It's really interesting, especially from my perspective, the real glory given to what amounts to subsistence farming in solarpunk tales like this. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm a known enjoyer of that sort of thing, I have a garden in my backyard for a reason (and it's not just that I have a mighty need for the best feasible tomato for my various tomato needs)! But in my humble opinion, the angle that's going to really return a much more fruitful crop in regards to inspiration is the process of mending things that you've already got on hand. Plants are infamously fickle, and there's a reason a pretty broad spectrum of people's ancestors did absolutely everything possible to claw their way out of that lifestyle (it asks a TON of you, in the line of how much work you've got to get done). However, I've had great success for FAR less time in mending my own clothes, for example. Or, depending on your luck finding good instructions, you can get pretty far fixing up old technology that should be working, but isn't, for some reason! For example, I managed to resurrect a kindle that had a completely depleted battery, with nothing but a simple screwdriver, a battery I snagged on the page that explained how to do it, and maybe 30, 40 minutes? This book kinda leans in that direction, talking about the (genuinely very clever) idea of urban mining, but beyond a passing mention of doing some hand sewing on that kite material, and some (well-deserved!) lauding of the use of color to aid in creativity of the fashion, but lean in! Make visible mending a vital part of the fashion movements! Tell me all about how the screws and easily-acessible batteries make the tech repairable by anyone! It's solarpunk, we're supposed to make the infrastructure a main character after all.

(Yes, I should just write my own solarpunk stories that focus on these things)

(Yes, I may or may not have written some already)

(No, I haven't posted them anywhere... yet!)

Want to read the book? Go check it out here: https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/wheelers/36444581/#edition=64297035&idiq=56656333

Want the book in a nutshell first? Check out Miles Past Xanadu: https://matt-stephens.blogspot.com/2020/07/miles-past-xanadu-complete-for-later.html

Have things to say, books to suggest, or just want to join another discord? Come check out mine!

https://discord.gg/PBZNsjn/

Last but not least, you want to catch stories live, well before they hit the podcast feed? Check us out, friday evenings, over on twitch!

https://www.twitch.tv/Glacier_Nester/

The kite generator mentioned here is actually some really neat tech! I kinda accidentally hit on how they work when we're talking over the potential approaches to a turbine in the kite generation system, essentially, these things take pre-established data on how the windspeed changes based on altitude, and then autonomously pilots it in a neat-looking figure eight pattern, in order to pull a tether out to spin a turbine where the windspeed is high, then move it back down to where the windspeed is low, pulling the kite back in. Interestingly, the article that I found the explanation of the mechanics in noted that the initial pitch for that company's idea was a sort of kite based sail for container ships, but that wasn't exactly an easy sell, (despite being a great idea to lean into in a solarpunk setting, I mean, the less fuel you have to burn to make those big barges go, the better, yknow?) so they pivoted to the kite generator. Anyway, if it's not obvious, there's a lot that you can really sink your teeth into in regards to learning neat stuff that's mentioned in passing in the story, even outside the things that get footnotes. Most of the technology and techniques are either actively being used, or only a few simple steps away from being actively used! Of particular note in my realm of expertise thus far in the story, the use of fractalline encryption, and mesh-based networking, are real processes that can be used. The mesh network in particular would be super handy for communicating through many smaller micronetworks, rather than the way the standard internet browsing experience focuses on a server that needs to be centrally managed. I actually wasn't very surprised to see the callout of that technique, it's a great way to handle a decentralized internet system that works in a similar fashion to those microgrids we're seeing.
Anyway, book good! More next week!

Want to read the book? Go check it out here: https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/wheelers/36444581/#edition=64297035&idiq=56656333

Want the book in a nutshell first? Check out Miles Past Xanadu: https://matt-stephens.blogspot.com/2020/07/miles-past-xanadu-complete-for-later.html

Have things to say, books to suggest, or just want to join another discord? Come check out mine!

https://discord.gg/PBZNsjn/

Last but not least, you want to catch stories live, well before they hit the podcast feed? Check us out, friday evenings, over on twitch!

https://www.twitch.tv/Glacier_Nester/

Phew! We made it out of the city! Luckily, now that we've got that place well behind us, we're able to see the true thrust of the world that made me fall in love with the genre as a whole, and Arcadia in specific. The technology on display being so, so close to what we've got these days is remarkably motivating, at least, in my humble opinion. I do go on in the show itself about it, most especially appealing to me being the building of aeroponic gardens in the spare storage space of the Rigs. If I ever do wind up back in the rv, you know I'm FULLY invested in building that out. I mean, I could manage to cram my stuff into the other cabinets to have the space! Sure, I don't exactly have the CRISPR knowhow to build new varieties of plants well-suited to the tightly enclosed environment, but there's plenty of things that would work just fine in that small of a space, you know? I actually wouldn't hate to try to build a sort of trellised system, where the runners from various "main" plants extend upward and diagonally to let the plants have that space to stretch their feet out, you know? Maybe this is worth trying out in the backyard... I better go get planning!

Want to read the book? Go check it out here: https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/wheelers/36444581/#edition=64297035&idiq=56656333

Want the book in a nutshell first? Check out Miles Past Xanadu: https://matt-stephens.blogspot.com/2020/07/miles-past-xanadu-complete-for-later.html

Have things to say, books to suggest, or just want to join another discord? Come check out mine!

https://discord.gg/PBZNsjn/

Last but not least, you want to catch stories live, well before they hit the podcast feed? Check us out, friday evenings, over on twitch!

https://www.twitch.tv/Glacier_Nester/

The return of author permission happens pretty quickly, turns out! Welcome to Arcadia, a world in which the years and years of using copyright law as a bludgeon to stop people from doing the easy solutions to save the planet has been taken to its logical extreme. Well, that's the perspective of our protagonist, Dana, intially anyway. However, when she can't afford the utility rates on her inherited house any longer, she's taken to an infringement center and summarily jailed. Surprise surprise, though, her brother's some kind of wild-man revolutionary, who lives outside the city. The cops (better known as Fringers, since they handle the result of Infringements) want to learn more about how her brother's surviving in the wastes outside the city, so they hand her a radio, and let a representative of the people outside come get her, in hopes that Dana will snitch. What Dana finds, however, immediately makes her hesitate, and reconsider the shape of the world around her!

That's right, this is the solarpunk novel I was rattling on about being excited to read earlier in the season! Don't worry, if you don't know what solarpunk is, I explain it relatively thoroughly, and this book is a superb example of what the genre can do, when written solidly. If you like this first episode, I'd also heartily suggest looking at Miles Past Xanadu, the short story that this novel was expanded out from. That one even has citations in the relevant footnotes, believe it or not! I really love this fledgeling genre, there's a lot to enjoy in it, and like I say in the episode, it's young enough to still have some teeth, y'know? Doesn't just use the punk as a suffix to denote a vibe, it means punk, and has some words for those in power who've been obliterating our climate. Many thanks to Matt Stephens, who was kind enough to let us read the book, I really love the tale, and here's hoping you do, too!

Want to read the book? Go check it out here: https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/wheelers/36444581/#edition=64297035&idiq=56656333

Want the book in a nutshell first? Check out Miles Past Xanadu: https://matt-stephens.blogspot.com/2020/07/miles-past-xanadu-complete-for-later.html

Have things to say, books to suggest, or just want to join another discord? Come check out mine!

https://discord.gg/PBZNsjn/

Last but not least, you want to catch stories live, well before they hit the podcast feed? Check us out, friday evenings, over on twitch!

https://www.twitch.tv/Glacier_Nester/

Despite my immediate nitpicking of the science that goes on in this particular story, this is actually quite the fun little tale! I mean, it's got everything you'd want from an alien invasion story, random alien nonsense stumbled upon by a put-upon scientist, a random dame that has dubious high society connections, and most of all, the wild threat to New York, dispelled by hastily-thrown-together technobabble solutions!

On the note of technobabble, it's really fascinating to me that I don't try NEARLY as hard to unpack the ins and outs of the science in a modern story, but the second these older stories go for any sort of loose accuracy with the science I go "WEll acTUALLY-", and I do wonder if that's more of an issue with my familiarity with the science they're using for the technobabble in particular, or more with the expectations of what science is being used as the base for the technobabble itself, y'know? There's certain key concepts that science fiction nowadays really likes to bend (and break) rules of, but these older stories instead like to wrangle oddities of the electromagnetic rather than the strangeness of the quantum, and I just don't catch on quite as fast, let alone noting how much more of an intuitive sense of electricity and magnetism I have in comparison.

Either way, once I get out of my own way, this last little bit of the August issue of Astounding Stories is a real hit!

I do provide a disclaimer, since these books are aged and not well-remembered:

TL;DR up front: Paper Cuts is almost all public domain stuff, and some of it hasn't aged well. I'll be doing my best to warn you, but I'm not changing any of it, I don't believe censorship is the path forward here.

Paper Cuts, by necessity, has to be a majority books that are in the US public domain. That means it's almost exclusively going to be content produced in the 1920s, or earlier. These works may have aspects that have not aged well to a modern viewer/listener. Now, I'm never one for censorship, but I do believe we are entitled to being able to filter the leisure content we don't want to see. So, this results in the following policy:

• I'll do my level best to warn you, the viewer, at the beginning of the episode, what's likely to come up.
• A great example is something like 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, which had some passages describing natives of various places in a fashion I'd charitably describe as unkindly.
• In cases where something sneaks up on me unwarned, I will be reading the content unedited, with my sincerest apologies for the lack of active warning.

All that said, I'm gonna cover my bases with some common warnings that have come up often in books I've read before:

1. Descriptions of "savage natives"
2. Various racial slurs, unkind terms, and/or Descriptions of groups that have taken on a worse connotation
3. General mistreatment and misrepresentation of cultures

Generally speaking, if something I'm reading is on the page? Don't expect me to have opinions aligning with it. We're here to have fun, not disparage people!

Want to grab the book to read along with us? check it out here, free of charge!

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/29768 (Astounding Stories, August 1930)

Have a book to request? Maybe some chats to chit? Finally interested in that bread I bake? drop by the discord!

https://www.discord.gg/PBZNsjn

Want to listen live? Come drop by, Fridays night, on twitch!

https://www.twitch.tv/glacier_nester/

To be honest, as much as Murder Madness here dragged its feet in getting to the point, I really enjoyed the story as a whole! It's a bit formulaic from a modern perspective, but what isn't in our usual milleu around here, you know? That's kinda a function of the public domain stories we read around here, just for the sheer factor of how many stories build off of the bits and pieces we're finding, sometimes completely unintentionally!

For example, here, there's the last act twist of just what the Master was up to the whole time. Bit of a spoiler here, to be fair and honest with you, but it's really not all that much of a shocker, if you ask me, that he's aiming to make some kind of improvement on humanity as a whole, just coincidentally finding himself at the top of the heap? Could see it coming pretty clearly, especially with the reveal of the Master's whole calm, cool, collected affect a bit earlier in the story.

I do provide a disclaimer, since these books are aged and, often, not well-remembered:

TL;DR up front: Paper Cuts is almost all public domain stuff, and some of it hasn't aged well. I'll be doing my best to warn you, but I'm not changing any of it, I don't believe censorship is the path forward here.

Paper Cuts, by necessity, has to be a majority books that are in the US public domain. That means it's almost exclusively going to be content produced in the 1920s, or earlier. These works may have aspects that have not aged well to a modern viewer/listener. Now, I'm never one for censorship, but I do believe we are entitled to being able to filter the leisure content we don't want to see. So, this results in the following policy:

• I'll do my level best to warn you, the viewer, at the beginning of the episode, what's likely to come up.
• A great example is something like 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, which had some passages describing natives of various places in a fashion I'd charitably describe as unkindly.
• In cases where something sneaks up on me unwarned, I will be reading the content unedited, with my sincerest apologies for the lack of active warning.

All that said, I'm gonna cover my bases with some common warnings that have come up often in books I've read before:

1. Descriptions of "savage natives"
2. Various racial slurs, unkind terms, and/or Descriptions of groups that have taken on a worse connotation
3. General mistreatment and misrepresentation of cultures

Generally speaking, if something I'm reading is on the page? Don't expect me to have opinions aligning with it. We're here to have fun, not disparage people!

Want to grab the book to read along with us? check it out here, free of charge!

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/29768 (Astounding Stories, August 1930)

Have a book to request? Maybe some chats to chit? Finally interested in that bread I bake? drop by the discord!

https://www.discord.gg/PBZNsjn

Want to listen live? Come drop by, Fridays night, on twitch!

https://www.twitch.tv/glacier_nester/

What do you think is the deal with these Gnomes? I mean, it's not really unpacked in the story very far, but it's kinda gently implied there's a sort of queen-and-workers sort of vibe going on. Sure, it's probably just there to give Sarka a target for this whole superiority schtick, but I'm the type of person to wonder about the ecology of a foreign planet after we've read the story they're set on. Sure, sure, I'm not too worried about it when we're in the middle of reading the tale, mostly because a lot of the stories we read aroud here just sort of glaze over that sort of thing, but I genuinely think between Dune and all the solarpunk I've been reading I'm stuck like this!

Even if the framing often makes no sense to the modern eye, there's plenty to enjoy in these old books. As I've made very clear, I'm a known enjoyer of these short story collections strictly BECAUSE they're not all polished and perfect. There's so much more room to take risky, big swings in the case of a shorter story, y'know?

I do provide a disclaimer, since these books are aged and not well-remembered:

TL;DR up front: Paper Cuts is almost all public domain stuff, and some of it hasn't aged well. I'll be doing my best to warn you, but I'm not changing any of it, I don't believe censorship is the path forward here.

Paper Cuts, by necessity, has to be a majority books that are in the US public domain. That means it's almost exclusively going to be content produced in the 1920s, or earlier. These works may have aspects that have not aged well to a modern viewer/listener. Now, I'm never one for censorship, but I do believe we are entitled to being able to filter the leisure content we don't want to see. So, this results in the following policy:

• I'll do my level best to warn you, the viewer, at the beginning of the episode, what's likely to come up.
• A great example is something like 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, which had some passages describing natives of various places in a fashion I'd charitably describe as unkindly.
• In cases where something sneaks up on me unwarned, I will be reading the content unedited, with my sincerest apologies for the lack of active warning.

All that said, I'm gonna cover my bases with some common warnings that have come up often in books I've read before:

1. Descriptions of "savage natives"
2. Various racial slurs, unkind terms, and/or Descriptions of groups that have taken on a worse connotation
3. General mistreatment and misrepresentation of cultures

Generally speaking, if something I'm reading is on the page? Don't expect me to have opinions aligning with it. We're here to have fun, not disparage people!

Want to grab the book to read along with us? check it out here, free of charge!

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/29768 (Astounding Stories, August 1930)

Have a book to request? Maybe some chats to chit? Finally interested in that bread I bake? drop by the discord!

https://www.discord.gg/PBZNsjn

Want to listen live? Come drop by, Fridays night, on twitch!

https://www.twitch.tv/glacier_nester/

If you're a bit lost on what's happening in Earth, the Marauder, I'd heartily suggest checking out the previous issue of Astounding, the July Issue! We did indeed read that in a previous episode of the show, just check the titles, I always title the first episode of a given thing with the title of the book, so that should make the July issue pretty easy to find!

Well, hopefully anyway. Even if not, a good most of the time, these serialized stories usually do a great job of reminding you what you missed. They kind of have to, y'know? Since not everybody caught every issue, and you didn't wanna wind up completely lost if you missed a trip to the newstand, that's the tact I'd take, anyway.

Either way, the tale on display here really has its ups and its downs. Loads of fun concepts, but some of them it REALLY doesn't pull off. At least, if you can't stand to hear this one, it's not going to hang around forever! That's the glory of these short story collections, the stuff you don't like doesn't loom large. Sure, that comes with the downside of the things you like not sticking around too long, but some of these stories would need MAJOR reworks to be any longer than they were written here.

I do provide a disclaimer, since these books are aged and not well-remembered:

TL;DR up front: Paper Cuts is almost all public domain stuff, and some of it hasn't aged well. I'll be doing my best to warn you, but I'm not changing any of it, I don't believe censorship is the path forward here.

Paper Cuts, by necessity, has to be a majority books that are in the US public domain. That means it's almost exclusively going to be content produced in the 1920s, or earlier. These works may have aspects that have not aged well to a modern viewer/listener. Now, I'm never one for censorship, but I do believe we are entitled to being able to filter the leisure content we don't want to see. So, this results in the following policy:

• I'll do my level best to warn you, the viewer, at the beginning of the episode, what's likely to come up.
• A great example is something like 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, which had some passages describing natives of various places in a fashion I'd charitably describe as unkindly.
• In cases where something sneaks up on me unwarned, I will be reading the content unedited, with my sincerest apologies for the lack of active warning.

All that said, I'm gonna cover my bases with some common warnings that have come up often in books I've read before:

1. Descriptions of "savage natives"
2. Various racial slurs, unkind terms, and/or Descriptions of groups that have taken on a worse connotation
3. General mistreatment and misrepresentation of cultures

Generally speaking, if something I'm reading is on the page? Don't expect me to have opinions aligning with it. We're here to have fun, not disparage people!

Want to grab the book to read along with us? check it out here, free of charge!

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/29768 (Astounding Stories, August 1930)

Have a book to request? Maybe some chats to chit? Finally interested in that bread I bake? drop by the discord!

https://www.discord.gg/PBZNsjn

Want to listen live? Come drop by, Fridays night, on twitch!

https://www.twitch.tv/glacier_nester/