Comments on: EP106: The House Beyond Your Sky

By: Kyoritsu

Kyoritsu — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 17:35:53 +0000

This story is lovely in it’s complexity and depth of thought. Plus it’s cool to hear Memetics terminology.

By: Review: The Ant King: and Other Stories by Benjamin Rosenbaum « MentatJack

Review: The Ant King: and Other Stories by Benjamin Rosenbaum « MentatJack — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 04:14:50 +0000

[...] book. I first encountered Rosenbaum on EscapePod and highly recommend listening to Start the Clock, The House Beyond Your Sky, The Death Trap of Dr. Nefario (not in this collection) and of course The Ant King: A California [...]

By: oscidwill

oscidwill — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 11:27:47 +0000

thank you, brother

By: The House Beyond Your Sky « Writing Every Day

The House Beyond Your Sky « Writing Every Day — Fri, 09 May 2008 16:09:03 +0000

[...] need to engage the text by reading it yourself to understand the story. And then you can go to Escape Pod and hear [...]

By: Norm

Norm — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 17:16:28 +0000

Maybe I’m slow, but I totally didn’t get it. Too abstract an idea for this mere human to digest.

By: Mike Morrow » Best Reads of 2007

Mike Morrow » Best Reads of 2007 — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 16:23:06 +0000

[...] se, but likely the single piece of fiction that did the most to rearrange my brainpan this year. Audio here. Text [...]

By: Dave (aka Nev the Deranged)

Dave (aka Nev the Deranged) — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 00:19:33 +0000

As a long time fan of Paul's HGWT 'cast, it was a treat (and a surprise) to hear him on EP. I liked this story pretty well, even with my limited grasp of the technical concepts... I know juuuust enough about information theory, virtuality, layered realities & etc. to follow this one, but it was a challenge.

Strangely, the whole thing with the little "girl" was the part I felt least interested in. I could see where it was going, and it offered no surprises, and didn't really fit with the rest of the story anyway.

I liked the parakeet character, though.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 21:53:23 +0000

I’m believe I understand some of the gripes voiced above, but the story was more than the d√©nouement of Mathias, though sometimes it didn’t appear to be. The pretense that beings such as those populating the story would represent themselves in the ways they did within this infospace separated the craftsmanship of this story from some harder SF, but, to my mind, this is a benefit to the narrative, and no criticism. The convention also brought to mind the whimsy and sadness of setting that I’ve felt before reading certain Michael Moorcock stories, which I miss in most hard(er)-SF. The impending dissolution of Mathias’ ability to manage his multiverse was portrayed with sympathy, ellipticality and metaphor, which I thought was appropriate, if challenging. The shifting plot action, its leaps between frames, the moves from ontotropes to bloody feathers, the ethereal ideas with fleetingly discernible motivations, I ate it up, every sentence.

Some of the remarks above are directed at the opacity of the characters and, perhaps also, at the plot itself. But I would defend the choices made by the author. Yes, they leave his readership (the healthy portion that doesn’t nod off to sleep ) with chronological myopia. Grand, idea-driven SF set in far future contexts should give us this myopia, but it should also make us aware that we are afflicted and that we cannot inductively project our constants to those distant points in time. Too often SF authors make a worse mistake: they want to leash the imaginations of their readers, seemingly oblivious to the fact that our selfish pleasures often lie in using the story–to roam.

Of the millions of words of SF stories, this is it: thanks, Steve, for bringing me my new favorite.

By: Mike

Mike — Wed, 30 May 2007 12:48:51 +0000

I didn't "get" this one either. I will try to read it on paper, at my own leisure, and see if that helps. I did, however, really enjoy the narration. I probably would have given up on the story if not for the fact that Mr. Tevis seemed to be enjoying it. I kept asking myself "What is he seeing in this that I'm not?" That kept me entertained when I couldn't understand the story itself.

You know what would be nice? If we could search EP episodes based on who narrated them. I'm sure I've heard other stories narrated by Mr. Tevis, but I can't remember which ones.

By: Martin Rundkvist

Martin Rundkvist — Sun, 27 May 2007 17:13:19 +0000

I didn’t get this at all. Maybe because I’m in bed with some bug my daughter brought home from daycare. I found it all too abstract, not well suited for audio narration: if I had read it eyewise I’d had to read it twice and maybe still not grokked it.

By: Chris Q.

Chris Q. — Fri, 25 May 2007 06:53:35 +0000

Complicated, hard to follow all the details.

By: JustaJ0e

JustaJ0e — Thu, 24 May 2007 13:58:45 +0000

I found this one pretty inaccessible. It wasn't the poetic style that was so much off-putting but the amount of knowledge I was assumed to already know about coding or writing programs or something.

Given all that, I would say that this story still comes in above EP091.

By: zen

zen — Wed, 23 May 2007 21:17:52 +0000

oops I posted on the wrong story sorry…….

By: zen

zen — Wed, 23 May 2007 21:17:01 +0000

Wow simply amazing story I really loved it being myself quite a film fanatic it really tickled my imagination.
Not sure if my positive reaction is for the fact that I could identify myself in the actions of the protagonist, since I am reading all these negative thoughts. Anyways I loved it…….

By: Anne Corwin

Anne Corwin — Wed, 23 May 2007 04:23:49 +0000

I think I’m going to have to try reading this one in print — my impression while listening was that it was probably a good, imaginative, high-quality story, but one that was too difficult to keep track of through the auditory channel.

There was a lot of great imagery, but the narrative structure was too loose and dreamlike for my taste. I don’t mind that sort of thing when reading print, but when I am listening to something I need the prose to be a bit “tighter” — otherwise the plot tends to elude me.

By: Scott

Scott — Tue, 22 May 2007 23:31:18 +0000

I am not sure I fully understood this one. Some of it felt poetic rather than narrative.
Neither of those points are intended as criticism though. Although I am a great consumer of space opera, I am very keen to broaden.

By: Artifex

Artifex — Tue, 22 May 2007 20:50:24 +0000

That had to my favorite Escape Pod story so far. As someone who reads sci-fi mostly for the ideas and speculation, I’ve read a lot of far-future hard sf, and I have to say- that story was some of the best I’ve seen anywhere- really top-notch. There are enough ideas in there for a good full-length novel (the ‘memetic’ weapons, Mathia’s theology, all excellent, original stuff) My only disappointment was when I learned that Rosenbaum hasn’t actually written any novels yet.

By: hapes

hapes — Tue, 22 May 2007 16:52:16 +0000

Wait, Matthias is the Flying Spaghetti Monster?!

By: Wez

Wez — Mon, 21 May 2007 07:44:59 +0000

Understanding the depth behind creating an artificial being tingled me when the parakeets fought back, choosing to do so out of their own free will. The idea of creating a world within a world sent shivers down my spine, especially in the end when you realize that our world is the indirect result of Matthias’s simulacra. I think stories that portray an alternate theory of creation appeals to most people, probably because each theory is as plausible as the next, and it’s fun to imagine where it all began.

By: Susanna

Susanna — Mon, 21 May 2007 07:40:00 +0000

Honestly? This story very nearly put me to sleep. I’m sure it’s interesting, I’m sure it’s well built, I’m sure it has loads of redeeming features, but what it comes down to, is that it didn’t tickle my imagination. You could project the ending very, very early, and the prose… Honestly? Pretentious.

Great as a sleeping pill, but otherways… Nah. Not for me.

By: Nobilis

Nobilis — Sun, 20 May 2007 19:25:13 +0000

The story is a chicken. I am being asked to eat it, but I do not have a fire, and I do not have time to build one before the chicken has gone.

By: Damien G Walter

Damien G Walter — Sun, 20 May 2007 11:09:22 +0000

I found the writing style of this story off putting. I felt the same when I read it on SH. It has the same problem a lot of the fiction on SH has, too much narration, not enough dialogue. The view point is too distanced, it would be much stronger with more of Mathias internal monologue instead of relying on external desciption. It reads like a sysnopsis. There are some nice ideas in there but the writing style made them hard work to engage with.

By: Tiffany from Australia

Tiffany from Australia — Sun, 20 May 2007 03:04:00 +0000

I found it easier to understand the story after I had listened to it rather than reading. But that may have just been because I read it on a computer screen and that can be distracting at times.
But, then again I did think reading it was also easier because I could go back and re read when I didn’t get bits.
Then again, it may have been easier to listen because I had only just read it…

By: snackboy

snackboy — Fri, 18 May 2007 16:11:11 +0000

Wow, this story was really great. My brain got sore trying to follow it! I am going to track this one down so I can read it myself. I think it would be easier to follow in text as opposed to audio.

Keep up the good work.

By: ComputerKing

ComputerKing — Fri, 18 May 2007 16:02:17 +0000

I think it was the off-center feeling that turned me off of this story. I'm only making a short statement because I stopped playing the episode pretty early on. The concept was interesting, the dialogue believable.

I didn't like the overpowering use of metaphor. Everything was something else. The simulated people were parakeets, the priest's home was a small hut, somehow able to hold dozens of simulations and whatever else was necessary to interact with the simulations. I understood what was going on, but I found it difficult to picture the strange circumstances in which the scene was being described.

Maybe I'll try again later. This is just my first impression.

By: Elizabeth GM

Elizabeth GM — Fri, 18 May 2007 14:19:54 +0000

That story was absolutely beautiful. It really puts the listener/reader off-center in a way that only the very best SF can do. Thanks, as always, for making it so easy and enjoyable to keep up with F&SF.

By: Tiffany from Australia

Tiffany from Australia — Thu, 17 May 2007 23:43:18 +0000

I just read this story two days ago! How freaky that it’s now on EP!