Escape Artists
Escape Pod => Episode Comments => Topic started by: Russell Nash on August 28, 2009, 12:44:27 PM
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EP213: A Monkey Will Never Get Rid of Its Black Hands (http://escapepod.org/2009/08/27/ep213-a-monkey-will-never-get-rid-of-its-black-hands/)
By Rachel Swirsky (http://www.rachelswirsky.com/).
Read by Alasdair Stuart (http://www.alasdairstuart.com/).
Papa and Uncle Fomba told me if I didn’t join the army, they’d kill me. They didn’t. They cut off my hands.
This was after U.S. forces marched on Syria, but before we invaded Lebanon. On every city block, posters of Uncle Sam entreated every Tom, Duc, and Haroun to get blown up in the name of freedom. Papa and Fomba gave me two weeks to enlist. I ran for Canada instead. They caught me.
Rated R for amputation fads.
(http://escapepod.org/wp-images/podcast-mini4.gif)
Listen to this week’s Escape Pod! (http://media.rawvoice.com/escapepod/media.libsyn.com/media/escapepod/EP213MonkeyWillNever.mp3)
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To all of the new folks coming here from the blog,
I'm the moderator of the episode comments for EP. I live six hours ahead of EPLT (EscapePod Local Time). Most of the time the stories go live sometime around three in the morning for me. This means there will not be a thread until seven hours after the story goes up. Sometimes the thread is up in fifteen minutes. Be a little patient. If you really need to post, you can send me a PM with your home phone number and I'll call you when the thread is up. On average the thread goes up at four in the morning EPLT. That's one in the morning on the west coast.
Make yourselves at home. We don't bite…much,
Russell Nash
Moderator EP forums
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I'm upset. The editing was atrocious. A stumble can be forgiven, but there were a lot of them and I almost got the felling that Alasdair was dozing off.
The story itself was ok, but I think the editing took me out of the story.
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Editing indeed. Bit of a freudian slip there Alasdair? Poor starving Americans? Still prefer your accent to a hell of a lot of others though, but that's probably to do with me being a fellow Brit.
Interesting story, but a little grim.
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Sorry folks, we really botched the editing on this one. I'm trying to get a fixed version up today.
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First of all it's hard for me to see how this story qualifies as sci-fi despite Alasdair's references to Phillip K. Dick stories, but be that as it may.
The story had an interesting take on moral courage that you don't see mentioned much in fiction any more and in a way that avoided the mawkishness and treacley sentiments usually associated with such discussions too. And for me that was a refreshing plus. As people should know by now being made a victim by whatever traumatic or brutal circumstances does not of its self confer a saintly halo of righteousness or martyrdom on a person. I think that this was Swirsky’s point in the story. The monkey handed victim only became authentically heroic after he chose to try to transcend his victimhood.
And to agree with a previous reviewer's comments the narration gaffes did kind of break the mood sometimes but it's the thought that counts and not perfect execution IMHO.
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Unfortunately, every now and again real life and other work combine with short deadlines and my basic enthusiasm to do lots of things to ensure that I don't do my best work. This is one of those times I'm afraid. The good news is that now things have settled down at Escape Artists this should happen a lot less.
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Did someone forget to use the cat 'o' nine tails on Al? Seriously, though, I think a little more edititing would have fixed the issues.
I understand being busy, and I do appreciate the effort!
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I wasn't so put off by the pauses and whatnot in the reading (I think there was only one mistake, also, so it really didn't interfere with my listening).
But.
Al? If you have to spend that long explaining why you think a story is "science fiction", it probably isn't. As in this case.
I understand the point you were making, with reference to earlier stories that take place in an altered world but 'different Earth from our own' isn't science fiction either, necessarily, otherwise a historical revisionist story would be sci-fi, too.
[*has flashbacks to Ye Olde Podcastle "Yes these are stories about elves" Conflict* Ugh. :P ]
As far as the story goes, maybe I missed something in the beginning but the setting wasn't entirely clear to me:
why exactly were mutilations helping to keep the war effort going? It worked as a spur for the main character so it was fine, but when my mind wandered to the actions of people in general in the country I was drawing a bit of blank.
And the descriptions of the narrator's experiences of life without hands were really well described, imho. As were the differing tensions between him and his girlfriend throughout the story.
So....good story, not science fiction but a good story nonetheless.
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The monkey handed victim only became authentically heroic after he chose to try to transcend his victimhood.
Oooh, yeah, forgot to mention that. I think that final moment really brought the story together for me.
He finally has the courage to move on with his life, or at least to try to.
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I rather was amused by the "poor starving Americans" line.
Al's reading was generally good, previously-mentioned concerns aside.
I don't know that I necessarily consider this sci-fi because I don't know where history diverged. But again, that discussion can be had by those more knowledgeable than I.
My second problem with the story was its length -- I counted at least three good places where it could have ended, but didn't.
My first problem with the story was that it felt very preachy, very "hey, in the future all this bad shit is going to happen because America is fighting an unwarranted war". I realize this is a valid point of view to some people (which may or may not include me), but I felt it there was too much of it, and the "okay, it's going to end... no, it's going to end NOW... no, it's going to end... NOW... no..." that I kept experiencing lent a lot to it. I think if the story had been shorter I could have handled that aspect a little better. I've written my share of near-future stories, but I tend to avoid war stories because they get preachy in the end. I think it can be very difficult to write a non-preachy war story.
Also, I find it interesting -- and I think this might be fodder for its own thread -- that very little of the contemporary American SF that I've read comes from the POV that "the war is good, and if we didn't fight the war, here's what would happen". Perhaps that's just because many contemporary American SF writers and editors have beliefs that fall in line with "the war is bad/unjust", or they know that if their beliefs don't fall into line with that, they have to keep it hidden. This list also may or may not include me.
I really liked the talk show description -- how the Narrator explained his livelihood, the way talk shows were uber-Patriotic, etc etc. I think that could have been the frame for the whole story, if the author had wanted to tell it differently (or shorter). And I'm both intrigued and uncomfortable at the kind of research the author must have had to do to make the Narrator's handlessness more realistic. Amputation is, I think, one of the most uncomfortable topics in both fiction and real-life. Our eyes tend to be drawn to the amputee's missing part more than the fact that s/he is still a human being. Maybe she did it by reading a lot, or maybe she went to a V.A. hospital to talk to soldiers who were amputees, or maybe she talked to doctors who specialize in treating the specific issues people must deal with when they go through an amputation. From the POV of someone who's never had to deal with it, she pulled off the horror and bleakness of it admirably, and I have much respect for that.
I can't give it a good/bad/meh rating, unfortunately. It had parts of all three. As a whole I didn't like it, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad story. It just wasn't a good story for me.
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Listener, check out David Weber and Terry Goodkind.
I wonder, too, about the focus on the girlfriend's weight. Was it necessary? Where is the outcry over the "she was fatter than I'd had, but a vehicle is never too big for it's driver"?
Edit::Put in the correct quote.
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The proverbs were interesting and I do like how realistically the main character reacted to the unwanted attention, but it was somewhat longer than it needed to be (a couple of scenes could have been taken out) and I found it really hard to believe that so many people would have their hands cut off.
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Ok first: I love stories with monkeys in them, but who doesn't. I was really looking forward to hear a great SciFi story about monkeys!
Ugh!
I'll give this 1 (out of five) stars. I found myself actively angry at the writer. The one (1) star is because of the slip "Starving American", the best part of the story. I think the story would have been better if had not been corrected.
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...and I found it really hard to believe that so many people would have their hands cut off.
I didn't. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/5129350.stm)
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The "starving Americans" line was a slip-up? Didn't occur to me it wasn't in the original story.
I noticed some editing problems, but overall I had no problem with Al's narration. If I'd read this story in text form and thought about who would be an ideal narrator, I admit the name Alasdair Stuart would have never occurred to me. But editing goofs aside, he did a fine job.
As for the story itself, there was a lot there, and a lot for me to mull over. As far as I'm concerned, sure, it was sufficiently science-fictional for Escape Pod. Why not?
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...and I found it really hard to believe that so many people would have their hands cut off.
I didn't. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/5129350.stm)
I meant in America. I'm so American that I just assume that everyone would know that I was talking about America. I should have been more specific.
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...and I found it really hard to believe that so many people would have their hands cut off.
I didn't. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/5129350.stm)
I meant in America. I'm so American that I just assume that everyone would know that I was talking about America. I should have been more specific.
I know it's fiction, but the Ellen Jamesians (http://everything2.com/title/Ellen+James) in The World According to Garp aren't that far-fetched. There are crazy people everywhere.
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I'm a big fan of Rachel Swirsky's work, but not such a big fan of this story. It was well written in a number of ways, many of which have already been mentioned, but it left me cold. Maybe its too close to home (I am really tired of the left vs. right rhetoric in the US that seems to pervade everything - the last place I want to encounter it is in Escapepod, which so often has been my escapepod from the rigors and travails of daily life).
Also, I can buy that someone used to living a life where cutting off the hands of women and children was commonplace, and who reveled in these acts, wouldn't hesitate to cut off the hands of his nephew, and I can buy some copycat cuttings done to strangers, but Barry's hands and feet being cut off by his own father? This is probably a key element in advancing one or more of the themes of this story that is beyond me, but for me it stretched the willing suspension of disbelief a bit too far.
I like that Escapepod has included a number of stories that aren't traditionally considered science fiction or which defy easy classification, but really? I'm glad Alisdair addressed this point immediately, even if I don't completely agree with what he said.
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...and I found it really hard to believe that so many people would have their hands cut off.
I didn't. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/5129350.stm)
I meant in America. I'm so American that I just assume that everyone would know that I was talking about America. I should have been more specific.
I know it's fiction, but the Ellen Jamesians (http://everything2.com/title/Ellen+James) in The World According to Garp aren't that far-fetched. There are crazy people everywhere.
the ellen jamesians had thier tounges cut out by thier rapists, these guys had thier hands cut off by their fathers. the one act might seem to be in the long-term interest of the perpetrator. fathers, theoreticaly, want thier sons functional.
that being said, i really liked this story. i liked what in said about violence. In terms of that, the 400 handless seemed kindof more of a surreal element. perhaps if we decide that statistic is more real than surreal, it is a sign that something is very wrong (kinda like with the ellen jamesians).
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I know it's fiction, but the Ellen Jamesians (http://everything2.com/title/Ellen+James) in The World According to Garp aren't that far-fetched. There are crazy people everywhere.
the ellen jamesians had thier tounges cut out by thier rapists,
Wrong. Ellen had her tongue cut out by her rapists, but her fan club cut out their own tongues as a symbolic protest.
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...and I found it really hard to believe that so many people would have their hands cut off.
I didn't. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/5129350.stm)
I meant in America. I'm so American that I just assume that everyone would know that I was talking about America. I should have been more specific.
I know it's fiction, but the Ellen Jamesians (http://everything2.com/title/Ellen+James) in The World According to Garp aren't that far-fetched. There are crazy people everywhere.
the ellen jamesians had thier tounges cut out by thier rapists,
I never read the book and the movie was a long time ago, but didn't the Ellen Jamesians cut out their own tongues. It was a way of showing their commitment to the cause. The real Ellen had hers cut out by her rapists (I think it was a gang rape), so she couldn't testify against them.
Argh… StePh beat me to it.
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I think that the reason Swirsky's story wasn't too popular is that she brought out into the open the darkness of heart some people have. Some more than others and the quite terrible few that act out their viciousness without remorse or restraint in particular. (http://"http://www.word-power.co.uk/books/time-for-machetes-I9781852429881/") This is not a pretty picture often times but it is a service that art performs for our culture.
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...and I found it really hard to believe that so many people would have their hands cut off.
I didn't. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/5129350.stm)
I meant in America. I'm so American that I just assume that everyone would know that I was talking about America. I should have been more specific.
I know it's fiction, but the Ellen Jamesians (http://everything2.com/title/Ellen+James) in The World According to Garp aren't that far-fetched. There are crazy people everywhere.
the ellen jamesians had thier tounges cut out by thier rapists,
I never read the book and the movie was a long time ago, but didn't the Ellen Jamesians cut out their own tongues. It was a way of showing their commitment to the cause. The real Ellen had hers cut out by her rapists (I think it was a gang rape), so she couldn't testify against them.
Argh… StePh beat me to it.
right, right.
that's a little far-fetched.
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Outstanding piece of writing. Great narration and dialogue, but I think the depth of the charaters really carried the story.
I didn't find anything here particularly far fetched. U.S. History is full of stranger foreign policy actions than WWIII to liberate the mid east and north Africa. I also don't have An issue with the way the mutilations were depicted. I could absolutely see this happening here.
As to whether or not this piece is sci fi, I think this is a perfectly sound bit of spec fic. Not sure I understand what the fuss is about.
Again, great story, engrossing and entertaining.
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Me, I liked this one. It's the first RS story I've heard/read (that I can remember). Might have to go hunt up some more.
Curiously, I identified best with Mammadu (sp?) when he was wondering why the hell these people were interfering so with his life. How dare they set him up with people and situations he wanted nothing to do with? I wasn't expecting him to change his mind. Hmm. Maybe there's a message in there for me... something like, if enough people/friends tell you you're being a dick, you're being a dick.
Was it sci-fi? Who cares? It was certainly speculative fiction. I liked it. I'd be fascinated to know what prompted the theme and the premise.
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This story was awesome. I loved it. It really got to me.
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Dead boring. Disliked everyone. Shut off at the 25 minute mark when I had had my fill of people being either cruel or surly.
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Dead boring. Disliked everyone. Shut off at the 25 minute mark when I had had my fill of people being either cruel or surly.
That's pretty harsh words for you.
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Dead boring. Disliked everyone. Shut off at the 25 minute mark when I had had my fill of people being either cruel or surly.
That's pretty harsh words for you.
I admit freely that I enjoy science fiction for escapism.
I want to HAVE FUN dammit.
I don't need to be preached to and I don't need to be lectured. I know that disabled people can be real bastards sometimes and the people who take care of them can be meddlesome busybodies, thank you very much.
When I go for nearly a half an hour wondering WHEN oh WHEN is someone going to drop a bomb on the whole batch and put them out of their misery, I stop listening. It's just not worth the investment.
Whatever happened to "Have Fun"?
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Dead boring. Disliked everyone. Shut off at the 25 minute mark when I had had my fill of people being either cruel or surly.
Nobilis' reaction doesn't surprise me. It was that kind of story. I had the same kind of reaction to the film Schindler's List. Everybody told me how much I should like it because...(insert trite bromide here). Writers can tell people their POV but they can't make readers accept it. It's a risk authors and those that publish them have to take.
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I suppose there's more to good fiction than escapism and wish fulfillment. I love a fun story as much as anyone, but I think fiction, of any genre, is at it's best when it prompts us to think a bit.
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As to whether or not this piece is sci fi, I think this is a perfectly sound bit of spec fic. Not sure I understand what the fuss is about.
Well, since you make the distinction yourself, it might be 'speculative fiction' and not SciFi.
Like I said, I enjoyed the story, but it wasn't SciFi, which is what Escape Pod does.
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Excellent story. ;D I consider it science fiction because it does what science fiction does best: it takes current trends and follows and extrapolates them into a different course, in the vein of every science fiction writer from Asimov to Wells.
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Excellent story. ;D I consider it science fiction because it does what science fiction does best: it takes current trends and follows and extrapolates them into a different course, in the vein of every science fiction writer from Asimov to Wells.
In which case you could have fantasy stories that would then be classifiable as science fiction.
Being in a changed setting or having a changed history isn't enough to be 'sci fi'
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Excellent story. ;D I consider it science fiction because it does what science fiction does best: it takes current trends and follows and extrapolates them into a different course, in the vein of every science fiction writer from Asimov to Wells.
In which case you could have fantasy stories that would then be classifiable as science fiction.
Being in a changed setting or having a changed history isn't enough to be 'sci fi'
OK. Would you have called in Sci Fi if it had been set on an orbital platform, or if the war were being fought in a distant solar system rather than the mid east? At the heart of Sci Fi is "what if?" and "I wonder...". Scatterbrain is spot on. It doesn't need space ships and nannites to be Sci Fi. Anyway, Spec is just a flavor of Sci Fi, like Space Opera or Military. The defining attribute of, for me at least, fantasy is the element of magic. So no, I see no way to get from that to anything I would call SF.
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Would you have called in Sci Fi if it had been set on an orbital platform, or if the war were being fought in a distant solar system rather than the mid east?
Very probably, yes. :P
At the heart of Sci Fi is "what if?" and "I wonder...".
Like I said, that would mean a lot of other types of story could be classed as Sci Fi.
The defining attribute of, for me at least, fantasy is the element of magic. So no, I see no way to get from that to anything I would call SF.
I appreciate what you say about genres having a defining attribute or element (like saying fantasy = magic of some form). I'm confused why you'd say that should have such a specific (and I agree, too, by the way) element to it but then say that 'science fiction' can be a story that has a central element of 'what if?'
As I see it, (just) being different or from a diverging history would make a story and setting different, sure, but I wouldn't then class that as Sci Fi.
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It doesn't need space ships and nannites to be Sci Fi.
I agree but a story does, imo, need at least something relating to some sort of science or technological development (and possibly then the social/cultural changes that would then occur).
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i'm glad that ep ran this story. it wasn't really my thing but it's different than normal and variety keeps things interesting. wouldn't want stories this preachy on a regular basis though.
if nothing else it gives us an excuse to rehash our personal definitions of the genre and that's always good for a couple pages of comments. maybe some of the fresh faces from the blog have a different take on it.
one thing that struck me was the reading. pseudopod does an excellent job of matching the right reader to the story, several simple ghost stories were made very compelling by the performance. a big part of this is getting a reader from the right region.
Alasdair5000 is a favourite of many listeners but this story was thoroughly american and it would have benefited for an american accent.
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one thing that struck me was the reading. pseudopod does an excellent job of matching the right reader to the story, several simple ghost stories were made very compelling by the performance. a big part of this is getting a reader from the right region.
Alasdair5000 is a favourite of many listeners but this story was thoroughly american and it would have benefited for an american accent.
I've been almost uniformly impressed with the narrators on PseudoPod, but there have been a couple of stories where the accent didn't quite match up with the story. I remember a few PseudoPods that left me with the strong impression the story was set on the opposite side of the Atlantic from where the narrator was from
I grew up in the area where "The Skull-Faced Boy" is set, and the accent the narrator gave some of the local characters is totally inappropriate. I can forgive that, because the narrator did a fantastic job otherwise.
Alasdair was far from the most obvious person to read this story, but he did a good job with it. Although I am beginning to wonder how a different narrator's take on it would be...
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There was a lot going on in this story. there was the analysis of what it is like to take care of people, and to need to be taken care of. but also, i though, a really bleak picture of world at war. i am not sure how accurate that picture is. i liked the setup, which, by giving the characters a past in Seirra Leone, reminded me that on a global level, conflict is non-stop. i though it painted a pretty chilling picture of how violence begets violence.
what i find far-fetched is that there are that many people in America who value blind patriotism so far ahead of family.
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I've read The Man in the High Castle. This ain't The Man in the High Castle.
Part of the problem with alternate history pieces is that it's hard to get a really accurate barometer of history without a lot of hindsight. Philip K. wrote his novella in 1962, almost two decades after the end of WWII. There's just not nearly enough historical perspective to pull off a similarly nuanced look at current wars. It'll inherently fall sort of flat because we still haven't really decided our collective attitude toward these conflicts.
I enjoyed the use of the traditional phrases as framing devices, but not much else. The story never reaches any transcendent highs, but it never bottoms out completely either. Solid enough from the execution standpoint, but I just don't think the concept works.
That said I still think it's sci-fi.
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As to whether or not this piece is sci fi, I think this is a perfectly sound bit of spec fic. Not sure I understand what the fuss is about.
Well, since you make the distinction yourself, it might be 'speculative fiction' and not SciFi.
Like I said, I enjoyed the story, but it wasn't SciFi, which is what Escape Pod does.
So, another 6 months has gone by. Let me dust off my old rant and put it here.
EP started as a Spec. Fic. market. That's big SF not sf. Ever since then EP and then PP and finally PC have done their bests to expand the borders of not only SF, but their individual niches. At the EA podcasts a story does not fall through the cracks, because it doesn't fit perfectly into one of the big three categories.
Whether or not a story belongs on one of the podcasts depends solely on whether or not the editor of that podcast points at it and says, "I want to run that." Arguments over classification of stories are DOA in these forums.
Edit: OK sleep and cooler heads have prevailed. Our policy of moving longer tangents and SF/nonSF discussions to our Gallimaufry board was out of place here. When this post was originally made, I was not aware that Al had started the discussion in the outro. Those of you who complained to me were right. And those of you who have been here for a while know that I don't normally do such strong moderation unless I know I'm right. When in doubt, I call in the other mods. In general the SF/nonSF discussion is still a non-starter in the story comments.
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I thought this sounded like an old argument.
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I'm interested by discussions of what is and is not SF, and where (or whether) the boundary should be drawn between science fiction and fantasy. But I seem to enjoy those discussions more when they're in the abstract. Because whenever someone asks whether story X counts as SF or not, my reaction is always to cheerfully shrug my shoulders and say, "Sure, it's SF. Why not?"
I know. Some help I am. :(
I'm actually still not sure if I like this particular story. It's well-written, and as shtick put it, there's a lot going on in it. I'd have to give it another listen to really figure out if I like it or not. But it depicts a world where the US is involved in a destructive pan-Middle Eastern war, and some of the chief props in American right-versus-left political culture are a bunch of people with deliberately amputated limbs. That's different from my world. Sure it belongs on Escape Pod. There's no uncertainty in my mind.
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I've read The Man in the High Castle. This ain't The Man in the High Castle.
Part of the problem with alternate history pieces is that it's hard to get a really accurate barometer of history without a lot of hindsight. Philip K. wrote his novella in 1962, almost two decades after the end of WWII. There's just not nearly enough historical perspective to pull off a similarly nuanced look at current wars. It'll inherently fall sort of flat because we still haven't really decided our collective attitude toward these conflicts.
I enjoyed the use of the traditional phrases as framing devices, but not much else. The story never reaches any transcendent highs, but it never bottoms out completely either. Solid enough from the execution standpoint, but I just don't think the concept works.
That said I still think it's sci-fi.
Personally I think a similar setting for Vietnam might have worked a little better, the attitude of Blind Patriotism (or the opposite) hold true. Look how we treated Vietnam veterans. Spit at, ignored at best etc. At least people seem to support our troops even if they don't support the war this time in America. As for the Blind Patriotism, when 9/11 first happened I heard a lot of statements from people who felt that treating people who didn't want to fight this way would almost be appropriate. People were all wanting to sign up as soon as they were able. It wasn't until the morass in Iraq that America lost the support for the "War on Terror"
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Whether or not a story belongs on one of the podcasts depends solely on whether or not the editor of that podcast points at it and says, "I want to run that." Arguments over classification of stories are DOA in these forums.
One of the things I've always enjoyed about EscapePod is that the intros and outros to the stories were often sources of great interest in themselves and sparked some interesting discussions. I'm not that interested in this particular discussion, as it has been done to death, but I'm not crazy about the precedent of bringing up a topic in the outtro and then declaring it DOA in the forums, either. Alisdair noted that some people were probably wondering why this story was run, and then argued that it "tapped into the vein of great science fiction." Maybe I've got the wrong idea about what forums are supposed to be, but that seems like an invitation to discussion to me. He didn't say that it was run because an editor pointed to it and said "I want to run that." If he had, that would be a very different matter.
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Well put. Whether this piece belongs on EP or not is, I think, a perfectly valid point of discussion.
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Go ahead and start a discussion in the SF discussion board or Gallimaufry and link to it from here, but as you said the conversation has been done to death in the episode threads. It has always lead to a screamfest that shouted out discussion of the story.
Edit: If you didn't see my edit a few posts back (http://forum.escapeartists.net/index.php?topic=2797.msg51057#msg51057), please read it before commenting.
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When Alasdair indicated that he'd be reading the story, I just about hit the "Skip" button.
MOD: Removed unnecessary and insulting language.
But I didn't. I decided to give it a try. Should have gone with my first inclination. "Somebody cut off my hands because I wouldn't go in the army and it made me sad and screwed up my relationships"
MOD: Did it again. Let's just say he wasn't happy with this one.
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If by "unnecessary and insulting language" you mean "a complaint about the poor quality of the audio recording equipment Alasdair uses that causes every single 'S' he utters to become a screeching sibilance that shatters my eardrums," then guilty as charged. Alasdair, please, for the love of Dagon, if you can't get a better microphone, try stretching a fabric or loosely elastic membrane in front of the mic. You're a fine speaker, delightful accent, but your recording equipment is absolutely butchering the reading.
MOD: You were guilty of far worse, but we'll leave it at that. Your rude and insulting language here is being left as an example of the absolute rudest behavior we allow in the forums. This is not the blogs. We try to have civilized conversations here.
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::Grumble grumble::
[back pedal] OK, I just finished listening to this one and I realize that an SF non-SF discussion is not totally out of line. I didn't realize that Al was starting the argument in the outro. If he'd been nice enough to let me know he was doing that, I would have started a thread in the SF discussion board when I put up this thread. My apologizes for any crushed toes.[/back pedal]
I took a couple of the posts and started the thread here (http://forum.escapeartists.net/index.php?topic=2815.0).
Edit: I back pedaled further. if you haven't read my edit here (http://forum.escapeartists.net/index.php?topic=2797.msg51057#msg51057), please do so before commenting.
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the point is, if a subject is brought up in an episode's intro/outro then it's valid to be discussed in that episode's thread.
you split out the posts that point this out but leave in your post telling people to avoid the topic and all posts that actually discuss the topic. this doesn't really seem like the act of contrition you're making it out to be.
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Yes, more discussion not about the episode. That's what we need.
I didn't claim to make any great act of contrition. I back pedaled a bit on some of my harsher attitude.
SF/nonSF arguments get very pointless, very fast and distract from the rest of the discussion about the story. I only said I would have had a separate thread ready for the discussion if I had been warned about the outro. My policy, until someone on the editorial staff tells me differently, is that these discussions are not allowed in the episode threads.
If you forget why that policy started, I recommend looking back at the threads around episodes 90-100 or so. It is incredibly dull reading.
Edit: If you haven't read my edit here (http://forum.escapeartists.net/index.php?topic=2797.msg51057#msg51057), please do so before commenting. This is the last post I needed to edit. This argument still holds water under normal conditions. These weren't normal. Please return to you regularly scheduled commenting on the story.
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I thought this was well-written and enjoyed the style; also it was an interesting idea. I couldn't really get the internal logic that made the Handless "heroes" - I just couldn't see why that would be. I also found it hard to believe that so many people would cut off their children's hands. The narrator's uncle was a heavy drinker who had been damaged by his experiences in the civil war, which made his actions more believable, but I just couldn't believe that it would spread like that. Also, is it just me, but is the title of the story a little offensive? I get that it's a proverb, but I dunno, a white woman writing about an African getting his hands cut off and naming the story after A Monkey's Black Hands... just seems a little- insensitive?
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I quite liked this. Although I couldn't really accept that Americans would start cutting off their childrens' hands to support a war effort, there were enough interesting ideas here to keep me riveted.
The editing slips didn't bother me... if anything they helped me appreciate the work that goes into recording an EP episode. Although when I heard the 'starving Americans' line I wondered if the alternate history was about to introduce a new angle.
And while it wasn't necessarily SF, alternate history stories (especially with a supernatural aspect) have been included in the SF genre for a while now, including other episodes of Escape Pod. So it wasn't out of place.
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you know, i don't think this thread is actually about whether the story is sf or not. i think this thread is about whether we are aloud to discuss it. i mean, talk about getting away from talking about the story. i am not even really interested in what sf is or isn't. i just like stories, and think that good ones come from here.
after nash laid down his law, i posted: "it was fantasy: the war ended", which post was moded about half an hour later. now, first, this was a joke, obviously, i though, and further, it was a story-content driven joke. i guess that was not how it was read. but, as i am new to this board and thus forming first impressions, the way i read the response to my response is that this is not a place that i should hang, with my flippant ways.
funny, i thought, since the last thing i posted about was not genre hairsplitting, but the ellen jamesians. ironic?
(note, i am NOT accusing board moderators of having a metaphorical connection with son-mutilating patriarchs through some tenuous connection between the act of silencing i feel was perpetrated on me and the characters in Irving's story and, through previous posts on this board, to the fathers in "Monkey", EXCEPT AS A JOKE. i don't even know the guy. i only know his actions)
Mod: Shtick, my apologies. Wiseass behavior is always welcome.
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I thought this was well-written and enjoyed the style; also it was an interesting idea. I couldn't really get the internal logic that made the Handless "heroes" - I just couldn't see why that would be. I also found it hard to believe that so many people would cut off their children's hands. The narrator's uncle was a heavy drinker who had been damaged by his experiences in the civil war, which made his actions more believable, but I just couldn't believe that it would spread like that.
yeah. the part that i found most interesting about the premise is how wars that are seemingly far away manage to ratchet up the violence everywhere on a micro level. i liked especially the throwaway line about America recruiting the immigrant children of those wars. i thought this made a good point about the international cycle of violence, and how even it can be co-opted. but there is a big difference between war here and war there still. i thought that this fact made the connection between state violence and the personal violence perpetrated by the fathers in this story twisted in a way that i am not sure i could follow.
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If you haven't read my edit here (http://forum.escapeartists.net/index.php?topic=2797.msg51057#msg51057), please do so. I hope everything can get back on track now.
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btw @shtick -- Welcome!! (as per my title)
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Thanks for moving me back to the thread, Russell - I could hear the crickets chirping in that other thread ;D FWIW, I don't think the moderators of the forums get paid nearly enough.
One of the things I've enjoyed about escapepod stories is that I can almost always enjoy them on two levels. The first level is the "imagine if" level. Imagine if you were in a spaceport talking to a guy named skinhorse after you had fought a war in Mars, imagine if you were sharing a spaceship with someone gradually losing their sanity, imagine if your memories had been erased for your crimes, and so on. The second level is the mirror that reflects back on us. What does the story with Skinhorse have to say about vets from wars, particularly unsuccessful wars, what does the isolation story have to say about our society, our relationships, what does the memory-erasing story have to say about our judicial system, about the way we behave in general, and so on.
The stories I like best are interesting on both levels, but I've also been thoroughly entertained by stories rich on the first level and weak on the second level. To me, the first level of this story was weak. Not because it wasn't speculative, but because the speculation didn't strike me as that much of a stretch from my current reality. So I got a heavy dose of a mirror highlighting the ugly lines of fracture of my society and the ignoble motivations and deeds of villian and victim alike. The growth of the main character at the end of the story was too little, too late. That was my personal reaction to the story, although I'm sure if I came into it with a different frame of mind or at a different time of life, I'd react very differently, as there was some brilliant writing on exhibition here, too.
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And, finally, it occurs to me that the goal of the author with this story may have been primarily to get the reader to think about things the reader may not want to think about. If so, I'd have to say the author was very successful, at least with me.
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The editing WAS awful. Generally I enjoy hearing Al read- but the pauses and the one (though amusing) flub took me a bit out of the story. My initial reaction to this was "good story, wrong cast" But I got to thinking about how it was an alternate reality. About how we get a lot of crossover pieces. Sometimes a story must strike someone (one of those big EP editors in the sky) as so good they must have it for their cast and damn the critics and the consequences. I think that may be the case behind this piece. I thought it was awful, powerful, at moments dull- but the imagery stuck with me. The ideas were decent. I am starting to wonder if Rachel is getting special treatment- we do get to hear a LOT of her stories, but then we get a lot of stories from repeat writers (Kat Rambo, the excellent Union Dues series, etc) so perhaps I'm seeing more there then I should, could just be her writing isn't to my particular taste. However- I'm rambling. Decent story, I still feel it falls a little short on being sci-fi, but that's just my opinion.
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Just popping in real quick to address a couple of things. I understand the discussion about whether or not this is science fiction. I certainly had that debate myself when considering the story, and ultimately, I felt that it reminded me of a lot of the science fiction I read as a kid (I think maybe it was New Wave?), dealing with social issues rather than rockets or ray guns. It reminds me of a lot of Terry Bisson's work. But I think it's a personal opinion, and one you are free to disagree with. I definitely understand why Russell moderated things the way he did as well. Ordinarily, it's a pretty boring discussion, and one that long-time fans have been over and over.
Please bear in mind that Escape Pod may run things not science fiction from time to time. Next week, you'll hear something that isn't strictly science fiction, read by Steve, but as Steve argues, it's an Escape Pod story. We think you will agree. We also have a policy of running sequels to stories that ran on Escape Pod on Escape Pod, regardless of their genre. I just purchased a follow-up to "The Trouble with Death Traps" which is fantasy.
As far as Rachel getting special consideration, not from me (I can't speak for anyone else). I rejected several of her stories before accepting this one. I do like Rachel's work, and I did long before I came on board here.
And as far as the editing goes, all I can say is we'll do better next time. I think you'll find that this week's episode is a marked improvement. Try to keep in mind that the team working on these right now are relatively new, so we're going to make mistakes from time to time. We'll do our best to avoid them. Part of the problem has been a very small lead time (my own fault, for which I take responsibility), but we're working very hard to get ahead of the schedule right now. Also, our narrators are volunteers. They are being very generous with their time, and they may not all be professional, but I hope that in many cases they make up for that with their enthusiasm for the genre. They are my heroes for what they do, and they save you all from having to listen to *my* horrible voice every week.
Anyway, sorry I don't make it in here more often. I do read your comments when I can, and I appreciate the feedback.
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I am starting to wonder if Rachel is getting special treatment- we do get to hear a LOT of her stories, but then we get a lot of stories from repeat writers (Kat Rambo, the excellent Union Dues series, etc) so perhaps I'm seeing more there then I should, could just be her writing isn't to my particular taste. However- I'm rambling. Decent story, I still feel it falls a little short on being sci-fi, but that's just my opinion.
I think we've heard three Swirsky stories in the past year across all three shows (not including Flash). I don't consider that "a lot". I do think we're hearing a LOT of Kat Rambo, either narrating or writing. Her style I don't like. Swirsky's topics generally aren't to my taste, but I don't have a huge problem with her style.
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This is somewhat off topic, except that Rachel's website is linked from her name in the original post. I clicked on it to see what was new, and what's new is that the site looks like it has been hacked. (The clue is the black page with the word 'HACKED!" in large white letters...)
I'm posting this here in the hopes that Rachel is checking this thread occasionally, or someone who has phone access to her can let her know right away, in case it matters to her.
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Jeremiah, good to hear from you. Thanks for taking the time to explain stuff.
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Sorry to make my first forum story comment harsh, but here goes. Editing issues and SF/notSF discussions aside (I would posit that if you have to spend more than three minutes explaining why a story is SF, it's not SF), this was a weak story.
1. Good alternate history is plausible alternate history. I find it highly unlikely that Americans are going to adopt the tactics of the RUF from Sierra Leone in dealing with pacifists and conscientious objectors during wartime. The RUF were mindless drug-addled teenage thugs that lopped off limbs for sport and boredom. That part Rachel got right. But that tribalist cultural context simply could not get transplanted to the pluralist United States. That kind of casual cruelty is all but taboo here, particularly parents and older relatives attacking children or younger siblings. I personally believe Fomba would not have lasted five years in prison after mutilating a family member, and there certainly would have been no copycat crimes. I understand what Swirsky was trying to say with this analogy, but it can't take the load of the story. Ultimately, it was a distraction.
2. The characters were a turnoff. The main character was a static, pessimist a**hole save for the last two minutes of the story, and the supporting characters all stayed static throughout. (Barry, the supposed foil, did little better by being a static, optimist a**hole.)
3. I'm not asking for a happy ending to every story, but this story marinates in its own nihilism and cynicism. The characters don't change, the world doesn't change, wars go on without end and end without meaning, the media are vultures, people who experience tragedy are consumed by it. But what is the point? I understand Alasdair saying that this is about chronicling alternate history from the micro end of the scale, but the story is so micro, and the characters so off-putting, that any point or moral is lost. (The Chris Hedges quote is oddly appropriate, he does this same reductionist thing with journalism - tell carefully-selected micro-tales of static human tragedy in war, and then handwave them into a denunciation of all war and hope no one notices or asks a question.)
Sorry. :-\
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I am sorry to announce that I do not like Swirsky's writing. That is why I stopped listening to Pod Castle.
I am not American and found this story to be a thinly disguised rant about the Iraq/Afganistan wars that seems to be obsessing the American public. I listen to EP for entertainment and, quite frankly, do not welcome this kind of psychoanalysis from Ms Swirsky. "Black hands" for Pete's sake. Am I the only one seeing a metaphor of "blood on our (American) hands"?
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1. Good alternate history is plausible alternate history. I find it highly unlikely that Americans are going to adopt the tactics of the RUF from Sierra Leone in dealing with pacifists and conscientious objectors during wartime.
We say that, but here's an example of how certain Americans think:
Recently, a 61-year-old man became frustrated when a woman wouldn't do something about her two-year-old daughter's crying while they shopped in Wal-Mart. The man said something to the effect of "shut that kid up or I will". When the child continued crying, the man gave the child a few slaps. He is now in jail on felony child cruelty charges. Full story: http://www.11alive.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=134682&catid=3
Yesterday morning I came across this article in support of what the man did: http://christwire.org/2009/09/older-gentleman-politely-slaps-strangers-crying-baby-at-walmart/
Obviously slapping a child and chopping off a person's hands are vastly different orders of magnitude, but it just goes to show that there are people everywhere -- even if they're just a minority -- who will do something "civilized society" thinks is wrong because the minority believes it's the right thing to do.
The people who turned the handless into the handless were a minority -- I'm fairly certain the average American in the story didn't have his/her hands chopped off for not agreeing to go to war -- and I do think the example was a tad hyperbolic, but Americans can be convinced to believe anything if enough people say it on TV or the internet, regardless of its rightness, truthfulness, or intelligent-ness.
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but Americans can be convinced to believe anything if enough people say it on TV or the internet, regardless of its rightness, truthfulness, or intelligent-ness.
Is this really an American trait or is it a human trait. I sure as hell see my share of Germans believing total horseshit.
I first started teaching English here in early 2002. As the only American in the room, I fielded many questions about the States. One of the most asked questions was if Americans really had unisex restrooms in offices. Ally McBeal was still on German television then and they thought the bathrooms were real.
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It seems to me that Ms Swirsky's style is to make her stories revolve around some contemporary issue. I have no problem with "social relevance" in a story. However, my experience with Ms Swirsky's writing (and, incidentally, her editing of Pod Castle) is that she is so blatantly cramming in "relevance" that the story is somewhat lost, or even non-existent.
That said, other posts have noted that Ms Swirsky has presented a powerful insight into the challenges of amputees, with which I agree. Stop grinding the axe so much Rachel and focus on the story.
I still don't think this is science fiction.
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You've said already that you are not a fan of Rachel Swirsky, which is fair enough if that's how you feel but it's probably better to keep discussions to the story itself rather than making things personal, which is very easy for internet 'board discussions to do.
Like you said (well, sort of :P ):
Stop grinding the axe so much [insert name here] and focus on the story.
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I first started teaching English here in early 2002. As the only American in the room, I fielded many questions about the States. One of the most asked questions was if Americans really had unisex restrooms in offices. Ally McBeal was still on German television then and they thought the bathrooms were real.
Wait. WAIT -- you DON'T have unisex bathrooms?? Shite!!
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I still don't think this is science fiction.
I'd say you're correct (see earlier in thread).
Personally I'd say this would go on the same point on a 'sf/non-sf' scale as The Handmaids Tale (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Handmaid%27s_Tale) in that it occurs in a different version of 'our' Earth and looks at the effects of different ways of being in a society.
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I first started teaching English here in early 2002. As the only American in the room, I fielded many questions about the States. One of the most asked questions was if Americans really had unisex restrooms in offices. Ally McBeal was still on German television then and they thought the bathrooms were real.
Wait. WAIT -- you DON'T have unisex bathrooms?? Shite!!
Not just that but, actually...........most female lawyers do not spend their time in near-psychotic-break levels of imaginary worlds and songs.
Or work with Lucy Liu. Or with Portia De Rossi....
Or have ex 80's/90's rock singers as their plumber.
Or have previously unknown about 10-year-old daughters turn up on their doorstep.
Or spend their time after they have finished work and could go home in a company bar that a) exists in the same building and b) is always busy.
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Terry,
You've made your points about the story. When you start going after someone personally, we start to have a problem. If you'd like to discuss Rachel's writing further, you are free to start a thread about it in the Gallimaufry or fantasy discussion sections.
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1. Good alternate history is plausible alternate history. I find it highly unlikely that Americans are going to adopt the tactics of the RUF from Sierra Leone in dealing with pacifists and conscientious objectors during wartime.
We say that, but here's an example of how certain Americans think:
Recently, a 61-year-old man became frustrated when a woman wouldn't do something about her two-year-old daughter's crying while they shopped in Wal-Mart. The man said something to the effect of "shut that kid up or I will". When the child continued crying, the man gave the child a few slaps. He is now in jail on felony child cruelty charges. Full story: http://www.11alive.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=134682&catid=3
Yesterday morning I came across this article in support of what the man did: http://christwire.org/2009/09/older-gentleman-politely-slaps-strangers-crying-baby-at-walmart/
Obviously slapping a child and chopping off a person's hands are vastly different orders of magnitude, but it just goes to show that there are people everywhere -- even if they're just a minority -- who will do something "civilized society" thinks is wrong because the minority believes it's the right thing to do.
I'm pretty sure that site is a parody - there's no links to any other conservative/Levitican websites (I refuse to dignify them with the title of "Christian"), but there are links to Daily Kos, Crooks and Liars, and Huffington Post. Their other articles seem similarly parody-ish, almost like a Levitican version of the Onion ("I am extremely terrified of Chinese people," "College Humor promotes gay office relationships" "Is it OK for my teenage daughter to masturbate?", etc.)
Plus, it's a lot more Web 2.0 than is typical for a site that crazy...
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Recently, a 61-year-old man became frustrated when a woman wouldn't do something about her two-year-old daughter's crying while they shopped in Wal-Mart. The man said something to the effect of "shut that kid up or I will". When the child continued crying, the man gave the child a few slaps. He is now in jail on felony child cruelty charges. Full story: http://www.11alive.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=134682&catid=3
Yesterday morning I came across this article in support of what the man did: http://christwire.org/2009/09/older-gentleman-politely-slaps-strangers-crying-baby-at-walmart/
I'm pretty sure that site is a parody - there's no links to any other conservative/Levitican websites (I refuse to dignify them with the title of "Christian"), but there are links to Daily Kos, Crooks and Liars, and Huffington Post. Their other articles seem similarly parody-ish, almost like a Levitican version of the Onion ("I am extremely terrified of Chinese people," "College Humor promotes gay office relationships" "Is it OK for my teenage daughter to masturbate?", etc.)
Seems a bit like Landover Baptist (http://www.landoverbaptist.org/).
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I didn't like this story because it failed to contain any of the things I love about short science fiction, such as such as exploring new technologies, looking at how alien cultures may develop, how we may interact with them, how science presents us with perilous opportunities, the process of discovery, new phenomena, space travel, and much more.
This story could have been published in the 99% of places that don't focus on sci-fi, I very much agree with Praxis' comment: "If you have to spend that long explaining why you think a story is "science fiction", it probably isn't. As in this case."
And, I'm not sure I agree that the discussion about "sci-fi" or "not sci-fi" is worthless in the forums because the forums aren't just a place for fans to discuss. Rather, they are a valuable way for the editors to get feedback on their selections. If many people comment and say "not sci-fi," I hope the editors would think twice about running similar stories in Escape Pod. To just say "I didn't like it" and not explain why feels unfair to the authors of such stories, as I might have liked this story in a different context with different expectations.
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And, I'm not sure I agree that the discussion about "sci-fi" or "not sci-fi" is worthless in the forums because the forums aren't just a place for fans to discuss. Rather, they are a valuable way for the editors to get feedback on their selections. If many people comment and say "not sci-fi," I hope the editors would think twice about running similar stories in Escape Pod. To just say "I didn't like it" and not explain why feels unfair to the authors of such stories, as I might have liked this story in a different context with different expectations.
The problem is that the argument blocks out all other comments and then degenerates down to the same back and forth. The argument is allowed just not in the story threads. Before this subject was banned, every single story ended up with this argument. This included a story on a space station with several different races of aliens. No two people have the same definition for scifi.
What's worse is that no matter how many times you explain that SF is Speculative Fiction, some Jackass still says it's not SciFi. This story was SpecFic. The discussion should be over how well it did that, not over if it's scifi or not.
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Fair enough! I guess I can see how someone would read a space station story and say, "that wasn't a real SciFi story because the author just plopped the people onto a space station."
Perhaps someone out there can invent a scale or system for describing stories that includes some non-spoiler way of indicating where on the SpecFic spectrum a story falls.
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I'm just back in from the car trying to listen to this story. The premise is great, the execution is horrible. The author constantly contradicts him/herself. Narrator says "Character X would never do action A". Then, Character X immediately does A. I got the feeling that Alasdair had to force his way through reading it. This is especially true considering his constantly having to stop reading, take a breath, and start over from two or three sentences back.
I have to say there were a number of hilarious misspoken bits that had me laughing, especially the bit about the main character puffing out his ribs to look like one of those starving "Americans". I really thought that was great until Alasdair went and corrected it to "Africans".
There were so many little elements that were just off, enough to jolt me out of what was otherwise an engaging setting.
In the final analysis, this story needs to go back to the author for revision.
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This was not science fiction, I am very dissapointed
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I should start with the positive - this was a very well written story. It was very well-paced, and made its points clearly without holding the reader's hands (pun not intended).
However, it was really hard for me to keep my interest, because I really, really, really couldn't stand any of the characters. The uncle - the unrepenting evil madman - stood out because he was the only one whose main character trait wasn't "obnoxious". Gah.
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Jeremiah-
I truly appriciate the fedback. Thanks for letting me in on the process. :) I love hearing from the "people in charge"
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This one had its moments. The characters felt very authentic, and the events sounded like they could really happen.
But though the characters were authentic, I just didn't give a darn about any of them, especially the protagonist. Extra points for making his reason for pacifism not altruism, but not wanting to do the killing himself. But then the rest of the story he takes a girlfriend that acts as his nurse, doing even things that he can damned well do himself. I had trouble drumming up any empathy for him. It's true that he can't do everything, but he certainly can do SOMETHING and he doesn't bother to make the effort. Finally he changed at the end, but the story was so long getting there that my reaction was pretty much that his change was a day late and a dollar short.
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another amazing case of brlliant writer meets awesome narrator