hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr1224.txt

Episode: 1224
Title: HPR1224: Podio Book Report on Jake Bible's "Dead Mech"
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1224/hpr1224.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-17 21:55:54

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Okay, I promise you folks that the record board is well in the ground.
Indeed I did, general listeners, but that was in an episode that was never completed
for Hacker Public Radio and is best forgotten.
When I first aspired to contribute a podcast, I thought I was too busy to set aside the
time to record, and I reasoned that if Dave Yates could podcast while driving, I should
be able to as well.
Alas, none of my vehicles proved to be a satisfactory recording environment as a Honda.
For your edification and amusement, I have appended excerpts of an HPR series that I would
have called Tales from the Truck to the end of this episode.
Failing in mastering, talking and driving at the same time, I next tried to record while
doing various maintenance tasks around the farm, such as working on engines or brake repair
or tractor maintenance.
I even went so far as to type up a script, but I eventually arrived at the conclusion that
I could either concentrate on the task at hand or record a podcast, not both.
However, like CT, in these tumultuous times at HPR, I have decided to rescue a recording
from the past and present it to you.
As it was recorded on my sense of use, literally from the bottom of a well.
To explain how I came to be at the bottom of a well, a couple of winners ago, a bit after
I made my first submission to Hacker Public Radio, I was having problems with the well
that provides water to our cattle pants.
I first replaced the electric powered, jumping jack pump actuator that took place of the original
wind powered pumping unit, known in the common vernacular as a windmill.
That lasted a few weeks until the pump rod bent and split, fracturing the cast iron
case of the new pumping mechanism.
You see, they had to conserve weight in the moving components of their original windmill
systems, lest they be too heavy for a wind turbine to lift.
Usually a big wooden stick would run from the windmill head to the ground, while a thin
wall tube would continue down through the well pipe to the pumping piston below ground
level.
You see, neither when the well was converted to electricity 50 odd years ago, or when the
well was worked over by my father and a friend, was away at school in the 80s, did anyone
consider replacing the thin walled pump rod with a solid piece of shafting.
After 70 years of rubbing against the well pipe with every stroke, the pump rod wore
through, and split along the entirety of its vertical seam, jamming the pump jack and
causing it to shear its mounts and tearing it from the top of the well pipe.
The only alternative was to replace the connecting shaft from the pump jack down to the pumping
piston in the working cylinder below ground.
I opened up the well pit and what should have extended several feet below ground was only
deep enough so that standing in the pit, my knees were about level off the ground, and
at that time daytime temperatures were in the 60s.
At the time I recorded what you're about to hear, I'd been digging for weeks, trying
to finish before it was too cold to fill the cattle tank of a water hose from the house,
and had the pit down to where the ground was about two feet above my head.
Time highs were then in the low 40s, and I was hacking through roots and filling a
five gallon bucket with a trowel and then carrying it up a ladder to dump it outside
the hole.
The well pitted start about three feet on the side, and narrowed to about two thirds
that size.
I think by that time I'd discovered the reason for my long excavation.
When I got down to the top of the working cylinder, which is a barrel about three times
the diameter of the well pipe, that contains the piston that drives the water upwards, where
the top cap should have been securely screwed into the barrel of the working cylinder.
It flopped loosely because the threads were all worn out.
So they denied my father and my friend instead of replacing the worn components, or at least
devising some sort of external clamp, many designs of which went through my head while
standing in the cold bottom of that well.
They must have decided to set the hole works back down in the hole and covered the joint
with duct tape, and then shevelled what they deemed to be a sufficient amount of dirt
back down in the hole to keep the working cylinder together where it wouldn't spread apart
on every stroke.
So that's the story of my gentle friends of how I wound up podcasting from the bottom
of the well.
Did I mention that I had to edit an hour and a half of audio to recover about the
four minute narrative?
I did leave the recorder going, with sounds of just me digging for some time after I finished
speaking.
I decided to lend atmosphere to the subject matter that you are about to hear.
And perhaps Clot 2 could use it as a spooky grave digging sounds in one of his movies.
That's right I was going to book review.
Today I wanted to tell you about one of my favorites from pottyobooks.com.
Jake Bibles, Dead Mech.
This will be a no spoilers introduction to the book, sort of like the as attack.
So you need only fear of the ravenous and rageful howl that begins each chapter.
Somehow, I left out the premise of the story entirely in my recovered recording.
So let me set the scene.
Dead Mech is set in a dystopian future as post zombie apocalypse stories tend to be.
Jake Bibles adds a unique twist to the zombie mythos, and one that will be surprised
if Hollywood doesn't steal.
In Bibles' bleak future, one need to be bitten by a zombie to become one.
In fact, the infection is airborne and endemic to the populations of the few great walled cities
that dot the zombie over on wastelands.
Whether one dies in back alley gladiatorial blood sports or having your throat slit in
a fanatical sacrificial ritual or crushed under the massive feet of a zombie pilot war machine
or even peacefully in your own bed, everyone rises again as a zombie.
Citizens of the somewhat civilized cities are fitted with explosive implants in their
craniums to destroy the brain at the moment of death so that they don't turn on the society
that controls and defends them.
All but the lawyers who must have nothing interfering with the neural interface to the giant
walking war machines.
Zombies are not the only horrors lying in the waste between the great cities.
There are tribes of savage cannibals.
Zombie worshipping zealots, heavily armed railroders driving the fortress trains that make
travel and commerce between the city's moderately safe, and hidden societies that for their own
reasons are more comfortable among the zombies than among civilized men.
Okay, 51.50 from the past.
You take the rest of this review and I'll rejoin you at the end.
The wastelands are patrolled in the cities protected by a core of lawyers driving the 50
and 55-story tall, heavily armed mechs that the designers failed to take into account.
What happens when a pilot dies in his cockpit and leaves a zombie in control of one of the
most devastating war machines ever constructed.
The dead mech, Jake Bible tells a story of one squadron of mech warriors about a generation
after humanity was destroyed once again by the undead pilots.
The men of Caprese must decide whether to take his warriors on the run from the wastel
announced post after he begins to suspect the survival of humanity is no longer a priority
for the totalitarian bureaucracy which controls what once was the United States.
He is further confronted with a raw recruit with a shadow he passed and whether he should
accept assistance from a most unlikely ally.
Well, that's it.
I think you should hop on over to partyobucks.com and give dead mech a try.
Jake Bible seems to have quite the cult following on the forums on his own website, but his
work still hasn't generated the buzz in the open source community as accompanies the
works of Nathan Lowell.
There are quite a few descriptions of graphic violence in this novel, though perhaps not
as gratuitous as what I've seen in some of the works by Scott Siegler.
I should also mention that Jake Bible calls this the world's first drabble novel, the
definition of drabble being a short story of exactly 100 words, so it's not as noticeable
in the first few chapters, but at the end of the book when the action gets hot and heavy,
the perspective of the reader shifts from one character to another every 100 words.
Well, I can see that Mr. Bible has cinematic ambitions.
I think that would have to be revised in a movie version, less they give the viewer whiplash.
And sure, if you passed by dead mech on partyobucks.com because the title seemed too cheesy, I strongly
suggest you go back and give it another look.
This has been 5150, Forehacker Public Radio and...
I don't know what it is.
Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Oh.
Oh.
Well, I thank you for that most interesting review past 5150.
I just wanted to add, the only part of the book that didn't hold my interest was and rather
overwrought explanation of an elaborate hazing ritual that serves as pilot training in the second segment.
I'm glad I ploughed through, though, because action builds as you progress through the story.
Now, the last segment is an epilogue where Bible interviews himself based on questions from readers posted to his form as episodes
were being released chapter by chapter.
And you can tell he has a sense of humor, so I think a podcast that interview science fiction authors would find Bible an entertaining guest.
I'm glad I'm here.
I'm glad I'm here.
I'm glad I'm here.
I'm glad I'm here.
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