Summer Reading 2016: Time Enough at Last

been reading, uh, hope to read in the future, et cetera. Yeah, a lot of listeners right into us, both on social media and through email to recommend books and movies and all kinds of things to us. And I feel like this is our chance to to give back. Although I mean probably every given episode we dropped some variety of things that we've been reading or movies we've been watching, or TV or something like that. But this is all about Hey, it's summertime, right, let's go to the beach

and read some books. Why is that a thing people do with the beach because you, well, in my experience, is because you you break free from your normal patterns um and you suddenly find yourself creating all this new time in a new space, craving John Grisham, No, no, I mean I thought some people like to go with the more mainstream books that are available in the beach House. But but no, I've always found it a good you can excuse you just really dive into something, uh, you know,

entertaining or or really heavy. Robert, what what was that you? You went to the beach I think within the past couple of years and uploaded to the internet some pictures of the library on the shelf at the beach House where they had a they had a book about a werewolf spy. I guess um was it was? It went and Robert mccommon um came in. Is that his name? Um? Gosh,

I can wish you remember which author that was. Yeah, but I was surprised to find some cool old genre stuff because generally you just find Tom Clancy John Grisham, uh, some various uh you know, my all romance novels. It's always Tom Clancy. The kind of people who owned beach houses. They like to know how nuclear submarines were. Well. I hope that the werewolf spy had some love in his life.

Pretty sure he did pretty cud good good. Well that's a good segue into my first book, which is a document that looks at the entire history of supernatural horror and fiction. WHOA, yeah, So this is my nonfiction pick this this year, guys, and it is by a past

stuff to blow your mind, guest. Mr St Joshi h He was on a previous episode that Robert and Julie did about HP Lovecraft in the Science behind his Works, and I believe you interviewed him, right, Yeah, yeah, I chatted with him on the phone and uh, we used to interview on the episode. So those of you who are unfamiliar with him maybe go back and listen to that EPI. So, but I'll give you a little primer here. St Joshy. He's like a literary critic and an academic.

He's primarily known for very close examinations of weird fiction. So HP Lovecraft and all the writers that preceded him, like Algernon Blackwood, m R. James Are, Arthur Macon and those who have followed him to like Ramsey Campbell, Ray Bradberry, Clark, Ashton Smith. He's written tomes on all of these people. Uh, and he has I guess what can be described as an acerbic style of writing about the genre. He's a little he's a little pointed in some of his criticisms.

I feel like he's kind of a horror fiction horror literature ment at. Yeah, yeah, his lips stained purple. Yes, that's how you know. Ellen Datlow is um a really prominent editor in the horror field. She edits the best Horror of the Year books that come out at the end of every year. She described St. Joshy as the nastiest reviewer in the field. So, um, I'm giving you this warning ahead of time. This book is great. But

he doesn't pull his punches. When he doesn't like something, he lets you know about it, and when he loves something, he celebrates it in all its glory. It's weird because I think I don't I can't remember offhand an example of him tearing something up like I tend to read Joshi. He does a lot of introductions two books and uh, and certainly puts together as at its compilations of things that he likes. So I've certainly encountered the loving as

t Jo, not so much the hammer. Wouldn't it be great to read a book though that had an introduction that ripped the very book you're reading to shreds. Well, here's an example. I've got one for you. Publishers Weekly did a review of this book, and they said Joshi reserves his sharpest judgments for contemporary horror writers, especially popular bestsellers, dismissing Stephen King as quote a schlockmeister, just the literary equivalent of all the b movie and comic books he

digested in his youth. So so there's that. Um, this is a great book, though, Like, if you are looking to really dive into the horror genre and to find out, like what's the best of the best, what's the history behind it, what's the stuff I should go out and look for. This is it. I mean. He starts with the Greek and Latin literature that includes supernatural elements, moves up to the Gothic era, has a whole huge section on Poe, and then talks a lot about the weird

horror writers at the end of the nineteenth century. That's just the first volume. Originally, this was published in two separate volumes. In the second volume covers the development of horror literature through the twentieth century, with sections mainly on those people I just mentioned before, Makin Blackwood, Lovecraft, etcetera. Uh, Shirley Jackson has her own whole chapter all the way up to Peter Straub, Stephen King and people who are

writing today like that. Well they're all writing today, but like Kately and R. Kiernan, who's like a relatively recent writer comparatively to the rest of this stuff. So I I really recommended if you're just looking to just play around and see what's out there in horror literature and what you like and what you don't like. Yeah, he's definitely one of those those uh, those great authoritative um experts on the field where you can always just get a few at least a few ideas of authors you

need to check out and try. Yeah, I'm loving it, especially the egg Allen post section has been really illuminating for me so far. And now, would you say his his survey of the field is more exclusively literary, just like looking at the authors and their works and the relationship to each other. Or does he do historical and

other cultural contextual stuff too. Uh No, it's primarily literary. Yeah, I don't think he not so much unless he's like previously written about an author like so, for instance, in the post section, he already had like a lot to gather from, so he could provide you with some context about like what was going on imposed life at the time that he wrote I don't know, murders in the room, morgue or something like that, and that provided some context, but but not for everything. Yeah, so yeah, I mean,

I highly recommend it. I know from talking to some of our listeners, they always like it when we bring up the weird horror literature that we've been reading, and uh, man, this is it. This is the book if you you know, you don't have to read the whole thing. You can just get it, flipped through it and kind of find like the area that you're looking for and and dive in and you will come out with just a treasure

trove of authors to go looking for. Then I gotta ask, last time we did a summer reading episode, y'all convinced me to read The Great God Pan by Arthur Makon, who is one of the writers you mentioned that he gets into. I went and read it, loved it. It's amazing. What does he think about it? I haven't gotten to the section yet where he talks about making. But if I know Joshi, I would imagine that he thinks it's awesome. Yeah,

he probably like sets up a shrine at its feet. Well, I know a lot of a lot of critics trashed it, didn't they back then? Yeah, I mean a hundred and twenty years ago when nobody knew anything. Yeah, and no, I think, And certainly it's not for everybody, Like I can imagine plenty of people would maybe not dig it today. Give men maybe a little bit stuffy, a little bit the prose style is yeah, is definitely of its time, and it's How does our friend H. E. C. Steiner

refer to it? He talks about it as being like yet another one of those stories of like learned gentleman, like just sitting around by fire talking about something horrific. Right, but it's awesome. It's one of the best horror stories I think I ever written. You would not comprehend my horror? When all right, Joe, what do you have? What do you have from the nonfictional bucket here for us? Well, I've got it. I've got one fiction book and a few nonfiction books, but all I'll start with one that

if you are a regular listener, to the show. This probably is not going to come as a surprise to you, because I think I've gushed about it on at least one episode before, maybe multiple episodes. But my first nonfiction pick is the Invention of Nature Alexander von Humboldt's New World by Andrea Woolf. And that's a book published by NOTAP and it's about the German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt,

who lived from seventeen eighteen fifty nine. And this guy has a lot of things in the world named after him. There's the Humboldt Current, the Humboldt Glacier in Greenland, Humboldt Bay in California, the Humboldt Range, Humboldt Falls, Humblet Mountains, Humbolt penguin, Humboldt squid, uh tons of other animal species. He's all over the map in the natural world. They should all get together and full formed like a Humblet super team, right like, and turn into a giant robot.

Yeah exactly, huh. And so I I think, in fact that this is my favorite. I think he's even got a sinkhole named after him. Now, once you've got a sinkhole named after you, you you have made it squad goals. But so he traveled all over the world during his lifetime making observations of nature. He was one of those classic nineteenth century naturalists, kind of like dar Win, but preceding Darwin, and so his influence in his own time

was pretty much incalculable. But I don't think I ever learned a single thing about this guy in school, And after reading this book, I think I'd say von Humboldt might be the most historically influential intellectual of the past millennium who is just completely forgotten by history. Why is that, I don't know, But reading Andrea Wolfe's book on him

is just wonderful. I I absolutely loved it. So to give a little context about what's going on in Humboldt's lifetime, I want to read a quote from Thomas Jefferson that sort of reflects the attitude toward nature one might encounter in the learned gentleman, as you say, of the of the nineteenth century. Turn of the nineteenth century. So Jefferson had put the mammoth on this chart he made of extant European mammals, and obviously some people were like, why

the mammoth, and so he said quote. It may be asked to why I insert the mammoth as if he still existed. It may be asked in return, why I should omit it as if it did not exist, such as the economy of nature, that no instance can be produced of her having permitted any one race of her animals to become extinct, of her having formed any link in her great works so weak as to be broken. I mean today, that's obviously extremely wrong in multiple ways.

But this was sort of the climate in which Humboldt's view was revolutionary. So in many ways Humboldt is responsible for the way scientists came to see nature as they do today, not as a static created order with everything in its right place and nothing really changing over the long term, but as this dynamic, changeable, massively interconnected system of ecology and biological and chemical webs of relationships between all the things on Earth, the elements, and its life forms.

So in Humboldts of view, habitats could be altered and destroyed, species could go extinct, and changes in one place could have far reaching effects and others. And Humblet began to use the analogy of the world as sort of one unified organism, whereas you know in an organism, if you get gang green in one part of your body, it will affect other parts of your body. So, Uh, I loved this book. It's just full of really fascinating stories

about humblets travels around the world and his experiments. I think I used it as one of our sources in the episodes Robert and I did about the early days of electricity experiments where uh one of the ones I related with Humbldt's quest to collect the bodies of lightning strike victims so he could examine the burns to their to their body hair and see exactly what that could

tell us about animal electricity. Another one was humbldts experiments with bom Blonde about the electric eels of South America, collecting eels by causing horses to stay impede over a pond full of them, and then once he finally got some eels. Uh like touching the eels a lot, and it's weird, but he was a very interesting, very smart, very cool guy for his time. He was like the

ig Nobel Prize winner of his time. Like, instead of taking bees and holding them to his body, he just touched electrical kind of but more of a more of a scientific superstar. Yeah, he was absolutely a rock star of his time, like more than Stephen Hawking or any celebrity scientists today. He's like dead to history now. I don't know if they don't talk about him in school or or you know, I guess just in the science community in general. I don't know. It's it's a good question, um,

because his his influence was absolutely huge. A big part of the book is just showing how big his influence was, like their chapters focusing on contemporaries of of Humboldts like Gerta. Darwin's Thorau, so artists, politicians, other scientists, and how they all revered him and got lots of ideas from him. And so I really don't know exactly why it is that his legacy is mostly forgotten. Well there's penguins and glaciers and sinkholes at least. Well it sounds like you

really need to push the Humboldt renaissance here. I mean, yeah, everyone behind and pushed Tesla back to the forefront. So yeah, I think humbold more interesting than Tesla. Whoah, you heard it here first folks. Yeah, but anyway, this should we name a car after him. Well, if you want to find out for yourself, for yourself, you should read this book. So it's really really wonderful. It's not only a pleasure. It covers this massive blind spot I didn't even know

I had in sort of the Western history of scientific thought. Uh. So that's Andrea Wolf Alexander von Humboldt's New World. Uh check it out. Big, big thumbs up from me. All right, well,

um from my part um. You know, we a lot of scientific books, especially the mainstream general scientific books across our desk, and of the ones that have come out in the past year, I really have to say that mar j Hart's Sex in the CEA our intimate connection with sex, changing fish, romantic lobsters, kiki squid, and other salty erotica of the deep, it's probably the one that right at the top of my list. Yeah, that's a great book. And we talked about it in our Osadas

bone Worm episode. We didn't talk to her with Ma and there and and we're planning to do another interview with her later this summer. Uh. She was delightful down to Earth and really is into the kinky stuff between marine life. Yeah, like she does. I thought she did just a fabulous job, not only you know, in the book, but in the interview as well. I mean, just really conveying I love for these creatures, but also a great willingness to enjoy the ridiculousness of totally inhuman weird nous,

of the sense of humor about it. The way that um she frames each of her chapters. Yeah, yeah, I enjoyed that. It reminded me of Mary Roach. I'd love to see more come out from Marra sort of along the same lines as how Mary Roach has got this series of books over time. Yeah, she has a similar voice, but but coming from you know, more of a devoted expert background, because this this is her her area of expertise,

and she really brings across a clear passion for ecological preservation. Uh. And it it's probably would say it's a perfect scientific beach read for obvious reasons. You're going to the beach and not better than the werewolf spot. Then you go swimming around in the ocean and have all the various fluids of marine life spawning just flowing around over your body. Now, this gives me an idea has anybody ever tried to

create a wear bone worm story? Well, you know, it would be hard because you'd have to swim all the way to the bottom of the ocean near a whales carcass and then be bitten by a bone worm. So it starts like the abyss. Yeah. Well, but then I don't see how I don't think think see how they

would be a threat to anybody. Like basically they'd be like, oh, well, Carl, he caught this bone worm illness, and now he just he keeps to himself a lot because he goes down the whale car because we'll remember we were talking about in that episode though about maybe it was just me. But but like how it would be great if you could use bone worms as like a weapon, like in BioShock or something like that, and you just throw them at people and they immediately start drilling through. So they

could be like that. You could just you could just change into a ware bone worm. But but a spy took Uh. The other book that I thought i'd mentioned this is another one that I've definitely mentioned on the podcast before, uh, and that is a Chinese mythology and introduction by and Beryl. I found this to be just a first of all, it's it has provids a great

overview of mythology as it's studied in general. So even if you're going into it without a whole lot of religious studies in your past or you know, mythological understanding, she provides just a great introduction to just what mythology is now it works, and then then a wonderful overview about what's distinct about Chinese myth cycles uh, compared to the West, compared to even other Asian myths cycles UM.

And there's just also a cool arrangement of themes, so she she groups everything and to for instance, they'll be at there's a section on on miraculous births, section on heroes, the section on immortality, on strange creatures, etcetera. So I feel like the the information is very well presented. Uh. You know, it's more of a more of a scholarly textbook for sure, compared to U to to my my

previous recommendation. But if you were at all interested in Chinese culture, if we were all interested in UM in Eastern mythology, I think it's a great book to pick up.

And I picked up a few different Chinese mythology texts found a few of them a little a little harder to engage with, So of those books, I feel like this is the this is the best, And this was a resource that I'm guessing that you turned to for a couple of different things that we've done over the last few months, Right, like the mythology episode that you and I did. You guys did an episode on the Zodiac.

Did it come into play there? Um? I picked up the book after the Zodiac, So I think I actually stopped this one out when I was working on that How Stuff Works Now piece of Superhero that was going to be the next thing I mentioned. Yeah, there was one particular story, um from Chinese folklore conserving concerning the seven to ten brothers, however many you want to count, and I was just determined to find a good scholarly

resource on this. As it turns out, it's not really dealt with in this book, but it ended up acquiring it anyway, And after I got it, I realized, well, this is not really gonna help me with this particular assignment. But then the more I started reading it, everyalized it was just a faculous text and couldn't put it back down. Cool that sounds great. I hope we get more out of it too, don't Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's tons of

inform in there. So if if you guys want to hear, uh, you know, anything else concerning mythology from us, if we have not filled our quota from based episodes, because we've had a couple of them, right, we've had the the uh, the overall look at mythology and then Joe, didn't we just record one dealing with myth as well. Yeah, we did one with on a mythical creatures mythology. So yeah, we we we have a couple of us feel like really strong myth based episodes. In mythology of course continually

comes up in our episodes. Anyone, we don't bust myths. Here is stuff to blow, all right, we embrace them, we build them. Okay, so we're gonna take a quick break, but when we get back, we're going to delve into our fiction picks for the year. Okay, so we're back, guys. I have been talking about this book, probably to you off air, but to pretty much everybody in my life for the last year. It is Jeff Vandermere's Annihilation. Uh. This is the first first book in his trilogy of

the Southern Reach story. Have I have I torn your ears apart yet? Oh? Yes, I I pushed hard for it to for its inclusion in a book club that I'm in it and it was it was just I guess too, Sci five. This is the stuff to blow your mind book. I'm telling you, like it's all like all the things we're going for with this podcast are

in this book. UM. So, if you don't know who vander Meer is, he's a weird fiction, sci fi horror author together with his wife, and he's compiled a lot of just excellent anthologies as introductions to those genres that he writes within. Um. In fact, last year, his book The Weird was on my list and I've probably talked about it on almost every single episode since then because I just loved that book. Um and so you've probably heard me mention it a lot of times. But Annihilation

is his book. It is a novel. Uh. And if you're a fan of what we do on the show, really I can't recommend you have to check it out. Combines weird science with this haunting prose in a great mystery. Uh. In fact, this is a description of the book just like, and I'm going to just give you a bare bones

summary because I don't want to spoil anything. It describes a team of four people therefore women, a biologist and anthropologist, a psychologist, and a surveyor, and they are sent into an area known as Area X, and this area has been completely abandoned and cut off from the rest of civilization. All they know is that they're the twelfth expedition to

go into this area. All of the other expeditions have met with disappearances of their members, suicides, aggressive cancers, or mental trauma when they get back, so pretty much everybody who goes there either dies or comes back and dies

or goes crazy. Um. It's narrated by the biologist, and as such, Vandermuir does this really good job of giving it an eye towards the field of biology, and the character explores this weird setting, and it makes use of the flora and the fauna both within the setting of the story in this Area X, but also in the

book's narrative. It's it's just wonderful at that. I don't want to spoil it any more than that, but there's some there's some weird stuff in Area X. Uh annely Knew It's give a great review of it over at I O nine, and she referred to it as the tale of an ill fated scientific expedition to a piece of coastline that has developed strange new physical properties that defy explanation, and it will make you believe in the

power of science mysteries again. Uh. It is currently being adapted into a film by Alex Garland, who most people know because he directed X Makina last year. I know, I'm from writing The Beach, which I read in high school. Yeah, he's well, he's done a bunch of great stuff. Twenty twenty days later. Um believe Judge Dred, Judge Dread he wrote, and I don't. I don't know if he directed Judge Dread,

but yeah, Alex Garland's great. So I'm psyched that he is making a movie version of this, and Natalie Portman and Oscar Isaac are both going to be in it, so I'm really looking forward to it. I don't want to say too much more about it other than that it's the first part of a trilogy. There's two more books, and I I hear those are good too. There on my list. Awesome, Well, I am going to get into my fiction pick now, and it is also a science

fiction book. In fact, I actually just finished reading this book this week. Earlier this week or a couple of weeks ago. I guess I didn't know what my fiction pick for this year was going to be, but now I know. I absolutely loved this book. It's called Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson and it's it was published by orbit In and it was just absolutely excellent, powerful, smart, thrilling, deeply researched, a very emotionally resonant and a lot of fun. And I again, I have a similar problem with you.

I don't want to spoil too much about the plot. Uh So I guess I'll keep my synopsis very brief, but the the story begins on a Generation starship, Robert. Have you ever in the back Yes? That's what No. I mean. Have you ever done an episode in the back catalog about like arc ships? Um? No, you know, it's one of those things that comes up. It has come up, been passing before, but never devoted episodes. That would be Yeah, I think that'd be a good thing

to focus an entire episode on someday. But generally the idea is um is that if you were planning on going to colonize an extrasolar star system in the galaxy, the limits imposed by physics say that, well, okay, you can't actually travel faster than light or anything like that. So it's gonna be a multi hundred year journey at the at the very least. Um, So what's gonna happen.

What happens if you need to make a you know, three hundred year journey to a star system, Well, you basically have to take enough of earth bio diversity with you to uh to create a self sustaining atmosphere and ecology on a ship. Um. And that's by a challenge. I mean, we we find we found significant challenges just creating uh, like the biospheres here on Earth. Yeah, I mean I believe one of the episodes we've done we talked about dirt. Didn't we about like the challenges of

like how much dirt you would need to bring? Yeah? I don't remember this, but yeah, I can imagine that absolutely features into this novel. So it's the novel starts on this this generation ship with multiple generations of passengers. I will say it starts into the journey. So all the characters are people who did not choose to embark

on this journey. They were all they were all born on the way, which is a strange position to imagine yourself in because you didn't sign up for this, right, the original generations and their descendants and their their children and their grandchildren are all dead. Uh. Well, in a way, you have to recycle all biological matter within these systems, so sort of, I mean, they don't directly cannibalize the flesh. Yeah, but I was imagining that in their atoms, their atoms

and energy go back into the ship system. But so, yeah, they're they're bound for this extrasolar star system known as Tao STI. And I think I can safely say that this is the most deeply and thoroughly scientific science fiction

book I have ever read. Uh. And I will say that because the plot is one of fundamentally it's a plot of scientific discovery, and that most of the conflicts in the plot are not like you know, your standard energy weapon battles, but they are scientific and engineering conflicts. It's uh, coming from smart people trying to struggle with the limitations imposed on them by physics, chemistry, and biology. And this is one of those books that I think I knew I was gonna like it once I saw

what the negative reviewers had to say. Do you ever have that experience? This got a lot of positive reviews, but when I saw what the negative reviews said, there's just a certain kind a negative review that makes me know I'm gonna love something. So I'm guessing this isn't something that the sad puppies would vote for a Hugo on. No, I don't think so. Well. Some people didn't like it,

I think because it had certain environmentalist themes. And then also I think some people found it boring because there wasn't enough like fighting and killing in it. Yeah exactly, okay, um, but there. But I thought it was just absolutely wonderful. I I fully, holly loved this book. Cool alright, Well for my fictional choice, UM, I'm definitely gonna give you the Cannibals that you wanted. Thank you. Question. I find myself. I found myself in the in the first half of

this year. Um, not reading a lot that I ended up really loving. Like I read, I've read some good books. I mean I read The Fixer by Bernard Malamud, which is which is great and it actually ties into some stuff I've written about for stuff to play your mind having to do with the blood, libel and person and

Jewish persecution of the Jews. I also read The knee On Bible by John Kennedy Tool, which is about the most impressive thing you'll ever read read by a sixteen year old if you really want to, really want to depress yourself about your your your teenage writing ability. Sixteen year old? How old was he when he wrote Confederacy of Dunces? Oh not, what was he older? You know, he was definitely older, lived tremendously long since the killed himself.

But this one came out after the Confederacy of Dunces because it was one that his mother had published, was written before then. I mean, they both came out after his death. But it's a I mean it's a very it's a very advanced book for a sixteen year old um and I enjoyed it, but I also I didn't just absolutely love it. And it's hard to really, you know, pick a science the ankle on it. Um. So really the book that's uh in aged me the most this year was a book of titled Off Season by Jack

Ketch um Um and it wasn't it. It's kind of an infamous publication and I wasn't even really going to mention it, but because it's extremely graphic, it's an extremely nasty piece of nineteen eighties horror fiction. And in fact, I think I edited out a mention of it on a previous show. Yeah, but but I figured, hey, it's the book that that sucked me in the most, so I should probably mention it with the caveat that it is not for for you, for young people, It is

not for anyone who's squeamish. It has a lot of a lot of extreme violence in it. Um it is, but it's a It's a real page turner. It's exceptionally well written. You care about the characters, and you hate, hate, hate all the debased villains, which are all essentially It's about some individuals on a vacation, so it's a great vacation read obviously, who are attacked by marauding cannibals that live in the hills and I go west Craven move turned into it. It sounds like the Hills have I Yeah,

it's my understanding that hills have ice. Was was kind of an inspiration on it. Like that, that, and a few other things. Um, but it's just it's really well executed, especially after you get the initial character development stuff out of the way. Once thing awful things start happening, it's just impossible to put it down. And uh, it's ultimately the book about normal folks who have to be who who are beset by bloodthirsty savages and then have to

become bloodthirsty savages to survive. And you find yourself becoming kind of a bloodthirsty savage reader as you cheer them on against these awful, awful people. So it's a it's an extreme read, uh, but not to the point where I ever felt like the author was just tormenting me or the characters just for the sake of all the sufferings, because I've certainly encountered haror like that before where it

just leaves me feeling a little gross with the roth. Yeah, and that being said, there is still plenty of bad stuff in here. So again I stressed that this this one is only for the dedicated horror fans out there, but it wouldn't be fair not to mention it since it was such a an engaging read, such an addictive read. Hey, so we need to take a quick break, but we will be right back with some more selections from our summer reading list, and we're back. Okay. So you guys

know me and I am a comics fan. So I wouldn't be able to bring and do a summer reading list if I didn't at least mention a couple of comics. Um. So I tried to narrow it down from my usual huge list to stuff that I think really resonates with our show and our listeners. On the first one that I have to recommend is called Junction True and it's

a graphic novel by Ray Fox. Uh. And it's illustrated and watercolored by Vince Locke, and it's just gorgeous water colors, really beautiful book, very uh, you know, has very painterly quality to it. Uh. And it is about a near future where subculture involves transhumanist body hacking, which just right

up our alley right. Uh. It's this weird, twisted love story about S and M rebellion, alienation, and body modification where the main character really has to ask himself how far he's willing to go for love, and by go, I mean modify his body for what his lover wants him to be. Uh. It is strange and kind of creepy and horrifying, but the characters just really feel real, and Uh, I just applauded it. Ray Fox is a very smart writer. He takes a lot of risks that

pay off in his storytelling and in the theme. So I recommend this book immensely. I believe it is put out by Top Shelf Productions. The second one that I would recommend, and this will come as no surprise to be who have listened to me talk about things on the show before. Warren Ellis has a new comic that's been out for the last year together with Declan Shelvey and Jordie Blair, called Injection, and Uh, it really takes that old Arthur C. Clark quote to heart. Any sufficiently

advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. So you can't really tell is it is there magic in this book or is it's, you know, some kind of sci fi technology that's just beyond our understanding. And he's not willing to hold your hand and let you know. If you haven't heard me babble about Warren Ellis on the show before. Uh, last year I recommended his nonfiction book Cunning Plans during

our summer reading list. He's known for doing comics like trans Metropolitan, Global Frequency, Planetary, Freak, Angels, and a lot of other superhero, video game and TV work. I went back and read the first volume of trans Metropolitan this year on your recommendation. I really liked it. Yeah, it's pretty cool, it was funny. I love it. Spent a long time since I've read it. Yeah, that Spider Jerusalem, right, Yes, Spider Jerusalem is his Like sci fi Hunter s. Thompson,

it's it's fun. Injection is about a team that consists of a secret agent, a scientist, a hacker, a shaman, and a detective and they make a mistake and they kind of think they're smarter than they are and they let something weird loose into the world, and subsequently they're all traumatized by this experience, but they're also trying to make things right. Uh. It doesn't hold your hand with

narrative structure. Ellis is definitely trying out some interesting like flashbacks, flash forwards, jumping from character to character, not really showing you all the pieces at once, But it comes together and it's it's excellent. The artwork is stunning. This team is great. Declan Chalvey and Jordie Blair are a couple that work together. He does the illustration and she does the colors, and so it's just, you know, you can see that teamwork in the art that really flows well together.

And the storytelling is superb for comics. If you like stories that deal with the following things, this is for you. Madness, weird, incursions into reality, the history of magic, especially in the British Isles, and government conspiracies. Injection has all that and more. Now are both of these that you've mentioned? Are these complete things? Are the ongoing Injection is still ongoing? Junction True is a complete work? That's cool? I uh so.

I actually this year have been embarking on a project of going back and reading basically all the great like classic graphic novels that I've never read before. So I've been reading a lot of as far as superheroes go, you know, the ones that everybody had read except for me. I read The Dark Knight Returns for the first time this year, and uh some other Batman stuff. Have you

done Alan moore Swamp thing run yet? I haven't, but I did read concerning Alan Moore I finally went and read From Hell, which is another one along your lines, Robert, that I certainly wouldn't recommend for our younger listeners because it is extremely graphic in terms of sex and violence. But it's also a really, really well researched and interesting dark graphic novels. Excellent. It's one of my favorite graphic novels of all time, and it has been a huge

influence on my own work in the field. And don't let the movies do from it. Yeah, but my next pick. I had a couple more nonfiction books that I read this year that I wanted to mention because I thought they were great. So another one concerning science is a book about black holes, and it is called black Hole Colon. How an idea abandoned by Newtonians, hated by Einstein, and gambled on by Hawking became loved by Marcia Bartouschek Yale University Press. So I have to say, points deducted for

having a sixteen wordlong subtitle that is obnoxious. You think it should be crunched down and yeah, point of infinite and city and zero volume black hole colon spaghettification, But points deducted for that points awarded for everything else. I thought, this is just a really superb and concise piece of science writing. Um and uh so Marcia Bartoschik, I think she is ahead of the head of a science writing program at M I T. And you can see why she has that post. She she is a really really

top notch science communicator. And there's a very breezy, readable, compact style to this book. Uh and so Bartschik tells the story of our knowledge about black holes, how they're first theorized, how violently physicists oppose them, and how they eventually came to be accepted and uh. Bartosik is very true to the difficult astrophysics behind black holes, but she makes the concepts involved, like really very easy to understand

for non scientists. I was am I'm not a physicist, I'm not even a very math inclined person, but I was following her the whole way. Uh and A lot of this is made possible simply by the way she narrativises the subject. It's easier to understand the ideas she presents because she tells the story historically, where she tells the story of each scientist interacting with the ideas of the other one. So you can see the logical progression

of how people understood black holes. But one of the most interesting things about the book to me is how it shows this long, painful battle between our scientific theories and our common sense. So for about a hundred years now, any physicist who cared to look would be able to work out that black holes are a consequence of Einstein's general relativity. But scientists across the generations just they allowed

their common sense to rebel against the idea. It's like, wait, how can the mass of many stars be compressed down to infinite density? That's just absurd, That can't happen. Uh. There's even one story in the book, how about Sir Arthur Eddington, who is one of the most respective physicists of the time, Just vicious Lee mocked the then young physicist Supermannia and Chandra Shaker after he gave a conference presentation in nineteen thirty five about the inevitability of black holes.

Apparently Eddington just got up after Chandra Shaker had finished giving his talk, and he said, surely nature has some way of preventing this nonsense more or less. Uh. And so, of course, in the end, we learned through decades of painful back and forth that our common sense about black holes is completely wrong, and these objects do in fact exists. They're they're not theoretical anymore. They're a fundamental part of

our picture of the universe. Um. But the every piece of common sense in our brain just rebels against it. It doesn't make any sense. How could there be something like that? Everything I know about black holes comes from the movie Interstellar. When you go when you go into did you guys know when you go into them you

travel back in time? You see? Now, everything I know about Disney's the black Hole, So I know that when you go into them, you fused with a row about and rule over hell man, Was any of this stuff covered in the book? No? That's uh, that's pretty cool. You've seen the black Hole? Right? No, I haven't. In case anyone's misunderstanding, maybe the science is ridiculous and I

met the same I was being ironic Interstellar as well. Yeah, black Hole is one of those like a super dark Disney sci fi fantasy movies that they did in like the late seventies. Yeah, like a robot disembowels Anthony Perkins in it. It's one of the What's What's the Witch Mountain movie? As part of that, There's there's another one anyway. Yeah, oh that sounds pretty good. So there's a lot of crazy dark movies that came out to round that time.

In Black Hole was one of them. To check that. Great, it's a go into it with you know, realistic expectations. It's a pretty fun, right, especially if you're ten. Yeah, well, I will definitely be looking into that. I always wanted to know how I could summon the dark powers of of of infinite density to do my bidding. Uh. A couple other quick mentions, I guess of of books I read this year, one is, uh, The Confidence Game by Maria Knakova of Viking. You got a copy of that,

didn't you write? Yeah? I saw her speak at the World Science Festival this year. She was on a panel that also included Mary Roach talking about about science writing, and yeah, I was really impressed with everything she had to say. Um, and that's why I also shared an article about that. She wrote about whether or not Trump Donald Trump is a con man on artists and I shared that on our Facebook feed, and some people did not like it, even though it was an objective scientific

approach look at what the Trump phenomenon is. Yeah, but I was really impressed with everything she had to say at the conference, and so I had to grab a copy of the book as well. I haven't read it yet, but I'm looking forward to uh reading through it. Yeah, it's it's a good book. And so it's about con artists.

About half historical narrative about some of the most interesting cons in history, and then the other half is science about psychological rea search on why humans are vulnerable to cons in general, and then particular tactics used by con artists and sort of the cognitive biases that they take advantage of. Uh. And I think it would be fun to discuss this book for for a whole episode of the show sometimes, especially if we could get con of COVID to come on and join us. I've touched based

with her her agent and so do that. Well, that'd be great. Yeah. I did find it interesting, And we have to like set it up as if we're going to do the show, but then don't actually call it. We just take all our money, yeah, exactly because oh DoD the audience not know that we get paid to do interviews. Um. Two things that She mentioned um in in her talk that I'm wondering, you know, to what extent there there in the book. She mentioned that she

was inspired by David Mannett movies. Really writing this book, I don't know. She didn't mention that in the book, and she also mentioned that she was inspired by like It's it's one thing we hear, we hear talk of con games and con artists, and it's easy to think, oh, well, that poor stupid person. But but in her talk at the World's Nice Festival, she mentioned that one of the things that really got are interested in this topic was that you have very smart people, very intelligent people, who

end up getting sucked into these things. Yeah. One of the stories in the book is about a physicist, a physicist, like working physicist, brilliant guy who gets conned by an Internet person pretending to be a I think like a check model, who wants fished, who wants to marry him, and they trick him into being a drug mule. Oh yeah, so you don't have to be dumb to fall for a con. They exploit biases that are that are there in all of us, even even physicists like check models. Uh.

Then there's one last nonfiction book I want to mention. Uh, and that is something I think it might have come out in an episode before. But it's Our Mathematical Universe, My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality. By Max teg Mark, not for Robert. Did you read this? Why? I didn't read it, but I've I've read that Tegmark stuff before. He's always great, He's awesome. And I get the feeling that tag Mark is sort of a polarizing

figure in the modern astrophysics and cosmology community. And I think this is because he does very important and relevant mainstream research. Like he's not some crazy crank, but he's also not afraid to go out on a limb and explore radically strange hypothesis like the idea that there's a physical way to quantify consciousness if you think about consciousness is a state of matter, or that the entire universe at bottom is made of math, not figuratively or metaphorically,

but literally. We're not described by math. We are mathematical objects. Uh. And so I think some scientists and scientifically literate people don't like it when otherwise respected scientists stick their necks out and speculate about such weirdness. Basically. Uh, But I I guess they think that it causes some confusion about what sciences. You hear people say this sometimes, like some

people in the skeptic community. Uh. And with those people, I I cannot agree, because I think it's wonderful when productive mainstream scientists are also free to play at the edges of what can be known about the world, as long as you're not confusing one type of intellectual exercise with the other. But ultimately, this book concerns the mathematical universe hypothesis, and it's also just a very good introduction to many other ideas in physics and cosmology today. One

example is the multiverse. I like the way Tagmark Tagmark tackles this idea, so, uh, the multi versus the idea that other universes exist and they're causally disconnected from our own. So if you if you follow like the cosmological debates, you'll know that a lot of people don't like this idea either. And one reason is that if another universe is causally disconnected from us, there's no way you could design a test to see if it's really there. So

what's the point in talking about whether it's there? Or not. By definition, there's no way to know, and I think that could be a very valid criticism. But in this book, teg Mark Uh makes an interesting case. He tries to make a case for why the multiverse is not a hypothesis to be tested on its own, but instead it's a prediction or a consequence of theories for which we do have experimental evidence. So you know, we have evidence that X theory is true. If X theory is true,

you would expect there to be other universes. Um. So for that alone, I think this book is worth reading Uh, and also be sure to check out some of the criticisms of tech Mark's ideas online. I remember at the time I read it, I came across a bunch of blog posts and reviews by other physicists who had a lot of disagreements with him, and they made interesting points

as well. And you know, as a non scientist, it's exciting to read a science book that's not just a presentation of established facts, but that's part of an ongoing debate where you know, the ideas are not have not been settled yet. Okay, So Robert, I think you're gonna close this out right, and you're gonna close this out with something for every buddy. Yeah, certainly for the younger, I'll read about the science of black holes and cannibal

uh destroyers. But well we got here. Well UM. As a lot of you know, I am the father of a four year old, so a lot of my reading these days involves reading books four or four year old and reading the same ones over and over and over again. I imagine many of our listeners I try and hide the ones they don't like to read UM or certainly

return them to the library. But I thought I mentioned just three quick ones here that I that I find to be very good books that my my son really engages with um and the and they're able to to cover science topics to varying degrees. The first one is

a book titled Octopus. This is by Evelyn Shaw with the illustrations by Ralph Carpentier, and this came out of one This is long out of print, but luckily with Amazon it's so easy these days to get out of print book, so you can pick up a copy of this hardback for like a dollar or two online, and I think it's really worth it. Basically, it's um. It is the story of an octopus with some wonderful kind of watercolor illustrations. But it's the story of an octopus

from basically her early life to her death. And she goes out, she finds a new home, she at some point mates, so that kind of happens off camera. You're just told that that occurs. Um she finds food, then she lays her eggs, and then she dies at the end. So it's the the life cycle of an octopus. It's not it's not presented in any kind of a cute see way. She's not like personified, right, She's kindling to tie into a previous discussion we've had on this show before.

Does she cannibalize other octopuses? No, but she gets in a fight with an octopus. So yeah, I'm not saying it's like a complete, no hold barred look at an octopus's life, but it is a refreshingly realistic, refreshing le naturalistic look at an animal. Uh. And so I enjoyed reading it, and my my son is really into hearing it.

And and it doesn't shy away from the fact that at the at the end of the book she dies, that she she walls herself up in her little cave and spins the last of her energy looking after eggs, which is, you know, kind of beautiful. Another one that he's really into is one called all about Scabs, Bige and Eat. I would have loved that if I was a kid, Yeah, because it's all about nasty scabs. What are they? What are they not getting into that body? Horror early Yeah, and this is this one is children's

That is a little bit. I mean, there's talk of in the book of do you eat scabs? Is a scab? Is it poop? Is that what it is is the body pooping out the scab. If you eat scabs, do you get ancient power? Depends on who who depends? A boy turns into a pig. At one point, I'm going to go on the record and say that my scabs when I was a kid did great. But I don't know what was in them, but they gave you the

strength of the wind to go. Another great thing about this one, and this is something that I think should resonate with any parents out there who read books, is that it has a couple of different levels of depth you can get into. So there's some stuff later on in the book where you can really get more into what skin is and how skin heels. That's cool and you can sort of read to whatever is appropriate for your child's engagement. So it's a great one. I believe

this was. This one is in the same book series as the Everybody Poops book. Oh yeah, okay, I'm well familiar with that one. And finally I have one. This one makes seem like a strange choice, but it's the Barrenstein Bears on the Moon by stand and Jan Berenstein. From this one came out what in ve um. You probably wonder how space he could this be? How how informative could this be about our solar system? This is what led all those people to write the manifesto about

the Case against Space. Maybe it's a for me though. Basically in this story you have a couple of the barn steamed bears and they go to the Moon with their dog on a rocket, and that's about all that happens.

They go there and they come back. But I found this to be pretty helpful and just explaining to my son what the moon is and where it is, because you know, I want to share all this great stuff, all this wonderful information about the about the Solar system, in the universe and what what what's happening on other planets. But initially I had to get over that hurdle of how do I explain to him what the moon is, That it's far away, that there's such an abstract constah,

that there's nobody on it. But yes, people have been there in the past, but only a handful and only white men, two bears and their dogs, and two bears and their dogs. So it basically just as a it works as a nice illustrative adventure to say, hey, this is what the Moon is, and this is how it relates to the Earth. Yea, that's neat very surface level, but you gotta start somewhere, and I found this to

be a good starting place. Now, is it the book that that movie Apollo eighteen with the Moon Spiders was based on. I didn't see that with it Moon Moon Spiders the Amne. I actually didn't see either, but I watched the trailer several times because I found it funny. It's actually a prequel to Transformers three. Dark of the Moon. The Barrenstein Bears find the Transformers buried on the Moon. All right, Well, that's those are the three that I have.

I guess the best way to close it out here is if there there are any books that you're looking forward to, or you know what's next on your plate that you're excited about. Well, I have a huge queue in my kindle right now of weird horror literature that I've picked up from reading that st JO sheet book. So Brian Evanson is sort of a newish like last ten years horror writer that I'm really enjoying and reading a book by him called A Collapse of Horses. I'm

going through Ramsey Campbell's back catalog. Um, those are the big ones that I can remember right now. Oh, we should I should throw this out there. A friend of the show, Michael we Hunt, has a collection of his stories out that are really good and it is called Greener Pastures. Yes, I read this as well. Um, I highly recommend anyone pick this up who's interested in contemporary

horror fiction. Um. Yeah, there two stories in their in particular the title tale Green Pastures and then the first one. Oh nannon is that it. It's the one with the mountain and the women. Uh. Anyway, the first story, it's one of those collections that kicks off on a really strong note, really knocks it out of the park. Yeah. So this is a young horror writer at the top

of his game. Go check it out. Speaking of friends of the show, there's a comic that I'm excited about that had just started up called Cryptocracy, and that's why our friend Van Jensen, who lives here in Atlanta, and it's illustrated by Pete Woods up from Dark Horse. It is really cool at the first two issues. And uh, I believe and at some point is going to be making an appearance with the conspiracy guys on their post. I hope. So, because his book is all about it's

basically the pitches what if every conspiracy theory was true? Yeah, and it's also from the point of view of the conspiracy perpetrator, it's not from the people who are trying to solve the mystery. It's fun. I like it a lot. Yeah. Interesting. Okay, how about you, Joe, what are you looking forward? Dude? What's what's the next big review? I think it's probably well, actually I already started it, so I know it. I don't know why I was hedging like that. It's uh.

The first novel in a trilogy, a science fiction trilogy by the Chinese author lu check Chen called The Three Body Problems but my list as well. I have not read it yet, but yeah, I I just started it and so far it's very good, so I'm very excited to continue with it. Well, for my part, I am extremely excited that our Scott Baker is the Great Ordeal. Book three of his Aspect Imperor trilogy is coming out next month. Um. I've talked about this author in this

series a lot the past. This is the dark fantasy series that has a tremendous amount of philosophy and even neuroscience in it. Um. I've heard nothing but good things about this series. I'm looking forward to catching up on it. And this reminds me of a book that you let me borrow that I should mention on the show as well.

Michael Shay, who we've talked about before because he my all time favorite horror story so far is written by him, The Autopsy, And when you heard that, you let me borrow a book of collection of his short fiction that The Autopsy is within. But then you also just let me borrow the Nift series, and so I'm getting into that as well. That niff Leen in in one episode we did recently, Yes, probably something with bugs because he's

um or mine. Maybe it had to do with giant bodies, that's right, yeah, giants, because yeah, because he's a very biologically or he was sadly passed away a year or two ago, but he was a very biologically literate author, and there was it all. There was always a lot of biological and body horror and creature heart insect horror in his work. Yeah, his work goes all over the place, and it's the autopsy is definitely that. It's like alien

body horror. But the nip the lean stuff is like if you're a fan of like sword and sorcery style kind of fantasy worlds, maybe Game of Thrones style stuff, this is that. But then incorporating all of this just absolutely weird aberrant, uh life forms and body horror. Yeah, yeah, I believe he took a lot of inspiration early on from Jack Vance dying our stories and then really took it into this. Uh this weird directional is alright. So

there you have it. Uh, some of some examples of stuff that we have read, that we are reading, that we plan to read, and of course we would love to hear from everyone out there. What are we missing? What what do we need to check out at all costs? What are your thoughts and some of the titles we've mentioned here. Yeah, we've got twelve more months before we do another summer reading, unless summer comes earlier next year. But in the meantime, and let us know the way

to get in touch with us social media. We are on Facebook, we're on Twitter, we're on Tumbler, we're on Instagram. You can take pictures of your books, send them to us on Instagram, put them on Tumbler, however, or you could just write us a message. How do they do that? Well, of course they can email us at blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com. Well more on this and pathans of other happens. Is it how stuff Works dot Com