Paper Cuts Glacier Nester

Indeed, we do stumble into quite the bevy of delights as we delve farther and farther into the past with this particular issue of Astounding Stories. Sure, it's already quite the delight to discover a new saga in the tale we've heard previously in Earth, the Marauder, but in addition to that, we're well on our way to finding other short stories that boggle the mind! 
As an aside, I mention a more modern short story collection out front, and I would love to stress to authors: I am more than willing to discuss featuring your work on the show! Guarding Gus, our first episode of the third season, is far from a fluke in terms of the stories I'm hoping to feature on the show going forward. If you've got some writing you feel would be a particularly good fit, feel free to shoot me an email at glaciernester@gmail.com, and we can talk about what that might look like for you! 
Back on topic, though, I really do believe that short story collections can contain startling volumes of incredibly compelling work. I'm not sure I've mentioned it on the show, but there's a particular short story that I've been chasing for YEARS, that I first read in high school, and didn't write down the title of, and cannot find for the LIFE of me. In short, it was in a black-covered science fiction anthology that was about to be weeded out of the school library, and the only two major stories I remember have stuck with me ever since: one set in a society where time is used as currency, which opens with a scene of a group of street buskers doing some performance art, wherein they set their internal clocks to tick down simultaneously, such that the mob they were standing in instead causes them to fall, spelling out MEMENTO MORI in a town square. The other swings a bit more horriffic, as a young woman struggles against the thrall of a claude glass, each time she stares, finding herself more and more strongly compelled to never look at anything else. There's a particularly vivid passage of her describing how a lizard that wandered into the house looks after staring into the claude glass, her perception of color forced into eye-popping contrast in comparison to life as it was before. 
The sheer vividity of these two stories as they impressed themselves into my then-younger mind has really instilled in me a drive to check out these short story collections, there's some real gems in there! Not just the yearly anthology issues, either, there's great stuff in the monthlies, too. Remind me to talk about Optopia on the live stream, sometime, you'll hear about some fantastic solarpunk yarns. 
Also of note, our content disclaimer:
TL;DR up front: Paper Cuts is almost all public domain stuff, and some of it hasn't aged well. I'll be doing my best to warn you, but I'm not changing any of it, I don't believe censorship is the path forward here.
Paper Cuts, by necessity, has to be a majority books that are in the US public domain. That means it's almost exclusively going to be content produced in the 1920s, or earlier. These works may have aspects that have not aged well to a modern viewer/listener. Now, I'm never one for censorship, but I do believe we are entitled to being able to filter the leisure content we don't want to see. So, this results in the following policy:
    I'll do my level best to warn you, the viewer, at the beginning of the episode, what's likely to come up.
    A great example is something like 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, which had some passages describing natives of various places in a fashion I'd charitably describe as unkindly.
    In cases where something sneaks up on me unwarned, I will be reading the content unedited, with my sincerest apologies for the lack of active warning.
All that said, I'm gonna cover my bases with some common warnings that have come up often in books I've read before:
    Descriptions of "savage natives"
    Various racial slurs, unkind terms, and/or Descriptions of groups that have taken on a

As I've been known to mention a great many times, I absolutely love the wonderful short stories on hand in these old pulp magazines. Sure, they're not exactly always a hit, but when the author nails what they're going for? It's really going to shine! I mean, picture just how many incredibly famous pieces of what forms not only the english class "canon", but also those works that prove definitional to a genre, most especially genre that was then-niche, but now having a moment in the sun, like science fiction, or cyberpunk! (If you're looking at modern story magazines, you can even find things that I feel define essential modern genres, like solarpunk, as well!)
Gush as much as I like about these magazines, unfortunately August is the last Astounding issue we're going to be reading outright, directly like this. We don't know it at the time of this recording, but going forward, I'm going to be shifting the focus when it comes to Astounding, leaning in to its strengths as a provider of short stories. We'll, rather than reading the issues all in one run, instead be adding pieces of the issue to act as bonus tales, when a story ends a bit earlier than I was expecting it to. Perhaps I'll add a little tag to the description of the episodes which feature astounding episodes, for my fellow serialized short story enjoyers! 
All that said, I hope you enjoy this particular issue of Astounding! As we work our way through the issue, we finish up that Earth the Marauder story that's been being chipped away at! Really, quite the fun twists in store here, as they wrangle their way through the whole conquering space whatnot. Reminds me of how science fiction tends to rhyme, we have this back in the 30s, and now there's tales of societies that prove a dyson sphere doesn't have quite enough energy, and instead propel their planet out of its original orbit, in hopes of finding more resources to work with. Wild to think about!
I don't think the disclaimer came up this time, but here it is anyway: 
TL;DR up front: Paper Cuts is almost all public domain stuff, and some of it hasn't aged well. I'll be doing my best to warn you, but I'm not changing any of it, I don't believe censorship is the path forward here.
Paper Cuts, by necessity, has to be a majority books that are in the US public domain. That means it's almost exclusively going to be content produced in the 1920s, or earlier. These works may have aspects that have not aged well to a modern viewer/listener. Now, I'm never one for censorship, but I do believe we are entitled to being able to filter the leisure content we don't want to see. So, this results in the following policy:
I'll do my level best to warn you, the viewer, at the beginning of the episode, what's likely to come up. A great example is something like 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, which had some passages describing natives of various places in a fashion I'd charitably describe as unkindly. In cases where something sneaks up on me unwarned, I will be reading the content unedited, with my sincerest apologies for the lack of active warning. All that said, I'm gonna cover my bases with some common warnings that have come up often in books I've read before:
Descriptions of "savage natives" Various racial slurs, unkind terms, and/or Descriptions of groups that have taken on a worse connotation General mistreatment and misrepresentation of cultures Generally speaking, if something I'm reading is on the page? Don't expect me to have opinions aligning with it. We're here to have fun, not disparage people!
Want to grab the book to read along with us? check it out here, free of charge!
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/29768 (Astounding Stories, August 1930)
Have a book to request? Maybe some chats to chit? Finally interested in that bread I bake? drop by the discord!
https://www.discord.gg/PBZNsjn
Want to listen live? Come drop by, Fridays night, on twitch!
https://www.twitch.tv/glacier_nester/ 

Welcome, welcome welcome, to season 3 of Paper Cuts! As you heard in the opening of the podcast, we're shifting our release model. Rather than innundating you with approximately eight hours of material all at once, that you then have to sort out how to listen to, we're instead cutting the stream down into managable, bite size even, 1 hour and 30 minute chunks. You're still getting the same great Live Audiobook content we know and love here at Paper Cuts, but I'm doing all the wrangling of squashing it down into a cleaner timeframe!
Fittingly, the first episode of our third season also debuts our other huge shift (well, the one that's audible to you listeners): we've got some modern books now! Thanks to the gracious permissions of several very generous authors, I get to showcase some books published outside the public domain. We've picked an absolutely fantastic starting point here, in showing off what I'd comfortably call a "shareware demo" of Guarding Gus, by Karryn Nagel. Don't let that put you off, however, even the first five chapters of this book are an absolute blast, as we dive into the world of a Multnomah changed by the (relatively) recent addition of things quite fantastical to our own world. We follow the foibles of two young men, Brant and Nico, as they struggle to pin down just what our title character, Gustopher, has roped them into, despite being an adorable baby gargoyle. I immediately fell in love with the characters on display here, Nico just wants his quiet little life with his quiet little bonsai, but his whole world is turned upside down on wanting to make sure everyone has stayed safe, only to find that a) he's been adopted by a local extrovert (in Brant) and b) now he's got to take care of this little baby alongside a guy who he barely knows! Oh, and it's a bit of a reverse heist situation, too, as the local leader of what amounts to the magic mob was originally planning on having Gustopher as a showpiece in his menagerie!
I really enjoyed the heck out of the first five chapters of this book, and I really hope you do too! Enough time has passed since the friday this episode came out that you can not only acquire this book through digital booksellers, but also physical copies, and it's available to your local libraries, too! There was a bit of a wait while we were originally airing, but like I've done the organizing for you, I've also done the waiting. Enough waiting, in fact, that the sequel to Guarding Gus, What to Suspect when You're Suspecting, has actually been announced! (Karryn, if you want me to do a demo of that one too, you'd hear no complaints from me, that's for sure!) There's a lot of really good stories coming down the road with this season, and I hope you enjoy the changes I'm making on the backend!
Want to read along with us? Find the book here: 
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/198424215-guarding-gus
Have opinions you want to share, or want to suggest books? Discord's great for that!
https://www.discord.gg/PBZNsjn/
Want to listen live? Drop by Fridays, over on twitch!
https://www.twitch.tv/glacier_nester/
Want to catch up in a video format? Check out the youtube channel!
https://www.youtube.com/user/glaciernester

Ah, the very last episode of this season! We start to get into the lush world of Arthur Conan Doyle's most popular (non-sherlock) writing, and discover that HOO BOY does that professor have some feelings on the matter of the people he met and the places he went. Well, that, and he really doesn't care for the press. He just wants to be right and have people know he's right, without all the fuss of proving it. Sounds like he'd fit right in on the internet, howsabout we get this guy a podcast, huh? I mean, a radio show would be more appropriate to the time, setting, and theme, but I'd love to see such oddities that an anachronistic old fogey like this would cause! 
Additionally of note, this month's episodes are the last ones of season 2, and as we come to season 3, starting in May, we'll be having a different release schedule! That's right, we're finally shifting to weekly episodes, much to the joy of everyone who didn't have time for multiple 3 to 4 hour journeys dropping all at once at the end of the month! No more having to ration out episodes of your favorite books to tide you over, I'll be spreading things out manually! Isn't that exciting?
I don't think the disclaimer came up this time, but here it is anyway: 
TL;DR up front: Paper Cuts is almost all public domain stuff, and some of it hasn't aged well. I'll be doing my best to warn you, but I'm not changing any of it, I don't believe censorship is the path forward here.
Paper Cuts, by necessity, has to be a majority books that are in the US public domain. That means it's almost exclusively going to be content produced in the 1920s, or earlier. These works may have aspects that have not aged well to a modern viewer/listener. Now, I'm never one for censorship, but I do believe we are entitled to being able to filter the leisure content we don't want to see. So, this results in the following policy:
I'll do my level best to warn you, the viewer, at the beginning of the episode, what's likely to come up. A great example is something like 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, which had some passages describing natives of various places in a fashion I'd charitably describe as unkindly. In cases where something sneaks up on me unwarned, I will be reading the content unedited, with my sincerest apologies for the lack of active warning. All that said, I'm gonna cover my bases with some common warnings that have come up often in books I've read before:
Descriptions of "savage natives" Various racial slurs, unkind terms, and/or Descriptions of groups that have taken on a worse connotation General mistreatment and misrepresentation of cultures Generally speaking, if something I'm reading is on the page? Don't expect me to have opinions aligning with it. We're here to have fun, not disparage people!
Want to grab the book to read along with us? check it out here, free of charge!
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/139 (The Lost World)
Have a book to request? Maybe some chats to chit? Finally interested in that bread I bake? drop by the discord!
https://www.discord.gg/PBZNsjn
Want to listen live? Come drop by, Fridays night, on twitch!
https://www.twitch.tv/glacier_nester/ 

Unsurprisingly, I really breeze through books I know well here on the show, but unfortunately, that also means a goodly sized number of my favorites really are here today, then gone next week. So, while we really did have a blast reading The Time Machine, it's all over now. Well, that is, if it ever even happened? The book is sure insistent on being unsure. Either way, there's so much to enjoy about H.G.'s writing, especially in the hits like this one. As for the short story we got through, it's always a pleasant surprise to see someone realizing the concerning pattern that invasive species can get you into, and that goes double for planets that aren't earth! Come to think of it, we'll have to work out some kind of safe decontamination procedure when it comes to interstellar travel, as even a healthy person's microbiome could wreak major havoc on the little creatures we can't manage to see on even uninhabited planets, maybe I've got something there? Actually, come to think, I've got a better idea involving a sourdough starter and a planet full of gluten...
Before I get too off topic, a little notice! This month's episodes are the last ones of season 2, and as we come to season 3, starting in May, we'll be having a different release schedule! That's right, we're finally shifting to weekly episodes, much to the joy of everyone who didn't have time for multiple 3 to 4 hour journeys dropping all at once at the end of the month! No more having to ration out episodes of your favorite books to tide you over, I'll be spreading things out manually! Isn't that exciting?
I don't think the disclaimer came up this time, but here it is anyway: 
TL;DR up front: Paper Cuts is almost all public domain stuff, and some of it hasn't aged well. I'll be doing my best to warn you, but I'm not changing any of it, I don't believe censorship is the path forward here.
Paper Cuts, by necessity, has to be a majority books that are in the US public domain. That means it's almost exclusively going to be content produced in the 1920s, or earlier. These works may have aspects that have not aged well to a modern viewer/listener. Now, I'm never one for censorship, but I do believe we are entitled to being able to filter the leisure content we don't want to see. So, this results in the following policy:
I'll do my level best to warn you, the viewer, at the beginning of the episode, what's likely to come up. A great example is something like 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, which had some passages describing natives of various places in a fashion I'd charitably describe as unkindly. In cases where something sneaks up on me unwarned, I will be reading the content unedited, with my sincerest apologies for the lack of active warning. All that said, I'm gonna cover my bases with some common warnings that have come up often in books I've read before:
Descriptions of "savage natives" Various racial slurs, unkind terms, and/or Descriptions of groups that have taken on a worse connotation General mistreatment and misrepresentation of cultures Generally speaking, if something I'm reading is on the page? Don't expect me to have opinions aligning with it. We're here to have fun, not disparage people!
Want to grab the book to read along with us? check it out here, free of charge!
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/35 (The Time Machine)
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/32124 (To Choke an Ocean)
Have a book to request? Maybe some chats to chit? Finally interested in that bread I bake? drop by the discord!
https://www.discord.gg/PBZNsjn
Want to listen live? Come drop by, Fridays night, on twitch!
https://www.twitch.tv/glacier_nester/ 

Once again, I return to a personal favorite of mine, this time in The Time Machine, by H.G. Wells. As I note in the episode, I absolutely fell in LOVE with h.g.'s writing as a kid, there's just so much to enjoy, even divorced of context as I originally read it. The Time Machine in particular, though, really shines if you learn more of the context this book was written in. It's actually quite a biting commentary on the aggressive stratification of that era's society, and what an extrapolation of that to its logical maximum could look like. Listen, I could carry on about my english class conclusions on the matter of just who these folks the time traveller meets up with first are meant to reflect, or why it's so important to consider the role of science fiction at large in making social commentary, but really, at the end of the day, it's just a darn solid read, and to be honest? I doubt anyone's reading the show notes anyway! If you ARE reading these, come drop by the discord, tell me something interesting in the infodump channel! You've got an open invitation to carry on about your favorite topic, bonus points for linking sources so we can learn more!
Want to read along with us? Find the book here:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/35
Have opinions you want to share, or want to suggest books? Discord's great for that!
https://www.discord.gg/PBZNsjn/
Want to listen live? Drop by Fridays, over on twitch!
https://www.twitch.tv/glacier_nester/