The Moon's Bounty (of Distractions)
Paper Cuts
Now that we're properly underway on our journey to mars, let's get distracted by the moon real quick! Let's be entirely fair, though, if I were handed a ticket to wander around space carte blanche, even in the here and now, if I had the time before my intended destination, I would definitely check out what's going on on the moon before heading anywhere else. I mean, it's right there! It's been a good bit since we've been there! (Notwithstanding the incoming Artemis 2 mission, but that hasn't happened yet, from my perspective! Darn you, inexorable passage of time) That's not the only tangent we...
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Edison's Conquest of Mars
Paper Cuts
This book really occupies a fascinating niche, to me. In the day and age we're in, the role of unauthorized sequel, if only for copyright law reasons, is most often firmly filled by a fanfiction author. You've got to file the serial numbers if you wanna publish that, buddy! However, in the realm of the public domain (and, by extension, the relatively loosey goosey copyright rules of the late 1800s), you've got free roam to write whatever you like. Didn't like how war of the worlds was set in Britain? Boom, now the martians are invading New York! Didn't think the aliens got their proper...
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Arcadia Arisen
Paper Cuts
Well then! Dana learned quite a powerful lesson from this book, I'd say. I suggest you take some of what we've heard to heart, too, yknow? The planet will thank you, even if some of that thanking will have to be done indirectly. I really loved reading this book on stream, and re-hearing the story as I was editing the episodes down for the podcast was quite the delight. It's got me motivated in a major way to keep trying my best to bring some small mote of what's on display here into my own life. I actually have a little garden going out in the backyard (in a series of little pots, with varying...
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Escape to the City
Paper Cuts
To be honest with you, this final act that's going on in this week's episode and the next really nails home how crushing it can feel to know there could be solutions to the sort of problems we've been experiencing of late. Well, that, and the commentary being made about the ins and outs of copyright and the importance of using that carefully! (Unstartlingly, the author is quite an advocate for Open Source, but it's also got a lot to say about corporations using the DMCA as a bludgeon) I'm really trying to not have this description come out as dire, but the happy ending is coming in next...
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Repository Committed
Paper Cuts
We inch ever closer to the answer of WHY the city does things like this in this episode, and man, does Stephens really nail the sheer confusion of someone introduced to these concepts from step one just right with the way Dana does things. There's a pervading sense of "Well if there's a better way, why aren't we bothering?" throughout this section of the book, sometimes to the point of almost feeling like we're the ones being talked to. (Which, don't get me started on how that's such a thin line to tread, between preaching to the reader, staring down the camera, in comparison to getting your...
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Flowers (And Tension) Is Growing
Paper Cuts
We're finally getting some resolution on what was set up out front, and hoo boy, it's getting TENSE in a MAJOR WAY this time, folks! I mean, you knew it was gonna be difficult the second she decided to keep the Particular Item from the Fringers, but wow, we really have that drop at perhaps the worst possible time, not to mention just how difficult things are getting with the general conflict between the two major players here, y'know? Honestly, I could really wax on for a long time about the beautiful use of the climate as an antagonistic force in stories like this, too! It really reminds you...
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A Forest Full of Ideas
Paper Cuts
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...
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Kites Make Flights of Fancy
Paper Cuts
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...
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Solarpunk means Community!
Paper Cuts
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...
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Wheelers
Paper Cuts
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...
info_outlineWelcome, welcome welcome, to season 3 of Paper Cuts! As you heard in the opening of the podcast, we're shifting our release model. Rather than innundating you with approximately eight hours of material all at once, that you then have to sort out how to listen to, we're instead cutting the stream down into managable, bite size even, 1 hour and 30 minute chunks. You're still getting the same great Live Audiobook content we know and love here at Paper Cuts, but I'm doing all the wrangling of squashing it down into a cleaner timeframe!
Fittingly, the first episode of our third season also debuts our other huge shift (well, the one that's audible to you listeners): we've got some modern books now! Thanks to the gracious permissions of several very generous authors, I get to showcase some books published outside the public domain. We've picked an absolutely fantastic starting point here, in showing off what I'd comfortably call a "shareware demo" of Guarding Gus, by Karryn Nagel. Don't let that put you off, however, even the first five chapters of this book are an absolute blast, as we dive into the world of a Multnomah changed by the (relatively) recent addition of things quite fantastical to our own world. We follow the foibles of two young men, Brant and Nico, as they struggle to pin down just what our title character, Gustopher, has roped them into, despite being an adorable baby gargoyle. I immediately fell in love with the characters on display here, Nico just wants his quiet little life with his quiet little bonsai, but his whole world is turned upside down on wanting to make sure everyone has stayed safe, only to find that a) he's been adopted by a local extrovert (in Brant) and b) now he's got to take care of this little baby alongside a guy who he barely knows! Oh, and it's a bit of a reverse heist situation, too, as the local leader of what amounts to the magic mob was originally planning on having Gustopher as a showpiece in his menagerie!
I really enjoyed the heck out of the first five chapters of this book, and I really hope you do too! Enough time has passed since the friday this episode came out that you can not only acquire this book through digital booksellers, but also physical copies, and it's available to your local libraries, too! There was a bit of a wait while we were originally airing, but like I've done the organizing for you, I've also done the waiting. Enough waiting, in fact, that the sequel to Guarding Gus, What to Suspect when You're Suspecting, has actually been announced! (Karryn, if you want me to do a demo of that one too, you'd hear no complaints from me, that's for sure!) There's a lot of really good stories coming down the road with this season, and I hope you enjoy the changes I'm making on the backend!
Want to read along with us? Find the book here:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/198424215-guarding-gus
Have opinions you want to share, or want to suggest books? Discord's great for that!
https://www.discord.gg/PBZNsjn/
Want to listen live? Drop by Fridays, over on twitch!
https://www.twitch.tv/glacier_nester/
Want to catch up in a video format? Check out the youtube channel!
https://www.youtube.com/user/glaciernester