Author Topic: EP215: Mr. Penumbra’s Twenty-Four-Hour Book Store  (Read 38324 times)

monkeystuff

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Reply #50 on: September 18, 2009, 04:58:34 AM
ah yes immortality...   but is it really just that? no,  if you try to obtain a form of immortality through preserved information, that information will, over time vanish, weather it's books being replaced by digital memory as in this story, or whatever.  time conquers all.  we are always moving forward and so are all the traces we leave behind.  you can write your life's story in a book and save that book for a long time after your dead, but maybe this story was implying more then just leaving your story behind... could the author be implying that some day it will be possible to move or copy your consciousness into digital form where it will last extremely long, and maybe that is the next evolution in attempted immortality.  but like I said time conquers all.  so theoretically immortality is impossible.  With that being said, I'd just like to add that for me, i don't seek immortality, i just try to enjoy my the time that i do have on this planet and thanks to the Escape Pod, i enjoy life just a little bit more.    thanks for bringing this to the public   

btw i'm new to escape pod,  and think it is one of the best things i've found on the internet to this day

does steve (narrator of EP) read the forums?

oh yeah Daikaiju is great

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Russell Nash

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Reply #51 on: September 18, 2009, 05:07:15 AM
does steve (narrator of EP) read the forums?

Basically everyone involved in the editorial process reads the story threads for their podcasts.  The other threads are hit and miss.



SFEley

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Reply #52 on: September 18, 2009, 05:28:08 AM
does steve (narrator of EP) read the forums?

I can neither confirm nor deny the allegations.

ESCAPE POD - The Science Fiction Podcast Magazine


thomasowenm

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Reply #53 on: September 18, 2009, 09:33:33 PM
Glad to hear Steve back in top form. 

This story is one that I enjoyed so much I might actually listen to it a second time.  This gives me one of those "I'll remember for the rest of my life" moments whenever I step foot in a library or book store.  Who am I giving a second chance at life by looking at, reading, or buying a book?

Good purchase for EP,  Now who is going to write the screenplay?  and deliver it's next incarnation? 




lowky

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Reply #54 on: September 18, 2009, 11:52:12 PM
Glad to hear Steve back in top form. 

This story is one that I enjoyed so much I might actually listen to it a second time.  This gives me one of those "I'll remember for the rest of my life" moments whenever I step foot in a library or book store.  Who am I giving a second chance at life by looking at, reading, or buying a book?

Good purchase for EP,  Now who is going to write the screenplay?  and deliver it's next incarnation? 



This would make for a cool movie wouldn't it. 


MacArthurBug

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Reply #55 on: September 20, 2009, 05:19:33 PM
Googlie goodness! Overall great story. Yeah I had a few disagreements, but more with the MC then anything. I just can't imagine working in a book store and NOT reading any books. Seems so *twitch* wrong

Oh, great and mighty Alasdair, Orator Maleficent, He of the Silvered Tongue, guide this humble fangirl past jumping up and down and squeeing upon hearing the greatness of Thy voice.
Oh mighty Mur the Magnificent. I am not worthy.


heyes

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Reply #56 on: September 21, 2009, 03:43:29 AM
All of you realize, they're not kidding about google...

Excellent story, great reading, very fun.

I sort of pictured the whole thing in my head as some kinda crazy flash animation with little ads popping up on the bottom.  I mean that in a good way.

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thinkingcaveman

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Reply #57 on: September 21, 2009, 07:33:00 PM
I have listened to most of Escape Pod and all of Pseudopod, I think that I have heard various elements of this story in other Escape/Pseudo Pod stories hmm

Have I been listening to long or not closely enough long enough

This is what I listen to Escape Artist Inc for



Pat

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Reply #58 on: September 22, 2009, 07:09:16 AM
Thanks guys, really enjoyed this episode.  Best geek meets girl and maybe get laid story since Impossible Dearms.



DKT

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Reply #59 on: September 22, 2009, 04:05:41 PM
I'm surprised no one mentioned this so far...


The restaurant in question is actually at 309 Clement St. (not 303 Clement St. as in the story) and is named Burma Superstar http://www.BurmaSuperstar.com/.

Fermented Green Tea Leaf Salad (Lephet Thote /La Pat Dok) is apparently one of their house specialties, importing the Lephet from Burma.

On my list of places to visit the next time I eat up in SF. :-)

Holy crap. I've actually eaten there. My brother-in-law (who lives in San Francisco) loves the place. Great food.


Listener

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Reply #60 on: September 22, 2009, 04:46:52 PM
Nice the way the author gets in a "product placement" plug for Google too ;D. Like they needed it, eh?

I figure it would've been more conspicuous had something been made up, like they do on TV. All CBS shows use (or used to use) the fake site "FinderSpyder", I guess in the hope that Google would buy ads or product placement. What old media (TV, mostly) has failed to realize is that by making up something you draw more attention to it than if you just use the real product.

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Sgarre1

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Reply #61 on: September 22, 2009, 05:18:55 PM
Eh, I'd old media then, because I'd rather have a fake something (easy to ignore, 555 as an exchange doesn't bug me) than the feeling I'm being hukstered to during every single second I'm alive, including time spent experiencing a creative work. I guess verisimilitude is different for different people, but when I see a known "brand" I don't think, "oh, that makes this seem more real", I think "oh, how much were they paid to put that there?"

different strokes....



Russell Nash

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Reply #62 on: September 22, 2009, 09:08:30 PM
You're not allowed to use a name or a known brand in a commercial work without permission, satire being an exception.  As soon as you ask for permission, they start wanting script approval and other shit like that. 

CBS' idea of using the same fake thing for all of their shows seems like a good idea to me.  If people hear it enough, it may start to seem real to the viewers.  Then it doesn't stick out so badly.



Goddess Jane

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Reply #63 on: September 23, 2009, 12:53:43 PM
"Google grew it" gotta to love this one!



Poppydragon

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Reply #64 on: September 24, 2009, 04:40:25 PM
One of my favourites so far...I so want to find a bookshop that looks like that, let alone one that sells books to wierd old blokes in the middle of the night.

Man - despite his artistic pretensions, his sophistication, and his many accomplishments - owes his existence to a six inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains.


HGE_Ben

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Reply #65 on: September 24, 2009, 08:28:16 PM
Just found this podcast last week, starting with this story, and have been hungrily devouring the back-issues ever since. Thanks for such a great podcast, hadn't realized how much I'd missed good speculative short fiction until I stumbled across this.



yicheng

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Reply #66 on: September 24, 2009, 09:25:19 PM
I'm going to be a curmudgeon and say that the story ultimately lacks substance beyond the google name-dropping, cute geek girls, and Wired-Magazine-like techno-fetishism.  Not that it wasn't fun, but it's just sort of meh and forgettable.



RochelleB

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Reply #67 on: September 25, 2009, 01:08:56 PM
A really wonderful story, and perfectly appropriate to Escape Pod. In my view, it's definitely science fiction.



lunastrixae

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Reply #68 on: September 25, 2009, 07:47:17 PM
I liked this. Not 'change my life' like it, but it was fun. I love how the main character really enjoys the simple task of writing and drawing in 'his book' with quaint paper and pen. It never occurs to him to digitize the logbook at the start, to blog or wiki it. Many of us hold out hope in the age of kindles and ipods that the physical acts of writing and flipping a page are not forgotten.



clperria

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Reply #69 on: September 26, 2009, 08:59:09 PM
This one is hard to classify, but wether its sci-fi or fantasy... it was an awsome story.



lowky

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Reply #70 on: September 27, 2009, 01:16:56 PM
This one is hard to classify, but wether its sci-fi or fantasy... it was an awsome story.

Everyone keeps saying Sci-fi or Fantasy, but I saw it more as horror story.  I honestly was expecting some kind of Lovecraftian twist to the story.  The Crazed people by strange and esoteric sounding tomes in the middle of the night.  Seemed much more Eldritch to me than sci-fi, yes there was science in the way of technology, yes google almost seemed like a fantasy castle, but on the whole, it all spoke to me on a more Eldritch level, and when you think about it, the fact that you will die if someone doesn't read what you wrote, right away, is a frightening thought.  Almost as frightening as living forever.  And the mechanations for evil that can happen both intentional and unintentional when your longevity is much more than that of those around you.  You start to want to control things, because you have seen the mistakes that have been made before first hand, then that kind of power/responsibility starts to twist even the best of intentions...



TripleAught

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Reply #71 on: September 28, 2009, 04:27:23 AM
I liked the play on changing technology from analog to digital in discovering how the secret to immortality.

The narrator was likable and his internal monologues added some nice humor.



Bdoomed

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Reply #72 on: October 01, 2009, 09:36:15 PM
This was the first time background music has annoyed me to almost not being able to listen.
In the beginning of this story I could hear the intro music in the background, and the song played all the way through to the end.  Is it always there? Maybe it was just because I was in a quiet room on my headphones that i could hear it? Anyway it really bugged me and I was very relieved when it ended.

As for the story, I haven't yet finished listening to it, but I like it so far! :)

I'd like to hear my options, so I could weigh them, what do you say?
Five pounds?  Six pounds? Seven pounds?


CryptoMe

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Reply #73 on: November 10, 2009, 02:43:04 PM
This didn't come up in the forum, so I will mention it...

Elzevir made me think of Elsevier, the big scientific publisher. So, I Googled (how ironic) them out of curiousity. According to Wikipedia, they take their name from an old Dutch publishing house, established in 1580 and named after their founder Lodewijk Elzevir.

I wonder if that's the guy from this story  ;)  Cute little detail if it is.

This is one of the reasons I liked this story. Lots of interesting little details like that.



DMBlackthorn

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Reply #74 on: January 21, 2010, 03:11:21 AM
Totally Awesome ideas!  The author's concept of immortality rings true with me, with one important difference.  Allow me to elaborate: I am a songwriter, and I also play  tunes from many folk styles.  Some of the songs I play are so old that the author's name has been lost to knowledge - but these songs still live on.  To me, it has always seemed that it is not when the author's name is remembered that they achieve immortality, but when the name is forgotten - but the tune is still remembered.  This is the kind of immortality I strive for - to create a song that will be sung well after my physical body is departed.  Then, that part of my being, my very soul, will be immortal.  As for the rest of me, well it might as well be a part of a dog, a shark, a tree and eventually an obsidian sphere when my bones are but dust that have blown over the edge of the earth and into the mouth of a volcano, merged with other minerals, been compacted by massive geological pressures, cool, and emerge near a post human encampment of pygmy Irish centaurs... but I digress...