Chicago

• Democratic convention

• Hot summer

• A few candidates

– Herbert Hoover

– Joe Steel

—- Used to be Joe Stalin

—- Huge Commie

Chicago
* Democratic convention
* Hot summer
* A few candidates
– Herbert Hoover
– Joe Steel
—- Used to be Joe Stalin
—- Huge Commie

This is the first Escape Pod I had to turn off. I could take only three minutes of it. And I was able to sit through both tedious Cory Doctorow pieces!

I know you said this wasn’t typical of Turtledove’s style, but this has definitely turned me off him. I’ve never read a Turtledove story, but if anyone were to offer me one of his books, I’d most likely attempt to beat them to death with it. And then burn it.

Really, really, really hated it.

The prose of this story made me go out and buy the print version so I could read it on the page. While the story isn’t particularly a premium telling, the overall presentation was perfect.

I think that the reason Escape Pod works so well is that they give us a variety of stories, both in subject and style. While it’s obvious from the comments ahead of me that some people didn’t like this story, I found it one of the best. I just hope that Steve maintains the variety of stories so that more people can be exposed to the unique styles being offered by authors. If one week’s story doesn’t work for someone, there is always the fast forward button, but for the rest of us, we’ve gained something in the listening.

I also liked the fact that the story didn’t buy into historical determinism by having the staus quo (or something close to it) restored at the end, like in The Guns of the South- or indeed Roth’s superior book.

Thanks for the effort in putting this together. I have vision problems and getting sci-fi in a portable audio format is a great boon to me.

The quality of the fiction and production is excelent.

Thanks again.

I think Turtledove deliberately sold you a shitty story to see if you’d reject it on its merits, or buy it on his name. You bought it.

This was a jarring style, a boring listen, and I couldn’t make it through. Yep. I’m pretty sure you failed.

As a foreigner I can’t really say that alternate US history does it for me: I don’t know enough of the current history to detect any nuances or differences. I felt like I needed to carry a dictionary together with my ipod, just to understand the story.

I’m not criticizing the story. I’m sure it’s wonderful, but alternate histories by US authors are, for obvious reasons, often very US-centric, and this does create a barrier for others to enjoy the story.

Unlike Mr. Seattle, I enjoyed both Capo and Squonk, partly because they both occur in fantasy worlds, the likes of which are far easier for me to immerse in than US history.

(Oh, this is my first comment here, so I’d better congratulate you on the best podcast to ever touch the surface of the Earth.)

But wow, I liked this story. Like the style and Steve, I liked your dramaticization of it. Bravo, sir.

I have to agree with the comment that suggested that this story might have been also well-suited to Pseudopod. However, it works here as well — I like my SF with a wonderful variety.

Score!

I didn’t find it scary or even chilling, in the same way that when I read 1984 as a child, it scared me, but now the society depicted seems like something we have outdone a while ago, and I think that we have shown just how limited Orwells imagination was.

I recently read The Plot Against America: A Novel, by Philip Roth. An alternative history that covers the same period. I was struck after I read that book that the forces of American Imperialism as express by Alfred Thayer Mahan(the 19th Century’s Project for a New American Century), and American Fascism as explified by
Prescott Bush (among others), were only delayed in their rise to power by the over excesses and poor timing in a Machiavellian sense, of the Third Reich.

I think that the value of speculative fiction, and of alternative history is that they give the reader a safe distance from which to examine and contrast what is from what depicted. Sometimes the funhouse mirror’s reflection gives you a better of what is really going on, because we tend to get used to the distortions in the mirrors at home.

I guess I like the political fiction a bit, because I enjoyed both the story and the telling of Head of State too. Keep up the great stories!

I’m interested in that time period in American History, and hearing a story of the New Deal turned on its head and delivered to the American people by a ruthless, murdering, charismatic, brutal tyrant made me think about easily a political system can be turned against the very people its meant to serve.

And, at the same time, I wish I could ask the author some questions about his timeline, such as who was filing the lawsuits against the government programs? Were any of those plaintiffs rounded up? Was there ever a planned corporate uprising against Joe Steele the way there supposedly was against FDR?

I liked the story, and I wouldn’t mind hearing more alternate history stories, picking up at various points in history and then changing a small detail to cause the currents to turn away from what we know into something less recognizable.

For instance, Huey Long’s popularity was growing at the time he was shot (some say by his own bodyguards by accident), and he was talked about as being a likely Presidential candidate. He was also said by some at the time to have fascist leanings… what if the assassination attempt on him (was it even an assassination attempt?) failed, and he went on to become President? (Actually, this might have been done already as the backstory to a tabletop RPG supplement.)

Slam is probably the wrong word, but this is likely to be my least favorite Escape Pod episode. Of course to me saying worst Escape Pod episode is like saying ugliest model in the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue. Even the worst is far better than most of what is available.

I like alternate history. It’s an exercise in what if and that’s always fun. I also think this story shows a semi-realistic view of how things could get out of control when the wrong person gets too much power.

My complaint was the style. I didn’t catch the transition from listening to song lyrics to listening to the story. The first time I tried to listen to the story was at night and I was a little tired. Instead of feeling relaxed I was lost. The short sentences made as statements of fact sounded like a lecture from the most boring history professor on campus. There wasn’t a flow or story line to follow. Joe Steele could have dropped dead from a heart attack at anytime during the story and it wouldn’t have changed the effect.

As always I look forward to the next installment of Escape Pod.

As an avid history buff with an interest in The Great Depression, it was a lot of fun to hear how this alternative history worked out. It was cool to hear how President Steele “addressed” all those powerful figures from actual history. I felt a big twinge when Sam Rayburn had his turn, as he’s one of my political heros. Cactus Jack Garner’s inclusion in the 1940 ticket bothered me, since in reality he was against the idea of a third term for the President (and he really wanted to be President, too).

Regardless. I am an American who cares deeply for my nation and her people, and I take my role as a citizen very seriously. It’s good for us as Americans, who have no social memory of totalitarianism grown from within, to have such a cautionary tale. And it was good for me, a self-professed populist, to be reminded that a dictator can come out of my crowd, too.

Keep up the good work, Steve. This one will add to the long list of EP stories that gets five out of five stars in my media player’s ratings. Can’t wait for next week.

One forgets, however much I listen to this place, that it is a hobbiest business. Take it easy Steve – keep up the good work.

The story has almost no substance (totally lacking in charecterisation – no people in it) apart from the plot, and the plot is so straightforward Animal Farm that there is nothing to say. It’s Stalin’s story + allegory, a re-write of AF. As an Englishman, writing Stalinism in America is no scarier than thinking about what *actually* happened in Russia – and that’s a true story. The nuance of Republican vs Democrats is just window dressing. Philip Roth just did a book on almost this exact topic – Harry Turtledove cannot match the greatest living American writer.

The only other element to discuss is the writing style – and that’s a pretty third rate Damon Runyon. Present tense hard-voice with short sentances? Yep, that’s Runyon allright, but without the class.

What’s happened to Escape Pod Steve? You haven’t done any real Science Fiction since Mur’s gorgeous “I Look Forward To Remembering You” and that was 11 stories ago. Somewhere in this desert of content you said “We’ll be doing some more literary sf soon”, where is it Steve? Are submissions that bad at the moment?

People need to be reminded that corruption and evil have the potential to crop up in any aspect of human society; but doubly so in the political arena. “Joe Steele” succeeds in doing so.

There was an excellent film that virtually no one saw, named “Max” which presents a fictional relationship between a Jewish art dealer and Adolph Hitler in post WW1 Berlin. The film posits that if Hitler had been successful as an artist, he would have steered away from politics. He still would have been an antisemetic twerp, but he would have just painted on canvas with paint rather than with the blood of untold millions of Europeans/Americans etc… Hitler’s psychotic break comes as he’s struggling to paint a figure and after destroying his studio, scrawls “Politics is the new art”.

The parallels between Joe Steele are our current President are not easy to miss, but framed in the theater of World War 2, diminishes some of the power. Seeing as Roosevelt had to deal with that issue too. The US economy thrived following the outbreak of war because of the supply/demand nature of capitalism. Whereas the Soviet model, at least as far as military production, thrived on massive manpower. The end of the war and the residual outcomes from the expense of conducting it are clear illustration of the success, economically, of one system vs. the other.

Had Joe Steele effectively turned the US into an ersatz USSR we’d never have come out of the depression, we may never have managed to supply ourselves or allies during the war either.

Anyway, good story. Better on the first listen though.