Weekly Roundup: July 10th - July 15th
I’m e rathke, the author of a number of books. Learn more about what you signed up for here. Go here to manage your email notifications.
This Week’s Posts
Tuesday: My review of the boardgame Root, one of the most impressive wargames of the last decade.
Wednesday: Paying subscribers received Chapter Ten of Emrys the Fool and free subscribers received Chapter Eight. If you received neither, there are instructions here on how to get these in your email.
Chapter Ten is the longest chapter so far, over double the size of every other chapter, and it’s also the conclusion to a mini-arc in the ongoing series. Now’s a good time to jump in!
Thursday: My interview with Russell Nohelty.
Friday: Not posted at this here substack, but my children’s storytime podcast continues with Chapter Two of A Pirate’s Life. This is the story I’ve been telling my son for a few months and began recording for him on his Yoto Player. With that in mind, this is a story meant for children and so share it with a child.
A young boy named Carrot who wants to become a pirate. Chapter Two involves saying goodbye to his father.
Music by my good friend Bart Larsen.
Saturday: I wrote something for the Ectopia prompt from
.It’s more a story about the transitional period between disaster and the hope of a sustainable future. It’s pretty nifty, if you like hope and the like.
From the Archives
With Barbie about to come out, I thought I’d reshare what I said about it this spring.
Listening
Reading
bringing the heat on the conversation about diversity in Horror.Mostly I’m just reading various translations of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Beowulf. I’ll have a lot to say about this kind of thing later. Also eyeing translations of The Iliad and The Odyssey, so I may just spend the rest of the year reading different translations of ancient poems.
Why not?
Watching
Hulu has a docuseries about the Hillsong Megachurch we watched this week. First, we made a cult Bingo card, which quickly filled up. Only missing a few spots.
We’re also watching Malcolm in the Middle, which, I think, might be the last TV show about working class people who actually have to deal with the strain of their poverty. It’s also consistently hilarious.
I kinda sorta watched this when it was on twenty years ago, but was never much of a fan. I like it a whole lot more now.
What Else?
Was notified about several short story acceptances this week, but I think this one is the only one I can announce. I’ll be in the Into the Forest Anthology from Space Cat Press. You can see the full list at the link.
You should also be expecting a short story to come out next week. Also, looks like Old Moon Quarterly #4 is now out, which has my story about fighting a giant monster.
Preorders for the How to Write a Novel Anthology from Autofocus Lit, edited by
, is also up, which has one of my essays.Since we’re talking preorder stuff, you can also preorder luminescent machinations from Neon Hemlock, which has one of my stories.
Got a nice shout out from
about my novel Howl in his list of books that feel like watching anime.Lady Agova, the glass-jawed mystic giantess who guides our protagonists through the dangerous cybergoth landscape, is as iconic as Goku or Naruto and belongs on just as many bedroom wall posters.
Lady Agova lives! And the sequel to Howl comes out in nine days! So go preorder Iron Wolf.
Anyway, read my books that are currently out. Then review them.
Thank you.
My novels:
Glossolalia - A Le Guinian fantasy novel about an anarchic community dealing with a disaster
Sing, Behemoth, Sing - Deadwood meets Neon Genesis Evangelion
Howl - Vampire Hunter D meets The Book of the New Sun in this lofi cyberpunk/solarpunk monster hunting adventure
Colony Collapse - Star Trek meets Firefly in the opening episode of this space opera
The Blood Dancers - The standalone sequel to Colony Collapse.
Iron Wolf - Sequel to Howl. Coming 7/25/2023
Some free books for your trouble:
Wolf.
Howl.
Ach, dude, Malcolm in the Middle is sooooo good. It is absolutely true that it is the last great working-class sitcom - and yet I wince when people describe it that way because I think that flattens how great the show is. Like, if you want a laugh, read this HILARIOUS article from Vice about how the show is "Actually a Socialist Masterpiece" : https://www.vice.com/en/article/vvvg39/why-malcolm-in-the-middle-is-a-socialist-masterpiece ... I think my favorite bit is when the writer says Malcolm has a poster of Jim Henson's Dinosaurs in his room (he doesn't), and that this is a tell that MITM was influenced by Dinosaurs (it wasn't), which was also a subversive work of anti-capitalist genius (LMAO no).
(The funny thing about that article is that Malcolm himself is acutely aware of the yawning gap between his intelligence and his social class, and that by the series' end this awareness has poisoned his personality and turned him into a smug, largely friendless asshole. It's funny to realize his bitterness at being an intellectual in the precariat is almost identical to the family patriarch on that *other* show Bryan Cranston was on - but also that, given that he attends Harvard in the show's finale, you can absolutely read MITM as the origin story of a proto-overeducated sour-grapes-socialist a la Chapo. Or of the kind of person who writes half-baked Marxist analysis of network sitcoms for Vice, for that matter!)
So it's a great show with depths that are mostly unrealized by critics. E.g., an understated (but really important) element of the show is that Hal comes from old-money WASP stock while Lois is a first-generation white ethnic, and their personalities stem from those backgrounds (Lois in particular is the sort of hardass-immigrant-background-mother-who-believes-in-the-American-dream that we only now see in pop culture with any regularity, and even now only if the character in question is Asian). I've always thought, hey, I should write about that, but I imagine the audience for that sort of thing, even on Substack, is pretty low.