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

Marooned! on Mars with Matt and Hilary

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 stopping us from acting? Why are we dithering? Who's this "we"?

We talk about revolution, excuses, reasons, ideology, fantasies of settler colonialism, psychology, Bill Gates (give us money!), and Kyrsten Sinema (go away!). We also find some differences between Matt and Hilary's editions of the novel.

SPOILER ALERT: Arkady dies in the Mars Trilogy.

Thanks for listening to us talk about this thick and chewy novel!

Swan and the Inspector – 11:00

Earth, the Planet of Sadness – 19:45

Swan on Earth – 41:55

Lists (10) – 1:25:25

Pluto, Charon, Nix, Hydra – 1:27:45

Pauline on Revolution – 1:32:15

Extracts (11) – 1:44:15

Swan at Home – 1:46:55

Extracts (12) – 1:59:10

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Music by Spirit of Space