Transcript of Leviathan Wakes: Not Leviathan’s Wake
<INTRO MUSIC>
Haley 00:13
Hello.
Amy 00:15
Hello.
Lori 00:15
Hello.
Haley 00:18
This is Hugo, Girl! The podcast where we read Hugo Award winning works of art, and writing.
Amy 00:24
And adjacent!
Haley 00:26
Yeah. This month we read Leviathan's Wake by James SA Corey, the pen name of Daniel Abraham and Ty Frank. It was adapted into the first season and a half of the show The Expanse, and it was nominated for the 2012 Hugo Award for Best Novel. This is a very long book and it's got a very complicated plot, but I think I, I've got it down to like 200 words. So, let's see if this works.
Amy 00:48
Let her rip, girl.
Haley 00:50
First, let's set up the solar system as it exists in this universe in the 23rd century or so. We've got Earth run by the UN. We've got Mars run by the Mars Congressional Republic. And then we've got the Belt which is kind of its own thing. Blue-collar worker bees out in the belt between Mars and the gas giants. Once you get past Mars in the Belt, you have the OPA, which is the Outer Planetary Alliance and it's you know, an uneasy detente in our solar system in this time period.
Amy 01:19
Detente, okay!
Lori 01:22
I don't know that word.
Amy 01:22
I don't know what that means! <laugh>
Haley 01:24
Oh, well, you know. Let me look at the exact definition real quick. <laugh> "Strained relations between countries." Perfect, perfect.
Amy 01:36
That's absolutely perfect.
Haley 01:38
You know, guys, I'm a writer, whatever. <laugh> Let's get into the actual plot. The ice hauler Canterbury is out looking for ice and gets a distress call from the frigate Scopuli. It's abandoned. But while Jim Holden and his crew are on a small freighter checking it out, the Canterbury gets intercepted by stealth ships that nuke the Canterbury. Based on the transponder they found on the ship, Jim and his crew immediately blast out that Mars is guilty of this offense, even if they're not sure. Meanwhile, the second third of the plot of the book revolves around a detective named Joe Miller. He lives on Ceres Station. He's a hard boiled detective. He's been contracted to find a missing woman Julie Mao, daughter of bigwigs who want her to come home. She's a rich girl has been hanging out with the OPA, you know, having some fun being liberal and her parents have had enough. So he's got to figure out where she's at. He gets too close to the case. His boss tells him to stop; he gets fired. Let's meet up again with Holden and company. They are ordered to meet up with the Mars Navy ship the Donnager which also gets destroyed because they're on it. They manage to escape on the newly christened Rocinante and meet up with Fred Thomas, a former Earther in the UN Navy who now runs Tycho Station of the OPA. Miller and his detectiving meets up with Holden and crew on Eros, a Belt city, another Belt city, where they all learned about the horrible research that's going on. Julie has been infected with some sort of virus and so has everyone else on the Station, a million people. After 100 pages of description <laughs> they both managed to get off the rock. Mars and Earth are at their throats. Turns out it's a false flag operation and this virus is actually something that was sent from aliens. And a corporation called Protogen was experimenting with it, calling it a proto molecule. Turns out Eros is heading to Earth. Holden and Miller decide to try and hit it with a big ship to knock it off course but it doesn't work. So instead, Miller finds Julie Mao who apparently is still alive and is in a symbiotic relationship with the proto molecule driving Eros to Earth. And he convinces her to make it land on Venus instead. It does. Cliffhanger.
Lori 03:40
Think you hit all the high notes. And the low notes. <laughs>
Haley 03:44
There's a lot happening in this book for sure.
Lori 03:46
There's so much. I reread the Wikipedia plot summary today to remind myself and I had completely forgotten like, the first part of the book.
Amy 03:54
I reread it. So this is a reread for me and there was especially having now read almost to the end of the series like rereading some of this was just fascinating because they like telegraph some of the stuff that's going to happen later, which is really interesting, but also had forgotten at least three fourths of what occurred in this book. <laughs>
Haley 04:12
All right, Goodies from Goodreads. Alright guys, I scoured Goodreads for a good 30 minutes today and I did not find anything outrageous or even funny or anything even like clever. Did y'all have any luck? <laughs.
Amy 04:25
I mean, I just found one that I thought was kind of entertaining for various reasons. But this one was on Amazon. And as a two star review from Russ C. And it just says...<laughs>...I find this very funny. The title of it is "Ran out of ideas", <laughs> which is very amusing to me, because it's a 950 page book, which is the first book in a series of at least seven books that are also 950 pages. <laughs>
Lori 04:49
Yeah, if anything, there were too many ideas.
Amy 04:51
<Laughs> Exactly, I don't think that running out of ideas was the problem. <Haley laughs> But then he said he "gave up when the author gave up on the story and resorted to romance." <all laugh>
Haley 05:00
Romance!
Amy 05:02
This is the least romantic relationship in the history of literature. But, okay. <Haley laughs>
Lori 05:06
I was hoping that he was gonna say I gave up when the author gave up and resorted to zombies. (Haley: Vomit zombies!) Okay, I have I have one and this was a comment on someone else's review. And this is a Goodreads user who just goes by the letter E and the review says, or the comment says, "As a dude I can confirm this to be Bro SciFi." <all laugh>
Amy 05:32
Does he say why? (Lori: Uh, well,...)
Haley 05:34
Oh I have so much evidence later.
Lori 05:36
No kidding! (Amy: Oh, that's fascinating!) Oh, I it was in response to a review about how like, the women in the book are dead or sleeping with their boss. <Haley laughs> (Amy: I...I...okay, I take exception...) You'll get your turn! (Amy: All right.) Okay! So this that also though tracks with the fact that this is tagged on Amazon under "Men's Adventure Fiction", <laugh> which is a genre which I previously did not know existed. And then we had Twitter friend Mitch Wagner tagged a friend of his who is a writer whose name is escaping me at the moment, but who wrote a lot of Men's Adventure Fiction. But this was like in the era of pulp novels that there were these books that were like, specifically for, like men to just sit down and read real quick and enjoy and not be like literary and be fun, you know, and that's fine.
Amy 06:27
Starship Troopers was Men's Adventure Fiction to me, but... (Haley: Oh, yeah.)
Lori 06:30
But this, the interesting thing is when I looked at Men's Adventure Fiction on Amazon, I thought, "Is there Women's Adventure Fiction?" And there is and the top 10 books were basically the same books. <all laugh> Is this a meaningful categorization? I don't think so. But anyway, I appreciated he calling it Bro SciFi 'cause I definitely agree.
Haley 06:53
I saw one line that that stuck out to me in the two star reviews on Goodreads and it was just, this book is extremely okay. <all laugh>
Lori 07:04
Yeah, yeah, I would go with that.
Amy 07:06
Aw, I really like this book.
Lori 07:08
Well, good, then we'll have a spectrum of opinions.
Haley 07:11
Yeah, no, I mean, I, it's got a wonderful world. I just, it wasn't a page turner for me, that's all.
Lori 07:17
So I liked the beginning, like, the, I would say, the first like 100-200 pages I was very into, and then... I started it before WorldCon, and then I didn't read it during WorldCon. And then we got back and I was like, oh now I have to finish it. And I was like, I just don't (Amy: Wanna.) Yeah, I just didn't feel like pulled to go find out what happened to everybody. Even though when I started it, I was interested. But I mean, I think part of it was I was like, it's just so long like it's going to be (Amy: Yeah, it's a doorstop.) It's going to be many hours before I know what happens.
Amy 07:48
When I first read...when I read this book the first time, I do not recall liking it as much as I did this time, and I think it has... so I think it has something to do... The books get better as the series goes along, like the series grows into the characters, or the other way around, I don't know, better. And so these characters, you invest a lot more in them as you go along. And I think the action gets paced a little better as it goes along. So going back and reading it now, having read ahead, I think I enjoyed it more, because I liked the characters more. Now.
Lori 08:14
I mean, that makes perfect sense. Yeah of course.
Amy 08:16
When I first read this book, I didn't pick up the second one for several years. And so I mean, I wasn't compelled to keep reading after I read it the first time. So I don't think I liked it as much when I first read it.
Lori 08:25
And I think what you said I think about how you see things telegraphed in the first book, once you know how it ends. That's always fun.
Amy 08:31
Yeah. <laugh> Yeah, I agree.
Haley 08:34
Have you watched the show too?
Amy 08:35
I've watched some of the show. I haven't. I haven't watched the whole thing.
Lori 08:39
Have you watched it, Haley?
Haley 08:41
I watched the first episode.
Lori 08:42
Yeah, I watched, like, the... Kevin and I watched the first like maybe three episodes. And it just didn't grab me at all. And I think the contrast with the show is part of why I liked the early part of the book because on the show everyone's like, very mad at each other for no apparent reason. And, and I guess, the idea is just they're in this pressure cooker, their ship has been blown up, they're all very heightened, which so of course, you would be, like, quick to get upset. But it just wasn't enjoyable for me to watch. Like everyone's very sweaty and very mad at each other. And, and then when I was reading it, I was like, "Oh, they're all just like nice friends!" They're like, "Oh, God, our family just got blown up. It's just the five of us left!" And they're all just kind and like, "No, you take the last protein bar," you know, they're just everyone's been very nice and trying their hardest to work through this problem. And there's none of them being at their throats like there was on the show. So I think it not being like the show made me like it a lot more than I might have if I just picked it up without having seen the show. Because the show gave me like, not a great expectation. But then when I read it and everyone was nice, I was like, "Oh this is the kind of book I like."
Amy 09:50
I think that's why I tried to watch the show - again the same kind of thing - I tried to watch the show, like, I watched the first episode of the show a long time ago and I didn't like it 'cause it was just sort of unrelenting grimness. And part of what I like about the books is that there's a lot of grim stuff that happens, but part of it... I don't know, some people may respond to it. Some people don't. It's a little Murderbot-y in a way to me. It's sort of this, like, humor that sort of lifts all the grimness up a little bit. And like, I feel like that's very much missing from the show. They're like, you know, the joke around with each other. They like each other. They're friends and see, like, it's, you know...
Lori 10:21
Definitely. I like that you can see like a obvious affection and caring. And like, even when things are very hard, they're making an effort to be nice and care for each other. (Haley: Yeah.) When it doesn't happen in the show, in the show, they're just all sweating and barely not punching each other. (Amy: True!)
Haley 10:37
So I was doing some research, and, turns out that this book, it was originated as a concept for a board game, which I thought was fascinating, like, a role playing game. (Amy: Oh, I didn't know that.) And then a novel, and then three, six, and finally nine books. And finally a TV show. So I think, somebody on Goodreads had mentioned this, and I was like, "Oh, that makes sense." Because, you know, if you think of like, this world as a board game, like, like a space Catan or something, yeah, you've got the miners here, and then you've got the resources from Earth, and then the OPA.
Lori 11:03
The game of colonialism! <all laugh>
Haley 11:07
I had a hard time. I mean, I know 100% that this would be true. I mean, obviously, we're very, you know, against each other, just as countries. But like, the idea of Martians hating Earthers, I was just like, huh, because I was trying to imagine like, a planetary allegiance versus, you know, like all of our countries. It was hard.
Amy 11:25
The whole thing's a colonization problem. Because like, they colonize Mars, and they colonize the Belt, and then they colonize the outer planets, they bring us, Earth, right? And then once they colonize these places, these places start to get their own identity. And then there's this fight, or there's this tension, because the places with their own identity want to be their own thing, but they're still reliant on Mars...or on Earth for a lot of the resources that come from Earth. So they can't quite break away. But they really want to and then so there's this ongoing tension. Anyway.
Haley 11:50
Yeah. Well, and then, you know, I think one of the most interesting parts of this book for me was, you know, the evolution of humans outside of the Earth's atmosphere, and you know, gravity and whatnot. And so, hearing about the different evolutions of humans that grew up without gravity, I thought that was really cool. (Amy: Yeah.) All right, let's talk about the fact that most of this book is like a noir mystery. Did it work for y'all?
Amy 12:16
I like it to a degree. You don't get any more Miller in the rest of the series. So it's kind of an interesting, it's kind of interesting to revisit it and see how different this one is than the rest of them. But like, one of the guys who wrote the book was like, you know, he didn't anticipate it being like this. But when he started writing, Miller, Miller was like, no, no, I'm a noir cop. So that's how he started writing. So I don't think that was the intent when he first started writing the book, but that's how it developed. I like Miller as a character. So I liked the Miller stuff, but I also like mysteries. So that works for me, that blows my skirt up. So if you don't like mystery, because he wouldn't like Miller,
Haley 12:51
So I know that y'all both like mysteries, but I... I don't know. I just something never sits right with me with a mystery. I feel like I'm always trying to figure things out. And I want to know, more ahead of time, I guess.
Lori 13:02
I like mysteries. And I liked this in some ways, but this book feels like it was written in 1990. And not... And maybe it was and it wasn't published until 2011. I don't know. But like, it's the whole mystery is is like a fridging narrative. The first time I heard someone talk about fridging on a podcast, I didn't know what they were saying. Yes, thank you, Amy. (Amy: Yeah, "What's fridging, Lori?" <laughs>) So it's, it's women in refrigerators that trope? Are y'all familiar with that? So there's a plotline from Green Lantern where he basically finds I think - I can't remember if it's a love interest or family member or what - dead in a refrigerator, and that drives the plot. And so it's the thing of like, my girlfriend, my wife, my daughter has been kidnapped has been killed. And that motivates the hero to act. And that's, I mean, I think, in 2011, I think it's lazy storytelling. And we see it all the time. I mean, it's everywhere. And it's a thing that I noticed, and I'm frustrated by and then recently, I'm aware of like, has a name as a trope, and it's referred to as women in refrigerators or girls in refrigerators and for short, fridging.
Lori 14:08
So we see kind of, it's somewhat of like a little bit of an inverted fridging trope, because she's not a love interest who dies. She's a stranger, who disappears, Julie. And Miller manages to fall in love with his idea of her as he's trying to solve this mystery
Amy 14:25
Which, to his credit, he does realize that's what he does.
Lori 14:27
He does and I appreciate that he acknowledges that. And yet for 900 pages, you know, I watched him do this thing. And so there's, there's a whole thing with this book, where there are a lot of parallels with Don Quixote, and so it's kind of the same thing where episode one of the show is called Dulcinea. And Dulcinea is Don Quixote's imaginary, kind of imaginary lady that he's gone on his quest for. (Amy: Oh interesting.) And the thing is, Dulcinea in reality is like a peasant girl in the village where Don Quixote is from and her name isn't even Dulcinea. But that's just like the image of her that he creates in his head. And so it's interesting that that's happening here, because that's exactly what he does with Julie and he knows he's doing it with Julie. So I think it's clever. But at the same time, I just continue to be bored and frustrated and kind of grossed out by the idea of the dead woman as the driving force behind a man's whole arc. I don't love it.
Amy 15:24
That's fair. Miller's not, I don't think, a character you're sp... You're not supposed to like think he's a good guy or like be into his motivations. I don't think. So that tracks I think. I hadn't thought about it from that perspective. But yeah, right. I mean, it is a, it's a dead idealized girl who's driving most of his, his choices. It's absolutely right. I think that it's interesting with Miller, I think, because I think for a while, he doesn't realize that's what he's doing. So it's a little more interesting for a while because he's sort of putting this puzzle together. And it's more interesting when he thinks it's just a puzzle that he's interested in. And then when he starts idealizing, the girl, it's a little bit weird.
Lori 15:59
He definitely gets unhinged toward the end, (Amy: <laughs> He does.) which I think is like probably then the end that he meets is fitting, but I didn't, I just didn't like reading it. And I'll tell you one thing that I really didn't like reading. So he's an unemployed detective by the end of the book, or maybe by like the middle of the book. But he... When he's first assigned to this case, she's missing, her parents are wealthy, and they've basically hired the police to kidnap her, because she's gone off on her own. She's an adult and she's decided to go, like Haley said, like, go be liberal for a while. And basically be like an OPA freedom fighter kind of thing. <Haley laughs> So they hire him, or they hire the police and he gets assigned to find her. And he starts researching her. And he tells us his thoughts about victims. (Quoting) There are three kinds of victims. One, the kind who pretend nothing happened. Two, people who took their victimhood his permission to act however they saw fit, which he calls quote, "professionals." And number three, quote, "The ones who sucked it up, learned the lesson and moved on. The Julies. The good ones." <All blow dismissive raspberries and chuckle.> Boy, you want to make me pick up a book and pitch it?
Amy 17:05
Yeah, that was real... I read that and cringed hard.
Lori 17:07
I was so upset about that! And the thing is, this is also right after he decides that he thinks that she's been raped. He doesn't know that. He learns from, basically, her, like, Krav Maga teacher or whatever, that she was attacked. And so she decided to learn self defense. And so he's like, "That's the right way to be a victim. She was probably raped. And so she learned how to defend herself." And I was just like, "Ah, this makes me want to rip my hair out."
Amy 17:32
Does it matter at all... I mean, let me just be... I read that and also cringed real hard and got angry, because it's stupid. It's really stupid. And what's the word I'm looking for... Minimizing or... (Lori: Yeah) Infantilizing? I don't know. But I think part of the point of Miller is that he's supposed to have this very, you know, jaded, pessimistic outlook on people because of what he's done. Like his being a cop, and doing all this stuff and living on Ceres where it's very bleak, and like, all the stuff, and then you get Holden, who's very optimistic and idealistic, and doesn't think that way.
Lori 18:01
I also hate him.
Amy 18:01
Okay. <Lori laughs> But I mean, I think part of what the authors were trying to do here is, is create this comparison between these two guys this tension, like which one's right? Are they both wrong? Are they both right? Are they both A and B, you know? So part of what... I think part of all these things we get from Miller that are just icky, are a little bit Miller being lazy about his view of the world and like, but also partially like, we're supposed to see him as this, like, that guy that thinks these kinds of things. Like, I don't know, if the, I don't know, I think that's supposed to be part of his character. So I wasn't trying to figure out whether to be mad about or or not I guess. <laughs>
Lori 18:37
Yeah, I don't know. And I mean, I think you make a good point. And, and as a reader, it's hard for me to know (Amy: Yeah) you know?
Amy 18:44
Yeah, I don't think they were successful.
Lori 18:45
Is this held up as a criticism? Like, am I supposed to look at this and go <vomit noise>? Or am I, you know, it's Men's Adventure Fiction, so... <All laugh> Or am I supposed to look at and be like, "Yeah, that's right. You know, girls who get into trouble, they ought to learn karate, so it doesn't happen to 'em again." Like I just I just don't know, and I don't know how to know.
Amy 19:02
And neither of these guys, I don't think either of the guys have it right. Right? Because one of them has such a bleak view of everyone they think... he thinks everybody's trash. And then the other one has such an idealistic view of everyone, that he's also got a trash view of everyone. <All chuckle.> It... He puts everybody, he puts it... Especially, especially Naomi is a really good example of this. Like, he puts Naomi on this pedestal and it's a ridiculous way to look at human persons. Like it's, it's they're both ridiculous in their own... (Lori: Yeah.) What do you think of Miller, Haley? <chuckles>
Amy 19:33
I just got sad reading his chapters, like... (Amy: Yeah it's real dark.) He's an alcoholic and kept going back to his "hole", which is a weird name for department. <All chuckle.> Yeah, I... I don't know like, this book was very claustrophobic to me to read.
Amy 19:47
Yeah, I think that's purposeful.
Lori 19:49
Which is interesting since it's called "The Expanse."
Amy 19:51
Well. So, this is one of the things I really like about this book and all the books that come after is, like, their constant grappling with this, with some way to make space feel big, but also feel really small, right? So, they have these ways of, like, trying to focus in on on these characters to try and hook us on on a small scale in this vast expanse, right? So, like, you have how long it takes them to get from point A to point B; you have, like, just how far away Earth is from where they are; and, like, how the sun looks like a speck to most of these people. Like, they don't feel like part of the solar system, right? But, then, you have them interacting with each other on a very personal level. And so, I think, these claustrophobic spaces that the Belters live in is supposed, is purposeful, like it's supposed to make you feel that way, I think. Because that's their whole world, is this tiny, tiny little space in this vast, vast, vast, vast emptiness.
Lori 20:40
Well, and I think there's something to it that, you know, we feel small when we think about space, too. (Amy: Yeah.) You know, I was just reminded when you were describing that, Amy, of when we went a few years ago to that cabin, and I was like, excited to go outside and look at the stars without any light pollution. (Amy: Yeah!) And, one of you was like, "Oh, Lori, come out and look!" And I looked up and I could, like, really see the Milky Way. And I was like, "Nope, don't like that!" <All laugh> "I'm going to go back inside and watch TV." <All laugh> I just got a little sense of my mortality. And I didn't like it! I don't like it! Going back in the house. <chuckling>
Amy 21:11
But I think, you know, Haley, that's funny that you should say that because like one of the things I was thinking when I was reading it this time around was how Haley is going to like the spaceship that they provide us. Like, whether that's gonna resonate with you. Because, you know, sometimes we'll read spaceship books, and you'll say, "They didn't talk much about spaceships!" And they talk a LOT about the spaceships in this book. They love their spaceships. But they do feel claustrophobic. They feel very small. And it's, you know...
Haley 21:36
Yeah, I... It was definitely better for me to watch the first episode because, like, you get to see though, like, the guy lose his arm in the ice machine in the big, you know, freighter. But uh, yeah, I mean, I feel very neutral towards the ship. So.
Haley 21:36
All of them? <chuckles> All the ship they gave us?
Haley 21:53
Yeah, I mean, like, I feel like we spend most of the time in the Roci. Um, and then like, I think it was the, it's the claustrophobia of like, Ceres and Eros, like, you know, I'm picturing like, the space station in the old Total Recall movie or like, hallways from Logan's Run? I don't know. Like... (Amy: Yeah.)
Lori 22:10
I have a difficult time picturing things in general, if I haven't seen it, which honestly, (Amy: Same.) I haven't seen any of these things. So that, for the Rocinante, I'm just like, imagining like a shiny IKEA version of, like, the Futurama spaceship. <Haley and Lori laugh.> Like the, the Rocinante, it was notable to me that they get on the ship, and they're like checking out all these cool things. And Naomi, the chief engineer is like, "Oh, the shower is so nice." (Amy: It would be nice to have a shower.) And I, I couldn't I was like arguing with myself about whether I was annoyed that the chief engineer only comments on the shower, and the only woman that comments on the quality of the shower. But then I had a note to myself, it was a counterpoint to myself, that Holden really waxes eloquent about the coffee maker.
Amy 22:55
It's a creature comfort thing, yeah. (Lori: Yeah.) On that note, like, I'm on the fence with these books about how they treat their women in these books. Because it's like, on the one hand, I think they do all right, just sort of making them a part of the general, you know, political dynamic that's happening. Like, later you'll meet Avasarala <pronouncing> Ava-sa-ra-la. I can't ever pronounce her name correctly when I say it out loud. But she's this amazing character! She's this politician from Earth, who's...
Lori 23:17
She's in the first few episodes of the show. (Amy and Haley: Yeah.)
Amy 23:19
Yeah, they put her in. She's great. Her character's great through the rest of the series. And then Naomi, like, really becomes a really great character as it goes along. And there's, and, you'll meet Bobby later. Bobby's a really good character, she shows up. She's a Martian Marine. So they do better, I think, later with their women. In this book, they don't do particularly well. It's like, they sort of make them a part of the bro landscape. They don't... There's no male gaze going on?
Lori 23:42
Oh, my God, I disagree. (Haley laughs.)
Amy 23:43
Holden has his moments. Well, I guess Miller, but they don't talk about it. It's weird. It's like, they talk about women from a very sexualized perspective. But they don't, like... (Haley: Almost entirely.) It's not like you're looking at a bunch of... You're not looking at naked bodies all the time or anything like that. (Lori: Um.) Lori has a face. (Lori clears throat, Amy laughs.) (Lori: Naomi has...)
Haley 24:08
This kind of bleeds into both Boob Talk and Misogynist Moment a bit.
Lori 24:11
I had such a hard time choosing Misogynist Moments. I have like four.
Amy 24:15
That is fascinating! I did not feel any particularly misog... Except for how often they say the word "whore".
Lori 24:20
Oh, I have a word count on that.
Amy 24:22
They say the word whore every other page. Yes.
Lori 24:24
So, I just found Naomi to be a deeply disappointing character. Like, she's the ranking officer after Holden. Why, though? Like, is it just seniority?
Amy 24:35
Because, yes, it's where they came off of from the Canterbury .
Lori 24:38
She is the chief engineer. I looked up, "What is the chief engineer on a ship?" And it's, like, the person who knows how to do everything. But we only ever see her hack software. Amos does every single repair. Something breaks on the ship, he's like, down there when they're like in battle. He's like down in the bowels of the ship fixing things as they break during battle. And she is, like, she's just kind of there. And, Holden's, like, just sort of observing her, and she does a lot of smiling. I have a word count for you on smiling. And she seems to also struggle with making difficult decisions. Like, I remember there was one point where she needed to make a difficult decision, and she just like froze up and couldn't. So, we don't... She's a very passive character. So, I was very disappointed in her. And let's see, she's always smiling at Holden. "Thanks. I hate it," is my note. In 2011, we sleep with the boss. Got it. So alright. Oh, and even after her very impassioned, like, "I've been around all this time, and you never liked me..." So he confesses that he thinks he's in love with her. I mean, I believe that he believes it at the moment. And she's like, basicall,y tells him off and she's like, "I've known you for five years, you've slept with 3000 people. None of them have been me. You've never expressed an interest in me. And now that I'm the only woman who's accessible to you, you think you're in love with me?" And then she's like, "Okay, let's do it". And I think... I just didn't, I just didn't like it. And, I mean, I think there's a reading of it to say where she was like, okay, we can have sex because we both want to. But after that, she was like, "I fell in love with you five minutes after I met you. And you've really treated me like I didn't exist. And now I'm here." And yeah, I don't know. I just, it didn't work for me.
Lori 26:27
So, I did also notice while I was reading that she smiles all the fucking time. And I thought, let me be fair, and see how many times everyone smiles. So, thank you to the Kobo for the word search. The word "smile" or some form of it occurs in this book 131 times. "Grin" occurs 52 times for a total of 183 happy faces. <Amy laughs.> Our number one smiler may surprise you. It is, in fact, Miller.
Amy 26:56
Oh, interesting. That does surprise me.
Lori 26:57
Miller has 35 smiles. And as I was going through...
Amy 27:00
Does he smile sadly most of those times?
Amy 27:03
Yeah maybe I'm, maybe I'm grafting other things that happened later on in the series onto this book.
Lori 27:03
No. So early on his smile seemed to be tactical. He's talking to a victim so he pastes a smile on his face. Or he's, like, talking to his boss and he pastes a smile on his face. So, and it's very, the narrative is very specific, that he's making a smile with his face on purpose. (Haley laughs) And then later on, the smiles become almost sort of deranged, because he's thinking about Julie and he just starts smiling and he's like alone and thinking of this woman who doesn't actually exist and he starts smiling. So there's this interesting first half where he smiles as a deliberate communication method. And then later on, he's like, he's just not in control of his emotions. So, coming in on his heels with 30 smiles is Naomi. And Naomi is a minor character, right? So our main characters are Holden and Miller. Naomi has 30 smiles, and, so, for comparison our other crew members: Amos, has six and Alex has two. Holden smiles 21 times, but interestingly almost all of his are referred to as "grins" not "smiles". (Haley laughs.) And Julie, who doesn't exist, smiles 16 times. <All laugh.> So I'm just so disappointed in Naomi's character. I felt like she was really just smiling and there for Holden to distract himself with.
Lori 27:26
I think that's a fair thing to do because...
Amy 27:42
She definitely becomes a more...
Lori 27:52
You've known her way longer than I have.
Amy 27:58
She definitely becomes a more solid character and I think they figure out how to write her a little bit... I think they probably get better beta readers too. I think the difference between her and... I think she's XO because of their ranks on the Canterbury. That's why she ends up XO,I think. And she's... And, like, Amos is a mechanic so he's going to be the one fixing things. She's, she's doing upper level, nav... Like, com stuff, weapons aiming type stuff like that sort of thing.
Lori 28:54
Counterpoint to that, though, later, it, toward the end of the book, Holden thinks to himself that she has only ever been in one battle and here she is acting like a veteran aiming some weapons or something. So that's not a thing that she previously knew how to do. (Amy: Mm hmm.) I really just see her, like, riding shotgun with him and absorbing his weird looks and smiling. She was disappointing to me. (Amy: Okay! <laughs> Clearly!) As you can tell! Haley, what's your word count on "whore" and "prostitute"?
Haley 29:28
Oh, yeah. So because I kept noticing it, and then I was like, "Is it just me?"
Amy 29:32
No, they definitely say those things a lot.
Haley 29:35
Yeah, prostitute six hooker six. He mentions them literally, like referring to, you know, sex workers. But he also uses them as a simile. And like... (Amy: Ew.) This one it was weird. (Quoting) "The moon itself, Phoebe, filled the frame turning slowly to show all sides like a prostitute at a cheap brothel."
Amy 29:51
Ewww. That's right, I forgot about that!
Lori 29:52
There are so many weird similes and metaphors in this book. (Haley: Yeah.) Nothing just is what it is. Everything is "like" something else.
Haley 30:00
What's funny is that, you know, I can put aside my feminist card and read, you know, I don't know what. In middle and high school I was reading Tom Clancy and you know, these Vietnam War books, and I can put up with sexism a lot, but sometimes, I can't when I'm reading a book? And like, I just find myself noticing. I'm like, this didn't have to be there. I mean, (Amy: Yeah.) you did, I guess we're doing a thing, but...
Amy 30:19
There's entirely too much. Too much reference, derogatory reference, I feel like, or some, you know, derogatory reference to sex workers. I mean, it's, it's all the time. And then every time they say the word "whore" just jars me right out of the narrative. It just makes (Haley: Yeah!) me mad.
Haley 30:36
It's just weird that, you know, 300 years in the future, we're not a little bit more advanced with our, you know, sexual and shame politics, but... (Lori: Well, exactly!)
Amy 30:45
Well, it's funny, because I think they're trying to create this world where they kind of are, but they're writing about it from now. So it's like, infused with that still.
Haley 30:53
I mean, whether it's on purpose or not, or it's skillful or not, I think, either way, doesn't matter. Like I still just don't love reading about it. (Amy: Yeah, yeah same.) I think that's like saying, I'm just like, it's like you doesn't matter why it's there. It's just like, it's uncomfortable sometimes just be like, "Oh, God, another dead hooker. Like, great." (Amy: Yeah.)
Lori 31:08
Well, the other thing I thought about too, was the use of the words "whore" and "prostitute." So like, nowadays, most people prefer... those people who are trying to speak respectfully prefer to use the words "sex worker" or "sex work", because that's what many sex workers have asked for people to say, because "prostitute" is the language of crime, right? And so I thought, you know, we're, like, 300 ish years in the future, and it's legal on this station. So, I thought it just was, like, uncreative to me to still use the language of criminalization in the year 2350, or whenever we are. And I was thinking of examples, like, we don't call the shipping of alcohol "bootlegging". You know? Like, we don't still call it that. We don't call like interstate adoptions "trafficking", you know? We have different words for those things. So I would think 300 years in the future, when something is legal and regulated, it's not going to be called the same thing. I mean, maybe it would be but I would like to see an author imagine it differently.
Amy 31:39
I was about to ask if the "sex worker" thing had been... was a thing in 2011. But then I remembered that in, that they wrote "Firefly" and managed to call her a "companion".
Lori 32:19
And that's the thing. I was trying to find when "sex work" became common parlance, and I couldn't quite figure it out. But I mean, it's in published literature, like, all the way back to the 70s. But I couldn't find when it was like a common thing. But again, this is fiction. And like you said, they call her a companion. You know, you're a writer, you can do better. You can call it anything you want! (All laugh ruefully.)
Amy 32:44
Is, I don't know if you notice when you're doing your word count, but was, was that solely related to Miller, or were other people using it too?
Lori 32:50
Oh other people were using it too because Amos is such a fan of the whorehouse.
Amy 32:53
He sure is, Amos.
Haley 32:54
He likes expensive hookers, he said. Like it just so much hooker talk!
Amy 32:59
Amos. Amos is troubled, as you find out later.
Lori 33:02
I wanted to mention one thing that Steve from Androids and Assets brought up. So, he sent me some thoughts on Twitter about mental health in this book. And I said, you know, that kind of missed me, so I you know, I would share what he said about it. And so if I'm getting the delivery wrong, please blame that on me and not on him.
Lori 33:22
Steve has professional history, working with incarcerated people, and he said, you know, it's just like, very harmful to equate a mental illness and evil. And that happens in this book, where toward the end, when we meet the big bad, the narrator refers to the guy... I mean, the word "sociopath" happens like 200 times in the last few pages, but not actually 200. I didn't... I did a word count on it. It was more like nine. But it's like a lot. It was distracting. You know, it was like, "The sociopath, the sociopath." And then they were like, "Oh, we, we hired all these scientists, and we chemically altered them so they had no empathy." And Holden's like, "You turned them into sociopaths!" And, like Steve's point was that it's incorrect for us to be like, "In order to do these evil acts, you must have the mental illness of sociopathy." Because he was like, there are people, like they're just normal people who are doing work that has horrific results and, you know, evil effects on everyday people's lives. And they're just regular people. So to say that, like, you would have to give someone a particular mental illness in order for them to perpetrate something that we would think about as evil is both incorrect and harmful and does not serve people who are actually living with mental illness. And I think Steve really summed it up in one of his messages where he said, "This book punches down on people with mental illness when it could punch up at the military industrial complex."
Amy 34:43
Just to contextualize what you're saying. So like they, so at one point in the book, so this company Protogen had been developing this, the protomolecule to be a weapon. They wanted to weaponize it, but they didn't know what it did. And so they developed this experiment where they were basically going to let loose the protomolecule in Eros Station to see what it did, basically. And what that meant was killing everybody in Eros Station to see how they were recreated by this protomolecule. And so they had this scientific station where they had, you know, just regular scientists on the station working on this experiment. And they were told that these scientists were put through this, I don't know, procedure or reprogramming to become sociopaths. Basically. That's what we're told in the book. So they wouldn't have any empathy so they could murder Eros without compunction. Basically, that's just to contextualize what we're talking about.
Lori 35:34
Thank you. Oh, I noted some strange racial depictions in this book that I feel are worth mentioning. Miller talking about his boss, Captain Shaddid, (quoting) "If Miller had been called on to describe her, the phrase 'deceptive coloration' would have figured in."
Amy 35:52
Oh, I thought he was talking about her demeanor.
Lori 35:54
What is the color of a demeanor?
Amy 35:56
Deceptive... I thought he was talking about like, she's sort of, she can blend into any... Like, she would go with whatever party was in power, she could blend into anything she's like, I didn't think it was literal coloration.
Lori 36:06
Really? It was in a paragraph talking about the length of her hair and stuff.
Amy 36:10
I don't know. That's how I read that. I remember that phrase. That's how I read it.
Lori 36:12
Oh, okay.
Amy 36:14
Otherwise, I don't know what he's talking about.
Lori 36:15
Well, here's another weird one. Holden on Naomi: (quoting) "What sort of genetic mashup had produced her features? Definitely some African and South American in there. Her last name hinted at Japanese ancestry, which was only barely visible as a slight epicanthic fold. She'd never been conventionally pretty. But from the right angle, she was actually fairly striking." You could find that under misogynist moment, cause that's real exoticizing. (Haley: <laughs> Yeah.) And it's just surprising to me, again, it's the same kind of thing where I feel like this book was written in 1990. It's like a Dan Brown space book. Because I just think like, in 300 and some years from the future, and we are populating like multiple planets and asteroids and like, people are physiologically, you know, different from people who are raised on Earth. And it's just interesting to me how they both seem kind of preoccupied with racial identity 300 plus years in the future, and that bums me out. Like you... I would hope that we might be past that or that, like, there would be something else that we stratify each other with, but it was just an interesting and, like, a very, very little bit offensive. I thought.
Amy 37:27
I don't know. Yeah, I guess if you're in space, and you haven't been to Earth ever, those kinds of characterizations don't really matter to a certain degree.
Lori 37:34
And I was surprised more so by Miller, because he, you know, has always lived his whole life on Ceres Station. So I thought why does he care? But...
Amy 37:43
Oh was that Miller's?
Lori 37:44
No, that was Holden. (Amy: Oh okay.) But Miller also, in a couple of places, makes a note of what he guesses at someone's racial identity. And I was just sort of surprised by that.
Amy 37:52
I hadn't thought about it, because why would he care? Because he's never been, yeah.
Lori 37:54
I mean, yeah, I just... To me, some of this stuff strikes me as uncreative. Like, I've set a book 300 years in the future, but I haven't really thought about what people will be like. I've thought about what politics might be like, what a station might be like, what a ship might be like, but I haven't really thought about what people will be like.
Amy 38:11
Most of the Belters, I feel like don't, they don't care. Like most of the Belters exist as Belters. Right? (Lori: Right.) They don't care about each other's, you know, ancestral makeup, like. (Lori: Right.) They don't care. Which is why it's interesting that Miller would ever comment on it. Most of that kind of stuff tends to come from people who are from Earth. But...
Lori 38:27
Miller definitely notes that he thinks someone he meets is East Indian, which I thought was very specific for someone who had never been to Earth.
Amy 38:34
That is interesting, I had not thought about that. Because I think most Belters, they are sort of a melting pot, right? So they end up... And they have never been to Earth, so they don't care. Right? They never, never talked about it. They're all you know, everything. They're all everything, basically, at that point. So that yeah, no, that's interesting I hadn't thought about it. Miller, it does not make any sense for Miller to be like... Unless! Unless. Unless, unless. Unless people, as they go out, you know... Because, you know, when people emigrate, they do tend to take their culture with them to a large degree, right? (Lori: Sure, right.) And they'll create pockets of their cultural heritage in wherever they end up. (Lori: Yeah!) For at least a while, you know, then they tend to disperse I think. (Lori: Yeah, yeah that's true.) So it's possible that as they went out to the Belt, that... Because they talk about there's a ship of Chinese folks who are boating around, and they are they're one of the casualties of war, and they talk about that boat a little bit. But it's entirely possible that - and this is grafting a lot onto this book that I don't know if they ever thought about or intended - but it's possible that when they emigrate out, they do the same thing. They keep their original heritage, even though it means nothing to them anymore, maybe because they've never been to Earth?
Haley 39:34
Yeah, I mean, you don't have to create a new you know, racial structure, but you also don't have to mention it either. So. Who knows?
Amy 39:40
Yeah. Agreed.
Haley 39:43
So, Boob Talk, one of our, you know, usual, g*ddammit. I'm so awkward tonight on this phone. It's like I'm, I'm sitting on my bed on my stomach. Like I'm, like, having like a three way call in 1999. <All crack up laughing.>
Lori 39:56
Well, that's perfect because I feel like this book is a 90s book.
Amy 39:59
Lori, I heard Haley was talking about you. Doesn't that make you mad? What do you wanna talk about Haley?
Lori 40:03
Can you hold on I got a beep.
Amy 40:05
Like I am literally moving my legs back and forth <all giggle> Anyway, so Boob Talk, for one night only, I would like to rename it, this section or segment "Ball Banter". (Amy: You got it.) So, so I had to, I had to Google this. I am not very familiar with balls, but there's three <all laugh> There's three different sentences, like, maybe 200 pages apart so like it became like a, like a tattoo or a cadence. I was like, "Okay more balls more balls." <all laugh> Okay, so this is usually Holden I think.
Amy 40:38
<chuckling> Yeah, he talks about balls a lot.
Haley 40:43
(quoting) "Sufficiently weird to make my balls creep up." Which is just like a, like a chef's kiss of a sentence for... <all laugh> Uh, things made his "balls itch" and then his balls "crawled up into his belly". And so I know that when a man gets cold, you know, things shrivel and get sucked in to preserve warmth, <Lori and Amy snicker> but like, gross! Like, this does happen a lot?
Lori 41:00
Do you want to phone a friend? I've got an expert on balls sitting right here.
Amy 41:03
We have, we have, we have some balls in the room.
Haley 41:04
How often are balls creeping up?
Amy 41:08
Kevin, how often do your balls go up?
Lori 41:10
Hello, phone a friend. Here we have a man.
Kevin 41:12
Yeah, um.
Amy 41:13
Hello, man. Hello, man.
Kevin 41:14
Not that, not that often? I mean, it's definitely a tr... a literary trope. I think, I think Stephen King uses it? I feel like Stephen King uses it a lot.
Amy 41:22
That doesn't surprise me at all. Wait, have you ever been so creeped out that your balls crawled up?
Kevin 41:26
No. <all laugh>
Haley 41:28
No, no, Kevin...
Lori 41:29
Kevin is a particularly stoic person, though. So, I feel like we need to ask a more excitable man or more nervous man.
Haley 41:35
It's not even "scary". The beauty of the sentence is "sufficiently weird to make my balls creep up." <Lori laughs>
Amy 41:45
I think his balls go into his body when he gets the juice also,when they...
Lori 41:51
That make a certain amount of sense.
Haley 41:52
Oh oh oh! One thing that I cannot stop thinking about is, um, so they get exposed to the radiation and then they've got to take this medicine like every day for the rest of their life and the entire book I was like, "Did they take it? Did they take it? (Lori: Oh me too!)
Amy 42:04
Their watch would go off every so often to make you feel better about their medication.
Lori 42:07
Well, and then I thought, though, like, what about when they're, like, in the middle of a battle? Like...
Haley 42:12
Yeah! Like I get my prescription at CVS...
Amy 42:16
I think they had like a window of time where they had to take the meds. He takes the meds the rest of the series.
Lori 42:21
I just thought like, you know, he's in like a firefight right now. Like, did they schedule?
Amy 42:27
I think book three it becomes a big plot point, Holden's meds. (Lori: Oh really?)
Haley 42:32
They really set it up as Chekhov's radiation pill. <all laugh.
Amy 42:37
I like when Miller's little chime goes off for his radiation pills when he's about to, um, go, you know, go off the cliff with Thelma and Louise at the end. He's like, Ah ha! I don't care about my radiation pills anymore. Ha ha I am free! It was kind of funny.
Lori 42:50
If I'm ever about to crash onto Venus I will not take my eating pills.
Amy 42:55
Same! I, you know what? I don't need those antidepressants if I'm about to crash into Venus and create crystal structures in the sky with my weird alien, asteroid...
Lori 43:04
Zombie, asteroid ship...
Amy 43:07
Vomit zombie asteroid ship.
Lori 43:08
...psychically piloted by your imaginary girlfriend. Slash real person who was a vomit zombie...
Amy 43:15
(leaning into mic) ...who had glitter on her breasts at the end.
Lori 43:18
Glitter? <Haley laughs>
Amy 43:18
Mm hmm. She had blue fireflies on her breasts.
Lori 43:21
Oh, I just thought she was like under a, under, like, a lamp.
Amy 43:25
Nah, when he walks into the station there's like blue fireflies everywhere. And they gather in places of power and they were on her.
Lori 43:31
I read that! I thought, I just thought she was under, like, a O/R light because they had, like, she was, like, plugged into the ship's mainframe or something. And I genuinely thought they were... <high pitched laugh> I didn't know she had glitter boobs!
Amy 43:34
She had glitter boobs. I was really looking forward to talking about it during Boob Talk.
Haley 43:52
I pictured her in the medical bay of the Millennium Falcon from Empire. Yeah. So.
Amy 43:58
I do recommend finding the episode of "The Expanse" where Miller has his little confrontation with her on the, as, as the as Eros, basically. It's an interesting depiction of that scene.
Lori 44:11
Can we still... Can we append some Boob Talk to Ball Banter?
Haley 44:15
We now return to your regularly scheduled program. <all laugh>
Amy 44:17
I've already mentioned the glitter boobs. That was my favorite.
Lori 44:20
Do you have any more, Amy?
Amy 44:21
I do have one other one. Which maybe somebody else is going to mention, too, but... (Reading) "The tube station that arrived from the port had six wide doors which emptied onto the casino floor. Miller accepted a drink from a tired looking woman in a G string and bared breasts and found a screen to stand at that afforded him a view of all six doors."
Lori 44:41
I've got that one as well.
Amy 44:42
A tired looking woman in a G string... <chuckles with incredulity>
Haley 44:44
That was like... In the chapter before there was, like, an exhausted looking woman, like, the women are not thriving in this book.
Amy 44:50
Why are the women so tired!?
Lori 44:51
Yeah, it's very demeaning. (Haley: Yeah.)
Amy 44:55
Or, or it's accurate because women are usually more tired.
Lori 44:59
I mean I think every, every Belter is tired because they're definitely exploited.
Amy 45:03
Well, that's what I'm trying to figure out if he's like being feminist by pointing out that the women are in these, that, you know, the women aren't enjoying these positions they're in, they just have to do the work just like all the time. But maybe not.
Lori 45:15
I mean, maybe, I don't know. That's the thing. I wonder, I wonder if like, we should know. Like, is a writer successful if we know or is it like, find that we don't know?
Amy 45:26
They might be trying to do something progressive and failing.
Lori 45:32
So I have a Boob Talk. It doesn't involve boobs, but it is a male gaze that made me grumpy. (Reading) "Naomi gave Holden a sleepy look through half lidded eyes that was suddenly sexy as hell." Bro! Oh my god. Like you can't even be sleepy. She's just like being sleepy.
Amy 45:53
That's when they're, like, at a table right? They're not even.
Lori 45:55
I don't remember. Oh, yeah, it's definitely not like after they've gotten together. (Amy: No, I think that was at the table.) She's actually just sleepy. Yeah, those are not, like, bedroom eyes in a bedroom.
Amy 46:04
There was also a moment where he was like, women are cute when they're angry. And I was just like, Uggggh.
Lori 46:08
Oh, my God. And then there's the part where they have, they get somewhere and they have a very capable mechanic who Amos has a boner for.
Amy 46:16
Sam! Sam shows up later. She's great.
Lori 46:17
And he keeps calling her the "pixie". And I'm like, look. Here's the note I have. The note I have is, "None of us are pixies. Even the petite ones of us with short haircuts. We are not pixies."
Amy 46:30
Maybe they just stopped looking at women in the 90s. And so they, that's where they're stuck. Maybe they got married in the 90s never looked at women since.
Haley 46:39
Yeah, I read that one of them, I forget which one, was George R.R. Martin's assistant. (Lori and Amy: Yeah.)
Amy 46:45
And he's in their like writing club. So he was one of their beta readers.
Lori 46:48
George is blurbed on the cover of Amy's book.
Amy 46:50
Um, apparently he said that this was the best vomit, uh, best book with vomit zombies that he's ever read.
Lori 46:57
That's a little backhanded, I think.
Amy 46:59
It wouldn't surprise me about ole George.
Lori 47:01
Yeah... Does anyone have a Feminist Favorite in this book?
Haley 47:07
I do. It's when Julie Mao decided to mind-drive the Eros into Venus saving Earth's life.
Amy 47:11
Yay! Good job, Julie!
Lori 47:14
(Chuckling) I don't know, I think maybe she should have driven it into Earth. (Haley: Yeah. <laughs>)
Amy 47:20
I like Julie's character. I think she's a good character. You know, the glimpses we get of her as an actual human person. I thought she was pretty good character. I'm trying to think if I have a Feminist Favorite. I don't know if I do really. I wouldn't say, I wouldn't say very, not very much of this book was exactly feminist.
Haley 47:37
Maybe Miller's wife divorcing him? <Amy laughs...loudly>
Lori 47:42
Good for her. Candace. You don't need to put up with that sad sack.
Amy 47:45
Ahhhh, that's awesome. And Miller had that partner who was like, "You're the cop that everybody gets stuck with." <laughter>
Lori 47:51
Oh, my God. You know, I will say... (Amy: She was pretty great.) that while I didn't enjoy Miller, I did like some things about his arc. Like, I was moved to, like serious sadness by his recognition that like, he isn't the guy he thought he was, he isn't the detective he thought he was, and how he kind of grapples with that, comes to terms with it, and then is like, "the thing I have left to give is to die". And, but like, heroically, but like, it just... I don't know. I thought that that was well-executed. I thought his, sort of, coming to terms with himself was well-executed in the sense that it made me very fucking sad. And I think we're supposed to.
Amy 48:29
Well, that's a good thing. I mean, that's a sign of a, that's good writing. (Lori: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.) I don't really guess I have one. (Glumly) Hmm.
Haley 48:36
That's okay. This isn't a very feminist book. It's just a space opera.
Amy 48:40
We're not skipping food, right?
Haley 48:42
No, no, that's okay. So Culinary Corner.
Lori 48:44
I hope we're not skipping Misogynist Moment.
Amy 48:46
Oh, no, we're not skipping Misogynist Moment. (Lori: Okay.)
Haley 48:49
Wait. Oh, I thought we talked about Misogynist Moment already.
Lori 48:52
I mean, we talked about a lot of misogynist moMENTS, but...
Amy 48:56
Have we not talked about your very favorite one?
Haley 48:58
Yeah. What's your favorite?
Amy 48:58
What's your very favorite one?
Lori 48:59
I have to pick one? I have four.
Amy 49:01
Oh, you can say them all if you want!
Haley 49:03
Yeah say them all. I just had all the hooker talk
Lori 49:07
(Laughing) The hooker talk!
Amy 49:07
New segment!
Lori 49:09
Okay, this is a very bad one. So Naomi's all drunk right after they get to Tycho Station. She's drunk. She's karaoking. And he's gotten to the point where even though his girlfriend just got vaporized like five minutes ago, he thinks he's in love with Naomi, which is okay, that could be like a trauma response. It's, whatever, he feels how he feels. He's fantasizing about hooking up with Naomi, and he thinks to himself, (reading) "He'd have hated himself in the morning for taking advantage, but he'd still have done it." (Haley: Ahhh I don't remember that.) I was like, you two gentlemen, here's the thing. There's a way to make your point in a less terrible way. And I was like he they could have said, "He'd have hated himself in the morning for taking advantage, so he went to bed." (Amy: Right you don't have to...) Like you could have just left that out. Because the next sentence is... Like I do think he, like, gets up and leaves, but, like, the but he'd still have done it.
Amy 50:00
Also I don't think that fits with Holden's character. (Lori: Well that's the thing...) I don't think Holden would have done that.
Lori 50:03
The whole rest of his character is that he's almost morally upright to a fault.
Amy 50:07
Right, right. He's Ned, he's Ned Stark.
Lori 50:09
So it's like, I don't know if that's them saying that like, giving him a little bit of moral ambiguity, or if it's just like, boys will be boys. You know, what's supposed to do? Like I just, oh, I shrieked. (Amy: That was a weird one.) Okay, here's another annoying one. There's like a protest that Miller observes. And it says, (reading) "The boys spoke in loud, angry voices about tyranny and freedom. The girls watched the boys strut." <Amy snorts> (Haley: Yeah. <laughs>) And again, I said did they write this in 1990?
Haley 50:37
That might have been in 1978 with the movie "Grease". I don't know. (Lori: I mean...)
Amy 50:41
Although I... Okay. I do think that catches... Because he's talking about the younger people when he's talking (Lori: Yeah!) right? So I think, I mean, I think he's trying to capture like, sort of the peacocking that, that adolescent boys do.
Lori 50:53
This is like a exploitation of Belter labor kind of protest moment, though. Like, having been to a lot of protests the past year and a half...
Amy 51:01
I'm not saying the women aren't, the adolescent girls aren't capable of having a opinion. I'm just, I'm just, I'm just working through what you're saying because I hadn't thought about it in those terms, so.
Lori 51:10
Um, okay, I'll move on to my third one. Naomi picks up lunch for everyone. And Holden says to her, "Every time it's your turn to get food, you get salmon rolls. It shows a lack of imagination." Go eat your fucking sushi, Jim Holden.
Lori 51:11
Okay, and then the last one, I read out loud to Kevin and he screamed a little bit. So he's having this like fantasy, Holden's having this fantasy that he's like, on a beach somewhere and is fantasizing about Naomi serving him drinks. And he says, quote, "As long as he was fantasizing, he threw in Naomi walking over to his hammock with a couple of fruity looking drinks in her hands. She ruined it by talking." And I thought there is, again, there was another way to say this. He could be going through his little fantasy where she brings him fruity drinks and something other than salmon rolls. And then he could just say, her voice brought him back to reality. Or he snapped out of his reverie when she said, Here's your salmon roll" or whatever! I've just, ugh, again, Men's Adventure Fiction from 1990. (Haley: Yeah.) Or 1970 as you just said, Haley. Okay, okay. I'm finished. I'm sorry.
Haley 52:17
Yeah, I think this is... It is just a plain old science fiction book. It was just not written with a keen feminist eye.
Amy 52:17
Yeah, no, no. Or a dull one. I do like, that, like, there are some things were I thought really cool, like this idea that they're building a Mormon generation ship with, like, we didn't even really talk about that.
Lori 52:35
Yeah I know. I had notes on that. I felt like I should just stop talking at a point.
Amy 52:38
I think that's a very interesting idea to put in the future. Like, of course, it's going to be religious, you know, some religious, sorry, (lowers voice) "cult" that, that with unlimited resources that builds one of these things and tries to go to the stars.
Haley 52:53
So a book I read a couple years ago, Kim Stanley Robinson has a book called "Aurora" and it basically tells the story of a generation ship that gets to a planet you know, like two or 300 years later, and you get to know a lot of the families and you also get the ship has like a character, is a character in it.
Lori 53:08
I love that.
Amy 53:09
Yeah, that's cool.
Haley 53:10
Yeah, I think y'all would like that.
Amy 53:11
All the stuff they were writing about, like, like, describing this huge just huge ship.
Lori 53:16
Yeah, I can't imagine the scope of it at all.
Amy 53:18
There was one point he was talking about looking at it through this, like, the screens of on Tycho were like reflecting what was going on outside - they weren't really windows, I guess - but he was looking at the ship. And there was something about, something happening on the ship, or or driving out to the ship or something changed his perspective from it being a slightly large ship kinda close up to a frickin huge ship really far away. (Lori: Yeah.) Like, oh, man, that's just crazy to even think about. They do a pretty good job with that on the on the show, I think, showing the size of the Nauvoo.
Lori 53:23
Well, I felt bad for them that their...
Amy 53:43
That they got their ship taken away?
Lori 53:49
They got their ship, like, requisitioned.
Amy 53:50
There's a good lawsuit reference later. There's lawsuit references later after they, like, in the later books there's a whole lot of Mormon lawsuits happening so it's pretty fun. (Lori: I mean, honestly.)
Haley 53:58
Oh, interesting!
Lori 53:59
Good for them!
Amy 53:59
And then the Nauvoo sticks around because it gets re-, it gets re-commissioned as different kinds of things.
Lori 54:05
I wondered what would happen since it didn't...
Amy 54:07
Yeah, it didn't crash into Eros so they they there's as you go along the Nauvoo does different things and gets renamed and becomes different things. It's interesting.
Haley 54:17
Um, are we ready for Culinary Corner?
Amy 54:19
Yes, please.
Lori 54:19
Mmm hmm!
Haley 54:20
We got fungal beans. We got vat grown rice. We got fungal culture whiskey. We got fungus curd, like scrambled eggs. I, I can watch them eat food in this book, the entire book.
Lori 54:30
I want to eat all of those fake meats.
Amy 54:32
I want to eat all the... I want to try the moss beer or moss whiskey they reference at one point. (Haley: Oh yeah yeah.)
Haley 54:38
My favorite scene in the entire novel and the part that I felt had the most heart was when they finally get to the Roci and there's bathrooms, they're happy, and then and then they make fake lasagna together as a group. (Lori: I know!) I have made lasagna with a big group of people and it's, it's a lot of work and it's a lot of fun. And it just made me so happy.
Amy 54:55
I think my favorite food moment in this whole book is when Miller's telling his... He's like, they're all gathered around the table. They're having like this moment of camaraderie and it's all focused around Miller telling them how he busted these guys and their underground cheese ring. And how they were like... (Haley: Oh, yeah yeah yeah yeah.) I just have "cheese" written at the top. (Lori: Oh, yeah!) Like he was like 'yeah, we busted these guys'...
Haley 55:13
That took me down, that's sent me down a Wikipedia wormhole on bathtub cheese. <all laugh>
Amy 55:22
So like they're talking about how you still only get the good stuff from Earth which was interesting and like they say they busted these guys who had this, you know, they were... had bootleg cheese, and, like, they locked up the cheese in, in the evidence room but then the cheese disappeared and all the cops got a brick and like it was the best cheese ever. And Naomi's like "I remember that cheese shortage, that was you!?" And then, I don't know, that whole conversation about cheese was just very... I would have, I would have been very engaged in that conversation.
Haley 55:47
That... And you know, I'm on my current cheese renaissance journey and just read about you that night too. It was good. <laughs>
Lori 55:54
Haley's trying to learn to like, not necessarily stinky cheeses, but cheeses that are not bland.
Haley 56:00
Right. So I'm doing okay. But I definitely got my parents a nice blue and I just couldn't do it. I was like, I don't like this. I just don't.
Lori 56:09
That's okay!
Amy 56:09
That's alright!
Lori 56:11
Sometimes a cheese tastes like the smell of the zoo.
Amy 56:13
That's right. It's real funky.
Haley 56:16
Alright. Anything else for Culinary Corner?
Amy 56:19
I just, this isn't a Culinary Corner but I just ran across one big question mark I had on the book. And I was just gonna run it by you people. They spend a lot of time talking about data. And I think at one point they talk about how paper was luxury because you couldn't get very much data onto one piece of paper. It seems like it takes a lot of space and then at one point Holden snatches a piece of paper from Fred's desk. Why's Fred have paper? I just want to know why Fred has paper.
Lori 56:43
Maybe it's an expression of the OPA's wealth? (Amy: I guess.) (Haley: Yeah.)
Amy 56:48
In conclusion, I want to try all your fungal beer and moss whiskey.
Lori 56:51
Same and I want all the fake meats.
Amy 56:53
And that real coffee that they have on the Rocinante. It sounds good.
Haley 56:56
Yeah, I was a little disappointed that there was not more space noodles, but that's okay.
Amy 56:59
Keep reading. Space noodle show up. (Haley: There better be.) There's also something called 'red kibble'. Which I would really like to know what that is.
Haley 56:59
Red kibble?
Amy 57:01
Yeah.
Haley 57:03
Oh, like human chow.
Amy 57:09
That's Naomi's favorite food from her Belter childhood is red kibble.
Lori 57:12
Not salmon rolls?
Amy 57:13
No. <Amy and Haley laugh>
Haley 57:16
Spicy tuna rolls. <Amy laughs> Um, is this book Star Wars or Lord of the Rings?
Amy 57:21
Nei...ther?
Lori 57:23
Well, there's literally a space war brewing. So I think it has to be Star Wars. But I will say that I think that the plan to push arrows into the sun is not unlike throwing the One Ring into Mount Doom. So there's an argument for it to be Lord of the Rings.
Amy 57:36
I would come down on Lord of the Rings because it's like there's this evil that they have to take their little ragtag group and fight and like, I think I'm on the Lord of the Rings side.
Haley 57:46
I think that it's actually Star Trek, because there's a lot of Navy talk, but like not in a fun way. (Lori: Oh...) (Amy: Fair, fair.) But there's also like, there's lots of drama and politics, which is usually not my thing.
Amy 57:56
Is it Game of Thrones in space?
Haley 57:59
No, no, no, it's not nearly as epic.
Lori 58:02
It's way too capitalist to be Star Trek though. Star Trek is a post-money society.
Haley 58:09
That's true.
Amy 58:09
They don't have any poverty anymore. They say it lots of times.
Amy 58:15
I think it I think it has a little bit of a jump the shark thing when, when Holden, or not Holden, when Miller is crawling around on, outside, on the outside of Eros. And he has to like...
Haley 58:26
Oh, that's very Armageddon-y, yeah yeah.
Lori 58:28
The vomit zombies were not the shark jumping for you? I was like...
Amy 58:32
They called them vomit zombies, but I felt like it fit with the rest of the story.
Lori 58:36
They were for sure zombies though, and I was like, this was 2011, this was like the height of Walking Dead popularity. And they were like, You know what we need? Zombies.
Amy 58:47
That's funny.
Lori 58:50
Did we like the book?
Haley 58:53
It was fun.
Lori 58:55
Amy???
Amy 58:56
(Sheepishly) I did!
Lori 58:57
Of course you did! <unintelligble chit chat> It's good that you like it!
Amy 59:02
But I'm glad we had this conversation because there are definitely things I glossed right over because I was just reading the story and trucking along.
Haley 59:09
And it sounds like it gets amazing, which is awesome. Like...
Amy 59:11
Well, "amazing" may be a little strong.
Lori 59:13
I mean, people love it. And I I know people who don't like science fiction who love the show. So I think, I mean, it's not a bad story. I basically liked it. I didn't like it enough to read the next one. I'm not gonna keep reading it, but like I I didn't hate reading it.
Amy 59:28
I do think that the... The show and the book, actually... It's one of those rare things where I think the show and the book actually complement each other, instead of like, like, you know, sometimes you kind of come down on one side of the other, I think? I've, you know... Having seen... I've seen through the end of this, I've seen, I think, I've seen through the middle of the third season. And, like, they complement each other really well. Like the, I think the show does a good job of, sort of, depicting a lot of things you have a hard time picturing. And I think it does, it helps the book a little bit in some of these areas where they were a little deficient. <laughs> And then the book gives you a lot of backstory that, I think, obviously, the show can't give you, so. I do, I think they're both, I think they're both good. I don't think... They, they're not perfect. I mean, they never get perfect. There's still a lot of pacing problems, and there's a lot of I think they probably still have some of the same broad stroke character problems that they, you know, but they, I think they just get better at what they're doing.
Lori 1:00:14
I have heard that.
Amy 1:00:15
Yeah. So I mean, yeah, yeah. I yeah, I don't know. There you are.
Lori 1:00:18
There are plenty of things about this book that I did like.
Amy 1:00:22
It's, I mean, it's a good start to, I think... It's a, it's a, it's a pretty good start, to what ends up being a really good series, I think.
Lori 1:00:29
Sounds good.
Haley 1:00:29
Yeah.
Amy 1:00:29
Yeah.
Haley 1:00:31
All right.
Amy 1:00:33
So what are we reading next?
Lori 1:00:36
"Barrayar"? I don't know how to say it. (Rolling her 'R's) Barrrrayarrr? (Amy: Brrrrrrrrp!) Beret yer? I don't know...by Lois McMaster Bujold for February, and then for March "Ringworld" by Larry Niven. Larry Niven, right. Yeah.
Amy 1:00:52
And thanks to all of our social media friends who suggested things for our upcoming episodes, because we did not know what to do.
Lori 1:00:58
Yeah, we have, we got a ton and a bunch of novella suggestions. And I, at this point, I love a novella, because it's just like fashionable now to write a novel that's like 11,000 pages long and I'm like feeling at this point a novel needs a word limit. And then and then there needs to be like a super novel. (Amy: Mega novel.) Also, I was, did I tell you guys I was thinking, like, maybe November we could have Novellavember?
Amy 1:01:24
I love that! I definitely think we should do that.
Lori 1:01:26
We could maybe even read two if they're little ones. We could do two mini episodes.
Amy 1:01:29
Oh I was thinking Novellavember would be several novellas, like several.
Lori 1:01:33
Oh okay! Yeah!
Haley 1:01:34
I would do one a week. Yeah. <Amy and Lori gasp in excitement>
Lori 1:01:37
Novellavember is born! (Haley: Woohoo!) Okay.
Amy 1:01:41
Good talk everybody.
Lori 1:01:43
And don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe! Leave me a review. (Singing) I didn't get any since the last episode. Holiday season is busy. It's okay. I forgive you but no one's busy in January, so leave us a review.
Amy 1:01:56
Happy New Year.
Lori 1:01:57
Happy New Year! Bye.
Haley 1:02:00
Bye.
Amy 1:02:00
Bye.
<OUTRO MUSIC>
Lori 1:02:06
(Post credits) Delete, delete, delete. He does like this. He just has his index finger and he goes (gun shootin' noise) down at the button!