one of Trudy Canavan's book specifically has that as a thing Oh yeah? Yeah

Like more than one of her series Avatar the last airbender even had it There were specific sandbenders who were earth vendors But they were really good at sand And so they floated around on sand boats And Terry Pratchett of course Also had the extremely elegant dry river race in XXXXXXX Yes

Much the same I believe Which is based on a real Australian thing. Yeah. Fucking weird. Fucking brilliant. And then Earth's various, because obviously Maggie's mission goes out really far. More gaps, I thought was very cool. Yeah. Because that opens up all sorts of more gap space, more exploration.

But yeah. But yeah, you'd have to get a lot of equipment out there via Twain. But worth it, surely. Yeah. For a lot of these, yeah, definitely. every time I still can't get over the word twain being like train

I'm sorry no it's inherently very funny have you noticed how I'm quite avoiding saying it wherever possible what do you mean nothing wrong with being a twain driver twain driver twain driver

um the the the the that whole like things are getting weird as we get further away thing is very fun very real

not realistic but you know what I mean very there's a lot of tidier in it in a way that makes the fun run more fun. Exactly. There's a lot of... All right, statistically speaking,

how far are we here? Like, okay, everything's acid now. Okay, now the earth's lighter. Okay. Now there's more gaps. Yeah. And also at the point, it gets to a point where the idea of a Joker

kind of loses all fucking meaning. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Meet me at the Joker. There's like bands of Joker. Yeah. Make me at the breathable air one. Get me at the one with oxygen. And they thought that eventually they're just going to hit a bit that is not Earth anymore.

Like, is that where the long Earth ends where the molten rock never coalesced? Yes, that's also really cool. And Moon Earth, which you already mentioned in your quote, but just I'm obsessed with the idea. It's so fucking cool. And the fact that they saw lights on the big planet, the fact that Maggie, line of, it's maddening, we stepped a quarter of a billion worlds to get here, but now we can't go cross a few thousand miles

to go see all that. Yeah, there's fucking yeah, and somehow that is much more exciting isn't it? Like, there's lights over on that other, but we've just been through a million, several hundred million. That one's massive and it's there, and we're in satellite and how on does that? Yes. We're used to

into universal travel now, that one's space. The one place not corrupted by capitalism. Yeah. Even though, like, you know you can't stand all that without being crushed because gravity. Yeah. But they leave a science party behind on Moon Earth, and then that science party has disappeared on the route back.

So obviously I want to know what's happened there. I took before I think about Andrew. I must have done about Andrew Hunter Murray's the last day, which is about like a tidily. Is it a tidily locked earth? Whatever. It's not spinning anymore. That's the point.

And so I would like to hear some more about that moon earth. And like the, you know, it's a hot side version. is the cold side and the bit in between where I bet there's a little temperate band of recognisably life. I know it's not how it works, but in my brain there's a bit in the middle where you can hop back and forward

between night and day. I know that's not how it works and that actually smiles wide from a... No, no time. There's a twilight zone, yeah. But it's like, yeah, it's like jumping to the cold side of the pillow, when you? Yes, exactly. night time for a bit of an app. Yeah. Listen, we haven't worked out fringes here yet.

We just kind of shove our sandwiches across the line. Oh, and then the other earth I wanted to mention is Black's new home. West 239,000,211,211,000, also known as Carackel. Yes. Did you do a little Google of the Chelsea Bonesdell paintings that they were talking about? Yeah, I actually had that set up for later in the episode. Okay, then we'll come back to it even better. Awesome.

But I like the fact that Maggie and Mack are immediately speculating about how horrifying it could be if this planet fills up with old men who are very rich and trying to live longer. That's probably not going to be a great place. Also, Black is really creepy. He is. But they're really directly, because Wu is one of the people who decides to stay and he refers to her to Maggie as her children will be tall and slender and have big chest for the thin air, just like the Martians of Ray Bradbury. He's very much like, in this part, he's almost like your general, well-meaning old man who doesn't realise how creepy he comes across.

Except I think he is also very directly looking at people staying as breeding stock. He then says to Maggie, like, you should stay and have children. Yeah, yeah. Not as his breeding stock, which I think is some mitigation. He's trying to assemble a harim. Yeah, he's not thinking, like, I can tell you right now this is going to be a sausage fest, just going by demographic billionaires. If we could get some women.

Can we work out some little mitigation for that now? This is going to be a lot less depressing. But, yeah, definitely creepy. But almost in a charming way. I'm sorry. I know, I know. People billionaire, but it's just at this point, it's quite funny. It is funny.

And it's quite charming. And again, I don't think... I'm sure we'll find out it all goes horribly wrong in the next book, I don't remember. But the plan doesn't feel malicious. He was looking for a fountain of youth, and he basically found an oxygen tent planet. And now he's going to send lots of research. If that research does make it back to other Earth, great.

He does seem pretty generous about how technology gets shared out, ish, kind of. Yeah, it's pretty good with it, yeah. Yeah. Compared to, you know, real-life billioners. Yeah, again, a couple of people point down. and the Discord, like Douglas Black is just seems quite jamming and nice because we have such real, because of what we have in the real world as our evil tech.

And it's sci-fi. We're allowed to give him a conscience. I want you, you swallowed the fucking acid snake helicopter and you're weird about the nice billionaire. Yes, actually. But I do like that they at least did keep him a little bit creepy. Oh, yeah, nice. You can't have the billionaire be too nice. Right, should we take a little break? Let's take a little break. Cool.

It might be an extra of five minutes. I need to shape a loaf of bread quickly. Of course you do. Little bits we liked. Do you want to start us off with a bit of immortality? Yeah. So this links in with the last thing we were talking about actually with Douglas Black's interesting plans. When Maggie and Mac, I think, are talking about the kind of implications of if it actually works and people get to live for a long time.

Matt says If so, it'll really be a Shangri-a without the monks or a community of strolled bugs like Gulliver's travels. There's something I need to read. Undying but ageing and growing more and more bitter a gang for whom even death will no longer bring an end to their clinging wealth and power, et cetera, et cetera. And then it might not be like that.

Maybe they will give us a longer perspective. Hell of a gamble if you ask me. it's an interesting discussion obviously if humanity gets to live longer is that good of humanity especially is it good for humanity if only the privileged get to enjoy that certainly for a certain amount of time it is yes another i would say a little bit of john wyndham excuse we've got the midwitch cookies and the trouble would liken in this book and i enjoy that yes even if they are both you know pretty common themes i just love a bit of windham and i'm not going to talk about him as much as i'd like this in a sci-fi book. So I'm bringing them up again. So what do you think?

I like, or no longer. It's not even immortality, but interlude really. It's just a long life. I think it asks an interesting question because this is starting with billionaires looking to extend their lives. Yeah. But it's also asked an interesting question within the concept of the long earth where money is becoming slowly valueless. You can't, you can't really do all that much capitalism because there are infinite resources. So if this is the earth where longevity can be found, then longevity in itself becomes a resource that is now being hoarded by people who have previously hoarded wealth. And that becomes an interesting question in its own right of obviously I think it could

be bad. There's in a game I really like, there's a whole thing of a billionaire basically locking himself in an underground bunker when the apocalypse comes with a scientist to help. and live forever and a Harim. And that doesn't go well. The devil you say. Yeah, no, amazingly. Take note, stuck a though.

The character is very much inspired by Elon Musk. Yeah. But yeah. So I can't imagine it going well, but the fact that people from Maggie's mission have stopped off and are going to be a part of it and the interesting things about what it could mean for Earth as a whole. And, you know, there's speculation in the long earth, the first book. what if humanity evolves in lots of different directions and black saying here,

they will evolve to be tall and have large chess for the air, look like Ray Bradbury's Martians. At what point is this not just becoming about longevity, but a different flavour of humanity, and not an evolution like the next, but an evolution physically to adapt to a specific landscape. Yeah. It'll be fun to find out if we get to watch from above for a few thousand years. It's a nice bit of speculation to have.

The next little bit we have here is a weird creatures, Dwar. I just wanted to, this is a short one, but I wanted to point out some of the cool stuff we see. On that planet, somehow there's like a consistent, very tall, six-legged design is the most popular design choice. You have the different basis of evolution on Mars that involves lots of serpentine and whale-like evolving into crustaceans. Yeah, kind of stuff.

Yes, ah, kiteness all over the place The Sauropods The big fucking, the dragons I can't fly, but they're dragons Yeah, they're dragons But they're just, the image, a total length of 250 feet From nose to tail, like eight blue whales Laid End to End

I struggled to, in my head, just think about how big a blue whale is I try not to, yeah There's a little image from, I think it's one of the horrible science books or some kind of kid science book I had of like a blue whale and then an elephant to scale kind of perched on its nose and that's how I remind myself

how big blue whales are but I've not really been that near an elephant very often so even that's kind of no I mean I've seen elephants yeah yeah no it's what I mean it's like a you don't remind yourself of every time you see one

it's a bit of a shock is what I mean exactly so then honestly every time I see a horse I'm a bit startled like your face is as big as me what's happened there that's not right but yeah anyway

so dragons just these giant firebreed breathing things the size of eight blue whales and I can't really quite fit them in my brain but I love the sound of the and I love Sally's aura as well where she's like yeah shut up this is the closest to dragon I don't see it's nice when Sally gets like a full

well yes all right I've seen a lot but not seen it all clearly and then my other favourite I wanted to mention is from the same planet as the helicopter snake more jellyfish more jellyfish a disc translucent huge

like a cross between a jellyfish and a Hollywood UFO that slithered and slurped and morphed its way over the land. Incredible. And then the fact that they're kind of families of them and they're traveling in pods, but also because of the way that planet works, it looks like they're moving in fast forward all the time. Just reminds me what I really liked about the first book, just random weird little interludes.

And also it brings one of the most, like when I thought about it for a second, horrible moments, one of the weird creatures, which was the blind crustacean underground. And we didn't get to linger there very long for obvious reasons. But there's the, you know, Sally for a second thinks, you poor fucker. Like, your civilization came down here and got stuck here so long you evolved into a blind underground,

as far as she could tell, non-thinking creature. Yeah. Like, oh my God, the implications, Joanna. Also just the implications of the underground microclimate. and how that ties into by weird fascination. Deep-Z stuff. I want to know what's down there. That's fucking crab.

Fucking Willis and the... Willis and the crab prints. Excellent, that name. Terrible reality. Terrible. I should remind... Not reality, because this is a fiction. No, no, it's a speculative fiction.

Not a documentary. Non-fiction, God. Sorry, I've tried to refer to non-fiction books as documentaries for a second. That's fine. Yeah, my brain is doing really well. Well, why not? Documentary doesn't inherently... It's like the etymology doesn't mean visual, does it?

No, it's a document. It's a document. It's fine. Anyway. Paper documentaries now. Paper documentaries, that's what I've written. What else did you like, Francine? Oh, fuck knows, mate.

Pliny, I hardly knew he. Who knows what progress we might have made if Pliny had got there first? So one of the scientists talking about why they shouldn't nuke the next. And who knows what other? obvious in hindsight notions we've missed. A representative of the Department of Defence grunted at that. Pliny, who the hell is he? I know who's American.

But I always said you guys in Darborough are a waste of money. I just like the, you know, considering the implications and the terribleness of the whole thing, I do like the farcicles. Yeah. A bunch of middle-aged men arguing about this stuff. Yeah. That fucking Pliny. I read it in the tone of Alice Alice. Who the fuck is Alice? Pliny. Pliny. Who the fuck is Pliny?

I don't think of the ones who did the staring at goats. And the LSD. I think that's right. I think so. Yeah. Sure. They're the good guys in this scene. And I just want you to let that sinking. The bar is deep underground hanging out with the blind crustaceans. Yeah. Oh no. Okay. Joanna, do you have some references for us? There's a few fun references.

Short one, when Cutler comes aboard towards the end, Mac offers him grain alcohol and rainwater, and says that's the only thing you'll drink, keeping your bodily fluids for it. It's a reference to Dr. Strange Love, or how I learned to love the bomb. And specifically, General Jack D. Ripper, who only drinks grain alcohol and rainwater because he thinks that the potential fluoride in water

is a communist plot. Right. Yep, yep. That was a fun little, fun little moment. Cutler would have been great in the 50s. You can see. Yeah, he's nearly in the 50s again, I suppose. Yeah. You can see him doing the kind of Red Scare.

Yeah, definitely. Yeah, yeah. I mean, he still probably hates communism now. I assume America doesn't change that much in all of this. My favorite reference is when they reach 250 million, the trolls start singing a song. a sweet barbershock quartet kind of song that sounded as if it had been selected

to celebrate the journey about how it was mighty nice a trip to paradise with my baby on board. On board. Is that just a Simpson song? Yeah, yeah. It was written for that episode of The Simpsons. I would say a real contender for Best Simpson song.

It is one of my favourite Simpsons episodes. This is Homer's Barbershop Quartet. The first episode of season five, although it was originally written to be the end of season four and it got moved over. So it's the last episode that has the whole

original writing team involved, I think. One of the fun things I do. And yeah, the song Baby on board is from Homer's Barbershot Quartet, the B-sharps. This is also the Simpsons episode that has, I think,

one of my all-time favourite Simpsons jokes, which is a plum floating in perfume that the man's hat. Yeah. Do you follow Benedict Townsend? TikTok. Yes, I do.

I love just his... Again, I love people talking about telly at me. I really like him explaining his favourite sentence jokes. Yeah. It's not quite my favourite because my favourite, I think, is still, you'll have to speak up. I'm wearing a towel. I mean, yeah.

Didn't you explain to me that that's deeper than we thought? It's not just a... It's funny because that's got nothing to do with it. Apparently it's referencing more of a... Women wearing them around their heads. I think we have had this conversation Even so fucking hilarious But yes I've just been walking around

Since I read that line singing to myself It must be mighty nice Also, sorry I obviously then read the Wikipedia page for that episode And lots of other stuff and listened to the song a couple times Yeah The singing on it They got Oh God I can't remember the chord out

There's barbershop quartet that performs at Disney World there's something dandies and so that's the background harmonies and then they sort of recorded it and had all the different voice actors record their little lead bits in it the dandy dans a handsome dans or something

um um did you look up what the crack in the sky song reference was no I didn't okay listeners answers on A crack in the sky?

No. Answers on a fragment of glider fluttering down into the 20 mile deep pit in which Joanna and I record. Yes, ominously fluttering down, thank you. Please make it ominous. Yeah, I shouldn't have to say this. Yeah, no, at this point, guys, if it's fluttering anything but ominously.

We're just not going to read it. What are we doing here? Take the serious. Like I say. Anyway. Sorry. And then the last reference is, again, going back to Charles Black's. No, not Charles Black, Douglas Black's new home world. He describes this planet, this Earth he's found as a Chelsea Bones Tell painting. Chesley, Chesley. I keep saying Chelsea as well, and I've infected you. It is Chesley. It's literally written in my notes directly in front of me.

Yeah, yeah, no, same. And you recognised the name already, didn't you? I didn't. Yes, but I don't know much about him, as I badly explained to you before we launched into this bit. I know his art because I love that kind of old sci-fi art, but I realised I don't know anything about him at all. So do you now? A little bit. I won't go into tons of detail. Chesley Bonesdale, born in 1888. Oh, I love that kind of.

I love it when someone was born in the 19th century, let alone. Yeah, iconic of them really to be born in the 19th century. People will say that about us one day, Joanna. They will. 21 slash 2. Three? Two. There's a year.

There's a year in it. It was the father of modern space art he's being referred to. So he's mostly active from the 40s to the 70s and he painted these incredible photorealistic space paintings. His first one was in

1905 after he got to go and see Saturn through a telescope. The place he lived burned down and it's been lost forever to history. Just from the website. I'll link to this. These will be web archive links in the show notes because a lot of these are defunct now. A pioneer of astronomical and space art who helped popularize manned space travel because

he was illustrating this before it was happening. Oh, wow. Yeah, of course. Did lots of cover up for science fiction magazines, including the astounding science fiction, the magazine of fantasy and science fiction. There's a particularly good one that's just on the Wikipedia page, which obviously talking about art great on this visual medium. yeah

everybody should have been Googling it by now yeah I don't know if you've seen this but I'm just going to quickly send it to you but yeah he illustrated in collaboration with authors and lots of stuff in the field of space exploration he also did architectural paintings and scientific illustrations which ties back into our fascination with botanical illustration

he did special effects map paintings for films his artwork is even in films like the original like 1930s hunchback of Notre Dame is used in sisters in cane as well as 1953's War of the Worlds Cool Yeah

There we go So this imaging question is amazing This is from February 1951 Galaxy Science Fiction magazine The featured story is The Fireman by Ray Bradbury

The painting itself is called The Tying Down of a spaceship On Mars in Desert Stanstorm Oh wow So this is yeah This is from the 1950s It's this gorgeous spaceship Again really photorealistic

surrealistic, surrounded by people with on Mars, this red planet, but with this beautiful blue sky, because obviously this is before advanced photography of it. He has a bronze medal from the British Interplanetary Society. He has a special achievement Hugo Award. He's in the International Space Hall of Fame, which I did not know as a thing and resisted the urge to go down that rabbit hole, so I've got that lined up for me. Fantastic. The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, there's the Chesley Award for achievement in science fiction and fantasy art is named for him. There's also a crater on Mars named after him and an asteroid 3129 Bones tell. He's got a crater on Mars and an asteroid named

after him. How cool is that? Also, bones tell in isolation is very metal. Very. But yes, I'm going to drop a couple of links to some cool artwork in the show notes. I've got a list of like a database of science fiction magazine covers that he did. Lovely. Hello, thank you. Yes. Have fun. You'll be Thank you. You shan't hear from me for a while. I also really want to buy a print of one of his artworks and hang it somewhere. That's a good idea. I've been slowly kind of populating a little gallery wall up there, and I haven't got any retro sci-fi art up there. That's a very good point. Yeah.

What I do have is a lovely painting of a cow. Almost as good, to be fair. Well, I think it would go nicely next to a rocket ship. Cow and a rocket ship is a classic combination, really. So speaking of tying a spaceship down on Mars, as Charles Bain. tell pointed. Let's go into big stuff. Do you want to talk about Mars, Francie? I love talking about Mars, but only when it's fictional Mars. Yep.

Because I don't know much about real Mars and I can't pretend to. So Mars in fiction, yes again, I've kind of went out of talking about the book properly in favour of pendental things. As to be fair, I've done for a lot of this podcast. A couple of leader fictions of Mars are like interesting but not so relevant to this, But there are some really early depictions of Mars that have it as kind of a spiritual realm. And I mean like 1600s, 1700s or like almost like a Valhalla equivalent with like reincarnated soldiers on it. And like Alexander the Great turns up in one of these things. Amazing.

That's all quite interesting, I think. However, talking about people who iconically were born in the 1800s, I'm going to start for now with HG Wells. Yeah. We don't get to spend time on Mars. with War of the World's 1897. But we damn sure get a close look at the Martians, these like ancient, intelligent, cold beings. Yes.

Yikes. And actually, let's introduce the second year one song of the episode. The chances of anything coming from Mars has been in my head on and off since I first heard that as a child. That's fair. Almost more than any other song. A baby on board might be a contender. Fun fact, by the way.

the Welshian Martians' easy destruction of London upset an astronomer slash pop science writer called Garrett Service with Double S. And he wrote this pulpy sequel pretty much straight away by which I mean it was published in 1898. Amazing. And in it, it's called Edison's Conquest of Mars and within it the world scientists or teams from around the world

led by Thomas Edison builds the technology and the weaponry needed to attack Mars back get the counter-strike it. It's so fucking pulpy and it's so like classic American pulp in the comparison to the classic English straight-laced

sci-fi. It's very funny and I need to read it now. And it has like the fucking most, you know, I'm just going to send you the Wiki link on Signal so you can have a look at the cover. Oh good lord. I mean A, the sort of, I am aware

this is just like, because of how things are printed at the time, but obviously the fact that it's all sort of coloured pencil, it kind of looks like my nephew did it. Do you know what? There weren't other things printed at the time. They didn't like that. Yeah. Also, that rocket, I know there's only so many things you can do with a long thin shape. I'm just saying that's just a penis. That is just a penis. No, that is very much just a penis. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, that's neither here nor there. Mainly I should be talking about things that may

have inspired Prattain Baxter, but in this case, We haven't asked. You couldn't have skipped that out. Thank you for giving me that gift. That's right. So in contrast to Wells' kind of violent sociopaths, a lot of early sci-fi about Mars has Martians as more of a utopian society. Yeah. So Alexander Bogdanov, for instance, published Red Star in 1908, and it describes a Martian utopia of socialist ideals and unadorned clothing and short meetings with concise. I just notes this guy had a fucking axe to grind. His Mars was red due to the vegetation, incidentally, which we see in a few authors' takes. And I just like this is why Mars is red, because Ben's are red here. Great, I love that.

Actually, that's what it reminded me of. It's just popped back to me. The moon is silver on this world, and it's got silver vegetation on it. Oh, yeah. There we go. That's what I was thinking of. Tolstoy, to have another Bolshevik bit of. Mars stuff took a different tack, unsurprisingly.

His Mars was beautiful as well. It had like these yellow meadows and orange pastures and a criss-cross of clear canals. But it was unfortunately, it turned out all bougie. Oh, no. I know. And, you know, well, you know, tell the story. The plot involves the Pales Revolution. And it does involve the line, your most grown comrades, Martians.

There's an interesting thing there. if you go back to the early ideas of Mars as a heaven, as a spiritual plane, of imagining it as something that is at least on the surface, a utopia. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it kind of evolved from like literally every, you know, at one point we did have, the sky is heaven, didn't we? And we've talked about this before, I think, when we talked about spermaments. Quite possibly.

Yeah, I want to say that. God, we've learned and forgot so much over the last few years. Again, if I could just get the lyrics to M&Ms without me out of my head, I could probably hold on to some actual facts. Too late now. Moving on to Edgar Rice Burroughs. Yes. Who?

As one does. Despite what my brain keeps telling me is not Edward Bulwer Litton, and I can't keep getting the mixed up. They're very different authors. Edgar Rose Burroughs is the Tarzan guy, isn't he? That's the Tarzan guy, yes. Right. He was also a very popular sci-fi.

writer, although his first sci-fi stories were published under a different name. Norman Bean or something like that. So that he did, I think that's right. Do you know what? I better check that for the worst name. I really wanted to be Norman Bean. I think it's Norman Bean. Oh, interesting.

After seven years of low wages, there's a pencil sharpen a wholesaler. Sorry, carry on, carry on, carry on. Norman Dick, that was right. Look at that. I also did just scroll past a bit saying he was an explicit supporter of eugenics and scientific races. Oh, no. Oh, what a prick.

Anyway, he had lots of very popular stories involving Barsoom, his name for Mars. Yes. They were so influential that he had an impact crater named for him as well. I guess there's a lot of craters on Mars. Mars is referred to as Barsoom at some point in this bit. Yes, which was one of the things I didn't get around to Googling. So now we know. Well, there we go.

Oh, I could have had that as an orf. Never mind. Bradbury thought him one of the world's most influential authors for the way he inspired. And a similar way that Chesley did, a generation of astronomers. Incredible. He kind of made people be able to picture the idea of traveling to these other planets. And then so his first Martian story was a Princess of Mars, serialized in 1912. His Martians came in many races, which he categorizes with like Linnaeian keenness.

I should have at this point understood he was eugenicsy. They include this green, six-legged, warlike species. She's of Martians called Tharks, which is a pleasingly early sci-fi name, I think. And like many of the Long Mars' inhabitants, they are massive. They're 15 feet tall or so. Yes. Gravity. I should say at this point, actually, I got a lot of this from the British Library science fiction, a literary history, which was edited by Roger Lockhurst.

It's the one I picked up when we were at the British Library. Oh, cool. Maybe on a couple decades, Stanley G. Weinbaum's 1934, a Martian Odyssey, includes such creatures as a friendly pseudo-ostridge, a psychic carnivorous plant, and an animal that just keeps on building pyramids for no particular reason. Just what it does. There is a sequel about Martians visiting Egypt in the distant past and becoming the deities. So I really need to read these books and report back to you. Yep. We'll come back to that. And then, on finally to Ray Bradbury. Yes. Round about. Oh. Foley.

The Martian Chronicles published in 1950 is a book of beautifully written short stories. Here is a short extract from the very beginning in which we have a look at Mars and to the Martians. Yes. They had a house of crystal pillars on the planet Mars by the edge of an empty sea

and every morning you could see Mrs. Kay eating the golden fruits that crew from the crystal walls or cleaning the house with handfuls of magnetic dust which, taking all dirt with it, blew away on the hot wind. Afternoons, when the fossil sea was warm and motionless, and the wine trees stood stiff in the yard, and the little distant Martian Bone Town was all enclosed, and no one drifted out their doors. You could see Mr. Kay himself in his room, reading from a metal book with raised hieroglyphs over which he brushed his hand as one might play a harp. and from the book as his fingers stroked a voice sang a soft ancient voice which told tales when the sea was red steam on the shore

and ancient men had carried clouds of metal insects and electric spiders into battle and yeah so like an opening scene on Mars like that is very different to almost all other in fact Ray Bradbury only classified one of the short stories in this as sci-fi himself yeah it was like online fantasy

Yeah. I like to think of more of his stuff than he would categorize as sci-fi as sci-fi because it's kind of, he has a point in that by the time he was writing this, that way of describing Mars was not scientific because we knew by this point there wasn't a civilization on Mars. He was writing in a very retro way. It's retro now because it's 1950s, but it's a very retro in the very retro look of Mars. Yeah. And it's beautiful, obviously. It's also quite, in the books that were writing about Martians, his stands out as having them as still not utopian exactly, but sympathetic and peaceful and intelligent. Yeah, they weren't an invading species. Yeah. By now, most sci-fi writers in America certainly were leaning into the Red Scare. Yeah, so Mars attacks.

Yes. Yes, it does. But still, Bradbury did keep his realism in this, In his description of humanity's colonization of Mars, he makes overt references to the atrocities committed against indigenous Americans. He also rails against the segregation in what was there in the modern U.S. It's, yeah. Bradbury was a cool guy. Yeah, he was. Yeah, I'm sure there's stuff that he wasn't cool about because it's in 1950s.

So, yeah, this book is beautiful, but very upsetting in Farts. There Will Come Soft Raines is devastating. Yeah. Just to warn you before you get to that bit when you eventually read it. I have started reading slowly I read like odd little bits here and there. I read the first short story in the collection

because I quite like dragging it out going in and like that's a treat. I get a Ray Bradbury short story. Yeah, no, that's their way of doing it than me. And then moving on to the one, well, like the 90s, so it's not even this century, but the most one bit of sci-fi I'm going to talk about today,

which is Kim Stanley Robinson. And he has no Martians. We're going to talk about space elephants, elevators. Sorry, that really wasn't a relevant elephant. We're going to talk about space elevators. Red Mars is one of the most important Mars-based piece of sci-fi, I should say, out there, one of which, obviously, because referenced in the book, Pratchett and Baxter are both very aware of. And nobody who loves sci-fi is unaware of this book, even if they've not gone for it yet.

It centers on the first humans to settle on Mars, how technology and society. develops and the conflicting ideologies that emerge. From kim Stanley Robinson.info, which by the way is a very helpful site, the space elevator I'm talking about here. By the way, there is some spoilers for Radmars here. I'd be surprised if people didn't know the basics by now, but that might be one of those things where it's like I'm so involved in reading about sci-fi, but I know more spoilers than I might.

The space elevator is means of ground space travel, obviously. It contains a cable attached to the surface of the planet. upon which cars physically travel up and down. On its end, beyond geosynchronous orbit, a space station counterbalances the way helps to keep the cable vertical above the planet's equator. Science fiction also is R.C. Clark is commonly credited for making the concept known to a wider public

in his novel The Fountain of Paradise, 1979, although American science fiction writer Charles Sheffield also wrote a novel featuring a space elevator in the same year, the word between two worlds, and the scientific concept of space tethers in general is attributed to Russian space scientist extraordinaire Oh shit. Constantine Schelkovsky,

Kovsky, maybe. Sure. Schelkowski, I'm going to say. Late 19th to early 20th century. Spoilers for Red Mars here, definitely. The novel, you don't mind you. The novel Red Mars is mentioned when in here, in this book,

the Mars Explorer trio were discussing the potential damage of a falling cable. We've kind of worry out the spoiler. it does come down in Red Mars and I won't read an extract because even if you've had this much spoiler it's well worth reading in context but I will say it is one of the most memorable pieces of book I've ever read like it is epic and I mean epic in the sense epic description like I remember reading out for the first time when I was 1920 to be like whoa fucking hell that's brilliant So yeah, I cannot recommend Red Mars enough.

It's just an incredible piece of sci-fi and anthropology kind of crossover. Kim Stanley Robinson's fantastic author anyway. He's written all kinds of brilliant, brilliant stuff. Also, I should probably mention at this point, the space station that was holding up, that was at that end, the top end, was called Clark in the book. Oh, lovely. Of course. But yeah, that's where I'm ending that bit. Awesome. Cool. I'm going to bring us back to the Long Mars, specifically the book we're talking about.

I'm going to just quickly throw in, though, because you've just talked about lots of sci-fi and alien various forms of Martians. It's not set on Mars, but The Left Hand of Darkness by Ersler Le Guin is one of my favourite books of all time and features a fascinating alien race as well as being an incredible dive into the concept of gender. So I'm just going to throw out, everyone should, if you've not read it already, go read the left hand of darkness. let's do it I'd by the way be interested in hearing your take

on some of the visual media set on Mars at some point yes maybe a bonus episode when time doesn't

get in the way right let's talk about the next you might have noticed we haven't really mentioned them yet and that's because I

wanted to keep it all in one place yeah they need containing they do need containing this cannot go wrong

gods and hubris I want to specifically talk about this idea of excessive pride leading towards deciding you are in some way a superior being. Hang on, I'm just going to put my wax

wings on. Yep, perfect. I will see how that bites people in the ass. And the first person I want to talk about is Willis. And my point is that Willis is not Daedalus. Willis is fucking Prometheus. Oh. And he is not considering the consequences,

but he is give, well, he's not stealing fire, but he's giving fire. Yeah. And I was thinking about this more in the context We just talked about Frankenstein, and one of the things we mentioned is that Mary Shelley, in calling the modern Prometheus, did not mean Prometheus as a compliment. No, yeah, yeah, yeah. Prometheus was a bad guy who provided fire, and that led to humans eating animals, and that's not a great thing.

So I'm not complimenting Willis when I call him Prometheus, although I'm personally not. You're taking Shelley side here, I, a vegan argument, notably. I'm not a vegan, but in this specific case. And we love Mary Shelley. I do love Mary Shelley But no, you're right In this case I definitely see what you're going about And I think Prometheus is inherently a bit of a fool in certain ways

Oh yeah, very much so It's the not considering consequences And I don't mean the consequences on Prometheus himself As much as I would love to see Willis chain to a rock With a birdpecking his liver out repeatedly I do think that's what he deserves But unfortunately it's probably not entirely realistic Unless we've got Zeus around to curse him

and I think if Zeus is around in this situation, we have got bigger problems. Yes. Just in general, Zeus is. I don't know if we've mentioned this on the podcast before, but I do think Zeus is actually quite problematic. Well, you know, he is, again, a man born before the 1950s. Yeah, so this idea of he is bestowing fire on people, or in this case, he's bestowing stepers on people, and he wants to bestow the space elevator thing on people. and then it becomes an argument

he is sort of considering himself gifting this to humanity but he is very much not concerned with the consequences of gifting this to humanity he's basically going humanity is net good enough that it'll all work itself out

fine and don't get me wrong when it comes to stepping yes without step for technology Yellowstone would have been a lot worse yeah he's got a real good argument there now isn't he that works out for him but also look at everything

that happened to the trolls maybe the net negative on the long earth, the incidences of slavery that burst out once the long earth became something accessible, the nuke in Madison, the crab prints killing Frank, like there are also negatives. It's kind of opening Pandora's box,

except humanity is what's in Pandora's box. Yeah, and now he's figuring out hopefully a better way that they can one day access space. And obviously, I'm a big fan of accessing space. I think it's a very cool idea. I love the idea of the beanstalk, the space elevator, that doesn't mean that humanity's going to do good things with it. Not if it's given all that much access all at once, certainly.

Yeah, and I think Willis is considering himself in a way separated from humanity and bestowing gifts on them. And then, of course, humans then find other things to look down on, and we have this whole story of what the fuck happened with the Beagles and why that last war was so bad, and it was humans' fault. yeah and it comes from mac who is a you know a sympathetic character and a yeah and a character we do like although he's a smaller character um mac explains that the whole issue with the beagles never getting to her progress scientifically or everything the stuff

we learned in the last book and it being to do with the breedles the breeding cycles and constant war and so they basically put contraceptives in the water supply so that the females bore smaller litters and we thought we'll do it first and explain later and what actually happened is it went horribly because they didn't do it to all of the beagles everywhere. They did it to one fucking area of beagles. And what happened is they were decimated in a horrific war. Yeah. And they shouldn't have done it regardless.

It was this human arrogance of we might as well be like God. Yeah. I will say, you know, Maggie is horrified when Mack tells her and does say like what happened to first do no harm. and the argument is unfortunate that is harmful and yet A it doesn't work and B it's just a horrific thing to do without the consent of an entire population

and it is these people considering themselves effectively gods like are a tier above the beagles also sidebar I know this idea of like population and then somehow reducing the population possibly against their will is like not an uncommon thing in speculative fiction but the specific way it's done here is so close to a specific storyline in Mass Effect

that I really want to know the genophage of the there's a sort of race that are effectively genetically engineered to be really fucking useful in a war but they also bred like rabbits and were very long lived and then the people

who genetically engineered them in the first place went oh fuck and then did this to them and to decimate their population by genetically damaging them effectively and in Mass Effect you have to decide whether to undo it or not so yeah I just thought

it reminded me so much of that. And like I said, it's a common speculative fiction thing. It's not the only story to use it. I think they might also draw off some real life. Also, yes, there is horrific real life stuff that happens. Yeah. To do with population control or has happened historically. Yeah, I'm sorry, I'm also just trying to think, like, when Mass Effect was there.

Around 2010, 12, like, sort of, 20-10. So, yeah, the third game would have been out by the time this book would risk it. it. I'd say. And yeah, I'm just curious if Terry Pratchett or Stephen Baxter played Mass Effect. Wouldn't be surprised. I felt like, obviously I did not know Terry Pratchett's store, but based on just the knowledge of the other games he liked, I think he would have liked Mass Effect.

Yeah, he was quite poorly by this point. Yes, that's true. Really good games. I want to play Mass Effect again. Anyway. And yeah, and this obviously then influences Mac when he becomes the person who has to argue for the elimination of the next. and he is forced in this position of being very logical while arguing against something

he does not believe in. Oh, I've already learned my lesson. Yeah. I am the guy who knows not to do this. The beagle forgave me. Kind of. Oh, how nice is it that we've got a beagle on an exploratory mission

akin to the beagle, by the way? Oh, yeah, I didn't actually clock that before. I just clocked that now. Delight. And then we have the next, who are this, Humans as the aferia, This idea of almost what if God's walked among us, but not this advancement.

Anyway, just before we devolve into, because I can't remember the Weird Al version now. No, I think I'm also thinking of a Simpson's version or something. So, well, the first, first, next we meet is Roberta. That's a revelation. I'm so sorry, carry on. That's absolutely fine. Before Roberta, though, sort of in this story, the first person we meet who introduced, themselves as the next is Paul Spencer Waggner.

And there's a really interesting thing here. So you have this scene where Josh arrives at the home, this girl runs out crying, and Paul is half-heartedly following her, very obviously trying not to laugh. And bear in mind, this is our first real, obviously with half a brain, you realise that Roberta is also one of these same involved people,

but this is our first direct interaction with someone we know is one of these people. And it is horrifying. The things Paul says about having sex with a woman who is not one of the next specifically, is dark and gross to read. And he says, can you imagine coupling with one of those the animal thrill of the moment, the beautiful empty eyes and the crashing shame you feel when it's over?

And I do think the intention was to be gross and horrifying in that sentence. But I also wonder if Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter realized how horrifying that is to read if you have experienced also just some men on this planet. Well, I think it definitely has a flavour of teenage misogyny in it, but maybe they can't understand how exactly how it feels to read that. but I think they are knowingly referencing those kind of men.

Yeah, no, again, there wasn't me saying they are bad people who didn't realize how gross it was. I wasn't telling you that, Joanna. You've got to stop defending points, defending yourself against points I'm not making. Yeah, I know, I'm sorry. It makes me seem like a twat. Okay, but what I actually meant was, Francis, no. But yeah, I wondered how, if they get how deeply visceral that is to read. Like, not a woman but was raised as one, much like my relationship with Catholicism.

in a inquisitor and gender police more like there's underlying I have experiences as a woman despite not identifying as one see everything that was horrific and then you are introduced to this crowd of the next and although it's gross and kind of horrifying when you read that stuff from Paul

when you sort of Josh is meeting them in a group setting and Paul is trying to explain how it feels for them to be around each other I felt like there is, it's possible to sympathise when they talk about, you know, to be surrounded by a bunch of upright aids with minds like guttering candles and yet who had built this vast civilisation

full of rules and a crushing weight of tradition. The crushing weight of tradition bit especially, I think, is where you can kind of see the sympathy creeping in. Although I must say at this point, I did realise how easy it was for Paul just to step a few steps away and like, you know, have a relationship

with a woman he didn't see as an animal. Yeah. Like there was really no need. for him. Yeah, no, that was... Sleeping with that poor girl. Yeah. That was...

But again, he sort of said it wasn't about sex. It was a particular kind of weird enjoying the sex with the dumb animal. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's creepy and gross, and that it doesn't redeem himself

with things you say afterwards, but I think the crushing... No, it's interesting to see the rest of them. Yeah. Very much, though. And then you meet David and his group and their whole story of happy landings and the fucking war and takeover.

It's very weird to read because, like I said, we had the ominous build-up around happy landings before, Sally's saying it doesn't feel right. But to realize how much has happened there off-screen while we've been reading about Mars and other things and Yellowstone happened and all of that stuff is in itself quite terrifying. Everything they've done since, including making a guy build his own cage and keeping him in captivity. I felt like the name Sam Allen also, I know they said he was in the previous book. He was on

the thing. I think he was in the first book. First book. Oh, yeah. No, wait. Second book was Maggie. You're right. You're right. Yeah, sorry.

Yeah. But I feel like I know the name from somewhere else, and I was wondering if it's a reference. I might go back into that. But the descriptions of David, again, really chilling, especially when he had a sense of entitlement about him that she'd seen in science of old money families. Yeah. And that puts it in such a very specific box.

And they call him out, and he's saying, we offer you order. and they say, yeah, the security of sheep. Yeah. You are very much expecting us to be ruled by you. And I think something that's really interesting is you can see Pratchett's influence here a lot in the writing of the next because they kind of read like the elves. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah.

They have this glamour, this charisma that kind of hypnotizes people. They are terrific. Yeah. Yeah, the glamour here instead of magic is just being very good at human psychology. but may as well be magic because being dim bulbs ourselves we can understand exactly what's happening so we can discourse over it like yeah and then but the thing is despite how fucking horrifying the next star the mass arrests are also still really chilling oh yeah yeah everyone just appearing and basically imprisoning them for who they are yeah and the thing is these five

are properly horrifying but they do they are very specifically the five who started a fucking coup and like they are the war criminals what the rest of the let's bit mainly children are probably fine and that's the other interesting thing about these characters we're meeting is that they are children especially when you see Paul's group and there's a very weird

childlike naivety that says no matter how intelligent they are they do also still need the wisdom of experience and without it they are naive they get captured yeah yeah And then they have this experience of functioning in an institution. And of course, there's a reference to them as cuckoo's in the nest, like an alien invasion from within our DNA.

So you can see where the fear comes from. But then you have Roberta as this sort of parallel one, who's a little bit older as well. Not by much. 20, I think. Yeah. So she's only a year older than Paul Spencer Wagner. but she has this one massive chunk of life experience that none of them have, which is these 20 million mission.

Yeah. And she grew and changed and learned a lot on that mission. Yeah. Yeah, these kids, I mean, yeah, we've talked about the fact that they're institutionalized in the way that they, you know, just sat down and dealt with the prison thing. But yeah, they're institutionalized. That also means they've not seen much yet. Yeah, they have very little in the way of life experience.

And when they do, they pick it up, they learn. Yeah. and the ones in happy landings they you know they think they know what's best for happy landings especially but they haven't really gone anywhere but yeah um because they didn't need to I suppose yeah and so Roberta is interesting because she's kind of she's the good version she's what they can be with some experience and perspective yeah um she says they're young um I'm like them. And Nelson is kind of impressed at her eye and self-controlled to keep camouflaging. Yeah. And so she says, well, because I have this experience, they don't. I think eventually I will

be a liaison from humans to them. But she also writes off the label as something unnecessary. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing, isn't it? It is a big step change. But on the other hand, they are literally our children in this scenario. Yes. That's why I think you know, makes Max argument, you know, argument under duress, that Binnie Andethystall should have stood up and done something as not very compelling. No. Even if, you know, we thought this was a good solution to that, which we don't. It's that, you know, at the end of the day, it's, don't we want our children to do better.

Exactly, yeah. And Mac says his fear is not slavery or extinction is that we'll come to worship them. And he tries to argue we have a biological moral and a religious mandate, which is odd because Mac is not really seen as a particularly religious character. And I also don't think it's biologically convincing to say that if our children are stronger than us, we should kill them. Yeah, no, not even slightly. so I think the book is also asking us the question not like should we kill nuke a bunch of children I think we can sort of argue that nuking a bunch of children is a bad thing

but true shall make you fretters against nuking a bunch of children yeah in case anyone was wandering yes cake no nuking children or anybody really yeah sort of generally kind of anti-nuke on this podcast I'd say been this context specifically yeah we're glad that they didn't. I'm very glad that they didn't nuke the children. But the book does present this interesting question of presenting them as borderline villains. Yeah.

Or at the very least terrifying people. And then saying, and how do we live with that? Yeah. And luckily, very midwitch cookies. Yeah. Um, so I don't really have a thorough point other than I think the book is, is presenting some really fascinating questions. and it made me having the other two books that had me really focus on, oh, God, we're so small and it's so big.

This is a different flavor of, oh, God, we're so small and it so big. It being the progression of humanity. Yes. Yeah. And then I guess quite literally the brains and what the cortexes are doing, because there is an explanation of how this evolution is actually worked. Oh, we're smooth brained. We're smooth brained in comparison.

They've got 4D brain. I've got 4D brain. Oh, that sounds like a terrible thing. thing now. So just quickly, I wanted to kind of revisit because I was talking last book about how I felt the structure maybe didn't serve it great. And so this isn't my favorite of the cycle so far. Do you have any thoughts? How do you feel about this book now or at the end? I like the book. I like the book then. I like the book now. Fair enough. Yeah, I still think I'd prefer it to the long war. I think it's it's got more interesting concepts to me, just the concepts we've just discussed

there and just the big sci-fi landscapes and the yeah. Yes. I think this this feels more more like, I don't know. Yeah, this feels more like the next big step. Yes. I agree with that. Obviously, the long order does include that because we've gone from step day to now we're all spread out and stuff. Yeah, the functioning stepping. But, I think is, I like, this isn't a novel. This is two interesting novellas in a trench coat.

and I like both of those novellas but it made me not really enjoy reading it as a book I would rather have read Sally's Adventures on Mars novella and then read the story of the next novella and then had each of those concepts be a bit more fleshed out within that this is people's criticism of Reaper Man

and I'll defend that one to the death so at least I'm consistent I think it's a valid criticism we talked about at the time I think it is a valid criticism of Reaper Man I really love Reaper Man it's a two beautiful well one really beautiful story and then one quite entertaining story um but the stories don't really serve each that's like the toddler that said explicitly on the top of the trunk kick yeah kind of windle poons yeah yeah why is the 12

you're well you can't balance on the toddler exactly um so yeah so i did enjoy the two stories that i read but i felt they were way too separate and as a result neither of them were really served by how this book is structured and both could have been a lot, either more fleshed out or at least joined together in some kind of significant way in the end. I know physically, like a character joins them together after Sally comes back from Mars, she goes and helps the children. Yeah. We don't really see anything from her perspective once we get to Happy Landings, which was a stupid place to take the children. Yes, yes. Sorry, I had to get it in one more time. Um, so I don't dislike it, but I do see why people feel this series has like

diminishing returns at this point. Yeah. I see what you mean. I think it would have been difficult to flash out the other two too much without it being just bigger descriptions of each planet they're going to, which is fun to read, but I don't think it's a novel each. I don't think there is a... I don't think there's two novels. I think there's two novellas.

I think if this was a two-volume book and half of it was Sally, and then the other half was the story of the next, and there was just more time between... Well, feel free to go back and read it in that order, I suppose. our lovely listeners and tell us what you think that's true I'm just being silly it's not true that's a silly thing to suggest I just want to see

somebody do it absolutely logical way to do it especially if you physically book up and rearrange the chapters yes I don't know my nonsense I don't hate it as the rest of this episode

I think it demonstrates quite well I love a lot of stuff about this book but it's definitely not going to be my favourite fair enough we'll have to see what happens on the next one we will but that'll be sometime next year yes we haven't planned that yet no

have you got an obscure reference finet for me yeah and in keeping with the rest of my thoughts on this book it's barely relevant but here we go so So Montecute is one of the long-standing Happy Landings names of The Natural Stepers. Yes. Montecute, yes.

Spelled M-O-N-T-E-Cute in the book. But in real life, that gets replaced by, did you mean M-O-N-T-A-Cute? I think that name, the E-V version and things like Montague come from like a common... similar root stock. But what I found when I was looking at Montacut to see if there was an obvious reference here was Montacute House in South Somerset. And within that, I found a Discworld adjacent reference. This is definitely, by the way, not, almost certainly not what inspired the name Montecute in these books. But this is what we're going to talk about.

So to read out exploring building history.com.com. UK, the visitor's eye is likely to be drawn towards the plasterwork freeze on facing wall at the end of the hall. It dominates the upper section of the wall. However, it is not a work of fine, sophisticated renaissance ornamentation. It fits more in the category of local naive craft. And I'm going to copy the image address and paste that into your old signal box. There we go. Ooh.

Yeah. Montecute House was built by a successful lawyer. in the 1600s, so why would a lawyer on the rise place a plasterwork freeze local scene of villages implementing their own form of justice? Because what is happening here is a custom called the skimity ride, the skimmington ride or carivari, which we've talked about before in the south-west of England. The event was normally called riding skimmington rough music and a form of popular culture. So here we have a freeze depicting rough music. and there are two frames in the first The wife is hitting her husband over the head with the clog

In the right she's holding something Maybe the handle of the ladle which is broken off And then in the second scene We see the terrible The husband who has been Yes It has been slapped about with the ladle Or possibly an effigy of him

Or a neighbour imitating him Which well has the ways of doing rough music It's more an intimidation than an assault sitting astride a pole uncomfortably and paraded through town while being made to play a wooden flute and a drum which provides some of the rough music and then

yeah so basically the man's transgression here is likely to be the fact that he allowed his wife to dominate him rather than whatever transgression he did to make the wife hit him with a ladlog yeah so double unhappiness for the poor man in here who was being beaten by a clog and then by his neighbours. But yeah, it's just a, that's what I found. Absolutely.

I looked at one to cute and I felt no need to go further than that. No, I'm very with you on that. Listeners, and you can enjoy a page all about the meaningful cuckoo within the, oh, there we go, I could tie that up there, couldn't I? There's also a cuckoo in there and the symbolism actually is very different from the mid-witch cuckoos. Excellent. Okay. I think that's all we're going to say about the Long Mars.

We'll be back in December. We are going to do a little Christmas special because multiple friends of the pod have got festive things out. So we're going to be talking about C.K. McDonald's new book in the Stranger Time series. And we're going to be talking about Mark Burroughs new book, Missile, The History of the Christmas Number One. We may have a special guest for that one. Maybe. I make no promises because timelines are hard. We've also got an episode coming out much, much sooner than that about my new book, American Teen Dramas from Sunnydale to Riverdale, which from today, when this episode you're listening to comes out, is on sale on my website if you want to sign copy.

Is this the first time we've recorded episodes in a different order to releasing them? Quite possibly. I wore the same jumper for both episodes for continuity reasons and also because it's quite warm. Yeah. Anyway, until we're back in December, dear listeners, you can of course join our wonderful Discord. There's a link down below. Follow us on Instagram at The True Show, Make You Threat, and Blue Sky

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and make you fret, we can exchange your hard-earned pennies, for all sorts of bonus nonsense. And until next time, dear listener, don't let us detain you. Yes, I look panicked, because I didn't have the end of the book I feel. Thank you for doing that.