Sophia Kelly Audiobooks Podcast - People of the Rock

Sophia Kelly - Author
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Recordings of my book People of the Rock - a hopeful story of time travelling lesbians, quantum entanglement and goats - read by the author www.sophiakelly.ca www.sophiaamazon.substack.com sophiaamazon.substack.com

  1. 6d ago

    Brenda and the hippy wannabees (and goats)

    In this segment, we hear about Brenda’s arrival on Bone Island. She is not as pleased as Lucy to be 500 years in the future, and being kidnapped was scary. Brenda is not important; she is a receptionist turned goat-hermit. She is not a woman on a mission; she just misses coffee. I’m working to get through this chapter a little faster, so stay tuned for more frequent updates, and for the full chapter recording for paid subscribers. As always, permission is denied to use any of my text or recordings for AI training or any other purpose without my specific permission. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sophiaamazon.substack.com/subscribe

  2. Oct 23

    So you will be balanced

    Together? Yup. After much flirting, yearning and unspoken chemistry, they are back in Marija’s rooms, covered in mud, and letting their hands follow their hearts. I’m happy to share the next segment with you, which is the first time Lucy and Marija make love. Reading it aloud, again after all this time since writing it, has me thinking, damn! That’s yummy and tender and right for these two. It has me all a tingle. I hope you enjoy it. Content note: This segment is not a fade to black situation - it contains a tasteful (ahem) description of lovemaking between two women. Medium spice. NSFW. As always, permission is denied for any of my content to be used to train AI systems or repurposed in whole or part. (You are encouraged to restack though). I will be releasing this entire chapter in one file shortly to all my paid subscribers, who pay $30/year or $5 a month. Free subscribers will be able to listen to the smaller segments like this one. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sophiaamazon.substack.com/subscribe

  3. Oct 23

    Entrainment

    In this short segment, one of my favourite characters, the Rock (who is actually a rock) explains how it knows things, in this case the deepening desire between Lucy and Marija, but also a whole sentient rock animist worldview that permeates this book. I am struck, reading this aloud so long after originally writing it, about how deep this philosophy permeates the book. It is perhaps the organizing principle, that everything is connected. I’m going to be thinking on this. In these interesting times, putting love into the world in the many ways we do, through doing the right thing, supporting others, being kind, is literally pulling more love from wherever love comes from and making it actual in the world. And perhaps that really means something practical, literal, holy. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sophiaamazon.substack.com/subscribe

  4. Oct 19

    2.3 Lucy Goes to university and plays in the mud

    In this 16 minute segment Lucy goes to the future equivalent of UBC and learns how the economics of the greater Vancouver region changed and why when oil ran out, and production of goods shifted to local economies. We get to watch a mini seminar on EF Schumacher, voluntary simplicity, appropriate technology and how the future looks back at present day commerce and trading patterns. Lucy and Marija frolic in the mud while helping her family build a house for her brother out of cob, a natural earth building technique in continuous use for the past 4000 years. Lucy is having a hard time getting used to everyone in the future, particularly Marija, feeling comfortable having their shirt off on hot days. Concepts in this section: * EF Schumacher was a German-born British economist and statistician, whose writings, particular his collection of essays called Small Is Beautiful influenced leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi. * Cob is a building material that is fireproof, termite proof, earthquake resistant (helpful in Vancouver) and uses low cost materials. It is very labour intensive, but straightforward to repair or remodel as required. * Appropriate technology - Examples: bike- and hand-powered water pumps (and other self-powered equipment), the bicycle, the universal nut sheller, self-contained solar lamps and streetlights, and passive solar building designs. A related term is open-source appropriate technology (OSAT) a model where appropriate and sustainable technology is developed and shared openly. This recording is only lightly edited, and is recorded in my voice. An edited consolidated longer recording of the entire Chapter 2 will be available soon for paid subscribers. You are welcome of course to listen in these free mini-segments. If you’d like to buy me a cup of tea, the tip jar is below. By the way, permission is specifically denied to use any of my recordings to train AI. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sophiaamazon.substack.com/subscribe

  5. Oct 9

    Chapter 2.2 - Detective + Brenda & the Goats

    This week’s second 12 minute segment contains two scenes. We first see the disappearance of two Vancouver women, one of them Lucy, through the eyes of a Vancouver police detective, Barbara Stamwick. It briefly mentions the Picton murders, but there is nothing likely to be triggering other than that name, I think. After we hear from Barbara, in our second scene “A baaad awakening’ we discover that Brenda has also been taken to the future, and is being stalked by a herd of goats. She has had a very different experience of the future than Lucy. Here’s a link to the Timbuk 3 song “The future’s so bright” she’s thinking of as she wakes in a sunlit field to the protests of goats. No future sustainability content in this piece, but I promise there will be a lot more. I’m going to record this chapter’s segments more quickly, and release the edited entire audio chapter to my awesome paid subscribers once it’s done. You will still be able to listen to the entire book in small installments without subscribing or paying the $5 a month if that’s not a fit. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sophiaamazon.substack.com/subscribe

  6. Oct 8

    Chapter 2 - 1 - Marija’s very unusual family

    Marija takes our time traveller Lucy home to meet the family. Lucy is half horrified half delighted to be made to share a bedroom with her crush Marija. Marija has 18 parents and 5 siblings - this is my future’s answer to the need for population reduction to make sure that the local farmland can feed everyone who lives in the region. When writing this, I was thinking about how to reduce the population to levels that could be equitably housed and fed locally (as my hypothetical future Vancouverites would need to do) without destroying the planet. I calculated the carrying capacity of Greater Vancouver, based on, if I recall correctly, one person per half hectare of fertile land. In order to feed all our people locally, even including crowing food on urban land alongside housing and a mostly vegetarian diet, we’d have to cut the current population of Greater Vancouver in half, and my reading indicated that having slightly fewer children wouldn’t drop the population quickly enough. If we were cut off from transported food (as we were recently by floods taking out roads and railways), half of us would die in short order. I saw as one of the problems in reducing the population that people (particularly straight acculturated people) want ‘their own’ children, by which they mean ones they are biologically related to, rather than being aunties or uncles to other people’s kids. Similarly, people who birth biological children are both overwhelmed with the workload and at the same time unwilling to share the title and perks of being the official parent of their children. In the story, I tried to construct conditions where it would be normal to be full socially recognized parents of children that were not biological relatives, and for many people to share the work of child-rearing equitably while also sharing the social status accorded parents. The solution I came up with is based it on childrearing practices I am aware of in my own queer community in Vancouver, where a lesbian couple might team up with their besties, exes and gay friends to conceive and rear children. Lesbians are such social innovators. I expanded it to give formal status to the non biological parents, which I think is a missing piece. The chapter also talks about the futures transportation and trading patterns, based on sustainable transport. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sophiaamazon.substack.com/subscribe

  7. Sep 23

    Chapter 1:16 Detective Stamwick investigates

    This short scene introduces the character of Detective Barbara Stamwick, who is investigating the disappearance of Lucy and Brenda. Are they a couple? Are they roommates? Is Michael Lucy’s boyfriend? murderer? Why do they have a picture of the world’s largest pirogi on their fridge? What is/was going on in the past? (Time travel makes verb tenses tricky, which is a big part of why the book is written in the present tense throughout. No matter where and when you are is ‘now’ to someone. Photocredit: Tourism Alberta, Worlds largest pirogi in the village of Glendon, Alberta. * Permission is expressely forbidden to use any of my voice recordings or content anywhere, but including the recording and content on this page, to train artificial intelligence, or to publish it in any format in whole or part elsewhere without my express and informed consent. * Coming in the next couple of weeks, paid subscribers will get access to high quality single chapter recordings of the entire book, fresh of the microphone. The cost is $5 a month, which is the lowest substack allows for paid subscriptions. You’ll still get these shorter segments for free, but the longer ones might be more fun. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sophiaamazon.substack.com/subscribe

  8. Sep 23

    Chapter 1.15 -‘Old’ Vancouver in the Future

    This is the segment of People of the Rock that many people have told me they love because of the hope and the first glimpse into a vision of a positive future where things are done well, both ecologically and socially. We continue with the appropriate technology in the form of local transportation and look at the way urban design would be changed by the transportation changes. We get another view into the gift economy, which some would say is traditional to the Pacific Northwest. Gift economies were documented in BC in pre-colonial times. I found it satisfying to reinstall them in ‘old’ Vancouver in this scene. Here’s a video by Meena Ray on Facebook that does a good job of explaining indigenous economics and how it works/worked. (You don’t have to log in to see the video.) Photocredit: Flying Penguin, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1620098 * Permission is expressely forbidden to use any of my voice recordings or content anywhere, but including the recording and content on this page, to train artificial intelligence, or to publish it in any format in whole or part elsewhere without my express and informed consent. * Coming in the next couple of weeks, paid subscribers will get access to high quality single chapter recordings of the entire book, fresh of the microphone. The cost is $5 a month, which is the lowest substack allows for paid subscriptions. You’ll still get these shorter segments for free, but the longer ones might be more fun. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sophiaamazon.substack.com/subscribe

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Recordings of my book People of the Rock - a hopeful story of time travelling lesbians, quantum entanglement and goats - read by the author www.sophiakelly.ca www.sophiaamazon.substack.com sophiaamazon.substack.com

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