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Study 129 - Liberation of Earth (Patreon)

Published:
2025-05-08 20:10:58
Edited:
2025-05-15 21:59:33
Imported:
2025-05
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Content

Earth is stuck in a war between alien races with devastating consequences, and it's somehow funny! Join us as we discuss Liberation of Earth by William Tenn!

Special thanks to our reader, George Woodruff of Full Throttle Sound!

Next up: Aickman Feedback and The Damp Man!

Comments

Jason Thompson

I love this story but…. It may be funny but it’s also so incredibly bleak and depressing! Anyway, great story. FWIW I hope you reconsider and end up doing an episode on “Where the Summer Ends” anyway. Give us some basic ghoulies jumping out of kudzu grabbing people!

Joe Webb

"...we can say with pardonable pride that we have been about as thoroughly liberated as it is possible for a race and a planet to be !" I think you can substitute the word "liberated" with, to be polite, the word "screwed". Possibly that's why the narrator emphasized the near impossibility of the oral story being related to him by his parents completely unchanged for generations.

Festerfest

The “thoroughly liberated” phrasing may be a reference to an incident in World War II where an anonymous American G.I. upon seeng the bombed and shattered remains of the French town of St. Lo, almost completely destroyed during fighting with the Germans,reportedly said, “We sure liberated the hell out of this place. “

Illegal_Structures

Great story and great episode, as always! Speaking of how to define the monstrous I think that the story, and your discussion thereof, suggests a very important point that there is something monstrous within power itself. To a certain extent, I think that we recoil not from lack of affinity or identification, but rather from the hideous excess that we find when another’s strength exceeds our own.

Ben Gilbert

Another great story by Tenn is Mistress Sary. It’s a weird tale of, not really an evil child, but a scary one.

James D

The cover art you posted on FB gives me flashbacks to the dreaded Cazedors in Fallout New Vegas

Apollo Sitting Up

“Suck air” is the new insult for 2025. “Go suck air!”

Derrick Mcmullin

So while I enjoyed the story I have some bones to pick since the Korean War is my special interest. The first being the idea that we left South Korea worse off then when we found it. Korea had been occupied by Japan since the turn of the century. The horrors of that occupation is well documented. After the war we stayed around and helped rebuild the country. The contrast between the states of the two countries can literally be seen from space.

Richard Horsman

A certain segment of the population has started saying "Hard times produce strong men" again lately. This story is a good reminder that the kind of hard times they mean are more likely to produce mountains of corpses and traumatized survivors. Also an interesting companion to this is the Polish SF film War of the Worlds: Next Century. It's more of a riff on Wells than an adaptation, and it's really about how Poland was a political football in the 70s and 80s. The main character is a seemingly independent broadcaster who is pressured by the collaborating government into praising the Martians. When the tide turns against the Martians he's then left in the crosshairs of the newly liberated government, which is mostly made up of the people who got him to collaborate in the first place. Like this story it's both hilarious and depressing. You can watch the trailer here, and I think the whole thing is streaming on Mubi in the US still. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yapgkKNqUmw

Gideon Falcon

The Dendi structures that make people vanish puts me in mind of landmines; even today, there are potentially THOUSANDS of live explosives buried just under the surface in Korea and Vietnam, that neither retreating military bothered to dispose of. Multiple times a year, innocent people going about their business accidentally step on one, receiving life-altering injuries -- because many mines were explicitly designed to main rather than kill, so that more soldiers would be taken out of action helping the injured get to safety. It's a disturbing and tragic testament to the sheer inhumanity of war.

Aaron La Vene

Just relistened to your full coverage of unknown kadath and you said u would always be thinking about that. So A. Does it still cross ur mind regularly? Lol But for real it made me think B. After studying all these other authors and looking back at all the lovecraft stories. How do you currently feel about lovecraft? How do you compare him to all the other authors we have been covering regularly? (Not including the influences, just his stories as they are) I have my own responses but I want to hear yours. Also Jesus Christ Chad I feel awful for ur grandma. That was top tier content. One of my new favorite bits lmao

Jim Cannon

I was thinking of Vietnam literally moments before Chad mentioned the much more appropriate Korea metaphor, but Tenn really universalizes the whole idea of war. This is Afghanistan, too. War truly is the absolute worst state for human beings to occupy. I always think of my first visit to the battlefield museum at Gettysburg, where I saw photographs of all the civilians who died from stray bullets. People just sitting in their houses, or watching the armies from a nearby hill, shot dead. War is far ranging, far affecting, voracious, and merely destructive.

Jim Cannon

Having listened to every episode of Mike Duncan's _Revolutions_ podcast, there are a few things I have learned about revolutions: number one: every revolution is a civil war, and number two: sometimes they are successful and bring about lasting, positive change. Sometimes.

Eric S. Vallone, M.D.

I loved this! But I have to admit that from the beginning of the podcast, when Chad first mentioned about humanity being reduced to primitive savagery by the aliens, all that I could think of for the rest of the episode was the pilot episode of “Futurama.” Specifically the scene where Fry first gets trapped in the cryo-chamber and we witness a very much “Time Machine” like passage of time outside the window: an alien spaceship armada passes across the sky from left to right instantly destroying all of the skyscrapers and demolishing the skyline of New York. Over time, trees grow, and then we see the construction of very tall but primitive, looking buildings of wood and stone. Then the aliens return from the other direction passing from right to left across the sky, destroying these buildings as well. Listening to the entire podcast, this initial image was strongly reinforced.

Eric - Speaker in Digressions

The various French revolutions (1789, 1830, 1848) and some copycat waves across Europe did indeed inspire Britain to make slow social and electoral reforms as an anti-revolution pressure valve. It basically worked (in England , Scotland, and Wales) despite some significant periods of unrest. On the continent, old-regime monarchies outside France generally went the other direction, fiercely guarding aristocratic privileges until they figured out how to coopt nationalism. (And that led to a European Golden Age of peace, progress, and equality that lasts to this day, right? Anyway my speciality is ancient Rome.)

James Kundart

I was lucky enough to take one of the last offerings of a science fiction literature course from Professor Klass when I was at Penn State in the late 1980s. He was a popular and entertaining lecturer who would regale us with firsthand stories about the great authors in the golden age of science fiction. It didn't seem to bother him -- or his students -- that his university colleagues regarded the genre with disdain. He was not self-promoting, and didn't readily share his pen name. Before the Internet, it took his large class most of the semester to figure out the pseudonym under which he published.

ESTY

“If you suck air hard enough, you can sometimes still hear the meowing of the Dendi, lo “ -Sweet Grandma

Newk

"Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose" that was a bummer ending honestly. But I guess what else are you going to do? So long and thanks for all the clusters of grass!

It's a Ghost.

I caught up this weekend with the episodes of Andor that have been released so far, and in the most recent episode Mon Mothma gave a speech that reminded me of this episode, your discussion of the story, and the world we live in today. In the speech, she said, "The distance between what is said and what is known to be true has become an abyss. Of all the things at risk, the loss of an objective reality is perhaps the most dangerous. The death of truth is the ultimate victory of evil. When truth leaves us, when we let it slip away, when it is ripped from our hands, we become vulnerable to the appetite of whatever monster screams the loudest."

Runninghead

Can we now adapt the format so every Strange Studies episode starts with "Hey-ho! Suck air and grab clusters!!"? 😂 Great treatment of this story as always guys. It's like every line of this one comes with its own line of powerful subtext about the state of our world today. Topical, fun, awesome. 👏

Jb Lee

William Tenn! You're gonna need to do CHILD's PLAY <-- NOT to be confused with Villy Sorensen's tale. This one's got scifi horror stuff! Boy, does it ever! THE MALTED MILK MONSTER THE SEVEN SEXES MISTRESS SARY

Justin Moran

Hey guys! Around the 3 minute mark, you made a comment about reading a ton of monster stories and them all following the same format. Just a point of interest, I would love for you two to do a deep dive into that formula. Give me your take on this general monster fiction beat sheet. As a literary podcast, I think that stuff fits too and I'd be super interested in your takes.

Blake Coleman

Already enjoying Alien Monster May! This one had me cracking up from the opening quote, and at the same time is so relevant. (Unfortunately I guess these government/cultural satires are pretty much always relevant). Anyway, jumping ahead in time: if you decide to celebrate "Thew-ly" again this July I have a few Robert E. Howard recommendations: "The Scarlet Citadel" the quintessential Conan dungeon crawl that no doubt served as inspiration for D&D. "Isle of Pirate's Doom" a fun pirate adventure (with a slight weird element) with one of Howard's lesser known heroines/femme fatales the dread pirate Helen Tavrel! "Temple of Abomination" another lesser known but great historical horror fantasy that takes place in the age of King Arthur (but it's not about Arthur, to be clear). And two Solomon Kane yarns: "Hills of the Dead" and "The Footfalls Within" two of my favorite Kane stories (minus some of the expected but unfortunate language) that introduce and explain, respectively, the Staff of Solomon that Kane wields. There's also vampires and monsters and punching said vampires and monsters.

Ben A

I agree with you two and the many commenters that this is bleak and depressing, but only because so much of it rings true. Humans are such an accommodating species. I was left at the end to think of the not-so-great but on-the-nose short in the New Twilight Zone (the 80s version) entitled "A Small Talent for War." Spoilers for the plot: aliens arrive at the UN and inform the planetary leadership that humans have 24 hours to live because they have a small talent for war. The leaders protest and say they will work over the next 24 hours to sue for global peace, which they achieve only to find that the aliens mean that human have _too small_ a talent for war. The aliens say humans are just not aggressive enough or advanced enough in their warfare. I'd argue that the two alien species in this tale would agree. Also, I agree with your assessment about Wagner's "Where the Summer Ends." But, it's still a fun story to read, even if it is a little bit predictable. I may be biased, though, as I daily drive the very road (Grand Avenue) on which the action of that story takes place, which to this day still is lined with patches of kudzu. Every once in a while, I am pretty sure I catch some rustling in the kudzu and the movement of a little green man out of the corner of my eye... I encourage folks to read that short story!

Anne Ominous

"suck air and grab clusters" is definitely how I'm starting all our family meetings from now on. Thanks giant bunny! Bawk! Bawk!

Mistress Frieren

Those Dendi sure perfected Managed Democracy.

Tomas Rawlings

The history and why’s and how’s of revolution in human history is fascinating and complex. Research suggests that peaceful revolutions are more successful than violent ones. However it is a debated point. For example some point to Gandhi s peaceful overthrow the of British rule as an example while others content it was only possible because the British Empire had been degraded by the very not peaceful WW2. There is a great podcast, Revolutions, that charts all the history of revolutions starting with the English Civil War. If you were to only listen to one chapter then I’d suggest Season 4 where the enslaved people of Haiti rise up and throw off multiple waves of oppression. It’s a powerful story.

Sweatin' to the Great Oldies

These aliens are certainly monsters in the original sense of the word - an ill omen or portent. Their strange shape indicates something terrible is about to happen.