Transcript of Ringworld: Tasp That Ass
<INTRO MUSIC>
Amy 00:00
Hello!
Haley 00:00
Hello.
Lori 00:01
Hello!
Haley 00:02
Welcome to Hugo girl podcast where we read Hugo award winning novels and then some I am Haley.
Amy 00:08
I am Amy.
Lori 00:09
I'm Lori.
Haley 00:10
Let's do this guys. Do you want to do the housekeeping?
Lori 00:13
Sure. Okay. First off, we're going to do Ringworld today. It was recommended by our Twitter friend Ron Payne. And also our Twitter friend Emmanuel has been looking forward to us reading this one as well. He said he read it last summer, and he thought, "What will Hugo, Girl! say?" <all laugh>
Amy 00:30
I can't imagine why!
Lori 00:32
So thanks for the recommendations. And also last time when we read Barrayar, that was recommended to us by Ronnie, Seth, Juan, Joe, Emanuel, and Lisa June. So lots of people were looking forward to that one. And so this year, I asked for recommendations in December because we were kind of like "I dunno, what are we doing next?" So we have a bunch of listener recommended reads coming up this year. So that'll be fun. I also wanted to say hello to our listener, Dirk de Lint, who left us a nice comment somehow on our Libsyn page, on the Physics Special. And I guess there's some Facebook plugin or something. But I tried to reply to it and it sent my browser into a tailspin. And then the comment disappeared. And then Facebook made this complete boot loop scene on my phone. And I was like, "Okay, well!" So anyway, hello, thank you for your nice thoughtful comment. We would like to have replied but could not, so thanks for listening. Um, and I think that is - oh, no, wait!!
Amy 01:28
I was about to say, we had a special review!
Lori 01:31
We had a special review!!! So I'm in this Facebook group. It's called Science Fiction Book Club. And it's a pretty fun group. I've gotten some good book recommendations out of there. And anyway, this person had a post about the Hugo Awards. And the thumbnail image was a picture of Project Hail Mary, and I like Project Hail Mary. And I thought that the post was going to be his novel recommendations, and mostly about that book. I was like, "Oh, I'll check it out." And the name of the blog is Starship Fonzie. And I clicked on it, and I was scrolling through it. And darned if at the top of his Best Fancast recommendations, which I did not expect would be there in the first place - was us!!
Haley 02:09
Woo-hoo!
Amy 02:09
Woo-hoo, us!
Lori 02:11
Oh, my gosh, thank you. He said, "This year, a lot of the same names crop up, but one has risen to the top to become one of the most fun listens I get, and that is Hugo, Girl. It's hosted by three women, Lori, Haley, and Amy who are giggly and gregarious." <all laugh> I know I think giggly and gregarious is our new tagline. (Haley: G and G.) He said, "Their fun-loving nature can't help but put a smile on my face every episode. Sometimes their conversations go off the rails, but that's part of the fun. Highly recommended." I mean, if that's not perfect review. I don't know what is. (Haley: Absolutely.) So anyway, that like made my day for like several days in a row. Thank you very much for that!
Haley 02:49
Also, remember when you recommended Project Hail Mary to your grandmother, and she said she doesn't like religious books. <all laugh>
Lori 02:57
Or football books! And I was like, "me neither. Me neither."
Haley 03:01
How dare she say that in this, the year of UGA's championship?
Amy 03:05
There was one religious book. I think it's a religious book, but it was that book, The Sparrow. (Haley: Oh, yeah.) I think it was a religious book.
Haley 03:13
So there's a history in science fiction, I think, of Jesuits going to space. That makes sense, because they would go on adventures on Earth.
Amy 03:19
Oh yeah, like Canticle for Lebowitz!
Lori 03:20
Oh yeah, that's true. Yeah.
Haley 03:21
Cool. Are we ready? Let's do it.
Amy 03:24
I mean, we've been ready.
Haley 03:25
All right. Ringworld by Larry Niven won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1971, as well as the Locus Award in 1971 and the Nebula in 1970. So it won the big three. (Lori: Yay...) (Amy: Good job, Larry.) Let me summarize this book for you. All right. Ringworld follows four characters Louis Wu, a human; Teela Brown, a human; Speaker to Animals, a kzin warrior, like a big cat; and Nessus, a Pierson's puppeteer, which is kind of a two-headed Snuffleupagus mixed with Lori's dog Ella, as they travel to explore a large mega structure, the eponymous Ringworld. Not much is known about it and, Nessus's - whew, that's a lot of esses - this is because Nessus's society wants to gauge its threat level, so they're gonna go do some recon. They crash land on the Ringworld near a large mountain and to fix their ship they decide to jet off in flycycles to reach the rim in the hopes of finding help. Over the course of their journey to the rim they encounter ruins of civilization and native peoples and eventually a map of the Ringworld so they get their bearings a little bit. So many depictions of abandoned buildings, and then there's there's the killer sunflowers. I really enjoyed that - well, I'm getting ahead of myself. The gang gets separated and Louis and Speaker get caught in a traffic trap dangling above a police <all burst out laughing> get caught in a traffic trap dangling above a police station dungeon that I found literally impossible to visualize. And they meet Prill who they eventually find out was part of the society that built the Ringworld. She's hanging out at the jail. I don't know. The gang gets all back together and Teela, formerly Louis's lover, is now dating a native dude named Seeker. They tie the police station to Nessus's flycycle and drive it back to the crashed ship, then drive it up the mountain and into it. Turns out it's not a mountain. It's the impact of an asteroid, and it puts the Ringworld material all up into a conical shape. That's it! <all laugh>
Lori 05:13
The Ringworld's anus
Haley 05:15
Or Megatron's Butthole, which is how we refer to the Atlanta United stadium in Atlanta, same thing. (Amy: Oh, yeah, that's right!) I left out a couple of B plots that I think aren't integral to a description of the summary or whatever, but that's it in a nutshell!
Amy 05:27
The high points are: They go. They land, they see, they leave.
Lori 05:32
This reminded me - like what you said when we read Rama - it reminded me of Rendezvous with Rama. Which, there's another Hugo-reading podcast called Hugonauts, and I listened to their Rendezvous with Rama episode, and they described that book as sort of like being inside someone's GoPro as they explore this big dumb object. And I thought that was absolutely perfect. (Amy: Perfect.)
Haley 05:53
Yeah. All right, Goodies from Goodreads, guys? I have two good ones. This one's from beyonder on Goodreads. And I kind of abridged the longer review, but this part is referring to the misogyny in the book: "It starts off subtle, so gentle, you can almost ignore it, like the smell of piss from the other end of the train platform. <all laugh> But in the second half of the book, the matter-of-fact disgust and dismissiveness with which the author treats all two of his female characters is ratcheted up and up until eventually it's all a decent person can see. I honestly came close to DNFing this one at 85%, it got so bad. So that's what you're in for - a glaringly mediocre sci-fi tale with some interesting historical significance to the genre written by a man who rates all women on a scale somewhere between needy and subhuman."
Haley 05:54
Man, if that doesn't exactly describe my experience of being able to ignore it for a long time. Until then, I really couldn't.
Haley 06:47
Yeah, I remember the first 100 pages. I'm like, "Yeah, this is silly. But you know, it's context and context," but, um... And then my other one is from Ryan, he gave it two stars. "Larry Niven's Ringworld, won the Hugo, the Locus and the Nebula, which I think just means that 1971 was a bad year for science fiction, <all laugh> the year before saw The Left Hand of Darkness and Slaughterhouse-Five, while the year after got The Lathe of Heaven." So sometimes there's just bad years. What y'all got?
Amy 07:12
I got two just small snippets, and then one longer one. So DR Gibbons gave it two stars on Amazon, and said "The characterization is little more than a tumescent adolescent's daydream." I was like yes, yes, it is. Christa Camp gave it two stars on Amazon. And this is a very small sentence out of a much longer good review: "The entire story exists only so that a 20-year-old girl could meet Conan the Barbarian." <all laugh>(Lori whispers: Soap Stuff!) But my longer one is an unnamed Kindle customer who gave it one star on Amazon, gave a review with the title "What the tanj?" and it's "I do not understand why this book would be so highly regarded. The characters, the plot, the dialogue, all make little sense. My dad insisted that us kids eat everything on our plates. And if we started a book, we were gonna finish it. Now I'm fat, and have suffered through a lot of lousy prose. That ends today. I cannot continue. Sorry, dad." <all laugh>
Haley 08:08
That's a man after my own heart. Lori, what you got?
Lori 08:13
Okay, I have Jamie from Goodreads, who gave it one star. And Jamie said, "I'm filing this book under Novels that Should have been Tweets. Here's the tweet: What if someone built a giant ring circling a star and lived on it? Ruminate on that and you'll come up with something better than Niven's book."
Haley 08:32
I think it would be fun if we each wrote a one page story about what the Ringworld could be about.
Amy 08:36
Listen, I would find either of your stories about what a Ringworld could be more interesting than this.
Haley 08:42
Okay, but how many sex workers would your story have?
Amy 08:46
Probably zero!
Haley 08:47
Yeah, you don't have to.
Amy 08:48
Instead of two! The only two women!
Haley 08:52
Technically it's just the one.
Amy 08:53
Technically, Tammy. (Lori and Haley: Teela!) Teela. So, when I started reading this book - her name is Teela Brown. And for some reason, the first thing that went through my mind was the drag queen Tammy Brown. And so I started calling her Tammy and couldn't stop the rest of the time I was reading the books, and now her name is Tammy. So if I say Tammy -
Haley 09:11
I called her Downtown Teela Brown. <laughter>
Lori 09:14
Also, tell them what you call Louis.
Amy 09:16
Louis CK. <laughter>
Haley 09:20
I was worried that y'all were gonna call him Louis <transcriptionist's note: Haley was worried we would pronounce it like "Lewis," rather than the French pronunciation.> I was like, no, he's a Louis.
Lori 09:24
Oh, I was completely calling him Louis and then I got the audiobook because sometimes I need a little help when I don't like the book that much. So I got the audio book and I then learned that it was Louis and I wanted to ask how you decide if a character is Louis or Louis?
Amy 09:38
I don't think you can.
Haley 09:39
I think he's kind of fun. (Amy: I think he's a pervert.) Well, yeah. But he seems like he doesn't - he just seems like a Louis.
Lori 09:49
"Louis" is too serious, like he has a desk job?
Haley 09:51
Like he wouldn't be a Harry. He'd be a Hank.
Amy 09:52
I went to church with a guy named Louis, so he can't be a Louis. Wait before we move on. I just want to say that at the end of the book technically, Teela gets sex trafficked. So we've got two precedents.
Haley 10:04
Yeah. Um, okay, so that's our reviews. Let's get into general discussion. (Amy: Ugh, ugh!) All right, this book. So this is going to be a hard episode like a lot of the our older sci-fi books because you can put MIsogynist Moment into every category. (Amy: That's right.) But I think I want to start with just a general discussion about what y'all thought of the hard sci-fi-ness of this, like, there's so much science but like, not in a way that makes sense.
Amy 10:28
I think that in a lot of ways, he knew what he was talking about. A lot of the science that he puts in there is plausible. Improbable but plausible. I just couldn't understand a single thing he said about it. Have y'all ever played the game Space Team? (Haley: I love Space Team. It is like Space Team!) It's like Space Team. He throws out science and spaceship words. (Haley: Positron the transmogrifier!) Exactly. And puts them together. I'm sure some of them do make sense. But I could not understand almost anything that I read. And so it's like this: "Teela was still alive because the sonic fold had a built in standing wave characteristic. She had felt the sudden wind and then hit the wreath retroflex, immediately before the mach two wind could tear her head off." What?! <laughter>
Haley 11:10
Yeah, like I pictured the sonic fold to be kind of like shields on an X Wing. I don't know.
Lori 11:15
I thought of a Jetsons car. But the sonic fold as not a physical glass. It's like a force field.
Haley 11:23
I could never tell how big it was. And I tried Google Image searching fan art. And sometimes it was like a Jetsons car. And sometimes it was like a motorcycle. I was like, well, but they "use the facilities." And there's a food machine. I don't know, it was confusing. The one part that I really didn't understand was when ships could go through the hole, or like ships could go through the ring. I don't know, there's one part towards the end about like the engineers getting things in there.
Amy 11:46
So could they go? Can you go both ways through the rim?
Haley 11:51
I don't know.
Amy 11:52
Because I was kind of picturing how you can go one way over those spikes when you leave the car rental place. But you can't come back the other way. <laughter> Kind of like that. But science.
Haley 12:02
Yeah. I mean, some stuff I got, you know. Here's some of the hard sciences I liked. So the Ringworld is about 1 million miles wide. And so that means the surface of it from left to right, I guess like if you were to walk across it. And it's approximately the diameter of Earth's orbit, which is about 584 million miles. It rotates to artificial gravity of 99.2%. I get that. And that provides a landmass of approximately 3 million Earths. That's too big to even think about. I can't.
Lori 12:32
Yeah, I can't, I couldn't conceptualize a lot of this stuff.
Haley 12:36
And I think the idea to be in awe of something is cool, because maybe we couldn't understand it, because it'd be so breathtaking. I don't know.
Lori 12:44
I felt very intimidated by a lot of the science in this book. I thought I was not smart enough until, as I realized today, I do know that gravity is 9.8 meters per second squared. And I was reading it, and I was like, "Have I just been wrong about gravity on Earth all this time?" Which is, to be fair, not something that comes up often for me, but it was just, you know, a science fact that I thought I knew. And then I was like, "Let me just go and check on gravity." And turns out Larry Niven was wrong about gravity! And then I felt a lot better about a lot of the things I didn't understand.
Amy 13:16
I read a Guardian review by a guy who liked this book, and one of the things he mentioned was after the publication of Ringworld, many fans identified numerous engineering problems in the Ringworld as described in the novel. One major one was that "Ringworld being a rigid structure was not actually in orbit around the stars and circled and would eventually drift ultimately colliding with its sun and disintegrating. This led MIT students attending the 1971 Worldcon to chant, 'the Ringworld is unstable.'"
Lori 13:44
That's also in the Wikipedia.
Haley 13:45
Yeah, that is so something that would happen at DragonCon too. "The Ringworld is unstable!" And then there would become a cult around it.
Lori 13:52
There would be a meme, it would be in the parade the next year. <laughter>
Haley 13:56
Yeah, so kind of like was with Rama, you get this sense of otherworldly awe
Amy 14:03
Imagining the way the sky would look was really cool. A lot of these books we read, some of the ideas are interesting to to mull over. And imagining what they see when they look up in the night sky and have just this blue and black arch, with like a tinge of sunlight on it or something like that. Sounds beautiful, and I can see what he was seeing in his head that filled him with wonder, you know?
Haley 14:24
Yeah. So, a question. I understand that it's big, and it's circular, and they've got walls that are 1000 miles high. How does the atmosphere stay? And like, where's the ceiling? I think I missed that part.
Lori 14:36
There's some science that's holding it in and as long as the ring itself is not punctured, like the bottom part of it. And the reason that the Fist of God doesn't leak is because it's like 10,000 miles tall or something. So it's so tall, that it is okay.
Haley 14:54
Maybe gravity keeps it down too?
Lori 14:55
Just, don't worry about it.
Amy 14:59
Maybe somebody can tell us.
Lori 15:00
Maybe it's the gravity from the spinning. They talked about it but like a lot of it I didn't really understand it. Here's the things I liked: floating capsules. That was neat. Food printer was neat. Speaker for - Speaker TO animals <laughter> (Haley: Speaker for the Dead?) I know, I kept thinking of him as Speaker FOR Animals because of Speaker for the Dead. Speaker to Animals is a delight. And that's what I liked.
Haley 15:28
Yeah, I think I texted you all at one point. I was like, He's just so smart, this cat.
Lori 15:32
I love him. And he almost - this is probably maybe being too much of an English major. But since I was an English major who knew more about gravity than Larry, I'll proceed. Speaker felt like almost like a little bit of a Greek chorus to me because he would be like, "What you are saying makes no sense. Louis Wu, you make no sense to me," and I was like, I was JUST thinking that too! I lilke him a lot.
Amy 15:57
He's sometimes the only reason you know that you're not supposed to take what Louis's doing seriously. Because Louis as a narrator - we can get to this later - but I mean yeah, Speaker to Animals is one of the only grounding things in this book in a lot of ways, even though he's a big fighting talking cat. (Haley: I love him.) But that character is the only reason I gave it two stars on Goodreads.
Haley 16:16
Well, and a lot of science fiction writers are not great authors in my opinion, you know, they're not writing beautiful prose. But his idea of foreshadowing is Louis being like, "I've got an idea, and I tell you about it later!" <all laugh>
Amy 16:28
I have on my list of things that Larry did that were lazy: build tension by having Louis CK say "You'll just have to wait and find out what my idea is!"
Lori 16:38
Also lazy is having Speaker say, "That doesn't make any sense. Louis, what are you talking about?" So then there's a prompt to explain it. But then on the other end of the spectrum, from when I thought he's sort of a Greek chorus. I also thought he's sort of an Amelia Bedelia. <laughter> He takes everything very literally. And then of course, he asks questions and then Louis or Nessus has to explain so then the reader can understand what's going on. But I frankly appreciated most of his questions.
Amy 17:04
I don't know if this counts as hard science, but I did like the puppeteers just taking their planets and skedaddling for the middle of the galaxy. (Haley: We gotta go!) The puppeteers just took their planets with them when they decided they wanted to leave.
Haley 17:18
But they didn't move the sun though in the middle, right? Or did they? Because I was like, wouldn't that upset like, the diurnal species, and the sun would be weird? (Amy: Oh! Yes.)
Lori 17:27
Well, I think that was part of their heat problem, was that they are using artificial light. You know, the whole impetus behind it is that they're getting too hot. (Haley: Yeah.) But their artificial light is contributing to their too-hotness. And so they're flying away?
Amy 17:43
Flying somewhere!
Haley 17:44
Oh, yeah. Oh, that that reminds me. So the, the idea for Ringworld came from the idea of Dyson spheres. Do y'all know about that?
Lori 17:50
I have in my notes, "What is a Dyson sphere? And do I care very much?"
Haley 17:55
Yeah, so a Dyson sphere was like a thought experiment cooked up by a guy named Dyson. I think this is all gonna be me pretending to know about science. But so basically, you imagine how far the earth is from the sun. And then instead of having just the earth, you create a big circle, like a big globe around it. And then you can have so much more room because apparently, a lot of people have predicted that we're gonna have too many people. And you know, there's what, there's like eight billion now? So like, it would be a way to still have the sun, but to have a lot more landmass so you could stretch out and just chill.
Amy 18:24
So basically, a Dyson Sphere just contains a sun.
Haley 18:26
Yeah, so imagine a sun and then my hand around it. Like that's the sphere. And it's artificial. And it would take a big timeline to develop. But so Larry Niven was like, I like that idea. But I'm just gonna do a belt of it instead of having the big old thing.
Amy 18:38
Ah, which makes the whole thing sound so much more plausible for some reason. I don't know why.
Haley 18:43
I just feel like it'd be too bright if you just had like, like a basketball around a light bulb? Like, that's just too much.
Lori 18:48
How do you have all that...gas burning in an enclosed space?
Amy 18:53
Well, I think that's part of the engineering problem around it.
Haley 18:57
That video I sent y'all about the the engineering of a Ringworld. I was doing some research into that, and to build a Ringworld, it would take all the raw materials from all the planets in our solar system. It would take an amount of engineering that we we would not see for a very long time. And even to keep the Ringworld together would take bonds that we can't currently harness. There's weak and strong magnetic forces. And then there's another one that's even stronger that we don't know how to do.
Amy 19:23
Okay, so did we ever talk in the book about why the engineers built Ringworld? Was it a space problem?
Lori 19:30
Prill gave us some insight into why they built it in the first place. Because they had 10 planets that they just shitted up.
Amy 19:37
Okay, so it was overpopulation, need for more resources.
Haley 19:39
They didn't have a hyperdrive, so they couldn't get to a new planet. So they had to build Ringworld.
Amy 19:42
I must have just skimmed right over why they built it.
Haley 19:45
I mean, it's still a little bit of a mystery.
Lori 19:46
Yeah, it's not super fleshed out. It was basically just like, "well, we used up everything we had."
Haley 19:52
But they would still have to use things from their system to build it.
Lori 19:55
So she was on one of the supply ships that was bringing stuff back and forth, I think.
Amy 20:02
Yeah, they didn't have everything there that they needed.
Haley 20:03
Oh, yeah, she had a very specific job that I'll get to later.
Amy 20:06
Well, she was on the ship that did that. She didn't do that. Her job was different.
Haley 20:11
Yeah. One brief aside is every single time he wrote the word "yeah" "Y-A-H," I was like, "huh?!"
Lori 20:18
I knew you were gonna say something about that!
Amy 20:21
He also doesn't know the meaning of the words "insanity," "insane," or "funny"
Lori 20:29
I decided that the genre for this book is Boys' Adventure Fiction. <Haley laughs>
Haley 20:34
Adolescent adventure fiction.
Haley 20:36
So I feel like we spend 17 years in the cockpit of a flycycle, and it's claustrophobic and it's weird. (Amy: Yeah, I just want them to land so bad!) But I didn't mind as much when we read Left Hand of Darkness and they're trekking across the ice for 26 years eating their food cubes. I was like, "that's fine!"
Amy 21:01
I think because A) they're walking; B) we already know and love them as characters; C) and she's just much much better at explaining the landscape to us. These people have no curiosity about what's going on around them.
Haley 21:13
Well, I don't know if that's true, because they stopped a lot. And they talked to people, they see buildings. There's nothing on the Antarctic continent. But I was thinking of like other kind of claustrophobic journeys and Rendezvous is similar. Scattered Bodies, they're on that boat on the river for a long time. It just seems like a weird, because there's very clearly the hero's journey. But this book did NOT seem like a hero's journey, because they were just kind of wandering.
Lori 21:33
I think part of it is that they don't really like each other very much. And in those other books, at least in Left Hand, you see the friendship developing, and maybe the romance developing. And so we're sort of seeing them and getting to know them. But in this book, they're just all very flat. And they learn to care about each other, but maybe not like each other. And so really, I was reading this book for one-liners from Speaker most of the time. I will say, there's some good dialogue. No, there's not good dialogue. But there are some good one-liners, some good zingers from time to time in this book. But I think that maybe that's part of why just the flying around and exploring is not as interesting because there's no good conversation going on.
Haley 22:18
Yeah, and every time they landed somewhere, I had a hard time picturing what was going on. Like even the floating castles. I was like, was it a first story, on top of a second story that's janky now? I don't know.
Lori 22:29
I didn't understand if they were tethered to the ground somehow. I don't think they were. I think maybe there's some electromagnetic floating. And I was surprised that we didn't learn more about the people. I thought it was gonna be more like Rama, and there wouldn't be any people. And then when they met people, I was like, "oh, where's this gonna go?" And then they were just like, "Well!" Someone punches Louis in the nose, and then they run away.
Haley 22:50
And then it's like, well, I guess we'll trick 'em!
Amy 22:53
Finally, they meet people. And instead of being like, "holy crap, there's people here!" they kill a bunch of them, and then just get back in their flycycles!
Lori 23:00
I mean, it also seems very relevant that they're humans, and Louis at no point is like, "Have you ever heard of Earth?"
Haley 23:07
Yeah. Or you would think Nessus would be like, "This is why we're here."
Amy 23:12
This is the thing that the puppeteers need. And nobody ever says that. Like, what? And then, ugh! There's just no wonder in this book at all, like these people have no interest or curiosity about where they are. I get that they're kind of in a crisis because they need to leave at some point, but they kind of knew that it was a possibility that they would crash on this thing, and have to stay. They all signed up for this possibly one-way trip. But and they do no exploring. And it's just crazy to me.
Lori 23:45
And interestingly, Louis really admires himself for being curious, and for liking alien species, and thinking how boring life would be if it were only humans, and there were nowhere to go. And the whole time, he's just like, "I wish I had a coffee spigot!"
Amy 24:00
I mean, I would also want a coffee spigot.
Lori 24:02
I mean, I would too, but I probably would have some other thoughts besides "coffee spigot" and "this woman who's 1/10 of my age is such an idiot. Also, let's bone." Listen, you cannot be someone's dad AND someone's boyfriend without also being a creep. And he just picked all of the above. <Amy laughs>
Haley 24:27
Let's talk about one of the key plot points in this book, and it's the big reveal at the end. It's all about luck! <laughter>
Amy 24:33
Please help me!
Haley 24:35
I think it's bullshit because he says in the book, luck has no memory, like the chances of always turning over a head or a tail is 50/50, right. You could do it 1 million times. There's no such thing as luck - I don't think so. It's random, I guess. But the idea that luck is such a plot point in a book that's so hard science-based. It reminds me of love being a plot point in Interstellar. <all laugh> When -w hat's her name? (Lori: Anne Hathaway.) Anne Hathaway says love is the one thing that we're capable of perceiving that transcends dimensions of time and space - that is like, what?! From a hard science book, I did not expect that.
Amy 25:13
I do like the idea of luck being so powerful that it becomes a physical force like like midichlorians or something. <all laugh> When they were talking about her luck, I was sort of thinking it's a little bit like using the force, you know? But just on accident.
Lori 25:25
Sorry to be a 2022 millennial, but I thought about it a little bit in terms of privilege. Teela doesn't even know that she has it until it's pointed out to her and then slowly the wool is peeled back from her eyes. And she's like, "Oh, my gosh, I have not even understood the whole shape of my life." (Amy: Does she have that realization?!) (Haley: She does!) I think somewhat! You know, she's not SUPER different at the end of the book, but she does. She's very upset. And then Louis tells us ALL ABOUT Teela's journey at the end of the book, and how she's grown up so much throughout the course of finding out that how easy her life has been has not really been of her doing. I don't think this is where Larry Niven was going with it. But it felt sort of like a analogy for privilege, in some ways.
Lori 25:43
She IS the only one that has a character arc. She's the only one that starts one way and ends another way, through conflict.
Lori 26:32
Well, I don't know. Nessus had two heads at the beginning, and now he only has one.
Haley 26:38
She does get a new boyfriend. So that's good. (Lori: a new owner!) (Amy: ugh!!)
Amy 26:43
Nessus doesn't get any braver, Speaker to Animals doesn't get any more sympathetic. Louis CK doesn't become less of a perv. Nothing changes for anybody except for her. Which is kind of interesting.
Haley 26:54
And that's exactly why it's not a hero's journey. It's just...a journey. <laughter>
Amy 27:01
God bless. Wait, what are we talking about? What's the topic?
Haley 27:04
Luck - it was just a weird thing for me in this book. I was like, I didn't expect that.
Amy 27:11
Well, I also kind of saw it coming. So like they they hire her onto the ship for how good luck she is. <all laugh> And she says, "I love you, Louis. And so I'm gonna go with you." Which, ugh. (Haley: She LOVED him.) After two days! I'm just gonna go, and go to space with him!
Haley 27:32
Although one time we did get into an argument about Romeo and Juliet.
Amy 27:35
I thought of you, the SECOND I wrote this. <Haley laughs throughout> I wrote that I 100% don't believe that she loves him. And now I understand where Haley was coming from with West Side Story. (Haley: Aww!!)
Haley 27:45
Well, you know what, I recently learned that I do believe in love, because I fucking love Titanic so much. And I was like, there you go. She got back on that boat.
Amy 27:51
That's true. And they only knew each other for a week!
Haley 27:53
People change! Objectively, two days is not enough. And the older I get, the more I'm like, it takes like a year.
Amy 27:58
Well, certainly not enough for these two, I can tell you that.
Haley 28:01
Well, he definitely didn't love her.
Amy 28:04
Ugh!! He loved her conical breasts. We'll get to that. <Lori giggles>
Haley 28:06
Yeah, so I found myself wondering, what is this "slaver" word they keep using? (Lori: I didn't know.) So I, I finished the entire book without knowing and then I Googled it. And it turns out it's from another book. This book is book one in the series. So we cannot be held at fault for this. But it turns out the Thrintun, singular Thrint, are a long extinct species which ruled the galaxy through telepathic mind control from three to 2 billion years ago. Humans knew them as slavers. I don't know if they were slavers. I didn't read the rest of the article cuz I was like, I don't care about this book. <laughter>
Haley 28:23
The first book in this series, but it's not the first thing he wrote in this world? Or in this universe?
Haley 28:45
I don't think so. He wrote a lot of other stuff too. So I went back and searched the word "slaver" in the book and there's not an explanation of it. The very first mention is, it's used as an adjective for like a weapon or something.
Amy 28:56
The Kzinti - this isn't the first time they show up either. He's got he's got his Known Universe. I guess that these things have shown up before.
Haley 29:03
But, he explained, it's a cat thing. So yeah, that is all I had for general discussion. Which y'all got?
Lori 29:10
I love it when Louis calls Speaker "furry buddy." He says, "Calm down, furry buddy." I heard that on audio. So of course my head snapped up, and I was like, what?! Such a funny, a couple of very funny moments. I think his writing is funny because one time he described a distance "as half a thousand miles." <Haley laughs> Famously also known as 500 miles. Did you catch the - so this is gonna be a temporary segment. (Haley: Uh oh, what is it?) The Moby-Dick Moment!
Haley 29:44
Oh, I only have the one but yeah, it was it literally Moby-Dick Moment.
Lori 29:50
I have it in my notes too, as Moby-Dick Moment.
Haley 29:52
So a Bandersnatch, which I thought was just an episode of Black Mirror. The quote is "a Bandersnatch looked like a cross between Moby-Dick and a caterpillar tractor." I think it'd be fun later if we tried to draw it.
Amy 30:03
I agree. I agree.
Haley 30:04
So what's the other Moby-Dick Moment?
Amy 30:06
Well, it's not in the book. I found this online, these people married up their favorite books with science fiction. And so a guy wrote a new intro to Moby-Dick. And he called it Melville's Ringworld or the Big Dumb Object. (Haley: that's cute.) I don't know if you want me to read the whole thing or not, but um, it's just the first paragraph.
Haley 30:29
Yeah, yeah! It's one of the best paragraphs in literature!
Amy 30:31
Call me Louis Wu. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having far too much money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on Earth, I thought I would explore about a little and see the livable parts of Known Space. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before the organ banks, and snarling up at the face of every Kzinti I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off—then, I account it high time to get to space as soon as I can.
Lori 31:14
oh my god
Amy 31:15
This is my substitute for wirehead and tasp. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the stars. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the skies with me.
Lori 31:32
Oh my god, that's great. I love it!
Haley 31:34
This is why someone needs to write space Moby-Dick.
Lori 31:41
Some of these zingers that I wrote down: One of my favorites is when Speaker says to Louis, "you have a remarkable ability to think like a coward, Louis." And then toward the end of the book, when they are executing their plan, where they hot glue a flying bicycle to a prison, so that they can fly to a castle to get a wire to fly back. I don't know. (Haley: it's unclear.) So I appreciate that Louis said what I was thinking, and he said, "this plan is silly." But Nessus said, "Nothing that works is silly." And I thought, "You know what, he's not wrong."
Amy 32:22
That's like what my mom says. She says she's never lost if she gets where she's going.
Haley 32:25
Is that like, Forrest Gump says stupid is as stupid does? <all laugh>
Amy 32:29
My dad says my mom gets lost all the time. And she says, I don't get lost if I get where I'm going. (Haley: That's true.) That's right. It's like that. Have we talked about the tasp? (Haley: Not yet.) So let's talk about the tasp!
Haley 32:36
It's an orgasm machine.
Lori 32:45
I think it's worse than that. I think it's a heroin machine. A psychological heroin machine.
Amy 32:51
It's like a specific buzz on your pleasure center, right. And you just get like, automatically addicted to it. Because it's so wonderful, I guess.
Haley 33:01
I think it's in Trainspotting, they said that heroin is like your best orgasm times a million.
Amy 33:06
I did like that he said that vaginas are basically tasps.
Haley 33:10
Oh, yeah. Well, so that's another way that he objectifies women, it's like, "well, they're like a built-in tasp!"
Lori 33:14
And it's actually kind of an interesting little meditation on addiction. How you'll always be thinking about it, just a little bit. And like always wanting it no matter what happens.
Lori 33:14
"And they can just control us, which is why they have so much social power." Sir! I thought the tasp was fairly benign, at the beginning. I thought, well, I guess, you know, if you're going to control people, it's maybe better to do it through like positive reinforcement...? And then later, when Prill gets addicted to it, and she's like, so, so sad. And she's like, in this deep depression, because she's not getting the tasp. And then Louis gets the dash of it when Nessus is mad at him about something and Louis is like, "I am not going to be the same after this." And I was like, Oh, this is psychiatric heroin. This isn't really not okay.
Haley 34:07
That's why I've never tried hard drugs? What if I like it too much?
Amy 34:09
I mean, but Louis didn't have a problem with it until Nessus used it on Prill when they were having sex, because Louis was like, "Oh, she really likes it. I'm great." And then he finds out in fact, no, she was being tasped.
Haley 34:29
Tasp that ass. <all laugh>
Lori 34:30
I was so confused. I was like, I just really, I truly cannot figure out what his views are on consent here. And not Larry's - Louis'. What are Louis' views on consent?
Amy 34:46
I don't think he's considered it very strongly.
Lori 34:48
I don't know.
Haley 34:50
I have a question for you. How did y'all picture the tasp? What it looked like?
Lori 34:54
Well, it's built in to Nessus.
Amy 34:56
I pictured it like a whip.
Haley 34:59
To me, it was a bobby pin because I think it's because tasp sounds like clasp. I don't know. (Lori: but I think it's inside him.) Yeah, it is. But I still picture it as a bobby pin.
Lori 35:09
As I realized it was internal I was like okay I don't need to think about it.
Amy 35:12
He can just think at you, and you get tasped.
Haley 35:14
Because it resembled a different word, I just tied them together in my head.
Lori 35:18
It's a heroin barette. <laughter>
Amy 35:23
To me I guess it sounded a little bit like asp. So I was picturing getting struck by a snake. And that's it went to whip, in my mind. I don't know. That whole thing was crazy. Speaker was very scared of it from the very beginning, and that's only reason I thought it was a good weapon. Was because Speaker's not scared of anything, and then he gets tasped in the very beginning, and he knows it's bad. (Lori: he knows it's bad news.) He's not gonna try and steal the ship anymore.
Haley 35:50
Sometimes in my head - so obviously, I thought about my old cat Wilma, who was orange, but sometimes I pictured him as Tony the Tiger. <laughter>
Lori 35:56
Me too!! I started out as Totoro Garfield. And then eventually I moved to Tony the Tiger, and pretty much stayed on Tony the Tiger.
Haley 36:05
And when he gets burnt and he's just pink, and I was just like, Aww!
Amy 36:09
Poor guy! I pictured him, uniformly orange, and very bright orange with a little raccoon mask. (Haley: Aww!) So in my mind, he was not scary at all. And then I looked at some fan art, and I was like, oh, no, that makes more sense. Like in my mind, he was just a little fluffy blob, with a rat tail, and with raccoon eyes. But like, with teeth!
Lori 36:30
He sounds like he has big Fievel ears, though. There's that one time when Louis wants him to seem scary, and Louis' like, "tuck your ears back."
Haley 36:38
Which is the cutest thing I've ever heard!
Amy 36:39
I thought that was funny. He gets all his fur burned off, and he's like, "MEOW." <all laugh> Louis' like, "Nah, it's not working."
Haley 36:46
It kinda reminds me of that quote that's like, "cats are nature's literal, perfect killing machines, but they weigh eight pounds, so we hold them and kiss them!"
Lori 36:53
That is another example of why I like a lot of things about this book, because there are so many little witty things like that.
Haley 37:00
Just fun, cute things.
Lori 37:01
I just really wish we could have just kept like, quipping at each other and eatin' our printed protein bricks, and-
Haley 37:09
If he had replaced Teela with another like - like a snake alien? It would have been interesting, I think.
Lori 37:14
Or like if Louis had just not had so many disgusting thoughts about her the whole time just to have a woman.
Amy 37:22
Just don't HAVE a woman! <Lori laughs very hard> I'd rather read Foundation than read this.
Haley 37:29
Yeah, same, same.
Lori 37:30
Who asked you for a woman, Larry Niven?
Amy 37:32
You don't get to write women anymore! You're, you're grounded.
Haley 37:35
I mean, y'all know that we love The Terror and Moby-Dick, in which there are very few women, if any.
Lori 37:41
But well, The Terror treats its one woman very badly. (Amy: Very badly.) (Haley: That's true.)
Amy 37:46
It's a failing in that book. But it's still good book.
Lori 37:50
I thought there was some stuff in here that interested me because this book is - like I said, I think it's Boys' Adventure Fiction. I think there is some stuff in here that I thought the bros on Goodreads would rage over if it were in an NK Jemisin book or a Mary Robinette book. (Haley: Oh, really?) I remember, I think it was The Calculating Stars, Haley, and you had a Goodreads review where somebody had said, "too many relevant issues." Where somebody was so mad about all the social issues in the book. And I thought about that when I got to a section in my copy that I think was like 289, 290, 291. And they were talking about the planets that the engineers had come from and how they were just trashed. And they said, "the seas had been used as garbage dumps for 100,000 years," and stored power, once the power went out in the Ringworld and there was some leftover power. They said, "stored power was generally confiscated for the use of men with political power." And like that, to me seems like a very normal thing to say would happen in a society that uses up what it has and basically until it breaks. And then whatever is left is held by the few who are already powerful. I mean, that's that's just how we do things. And, you know, 1970 everybody was like, "Yeah," and I truly feel that if NK Jemisin wrote those words, people would be like, "Social justice warrior, bleh!!!" and would be so mad about it. So it really stuck out to me.
Haley 39:12
That makes sense, because the irony is like in the 70s Like, that's when we started to take environmentalism seriously, and now it's like, "that's for libtards"
Amy 39:18
It was a much bigger deal in the 70s. Yeah, I was laughing at the idea that the Earth would ever be able to implement just universal baby regulation because as we know, Americans would just say, like, just flip somebody off, nope out, and shoot somebody. They wouldn't do it. I just don't see that ever happening. Like, what if the world had decided to make worldwide COVID regulations? It wouldn't work. I was lol-ing at that.
Haley 39:53
Not in America. It would have to be like after we fall to like a fascist regime, I guess. I noticed some of the birth control stuff when I was reading and I was like, I don't have time to get into that. Like there's so many yeah "other relevant issues" <laughter> in this book. Boob Talk, I think is pretty quick. So I clocked two: we have "Louis' memory filled in the details, the long perfect legs, the conical breasts, the delicate beauty of her small face," which, not only are breasts, generally not conical. The fact that he diminutizes her with a small face. It's just like, of course you did. And then "her breasts were high and heavy."
Amy 40:26
I don't think you can be both. I don't think you can be both!
Lori 40:29
That's exactly mine!
Haley 40:30
Yeah. I agree. I agree.
Amy 40:32
I don't think you can be both.
Lori 40:33
Yeah, but I will say mine are definitely conical.
Haley 40:36
Really?!
Amy 40:36
Mine were conical when they were smaller. (Lori: Like Hershey kisses.)Not in America. Yeah, when they're smaller, they're like, BOOP! (Lori: Yeah.) But they have to be smallish.
Haley 40:44
To me, conical is a very severe shape. Whereas every boob I've seen - and I've seen a lot - <laughter> they're like soft, sweet things. I don't know. Conical sounds like a weapon!
Lori 40:56
I dunno, I felt represented by conical. <laughter>
Amy 40:59
Bras used to be more conical. (Haley: Yeah, yeah, true.) Maybe he had never seen a boob, when he wrote this.
Haley 41:04
What else? This wasn't Boob Talk but Teela impaling herself. I recently learned that one of the origins of impaling people, you would do it through the butt.
Amy 41:13
Oh, yes. Oh, yes. (Lori: Augh!!!) That was an execution method. You would just, stick someone with a stick.
Haley 41:20
Yes. And I instantly had your reaction, Lori, but then I was like, I don't think it would feel good to be impaled through your stomach either.
Amy 41:25
No, I don't think impaling in any way, is gonna be a really good way to spend your time.
Lori 41:29
There's a lot of nerves in the butthole.
Haley 41:30
That's true. That's true. (Amy: Ugh.)
Lori 41:34
Controversial opinion. I did not mind Teela impaling herself. It was a more active role than we normally see for a female character in this type of book. (Amy: It was just a really funny was to put it.) Was it ideal? No. Was it great? Was it a great love scene? No. But she was on top. She was having a good time. She was active. I mean, the bar I'm setting here is: could it have been worse? Yes.
Amy 42:00
They were fighting. She swims over to the waterfall and then impaled herself on him. The word choice just makes it bad, to me.
Haley 42:09
I don't like to associate sex and violence too closely.
Lori 42:13
She was goin' to town.
Haley 42:16
On to fantastical food. There's some good food in this book. We have the return of nutrient bars. One of my favorite ideas.
Amy 42:21
Yes! And I would like to know what a "hand meal" is. Is it a Hot Pocket?
Lori 42:26
I thought it was a sandwich! He said it came apart into separate strata of meat and cheese and bread and some kind of leaf. (Haley: Yeah.) That sounds like a sandwich that fell apart. (Amy: Like a burger.)
Haley 42:38
This was the year 2800. You know, the origin of "sandwich" comes from the Earl of Sandwich. That legend, I don't know if it's true or not. But like, if we didn't have that name for it, we'd probably call it a hand meal.
Lori 42:47
"Hand meal" sounds very miladyish, though.
Haley 42:51
"Do you want a handy?"
Lori 42:53
Milady, I have brought thou elevenses hand meal.
Amy 42:57
Listen, I want to start calling it a hand meal, and y'all can't stop me.
Haley 43:00
Do you want a turkey and cheese hand meal? I want a peanut butter and jelly hand meal, and it's like, sticky. I love this quote: "The difference between food and garbage was mostly cultural." (Lori: I loved that!) I mean, that's true.
Amy 43:11
How about Speaker's whole frozen emu that he ate? When they were in the prison? They drag a whole-ass frozen emu down the stairs and fling it at Speaker. He just goes to town.
Haley 43:24
Yeah. And then Louis spends most of the book cooking raw meat with his flashlight laser.
Lori 43:33
I love when Speaker says that the humans' food smells like hot garbage.
Amy 43:40
I'm sure I have eaten things that smelled like hot garbage.
Lori 43:42
That is another bonus point that I'll give to this book, that I think it does a good job shifting the gaze between cultures at times. And that's a good example, Haley, what you just read about one man's food is another man's garbage and I think a lot of times one society is like, "Eww, gross, why would you eat that?" Not understanding that those people are staring back at us going, "Eww, gross. Why would you eat that?" So I think this book kind of does a good job of that.
Amy 44:09
I would be more inclined to give him points for that if the book had not started with such blatant Orientalism.
Haley 44:14
Yeah.
Lori 44:15
Yeah.
Haley 44:16
That was just completely unnecessary.
Amy 44:18
Mmhmm.
Lori 44:18
Yeah. I felt like it was so complicated to unpack how that worked in 1970, that I couldn't - I didn't even approach it.
Haley 46:03
On the subject of how he's giving a good glimpse into the cat culture. In his little author bio in the back of the book, it says he likes cats, so that's one point for him.A man that likes cats.
Lori 46:13
Yeah I do appreciate a man that likes cats.
Amy 46:14
He made the cat the best character.
Haley 46:16
I mean, he was nicer about the cat than he was about the women.
Lori 46:21
There's a pun you could make there...
Amy 46:23
That's because cats don't sass ya.
Lori 46:25
Cats definitely sass you.
Haley 46:28
Alright, Feminist Fave.
Amy 46:31
I thought maybe Paula breaking Louis CK's heart.
Haley 46:43
My Feminist Fave, because obviously there's not a lot of moments in this book, I have two <chuckles> Prill just keeping them suspended above the pit in the police station. <laughter> She was changing outfits, she was going back to watch Netflix, smoking cigarettes, snacking. I don't know what she was doing. She was NOT worried about it.
Amy 47:01
She was obsessed with changing her clothes.
Haley 47:04
Women be shopping!
Lori 47:05
What else does she have to do?
Haley 47:08
And my second Feminist Favorite moment is: me, trying to analyze this book from an educated woman's perspective on a science fiction feminist podcast.
Lori 47:15
Yay!
Amy 47:16
My feminist favorite is: me!
Haley 47:18
I'm trying to imagine Larry Niven in 1970 being like, "I wonder what Haley and Lori and Amy are gonna think about this." (Amy: That's right.)
Lori 47:23
So I've kind of wedged something in to this category. And it is when Louis is telling Speaker about the birth control laws on Earth. And Speaker says, "If the patriarchy tried to force such a law on the kzinti, we would exterminate the patriarchy for its insolence." <laughter>
Amy 47:46
Again, it would go further if Speaker's race had a sentient female! (Lori: yes.) Two of the races in this book, don't have sentient females.
Haley 47:55
Yeah, tell us how you really feel about women. (Amy: Ugh!!) Let's go straight into Misogynist Moment. So as I was researching on the Internet last night, I came across a Reddit thread talking about this book, and people were defending it like it was the Bible. And their argument was, well, this is Larry Niven trying to show how barbaric these cultures were. I'm like, again, the argument we always come back to is, you have a whole universe to imagine and this is what he chooses to present to you. A race where we've created women to be non-sentient. "See how bad they are? We hate this, right guys?"
Amy 48:28
Oh, my god. We have three races in this book. Two of them have non-sentient females. I mean, I guess we know we have three races because the people on Ringworld are human, right? So Prill is human really, yeah. And two of the races have non sentient females, one of the races has two female representatives in the whole book, both of whom basically do sex work -
Lori 48:50
And which is a fine thing to do. But it is a big choice by Larry.
Haley 48:54
And he wasn't doing it in an empowering way.
Amy 48:56
And they have no other function or capability besides luck. And sex.
Lori 49:02
I'm going to take a tiny, tiny pushback on that, though, because from Louis' perspective, yes. But I do think that it's not by accident that every time he has a low opinion of Teela and expresses it, within two paragraphs, he is proven wrong. And that can't be an accident. (Amy: You're right.) (Haley: Yeah.) I'm not cheerleading Larry. But then also, Louis goes so far as to refer to Prill, I think even says it to her, as "ship's whore," which is so gross. And then she's like, "also, I speak like 11 languages and I explained our culture and I explained how the ship works." Like, it's very clear that Prill is I think, maybe more of what we would think of as like a courtesan? Is that the word? Everyone in this book thinks everyone else is dumb. And actually none of them are dumb.
Haley 49:50
And again, it's a boys insult. You're dumb, right? You're stupid. (Lori: Yep. You're a ship's whore!) Yeah, so ship's whore, I hate because one: It takes away from the idea of a ship's cat. Same pun could be made. <laughter> And so I wrote in my notes, "I cannot I cannot." I tried to imagine if I had a 14 year old daughter in 1970, who loves sci fi, reading this book, and I would just be embarrassed. (Lori: Yeah.) So later on when he's just talking about Prill. He's trying to give her less than short shrift, and he says, "to be a ship's whore." Like, it's a fucking MOS in the military: "needs knowledge of medicine of mind and body, plus love of many men." And this was, I think, the most misogynistic part: "plus a rare ability to converse." <sarcastically> Women can't talk!
Haley 49:54
You're right. And that was actually what I was thinking of, when he realizes like all these things that she actually needs to be good at. But you're right, it is completely reductive.
Haley 50:40
Well, and I just wonder, maybe this is a society that's like super polyamorous or something. Maybe it's not the worst thing he could imagine, but it seems to hit to him like it's this horrible thing.
Amy 50:43
At one point, he describes Teela. He's going on and on about how shallow she is and how she has no empathy. And then in order to just say something nice about her, he says "yet, she could sense another's pleasure and respond to pleasure and create pleasure, she was a marvelous lover, painfully beautiful, almost new to the art, sensuous as a cat, startlingly uninhibited, none of which would qualify her as an explorer." So those are the nice things you get about her.
Haley 51:21
Descartes once argued, I think, and I could be wrong about this, but my old college roommate talked about this a lot, in a paper for ecocriticism. She was like, Descartes didn't believe that animals had feelings, and she said that he said things that were like, "when an animal cries in pain, it's like a wheel squeaking" - like he just completely takes away humanity and feeling and just like, why would you say that about her? And I think I've talked to you about this Lori, too. I try to be very cautious of how I talk about things that women like, and girls especially, because it's so easy to shit on dolls or BTS or things that. Generally women get short shrift in our society, but like - "shallow" by whose opinion?
Lori 52:00
Right. Right. And I think it's so funny that he will think that and then he will fuck her.
Amy 52:07
Oh, has no problem fucking her brains out!
Lori 52:09
He's like, "she's a baby! She's a stupid, sexy, baby.
Amy 52:29
I mean, what about when he tells us that her lips he saw were "perfect for pouting. She was one of those rare lucky women whom crying does not make ugly."
Lori 52:38
Oh, god. That one missed me. I must have blacked out.
Haley 52:42
I got that one.
Amy 52:43
He is so bothered that he can't see Prill's shape. He keeps talking about how her clothes block her shape. And he can finally see her shape, when she comes to the bed, and her breasts are high and heavy.
Haley 52:53
And at one point he's like, "Are you sure you want to come to where we live? You have to grow your hair out."
Lori 52:58
He said you'd have to wear a wig!
Haley 53:02
We cannot have bald women. No, ma'am.
Amy 53:04
How about when he tells her we need you to come on the ship? So I don't rape Nessus?
Haley 53:08
Yeah, that's that's the number one misogynist moment.
Amy 53:12
What?! Whoa, no, my number one is when he SELLS her.
Lori 53:17
Oh, my number one is when Prill is getting him all hot and bothered and he says he will "take her by force" if he needs to. That ruined the book for me! Because throughout the whole book, even the joke about raping Nessus was ridiculous. But Nessus wasn't there, you know, Nessus wasn't harmed, Nessus wasn't threatened. It was a disgusting, gross joke.
Haley 53:39
He probably would not do it. I hope...
Lori 53:41
Right, I don't think he would actually have done it. But in that scene, he told us he actually would have done it. And it reminded me of Leviathan Wakes, when Holden was like, "Naomi is so drunk, he would know he shouldn't and he'd hate himself tomorrow, but he'd still do it." And I was like, if you just didn't say that. If you just didn't have that one phrase. I would be like, yeah, this book is silly, but it's a product of its time. I'm like, not that mad at it. There's floating castles, whatever. But that was enough for me to be like, alright, fuck you. I don't want to read the rest. I don't want to read the rest. I got 20 pages left. And I don't want to read them!
Amy 54:16
Because he was not being tasped in that moment. He was of sound mind. He was just being expertly handled by a woman who's good at her craft. And he very clearly says he won't be able to -
Lori 54:29
It is okay to say he was very, very horny and he hoped she wanted to have sex. Period, end of sentence. And then "oh, yay! She does! So we get to!"
Haley 54:39
Or even if he wants to go into an elaboration of blue balls or something even sillier. Like, please do!
Lori 54:44
"I'll be so disappointed if she doesn't want to! It'll really ruin my evening."
Amy 54:50
There are many other misogynist things you can say that don't actually include rape.
Lori 54:53
Particularly because I do regard this as Boys' Adventure Fiction. It's extra upsetting.
Amy 54:58
Many, many adolescent boys read this. (Haley: Yeah.)
Lori 55:01
And were like, oh, Louis, he's the hero and he, you know...she got him so worked up!
Haley 55:06
And even if you don't think about it, you still internalize it after a certain point. (Lori: Yes, exactly._ Yeah. Y'all hit on my points for sure.
Amy 55:13
Remember when Louis CK sells Tammy Brown to the Conan the Barbarian?
Haley 55:18
That part, I couldn't even take seriously cuz I was like, Who are these people? I don't know them. She seemed happier with Seeker than with Louis. Maybe he's nicer to her?
Amy 55:29
Oh, no, I definitely would prefer her to be with Conan the Barbarian.
Haley 55:32
It's like when you hear about people that have arranged marriages and they're happier than people that get divorced. I don't know.
Lori 55:38
Happier than people met in a bar, who were both drunk. Which was how my first marriage began.
Haley 55:46
Well, you live you learn. Alright, I'm going to turn over Soap Stuff to Lori. Because I'm never very good at this.
Lori 55:51
I don't have anything!
Amy 55:52
Oh, I have so many.
Haley 55:53
Oh, I mean, I wrote down pulling the police station up a mountain. It's pretty damn ridiculous.
Lori 55:57
Yeah, I mean, I think like, there's a particular flavor of ridiculous that is soapy. And nothing jumped out at me. Everything is ridiculous. But nothing really jumped out at me.
Amy 56:08
So I think Nessus is definitely gonna come back from the dead. Because he got a miracle soap opera medicine and he's going to come back from the dead. And that's definitely gonna be a Soap Stuff at some point, too. (Lori: Yep.)
Haley 56:20
Teela coming back with a surprise new boyfriend on a Ringworld -
Amy 56:22
Well, that's what I'm about to say. So Teela, escaping the sideways hurricane by miraculously passing out on the correct part of her dashboard. Just accidentally being rescued by Conan the Barbarian. I felt like was pretty soapy.
Haley 56:37
Yeah, I didn't see that one coming for sure.
Amy 56:39
And then soap operas really do like some rape-mance. (Lori: Oh, for sure. Yeah.) So there was a lot of rape-mance in this book that I felt probably would fall under Soap Stuff. And then there's the Conan and Tammy and Louis love triangle. Pretty soapy.
Lori 56:57
It's funny how Louis was like, I fell out of love with her so quickly. And then the minute she shows up with a hot new boyfriend, he's, like, all mad about it!
Amy 57:06
Yeah, he gets real salty about it.
Haley 57:07
That's what happens when you meet somebody!
Lori 57:10
He's look at her Insta Stories. Like, oh, who is that?
Amy 57:14
I've told you this - it's the bicycle clause. Have I told you about this? When you get into relationship - I made this up. You know how when you own a bicycle when you're a kid? At some point, you outgrow that bicycle? (Lori: I never did.) (Haley: Oh, that's right!) And it lives in your - you can -
Haley 57:26
She knows now!
Amy 57:27
Did you have a horse?
Lori 57:28
No. I rode other people's horses. <laughter> Amy. I was a poor kid.
Amy 57:34
I didn't have a horse either!
Haley 57:34
So you DIDN'T have a racecar bed? <laughter> (Lori: I did not.)
Amy 57:37
Okay, for children who HAVE a bicycle...(Lori: I'll imagine!) At some point, you outgrow your bicycle, and it lives in your garage. But just because you're not riding the bicycle, does not mean it's not still yours. It's still your bicycle, you're just not using it. So I feel like every time you get into relationship, there's this unspoken bicycle clause where at some point you're going to break up and you're not going to be using each other anymore. But just because you're not still using it doesn't mean it's not still yours. <laughter> You get to get jealous if they ever get into another relationship.
Lori 58:04
Did you make that up??
Amy 58:05
I either read it somewhere or I made it up. It's been in my subconscious since high school.
Lori 58:08
I like it. Even a person who didn't have a bicycle as a child can understand it. <laughter>
Amy 58:14
I'm glad there's an analogy!
Haley 58:15
If I could be sent every year on January 1, a one page, or like if I could get one of those life updates from every single one of my exes, I would read it. Did you like this book?
Amy 58:25
NO!
Haley 58:26
What Amy? I'm shocked
Amy 58:27
NO!
Lori 58:30
The thing is, the things that I hated, I hated so much! I thought the world was neat, and all those lines that I read that I thought were very pithy and funny. And I like Speaker a lot and...I just wish it were different.
Haley 58:47
Yeah, I gave it between two and three stars. The opening had me excited, the world had me enthralled. Choosing to tell the story like he did with his less than stellar writing skills was not my favorite.
Amy 58:56
I finished this book because I am on a podcast. I do not ever not finish books. And I would not have finished this book, if I didn't have to read it with you people.
Haley 59:03
Come to the dark side.
Lori 59:03
Remember, I told you guys about how they're republishing Agatha Christie, and it's called Agatha Christie, But Not Racist. (Haley: Oh, that's nice.) I would like a similar edit of this book and books of that same ilk. And it would be so easy because none of the bad stuff in it drives the plot, you know, just highlight, delete, highlight, delete. You wouldn't even have to change Teela that much. She could still just be a boring character, but maybe NOT boning someone literally 10 times her age who thinks about how she's stupid, and the book would probably also be 30 pages shorter if you took out all the times that Louis thought about she was dumb or naive or not good at life.
Amy 59:43
Yeah, there'd be have to be quite an overhaul on this book.
Lori 59:45
I don't think it would be that much of an overhaul! (Amy: It would for me!) I think it would be some highlights and deletes maybe we'd be left with a novella.
Amy 59:51
I also truly hated the way he wrote, and I hate the pacing, and I hate - I did not like this book.
Haley 59:56
Yeah he's not a good writer. A perfect example of that. So I started reading Cloud Cuckoo Land for another book club. And it's like, fucking, like driving a Cadillac after riding a child's bike.
Lori 1:00:06
A child's bike - what's that? <laughter>
Haley 1:00:12
I just started reading it last night. I finished this, and then picked up Cloud Cuckoo Land almost immediately. And it's to be fair, it's written by a guy that won the Pulitzer Prize for All the Light We Cannot See. But it was just like, ahhhh <sigh of relief>.
Lori 1:00:25
That's how I felt about The Actual Star, that I read recently, by Monica Byrne, and I'm gonna nominate that for the Hugo ballot this year. It was so good.
Haley 1:00:32
Some people can just write. And I think we say this, again, every episode. Sci fi is mainly about ideas, and not necessarily executions.
Amy 1:00:38
Ugh. Some of the ideas he had in the book were interesting. <laughter>
Haley 1:00:46
That's as good as we're gonna get, folks. All right, Star Wars or Lord of the Rings! I have an answer. But Amy, would you like to go first? (Amy: No.) I believe, and this won't happen very often - it is 50% each. Because - Lord of the Rings argument: it starts with a birthday celebration by a man who was hundreds of years old. <Lori laughs> A powerful being shows up and drops an adventure into a man's lap. They undertake a long journey that ends at a mountain that holds a secret.
Amy 1:01:13
Ahhh! Ahh!
Lori 1:01:14
I'm 100% with you.
Amy 1:01:15
That's good.
Haley 1:01:17
I Googled Mordor to make sure it was a mountain - well yeah, it's a place. (Lori: Mount Doom.) And then there's another tower, but I wasn't sure. BUT! There is spaceship, and a superstructure, the Ringworld, much like the Death Star. And the aliens - kzin, which is basically a Bothan, which is like the spies that helped got the plans to the second Death Star. So I mean, this is very space heavy. There's a lot of space base concepts. So I think it's a draw.
Lori 1:01:41
I just had Lord of the Rings, and I thought about Mount Doom, and a motley crew on a quest for a thing that is in fact a ring. <all laugh>
Lori 1:01:54
They're not CARRYING a ring, but they're on ring-related quest.
Haley 1:01:57
That just tipped the scales. It's like 60/40 now.
Amy 1:02:00
So yeah, that's that's pretty big. (Haley: The ring!! The one Ringworld!!) <laughter> (Lori: One Ring to rule them all!) There's a little star war in here to me because the flashlight laser is basically a lightsaber. He just sets it off, it starts fighting with it. (Lori: absolutely.) A little Lord of the Rings because the book starts with Bilbo's birthday. (Haley: Yeah, yeah, yeah.) A man disillusioned with and bored by the world around him is tempted to adventure during his eleventy-first birthday. (Lori: perfect.) It's a journey book with some erstwhile companions. (Haley: A journey, but not a hero's journey.) No one knows who's in charge. But really this book is Star Trek because because the kzinti were also written by Niven into the Star Trek universe. Appearing first in Star Trek, The Animated Series also in Starfleet Universe, as well as material for Star Trek Enterprise that was never produced because of the series' cancellation. They're literally exploring strange new worlds seeking out new life and new civilizations and boldly going where no one has gone before.
Amy 1:02:13
And the kzinti became canon in Picard.
Amy 1:02:40
That's right! (Haley: I love when that happens.) And they were already canon. You said they were the template for Klingons.
Lori 1:03:08
Well, Juan mentioned that. I was not able to find anything I could read on that. But I see the their demeanor seemed the same. (Amy: 100%!)
Haley 1:03:19
There's also the Ringworld in the new Boba Fett.
Lori 1:03:21
Oh, yeah, that is so cool.
Amy 1:03:23
There was a Ringworld in Moonfall.
Haley 1:03:28
Oh, there was a Ringworld in moonfall. That movie.
Amy 1:03:30
It was terrible.
Lori 1:03:31
I don't know anything about that.
Amy 1:03:33
It's a new movie in the movie theaters.
Haley 1:03:34
But yeah, this movie was just such bad science fiction where the moon is falling towards the earth.
Lori 1:03:40
I just saw it. It's called Don't Look Up!
Haley 1:03:44
That was good, too. I thought it was great.
Lori 1:03:45
I liked that. People have mixed feelings about it.
Amy 1:03:48
My brother told me several times to watch it. I do recommend Moonfall, it's so so so bad. What are we reading next time?
Haley 1:03:59
Dreamsnake! Thank you, Lori.
Lori 1:04:02
You're welcome. We swapped DM schedules so that Haley could do Ringworld slash didn't have to do a book with both snakes and horses. <laughter> It's supposed to be so good though.
Haley 1:04:13
Vonda McIntyre wrote Star Wars book. It was not good. So we'll see.
Amy 1:04:18
Not everybody who writes good, writes good Star Wars.
Haley 1:04:23
There's a lot of bad Star Wars books, it's true.
Lori 1:04:26
All right.
Amy 1:04:28
Go rate, review, and subscribe.
All 1:04:30
Bye!!!
<OUTRO MUSIC>
Lori 1:03:21
One ring to find them wait. How does it go?
Haley 1:03:23
One Ringworld to rule them.
Lori 1:03:25
Yeah. Well, - it's, there's something "find them," or something. One ring for them to find.
Amy 1:03:30
You're doing a really good job. I just want you to keep going. <laughter>
Lori 1:03:34
Thanks! <laughs> I feel like I'm flailing.