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Study 079 - Microcosmic God - Part 1 (Patreon)

Published:
2024-02-22 16:50:26
Imported:
2026-06
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Join us as we examine Theodore Sturgeon's Microcosmic God - one of the best sci-fi stories of all time!

Special thanks to reader Greig Johnson! You can see all the cool things he's making by joining his Patreon, or grab everything you can from his Etsy page!

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Comments

David Halstead

You could easily fill a month of stories that were "Kinda ripped by Stephen King."

REO Jackwagon

Hold up! This guy's no scientist. What theory is he trying to advance? What hypothesis is he trying to validate? Scientist? No, he's a mad inventor! No more!

Robert Curtin

Curse my being caught up with the show! Now I must wait a WHOLE WEEK for the next part! I'm gonna have to track this down to read it myself. Not gonna lie, hearing my name made me tear up a bit, (insert precautionary advice against forming para-social relationships with people you only know online), but while I was a relatively late comer to the show, (2016ish I think?), you guys and Andrew, and the whole crew have been such a comfort and source of joy, (and terror!), over the years. I've been so glad to contribute my measly subscription fund over the years, and plan to continue doing so till the end! Thank you guys so much

Cole Caron

This story made me want to re-download and play Spore.

Shadavid

Your mention of innovations not spilling over into the Marvel Universe makes me think of my favourite example. How much do people complain about not having flying cars in a universe where there are flying cars?

Sweatin' to the Great Oldies

I don't much like the idea of creating intelligent life, showing it no love, and demanding absolute obedience to a bunch of seemingly arbitrary commands. But I don't know that I'd have any of the same qualms about creating new computers, showing them no love, and demanding absolute obedience to a bunch of seemingly arbitrary commands. Does this make me mad? I wouldn't want to convince anybody that the Marvel movies do a great job showing the proliferation of new tech. But proliferation there is. That it has not completely changed the world, well, I think that's actually pretty realistic. Consider how much technology we've already developed that would improve agriculture, lower pollution, improve health, and redistribute resources more equitably . . . and how little of that has seen widespread adoption.

Jim Cannon

To some extent I think Watchmen looks much more revolutionary than it actually was, simply because it presented a world where a superhuman had a noticeable effect upon world technology and politics. I think Moore and Gibbons shied away from really following through on their premise, but it still stands as one of the few genuine attempts at a sci-fi alternate world in the superhero genre.

Jim Cannon

Haven't gotten to the second part yet, but its hard for me not to see the scientist as a god and this a metaphor for religion, but the scientist/banker as The Market and the smurfs as us, wage slaves manipulated and controlled by commerce and debt, so a criticism of capitalism rather than religion.

Eric - Speaker in Digressions

I like to think Kidder motivates the Neoterics with the ultimate reward: employee pizza parties.

Darth Oldius

I remember my first time seeing the phones on the bridge of Galactica; I repaired them when I was in the Corps. The TA-1 Adama used was OLD when I served from 93-03.

Matthew Bizzell

As y'all debated the mad scientist label for Kidder, I was struck by how close some real-world research may come to Chris' definition of knowingly enacting cruelty for one's ends (even if those ends benefit humanity as a whole): For context, I work at an R-1 institution in the U.S. There, I have the weird honor of hearing about the undergraduate research going on at the University. Most recently, I have gotten to know a lot (perhaps too much) about a student's project on compulsive drug-seeking in adverse conditions using a rodent model. Effectively, cocaine-addicted rats are tested for their resistance to foot shock as they look to get their fix. This is supposed to teach us something about addiction in humans...and was reviewed and approved by the governing body for vertebrate animal testing, IACUC. How are the ethics checking out for you on this one, Chris? We're way past lab rat mazes, it seems. At a _different_ institution, I worked with a student who looked to solve chronic levels of cholesterol in children (the kind that kills eight-year-olds). To do this, they genetically modified mice to attain these extreme cholesterol levels and then used CRISPR to attempt to edit those genes. They came to me in that instance because all those mice happened to die from poor testing conditions in the midst of a writing deadline. Are we just a society of mad scientists? NB: I have omitted some information to not completely blow up the spots of the researchers in these fields, but the faculty whose projects these students were working on are part of published works, some of which are publically available. Relatedly (and less depressingly), I foresaw Chad's questing for comedy material, so I spun up a microcosm of neo-Chads 200 days ago and can report that all roads lead to Dandelo. It truly is the best of all possible worlds.

Anne Ominous

Kidder wasn't 'mad' at all - merely intoxicated by the pursuit, taking it to the nth degree. If there is a metaphor to be had, it's somewhere in the idea that Conant was taking advantage while Kidder was lost in the shiny. Makes me think of social media harvesting our data whilst we giggle over endless memes...

Thunk

As my memerism teacher used to say "if you think you Conan, or think you Conant, you're right"

Andrew M. Reichart

YES the world wants the SSoSS glue-stick-and-xerox zine!!!

Dr. Bloodmoney

You guys should cover Gene Wolfe's story "The Island of Dr. Death and Other Stories".

Jason of the K

Did GRRM rip this for his Sandkings short story? And now I feel kinda bad for all the glee I took in wrecking destruction whilst playing Populace all those years ago. My divine hand giveith and it taketh away :P

Newk

Do you really enjoy seeing people's libraries and work spaces though?