Marooned! On Mars With Matt And Hilary

Informações:

Sinopsis

A read-along podcast exploring the world(s) of Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy. Two humanities scholars--and friends!--read and discuss Kim Stanley Robinson's amazing Red Mars, Green Mars, and Blue Mars, one part at a time. Occasional guests! Utopian sci-fi fun and thinking! And fun! Become a supporter of this podcast:https://anchor.fm/marooned-on-mars-with-matt-and-hilary/support

Episodios

  • Green Earth, Episode 5: "Fifty Degrees Below" 3, Indecision, Mutual Aid, Election Theater, and Bailiwicks

    09/05/2022 Duración: 01h27min

    First, the name of the Buddhist climate activist who self-immolated in front of the Supreme Court was Wynn Bruce. Matt forgets his name when he mentions him, but everyone should know him. In this episode, we finish volume 2 of Green Earth, discussing "The Cold Snap," "Always Generous," "Leap Before You Look," and "Primavera Porteño"-- in a very freewheeling manner, it must be said! We talk about the gap between knowing and acting, seeming and being. And ponder the following questions: Are elections meaningful?  Is Frank's brain injury the cause of his indecision? Is the Khembali exorcism ceremony real? Which of them are theater? Paranoia, bourgeois individualism, coping, illusion, co-imagining trauma and the everyday, living a whole life--big themes in this episode! We also mourn the passing of Hilary's cat and frequent podcast drop-in Louise, and look forward to the utopia of feline immortality under communism. Thanks for listening! Email us at maroonedonmarspodcast@gmail.com Follow us on Twitter @podca

  • Green Earth, Episode 4: Permaculture, the Commons, Destiny

    05/05/2022 Duración: 01h44min

    NOTE: This episode was recorded in early April. In this episode we focus on “Is There a Technical Solution?,” “Autumn in New York,” and “Optimodal.” But first we spend some time (as usual) lamenting the state of the world, especially the plight of the unhoused from Maine to Chicago. We decide private property should be abolished, which is also one of the best takeaways from Eric Holthaus’s The Future Earth. We also curse Barack Obama for what the Obama Center is doing to the South Side of Chicago. A bad guy, actually! This leads us into thinking about public space and the commons, which takes us back into Green Earth and Frank’s experience living in a tree in Rock Creek Park. Here, outdoor spaces have become something more than what they were before the flood and the freeze. In the park, with Frank, the bros, and the frisbee golfers, we can find the novel’s speculative kernel, taking us outside the question of whether science can become political and whether politics can be reconciled to science. We talk abou

  • Green Earth, Episode 3: "Fifty Degrees Below," Robinsonades, Realism, Lama-Grooming

    30/03/2022 Duración: 01h27min

    In this episode we talk about the first three chapters of Fifty Degrees Below, "Primate in Forest," "Abrupt Climate Change," and "Return to Khembalung." We discuss the way this novel works within the mode of realism and look for areas where it pushes against that mode to find possibly utopian, possibly fantastical, alternatives. Our focus here is on comparing what we regard as the novel's two main characters, Frank and Charlie, and the way they are negotiating the "new normal" they find themselves in. They each seem to resist the new at the same time they are struggling to build it, whether that be in legislation (writing the book of the future) or in a treehouse (a Swiss Family Robinsonade). We talk about genre, truth claims, rewilding, and lama-grooming. We'll be back in a couple weeks with our discussion of the next three chapters "Is There a Technical Solution?" "Autumn in New York," and "Optimodal." Thanks for listening! Email us at maroonedonmarspodcast@gmail.com Follow us on Twitter @podcastonmars Leav

  • Green Earth, Episode 2: Sweatpants, Buddha Nature, and Nukes

    07/03/2022 Duración: 01h43min

    In this episode we talk about the second half of the first volume of Green Earth, Forty Signs of Rain from "Athena on the Pacific" to "Broader Impacts." --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/marooned-on-mars/message

  • Green Earth, Episode 1: "The Buddha Arrives" to "Science in the Capital": Setting the Table, the Literature of Banality, and Science in the W. Era

    19/02/2022 Duración: 01h16min

    We're back! This season we're tackling Green Earth, KSR's revised, single-volume edition of the Science in the Capital trilogy. The trilogy was originally published from 2004 to 2007. Green Earth was put out in 2015. In this first episode we discuss the (un)likability of the novel's main characters, and the way the book seems to set the table for KSR's agenda for his following novels, particularly Shaman, 2312, New York 2140, and The Ministry for the Future. We talk about how Green Earth feels very much a Bush-era book, when it was still possible to believe that the main impediment to addressing climate change was anti-science attitudes that had infested an entire party in American politics, before the Obama era revealed that the real problem was far deeper, including obviously capitalism itself, but also something far more intractable, an approach to reality that was impervious to "just the facts" or "trust science" platitudes. One thing Green Earth does that feels very of its moment as we read it from 2022

  • 2312 Episode 14: "Kiran on Ice" to "Epilogue': The Final Countdown!, Crossword Puzzles, Exile, Pair Bonding, Pronouns!

    05/01/2022 Duración: 02h17min

    Our final episode of our 2312 season is here! First, we talk about the topic on everyone's mind, the New York Times Crossword puzzle and how bad it is. We wrap that up around 6.5 minutes in. Then, we reveal the topic of our next season, and it's....drumroll....GREEN EARTH! I know this delights many of you and disappoints an equal amount, and then the final third just can't wait for our mellifluous voices to lull them back to sleep. But whatever your reaction, we're going to dive into this 1000-page behemoth starting around February 2022. We'll probably, hopefully, have a movie episode in the meantime tide over the "true heads." We talk then about resolutions that don't resolve things, closures that leave a lot open, comedy and the marriage plot, and the mode of the novel. Is this a novel? Is it an anti-novel? We talk a lot about punishment, prison, exile, and the police. Genette reveals another side of Genette-self---and we find some prounouns attributed to "him"! ***ATTENTION STAN, ATTENTION STAN, THERE ARE

  • 2312 Episode 13: "Swan and Pauline and Wahram and Genette," and Diane Keaton and Joe Manchin and Sonny Crockett and Jerry Seinfeld

    26/12/2021 Duración: 01h18min

    Back to hot opens, in another episode where we ask important questions like, “what is time? Is it just a number? Is a wristwatch like handcuffing yourself to time? What about neckties? Is it okay when Diane Keaton wears one? Should neurodivergent people join the CIA?” We chit chat about the demonstrably untrue myth of progress in light of news from Antarctica, pandemic, and American political system, and Hilary bullies Matt into reading The Dawn of Everything. Matt would prefer to hang out and watch Seinfeld, the way social primates should. We settle the rules of subscribing to TIME Magazine before we finally get down to business at 18 minutes When we start talking about the chapter “Swan and Pauline and Wahram and Genette.” This chapter weaves a bunch of strands together that don’t initially seem to belong to each other, in a way that’s poignant, playful, and action-packed. The team of investigators start to get to the bottom of what’s doing what to whom. Should the world be more stable than your body? What

  • 2312 Episode 12: "Extracts (17)" to "ETH Mobile" (I'm not even going to try to spell it): Utopias of Gender, Virginia Woolf, the Long Stare of the Tenured Professor

    19/12/2021 Duración: 01h17min

    Hilary and The Good German are back! We're talking animals, qubes, and consciousness, embodiment and emotion, landscape and economic miracles, long stares of wolves (and tenured professors), utopia of gender, and lawn bowling with Virginia Woolf.  (Most profanity and profundity has been edited out. For the book.) Extracts (17) - 16:00 Swan in the Chateau Garden - 37:00 Quantum Walk (2) Inspector Genette and Swan - 50:00 Titan - 52:25 Swan and Genette and Wahram - 54:25 Matt makes a fart joke with the longest set-up in history, 59:30-1:00:00 (Hi, NSA!) Lists (15) - 1:11:25 Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Mobile - 1:13:45 Thanks for listening! Email us at maroonedonmarspodcast@gmail.com Follow us on Twitter @podcastonmars Leave us a voicemail on the Anchor.fm app Rate and review us on iTunes or wherever you listen to your podcasts! Music by Spirit of Space --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/marooned-on-mars/message

  • 2312 Episode 11: "Extracts (15)" to "Lists (14)": Piloerection, Multispecies Solidarity, Land Art, Freedom

    05/12/2021 Duración: 01h37min

    Hello again! First a massive apology for taking so long to get this episode out. As Matt explains in the opening, this was relatively unavoidable and not intentional, and we hope to finish our discussion of 2312 by the end of the year. As you’ll hear, the audio quality of the recording presented big problems for Matt, not an audio engineer, for making a listenable episode. He’s done his best! In this episode we discuss chapters Extracts (15) to Lists (14), with characteristic rambling, long-windedness, and propensity for spoilers that you’ve grown to know and love. We talk about piloerection (it’s when your hair stands on end, weirdo), nature vs. culture, science vs. art, mammalness, revolution, and playful unresolvability. Thanks for listening! We hope to be back soon! 30:30 – Extracts (15) 34:30 – Lists (12) 35:30 – Swan in Africa 45:30ish – Swan and the Wolves 56:30 – Lists (13) 58:30 – back to Swan and the Wolves 1:12:45 – Extracts (16) 1:24:20 – Wahram and Swan 1:34:25 – Lists (14) Email us at maroonedo

  • 2312 Episode 10: "Swan in the Vulcanoids" to "Wahram on Earth": Political Economy, Aggressive Charity, Gifts

    29/10/2021 Duración: 01h37min

    We start with more news from Maine: There's lithium in them thar hills! Will Elon Musk coup the governor? Stay tuned, and find out more here. We ask whether it's possible to extract these important minerals outside the demands of capital and profit, and to do it in a way that doesn't wreck the environment or the bodies of the people who will have to do this labor. We have no answers, just want to know! Then, back to 2312. We talk a lot about the political economies of the various powers in the solar system, as the various plotlines and threads seem to start coming together and getting clearer in this chunk of chapters. How does the gift economy of the Vulcanoids and the Saturn League work? Why does the mute compulsion of economic relations still obtain on Venus? What is to be done with Earth? What's the difference between charity and a gift economy? Is charity always aggressive? What kind of revolution are Swan and Wahram driving at? We'll find out next time! Swan in the Vulcanoids – 35:00 Lists (11) – 54:10

  • 2312 Episode 9: "Swan and the Inspector" to "Extracts (12)": Totalities, Interpretability, and The Sad Planet

    16/10/2021 Duración: 02h06min

    We spend the first ten minutes or so of this episode talking about an issue in Maine politics that presents a conundrum that's characteristic of the false choices capitalism and American democracy give us politically: which part of the ecosystem do you want to sacrifice to mitigate the disasters of another part? What's the least bad option? To read more about Question 1 on the Maine ballot, click here or here.  Then we're off and running, talking about narrative and genre, sexliners and surfing, and the heaviness of Earth. Swan encounters a kind of dark postmodernity in her confrontation with the reality of Earth in this chunk of chapters, where it seems impossible to theorize the totality and the world is fundamentally unintepretable. In fact, while thinking the totality may promise to be our salvation, it may be that trying to think the totality--or even thinking that we could think the totality--is kind of what got us here in the first place. Perennial question: What are the barriers to change? What's

  • 2312 Episode 8: "Lists (7)" to "Quantum Walk (1)": Noir, Late Feudalism, and the Long Postmodern

    28/09/2021 Duración: 01h54min

    This week's episode features coughing, an apology (not for the coughing), and cat-talk. Also we discuss science communication, agency and historical periodization, intentional urban planning, living aesthetically, programming and will, surfing and gravity, noir and detective stories (watch Cutter's Way), and large forces that seem to control our lives (or do they?) and are impossible to understand (or are they??!!). For those of you who want to cut straight to the news about Matt's cats' diets, it's at 1:04:20. Be on the lookout for friend-of-the-show Daniel Aldana Cohen's interview with source-of-the-material-of-the-show-and-listener-to-and-number-one-fan-of-the-show Kim Stanley Robinson on The Dig from Jacobin (@thedigradio)! Thanks for listening! Email us at maroonedonmarspodcast@gmail.com Follow us on Twitter @podcastonmars Leave us a voicemail on the Anchor.fm app Rate and review us on iTunes or wherever you listen to your podcasts! Music by Spirit of Space --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.

  • 2312 Episode 7: "Swan and the Inspector," Swan in Wonderland, Post-Scarcity Conspiracies, and the Nature of Evil

    12/09/2021 Duración: 01h10min

    This week’s episode is the second half of our conversation from last week’s episode, and concerns the “Swan and the Inspector” chapter. Genette takes Swan on his investigation of the strange goings-on throughout the solar system, visiting several asteroids including Yggdrasil and Inner Mongolia using the Interplan starship Swift Justice. The possibility of a conspiracy or some kind of concerted plan that potentially links Alex’s death, the destruction of Terminator, the even on Io, and the catastrophe on Yggdrasil, all involving strange qube behavior, starts to materialize for Genette. Matt and Hilary have a long discussion about the nature of conspiracy, its possibilities and limitations as a conceptual apparatus for understanding the operation of power. While conspiracies are useful in illuminating certain aspects of the way power functions, they also contain the temptation for the analyst or investigator to throw up their hands and resign oneself to a kind of existential lack of agency. In this way, conspi

  • 2312 Episode 6: "Lists (4)" to "Lists (6)": Patterns, Agency, Cops, Detection

    07/09/2021 Duración: 01h12min

    We had to split this episode up into two because we talked so long! The following episode (Episode 7, or maybe 6.2?) will deal with "Swan and the Inspector." Here, we have:  3:20 - Lists (4) 11:35 - Inspector Genette 32:28 - Lists (5) 39:00 - Swan and Mqaret 51:30 - Extracts (7) 1:01:00 - Kiran on Venus 1:08:25 - Lists (6) Lots of discussion of identity, the state, agency, conspiracy (more to come on that), sex/gender, and detecting patterns. Genette is trying to figure out what happened to Terminator, and the solution almost immediately appears before the inspector. It has something to do with the qubes, although we're not sure what. In the next episode Matt and Hilary will talk extensively about the very creepy episode where Swan confronts 3 women claiming to be qubes. For now, please excuse Matt the neanderthal for giving Genette pronouns! No pronouns for Jean! Thanks for listening! Email us at maroonedonmarspodcast@gmail.com Follow us on Twitter @podcastonmars Leave us a voicemail on the Anchor.fm ap

  • 2312 Episode 5: "Wahram and Swan:" A bird and a toad go for a walk and whistle Beethoven

    22/08/2021 Duración: 01h40min

    This long episode is devoted to the "Wahram and Swan" chapter of 2312, when the two characters attend a Beethoven concert and the tracks on which Terminator runs are mysteriously destroyed. Wahram and Swan, along with three young "sunwalkers", then have to us the utilidor under the surface of Mercury to seek help. This is a major inciting incident for the remainder of the novel. Matt and Hilary discuss a range of issues, including social reproduction (dyads vs. crechés), sameness and repetition, the dense specificities of place, and more. Thanks for listening! Email us at maroonedonmarspodcast@gmail.com Follow us on Twitter @podcastonmars Leave us a voicemail on the Anchor.fm app Rate and review us on iTunes or wherever you listen to your podcasts! Music by Spirit of Space --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/marooned-on-mars/message

  • 2312 Episode 4: "Extracts (3)" to "Extracts (6)": Rainbows, Frogs, Worms, and Heterogeneous Economies

    10/08/2021 Duración: 01h29min

    We talk about the form of the "Extracts" chapters, the importance of Earth in the relationships in the story, the sky, living on the side of a planet, acting vs. being, talking to frogs, sleeping with worms, O. Henry, Danny DeVito, hawala, elephants, degenerates, and "marginal capitalism" (what is it?). Watch out for the Late Heavy Bombardment, because it's coming! Thanks for listening! Email us at maroonedonmarspodcast@gmail.com Follow us on Twitter @podcastonmars Leave us a voicemail on the Anchor.fm app Rate and review us on iTunes or wherever you listen to your podcasts! Music by Spirit of Space --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/marooned-on-mars/message

  • 2312 Episode 3: Intentions, Aporia, Freedom

    30/07/2021 Duración: 01h02min

    We continue our conversation from last week, ending right before the chapter "Extracts (3)." Matt and Hilary talk about art, chemistry, repetition, intentionality, power, capital, alliances, suffering, allegory, systems, etc. A big question is whether the spacers constitute something like an interplanetary bourgeoisie (or elite), and where capitalism is still alive in the solar system of 2312. We also talk about the role the figure of AI plays here, and whether it is allegorical to something like what we call "the market" or "capital"--in other words, the concept of a kind of an algorithmic logic that appears to operate behind the backs of the human characters. Is it independent of them? Does it act with intention? How can it be mapped and understood? We're introduced to Zasha and Kiran, and the solar system's balkanization. "Lists (2)" is a litany of practices of conscious embodiment and experiments in experience that are not only individual but that might also be shared, public, or communal in various ways.

  • 2312 Episode 2: "Extracts (1)" to "Wahram and Swan": Decadence, Dragons, Seizing the Day in the Pseudoiterative

    23/07/2021 Duración: 01h04min

    In this episode we talk about chapters from Extracts (1) to Wahram and Swan (yes, only two chapters, how decadent of us!). We talk about the "Ascensions," the asteroids that are hollowed out to create terraria, refugia, and farms, and try to think about the political economy of the solar system in 2312. Wahram and Swan on the Alfred Wegener asteroid lead to a discussion of decadence, habit, and constructing pseudoiteratives to live artfully and be open to finding newness in the everyday. We ask what "being productive" means and how we seize the day in capitalism. Swan and Wahram have very different approaches to the problem of living free of wage labor. Also Hilary insists on talking about the Christian Bale/ Matthew McConaughey vehicle dragon/ tomato movie Reign of Fire (2002). It's her favorite movie, smh. We spoke for 2 hours in this session, so we decided to split it into two episodes. The next one will drop some time next week, and we'll go up to Extracts (3), for those following along. The clip at the e

  • 2312 Episode One: Attachment, Habit, Gender, and Purloined Letters

    12/07/2021 Duración: 01h29min

    In this episode we read from the first chapter after the prologue up to "Swan and Alex." First, Hilary and Matt start by discussing the work of Lauren Berlant, an eminent literary critic and feminist theorist from the University of Chicago who passed away recently. Berlant's work focuses on affect, agency, attachment, the sentimental, literature, politics, human-being, normativity, and innumerable other topics, in ways that help illuminate the questions we discuss so much: how does change happen (or not), and what does literature (or art) have to do with it? Matt and Hilary explore some of the ways Berlant's work might shed light KSR's novels. There are elements in 2312, especially around attachment and habit and gender, that Berlant's ideas may help illuminate. We discuss pieces including Cruel Optimism, "Poor Eliza," and The Queen of America Goes to Washington City. We get started talking about the novel about 37 minutes in (in case you're anxious) and talk about Swan and her relationship to herself, her ar

  • 2312 Episode Zero: "Prologue," Far-Future Posthumanism, Narrative, Gender, Habit, and Ritual

    27/06/2021 Duración: 01h13min

    We're back to reveal your desires to you! We're starting on our new season, which will focus on 2312. In this episode we talk about far-future science fiction, posthumanism, and some of the broad themes and topics this book focuses on, such as gender and sexuality, habit and ritual, art and performance. We talk a bit about how the book tends to subvert its own narrative, and narrative itself, with its tendency to ties things up in neat little bows. 2312 traffics in many narrative forms and modes, including (interplanetary) romance and the detective novel, but it's also a book about home, where to find it and how to build it. Of course, we're here with our customary digressions and non-sequiturs, including, here, one about fictional universes, authorship, Michael Mann, podcasts, and the decay of higher education. We'll be back in roughly a week to talk about a chunk of the book, duration TBD (probably 50-80 pages, if history is any indication?). We hope you join us and look forward to reading with you! This se

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