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Study 080 - Microcosmic God - Part 2 (Patreon)

Published:
2024-02-27 16:19:12
Edited:
2024-02-27 16:20:45
Imported:
2024-02
Tags:

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We're back with the conclusion to Theodore Sturgeon's Microcosmic God, and it's action-packed!

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!

Check out They're Made out of Meat by the late, great Terry Bisson!

Next up: Extra Credit - What Does "High-Concept" Mean?

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Comments

Ben Gilbert

Bears Discover Fire by Terry Bisson is one of my favorite stories. I love the relationship of the uncle, nephew and grandmother.

Eric - Speaker in Digressions

The ending prediction of the day the Neoterics emerge with advanced tech makes me think of the Simpsons Treehouse of Horror segment when Lisa makes a miniature civilization that Bart torments. Also a couple of Trek episodes (especially Voyager's "Blink of an Eye") and an Orville remix.

Andrew Brown

Sturgeon is shamefully unknown today. This is one of my faves but the one you really need to cover is Shottle Bop. Sneakily one of the most influential stories ever.

Bugberry

Occasionally I’ll relisten to the early Podcraft episodes, and I forget the episode but I’m repeatedly reminded of the “Honeybadger don’t care” video when y’all mention it. So I laughed out loud when Chris’ idea for a dangerous animal was a golden Honeybadger.

Edward Rice

Fun fact, Theodore Sturgeon was a screenwriter for the 1974 classic "Killdozer" the tagline of which reads "Everyone Knows a Machine Cannot Kill. Except the Machine."

Matthew Thomas

Etsy page to make life? Isn't that just a only fans with a specific demographic? Also there has been a lot of stuff happening with X-Men comics in the last few years but the concepts of this dome and what happens when it finally goes down is explored with varring success in the Children of the Vault comic associated with current X-Men but replace the reptile men with science with Mutants and genetic engineering

Sweatin' to the Great Oldies

Perhaps an even darker take? Kidder dies. The Neoterics without guidance begin to fight with each other and nothing is left inside that impenetrable dome.

Father of Beagles

Hey I got a shout out. Super exciting. Has anyone brought up that this is very close to a Simpsons Halloween episode where Lisa makes a mini world? I assume it based on this story.

Christine M

I think George RR Martin must have been riffing on this story when he wrote "Sandkings." Much like this story, it features a guy presiding over miniature civilizations kept in a sealed environment. They also come to worship him, but his hubris is less about science and more about narcissistic personality disorder. As you might expect, things Do Not Go Well for him in the end.

Mark Simmons

Still thinking about the subtle distinctions between different types of Mad Science (the ideas are mad, the ideas are fine but the scientist is mad, the scientist is rational but a callous jerk, etc). Maybe we need some kind of checklist where you give yourself a point total, like the Foxworthy Redneck Assessment Test. As for creating tiny servant homunculi, this also makes me think of Rossum's Universal Robots, in which the artificial people are simplified to eliminate everything that's not relevant to their jobs. RUR author Karel Capek explored a similar idea in "War With The Newts," my favorite SF book of all time, so based on the newts-and-robots precedent I think that the eventual emergence of the Neoterics won't be much fun for us inefficient humans.

Jim Cannon

Well I suppose my Marxist interpretation of this story has taken a hit with the second half. But not, I think, a fatal one.

Anne Ominous

Kinda wanted Connant to have a longer downward spiral than 'one week in an asylum and death'. That guy rubbed me the wrong way

Aaron La Vene

This has been an amazing two episodes. Thank you for covering this story, but better yet. The outro “I assume Chad** made” was one of the best yet idk why, but I caught myself really enjoying it. Just figured I’d throw that compliment as I don’t think it gets spoken about enough. (If u didn’t make it… lmfao oh well)

It's a Ghost.

I don’t think Kidder was a mad scientist. He just seemed indifferent towards other people, and he just wanted to be left alone to do what he cared about. Plus, when he knew the bombing was about to occur, he rushed out to warn Johansen, so he clearly saw Johansen as a person and someone who he didn’t want to get hurt or killed. In that moment, he clearly had empathy for Johansen. On the other hand, although he seemed to care about the Neoterics as a whole—he clearly didn’t want them destroyed by the bombing—he was a-ok with killing some of them in order to control them and keep them on task. He found them amazing as a whole and valued all their creations, but he clearly didn’t care about them as individuals and didn't see them as sentient beings that were worth saving on an individual level.

Eric Sroka

Every time I read Sturgeon, I always think “I should read more Sturgeon”. Great story/analysis. I’m with Chad- Kidder isn’t a mad scientist. Not sure how things are now, but when I was in college 25 years ago we experimented on animals. One unlucky mouse, unharmed by our experiment, was given to my lab partner, who then fed it to his snake.

Scott McCrate

Please cover George R.R. Martin's The Sandkings! Has a lot of resonances with this story. Weird Fiction, Science Fiction, Horror...a little bit of all of that.

Breton

Started with the Free H.G. Wells "The War of the Worlds," and now I'm hooked!