Home
Creators
Search Recent Random
Posts
Search DMs Popular Hash Lookup Tags Random
Importer
Import FAQ
Register Favorites Keys Review DMs Logout
Community
Telegram ThePornDude
Home Creators Posts Import Register Favorites Logout

Study 040 - The Miracle of the Lily (Patreon)

Published:
2023-04-27 18:31:41
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

Downloads

Content

It's Humans vs. Insects in the 1920s sci-fi time-trip The Miracle of the Lily by Clare Winger Harris! Check it out in The Future is Female!

Special thanks to supreme reader Rachel Lackey!

Have a listen to In the Year 2525 by Zager and Evans or Visage!

Music from The H.P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast - Volume 3 is available now!

Comments

Sweatin' to the Great Oldies

I, for one, would be perfectly happy to live without having to be concerned about making money, being productive for others, or winning. There is, I fear, a cult of accomplishment that promises much and delivers far too little. A life spent in conversation, taking long walks, and fiddling about with my own projects would suit me just fine.

Matthew Alderman

Sorry to be that guy, but “life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” which I of course think a very good thing, is in the Declaration of Independence, not the US Constitution.

Matthew Alderman

Also, this sterile, plant-less earth reminds me a little of the master plan of the sinister Sulvans of the earth-facing “bare” side of the moon in CS Lewis’s “That Hideous Strength.”

KateSherrod

I'm here to see how long it takes our friend Fred Kiesche to jump on here and advocate for Olaf Stapledon's LAST AND FIRST MEN for a future study of strangeness, which I would second. It is an absolute classic of its kind (future history) and takes humanity from Stapledon's era (early 20th Century) to pretty much the heat death of the universe, discussing how our bodies and cultures will evolve to suit living in the rest of the solar system, etc. Totally cosmic! As for the premise of Miracle of the Lily being flimsy, not necessarily! Just as once there were many varieties within the Homo genus, with us being descended from the best survivor/competitor, that could happen with insects, too. We're already applying evolutionary pressure on them with things like Bt crops (crops engineered to produce a bacterial toxin to kill insect pets), which could kill off a great deal of species until only things that Bt can't kill are left. Every strategy we try threatens more biodiversity. There really could wind up being a single insect super pest, just like there's nothing left of our genus but Homo sapiens sapient. For another perspective on the world depicted in this great story, you should also check out T.J. Bass, a physician who only wrote two novels, Half Past Human and The Godwhale, both set in a world in which wild food is extinct and humans have adapted to live underground on synthetics. They're fantastic and short. Now, I wonder if I'm going to be able to get a copy of this anthology somehow. Someday I'll just learn to buy the damned things right when you announce you're covering them...

witchhousemedia

Aside from mixing up declarations and constitutions, I implied that spiders are insects in this episode. I have found a spider who teaches history and apologized. —fifer

Sludgecrawler

I always think of Gentlemen Broncos when In The Year 2525 comes up. If you can look past the juvenile humour it's a little known gem with Jennifer Coolidge, Sam Rockwell and Jemaine Clement. Please also consider covering the author Iain M. Banks and his books about The Culture! When talk starts about humanity's dismal future and the tired old tropes about how we definitely would turn into aimless couch potatoes if we weren't wageslaves and how we could never handle not being forced to sell our lives to survive (just like in our current capitalist hellscape), I always look to Banks' books for some solace. His politics and visions about a radically different mindset are very much worthy of consideration. Mostly he wrote novels, but the anthology The State of The Art contains a few shorter ones you should look into. I know Chris mentioned his books on RWST too. And he's dead, so get to it!

Jim Cannon

Well this is a fairly preposterous premise with a barely adequate understanding of biology or how evolution works BUT as an allegory for how human beings are systematically destroying the environment that we depend on for our existence, I say it knocks it out of the park. The insects of Venus (as opposed to the furry Amazons of Venus) were a nice Twilight Zone-y twist. I don't know about stagnation or the perils of a life without conflict, but Earth as a barren rock paved over with Mega-City One is nightmarish to the extreme. Humanity survives, but... like you discuss... to what end, ultimately? Sounds like a supremely horrid existence. Except for the electric skates, I guess.

It's a Ghost.

This episode reminds me of how, in the name of progress, many highways were built through US cities in 60s, slicing through and carving up communities, and how subsequently many cities have reconsidered this so-called progress and have worked to modify these highways, move them underground, or simply dismantle them altogether.

Jeremy Impson

I came here to lament about how strong the work-to-live sentiment is in the US today, and how cynical I am about the possibility of a Roddenberry-esque future where basic needs are fulfilled and advanced in technology are easily available to anyone. Unfortunately I don't have a hopeful thought to conclude with.

Thomas Paynter

This story reminded me of another story in which insects threaten humanity: Doomsday Deferred, by Leinster, Murray [writing as Will F. Jenkins]. I read it as a kid in Alfred Hitchcock's Monster Museum. I ran across the book in a used bookstore a few years ago, picked it up for old times' sake, and was reading Doomsday Deferred in a pizza joint when out of nowhere...I found myself becoming actually scared by the story. Goosebumps and all. That doesn't happen to an old horror hand like me. If you want some horror with your sci fi, wouldn't be a bad choice for the show.

Eric - Speaker in Digressions

To the "why do we do this stuff?" question Aristotle answered that it's all for happiness, since that's the one thing we choose for itself and not as the step on the way to something else. Of course, then he needs to define "happiness," which he does by ruling out anything transient, dependent upon stuff we can't control, or unachievable in this life, and says that it's about using our reason to choose the proper actions that will allow us to live in accordance with virtue. But then he also thought women had fewer teeth than men, so YMMV.

Mark K

I liked this one! Yes, the science wasn't great--I was especially bothered by the idea that there'd be flowering plants without insect pollinators--but it managed to be disturbing in a bunch of different ways.

David Halstead

There a metal cover of the song In the Year 2525 by Fields Of The Nephilim.

Jason of the K

I love these very early sci-fi tales before all the standard tropes (hyperspace, FTL communicators, giant high res Zoom meeting screens, etc) were enshrined into pop culture and we could get more varied and interesting problems to solve. I loved the idea that Beetle Venusians and Ape Earthings both agreed to just go their separate ways because we know our base natures.