Episode 29 - What The Hell Was That?
Added 2019-01-11 13:52:02 +0000 UTCWell, the pace sure as hell was unrelenting, folks. We've reached the end of TekWar, and there both is and isn't a lot to talk about. Chest-high walls, disdainful robot pimps, the brief and wondrous life of Sonny Hokori are all just the tip of the iceberg. Thanks to all who hitched their wagons to the Shatlart skytrain for this plasride!
As announced in the episode, we'll be taking a look at the TekWar TV movie soon as a Patreon exclusive, so stay tuned for that. Conor also has his eye on the next title, so we will get started on that soon as well! Also, we'll pick a "lucky" winner to receive the copy of the book that Conor took all his notes in, we'll do that shortly. Mike still has yet to receive his, which may be for the best.
Also, thanks to your generosity, we sent a $300 donation to 826 National, the non-profit who helps underserved children with creative writing programs (who we've supported before.) They're a great org and we're eliminating any future Shatlarts!
Comments
Posting from the distant plas-laden future to add that just this year (2023) an audiobook version of TekWar was released for some reason, which I listened to as I revisited these episodes. Sadly, Mr. Shatner does not narrate the audiobook. I will say that the narrator does as a good of a job as one could expect with all the goofy wording in this book. However, at the end of the audiobook there is an interview with Shatner and the audiobook's narrator, Jeffrey Kafer. There was zero mention of Goulart or any ghostwriting at all. Mr. Kafer was very deferential to Shatner and his insightful vision of the future. Shatner's responses to questions were very halting, he rambled a good bit, and he seemed generally distracted as well as distracted by noises around his home office. At the end, the narrator and his producer share a good laugh about the trees being chainsawed seemingly right outside Shatner's window.
Stephen Spears
2023-12-27 19:06:45 +0000 UTCSame here. But, Mike is also right that this is a term that has fallen out of style for some decades. As this is The FUTURE, it's at best a strange affectation.
Daniel Laird
2019-01-22 04:43:35 +0000 UTC(Mike says -- ) Yeah, it's the starkness of the sudden late 19th century cockney slang that I think we're all calling bulls--t on, right? I mean, it's a dumb island in a vast sea of even-dumber-ness.
372 Pages We'll Never Get Back
2019-01-18 23:27:05 +0000 UTCDon't banshees keen? I feel like I know that word because of D&D
Chuck Nice
2019-01-17 02:57:07 +0000 UTC"Tumbled to", on the other hand, is old-timey (late 19th century) Cockney slang. It's the kind of thing 'Arry would say in Punch. It used to also mean "took quickly to" ("he tumbled to pickpocketing right quick" or the like) or even just "consented to", but the surviving meaning is "caught on to". It has kind of a gritty underworld sense to it, and I suspect Shatlart is trying to be hardboiled but, again, not quite using the right word.
stepped pyramids
2019-01-17 01:20:24 +0000 UTC"Keening" is a little odd in that I think the way it's often used is the result of a misunderstanding. "Keening" is a traditional Irish folk practice where the dead are seen off with kind of a chorus of chants and wails. Here's some guy talking about it: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFjE7wrRCIw" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFjE7wrRCIw</a> Writers started using it as a metaphorical term describing other kinds of mourning sounds. Faulkner: "She began the high, whining keen of the death wail". I think people read this kind of usage of "keen(ing)" and ended up reinterpreting it as an adjective meaning "high-pitched". Anyway, Shatlart's use of "keening" here is technically an appropriate use of the word but, like many of his word choices, kind of awkward and distracting.
stepped pyramids
2019-01-17 00:57:25 +0000 UTC"The System may or may not understand that it's only buying time. And that time is an artificial resource to begin with, of no value to anyone or anything but the System, which must sooner or later crash to its death, when its addiction to energy has become more than the rest of the World can supply, dragging with it innocent souls all along the chain of life," said the robot pimp disdainfully.
Jacob Grudzina
2019-01-14 05:10:47 +0000 UTCJust to tie a bow around the Futurama thing, I'd like to just mention that Professor Farnsworth's one-time student and biggest rival is also an Ogden. (WERNSTROM!)
Scot Hill
2019-01-13 00:28:25 +0000 UTCI’ve heard that phrase before (probably as old-timey slang).
James Collins
2019-01-12 21:26:38 +0000 UTCFor what it's worth (very little), tumbling to what's going on definitely isn't a Canadian turn of phrase. Moviegique above found it in a dictionary which begs the question, where DOES it come from? Is there a tiny secluded community out there where all this inhuman phrasing and slang we've been making fun of is commonplace?
Elizabeth Foote
2019-01-12 13:47:25 +0000 UTCI like that you're dragging conor over this of all things xD
amolove
2019-01-12 01:40:36 +0000 UTCNo pressure, but I cannot *wait* to see what's next on the list... y'all have picked some real doozies up to this point. I eagerly await whatever trainwreck you do next!
PG
2019-01-12 01:30:10 +0000 UTCConor didn't mention two other Ogden's I found. In Fill in the Blank by Ron Goulart there is an Ogden Boothrod In The Mystery of the Missing Automaton by Ron Goulart there is an Ogden Zimmerman. Yes. There were even more Ogdens.
Luke Bovard
2019-01-11 21:02:52 +0000 UTCIf those robots aren't running PlasOS (Lucite Edition) I'll eat my hat.
Moviegique
2019-01-11 20:50:24 +0000 UTCThe next line of the definition: NOTE: Never ever actually used
372 Pages We'll Never Get Back
2019-01-11 20:44:17 +0000 UTCHm... I dunno, using SUCH a specific detail still seems Weaselly to me. What does everyone else think?? -C
372 Pages We'll Never Get Back
2019-01-11 20:43:43 +0000 UTCSad to see TekWar episodes go! The book was abysmal but that made the podcast hilarious. Someone needs to log into the TekWar Oasis and hit the shut-down button Halliday provided...
Erika Flowers
2019-01-11 19:59:13 +0000 UTCI suspect that the kamikaze robots are running modified versions of standard robot operating systems with just enough alterations to make the bombs work, which would make more sense than developing a whole new OS. So Robo-Dan (Danikaze?) got mad at Robo-Beth (Robeth, if you will) because he was running an OS programmed to get mad at people who try to stop him from doing his job, modified just enough that he had no problems with his 'job' being to grab Jake and explode. Admittedly I am giving Shatlart a lot of credit on this one, but if I were writing a sci-fi novel involving self-destructing androids, that's how I'd do it.
Theodore Lehman
2019-01-11 19:45:34 +0000 UTCDefinition of tumble: INFORMAL understand the meaning or hidden implication of (a situation). "she tumbled to our scam" -- I'm not sure but I think it's related to lock tumblers.
Moviegique
2019-01-11 18:41:24 +0000 UTC"I don't approve of slightly changing the scenes in order to try and trick you." I'm going to jump to the defense of other fanfic author a bit, here. The scene in question wasn't slightly changed, it was an entirely different scene, in a room not a spaceship galley, with Sonny Hokori not Gomez, with pointing and grabbing guns instead of chatting up the computer, and the only things that were from the actual book were oatmeal, raisins, and plaschina bowl, reworded around enough to not be a cut-and-paste job. Yeah, they read ahead, but so did I, to scan for sentences that could be used as Real. In fact, I even included the entire oatmeal and blue raisins bit in the email I sent you, clearly labeled as This Is Real, but I guess the rooster sentences were distracting enough to cause it to get glossed over. You could also have labeled my fanfic as just "slightly changed" because it includes Sonny Hokori getting shot, although everything else around it (including it not being the real Hokori, but a simulacrum) was different.
SabreMau
2019-01-11 18:21:52 +0000 UTC
