Episodios

  • Episode 92: “It’s So Dark,” or Cixin Liu’s The Dark Forest, Part II

    Episode 92: “It’s So Dark,” or Cixin Liu’s The Dark Forest, Part II
    Jul 25 2025
    The boys carve through the second half of Cixin Liu’s sprawling, imaginative, and haunting The Dark Forest. Bagg has questions about how much we can trust our author and the characters he uses to make his plot work, while Dukes identifies the fact that the most important “character” in this novel is humanity itself. Regardless of your opinion of this quixotic book, you cannot dispute the ambition of its author—and his ability to transform his imagination into an ever-expanding epic.
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    1 h y 29 m
  • Episode 91: “All Chess Pieces, No Chess,” or Cixin Liu’s The Dark Forest, Part I

    Episode 91: “All Chess Pieces, No Chess,” or Cixin Liu’s The Dark Forest, Part I
    Jul 10 2025
    The premise of the Dark Forest, that Humanity must make a secret plan stored in our hidden thoughts to defeat an enemy that can spy on our every move, is wonderful. But the lads find the action in the first half a bit tepid, as Cixin Liu builds sets up the chess pieces we expect he’ll start knocking down in the second half of the book. There are some hot spots, and wonderful moments, including a depiction of the best group photo ever taken, but you have to read through a lot of narrative chaff to find htem. Here is the video of a six year old watching Star Wars for the first time with his Dad. Hint, at the end, the kid says “It’s the most amazingest thing I’ve ever saw in my whole entire, whole entire, whole entire, whole entire life.” And here is the Hildebrandt Brothers poster art for Star Wars, using models who were not actually Carrie Fisher or Mark Hamill.
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    56 m
  • Episode 90: “An Egg Slicer Through a Supertanker,” or Cixin Liu’s The Three Body Problem, Part II

    Episode 90: “An Egg Slicer Through a Supertanker,” or Cixin Liu’s The Three Body Problem, Part II
    Jun 26 2025
    The lads host their first UMB Official Sports Update as Jesse manages to survive a weekend of ultimate frisbee before getting into the second half of Cixin Liu’s sprawling and ambitious The Three Body Problem. The UMBers revisit some of our old friends, like Neal Stephenson’s habit of setting up narrative chessboards for a long time and eventually letting the game unfold, examining if Liu’s narrative setups have plausible payoffs. They also identify some of the “hapless protagonist” effect they’ve seen before in The Diamond Age and The Arrest, and talk about Liu’s claim that his work does not allegorize IRL history and action. Despite some misgivings, Jesse is excited for his third time through the subsequent two books, and Bagg is also looking forward to discovering how the earth responds to the Trisolaran “problem.”
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    Menos de 1 minuto
  • Review: John Scalzi’s “When the Moon Hits Your Eye”

    Review: John Scalzi’s “When the Moon Hits Your Eye”
    Jun 23 2025
    Jesse Dukes offers a quick review of popular science fiction writer John Scalzi's newest novel, "When the Moon Hits Your Eye". While he initially put the book down after reading the first chapter, due to frustration with the absurd premise, on a second read, Dukes found that the book has its charms.
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    10 m
  • Episode 89: “A Creeping Awareness” or Cixin Liu’s The Three Body Problem, Part I

    Episode 89: “A Creeping Awareness” or Cixin Liu’s The Three Body Problem, Part I
    Jun 16 2025
    The Three Body Problem begins with an inexplicable series of tragic mysteries, most notably, that physics as we know it has stopped working. Slowly, the reader is given enough clues to start to suspect various causes, although halfway through, we still don’t really know what’s going on. Dukes has read it before, and Bagg has not, so they lads compare notes as to their experience of the creeping awareness of the disturbing truth dawning on the characters.
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    1 h y 7 m
  • Episode 88: “Creation’s Folly,” or Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Part II

    Episode 88: “Creation’s Folly,” or Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Part II
    Jun 5 2025
    The boys wrap up their discussion of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and come away somewhat ambivalent: this is clearly a work of importance, imagination, and invention, but it feels…unfocused. We posit that the undeserved press and social pressure clouds what is otherwise an incredible meditation on creation: what are a creator’s responsibilities to their creation, and what effect does the fulfillment (or neglect) of those responsibilities have upon the created?
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    1 h y 8 m
  • Digression: Solo Canoe Sailing on Long Lake

    Digression: Solo Canoe Sailing on Long Lake
    Jun 2 2025
    Friend of the show Justin shares another update, as well as his foray into what he terms Contemporary Victorian Episolary Short Travel Non-Fiction. Justin is paddling a solo canoe (and often carrying the canoe) along the 700 Mile Northern Forest canoe trail, and we are digressing from our regular programming to share his dispatches. We are pleased to include Justin's drawings of canoe sailings rigs including the standard rafted canoe rig. And the author's innovative solo canoe sailing rig. As well as the pdf of his entire account as a downloadable .pdf. BJFR Canoe Sailing NarrativeDownload
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    31 m
  • Digression, From the North Woods with Justin Reich

    Digression, From the North Woods with Justin Reich
    May 22 2025
    We reach Upper Middlebrow education expert Justin Reich on the Northern Forest Canoe Trail, at the edge of mobile phone reception. He gives us a dispatch, mid journey, from a rather literary setting. Justin is finishing his sabbatical with nothing but a canoe, a backpack, a couple of paddles, and aluminum pole (for poling up river) and a canoe portage cart. The North Woods in May bring long days, rainy weather, and if you're lucky, few black flies, and reasonable water level. From the Northern Forest Canoe Trail website: The Northern Forest Canoe Trail is a 700-mile water trail from Old Forge, New York to Fort Kent, Maine, that goes through private and public lands. The trail follows traditional travel routes used by Native American, settlers and guides. It is the longest inland water trail in the nation.
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    43 m