Author Topic: EP200: All You Zombies  (Read 49400 times)

Zathras

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Reply #50 on: July 08, 2009, 07:20:07 PM
Quote
I felt a headache coming on, but a headache powder is one thing I do not take. I did once—and you all went away.

What did this part mean? 

I've had many different answers to this over the years.  My favorite:

We're just a figment of nis imagination.  If ne stops concentrating, we cease to exist.  This is backed up by the I know I'm real but what about the rest of you zombies line.




Zathras

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Reply #51 on: July 08, 2009, 11:12:50 PM
Another question:  Am I the only one here who had heard I'm my own Grandpa before this episode?



eytanz

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Reply #52 on: July 08, 2009, 11:35:37 PM
Another question:  Am I the only one here who had heard I'm my own Grandpa before this episode?

No.



alllie

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Reply #53 on: July 09, 2009, 12:27:29 AM
Only thing I didn't quite understand, though, was how Jane-as-man got to impregnate Jane-as-woman. Young, female Jane was innocent in this, since she didn't know she'd ever turn out to be a man, but male Jane knew he'd been a woman, remembered - I hope - what he looked like as a woman, since apparently it'd caused her so much grief, so he'd recognise himself wooing himself, right? And it's not like they had a one-night-stand. He had nearly a whole month to come to the right conclusion and not be shocked to be 'that man' when the barman reappeared. And any newspaper could confirm the time-travel.

So, what gives?

I don't think I would seduce myself and set up the cycle of unhappiness but if he doesn't seduce himself then he'll never be born. So maybe that was why he did it. He had to choose between a life of suffering and no life at all. He chose life.



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Reply #54 on: July 09, 2009, 03:43:13 AM
Only thing I didn't quite understand, though, was how Jane-as-man got to impregnate Jane-as-woman. Young, female Jane was innocent in this, since she didn't know she'd ever turn out to be a man, but male Jane knew he'd been a woman, remembered - I hope - what he looked like as a woman, since apparently it'd caused her so much grief, so he'd recognise himself wooing himself, right? And it's not like they had a one-night-stand. He had nearly a whole month to come to the right conclusion and not be shocked to be 'that man' when the barman reappeared. And any newspaper could confirm the time-travel.

So, what gives?

I don't think I would seduce myself and set up the cycle of unhappiness but if he doesn't seduce himself then he'll never be born. So maybe that was why he did it. He had to choose between a life of suffering and no life at all. He chose life.

While that's true.. how did it all start? The circle loops...



Zathras

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Reply #55 on: July 09, 2009, 04:20:07 AM
I don't believe that he knew all the details when he went back and seduced herself.



deflective

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Reply #56 on: July 09, 2009, 04:28:35 AM
Am I the only one here who had heard I'm my own Grandpa before this episode?

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/ZdFPDjtX2Q4" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="bbc_link bbc_flash_disabled new_win">http://www.youtube.com/v/ZdFPDjtX2Q4</a>
for those who haven't


Quote
I felt a headache coming on, but a headache powder is one thing I do not take. I did once—and you all went away.

What did this part mean?

as mentioned, the generally accepted reading is one of solipsism.

i'm not a fan of that philosophy tho, i prefer to believe that the hangover remedy made him knurd and see that he is the only true agent of free will.  all of us are subject to the cause-effect determinism that created us (zombies) but he exists simply because he created himself.

but that reading really isn't supported by the text or timeperiod it was written in.


And again, it's not a paradox for something to be its own influence (if we have time travel).
You might as well say the universe is a paradox, in the absence of an outside cause.

perhapse you see the paradox that if time traveling self-replicating entities can spontaneously create themselves then every one of those entities should exist?  giant amoeba cyborgs with integrated timenets would be around, they just need one of their number to jump back after splitting to seed the species.  vampires with the mystic ability to warp time?  one of them warps back to give that first bite.

and we still know very little about our universe, even those who like to pretend otherwise.  our big bang model has been around for less than a hundred years and is almost certainly wrong.  like those early philosophers that decided this is a flat earth under a spherical sky because that's what it looks like, at the moment it looks everything that exists is part of some vast explosion but if we're in the corona some sort of universe sized super nova then it's hardly surprising that we can't see beyond it.

the very concept of universe (all of space and time) may actually be a paradox, as meaningless as the sentence that calls itself is untrue.
« Last Edit: July 09, 2009, 04:32:07 AM by deflective »



Russell Nash

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Reply #57 on: July 09, 2009, 07:37:53 AM
Quote
I felt a headache coming on, but a headache powder is one thing I do not take. I did once—and you all went away.

What did this part mean? 

I've had many different answers to this over the years.  My favorite:

We're just a figment of nis imagination.  If ne stops concentrating, we cease to exist.  This is backed up by the I know I'm real but what about the rest of you zombies line.



It sounds very much like a schizophrenic (or a sufferer of some other mental condition) whose world changes when he takes some kind of medicine to control his condition.  This world only exists in his warped head.



Zathras

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Reply #58 on: July 09, 2009, 02:55:38 PM
Quote
I felt a headache coming on, but a headache powder is one thing I do not take. I did once—and you all went away.

What did this part mean? 

I've had many different answers to this over the years.  My favorite:

We're just a figment of nis imagination.  If ne stops concentrating, we cease to exist.  This is backed up by the I know I'm real but what about the rest of you zombies line.



It sounds very much like a schizophrenic (or a sufferer of some other mental condition) whose world changes when he takes some kind of medicine to control his condition.  This world only exists in his warped head.

And therefor might not be a time travel story at all.

This is one of the reasons I absolutely love this story.  For as short as it is, there is so much meaning that can be added, discussed and argued.



Ocicat

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Reply #59 on: July 09, 2009, 09:38:43 PM
That's what  get for not really paying attention to dates in stories.  This one snuck up behind me, ripped out my brain, and showed it to me. 

Excellent number 200.  Who do we get for number 300, Clarke?

Well, they are the holy trinity-

Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke.

Must. Have. Bradbury!!!

I somehow doubt that Mr. Bradbury would approve one of his stories for podcasting.  He's kind of infamously technophobic, so I doubt the medium would appeal to him.



izzardfan

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Reply #60 on: July 09, 2009, 09:53:26 PM
I somehow doubt that Mr. Bradbury would approve one of his stories for podcasting.  He's kind of infamously technophobic, so I doubt the medium would appeal to him.

It's not so much technology as the internet that he doesn't like.  From this article (NYTimes):

The Internet? Don’t get him started. “The Internet is a big distraction,” Mr. Bradbury barked from his perch in his house in Los Angeles, which is jammed with enormous stuffed animals, videos, DVDs, wooden toys, photographs and books, with things like the National Medal of Arts sort of tossed on a table.

“Yahoo called me eight weeks ago,” he said, voice rising. “They wanted to put a book of mine on Yahoo! You know what I told them? ‘To hell with you. To hell with you and to hell with the Internet.’

“It’s distracting,” he continued. “It’s meaningless; it’s not real. It’s in the air somewhere.”



eytanz

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Reply #61 on: July 09, 2009, 10:14:20 PM
I love Bradbury, but all his best stories belong on Podcastle, not Escape Pod. But yeah, I doubt if he'd ever give permission for his stories to appear on any Escape Artist podcast.



Zathras

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Reply #62 on: July 09, 2009, 10:24:36 PM
If you ever want to torment yourself, go listen to Bradbuy's reading of Fahrenheit 451.  It was painful.



Void Munashii

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Reply #63 on: July 10, 2009, 11:36:33 AM
 I loved this story and found it well worth the wait. I went through a Heinlein phase back in the 90's, but never read this story. I had to spend some time explaining my understanding of the story to Osaka afterward though because she had trouble with the exact stuff that I didn't; the giant paradox of the whole thing, but specifically how it got started.

  We also had some questions about why everyone else was a zombie, and we came to the theory that the protag always exists because he lives in a continuous loop, never starting, never ending; in a way this makes him immortaRL. however everyone he encounterS who is not him is someone who will eventually die, therefore they are the walking dead, and therefore zombies. It's not a perfect theory (for one it assumes his use of the word zombie then fits with the way the word is used now), but it helps me sleep at night.

  As to the outro; speaking only for myself and Osaka, we like The Steve Eley show. All of the other hosts do great jobs, but my wife is always happy when she hears Mr. Eley's voice at the start of an episode.
« Last Edit: July 10, 2009, 11:40:15 AM by Void Munashii »

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Father Beast

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Reply #64 on: July 11, 2009, 03:51:00 AM
Okay, Time for the big review....

First, a big pile of kudos to mr. Eley for saving the day with the fact that a time warp and paradox had caused the unseemly delay of episode #200. I was getting depressed waiting for it and thought it would never come out. Then I heard the intro explaining it. All Is Forgiven, Steve!!

I read this story when I was about 15, and it kept catching me off guard. The hermaphrodite with the sorry childhood story was quite enough to hook me, but it kept hitting me with more. Admittedly, I saw it coming that he was the father, but then it blindsided me with him being the kid, too. I was still reeling when the old agent looks at his old cesarean scars.

Call me a fool, but I was 15. Give me a break. It was one of those stories that haunts you for years after you forgot the title, or occasionally, the author. Kind of like "The Last Question" by Isaac Asimov.

I was hoping for a Heinlein for #200, but I wasn't sure what would do it. I thought maybe "Life Line", or "Let There Be Light", or even "and He Built a Crooked House", but none of those seemed quite right. As soon as I saw the title when it time-warped onto the site, it all came rushing back, and I knew it was a good call.

After all this time, even with knowing what was happening, it was still a great read. I still got chills when he said we all went away when he took headache powder. I was again struck, like I was long ago, by the image of a single person all alone in the night, with no idea what causes all the rest of us.





and so on to my hope for a Clarke story for episode #300, which will be in what? September 2011? I don't know which one will be good. the Nine Billion Names of God is just too short (maybe a flash piece), and while The Sentinel seems obvious, something doesn't seem right.

One thing for sure - No Bradbury. I have never read anything of his that doesn't tie up a good story idea in lousy prose. Fahrenheit 451 wasn't just painful to listen to, it was painful to read.



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Reply #65 on: July 13, 2009, 08:21:07 AM
All You Zombies was like one of those falling domino setups. Once you see what's going on you have a pretty good idea of how it will end, but it's still fun to see it through. Even more so if you could get the last domino to knock down the first domino. One a' them Escher-Goldberg devices.

One thing for sure - No Bradbury. I have never read anything of his that doesn't tie up a good story idea in lousy prose. Fahrenheit 451 wasn't just painful to listen to, it was painful to read.
Bradbury doesn't write prose, he writes poetry disguised as prose. I'm thinking more of his short story collections. I hardly remember the plots, but I do remember the moods in stories I haven't read for 30 years.

Quote
Another question:  Am I the only one here who had heard I'm my own Grandpa before this episode?
At least three of us have heard it.
The finale/chorus/whatever of that song (listen to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYlJH81dSiw&feature=fvst , at about 2:03) was an earworm for a few hours after hearing the episode.

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DarkKnightJRK

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Reply #66 on: July 14, 2009, 12:47:41 AM
I've been on a Heinlein kick lately (and I didn't figure out until this episode that it's pronounced "hein-LINE," I always thought it was pronounced "hein-LEN"), so this was a pretty cool episode--even if, as Steve mentioned, part of me kept going "well that makes no sense!"

And yes, at the end I was thinking of "I'm my own grandpaw" too.



Ben Phillips

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Reply #67 on: July 14, 2009, 10:42:30 AM
  We also had some questions about why everyone else was a zombie, and we came to the theory that the protag always exists because he lives in a continuous loop, never starting, never ending; in a way this makes him immortaRL. however everyone he encounterS who is not him is someone who will eventually die, therefore they are the walking dead, and therefore zombies. It's not a perfect theory (for one it assumes his use of the word zombie then fits with the way the word is used now), but it helps me sleep at night.

What did the word mean back then?  It was definitely in common use, although I can only assume the going context was voodoo-style and not Romero-style.  Fun fact:  The word never appears in Night of the Living Dead, and only once in Dawn of the Dead (1978), toward the end of the movie.  (If I'm searching correctly.)  Could that indicate the word hadn't commonly come to signify the walking man-eating dead yet?  Can somebody who remembers 1978 fill us in?  :)



Ocicat

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Reply #68 on: July 14, 2009, 03:39:36 PM
Pretty much the term meant voodoo style zombie.  Which for those not in the know, the primary concept is "mindless servant".  Zombies took orders from their masters, and otherwise just stood there.



Sgarre1

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Reply #69 on: July 14, 2009, 09:12:38 PM
Yes, Ocicat has it right - "zombie" at that point would have been a reference to voodoo derived zombies, but by then (actually, I'd say by the 50's for the general populace) had generally come to mean a slave under mental control of the master or a being without free will (there are loads of "zombie slaves under my mental control" in 30's and 40's movies that don't have a touch of voodoo in them).  "Thralls" would probably be an equivalent nowadays.  All of this probably arose through the use of zombies in "weird menace" pulps in the 20's/30's.  There's one or two writers who specialized in Caribbean/south seas native threats, but names escape me at the moment (one's the guy who did "Lukundoo" and "Fishhead").

Yeah, they're "ghouls" in NOTLD, which is in itself a oddity as ghouls, as popularly conceived to that point (if not actually conceived so in the original Arabic), would have been living beings who feed on dead flesh, not the opposite.

« Last Edit: July 15, 2009, 12:53:37 AM by Sgarre1 »



izzardfan

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Reply #70 on: July 15, 2009, 05:38:06 AM
I read an article recently discussing the results of a particular virus (or something similar) that had caused extensive DOS attacks.  The article said there were over 100,000 "zombies" involved, meaning computers being controlled by an outside source.
« Last Edit: August 24, 2009, 06:21:55 AM by izzardfan »



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Reply #71 on: July 20, 2009, 09:41:50 PM
Good choice for a 209th...err 200th episode.  This showcases forward thinking which good scifi does.  Being written in '58 Heinlein displayed truly progressive attitudes to gender identity issues.  Talk of hermaphrodites and sex change operation would have been unheard of in the 50's, but this story took taboo issues and addressed them without preaching. 

Overall a good story, made better by Steve reading it.
 



JoeFitz

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Reply #72 on: July 20, 2009, 11:24:05 PM
As I haven't read many Heinlein shorts, this one was a nice find. I agree with Steve's right/left brain observation. Quite a coup for a podcast, given the potential issues in getting this work licensed - thanks for sticking it out and getting it done!



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Reply #73 on: July 22, 2009, 06:33:03 PM
Pretty much the term meant voodoo style zombie.  Which for those not in the know, the primary concept is "mindless servant".  Zombies took orders from their masters, and otherwise just stood there.

  Well that blows my theory out of the water then.

  So then does he feel that no one else except for him has free will? If anything he has no free will since his life is predetermined because it's already happened an infinite number of times, and will continue to do so forever with out end or change.

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Reply #74 on: August 02, 2009, 11:25:40 PM
Listening to Robyn Hitchcock's "The Man Who Invented Himself" reminds me of this story.  Only a few lines are really reminiscent of the story (along with the title, obviously) but those lines are really reminiscent ...

Quote
He came bursting out of nowhere
Like a spear into the sky
And he cast his light on everything
It was like he'd never die

And he landed right on target
But the target rolled away
And it left him pointing nowhere
You could hear the children say

"He's the fella
The man who invented himself
He's the fella
The man who invented himself"

When you need her love so badly
But she's trying to relax
You can't work it with your fingers
So you try it with an axe

And he taps you on the shoulder
"Looking out for number one
Is like drilling for a rainbow
Or an iceberg in the sun"

He's the fella
The man who invented himself
He's the fella
The man who invented himself

Nobody knows where he's from
Nobody knows where he's gone and gone and gone
But he's not here

When you're waiting for your baby
To get back from the moon
And throw her arms around you
In a very quiet lagoon

Well, that loneliness is nothing
Just imagine how he feels
He's the only person in the world
Who still believes he's real


He's the fella
The man who invented himself
(etc. repeats)

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