Tom Ewing joins Mark Sinker and Elisha Sessions to discuss Fritz Leiber’s “A Pail of Air”, written in 1951. It’s a short story about a kid, some rugs, and an Earth so cold that helium crawls. Will it crawl onto YOU? Elisha reads from the story in case you haven’t.
Next week: Isaac Asimov – “Segregationist”.
Audio Player
It’s always tough when a go-to site shuts down, especially one like MP3sFinder, which was a reliable and fast resource…
Eleven years later (couldn't hang on another 3), I just wanted to add "I agree".. it's damn funky
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Thanks for the deep dive into all of this lunacy. I started reading Cerebus in high school, when it was…
It's been a heck of a ride revisiting Cerebus through your eyes and analysis. Thank you for taking the time…
I think this is more in the sense of "anyone else Sim chooses"
The self-contained Five Bar Gate issue and the issue where Cerebus and the Stooges stumble their way through 100% darkness…
My wife was diagnosed of Parkinson’s Disease at age 61. She had severe calf pain, muscle pain, tremors, slurred speech,…
This story is great, I remember reading it at school.
http://www.webscription.net/chapters/0743498747/0743498747___6.htm
What was the show on Resonance after you? It was another round table chat affair involving at least one guy with a North American accent. I dozed off* towards the end of A Slug and woke up in the middle of this other show. I was highly confused for a good ten minutes.
*forgive me, I have a cold and was v. tired
it was ben watson and “bob dobbs”:
“Bob Dobbs is the figurehead of The Church Of The SubGenius, in this exclusive late night show the person who claims to be Bob Dobbs chews the fat with Ben Watson about Frank, James, Marshall and those that croak from beyond the grave…. and no he doesn’t discuss The Church”.
the show before was Julia Davis and Jessica Hines as well…
Another excellent episode, guys. Thank you!
BTW: a pousse café is a fancy-pants cocktail made up of layered liqueurs that float one atop the other without mixing. You would drink it after dinner, and it would “push [down] the coffee.”
Yep, really enjoyable show again, though I always pictured this story taking place in an Allied Carpet’s showroom, the rugs being so central to the plot!
And good editing of chatbits Eli, the stings probably helped the flow. The discussion did not get on to post-apocalyptic novels in general – and the post-apocalyptic being the route from sci-fi back into fantasy (HELLOW GENE WOLFE!), and indeed hello Cormac’s Road too!
Yeah I didn’t mention The Road cos I haven’t actually read it – and I didn’t know if anyone else there had either, so I didn’t want to say “It’s a bit like The Road isn’t it – well so I hear” and Eli and Mark saying yes so we hear too.
The thing about pail of air compared to pretty much any other post-ap novel/story I can think of (Road included) is how static it is: they generally involve epic journeys, which APOA also does but the journey is only seen from the point of its destination.
not mentioning gene wolfe = FEATURE NOT BUG
Sinker: I was just about to fire off an indignant reply to your comment, but as I think about it, you’re probably right – although not for the reasons you think you are. I love love love Gene Wolfe, but he’s such a one-off – such a singular figure in terms of how he approaches SF and how he conceives of what it is and what it does – that trying to trace his “place” in science fiction (even when he himself provides a roadmap, as he does in some of his essays) is only going to lead down unprofitable tangents. He is of SF but not in it, might be one way to put it.
i didn’t really HAVE a reason once you get past the irresistable open-goal joke :(
a more serious reason: i suppose in a way eli and i are very much angling, as the project behind slugs, to defend the short story as the basic unit of a certain era’s expressive value — which will inevitably leave us looking leerily at the “trilogy of triologies” types: nothing wrong with long books in long rows, maybe, BUT we want to dig a bit into what got lost
Wolfe was famous for his short stories and novellas before his big long books – “The Fifth Head Of Cerberus” (which I think was a short story before it was expanded), “The Island Of Doctor Death And Other Stories” etc. (And actually Book Of The New Sun has a bunch of short stories nested inside it though I don’t think any of them are much good as standalones). If you wanted to do a New Wave series he’s got some good candidates.