hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr1464.txt

Episode: 1464
Title: HPR1464: HPR Audiobook Club: Space Casey
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1464/hpr1464.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 03:39:00

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The one thing I liked is that you said you actually approached this as an audio book before,
you know, before looking at it, it's like a just a regular textbook, which I thought was cool.
Oh yeah, that was definitely the case because I had done Nina Kimberly the merciless,
which of course was a print, you know, it's pro's novel first, but because I enjoyed doing the
audio book so much, I started thinking about, well, okay, that's an adaptation of something from
its original form into audio. If I know that I want to do something in an audio form,
why not experiment with some of the forms that are really best suited for audio?
Yeah, definitely. So did you actually turn Space Casey into a traditional book after the audio,
or did you just leave as audio? I actually did a script book that was released in print,
but it wasn't as pros, it was really just the scripts, and that was self-published through Lulu,
and you could buy it on Amazon for a while, but basically it had all sorts of like puzzles
and illustrations and stuff too, making it like an activity book, which was fun. I'm going to jump
in here real quick. This is too good of content to throw away, and I'm going to do the intro here,
we'll start from a little earlier on, but hello everybody, and welcome to the Hacker Public Radio
Audio Book Club. Sorry, this episode has been such a long time in coming, it's been like two years
since we recorded one, and people have been on my case to get back to it and get these done, so
I have no one to blame but myself, and oh yeah, and the rest of the community who didn't do one
without me, because you're free to do so on Hacker Public Radio, but no, that's my fault for not
jumping in and doing it. We have tonight a very special guest, we have Cristiana Ellis,
who is the author of Space Casey, which is the book that we chose for the book club two years ago
when this all fell off, and I take full responsibility for, so this is really, really fun, and that's
who you heard speaking with Jonathan. We also have Jonathan Nadu. Howdy, howdy.
And sorry, Cristiana, go ahead and say hello, so people recognize your voice.
Hello, and I'm Poke as you guys may know, and we got Brom. Howdy people.
So yeah, the book that we were supposed to have listened to at this point was Cristiana Ellis' Space
Casey, which is available. It's free to download on podiobooks.com. We've just been made aware that
it's, is it still Cristiana? Is it still available for purchase on Lulu?
It is, although I'll have to get the link together. It's on Lulu, and for a while I had the
affiliate thing to, so you could buy it from the Amazon storefront too, but then that
disappeared and I haven't gone to the effort of figuring out how to get it back yet.
Okay, but if people like it enough and want to throw some cash at you, they can still donate
through podiobooks.com, is that correct? Yes, that's definitely correct. Right on. Okay.
And Jonathan, are you aware that you're echoing back just a little bit?
I'll fix that, give me one second. All right, right on, and it's only when you key up
one other people are talking. I don't know if you're aware of it or not.
All right, so the way that the audiobook club works is
we on the show, we've all listened to the audiobook, but we understand that the listeners
may not have. So we go through and say whatever we can say about the book without spoiling anything,
then we take a short break where we each review a beverage of our own choice, whatever we brought,
some folks like to bring a beer or a glass of wine, some folks like a cup of coffee or tea,
we do that review, and then after the beverage review, we go into the book with as many spoilers
as we feel like. So that's fair warning to anybody who hasn't listened to the book and doesn't
want any spoilers before they do, that will come after the beverage review.
One question. Yes, sir. Is the fact that the book takes place in space a spoiler or not?
I think it's in the title. We'd have to go to the expert on this one.
Well, it's one of two words in the title. So it's about as much of a spoiler as saying that the
main character's name is Casey. Fair enough. So I will start off by saying I loved this book. I
thought it was absolutely fantastic. I'm in my mid-30s and I still have not gotten over the young
adult fiction genre. I did still one of my favorite, especially sci-fi. I just, I loved, you know,
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and that type of thing, and this is the same kind of mood that
this book puts me in. Well, you know, that is things like Hitchhiker's Guide is definitely
one of the big inspirations for what I wanted to do, you know, that and there's the Discworld
series, which is fantasy, of course, but that same kind of idea that you can have, you know,
Jean Refiction, but also have it be funny. Oh, yeah. Discworld is something I have to get into.
I saw the TV adaptation of going postal there and it was absolutely hilarious. We loved that. But
just and the other thing I loved about this is this is something I can listen to with my family. I
don't have to worry about, you know, inappropriate topics or language coming up. I can listen to
this with the kids put on the car and I just I loved it for that as well. Well, one thing I would
say about that is it's certainly PG-13. Yeah, you're right. It is PG-13. There were those two
little bits in there that that got PG-13. We can talk about those after the the beverage review.
Yeah, it's it. Oh, no, go ahead. I was just going to say it was interesting that you kind of
called out the idea of young adult because I don't really think of this particular story as being
a young adult story. Certainly Casey herself is not, you know, she's she's an adult. But I do kind
of think of the tone as being a little bit like the young adult hero is now 33.
Right, I got that feeling. I thought I wouldn't call her quite a hero either.
Well, protagonist then. Sure, sure. I was just going to say I like the, you know, it's
has that outer space feel to it, but it doesn't get like, you know, totally geeky with sort of like
space things, but it has, you know, it has the in it. But I love, you know, the humor and also just
you know, the sarcasm from Casey and everything. It was pretty funny.
Well, thanks. Yeah, actually, I really enjoyed this book. I had listened to it the two years ago
and we were going to do this and it seems kind of weird. It's like it's long overdue, but I ended up
grabbing it and listening to it again. And I really enjoyed it. Even though I knew where everything
was going to go, I had forgotten some pieces and it was still a very enjoyable ride.
It's interesting to hear that you say that you didn't really intend this as young at all,
but it sort of and did it sort of end up that way? Or is it just something there's like, well, you know,
we, it wasn't your intention at all. It just, that's the way you write.
I really think it is kind of the latter. I mean, I, I didn't set out to write it as young
adult or not young adult. It was really just kind of the story as it came to me. But I have kind
of, I've been told before that other things that I write, even when the main character is not
a young adult. I guess it's just kind of part of the tone of how I write kind of comes across as
with a young adult feel. Is it just you? Do you just like, are you kind of just PG-13 as you wander
through life? You're not just maybe does crude as the rest of us? I like to think it's because I'm
emotionally immature. Oh, okay. That's a good answer. Oh, man, I was going to say like, man,
we're going to have to really tone on our language after the beverage break. Yeah, now I,
I thought Casey was funny, but I think it's commendable as well. You'd be in the voice of Casey
that you let Al steal the show in every scene. He was Al cracked me up. Al was the DAI. And I
don't think that's a spoiler to say that, the computer. Yeah, so he shows up pretty soon. He's
really the second lead of the story. Yeah, and just the way that you bounce that dialogue off
of each other. Now, did you write everything in the book? Was there any ad living in all? Or was
this all straight out of you? There's just a little bit of ad living, but usually it's just kind of
the voice actor had a slightly different variation on a line or something like that. But by and
large, I wrote the scripts. And so what I told my voice actors was that please give me at least
two different takes with it as it's written, but then if you have some other ideas, go for it.
But by and large, usually the only things that are not what I originally wrote are just, you know,
minor variations on the line. And as far as giving Al all the good lines, I mean, well, part of that
is just because, you know, I because I wrote the whole thing, it didn't really feel like I'm giving
the good lines away. It's more that I wanted the banter. And it just sort of came out that way
that it's funnier to have the artificial intelligence be the one that's much more melodramatic and
historic. Yeah, I don't remember his name because I tended to skip the credits, unfortunately,
you know, I'll admit to that. But he was really expressive. I mean, I had a feeling that you were
trying to be the more the straight man, the the character that everybody kind of bounces off. There's
a bit of a thing that happens to a lot of things happen to Casey. And a lot of stuff she ends up pulling,
you know, but it was it was always allowed to be more melodramatic, more historic, more expressive.
And for the most part, that was good. There were a couple parts, it was just like, that's really
annoying or hurt my ears a little bit. Yeah. And I thought that Casey's lines, when there were
lines that dry humor was just so consistent and well placed, it never felt forced to me or like,
oh, this this scene was written just for that punch line. It just felt it fell in there naturally.
And I really enjoyed Casey's lines as well. I loved all of her lines.
Well, thanks. You know, Wesley Clifford is the the voice actor who played Al and I had heard him
on a podcast that he did called Planet Retcon Radio. I don't think they've put out anything
recently, but they were certainly running when I originally produced this. And I thought he was
great on there. And so I'd started writing this story, but I hadn't finished it yet. And certainly
towards the end, I was really writing it with him in mind. So it was great that he was willing to
and able to actually play it. And I can also happily say that he he will be back in season two,
which is in production now. Excellent. Now you may not know him, but for these other two guys,
did did he remind you at all of Chess Griffin, because I thought when he was speaking flat,
his voice reminded me a lot of Chess Griffin. A tiny bit. I could see that now that you mentioned it.
Okay. We would just need Al to start talking about the file system. And, you know,
yeah, right. Oh, yeah. Chess Griffin did a podcast that's, you know, for Linux users, it's
like a must have that he did 100 episodes and covered everything he needed to cover in 100
episodes. And it's just it was perfect. What can you say? But Chess is awesome. And he just
reminded me of Chess a lot, which probably helped me to fall in love with it.
Well, helping to remind you of anything else that's awesome is a plus, I guess.
Oh, yeah. Yeah, for sure. Now, how about the not to mention Grant Pechoco, who did all the
Dr. Oshuo sales podcasts? The radio adventures of Dr. Floyd.
Yes, Dr. Floyd. Yes, Grant, that he was that was a great podcast for the kids. When my kids were
younger, we found that right on time. They we used to love listening to that together. And
here in Grant was excellent. Yeah, he was a lot of a lot of fun too. I've met him in person
a couple of times. But, you know, I almost all of the recording in Space Casey was done remotely.
But he was certainly one that it would have been lots of fun to be there together in person.
Yeah, and he's a big get is, you know, as far as podcasters go.
Yeah, he's super busy all the time. And so I was so glad that he was willing to do it.
Bromancey flash in there. Oh, I'm sorry. That was external stuff. I was just going to add that,
do we want to start talking about technical stuff for a bit like all the background sound effects,
or do you want to keep going on about voice actors? Oh, yeah, I was just about to ask that. Please,
go ahead. Okay. Well, I mean, one of the really nice things about it, even though I actually take
some issue with it, it was good because there were audio cues as to where people were. There wasn't
it wasn't just disembodied voices in the middle of nowhere. There was a sense that you're on the ship.
You hear a certain background noise and you're on you're on this scene. You hear this noise and
that sort of thing. So you get this background of where people are. The one problem that I had,
especially with the ship noise, is that it was so it got a little annoying after a while. And I
think that was probably just a, you know, I think any noise that's on that long and any volume
is going to get annoying after a while. But once you switch to the inner monologues, it's like,
oh, it stopped. Well, you know, it's I in some ways, the format kind of requires some of that.
Now that's not to say that it couldn't be done without it. But partly because this is more like a
radio play than a novel, I don't have any of that descriptive stuff that says. And then they walked
into the galley area of the shuttle. So I really have to convey that through audio somehow.
And so I was trying to have the various different soundscapes to help convey that. And I did
certainly learn some lessons over the course of the production. And there are a couple in there
that I tend to agree with you when I listen back now is that there was a couple like in particular,
I think the background when she's in the the prison cell. That one bugs me a little bit when I
listen to it now. I didn't get bothered by any of that. I have to step away now for a little bit
while we plow the driveway. It shouldn't take too long. I hope. But I pretend I'm here, I guess,
to make fun of me while I'm gone, whatever you like. Perfect. Yeah, I like myself like we said
before the show, I'm blind. I appreciated the sound, the different sounds that were in the various
parts of the ship or the different scenes that just gave my mind's eye a way to imagine a different
part of the ship or wherever they were, whether it be in the jail cell or when Casey ran on the
stage at that concert or whatever. So it was I thought with me though, I tend to I can sort of
block some of those things sometimes. So I did notice the spaceship sound. But after a while,
it just became sort of in the background. And I didn't even notice it after a while. But I thought
it was all it was all really done well. And I guess again, it comes back to how we mentioned that
you thought of this as an audiobook before you even, you know, ventured out to put it down on text.
So, you know, it was well thought out. Well, thanks. And so like I said, I mean, even as I wrote it,
I didn't ever write any of that descriptive language that, you know, described any of the scenes
visually or any of the actions like that. It was really just wrote it like the script of a play
where it has dialogue and it has sound effect cues. And that's all that's in the script.
So it's like a stage direction then sort of. Yeah, really, that's that is kind of what it is.
And it's partly just because that really was kind of how I thought of it. And in fact, actually,
when I did the script book, and I was working with a really excellent web comic artist named
Steph Cherrywell to do illustrations, they were a little bit frustrated with me occasionally because
they would say, okay, so what did this alien look like? And I'm like, I don't know, I know what they
sound like. Yeah, well, I was going to say another impressive thing like with the various voice actors,
you managed to get a pretty like consistent sort of sound. I don't want to say sound quality.
It's not the word I'm looking for, but a consistency between all the various voice actors. And I'm sure,
you know, they have all various, you know, recording equipment and whatnot. It was pretty good
that you were able to put a lot of it together and sink it very nicely. Well, thanks. There's actually
a little bit of a trick to that. And I don't mean to imply that it's just my audio production
skills, although I did work at it. But what I mean is that if you listened to all of the raw
recordings, they would probably sound more different than you expect. But part of the nature of
the way the script works is that a lot of the time, people are actually communicating with each
other like overship communications or over the little radio or in some other form of separation.
And there's not as many scenes where the characters are actually all in the same room without any
kind of modification. And so that I think helped cover some of the places where the audio recordings
might have had slightly different background sounds or whatever. Oh yeah, that's true. I didn't
take that into consideration. I'm realizing that that is a really good way of covering up that
sort of like desync because normally when you're standing in front of somebody, you get a sense
whether, you know, when they're, you know, when they're done speaking and that's a little harder
over the internet, especially with latency. I mean, mumble, it's not so bad. You notice we're not
really keen up over each other too much. But, you know, with recording, you can't have any of that
at all. And the fact that it's like a message and there's that over and out 10, 4, like that CB
radio type, that was a sense I'm getting of it now where you're not going to talk over each
other because one person transmits and then the other person processes that and then responds.
Oh, well, I actually should correct you on one thing. Then all of these were not recorded
simultaneously at all. Like everyone recorded their own lines in a vacuum and then I edited it
all together afterwards. Okay. But just in terms of like the different room sound or if someone had
a fan in the background or something like that, it helped to cover that when it's already the case
where they're talking on the radio between two different ships. Yeah, the only the only scene I
can that I can think of is when was was the name hack source came on on the ship and he had his,
you know, thug with them hit that that robot voice I can't remember his name. His voice was the
only one that was like a little garbled and I'm wondering I don't know if it came across the way
you wanted it to or not, but it seemed like a little too far in the background. You couldn't really
make him out too clearly. Yeah, that actually was my voice. I was using a vocoder. I wanted it to sound
like the old school silence, but I agree I didn't quite nail it. Yeah, I mean, you could tell
what was trying to happen, but it just seemed like, like, you know, just a volume in general,
it seemed like a little, a little too far back. I know you're trying to give, you know, give it,
make it seem like, you know, he was behind hack source and you know, he was there to kind of
protect him or whatever, but he seemed like he was standing a little too far back from them.
That's all. Oh, believe me. If we want to talk about audio nitpicks, when I really listen to it,
there's a billion of them. Oh, yeah, I'm sure you can find every little thing, you know, especially,
you know, going through it over and over again and putting stuff together.
Yeah, go ahead. I was just going to say the production of this, just like any work of fiction,
we're probably really any creative endeavor or whatsoever. It's like that old saying about
they're never finished. They're only abandoned. Yeah, exactly. Oh, I was going to say that I had
a handyman over all day and we covered up a lot of stuff and there's this whole thing about
with the house for sale. It's like you have, you want to get the small stuff, but not like the
really fine detail and there comes a point where it's like, yeah, no one looks at that. I mean,
they want to make sure there's no cracks in the paint. There's no, you know, cracks in between the
walls, but like they're not going to look every single place. They're not going to look everywhere.
They just want something where you scan it initially. And so you may see a million glaring
errors, Cristiana or like little things that you would have corrected, but the rest of us aren't
even going to notice. Yeah. Well, and I do take some comfort in that. It's just,
it's usually one of those things where I remember making the decision at the point where it's like,
okay, well, I decided to change the line, but then when I went in to rerecord it, the audio
doesn't quite match. And I did the best I could, but at some point I had to just say, okay,
well, that's got to be good enough. I'm moving forward, but I listen back to it now and I say,
oh, but it doesn't match. And then you're right, probably no one else I've even noticed.
Can't say I did, or if I did, I was too engrossed in the story and I was like, you know,
like minor technical errors are going to be forgiven. You already had that suspension of disbelief.
Well, good. That is what I was hoping. So then, bro, do you want to get into sort of like
what space case is it all now? Like we cover kind of the technical stuff. Do you want to get into
the actual book now? Oh, no, I was going to wait for Poké. Or at least I can, I figure we can
milk this for about five to ten more minutes. Oh, yeah. Poké is going to be Poké, then that's his
problem. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I can still talk about the technical stuff as no problem.
Yeah, one of the problems that I had with I think it was the the sergeant or the cop. I don't
remember her name off the top of my head. Yeah, juber. Yeah, juber. That's what it was. Her, the
the echo and the it was like a pre echo almost the way it sounded. I used to do music a long time
ago. And it was just it was really hard to understand individual words. I mean, you got the
gist of what she was saying, but she was tough to decipher at times. Yeah, I think the the accent
plus the vocal effect that I did, it wasn't always as clear as it maybe ideally would have been.
It was a pre echo in the sense that what I did was I I reversed the audio and then added an echo
and then reversed it again. It's a little bit like the the you know, poltergeist from the other
through the portal voice. Yeah, in my mind, I was picturing her with like not necessarily
Helma, but like some type of like mask or whatever. That was over her mouth and like that was
producing, you know, with her accent and, you know, with the effect from like the mask, whatever
that's how I was picturing her in my mind, what was, you know, causing her to sound like that.
I kind of had in my head that she was like an energy being of some kind that, you know,
I didn't, you know, actually put any of that in the audio, but that's what I had in my head.
Okay, yeah, I could see that too. Yeah, I think some other sci-fi stuff. I want to say
Starcraft. I think they've done stuff like that where energy beings kind of sound like that. So
maybe that's where you're getting that from or I don't know. Well, part of it too is just I was,
you know, I I wanted a lot of the different characters to be obviously alien because that's
part of the whole story is that Casey is having to deal with all of these crazy things that she's
not used to. She is essentially the only human in the entire story other than the dock worker
that Scott Siggler plays. So I kind of just wanted a lot of the other characters if they weren't,
if their voice wasn't weird already, I wanted to do something to it to just make sure it was
really obvious that they're an alien. That was another thing I liked in the, you know, throughout
the story is when this might this might be sort of getting into the book a little, but I liked how
when Al would change Casey, she would be like, what what am I? What is, you know, and she would describe
like what she looked like. I thought that was cool. How you you went ahead and did, you know,
you describe like what Al just changed Casey into so you can kind of picture, you know,
something in your mind while, you know, they're going through the scene.
Those were some of the the few occasions where I had details that I could actually give the
illustrator. Yeah, and you had some fun with some of the, I want to say like bodily parts like,
oh yeah, those are just your hindarms. Yeah. Oh, don't worry, your kidney is wireless right now.
I think wireless kidneys is the one line that I've gotten the most feedback on in the whole thing.
Yeah, that's pretty funny. You're just like, what? And they're like, wait, that's cool. And they're
like, okay, that's a little improbable. Well, also just the idea that that would be described as
cosmetic. Yeah, exactly. I don't actually even remember quite where that came from. It was just
something that I was trying to have, I mean, exactly, I know it's kind of just explaining the joke,
but I was looking for something like that, which is a way to say that Al has made more significant
changes than she expected and to have it be weird in a sci-fi way. Yeah, and what was funny is like
to Al, it's no big deal. Like he was just like, ah, you know, you have a wireless kidney, so what?
Well, for an AI, you know, having a part be wirelessly attached is not a big stretch.
Yeah, one of the things I had a lot of fun with in writing Al was his consistent
lack of understanding of how biological organisms work.
I think you did a very good job of that. That was something that's like, Al doesn't really
understand. It's like, I need to see how it moves. I need to see this. And there was, that was a bit
of the fat, you know, well, okay, that's a spoiler. So I'm glad I caught myself, but he definitely does
not understand biologicals. Well, and really, why would he? You know, except of course that it's his
job and he uses the cosmetic synthesizer all the time. Jonathan, I think it's beverage time.
Okay, you want to go first, Romer? I'm actually going to be driving here soon because I'm taking my
wife to the gym. I said I was going to go to the gym. So I'm actually drinking a big old bottle
of nothing. Yeah, okay. You know, it's wonderful. No calories, you know, it tastes great less filling,
all that fun stuff. Yeah, I don't have anything exciting this time around. I just had some coffee
earlier. And I think it's just Starbucks coffee, like not bought from the, you know, not from Starbucks
itself, just like a bag of coffee. I strictly drink ice coffee, even though, you know, even if I live
in New England and gets, you know, five blows or whatever, I strictly drink ice coffee. So every
night or so, I basically brew a whole pot of coffee, throw it in the picture, put it in the fridge.
Next morning, I have, you know, cold coffee and people wonder, you know, why do you drink ice coffee
all the time? And that's because when it's cold, you can drink ice coffee at will. And if you have to,
you can, you know, slam as much as you need to. That you can just go outside. You don't actually
need to use the freezer, you know, exactly. I could just leave it out on the, on the snow.
We probably have, after the past few weeks, we got to have like 18 inches or two feet.
Oh, it's crazy, right? Got another couple inches today. They sent me home early from my office.
Yeah, we got at least another six to eight today. So it was just like, oh, man, like my wife
was just telling us like, how much, you know, snow do we have in the backyard? And she was like,
well, our patio set, the chairs for the patio set, the snow is over the armrest. So all you can see
is like the very back of the chair. That's it. You hate me. I mean, we have snow, but most of it's
melting. Melting? I didn't know snow does that. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, well, I'm just south of the
Mason Dixon line. So yeah, I have, I have family in Charlotte and they got like 11 inches,
but it was like gone in two days because, you know, I got like 60 or 70 and boom, snow's gone.
I have a little corgi and her legs are not very long. So she has to stick to the paths where
people have already kind of trumped the snow down and made a trail. Yeah, she, he or she would
definitely be covered if they fell in. Well, so I have a beverage too, because I was told that this
was a thing. I got flying cauldron butterscotch cream soda. I got it from the Whole Foods
because I like butterscotch. It is not sugar free, but it is made, you know, it's got cane sugar.
It was from Whole Foods, so it's got all the, you know, the natural ingredients, all of that,
you know, like natural caramel, natural stevia, apparently. Oh, I mean, there's no, there's no MSG.
I mean, what's that? There is however vanilla extract. And the smell, the smell is very,
you know, butterscotch reminiscent, I guess. The taste is a little different, but it's good.
You know, I would say it doesn't quite taste like eating a butterscotch candy, but, you know,
does taste good. It's kind of just a cream soda. Nice. Do you get other types of that brand of
soda normally? I haven't usually, I'm a diet coke girl. Oh, okay. But I wanted something fancy
for this. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, unfortunately, I didn't come fancy normally. I probably have a beer
or something, but I didn't have anything this time around. Yeah, usually I'm either hard liquor tea,
but neither those are really good for long trips. All right, spoilers, spoilers.
Well, before, before I, I don't know if this is necessarily spoiler, but the one thing that I
really liked about the story is, you know, Casey is an earthling and the whole outer space is like
protecting these, these earthlings that are, you know, they're, it almost seems like they're
cuddling them and they don't, you know, the, oh, the poor little earthlings, we have to protect them
because they, they can't handle anything out here and let's, let's keep them in their shelter.
But, you know, when Casey comes out the outer space and she's like, you know, sort of like lying
or misleading and I was like, well, what are you doing? Like, it seems like no one's ever like,
everyone's like, you know, straight arrow and outer space. And Casey just knows how to sort of
manipulate every system so she can get what she wants out of it. Yeah, you know, she's not the,
the only one in the wider galaxy that get it, we'll do that stuff. Like, if you hack sort of,
of course, does his, you know, his illegal software mods, you have the, the government official
who was willing to take a bribe or, you know, sexual favors at least. Oh, yeah, that's right.
And so she's not the only one, but certainly it seems like there's a lot of people unprepared
for her. But I think, of course, ultimately, it's, it's her skill set as that that allows her to see
through what the old ones, the old ones stick at the end. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, my whole
thing was like, oh, yeah, of course, Casey will be able to see this because she could spot a con.
That was the whole thing. I also caught a lot of that off of the doctor in the medical bay where
he kept like trying to add on extra sale. Oh, yeah, let me upgrade that. Let me give you this,
you know, come back for your monthly checkup. Like, it seemed like, you know, everywhere she runs,
like she's runs into a lot of robes. And then later she starts to run into a lot of con men.
Yep, the, the, the doc was a fun character to write to that was played by an old friend of mine who
he's actually doesn't, hasn't done any other voice acting, but I do other nonfiction podcasts with
him. But I just knew he could pull off the rapid fire sales talk. Yeah, another thing that I
liked that was pretty funny was was the first sort of con Casey pulled when they found that,
I came around, it's called not like, but like that storage unit floating out in outer space.
And she was going to get it and that husband and wife were trying to drag it in. And so Casey's
like, oh, no, no, I'm supposed to get 50,000 credits for that. And, you know, the wife's telling
the husband, let me take over. I know what I'm doing. And so the wife's like, we're getting a deal.
We'll give her the 25,000 and then we'll get 54. And it was just funny that, you know, the wife's
like, I got this under control. My husband's a pushover. And I'll take control of this. And,
you know, in the end, she's the one getting the hood pulled over her eyes.
Yep, anyone who's a student of con artists, I wouldn't say I'm a student in the sense that I
follow their teachings as much as I'm, you know, I like con artist stories. But that is actually
a take on a very classic con known as the pigeon drop. Okay.
The usual way the pigeon drop goes is like you might say, it's a briefcase full of money
that you you you like. So the con artist will pretend to accidentally find along with someone else.
And then they have to basically say, well, we have to figure out what we can do with this.
Briefcase full of money so that it's fair so that we can split it up with everybody. And like,
you know, it was done at a time where like the bank would have been closed or something. So you
you have to hold on to it until then. But the the con artist can't stay. But he also doesn't trust
the guys to, you know, the the mark to to hold on to it and have it be fair. And so eventually what
you have happened is the the mark pays the con artist for their half in order to keep the briefcase.
But then at some point you switch out the briefcase for one that's not got all the money in it.
Oh, okay. Yeah, so they're left with a big basically a box full of nothing and you can't
manage counts with the money. Well, yeah, what's funny, what's funny is that, you know, at the end of
the book case or not Casey's, but I can't remember the character's name that Casey stole the ship
from flange. Phoebo. Phoebo, yes, thank you. Where Phoebo's boss ended up paying the 50,000
credits for that empty thing at the end to those people, right? Is that how that went down?
Yes, I liked that part of that came just from there was a point where I was a little bit concerned
that people would not want Casey to have really stolen effectively stolen all that money from
from them. And so just adding this little detail that ties into the the Phoebo's boss,
Karstu, being a little bit dim and then also just like government waste the idea that oh, he just
paid them before and he's like, oh, it seems like a little steep, but I went ahead and did it.
Yeah, that was funny. Yeah, that actually was, that was pretty good because I was expecting like,
oh, yeah, what, you know, how are you going to tie up this loose end? And I was like, oh, he paid
them. That's great. Yeah, it's just funny how he's so nonchalant. I was like, yeah, you know,
like Cristiano just said, yeah, I just paid him a little steep, but you know, whatever.
I expense it. Naturally. What were some of the other good cons? I know there was the, you know,
the pigeon drop was that one. I think that was in chapter four. There was obviously the,
the, the, the, the tooth sauer divining your future where she steals Phoebo's ship.
Was that like a, go on. There weren't really a lot of other ones. Like, there was the,
effectively, their version of the Nigerian email scam that she and I'll talk about, but never
pays off that, you know, they were just sending that out before they came across the, the,
shipping container. Other than that, there's not a lot of other cons just because really,
I mean, Casey is a very reactive character in this particular story because she's just,
she's thrust into this world she doesn't understand. So she's kind of just having to
deal with whatever she can at any given moment. Yeah, there's the one scene where, you know, up until
this point, you kind of think, all right, well, Casey's obviously going to do whatever she has to do
to, you know, to get back home. She's, you know, pretty quick-witted things on her feet.
But then when, when Haksaurus comes and, you know, they make the deal and he gets into the computer,
he starts programming stuff and he's like, okay, so the first thing I'm doing is, you know,
putting in this override thing, but the second thing I'm doing, you're basically going to have to
wipe the system and, and, you know, to, for this one to take effect. And before Haksaurus did that,
I was like, Casey, don't let him race me. Don't let him race me. And, you know, Casey's like,
don't, don't worry, I'm not going to let him. You'll be fine. And so after Casey finds out, she's,
you kind of see like, okay, maybe Casey won't do everything she has to do because she, you know,
what she was worried about having to wipe out. And so she didn't even tell him that that was even
an option. And, you know, then there was another thing within that Haksaurus scene where, you know,
she ended up getting the deal for half the price, but it was just good to see that there was a
limit to how far Casey would go. Yeah, Casey is not full out evil or even really completely amoral.
She's more just cynical. Yeah. And so I think I like to think that she was even not 100% sure that
she wouldn't eventually do it because just the nature of how it was all set up, she really could
have done it at any time if she changed her mind. And I think that her hesitation was sort of just
enough to make her say, well, I don't have to do it now. I can hold that into reserve if I need it.
But I think she, she has a complex relationship with her own emotions when it comes to that sort of
thing. Yeah, I think one of the things that helped her with sort of, you know, holding back as long
as she could was when he was kind of putting Alan like that standby mode, Al's character or his,
you know, what was Al? The essence of Al disappeared and he started, you know, to sound like a
computer that would talk. And she was like, ooh, creepy. Like, you know, and I think she saw a little
bit of a taste of what Al would be like if he was a race and didn't come back. Yeah, and it kind
of ties in also with just the different ways that you might have people look at a really sophisticated
artificial intelligence like that. I don't know if you guys have seen the movie Hurr that's in
theaters right now. It's Oscar nominated. It's great. But, you know, it just kind of could raise
that question of if it is so much like a real person that you can't tell the difference,
does that, is there really a difference? But then you have characters like Haxor who can actually
go in there and see the lines of code and know that, hey, if I delete this one line, then they don't
remember the color orange. And so from there, their point of view, they really are just a complex
software program. And so he wouldn't even think anything of it. And as he demonstrates.
One of the other things, especially it was right there in that scene is like where Casey becomes a
drug dealer. That was really funny. That was really funny. Hey, sorry, we're just saying I'm
back. I want to thank you guys so very much for all your patients with me tonight and all the
mess I'm dealing with up here. Don't think it's yeah, we weren't that patient. We didn't see
here what we said about you. No problem. But, but, but what Broma saying, I loved how I don't
remember what caused it. I think it was Casey arguing with Haxor about, you know, hey, this wasn't
the deal. You know, you said you weren't going to do anything that could damage the computer.
And she was just like, oh, yeah, we'll take this. And, you know, she spits on them. And then he
starts being like, ah, and he's like all getting like, you know, a higher drunk from her saliva.
And that was, that was really funny. Yes, that was hilarious. I think my favorite,
maybe my favorite scene like that in the whole book was what are these tentically things?
Tentacles. I think the the saliva works as a drug thing. Part of that was it came just from
it doesn't matter. It was just was just plot necessity at some point because I kind of realized
I had slightly written myself into a corner with like, oh, well, how does does she just go ahead
and pay? That seems a little bit unsatisfying. So what's something that can allow her to get one
up but without her necessarily having planned it all along? And so it worked as that. And it also
helped as far as tying things back. But I think there are there, I will confess that this a lot of
elements of this story do hinge a little bit on Deus Ex Machina type events. But I hope that
just having them be funny is enough to kind of make up for that a little. Yeah. And again,
it gave the opportunity to show Kasey like thinking on her feet. She was like, oh, hey, wait a minute.
All right. I'm going to give you half of what we agreed on. And I'll give you 15 minutes of what I
can fill up this bottle with the mice saliva and, you know, hack source is like, deal.
I will confess I always laugh at just the thought of her spending 15 minutes spitting into a jar.
Yeah, exactly. Oh, you know, mouth is getting all dry and he's complaining. Is that all you can do?
Now you're just faking it. So I take it. We've done the beverage reviews. Yeah. Do you have one?
I do. I have a great one. A buddy of mine picked it up special at a special beer supply store that
had some craft brews. It is Harvestoon old engine oil black ale, a product of Scotland.
And the label says viscous, chocolatey and roasty. And that's correct. On all three accounts,
it does pour slightly slower than a regular beer. It's not like thick, thick like old engine oil
would have you believe. But it doesn't pass light. If I hold it up to the, if I hold the glass
up to the light, no light comes through it. So it is that dark and it's, it's very nice. It's smooth.
It's sweet on the front end, bitter on the back end. It's got very little
carbonation to it, at least that bubbles through. I can taste and feel carbonation, but there's
almost no head on the thing. And whatever head there was disappeared pretty quickly.
But it's, it's just really, really nice. If I feel like a black ale or a stout or a porter,
it's not, it's, it's in that category. But it's a little, little hopier than a typical stout
or porter would be. No, when you say black ale, it's not like, it's not at all any like a black
licorice hint to it, is there? No, I'm not, no, I'm not detecting any black licorice. I think
when they say black ale, they're talking about the color of the thing. It is, it is dark, dark, dark.
Yeah, because why I fell for that once there's a company southern tier that makes really good,
a really good chocolate stout, a really good milk stout. And I saw that they had this black ale.
And I was like, oh, I'm going to try that. And nowhere on the bottle, I said anything,
it mentioned anything about like black licorice. And I do not like black licorice at all.
I opened it up and I smelled it and I was like, oh, like took a sip and I was like,
then I was like, this feels wrong, but dumped it out. I was like, I just can't stand black licorice.
So now when I hear black ale, I'm like, oh, be careful. Oh, that's weird. I've never heard of a
black licorice flavor and beer. See, now I want to just go a little bit chemistry geek on you.
And I'm wondering if the lessened head and carbonation is partly due to increased viscosity.
So how thick is it? Is it like Italian dressing thick or is it more liquidy still than that?
It's more okay. Well, it's probably a quarter to half the way from water to Italian dressing,
closer to water still. But it's interesting. Yeah, but it is noticeably more viscous than water,
just not quite as much as like an oil and vinegar mix like Italian dressing would be.
Doesn't feel more viscous. It just looked at when I was pouring it and that they could be just
the color. Maybe it isn't this more viscous. Maybe I'm fooled by the color of it.
We need a special analytical instrument to test it. Yeah, piece of flat glass is what you use
to test viscosity. You put a drop on the glass and then hold it vertically and you time it over
a distance. See, I was going fancier than that, but that's partly because I work in the pharmaceutical
industry. But yeah, that'd do it. Oh, right on. Yeah, I've never heard of any other way to test
viscosity, but I grew up in the automotive industry. So we, you know, oil was as close as we had to get.
Well, there are instruments that essentially it's kind of like you stir it and test how much
forces needed to stir it at what speed. Oh, cool. Anyway, and I just realized I didn't say anything
about the smell. Let me, let me take a good whiff of this real quick. Your mic.
I'm sorry. Eat my mic. No, I said mute your mic like I don't want to hear you inhaling like
you're doing coke on the table. Oh, no, I don't do that. I have a properly shaped glass. I just
have to stick my nose in it and get a little whiff. Wasting motion. Yeah, exactly. No, it smells like
a nice beer. It smells pretty hoppy and it actually has a little bit of a floral smell to it. A
little bit of like flower pollen smell, but not too much. Yeah, and it's a high quality. I give
this one a, and it's got a nice clean finish. The bitter aftertaste seems to only be on the back of
the tongue. It finishes clean everywhere else. It almost, it almost washes off the side of the
tongue like water. Would, you know, to be a kind of a palate cleanser, but no, it's really nice.
All right, back to the book. I'm done. Thanks, guys.
Where were we? We left off at, uh, you know, Casey becoming a drug dealer.
Well, she gets out of it again by the end, you know, too many people get hurt. Exactly.
Now, all right. So from Casey being a drug dealer to Casey being a con artist, I wanted to ask you,
have you talked about that yet? Her con artistness? Yeah. Well, we talked a little bit about some
of the cons she does, but not as much about her as like how it affects her character.
Well, yeah. No, it's, it's, there was one particular thing in like the, for, I believe it's
chapter one, might have been chapter two, but really early on where, you know, Casey says,
all you've got to do is give them that one moment to hope that something might just be possible.
Did you come up with that? Was that research? Are you that devious? Like, how did that line
happen? Because that really hooked me. Well, I am definitely a fan of con artist characters,
which I hasten to distinguish from actual real con artists who are kind of awful people.
But, um, con artist stories are really awesome. I'm a big fan of them in general. And so I've,
I've done a lot of reading just about like classic cons and just con artist stories in general
that I, I enjoy. And including reading about real con artists. But the, the, when I, when I
clarify, you know, con artist stories, which are all kind of, you have the con artist being sort of
the lovable rogue a lot of the time. Uh, but the, the problem is if you think about it,
being a con artist is worse in some ways than really just mugging someone if you think about it.
Because it's scarier in the moment to, to mug someone, um, you know, like stick them up with a,
a gun or a knife. But to pray on someone's trust and hope in a malicious way or at least a selfish
way is really kind of a dark thing. And so part of what I wanted to do with, with Casey is,
is not like not go full dark because I wanted some of the fun of a con artist story. But
just to also really think about what kind of person decides that that's what they want to do with
their life and how they want to live. Um, and, and so it's important. I think, although I, I,
I think anyone can enjoy the story without getting into this too much. But when Casey is doing
those monologues at the beginning and end, in my mind, she's really often talking to herself
as much as to anyone else. It's like she's trying to rationalize how she feels about all the stuff
she does. Oh, I totally got that that she was, uh, I, well, I don't know if I felt that she was
rationalizing it, but maybe, maybe, um, blowviating on her rationalization, you know, and like,
if I felt like she already had it figured out, but she was trying to reinforce her own, um,
her own disposition of being okay with it. Yeah, there's a little bit of a blowviating there
to, um, you know, she's kind of in love with the sound of her own voice from time to time.
But yeah, as far as, uh, the, the specific wording there, I mean, it's, it's certainly based
on what real con artists do because the thing is that often a con, if you looked at it in just
pure, cold, rational terms, becomes pretty obvious right away that it's not going to be a good deal.
Um, it's only works because you are able to, you know, it's like, why do people buy lottery tickets?
You know, you could say on one hand, they don't have a good understanding of statistics,
but it's also just because just the, the idea of just thinking about, oh, if I won,
how great would that be? What would I buy with it? People are so in love with just thinking about
that, that they're willing to spend money, might as well just be throwing it in the street, um,
to buy, you know, and so lots of con artists, what they do is they really capitalize on that.
They try to give people this, this fantasy that they can dream about that really, uh,
blinds them to the, the more obvious flaws in whatever the, uh, proposal is.
And then Karstu just expenses it, which I thought was freaking hilarious. I, I laughed out at that one.
I, I was a fan of that too. Uh, I, I think I, that was one of the ones that I wasn't sure if
everybody kind of fully got that, you know, just, you know, when I think back on it, I,
should I have made it more clear? Did it work? But part of that, as I was, I actually discussed
that a little bit earlier was just the idea that I kind of wanted the, the two salvage, uh,
minors to not, I wanted them to end the story, not having actually gotten scammed out of 25,000
credits. Yeah, that was a nice, you know, bonus. So I didn't feel too bad about them, that the,
I don't know, the, I don't know which one was the female, which was the male, but the female
voice, I didn't feel bad about her losing credit. She was kind of mean. Well, you know, it's funny,
you mentioned the, uh, the genders there just because, uh, not even just with them, but kind of
throughout. I deliberately was sort of playing around with, uh, uh, the gender, not only, you know,
at one point, Casey is disguised as a, as a male alien, but also you, you may have realized that,
when she's interacting with other aliens that, uh, that think that no she's a human,
they frequently refer to her with the, uh, the male pronoun just because, you know, it's,
it's like when you see a dog and you don't bend down to look between their legs, you might just
default to say, oh, you know, what's his name or whatever. And so I was kind of going this,
for the same thing there, but then with a flockser and plester, the two there, I deliberately gave the,
after you got me pregnant line to, um, to the male voice actor. Yeah, that worked very, very well.
I thought, okay, and did you, did you guys, well, that was way, did you discuss, uh,
Casey's a gender role switch at any point? No, we didn't cover that. No, not yet. I was going to say
that I actually kind of nicknamed those two in my head the starfishes because of that line.
Nice. I like that. All right, to either you have anything to say about Casey's
gender reversal. I just have one last thing about, you know, Casey's like cons, whatever.
It's, it's just kind of funny that I mean, I guess she continued her conning ways as she got into
trouble, you know, from the, from the outset, you know, the whole reason why she even got into
the trouble she was in was because of the way the book opened. She, you know, she was pulling on
con. And that's what even got her into all the trouble in the beginning. And she just kind of
kept writing that wave to, you know, get her back home, I guess, but, you know, it's, it's her
concept or what even got her in trouble in the first place. Well, and the thing is too that, you
know, for all the energy she spends trying to get home at the end, like she was running away at
the beginning is what she was doing. She was stealing a ship so that she could get off the station
because she wanted to leave. Yeah, and then, then when she was out, she's like, oh, never mind,
I want to go back home. Yeah, Casey doesn't really know what she wants. That's part of her, her
problem at when it gets to the core of it. That might be what gives it such a young adult
feel to it that she's just combative and, you know, disobedient any opportunity she gets,
regardless of, of, you know, she ran away and then she wants to go home. Then when somebody tries
to help her get home, she breaks out of prison to steal our back. She just, you know, is, is
disobedient no matter what that maybe that's what it was. It's a little bit of a rebel without a
cause there. Yeah, yeah, rebellious. That's the word I was fishing for. Yeah, actually, as I've
been working on the second season, which, you know, is a long time coming, but actually in production
now, I kind of explored that further just in terms of what is it at the core that she really wants
and is it necessarily even in the same sphere as what she thinks she's supposed to want.
Wow, that's weird that as the author you're hunting for that because to me it seemed obvious
she just wants her way. Well, she, she does, but the problem is that at a certain point, you can
just go off by yourself and no one will bother you, but that's not really what she wants either.
Right, right, right. She just wants to have her way. She wants life on her terms and, you know,
part of her justification for being a con artist always seems to be, well, the universe gave me,
gave me these cards to play. She said a couple times, dealt me this hand. I am playing them the way
that I feel they need to be played. That's, that's, you play a game of cards on your terms.
It just seemed like that, like everyone she met, she wanted to have it her way, and that,
that seemed pretty consistent. Well, I think maybe the, the difference, though, is just when,
like we talked before about people imagining what they would do if they won the lottery.
I feel like if Casey won the lottery, she wouldn't know, she doesn't know what she would want to do.
Yeah, maybe. That's, that's, here I'm arguing with the author, maybe.
Well, no, that's, that's, that's completely fair because, you know, it's that whole,
you know, death of the author idea, just that once a story gets out there, it's not always,
you know, people will interpret it differently than the author intended, and that's not wrong.
How does that feel?
Well, it's, it's kind of interesting. It just, you know, I, I try to take it as a compliment in
the sense of knowing that, you know, I've created something that inspires people to think about it
beyond what's just there in the, in the, in the text or the audio, so to speak. But again,
it's like, we're not even necessarily completely disagreeing. I'm not saying it's like, well,
that's not what I intended. It's more that it's, it's, you know, it's complex, and you know, there's,
there's not, it's not just a simple one answer.
Yeah, and that's when you say complex, that's an interesting word because the book did not feel
complex. The story felt simple and easy to follow, but the characters did feel complex. So I,
that's kind of neat. I didn't thought of that quite that way until you just used that word. Maybe
think of that. Well, it's also true that a lot of the, the, the, the more nuanced parts of the
character development are definitely given a backseat, you know, to the, just adventure part of the
story. Yeah, sure. Yeah, I wanted to actually jump to the ending for a second. I'm not going to say
I didn't like it, but it was sort of, I don't really see how she got to, and maybe that was the
point to just, you know, where she was at the end where Fibo means her to the bar. And it's like,
how did you get here? Is this a story you're weaving or is this actually happened? I think maybe it
was meant to be a little ambiguous. That's kind of how I took it. Like maybe this happened. Maybe
she's making it up. Yeah, I had the same question. Is the story true? Well, that is a good question.
It does seem to be a story that she's telling the bartender in order to get out of her tab.
Yeah, for sure. Well, so that's the thing is that it is intended to be a little bit ambiguous
in that sense. What I like to think is that by and large, it's true, but Casey is also just kind of
a storyteller by nature. And so she will often tailor things to the listener, even if for the most
part, it's true. But just the the idea of leaving this this bar that she's at and who's this bartender
and where is this and how long after all the events of the story is this taking place, I definitely
left all that vague on purpose. You know, until you just said that it never occurred to me that
where is this could be a question that the bartender wasn't human. Maybe he is and maybe he's not.
I mean, you can go from the audio cues that it doesn't really seem like it because as when you
were out plowing, Pokey, we had a discussion about some of the technical pieces where alien voices
were meant to sound a bit alien. So I mean, you can you can claim that, but you kind of did paint
yourself in a corner from a technical perspective where the bartender sounds human.
I look forward to hearing that part of the conversation because I was going to ask if no one else,
I was going to bring it up if no one else did. It was excellent technically.
Thank you. You know, I wasn't trying to make it like it's not like it was supposed to be a total
mystery, but I was just leaving the specifics as far as the nature of the bartender. And I think
part of that was really just this idea that it almost doesn't matter. You know what I mean? It's
like she would be telling the same story the same way whether it's a human bartender or an alien
bartender on a different planet. Let me ask and this is a question for everybody else here,
everyone here. Is it just me or is mystery funny? Is it funny when you leave something like that
unanswered like is this guy human or isn't? I thought that that kind of thing makes me chuckle
though I didn't think of that particular one at that point, but even like to give a pretty famous
example, the end of the movie lock stock and two smoking barrels, I thought that was hilarious.
My wife can't say any business or ovaries. How much of that movie on?
I actually don't remember the end of that. Oh, I can't spoil that. That wasn't assigned.
Oh well, but I don't know. I think it can be. You know, there are certainly some examples of
stories that end ambiguously where I don't know that I would call it funny, but at the same time,
I think it can be. And I kind of wanted it to feel a little bit that way here, not necessarily in
that element being funny in and of itself, but also just the idea that, oh, this whole story was
really just a way to try to get out of a barcab and it was unsuccessful in that name.
Yeah, yeah, that was good. Bro, do you have any thoughts on that?
Yeah, I can see how that would work. It's sort of like though, like this is a really detailed
story. This is not the kind of, I mean, she must be really desperate to get out of this bar tab if
she's spinning like a, you know, the story that's spent the last 10 volumes, you know, it's like,
like nobody gets into a story this deep unless they're desperate and that did help with it. It's like,
oh, it's like this. It was kind of a dissatisfaction is what I was feeling. It did make some sense
that she would spin this crazy tall tail and it's like, oh, you know, Casey didn't really learn
anything from this, but if she didn't go through it, then it didn't really matter too much.
So it was, I ended up having like a two minds or a split, like, oh, it could have gone this way,
it could have gone that way and having to consider each one independently. See, now that's what I
thought was so funny about it was no matter what, whether she made the story up, that was funny to
me. If she made this whole story up to get out of a bar tab, that was humorous. If she didn't,
if it was a true story, if she went through all this, the first, basically the first person,
the time travel ever happened to the first human to get all this stuff is true and she still winds
up in a bar and can't pay for own drink. That's funny to me too. I don't know. I laugh both ways.
I think it's fair that the ending, basically, what happens as far as her personal arc is that she
comes really, really close to some serious personal growth and then it's basically let off the hook
at the last minute by a total Deus Ex Machina. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yep, which would explain her
having to weasel her way out of a bar tab in either case. I think, okay, I was going to say something
and now it's totally gone. I shouldn't have pushed the key. I hate when that happens a deal all time.
But I guess one thing though, the framing device, again, I don't want to talk too much about
Space KC2 just because fans of mine have been bugging me for years. I mean, the original Space KC came
out in 2007 and so season two has been a long time coming. I'm hoping for like a like a Balticon
Memorial Day-ish premiere, but the framing device in that one is a little bit more
clear in the sense that basically the whole idea in that one is that she is testifying now in the
trial of the old ones. And so the story she's telling is in that context. Oh, cool. By the way,
I'm available for voice work as I said before. Oh, thank you. Well, I do have actually several more
small roles too that I still need lines for. So I think that could probably be made to happen.
Well, then my audio quality on this recording is my application, I guess.
Are you going to do the owl squee because we could use more owl squee? Yeah, there you go.
Even though it hurt your ears. I can take my headphones off for a second.
Right on. Okay, so KC's gender role. When she found out that she had been role reversed,
you know, she was all about get me out of this body, get me back into my own body.
And then she found out that her gender had been changed. She's like, well, give me a minute.
I found that the most relatable moment in the whole story.
The most in the whole story? Well, but no, I'm kind of kidding. Because I think that's that's true.
I mean, it's one thing to say something is just weird. And she's maybe not that interested in
just weird. But when there isn't that additional angle to it, yeah, there's there's some curiosity
there. And the thing is too that she is, she's not really like a prude, you know, she's, uh,
oh for sure. Because when the government official propositions her, I mean, she's reluctant because
he's a giant gross slimy blob, not because she would otherwise not be into it. But even still,
she's planning to psych herself up and do it. Little tequila. But yeah, no, I mean, I,
you know, I, I wouldn't say often, but often enough, I have wondered what does this feel like
to the opposite gender? What exactly are they feeling? I know what I'm feeling. And I suspect
it's not identical. So yeah, I've, I've wondered that many times. And when she got the chance to
figure it out, I was a little jealous. Well, and plus she had all the sensory clusters and
tentacles to go to go with it. And even considered that tentacles. I mean, seriously, though, I mean,
I think anybody, everybody feels that way. So it's, it's kind of, uh, it is something that really
just seems, you know, I, I had it happen because it was funny, but that she would want an extra
minute to consider it, just felt like, well, obviously she would. I'm glad it's obvious. I'm glad
I'm not the only one. Oh, yeah, you're not alone. We're just going to, we're just going to let
you stew on the pot for a little bit because that's funny. But yeah, I mean, sort of like everyone,
it's like, oh, you know, a lot of people want this opportunity. And it's like, I've got it for a
second. You know, like, like, hold on. Let me, let me feel this out just to get my own curiosity out
and that was funny. Well, and, and like I was saying earlier, too, I think just, I, I wanted
there to be a little bit of a sense of slightly more fluidity in that sort of thing. In general,
you know, just the, this sort of the swapping of the roles with the, the two minors and just the
fact that, uh, um, all the other aliens tends to call Casey with by the, uh, male pronoun. And
even, even her name, you know, Casey is often considered a male name, um, although I can't say that
I named her that because of that idea. I mean, you know, she's named Casey because the title is
Space Casey. Yeah, yeah, it's, it's alliteration. That was, yeah, it was a good choice.
In my, and I'll say my guilty pleasure of the book, the thing that I, I laugh at again,
I've listened four times and every time I know it's coming and I laugh at it every time,
is when striping slimes her and just won't stop. I mean,
that one was a lot of fun, uh, to just the, I mean, I loved just the idea that, um, it's basically
an alien facehugger, right? Only like as a pet that everyone else thinks is cute. Um, but at the same
time that there are aspects of, of stripy that are kind of good as a pet, it's just he's also kind
of gross looking and sprays, fell selling, smelling slime everywhere and choose on system cables.
It's just kind of, uh, it's like everything that you would not want in a pet except that he's
also kind of nice. Yeah, I mean, I'm sitting here with one of my cats, howling at my door,
because she wants to come in. It's like, yeah, it's that sort of thing. They want your attention.
They want this. In case he's like, you know, I didn't really sign up for this.
And it's like, oh, yeah, I almost wonder though, did I get her stuck in the tube deliberately?
Or was that just something that happened and like, you know, the loop gets her out as a happy
accident? And that's not really something that needs to be answered. It was just more of a rhetorical,
like, gee, I wonder what this was all about. Like I was, was I trying to make her make friends or,
you know, and you can overthink that a bit too. But it was, it was just really interesting.
It's like, oh, yeah, getting climbed repeatedly actually was helpful.
I tend to think, and I, again, like this is not necessarily the definitive answer. But
in my mind, at least, L, at that point was not, you know, like, it was too early in their
relationship for him to have anything like ulterior motives in that sense. So I think he's being
pretty straight up with her in the sense of, you know, he's going to go chew on some system
cables. And we really can't have that what there's not going to be anything we can do about it.
That said, he certainly has an emotional investment in wanting Casey and Stripey to get along.
I thought L was way, way to naive and even innocent at this point to be devious. But above
innocence, even if he wasn't, he's just too naive. That's true. I, you know, I had thought about it.
It was more of long lines of like, you could have taken it this way. It didn't really seem like it,
but it just kind of, it's sort of like where you have two paths and they both end up being the
same result. Well, it's also, you know, comes down to his lack of understanding of human physiology
because he is, he's genuinely perplexed when she gets stuck and he's, and he, he just says,
well, collapse your ribcage and slide out. Like, what's the problem?
And speaking of Al, where, where did he get his, I don't, I don't remember this in the book,
but where did, you know, where did his fashion sense come from?
That really, it kind of, I was just trying to think of some,
something that would be strange because a lot of the initial ideas of things that were happening
in the story really just came from, I want something weird for Casey to have to respond to.
And so that was kind of the initial idea is like, what is like the weirdest possible thing
that like an artificial intelligence that runs a spaceship to be interested in?
And I actually, it started off a little bit more like, like a fetish-y sort of thing, not
in like fetish gear, but just the idea that like, he would like to wear clothes somehow,
like almost like it's a cross-dressing thing. So that was kind of, I didn't catch that.
Well, it kind of evolved from that to not really be about that, but that was at least part
of the original idea. But then eventually, I just, once it kind of occurred to me,
I realized that there were, there were several ways that I could make that work with the rest
of the story that I enjoyed. For example, the idea that Casey would be, you know, able to work
as a model with him. And it also just, you know, it gave him something else to do.
Regardless, it's a brilliant place to start. It's a great platform, no matter how he turned out.
It's, you know what I mean? It's a good starting point.
I, you know, one of the great pleasures of doing this kind of a format, as opposed to
like a more straight read of an audiobook is, although it's certainly a lot more work to deal with
all the different voice actors, sometimes they really bring things to the character in ways
beyond what you expect. And like, for example, when Al is telling Casey about his interest in
fashion design, and he's just so hesitant to even let her know. He's just so vulnerable there.
And he's like, you don't think it's weird. You know, it just breaks my heart for Al there.
I was good in this case. I'm going to just forgot. I'm sorry. I reached for the key and it flew right out.
That's all right. I did it earlier. But of course, at the same time, like, that is really, I think,
the first real sort of bonding moment between Casey and Al, though, just because he kind of,
or she kind of validates it, you know, in the sense that, you know, he's, you know, he's saying,
you don't think it's weird. And she tells him, of course, it's weird. But she's kind of saying,
but it's no weirder than all of this other stuff that I'm doing. So let's go for it.
Yeah. And I can relate to the whole idea of who cares if it's weird, because if anybody cared if I
was weird, I wouldn't even be here. My wife is standing over my shoulder, smirking at me,
because she believes that's true as well. Here we are, Pokey. But see, we're, where does not a
automatically pejorative thing? No, I think normal is automatically pejorative. That's just where I
come from, though. The other thing I'll say to that is it's sort of like, you get that, the adventure
of the Ragtag band of misfits, you get that a bit. And especially as a con artist, you tend to,
you tend to fall in with some people who not necessarily aren't all there, but are definitely
definitely off the beaten path. Yeah, one of another, one of the, the influences, I think,
not that I was drawing any specific elements from it, but I really enjoyed is Cowboy Bebop,
the anime. And that has a similar feel there, just in the sense of you have all of these people
who are kind of, kind of, damaged in their own way, but you chat their own skills to bring,
and they all kind of become this weird little family. Yeah, I need to see more of that. I only
have the first episode. I only have the first session on DVD. I need to get the rest of them to
finally see that. Oh, it's pretty great. And one of the, it's just the fact that it's complete
and not that long makes it a good watch also. I should also point out that the reason I have a
Corgi is because of I'm the Corgi from Cowboy Bebop. I've been avoiding watching that, but I guess
I'll have to now. It's mandatory. Glad, bro. Oh, I was going to say I do remember seeing it like
in college, I think a while ago, I do remember specifically there's one part in the intro where
there's a bunch of waving hands. We all used to do that in front of the projector, which was
pretty funny, but it's been so long. I would say I've forgotten most of the plot.
Yeah, I have no anime background. And I heard that was good. And I asked my brother about it
because he's seen a bunch of anime, but he's not watching with other people. Maybe that's the
difference is he, he just sits alone and watch them as far as I can tell. And he said Cowboy Bebop was
not a good one. So I, you know, didn't watch it, but now I have to. Well, it tastes as subjective,
of course, but I'm a little surprised just that, you know, like I'm not a super anime fan or
anything, but I've seen, I've seen perhaps more than average, but I've always had the impression
that that one is pretty widely regarded as being great. Okay, yeah, I'll check it out. A lot of it
is story too, not necessarily like art or things like that. To get back on the topic, is there
anything else you guys wanted to bring up? I think you guys covered everything that I would have
brought up if I were here. And while I was here, I brought up everything else I would have covered.
Christianity is there anything we're not asking you about something that you, you know,
think we're missing or especially proud of? No, not really. I mean, I think, I think just to
elaborate a little bit more on what I was saying in terms of the difference between doing something
like this where it's more like a radio play with the full cast of voice actors and all the effects
and music and so on, versus doing something that's more like a straight read or, you know,
traditional audiobooks say it's way, way more work. I mean, it's like an order of magnitude more
work. And so I'm like, I'm proud of it, but it also just sort of makes me hesitant to do more
that's just like it because, you know, it's, it is just so much more effort by comparison, but
at the same time, it really does have its own joys too because, you know, even though there's
all these little nitpicks that I still have about it, you know, places where I remember, oh,
I wish I had made that one effect louder and that mix or something, but also just the joy of
finding just the right effect and placing it in just the right split second so that it works with
the like all of the the effects of Casey when she is trapped in the vent. I'm really kind of proud
of those because like the sheet metal lumping. Well, yeah, there's that and then also like a lot
of the sort of squeaks of her like trying to push against it. I mean, you know, I did that with my
hand against a mirror with a mic nearby. So it's like making your sound designer too. Yeah, well,
so I did get a lot of my effects from the free sound project, but I did record a bunch of them
myself as well. It's excellent. I have a question for you on a personal level. What's your motivation
for doing these? It's fine. I mean, you know, that's kind of tried, but I don't know, I guess I'm
just feel kind of like I'm just I like telling stories and one of the things that you know,
so like even back from when I was a little kid, I was always writing various stories and I
also did community theater. And then when I was in high school, I did speech and debate and I was
my category was interpretation of humorous literature, which is a lot of vocal presentation.
And so it just is something I enjoy and the podcast medium really gives me this outlet to not
only have the story, but I can tell it in a way that's fun for me and people actually get to hear
it. And there's just something magical about that. And how do you feel about the reward? I mean,
because I don't imagine there's a whole lot of monetary reward here, but there's heaps and heaps
of love coming back at you, right? Well, yeah, I mean, you're absolutely right. It's, you know, I've
I've paid way more money than I've made for any of my any of my podcast stuff.
So, but that said, you know, I kind of like I'm I'm okay with that. You know, I,
I, you know, if I became some big best-sellering author or something and could quit my day job or
whatever, I mean, I'm not saying I would turn that down, but I'm kind of okay with it being a hobby.
And so I'm not really in it for the financial reward, but it's really more about like
a way of telling a story, creating something that means something to me and then sharing it with
other people. That's that's what I'm in it for. And that's that I definitely get.
That's awesome. That's awesome. And then in that framework, I am pleased to say that I've
thoroughly enjoyed SpaceKC multiple times. Thank you. Yes, I appreciated it myself.
It was definitely a good read and I look forward to, you know, hearing SpaceKC2 and, you know,
don't rush, you know, these things take time and knowing that you're doing it for a hobby means that,
you know, you have to you have to do it with love. I mean, that's one of the reasons I kind of
slowed down writing music was that it was becoming more tedious than anything else.
Well, you know, it is it's interesting just because I've certainly not been rushing in. I mean,
it's literally, you know, off and on. It's been something like seven years, you know, since the
original came out. And I won't say that I was working exclusively on this all that time.
But, you know, people have been asking me about it. And there was a pros, you know, I mean,
people I know from two and a half years ago were hearing me say, oh, yeah, I'm getting
getting to work on the script. I'm going to, I'm going to do it. And you know, it's still not out.
And I'm a little bit wary even now of really saying too much about it because it's not 100% ready yet.
But it's getting close enough that I'm kind of okay saying more about it again. But
the having it be a hobby and finding the time to work on it, it really is a dilemma of some,
you're not always going to feel like it feel like working on it enough to get anything done in a
reasonable amount of time. So you have to balance making yourself work on it even when you don't
feel like it versus this idea of burning yourself out on it and then not wanting to do it at all
anymore. Finding that balance is very difficult sometimes. Oh, yeah. And audio editing can be so
tedious when it's in front of you. I mean, it is rewarding as it is when it's behind you, when it's
in front of you. Oh boy. Oh my god. Yes. The in in particular, the like the part where you're
finding effects and music and layering them in and tweaking it. And like I kind of like that part of it.
Yes. But but the the part where you're editing out all the ums and oz and like, oh shoot. This
is the perfect line reading except it flubbed the pronunciation of the word at the end. And you try
to see if you can bring in that word from another take, but it doesn't match and then that that
parts of nightmare. Yes. Yeah, you want to talk about editing the 24 hour show, Pokey? Oh, no,
I did not edit. I just cut and paste it into into file house. Actually, that was a 26 hour show,
wasn't it? Not the one that I actually didn't edit this year's show. I did the the first year,
which was only a 12 hour live podcast. And the second year, which was 24 ish. I see what's in
this past year's like 36 or something like that. It really just kept going and going. It went very
long. Yeah, I was on it probably the whole day when I woke up till about one in the morning and
I just crashed in the back. I got back up. It was over, but it was a long show. And I don't know
even know if we edited that show. It was probably just shipped raw, but I mean, you can't do that
with an audio book. You can do that with a promotion like this. It's like, you know, it's 30 hours
of shows, you know. And by the way, Kristiana, you're invited next New Year's Eve. If you've got even
five minutes to spare, pop back in this room and chat with nerds all around the world.
I'll keep that in mind. You know, the the last time I tried to do anything that was even close to
24 hours, there's this the extra life thing where you can you do try to play video games for 24
hours for charity. I did that a few years ago and discovered that's like, gosh, it's not as easy
to stay up for 24 hours as it used to be. Oh, yeah, I know what you mean. I've heard of that charity too.
One of the nerd core rap podcasts was talking about that a couple times. It sounds like an interesting
and interesting like pledge drive marathon type thing. What what came did you play?
Oh, it wasn't just one game. I couldn't do just one game for the whole time. In fact, I think near
the end, I was having to switch games like every 15 minutes because otherwise I would just I would
start to nod off and walk off a cliff or something like that. So I had to just kind of keep changing
it up in order to keep my brain working. Although I think in the in that context part of the way I
was doing it at the time was although I was doing recordings and taking pictures just like myself,
there was really no one else in the room. So it was really just me there in the room with no one
else to talk to most of the time. So it was harder there than I think it would have been if there
were other people. Yeah, for sure. I think I could play Gran Turismo for 24 hours straight.
Is it try it for the marathon next year? You'll find that it's more difficult than you think.
You're probably right. You're probably right. Final thoughts? Or at least my final thoughts,
I have to get going here soon. But yeah, I definitely enjoyed this. I am completely surprised that
you were able to get to the author to show up poking. That is we're glad that you're here,
Kristiana. But I am pleased surprised you managed to do it. And it was fun to actually be able to
bounce ideas off and you know, speak to you because normally we do these book reviews and you know
eventually they get back to the author but to have her here talking with us is a really a treat.
Yeah, she set the bar high for everyone else now. Oh yeah, and it was we've invited all
but one author to the best of my recollection. We've invited all but one author on that we
reviewed their books. And that's just because nobody liked that book. And we didn't want to hear
you. What's that? We tore that book up. I remember which one you were talking about. I remember
the beverage review came real early. Yeah, I mean, it's not that we tore it up on purpose. We're just
fishing for content and we couldn't find. It was hard to find nice things to say about a book you
don't like. Well, I like to think that you guys were more kind because I was here than you might
have been. Otherwise, you might have found more depicts or something if I wasn't. But that's okay
because I get to supervise you guys and make sure you didn't say bad stuff. Which is very important
because I said some bad stuff on our 24 hour show and got called on it and had to do a whole separate
podcast to let those guys have their say. It's easier this way. Seriously, though, I, you know,
it was it was a treat to be invited on here. And obviously, you know, it's just based cases
podcast that I'm proud of. And like I said, the whole motivation is I love sharing these stories
with people. And so hearing this kind of feedback is really it's like that's the reward
that I am accepting in lieu of cash. So.
Woohoo. Wait, I was just about to donate on part of your books. You stopped me just before I clicked.
That's crazy. That was close. Sorry, go on.
I think Casey maybe even would appreciate accolades more than cash.
Great. On Jonathan, did you have anything you wanted to finish up with?
No, I just think it's a it's really a great book and I highly, you know, you won't be disappointed
go to party books. Download it. Listen to it. It's it's a great book.
And and I will I should say, bro, I really had so little to do with Cristiana being here.
It was your random chance that we bumped into each other. And it was Cristiana's fault for being
so personable that I felt I could, you know, email her and say, Hey, remember me? Which
would you help us out and do this with us? So that this is all Cristiana. I can't take any credit
for it. Well, I was laughing because when I got the email, I, you know, I remembered
meeting you. And so I assumed that you you were picking Space Casey next because you would run
into me and you thought you could get me on the podcast. But then when I looked from two years back,
you had said that this was going to be in the next book. I that was that was kind of funny.
That was so awkward for me. When we met, I was I was I wanted to say, Hey, we're reviewing your book
for two years. It just it was really, I don't know if you noticed that, but I yeah, I didn't
how to deal with that. Well, you know, it worked out. Okay. Yeah. Yes. And thank you for making it
easy on me there. Well, we had promised the book. And then we just everybody sort of dropped off
the face of the earth. And you know, we were like, Hey, let's get the book back together. Oh,
hey, what book should we do? You know, we did promise Space Casey. Well, no one had any objections.
So it's like, let's just finish up Space Casey because we had promised we'll do it. And it was
a good book and we reviewed it. And then Poke said that you the Cristiano Ellis was going to show up
and we're like, Oh, hey, it's going to be fun. See, and I think that I think that might be why
the book club fell off in the first place as people when I suggested Space Casey people were like,
Oh, no, this is a kids book. And I think they only just saw the cover. And I got a little
dejected by that. And I don't know. Maybe I heard some more complaints before people gave it a shot.
I'm really not sure. But that seemed to be what made it fall off. And then I just had a hard time
deciding since everybody has left it up to me to decide, you know, do we do the book that I
seem like nobody wanted to do? Or do we pick a book that people said they wanted to do? But now we've
left, you know, anyone hanging who's a fan and, you know, God forbid it, get back to Cristiano,
that we want to do her book. And then everybody wanted to, it just, it almost felt like a moral dilemma
to me. And at the same time, I really did want to do it. Decisions, decisions.
You know, it's interesting though, just I guess getting the feedback that people who haven't
listened maybe would think it's a kids book, I guess that had never really occurred to me. But I
think that a lot of that's just on me for not always being very aware of how I'm presenting myself.
I don't, maybe, but I didn't have a problem with it. If my opinion counts for anything, which I,
it doesn't, I don't pretend that it does, but, you know, that's just the way I feel. I didn't have
a problem with it at all. Alrighty. Well, I think being more like a kids book though, you know,
it's interesting because I do have that script book, which very much does look like a,
sorry, let, let my finger off the key there. The script book does look very much like a kids book
because that's kind of supposed to be the joke is that it's supposed to look like one of those
transformers or my little pony activity books you'd buy at the grocery store when you're a six,
you know, that's coloring book and has mazes and word searches and stuff in it.
I mean, that was supposed to be kind of the gimmick of it, but I suppose too that if you don't
actually know already that it's a joke, you might assume that it's sincere. Yeah, I get that.
All right. Well, Cristiana, would you do us the honor of assigning our next book if you have one
ready for you there or ready for us? I mean, oh, man, I shoot. I actually thought about this
in advance and now they're all gone. Have you guys done any of Nathan Lowles?
Not on the audio book club. Some of the folks in our community have have reviewed his books and
actually interviewed him, which I think might have been how I found potty of books was listening to
an interview with Nathan Lowle, but we haven't. We could just grab the latest one that he's posted,
I guess, that work. No, because it's book six in a series. Pity. It's funny that you mentioned
him though, because when I was talking on the back channel on the mail list, I recommended for
whoever was to pick the next one if they needed any suggestions. One of the ones I suggested was
one that he narrated, but he didn't write. That was one that I thought was a good book. I liked it.
And don't worry about dead air. We can this edits out automatically, but I can almost
feel you scrolling through potty of books right now. Well, I was and then I realized that I
wasn't, I realized that I hadn't been pressing the key, so I was actually talking there for a bit.
But how about South Coast? That's one that's actually in the same universe as his Ishmael Wong
series, but it's a separate standalone story. And I really, really enjoyed that one. So that's
how about that? That's my recommendation. You got it. Is that on potty of books?
It was when I listened to it. I don't think it's been removed.
Shaman tells one South Coast. Yes, that's it. Okay, found it.
Yes, that's our next book. Shaman tells one South Coast. And that's right, he renamed all of his
books at one point. So it used to just be South Coast, but right now it's Shaman Tales.
Yeah, it's a great story about all sorts of things like
the meaning of art and the aesthetics of art, living up to parental expectations.
And then also just, it's one of the very rare stories where there's a corporation that's not evil.
Yeah, yeah. There's a lot of honesty and hard work portrayed as positive things.
Yeah, so I really enjoyed that book. I bet those of you who haven't yet listened will also like it.
Yeah, we definitely will. And it's got that classic Nathan Lowell style and pace that I don't
know. It seems like 99 out of 100 people love it. And that one person just seems to absolutely
hate it. And he's a weirdo. And don't worry about him.
Well, you know, it is interesting just in the sense that his Ishmael Long series in particular,
it's kind of amazing how compelling it ends up being given that if you were to just describe
the plot to someone, it sounds like it has no conflict at all. So this makes coffee.
Yeah, pretty much. Local boy makes good. It's pretty much the whole story.
But then South Coast is a little bit more of a traditional kind of story in that sense,
meaning there's a little bit more internal conflict as opposed to just, hey, let's follow this guy
as he learns how to do new things. But even still, it definitely has his style and that same feel.
Yeah, excellent. Thank you so much for doing this with us. We'll definitely be reviewing that book
next time we get together, which I'm not quite sure when that's going to be. We did have one
request at the next time we get together. We'd make it an hour later because Dublin, Dan,
Dan Washgo, can't make it at six o'clock. And he is he is fantastic to have on these shows.
But maybe we could set it for maybe a month from now or roughly there about Tuesday night seem
to get a lot of responses, but you're more than welcome to join us any time you want, Cristiana.
Awesome. Thank you. I keep forgetting to press the key.
That's okay. I want to ask you to commit to anything again, but yeah, I will definitely keep
you in the loop if you're interested in being in the loop or for anybody who's listening who
is interested in joining us. Just join the hacker public radio mailing list.
And you'll get all the updates. We try to put everything there anytime. We are, you know,
batting around potential dates and times, you know, and the only prerequisite is that you get
mumble work in and that you've listened to the audiobook and you bring up the efforts to review.
And you heard what's about. We had fun here and we try to every time.
All right. And with that, I'm out. Thank you, everybody.
Oh, thank you as well. And thanks everyone for listening and everyone who was on the show tonight.
Thank you. Thank you. And good night.
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