Speaker 1: Whole Zone Media.
Speaker 2: I think we should drop the book club chanting because
Speaker 2: it's a sort of funny bit, but can only go
Speaker 2: so far.
Speaker 1: But what's your plans to replace the chanting?
Speaker 2: I think you should start by chanting, and then I'll
Speaker 2: chastise you for how that doesn't work and why are
Speaker 2: you doing that.
Speaker 1: I'm against chanting in general, just because I find it
Speaker 1: kind of uptoce and conformist and a whole bitch of
Speaker 1: other bullshit reasons, mostly because I don't like talking loudly.
Speaker 1: There's the real reason I don't like chanting. It just
Speaker 1: takes me uncomfortable.
Speaker 2: Okay, well let's do it the opposite. I will start
Speaker 2: chanting and you will refuse to join in, and then
Speaker 2: chastise me. How does that sound?
Speaker 1: Or we could have already started it with my rant
Speaker 1: about why I don't like chanting.
Speaker 2: Well, then, I guess you're listening to cool Zone Media
Speaker 2: book Club Club, the podcast in which Gere and Margaret
Speaker 2: discuss how to start podcasts, podcasts, hard Cast, hardener Cast.
Speaker 2: That's my new country Western cool Ze Media book Club
Speaker 2: is a weekly book club where I read you stories,
Speaker 2: and in this case, you will be played by gear
Speaker 2: Hi Gre.
Speaker 1: Hi, Hello, audience, surrogate.
Speaker 2: Okay, so half the book club is like new, cool,
Speaker 2: exciting stories, and then the other half is that I'm like,
Speaker 2: I want y'all to know some classics of science fiction
Speaker 2: and where everything comes from. And this is one of
Speaker 2: those episodes. This episode you'll probably guessed because the name
Speaker 2: in the title, Arthur C. Clark, is a name y'all
Speaker 2: might have heard of, Like Garre, have you heard of
Speaker 2: Arthur C.
Speaker 1: Clark? I have heard of Arthur C. Clark.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's enough. He's one of those people where
Speaker 2: if you dig in too much, you start being like,
Speaker 2: do I actually want to read this guy?
Speaker 1: Well? I mean, isn't that like all like male authors
Speaker 1: more or less?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like, don't type in Arthur C. Clark controversy into Google.
Speaker 1: Okay, I will not to do that.
Speaker 2: There's some allegations anyway. He is one of the classic
Speaker 2: science fiction writers. He's from England. He wrote the screenplay
Speaker 2: for a nineteen sixty eight two thousand and one space Odyssey.
Speaker 1: Oh this guy Okay. Yeah, all of the bad stuff
Speaker 1: in two thousand and one comes from him, and all
Speaker 1: the cool stuff comes from Kubrick. Oh interesting, Based on
Speaker 1: my diving into the development of that story. But that's
Speaker 1: just my personal opinion. That's up to interpretation. Many people
Speaker 1: disagree with me.
Speaker 2: Well, I love two thousand and one, I need to
Speaker 2: rewatch it. The idea that in space there are things
Speaker 2: that just don't conform with our idea of reality that
Speaker 2: will like break our brains. Is that a him or
Speaker 2: is that a Kubrick?
Speaker 1: That's mostly Kubrick because him and Kubrick works together to
Speaker 1: write the screenplay, and then Arthur C. Clerk wrote the
Speaker 1: book based on the screenplay from him and Kubrick, so
Speaker 1: it wasn't actually his original idea. Most people have that reversed.
Speaker 1: People think that the movie's an adaptation of Arthur C.
Speaker 1: Clerk's book, but it's not. The book itself is an
Speaker 1: adaptation of a story that mostly came from Kubrick. Okay,
Speaker 1: So a lot of like the more like Nietzschean or
Speaker 1: like existential stuff in two thousand and one mostly comes
Speaker 1: from Kubrick. Okay, And if you read any of the
Speaker 1: sequels to two thousand and one, you can very clearly
Speaker 1: see what type of stuff came from Arthur C. Clark.
Speaker 1: It's just an interesting experiment.
Speaker 2: So that's Actually, that's really interesting to me because of
Speaker 2: the story that we're about to read.
Speaker 1: I'd excited to hear it.
Speaker 2: So I first ran across this story when I was
Speaker 2: probably a young teen. There's this book called the Science
Speaker 2: Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume one, and it was put
Speaker 2: together by the Science Fiction Writers of America the SFWA,
Speaker 2: which is kind of the closest thing that we have
Speaker 2: to a union as speculative fiction writers in the US.
Speaker 2: I was about to say, I'm a member of SFWA,
Speaker 2: but I don't know if I'm up on my I
Speaker 2: don't know if I renewed my membership. I believe in
Speaker 2: the SFWA and have been a member in the past,
Speaker 2: and will probably be a member now that I've shamed
Speaker 2: myself into remembering to send in my you know, yearly
Speaker 2: fee or whatever.
Speaker 1: But they're the group that's me and the IWW, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: They're the group that is primarily the reason that speculative
Speaker 2: fiction short fiction is actually something that you can make
Speaker 2: a little bit of money at compared to other things
Speaker 2: other types of writing. That's cool because they declare what
Speaker 2: counts as pro rates and they raise it all the
Speaker 2: time to match inflation, and so outside of specula fiction,
Speaker 2: you have all these places paying like one cent a word,
Speaker 2: you know, and then within science fiction or speculative fiction.
Speaker 2: More broadly, most magazines want to be professional magazines, and
Speaker 2: so they therefore have to pay the current professional rate,
Speaker 2: which I don't remember what is, because I haven't submitted
Speaker 2: short fiction to magazines in a while. My little brag
Speaker 2: about how they come to me. No, I've just been
Speaker 2: busy writing other stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're busy writing a lot of devellos from my
Speaker 1: a lot.
Speaker 2: Of novellas and now a book. But I'll plug that
Speaker 2: at the end. So I found this book on my
Speaker 2: dad's shelf and I read it, and there's two stories
Speaker 2: I remember from it, And the other one was a
Speaker 2: man invents a machine to be able to hear in
Speaker 2: the frequencies that plants communicate, and then he like cuts
Speaker 2: a tree and then can never live with himself again
Speaker 2: and realizes that, like everything alive, can feel pain, and
Speaker 2: he just suffers. He just absolutely suffers with that realization.
Speaker 2: How there's a couple other stories from there. There's another
Speaker 2: one who a guy invents a thing where he doesn't
Speaker 2: have to sleep, and then he a lot of stuff
Speaker 2: that Futurama has ripped off of comes from this book.
Speaker 1: That makes sense.
Speaker 2: But this story in particular stuck with me as a kid.
Speaker 2: And it's called the Nine Billion Names of God, and
Speaker 2: it's about the nine billion Names of God, and I'm
Speaker 2: going to read it. This story was originally published in
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty three or nineteen fifty four, so for understanding
Speaker 2: of when they're talking about computers, that's what they're talking about.
Speaker 2: This story absolutely plays with orientalist tropes, and not in
Speaker 2: a self conscious way. I want to point that out,
Speaker 2: and I will chalk that up to the style at
Speaker 2: the time. But you don't need to.
Speaker 1: Well, you could also very easily blame the Theosophists, as
Speaker 1: you can for many many things, for introducing this style
Speaker 1: of like Tibetan orientalism. Just blame the theosophists. It's easy,
Speaker 1: it's free, it's cheap, it's fun. Just blame them. They
Speaker 1: can take the heat. They've taken the heat for decades.
Speaker 2: It's fine, okay. So with that disclaimer. The Nine Billion
Speaker 2: Names of God by Arthur C. Clark. This is a
Speaker 2: slightly unusual quest, said doctor Wagner, with what he had
Speaker 2: hoped was commendable restraint. As far as I know, it's
Speaker 2: the first time anyone's been asked to supply a Tibetan
Speaker 2: monastery with an automatic sequence computer. I don't wish to
Speaker 2: be inquisitive, but I should hardly have thought that your
Speaker 2: establishment had much use for such a machine. Could you
Speaker 2: explain just what you intend to do with it, gladly,
Speaker 2: replied the Lama, readjusting his silk robes and carefully putting
Speaker 2: away the slide rule he had been using for currency conversions.
Speaker 2: Your Mark five computer can carry out any routine mathematical
Speaker 2: operation involving up to ten digits. However, for our work,
Speaker 2: we are interested in letters, not numbers. As we wish
Speaker 2: you to modify the output circuits, the machine will be
Speaker 2: printing words, not columns of figures. I don't quite understand.
Speaker 2: This is a project on which we have been working
Speaker 2: for the last three centuries since the Lamissary was founded.
Speaker 2: In fact, it is somewhat alien to your way of thought,
Speaker 2: so I hope you will listen with an open mind
Speaker 2: while I explain it naturally well. In order to run
Speaker 2: this podcast, we need to interject classic and important stories
Speaker 2: with advertisements for ads and services, said Margaret. The host,
Speaker 2: here's the mess, and we're back. It is really quite simple.
Speaker 2: We have been compiling a list which shall contain all
Speaker 2: the possible names of God. I beg your pardon. We
Speaker 2: have reason to believe, continued the Lama in imperturbably. That's
Speaker 2: totally how you pronounced that that all such names can
Speaker 2: be written with not more than nine letters in an
Speaker 2: alphabet we have devised, and you have been doing this
Speaker 2: for three centuries. Yes, we expected it would take us
Speaker 2: about fifteen thousand years to complete the task. Oh, doctor
Speaker 2: Wagner looked a little dazed. Now, I see why you
Speaker 2: wanted to hire one of our machines. But exactly what
Speaker 2: is the purpose of this project? Lama hesitated for a
Speaker 2: fraction of a second, and Wagner wondered if he had
Speaker 2: offended him. If so, there was no trace of annoyance
Speaker 2: in the reply. Call it ritual if you like, but
Speaker 2: it's a fundamental part of our belief. All the many
Speaker 2: names of the Supreme Being God, Jehovah, Allah, and so
Speaker 2: on are only man made labels. There is a philosophical
Speaker 2: problem with some difficult to hear, which I do not
Speaker 2: propose to discuss. But somewhere among all the possible combinations
Speaker 2: of letters that can occur are what one may call
Speaker 2: the real names of God. By systematic permutation of letters.
Speaker 2: We have been trying to list them all. I see,
Speaker 2: so you've been starting at A and working to zzzzzzz exactly.
Speaker 2: Though we use a special alphabet of our own. Modifying
Speaker 2: the electromatic typewriters to deal with this is of course trivial.
Speaker 2: A rather more interesting problem is that of devising suitable
Speaker 2: circuits to eliminate ridiculous combinations. For example, no oh letter
Speaker 2: must occur more than three times in succession three. Surely
Speaker 2: you mean two three is correct. I'm afraid it would
Speaker 2: take too long to explain why, even if you understood
Speaker 2: our language. I'm sure it would, said Wagner hastily. Go on. Luckily,
Speaker 2: it will be a simple matter to adapt your automatic
Speaker 2: sequence computer for this work, since once it has been
Speaker 2: programmed properly, it will permute each letter in turn and
Speaker 2: print the result. What would have taken us fifteen thousand years,
Speaker 2: it will be able to do in a hundred days.
Speaker 2: Doctor Wagner was scarcely conscious of the faint sounds from
Speaker 2: the Manhattan streets far below. He was in a different world,
Speaker 2: a whirl of natural, not man made mountains high up
Speaker 2: in their remote areas. These monks had been patiently at work,
Speaker 2: generation after generation, compiling their lists of meaningless words. Was
Speaker 2: there any limits to the follies of mankind? Still? He
Speaker 2: must give no hint to his inner thoughts. The customer
Speaker 2: was always right. There's no doubt, replied the doctor, that
Speaker 2: we can modify the mark five to print lists of
Speaker 2: this nature. I'm much more worried about the problem of
Speaker 2: installation and maintenance. Getting out to Tibet in these days
Speaker 2: is not going to be easy. We can arrange that
Speaker 2: the components are small enough to travel by air. That
Speaker 2: is one reason why we chose your machine. If you
Speaker 2: can get them to India, we will provide transport from there.
Speaker 2: And you want to hire two of our engineers, Yes,
Speaker 2: for the three months that the project should occupy. I've
Speaker 2: no doubt that personnel can manage that. Doctor Wagner scribbled
Speaker 2: a note on his desk pad. There are just two
Speaker 2: other points. Before he could finish the sentence, the lama
Speaker 2: had produced a small slip of paper. This is my
Speaker 2: certified credit balance at the Asiatic Bank. Thank you. It
Speaker 2: appears to be adequate. The second matter is so trivial
Speaker 2: that I hesitate to mention it. But it's surprising how
Speaker 2: often the obvious gets overlooked. What source of electrical energy
Speaker 2: do you have? You a diesel generator providing fifty kilowotts
Speaker 2: at one hundred and ten volts. It was installed about
Speaker 2: five years ago and is quite reliable. It's made life
Speaker 2: at the lamissary much more comfortable. But of course it
Speaker 2: was really installed to provide power for the motors driving
Speaker 2: the prayer wheels. Of course, echoed doctor Wagner. I should
Speaker 2: have thought of that. The view from the parapet was verticenuous,
Speaker 2: but in time, one gets used to anything. After three months,
Speaker 2: George Hanley was not impressed by the two thousand foot
Speaker 2: swoop into the Abyss or the remote checkerboard of fields
Speaker 2: in the valley below. He was leaning against the wind
Speaker 2: smooth stones and staring morosely at the distant mountains whose
Speaker 2: names he had never bothered to discover. This thought, George
Speaker 2: was the craziest thing that had ever happened to him.
Speaker 2: Project Shangri La, some went back at the labs had
Speaker 2: christened it. For weeks now the mark five had been
Speaker 2: churning out acres of sheets covered with gibberish patiently inexorably.
Speaker 2: The computer had been re arranging letters in all their
Speaker 2: possible combinations, exhausting each clasp before going on to the next.
Speaker 2: As the sheets had emerged from the electromatic typewriters, the
Speaker 2: monks had carefully cut them up and pasted them into
Speaker 2: enormous books. In another week, Heaven be praised, they would
Speaker 2: have finished just what obscure calculations had convinced the monks
Speaker 2: that they needn't bother to go on to words of ten,
Speaker 2: twenty or one hundred letters. George didn't know. One of
Speaker 2: his recurring nightmares was that there would be some change
Speaker 2: of plan and that the hi Lama, whom they naturally
Speaker 2: called Sam Jaffe, although he didn't look a bit like him.
Speaker 2: Reader's note, I had to look that up. That's an
Speaker 2: actor who people would have recognized in the fifties, would
Speaker 2: suddenly announced that the project would be extended to approximately
Speaker 2: eighty twenty sixty. They were quite capable of it. George
Speaker 2: heard the heavy wooden door slam in the wind as
Speaker 2: Chuck came out onto the parapet beside him. As usual,
Speaker 2: Chuck was smoking one of the cigars that made him
Speaker 2: so popular with the monks, who it seemed, were quite
Speaker 2: willing to embrace all the minor and most of them
Speaker 2: the major pleasures of life. That was one thing in
Speaker 2: their favor. They might be crazy, but they weren't blue
Speaker 2: noses those frequent trips they took down to the village,
Speaker 2: for instance. Listen, George said Chuck urgently, I've learned something
Speaker 2: that means trouble. What's wrong? Isn't the machine behaving? That
Speaker 2: was the worst contingency George could imagine. It might delay
Speaker 2: his return, and nothing could be more horrible the way
Speaker 2: he felt. Now, even the sight of a TV commercial
Speaker 2: would seem like manna from heaven. At least it would
Speaker 2: be some link with home. And who would I be
Speaker 2: to not take that opportunity to offer you this the
Speaker 2: modern version of the TV commercial, the podcast commercial, and
Speaker 2: we're back. No, oh, it's nothing like that. Chuck settled
Speaker 2: himself on the parapet, which was unusual because normally he
Speaker 2: was scared of the drop. I've just found what all
Speaker 2: this is about? What do you mean? I thought we knew, sure,
Speaker 2: we know what the monks are trying to do. But
Speaker 2: we didn't know why. It's the craziest thing. Tell me
Speaker 2: something new, growled George. But old Sam's come clean with me.
Speaker 2: You know the way he drops in every afternoon just
Speaker 2: to watch the sheet rolls out. Well, this time he
Speaker 2: seemed rather excited, or at least as near as he'll
Speaker 2: ever get to it. When I told him that we
Speaker 2: were on the last cycle, he asked me, in that
Speaker 2: cute English accent of his, if i'd ever wondered what
Speaker 2: they were trying to do. I said sure, and he
Speaker 2: told me, go on, I'll buy it. Well, they believe
Speaker 2: that when they've listed all his names and they reckon
Speaker 2: they're about nine billion of them, God's purpose will be achieved.
Speaker 2: The human race will have finished what it was created
Speaker 2: to do, and there won't be any point in carrying on. Indeed,
Speaker 2: the very idea is something like blasphemy. Then what do
Speaker 2: they expect us to do? Commit suicide? There's no need
Speaker 2: for that. When the list completed, God steps in and
Speaker 2: simply winds things up. Bingo, Oh, I get it. When
Speaker 2: we finish our job, it'll be the end of the world.
Speaker 2: Chuck gave a nervous little laugh. That's just what I
Speaker 2: said to Sam, and do you know what happened? He
Speaker 2: looked at me in a very queer way, like I'd
Speaker 2: been stupid in class, and said, it's nothing as trivial
Speaker 2: as that. George thought this over for a moment. That's
Speaker 2: what I call taking the wide view, he said, presently,
Speaker 2: But what do you suppose we should do about it?
Speaker 2: I don't see it makes the slightest difference to us.
Speaker 2: After all, we already knew they were crazy. Yes, but
Speaker 2: don't you see what may happen when the list's complete
Speaker 2: and the last Trump doesn't blow or whatever it is
Speaker 2: they expect, We may get the blame. It's our machine
Speaker 2: they've been using. I don't like the situation one little bit,
Speaker 2: I see, said George slowly. You've got a point there.
Speaker 2: But this sort of thing's happened before, you know. When
Speaker 2: I was a kid down in Louisiana, we had a
Speaker 2: crackpot preacher who once said the world was going to
Speaker 2: end next Sunday. Hundreds of people believed him, even sold
Speaker 2: their homes. Yet when nothing happened, they didn't turn nasty
Speaker 2: as you'd expect. They just decided that he'd made a
Speaker 2: mistake in his calculations and went right on believing. I
Speaker 2: guess some of them still do well. This isn't Louisiana,
Speaker 2: in case you hadn't noticed, there are just two of
Speaker 2: us and hundreds of these monks. I like them, and
Speaker 2: I'll be sorry for old Sam when his life work
Speaker 2: backfires on him. But all the same, I wish I
Speaker 2: was somewhere else. I've been wishing that for weeks. But
Speaker 2: there's nothing we can do until the contract's finished and
Speaker 2: the transport arrives to fly us out. Of course, said
Speaker 2: Chuck thoughtfully. We could always try a bit of sabotage,
Speaker 2: like how we could That would make things worse, not
Speaker 2: the way I meant look at it. Like this, the
Speaker 2: machine will finish its run four days from now on
Speaker 2: the present twenty four hours a day basis. The transport
Speaker 2: calls in in a week. Okay, then all we need
Speaker 2: to do is find something that needs replacing during one
Speaker 2: of the overhaul periods, something that'll hold up the work
Speaker 2: for a couple of days. We'll fix it, of course,
Speaker 2: but not too quickly. If we time matters properly, we
Speaker 2: can be down at the airfield when the last name
Speaker 2: pops out of the register. They won't be able to
Speaker 2: catch us. Then I don't like it, said George. It
Speaker 2: will be the first time I ever walked out on
Speaker 2: a job. Besides, it would make them suspicious. No, I'll
Speaker 2: sit tight and see what comes. I still don't like it,
Speaker 2: he said seven days later, as the tough little mountain
Speaker 2: ponies carried them down the winding road. And don't you
Speaker 2: think I'm running away, because I'm afraid. I'm just sorry
Speaker 2: for those poor old guys up there, and I don't
Speaker 2: want to be around when they find out what suckers
Speaker 2: they've been. Wonder how Sam will take it. It's funny,
Speaker 2: replied Chuck. But when I said goodbye, I got the
Speaker 2: idea that he knew we were walking out on him,
Speaker 2: and that he didn't care because he knew the machine
Speaker 2: was running smoothly and that the job would soon be finished.
Speaker 2: After that, well, of course, for him, there just isn't
Speaker 2: any after that. George turned in his saddle and stared
Speaker 2: back up the mountain road. This was the last place
Speaker 2: from which one could get a clear view of the lamissary.
Speaker 2: The squat angular buildings were silhouetted against the after glow
Speaker 2: of the sunset. Here and there lights gleamed like portholes
Speaker 2: in the side of an ocean liner electric lights, of course,
Speaker 2: sharing the same circuit as the Mark five. How much
Speaker 2: longer would they share, it, wondered George. Would the monks
Speaker 2: smash up the computer and their rage and disappointment, or
Speaker 2: would they just sit down quietly and begin their calculations
Speaker 2: all over again. He knew exactly what was happening up
Speaker 2: on the mountain at this very moment. The High Lama
Speaker 2: and his assistants would be sitting in their silk robes,
Speaker 2: inspecting the sheets as the junior monks carried them away
Speaker 2: from the typewriters and pasted them into their great volumes.
Speaker 2: No one would be saying anything. The only sound would
Speaker 2: be the incessant patter the never ending rain storm of
Speaker 2: the keys hitting the paper. For the Mark five itself
Speaker 2: was utterly silent as it flashed through its thousands of calculations.
Speaker 2: A second three months of this, thought George, was enough
Speaker 2: to start anyone climbing up the wall. There she is, called, Chuck,
Speaker 2: pointing down into the valley. Ain't she beautiful? She certainly was,
Speaker 2: thought George. The battered old Dasey three lay at the
Speaker 2: end of the runway like a tiny silver cross. In
Speaker 2: two hours she would be bearing them away to freedom insanity.
Speaker 2: It was a thought worth savoring, Like a final liqueur.
Speaker 2: George let it roll around in his mind as the
Speaker 2: pony trudged patiently down the slope. The swift night of
Speaker 2: the high Himalayas was now almost upon them. Fortunately, the
Speaker 2: road was very good, as roads went in that region,
Speaker 2: and they were both carrying torches. There was not the
Speaker 2: slightest danger, only a certain discomfort from the bitter cold.
Speaker 2: The sky overhead was perfectly clear and a blaze with familiar,
Speaker 2: friendly stars. At least there would be no risk, thought
Speaker 2: George of the pilot being unable to take off because
Speaker 2: of weather conditions. That had been his only remaining worry.
Speaker 2: He began to sing, but gave it up after a while.
Speaker 2: This vast arena of mountains gleaming like whitely hooded ghosts
Speaker 2: on every side did not encourage such ebuliance. Presently, George
Speaker 2: glanced at his watch. Should be there in an hour,
Speaker 2: he called back over his shoulder to Chuck. Then he added,
Speaker 2: in an afterthought, wonder if the computers finished its run.
Speaker 2: It was due about now. Chuck didn't reply, so George
Speaker 2: swung round in his saddle. He could just see Chuck's face.
Speaker 2: A white oval turned toward the sky, look whispered Chuck,
Speaker 2: and George lifted his eyes to heaven. There is always
Speaker 2: a last time for everything. Overhead, without any fuss, the
Speaker 2: stars were going out. That's the story. Apparently at some
Speaker 2: point the Dali Lama wrote Arthur C. Clark instead. I
Speaker 2: read your story and found it very amusing, So that's fun. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it got a pass from the people it was weirdly appropriating.
Speaker 2: I guess. Yeah, it's overall self contained. But I have
Speaker 2: a few thoughts about it. One that I didn't get
Speaker 2: into this last reading. It's really funny to me that
Speaker 2: the last trump is used instead of the last trumpet,
Speaker 2: like as the way of signaling the end of the world.
Speaker 2: And apparently that would be a way that you would
Speaker 2: have said that in the fifties, and I just find
Speaker 2: that very amusing based on the current state of the
Speaker 2: political world or whatever.
Speaker 1: Uh huh. Yeah.
Speaker 2: The actual thing that I've been thinking about the reason
Speaker 2: that I wanted to do this episode is that I
Speaker 2: just did a piece on cool people did cool stuff
Speaker 2: about Ada Lovelace and you know, early software and mechanical
Speaker 2: computers and things like that, right, Yeah, and she talked
Speaker 2: very explicit about how computers are not capable and would
Speaker 2: never be capable of creating things but instead like responding
Speaker 2: to the inputs and things like that. It's gone on
Speaker 2: to be like I don't have it in front of me,
Speaker 2: but like Ada's objection or something was coined by the
Speaker 2: gay British man who defeated the Nazis the computer guy
Speaker 2: who invented computing.
Speaker 1: Oh that guy, yeah, the guy that was killed for
Speaker 1: being gay essentially.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was like chemically castrated to the machine guy. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that guy that we know everything about except the name
Speaker 2: of because we're professionals exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So half of the listeners at least are now shouting
Speaker 2: this man's name and frustration at us.
Speaker 1: You know. What the cool thing is, though, is that
Speaker 1: this is a podcast and I cannot hear them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 1: I won't hear how for many Yeah, people is yelling
Speaker 1: his name at me at the moment. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So that man who we're gonna call George, he wrote
Speaker 2: Objection and it was about how computers do with it
Speaker 2: what you have them do, you know, rather than being
Speaker 2: like themselves a creative force. Okay, so this is the
Speaker 2: wing nuttiest thing. This is why I wanted you to
Speaker 2: be the guest for this. I've been thinking a lot
Speaker 2: about how AI is like running through all possibilities of
Speaker 2: creative things. Yeah, like systematically rather than like creatively. It's
Speaker 2: just like what if all possible images are made? And
Speaker 2: so it's kind of like I think, I don't know
Speaker 2: if I really think this, but I've been thinking about it.
Speaker 2: It's like running us towards the death of culture because
Speaker 2: everything will have been like there's sort of an infinite
Speaker 2: possibility of combinations of words that there's an infinite creative
Speaker 2: output that could be made. But AI is like trying
Speaker 2: to run through them as fast as possible. And we've
Speaker 2: been kind of even before AI kind of doing that
Speaker 2: as like culture speeds up. I don't know where I'm
Speaker 2: going with that, but I just want to run that past.
Speaker 2: As relates to this story.
Speaker 1: Yeah, now that I've heard the story, I can also
Speaker 1: see the large number of influences it's had throughout culture,
Speaker 1: like using computers to like pinpoint God. It is also
Speaker 1: like weirdly like lovecrafting and story as well. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: initiating an apocalypse by like naming by coming up with
Speaker 1: all of the utterances of god.
Speaker 2: Oh, you're totally right, and this is years after Lovecraft,
Speaker 2: so yeah, oh interesting, Okay.
Speaker 1: I also just really like the turn to phrase the
Speaker 1: stars are going out. It's like someone's like flicking off
Speaker 1: the lights. I find that to be funn.
Speaker 2: It's one of the best lines in literature overhead without
Speaker 2: any fuss. The stars were going out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, very good.
Speaker 2: And like how it changes on a dime this Like
Speaker 2: you know earlier I said that it was like not
Speaker 2: self consciously orientalist. Your two computer programmers consider themselves clearly
Speaker 2: enlightened compared to these backwards people, even though all they
Speaker 2: want to do is get back to TV. And there's
Speaker 2: even kind of this thing. I have a feeling that
Speaker 2: the author didn't specifically intend this, but I like reading
Speaker 2: this kind of thing into it. The thing that is
Speaker 2: going to carry them away from this backwards place is
Speaker 2: a silver cross. They refer to the plane as a
Speaker 2: silver cross, and we assume we know better, but we don't.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like human's own hubris is kind of I guess
Speaker 1: a recurring trend in work kind of like this, And
Speaker 1: I always have the impulse to comparison like this to
Speaker 1: the other biggest case of Tibetan orientalism in fantasy and
Speaker 1: science fiction, which would be Twin Peaks. We're also I
Speaker 1: think one of the main cruxes is one of the
Speaker 1: main character's own hubris and his inability to leave well
Speaker 1: enough load.
Speaker 2: So now you're going to destroy all of my goth cred.
Speaker 1: No, Margaret, are you serious?
Speaker 2: I have only seen like an episode.
Speaker 1: Of Takes God.
Speaker 2: No, I have seen so many movies by that man,
Speaker 2: Jesus fucking Christ, and I have no idea why I
Speaker 2: haven't seen Twin Peaks, And now I have lost thirty
Speaker 2: percent of my friends.
Speaker 1: I'm showing Twin Peaks currently to like five different people.
Speaker 1: I've met so many different points in this series right
Speaker 1: now because I'm watching it with so many other people
Speaker 1: to give them the experience. I have had my apartment
Speaker 1: turned into a Twin Peaks set.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, no, and I'm very It's been part of
Speaker 2: like the culture I've been in for a very long time. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I think that's what it is. Is that I hit
Speaker 2: this point where I was, like, I sat down to
Speaker 2: watch it once Wait of No Return. It didn't immediately
Speaker 2: catch me, but yeah, I hit the point of no
Speaker 2: return where I was like too embarrassed to admit it.
Speaker 2: So don't tell anyone, Garet, it's just between you and I.
Speaker 1: I won't. This is a secret. Yeah, I'm yeah. I
Speaker 1: will not spread this around. We don't want to damage
Speaker 1: your rent. No, no, we can keep this contained.
Speaker 2: Yeah, irreversible damage.
Speaker 1: I would recommend giving it a watch.
Speaker 2: I will.
Speaker 1: It has a lot of good Tibetan stuff, a lot
Speaker 1: of good like exontential stuff, not in terms of computers,
Speaker 1: but otherwise a lot of thematic similarities to this story.
Speaker 1: And I would not be surprised if the co writer
Speaker 1: Mark Frost was intimately familiar, because he pulls from a
Speaker 1: lot of science fiction mythological stuff. In fact, the ending
Speaker 1: of this story essentially happens at kind of multiple points
Speaker 1: in Twin Peaks. It's quite good. It's quite good.
Speaker 2: I think I wouldn't have been ready for it when
Speaker 2: I first sat down to watch it, because I needed
Speaker 2: my weirdness to be overtly gothic and weird, like it
Speaker 2: needed to be like absolutely in a castle instead of
Speaker 2: like in the mundane world, which is the beauty of
Speaker 2: that guy Twin Peaks.
Speaker 1: Guy Lynch.
Speaker 2: Lynch is that he creates that sense within the every
Speaker 2: day you know.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, And there's a few specific moments, especially in
Speaker 1: Firewalk with Me and Season three that are like very
Speaker 1: like American Gothic, like extremely very condensed. But the rest
Speaker 1: of it, there's actually an interesting juxtaposition between like American
Speaker 1: Gothic versus like Pacific Northwest New Weird, which are like
Speaker 1: two sister genres, but they're not always the same thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and Twin Peaks likes to kind of mix between the two,
Speaker 1: and for the original series probably more often ends up
Speaker 1: being in like P and W New Weird as opposed
Speaker 1: to some of the American Gothics sensibilities it kind of
Speaker 1: grows into. There's certainly some science fiction elements similar to
Speaker 1: kind of how this story kind of blends that sort
Speaker 1: of like orientalism with science fiction elements right well, And
Speaker 1: actually this also ties in a lot if we're talking
Speaker 1: about Arthur C. Clark in two thousand and one, there's also
Speaker 1: a lot of carryover from two thousand and one into
Speaker 1: Twin Peaks as well. A lot of that does come
Speaker 1: from Kubrick, because Kubrick and Lynch were contemporaries, but some
Speaker 1: that certainly would also stem from Arthur C. Clark's stuff.
Speaker 1: But yeah, the ending of season two is very similar
Speaker 1: in some ways to one part of the ending of
Speaker 1: two thousand and one. There's a part that's very similar
Speaker 1: to the Stargate sequence. There's a decent amount of crossover.
Speaker 1: You can definitely read in some Arthur C. Clark undertones
Speaker 1: across some of the more cosmic elements of Twin Peaks.
Speaker 2: Well, that's what's so interesting about is overall Arthur C.
Speaker 2: Clark's reputation as a science fiction author.
Speaker 1: He's like a scientific realist in a lot of cases.
Speaker 2: Exactly, he's specifically a scientific realist, and so this sort
Speaker 2: of mystical element, Like people talk about this story as
Speaker 2: being like outside of his traditional wheelhouse. So that was why,
Speaker 2: you know, at the beginning, you were like, oh, Arthur
Speaker 2: C. Clark wrote the science e boring bits of two thousand works,
Speaker 2: and Kubrick did the like, but what if it's like
Speaker 2: drugs and space part And that's what makes this sort
Speaker 2: of interesting to me is a kind of a gate
Speaker 2: into that there is like a certain level where if
Speaker 2: you write about space and it's not fundamentally weird, you're
Speaker 2: doing it wrong. Yeah, totally, and like it's kind of
Speaker 2: part of the betrayal of Star Wars and shit, absolutely
Speaker 2: I like Star Wars, but I mean space.
Speaker 1: Is like it's literally right on the outside. You have
Speaker 1: to incorporate us certain amount of outsideness into it or
Speaker 1: else it won't feel correct. And I mean that goes
Speaker 1: all the way back to Lovecraft, and you can can
Speaker 1: incorporate that into like the cciu's cultural theoristic stuff in
Speaker 1: terms of how they view science fiction. But no, it
Speaker 1: has to have an element of outsideness, and that's something
Speaker 1: I think this story gets to really well, especially you
Speaker 1: have on almost like a caricter of Arthur C. Clark
Speaker 1: within the scientists being like, Oh, they're gonna be so
Speaker 1: bad with this mystical mumbo jumbo computer stuff doesn't end
Speaker 1: up working, and then it still does, so there's that
Speaker 1: little fun part and then it kind of introduces that
Speaker 1: element of outsideness, which otherwise I think the story would
Speaker 1: not be good at all if it just if.
Speaker 2: It doesn't exactly, if it just ended.
Speaker 1: With the thing not working, then it was like an
Speaker 1: examination of like the failures to use technology to like
Speaker 1: incorporate some kind of spiritual lightment like that does not
Speaker 1: sound like a very interesting short story.
Speaker 2: No, it would have not passed down through the generations
Speaker 2: to you listeners today.
Speaker 1: No, No, yeah, well, and then continuing on to two
Speaker 1: thousand and one and then even twin peaks, like having
Speaker 1: that element about sadness is what has made these things
Speaker 1: like cultural touchstones for so long, and the emphasis on
Speaker 1: not trying to explain everything with a scientific rationalization gives
Speaker 1: these things a sense of like immortal intrigue that he
Speaker 1: keeps lingering on our mind for so long.
Speaker 2: When it's like I went and saw totality last week,
Speaker 2: you know, same as a lot of people, and as
Speaker 2: the second time I got to see it, and the
Speaker 2: first time I saw it, I was like, oh, I
Speaker 2: have now looked into the eye of God. I know
Speaker 2: what's happening. I know that the moon went in front
Speaker 2: of the sun right like, but it doesn't make it not.
Speaker 2: I am now looking at the thing that controls all
Speaker 2: life on earth that we can't look at. You know,
Speaker 2: if like you were just described the sun being like, oh,
Speaker 2: there's this thing in the sky that you can't make
Speaker 2: eye contact with or you'll it'll fuck you up.
Speaker 1: Yeah it's God, you know, Yeah, like humans have known
Speaker 1: this is god for like a long time. Almost all
Speaker 1: of our gods are sun gods, Like we're very aware.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so I went and saw a star go out,
Speaker 2: and you know, obviously I knew it was gonna come back,
Speaker 2: and like freaky though, I really like the fact that
Speaker 2: knowing the science doesn't take away its power. It's interest.
Speaker 1: It's awe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all is the right.
Speaker 1: Word quite literally, like it is like it is like
Speaker 1: a divine awe.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: No, it is great to watch when everything goes dark
Speaker 1: at three pm in the afternoon and shadows start creating
Speaker 1: little cameras and your animals go crazy. Yes, they are
Speaker 1: confused for what's happening. It is like a very divine experience.
Speaker 2: Anyway, that's gonna do it for us Here at Cool
Speaker 2: Zone Media book Club. If you enjoyed this podcast on
Speaker 2: the Cool People Did Cool Stuff Feed, you should check
Speaker 2: out that it could happen here feed that Gere is
Speaker 2: a guest of Gary. You just did a good What's
Speaker 2: it project seventy million Agenda forty seven Agenda forty seven,
Speaker 2: which is the secondary highest number of synchronicity after twenty three,
Speaker 2: So watch out for that, folks. And if you're listening
Speaker 2: to something that can happen here. You can check me
Speaker 2: out on Cool People Did Cool Stuff. I talk about
Speaker 2: history and I also have a book that will be
Speaker 2: going into pre order soon. It is my first novel.
Speaker 2: I've been as mentioned earlier, I've written an awful lot
Speaker 2: of novellas, including very long novellas that whatever all categories
Speaker 2: or social categorization. I have decided that this is my
Speaker 2: first novel in the country. It goes as a long novella.
Speaker 2: And this book is called The Sapling Cage and it
Speaker 2: comes out on September twenty fourth from the Feminist Press
Speaker 2: and you can check it out closer to them if
Speaker 2: you pre order it. See y'all next week, Alan Turing.
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