Theme: Our house … is a very, very, very smart house

Episode Connections
Authors, stories. Sara Teasdale, “There Will Come Soft Rains.” Dean Koontz, The Demon Seed. Alan Weisman, The World Without Us. James Tiptree Jr., “The Last Flight of Dr. Ain.” McSweeney’s.com. Fritz Lieber, “A Pale of Air.” Larry Niven, “Inconstant Moon.”
Films. The Demon Seed. I, Robot. Back to the Future. Mad Max. Planet of the Apes. Winnie the Pooh.
TV episodes, series. Ray Bradbury Theater. The Jetsons. The Jeffersons. Life After People. Little House on the Prairie.
Ideas. An automated house that survives a nuclear holocaust. Lots of human routines. Housing automations always fit around human routines, which makes sense. Hues lights. Alexa. Smart thermostats. But the story is really a post-WWII anti-war story rather than one about automated houses. The story puts human ingenuity at odds with human weakness as a warlike species. Once we are gone, nature reclaims the spaces we occupied. What will be the last thing left to represent us when we are gone? The Teasdale poem from which the story gets its title was a post-WWI offering that was published during the 1918 Flu Pandemic. Kitchens are often the center of the house these days. Everyone needs an incinerator in their home. Bill Williamson’s trash rockets … the wave of the future. Vinyl is nostalgia now. But not 8-track tapes. We have now explored a lot of apocalyptic visions with a variety of causes.
Whoa - Hmmm - WTF. Dan says it is definitely a Hmmm story to begin with, but maybe a little bit a Hmmm - wtf. As in WTF did you humans do? Bill says it is a bit of Whoa because there are no humans.

Previous episode: James Tiptree Jr., “The Last Flight of Dr. Ain”
Next episode: Roger Zelazny, “For a Breath I Tarry”

Music Credit: "Ouroboros" Kevin MacLeod (Incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
Link: Creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Theme: A plague of humans.

Episode Connections
Authors, stories. Lynn Margulis, the Gaia Hypothesis. Stephen King, The Stand. Richard Matheson, I Am Legend. Richard Preston, The Hot Zone. Albert Robina, The War in the Twentieth Century. Aldo’s Huxley, Brave New World. H.G. Wells, “The Stolen Bacillus.” Nicholas Christakis, Apollo’s Arrow.
Films. The Matrix. Resident Evil films. The Omega Man. The Last Man On Earth. I Am Legend. 12 Monkeys. The Andromeda Strain. Outbreak.
Games. Plague Incorporated. The Goliath Virus.
Ideas. More post-apocalyptic sci fi. Male pseudonyms for female authors. Environmental degradation is an essential element of the background setting for the story. At the core of the story are military efforts to weaponize diseases. Dr. Ain seeks to reboot planet Earth by killing off humans and other higher order primates, thus leaving things to the other animals. Maybe bears. The Gaia Hypothesis. Humans as a threat to life on Earth. On the possibility of weaponized diseases. CoVid 19 and conspiracy theories. We love to make light of apocalypse by virus. Look up Biosafety Level IV. We do not always understand the vectors that spread viruses until it is too late. Our economic connections make us vulnerable to disaster. Monkey Pox. SARS. HIV. And more. We have been writing stories about such things for over 100 years, although the maladies evolve over the years. We also have a lot of stories that anthropomorphize the Earth. Human patterns during crises such as pandemics and plagues. Fear is a mechanism for controlling people. And we have a long history of weaponizing fear and disease. The suicide pact between Alice Sheldon and her husband. Parallels to contemporary events. The continuing arc of disaster stories on TBD. Who gets to join our post-apocalyptic island society? There is a lot of utopic fiction. This one balances that with some apocalyptic vision.
Whoa - Hmmm - WTF. Dan says Hmmm. A very plausible hmmm. Bill wishes that it could be a WTF story, but it is just too real.

Previous episode: Larry Niven, “Inconstant Moon”
Next episode: Ray Bradbury, “There Will Come Soft Rains”

Music Credit: "Ouroboros" Kevin MacLeod (Incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
Link: Creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Theme: It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel … angst.

Episode Connections
Authors, stories. Larry Niven, Ringworld series. Fritz Lieber, “A Pail of Air.” Arthur C. Clarke, “Rescue Party,” and “The Star.” Jerry Pournelle. Ursula K. LeGuin.
Films. Finch. Castaway. Solar Flare. Sunshine. Sharknado. The World’s End. Knowing. Apollo 19.
TV episodes, series. The Land of the Lost. Star Trek: The Animated Series. The Outer Limits. The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.
Music. Nickel Creek, “The 21st of May.”
Ideas. More post-apocalyptic sci fi. What would happen to the Earth if the Sun went nova? What would you do if you had only one night left to live? Would people figure it out if the world were really about to end? And what if everyone didn’t die right away … what then? Which is worse … dying in a catastrophe or living through it? The science in “Inconstant Moon” is much more plausible than what we saw in “A Pail of Air.” There are not a lot of stories like this one. Our sun cannot go nova, but we have not seen a lot of speculative fiction about problems with the sun, regardless. But we do LOVE a good disaster movie. Even better when we combine catastrophes. Doomsday stories often explore the psychology of living and dying. The story is set long before social media, so the events are not subject to broadcast. How might the story be different today? Ships (the coffee shop in the story) was a real place. How often does someone claim that the world is about to end? Prophecy. Nostradamus. Heaven’s Gate. There is a lot of profit in being a prophet. Recent events have spawned the prepper movement. Let’s stockpile weapons and food and water. Y2K. Media builds much more hype around doomsday scenarios today. EMP … the new apocalypse. Niven contextualizes the story in contemporary details. Niven calls this a love story in a sci-fi context.
Whoa - Hmmm - WTF. Dan says it falls between Hmmm & Whoa. Bills suggests it is a rising and falling Whoa, like a roller coaster.

Previous episode: Fritz Lieber, “A Pail of Air”
Next episode: James Tiptree Jr., “The Last Flight of Dr. Ain”

Music Credit: "Ouroboros" Kevin MacLeod (Incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
Link: Creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/