EP414: Knowing

[Max e^{i pi}]

"...and wearing an apron the color of dead flowers"

But what kind of flowers?

I also was quite intrigued by an industrial wench with the power to convert a demon into string. Oh well.

[TheArchivist]

Why do people who know nothing about religion insist on telling us what it's all about? Alasdair? Matt?  I was already bored of the "religion causes war" (or religion == war) fallacy many years ago.

Other than that, this bit of blatant "supernatural horror" masquerading as SF by the vague reference to nukes, didn't seem to do anything much. And also:

It seemed too much like a story a middle-schooler would write, where they say "He did this" & "He did that" for five pages til you get to the end and they make the big reveal that "He" was whoever-he-was the whole time!  Isn't that shocking?  I dunno.

Felt like that to me, too.

Oh well, I guess it just wasn't for me.

[Max e^{i pi}]

Oh, what with my brain being broken by the flower colored apron I forgot to actually comment on the story.
I found it entertaining, but not a story I'd want to hear/read again or explore more of that world.

[Alasdair5000]

"Why do people who know nothing about religion insist on telling us what it's all about? Alasdair? Matt?  I was already bored of the "religion causes war" (or religion == war) fallacy many years ago."


I was confirmed into the Catholic Church aged 12. I've been active in multiple stripes of Christianity and other religions my entire life.

[Mouseneb]

Oh, what with my brain being broken by the flower colored apron I forgot to actually comment on the story.
I found it entertaining, but not a story I'd want to hear/read again or explore more of that world.

That's good. It seems to have dissolved.

[Yarin]

What was the deal with Meta I get that it had all holy knowledge uploaded into his/her brain but what brought out the second gender?

[evrgrn_monster]

I'm with the majority of the other listener's on this piece. It was quite cryptic, and frankly, flew right over my head. I think the characters had interesting quirks, with the gold-medal level cursing of the demon, the drug addicted priest, the dual gendered ally, and of course the "baby" Pope. It seemed like the story relied too heavily on these characters though, and not enough on the narrative itself, which I thought was a lot of violence without much actual movement.

I liked the ending of this well enough, though. I thought the somewhat calm ending was an interesting choice.

[FireTurtle]

If a spaghetti-Western had demons in it, I think it would look a lot like this. It was kind of a character-driven piece with lot of characters and not much...um other stuff. Just a veneer of plot pasted over a bunch of interesting people(Demons, they are people too!). Great swearing.
An aside: The swearing is almost as good as a neurosurgeon I work with (he is my baseline for all feats of swearing). He is round-faced and friendly as Santa Claus. But, if he is working on someone's spine and sees a drop of blood...my god. It is amazing. I have been known to volunteer to work with him just on the off chance I'll get new material.   

As far as wench vs winch. Its a dialect thing. Now, I spell winch as winch. But, if you ask us when I'm out at the ranch with my Dad for the thing spelled winch? We'd both say wench. Wench, wench, wench. I got all nostalgic for the ranching days of my youth when I heard that. Now, my Dad (bless him), also adds an unfortunate "t" to the end of chess when he says it aloud, so I am not saying us ranching folks is always in the right. You haven't lived until your father has asked you to go play "chest". 

Anyhow, loved the characters, really really really hated the not knowing bit of things. Once I realized that there would be no reveal, I had fantasies of doing horrible things to the author to get him to confess what was on the paper. Horrible things involving wenches.
 

[Yarin]

i want to learn more about these characters and the world they live in

[Mouseneb]

I have downloaded "The Failed Cities Monologues." This is not helping my podcast backlog

[SF.Fangirl]

I don't mean to gripe, from the prose it's clear to me this isn't Wallace's first rodeo, I just really hate that device where something is hinted at the whole story.  After a certain point, you're no longer even in suspense, you just want the reveal already so you can get on with the story.

Yeah, I went all the way through that until I reached the point where I decided that "The Answer" was like the contents of the briefcase in "Pulp Fiction" -- the unseen thing that drives the action but is never revealed.  A true MacGuffin.

Yeah.  That's my feeling.  I didn't enjoy the story that much, but I kept going for the reveal which never came so it left me frustrated.

[SF.Fangirl]

So is this science fiction or fantasy?  I ask not to gripe, but because I couldn't figure out what the heck was going on in the story and knowing the genre might help me.

If it is sci fi, then I speculate that the answer is that they are in the matrix - a virtual world - hence all the destruction (not just fighting) when the secret is revealed.

Also felt like the author was poking fun at the Catholic church; although, he didn't treat any other religion so great either.

It was too confusing to be fun and I just kept listening for the revelation of the answer which never came so this ended just being frustrating.

[Yarin]

i think the point was that it didnt matter what the answer was just the fact that it was an immutable truth and thats what caused the world to end

[Gamercow]

I enjoyed this one, it was unique(to me), interesting, and entertaining.  The misery and darkness of the world was intriguing, and while I didn't understand parts, they were not integral to the overall understanding of the story as a whole.

[DKT]

And finally, to second a point made in the podcast: If you haven't done so, go listen to "The Failed Cities Monologues." It is one of the most absolutely amazing things I've ever heard come out of my iPod.  It's a common plot developed through multiple points of view in a future dystopia.  Structurally innovative, well-written, brilliantly produced, with terrific narrators. 

Here's the iTunes link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-failed-cities-monologues/id219621168

Podio Books: http://podiobooks.com/title/the-failed-cities-monologues/

+1

This might be my very favorite podcast novel, because it told the story in such an innovative way - one that's best experienced by listening to it. (Though I doubt Matt would complain if you bought the text version of it from him!)

[matweller]

And finally, to second a point made in the podcast: If you haven't done so, go listen to "The Failed Cities Monologues." It is one of the most absolutely amazing things I've ever heard come out of my iPod.  It's a common plot developed through multiple points of view in a future dystopia.  Structurally innovative, well-written, brilliantly produced, with terrific narrators. 

Here's the iTunes link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-failed-cities-monologues/id219621168

Podio Books: http://podiobooks.com/title/the-failed-cities-monologues/

+1

This might be my very favorite podcast novel, because it told the story in such an innovative way - one that's best experienced by listening to it. (Though I doubt Matt would complain if you bought the text version of it from him!)

I second that. Hopefully people are buying other media from the stories and authors we feature if they like them. I'm not rich at all, but whenever I can I buy copies of stories I've heard new media stars podcast. I've got Rossi, Sigler, Hutchins and more on my bookshelf -- some I've never read, I just wanted to give a couple bucks to someone who entertained me for a while.

<ThinlyVeiledPitch>
That's why I make monthly donations to podcasts like EP. The authors get paid for their work at a better rate than they would with any traditional form of publishing, and the show gets paid for bringing those works to me. I get to choose what's that worth vs. what I can afford -- so many great wins!
</ThinlyVeiledPitch>

[BethPeters]

I wasn't a huge fan of this.  It seemed like there was too much going on and I had a hard time following, I'm still not sure what the ending meant.  Perhaps I should listen again but I just don't feel particularly interested from what I did follow.  I agree the swearing was fun.

[davidthygod]

This was great, I regretted reaching my destination because I had to pause the story temporarily.

[Unblinking]

Not a fan of this one.  It's all about the Macguffin, about which I never particularly cared.  One trouble with basing a story from which madness and chaos will certaiinly ensue is that you can never actually reveal what it is without proving the claim false.  That element just felt so entirely fake that all of the rest of it was just a caricature rather than having any belief in the story.  And it just kept going on.

I've also listened to the Failed City Monologues.  It was a cool idea, but I wasn't as enamored by it as most others seem to be.  It had some neat ideas but it seemed like there was very little movement in your average  episode.
http://www.diabolicalplots.com/?p=2554

[eytanz]

I'm afraid to say that this one was did not work for me. Not because of the lack of the reveal, but because, like Unblinking, I didn't find enough in it to care about. It was all a bit over the top, with most characters being rather cartoonish. It was tough to take it seriously at all, but it was far too self-serious to be a fun romp.

What I did really appreciate was Alasdair's outro. I often find that I'm happy to listen to 30 minutes of a story that doesn't do much for me in order to be able to listen to him talk about his take on its themes for 3-4 minutes afterwards, and this was definitely one of those cases.

[davidthygod]

Here is the Answer:

"Heresy  NIN"

He sewed his eyes shut because he is afraid to see
He tries to tell me what I put inside of me
He's got the answers to ease my curiosity
He dreamed a god up and called it Christianity

Your god is dead and no one cares
If there is a hell I'll see you there

He flexed his muscles to keep his flock of sheep in line
He made a virus that would kill off all the swine
His perfect kingdom of killing, suffering and pain
Demands devotion atrocities done in his name

Your god is dead and no one cares
If there is a hell I'll see you there
Your god is dead and no one cares
If there is a hell I'll see you there

Drowning in his own hypocrisy
And if there is a hell I'll see you there
Burning with your god in humility
Will you die for this?

[MooG]

This one was oddly a big old 'meh' for me.

I say "oddly" because my main beef with escape pod is not that it doesn't run enough science fiction, but that it doesn't run enough stories. Preferring tales of bonding, introspection and angst over stories where stuff actually happens. Well stuff happens here in spades but it still didn't feel like a proper story.

All the characters had huge quirks but none made a jot of difference to the way they acted and while the universe died it appeared to do so only to act as a backdrop for the main protagonist to sit on the porch and espouse some home-spun philosophy on the importance of doing right by your people.

[CryptoMe]

Yup. Didn't care for this one either. Aside form the (in my opinion) stupid attempt at mind games (no, what do *you* think the Answer is?...), the story was just too disjointed for me, a jumble of characters who had almost nothing to do with each other. As a result, I found it confusing and hard to follow. In fact, on my first attempt to listen to this, I wasn't sure if I had actually heard 3 separate stories (and I had only gotten 1/2 way through at that point). In short, didn't work for me.

[hardware]

While I didn't get too much out of the story itself, I enjoyed the atmosphere and the tense surrealism it created. This was clearly an unhinged world where almost anything could and did happen. But yeah, the whole thing about the truth being too much to handle didn't feel very original, and the characters certainly never rose above pawn-status.