Paper Cuts Glacier Nester

Despite my immediate nitpicking of the science that goes on in this particular story, this is actually quite the fun little tale! I mean, it's got everything you'd want from an alien invasion story, random alien nonsense stumbled upon by a put-upon scientist, a random dame that has dubious high society connections, and most of all, the wild threat to New York, dispelled by hastily-thrown-together technobabble solutions! 
On the note of technobabble, it's really fascinating to me that I don't try NEARLY as hard to unpack the ins and outs of the science in a modern story, but the second these older stories go for any sort of loose accuracy with the science I go "WEll acTUALLY-", and I do wonder if that's more of an issue with my familiarity with the science they're using for the technobabble in particular, or more with the expectations of what science is being used as the base for the technobabble itself, y'know? There's certain key concepts that science fiction nowadays really likes to bend (and break) rules of, but these older stories instead like to wrangle oddities of the electromagnetic rather than the strangeness of the quantum, and I just don't catch on quite as fast, let alone noting how much more of an intuitive sense of electricity and magnetism I have in comparison.
Either way, once I get out of my own way, this last little bit of the August issue of Astounding Stories is a real hit! 
I do provide a disclaimer, since these books are aged and not well-remembered: 
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/ 

To be honest, as much as Murder Madness here dragged its feet in getting to the point, I really enjoyed the story as a whole! It's a bit formulaic from a modern perspective, but what isn't in our usual milleu around here, you know? That's kinda a function of the public domain stories we read around here, just for the sheer factor of how many stories build off of the bits and pieces we're finding, sometimes completely unintentionally! 
For example, here, there's the last act twist of just what the Master was up to the whole time. Bit of a spoiler here, to be fair and honest with you, but it's really not all that much of a shocker, if you ask me, that he's aiming to make some kind of improvement on humanity as a whole, just coincidentally finding himself at the top of the heap? Could see it coming pretty clearly, especially with the reveal of the Master's whole calm, cool, collected affect a bit earlier in the story. 
I do provide a disclaimer, since these books are aged and, often, not well-remembered: 
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/ 
 

What do you think is the deal with these Gnomes? I mean, it's not really unpacked in the story very far, but it's kinda gently implied there's a sort of queen-and-workers sort of vibe going on. Sure, it's probably just there to give Sarka a target for this whole superiority schtick, but I'm the type of person to wonder about the ecology of a foreign planet after we've read the story they're set on. Sure, sure, I'm not too worried about it when we're in the middle of reading the tale, mostly because a lot of the stories we read aroud here just sort of glaze over that sort of thing, but I genuinely think between Dune and all the solarpunk I've been reading I'm stuck like this! 
Even if the framing often makes no sense to the modern eye, there's plenty to enjoy in these old books. As I've made very clear, I'm a known enjoyer of these short story collections strictly BECAUSE they're not all polished and perfect. There's so much more room to take risky, big swings in the case of a shorter story, y'know? 
I do provide a disclaimer, since these books are aged and not well-remembered: 
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/ 

If you're a bit lost on what's happening in Earth, the Marauder, I'd heartily suggest checking out the previous issue of Astounding, the July Issue! We did indeed read that in a previous episode of the show, just check the titles, I always title the first episode of a given thing with the title of the book, so that should make the July issue pretty easy to find! 
Well, hopefully anyway. Even if not, a good most of the time, these serialized stories usually do a great job of reminding you what you missed. They kind of have to, y'know? Since not everybody caught every issue, and you didn't wanna wind up completely lost if you missed a trip to the newstand, that's the tact I'd take, anyway. 
Either way, the tale on display here really has its ups and its downs. Loads of fun concepts, but some of them it REALLY doesn't pull off. At least, if you can't stand to hear this one, it's not going to hang around forever! That's the glory of these short story collections, the stuff you don't like doesn't loom large. Sure, that comes with the downside of the things you like not sticking around too long, but some of these stories would need MAJOR reworks to be any longer than they were written here. 
I do provide a disclaimer, since these books are aged and not well-remembered: 
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/ 

You never know what you'll happen to find beneath the earth in these oddball little pulp stories we read here on the show. Could it be some sort of monster? Perhaps a whole society of people we've been missing out on interacting with? Maybe, even, depending on the day, some sort of giant aeomeba that just wants to burble about for a while! 
That's not even to mention the absolutely madcap volume of oddities you'll find just above the average cruising altitude of a plane, I mean, an entire planet full of blood-drinking frog men, just hanging out up there is just the start of things! Don't even get me started on what they found beyond the heaviside layer, or up there on the moon! 
But enough listing possibilities from me, you'll have to listen to the episode itself if you want to know just what we find not only on the second satellite, but beneath the silver dome, as well.
I might have invoked the disclaimer in this one? either way, here it is: 
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/ 

Don't let my sleepy, dozy demeanor fool you here, gang, I had just had a long day at the time! This tale is quite the ride, a whole second planet just hanging out within the easy reach of an airplane? Wild! 
 
I mean, the physics of something like that would be turning the world upside down, but who needs physics when you've got a waterworld full of frog-men who seem to subsist on the blood of the other people who live on the planet? You really don't find plots this wild outside the pulps, people! You're really going to want to tune in to next week's episode if that concept interests you at all, this really evolves into quite the story!
I do provide a disclaimer, since these books are aged and not well-remembered: 
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/