KAMN Show #13: Holy Fire
Welcome to Show #13!
Summer, Joe and David are joined by the one and only Jack Mangan in a lively discussion about the 1996 Bruce Sterling novel, Holy Fire.
The Ninjas share their varied thoughts and impressions about the story, and argue a bit on whether there really was a story somewhere underneath the bombardment of concepts and ideas.
Aaron from the Weekly Anime Review has a review of The Irresponsible Captain Tylor, a Japanese TV show from 1993, for us this time around.
We also play a couple of voicemail comments:
- Southern Oracle on Logan’s Run
- Alvie on Logan’s Run and being an old school geek
Books mentioned:
Promos and Links:
Promo: Silent Universe
Link: Mirrorshades Postmodern Archive
Link: Holy Fire review at SciFi Wire
Link: Holy Fire review by Steven H. Silver
Link: Holy Fire review by Conor O’Connor
Link: Holy Fire review by Richard Horton
Link: Holy Fire review by Anoop Sarkar
Link: Holy Fire review at BookPage
Please stop fighting. Please stop. Please…
Well, thanks for a spicy debate on Holy Fire. Now I gotta debate myself on if ima gonna read it or not.
I bought Holy Fire when it hit the shelves after being caught up in the whole Cyberpunk series. I had red a few Bruce Sterling books, islnads in the net and schmatrix and just bought the book because I had enjoyed those.
How wrong was I ! I hated Holy Fire to the point where I have never finished the book. It just never seemed to get going for me, and other books (Snowcrash) were much more appealing.
Maybe after hearing your discussion I will give it another go, I am a bit older now (am wiser
) that I may just get it.
MAybe if there were a few sword fights in it I would have read it.
Thanks
Rob
Great episode as always. I haven’t read much Sterling. Your discussion has pushed me to look for this book. The odd thing is, having hit 43, I”m starting to feel this odd pressure that my employment status is going to become more difficult, because younger people are percieved to be more creative and flexible – and cheaper. so, an interesting reversal in (my) life, compared to what you discussed about the aging theme in Holy Fire.
Keep up the great work, Ninjas!
I just got around to listening to this. Another great show, though I’m not sure if I’ll actually read the book.
One thing though, I’m not sure if Dave’s “total idiots” comment was tongue-in-cheek or not. It sounded a little like he was offended that Summer and Joe didn’t like the book. If it was a joke, then please ignore this, but Dave needs to learn that criticism of a book he loves is not a personal attack. Other than that, I love the energetic discussions you guys always have.
Anyway, great job and keep up the good work. I’m looking forward to the next podcast.
I enjoyed the added dynamic of Mr. Mangan’s commentary for the podcast, especially as “Holy Fire” held less appeal for Mr. Murphy and our Miss Brooks. As much as I like Mr. Moldawer’s analysis I imagine a podcast review of “Holy Fire” with just the three regulars would have necessarily seen Moldawer monopolizing the conversation.
Of “Holy Fire” I can say little positive (or much extremely negative) even though I had read it twice several years ago. The novel formed _that_ negligible an impression in my memory. From what I can comment, I am in agreement with Mr. Murphy that the characters in the novel are not particularly fleshed-out. I found myself little caring about their fate.
One thing I find interesting is that in choosing a Bruce Sterling novel to review, that KAMN chose “Holy Fire” in the first place. To severely over-flatter Mr. Sterling, it was as if you assembled a podcast commenting on the work of Orson Welles and focused on “The Lady from Shanghai” and only mentioned “Citizen Kane” in passing.
Why not a ninety minute discussion of “Schismatrix” ?
Part of my initial vision for this show was to cover the books and films that weren’t as well known. I realized later that if we picked items that were too obscure, listeners were less likely to check them out beforehand and stir up chat in the pre-show discussion threads.
So to balance out picking more popular choices, I occassionally picked a lesser-known work that I’ve never seen or read, and so far, that’s resulted in some less than stellar topics to talk about
Choosing “Holy Fire” was a choice of expedience, for me, because I couldn’t find anything else locally by Sterling. And truth be told, the back cover blurb made the book sound far more enticing than the end result delivered. I also intentionally avoided any online reviews of it until just before we were getting ready to record the show, so I could try to remain unbiased going in.
If I’d known ahead of time that we’d be out of commission for an extra two weeks, I would’ve ordered a copy online and we’d have done either “Islands in the Net” or “Schismatrix”.
Live and learn… but as long as we’re all having fun, that’s really what matters.
Summer, FWIW – I like the discussions where you don’t always see eye to eye on the book. And it seems to happen more with the books and not the movies. What does that mean?…
Tim,
Yes.