Author Topic: EP465: The Sky is Blue, and Bright, and Filled with Stars  (Read 12657 times)

Unblinking

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Reply #25 on: October 28, 2014, 01:22:25 PM
Quote from: Varda
I really enjoyed this story as an SF riff on the Wizard of Oz ("Dot", a cowardly posthuman lion named "Gerald", the tin man, the scarecrow, the "wizards"). For me, that pulled the meandering framing device together nicely. It's all about displacement--in Oz, Dorothy is in another world, but in this story, Dot is out of place in time, in a sense.

I didn't notice the Wizard of Oz references, other than the Wizard, who was very blatant.  Now that you've pointed that out the Oz references to me, they seem shoehorned in.  I get it, it's a pastiche, but why bother?  The references seem really pasted-on and forced, when the story should have stood on its own without being derivative. 

I also want to say that I enjoyed listening to the podcast.  It was fun, and I thought it was a good story, all in all. 

If you didn't notice the references, how they can be forced?



koosie

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Reply #26 on: October 28, 2014, 05:07:51 PM
Straw man argument! You guys kill me. No Toto neither, now that would be shoe-horning. At first when we were introduced to Dot and a nervous Furry I thought I'd come across a tribute to those old Australian cartoons no-one's likely to remember but this was just as good and if the next thousand years are a total waste of time, then what of it, huh? It was worth it for the laughs and if it goes a bit Leonard Cohen at the end, that's ok too.



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Reply #27 on: October 28, 2014, 06:53:45 PM
I just want to point out something.
You know how we're always there to criticize an episode? Whether it's a poor reader, bad hardware setup or just not enough time to clean up the final audio?
Well, this episode deserves the opposite. I want to congratulate the EP team. This story was well-paired with the reader, and very well read. That accent! In my opinion, it made the episode. I'll be honest, at first my American-trained ears had a little trouble keeping up, but I slipped into the rhythm of it pretty quickly. It reminds me a little bit of the Hitchhiker's Guide radio plays. They are still my favorite form of the trilogy (in five parts), even though I was exposed to them after the books. It somehow added an extra dimension of hilarity to the story, very Adams-esque.
Only in an Adams universe would nano robots give up trying to terraform an asteroid and instead do it to planets. Only in such a universe would antigravity space ships need an all powerful space navy to fix their own blunders. (BTW, if you do happen to have some form of gravity-neutralizing thrust, that is a very powerful weapon. Drop a planet into its star or throw ships out of the galaxy. The things you could do are limited only by your imagination. Which, I suppose, nanobots probably don't have. Never mind).

I also totally missed the Oz references until the wizard showed up, but the story stood well enough on its own without them.
I'm sort of glad that Dot chose to watch the end. As Dumbledor said: "To the well organized mind, death is but the next great adventure."

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Chairman Goodchild

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Reply #28 on: October 28, 2014, 10:08:29 PM
Quote from: Unblinking
If you didn't notice the references, how they can be forced?

Because they did seem that way after they were pointed out to me. 

And once again, I'd like to say while I disagree with all of the Oz references, it was a fine story that I enjoyed, and had much natural humor in it.  Douglas Adams mixed in with a bit of The Sirens of Titan. 
« Last Edit: October 28, 2014, 10:10:01 PM by Chairman Goodchild »



Unblinking

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Reply #29 on: October 29, 2014, 02:06:05 PM
Because they did seem that way after they were pointed out to me. 

Right, I'm just saying that if the story worked for you without thinking of the references, then it seems they must've worked okay.  At least, when I think of a "forced" reference it's one that pulls me out of the story and distracts me as I'm experiencing the story. 



FireTurtle

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Reply #30 on: November 05, 2014, 10:39:28 PM
Feeling quite pleased with myself that I actually GOT the Oz references as I was listening. I tend to be a but thick in the moment and only realize afterward anything going on outside the storyline. Although I was a bit disappointed when the earth-killing aliens did not appear as flying-monkeys in the end. But, the sheer poetry if the last few lines mollified me a bit.

Agree with ththe others that this story was enhanced behind measure by the quality of the narrator. Absolutely excellent pairing. Gerald the mechman is right up there with Smidgen the snack cake in my most memorably funny Escapepod characters of all time. Huzzah.

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Fenrix

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Reply #31 on: November 12, 2014, 03:55:19 PM
This was nicely done all around. Good call on running this EP original story.

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hardware

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Reply #32 on: November 17, 2014, 09:14:57 AM
Yes, grand ideas and a sense of (dark) humour makes for a pretty great story. Douglas Adams is clearly a reference point, but with a melancholy which really hit it's mark just when I started to think it would become simply silly.