DEATH // SENTENCE

Langdon and Eden kick things off by asking the important questions: which member of the Friends cast would you follow into battle? They also discuss the inherent futility and horror of war. Then, they tackle Roger Zelazny's weird and feverish Creatures of Light and Darkness, touching on elements of myth, explosive prose, attention to detail, and Zelazny's unfortunate misogyny. Music played: Mathilde - Kepler- 186f https://mathilde-blackmetal.bandcamp.com/track/kepler-186-f Imipolex - Martian Blood Mother https://imipolex.bandcamp.com/track/martian-blood-mother

We made it - the podcast's personal favourite Kazuo Ishiguro book, The Buried Giant. It turns out a book about memory and genocide is kind of relevant to the world today, but we set it as part of Ishiguro's grand project of showing how Britain is bad and should sink below the waves. Music by Planning for Burial Theme tune by Caina

Gareth and Eden explore Nisi Shawl's Everfair, a mostly successful attempt at writing better, less racist, and more "complete" historical fiction. Nuclear dirigibles, proto-socialist societies, cool knife-hands, and lots and lots (and lots) of character PoVs mix and mingle with geopolitics and complex racial identities! Music played: Knives - PHD https://knivesnoise.bandcamp.com/track/phd

Eden flies solo on this episode, diving deep into the masterful, subtle, and rich Growing Up Weightless by the criminally under-read and under-recognized John M. Ford. Lunar politics, coming of age, and weird interstellar drives clash in this unique, hard sci-fi bildungsroman! Music played: Changeling - Changeling https://changelingofficial.bandcamp.com/track/changeling

Langdon and Eden kick things off by discussing their favorite Metallica tracks and also how good Metallica really are. Then, they dive into Oliver K. Langmead's "Calypso", a beautiful, if limited, verse novel about terraforming, memory, personhood, and endings. Music played: Slave Agent - Forced to Suffer https://slaveagent.bandcamp.com/track/forced-to-suffer Grails - Silver Bells https://grails.bandcamp.com/track/silver-bells

The Kazuo Ishiguro season continues with maybe his least known, maybe his least liked work: Nocturnes. Sitting between the mega-hit Never Let Me Go and the critical blockbuster The Buried Giant, this book is often overlooked and, maybe, it kind of deserves to be? But first, we talk GAMING - specifically Clair Obscure: Expedition 33 and The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy, because our woke Marxist schools taught us that everything is a text. Music by Hedvig Mollestad Trio, theme tune by Caina.

Are books... dangerous? A lot of people think so, from Moms For Liberty to the mostly-imaginary internet spectre of the censorious Puriteen. Lyta Gold joins us to talk about which books are most dangerous and which might be able to redeem the act of reading. Theme tune by Caina: https://cainaband.bandcamp.com/ Danger is our Patreon's middle name: https://www.patreon.com/DeathSentence

Eden and Langdon both exist (maybe) and with this snippet of existence, they discuss the historiography of the Paris Commune on the left and suggest a proper position (empathy) towards its hopes and failures. Then, they discuss the beautiful and problematic "Five Ways to Forgiveness" by Ursula K. Le Guin, a short story suite about slavery, feminism, war and Hain. Music played: Object Unto Earth - Alas I Hop Along https://objectuntoearth.bandcamp.com/track/alas-i-hop-along Cave Sermon - Hopeless Magic https://cavesermon.bandcamp.com/track/hopeless-magic

Olga Tokarczuk's first book since winning the Nobel prize in Literature is deeply feminist folk-horror with more than a little influence from Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain. Is it just a fun ghost story or a warning about how the Male Loneliness Epidemic(tm) will end in tragedy. More importantly, does Langdon yearn for the production lines?

This time around, Langdon and Eden discuss what can be done in our personal lives, regardless of the potential for a revolution or any feelings of hope and despair. Then, they dive into the mesmerizing verse-prose of Jason Guriel's Forgotten Work, a novel in heroic couplets about the power of music, obsession, cult followings, and sick teleportation technology. Music played: Kyros - Esoterica https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQGbHdn_SJ0 Max Cooper - The Sun in a Box https://maxcooper.bandcamp.com/track/the-sun-in-a-box-2