The Library of Babel Podcast

A humorous tale from the master American storyteller, Mark Twain.

The text of this story can be found at the Strange Horizons website where it was originally published, here, or in the author's free short story collection, The Ant King and Other Stories.I highly recommend reading 1 Samuel 15-31 in the Bible if you have the time; it's very useful background for understanding the story. If you'd like a translation recommendation, I highly suggest The David Story, by Robert Alter. Give Us a King by Everett Fox is also great.I mentioned a story called The Gospel According to Gamaliel Crucis by Michael Bishop, about Jesus returning to Earth as an alien mantis; you can find it in the author's collection of scifi-meets-religion short stories, Close Encounters with the Diety. Music Attribution:Desert City by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1100564Artist: http://incompetech.com/Emerald Therapy by Audionautix (http://audionautix.com) is part of the YouTube Audio Library (https://www.youtube.com/audiolibrary/) and it's licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)Lamentation by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1100607Artist: http://incompetech.com/

The text of this story and can be found online here. It's released under a Creative Commons, Attribution, Non-Commercial, Share Alike license. The other stories in the collection, Thoughtcrime Experiments, are released under the same license.  I recommended Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice series in this episode. Find out more about it at her website, here, and read more about why I think it's a better sci-fi model for political action and change here. 

Music: Noble Dub by Silent Partner, True Love by Silent Partner, Coast by Silent Partner, Bomber by Riot, Tropix by Gunnar Olsen, and Camagüey by Silent Partner. All songs can be found on the YouTube Audio Library. 

A bit of Civil War alternate history, this story won a Hugo Award in 1996 (I said 1995 in the episode, which is the year it was written). It has been released under a Creative Commons, Attribution, Non-Commercial, Share Alike license. You can find the full text of the story here.Civil War era music is from History on the Net; the songs were The Vacant Chair and Tramp, Tramp, Tramp. The closing song is Song to the Moon from the opera Rusalka, performed by Zaira Soria, released under a Creative Commons Attribution license.

This is a story in the form of a long-form magazine article, which I think is a neat way to write a bit of speculative fiction. It’s a story about art and machine learning. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike License. The full text can be found on the author's website, here.Music:Pump, by Gunnar OlsenNew Land, by AlbisTerminal D, by Silent PartnerIn Albany New York, by the 126ersAll music can be found at the YouTube Audio Library.

This is an alternate history story set in the 1880s and concerns the underground activities of a group of first-wave feminists. It has been released under a Creative Commons, Attribution, Non-Commercial, Share Alike license, and the full text can be found here.Music Credits:Autumn Sunset by Audionautix is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)Artist: http://audionautix.com/Chorale No. 1 by Twin Musicom is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)Artist: http://www.twinmusicom.org/Easy Breezy by Silent Partner can be found at the YouTube Audio Library, as can the other works above.

This is an alternate history story set in the 1880s and concerns the underground activities of a group of first-wave feminists. It has been released under a Creative Commons, Attribution, Non-Commercial, Share Alike license, and the full text can be found here, as part of the author's short story collection, The Baum Plan for Financial Independence and Other Stories.

Music Attribution:

Autumn Sunset by Audionautix is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Artist: http://audionautix.com/

Chorale No. 1 by Twin Musicom is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Artist: http://www.twinmusicom.org/

Easy Breezy by Silent Partner can be found at the YouTube Audio Library, as can the other works above.

This is a story in the form of a long-form magazine article, which I think is a neat way to write a bit of speculative fiction. It’s a story about art and machine learning.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike License. The full text can be found on the author's website, here. Several other works by Ken Liu can be found for free at his website, here. You can also listen to his World Fantasy Award, Hugo, and Nebula-winning short story The Paper Menagerie on the Levar Burton Reads podcast; it's episode 11.

Music: Pump by Gunnar Olsen, New Land by ALBIS, Terminal D by Silent Partner, In Albany New York by the 126ers. All music can be found at the YouTube Audio Library.

A bit of Civil War alternate history, this story won a Hugo Award in 1996 (I said 1995 in the episode, which is the year it was written). It has been released under a Creative Commons, Attribution, Non-Commercial, Share Alike license, along with many of the Maureen McHugh's other works, in a collection called Mothers and Other Monsters. You can find the full text of the story here.

Civil War era music is from History on the Net; the songs were The Vacant Chair and Tramp, Tramp, Tramp. The closing song is Song to the Moon from the opera Rusalka, performed by Zaira Soria, released under a Creative Commons Attribution license.

The text of this story and can be found online here. It was released under a Creative Commons, Attribution, Non-Commercial, Share Alike license. The other stories in the collection, Thoughtcrime Experiments, are released under the same license.  

I recommended Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice series in this episode. Find out more about it at her website, here, and read more about why I think it's a better sci-fi model for political action and change here. 

Music: Noble Dub by Silent Partner, True Love by Silent

Partner, Coast by Silent Partner, Bomber by Riot, Tropix by Gunnar Olsen, and Camagüey by Silent Partner. All songs can be found on the YouTube Audio Library.