Summer Reading: Aliens, Microbes, Cocktails and More

radioactive beaches and read your books, right right. Yeah, So this is kind of, you know, an annual tradition here, it's Stuff to Blow your Mind where we take a break from the research and we talked about what we've just been reading casually that we recommend our listeners go and read for the summer. Yeah. I mean this is the time, to your point, people are going on on vacation. People like to bring I like to bring a book with me on vacation if I'm whether I'm going to

the beach or not. And uh, it's also the time when we have a lot of we're just putting together the podcast. People are in and out, people are going on vacation, so it's nice to have something we can we can put together without a whole lot of extra research involved. One thing I've discovered is that if you're going on vacation, not to the beach, but say, to your in laws house, it's also great to bring a book there because you can sneak away. And I say

that as somebody who loves my in laws. I don't have in law problems. They are the greatest people in the world. But you're in somebody else's house every now and then you want to sneak off to another room and just read. Yeah. Well, And I have two thoughts

on this as well. For starters, we have so many distractions built into our regular routine that if you just break your routine a little bit, even by just going on a small family trip or going to visit in laws, you're gonna be able to break free from the shackles of of of your life a little bit and maybe read a bit more. That's nice. And then in general, there's this rule of life always brings something to read, because if you bring something to read, you will not

have time for it. But if you if you don't bring a book, then you will find yourself sitting in a in a waiting room somewhere with nothing to occupy yourself, but you know, staring at your fingernails and wishing you had your clippers on you, or you'll be looking at

junk on your phone and wishing you hadn't. I'm one of those people who like overly prepares in that respect, Like I've always got something to read, and I've also always got like notebooks to write in, to the point now where I've got like an absurd amount of notebooks in my everyday bag, like because I got a field Notes subscription. This isn't an advertisement for them, but I gotta field Notes subscription, and now I have like six field Notes for like all different things that are in

my backpack at all times. Plus I'm reading constantly. Well, until until very recently, you couldn't really have the kindle out on the plane while you're you know, during takeoff and landing. So I would always make sure, Okay, do I have a physical book for that portion of the flight, and then I can bust out the kindle for the rest. That's smart. Yeah, yeah, you don't have a kindle yet, right, you're still reading everything physical. I read physical books and

on my phone, so I so this is funny. The majority of the books that I'm going to recommend today I read on my phone, even though I still like paper books much better. Yeah, how is that on your eyes? Though? I mean it's not great. It was one of those where I just wanted to start reading a book. I didn't want to go out and buy it somewhere wait for it to arrive, so I just got the book and started reading or or started listening to an audio book.

I mean I do both of those. So I I consume books digitally a lot, even though I'm much enjoy paper books. Yeah, I enjoy them much more. Yeah. Yeah, it was boy getting a kindle this again on an advertisement, like any whatever e reader that doesn't like flash light directly into your eyeballs. Man, it was a revelation for me, Like my reading increased exponentially when I when I got that, because I just, I don't know, there's something about it, like it got me really back into reading again. Yeah.

I've also really enjoyed the various like free e books offerings that are out there. Like one that comes to mind is U Tour books. We talked about this. Yeah, they'll do a I think they're still doing this, a Book of the Month club where they'll just put out an e book and you can They'll just say here, here's the file downloaded, get it on your device. However, you get it on your device and then you get to go one of those, which is like a novel

lette that I read recently. It wasn't free, it was cents, so it really broke the bank. But not on my list here, but I recommend it. Kelly Robeson, she's this up and coming kind of sci fi horror fantasy writer, and she wrote this story called I Think It's a Human Stain and it is wow, really good. Yeah, but I'm jumping ahead. I'm like, I'm already recommending stuff that isn't on paper in front of me right here. Well, where should we start, gentlemen? Should we start with fiction

or nonfiction? Because we're gonna roll through some fictional selections, some nonfictional selections, and uh, Christian and I are gonna bust out at least a couple of comics. I think you have more than one. I'd have one comics selection. I surprisingly only have one comics. But knowing me, I'll end up talking about ten other comics by the end of this episode. Yeah, why don't we start with the fiction? All right? And I think one of you guys should

go first, because my fiction is a little odd. It's not like one thing, Joe, why don't you kick it off? Then? Alright, Well, I've got a couple of fiction picks this year. One is a book that is more recent I mean, actually, I guess it's about ten years ago now, but more recent. Another one is a classic that I just discovered for the first time this year. So I'll start with the more recent one, and that is going to be Blind Site by Peter Watts, which was published by Tour Books

in two thousand six. And we're just given Tour all the love today. I'm gonna try not to interrupt you too much, Joe, but I am currently reading this book and and enjoying it quite a lot, so i'll I may interject my opinions as well here and there. Well, y'all tap me on the shoulder if I'm just gushing to too effusively about this book. I loved this book.

I I picked up Blind Site after our interview with our Scott Baker because in his paper on alien philosophy or Scott Baker mentioned that there were really only two books he could think of that really achieved the imagination of a truly non anthropomorphic alien mind, and one of the two books he named was blind Side. I've never heard of it before. I've never read anything by Peter Watts, but I was like, well, I'm looking for a new sci fi horror kind of book right now, I'll check

that out. I ordered it, and oh man, it is so great. Uh it's it's a great example of the themes we talked about on the show all the time. So I think it's like Dead Center, bulls Eye stuff to blow your mind fan kind of book. But also it's a it's a great example of, um, this common sci fi type story, the first contact story. I don't want to say too much about the story, though I will talk about some elements from the setting of the novel, because the story, I think you should just experience the

surprises of the plot on your own. But I will say a bit about the themes and the setting. So Peter Watts is a Canadian marine biologist turned science fiction author, and his science background, I would say, really, really comes through in the novel because it's a novel about scientific hypotheses. Characters are scientists and are trying to solve scientific problems in the in the plot of the story, and it also deals with these fascinating questions about the biological origins

of consciousness. I would say it's my favorite kind of science fiction novel because I want to picture there are like four squares in a grid, and I would call this in the square that I would call wild hard. So you could define you could divide science fiction into hard and soft, where hard sci fi incorporates scientific themes and it tries to stay true to real physics and biology.

And then you've got soft sci fi has you know, unexplained magical elements, and that's fine, but that's its own thing. But then i'd separated also into dry versus wild. Dry sci fi deals with the standard themes of drama and fiction, familiar off interpersonal relationships and all that. Wild sci fi deals with unpredictable, bizarre creatures and scenarios. And so this this is in the corner of both hard and wild. It's absolutely bonkers, but at the same time it's extremely

scientifically conscientious and concerned with scientific accuracy and plausibility. So well, this is I think would you agree with I would agree, And I think at this point you need to mention, uh, the plot element and one particular character that initially hooked me on it, Like, I think it's probably the first thing you told me about it. Yeah, I would say.

My first thing to sell a stuff to blow your mind fan about this book is that it's a space adventure, hard sci fi, first contact book that has vampires, and I'm on board. So it's Life Force. No, no, it's not quite Life Force. So Life Force is definitely not hard Side. Right, So you're out there going like, wait a minute, vampires, Okay, I thought you said this was hard sci fi. I would say it is. There's no fantasy, there's no supernatural elements. Watts does an amazingly good job

of making vampires biologically plausible. And what he does is he envisions them as an extinct branch of hominids that went extinct in the place to see an epoch, uh, and their cousins of Homo sapiens and Neanderthals. But they've got all these interesting inherited glitches and features in their body. For one thing, they are obligate cannibals, like they have to consume other hominids because they need a necessary protein that's generated in hominid bodies, and they can't generate it themselves,

so they've got to eat other hominids to survive. This is why they're, you know, feeding on us. Of course, this they eat, they're not drinking blood. They literally are eating people. Now, I think it's more like they would just eat people. They might drink your blood too. But the genesis of all vampire myths, though, got you. So

how does this hold up in comparison. I'm looking to Robert here because we did an episode on Germo del Toro's The Strain, which is also very heavily scientifically influenced

vampire creation. I would say that the major difference here is that in The Strain, they put a lot of effort into imagining a very monstrous um vampire species that is essentially parasitic in in its origin and in blind Sight, Peter Watts puts a tremendous amount of effort into creating It's still monstrous in a way, it's still inhuman, but it's a very very human vampire in well, that that's where it gets really interesting because he spends so much

time just talking about how would a creature like this think, how would it uh. One of the examples that comes up is it's uh, the vampire character doesn't speak much, or when it does speak, if he speaks very briefly, and it makes a comparison to two orcas, to transient predatory, transient predator, and how the the ones that prey upon mammals speak less and are therefore, you know, creating less

noise that would scare off potential prey. So even though this vampire is a member of the crew, it's still behaving and thinking like an evolved predator. Yeah, yeah, and it's so great, I mean, and they so they respond to it the same way you would respond in the presence of a predator, Like they feel the predatory gaze as if there's like a lion sitting across the table

from them talking to them. Um, and it's all it's there's so many other little features he comes up with that are just fascinating, Like they have to go into these undead hibernation periods because of course, if you're just eating humans all the time, you run out of food, so they have to slow down their metabolism another thing they've covered the show before. Yeah. Uh. And then so they're harmed by looking at crosses. How does he make

that scientifically plausible? Where he gives He gives them this inherited neurological glitch because perpendicular intersecting right angles almost never occur in nature, and they've got this problem where when they look at one, they go into seizures. And that's clever, and that's kind of that's essentially one of the main reasons they went extinct, right, is not because human were

able to really outsmart them, because they are brilliant. There a rise of Christianity, well just the rise of human and you can't go into a human city and they can't. So if they okay, I see, So even if they're just like looking at a house that's spilt with the right angles, they start having these seizures. Yeah, wow, okay, and then they also, like another detail he brings up is um how they can they can hold two separate

worldviews in their mind at the same time. Yeah, they're like a they're like a multi core parallel processor and they can sort of divide their attention between solving multiple problems at the same time, they've got a divisible internal brain. This is not the example wats used, but I'm gonna tweak it. You know, the what is it the rabbit? What is the optical illusion? Sometimes it looks like a rabbit the duck, The rabbit the duck. The vampires can look at the rabbit the duck and they see a

rabbit in the duck at the same time. Is it the Necker cube? Yes, that's the example. You know about this Christian right, Well, it's a It's a three dimensional illustration of a cube, like the wire our cube, and your mind, while you're looking at it will switch back and forth from seeing it as a cube oriented in one direction to a cube oriented the other direction. I do know what you're talking about. I just didn't know

that's what it was called. Okay, So a human looks at that and your mind is naturally switching you back and forth. You see it one way, then you see it the other way. The vampires in this novel can see both cubes at once. One more thing I wanted

to terrify. Yeah, they sound like apex predators totally. I'd say this novel it has really strong horror elements and they are of a very interesting kind, because I would say it's a cousin to the kind of cosmic horror you'd see in something like Lovecraft and related works, where there's this idea that there are vast powerful forces at work in the universe and you're just a speck and you have no reason to think that these vast powerful

forces are sympathetic to you at all. Corror. Yeah, and so in Lovecraft these are like alien god beings and these pantheons and things like that. In blind Sight, I'd say the same thematic role is played by the laws of biological evolution, Like the novel actually leverages real facts about biology and extending them into thinking about space to fill the role of cosmic dread brought on by the elder gods in love Craft. That sounds very nice. Yeah, I need to check this book out. Yeah, there, this

is one of those books. I'm reading it in in the book format, and uh I keep making notes uh in in my device as I see that. See it tie into various topics we've covered, Like there's a scene where there are a number of scenes in the book where characters are are hit with very strong magnetic fields and it's causing hallucinations and also, um, like a god helmet. Yeah, it's like a god helmet. There. One of the characters

sees the creator God and goes berserk over it. Another character essentially ends up having the Cotard's delusion, believing that she does not exist anymore. It's it. I would say that that in the portion I've read of it, the cognitive stuff, like all the characters in it are so cognitively trans human, so delightfully cognitively trans human. Um. But but I don't want to steal too much of your thunder here. Well, no, I just I think I'm about

ready to move on. But I just want to say I think we haven't even touched on half of the amazingly fascinating ideas in this book. So it's just jammed with with stuff to contemplate really cool, interesting ideas. If you're into science, if you're into big questions and cosmic mysteries of existence, this is an excellent book. I think you'd really enjoy. And there's not there is not a

quote unquote normal character in the book. Like now every character is has some sort of bizarre cognitive ability or transformation. Like there's a character with multiple personalities intentionally created in her head team, like in her right so very eclipse phase, where so they've got like the ability to sort of sleeve multiple identities into a body. One character does, uh, eventually maybe more than one, but yeah, another character has the main character has lost lost half his brain to

an infection radical hemisphere ectomy. He had. He suffered from seizures when he was a child, and they were so bad that they did this procedure where they remove one hemisphere of the brain and that does stop the seizures, but it also has lots of side effects. Yeah. So it's it's like that level of of creativity in this book that that I think is just really really amazing. I thought one more fact I want to say, and then we can move on. This book also does something

that I've never seen done before. Maybe somebody else does it, but I think it's great. You always hear the singularitarians being so excited about uploading our consciousness into computers, and that's always interpreted as and that's the end, that's the end of history. We just upload our consciousness into computers and then it's just heavenly bliss in a virtual environment for all time. And we don't need to worry about

anything else. This book incorporates that as a historical event people start being able to upload their minds into virtual heavens, and then says, actually, that's not the end of history. That just happens at some point and things continue going on. What would be the consequences of that? And uh, and I love it. The way he deals with it is really interesting and oh yeah, like there are elements of yes, we've had were post singularity, but we we have difficulty

communicating with the machines and understanding each other. You have to have individuals whose whole role is to sort of serve as an arbitrator between these two factions. It is he is, he's sort of depicting post singularity, but it's not a he's not sanguine about the singularity and its effects on our lives. It's more kind of like, here's

just one more radically weird complication and human experience. Yeah, and I seem to recall to that, like there are a few areas where we haven't pushed into like full singularity situations, such as the digitization of consciousness. Like I think the individuals who are in that heaven still have to have their body or at least part of it on file somewhere right, Yeah, squeezed into tenually smaller and smaller drawers. This reminds me of have you guys ever

read any Charles Stross? A lot of his stuff kind of treats this singularity. This is funny. Charles Stross blurbed the heck out of this. Apparently Charles Stross loved blind Son. Yeah, so that's why it reminds me. Also, is Peter Watts a pseudonym? That's his real name, because Peter Watts is the the name of the character on Millennium that Terry o Quinn played. Yeah, just a fun coincidence. Terryo Quinn was in Millennium. Oh yeah, Terry Quinn was like a regular.

He wasn't in every episode, but he was. He was like essentially like Leans Hendrickson's like Millennium group partner slash front of me. Okay, well, y'all have to stop me, or we have I have to stop myself. We some somehow this has gotta stop where I'm just gonna keep gushing about this book. Let's let's get your fiction pick in here, all right. Well, um, maybe maybe I'm a bit set in my ways here, but I decided to

not shock anyone into feature an Ian M. Banks culture novel. Yeah, but you know, I think we're like N. M. Banks is like best like commercial service. Maybe. So, I mean, it's not the only book I read, but I have to say I do love them, and I kind of resist the urge to really just drive through them all and just read all of them, because we're not going to get any more of them since an M. Banks it's no longer with us. But I generally read one

a year, and it's always it's always a pleasure. Um. And then there are always so many stuff to blow your mind aligned themes that pop up in in these books. How many are there total? I want to say there, Um, it depends on how you count on because I think there's seven or eight that are considered culture novels. But some are are sort of clear culture culture novels that are you know, definitely involving members of the culture, and then others it's a case where okay, this seems to

be a novel that's taking place in the same universe. Yeah, and that that that those varying levels of awareness actually come come into play in this book. The book is uh is Matter. So the book concerns the shell world of Sersamon, which is a titanic artificial planet that contains nested concentric spheres internally lit by tiny thermonuclear stars. So in the book we learned that it was built by a mysterious long dead race known as the Veil for

reasons unknown. Uh. There there are multiple shell worlds spread throughout the galaxy in the Culture universe, but it's thought that the structures were originally intended to be fluid filled and utilized as a means of projecting some manner of of shielding around the entire galaxy. Now unknown if that shielding would have been to keep something out or to

keep something in. Uh. You know, it's hard to question the ways of the ancients, right, But anyway, it was never completed, and in the ages that followed you have various space fearing races coming in, exploring it, taking control of it. And now various layers of this thing are home to implanted ecosystems, and two of these contain humanoids, feudal pre industrial humanoid races engaged in wars of conquest,

while foster civilizations look on like different alien beings. One of them, they're just called the oct because they're kind of cephalopodic. Wait now, if you said this, I missed it. Do the do the people inside the shell worlds know they're in the shell world or do they just think

they're in the world. That's one of the really interesting aspects of this book because the three main characters of humanoid characters are members of the Royal House of Sorrow and one of these internal levels that's again in this pre industrial feudal age. But they're not They're not living in complete ignorance of the world beyond them. Like they they know that the oct or an alien species that looks after them. They know that they live in a

shell world and that there's a greater universe beyond. But at the same time, they they believe that their god lives in the center of the shell world and uh, and they're able to have like they're able to sort of think magically, to have sort of magical thinking about these greater powers while also believing that they are rooted

in more of a logical universe. So through throughout the book he does a great job of exploring this question, what would it be like to exist in a society like this to to know uh, to know their aliens, to know that there's a there's advanced science that your people can't even uh, you know, graphs that you don't even have it, like a germ theory of of of disease. But yet to know that there are spaceships that travel

around inside your shell world. Um, and then how would you and then how do you understand the the the universe beyond your shell world? Because the problem is like their cosmology is built upon this these layers within this sphere, and so it's even more complex for them to try and grasp this greater universe beyond. Now that makes me think about sort of the consequences of like what we

see in Star Trek with the prime directive. You know, they always say like, don't interfere and try to help a less advanced species, uh, because you'd just be messing up their way of life and their natural evolution through history. And I often look at that and say, oh why not, why don't we just come in and teach them about

spaceships and stuff like that. But you can imagine the trouble that could be caused with this radical disconnect where you don't have the scientific foundations already existing and suddenly you're just aware of advanced technology. Yeah, and banks explore some of this because you have these these various alien races that are watching these feudal societies and essentially setting back and enjoying their wars of conquest. And at the

same time, they're not supposed to get too involved. There are there are laws involved that are keeping them from you know, showing up and handing over advanced technology. And uh, and I don't want to spoiling anything in the plot, but essentially, uh, it seems to be the case that

someone has violated one of these these laws. Uh. It's it's it's a book where the plot, it initially seems pretty simple because within the shell world, you have a just king who's who's killed by a new server, and then you have the three children of the king who have to deal with it. Like one child witnesses the murder. He's not a child anymore, he's had grown up. Uh, the witnesses the murder and is on the run. And then the youngest son is there um uh you know,

left is the air. And then you have the daughter who has actually left uh the shell world and now is a member of the culture. And of course the culture uh with a capital c is is the the inter planetary, interstellar society at the core of most of these culture books, and they're what I guess you would say, hum an anarchist, utopian society post scarcity. And yeah, and one of the details that comes up in this book is that so the AI s are each a ship.

So these show run the culture essentially and they have converse with one another make decisions, but each one's operating system is built from the ground up, like it evolves from the ground up. That protects them from being like rapidly infected by anything. I think you just answered one of my questions about this. But it sounds like you're reading this book through the perspective of multiple cultures. Right.

It's not like there's one character that we follow that's only in the culture and not in the show world. You're getting perspectives from all of them. Well, there are three, the three main characters all are rooted in in the House of Sorrow, but you do encounter various other individuals who are like there's a there's a character that was maybe once a humanoid and now as a essentially this metallic bush kind of a creature, like very trans human

um Verry David Lynch. Yeah. I mean that's one of the great things about Banks sci fi is that he deals with some very serious, uh science fiction topic, you know, some very lofty ideas. There's a whole there's a whole bit in this and really the the title itself refers to uh section in it where they're they're talking about simulations in the theory that that we live within a simulation, that this is all computer simulation. And so they talk about that like whether how do we know that we

are matter? How do we know that we are the we're like the prime reality and not some created reality for another's amusement. Uh, And then they agreed Deckard together, well, and then there's gonna be some sort of absurd punchline here. And I mean it's not I don't want to paint it like it's discworld or anything, but there is a there is a goodhearted silliness in a lot of of the culture series that I think, uh, you know, propels

one on. There's an optimism there too. So what are the chances that Hollywood is eyeing this as like a big like franchise property. It sounds right for turning it into some kind of media property, since it's got all these different books and Enim Banks is so beloved as an author. I don't know. I have not heard any concrete plans to adapt any of the books, but there's some there's some lovely smaller scale books that in the

series that I think would work. Wonders such as The Player of Games, which I think I've talked about on this podcast in the past before. But it's about a cultural operative who has to infiltrate in an effect and alien society, whose whole society has built around a single super complex board game essentially, so they have to bring him in a Master of Games Jonathan maybe, yeah, maybe Jonathan will play We'll play him in the movie. So anyway,

I highly recommend matter. I I'm I'm torn if it's an ideal starting point for the culture series, but that's one of the ultimate beautiful things about it is that this is not like an eight seven or eight volumes saga, like each one can stand on its own, and each one may refer to the overall time line, um, you know, a little bit or a lot depending on what the plot is, and each one I'm assuming does like a pretty good job of immersing you in this world and

like kind of getting you settled into it before it proceeds with its narrative. Yeah, yeah, yeah that they do this one. This one is I think does an especially good job because you have characters that are at home in certain a certain layer, within a certain world, within this larger reuniverse, and you're able to sort of work out from there. Cool. Yeah, it's uh, my reading list grows by the day. I I really don't think that I'm going to ever be able to read everything that's

been recommended to me. But uh, Ian Banks, I have The Wasp Factory sitting in my pile next to the bed that start Yeah. Um, but that's not one of his sci fi novel that was his for He had written some sci fi novels and he he had difficulty finding publishers, and so he said, well, heck, I'm going to write a kind of a literary horror tale. So he wrote The Wasp Factory and it's a tremendous hit, and it is a it's a tremendous um. It's kind of slightly surreal horror read. But one of the things

that makes me want to read The Wasp Factory. Is that it's got a poll quote on the outside of the book where you normally have stuff like, you know, a tour to force, and the poll quote says something like utter trash, absolutely depraved. Yeah, it's kind of depraved. Once I finished that, then I'm gonna then I'll probably add a culture book to that stack, and then it'll be five years after that that I get to that. I'm still trying to finish that niff the Lean book

that you love Me Borrow a year ago. Well, that's a good one, which I have also recommended all over the place. Michael Shay al Right, well, speaking of literary horror. Speaking of Michael, what's your fiction selection? Yeah, so I don't have one fiction selection. I have many. I have undergone a project for the summer. My wife, for my birthday, because I asked her to do this, got me subscriptions to a bunch of genre magazines that have short fiction

in them. So I was like, you know what, I really I know about all this stuff that's going on. I write fiction. I should try to immerse myself and what people are currently publishing. So here I'll hand you

guys the two physical copies that I brought in. You can take a peek while I'm going through these, But I have been reading, uh, and have subscriptions now to The Dark Nightmare Magazine, Apex Magazine, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Clark's World, Light Speed, Cemetery Dance, Black Static, and The Lovecraft Easing. Uh. And if that sounds like a lot, it is. I had no idea how much I was getting into and how much I was gonna

try to keep up with. But yeah, the basic idea was that I subscribed to these so I could be more aware of what is publishing within this ecosystem, Who are the new voices in genres like horror and fantasy and sci fi, and what are their concerns. I felt like I had a responsibility as a writer to to keep up with what my peers were doing, but also to support their work financially. Uh. So the copies I just gave you, I have physical subscriptions to Cemetary Dance

and Black Static. Everything else is digital, so uh, you know, it actually only ends up being like something like twenty dollars a month for all of those subscriptions, which is kind of nice. And uh, there aren't as many avenues I think for beginning writers to break in anymore. Robert and I were talking about this earlier this morning, and to get paid on top of that, right as there used to be. So I decided I'm going to try to support these and do my best to keep up.

Although wow, I'm I'm already way behind. It is a ton to keep up with. I don't think I'll ever be able to read all of it. I've already got a stack. I've only had it for three months. I've already got a stack of twenty plus issues to catch up on. But I've been trying to read like one short story a day, and then I again have a little field Notes notebook that I tracked the stories in, and you know, track which ones I like the most, so I can keep an eye out for those authors

in the future. Cool. Yeah, I mean, I I have a I have a lot of thoughts about the UH, the the independent publishing industry, and and and the various horror publications that still survived this day and some of the new ones that have come out. I mean, I've

I've I've written fiction. I do enough for a while, so I'm familiar with with these, but certainly, uh, certainly some legendary titles that a Cemetery Dance has been around for quite a while, and I think that's I remember when I was first discovering like Joe Lansdale and Poppy z Bright, I remember having their short story collections and I was always curious, like, where did these? Anytime I look at a short story collection, I want to see

where things published originally? Curiosity and Cemetery Dance was always on the list. That was how I picked this group. I basically have been reading a lot of anthologies in the last couple of years. Usually it's like the best Horror of the year, the best dark fiction of the year or whatever, and so I would go through those as bibliographies essentially and say, like, all right, where was all this stuff published originally? Cool, I'll go subscribe to

that stuff now. Um. Surprisingly, yeah, it's not all that expensive. They're about like two or three dollars an issue. If you get them digitally, they get auto delivered to my Kindle. I don't even have to download them. Like all of a sudden. It's like at the on the first day of a month, there's like, you know, ten new magazine sitting on my Kindle. Um. There's some weird formatting issues though. The Dark in particular, like for some reason isn't Kindle ready,

so it won't show up on my Kindle. But I can read it on like the Amazon app, on like a phone or a tablet or something like that. So sometimes I gotta switch devices or whatever. But it's fine, the first world problem. The cool thing about Clark's World that I'd like to point out is that it also republishes classic works by you know, really well known established

sci fi fantasy authors. Uh So, like, for instance, James Tiptree Jr. There was a story by him her in uh in one of the issues that I was reading. So I don't know how familiar you guys are with James Tiptree Jr. But it's a pseudonym for Alice Bradley Sheldon, uh And she wrote sci fi from the sixties to the eighties, but she took on a male student in persona to make it easier to get published. She really wrote some amazing stuff, one of the greats, really, and

she's got this huge body of work to explore. So it was cool that just like kind of popped up there in Clark's World. Uh, there's also nonfiction in these, so there's a lot of stuff that looks at the industry as a whole. What's going on with publishing. Uh, what kind of awards are coming out? You know, brom Stoker, Shirley Jackson. Actually, as we're recording this, the Shirley Jackson Awards were just awarded like two two or three days ago, I think for sixteen nominees, and uh, they talk about

genre films related literary criticism. It's really interesting. Uh so my favorite so far. I've been reading these for three months now trying to keep up. There's three stories that I want to call out in particular. One is Kiss the Mouthless Girl by Giovanni de Fio, and that was in Nightmare of May of this year. You were telling me about this, Yeah, yeah, this one really stuck out

to me. And then there was The Witches Hour or just Witches Hour by Shannon Connor Winward, which was in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction again May, the May issue. And The Lark Ascending, which is a story by Samantha Henderson that was in the Dark Again published

in May. Uh, Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction did you know, like that's where all the Dark Tower stuff was published originally, Like The Gun Slinger originally came out as five short stories in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction over the course of the late seventies going into the eighties. Yeah. So uh that magazine, I mean,

it's been around since the forties. It has like this amazing track record of of talent that it's Foster Stephen King eventually worked up to that after all the all the Cavalier, Yeah, Stephen King is the opposite. Like if you go and you look at like Nightshift and Skeleton Crew and you're like, where was this originally published, and it's all like Cavalier and like Penthouse and stuff like that. Yeah, that was back in the day where you could make

money writing short fiction and just selling them to skin Mag's. Yeah. Uh, you know a publication that I'll throw in there is being a pretty good one if you're into if you're into fantasy, particularly dark fantasy. Grim Dark Magazine, Oh yeah, yeah, that was also on my list. I ended up not going with it because that's like a very specific genre, right, grim dark is a its own like sub genre, is

my understanding. It depends how you're talking to ye. Do people not consider George R. Martin an example of grim dark? Like the Throne stuff? Think sure, but basically their whole lengthy like Facebook arguments like is this author grim dark? Nope, not grim dark enough for me. Yeah, it gets a bit As with any genre classification and stub genre classification, it can get a bit silly. So what is it?

It's it's fantasy where characters swear and they're mean and immoral. Well, it's like I think graphically violent, right, is part of it? Though this is the whole. These are all discussion points in the argument. But because I remember, like I wrote

a short story. But both of you guys have read this short story I wrote last year and I sent it around to a couple of friends, and our buddy Michael we Hunt, who's an established writer who's published in some of these magazines, was like, it's a it's a little bit grim dark. I don't know if you're going to be able to get it published some of these And I was like, I don't even know what that is. And then that's how I learned. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I guess grim dark is just kind of like, you know,

a lot of it's nihilistic. Um. Yeah, that sounds like Grim Dark Magazine in particular. I wonder the reason I started picking it up is because our Scott Baker has had a couple of short stories said in his uh his universe in that those books, So we should throw that out for people who haven't listened to the Art

Scott Baker episode. So, uh, that universe is the Second Apocalypse socca yea, yeah, yeah, yeah, And these are dark fantasy books that he has what like at least like eight of or something like that, and it's a dark, dark, philosophically charged fantasy epic. Yeah. Again, another thing that's in my stack. I have the first book in that series, but I haven't gotten to it yet. Also recommended to me by a friend of the show, E. C. Steiner. Yeah. A lot of people whose opinions I respect to love

that stuff. So that's my fiction for the summer, Holy Cow. Other than comics, of course, But yeah, I've I've been diving into the deep end. I also just finished rereading Stephen King's for the summer, but that is not on my recommendation list. I love that book, but I don't know that I necessarily think it's for everybody to revisit. It's a huge Alright, So we're gonna take a quick break, and when we come back, we'll jump into some non

fictional selections. Uh, and then after that we'll probably take another commercial break, and then we will discuss a few comics and one final fiction selection from Joe. Thank Thank Alright, we're back. Okay, So nonfiction, if I know you guys, there's some pretty dense stuff because you, especially Joe, Joe loves some like really dense scientific nonfiction material but also accessible. I don't know what you mean by Dent's. I mean,

I wouldn't like, I'm not recommending like textbooks or anything. Okay, it's uh, it's a textbook. Now. My pick this year is The Fundamentals of Physics, Volume two. Now it's a book by Ed Young, of course, one of my favorite science writers and has been for years. The book is his twenty sixteen book from HarperCollins called I Contain Multitudes The Microbes Within Us in a Grander View of Life. Now.

Ed Young is, as you've mentioned before on the show, somebody if you're into our podcast, worth following on Twitter because he has some really interesting insights. So yeah, he. I mean, he's great on Twitter. Just if you ever see an article by him. He writes for different publications that he writes for The Atlantic, for National Geographics sometimes, but anytime you see an article by him, it's worth

checking out. It's usually going to be about some really interesting feature of biology that you've never been aware of before. And he's one of the real great biology writers out there right now. He's one of those dudes that like every time we're researching, like I'd say, like once a month when we're researching, like something will just paying on the radar and it will be an ed Young. Uh So.

I Contain Multitudes is about microbial life, and it's one of the best science books I've read in a long time. I'm actually hoping we can talk to Ed Young on the show sometimes. It'd be really great, and I've I've emailed with him once, but I want to get back in touch with them. Hopefully we can bring him on. We'll see. But like I said, he's been one of my favorite science writers for years, and I think this

book is just gold. It hits the sweet spot of combining getting it right with making it fascinating, which sometimes you feel like science writers tend to spill more over onto one side of that than the other. He can do both. He's really good at getting the point across and being accessible. Yeah. Um, so, based on the title, you might guess that I Contain Multitudes because you contain them. Is about the microbiota within your body, and that is a major part of the book, but it's only one

part of the story. One of the main themes that I took away from the book is that it's about the many ways in which this is not a world of plants and animals with some microbes scattered around it. This is a world of microbes. And if you were just to communicate from a purely biological perspective with an alien species, what is Earth life like? People would usually say, well, it's you know, it's like humans. They've got a head

with eyes and aren't. No, you'd be talking about the microbes because that is what the majority of Earth life is. We didn't put them on the Golden plates at all. Yeah, I mean we should have that, that is, Yeah, that is what's representative of Earth life. And so this is a mic anything about bacteria that surely they must that's an interesting question. We should look at in the future. Well, they did have carvings of naked humans, and those naked

humans are crawling with bacteria, naked bacteria. It depends what the the alien encountering it knows about life. Yeah, we assume that the aliens that are encountering it are also going to be anthropo, more fick and subsequently have eyes and look at these etchings on a gold plate anyway, might feel them or yeah, you know it's but if

they have harsh on voyage, are too bad. But if they evolved from microbial life, and I guess we to assume they did, that's our only modeled and they would surely look at a human being on a plate and say, oh, this is what evolved from microbial life on their world, right, So okay, back to your ed Young book. Yeah, and so well, that is one thing we can sort of

expect that ed Young doesn't talk about this much. But it's like, if we encounter life somewhere else in the universe, one thing we can almost certainly be sure of is that it evolved from single celled organisms. And in what direction it evolved. You know, it's hard to guess. I might go in all kinds of ways. But single celled organisms are going to be the rule for life in the galaxy, and they're definitely the rule for life on Earth. Microbes are are not just a thing that we interact

with on Earth. But one of the great things about his book is it shows all the hundreds of ways that microbes are so integrally a part of our existence. It almost doesn't even make sense to think of ourselves as humans with microbes living in and on us. We need them for our lives. We've co evolved with them. The more we learn, the more it becomes clear they are us. Microbes are part of what we are, and

without them, we wouldn't be what we are. So I'm gonna how stuff works eyes this conversation for a second. Brain Stuff are one of our other shows here that I am the narrator on. UH. We have the classic episode, which is our version of this why are You Farting? Which is that that's basically like our version of that. It's like, here's about all these microbes that are inside

your body, but we'll tie it into flatulence. Anyway, that book is definitely worth checking out, and maybe in the future we'll get to talk to Ed on the show. Sometimes Yeah, that'd be cool ed. If you're listening, give us a call. Alright, So I have two selections I'm going to run through here. Okay, there's a reason because you'll need the set one after the first one. The first book is Raven Rock, The Story of the U. S. Government's secret plan to save itself when the rest of

us die, by Garrett M. Graff. Uh. This is one of the more terrifying things you you can read this year. Uh, and the horror is twofold. So on one level, you can revel in the post apocalypse that might have been a United States ravaged by nuclear war, in which a replacement US government has stitched together from surviving political and corporate leaders. Post office employees travel the country to count the dead. It's it's sort of chronicle of the mega deaths,

I guess. And uh, everyone else who crawled out of a bunker gets to spend those hoarded two dollar bills and eat Nibisco survival biscuits, so you know, it's kind of it has something for fallout fans, you know. On the other hand, you get to learn all about our our nation's past rehearsals for nuclear war, the nature of the so called nuclear football, and just how much unchecked power a US president has to plunge the world into

nuclear annihilation. So it will it will absolutely horrify de Beatreat. Well, yeah, yeah, you get to what is it A Boy and his Dog? Yeah, I mean, in a way, if you're reading A Boy and his Dog, or The Road or The Stand or just about anything else you can you can whip this

out and sort of fact check everything. So in this book you get to learn about the mobile aerial command centers for the US government and the Buried Bunker, essentially cities created to shelter the chosen few while you know, the rest of everybody else dies, And you get to consider all these different accounts of how these plans played into US history, such as there's this account of Defense Secretary James Schlessinger and he ordered the Pentagon, he had

to order the Pentagon not to uh to disregard a presidential launch order of nuclear weapons because he was a raid that Richard Nixon, who at the time was this like the very end of his presidency. He's drinking heavily, you know, just thumbing through his enemies. This is what everybody was worried about, that he would like in a rage, just fire some nukes on his way out the door. And I believe he It is not just like I wonder if he'll do this, like I think Nixon had

had mentioned the possibility. Well, Nixon had been practicing what was known then as the Madman theory of of international relations, where he would he would get his subordinates to try to convince the Soviet Union that he was unhinged and likely to launch a nuclear strike in order to get more leveraging power in negotiations with them because he was The idea was, if the Soviets think that Nixon might is so crazy he really might start a war, then

we can get more out of them when we're having discussions. Okay, So it's it's that practics by any other world leaders. Uh. Well, I will just say that with with everything that continues to uh fill our news feeds, this this book is uting and relevant and uh and also you know anxiety uh aggravating as well. Alright, and this is why you have a second book. That is why I have the

second book. The second book. Listeners to the show may remember from Joe and I's Cocktail episode, because after Raven Rock, you're gonna need a drink. The book is The Drunken Botanists The Plants that Create the World's Great Drinks by Amy Stewart. This is just this is a lovely volume to keep around. This is one that I pull off the bookshelf fairly frequently. Yeah, Robert, you let me borrow this when we were preparing for our mixology episode and

I flipped through it. I really enjoyed it. It's it's got just cool little facts and uh stuff behind all these cocktails you might enjoy in the liquors that go into them, and it's uh, it's a cabinet of curiosities for the mouth and the stomach. Yeah. Essentially, if you if you drink, and you are if you're a beer drink or a and drink, or certainly if you're a cocktail drinker, you can look up to be different beers, wines, various liqueurs and see what is the botanical origin and

then what is that plan? Where does it come from, how did it come to be? How did humans cultivated or interact with it? Uh? So it it turns every it turns every cocktail you might have uh into uh into a potential you know, botany lesson between this and our colleagues Annie and Laura and over on food stuff. I feel like, uh like we need to just have like a full bar set up here and how stuff works, well, I feel like we have a cabinet full of liquor bottles.

But like I look at their feeding, like half the episodes that they do are about like some kind of alcohol. So it's clearly like really interesting. Scientifically, well, it's it's kind of an imbalance, right. I mean they get the free alcohol and we get free copies of Raven Rocks. So there you go review copies. I should say they're

not free. So yeah, the Drunken Botanist, Uh excellent volume looks good on a shelf, and it has cocktail recipes within it so you can bust it out to to see what you're gonna you know, uh, concoct for the evening. So at the beginning of this episode, I said that I would inevitably bring up other comic books. Raven Rock reminds me of this great series that I think is wrapping up right now called Letter forty four. Have I

talked to you guys about this before? The premise is that, uh, the United States has detected a spaceship just within the Solar system, and they have already sent a ship full of scientists to go investigate what it is. And the beginning of the story, as a new president is elected, there's a letter on his desk in the Oval office and he opens it. It's essentially a letter describing to him like, here's all this stuff that's going on. Congratulations,

you just inherited this huge problem. And the story goes on from there. The Raven Rock thing reminds me because a huge part of it is them preparing for what they assume is going to be some kind of doomsday scenario if the aliens are coming to Earth. I highly recommend this story. It's like the West Wing meets uh, you know, some like outlandish hard sci fi is really cool.

And that leads me to a completely unrelated nonfiction recommendation that I have, so I recommend and this is something that I am about halfway through right now myself, Corey doctor Rose. Book Information doesn't want to be free laws for the Internet age. This is something I stumbled across when I went to south By Southwest earlier this year. They have they do this little thing where they have like a south By Southwest bookstore that they set up

in the convention Center. And it's like all books that have debuted at south By Southwest where the the authors have given talks related to them. So I found this there. Um short. These are all short essays by Corey Doctor or like real short about copyright and navigating around it to be a successful creator of really anything in the digital age. It's about how old models have failed and are changing and what is actually coming down the road.

And this is a book that's published by McSweeney's. You guys are familiar with mc sweeney's. So the physical copies got this really cool design to it. I'm reading it digitally, but it's got a it's got a beautiful cover. Um. Corey Doctor, if people aren't familiar, is a blogger and fiction writer. He's the guy who runs Boying Boying Uh. He's very active in copyright activism and in Creative Commons is writings. They're almost all available as free PDFs from

his own site using Creative Commons licenses. So he's basically made some some interesting arguments. I don't know that I agree with all of them, and I don't I don't want to go through all of them here, but that distributing his content as such, making them free to everybody, actually helps his sales in other distribution models, whether that's print or digitally. So even though you can download a PDF of like this book, he argues, well, that acts as like fodder to get people to go and buy it,

whether it's in print or digitally. It's kind of an interesting model. That's interesting that that kind of perhaps ties in with the comic book I'm gonna mention later. Oh cool, Oh right, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's that. That is a good launching point. Um. So there's some really good advice in this book for creative people who are trying to make a go at making a living off of what they do. Whether you're your musician, your writer, your podcast

or whatever. You're making short films and you're putting them on YouTube. This gives you advice on questions like when should you quit your job, does copyright protection work in your favor? It tells you how to build an audience, and uh doctor makes this point that most creative people, when they're starting out, they don't want to worry about

this stuff, right, They just want to make things. They just want to get it out there in the world, but rather than ignoring it, he recommends use this book based on the lessons that he's learned as a starting point so that you can learn the difference between These are the various sectors that he describes creators, investors, audience,

and intermediaries and as well. This also describes how the industry is currently organized and where it's going, which is something I mean, I know it's of interest to us because we work within this industry, but I'm sure that there are many of our listeners out there that make stuff, whether they're they're writing articles, or they're doing their own podcasts,

or they're making short films, or they're recording music. I think this would be of interest to most people who are trying to sort of get their creative projects out there into the world. Cool. Yeah, So if you're out there and you're listening to us and say, hey, when can I start a podcast and quit my job? Yeah? Read this before? Yeah, definitely. Yeah. I think basically, if I remember correctly, there's a there's a chapter title that's like,

when should I quit my job? Don't? Well, maybe we should take a quick break and then when we come back we can look at our our final selections. I know a couple of comics from you guys, and another fig book I wanted to mention. Thank alright, we're back. So Joe, what do you have? You have one? You have one more fictional selection here before Christian and I share a couple of comics. Yeah, and now this one

is a classic in science fiction. I'm sure a lot of you have probably already read it, and I just wanted to mention it because it was new to me this year, and it's every bit as great as people say it is. It's deserving of the praise. And this would be the nineteen sixty nine sci fi classic, The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Kay Lagwin. Ah. Yeah, my wife has been reading a lot of Lagwin lately. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah. Have you guys read this book?

I have not read it. I have not. Yeah, I just okay, So I've been meaning to read this book for years. I think there's a big resurgence with her stuff going on, right, Yeah, I just noticed that this is funny. So I started reading this book, and I was talking to my wife, Rachel, who doesn't usually read a whole lot of sci fi. Uh, And I found out at the same time, completely unknown to me, she had been reading a different Languin book. I don't know

where all this sudden interest came from. I guess it just emerged from the ether. But hold on, Your wife and my wife are in the same reading group. I think they might have had a Luguin book assigned for that. That might be it may well. Anyway, this book is just excellent. Like, if you've never read it before, you should go back. It was published in nineteen nine, but it's fresh. It feels like it could have been published this year. Uh, it just jumps off the page. It's

so good. All right, Well, we'll give us the cell beyond everyone knowing that this is a book we should have read. Why should we read it? Well, it's It's a very different kind of alien contact story. Unlike Peter Watt's book that I recommended earlier, Blindside, which is amazing on its own, and in that book, the alien contact is a confusing and dangerous meeting of utterly unfamiliar minds.

This is more of an alien anthropology story. So it's set within Laguin's Hainish cycle, which is this larger group of books that I haven't read any of the other ones in this cycle, So you don't need to know anything about the cycle going in. It's all explained within the story. You can just jump right in to this novel.

But anyway, in this story, there are many solar systems throughout the galaxy with similar related humanoid life forms that have been seeded by one original culture, and the humanoid world's gradually become absorbed into this one sort of galactic treaty organization called the Ecumen. And this is I guess sort of similar to the culture actually in the Banks.

And in this novel, the Ecumen sends a single loan representative named ginli I to this cold frozen planet called Gethen, and it's his job to convince the planet's major governments to sign treaties and join the Ecumen. But it's kind of difficult because they're not a spacefaring planet. They have

no spaceships. Uh, they don't have much technology that's sort of like, you know, a mid twentieth century industrial technology, but they that they have no goal of going into space, and so when he shows up, their reaction is not very interested. Surprisingly, But anyway, that that sort of gets into the cultural differences between like Earth culture and what's

there on this planet? So that that's the opening set up, But most of the joy of this novel is just in the interactions of alien cultures learning from each other and learning about each other. And one of the great themes in this book, and it's sort of there in the title, is that light is the left hand of darkness.

It's that we learn to understand thuring things through difference in distinction, Like they're oftentimes things we don't recognize in ourselves until we meet somebody very different from us, and we we learned to contrast that person with us to see something we never knew was there before. So the novels this kind of anthropology of the inhabitants of Gethin, but in doing that, it also a reverse anthropology of

human Earth culture. And it's it's just full of I mean, I don't want to spoil too much about it, because most of the pleasure and it is just discovering how the world works and how different it is from us, and and how the differences can be can seem so different and be the same, or can show us something

about ourselves. It's just a great, great sci fi book. Cool. Yeah, Well, it sounds like I need to actually pull it off the shelf and jump in, actually make it happen this year with the Left Hand of Darkness, not to be confused with the Right Hand of doom. What is that's a hell Boy graphic novel? Okay? Is the Big the Big Stone Hand? Yeah? Oh right, right right? The Big Punchy very different than the hell Boy world. But but there's all kinds of I mean, it's serious, but it's

also got some humor in it. It's um I couldn't recommend it enough, and I think both of you guys would love it cool. The idea that there's some humor in it, I think is a good selling point because she has a very very serious sounding name. I know that sounds ridiculous, but well, it's not a silly novel. I mean, it's not Star Trek e like it's a It's got a very serious story and a lot of serious stuff happens in it. But there there's also some joy and some humor in it to be had in

the relations between the characters. Yeah, I think that's one of the That is one of the reasons I keep coming back to Banks, So there is a joy there, you know. I do enjoy some joyless fiction, I know. But yeah, it's like you want something that they wants to wake up in the morning. Sometimes. All right, well shall I cover my comic here? Comics? Okay, So I always have to to preface by saying I'm not a huge comics guy. I probably read like three comics a year.

And uh and and I'm you know, a bit, a bit choosy and reluctant. Uh, but inevitably pick up a couple of things. So this year I I read Alejandro Jodorowski's Showman Killer, which I enjoyed. On you suggestion, Christian, I read James Stoko's Orc Stain. Oh God, so good. Yeah. Yeah, I'm actually reading one of James Stocco's earlier works right now.

Not on my recommendation list, but he did this book called Wanton Soup that's all about like space truckers, essentially who in the main space trucker is constantly in search for the best wanton soup in the galaxy. Yeah, well that sounds fun too. Yeah. Stucco is great. But the book that I'm gonna highlight here is is a wonderful little comic. Uh. And it's actually a web comic, but there's the first uh what ninety two pages of it are available in physical form, and it's called Kill six

Billion Demons by Tom Parkinson Morgan. And this one is actually recommend recommended to me by j M. Dragonis, who is another tought talented comic artist in a friend of yours. Yeah, well I met him because he's a listener to our show. Yeah, he wrote into me. I think he heard me talking about going to comic book conven at some point, and we sometime last year we met up at a comic book convention and became friends and we're comics buddies now. Yeah. And and I introduced you to him when we did

our live show at C two e two earlier this year. Yeah, and that's where we were chatting and he said, oh, you should check out six Billion Demons, So I looked it up. I did, and by while we're at it. His pen name for his comics is JM. But his name is Joe Uh. Joe Uh does a book called The Sires of Time, which is worth checking out too. Oh yeah, he has this kind of this wonderful wood cut style that it's beautiful. You should follow him on social media and what like watching him the time he

puts into like every single page is it's stunning. Anyways, kill sixteen billion Demons those sounds right up my alley. Yeah, and uh, it's it's it's a web comic, which is kind of a new thing to me. I'm not really that up on web comics and now they work. But you can you can go to kill six Billion Demons

dot com. That's no numbers and there must went tough to get that domain name, but you can read it all there and it's like people it's like a guess kind of a patron system where people support that way and or by the physical book. But it's it's essentially the story of a young woman who sucked into an alien world of demons, angels, fallen gods. Uh. It showcases heavy inspiration from Eastern religion, so lots of like lots of iconography that feels reminiscent of Hinduism and various as

well as various Buddhist works of art. And there's also uh this meant might just be me. I haven't seen you know him point to this artists and inspiration, but uh, I get a strong sense of Wayne Barlow in a lot of the designs Wayne Barlow, who you know, created and made a career out of drawing uh at times dinosaurs, some paleo art, but also aliens and demons. Ye, so gorgeous stuff. Like if you just if you're out there listening and you want to see what it looks like,

like Google image search that or look for it on Pinterest. Yeah. Yeah, Wayne Wayne Barlow is incredible. H So this uh, this, this is just a really really fun comic to pick up strong female protagonists, wonderful lore and there's just so many, so many scenes you turned to are just going to be like an epic landscape where they're all these different demonic or angelic creatures engaged in various activities around like strange locales, and you just kind of you just kind

of lose yourself in the image. It's kind of like looking at a at a Bosch painting, you know, and you're just you're just picking out all the details and figuring out the smaller stories that are occupying the corners. Yeah. I mean I had never heard of this until you you brought it in today into the studio and it completely missed my radar. But it looks gorgeous al right, Well, how about you, Christian you you were You, unlike me, are a big comics guy, so I know you've got

something special for us. This is uh my favorite comic that's come out in the last I guess like twelve months maybe um. I think it was being published in single issues last year and the collected edition came out early seen. I believe it's called House of Penance and it's by Peter J. Tamassi, Ian Bertram and Dave Stewart, and it's published by dark Horse Comics. This is so the collection is a graphic novel horror story about the

Winchester Mystery House and its construction. So we're probably all three of us fairly familiar with it. But if if you're unfamiliar with it. It builds off of the myth that Sarah Winchester thought there was a blood curse on her home thanks to her husband's gun business. So the idea here and this is real. You can go visit this place if you've not heard of it before. Winchester Mystery House is a real mansion in San Jose, California.

It was the residence of William worked Winchester's widow, Sarah, and it has a lack of a building plan that's turned it into this odd curiosity for tourists. Uh. It was constructed in eighty four and Sarah and other people have claimed that it was haunted by the ghosts of those who were killed with Winchester rifles, so she kept building it into this crazy labyrinth. There's doors and stairs that go to nowhere, like our hotel in Chicago, stairs

leading straight into a wall. I thought I thought of the Winchester Mystery House when we stayed there. Yeah. There's also like there's just windows inside that open up into other rooms, but they don't open outside. Like, yeah, I've not visited, but it's definitely on my bucket list. It's pretty interesting. So this book is all about that. It's about this the construction of it. It's got this art that is just stunningly detailed. It's got this wonderful color palette.

So if you don't recognize Dave Stewart's name, Dave Stewart is like the go to colorist in the comics industry. Like he is the guy who's one like best colorist at all the awards ceremonies for like the last like fifteen years or something like that. He's he's amazing, uh, and so he uses this really cool palette of beds that draws you into this myth. It's got some smart layout with really clever panel designs, but at the same time it keeps this story flowing. It's really haunting and

unsettling too. Like Tamasi really takes the whole like Sarah Winchester myth and and builds out with it, you know, beyond what we know about Sarah Winchester. But it's rare for a horror comic in that it's actually unsettling and fills me with dread when I'm reading it. Like most horror comics, I write horror comics, so I have this problem when I'm writing mine. It's very difficult in the medium of comics to build dread in the same way you can in prose or in film, for instance, where

you've got like audio to work with. Right in comics there's there's different tricks and tools that you can play with, but it's not as easy. And this book, man, it really does a good job of it. I mean, it gets your your skin crawling by the end of it.

It's definitely for any horror fans who found our episode on the causes of human and violence interesting because really the larger theme surrounding the book, you know, outside of these like bizarre ghosts that may or may not be haunting Sarah Winchester as she's constructing this monstrous mansion, it's

about human violence, you know. And and and the legend goes that for all the construction workers that lived on site that we're building the house, she wouldn't allow them to carry arms, and they weren't allowed to No violence was allowed on the property. If they ever gotten to a fight or anything, they were immediately fired. Um. It uses lettering in a really smart way too. So we associate bang in comics with a gun shooting, right, but

they use the lettering. So there's bangs and blams all throughout this book, but it's associated with the construction of this building and all these guys constantly hammering and building these rooms and then tearing these rooms down and rebuilding them in a different configuration. But then gunshots get mixed in there too, and violence gets mixed in there. It's I was really really impressed with this book, so I

highly recommended. I want to say, uh, the original series of something like five or six issues long, so it's it's a good one and done graphic novel that's just utterly creepy cool. And does it Does it have any overlap at all with the movie Thirteen Ghosts? No? I wish it did. Uh yeah No, unfortunately no, because that may be my favorite specially built. I was going to say, we need to, uh, we need to find a way to incorporate thirteen Ghosts since one of our trailer talks, right,

I'm talking about the remake with Matthew Lillard. Right, oh yeah, I think he was yeah, and um god what yeah? So oh, you know what, this was another one of those movies where U two movies with the basic same premise came out at the same time. There was House on Haunted Hill and in thirteen Ghosts all came out like right around yeah, right right, yeah. Did thirteen Ghosts have f Murray Abraham in it? It might have. Yeah, he might have been. He might have been the grand designer.

I think. I recall from Roger Abert's review of Thirteen Ghosts where he started by saying, this is certainly one of the loudest movies I've ever seen. I will give Thirteen Ghosts this the designs of the ghosts in that movie are awesome. Like, the ghosts look really cool. I think I remember I vaguely remember f Murray Abraham, but he might not have even been anything. Don't you have to wear like special glasses or they're they construct glass around the house so you can see the ghosts, but

only through this particular kind of made glass. Yeah what Yeah, no, this is completely unrelated, but definitely go see thirteen Ghosts. All right, Well, there you have it, some fictional, nonfictional and comic recommendations from your host here for you to, uh, you know, consider for your summer reading. Yeah, definitely if you listeners out there have something that you think we should read, which I'm sure you do after hearing us gab about what we've been reading for the last hour plus,

let us know, right, you can write into us. We're all over social media. We're on Facebook. You can write us there, Twitter, Tumbler, and Instagram. I'm loving Instagram right now, guys. Instagram's Instagram is my new social media platform of choice. You mean personally or for the brand both. Yeah, it's like brand the brand. Yeah, I just really like it. It's like, uh, it feels like the one safe space in social media right now where people can't just be

like utterly and human to each other. Yeah. I definitely feel like feel that way about like my personal Instagram. Yeah, I can just go there and it's mostly pictures of people's kids, right Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's either like people sharing cool art or you know, self is aren't really my thing, but like doing selfies and feeling proud about themselves or taking pictures of their lives. Yeah, we should start uploading pictures of food and that how you get

followers on Instagram as food? Yeah, I would assume so. Pretty much our Instagram feed is like our episodes or weird pictures Robert and I take throughout the course of our day. Oh. I should also mention that on our Facebook group we uh on Facebook page, we now have

a group associated with that. So if you if you were one of our Facebook followers, and you you you would you would like to interact with us more and comment on the on the various content we put out, especially on the podcast episodes, but in a way that maybe is less lost. Uh, you know, it's not as lost as it would be on the main page. Then the group is uh, it's potentially a good place for that.

We just rolled it out. It's we're still still building up, but we're just we're gonna see what happens with It's very small right now. I mean it compareson to our Facebook page. I think our Facebook page has a million plus followers, but like our discussion group right now is only like maybe twenty or thirty people. So yeah, definitely

hop in there. Uh, it's a great place. Like some of our our listeners are already putting articles in there to get our attention and other listeners attention to be like, hey, did you hear about this? Check this out? Like the tartar grade thing. I saw that tartar grade piece and then Peter shared it on our discussion board, and I immediately thought of Joe. It was like Joe tart grades. Yeah, so check this out and it should. This is a

water Bears yeah, the client of Vassa Baron. Uh, this is a good place for if you've ever wanted to share something to our page. I don't think we have that functionality right now. You can share it to the group and you'll be able to accomplish the same effect. Yeah, yeah, totally. Hey, And in the meantime, As always, you can go to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com if you want to see some blog posts Robert, you've done any good monster stuff on there lately? Oh man, it's summer's been

too busy for mine. I think I did one un blade. Yeah, I saw your blade. Well that was great to a slime? Might I think that's it? Seriously, best kept secret on the Internet. Robert's monster science posts on our site are amazing. If you're not like, subscribe to our assess feed, go to Stuff to Blow your Mind right now and just scroll through all the awesome stuff robertson putting up there for seven years now. Yeah, it'll be an easy trip. You will not be trying to be a slim mic

crawling up hill ice ice skating up hill um. And also, as always, if you want to email us get in touch with us directly. You can hit us up at blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff works dot com b B four five