CZM Book Club: Hermetica, Interview with Alan Lea

Summary

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It Could Happen Here: CZM Book Club – Hermetica (Interview with Alan Lee)

Podcast: It Could Happen Here
Host: Cool Zone Media and iHeartPodcasts
Date: September 21, 2025
Guests: Alan Lee (author of Hermetica), Hazel (CZM Book Club regular), Margaret (host)

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Episode Overview

This episode of Cool Zone Media Book Club dives deep into Hermetica, a speculative fiction novel by Alan Lee. The hosts, joined by Lee and book club stalwart Hazel, discuss the book’s inspiration, the impacts of social control and surveillance, intersections between fiction and activism, and the challenges of both writing and publishing radical literature today. Touching on lived experience, genre, and contemporary relevance, the conversation offers insight both into the novel and into the broader role of storytelling in anarchist, anti-authoritarian thought.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Origins and Inspiration of Hermetica

[04:31-06:10]

• Alan Lee describes the book's birth during the intense early month of the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighting how feelings of lockdown and social isolation influenced its claustrophobic tone.

• Lee’s focus was less on pandemic dynamics than on “evolving technologies of social control and surveillance,” particularly the ways social media isolates while simulating connection:

  “The compartmentalizing, siloed effect of social media … really limits and cuts down on people’s social interactions while giving the illusion of having more … it could be AI, it could be robots on the other end… it’s not tactile … you’re so rarely actually in the room with people.” (Alan Lee, 04:55)

• The book also grew from ruminations on state responses to ecological crisis and forms of contemporary totalitarianism.

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Prescience about AI and the Nature of Frustration

[06:10-07:34]

• The hosts marvel at how Hermetica predicted the rise of AI-bots in online arguing, with Margaret noting that, “these days, if you’re arguing with someone on the internet, there’s really a good chance you’re just straight up arguing with a cell phone somewhere that's running a program.”
• Lee reflects, with dark humor, on the recurring frustrations of seeing social warnings go unheeded:

  “It’s like seeing people you care about jump joyfully onto a sledge... right into a trash compactor. …Do that over and over again. Every year, every century.” (Alan Lee, 06:36)

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Fiction and Nonfiction: Two Tools for Change

[08:14-11:11]

• Hazel underscores Lee’s dual life as a nonfiction and fiction author, and how fiction complements direct critique:

  • Lee’s experience: Nonfiction is easier to publish, especially outside the monopolized world of speculative fiction.
  • Both fiction and nonfiction are ways “to interact with and understand the world” and “acts of joy, of desperation, of rage, of curiosity.”

  “The real world can’t exist without the imaginary world … We need imagination. And imagination can also really allow us to better understand or change the world.” (Alan Lee, 09:59)

• Margaret quips about Marx and materialism, leading Lee to comment on constructs like money:

  “It seems like money … it’s almost as though money were not that material.” (Alan Lee, 10:57)

• Hazel links this tradition to a lineage of anarchist fiction writers like Ursula K. Le Guin, highlighting the movement’s emphasis on creative imagination.

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The Trash Compactor World: Metaphors of Control and Possibility

[12:25-19:09]

• Conversation delves into the book’s core metaphor: illusory choices in a totalizing, controlled society.
• Margaret observes a disconnect between the book’s sense that “all choices are totally illusionary” and the lived experience of resisting oppressive systems in the real world.
• Lee explains:

  • The book is not just strict metaphor but an attempt at a working world, in which the protagonist Daze’s unique perspective and limitations are core.

  • Daze’s end is “where this character would end up based on who they are,” but Lee is careful to distinguish the fictional limits from the real:

    “In the real world, there is always an outside. … The state’s goal and their practice is to make sure that there is never any outside … and at the same time, the state always fails in that goal, that there has always been an outside.” (Alan Lee, 23:07)

  • Key takeaway: Even the most totalizing systems cannot capture all forms of freedom, which may exist in rebellion, liminal spaces, or personal acts of autonomy.

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Reflections on Prison Society and Personal Experience

[19:09-24:48]

• Lee discusses surviving real prisons, and how carceral systems are simply extreme versions of broader societal control:

  “There was nothing about the experience [of prison] that didn’t remind me about the psychiatric ward … high school itself, all these other institutions. We really do live in a prison society… that’s not just a hyperbolic metaphor.” (Alan Lee, 21:54)

• The limits placed on choice in maximum security become metaphors for broader struggles—yet individual autonomy always finds cracks.

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The Anarchist Tradition in Speculative Fiction

[30:59-37:48]

• Hazel observes that Hermetica feels like classic, golden-age sci-fi but with a modern anarchist spin: “What if we took the tone and theme of [Orwell or Huxley] and gave it a fresh, modern, anarchist, anti-authoritarian twist?”

• Lee credits magical realism (Marquez’s 100 Years of Solitude, Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita), classic dystopias (We by Zamyatin, 1984, Brave New World), and Vonnegut as inspirations.

• They critique how current publishing industry conventions constrain genre fiction, with Lee noting:

  “If we differentiated between a tool and a machine… with the machine, we just become adjuncts to the machine… feed material into it, following parameters set by the machine.” (Alan Lee, 33:29)

• Margaret describes how publishing does allow for radical content but often demands specific genre conventions in form and character, while the legacy of major dystopian fiction is rooted in anarchist and anti-authoritarian thought:

  “All of these classic works of dystopia … were written by people who have this set of values — they believe in both socialism and freedom, take care of each other but also be in charge of ourselves…” (Margaret, 37:05)

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On Publishing, Algorithms, and Representation

[37:48-39:33]

• Lee explains how big publishers now "algo-decide" what gets promoted — most titles are essentially buried, serving mainly as potential IP for blockbuster adaptation.

• Notable advice for writers: Pre-orders and buzz matter more than ever for a book's survival in traditional publishing.

• Despite industry failings, the field is more open to marginalized voices than in the past.

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Book Recommendations and Endorsements

[39:33-43:09]

• Alan Lee: Recommends Arkady Martine (A Memory Called Empire), Emma Mieko Candon, Hilary Mantel (The Mirror and the Light), and classic Calvin and Hobbes.
• Margaret: Just read Morsel by Carter Keene (upcoming horror novella with radical politics).
• Hazel: Recently enjoyed cozy novellas:
  • A Song for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers (gentle, post-apocalyptic reflecting on burnout, nature, and healing)
  • A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping by Sangu Mandana (about disability, grief, and found family)
  • The Word for World is Forest by Ursula K. Le Guin (“violent in a cathartic way … is what Star Wars and Avatar ripped off”)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “We need imagination. And imagination can also really allow us to better understand or change the world that we live in.”
  — Alan Lee, 09:59

• "As an anarchist, I feel like that’s a part of our lot is being incredibly frustrated … seeing people you care about jump joyfully onto a sledge … into a trash compactor.”
  — Alan Lee, 06:36

• “The real world can’t exist without the imaginary world. And that’s true on a mathematical level. That’s also true on the level of how societies organize themselves.”
  — Alan Lee, 09:59

• “We really do live in a prison society. That's not just a hyperbolic metaphor. … It's not exceptional. It's so similar to all the other institutions that make up our society.”
  — Alan Lee, 21:54

• “Freedom is not like, I am an island, a sovereign island that is unencroached by other islands. ... It’s that we are all influencing each other, but without undue pressure or constraint…”
  — Alan Lee, 23:09

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [03:09] – Intro and welcome; the structure of this Book Club
• [04:31] – Alan Lee on inspiration and the writing process
• [06:36] – On AI, social control, and anarchist prescience
• [08:14] – Relationship between fiction and nonfiction in radical writing
• [12:25 / 19:09] – Metaphorical vs. literal constraints, agency inside and outside systems
• [21:54] – Personal experience with prison as informational backdrop
• [23:07] – Possibilities of “the outside” and limitations of state totality
• [30:59] – Discussion of genre, influences, and the machinery of publishing
• [39:33] – Book recommendations and personal reading habits
• [43:09] – Alan Lee teases upcoming trilogy, Mad Hatter

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Episode Tone and Feel

The conversation is relaxed, a touch irreverent, and deeply thoughtful — blending personal anecdote, political critique, and literary analysis, with frequent wry humor about podcast ads and genre conventions. The hosts and author make radical ideas accessible, rooting them in lived experience and contemporary cultural dynamics.

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Further Reading/Listening

• Hermetica by Alan Lee (the subject of the discussion)
• A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine
• A Song for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers
• The Word for World is Forest by Ursula K. Le Guin
• Morsel by Carter Keene (forthcoming)

Coming soon: Mad Hatter trilogy by Alan Lee

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Transcript

[Hazel]

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[Margaret]

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[Alan Lee]

Speaking of tanning, I was sunning my.

[Margaret]

Nether regions because I read that you're.

[Alan Lee]

Supposed to like get sun not only.

[Margaret]

In your mouth but also in your other orifices. Wait, are you talking about you put your hole into the sun? I did. That's crazy.

[Alan Lee]

Downward dog mooning the sun.

[Margaret]

I was gonna say. Is it cheeks open?

[Alan Lee]

It's cheeks open all the way wide.

[Margaret]

Is it cheeks?

[Alan Lee]

Huh?

[Margaret]

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[Alan Lee]

Cool Zone Media.

[Margaret]

Book Club.

[Alan Lee]

Book club. Book club. Book club. Book club. Book club. Book club. Book club. Book club.

[Margaret]

Hello and welcome to Cool Zone Media Book Club, the only book club where you don't have to do the reading because I do it for you. And I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, how has this been a proper book club club when you do the reading, but then there's no discussion. Well, this week we're gonna have a discussion. And we have on not only the author, Alan Lee, of the book that you just listened to, Hermetica, but also Hazel, who helps a lot with book club. And so that way it's an actual conversation between a bunch of people. How are you, Alan? I'll start with Alan.

[Alan Lee]

I don't know. I'm here.

[Margaret]

Yay.

[Alan Lee]

And a variety of complex and ineffable ways.

[Hazel]

Love this for you. Hi. I'm also feeling complex and ineffable. That was an incredible description. I had a little smoothie for breakfast. I got up early. I'm so proud of myself.

[Margaret]

We are here at the crack of 10am to record for you all Eastern time. Eastern time. That's how much we all love you. So there's a book. It's called Hermetica. We just listened to it. Well, you all just listened to it. Well, I don't know. Whatever. And we want to talk about it. Hazel, what do you got?

[Hazel]

Yeah, let's start off with just where the book came from. Can you tell us a little bit about where you found inspiration for this and maybe where you typically find inspiration for your fiction?

[Alan Lee]

Well, every writing process is different. I did the vast majority of the writing for Hermetica in a very frenzied month early in the COVID pandemic. So the feelings of lockdown may have shown up a little bit in the claustrophobia of the work. Maybe. I mean, probably not. Context isn't real, but, no, it definitely is real. And so that was a part of it. While also thinking about evolving technologies of social control and surveillance, far more than the pandemic would say, social media actually really shows up in this book. The compartmentalizing, siloed effect of social media, how it allows people's reality to be controlled, how it really, really limits and cuts down on people's social interactions while giving them the illusion of having more social interactions, when, in fact, these interactions could be, you know, it could be AI, it could be robots on the other end of things. And in any case, it's not tactile. It's not, you know, olfactory. Like, you're so rarely actually in the room with people or walking down the street with people. And then, of course, always. And connected to that. A lot of thinking about different options that the state may have for responding to the ecological crisis, to responding to these building pressures that may lead towards collapse and what different forms of totalitarianism might look like today.

[Margaret]

Is it frustrating to have been prescient so fast about the AI thing where, like. Because I think in 2020, 2021, it was less likely that the people that you would be arguing with on the Internet were literally not people. Right. But these days, more and more, if you're arguing with someone on the Internet, there's like a really good chance you're just straight up arguing with a cell phone somewhere. That is like running a program.

[Alan Lee]

Personally, as an anarchist, I feel like that's a part of our lot is being incredibly frustrated with. It's not like an ego thing. It's not like an I told you thing. It's like seeing people that you care about jump joyfully onto a sledge and go full speed down a snowy hill right into a trash compactor. And at the beginning, you're like, there's a trash compactor right there. And you have to watch this whole beautiful descent and then just the horror of all the blood and gore flying. And then do that over and over again. Every year, every century. I think sometimes I wake up with, I don't know, Emma Goldman or Alexander Berkman screaming through my mouth. Things that should have been obvious at the end of the 19th century. And we just keep diving headfirst into it. But somehow we're surviving this trash compactor world. It can be frustrating, and it can also be inspiring on some dark levels that, like, you know, we're still here.

[Margaret]

Yeah. Yeah, it's heavy.

[Alan Lee]

We're still here. Give us another one. Let's go through the masher again.

[Margaret]

Yeah. Back onto the sled, motherfuckers. Yeah.

[Hazel]

Alan, you're somebody who I came across first through, like, nonfiction, particularly through, like, how to Live in the Trash Compactor World. And I'm. I remember you handed me this book and I went, oh, my friend writes fiction, too. I'm wondering if you could talk about. I know that Fiction is important to you in your personal life. And I'm wondering specifically if you could talk about your relationship with fiction and how the fiction that you write complements your nonfiction work.

[Alan Lee]

Yeah. So it's not really a secret anymore, but I also write a lot of nonfiction under another name, which, you know, you might be able to find out. Any sleuths out there, or.

[Margaret]

We've been saying it at the top and bottom of every episode that people should check out your books. We got permission from you to do this. I want to be really clear.

[Alan Lee]

Oh, yeah, no, I know. Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. But how about we don't say that name at all during this whole interview, and then we'll force our sleuths out there in case any of them haven't to listen to the book.

[Margaret]

Okay.

[Alan Lee]

Yeah, well, you know, low bar. Low bar for sleuthing these days. Like, I mean, all of the big mysteries are obvious. Like, yes, it is genocide. Yes, we are heading towards billions of deaths and mass extinction. Like, they don't even have to hide it anymore. Yeah. From early on, I had a lot more luck getting the nonfiction published. Some of it is luck. Some of it is also that the fiction world is way more. Especially speculative fiction is way more monopolized or kind of concentrated into like five massive evil corporations. They control such a larger share of the speculative fiction that is published than in the non fiction world, where you have a lot more independent presses that have managed to hold on. And that might be starting to change again for the better as far as fiction is concerned. But it can be really difficult to get fiction published. So even though I might, my nonfiction writing is definitely way more widespread. I've been writing fiction since I was a little kid, both as a form of survival and a form of pure, unmitigated joy. When I was a teeny little kid, I would just kind of walk back and forth in the woods or if I was stuck in the house, stuck in the house, just kind of imagining different worlds and stories and whatnot. And also as one becomes more and more aware of the world around them. I don't want to take a utilitarian approach, either to non fiction or to fiction. I think they both can and should be acts of joy, of desperation, of rage, of curiosity. But they're both tools for understanding the world around us, for interacting with the world around us. And basically the real world can't exist without the imaginary world. And that's true on a mathematical level. That's also true on. On the level of how societies organize themselves. We need imagination. And imagination can also really allow us to better understand or change the world that we live in.

[Margaret]

But if that were true, then Marx's pure materialism might not be fully correct. And so I actually think you must be wrong because Marx said that everything is material.

[Alan Lee]

I'm. I'm probably wrong. And.

[Margaret]

Yeah.

[Alan Lee]

And though I do prefer cash money, like, it seems like money, I don't know, it's almost as though money were not that material. Like, less than trying to say that.

[Margaret]

Social constructs are real.

[Hazel]

I do think this is one of the, like, great gifts of anarchism, though, is that, like, a lot of our, like, great anarchists are like, also fiction writers. You know, like, Ursula K. Le Guin was predominantly a fiction writer. I think this is, like a thing that's really special about the anarchist tradition, is that we are so interwoven in with fiction and with imagination and along with exploring how big themes show up in our actual lives, also exploring how things could be different or how things could be worse.

[Margaret]

Yeah, I think that we kind of like missed a period. When I first started writing fiction or like reading about anarchist fiction, I was like, oh, where is it? And I had trouble finding it a while ago, and that's changed completely. And then, yeah, if I look back historically, there is so much fiction in the anarchist movement and like the left and, you know, whatever, more broadly. And it, it just kind of, it stopped being the thing that people were focused on for a little while and focused on is the wrong word. Right. I don't think we should all, like, writing novels isn't the way, the way that we change the world. Right? It's like one of the ways that we influence the world and also survive inside the trash compactor.

[Hazel]

But Margaret, you know how else we survive inside the trash compaction and influence the world?

[Margaret]

Is it the fact that our podcast is sponsored by goods and services that people can rely on for every single need they have and we can rely on for modest income?

[Hazel]

I do like a modest income. And I do love the fact that I hate capitalism. With the strong exception of anything that is plugged on this podcast.

[Margaret]

That's right. Here's all the stuff we personally love that we have absolutely no control over because it's just ads.

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[Margaret]

And we're back.

[Alan Lee]

I personally love to shower with that product that was just advertised.

[Hazel]

Oh, especially the Internet mattresses. You love to shower with those Internet mattresses.

[Margaret]

Well, the best part is that there's, like, a whole series of categories of ads that we have completely banned, but sometimes they slip in anyway. And the most famous example of this is that a couple years ago, Cool Zone Media had some ads for joining the Washington State Highway Patrol.

[Alan Lee]

Oh, God.

[Margaret]

And then I was listening once, and I got an ad for become a jailer.

[Alan Lee]

Oh, geez.

[Hazel]

I got an ad once for become a jailer in Ohio specifically.

[Margaret]

Yeah. I think I was driving through Ohio when that happened to me. So if you're listening in Ohio, Sorry. Yeah, don't do that. That's an exception. Anyway, so I want to fuss at you about this book. I really like this book. I just read it for the. The second time to a bunch of people. And there's a point near the end of this book, days is in job search jail. And in job search jail days is like thinking through, well, what if I go study moss, but then work with people to step outside the system? And if this was a neat, simple narrative, this is what would happen, right? And I recognize that everyone has different ways of responding to things, but that's what I would do. Right? And I think that there's this interesting thing, right? You're presenting this very grand metaphor, and I think in the classic science fiction way, you're presenting this grand metaphor for how all of our choices are illusory. Right? I don't know how to pronounce that word, but it turns out illusionary isn't a word, and I'm really annoyed by that, because illusionary should be the word because it makes more sense than illusory.

[Alan Lee]

Illusory, I think, does a good job as a pronunciation. It, like, brings out, you know, the word illusion.

[Margaret]

Yeah, no, that makes more sense. I have this problem where I read more than I talk, which is impressive because I talk for a living. But you have these illusionary choices. I'm gonna try and make this. Fucking make this.

[Alan Lee]

We're allowed to make words. Every word was made by a person.

[Margaret]

Yeah. Whoa. Until the future when they're all made by robots, and then we're shot if we use the wrong ones. In this job search metaphor, jail, basically. Saying that all choices that we make are totally illusionary and illusion of freedom and there is no outside the system is one of the main things in this metaphorical world. But all three of us are currently alive, and all three of us perceive ourselves as doing a complicated navigation with a system to kind of live outside and to try to open up the concept of an outside. So in my mind, the metaphor of this book and the actions that the character is choosing work within the context of this metaphor and not within the real world that it's representing. I don't have a question here. I'm just trying to challenge you about this part.

[Alan Lee]

Yeah, so first referring really strictly to the story, and then to get theoretical. Finally after that. I don't see the book as a strict metaphor. Obviously, there's a lot of metaphor in it. I also intend it to be a world that works. A world that might be our world someday, hopefully not, but might be in addition to a reflection on the world that we currently inhabit. I think Daze makes the choice that makes the most sense for them. Days is a little bit crazy. Daze is not like everyone else in terms of how emotionally and psychologically they relate with the rest of the world. And instead of them being cast as neurodivergent, which in my humble opinion is just like a stupid, literal synonym for abnormal, their craziness actually gives them strengths that other people don't have. It also deprives them of some of the resources of stronger human connection where they could just soldier on through the lies. They could soldier on through that prison world and keep surviving. So dying or possibly dying, suicide, for them is a choice. I mean, there's also a great sadness to it. Like, Days also inhabit a very sad world. They can't really survive in a prison once they realize that it's a prison. And that's the reality for a lot of us in this world. In the real world, there is always an outside. There are almost always other choices until we end up in maximum security prison. In maximum security prison, I mean, your choices are basically eat or. Or don't eat, try to kill yourself, or try to survive because of the extreme level of physical constraint. But outside of prison, in the rest of the world, a lot of us end up taking our own lives as a response to prison society. And that's what Daze does. I did bring in a couple other characters to reflect that there were other choices. But, yeah, I guess I feel like that that was kind of where this character would end up based on who they are.

[Margaret]

No, it makes sense. And it does make sense as the end of the story. I just have this. I think it was that reading the. Oh, well, this other story would Be like this. And I'm like, ah, that's the one I would pick. Right. But I also do think it's kind of worth reflecting on. Not that people can only write about their own experiences, but the first time I met you, you handed me a book of short stories that you had written in prison. I can see how the experience of having absolutely no control might have influenced. I think a lot of people would write this as a raw thought experiment. They're like, oh, what if I was in job search prison? But you've been in. Well, I think it wasn't job search prison that you were in, but I don't know. How does this relate?

[Alan Lee]

Yeah, I was in real prison. Different security levels, from maximum security to minimum security. That definitely relates. I mean, that definitely marked and influenced me as a person. And at the same time, one of the most remarkable things about it was when I went in, there was nothing new about the experience. There was nothing that didn't remind me about the psychiatric ward. The one time in high school when I was hospitalized, or high school itself, or all of these other institutions. We really do live in a prison society. That's not just a hyperbolic metaphor. And so being in an actual prison definitely changes you and influences you, but also it's not an other reality. It's not exceptional. It's so similar to all the other institutions that make up our society. And that kind of also brings us to this question of the outside of what's potentially outside of all of this. I think a lot of radical academics will construct these really beautiful theories, these little airtight theories, almost airtight, like certain buildings we might have just recently referred to.

[Margaret]

Hermetically sealed.

[Alan Lee]

Yeah, these hermetically sealed theories, exactly. Thank you. And I think one of the problems with that is, in a very kind of unconsciously colonial Western way, they're confusing influence with unfreedom. There's nowhere on the planet that is not influenced by capitalism in the state. We can find plastic trash at the bottom of the deepest trench in the Pacific Ocean. But influence is not unfreedom. Influence is actually freedom. Freedom is not like, I am an island, a sovereign island that is unencroached by other islands. It's that we are all influencing each other, but without undue pressure or constraint from one of the beings or one of the forces within this overall network. And so, on the one hand, it's really important to recognize that the state's imaginary, the state's model, the state's goal and their practice is to make sure that there is Never any outside, that there is never any real independence or freedom from it. And at the same time, the state always fails in that goal, that there has always been an outside. Sometimes the outside is right under the state's nose. Sometimes it's in the borderlands, sometimes it's in the crossing of borders, sometimes it's in illegible spaces, sometimes it's in huge rebellions. And sometimes it's in the choice that a single prisoner has with no other friends nearby, with no other connections to stop eating, to stop going along with it. And choice is a really important part of control. Domination works a lot better if they give us choices, if they give us elections. But there are always going to be more choices than the ones that we're presented with.

[Margaret]

I like that. I think that that is the kind of core of Hermetica is the staring at the six choices on the board being like, oh, you can choose to wear the, I don't know, Che Guevara shirt and become a state sanctioned radical or whatever. I don't know where I'm going with that. Someone saved me.

[Hazel]

You know what six choices this podcast offers you. I'm so sorry I was encountering this while we were going through the script of the book. I was like I to put an ad pivot in here, but this is really heavy and I feel really bad pivoting to ads. But we all also need to get paid and I am deeply, deeply grateful in my gen deflection for the sponsors. You make your own choices about whether you listen to them.

[Margaret]

I want everyone to understand how deeply we think about these ad pivots and see the inside baseball of how we think about these ad pivots and how they keep us awake at night to make the perfect ad pivot.

[Alan Lee]

Yes, readers, listeners, if I may, could we just all reach through the ether across the Internet, the physical distance that separates us, hold hands and genuflect to our sponsors.

[Margaret]

That's right.

[Alan Lee]

Thank you for that word, Hazel.

[Hazel]

Yeah, you're welcome.

[Margaret]

And here they are.

[Hazel]

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[Margaret]

And we're back. I, for one, am glad we found our new God, whatever the last sponsor was.

[Alan Lee]

Mm.

[Margaret]

I feel bad for all the people who got the other advertisers because they're not our new God. It's only the last one.

[Alan Lee]

Other people are so doomed.

[Margaret]

Whew yeah, it's really just a lottery.

[Hazel]

At least they're not following any of the other many products and services that aren't advertised on the show that are shortly about to become illegal.

[Margaret]

Because they're not on the show or because we live in a fascist cell state and everything's illegal now.

[Hazel]

Who knows? Let's talk about genre space. It's instead. Okay, yeah. Alan, I want to chat about genre space. This is a book to me that really reads like something from like a classic golden age of sci fi novella. It's got this, like, really sweeping metaphor that's not one to one. It's aiming towards, like, bigger sociological themes. There's like whole Socratic asides about gender. And I guess that's something that I don't encounter very often anymore. And it was really fun to read. Something that felt to me like, what if we took kind of the tone and the theme of something like Brave new world or 1984, something that I really grew up in middle school on, and then gave it a fresh modern, anarchist, anti authoritarian twist? I don't know. I guess I'm curious. Could you tell us a little bit more about what was interesting to you about that tone and how you came to that as the tropes and the frameworks that you were gonna work within?

[Alan Lee]

I love that you bring that out because for me, that was. This might seem odd, almost unconscious or invisible to me because it's just kind of like. I described this earlier as a very feverish writing process. I was so in it that I could barely see it. And really some of the big influential works for me growing up and maybe also in my 20s. Let's see. I think you mentioned Kurt Vonnegut. That definitely figures. Also a lot of the major works of magical realism, whether it's Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 100 Years of Solitude, or Bulgakov's Master and Margarita.

[Hazel]

I'll also say the Truman Show. This book feels in a lot of ways like a reverse Truman Show.

[Margaret]

Yeah, that's true. The sky is real, so the sky is fake.

[Alan Lee]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Getting even older. Like before 1984, there's this lesser known novel by Yevgeny Zamyatin, we early Soviet novel, where one of the people to speak out around this socialist revolution that was quickly turning into a hellscape, was a science fiction writer. And he wrote something that was certainly a huge influence on Orwell and is also very much about a surveillance society. I think a lot of those older works were a much greater influence on me than a lot of Newer speculative fiction, which is not to say that that the newer speculative fiction isn't there. I think there have been some really amazing works coming out lately. There's also been a lot of really mediocre stuff that gets huge, huge, huge platforms. But the great stuff, I think still really has to generally pass this filter, which is designed more for the marketing of books. It's designed more for the limitations of editors and agents that are looking at hundreds of manuscripts or pitches a day. And so really the way that if we differentiated between a tool and a machine, we have more choice with the tool, we have more craft with the tool. We can use it to amplify our abilities, to amplify our effect. Whereas a machine, we just become adjuncts to the machine. We have to feed material into the machine, following parameters set by the machine. And I'd actually love to hear more from you, Margaret, about your experiences with both larger publishers and independent publishers. But, yeah, I think for me, that's been. I guess I've sort of resisted some of the generic rules that have kind of come up in the last 10 or 20 years that are really set by the industry machine. And I think I've kind of immersed myself more in looking back to other works of speculative fiction from decades and decades ago.

[Margaret]

I do have a different take on the way that publishing is working right now. I actually think that the publishing world does not shy away from radical content. It is that there's specific asks in genre around form. And this has been true, I think, forever, because genre fiction, literally, by being genre fiction, has a certain commercial aspect to it and a certain popular fiction aspect to it, which I actually think is one of its more interesting advantages. I think it reaches more people than literature often. And so, yes, there is kind of lowest common denominator stuff in the Marvel movies or things like that. But I actually think that the genre fiction world right now is alive with radicalism. And I think that even at the major publishers, most of the individual editors who are making these decisions are themselves very radical, or at least progressive and. And tend to be progressive, who are open to radical ideas. This has been my experience. I remember writing a short story about people using drones to kill CEOs and how that was fine. And I remember being like, no one will ever touch this. And Strange Horizons published it and did a good job with it and it was reasonably well received. But I think that there are absolutely genre restrictions that change over time, and you kind of have to play within them about ways of describing characters and ways that plots work and who the interiority is with and things like that that are larger social conventions of form. But I do think that it is interesting and good to be able to just also sometimes be like, but that's not what this book is. I don't fucking care. And my other aside is that just to be really nerdy about anarchist fiction. You mentioned Vonnegut, you mentioned Huxley and Orwell, and Vonnegut was a pacifist anarchist very explicitly. Huxley was an anarchist. Huxley specifically said in the introduction to I think island, his utopian novel that I haven't read since I was a teenager, he says what the world needs is decentralization of a Kropotkin esque nature. And so what he's saying is what the world needs is anarchism. And referencing Peter Kropotkin. And of course Orwell is a very complicated figure, but was certainly willing to throw grenades at fascists and get shot through the neck for that process. And so I will forgive a lot of decisions that he made based on that. And he also specifically said if I had gone to Spain to fight again, I would have gone with the anarchists if I had known what I knew going into it. Instead he fought with an anti state Marxist militia, the PUM or whatever. More complicated than that. C the entire first year of cool people who did cool stuff for me, talking about the Spanish Civil War and also my episode about Orwell. But I think it's interesting that a lot of the people that we will reference as these sort of like grand figures of science fiction and speculative concepts and even to throw one that I'm always sort of afraid to throw in Clockwork Orange Man. Anthony Burgess was also an anarchist. And obviously the movie of that is a very interesting, complicated edgelord piece of fiction that is trying to explain a social idea. And I am not really even trying to say anything about that right now, but I think that's interesting that it's coming from people who have this very specific set of critiques where they believe in both socialism and freedom, where they believe we should take care of each other but also be in charge of ourselves, and that the state shouldn't be this massive domineering force. And so it's really interesting to me that the golden Age, I don't know if Golden Age is the right word, but all of these classic works of dystopia and stuff were written by people who have this set of values.

[Alan Lee]

Yeah, yeah, publishing currently they're kind of capturing and publishing a huge number of books of new stories and on the one hand, they're doing this in a pretty harmful marketplace of ideas sort of way, where they're algorithmically from the first day. And so this is important for any new authors out there. Get all of your friends, get everyone you can to help you boost your book before it even hits the shelves.

[Margaret]

Oh, yeah, with pre orders.

[Alan Lee]

Pre orders, campaigns, buzz, whatever. Because algorithms do so much of the decision making now about a major publisher. They're not just publishing a dozen books a year, they're publishing hundreds or thousands. And what they're doing is they're scooping up intellectual property. So they get a big cut. They may even be mediocre renditions of a story that gets scooped up by Hollywood and turned into a blockbuster film that there's a whole bunch of money in. And otherwise, they're basically just from day one, upvoting or downvoting a book. And so they might be publishing thousands of titles with the hopes that they get one or two bestsellers out of it. And so all of those other books, they get published, this author feels like they had this amazing experience of like, hey, my story's gotten out there, and really, it's kind of buried in an intellectual property vault. So on the one hand, we have this really damaging marketplace of ideas, but on the other hand, it does also really mean that the publishing industry is open, just like you said, a huge diversity of different kinds of stories to radical stories, to people who, just because of their gender or the color of their skin, might have been barred from a chance of publishing speculative fiction in the not so distant past.

[Hazel]

Yeah, I think that brings us into a nice outro. I wanted to end on just asking y' all what you've been reading recently, anything you've been enjoying, Anything you would recommend.

[Alan Lee]

Well, let's see. I have definitely been keeping up on what Arkady Martine has been writing. That's the author of A Memory Called Empire, also Emma Mieko Kandon, Hilary Mantel's historical fiction series the Mirror and the Light. I'm currently reading the last one in that trilogy. And then I always go back to some old classics. Lately, I've been finding a lot of solace in Calvin and Hobbes, which is, I think, just some of the best metafiction that's ever been written.

[Margaret]

One of the first zines I was ever handed when I became an anarchist was a big oversized zine that was 8 and a half by 11 stapled in the corner, and it was Calvin and Hobbes as anarchist, and they didn't Change any of the words of any of the Calvin and Hobbes comics.

[Alan Lee]

I remember that one.

[Margaret]

They just like organized them by like critiques of society, critiques of school, critiques of work.

[Alan Lee]

Yeah, yeah. So good.

[Margaret]

I finished reading a book that is coming out soon by Carter Keene. It's called Morsel and it's a horror novella that's really good and I don't know, has good, like radical politics woven throughout a story about an ancient monster. I really liked that. Hazel. You read anything good?

[Hazel]

I have mostly been reading things that are cozy and gentle, which is not quite the vibe of the things that you both were plugging. But I've really enjoyed A Song for the Wild Belt by Becky Dreambers, which is a novella about a tea monk who has a like steampunk ass bicycle powered little tea cart that they ride around and then they meet this robot who like helps them go on a journey. And it's very sweet. It's about burnout and reconnecting with nature and regrowing part of your soul. I also really enjoyed A Witch's Guide to Magical Innkeeping by Sangu Mandana, which is about a witch who runs an inn and is trying to get her magic back. And is has a lot about disability, grief and also burnout and found family and what magic really is. So that's what I've been enjoying. If you want something a little bit more edgy, I did also recently reread the Word for World is Forest by Ursula Kalin, which is a really good novella about. It's like Ursula's perspectives on kind of the Vietnam War and also generally on colonialism and exploitation. Yeah, it's good. It's violent in a cathartic way. It's revolutionary.

[Margaret]

Is it also what Star wars ripped off?

[Hazel]

It is what Star wars ripped off Avatar.

[Margaret]

I thought, well, so Star wars rips it off because Andor is the name of. Oh, andor the like city that the creatures that are totally not Ewoks are based out of.

[Hazel]

They also are human. It's important that they are. They are kind of described as like short teddy bear people, but they are genetically also human.

[Margaret]

Yeah, I think that just the like, I don't know, as soon as I realized that their town was called Andor, I was like, this is just literally what the Ewoks are based on. This is just the word for world is Forest is my favorite Star wars film as a kid. Anyway, anyone got anything to plug here? Alan, you got anything you've been writing?

[Alan Lee]

Well, actually. So like I said at the beginning. I've been writing fiction forever. I have just manuscripts and manuscripts that are awaiting publication and I might be getting some good news. There's a really strong possibility that in the next year or two you will see on the shelves at the independent bookstore near you and certainly not Amazon, the first in a trilogy called Mad Hatter. So yeah, we're just waiting for an official announcement, but this is a pre official announcement that yeah, my next sci fi book, Mad Hatter should be getting published.

[Margaret]

All right, well that's it for Cool Zone Media Book Club this week and next week we'll bring you more stories.

[Alan Lee]

Yay. Thanks.

[Hazel]

Thanks y' all.

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[Hazel]

This is an iHeart podcast.