EP147: Pressure

[Tango Alpha Delta]

This story reminded me of a Fred Pohl book called Man Plus. Similar theme but the guy is physically engineered to live on Mars.  I have it but haven't read it yet but its sitting on the shelf.  It won the Nebula in 1976.

I was thinking Clifford D. Simak's City was a closer fit, especially that one story wherein a man and his dog became Jovians and didn't want to return to being human.

I thought I knew the Simak story you were referring to, but I was thinking of Call Me Joe by Poul Anderson.

[Darwinist]

Ah, yes..... Either him or the Manimal guy.

HA! Now there's a blast from the past! I can count on my right hand how many people I know that remember that show, and I'm missing a finger.

Yeah, it's amazing what crap a person can remember.  But I can't remember where I put the extra set of my car keys.  I just looked up Manimal on Wikipedia - it only lasted 8 episodes in the States but it got great ratings in Pakistan and Peru.   

Back to fish guy talk...........

[Kurt Faler]

Ah, yes..... Either him or the Manimal guy.

HA! Now there's a blast from the past! I can count on my right hand how many people I know that remember that show, and I'm missing a finger.

Yeah, it's amazing what crap a person can remember.  But I can't remember where I put the extra set of my car keys.  I just looked up Manimal on Wikipedia - it only lasted 8 episodes in the States but it got great ratings in Pakistan and Peru.   

Back to fish guy talk...........

Ok who would win in a fight: Manimal, The Man from Atlantis, or Automan?

[Darwinist]

Ah, yes..... Either him or the Manimal guy.

HA! Now there's a blast from the past! I can count on my right hand how many people I know that remember that show, and I'm missing a finger.

Yeah, it's amazing what crap a person can remember.  But I can't remember where I put the extra set of my car keys.  I just looked up Manimal on Wikipedia - it only lasted 8 episodes in the States but it got great ratings in Pakistan and Peru.   

Back to fish guy talk...........

Ok who would win in a fight: Manimal, The Man from Atlantis, or Automan?

Automan.   He could not be harmed by gunshots and explosions.  Manimal and the Man from Atlantis were vulnerable humans. 

[birdless]

...and I'm missing a finger.

I have to ask, given your name, if it's the finger I'm thinking it might be?

You would be correct! Good on ya for figuring that one out!

[Myst]

Hello this is my first post to the Escape Pod forums, but I have been listening to the pod casts for awhile. This particular story caught my attention because the protagonist didn't follow the typical plot path, Hero is confronted with a problem hero struggles with problem and then finally hero overcomes problem. In this story the hero refused to grow he failed his test and ran away. That doesn't mean this is a bad story. Just one that most people find less satisfying than the more typical plot line.

[BSWeichsel]

I really enjoyed this one. I thought its one of the better stories and that a lot of people think he is leaving his family, as far as I'm concerned his family left him. He was happy where he was. If he went back to the surface he would have had to change to a normal man again. There was nothing up there to make him happy. but his entire life he was all ways happier in the water.

[CGFxColONeill]

Hello this is my first post to the Escape Pod forums, but I have been listening to the pod casts for awhile. This particular story caught my attention because the protagonist didn't follow the typical plot path, Hero is confronted with a problem hero struggles with problem and then finally hero overcomes problem. In this story the hero refused to grow he failed his test and ran away. That doesn't mean this is a bad story. Just one that most people find less satisfying than the more typical plot line.

Welcome to the board

[Listener]

At least one good thing came out of "Pressure".

Actually, 11,024 good things.

That's the length of the story I wrote on Monday, after I finished listening to "Pressure".  It's in phase-one editing now.

w00t.

[Djerrid]

I liked it. The tone, the pacing and reading were all spot on for me. The thing that made the most sense was how being in the water can become a solitary sort of comfort - like going back to the womb. For someone who could move effortlessly in that environment it would be hard to shoulder the burden of gravity once they climbed out.

[stePH]

This one fell a bit flat with me as well. I had to listen to the first part twice because I kept getting confused about who and what Garcia was.  I think the ending was inevitable, for all the reasons others have stated before me, but it made me wonder just how long he thinks he's going to live out in the open ocean without a few dozen more clips for that flechette(?) gun of his.  He barely survived that one encounter with the squid and sharks.

I wondered the same thing.  He'd better be able to come up with some other ways to defend himself or I give his life expectancy a week or two.

also wondered how the MC was going to survive - even basics like feeding himself. Imagine him popping up on some Pacific Island, in the middle of the night, stealing from the locals.

He caught a yellowfin himself, remember?  He talked about foraging to supplement the contents of his food belt (which would run out very soon after his defection) and put some variety in his diet.

[CammoBlammo]

I can't get over that fact that we had a movie with a giant squid and goatkeeper hasn't commented.

C'mon, Norm, a freakin' giant squid!

[spatial_mongrel]

I was very happy with this story and enjoyed it quite a bit - the idea of a person who, deep down had always longed to be at sea and was drawn to it through everything he did - then found himself a "fish out of water" in a dead-end job, away from what he loved, in a situation he couldn't control and didn't speak to his essential nature. When the opportunity came up, he would have had no choice not to take the job - his rationalizing about the money for a family was just his way of making excuses for it, because I think deep down, he didn't consider himself to be human at all, and after being discharged, was simply going through all the motions of what one would expect a person to do. It's no surprise that - what with the communication issues (text-only) and completely different environment, he finally abandoned his connections to humanity completely and swam off to fulfill his quest for self. I think it raised interesting questions about who we are at heart, who we want to be, and the sacrifices we make as we try and understand how to reconcile dreams and reality.

The best part of this story was the Jonathan Coulton song at the end. I've bought it now, and thought it fit the story perfectly. Nice find, Steve!

[stePH]

The best part of this story was the Jonathan Coulton song at the end. I've bought it now, and thought it fit the story perfectly. Nice find, Steve!

I've heard the song before at the end of some other podcast, though I can't remember if it was Dani Cutler's or Mur Lafferty's.  Probably Cutler's; I think she has a song at the end of every podcast.

[FNH]

Terrific story.  I did manage to guess the end before we got there, but the ride was a good one.  I'm a big fan of the minor sound "effects" it adds audio interest that keep the ears awake.

[Anarkey]

I'm not sure what I can add to the already ongoing conversation, but I wanted to note that I liked this story quite a bit.  I loved the (mis)communication motif that TAD pointed out, and unlike most people, found the ending completely satisfying.  It was also (as pointed out by...bolddeceiver, maybe?) inevitable.  The way the author had laid things out, any other ending would have been enormously wtf.  I do agree with people upthread who posit that doing endings right is quite difficult, but this is not an example of an ending gone wrong, imo. 

I did think the characterization of everyone not the protag was a little shallow and stereotypical, but I could roll with this as an artifact of the narrator's dehumanization of others.

I also thought we were meant to think the guy was the king of jackasses, but I could be wrong, maybe that was just an unintentional consequence of the way he was portrayed.

But yeah.  Jackass.  Good riddance!  Don't let the tide wash you back in! 

[Planish]

Pohl's Man Plus was my first thought too, except that guy had no family ties on Earth (that I recall), his procedure was irreversible, etc. etc.

The undersea setting was a nice change. I did a lot of snorkeling as a kid and even though it was mostly in fresh water, it was like being in a different world. Travelling over or through it was like flying.

I had trouble believing the guy could survive on his own at the end. He might be okay for food.

Fish and sea greens, plankton and protein from the sea!

He wouldn't have to stick to regions where large predators would give him a hard time.

Still, I would have expected that body mods like that would require ongoing post-op monitoring or drugs or something, unless it was so far in the future that all the bugs were worked out.  If that was the case, there would be a whole community of similarly-modified humans, which changes the premise and gives us a much different story.

I'm not sure if I heard it right and understood his plan, but was he expecting that the body he saw would be mistaken for his own? Even if that body was "aquacized" like him I find it hard to accept, given the amount of detailed medical data they would have had on him.

[MattArnold]

You know the type of story that makes you say "I want to find out what happens next"? For me, this was one of them. There is the makings of a truly fine Robinson Crusoe story. It wasn't the end, it was only the beginning.

[Nobilis]

In my version of what happens next, he gets eaten by an orca.

[AarrowOM]

In my version of what happens next, he gets eaten by an orca.

If he can get to the Atlantic, he could commiserate with Ishmael (EP113).

[CammoBlammo]

If he can get to the Atlantic, he could commiserate with Ishmael (EP113).

They could be good for each other, or quite bad. Ishmael was rejected by a human, so he went off and raped another dolphin. Andrea was jealous of Garcia's preference for the sea, and Garcia just wanted to live in the sea.

I could imagine the two getting on very well, depending on the mood. It's probably good that Garcia wasn't swimming past just as Ishmael's ire got the better of him.

[goatkeeper]

I can't get over that fact that we had a movie with a giant squid and goatkeeper hasn't commented.

C'mon, Norm, a freakin' giant squid!

Yah, I've been catching up.  AWESOME story.  Such a cool way to set up the paradoxical conflict of one mans need for adventure and also stability/family.  Then you throw in a battle between a cyborg merman and a giant squid- I swear I almost had to pull over and collect myself.

[Planish]

Then you throw in a battle between a cyborg merman and a giant squid- a swear I almost had to pull over and collect myself.

Gee, when you say it that way it sounds all ... Roger Corman-y. 
Not that there's anything wrong with that.

[goatkeeper]

Then you throw in a battle between a cyborg merman and a giant squid- a swear I almost had to pull over and collect myself.

Gee, when you say it that way it sounds all ... Roger Corman-y. 
Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Ha!  Oh man, the things Roger Corman could have done with this story.

[Roney]

Regarding Steve's intro, I'm sure I read Arthur C Clarke writing something similar about the oceans being ideal settings for SF stories (being stranger than space and slightly more accessible) and expressing disappointment that there aren't more out there.  Perhaps in a foreword to The Deep Range?  (Sorry to be so vague, but it's a very, very long time since I read it and I don't have the book to hand.)  But that was a pretty weak story too, like all the undersea SF in print or on screen that I can think of off the top of my head, so I remain to be convinced that he's right.

Anyway, while digging around in Wikipedia for corroboration I spotted this quote, which I thought I'd share:

How inappropriate to call this planet Earth, when clearly it is Ocean.