American Writers (One Hundred Pages at a Time)

In this episode I look at the second hundred pages of Jack London's masterpiece Martin Eden. What are the challenges of becoming a writer in the face of the impersonal publishing industry? How does an artist face poverty?

In this episode of the Philip K. Dick Club we look at "A Present for Pat", cargo cults, and alien gods.

In this episode we meet Martin Eden and the struggles of a working class man to become a published writer.

We look at "The Hanging Stranger," Philip K. Dick's story of lynching and state power. And it has Lovecraftian creatures in it. What happens when we story accepting the cruelities essential to the systerms we live in?

In the second part of The Iron Heel, Jack London takes us to the events surrounding the first uprising, or the Chicago Commune. How does the Oligarchy survive this and other threats? How much of London's novel is true to life? Are we facing our own Iron Heel today?

Is creation just a failed experiment? Do children hold the key to preserving individualism in an increasingly conformist world? These are some of the questions explored in Philip K. Dick's short story "Project: Earth".

The first episode of two on Jack London's dystopian novel, The Iron Heel. In this work, London takes on the role of prophet as he predicts what the future of American capiatalism will be. How much of his prediction has come true?

Philip K. Dick takes on endless war and consumerism in his allegorical tale "Some Kinds of Life". Are wars for resources ever justifiable? What happens when we start to fight wars to keep up with the most banal consumer technologies.  

In this episode I explore Jack London's memoirs on his year as a hobo, The Road. This short book is a great introduction into hobo life and the economic depression of the 1890s. 

Does Earth belong to humans, or to the life that comes after us? Philip K. Dick asks this question in his short story "Planet for Transients."