#541A - Bot Stuff

0:00Have you ever asked yourself, what's the best way I can contribute to sci-fi and fantasy in the literary world? If you have the answer is simple, you just have to be Veronica Belmont or Tom Merritt and host the Sword and Laser podcast. If for some reason you can't be Veronica Belmont or Tom Merritt, however, don't despair, all is not lost. You can still head over to patreon.com slash Sword and Laser and help fund their hard work. Every cent you give adds more swords and more lasers to their growing arsenal of speculative literary goodness. That's patreon.com slash sword and laser. Hey everyone, welcome to the Sword and Laser, I'm Veronica Belmont. And I'm Tom Merritt. Sword and Laser is a book club, but it's so much more. It's also my only job. No, that's a sad. We bring you news from the world of science, fiction and fantasy and awesome discussions from fans just like you.

1:03And if you double your patron now, I will give half the proceeds to Veronica Belmont, just like we always do. It's all good, man. I'm living my best life. Yeah, I'm on a whale watch. Oh nice. I'm going to go on a horseback ride next week, I think. They have horses. Yeah, wow. Not the whales. Not the wind. I'm not going to do a whale ride. Oh my god, can you imagine? Hilarious and terrible. No, I'm good. I'm good. I'm fine. I'm fine. It's all good. Yeah, you need anything. No, I mean, I need I need you to explain to the listeners one more time how the podcast is going to change probably at some point. We'll do that a little later. Yeah, yeah. On how I have to edit things now. And Jim, you know, at Jim has to do that. I know. I guess I kind of forgot that I don't even do that anymore. That's how little I work these days. You take a walk these days. Sorry, Jim. Veronica fired you for yourself.

2:03It's for yourself. It's like an over-robin for everything. Exactly the joke I was about to make that is 100%. We lived in San Francisco for too long. Yeah, what is that called? What is that that law called? It has a name. It has a name. But it has a name. It's a different name. It's a different name. Yeah, anyway, it doesn't matter. But that's that was the joke. Be in the jerk. We've been in the being a jerk law. We've been doing this too long. We have the same brain thoughts. But yeah, Tom, what do you what do you know? I'm in on this week. I had a little pesto, hake fish with creamy mushroom mashed potatoes. Sounds awesome. Yeah, it was it was. Hake is usually what you get like with fish and chips. A lot of the time. Maybe not really not hell a bit. Yeah, that's why I said maybe a lot of the time. Because other times it's hell a bit. But hey, it's another one that you can get. So it's like a flaky white fish. Yeah, it's a flaky white fish. That's basically the only kind of fish I can tolerate.

3:04You would have loved this. Creamy mushroom mashed potatoes. Faceless. The blandest fish you can come up with. And it was for those who were like, oh, I can't have pesto, not free pesto. Not that we needed it, not free. But that's the pesto that we made. No, no. Actually, I have a funny story about that. I was on the whale watch and it was a long tour. It was, you know, a three hour tour, etc. And I had packed myself a little sandwich. And being the mother of a five year old, I have access to a lot of peanut butter and jelly. So that was my decision for that day for myself. And there was a girl sitting next to me and I was like, hey, do you have a peanut allergy or anything? I won't eat my sandwich. And just, you know, because I have to be aware of these things as a mom, typically. And she was like, she's like, no, no. And I started eating my sandwich and she goes, but I am celiac. And I was like, oh, like the really bad kind? And she was like, yeah, the really bad kind. And I was like, are you are you going to be okay?

4:07And she's like, yeah, we're outdoors. This should be fine. I was like, okay, you could have opened with that. You didn't need to wait until I was already eating the sandwich. I thought you were going to say she, but I do have a jelly allergy. I mean, it is, it is on me for, I guess, not asking that. Like, do you have any allergies that this would impact you? Yeah. But I guess that's the better question. You're right. I, but if you have an allergy like that, I feel like it's, it is partially incumbent on you when someone asked if you have a peanut allergy to say, no, but I do have this kind of allergy. That, yes. Yeah. That would have made things a little bit easier. But we all survived. We can't all be perfect. And, you know, she probably wasn't worried. So she was probably like, oh, I should tell you, so you don't like blow grain my way. We were traveling in very high speed. So maybe she was where she got like some bread blowback. Yeah, right, right. Off the, off the starboard side. But yeah, she was fine. So that made me laugh.

5:08I'm still eating tomatoes. Tom Endless, abundant tomatoes. We have moved on from the cherry tomato varieties, the smaller varieties into the heirloom era. That's a tasty rare. I have to say. Not just no shade on cherry tomatoes, which are great. No disrespect. But they are gorgeous. I'll send you some photos. These are good looking tomatoes. Yeah, it is, they just won't stop. Can't stop won't stop. Just keep happening to make it. It's a, it's fresh tomato summer for you. This is, yeah, this is a situation I've brought onto myself. I'm fully eyes wide open, understanding how this happened and how to prevent it next year. But yeah, last year it was crows. This year it's tomatoes. Yeah, so I'll figure out a good balance the way I did with crows this year. Yeah, you just gotta find it's all about balance. Every year it's something. It's all about moderation. Yeah. Think of it as abundance.

6:08You have an abundance of tomatoes. I'm having an abundance mindset right now, you know? I have an abundance of good feelings because we had a wonderful meetup at WorldCon that Veronica was kind of at. Yes, even though she did it. Even though she did it. Even though she did it. Even though she did it. Wait, what do you mean? Leave the country. You, you didn't travel. No, I did not travel. But yeah, we had a meetup in Anaheim at WorldCon. Huge thanks to Zoe for getting that all set up and giving us the room. I should have been better myself in letting people know whether they needed a badge or not because technically I think you did. But there was no one checking the badges. Okay, so the meetup was in the hotel. It was in the Hilton in a room that WorldCon provided us. But it wasn't behind Badgecheck, nor was it in the convention center. So that should be fine. Yeah, no, it was fine, but I didn't know that.

7:09So I wasn't making, I think a lot of people are like, well, I'd go, but I'm not going to WorldCon. It's like, oh, I see. I would have assumed that as well. Yeah. Okay, well, next year. Yeah. But it was great. We, everybody went home with prizes. There were snacks galore. Zoe brought snacks from the UK. So we had some British fudge and some Scottish crunchies. And we had great talks about all kinds of things. Some of which were science fiction fantasy books. But we also talked about a bunch of other stuff. And it was lovely. So big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big thanks to everybody who came out. And as we said, we facetimed with Veronica, hung her on a chair and took a big photo. So it was awesome. That sounds worse than it was. I was unharmed, but it was, it was really funny. The pictures made me laugh a lot, actually, of my, of my little face.

8:11Well, because I have one of those iPhone cases where you can pull out the camera lens shield as a prop. So that's how I hung you on the chair. And then I'm a dual user. So I had my Google Pixel, my Android phone. And I'm like, oh, well, then it's a foldable, right? It's a pixel fold. So I like set it up to do the selfie thing. It was perfect. Everything worked great. Yeah, it worked out. So thank you for having me. And I'm so happy everyone got to get together. And yeah, we're going to talk about some of the winners. The winners of the event for the awards and whatnot. That's right. Coming up next. And the winners are the Sword and Laser fans who came out to the All right. Let's jump along the way. Into the Quick Burns. Thank you, Rob Arader. For pointing out, we're getting a few more details on the upcoming Dungeon Crawler Carole TV show. The showrunner will, one of the showrunners will be a rival writer and therefore Oscar winner. And also the person who ran a shadow and bone Eric Heissler.

9:15He will join Chris Yost. We knew about Chris Yost already, but it will be Eric Heissler and Chris wrote Chris Yost running the show for Dungeon Crawler Carole, which is a Seth MacFarlane production. I am so eager for more casting news. I know. For the, I ran, but it's like they teased us. They were like, all right, let's just get Jeff Hayes out of the way. Yeah, that was the easy way. They're like, we're going to use Jeff Hayes. We're going to use them for this. Great. Done. Okay. Keep them happy. Give them that little nugget. Let them, let them start continuing to be concerned about who else. But I just want to know. I'm so excited. I need to, I need more info. I'm hungry. I'm starved for it. Do we have any idea about dates? No. Said nothing yet, right? I don't even know if they've broken the story. The timeframes. Yeah. Okay. I mean, if you're just adding showrunners, you probably haven't even broken the season. So. Oh, look at you, LA. I don't even know what these words you're saying mean.

10:16Broken the seat broke. What does that mean? I go to in and out. That's the next LA thing I get to go. Breaking breaking the story is when you decide like, hear the beats, we're going to hit. And it's going to go here. The episodes are going to focus on this and this and this and this. Did anyone else hear Eileen sneeze? Because I did. Did you really? Wow. She does sneeze kind of well. The door is closed to everything. I love it. I love it. Ryan has the most, I mean, it's kind of a joke. Usually that men have very loud sneezes. But Ryan got his from his mother. My mother-in-law has the insanest sneeze I've ever heard in my life. It is like apocalyptic. We know who wears the sneezes in our families. There you go. There you go. All right. I'm moving on. Scott M says, I'm fascinated by the different places. Nediah Kora for his death of the author is showing up. The latest is the 2026 shortlist for the Goldsboro Glass Bell Award.

11:20Wow. Okay. Along with the corresponded by Virginia Evans, Atmosphere, a love story by Taylor Jikens read the names by Florence Napp, Buck I by Patrick Ryan, and the Rush by Beth Lewis. So yeah, this is this kind of spans literary fiction, speculative fiction, contemporary drama, and gripping page turners, according to their website, reflecting the remarkable breath and quality of fiction being published today. So this is just fiction. Yeah. Cool, great fiction. They started this award in 2017 to recognize novels that combine compelling storytelling, unforgettable characters, and a truly distinctive voice, which on the one hand, I'm tempted to go like, like all good novels. Like that's what you like, compelling storytelling, unforgettable characters, and a distinctive voice. But I think what they're saying is like, we're really focusing on unusual or unexpected or not typical, or you know, something like that. So yeah, it's totally cool. Very, very cool indeed.

12:21Okay, I have to get back to the dock where it says, Seth and Tama Home both, let us know that Rebecca Yaros announced a fourth-wing graphic novel series coming this spring. The first volume will cover chapters one through 22 and be illustrated by Italian artist Annabelle Rossi. Very cool. That's rad. Yeah. All right, well, this is this is this is the big one in my opinion. Ian Bertram. Said that the Hugo winners have been announced, of course, because we just had the Hugo's. And so, all right, here are the nominees. The nominees for best novel were all stellar. Right? So we had a drop of corruption, Robert Jackson Bennett. You know my feelings on this series. I love it. Raven Scholar and Tony Hodgson. Incredible novel. We loved it. We read it for Sword and Laser. Death of the author. The aforementioned death of the author by Nitya Korofor. Shroud by Adrian Cekowski. You know, well loved, beloved author.

13:21And the incandescent by Emily Tush. Another Sword and Laser author. And of course, the everlasting by Alexi Harrow. Not a Sword and Laser pig, but a book that I read recently and really, really loved. Which ended up being the winner. Have we read Alexi Harrow? We. I swear we have. But maybe I shouldn't swear. All right, chat. Now, the moment the 10,000 doors of January. That was Alexi Harrow. Yeah. Fascinating. Yeah, that was in September of 2020. How did you do that so fast? Went to Sword and Laser.com slash PIX. Control F. Harrow. I always go to the wiki. I used to go to the wiki until I started using the wiki to help me update the Pix page. So now the picks are updated. Because that's why I didn't use PIX. Yeah, yeah. PIX are now up. I'm not blaming you. No, no, you should blame me. But you blame me no more.

14:22It's there. It do be there. All right, excellent. Well, yeah, the everlasting is a great, great novel. I really loved it. I think it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a story of yearning. I would say of yearning and adventure. And I think it just hit, hit a chord with a lot of people. So that was the, that was the winner for best novel. So congratulations to Alexi Harrow. So we had others, other Swardin laserites. For Best No Vella, the winner was the River Has Roots by Amal Elmotar. Best Novelet was never eaten vegetables by HHPAC. Best short story in my country by Thomas Ha. Best series, Old Man's War by John Scalsey. How does that work? How do you just, is it just like, how does that get nominated? Is it? How do you do that? No, but I mean like, why now? You know what I mean? Yeah, like, why did Old Man's War, like what? I don't know.

15:23I am not up to speed on the qualifications for Best Series. That's my curiosity. Yeah, like that's, the series has been out for a while. Did it just finish? Like, is it, I mean, I'm not aware, October day was nominated by Shadow Maguire, Kraft Wars by Max Gladstone, Emily Wilde by Heather Fossett, White Space by Elizabeth Bear and the Chronicles of Orseth by Catherine Addison. So I think we've read everybody there except Heather Fossett. Okay, here we go. Okay, you got it. It must have at least three installments. Okay. It should total at least 240,000 words. The individual parts can be any length, but the three installments must be 240,000 words combined or more. Okay. And you could have more installments too. It must have had one part of the series published during the prior calendar year. I think that's the key to be like, oh, okay. The timing was my main one.

16:24It wins. It can't, that series can't be nominated again. It's done. Okay. Even if you keep publishing in the series, it already won. Okay, I win again. If a series is a finalist, but does not win, it can only be re-nominated after two more installments are published. So let's say Old Man's War got nominated three years ago and Scalzi put out two Old Man's Wars since three years ago. It can get nominated again and then win. Okay. Okay. But you can't lose and then get nominated the next year. Oh, I guess if you put out two installments in the year, you could. But you have to have a, you can't just put out one more book and be like, okay, I'm back. You have to put out two because that's, I think the idea is that significantly adds to the series to where it's like, okay, it's worth reconsidering. Maybe it's better now with these two new installments. Awesome. Okay.

17:24Well, that's good to know. And then a best graphic story or comic went to a Wizard of Earth's Seaheographic novel. Best Related Work went to Inventing the Renaissance by Ada Palmer. Best dramatic presentation sinners, which I actually do really want to see even though it's kind of scary. And best dramatic presentation short form murder bot. All right, I'll keep going because why not? Okay. I thought you were going to stop right there. Clare Obscure Expedition 33, which I've heard fantastic things about. Best edit. All right, I don't have to keep going. Yeah. But that's, yeah, those are those. All of the awards are available for you to look at at locustbag.com or the Hugo Awards official page. Jan wrote via file770.com. The 2026 Sidewise Awards have been announced in the best long form alternate history of the year is 10 Incarnations of Rebellion by Vaishnavi Patel, which according to the Goodreads description,

18:26imagines an alternate version of India that was never liberated from the British and is told as 10 moments from the protagonist's life that marry the Dasha Vattara, the 10 avatars of Vishnu. The Special Achievement Award went to Ronald De Moore for bringing alternate history to television through the shows for All Mankind and Star City. Cool. Seth says Murderbot Season 2 has revealed two dozen new cast members. Come on, Dungeon Crawler Carl. Take a, take a, take a hit. Well, Murderbot's already been out for a second. I know. Murderbot's already been written. I know. I'm just an eager beaver. Including really notable actors. We got Steve Bouchemmi, Wanda Sykes, Patinos Walt, Blair Underwood, and Brendan Hunt. Will they be the cast of world hoppers or sanctuary moon? Oh, maybe. Yeah. It just doesn't seem like there's room for all of them in the main storyline. Well, the second season be the second novella and who plays art. There's some fun speculation to do.

19:27Yeah, folks were speculating that Patinos Walt might be art. Oh, yeah. I think it was time I told him. I can totally see that. Totally see that. Mm-hmm. Did I tell you, what did I finish the most recent Murderbot since the last time we... You did, yes. Podcasts, and I said I was back on the book of a train. Yeah, and you're back on the bot. Back on the bot. We're up along. Excellent. Boogie in the bot. That sounds weird. I don't know why. Because it's an Eddie Murphy song called Boogie in the butt. That's right. That's right. Boogie in the butt. So it's a buckle B in your butt. Put a whole damn tree in your butt. What's moved to bury your sword, which is our feedback from the audience? Traillers. Is all it says in her notes. That's why I'm very nervous. I just want to do point out. A trike has been doing an ongoing thread that he hasn't gotten recognition for. For many stories. This is a, what is it called when you...

20:30Lifetime Achievement. This is a Lifetime Achievement Award for trike. Trike has been a long, long standing member in good faith in the Goodreads community and Sword and Laser community. And he has been doing this thread since 2021. And I don't think we've ever talked about it before. It's called Coming Soon Traillers. And it's all just links to awesome movies that like you might want to see if you listen to Sword and Laser. And so I just wanted to point that out. Because I've been getting fed a lot of really cool trailers recently on Instagram. And this made me think like, now I have a list of like cool stuff to just go browse through. Because I don't see a lot of movies. I'm not a big movie buff. But I love watching trailers. And I love reading plots and opses on Wikipedia. Yeah. That's why I enjoy my film content. Because you'd start to think maybe this is just a bot.

21:33But every once in a while, trike puts a little commentaried it to let you know like, oh no, I am human. Like from It Ends theaters August 21. First he says, I've been on road trips. I felt like this. Like I don't have any context for that. Because I haven't seen the trailer yet. But now I'm going to go watch the trailer. Or back in July. Jumanji, open world theaters Christmas. That was actually funny. You know, I don't know though. Is it ends? Is it ends? It it like the it? I don't know. I watched the trailer. I don't know. Do I just have to keep saying it? You know what I mean, right? Yes, I do. You mean Stephen King it. I do mean Stephen King it. Yes. And are they related? And George Cran's post college plans are derailed when a wrong turn traps them on a never ending back road. I don't know. I don't know. That feels like it could be. It feels like a horror film, but maybe not about it. Yeah. Okay. Well, someone should let me know. Yeah. So I don't watch it. It doesn't look scary.

22:34It looks like they're just trapped in a car. It looks kind of boring, but I'm not listening to it. Zomenos says it's a horror road trip movie. Horror road trip. Okay, that's it. That tracks. And Sarah says that she's going to make a t-shirt that say, your mama's a bot. Please do. We'll sell it. I would buy that. I would buy that. Sure. We finally get our act together and make the sword and laser store again. We'll put that in there. Perfect. All right, Tom has made a few jokes. This is from Andrew. Tom has made a few jokes or comments about everyone always disliking the book. Pex. Because there's always more than one person who does. Yeah. You know, we should be so lucky that there are people who have opinions about the things we do. You know, we should feel I'm an abundance mindset. I told you this is a new way of looking at the world. You're walking the walk. Andrew says, I just wanted to add my two cents. I have been reading along with the podcast since Frankenstein 2018-ish. In that time, I've only had two or three books that were not for me.

23:35I wouldn't call them bad or even really say I disliked them. I just never got invested in them. There have been a ton of books that I thought I would hate, but ended up loving some desperate glory, for example. Prior to SNL, I would have probably only ever read a half a dozen books by choice. You've helped me discover that reading can be enjoyable and I'm very grateful for that gift. Oh my god. I guess that's all just a way of saying, hey, I like the book. Oh, thanks. Thanks, Andrew. Okay, I'm literally crying right now. I'm not Jen, Jen, Z crying. I'm literally crying right now. Jen, Z crying. Jen, Z does it cry. They just fake it. They just say, guys, I'm literally crying right now. I'm actually tearing up. That's really sweet. Thank you. Andrew, this is really appreciated because I joke about that because we all, in myself included, are much more likely to talk about things we hate than things we love. That doesn't mean we never talk about things we love. But if you're giving feedback, you're much more likely to write a complaint

24:39letter than you are to write a, hey, everything went well, right? So the people who like the book like you, Andrew, are like, yeah, like the book. I don't have anything to say. It was great, right? But the people who hate it, like let me tell you why I hated this book. So we see that more often. So it's very nice that Andrew made the extra effort to be like, hey, I mostly love the books. That's right. There's got to be a phrase for that because I feel like that's such a common phenomena on the internet to give more weight to negative comments versus positive. There's the, oh, there's that too. You're right. Like it's not just that people are more likely to make negative comments. If you see an equal number of negative and positive comments about something, you will think about the negative ones. You will not think about the positive ones. Really messed with me in my career. Back when I did video stuff, like I would lay awake at night and think about comments that people had made and never even give a second thought to the really wonderful comments.

25:43Right. It's so shitty. That's such a sad way that our brains work. It's a evolutionary advantage. If you pay attention to the negative, you are more likely to survive when the tiger attacks. It did not feel like surviving. It did not feel like thriving either. But that's the thing, right? We've outgrown the usefulness of that evolutionary advantage. We no longer are being attacked by tigers. And instead, this is like, there's an evolutionary advantage to craving fats and sweets when they were rare because it would make you survive the winter. But now we have plenty of them. We also have plenty of negative comments. We don't need to pay attention to the rare negative thing that will help us survive the tiger attack. So yeah. Tigers are the most violent cats. Are they? Yep. You're sure? Yep. Not Princess Donut? I mean, it turns with body count. She's definitely a lot more. I'm just saying. Oh, one of that teams has a single cat.

26:44She's definitely the most murdery of all cats. Yeah. Okay. I just want to share that factoid. That's interesting. A lot of that's interesting. Yeah, they're the most man-eating of all the big cats. They're only women. Yes, Tom. They're women. But not as much. Not as much. Okay. So we found, by the way, we almost didn't have a barrier-sword section because there were no comments on the Goodreads thread this month. Weirdly. I don't know why. Yeah, why did you guys like the, like the, what was it? Calf and Coil? I feel like people are just using Goodreads less, which is fine. So just send us an email like Andrew. It was fair. We did talk about how fable was starting to eat. Goodreads one in a little bit. So maybe that was, maybe it was self-fulfilling prophecy there. Right. A bit too much. And I know we have a whole barrier-sword section in the discord, which is where I pulled this thread.

27:46Shhh. Jan wrote, So Veronica sometimes lives in a deep dark hole and can't bring a light. Is she working with the undead? Doing an interview with a vampire? Is she a vampire? Can anyone confirm Veronica Sparkles? So mysterious. Mark replied, maybe she works for the Canadian government now, and they have her working in a missile silo, prepping for the day the Trump invades Canada. Tassie Dave responded, Belmont's our vampire hunters slash killers. Thank you, Tassie. Go where the enemy is. And then cited the Castlevania wiki, Belmont clan disclaimer portions of this page are based on internal world building material. That was not made publicly available, and this might be subject to change. And then Jan said, so Tom is some kind of Giles, because you're a vampire hunter. Yeah, Giles from Buffy. Oh, it was a pronounced Giles.

28:48Yeah. Okay, that's not how I ever said it in my brain, but I never watch Buffy. Oh, I don't want to tell you. So you only read it. I was going to say, how did you not know that if you watch Buffy? I told you I like to read plots and obfuscates. Okay, no, that makes sense. So Tom is some kind of Giles. And then Jason B said, how many times have I heard Veronica introduce herself, hint 20 years, and it just now hits me. She's a vampire hunter. There are vampires in Canada. And Aaron Bell responded once they showed up in London. It was only a matter of time before they were in the other common off nations. I don't remember why I was in a deep dark hole and can't bring a light. Is that something I said? I don't remember either. Feels right. Yeah. It was August 6th when this thread started, by the way. So that was a while ago.

29:48Yeah. And then it continued until last week, like it kept going. Well, Jason B's typing right now. And he was part of this thread. So I'm assuming he'll give us some more context shortly. He's not frantically typing. Oh, now he stopped. Saray is typing now. Saray focused. I put too much attention to right now. Saray conquered Jason B. No Jason B's just laughing. He's just laughing. Okay. Stop copying me. Well, thank you, everybody. Yes, I'm doing my best to, you know, live my life as a vampire hunter here in the Pacific Northwest, which as you know, is a very popular place for vampires. So yeah, that's just how we roll. That's how we roll places. Lousy with vampires. All right. So we're going to do a kickoff, hey? Yes. It is time to kick off our September read. Which is the luminous by Sylvia Park. Sylvia Park is a professor at Kansas University.

30:49This is Sylvia Park's first novel. They grew up in Seoul, went to school in the US, got a BA from Columbia and an MFA from NYU. They currently split time between Korea and the United States, but teach in the English department at the University of Kansas. So rock, hawk, Jay hawk. Park previously taught creative writing at Oberlin, as well as the University of Utah as Asia campus and at NYU, has taught courses ranging from speculative fiction to digital storytelling. Luminous was put out in 2025. It follows three siblings, two human and one robotic. It is. Oh, it feels like a spoiler that there's three. It is set in a near future reunified Korea. By the way, this is from Wikipedia's like intro line. So this is a book copy, spoilers. It is set in a near future reunified Korea. So North and South Korea have been reunified. The novel receives critical praise for its exploration of the nature of humanity with relationship to robots.

31:51And I have personally seen it compared to Philip K. Dick's Do Android's Dream of Electric Sheep quite a bit. So that definitely got me intrigued. I've started it and I'm already really enjoying it. Cool. Okay. Yeah. I'm a third of the way through so far because I was also rereading this kingdom will not kill me at the same time that I started it. I should have done that. Yeah. I should have done that because man, it's, I'm losing it. I'm losing it. But let's we'll talk about that later. But anyway, yeah. Luminous by Sylvia Park is about robots. It's very much about the dividing line between robots and humanity. There are a lot of characters in here that you know our fully robots. There are some that you know are augmented, kind of murderbot style. But they, you know, they are, they were human to begin with and they're still mostly human. But then sometimes they get treated like robots.

32:52And there's a noodle shop comparison where there's like, oh yeah, but there's, there's laws against abusing robots. It's like, yeah, but like anybody follows those laws. You know, good luck enforcing. Right. Right. Kind of thing. Yeah. So. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. It's a, it's a very interesting meditation on what makes us human. I like that. And it feels, I mean, it feels really real. Like there was a whole scene where one of the characters, one of the siblings is talking about this project manager that she's really hated by. I thought about it. And like, what did she say? She said the project manager, a project manager is a, oh god. The way that they explained what a project manager made me laugh really hard, it was kind of like a failed engineer with an MBA or something like that. And I was like, that's hurtful. And I'm not even a project manager. Yeah. I know. But it was, it was something like that. And I just, I laughed because I was like, okay, so. Sylvia Park, like, knows tech, like knows the, it felt very like the startup vibe,

33:56the industry. Like there's a lot of jargon and, and explanations of that that feel very future, future, what we're experiencing now in many ways. So I like that, that perspective always cracks me up. And yeah, there's, there's a lot of, I think, similar to, to the noodle story, the noodle book. There's going to be a lot of comparisons between gender identity and, and humanity versus robot expression. I'm not sure what the, how to phrase that better. But I think there's a lot of, there's going to be some really interesting conversations we can have around that. Yeah, I think it'll be easier to explain what you mean when you can spoil, because you can point to examples, obviously, but we're not being spoilery on this. So, so yeah, luminous by Sylvia Park. It seems like, to Andrew's point, people are enjoying this one so far. I've seen more, more positive comments than, than negative ones on this one.

35:00So yeah, and what, and if you're, it's in the book briefing, but one of the reasons I picked this, it was on the Arthur C. Clark nominations list. And I think it was either the only one or one of only two from an author we hadn't read before. So I was, it was like, oh, great. This is, you know, it's always good to bring a new author that's getting widely recognized for things. Okay, we have a new system starting this month. If you are a patron, it's going to change things in that you'll get this format of episode once a month. And then on the other time of the month, usually there's a second episode every month we record, we will just be doing a more free form chat with the audience. So not trying to pull together quick burns and, and, and, barrier swords and everything for that second episode, which sometimes has been kind of a strain, especially with the book check ins where we're like, well, we already talked about this book and they were kick off. And we're going to talk about it again in the wrap up. What do we say now?

36:04It'll be just a more free form chat with the discord. So we'll be able to just like, talk to each other, you kind of free roam. That will be recorded and given to patrons that will not go out to the public. That will be only for patrons that second episode. This big episode will be broken up into two for non patrons. So if you're not a patron, you're still going to get two episodes a month. You're just going to get one that ends now with the kick off. And then the next week you get the wrap up, which means you basically get the book wrap up earlier if you're a patron. So we are pushing off the book wrap up till next week if you're on the free fee. You still get it. You just get it a week later than the patrons get it. The patrons get it all at once. Anything that you can think that I didn't mention there? No, yeah. I think it's, you know, it'll take some getting used to mostly for me. But it is, Tom has put a lot of work into

37:06planning this out and I super appreciate all the thought you've put into this. So thank you. And yeah, tell us what you think. You know, if this is if this is work in, if you like it, if there's things, we can make. Let us know. Yeah. We just want to make sure that patrons are getting some bang for their buck literally. And we can come up with new ways to connect to the community and and make some different new kinds of content. So do sign up for the discord because then you can listen to us when we when we do the just hang out and chat and do sign up for the Patreon. If you want to make sure that you get it all in one go and get it earlier. So again, patrons, stick around for the book wrap up. Everybody else, we'll see you next week.