Swords & Starships

Our Favorite Aliens!

May 07, 2021 Brittney & Joshua Season 1
Swords & Starships
Our Favorite Aliens!
Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

In this episode, Brittney and Joshua share their favorite folks from galaxies far, far away and offer a new mysterious sound!

**It is with much love and respect that we honor the life and work of author Rachel Caine who passed on November 1, 2020. Rachel is a talented author of numerous works of Fantasy, Sci Fi and Horror and co-writer of one of our favorite YA series The Honors.**

Brittney's recommendations:

The Hostby Stephanie Meyer
Honor Among Thieves by Rachel Caine and Ann Aguirre

Joshua's recommendations:


The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer

Links mentioned in this episode:


The UFOFEST in McMinnville, Oregon, began when two local citizens encountered and photographed a UFO in 1950. The photograph is still considered one of the most credible UFO images to date.

Micromegas by Voltaire

There's always something going on at the Coos Bay Public Library. Check out our Events for exciting monthly programs!

Find Us At:

Podcast Website: https://swordsstarships.buzzsprout.com
Instagram: Brittney and Joshua (@swordsnstarships) • Instagram photos and videos
Email: Starships@coosbaylibrary.org

Library Website: Coos Bay Public Library | (coosbaylibrary.org)
Our Library's Facebook Page: Coos Bay Public Library | Facebook
Coos Bay Public Library's Instagram: CoosBayLibrary (@coosbaylibrary) • Instagram photos and videos

Find us at:

Podcast Website: https://swordsstarships.buzzsprout.com
Instagram: Brittney and Joshua (@swordsnstarships) • Instagram photos and videos
Email: Starships@coosbaylibrary.org

Our Library's Facebook Page: Coos Bay Public Library | Facebook
Coos Bay Public Library's Instagram: CoosBayLibrary (@coosbaylibrary) • Instagram photos and videos

JOSHUA:

I'm Joshua.

BRITTNEY:

And I'm Brittany. And we're two librarians who talk about Sci fi and Fantasy and a little bit of everything else

JOSHUA:

Aaaand ... Hi, everybody. Welcome back. This is our fifth show, Brittany.

BRITTNEY:

Are you serious?

JOSHUA:

And thank you all you people for like hanging out with us.

BRITTNEY:

At this point, we've just had one Show go live and we've had 30 downloads and some of them in Asia.

JOSHUA:

Thank you.

BRITTNEY:

Thank you. It's so cool.

JOSHUA:

So today we're talking about aliens; aliens in Science Fiction.

BRITTNEY:

Yes.

JOSHUA:

Which is kind of appropriate because like what happened just like last week?

BRITTNEY:

What happened last week?

JOSHUA:

The Mars landing. The Perseverence landed on Mars.

BRITTNEY:

Yes, it's looking for life. Well, like for signs of former life. You know what would be really exciting if like Sasquatch walked by. It turns out he's an alien.

JOSHUA:

I've been here the whole time.

BRITTNEY:

You know, you guys.

JOSHUA:

You didn't call me or anything.

BRITTNEY:

Though I was down there. I'm actually up here.

JOSHUA:

That would blow my mind.

BRITTNEY:

I'd be like, "okay, that's exciting."

JOSHUA:

Do you think there is alien life out there?

BRITTNEY:

I'd be really disappointed if there wasn't.

JOSHUA:

Me too.

BRITTNEY:

I like the world. The world. The universe is so big. I'd be really sad if it was just us. And I don't think that's the case. I really don't. The universe is so big, even if it's shrinking. Which means all of our alien neighbors are just getting closer and closer.

JOSHUA:

So it's a small universe after all.

BRITTNEY:

Yeah, maybe. I don't know what I'm talking about, but it's fine.

JOSHUA:

I agree. I think alien life is out there. Whether or not we've come into contact with that in some form or another, I'm doubtful.

BRITTNEY:

Yeah, I don't know, because you hear about like the UFO and I don't know how much of it is real and like Area 51, just like all these strange stories. I mean, it's hard to prove any of it, but it's like I wouldn't be surprised if one of our neighbors came and took a look at us like what's going on down on Earth.

JOSHUA:

I mean, we kind of do it sometimes when we, like, walk by Migus Park Pond and say, "eww, that's disgusting.

BRITTNEY:

Gross. Keep going. Yeah, that's true. Because we don't we don't even know, like, what form they would take. They could be told something that we don't even see.

JOSHUA:

Yes. Yes. And I like that idea.

BRITTNEY:

It's a little frightening but it's also very exciting.

JOSHUA:

Yeah, totally. So we're going to talk about them Aliens.

BRITTNEY: "Them Aliens.:

"

JOSHUA:

And the books that we read with them inside. Yeah. I'm really excited. We have kind of a hard time thinking about what our favorite aliens were.

BRITTNEY:

We both realized we don't actually read a ton of alien books. Yeah, I mean, we read a lot of Sci Fi/Fantasy, but I think we both discovered that we read a lot of monsters. I personally read a lot of fantasy. Aliens? I don't read a ton of. Not say dislike them. They just don't show up in the things I look at.

JOSHUA:

Yeah, I've read a few alien books, but most of what I know about ... what I "know" about them ... I mean what I enjoy from them comes from movies, basically.

BRITTNEY:

My mom's favorite movie was Aliens with the Xenomorphs. So, I have watched that movie a million times. I didn't even watch the first one until like college. It was just always Aliens, the second one.

JOSHUA:

You know, I think Aliens is much more appealing for young people than Alien is. Alien, it's kind of a spooky one. I didn't watch that until I was much older. Yeah, I definitely watch Aliens before Alien.

BRITTNEY:

OK, that makes sense. I can barely remember the first one. It's all about the second one.

JOSHUA:

You're in a haunted house or rather a spaceship and there's a ghostly alien.

BRITTNEY:

Yeah. I remember my parents said it's too dark, you can't see what's happening.

JOSHUA:

You don't really see it until the very end when it's kind of sick. Yeah. So.

BRITTNEY:

Gross. OK anyway stick with Aliens. Got it.

JOSHUA:

Actually growing up I grew up in the eighties so my impression of alien life came from Steven Spielberg, his E.T..

BRITTNEY:

Oh my gosh.

JOSHUA:

I was, I honestly I was terrified of E.T. when it first came. I was terrified about it. It was only until later when I sat down and watched, I'm like, oh, it's OK. But I don't really like the movie.

BRITTNEY:

But the part I remember is when he was laying down the Skittles?

JOSHUA:

Reese's Pieces.

BRITTNEY:

Was that what it was? Oh, it used to scare me so bad because ...

JOSHUA:

His little hand came out?

BRITTNEY:

*makes creepy ET sound*

JOSHUA:

Oh my God.

BRITTNEY:

I was like, do not go near that! What are you doing child?!

JOSHUA:

And when he's hiding in, like, Elliot's sister's room full of stuffed animals. Oh my God. It's the most frightening thing, that creepy alien face. From now on, if I see, like, piles of stuffed animals ...

BRITTNEY:

You're like, "which one is the real one??

JOSHUA:

I'm lo-key terrified of that.

BRITTNEY:

Yes, it was terrifying.

JOSHUA:

Who is hiding in there?

BRITTNEY:

And like, you get to know that he's nice. But when you're a small child, you're like he's frightening. He's like kind of frightening looking.

JOSHUA:

That is our experience with aliens. They're nice, but they're really scary sometimes.

BRITTNEY:

Yeah. And some of them aren't nice. Some of them want to eat you. OK. In fact, I went to college in McMinnville. Supposedly there was a UFO sightings in McMinnville. They have a festival every year, the alien festival. And I remember my first year there, I was like, what is happening? Because people like from all over will come like just totally book out McMinnville and it's like this crazy day of alien parade.

JOSHUA:

They have an alien parade?

BRITTNEY:

A parade.

JOSHUA:

I love it. McMinnville, Oregon. Are there pictures of this UFO sighting or is it is it truly eyewitness accounts?

BRITTNEY:

I'm not sure. I just remember being a college and be like, where's everybody going? They're like, "we're going to the parade!" People like dress up their animals and they all get in the parade and it's like a thing.

JOSHUA:

You should. If you have an alien sighting and you're not dressing up your dogs as little alien invaders. Yes. I need to know what the heck is going on.

BRITTNEY:

Yeah, I totally forgot about that until until now.

JOSHUA:

And so where did this all begin? Like this history of stuff. OK, so let's start all the way back in 1752.

BRITTNEY:

Oh, my God.

JOSHUA:

Little time called the Enlightenment. There are men running around with beautiful curly wigs

BRITTNEY:

Isn't that plagued time?

JOSHUA:

You know, it kind of was plague, syphilis, that kind of thing.

BRITTNEY:

If I'm super wrong, then I can tell you that I just think, "wake up and smell the plague".

JOSHUA:

I think it was a generally unhealthy time for us. Anyway, there's a man named Voltaire, the famous Voltaire, who wrote a short story called (I won't pronounce It in French because it's horrendous) Micromegas. He wrote that in 1752. That has our very first print fiction that contained an alien. Crazy, right?

BRITTNEY:

Yeah.

JOSHUA:

OK, so the main character, his name's Micromegas, which means "Little Bg". He was just exiled from the Sirius system. It's the "Dog Star". And he comes to Saturn in exile. He wrote something that is controversial. He's about 6,000 feet tall and that's the only real detail we get about him. So, he eventually comes to Earth to examine us under a giant microscope.

BRITTNEY:

Does he actually burn us?

JOSHUA:

I mean, I read a little bit of the short story. It's not really my thing because it's ... kinda weird.

BRITTNEY:

Sorry, Voltaire.

JOSHUA:

But he's kind of like, shocked at how tiny we are. And he likes to argue with the world's smartest people about why we think certain things.

BRITTNEY:

You know what this is? This is "Horton Hears a Who". That's what this is!

JOSHUA:

So Horton is from the Sirius Star. OK, and Whos are us? Who'd have thought. And then let's go forward a few hundred years to 1871. And there was a famous astronomer named Camille Flammarion.

BRITTNEY:

What a fancy name.

JOSHUA: I like it:

Flammarion.

BRITTNEY:

Flammarion.

JOSHUA:

I don't know what it means.

BRITTNEY:

What if it's something bad.

JOSHUA:

I think he was big into astronomy. I mean, if you might look him up and see some cool stuff that he's discovered. I was mainly interested in his nerd life, which is he really liked to write stories about different planets and what different planets would look like.

BRITTNEY:

That's fun. He's like fan fiction.

JOSHUA:

Kind of fan fiction. He like he's like, "Oh, that's an interesting planet." He looked in his telescope and he's like, "I believe it's like full of this stuff."

BRITTNEY:

That'd be so much fun.

JOSHUA:

So he wrote a book called Blumen or Lewman. It's kind of like Gulliver's Travels. But if Gulliver were a psychic explorer going to different worlds, like he put his consciousness in other bodies. So that's kind of what's going on about. So Camille Flammarion, as far as I know in the research that I did, is the first to like describe a non-human looking alien. One of the aliens he described is a being with three thumbs.

BRITTNEY:

E.T.!

JOSHUA:

Oh My God!. And toes coming out of his heels.

BRITTNEY:

Is that E.T. as well?

SPEAKER:

I don't know

BRITTNEY:

I don't know E.T.'s feet ... they're like *make's alien sound*.

JOSHUA:

That's the sound representation of ...

BRITTNEY:

E.T.'s feet.

JOSHUA:

We get our first non-human description of an alien that 1871. And then a few decades later, we meet H.G. Wells.

BRITTNEY:

Oh buddy

JOSHUA:

War of the Worlds.

BRITTNEY:

He scared everybody.

JOSHUA:

Scared everybody. He really did, because he wrote the first alien invasion story where they came to Earth and were like, "people got to die."

BRITTNEY:

But he like, put it on the radio.

JOSHUA:

Well, no, no, he he didn't put it on the radio. Yeah, he wrote the book. But then later, what's that guy's name? That that guy who did ...

BRITTNEY:

Doug. Rick.

JOSHUA:

He did that movie about Rosebud.

BRITTNEY:

Bob. Listeners, if you know let us know.

JOSHUA:

Yeah. Please let us know.

BRITTNEY:

Maybe we'll insert it. We might just move on with our lives because we don't know.

JOSHUA:

Yeah. He did the radio show and scared a lot of people. They like boarded up their house, got their guns ready.

BRITTNEY:

Yeah. Because like if you tuned into it, you didn't realize it was a story people thought the end of the world was happening.

JOSHUA:

Yeah. And that's exactly what most people did. Like, he did have a disclaimer in the beginning of the show that this is a work of fiction, blah, blah, blah. But most people don't tune in right at the second show starts they tune in a few minutes later, and they got this, like, alien coming out of the ground and zapping people.

BRITTNEY:

Yeah. Listen to a whole podcast on that and how many people lost their minds and who wouldn't? You know. It's like brand new and they were trusting of the radio. And they thought every body was dying, it's really sad.

JOSHUA:

But yeah, he kind of like created this idea that if there is alien life, it's not always going to be nice to us. And we have to be careful about that.

BRITTNEY:

He looked into the abyss. Yeah.

JOSHUA:

Yeah, he did. He kind of tapped into this anxiety about the fear of the other. He described their physical appearance as having tripods with whiplike tentacles. And that kind of image of aliens still exists today as kind of an iconic vision of horror and threat.

BRITTNEY:

Did you watch the movie with Tom Cruise?

JOSHUA:

Yes, I did.

BRITTNEY:

I think I watched it like as a young teen. Like nooooo! They put the people in the basket.

JOSHUA:

Oh, yeah. That was horrifying. They're like screaming.

BRITTNEY:

It was rough. I'm sure it's not scary now, but at the time I was like, this is bad. It's all bad.

JOSHUA:

So for the next, I don't know, 50 years or so, that's kind of our image of aliens. So if you see an alien in literature from the 1920s, up until the 1950s, they're aggressive. They're they're bad news. They just want to fight all the time.

BRITTNEY:

HG Wells aliens, very aggressive.

JOSHUA:

They like want to beat you up or take your money and stuff.

BRITTNEY:

Take your money?

JOSHUA:

But in 1925, a Belgian writer by the name of J.H. Rosney, he wrote the first interspecies romance between a human and of alien. I know!

BRITTNEY:

Bom-chica-bow-wow.

JOSHUA:

It's called The Navigators to Infinity. And the narrator, he goes to Mars and he falls in love with the Martian female.

BRITTNEY:

Do they look pretty humanoid.

JOSHUA:

So the Martian female is described as having three legs and six eyes, no nose and no ears. Yeah. So the narrator's like I'm not quoting what he said. I'm paraphrasing. He's like basically the nose is kind of snotty, the ears not that sexy. So it's OK. I mean, those are the worst parts of our body. So, I don't mind if she's without a nose or ears.

BRITTNEY:

Well, it's very accepting.

JOSHUA:

And then he says her, quote, "nuptial caress" end quote, was relaxing or something like that. Nuptial caress, whatever that means? I think it's coded in 1920s.

BRITTNEY:

That's wild. I didn't know that part sexy aliens that's where they began.

JOSHUA:

Yeah. And it's very interesting that she's not very human looking. He liked her for who she was.

BRITTNEY:

Consent is key.

JOSHUA:

Yes. Well, I guess they got married. I don't know.

BRITTNEY:

I guess they got married? I wonder what their kids look like.

JOSHUA:

That's a good question.

BRITTNEY:

Four eyes?

JOSHUA:

OK. If any of you write fan fiction, can you write a fan fiction ...

BRITTNEY:

About their kids.

JOSHUA:

The children of this Martian being and our narrator in Navigators to Infinity.

BRITTNEY:

I bet there already is fan fiction.

JOSHUA:

There should be Alien invasions and alien love that populated popular fiction for the next 50 years. And then we get the 1960s.

BRITTNEY:

Hippies?

JOSHUA:

Hippies. Now, the 60s was a cultural shift in the United States for many things in Science Fiction in particular, because they started writing about things, for example, in the book "Strangers in a Strange Land". If there was an alien that came to Earth, what would happen to Earth? How would society change? The book "Left Hand of Darkness" by Ursula K. LeGuin came out in 1966. That book kind of freaked people out and opened up minds about what an alien society might actually look like and how, for example, in that book, she kind of reexamines gender identity.

BRITTNEY:

Oooh, good job, Ursula.

JOSHUA:

I'll get into it later why it was such a shift in awareness. But she imagined a society free of gender constraints of traditional gender roles, and it got people thinking like, "why are things like this on Earth if these kind of things are possible in fiction?" It created a lot of interesting conversations that still happen today.

BRITTNEY:

That's what books are supposed to do.

JOSHUA:

Exactly right.

BRITTNEY:

Good job, Ursula.

JOSHUA:

So that is our history. And we're going to get ready for our books.

BRITTNEY:

Books, books, books.

JOSHUA:

Who goes first?

BRITTNEY:

I go first. Yeah, it's Brittney's turn. So, the first book I picked, I read it when I was pretty young and people are getting here on this author's name be like, no, but I just need you to hang out with me.

JOSHUA:

I'm going to defend her when they say that.

BRITTNEY:

Yeah, it's "The Host" by Stephanie Meyer.

JOSHUA:

OK, let me say why. If you're saying "No, Stephenie Meyer" let me tell you why you're wrong. She as a writer, she writes excellently and she got a whole generation of people to read her books. She completely changed the vampire mythos. And created a new subgenre.

BRITTNEY:

Redefined it.

JOSHUA:

So don't hate her. She did great things for our literature.

BRITTNEY:

You don't have to love her writing. But you should not poo-poo Stephenie Meyer. Yes, there are some problematic things now about the Twilight series. It opened up conversations about those problematic things. Just hold up a hot second, please listen. Listen and learn. "The Host" is a stand alone. It is kind of chunky. Stephenie Meyer is writing, I feel like runs pretty quick. It goes along by a really fast clip. I was skimming through it the other day and I was already getting sucked in again. I've read this book multiple times. It's a great book and I think the host by itself personally was better than the Twilight series as a whole. Like if I had to pick one or the other, I would pick The Host.

JOSHUA:

I've heard that comment before

BRITTNEY:

Buckle up, because I'm here to tell you about it. So alien invasion, we're at the part where Earth already lost. We lost. It was a bummer. It's body snatchers. These aliens have come down and body snatched us because what they look like in their real form is almost like these little, I don't want to say slug's, but the the people some of them have nicknamed them the centipedes because they're like little ghostly bug like things and their actual form. And what they do, they slide into your vertebra in the back of your neck. And they take over and the human side of you, your personality slowly fades away, if not immediately. But the problem is for this particular alien, her name is Wanderer. Her human won't go away. Her human's name is Melanie and Melanie is a fighter. Melanie was part of the human resistance and she's one of the last people to have been caught. These two fight all the time in their head, obviously, and the counselor just keeps telling Wanderer, like, you just got to push through, like she will go away. Melanie convinces Wanderer to go out and find some of the human survivors, including her boyfriend, her younger brother and her uncle Jeb. And they have a way of kind of blocking certain thoughts from each other. So she won't exactly give her all the details of where they are. But she's like, I need to go into the desert. And Wanderer is convinced to go find these people and she almost dies doing it. Uncle Jeb finds her. And the only reason Uncle Jeb does not kill her was because both of them kind of can speak at the same time. They're like "Uncle Jeb, you found us." And so when he hears us, he's like, oh my God, Melanie is still in there. So this whole book, she is taken into this human colony and most of the people want to kill her.

JOSHUA:

Understandable.

BRITTNEY:

Understandably, they want to kill her. They're like, "this is the last of us. She's an invader.".

JOSHUA:

She's a spy.

BRITTNEY:

Yeah. And Wanderer's smart, she knows I just need to keep my mouth shut and I'm going to try to get Melanie to keep her mouth shut too b ecause Melanie is like out of her mind, so happy that they're all still alive. She was afraid they might have all been taken by now. It's just really, really interesting because Melanie is very in love with her boyfriend, Jared. And Jared obviously is heartbroken. He is not even sure if Melanie is in there. And Melanie's feelings kind of start affecting Wanderer. She also kind of starts having feelings for Jared and just kind of osmosis a little bit. And she starts really, really caring about, like the younger brother, Jamie. Like she doesn't want anything bad to happen to Jamie. She kind of loves Uncle Jeb. It's like this weird osmosis of feelings. And the more the Wanderer hangs out with these people, as the more they start to kind of trust her and realize she's not going to run away, she kind of realizes what the aliens are called The Souls. She kind of realizes what The Souls have done to human society. And it's not the first planet they've overtaken. They've overtaken, I think, like seven planets. And it's really, really fascinating because Wanderer, her job is kind of like a storyteller because she's from The Origin, they call it, where they started. And she goes and she tells about all the other planets everywhere she's been, kind of like the history of their species. They kind of talk about her in the very beginning when she was being implanted into Melanie. This is like one tough soul and she's never been able to settle. That's why her name is Wanderer. She really realizes that the human society that she's landed in, "I think I found home" like "I think this is where I'm supposed to be and I can't believe we've done this." And she thinks back to the other plants and being like, "Oh, my God. Like the way we overtook we didn't understand them." Because the souls think that they go on and make places better. Which, visually, they do. You know, humanity was on the brink of war and The Souls did come and fix everything, but obviously the humans aren't in their shells anymore. So it's very, very fascinating because you kind of start seeing more and more of that from other souls and their bodies where you realize, oh, not everybody's gone from the bodies. It's very fascinating. It is such a good look at like humanity and an interesting love story, too, because, I mean, she has feelings for Jerry, but there's another guy who comes in named Ian. He genuinely likes Wanderer. He wants to hear her stories even though he has a reason to be terrified of her. It's just very fascinating. There's really good conversations that happen in that book.

JOSHUA:

The best books about aliens at their core are books about humanity. And ask us to take a look at ourselves and be like, what are some things we can make better? I think The Host definitely does ask those questions and open that up to us.

BRITTNEY:

Yeah. Because it's like if we could make everything perfect would we?

JOSHUA:

And what's the price of perfection?

BRITTNEY:

Nail on the head. Perfect. What is the price of perfection? And in this case it was too much. You know, it's really fascinating because ... thanks, SuperSummary.com ... They mentioned in there that Stephenie Meyer wrote this kind of as an ode to body image. She has a really at least she did have a really hard time with her own body image. And she wrote this as a way to kind of address like we are not just the bodies we reside in. We are also our souls. And that's really the important part of us. I was like, oh, my gosh, this is so good.

JOSHUA:

So how interesting that the human body without our consciousness is just a shell. See! Great book. OK, so my book that I'm going to talk about is Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness.

BRITTNEY:

Please tell me about it.

JOSHUA:

OK, so Le Guin is kind of like a monolith in Science Fiction. She's kind of like the grand master who moved Science Fiction from the world of science and technology and dudes doing dude things on planets far away and said, "OK, let's take a look at science fiction and make it a little bit more introspective. Let's explore ideas rather than just technology and things like that."

BRITTNEY:

Yeah. If our listeners hear drilling right now, it's because there's drilling behind us. Sorry.

JOSHUA:

So she debuted in 1966, a few years before the Summer of Love and the Cultural Revolution that happened in the United States. She has published 21 novels, 11 volumes of short stories, 12 children's books, and about a truck size of essays and poetry. She was born and raised in Berkeley, California. But in 1958, she moved to Portland, Oregon, and she lived there until her death in 2018. And she wrote all of her novels in the Pacific Northwest. So if you read her novels and you get these beautiful descriptions of place that inspired by large by the Pacific Northwest.

BRITTNEY:

So fun fact. One of my good friends in college, his favorite author was Ursula K. Le Guin, and he gave me one of her books to read and she had signed it. And I like I read a little bit of it, but I had this low-key nerve that was going to hurt the book so I ended up not reading the book, and I gave it back to me. I felt so bad.

JOSHUA:

I mean, that's just what an impact she has. I bet that book is pretty valuable.

BRITTNEY:

Yeah, yeah. All right. Thank you for letting me read this book. But please, take it back.

JOSHUA:

In this work, The Left Hand of Darkness, it was so groundbreaking because it was the first to include gender norms in its characters and characters who don't subscribe to the, you know, the accepted gender norms of that time. There was also the first to pose the question like, what is gender actually like? What does it mean? Is it something that is innate in us? Is it a biological thing or is it something that society creates around us? And I don't think she really comes up with an answer to that, but she definitely explores a society that is without those gender norms.

BRITTNEY:

She at least poses the question, which is important.

JOSHUA:

And just the speak to kind of the impact is like back in the 60s, those kind of ideas were kind of considered taboo. Like men and women acted, they acted this way. The dress this way.

BRITTNEY:

They had their roles.

JOSHUA:

You deviate from that. You're kind of branded as something against the norms of society and sometimes dangerous to society. So it was really fascinating when a book like this came out and the impact it made on people.

BRITTNEY:

You think of Stepford Wives.

JOSHUA:

Really. Yeah, that was a big deal too. We might talk about that in the future someday. So, this also is a book not so much about technology and about science, but a different side of science, about social science, anthropology and biology. So she gave equal weight to those kinds of scientific thought, which I think is amazing.

BRITTNEY:

That's cool.

JOSHUA:

So this novel is set in this huge galactic organization called The Ecumen, and it's a collection of worlds that are spread throughout different star systems and things. And they're linked by a shared technology called the Ansible. You might have heard about this before she created this idea of this communication device that happens instantaneously, regardless of where you are in the universe.

BRITTNEY:

Oh, nifty.

JOSHUA:

So in this world, ships cannot travel faster than the speed of light. It takes a very long time to get from one world to the next. It can take decades. It can take an entire lifetime. The way that they hold together is through this technology. So the novel follows this character named Genly Ai and he is the human representative. He's a Terran from Earth. And he's going to invite these people on the planet of Winter, otherwise known as Gethen, to invite them to join the Ecumen and share in their technology and share in their experiences. So a little thing about the Gethenians there are different from a Terran in the fact that they are ambisexual meaning that they can transition between male and female.

BRITTNEY:

That's nifty

JOSHUA:

and back again. In a Gethenian year, they spend most of the time as gender neutral and only during a specific time, a few months, during the Kemmer, they can either choose to be male or choose to be female.

BRITTNEY:

That's cool.

JOSHUA:

Isn't that cool?

BRITTNEY:

That's really cool.

JOSHUA:

So when Genly arrives on the planet, things aren't going to go so well.

BRITTNEY:

Things will go badly.

JOSHUA:

So basically, the Gethenians look at Genly Ai and see him as a male that cannot change into a female or is not gender neutral. They see him as kind of like a pervert. "Oh, he's not changing. He's weird." So it's kind of like flips that whole trope on somebody who presents is gender neutral is the norm, is somebody who is masculine, is a weirdo.

BRITTNEY:

They're like, dude, knock it off,

JOSHUA:

cut it out.

BRITTNEY:

Get with the program.

JOSHUA:

But he also finds them to be a little duplicitous. As if they're hiding something from him. So there's kind of like this mutual mistrust going on. It's a cultural misunderstanding. And he gets connected with this character named Estraven.

BRITTNEY:

Is that supposed to be a play on estrogen?

JOSHUA:

I think it is, actually. Estraven takes Genly to to meet the king of the planet. And Genly gives his his spiel about why it's so great to join the Ecumen. You get all this information for free and get the Ansible and the Kings like, "well, what else do you get any money? Do you get any prestige? Do we get warships" and Genly's like, "No, you just get the machine and the information."

BRITTNEY:

I mean, information's good.

JOSHUA:

Well, the king can't really see the benefit to him. So he's like, No, no, thank you, we're fine." And then he says, "Oh, by the way, Estraven, you're exiled forever." And he kicked him out.

BRITTNEY:

Why?

JOSHUA:

No, there's there's some politics going on. I won't go into too much detail. So, Genly spent like to get to this world, he took about twenty years of his life. So now he's like, "I wasted my life, what am I going to do?" So he has to figure out a way of bringing Winter into the fold. And so the rest of the story is about him exploring the planet, getting to know the Gethenians a little bit better. And gives Le Guin the chance to explore what is it like to be in a gender neutral society where you don't have the problems of sexual politics? You know, what are the benefits? What are the negatives about that?

BRITTNEY:

I will have to read that. That's fascinating.

JOSHUA:

A little thing it's it's not the fastest pace book. It's kind of very meditative. Ursula K. Le Guin is the kind of author that doesn't write about laser fights. She has conversations.

BRITTNEY:

No Speed Racers?

JOSHUA:

No zoomy ships. Nothing

BRITTNEY:

OK, takes all types.

JOSHUA:

Yeah, it does. It does. Yeah. So just be aware, it's kind ofa very slow read.

BRITTNEY:

OK, so you're telling me audio book like sped up a little.

JOSHUA:

The good thing is it's not that long, it's relatively short book. A few hundred pages. But I definitely, as with all classics, I mean if you really like to read classics power to you! I wish I could be like you. I have to listen to my classics because

BRITTNEY:

Unless it's Dracula, that one's great. Because it eats people

JOSHUA:

and like crawls on walls.

BRITTNEY:

It's great, he scuttles. Anywho, this is not the vampire episode. This is the alien episode.

JOSHUA:

I picked the Gethenians because they're just there were so unusual for their time. And I read this book for the first time when I was about the end of high school or so, and it kind of went against the lifestyle of growing up in a conservative small town. You know, you don't get really exposed to different perspectives. So it was interesting coming into this. I can't say that I was like woken up like, oh my gosh, because I did have television and I did have the Internet.

BRITTNEY:

I lived in today's standards.

JOSHUA:

But yeah, it made an impact on me. And I was I was impressed by it. And I really like the Gethenians. I wanted to meet them. I wanted to live with them. And I thought it was a fantastic way to build your society and build your world.

BRITTNEY: That's fun. And at least poses the question of gender:

what is it? which is important.

JOSHUA:

Once again, the aliens were used as a vehicle to talk about human conditions.

BRITTNEY:

Love it.

JOSHUA:

What's your last book.

BRITTNEY:

OK, so I read this a couple of years ago for Book Club. It's called "Honor Among Thieves".

JOSHUA:

I started reading this last week.

BRITTNEY:

Did you really? It's pretty good. I like it. The authors are Rachel Cain and Ann Aguirre. I think it's how you pronounce it. So if you're reading it, you're now starting this. I will do my best not to spoil it. OK, but so the main character is Zahra Cole. She's kind of like a street thug. She lives a pretty rough life. She does what she needs to to survive. She gets into a spot of trouble because she pickpockets a kingpin's daughter. So that kingpin is angry. He is so angry. He's like basically like I want Sakalys head on a platter. Like he's mad. So she is taken into kind of like the equivalent of juvie. It's not exactly where she wants to be, but she's like it'll at least keep me out of the kingpin's hands. For the most part, she knows she's still not super safe, but she's like, oh, for now it'll work. In this book, Earth has been visited by these aliens called the Leviathan. And this has happened. I don't know how many years, but it's fairly recently. At this time it's pretty normal to everybody. The Leviathan are we still don't know everything about them, but we have accepted them. And the Leviathan are basically big space whales like you won't see them walking around. They hang out in space. They're too big to land on the planet super well. They're big space whales. And what they have done is they have come and offered all their information, eradicated a lot of sickness. Obviously, Earth is still not perfect, but it's a lot better. And in return, they have created something called the honors program. And I think it's a hundred people every year are chosen to go with the Leviathan and they go in pairs of two and they travel space with a Leviathan. It's supposed to be kind of like it feels like a foreign exchange program is what it feels like. And at the end of that year, the humans can choose to go on the journey. And that means they go out into space with the Leviathan very far and they never come back and nobody ever hears from them ever again. And the Leviathan won't say why. But it's totally up to the humans if they're like, if you want to come, you can, you do not have to. So they're not forced into anything like that. Very interesting. And the people who are chosen are typically really smart people. Really, really wealthy, really smart. Well, Zahra's in this juvie program, and all sudden these people come walking in and she's like, what is happening? Because she realizes one of them is the announcer for like honors, for example, like you have been chosen to be an honor. It's like, whoa. So she's like, sweet, I can get off the planet. Kingpin cannot touch me in space. Perfect. Here I go. So it's very fascinating because Zahra is dealing with a lot of kind of PTSD from her past.

JOSHUA:

Just a little.

BRITTNEY:

Yeah, yeah. And you learn more and more about that like as she goes and her partner on the ship is Beatrice. Beatrice is very sweet, very kind. She's an opera singer. She's smart. But it turns out that Zahra, the Leviathan she's been paired with, his name is Nadeem. Nadeem and him and Zahra gel together like really. Really well,

JOSHUA:

yeah. Like almost right off the bat.

BRITTNEY:

It's almost like the equivalent of like soulmates. Like they they can mind meld and as new partners they really aren't ... they call it the bond ... they aren't really supposed to sink into the bond right away, but they kind of do right off the bat. And she doesn't really understand. He's like we just we just gelled really well. And so they're off planet. They're kind of exploring other planets. And she's kind of realizing Nadeem's keeping stuff from her. And she's like, ain't nobody got time for that. She's like, I've had my back to the wall my entire life. You do not get to keep stuff for me. This book is really, really interesting because it is kind of like an alien human romance, kind of. There's something very sensual about their relationship.

JOSHUA:

Yes. I Agree.

BRITTNEY:

It was funny because that book club were saying "sexy space whales!" Nadeem's a sexy space whale! But there's nothing super graphic happening like that. But there is something sensual, something somewhat romantic happening.

JOSHUA:

Yeah. It's like he kind of gets her real fast. And that's I find that that's what makes him such a sexy space whale.

BRITTNEY:

He is a sexy space. Well and he he really is a home for her in all senses of the word. Like, he is her spaceship. She lives within him.

JOSHUA:

In his belly.

BRITTNEY:

Yeah. And he can create other rooms and stuff inside himself, which is very fascinating. And they just balance each other really, really well. I won't spoil anything else for you, but it's very exciting to see the space adventures they go on. I would say if you love Han Solo, Zahra Cole is very much a Han Solo character. She is a space cowgirl and she's here to mess you up. If you like that kind of story, I would definitely recommend this. It is a lot of fun. I would say it moves by pretty quickly. It's interesting because later on the second book, Beatrice becomes more involved with their relationship. So it's almost kind of alluded to a little bit of polyamory, a little bit, which is not something you see in my Y.A. And again, there is nothing super graphic happening, at least not yet. And I've read two of the books. I think it's a trilogy. It questions relationships and how we typically have relationships. And Zahra, is like I'm in space, a relationship is whatever it needs to be defined as, especially with aliens. So it's very fascinating. Space cowboys space cowgirls. Aliens. It's fun. It's a lot of fun.

JOSHUA:

Yeah. Just to add to that, Nadeem is kind of like young for a leviathan. So he's kind of figuring stuff out too. So it's like a Zahra is exploring herself, Nadeem is also exploring himself.

BRITTNEY:

And he's also learning secrets that have been kept from him from the other Leviathan, which he didn't realize. So it really is him and Zahra versus the universe. And it's just so much fun to see because there is, I would say, some sort of internal guilt of her feeling very thuggish and not good enough for her family and really seeing her certain skillset become her assets, especially out in space being like Zahra. We need you. We need, like, everything you know about fighting. She's got it. I'm here for it.

JOSHUA:

And I love the aliens so much. The idea that they're this living vessel that just floating through space. Great, great choices. Great choices. I love these aliens. OK, so my last one. Are you ready for this?

BRITTNEY:

Yes.

JOSHUA:

OK, I've gone through this phase lately where I'm just like I want my aliens to be actual aliens, to be non-human. I don't want them to talk like humans or have human emotion.

BRITTNEY:

No humanoid

JOSHUA:

Oh, no humanoids at all. No, no, no, I want them to look, act and be just completely weird completely alien.

BRITTNEY:

Here for it.

JOSHUA:

Yeah. So the last book I picked is Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer.

BRITTNEY:

Oh, my gosh. This book is wild!

JOSHUA:

This is in the genre, new weird.

BRITTNEY:

New weird. We briefly discussed this before.

JOSHUA:

It's basically like I don't even know how to describe that.

BRITTNEY:

It breaks all the rules.

JOSHUA:

It does.

BRITTNEY:

It makes it's own rules.

JOSHUA:

I mean narratively it just kind of goes off the rails near the end of the book. It doesn't make it bad. It's what's really, really interesting. But at some point you're going to ask what the ____ is going on.

BRITTNEY:

Yes. Agreed. If you need something weird, new weird is fascinating.

JOSHUA:

And if you've seen the movie doesn't even get into half of the weirdness of this very short book, actually it

BRITTNEY:

is kind of shorter.

JOSHUA:

So Jeff Vandermeer, he's an American writer who lives in Florida. He's won multiple awards across many genres. Yeah, yeah. He's a he's kind of a new voice in science fiction. What I like about him is he's a plant and nature enthusiast. He is a real proponent for "plant rights." I made that up, by the way. There's not really a thing called "plant rights"

BRITTNEY:

Oh, that's fascinating.

JOSHUA:

But he's written several articles about just how to make your human space better for the animals that we share it with. Like I just read an article of his where he talks about rewilding your yard and says, "Hey, humans, you're not the only ones living in this yard. There are birds, there are insects that want to share this space with you and think about how you can make this space better for them."

BRITTNEY:

I have no idea about that. And that kind of goes into his book a little bit.

JOSHUA:

Totally. Totally. Because what happens in Annihilation is there's this place on the coastline of South Carolina, North Florida area, I think it's called Area X now because something happened.

BRITTNEY:

Did a comet happen?

JOSHUA:

I think in the movie it showed up as a comet but in the book, it's never really explained. It's just like there's this Area X. If you go into it, you never come out. Or if you come out, you're.

BRITTNEY:

You're weird. You're different.

JOSHUA:

Bat crap crazy. The main characters are a crew of female scientists. They're not named throughout. So they'll be referred to as the biologist, the psychologist, the linguist that on and on they all enter Area X and it takes four days to reach their base camp. And through this whole time, they're under hypnosis. They don't remember crossing the barrier to Area X and getting to their base camp. So from the beginning, we don't know what's going on or what happens when you cross into this place. We find out that they're the twelfth expedition.

BRITTNEY:

That's a bummer.

JOSHUA:

I know right? I imagine them sitting down with these women and being like, OK, so we want you to go into this place. By the way, you're the twelfth group to do that. The the lobby before you were there all dead. We don't know what happened to them. They're gone.

BRITTNEY:

I be like, "no, thank you. No thanks. I'm good."

JOSHUA:

Well, what's interesting is the biologist, her husband was part of the eleventh group. So in a way, she's going in to find out what happened to him. The other members I have no idea what their story is or what their interests were into going to this.

BRITTNEY:

It feels very kamikaze pilot like we're not expecting come back out, but we're going to go in and see what we can do.

JOSHUA:

Yeah, I think a very particular type of person is going to want to go into that place.

BRITTNEY:

They found them!

JOSHUA:

Yes. So at the base camp, they discovered that a tower that was not mentioned in the records of previous expeditions and that has been erected into this landscape, this biologist goes in to investigate. She wants to find out what's going on. So inside she sees the interior of the wall. It's covered in writing. And the writing is kind of like biblical in nature. And it's kind of rambling, but it's not related to any kind of text that she knows or she can recognize. And when she looks into closer, these are the things that are written. The writing itself is actually tiny little organisms. And when she gets in really close, this pod pops in her face and she inhales the spores.

BRITTNEY:

Oh, no, no.

JOSHUA:

You know, like when that phrase "inhale the spores", it's bad. That's a bad thing in any context.

BRITTNEY:

Especially X Files.

JOSHUA:

Yes. But she doesn't tell anybody what happened to her. She keeps it a secret because she doesn't trust the other women in this group.

BRITTNEY:

That's right they become manic.

JOSHUA:

She thinks the psychologist is leading them towards their death. And the others, they're getting anxious or as you said, manic.

BRITTNEY:

I read it. I don't know how many years ago. And I, I almost couldn't explain that book after it read. What did I just read? That's a book I almost had to read a couple of times to really be like like it's really, really different.

JOSHUA:

Yeah, yeah. Especially when she gets to this certain place that's kind of like the heart of everything. And you're just like, what is going on? What literally is going on? because I can't follow it. So that's why I picked this one, because it kind of fulfilled my interest in reading what an actual alien would be like. It's something so unknowable. We don't know its intentions, why it's there or what it's doing to the landscape around it or to the people who have come in contact with it. It's just a complete mystery. And if you want to find out what happens, you have to read the book.

BRITTNEY:

Indescribable. I can't say I love the movie. It actually kind of scared me.

JOSHUA:

Yeah, well, the movie and the book depart from each other. I enjoyed the movie. I thought it was fun. I liked all the actresses in it. But yeah, if you're looking for conclusions from that movie. You're not going to find it.

BRITTNEY:

No it's dark.

JOSHUA:

Yeah. So that is Annihilation. So if you want to read about aliens who are freaking weird then you should read that book

BRITTNEY:

and as we mentioned before in the Seep by Chana Porter.

JOSHUA:

I love the Seep! I wanted to talk about this show, but I talked about them already. I love them. They're just so funny.

BRITTNEY:

Do you remember which episode we talk about the Seep?

JOSHUA:

The first one was the very first one.

BRITTNEY:

If you want more like Annihilation, maybe check out the Seep by Chana Porter. Very strange aliens. Very strange.

JOSHUA:

I mean a little bit more knowable because we ingest them and they become a part of us. So what were the books that we reviewed?

BRITTNEY:

I reviewed the Host by Stephenie Meyer, do you not judge her, and Honor Among Thieves by Rachel Caine and Ann Aguirre.

JOSHUA:

and I reviewed Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness. And Jeffrey ... I was like as a Jeff or John? I reviewed Jeff VanderMeer's Annihilation. OK, so we have a game.

BRITTNEY:

I remember the game. Game, game, game.

BRITTNEY AND JOSHUA:

The game are going to play is called What's that Sound?

BRITTNEY:

Literally told me we needed a sound. And this was last month and Christine and I, went and found a sound immediately. I've been holding onto this sound for over a month.

JOSHUA:

I'm so excited.

BRITTNEY:

And I think surprisingly it is kind of space-ish sounding. So it is new recording number five play that

JOSHUA:

Did you put Christina's head underwater in an aquarium?

BRITTNEY:

I did not waterboard Christina. No, no, I did not. But I can't just on aquarium like it does. There's no water involved.

JOSHUA:

Oh, I wonder. Gosh, is it like photocopy related?

BRITTNEY:

No, but that's also a good guess. You let me know if you need a hint.

JOSHUA:

OK, I'm going to keep asking questions. Yes, is it the kind of thing that you have to do something to make this sound or is it some sound that occurs naturally in the library?

BRITTNEY:

You have to do something you have to do. You have to make the sound happen. It is very easy to make the sound happen and it does not take a whole lot of work.

JOSHUA:

Oh, my gosh. Have I made the sound before?

BRITTNEY:

I don't think you have made the sound before. It would probably be more of a sound if you were more into programing.

JOSHUA:

Hmm. I got it. I got

BRITTNEY:

it. I love doing too big of hints.

JOSHUA:

OK, is it the microfilm? No, I don't know. I don't know.

BRITTNEY:

Do you want me to tell you which room it's in? It is in the Myrtlewood Room.

JOSHUA:

It's in the Myrtlewood Room? I don't know.

BRITTNEY:

That's OK. It is the projection screen. The one that lowers and goes up.

JOSHUA:

That's what that rumble, rumble, rumble, click is.

BRITTNEY:

You press the button and it that's the sound of me.

JOSHUA:

I didn't know we had a projection screen.

BRITTNEY:

It's a it takes up the whole wall.

JOSHUA:

That's awesome! Oh my gosh. So when we're screening movie night we're actually screening movies.

BRITTNEY:

Yes, yeah. Yeah. We put it up on the projection screen. It's enormous.

JOSHUA:

it's so cool.

BRITTNEY:

You haven't seen a projection screen.

JOSHUA:

Never seen it.

BRITTNEY:

OK, so maybe that was bad. Yeah I did see that.

JOSHUA:

That's awesome. Well now I know I thought we just like put it on a on a TV.

BRITTNEY:

Joshua, no!

JOSHUA:

People crowd around.

BRITTNEY:

OK, we're going to take a field trip in there some time and I'm going to show you because it's literally a button. What if we all die? You'll have to show somebody else how to work the projection screen.

JOSHUA:

I think that would be last on my list of priorities.

BRITTNEY:

I know how to work the projection screen. I'll just have to let you go try it out sometime.

JOSHUA:

That's awesome. Thank you for that sound. And I'm so glad we learned something new today.

BRITTNEY:

We have an enormous projection screen that takes up one whole wall of our library.

JOSHUA:

Well so when pandemic times are over, one day you're going to have to come in and view a movie and watch that projected screen people in podcast land.

BRITTNEY:

Yeah. And people do all sorts of cool lectures and and all sorts of stuff on the projection screen.

JOSHUA:

See, that's why I'm a bad person. I haven't gone to any activities before.

BRITTNEY:

You weren't doing a lot of programing. Like after pandemic times, you might be more into programing.

JOSHUA:

So I get to see it firsthand. Great. Well thanks folks for hanging out with us. I hope you learned something. I hope you got like four new books to read.

BRITTNEY:

We'd love to hear about your favorite aliens.

JOSHUA:

Heck yeah. You know what? We have an email that's up. We have an email. It's a new thing called email.

BRITTNEY:

We sound like we're eighty.

JOSHUA:

And you just you go on to the computer and you put it in,

BRITTNEY:

you find the Google.

JOSHUA:

it goes there instantaneous. I think Ursula Le Guin made it.

BRITTNEY:

Are you Canadian? I don't know what it's all talked about. I don't I'm allowed to say that because my husband's Canadian and we do have an email. Starships@coosbaylibrary.org If you want to, like, get in contact with us about book recommendations, if you want to tell us anything about what you're reading, what you like, what you don't like, and if like in a future episode you want us to do a reader's advisory for you, give us all those details. We would be so excited. And I mean, if you tell us not to say your name, we won't say your name, but like, you'll get to hear your book recommendations. We would love to do that for you because every other episode would do is a reader's advisory episode, which are a little bit shorter. But we recommend books to people.

JOSHUA:

Yeah, they baseliner their likes and dislikes. So cool. Folks, thank you for tuning in and I'll see you next time.

BRITTNEY:

We'll see you next time.

BRITTNEY AND JOSHUA:

Byeeeeeeee.

History of Aliens in Fiction
Our Book Recommendations
What's That Sound?