Episode 77: Literature Lessons: Science Romance

Let’s look 100 years into the future to see what 2012 will bring!

A pneumatic tube messaging craze will sweep the country!
Science will find the cure for racism: all babies born in 2012 will be white!
Automatons will do all domestic chores! Women will stay in the kitchen for the fun of it!
Man will teach dogs and cats to talk! Will learn that they never really had much to say!
The Idle Red Hands, a radio program about Marxism, will win best show of the year!

In this Literature Lesson, we look at the science fiction of Verne, Wells, and Burroughs. Despite having an outline that includes colonialism, eugenics and xenophobia, we’re actually surprised when the show gets dark.

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Episode 68: Apocalypse Part 2

“Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
– Winston Churchill

Was Churchill talking about World War Two or a game of Axis and Allies?
With an apocalypse, the end is not really the end either. In fact, it’s where the fun really begins, if radiation sickness, starvation and sterility could be called “fun”.
In this episode, we talk about the post-apocalypse, including zombies, vampires, farmers, and Sam Gamgee’s second favourite topic.

Special Note: The Novel which Chris refers to, in which weapons are used to remove information from matter, is titled “The Gone-Away World” by Nick Harkaway.

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