"... And Be Built A Crooked House" is a solid and fun story by Robert Heinlein, exploring the geography of four dimensions through the device of a tesseract house.
A bit of fatigue with these travelogues by Mark Twain hits me in this (one of my shortest) episodes. A TRAMP ABROAD descends into more simple tourism at the end, sadly. Hopefully, I will have more to say in FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR.
Well, this one is a doozy. BY HIS BOOTSTRAPS is one of the best Robert A. Heinlein stories yet. A perfectly constructed time travel story that begs the question: Can you lift yourself by your own bootstraps? Answer: Maybe?
Part 3 of my review of Mark Twain's A TRAMP ABROAD tried to take a big picture look at this book and its significance among Twain's travel literature.
The second part of my review of SIXTH COLUMN by Robert A. Heinlein. It is a fascinating a troublesome book about race, religion, resistance, and technology.
I continue to work my way through the works of Mark Twain with A TRAMP ABROAD. Mark Twain seems to be coming to terms with European nationalism and folklore as he makes his deep dive into the German land, culture, and people.
We go back to the travel writings with Mark Twain's 1880 A TRAMP ABROAD. These are some of the funnest to read and some of the hardest to talk about books I have ever one on this podcast. In any case, let's see what Mark Twain thinks of Europe now that he is not innocent anymore.
This one (Robert A. Heinlein's SIXTH COLUMN) certainly leaves us with lots to talk about, including Pan-Asianism, technology, religion, and race. This is episode 1 of 2 exploring this short novel, originally published in 1941.
Let's explore some Super science and posthumanism with Robert A. Heinlein's LOST LEGACY, a novella about the untapped potential of humanity and infiltrating The Boy Scouts.
In this episode I finish another book (Mark Twain's PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF JOAN OF ARC) and another volume of the Library of America. At this rate, I will finish in about the time it took for France to win the 100 Years War!
Like in the previous episodes on THE PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF JOAN OF ARC by Mark Twain, I focus on what Joan of Arc can mean to us today. The book stans way to hard for Joan, so we need move a bit beyond the text.
I finish up my thoughts on METHUSELAH'S CHILDREN in this episode. Mostly, I talk about the tension between individualism and the community. If it were not so cliche I would have mentioned Tocqueville.
This part of the THE PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF JOAN OF ARC is about lifting the siege of Orleans, but I do not says much about that and instead continue to explore the question of what in Mark Twain's mind made Joan of Arc great and what she transformation she causes.
Here I take a look at part 2 of "Methuselah's Children" by Robert A. Heinlein. I spend most of the time trying to figure out what might be the key to understanding this story and Heinlein himself. I fail. I guess I will need to read more Heinlein.
What do we owe our youth? Maybe we just owe it to get out of their way. In this episode I use JOAN OF ARC by Mark Twain to reflect on this question and the type of world we leave to our children.
The first part of METHUSELAH'S CHILDREN by Robert A. Heinlein does a great deal of work in putting together the "future history" world and introduces one of his cornerstone characters. It is also a great ideas novel.
In the finale of my review of A CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING ARTHUR'S COURT, I explore technology, power and the chilling climax of the novel. This is one of Twain's best books and worth a close look.
Pay attention Hollywood, this episode on Heinlein's 1941 short story "We Also Walk Dogs" includes a pitch for the next hit TV series.
Heinlein may always have been annoying, but it sort of triggers me in this one. In this episode I discuss "The Logic of Empire" (1941) and Heinlein's allegory for American slavery and indentured servitude.
Part two of my review of Mark Twain's A CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING ARTHUR'S COURT. I discuss mostly the points where reform hits the cultural wall, and the nature of authority and power in Twain's imagination.
Part one of my review of Mark Twain's novel CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING'S ARTHUR COURT. The first third of this book mostly sets up the hero and the setting. Over the next few episodes I will explore the themes of technology, power, and religion as they are explored and lambasted in the novel.
"Common Sense" is Robert A. Heinlein's action-packed sequel to "Universe". While I do not find it quite as elegant a story as "Universe", I did enjoy how it wrapped up the story with a bittersweet success for our heroes, but maybe a loss for humanity.
This episode includes part two of my review of THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER by Mark Twain (1882). I discuss my concerns that Twain is making safe arguments from a safe place and cannot quite see the necessity for radical alternatives.
Part one of my review of THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER, an 1882 children's novel by Mark Twain. This classic role-swapping story is a window into American attitudes about aristocracy and class.
My review of Heinlein's 1941 story "Universe". While the first part of the story later published as ORPHANS OF THE SKY stands on its own, only with the sequel "Common Sense," do we find a darker more pessimistic truth about the necessity of stability.
The finale of my review of ROUGHING IT by Mark Twain. In the final chapters of this book Mark Twain moves on from Nevada to California and spends half a year in Hawaii. Is this a break from the earlier narrative or just part of a larger story of American empire?
"Magic, Inc." is a fascinating novella by Robert A. Heinlein, published in 1940. It explores issues such as union power, technology, law, corruption, and industrial production, while also trying to take magic seriously by placing it in our world. It is worth checking out for the richness of the themes.
After failing as a silver prospector, Mark Twain took up journalism. He discusses his early days on the beat in ROUGHING IT (1872). I discuss this and other issues as I dig deeper in my review of this autobiographical book.
In part 2 of my review of ROUGHING IT by Mark Twain, I find some of the most important commentary and observations on the betrayals at the heart of the ideology of democratic capitalism, and clues as to why the West was so quickly tamed by capital, big business, and government (later the military-industrial complex). Is there any future to an economy built on speculation?
In "They", published in 1941, Robert A. Heinlein takes on issues I am more used to talking about in my series on Philip K. Dick: conspiracy, shifting realities, and paranoia. Mostly, I take on the question of the utility of conspiracy theories and express my distaste for the solipsism of the extremely based. But I cannot not recommend this story to Heinlein readers. It has its value.
