hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr2509.txt

Episode: 2509
Title: HPR2509: AudioBookClub 16 Matcher Rules
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2509/hpr2509.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-19 04:31:02

---

This is HBR episode 2500 and I'm titled for the Obook Club 16 Matcha Rules and in part of the series HBR or the Obook Club.
It is hosted by HBR or the Obook Club and is about 120 minutes long and carries an explicit flag.
The summary is the HBR or the Obook Club Review Matcha Rules by Mary Holland.
This episode of HBR is brought to you by an honesthost.com.
Get 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HBR15. That's HBR15.
Better web hosting that's honest and fair at an honesthost.com.
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Hacker Public Radio Audio Book Club. I'm one of your panelists. I'm Poki and with me on the show tonight we got 5150.
We've got Touch.
What's good everybody? And we've got X1101.
Hey guys.
So for any of those who may be new to the show or unfamiliar with how it works, we each listen to the same audio book over the course of a month.
It's got to be an audio book that's freely available to the public so that anyone who wishes can participate in the audio book club.
When we come on here we use free software, free with a capital F but usually you can get that free of charge as well so that there's also no barrier to entry there for people to participate.
We've discussed the book in very general manner without doing any kind of spoilers for a little while.
And then we have a break in the middle of the show where we do a beverage review and then after our beverage review break we will spoil the book.
If you if you like the show and haven't heard the book yet, you know, feel free to to call it quits at or after the beverage review.
If you don't want the books spoiled, if you plan on listening to it, I think it's a lot of high points that I miss anything guys.
No, that sounds about right. That's the spiel.
All right. So that's it. What'd you guys think of this one?
Well, you tell the audience what the book was first.
Well, you can do that if you remember.
Yeah, just so I don't get it wrong. Let me go back to the page.
I didn't mean to put you in the spot. I was only kidding.
I was still looking at the still had the Belkin FM transmitter open.
Our book this week was Matcher Rules by me Holland and we downloaded it from pottyobooks.com.
It's there's 20 different episodes by the downloads. Of course, like like most books that weren't the chapters, there's more chapters than there are audio fragments.
And it's about, of course, in the far future where other worlds beyond earth have been colonized.
In fact, I get they never say it outright. I get the impression that old earth as they call it has either been abandoned or it's been, you know, outshadowed by other densely settled worlds.
This isn't the Novai colony and it's about 150 years into since the settlement of this colony.
And they're still dealing with things like population controls.
Everybody can have an adequate standard of living without without putting too much pressure on the agriculture that they're able to do at home because they talk about the economic about.
If you start having to import basic foodstuffs from space, then everything gets a non-viable real quick and people start to starve.
And they've sort of up their own little unique society on Novai.
Nobody wants to take it from there.
Sure. So I will say, because you clipped right when you said it, that the book was by Mary Holland.
And I feel it's important to give the author credit for the book.
Yeah, that's pretty good. I mean, their society is based on these affinity groups that this mysterious matcher puts everybody in.
And, you know, without spoiling anything for all intents and purposes, we can just say that it's a mysterious rock that communicates with one single person who they call the solo who's not in any affinity with anybody.
And they put all these people in their affinity groups. And that kind of keeps fighting and arguments to a minimum.
So the place is pretty peaceful and it goes on from there. So yeah, I think that's about all I can think to say without spoiling it as far as the plot goes.
The setting seems seems to be a pretty pastoral planet. They do have some city centers, but most of it does seem to be based on agriculture.
They mentioned that their major exports are wine and coffee and frankly, who needs anything else? Who needs any imports if you got that?
Yeah, I thought audio quality was decent. It wasn't the best ever, but it wasn't intolerable.
The reading was pretty good. You could tell that she's not a professional, but she by no means did a bad job with it.
It was an enjoyable story. It wasn't for me like it wasn't my kind of story. There was just, there was too much in it that kept taking me out of the story, but I was still hooked to it.
It was still, you know, a quote unquote page turner if we can still call and audio book a page turner. I will say it was that because I did want to know where the story went, even though I wasn't really invested in the characters.
Well, I will say about the reading of Ms. Holland and her Mrs. Holland unlike a lot of the authors try to do. She really made no effort to give each or a different voice like she was reading a play.
It was pretty much like story time at the library. She picked up the shelf, which is fine. Not everybody has this theatrical talent to create a different voice for all their characters.
Yeah, and I wasn't really even considering that. I mean, I could take that either way. I don't mind if people try to do voices and I don't mind if they don't, you know, either one is fine with me.
And a little on the finities and this is, this is kind of part of the process of the book. You don't learn everything about everything up front, but this is a spoiler at their society.
When you go these affinities, when you go to the master and you learn her, and then he is about it, about when I'm an adult, 18 or 1920, there you are putting a group of either just two people or three people or four people or five people.
And they sort of act as a, as a communal organization. I mean, the children are raised in common, but just because there's five people in the, in the affinity, it doesn't mean everybody's having a big orgy with everybody.
As you breath through the book, it, it seems it's more calm. You know, if you, that in within these affinities for religions, people will actually perhaps a monogamous partner after a few, after a time of experimentation.
It seemed that when you, it was common that if you had an affinity that had an odd number of people that one person in there might have been by.
Yeah, where was satisfied being the odd person out touch X 101, we haven't heard from you guys yet. And sorry to be hogging the microphone.
No, I'm just enjoying listening because you're hitting all the points I would be hitting all I can say is I really enjoyed it.
It was, was more up your alley than mine. Oh, I found that I kind of have a low barrier to being entertained. So I have to really not like something to not get into it.
So that's not really a good judge of it. Okay, touch. I will say I was consistently surprised by how much I liked it when we kind of went through the synopsis last time when Michael was telling us about it.
I was like, maybe, and then I started listening to it. And I was like, maybe. And then it just consistently kept up in its game a little bit and he kept me interested in and to by the end of it, I really, really liked it. I think it's a good story.
There are parts that are really predictable, but I still liked it a lot.
I will say it's a little slow to start, but what worth it?
For me, it took a few chapters to grow on me and said, well, you know, this, this first few chapters said, well, this isn't my cup of tea, but I'll listen to it as my duty to the, to the podcast because some people have different.
But, you know, by halfway through, I was interested in knowing how it came out. Now, we should add to the fittings. There is a large minority of people's planet that are known as retros and they're people who believe in only monogamous relationships. It's not really.
Only on the surface that they believe in monogamy, they just didn't like the match or they, they felt that it was controlling people in there.
I don't think it's ruining the plot to bring them up so it's fair, but yeah, they, they thought it was an alien or an alien entity or something that was control on the folks.
But yeah, you learn they're not strictly about monotony and they just, they just kind of wear that mask, so to speak.
Okay, I think you just made a pretty big, uh, uh, Freudian slip. You said, you said they're not strictly about monotony.
Oh, I might have. No, I didn't think the book was monotonous. That was not Freudian.
The point I was going to make is that I don't think there's so much focused on the monogamy, though, that is one of the points they make as they see the match or is taking away free will.
Yeah, that's the, that's the thing they're concerned with. Yeah, they, they use, they kind of hid behind monogamy.
That was one of their tenants. It seemed early on, but they're, you know, they were pretty hypocritical.
And really, you know, uh, they do have a point.
I mean, what, what kind of bigger decision are you going to make in your, in your life on who you're expected to spin entirety of the rest of it with?
Uh, uh, yeah, as, as kept wording out, you know, just because you have freedom of choice doesn't necessarily mean you're going to have a good outcome.
I agree with you there. And I will go so far as to say that that's why the book felt so slow to get started for me is because for at least the first, I don't know, maybe, maybe six chapters.
I was on the, I was on the retro side. I thought they were right in this, you know, everything about the, the match or sounded wrong to me and, you know, right down to them wearing arm bands.
Like we've seen how arm bands work, you know, yeah, I thought it was cut.
It was kind of a little strange. I mean, you, you had these, uh, affinity guilds where you, you grew together, not necessarily politely, but look economically.
I mean, all the, all the quints hung together and had a guild to carry their welfare of general for somebody was none on their luck. And, you know, and all the triads, people, the group of three had their guild.
Somehow, it wasn't terribly well played. I think they, they may have talked about how the various affinent groups, then that sold partially determines the type of work you would want to do as well.
But it's never really explained why you, people were grouped together by the number, by the number of people they lived with.
Oh, you know, and, but this, this book was very, very political because the political structure, you know, is democracy that had equivalent to, you know, city government and state or territorial government.
And then each territory, you know, would elect one representative in the 12 territories, you know, 12 member ruling council council of elders.
And, um, and also, does anybody think elderberry was it meant to be from the beginning?
Was meant to be what?
Well, they didn't refer to them this way, but halfway through the book, she could marry every time she referred to him, she called him elderberry.
You know, I never put that together until just now.
Never caught on.
I needed a thousand.
Now, I just want to point out one thing you said there, 50 that was a big point of contention.
You said it's a democracy, but it was a representative democracy, not a straight democracy.
And the difference in how those function is kind of critical to the politics in this book.
Yeah, yeah, you're right.
All right, because from, you know, one of the antagonists is the, is the elder from district one, Max Barry.
And, uh, you know, he, he's your old style style, dirty, you know, smoke filled room type politician.
You know, he's, he's working out deals politically that are, you know, to, to serve his own interests and not the interest of his constituents.
And well, one of the things they've done is originally in the match are would pick the soul from a group of people.
When, when the old solo died, you, you know, if he picked as a solo, you're solo to die.
But they keep picking old part of that is because at, as a solo, you're supposed to, you're, you're no longer part of an affinity group.
So they're picking people usually who, you know, I mean, their affinity group is passed on, which means they're of a certain age themselves.
So they don't last more than three or four years.
But how they, how they, how they've been rigging the vote, the elder council for the past, you know, several decades has been, they've, they've only been one person to the match.
At a time to be solo. So they're actually picking the solo rather than the, the match early in the vice, picking the solo for them.
And then doing this in the early in the book, they, the old solo dies and they have to, they have to pick a new one.
Max Barry picks one. It is just completely in his pocket and has agreed to do things like actually put the, put people together in an affinity groups other, other than what the match choose.
So they have them send it. At one point in the book, they send them in with the Marais list to make all those choosings and then with the match or choose everybody else.
You know, he's, Max Barry, he's a dirty politician and he's, he's not a, not above actually had somebody killed, which is this is this part on the book.
I mean, getting close to spoilers here 50. Okay. Well, that was fairly in the book.
Oh, don't worry. We're going to get back to him when we get to the spoiler part for sure.
You guys know who Billy Balger was. Do you guys remember him?
I can't say that I do. Is that the gangster dude in Boston?
It was the gangster dude in Boston's brother. The gangster dude was whitey balger. Billy was the corrupt politician who protected whitey for so long.
And, and just ran Boston kind of into the ground with, with, you know, people that he controlled and he had put in place, but he, he made me think of Billy Balger.
Wait, there's a difference between gangsters and politicians.
Oh, no, he didn't. It's subtle. He got to look close.
Okay. The protagonist in our story and he'll be a spoiler just to say to her, why they become important to the story.
But the main protagonist, Stella, and she has a twin sister, Amber, and two others and a mother.
The story kind of revolves in the beginning around, around this family.
And both sisters are, you know, preparing, well, in time and space, from the time book begins, it's about six months.
They're there, pretend, you know, preparing to go to the matchroom and out there, finishing and go off in the world.
The other protagonist is, is Jersey. He's a captain in the, was it this starskits?
And it's, it's, it's a, is a branch of the Galactic Terry and they say early in the book that, you know, they don't, the galaxy does not have.
This is a galaxy. It hasn't, they haven't found aliens, you know, all, all human.
But there is a standing army, but it's apparently not a very big one.
And they just really don't have the, that's the where we'll fall to really enforce, you know, rules on individual planets.
They do it economically. I mean, if you play nice and you don't, you have, you have a rep of democracy for a government, then you can eventually apply for different levels of membership.
It's not the commonwealth and something close to that, but until, until you, you know, until you finally get full membership and they, they kind of keep them under control. Well, if you're not a full member, then you have important export tariffs.
And if you're really out, if you're really not playing nice, you get a lot, get a lot higher tariffs.
And really, this is a future where there's most places, there's not much crime at all.
But Novi has been identified as an anomaly, a lot less crime, or, you know, at least statistically, they've, they have at least a little bit less crime than everybody else.
And they dispatched, well, Jersey's a guy who had been caught by a terrorist dictator in his previous assignment had been tortured.
And then you find that first thing in the book. And really his, his bosses are wanting to find an excuse to cashier amount. Well, I shouldn't cash him.
You get him to take a medical desk discharge and retire. And at the beginning of the book, all he wants to do is stay in the military.
So he takes this not very prestigious assignment that they give him to go to this peaceful colony and find out for him why it's so peaceful.
So he's not, he doesn't necessarily need to go undercover, but he's not advertising to everybody what is mission it.
I'm realizing that I found the setup of the story, the first few chapters where all that was laid out to be more interesting than the plot itself.
Well, I think we're going to have a real trouble. It, you know, identify where is the, where is the part where the spoiler starts. So I said, part of the story is about, well, part of it is telling his backstory.
And so he's still in traveling space from the stories.
And, but he gets there, you know, a couple before the matching and finds the previous guy who had had his own world tactics guide, also been a star scout and had pretty much gone.
And on to retire and go watch, I guess he had this after that, but when he, when he, when he retired from the military, he went back to Novy and went through the matching and is pretty much gone on native as far as Jersey can tell.
So he's not, he's not sure how, how she can rely on him, but he's the first person to really answer a lot of Jersey's questions and the audience's questions as is often the vehicle used by science fiction.
You always have science fiction almost almost always have have the other outside so that in the story. So by, you know, somebody explaining to him how this society works. And the, the, the listener, the reader well learns.
Yeah, I found that fairly common device fairly well used here.
Like I said earlier, you, you go through the first few chapters, you really don't know exactly what is the deal with these affinities and what they mean and et cetera. So it's as a lot of his as Jersey learns and as, you know, just conversations, people have people have in the book.
That about third of the way through you've got a pretty good idea how this society is set up.
It seems to me like the author, you know, tried to keep most of what was really going on in mystery until, you know, towards the end.
And she saved it up for the big reveal, which I don't want to get into just yet. Of course, because we're not in the spoiler section. But if she was trying to make it a mystery, I don't think that worked. This didn't feel like a mystery to me. Did it to you guys.
I kind of trying to do this stuff, boiling it. I think the ending was telegraphed pretty early, kind of found myself thinking once I knew what the end game was going to be.
I was like, I bet, I bet this is what's going to happen. Turn it on. It was right. It was still satisfying. I wasn't like a shock. I already knew. So it wasn't like a mystery in that fact. If you guess the mystery, you're kind of either disappointed or, you know, just have a really big ego and think you're awesome.
So, I mean, it's not. It wasn't that. It was more. Oh, of course this happens.
Most of the time when in those cases where what's going to happen is fairly plain. It's the how and the why that is the meat of the story.
Yeah, and I think that part was done well, or at least it was interesting. I was interested in how it was going to play out because I had bought into the whole idea of that culture.
So that kept me interested in it.
I get one of the other conflicts. More of a minor conflict. And I don't know if given the impression everybody on the elder council is
necessarily a crook. They certainly all have their own interests. And the main rival roof and the councils between elderberry and what were named the leader of the other faction.
Yeah, I didn't think that the author went real deep with that relationship, not as deep as she could have. That's getting into a spoiler. I don't want to get into. How about we have a drink? Let's do some drink.
What do you guys think? Ready for that? I second this.
Yeah, I think we're going to have difficulty much farther if I'm getting into spoilers. I will go get my beer.
Okay. Well, I've got mine sitting beside me. So I'll go ahead and start. Oh, you're last fall. I attended a party in front of his friend of his.
I did a little comb distilling and you know, I was friends in in in canning jars and all that, you know, and it had wonderful flavor.
I tried to try some of the root beer and some of the peach. You know, you know, I had all kinds of flavors. And you know, for for stuff that didn't come through the government store. I mean, this is the smoothest alcohol I drank.
I mean, the root beer is just like drinking a root beer except could tell, you know, you have a whole lot of this. You're going, you're going to wind up sitting right on your tailbone.
So I've tried and some of the similar stuff has been shown up the last year in liquor stores and a lot of its flavored with various things.
I had some peach the other day. It was not nearly so smooth as what I'd had that was homemade. So I knew we're going to do this tonight. So I went by this is a different brand.
This is junior Johnson's midnight moonshine or midnight moon. It's got on the label. It's got a picture of a like a Ford Ford coupe.
I was going to ask if that was junior Johnson the race car driver. And yeah, that makes sense.
Yeah, I expect they've probably licensed his name. And you know, it looks to come to about three flavors. One of one of them is just the moonshine.
And there's two other flavors and they've infused fruits. I don't know if they put syrup or anything like that in there as well.
But if you look in the bottom of this bottle, I got the strawberry version. There's just strawberry sunk in the bottom of the bottle or the bottom of the jar, rather. If you see one of these, it's going to be in a jar.
And the other the other flavor one has cherries into the strawberries. And actually, I've waited till just now to try this.
But I did get the lid loose, which wouldn't have a trouble earlier. And this is, it's just as the most wonderful strawberry now. So I'll pour some in a glass.
It's surprising, not deep red like I expected. It's sort of a very light pink. And so we'll actually try some of it.
It's not bad. Not as good as the homemade stuff I had, I had, but it's, you know, smoother than the brand I had the other day.
All these things to run about similar price, I think $22 for 750 milliliter.
So that's, that's a little pricey, but it's nothing like a single malt scotch.
So if you want something that goes down pretty good, tastes pretty good. I recommend you try this junior Johnson.
Cool, cool. Don't forget to put your link to that and maybe a brief description in the show notes 50 on the ether pad.
Oh, thanks for reminding me. Yeah.
Yeah, that sounds good. I had some moon shine type liquor. They're becoming popular in the last couple of years. My buddy had some a couple of years ago.
And it was really good. I thought when it was right out of the bottle, but after it sat for a couple of months, it got bad. It was not even drinkable.
It's a little hard to pour out spills a little bit, at least bottles full.
Oh, yeah, with the mason jar that is kind of ridiculous.
That's one thing. This other brand I tried. I think it's old American or something like that, but it had mason jar lid didn't have stopped the center of it.
Not a bad idea if you're going to serve your liquor in a mason jar. I think, I think the idea is, they think you're going to drink right out of the jar.
Yeah, but if I was a true southerner, like you've accused me of, I'm sure I would do that, but I'm using a glass.
Oh, I did, I did mean to mention if you guys now that I temporarily have cable every once in a while, like I come across one of these real moonshine or shows, which still I don't know how they get away with.
Yeah, we're a film you breaking the wall and put that on the air. So I don't know how that works.
Maybe it's a, maybe it's only a breaking wall. I'm selling it. But, and you know, these guys are out in the woods of rifles and all that drunk off their tail while they're making it sometimes last episode I saw they were coming.
Oh, we're, you know, we've all this fake moonshine on the market, you know, off end here, he's got a, he's got a production license. Now, how does a known moonshine or get a production license?
But be that as it may and, you know, and he's going in the production and it's going to blow these things off the market.
Yeah, when I see those shows, I usually suspect that it's not, not nearly as illegal as they talk it up to be, you know.
Right, because these guys out here, you know, five powered rifles and shotguns. Oh, you know, we may not see the sheriff.
Well, you know, you think film crews going to stand there and film shooting at cops. I don't think so. Okay, who else has a libation?
I do. I have a lovely Harpoon IPA, which is a New England style IPA. I see Harpoon a lot. Yeah, so do I. I don't know if I had it before this six pack, but I really like it.
It pours very, very light, which is unusual for most of the stuff that I drink. No head, very little lacing.
I think the ones I have are too cold because I'm not getting a lot of the, the hoppy, the citrus and the, the bite to it.
So I'll have to let it sit a little bit and get a little less cold because I would, I had it in the, the free refrigerator, which is outside.
Ah, free, free, free. I don't know. It's got to be a pun for that. What do you mean by lacing with me?
You didn't even sprinkle PCP into this time. No, as I, as I drink it, there's nothing. There's no head or foam left on the glass. It's pretty clean.
Oh, okay, me. I didn't know that that was the thing.
Yeah, and it's usually a pretty good indicator of the amount of alcohol in the beer that the higher alcohol percentage the lacing you'll have.
Oh, it's just the opposite with wine with wine when you swirl it around. If it clings to the side of the glass, that means it's got more sugar and alcohol in it.
Well, as it happens, I was drinking a new before I opened this. I was drinking new Belgium slow ride session IPA. It's by session. It means it's, it's a low enough in alcohol that you can, you can drink a bunch of them without falling off your bar stool.
Yeah, that's what's 4.5 cents. That's not, that's, that's neither really low or really high highway.
That's fairly typical in the high fours low fives is kind of where the session stuff tends to be.
I said, I prefer a, a, an IPA. I mean, I'm not that big on hoppy beers, but what I do, I like one that has other flavors and it really, I don't, it's not, it's not horribly hoppy.
It's not one of those. My hops can beat up your hops beers, but there really isn't much there. It's the hops.
And I'm looking at definition online as session IP. It says it should be a little more, it should be more, if it's going to call itself a session.
This is a really good, thirst quenching beer. This is what we call long mower beer, I would say 50 if you're going to do two beers, you got to do it twice the show notes.
Well, actually, I plan to put one of my, one of my beers, but yeah, kids out there saying, no, turn each one into a different episode.
The session one that I've had that's been the best has been founders. I have an all day IPA that's just fantastic.
Yeah, you guys go again with your IPAs, I think. I don't know, I feel alienated, not by you, but just by myself that I don't like IPAs, I don't like super hoppy beers.
I wish I did because there's four IPAs to every one beer that isn't IPA in every grocer's refrigerator that I see.
I think you and I need to trade places because at this point, I have a hard time finding an IPA that's not one of the couple mainstream ones or one I haven't had a dozen times before.
Oh, man, we've got a pretty good selection of IPAs. Yeah, I, you know, I prefer more multi beer myself most of the time. When I see something I haven't had, I always try it.
Yeah, I'm with you there. I like multi or creamy or, you know, chewy beers more than more than the hoppy beers.
I don't like too sweet, which is hard to find a beer that's multi without being real sweet.
Two years ago, I would have agreed with you completely. I thought IPAs tasted mostly like feet, and I don't know what changed, but now the my hops can beat up your hops is kind of what I'm looking for.
I would not be surprised to find that there's a beer named my hops can beat up your hops.
Yeah, you would really like X 1101 that the tall grass 8-bit ale. I don't that's probably not available in your area. It's more, more local here in Kansas.
Well, 50, the one thing you should avoid is anything that's IPA from stone brewery. You're not going to like it. It's very hoppy and very mean tasting.
Do you guys have the shoots out there? I'm probably not pronouncing correctly. I believe they're out of Colorado almost all their stuff tends toward the hoppy.
Not that I've seen. Well, Todd, do you have a libation?
Well, it's everybody probably noticed. I'm in the process of losing my voice because of a cold. So what I'm drinking tonight is some throat tea with lemon squeezed into it and some honey.
Just so I have a voice to get to this.
You are missing a key ingredient there, sir. Something tells me it has alcohol involved.
It's not just because that's the trend. It's a drink my father always used to make for me as a sore throat remedy. They call it a hot tea. It's hot tea lemon, honey and whiskey.
Yeah, it's on that. You can do brandy if you don't like whiskey. Actually, if I was going to drink anything, it would probably be whiskey.
I mean, it's right there.
True, true, so true.
Well, mine's almost boring because this might be the third show in a row where I've got a smuddy nose.
As I said before, they're quickly becoming my favorite brewery. This one's a robust porter. Go get some. It's fantastic.
So, but instead of reviewing that and giving a full review, because it's a porter, it's robust.
It's everything it says it is and it's fantastic. Other than doing that, I'd like to review a product if you guys don't mind as long as they're not paying you.
No, they're not paying me. Good enough. So, I bought a spider co triangle sharp maker, which is a knife sharpener.
And that thing is fantastic. It's a little kind of block thing and you put a couple of guards on it so you don't cut your hand off if you slip.
And it comes with different, they're like real high tech ceramic stones. I think they said they were ruby like or garnet like in their hardness and texture.
And they seem really super smooth, but it's genius because they're triangles.
You set them in this block with the point facing in and it creates a little point of high pressure even though it's not all that rough and it does a very quick job of grind in the metal down to sharpen the knife.
And then when you're done with that step, the next step is to take the exact same stone and turn it so that your sharpening on the flat, which reduces that pressure and it grinds much slower and gets it much smoother.
And it comes with two sets of stones so that gives you four steps of sharpening. And now it does a really quick job of making a sharp a knife literally razor sharp. I mean, I, I test a knife by, you know, shaving hairs off my arm. And I, it's been able to do that with every knife that I've tried on it yet really, really fantastic product does excellent, excellent job.
I was telling a guy a work about it and he asked me if I would sharpen his pocket knife. So I brought the thing in and I was able to sharpen his pocket knife literally to a hair splitting razor in our 10 minute break period. And it was it's worth every penny I paid for it. It's a little expensive.
I think it's probably six years, 70 bucks, but it was worth every penny. I've got every knife in my house razor sharp now.
I made you to get one of those because I've got my two everyday carrying knives that are just well, dull.
Yeah, Poke, make sure you put that in the show notes. So like what I need for well, often fire, I lost all my knives and I bought buck 845. It's a folding knife. And it's it's I think the best folding knife I've ever had. I can't remember too much, but it's time I renew the edge on it.
Can you say again with the knife is buck 845. Oh, right on. Okay. Yeah, that sharpener is one of my favorite sharpeners. I use I use that constantly one like pro tip.
If you look around Lansky sells these they look like little sponges. They kind of feel like sponges too. They're these eraser blocks. And if you if you use your sharpening stones too much, they'll get the middle shape.
So get kind of crushed it up on it. You take this little racer and you just whack it down the side of the rods and it just cleans all that off. And it's like brand new. And I think they're like two or three bucks to buy one. That's totally awesome purchase.
So it's a sharpener for your sharpener. It's more like a cleaning utensil for your sharpener.
That's a really good tip. Yeah, that's what you would use. And I bet I have something that would work just the same, but you can buy these giant erasers that are like that for cleaning out grinding wheels. And I bet it's the exact same thing, but you can also throw the stones in the dishwasher to clean the metal out of them too.
I'm always scared to do that because I'm afraid that you know it might dumb luck something will fall on it and crack them. So I've been doing this because I I sharpened eyes a lot. It's like my zen. So I wind up cleaning it constantly and it works. I have a Lansky ceramic rods set for like kitchen knives.
And it works for that too. So anything that has kind of like the ceramic rod systems are even just like regular stones. If you if you dry sharpen, it's it's great.
Yeah, for sure. And I already here's since we're doing with the pro tips. I'll give you two pro tips on this thing.
The first is that I bought an extra set because it comes with medium and fine stones and I bought a set of extra fine stones for this one or triangle rods and a really stone.
I bought a set of extra fine and they are utterly useless. The knife is so sharp after using the fine stones.
You absolutely don't need the extra fines. I mean it is it is shaving sharp. And all I've been able to do with the extra fine stones is put a burr on the knife that I then have to strap off of it.
Yeah, it's once once you get the metal gets so thin there's no way for it not to roll over. So exactly you get to a point where you sharpened to dullness and it's got full circle.
Yeah, exactly. And then you can stop it and it brings it right back. But yeah, the extra fine stones I they're useless don't spend the extra I don't know, I think was 30 bucks. I spent on those and I haven't found a use form and the other pro tip. I'll give you this knife sharpener comes with a video.
Fantastic videos about 45 minutes long and it is worth 45 minutes of your time to learn how to use this knife sharpener correctly because you can sharpen anything with it.
They show you how to do you know straight blades rated blades straight edge razors, axes. I mean you name it fingernail clippers, potato peelers, they took to sharpen everything.
But what the guy says at the beginning, he says is that the stones kind of come out of the factory with a little bit of a glaze on him.
And he said eventually the knife will break the glaze, but if you want to do that quicker, you can rub the stones against each other.
And the pro tip is do not rub the stones each other in a way that you're you're rubbing the same point because I cut deep grooves into not super deep, but you can feel them and soak in the knife.
I cut grooves into the two rough stones of mine, which renders one point and two sides of each stone utterly useless. So don't do that.
Yeah, I'll second that that that system is my everyday carry now is a folder, but it's like a modified mini cookery style blade.
So it's got the big belly on it. It's the only thing I have that will sharpen it consistently sharp across all the angles on it.
So I mean, it's if you like weird blade geometries and stuff, it's definitely the sharpener to get for that.
Yeah, I will say the, you know, I was able to put a quick edge on the guy at work on his knife, but when he pulled it out, it was a folding knife.
And I forget who he said made it. It had a snap on brand on it, but he said it wasn't made by snap on. It's made by a well regarded knife maker, but it was a curved blade with a drop point.
Like a drastically dropped point and the blade when I was sharp and it run it down the sharpener, it felt like a consistent radius in it.
It almost felt like I mean, the knife was big folded up, but it felt like someone made a folding I think it's pronounced Ulu the the Eskimo blades.
It just you know, it had a point to it, but it's not a point that has that serves any purpose.
And wow, was that thing easy to sharpen? It's easiest knife I've ever sharpened.
Yeah, that's a curchelle knife. I saw that for where I saw it, but yeah, it looks pretty wicked.
Yeah, if you want to learn how to show, if you've never sharpened a knife before and you want to learn how to sharpen a knife and feel like you're a pro your first time, get get a knife with that shape and get this system.
And you will be a pro and at least at that knife, you'll be a pro very quickly.
I've got a couple of curbers that I carry, switch back and forth with.
One's a spring, it's lock and then spring assist and the other's a para body that one of those is in my pocket if I am not in my house.
Yeah, I carry a tiny little knife that's got maybe like an inch and a half blade and it's a spring assisted opening.
So it just pops open with one hand and it's just cheap and Chinese, but it seems to hold an edge fairly well and it was like $2.
So I bought a dozen of them and I don't care if I lose it even though I haven't lost it.
The other thing that I like about this, the spider coat triangle sharp maker as it is branded.
It's fairly lightweight and I wouldn't mind carrying this if I was going camping.
This is, I mean, it's a little heavier than what you would probably want to carry camping.
But you know, I would not hesitate to take it with me if I was going on like a long hike and I was going to be away from roofs for a while.
I wouldn't mind taking this.
That's it.
I think all I have to say about the sharp maker, the knife sharpener.
So all right, spoilers guys.
What did you, what did you think about the plot and all that?
Well, you know, certainly got somewhat exciting.
I mean, this is not a big action book, but it's a nice little study of how society might felt differently in nature.
And I'm saying, perhaps the author has it by us that for, you know, in a communal living may be preferable to, you know, to two people living in the dog.
I mean, like I said, usually it seemed like they didn't, they didn't go in that much detail.
It seemed like most people settled down into one on one sexual partners, even though they were in a multi group of the group was more for it.
Taking, taking care of the kids like it takes a village.
I thought it was interesting that the way because even they even they joke in the book about like it's not always an orgy.
But the circuitry is interested in that and that's not what it is.
The fact that they are able to inside these affinity groups separate out emotional relationships from sexual relationships.
Those two things can coexist in in the same person or persons or they don't have to.
You can have an emotional partner and you can have a sexual partner and they can be totally totally different things, but they are within your group.
And so that's just an interesting like way of looking at it.
That's just something that's so foreign to our way that we do now.
Well, a perfect example.
This is definitely a spoiler.
Stella's family triad.
We'll explain later how Stella becomes a major character in their society, but because of conflict with the retro.
So you know, the retro's have been doing minor acts of terrorism against the ads.
Against the affinity groups.
And early in the book.
Stella's family and George the head of the retro's there for Ambrose George Ambrose.
Their families have a you know conflict when the kids and the kid didn't necessarily stay all the.
Retros are like this, but certainly the majority.
They're completely ignoring the population caps that are, you know, set to try to keep a balance so that they don't to at strip their ability to feed themselves.
That's one thing where I might have a brief to retro's he didn't complete.
I'm pretty much set in stone.
Reality that if you have too many people, you're not you're not going to feed yourselves on this little settlement where they took things kind of.
Better run in.
We're on their home.
Stella their sister and Angie Amber.
The kids from the younger children from the Ambrose family who they are just you know, not very well acquainted with.
They pick up rocks and throw them.
I think it's Amber gets hit, which is strange to see the one who goes into the retro's.
I can't remember now with which one, but actually he gives her stitches puts her in the hospital for a day.
You know, given caution.
And there's a trial on this and it's just this kids being kids, you know, definitely there's this.
Amosity between the groups behind this, but this this this is early in the story later in the story.
The Ambrose move move away from after this incident from Danor, the town where Stella and Amber family live.
But it's it's shown at the end of the book.
They were instrumental in organizing a fire in the family.
And the two fathers, one of them has was Rob runs the.
Their binary and his Edward is a scholar historian.
Maybe I'm getting that backwards, but now I am getting that back.
Robert's historian Edward runs the family one.
And so Robert has a office.
The room left in the house, though.
Ebergism office.
The attic of the refinery and their refinery, the winery.
And the retro's come by and they set it on fire.
They've been they've been doing our son and, you know, some, some major crimes and some less crimes trying to terrorize the affinity groups.
And it is that it, you know, was not an intended murder.
They'd expect anybody to be in there.
But of course, Robert runs up to save all his research.
So he's throwing all the original books from the colony that haven't been replicated digitally out the window.
And Edward goes up to save him.
Finally, you know, they're both trying to get books, but it's obvious they're not going to get out.
So Ed tosses Robert out the window.
And he falls and breaks his leg.
And before Edward can get out, the whole winery collapses on him.
You know, he's, he's killed in the fire.
I guess what I was getting at is what's known in the book is the pro.
And he's be quite fairly late in the book.
You learn that, you know, Edward was by.
So, you know, and Robert's gay.
And the Stella's mother, she, she's strict.
So even though there's these two people left in the trot, two people left from the triad,
they have no physical relationship between them.
So that's sort of, you know, that's sort of theme of the book that, you know, when you,
these affinities are great, but it really gets messed up when you lose somebody out of these affinities.
I don't think it necessarily meant that the one guy was by and the other guy was gay.
It just that their friendship was that close.
I don't, I didn't say specifically it was a sexual relationship.
So I, I don't know, I didn't make that lead to just assume that it was.
I figured it might be, but it might not be just the same.
No, I think they made that pretty, pretty plain actually.
No, I'm with Pokey. I think that they did not make that plain.
They could very well have been a non physical relationship.
I mean, they said it was always the two guys, but they didn't say that it was a physical relationship at all.
Okay, I read that differently.
I don't, I, you're right.
They didn't come out and say it, but I don't think they could, I don't think they all could have implied it more strongly.
Well, I mean, and there's this thing where I, and I'm thinking specifically of Max.
They even say that once his affinity was broken, his connection was to the other man.
And it doesn't say whether it's sexual or emotional.
To me, I imagine it's emotional that once that partner died, you could see him just kind of going down the dark path where he wound up.
That even the other people in his affinity are just looking at him like, what, what is this? What are you?
Right. And I, you know, I, I don't think this whole affinity thing would work if just one, you know, somebody was always the odd man out, odd woman out.
And in the affinity as far sexually, because we, we see how, you know, it affects.
And this, this is a big reveal.
And we probably ought to get into this next style becomes the solo at 20 years old.
And or it's been fine, you know, it's been old man, old men in their 60s who don't, you know, for years who don't have much time after all women that there was, you know, they mentioned female solos.
But, you know, it's always been people who are sort of past.
They're, they're age of sexuality, not, not to insult people who are 60, who might be listing, because I'm only 10 years away from that.
But, you know, but she, you know, the way he is so emotionally broken up that she is looking, she's only 20.
She thinks that she's looking at the rest of her life without a physical partner, you know, and that, you know, that's one of the main things that really affects her emotionally.
When she becomes a solo.
So, yeah, I think with, with that amount of importance, the authoring on that, I think you would be looking at a really brilliant society that you're put into one of these groups.
And if you don't have a partner of your orientation, that's just the odd man for the rest of your life.
Because everybody, you know, everybody, most, or at least the huge majority of people, they're put into an event about 1920.
And so, yeah, I think if the match are constantly making relationships where a person's not going to have a sexual partner that I don't think people would be very happy with this system.
Well, I mean, they're examples in our own culture of people who choose celibacy.
So, I mean, I'm sure that they're something similar in their culture, but it seems like the matcher does a fairly good job.
Nobody complains about their identities to only when somebody's gone that was supposed to be there that any of the problems even begin.
So, I mean, it seems like in the past before Stella, it was kind of not a thing that they would break the affinities and build new ones.
But when she does it, they're like, oh, okay, and it fixes problems.
So, maybe that's just another thing that they're adding that would make it work better.
Yeah, but yes, it just works, but you can't see how it works.
And you can't look into the thing or figure it out.
This was like a society set up by Steve Jobs.
Well, one thing that they did say, I completely agree with you.
Let me start by saying it completely, agree with you.
But the one thing they did say was that once the matcher put them in these affinities, they felt like they found the people they should have found anyway.
It just sped that up.
But there's no way to tell for sure, because as they say later, you can't take the same people and both send them to the matcher and not send them to the matcher and see if things turn out the same.
Yes, and no.
Okay, now while I liked the story, and I kept listening to hear what was going on, and I would have finished this one even if it wasn't an audiobook club book.
I did have a lot of problems with the story, and that was one of them, where I'm trying to relate to these people in this lifestyle that is foreign to my experiences.
And the only thread that I can grasp on to is that it works, you know, so why mess with it?
But then later on in the book, the later you get, the more you find out that, well, it's only barely working because the other solos weren't really that good at their job, so it could work a lot better.
So then it doesn't just work, so which one is it?
And that was one of the issues I had with this story that would take me out of the story and make it less believable and less suspension and disbelief.
Well, see, I think that it does work, but the way that Stella does it works better.
So it wasn't broken before, but it also wasn't the best it could be.
Well, yeah, I get that, but so does that mean that there's really one person out there for you?
Or well, it could be one person or a different person.
I mean, and I know what you're saying, where there's, okay, well, maybe it's four people, maybe there's four people out there for you.
But maybe now it's four different people, and they would have been the better ones, which means that these people using the match are where wrong to begin with.
So I just really kind of took me out of it again.
Well, but the thing that with Stella's was it wasn't necessarily different matches.
It was bigger matches.
So, you know, where an older solo would have seen, oh, well, these three people go together.
Well, but those three people would actually work better as a subset of these five people to make a stronger affinity that works better.
Without interfering on any of the interrelations internally.
Well, I mean, there you can see how, I mean, if X and Y were a pretty good Z or that the matcher is going to, you know, select X and Z, which leaves Y out in the cold.
But, you know, and depending on, you know, personalities, why might not have been comfortable, you know, in a multiple relationships.
So those are the people that the matcher puts and puts in the duos.
Why gets with R or something, which is maybe not the optimal, what the best choice.
But overall, everything it is the best choice, but they're, you know, they're, and this is one of conflicts when Stella solo, we haven't really talked about how or why that she does no duos.
And it's because it seems like the matcher is of the opinion that, you know, these multiple relationships are inherently stronger than a one-on-one relationship.
I kind of question the fact that the, the matcher is constantly referred to as a machine.
Maybe because she is obviously the youngest solo that they've ever picked or has ever been picked because everybody else was picked by people basically.
How much of it was, because there is a connection between her, how much of it was maybe the computer was like, oh, this is new, and this is a new parameter.
And maybe I can integrate this into what I'm already doing or even the matcher had a connection to two people this time, not just the solo, but the jersey, which is a terrible name.
They should have come up with something better than that.
And how much did that connection manipulate the program you already had to give it new possibilities that it didn't have before?
Well, I see the matcher as sort of a kin to our track's guardian of forever when Kirk asked, are you being or machine and it, it, it tells him I am both in there.
So this is, you know, this is, this is alien stuff completely outside our kin.
And we have a brought up so people won't be fused.
Now halfway through the book, that was going to her matching Amber because she was attracted to was a Julian that was George Ambrose's son.
She's done this act of rebellion and gone away to be a retro and has married has married Julian. So this is, this is a huge thanks to her sister, you know, for heart and emotional turmoil.
So Stella is going there for a friend and part of it is, and this is strange if there are twin sisters, they should have been born the same day.
However, there, there is something in there about, you know, Amber would have been eligible to go year four because she was older than Stella.
That doesn't make sense. It seems to me like maybe something got written and then and get propagated all the way through the, after the storyline.
But so Stella goes to the matching and the old matcher died or well, the recently selected matcher and I'm sorry, the recently selected solo who was put in place by Elderberry.
He has a massive coronary right to be in the man. And since there have been previously evidence that the matcher can reach out and kill people who are threat or at least mess them up earlier in the story, five retro's tried to blow the matcher up with with industrial explosives, because there's no weapons on on these columns.
And before they could get to it, the matcher reached out and broke their minds in various ways. That's one plot point in the story.
So I'm surprised that nobody ever had the idea because this matcher, sorry, the solo had been manipulated by Elder to ignore what the matcher was telling him.
And you know, create his own list of affidities that benefit Max Berry politically that, you know, that he wasn't that he wasn't killed by the matcher there than just natural causes.
But as a story goes, you know, the matcher would normal pick a new solo from the candidates, you know, who would, you know, people would physically march down and get close to the matcher in this amphitheater.
And at this time there were, since it was, since it was the matching, you had thousands of people in this amphitheater. And of all those people, the matcher picked Stella Sen to be the new solo.
So now we know why she was important to this door from the beginning. But connection to the matcher was so strong, she needed an anchor of some sort or another conduit.
It's creating more bandwidth. You know, there's so much bandwidth she couldn't take it all. So the matcher picks Jersey, the, you know, the space scout who has decided like, you know, his predecessor, which went native that he can't really finish his report without getting a matcher band and being matched.
Though, he's, you know, for, it seems like his pride priorities, just in a few months have completely changed. I mean, when he got to the planet, his only priority was to accomplish this mission and continue the service. And he's doing something here where he knows, unless he just, he may think at the time he goes down in there, he just ignore the affinity and leave those predecessors.
Obviously, you know, shows that you don't, you just don't do that. But he is, you know, he's selected to be sort of her anchor in the storm and add, you know, add his support, though she doesn't realize it at the time that the matcher selects him to, you know, as a second conduit for his power.
So, and that's how she's a matcher at the end. Her, her bright bracelet turns red. Each, each of the identity bracelets turn a different color depending on, you know, which affinity.
You know, I don't know if we've mentioned that like was triads green something like that. So, so this is one of the major turning points.
So, Stella becomes the solo max max is horrified and pretty much kidnap certain wister way to the capital, which is called first.
And then Jersey, he's left nobody knows about him in Stella, but he has this psychic link to her that, you know, he, he's got like a compass. So, he always knows which direction to go to get to her. He all he knows is he has to get to her.
I'm glad you brought up the whole Stella becoming the solo thing because it reminded me of the worst line and the entire book.
Um, I think I audibly groaned and I forget who says it, but it's something like she must have been the person who wanted it the most in the whole.
The amphitheater and in my head, I was like, that's almost as bad as like episode three. Queen Amidala died from a broken heart.
Take a drink, by the way.
Gladly.
Yeah, I think with the elderberry joke got surprised there wasn't a Han Solo joke in their someplace.
I think his name was pronounced Barry with an A, but maybe that's why we all didn't catch it.
Now, see, I kept getting taken out of this story as much as I wanted to hear where it went and how it finished.
It, there were a few parts that, you know, kind of made me groan.
And I think that boy, I don't want to sound too critical though.
I'm going to be critical here. So I mean, where do I start?
First thing, I guess I'll start with maybe some of the terminology where it really threw me just as an example because it happened later on in the book,
but it was really pronounced in my mind is when all the hostages were taken.
They went up to the matcher and they were all carrying glow sticks to see with.
They're just flashlights. Why doesn't the author just call them flashlights?
She goes on glow sticks as if there's some, you know, who now it's sci-fi because it's not called a flashlight anymore.
I mean, either it was a flashlight or it was a torch or not a torch, excuse me, a lantern.
You know, that's all you'd really want if you were walking in nobody's holding, you know, sticks that glow, that's just a lantern.
You know what I mean? And that kind of thing takes me out of a sci-fi story where they throw that in just, it seems, it feels like they throw it in just to make it sci-fi because this really isn't a very sci-fi story,
except that there's glow sticks and flying cars and the alien computer.
I'll stop for now. I'll get back because there's a few more, but I'll stop for now to hear what you guys have to say.
No, I took glow sticks, literally glow sticks like we have now that you take it out of the package and you crack the thing and there's the chemical reaction and you get a dim amount of lot as long as the chemical reaction is going on.
I mean, this is one of the, one of the things we haven't mentioned about this world, you know, even compared to our modern day, it is kind of, you know, technologically backward because that's expensive to export to a new world.
I mean, you talk about cars, Pokey, but there's only like 13 of them on the entire planet.
We can tell one for each of the provincial counselors because they get around and another one for the solo.
If there aren't any other mentioned, everybody else, you have a railway system where the hub is the city first and pretty much if you want to go any place on the planet,
you have to take a train to first and then get on another and go out wherever it is you're going.
They did talk about completing a circle round, but they they did that done yet and there's like golf parts sort of things.
That's it, you know, anything there in that you walk.
I mean, my two big criticisms with the book in general is and the first one is kind of going off with 50 just says scale.
I cannot understand how big or small this planet was.
It seemed like everything was within a country, but then because people were just starting back and forth like it was nothing.
Or maybe that's just, you know, where they're at, but then they talk about how long it takes and it just didn't make any sense in the other.
My other criticism would be where our book last month, the writer was extremely good at writing action.
I think this author that's not her strong suit whenever the action happened.
It was very just kind of like, oh, this happened and I didn't get into it as much.
No, I, I, I kind of saw it as tired.
I think I broke 50.
It seems to happen every week.
Why do you keep doing that to the poor man?
You hear me now.
Yeah.
Okay, what's in is you've pretty much have an earth like mass for the planet to have earth like gravity.
So, you know, you know, to go back to Star Trek in class planets or whatever.
It seems pretty good.
I have to be pretty narrow definition.
As far as this is touch or was X 11.
I get the impression that only a small, this is a call only a part of this planet is settled.
So, they, you know, they might, they may be over an area, you know, the size of the ridge of 13 colonies all on one continent.
I mean, you're, you're just going to complicate.
There may be multiple continents, but you're going to be complicates things if you try to, you know, settle a certain one before you're done with the first.
Oh, no, no.
See, this is this before you go too far down this road.
You're saying all this in argument against my point that she didn't just call flashlights flashlights.
If resources are hard to import, then the last thing you're going to want is chemical glow sticks.
Even if resources are free, the last thing you want if you're walking in the dark at night is a chemical glow stick.
They don't show you anything glow sticks are good for being seen, not for seeing with.
So, I don't buy that point.
The other thing is that, you know, this settlement.
Oh, come on, glow sticks are good for raves.
That's what glow sticks are good for.
I've never been to a rave and to all them.
Sorry.
And I have to take the credit this time.
I think I broke Poke because that that last bit we got about half of.
Well, I was saying that you cannot see with glow sticks.
You can be seen with glow sticks.
That's what, therefore, they're not for seeing enough for illuminating what's in front of you.
So, I just don't buy it.
That's why they had glow sticks and she called glow sticks.
I just don't buy it. They're chemical.
Maybe it's a chemical reaction, but you need enough light to be seen with or, I mean, to see where we're going with.
And she even made the point that, ooh, the matcher got so bright that it looked like glow sticks weren't even on.
So, is the matcher fairly dim?
It's, I mean, that it's just not that impressive.
Or do we have, maybe we have sci-fi future glow sticks.
Do you have the two guys think I'm breaking up?
Is it 50s connection?
I've heard him just fine.
Yeah, I think it's all fine.
So, you know, I don't buy that.
The other part that I didn't buy right from the beginning.
And I understand why she did this, but I don't like shortcuts in writing.
When you can create the universe, create the universe.
And I don't like shortcuts and it felt like a shortcut.
And we put a limit on population so that the economy could sustain it.
That flies in the face of everything we know about economics.
And I understand that economics is the furthest thing that we have from an exact science.
But you do not grow an economy by limiting population.
You grow population in order to grow economy.
So, that was like, you know, rule number one of reality was broken right there.
But they didn't want to not grow population.
But they wanted to grow it in a controlled way so that the population didn't spike.
And then they had to import food which is economically unfeasible.
They wanted to do a slow burn grow on population so that it was controlled so that it was sustainable.
So, you don't have the baby boomers.
And then, oh my god, we can't feed all these people.
Sure, but you get baby boomers by having a boom in economy.
What they were talking about was a replacement population.
They were talking about zero population growth other than, you know, what people might emigrate to this place.
It's, you know what I mean?
That's not what it is.
You don't have a population spike by letting people have babies.
That's how you have steady growth.
We've always had steady growth since the beginning of time.
But they talked about it was replacement and then there were exceptions made so that the population grew at a controllable predictable rate.
It wasn't simply a replacement population.
There was some allowed growth but it was a planned controlled growth.
Sure, but again, you're not going to grow your economy.
Unless you have some sort of manufacturing, some sort of production going on.
You don't have production without people and you don't have people without population growth.
So, you know, what she was saying, her reasons for doing that just don't work in the real world.
And that kept, I kept having to, you know, again, suspend disbelief, suspend disbelief.
And I know I complain about it all the time but I really like stories where I don't have to suspend my disbelief.
Or at least where the suspension is, is viable in the context of the story.
And this story, the context is our universe or one very similar to ours.
So that was really hard for me to get over.
And it kept becoming a point that I had a hard time getting over in several different ways.
And several of the story telling plots kept reminding me that her construct was broken.
And it's saying that I will also say I get why she did it.
The only reason this is sci-fi is because she needed a...
In space.
Well, no, not just in space.
She was looking for a tabula rasa upon which to write her story.
She needed a blank slate, a clean sheet of paper to draw her story.
And if you're going to do that, there's no better way to do it than to create a new world.
And she just didn't paint a very big picture as what it felt like.
You know, that's why all the colonies were within...
It felt almost literally like stone throwing distance.
You know, if this was a big place, big enough that they have trains that can bring each other, you know, bring people from one place to another.
I don't know, none of it really seemed to be stitched together all that well.
Back on your population thing, the reason it didn't bother me other than...
It takes a lot more discontinuity to really pull me out of the story than that.
But I think that, at least to me, the idea that, you know, you have to slow-grow the population to develop the infrastructure, to develop the agriculture in a controlled way.
They didn't bother me.
I mean, I know that you have to grow all of those things, but doing a controlled way prevents, well, sporadic, natural things that are uncontrollable.
Right, exactly, which...
I'm jealous that you can to spend disbelief so easily.
I'm jealous of that ability that you have, first of all.
But when you say that, you're saying that they've now taken economics and turned it into an exact science that they're able to manage all these things.
And if you're going to say that, say it.
Don't just imply it, because that's a bridge too far for me, and I'm sorry.
Well, I think they implied that specific thing in multiple ways in that they said that rather than using their military forces and this being the human empire for lack of a better word, because I don't remember what they called it.
Had a military force, but didn't use it for anything except in existing conflicts.
They used economics, and that kind of implies that they've narrowed economics down to where they almost had an exact science, which I know is completely impossible.
But I just chucked it up even now.
They're idiots that say all kinds of ridiculous stuff about economics and make policy based on it, even though it's pretty solidly bit disproven, and that doesn't stop people from setting policy.
So I mean, I can see where somebody was in charge of a plan to be like, this is what I believe, so this is what we're going to do, because that's the way this works.
So you're saying that they, rather than it being a perfect science, that someone was just wrong and set their policy that way anyway?
Well, I mean, they kind of, these people aren't part of the, whatever it was, I forget, starts with the C, I forget what it was.
Who's the compact?
Yes, the compact.
That's what I was.
Thank you.
Thank you.
That this was sort of a backwater world that was just getting started, and really their economics wasn't up to the par where they were even considered to be a member.
So I mean, it could just be that somebody who thinks they know what they're doing and doesn't is running everything and making policy that's stupid.
And I can totally see that being a possibility.
So I don't have to, I don't have to suspend my disbelief that's a bad policy.
I just have to, yes, it's been my disbelief that, you know, the people in charge know what they're doing, which is way easier to do.
Yeah, but there's part of that.
Just belief there.
The other part of that is why bother going to a whole nother planet if your goal is to be part of the compact.
If you got your own whole planet to yourself and there seems to be only about 70 or 80 people on it to hell with the compact, let's make a planet here.
Why did people come here from Europe?
I mean, it because it got too crowded and there wasn't enough stuff for everybody.
Exactly. They came here to not be a part of Europe anymore.
They didn't come here to be part, I mean, yes, Europe funded it because they wanted more territory.
But the people who came here came here to get to not be part of Europe anymore.
That's what I'm saying about these people in this planet.
They went out of their way to go populate this planet and all they're working towards is to be part of the thing that they left.
I didn't realize it until just now, but that's also unbelievable.
I disagree because one of the main reasons for the revolution was the economic tyranny of the British.
I mean, just like what we're talking about here, they actively had laws to prevent the colonists here from producing fish goods.
So because they were making so much money over on the terrace of imported finished goods from Britain, just like in this scenario, as a colony, they are subjected to
the colonial Americans are subjected to high import next fort.
Terror. So they got it, you know, that one, the only reason was certainly certainly a one of one of the reasons we picked rifles and started shooting at the people.
But Fifi, you just argued against your own point.
I think you just argued for poker's point.
Yeah, I would just like to apologize for our global listeners that for our American centric use of the revolution.
We're making a revolution.
Yeah, they have been a few. You're right. They weren't all here.
No, you know, just just looking at the current day.
Manit Poki, I'm not sure I agree with your point that you tie unrestricted population to economic growth.
I mean, look, all the places where there are depressed economies in this world, there's high population destiny.
That is not economy. That's resources. That's a lack of resources.
These people are on a planet. They, you know, you're, you're led to believe they have all the raw materials that they could possibly need.
And, you know, I'm not an economist. And even if I was, I've already said, economy is the furthest thing from an exact science.
I'm just saying I don't think there's an example of an economy growing at any appreciable rate for a sustained amount of time without population growth being a part of that.
I don't think those things can be mutually or have ever been mutually exclusive.
Again, it's not an exact science. I know it's, it's not, but I don't think there's an example of it.
And if there is, then I'm wrong. And that's fine.
Well, and I mean that one difference here is they're, you know, they're obviously occupying a small part of the potential of this that they're on.
We're, we're in the situation where, you know, our, our popular spending and we, you know, we don't have any hope in a thousand years of escaping this planet.
We're stuck with the one that we've got for quite some time.
Well, that's a fairly pessimistic view. I'm not sure that I, I can curve with the thousand years portion, but yeah, we're stuck with it for now till somebody else figures out a way to travel faster than light or something.
Well, I'm a, you know, I, I think our science fiction on Facebook has been too optimistic that, yeah, we have in the 20th century.
And sometime towards the end of the 21st, we're going to have faster light than light travel. I mean, that's every science fiction.
Babylon 5, you know, all of them that suddenly we go from being not too different than we are to, you know, expanding across the universe.
I, I just, I am pessimistic that it's going to take a little bit longer to set out.
I think that I read a paper or read the abstract of a paper where someone had already figured it out.
And it was simply a matter of being able to produce the amount of energy needed.
Yeah, it's going to stick in enough power in one place.
I think I'll be career drive that basically like the quote unquote warp drive.
Yeah, and it works just like the warp drive rather than actually traveling faster than light, you simply kind of bend space around you.
So you're not traveling faster than light spaces or something like that.
There's fundamental forces that we do not fully understand and I think understanding those fundamental forces is going to open new doors to science and technology.
You know, and I have no guess as to how far off in the future that will be.
But in this story we're talking about a planet where people touch down, they settle down and they seem to be living under restrictions of population.
And what also kind of appears to be location because I mean, given 150 years with knowledge of, I don't know, blacksmithing and gunpowder and some basic carpentry.
You can settle a continent and these people just don't seem to have done that, you know what I mean?
But they want to be able to settle a continent and still have strip malls.
Like hell, people go someplace so they can have land. They want property.
They want to be able to spread out and do their thing that there was one of the other problems I had with this story all throughout it was that these people in this story didn't
act like people. They acted like characters in a story.
They always did the thing that would move the plot along not what I felt human nature would have led someone in their positions to do that.
Like in the middle part of the book, especially that really, you know, I kept going, no, that's not how people work. That's not how people work.
For instance, there were no like macho dudes in their late teens and early 20s. There were none of those.
You know what I mean? There was a lot of that. This is not how people act. This is how characters act.
The one thing that consistently struck me in this book and it goes to your point there where they were characters not people.
And or maybe it's simply they weren't people the same way that a lot of the people that I've interacted with tend to be is there was not nearly enough.
Live and let live the whole retro versus affinity conflict could have been solved in a much easier way where.
Hey, we're not going to go and you're not going to make us. We're cool problem solved.
I mean, this is and stuff like this. I've seen similar similar theories. Like I said, current current day.
That the retro's under George. They had George Ambrose. They they had as a matter of policy that the only way we're going to rule and get rid of the affinities is if we.
If we outstripped them in population. So they were having people, you know, removing their population limiter.
And this one talked about it. Apparently the you know, still her family are from the north. And so and the majority of the troves lived in the south.
So she she'd really never had much experience with retro's. In fact, you know, when it was, you know, explain to her, the Ambrose family were retro's. That was something.
You know, she'd almost never thought of. See, I have to disagree with you again. And I'm sorry to keep doing so. But I don't think that George Ambrose was a retro.
I think he just used that cause as a means to his end. I don't think he I don't think he believed anything that that he was spouting to the rest of them to get them behind him.
Well, he may have believed that the matcher removed free will. That he might have.
But the rest, I agree that he was just a power monger who saw a movement that he could.
Catalized to propel himself.
Yeah, whether or not he believed the matcher was was robbing these people of the free will. He used it as his scapegoat.
So I think it I think it matters very little whether or not he he believed it because he he just didn't act like one of them.
Well, he was just like max. He wanted power by any means possible.
He acted very much like a leader.
Yeah, for sure. And so did everybody.
Each person who represented their faction acted like a cult leader in this book. That's why I had such a hard time relating to anybody in it.
And early on I was relating more to the repros than to the the affinity groups.
Well, still after after her biological father is killed in the fire, you know, she she she goes from non-understanding retroactively being hostile towards them.
I still think the whole thing could have been solved with a little more live and let live.
I think that might have actually been the point of the book. I think that's what the the issue the book was trying to raise and and the story was an attempt to answer the question was, you know, what if we could just hang out with our friends all the time.
What if we could do what if we surround ourselves with people who we thought like and and and loved and you know didn't have to worry too much of a fighting with what if you know and the book is an attempt to answer that what if.
Well, not just that what I meant was if the red frozen the affinities didn't try in each was trying to force their way of life on everyone else.
Why can't it be enough that found a thing that works for me if you want it cool and if not that's cool too.
Yeah, but we'll do that now even here. We can't do that. That's the impossible thing right now.
That's the side part of it touch. I was going to say this is sci-fi they're supposed to be able to do things we can't do like be excellent to each other.
All sci-fi on dude. All sci-fi is not Star Trek. Take a drink.
I think we've proved the scene that Poké and I will definitely not be in an affinity together and that's good because it'd be kind of a born group if we all agreed on every point of the story.
Oh, maybe I just think we see stories a different way. So what did everybody think about the big climax?
Was it satisfying did you see it coming.
Thoughts. Deus Ex Machina.
Yeah.
Quite a little bit. I didn't, but as I said earlier, I tend to get into a story to where I'm just kind of experiencing it with the characters.
So I don't really think about well, this story is a lot like these other stories. So this is probably what's going to happen.
That doesn't usually occur to me. I'm simply letting it kind of wash over me.
As soon as she said earlier in the book that she had never touched the core and she didn't know what would happen when she did.
The first thing that instantly popped in my brain. Oh, it'll just download into you like that's what's going to happen.
I don't know if I've just read too many things where it just sort of happens or why I had that medicine.
As soon as she walked up the hill for that ending, I was like, she's just going to absorb it. She'll destroy it and then come down and we'll bear by that.
Which is exactly what happened.
That's a good etch and maybe I wasn't paying very close attention.
I did not catch that, but now that you say it, it seems like I should have.
Yeah, I didn't see it quite so much there.
I figure she would somehow get deep enough into the match here to tell them to explain to the match.
I'm not really the threat to you. It's Georgian is crony. It was that them.
I saw her walk into the core more like she's the camp, the warp core and wrath on.
Drink. Damn it. I was going for that.
Because everything comes back to Star Trek. I'm sorry.
Oh, no, it's pretty much a standard at this point. Star Trek, Star Wars, your science fiction do sure.
We always manage to tie it back to one or more of them.
So how was the match or like spider man? That's what we need to come up with.
Well, with great power comes great responsibility.
Because it fried all those people's brains when it's spiting senses tangled.
I will, I will concede that point you in.
See, I thought that the ending, the fact that she could just download this thing and then reupload it way to convenient.
And she instant magically knew how to do that.
And that she just made a giant assumption and a giant leap of faith.
And of course it works out because she's the protagonist.
I just, I find that just way too convenient in writing.
And I don't like when writers do that.
Plot bullets, anyone? Yeah, pretty much.
And not just plot bullets, but you know, double ringed plot bullets that have to fit into each other.
Well, we haven't talked about her spotty sense where she see, you know,
everyone who is an enemy and she could see darkly the retros, you know, through a mental connection.
And she couldn't see Jersey at all until after she became the match.
And it was only because she was suddenly seeing the back channel that he represented.
That part I did buy, but it leads me to a thing that I didn't.
So I'll let someone else talk first.
Well, no, I was going to say pretty much the same thing is that I completely bought that because she's kind of connected to the matcher.
And somehow somehow those bands are how it sees people and connects people.
And so if the matcher can see people, she can see people the way that it would.
So I totally bought that.
Well, I didn't say I didn't buy it.
Now one thing that I thought, you know, they locked over, maybe it happened in the three year gap between the end of the story and the apple log, you know, that when it was revealed to the general
public that, you know, that Stella and Jersey had a physical relationship, you know, that sort of a cult-like thing,
despite all their efforts to make it what that there weren't people with torches and pitchforks saying that no, the solo needs to be celibate.
See, we can think alike sometimes I agree with you on that one.
I'm supposed to miss apple log because none of this is ringing about.
The guy writing the book, cults of the, what do we call it?
Well, cults of the Commonwealth or whatever it is, the at the end of compact at the end three years later.
And he's been looking for the solo and he, you know, he runs into both her and Jersey.
At the end of, you know, because the big hall has been damaged by a falling tree and he's the only guy because he's, you know, I'm not, it's not my, I'm not going to end.
But Jersey comes again with a cup of coffee and talks to him and, you know, this, this is the guy they've been actively avoiding.
But, you know, on his last day on the planet, they come, you know, they come to feel him out, but they don't reveal who they are.
My other thing with the apple log is when she's talking and she's, oh, I felt the call home.
As soon as she said that in my brain, I was like, nope, nope, don't do that.
No sequel.
Walk away slowly and nobody gets hurt.
Yeah, that's a good point.
I was going to mention that they, they, she leaves it wide open for a sequel.
But the thing is, you know, they, they talk about whoever this race is, they must live.
You know, for, you know, practically forever and, you know, our lives will be over in their instant.
You know, we would have no concept of who we are.
So he does ever sequel.
Does she do a sequel with the same characters or does she do it on the same planet a fountain years later?
The only thing about the matcher than interest me is the mystery behind it.
It's a cool thing that does a cool thing.
But if I know about it, it's just like explaining many glorians.
I don't need to know why it works.
I don't need to know how it works.
It just the fact that it works.
It's cool enough.
That's it.
Leave it alone.
You don't have to explain it.
Yeah, I think stretching this setting over two books is, is stretching it to thin.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I might be interested in the second book.
We'll, we'll see what happens.
But when, when was this book first produced?
I don't know.
I must have missed the upload because I'm not, none of this is ringing any bells, which is disappointing because it sounds like it was good.
It was, again, fairly convenient.
It, you know, it, it wrapped everything up nicely with a bow on it is, is what the, the upload did.
But it was, you know, episode 20.
One of the things that the, what I thought was the core of the plot of this story.
And I found exceptionally frustrating that it was just brushed away as if it didn't even have to exist, except as a specific plot bullet.
Was the commission that was there to find out if this thing was an alien or not.
They never even bothered to go look at the thing.
And when they decided it was not an alien, but it's doing something.
Why is an alien artifact any less interesting than an alien?
This, this frustrated meeting and they would just go, oh, yeah, okay, it's fine.
Bye now.
I thought that was pretty well explained by Jersey's attitude.
I mean, if had they decided through their, you know, prime directive.
Again, back to, back to Star Trek, but I mean, this stuff we haven't talked about.
Metro's call the compact and say, hey, there's this alien thing, which is doing mind control on our planet.
You need to come here and investigate and came to investigate whether it was a sentient life form or an artifact.
Had it been, they rule had been sentient.
They would have had to evacuate the planet because they're, they're thinking, well, if there's one sentient life form on that planet, we can't go in.
And take it over. We have to respect rights of the alien.
It pretty much hit it at in the last part of the book that, you know, Jersey was thinking, well, I really don't think they're going to rule this as a sentient alien
because the compact one pay for an ex to this to read over the populace of this planet.
Let's not even get me started on the prime directive. I'm rewatching DS9 and I read a really interesting article.
Think linked from Reddit about the prime directive and how in every usage after like the first season of next generation,
their interpretation of it becomes totally bullshit. It becomes totally like, hey, they're not part of the federation, so we're not touching it.
Instead of what it actually says of, hey, don't help pre-warp civilizations.
And after reading that article and watching some of Star Trek, it's every time they mention the prime directive,
I just get pissed off and be like, but you're, okay, but how, how does that to, you know,
that doesn't answer my question of how is an alien artifact any less than a live alien?
Well, to answer that question specifically and 50 touched on this, their prime directive is if there's an alien here,
we won't settle here. If we find it after we settle, we'll leave. If it's an alien, not if it's something an alien left,
not saying it's less interesting, but it is no longer a we have to leave.
So with that implies that if it's an alien, we all get out of there and give it its land back,
but if it's not an alien, we don't even bother calling the alien artifact group to investigate.
Like, there's got to be something more than just, oh, now, well, they don't have resources to do to look into that,
but yeah, they're touched on the book, you know, that they have the resources to travel between planets,
but they don't have the resources to investigate an alien artifact.
David, I mean, Jersey was worried, you know, if they, if you don't once the,
I was a common wolf that's not right again.
Come back. Come back. Once the compact got here,
that that key in Stella would be locked up like lab animals.
I'm not disagreeing with you, Pohi. I think that this is, they should have said,
this is still interesting, we should look at it.
But the question they were there to answer is, are we on a world where we've said we won't be?
Yes or no, they determine no, they leave. Should they send someone else to say,
hey, but there's still this thing we don't understand, we should look at it.
Yes, maybe if they're in Star Trek, I'm not sure that the society,
that universal society that they've created really cares so much about.
Okay, but make sure any intelligent person in their shoes,
as opposed to just an actor or a character who is a tool to move this plot along.
If I were to say to you, look at that thing over there.
I need you to, or if you were to say to me, look at that thing over there.
I need you to decide whether it's an alien or an artifact or some other thing.
And my determination is that it is not an alien, but it's probably an alien computer.
You don't think to say, wow, I wonder if it's an AI,
which would make it an intelligence, which would make it an alien.
Even if they're completely discounting what I said before about an alien artifact,
be it interesting, if this thing's a machine, let's find out if it's sentient,
because we certainly seem to believe that sentient machines are possible.
We have enough of our own fiction based around that.
But I think that you're rewording the question there.
The question they're posed with is not, is this an alien or is it something else?
Is it an alien or not?
Okay.
And they answered, or not.
The rest of it is, and again, you're saying intelligent, curious individuals,
these are probably bureaucrats who were given a question, is it an alien or not?
They say it or not.
They see their job is done.
Well, I mean, this was strongly tied by Jersey.
I mean, it was, it was mentioned above their discussing this.
Why did I already agree with you?
Why does the compact have a commission to investigate aliens when we've never found one
and however long the, I mean, it seems as this is the first evidence that anybody's ever had
that anybody ever existed.
So you're right, Pokey.
I think it'd be over that, on that, like, wide-on rise.
But, you know, this, this, uh, many in, you know, an economic artifact,
and their job is to, because there's, there's off-world investment in NOVAI,
plus the expense of, you know, reporting everybody off NOVAI, it seems like space.
You know, you wouldn't have some goods and all that if, if space was a cheap thing.
So, you know, the, if it's commonwealth decides that, yeah, there's a,
this is an alien planet and we don't want to interfere.
They have this whole sense of moving the entire population, finding someplace else
formed to go, possibly fighting a war with them, because they don't want to leave.
You know, it's, it's in the end to the commonwealth for this committee to decide,
no, this is not a sentient alien, very strongly interests of the commonwealth.
And, in other words, this committee was set up, said, you know, you, you, you guys,
finding any aliens, there's going to be hell pay.
One of the things that just popped in my head that I didn't even think about is,
what if they already know, what if the compact knows that there are these types of things out there?
And they're like, okay, just put on a show, make the people think that we don't know and move on,
because we've already seen this, we already know what it is.
It's, it's not worth anybody's time.
Yeah, I'm just wondering, Falleys and, uh, compact investigators all, all dress black.
With blue rubber gloves and some blue.
Nicely done take a drink.
Thank you guys for getting that.
Not many people would get that.
No, but all of us couldn't help it.
We couldn't miss it.
So, just in case the, the author ever hears this, I will say that the, the, the reason I got so frustrated
with all the inconsistencies in this is because underneath it all, it's a good story.
And I, like I said, it was a real page, Turner, and I wanted to keep here in the story.
And to, to hear, um, you know, good writing, uh, you know, kind of, kind of be intertwined with,
with things that I find frustrating.
I get doubly frustrating for me.
Maybe that's just me.
I can't, I hope it's just me.
But, well, not really.
I don't know.
Do you guys, you know what I'm saying?
Like, I've heard audio books and I've read books that were just garbage.
And it didn't bother me that, you know, there were holes in the plot or plot bullets or inconsistencies or, or unrealities.
Because the books are just garbage and I just didn't care.
I wasn't invested in them at all.
But despite all these things, I was invested in this story.
And, uh, you know, I, I think that if they were fixed, this could be a phenomenal story.
Like, if they, if they were a rewrite, you know, or a vision to it, I think it could be a phenomenal story.
Those things, you know, kept sticking in my head.
Um, the things that I've mentioned mostly, um, maybe there was one or two more.
Uh, I'll tell you one still is the title, Matcher Rules.
There was nothing in this book about rules.
Why not just call it the matcher.
You know, I kept, I kept waiting to find out what, what the rules are.
There aren't any.
We need to be next because we care.
I just agree completely on that when she describes the whole process.
You know, it's, it's, uh, uh, putting this jigsaw piece in with this other jigsaw piece and making a stronger thing.
It's all about rules. I mean, she's not allowed to do, you know, uh, she keeps saying the thing.
You know, uh, I could enforce people into an affinity, but I'm not allowed to do that.
Yeah, but the consent was the only rule that ever got mentioned.
As far as what affinities had to be and didn't have to be, there were no rules about that.
She, she specifically said she sees it as links of a chain.
Some links are stronger than others. So she tried to choose the most efficient ones.
There were almost no rules as far as what the, the links were.
Early on in the story, I thought that the original solo died as a result of him trying to make, uh, affinities that, that were not what the matcher was trying to make.
At the end of the story, I didn't believe that at all because she said there were so many, uh, softball and inefficient affinities that were made by her predecessors.
So, you know, I completely changed my mind on that.
I don't, I don't, I don't see that as a rule at all.
The only rule there was do I have your permission to put you in an affinity or take you out of one.
Yeah, I kind of, yeah, I hadn't brought that up, you know, the lack of when she did the matching, there were no duos in the, you know, and this is one thing that the dual affinity was pushed towards association with the retro.
You know, they, you know, when she said the matching that the triads came about the three people came out about even which if they would have expected.
And then the gods and the quince, you know, came out a lot bigger and her making her making the statement that well, you know, it seems like the more people, the stronger the affinity.
And it, you know, I kind of thought that was maybe the previous solos had had, you know, sort, sort of, you know, old world attachment like it seems like every other planet, you know, that monogamy is the is the rule.
So that perhaps previous solos all being older people were more tied to tradition where still was, you know, more willing to go with what the matcher said.
Yeah, maybe I don't know.
All right, we're, we're going into, you know, who knows what it's going to wind up being after editing, but we're over two hours at this point.
And I don't think we're going to come to any conclusions or solve anything about this book.
Do you guys have any final thoughts you want to, you want to close on and we can pick our next book?
It's well, it's well worth your time to sit, listen, and enjoy.
And I am wondering if the author is not, you know, a child of 60, 70s content culture, you know, and making a statement that, you know, one-on-one relationships monogamy is, is not the best thing that a big group, you know, takes a village to raise a child is a better way to go.
That's a fairly astute point.
Touch.
The same thing had occurred to me, and I, it harkened me back to Ender's Game and several other novels by Orson Scott Card, who, once you know his social and political beliefs, it's impossible not to read them in his books.
Find your astute 2X1-1-1. Now can we hear from touch?
Yes, please.
I refuse to be astute just on principle at a boy.
Now it's, it's, if it sounds at all interesting, if you're intrigued at all by the, by anything we've said, it's, it's worth a listen.
Just go into it, no one, what it is, and you know, I, I enjoyed it. I mean, if I had nothing else to listen to, and it was there, I would listen to it again.
So I mean, it's, it's good. Just keep your expectations in general.
And I say wait for the rewrite.
Yeah, I have a trouble with the rewrite the Poke because every time somebody rewrites thing on patio books, it no longer becomes freely accessible.
I see, I don't have a problem with that, though. I don't mind at all when people use audio books as the gateway drug and then charge for their later books.
I think it, it seems to be a business model that works for some people, and if it gets more, more art out there and gets these people paid, that's great.
So who's got a book for next time?
If no one else does, then one was recommended to me, but if anybody else has one, then it, it can certainly wait.
Well, I've got one I've had for a while, but again, it can wait. It's not going anywhere.
I guess we could say I'm both and then flip a coin or something, then unless either the other guys want to chime in with something.
I've got nothing.
All right, touch.
I'll, why don't you do like a pick a random number between one and two, and we'll do it the nerdy way.
I'll be two and X 101, no, X 101 one can be one because he's an odd number anyway.
I'm an odd something.
So when you say one and two, do you mean zero and one or like literally one and two?
I mean zero and want, I don't know what Poke means.
Oh man, you just exposed my false nerd credit to everybody.
We bring that stuff in the light of day.
That's fair enough.
All right, so pick a random number and then tell us which one of us is going to do the book.
I'm picking the random number of one because it is both one and two.
Wow, like point nine or P.D.
It's both one and less than one.
All right, go ahead.
X 101 is your turn.
All right, I have got a book called Blood Witness by David Hitch.
David, I'm sorry.
Posting the link now.
And where is that available from?
Polly Books.
Excellent.
Right around Halloween, I had a vampire kick and this was part of it.
Oh, cool.
All right.
The 10 second elevator pitch is vampires and Mormons.
How could it get any more music than that?
I like a good vampire story, but I like a good anything story.
So that's cool.
Seems like we're to offend the people, but I'm not sure Mormons listen to podcasts.
So now I've been offensive.
Oh, if any of the things that we've done could offend people,
this book will offend someone if they're offendable probably.
This isn't.
This is not a child safe book.
This is not a work safe book.
This is not a easily offended people safe book, but it's fun.
Description mentions Jehovah and this as well.
So I'm sure Jehovah Witness are never going to listen to this podcast.
Oh, I don't know.
What did Jehovah's Witness who I suspect may listen to the hacker public radio?
OK.
I stand corrected then and I am in modest to dive in salted all that Jehovah's Witnesses.
I'm sure certain of all show up on my doorstep to express their displeasure.
Nothing else going to change that.
Well, and I apologize that I think I've conflated Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses.
So is this a straight horror or is it comedy or drama?
What are we what are we getting into?
Yes.
All right.
Well, then we'll see everybody next month.
Alrighty.
Good night everybody.
Thanks for listening.
Please feel free to join us on any recording.
We do the second Tuesday of every month.
What many people refer to as patch Tuesday.
Though I don't think anybody in this room probably patched any windows computers today.
So we've made it a convenient opening and my schedule anyway.
We're doing this.
We moved the time.
It's now at 8 30 PM Eastern US time.
I can't think off and right now what that might be in GMT, but I should probably work on that for the next episode.
And that'll be Tuesday March 10th.
And I gotta say, Poke, that works out better for me because I usually work with dark every night.
So, you know, I always have to take off early to get on the book club.
Yeah, there's a couple other people that I heard that from Stephen.
It makes me kind of wish I had suggested or taken their suggestions of moving it maybe sooner.
So we weren't excluding some some people or as many people.
I don't know, but we seem to go along.
That's the only reason.
I know this is going to be rough on me.
I'm going to be dead on my feet in the morning.
But I'll make a good strong pot of coffee and I'll be fine.
So tomorrow is my second Saturday.
I'll be okay.
Well, for future note, if I was to pick one there, you know, you have a fan fiction on how I had to bring it back to Star Trek.
Yeah, Star Trek.
And then it was a series I discovered that was audio only, you know, that be up as a book.
In other words, would anybody object to fight for that sometime in the future?
No, I wouldn't.
Would you guys?
Nope.
I'd be cool with it.
Yeah, I mean, I don't think we they strictly have to be audio novels.
I mean, you know, an audio drama is fine.
And a lot, some of the books we've done have kind of straddled that gap anyway.
Yeah, it's, it's.
I mean, I like that there are, you know, definitions for each different kind of thing.
Just because it makes it easier to describe it.
And I know that like Lost in Bronx is kind of a stickler for calling them what they are.
But he's a he's a heck of a lot more deeply involved in the creation of them than I am as well.
So I do like that there's words to describe them.
But I don't think that by calling it the audio book club that.
I don't think that anybody involved in the naming of this particular series meant to pigeonhole us into one particular kind of of audio fiction or audio listen.
I don't even think I should be fiction.
That's probably not even right word either.
But yeah, what why not?
Well, and a lot of times it's as I was saying, it's not necessarily a binary thing.
You know, it's you can be something in between an audio book and an audio drama.
I mean, at some point you have to pick one maybe, but there are definitely things that fall in between those categories.
And on kind of that topic, Pokev, you ever heard any updates from this thing of ours?
I mean, I know I know they killed you off in the last episode that I heard.
So I guess you're no longer on the mailing list.
No, I hadn't heard anything else about it.
And I didn't think they'd even killed me off yet.
I didn't think that episode had aired.
It was recorded, but I don't think it aired.
But either way, yeah, I think it's done.
I mean, I'm not surprised either.
The work that Scott was putting into that series was tremendous.
Would have cost him a tremendous amount of time and to not get any money out of it or you know, be able to use it.
I'm sure he was using it as a resume.
I hope he was just because he did fantastic work on that.
And I'm just wasn't continued to be thrilled to be a part of it.
And it would be really nice if it, you know, we're wrapped up and came to an end.
But I can understand if he just doesn't have the time to do it.
That's perfectly understandable.
But no, I don't know whether or not he has plans to pick it back up or whether he's actually put it down.
That is so sorry.
No.
Good night, folks.
I'm going to bed.
Have a nice night.
See you next month.
Me too.
Have a great month, guys.
Later, guys.
You've been listening to Hacker Public Radio at HackerPublicRadio.org.
We are a community podcast network that releases shows every weekday, Monday through Friday.
Today's show, like all our shows, was contributed by an HBR listener like yourself.
If you ever thought of recording a podcast, then click on our contributing to find out how easy it really is.
Hacker Public Radio was founded by the digital dog pound and the Infonomicon Computer Club.
And it's part of the binary revolution at binrev.com.
If you have comments on today's show, please email the host directly.
Leave a comment on the website or record a follow-up episode yourself.
Unless otherwise stated, today's show is released on the creative comments,
attribution, share a live 3.0 license.