Marooned! on Mars with Matt and Hilary

I loved the Mars trilogy and began searching for podcasts that discussed it - mostly one off episodes of sci fi podcasts, great but not enough. Then I read on Reddit about “Marooned on Mars” and began the odyssey. The hosts of this podcast are incredible - deeply knowledgeable about literary analysis, funny, and really serious in their interest about these great books. I’m so grateful for their work. This podcast is highly recommended. Update: Podcast keeps getting better. The hosts really hit their stride during the green mars portion and continue to improve. Great repartee. Academia is somewhat of a survival of the fittest where the smartest and most productive survive, and these two are legitimate academics who were able to ingest the giant reams of writing to complete PhDs and became really potently knowledgeable on a lot of topics germane to this podcast. They both teach at a college and grad school level about sci fi. I would love to take their classes, but since I’m a middle aged person with my own business to attend to, I get to learn from them via podcast. Great job!

As a self-identified parasocial friend, I’d like to welcome you back and thank you for deciding to start podcasting again at this most fortuitous moment. We members of the Marooned on Mars 76ers have much to celebrate. The waterworld of Stan’s work is making some massive waves. The recent Apple TV series “Extrapolations” seems to have been deeply inspired by “Ministry for the Future “, sharing the ideas/themes contained there in with a huge audience. And then there’s the upcoming UN Summit for the Future (google it) which will have a planetary wide reach. KSR shared in a recent conversation about “Ministry for the Future “ with Jeffrey Sachs that friends of Stan’s who happen to be UN insiders told him straight up that this UN Summit was inspired by “Ministry “. So, thank you again for introducing me to KSR. Looking forward to hanging five (cue Delltones ) with you all as we surf the currents Stan and you two helped set in motion.

Incisive analysis, positive attitudes, lovely camaraderie!

The hosts do KSR’s work justice by approaching it with the depth it deserves while still generally keeping things light. The Years of Rice and Salt is one of the books that got me into Alternate History (and Islamic studies), I am EAGERLY anticipating their coverage. That book has a lot of counterfactual rabbit holes to go down and the author constantly find clever ways to import real life references and history into his alt universe, I hope the hosts do their research so they can recognize and dig into all of them. The show is generally more of a vibe and theme analysis, a lot of which went over my teenage head when I first read Rice and Salt, so I’ll be starting a reread and looking forward to the hosts’ takes.