Ep 723 - Of Monsters and Mainframes, by Barbara Truelove

Summary

Overdue Podcast Episode 723: "Of Monsters and Mainframes" by Barbara Truelove

Release Date: October 6, 2025
Hosts: Andrew & Craig
Podcast Theme: Overdue is a podcast about the books you’ve been meaning to read. Every week Andrew and Craig tackle a different title—ranging from classic literature to trendy BookTok sensations.

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Episode Overview

Main Theme:
For the kickoff of Spooktober (Overdue’s annual October series dedicated to “books with monsters, chills, spills, and thrills”), Andrew and Craig discuss "Of Monsters and Mainframes" by Barbara Truelove, a recent speculative sci-fi horror novel notable for its BookTok popularity and unconventional path to publication. The episode explores the book’s tone, its playful riffing on genre tropes, and the evolving landscape of influencer-driven and micro-imprint publishing.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Spooktober Kickoff & Book Selection Context

• (03:19–07:49):
  • Andrew and Craig celebrate the start of Spooktober, reviving their tradition of monster/bizarre reads for October.
  • "Of Monsters and Mainframes" is described as a book blending classic monsters with science fiction, capturing recent trends in book design (e.g., bold fonts, vibrant covers), and fitting in with viral “BookTok” reads.
  • Discussion of upcoming Spooktober schedule: Dark Carnival (Bradbury), Haunted Baby (Packard), and I Know What You Did Last Summer (Duncan).

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2. About Barbara Truelove & Publication Backstory

• (08:00–21:01):
  • Barbara Truelove: An Australian author and game designer, known for writing about werewolves, vampires, and sentient spaceships. Her career includes stints in TV, hospitality, and teaching English in South Korea.
  • "Of Monsters and Mainframes" is her first non-interactive, full-length novel.
  • Interactive Fiction Background: Reference to Blood Moon, an interactive werewolf novel published through Choice of Games.
  • Publisher (Bindery/Easy Cat Press):
    • The novel was published via Bindery, a BookTok-centric, influencer-driven micro-imprint platform. “Easy Cat Press” is the micro-imprint of Jason Headley a.k.a. EasyCat.
    • Bindery works with influencers to select manuscripts from agency submissions; chosen books get published with the influencer’s support and branding.
  • Craig notes the business model: “low advance, high royalty deal” (18:53), and how influencer-driven publishing may shape the literary landscape.
  • Notable quote on the ethos:
    • Andrew, reading Headley/EasyCat's perspective:

      “We’ve seen Big Five publishers refuse to pick up riskier books due to the author not having a social media presence… we've seen Big Five publishers so intent on publishing things they know will sell, they're willing to take fewer and fewer risks.” (23:57, Andrew quoting EasyCat)

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3. Book Structure, Tone, and Style

• (28:30–29:39):
  • The book is described as a fusion of light horror, adventure, and witty sci-fi:
    • “Sort of like ‘light horror plus adventure’. It’s sort of murder-botty. The AI computer characters… they got a little bit of ‘tude to them.” (29:10, Andrew)
  • Listeners compare the book to Martha Wells’ Murderbot Diaries and Becky Chambers, but with monster twists.

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4. Plot Summary & Worldbuilding

• (32:20–61:17; selected highlights):

a) Opening & Main Character: Demeter

• The ship's AI, Demeter, is the primary narrator. The story opens with her booting up after a long journey.
• “It's day 2293 of our journey, and we're on our final approach to Alpha Centauri B…” (32:20, Andrew quoting book)

b) Immediate Mystery: All the Humans Are Dead

• Demeter discovers all her human passengers have died and investigates anomalies in her memory and data logs.
• The story quickly weaves in classic monster mystery: “She notices there’s too much food slurry in her food slurry stores…” (36:15, Craig)

c) AI Characterization and Themes

• The AI characters have distinct personalities: Demeter is systematic and rules-driven; Steward is the cantankerous medbay AI (“like the Doctor from Star Trek: Voyager” (37:47, Andrew)).
• The book explores ideas of AI memory manipulation, self-patching code, and the “Three Laws of Robotics.”
• “How can these computers realize that their memory's been tampered with? How do they proceed from there?” (36:34, Andrew)

d) Monster Encounters & Episodic Structure

• Early sections follow an episodic “Monster-of-the-Week” pattern:
  • Dracula kills all passengers in the first timeline.
  • Werewolf scenario: A passenger transforms during a cosmic “moons” sightseeing event and wreaks havoc.
  • Mummy: “Steve, the sexy mummy made out of bugs from the movie The Mummy…” (41:45, Andrew)
  • Frankenstein: A cyborg assembled from the DNA of previous victims, referred to as “Frank,” goes by they/them pronouns.
  • Vampire romance: Sapphic romance subplot weaves in during later stages.
• Book’s perspective shifts among various characters/creatures, but always with a tongue-in-cheek, referential mood.

e) Tone and Style

• Book is playful with horror/scifi rules (“pictures of the moon can trigger a werewolf; vampires don’t immediately die in sunlight” (47:09–47:23, Andrew)).
• Found family motif arises as monsters band together:
  • “All the monsters end up becoming friends and teaming up against Dracula.” (45:20, Andrew)
• “If you ever wanted to read a book where you could ship a ship, this is the book that’s gonna give that to you.” (54:09, Andrew)

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5. Discussion of Strengths and Weaknesses

a) Character Voice & Relationships

• Andrew highlights the distinct personalities among AIs and monsters; more focus is on the Demeter/Steward relationship than on deep individual arcs for the monsters.
• Some book club reviewers noted that the found family arc and monster relationships could be more thoroughly developed.

b) Perspective Shifts & Audiobook Edition

• (70:04–74:34): Discussion of audiobook with seven narrators:
  • Some listeners found multiple narrators confusing, especially as each narrator tries to voice other characters in their chapters.
  • The book itself titles each chapter by narrator/perspective for clarity.

c) BookTok Style & Accessibility

• “Every book we’ve read that’s BookTok-y is about big emotions, romance, weird stories… no one’s writing Infinite Jest for BookTok.” (67:59–68:38, Andrew)

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6. Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Demeter’s Odd Awakening:

  • “I check for heat signatures, and nothing. Oh, they’re all dead. Well, that’s awkward.” (35:52, Andrew quoting book)

• On the Monsters-As-Friends Trope:

  • “All the monsters end up becoming friends and teaming up against Dracula.” (45:20, Andrew)

• On Publishing Trends:

  • “It is like going right into online communities and saying, you are the publisher now.” (20:22, Craig)

• On BookTok & Pandering:

  • (On the quick introduction of a sapphic vampire romance:)
    • “There’s an amount of pandering that happens… Know your audience, I guess.” (48:37, Andrew)

• On the Book’s Attitude:

  • “If you have any weakness for sci-fi or classic monster movies, you’ll find something to enjoy here.” (75:40, Andrew)

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7. Listener & Reviewer Feedback

• Monster-of-the-Week Structure: Some found it “a little episodic,” with the story coalescing by the midpoint into a heist/quest narrative akin to Firefly or Guardians of the Galaxy.
• AI Perspective: Praised for clever use of limited POV—hiding or revealing information naturally, such as Demeter realizing cargo weight/dirt anomalies.
• Audiobook Multi-narrator Approach: Mixed feelings; cited as “kind of confusing” (70:04, Craig summarizing listener Nora).

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Important Timestamps

• Start of main content: 03:19
• Barbara Truelove’s background: 09:39
• About Bindery & influencer publishing: 13:38–21:01
• Demeter’s opening chapter/AI voice: 32:20–34:26
• Monster-of-the-week phase: 44:12–46:12
• Shift to found family/heist narrative: 61:17
• Audiobook/narration discussion: 70:04–74:34
• Final assessment & closing thoughts: 75:18–76:00

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Final Thoughts & Recommendations

• "Of Monsters and Mainframes" delivers what Overdue’s Spooktober promises: monsters galore, a fun AI narrator, and creative genre-mixing that plays recognizably with classic horror and sci-fi tropes—without getting too dark or gruesome.
• The book’s uniqueness comes not just from its concept, but from its place in the world of BookTok-era, influencer-powered indie publishing.
• It’s recommended for those who want an irreverent mix of “Killjoys”-meets-“Universal Monster Squad” on a starship, as well as for readers interested in the ongoing evolution of how books reach the public.

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For Further Engagement

• Podcast Website & Schedule: overduepodcast.com
• Patreon/Discord: patreon.com/overduepod (join for community, bonus episodes, and more)
• Upcoming Spooktober Titles:
  • Dark Carnival by Ray Bradbury
  • Haunted Baby by Edward Packard
  • I Know What You Did Last Summer by Lois Duncan

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Notable final moment:
Andrew: "If you have any weakness at all for sci-fi or classic monster movies, I think you’ll find something to enjoy here… This is a good start to Spooktober." (75:40)

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End of summary.

Transcript

[Andrew]

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[Craig]

I do love audiobooks.

[Andrew]

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[Craig]

Please tell me more.

[Andrew]

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[Craig]

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[Craig]

This all sounds good. Andrew, could you call me to action please?

[Andrew]

I could call you to action using my phone on Mint Mobile. Are you ready to say yes to saying no? Make the [e-mail] overdue that's mintmobile.com overdue.

[Craig]

Upfront payment of $45 required, equivalent to $15 a month limited time. New customer offer for first three months only. Speeds may slow above 35 gigabytes on an unlimited plan. Taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details. While Andrew and Craig believe the joy.

[Andrew]

Of discovery is crucial to enjoying any.

[Craig]

Well told tale, they will not shy.

[Andrew]

Away from spoiling specific story beats when necessary.

[Craig]

Plus, these are books you should have read by now. Hey everybody. Welcome to Overdue. It's a podcast about the books you've been meaning to read. My name is Undead Craig.

[Andrew]

My name is Afterlife. Andrew, welcome to Spooktober. Oh, man, we almost got out of it without you doing some kind of a voice.

[Craig]

I only have the voice I have, Andrew, and I just like to stretch it sometimes. That's the real horror.

[Andrew]

I think the horror is when the tongue gets more involved. When the tongue is like, let me choose to be super audible in this. In this voice. But yeah, every year since the second year of our podcast, which we've been doing for 200 years. Yep, the entire month of October has been dedicated to spooky books with monsters and spills and chills and thrills. Sometimes the monsters are psychological, sometimes they're literal. Sometimes the monster was humanity all along. Yep, we've read pretty much every kind of monster story at this point.

[Craig]

Yeah. So I'm excited for this week's book that I understand incorporates a lot of monsters into it.

[Andrew]

And monsters. A regular. Regular. It's like all the classic serial monsters.

[Craig]

They opened up Arkham Asylum and the universal monsters spilled out. The Dark universe is here. We don't usually do this at the top of the show, but because it's Spooktober. Andrew, maybe let's share the schedule real quick to get people pumped. Spooky, of course. Andrew, what is this week's book of.

[Andrew]

Monsters and Mainframes by Barbara Truelove.

[Craig]

I can't wait to hear about which was more monstrous, the monsters or the mainframes. Next week we're going to be talking about Dark Carnival by Ray Bradbury Raymond himself, and then the Haunted Baby by Edward Packard. It is a choose your own nightmare.

[Andrew]

I need to order that.

[Craig]

I do too. Number 13. And I did. Look, there are. It's not just number 13 because that would be a spooky number. There are at least 12 other of those.

[Andrew]

Okay. Man, I. I thought that it was gonna be a little like, outlier for the choose your own adventure stories that he just did.

[Craig]

No. So we get to learn about a whole new series. I'm very excited. And then we're going to close out the month.

[Andrew]

This book. This book costs 30, at least 30 bucks on Amazon.

[Craig]

Subscribe patreon.com overdue pod help us.

[Andrew]

I'm gonna buy what might be the only.

[Craig]

I know what you did last summer by Lois Duncan will be our last book of the month. I'm excited to read that and compare it to the film that I loved as a teenager. And we're also going to be doing a Spooktober hangout stream for some of our Patreon supporters where we are going to rank into tiers all of our Spooktober books. That's going to be the goal. Will we accomplish it in one stream? I don't know. Maybe.

[Andrew]

Is there a particular for people who want to know more about how it's going to work? Is there, like, a specific tiering system?

[Craig]

I think we're going to start with S A, B, C, D. Like S tier is the best. And then you just go from there. The reason to do tiers is so that we don't have to rank them one to one against each other all the way. But you can just kind of create bands of, you know, we like this one the best. Or we thought this was a really good episode versus this one was a clunker.

[Andrew]

I've seen this for. Mostly for the Smash Brothers. Yeah, Fighters.

[Craig]

I've seen people, you know, rank many brands or like styles of furniture. Maybe we're gonna have some fun. Patreon.com overdue pod but you don't need to do that to just join us for the month of Spookin, which is what we're going to kick off this week. Andrew, I'm excited for you.

[Andrew]

It says there's one copy of Haunted Baby left in stock, but it might just be that the stock hasn't updated since I ordered my.

[Craig]

Okay. Oh.

[Andrew]

Anyway, you can figure it out.

[Craig]

All right, Andrew. We are here to talk of Monsters and Mainframes by Barbara Truelo. Published in June of this year.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

But it is a buzzy novel from the buzzy world of book talk and other places.

[Andrew]

Saw it on a shelf at a small local book and game store that I went into here in Philadelphia. Sure I did.

[Craig]

Scariest place.

[Andrew]

Go in just to see because I have not been able to buy a pack of Pokemon cards in calendar year 20, 25. Because of one of the Paul brothers, I think. And I just went in there to see if there was. If there, you know, just turn over whatever stone you can to see if you can find a pack in there to crack.

[Craig]

This is a horror story. Okay.

[Andrew]

Did you. But. And I didn't know they didn't even have any Pokemon stuff. You could see the, you know, they sold other cards. You could see that once there had been a place there for Pokemon cards.

[Craig]

Sure.

[Andrew]

But I did. I also saw this book on a shelf and it had one of those cover, you know, one of those trends.

[Craig]

It has a good cover.

[Andrew]

Has a good cover that's just like a big vampire mouth eating the words. And it is sort of on trend and that it uses lots of like bright colors and big fonts.

[Craig]

But it doesn't look like the book blob. It looks different than the book blob.

[Andrew]

No, it doesn't look like this sort of pastel romance book blob.

[Craig]

Yes. So, yeah. And then I recall when you suggested it, it had been all abuzz in our overdue community. So I'd like recognize the name. It sounded like a cool book.

[Andrew]

Yeah. There we are. The blurb got me. Not sure if I could even find the blurb in the ebook version that I read.

[Craig]

All right, see if you can find the blurb. I can tell you that Barbara Truelove is an Australian author and game designer. And I can just pull up her bio from her website to give you just kind of a sense of her sense of self, I suppose. You know, she has a short bio that she's an Australian author and game designer. She writes about werewolves and sometimes other things, including vampires, zombies and sentient spaceships. She worked in tv, ran hotels, taught English to kindergartners in South Korea. Sure, sure, sure. The long version, Barbara Truelove is the name given to a moderately sentient Homo sapien, known to wander land masses in Oceania and occasionally further afield. Powered by complex carbons and caffeine, she has existed in varying forms since the early 1990s. That's kind of the. The tongue in cheek style you're going to get here, I think, which is kind of fun. Fun to get into. She attended Griffith film school in 2015, studying screenwriting, went on to work in TV in Sydney. Then she was teaching kindergarten in Seoul and believe she was doing that in the run up to COVID lockdown and stayed there.

[Andrew]

Okay.

[Craig]

And started writing sci fi horror in her spare time, which she calls tongue in cheek stuff. Kind of ghastly funny stuff. One of the few interviews I could find with her was from a like regional Australian news outlet for this town of Goldburn where she moved I think to be closer to family. And the article has like real, even young, charming sci fi horror writers want to live here in our funny little town energy. It's really cute. What is it about? Regional.comau written by John Thistleton Sci fi horror author spells out qualities giving Goldburn an edge. She likes how walkable it is and some of the architecture, sure. But she began working on an interactive werewolf novel called Blood Moon that was ultimately published in 2023. You can find she has an itch IO page for her smaller visual not or smaller interactive novels. Blood Moon is on most platforms. You can play the first few chapters of it on like the publisher's website. ChoiceOfGames.com is one website where I found it and it seems neat. It is told from the perspective of a werewolf in a pack and then you discover a stray and whether or not you're going to take them in, I can't tell how branching it is or not.

[Andrew]

Yeah. Remember that time that we were trying to write an interactive, an interactive non trademark infringing branching path book?

[Craig]

It was tough.

[Andrew]

And we had also settled on a horror motif. The working title, as I see in folders sometimes, is the Curse of the Mummy's Curse, which is still funny to me.

[Craig]

Tmtmtm.

[Andrew]

But we never got, we never got very far partly because we couldn't figure out like technology wise what.

[Craig]

How we were. Yeah, we were messing with twine but we never got past that. And she's. I don't think that this is made in twine per se. It could be though. But I kind of like the writing seems neat. And then she has this, her first like proper debut novel of monsters and mainframes published in 2025. The Journey to publication is a little different. Andrew. Right. What is mentioned in the book? Cause you brought this up to me and then I went reading a little bit.

[Andrew]

You just get a couple of little bits in the back about the publisher. Bindery. Yeah. Jason Headley, I guess. Oh, that's easy. Yeah, yeah. That is the government name of somebody who goes by EasyCat on various social platforms. And this person is on this social book site called Bindery that I have not really like I did not dive super deep into the different features that it, that it has, but it's got a bunch of different. Like you can have a bookshelf and you can have like a little feed and and you could, it's sort of like a Goodreads with a better user interface meets Patreon.

[Craig]

Correct.

[Andrew]

For like creators and influencers.

[Craig]

Yeah, yeah.

[Andrew]

And bindery for influencers that it chooses to partner with. Like this is all, this all happens on binderies and it's not something that you can initiate yourself if you're like sufficiently large or whatever. It's all, all binderies thing. But if they like you enough and they, I assume see it as lucrative, they will offer to start your own little like branded book publishing micro imprint.

[Craig]

Is what I heard it referred to.

[Andrew]

So Easy Cat Press is, is that it's just like some guy and his social media operations. Little book publishing imprint through bindery. And so he's done this and he's done a few other ones. But yeah, it was just a, you know, we, we've read book talk famous books on the show before, like the, the fourth Wing, Colleen Hoover, maybe our biggest one. But yeah, there's some Colleen Hoovers and Colleen Hoover's been hustling for longer than book talks.

[Craig]

That's true, that's true.

[Andrew]

But yeah, this, this community of people who come to books through a short form video app. Yeah, but this is the first time I'd run into something that went sort of beyond the model of, you know, I started self publishing directly onto Amazon and then got. Yeah. Regular book famous after that. You know, I mean like it's, it's coming from a different, a different like nexus of the, of the community and it's the first time we've run into it. I found it interesting.

[Craig]

Yeah. So I, I found a Publisher's weekly article from 2023 around the launch of Bindery called a new startup proposes influencer driven publishing by Sophia Stewart says that Bindery was founded by Matt K. This is not like investigative journalism. This is, this is interesting. Here's it's new. I'm writing an article instead of just publishing the press release.

[Andrew]

First time we ever run into it, maybe we'll never run into it again. Maybe we'll be talking about it constantly for the next five years. Who knows? But here we go.

[Craig]

Matt K. And Meg Harvey kind of founded it. Harvey had worked at another publisher and they've contracted with another distributor to get these books out there. And yeah, as you said, they started with nine inaugural micro imprints that are all built around specific influencers. Headley is, I believe, an author himself and has gone on to become, you know, a video social media person. But the, the couple of things that make it interesting is that they. They work directly with agencies to get like a kind of catalog of potential manuscripts, and then they turn those manuscripts over to the tastemakers, who then select which book they might think is interesting to put on their imprint, maybe with consultation of their paid bindery, like, members. Like, because you can subscribe to specific people.

[Andrew]

I think there's a list of. There's like a list of names in the back of this that reads like, like, like, like, like we had to put the names of all of our backers in our video game because they paid us money.

[Craig]

And then the. And then there's like a specific advance that happens and then. And then royalties from there.

[Andrew]

So they get the manuscripts from where that. From, like, from.

[Craig]

From agencies, like, or. I think they might also have some opening now two years in. They might also do open calls or they might need agents to submit them.

[Andrew]

But it's not. It's not from the publishing, like the publishing companies. It's from the agencies that are trying to sell to the publishing.

[Craig]

Correct. So they're kind of. And so what is one article I read from 2024 that I can't remember where it was, but was kind of like, they're. The publisher here is actually giving up the idea of, like, shifting the market in a specific way by being a gatekeeper and instead just saying, well, they'll figure out what will sell. Yeah, let's end, like, maybe it'll work. It's a little bit different than a traditional publisher trying to get books into the hands of influencers with, you know, arcs and just saying, like, I hope that word of mouth drives it. At this point. These influencers have a vested interest because they do get a share of.

[Andrew]

Yeah, right.

[Craig]

The sales. Right. I did see, like a Reddit thread where some folks who are trying to break into writing were like, this seem. It's a like, low. I saw the phrase low advance, high royalty deal. It's based. There's a bunch of business stuff that I'm probably not qualified to talk about, but every once in a while I.

[Andrew]

Feel like we should do some kind of a series about the pupil. Like the.

[Craig]

We should learn. Yeah, we've been doing for long enough.

[Andrew]

We should, like, actually interview people and do some, like, original stuff. It's an idea that I. That bounces around in my head and then we get busy and I forget about it. We've also been saying, like, let's do another run of T shirts for like six years and not.

[Craig]

Yeah, but a T shirt isn't a podcast. And we like making podcasts a lot.

[Andrew]

I mean, making T shirts is fine too, but it's not, but it's not our like, core competency. You know, it. It goes beyond our core skill set.

[Craig]

So I would be interested to know if. If anybody in our listenership has like experience with bindery or has read other books that they've published and, you know, or it's only two years old, so. Yeah, as Xander said, either we will hear about this a lot or things like it or we will never hear about it again. I think the interesting, like, it is not finding Hollywood celebrities and like trying to make their lists, like, sell books. It is like going right into online communities and saying, you are the publisher now.

[Andrew]

Yeah. I mean, it feels like it work. It feels like a. It's of a piece with the. I published something Amazon and picked it up and then it got big. Like, it's like that. Except now the influencer person who is picking it up and making it big is doing it at a different stage of the process and in fact like bring. Bringing stuff into the world instead of just like finding things or letting like an algorithm drive you to things. Yeah, it's. It's a similar. It. The book finds its way to readers in a similar way, but like, how the book comes to exist in the first place is different.

[Craig]

Yep.

[Andrew]

So I just found it interesting.

[Craig]

Yeah, well, that's. That's how this book came to be. That's how True Love got on our radar.

[Andrew]

It explains why we did not.

[Craig]

Like, usually we'll find it's not a marketing machine here.

[Andrew]

Yeah, yeah, usually we'll find, you know, an interview in the Guardian just to pick a, pick a name of a. Of a publication. Usually we'll find stuff from the press tour from whatever book came out and that's where we'll get quotes from the author and some stuff about like, publication history. That didn't really exist for this, as.

[Craig]

I understand if it did. It's all in TikTok, which I'm not on. And like, how would I find it? You know, there's also.

[Andrew]

There's some stuff on Headley's like, binary page. It's like, it's, It's. I thought it was paywall initially. It's. Most of it is just registration walls, so you can like subscribe for free and then read a bunch of stuff. But yeah, like, it. If you read some of the stuff about this was from a post about monsters and mainframes becoming like a. A bestseller on like, like actual bestseller lists. And it's all. It's all framed in a very, like, David and Goliathy sort of like giving a voice to the voiceless sort of way, which I'm not here to judge how true that is or not, but it's. Yeah, that, that's. That's definitely like the emotional relationship that they're trying to foster with people who might be buying books from this little imprint. This is from Headley. When I first joined BookTok back in 2020, it was basically five people talking about books. It was a super small niche on a dancing app, which is a hilarious way to describe. I still remember the first time I was just at the deli counter trying to get, like a cut of salmon and there are like three girls in the acme, like, trying to do a dance in a way where it, like, looked spontaneous, but also like they did a million takes.

[Craig]

It's always three. I was trying. I was trying to watch the Phillies lose last night and I was getting distracted by three people on my random street in South Philadelphia using their Flash to illuminate whatever TikTok videos they were making. And in front of a house I don't think they live in, like, what was going on sometimes. I hope the video is good. I hope it's a good video.

[Andrew]

Getting to watch that tiny niche become this huge thing that even celebrities are joining has been immensely rewarding. We've also seen how booktok can change an author's life. Older listed titles like they Both Die at the End and the Song of Achilles found new fan bases on the app. And in the past couple of years, we've seen how indie authors have been able to use BookTok to shoot their sales into the stratosphere by using BookTok to market their books. But every coin has two sides. We've also seen authors with smaller or no following struggle to make a name of themselves in an ever changing social landscape. We've seen Big five publishers refuse to pick up riskier books due to the author not having a social media presence. We've seen Big five publishers so intent on publishing things they know will sell, they're willing to take fewer and fewer risks.

[Craig]

Yeah, yeah.

[Andrew]

So it's all, you know, it's all couched in this, like, Silicon Valley language of disrupting upstarts.

[Craig]

Yep, yep, yep.

[Andrew]

I think we've seen this, this sort of story happen often enough and then end up just becoming like, you just become the system that you're railing against. Like, it's hard for me to get, like, super idealistic about it, but it's. It's interesting. It seems like it's done in good faith. I like this book. So like regardless.

[Craig]

Yes, exactly.

[Andrew]

Whatever else happens around it, like this was fun. So yeah, that's the deal. But yeah, and I can't wait to see what happens to Booktok once the Ellisons are in it. Yeah, and it's just Donald Trump Jr. Books. It's just Don Jr. Books on BookTok.

[Craig]

Can't wait.

[Andrew]

That'll be really fun. Yeah.

[Craig]

Let's all take a quick break and ponder that. And when we come back, Andrew will tell us more about Of Monsters and Mainframes.

[Andrew]

Craig Andrew, this podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. You know, if you are going to imprint on a computer and love it like a member of your family and put your life in its hands, I think that it might as well be one of the computers that they're using to make the websites at Squarespace.

[Craig]

Yeah, sure.

[Andrew]

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[Craig]

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[Craig]

Andrew, it's already October 6th, and I haven't encountered a single monster in a book yet. Help me.

[Andrew]

Why not? Is it just because I read I did the first episode for the month? Is that why you haven't found a monster yet?

[Craig]

Correct. I have not read. I've not read a book that has a monster. Listen, I've read books with plenty of monsters in them before, but not this month. And I am jonesing for one. Help me.

[Andrew]

Okay, so this book is about monsters and it's about mainframes, as you may have guessed. Collection.

[Craig]

Clever.

[Andrew]

One of the, one of these times I'm going to show up to do like a Bart Simpson book report style overdue episode where I did not read anything except for the title and the. The blurb on the back. And I'm going to see how long it takes you to note.

[Craig]

I encourage people to go back to April Fools of 2025.

[Andrew]

Well, I mean, I'm going to do it without telling you.

[Craig]

Oh, okay, great.

[Andrew]

We're going to do it without. Without collaborating on it. Okay. But we get the mainframes bit first.

[Craig]

Oh, in. Ooh, curveball.

[Andrew]

So the way I would describe this book to people who don't like people who don't know anything about it is it's sort of like light horror plus adventure. It's like kind of murder body. That was the thing. That was the perspective that I was reminded the most when reading, like the AI computer characters in this is. It's like they're AI computers, but they've got, you know, they got a little bit of a tude to them.

[Craig]

Kate LB in the Overdue Discord, referred to it as Murderbot slash Becky Chambers, but with monsters. Becky Chambers, I think. I don't know if you read a Becky Chambers, Andrew. I know we had the worst best sellers on to read Becky Chambers at one point. And Tall Brian. I don't know if we have a short Brian in the server or not, but Tall Brian.

[Andrew]

It's good to distinguish between the different Brian's.

[Craig]

Didn't realize this was on the list, but happy to find out. I thought it was the best clearly written post Murderbot story I've read so far. Which is an interesting. Let's not pin it all on clearly written.

[Andrew]

Meaning what? Oh, you mean the book was clearly written after Murderbot had come out?

[Craig]

Clearly dash written, dash post, dash Murderbot. Yeah.

[Andrew]

Okay. Yes.

[Craig]

Which is an interesting.

[Andrew]

It is clearly that.

[Craig]

Yeah, okay.

[Andrew]

But Murderbot is sort of a biped, sort of a humanoid AI figure. And the AIs that you run into in this book are like the computer components of larger entities.

[Craig]

Sure.

[Andrew]

So it opens with this ship. Her name is Demeter or Demeter, but.

[Craig]

Maybe we'll say Demeter today.

[Andrew]

But I mean Demeter is, I think the more common pronunciation. There are characters in Scavengers Reign, which is a sci fi cartoon that I like a lot that also has a ship named Demeter in it where I think some characters pronounce it Demeter. So in my head I kept pronouncing Demeter. But if I. So if I bounce back and forth, that's why.

[Craig]

Great.

[Andrew]

But it's. You open with a chapter. It's split into five parts. The book is. Part one is a. Demeter is trying her best.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

Each part is. It opens with a sequence of binary numbered like letters in binary. Yeah, I'll let people figure out themselves they decide to read the book because it's just like little Easter eggy sort of things.

[Craig]

Go ahead. Well, just. Barbara Truelove was posted on Blue Sky a little while ago when somebody commented on the beginning of the audiobook that left in the binary, where apparently I think they just say the ones and zeros for long stretches. And she said that she didn't think that the audiobook readers would put those pages in or she didn't think about them. At least she thought it was a fun puzzle. And now she's engaging in like Cold War number station torture on readers who are just being beset by Zeros and ones, which is kind of funny.

[Andrew]

Yeah, that sets the mood, I suppose.

[Craig]

For sure.

[Andrew]

The first chapter of the first part of the book is called Something's Wrong. And you read. Demeter goes through a boot process and she wakes up. I wake. It's a beautiful day. My engines are roaring, my centrifuge is spinning and my radiation shields are buzzing. I. I stretch into my systems, enjoying the frizz of electricity dancing across my nodes and the widening of my consciousness as more and more servers come online. It's day 2293 of our journey, and we're on our final approach to Alpha Centauri B, habitation 004. I send all required documentation to the space station's docking system, check the current deceleration rate, and play an audio file informing everyone to please return to their seats as we'll be arriving shortly. A warning pops up. It's low priority. It's also corrupted. A buzzing mess of letters, numbers, and symbols that don't match anything in my database. I dismiss it. It comes right back. The same tangle of useless data. I flag it for human analysis and wait and wait and wait and wait. An hour passes, then 2, then 4. Humans are usually faster than this. Something's wrong. It's a message from one of my subsystems. I don't like it when my subsystems ping me like this. It makes me uneasy to think there are parts of my programming I can't control. Badly written code, dysfunctional update patches, disconnected data. Okay, so this. This sets the tone. Like you are. You are with Demeter. Demeter is a big old ship. She's got servers, she's got code. She's been around for a while. You know, she. At a bare minimum, you know from this opening passage that she's been on this. The current, like, trip she's on for like, 2200 days, almost 2300. Okay, you get a sense of, you know, she thinks very. She thinks and does things very quickly, but she interfaces with humans and she's kind of used to humans. And so this. This first chapter is introducing you to that which is, I think, the most like, Murder part Murderbot part of the book is just like, here's. Here's what this AI is doing, here's how it thinks, here's what it does and what it is and what it's sort of broadly generally capable of.

[Craig]

Okay?

[Andrew]

It's. It does a pretty good job of setting up what the kind of the status quo for a system like this is, and then launches you into the, like, the the monsters part of the. Of the title.

[Craig]

Oh. How does it do that?

[Andrew]

Well, so something's wrong. Remember when I. When I read that part where something's wrong?

[Craig]

Something is wrong.

[Andrew]

Demeter. Demeter is man. First one. I did it.

[Craig]

No, you didn't. You've already done it once. It's fine.

[Andrew]

Demeter, she's going through her like the manifest of cargo and stuff, and she is, you know, she. She has pinged the humans to try and figure out what this error message is, and they're not responding. But she take. It takes a while for her to kind of get the lay of the. The land as she's just like, booting back up and she is trying to look at, like, she doesn't really have, like, eyes or anything. She just kind of takes. She takes images and scans them and tags them. Like your iPhone would tag a picture of a tree. Yeah. Search a tree. It will bring up trees. So she keeps getting this, the subsystem of hers that keeps pinging her. Something's wrong. Something's wrong. And then eventually I check for heat signatures, and nothing. Oh, they're all dead. Well, that's awkward. Something's wrong. Yes, I know. I can see that. My humans died. And judging by the lack of nutrient consumed, they died a long time ago. Why am I only becoming aware of this now at the very end of our journey? And come to think of it, why was I offline?

[Craig]

Oh, yeah.

[Andrew]

So that's usually going through everything. Like you're saying, got all my nitrogen tanks and all this stuff. And then she notices that there's too much, like, food slurry in her food slurry stores. Like it's not being consumed quickly enough.

[Craig]

And also. Yeah. Why was she offline in the first place? That's a great little note.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

And that's. There's a lot of that kind of thing in this book where, like, Demeter, she can. She's there. The laws of robotics exist in this. In this book.

[Craig]

Like, oh, okay.

[Andrew]

Robots cannot, like, directly. Like the Asimov Laws. You can't directly harm a human being. But these AIs also, they can write their own code and kind of patch themselves to get around things as they. As they need to. They can. What is memory for a computer is a question that the book thinks about a lot. And can that memory be manipulated and by who and to what end? And like, what are the downstream consequences of that? How can these computers realize that their memory's been tampered with? How do they proceed from there? Like, It. It does that a lot.

[Craig]

Okay, that's neat.

[Andrew]

There's a point where Demeter and Steward, who is the sort of medical robot who exists in. In the med bay and who is more like, better at talking to people, but does not have the same, like, processing power that Demeter has because Steward does not need to, like, run the ship. I think, Craig, you. You'll have no idea what this means if you put yourself in the mind of the Doctor from Star Trek Voyager. That' pretty much exactly what Steward is.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

Right down to being very cranky and kind of seeming like it hates everybody most of the time.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

But the Doctor from early Voyager especially is going to put you in mind of Stuart, the AI who runs the medical bay.

[Craig]

So noted.

[Andrew]

You're welcome. Star Trek Voyager fans.

[Craig]

They get so little. Andrew, it's good to give you.

[Andrew]

We haven't done a bonus episode about Star Trek Voyager yet, though. Now I wonder if we ought to. We did for the Deep Space Nine series.

[Craig]

We'll get there.

[Andrew]

But Demeter, yes. She realizes that all her humans are dead. And then she's like, well, what gives? And she sees, like, a sort of a shadow on some of the video footage that she's collected, and she realizes that there is a bunch of dirt in one of the cargo bays. And the dirt weighed, like, a certain number of kilograms when it was brought on board, and now it weighs, like, fewer kilograms.

[Craig]

So something was in the dirt.

[Andrew]

Something was. Something was in the dirt that's not there anymore.

[Craig]

Cool.

[Andrew]

And Demeter, through sort of a process of elimination and analyzing a bunch of footage and thinking a lot about things is like, is this like a. Is this a vampire? Is there paranormal stuff going on here?

[Craig]

Huh?

[Andrew]

On. On me, on my ship. She gets. And then she docks and then she shut down, and she's like, shut down for a few years, and then she boots back up and she's, you know, time has passed and she is on another voyage. And so the first, like, half or so of the book is just like a bunch of. A bunch of things that the ship Demeter is doing and she encounters various, like, monsters, mostly from. Mostly monsters that we would recognize from stories that. That we have.

[Craig]

The universal monsters. They're universal to us.

[Andrew]

I would not say the universal monsters, because that makes me think of the Universal Pictures monsters. And there's no analog for the Fish man, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, like the big one here.

[Craig]

Yeah, yeah.

[Andrew]

But it's a lot. Yeah. There is werewolf. Yeah, yeah, there's a werewolf. There's a Frankenstein's monster, whose name is Frankenstein. They go by Frank. Ooh.

[Craig]

Bold.

[Andrew]

As if to. As if to thumb her nose at every. Actually, Eddie Pettit monster.

[Craig]

Yeah. A different kind of monster.

[Andrew]

Yeah, yeah. As though Barbara. Barbara Truelove is like, listen, I know, but we just. Can we just call it Frank? And that tweet with the handwritten note at the end. Have you seen this?

[Craig]

No.

[Andrew]

There's a. It's an all. It's an old, old tweet. It's the. The elder tweets back in the day when the site was good, where they. Somebody jokes that they found the original edition of Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and it's just like the print edition. But somebody wrote in with ballpoint pen, like, as the monster is drifting off, that it yells so that the writer can hear it. You could just call me Frankenstein. It's okay. I don't mind.

[Craig]

Okay, that's good.

[Andrew]

I see you don't know that I.

[Craig]

If I. If I did ever see it, I have not logged it. It is not in my ram.

[Andrew]

I just feel like you and I like traffic so much in like the top tweets of the.

[Craig]

Yeah, I feel like I might have seen it. I don't know.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

There was a period of time where I was using Twitter with a dumb phone, Andrew. And I don't know what I was doing, so.

[Andrew]

Well, any phone that you're using is kind of a dumb phone. And it's often funk phone can only be smart as a person who's using it. Can it? Listen, there is a mummy character who's pretty much the mummy from the movies. The mummy.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

In that he's made out of like, he's made out of bugs.

[Craig]

Yeah. Yes.

[Andrew]

And he doesn't even show up on Demeter's camera as like a human like he does to everybody else.

[Craig]

Can I just real quick put up.

[Andrew]

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

[Craig]

I have a. There are children's books that I've been reading to my son.

[Andrew]

Sure.

[Craig]

That are Halloween so far that are Halloween themed. Some of the characters dress as mummies. I don't know when I'm ready to tell them what a mummy is.

[Andrew]

Like, do they dress up like a. Like a toilet paper mummy or like.

[Craig]

A sexy a to no, the mummy. Toilet paper mummy. So like, even then I'm like, well, what am I showing him here?

[Andrew]

Are you tell.

[Craig]

I'm just calling it a mummy and just like, kind of moving on.

[Andrew]

Are there also like skeletons, though, in the books?

[Craig]

Yeah, we. So far he thinks skeletons are kind of Neat.

[Andrew]

Do you have the same problem with skeletons, though? Like, because they're both kind of just different forms?

[Craig]

Of course not.

[Andrew]

Right.

[Craig]

All right, that's helpful. He does know that bones are inside of you, so maybe, yeah, there's a.

[Andrew]

Skeleton inside all of us.

[Craig]

Just kind of worried about making.

[Andrew]

Just trying. Just trying to get out. What are you, like, what are you worried about with the mummy thing, specifically when you have to tell them about the brain hook? Because the brain hook's always the brain hook. When they have the. The hook that they reach into through the nose and they pull the brain out.

[Craig]

Maybe that it was animated by an ancient curse and that it's like, basically, we have to talk about death. We have to talk about death. That's the thing that I haven't talked to him about death yet.

[Andrew]

You're painting with a pretty broad brush.

[Craig]

Mummies.

[Andrew]

Well, just like, what is animating a mummy? Is it always an ancient curse? You don't know.

[Craig]

Well, no, but it. It died, didn't it?

[Andrew]

Arguably.

[Craig]

I'm kind of glossing over that part.

[Andrew]

What's dying? What's living? You know?

[Craig]

Oh, the big questions. Anyway, continue.

[Andrew]

So, oh, there's a mummy, but it's not toilet paper mummy. It's a sexy mummy that's made out of bugs. Like from the movie the Mummy with Danny Fraser.

[Craig]

The sexiest things are made out of bugs. I read a review of this.

[Andrew]

Review.

[Craig]

Of this book on theglossbookclub.com that kind of talked about this early part of the book as being a little uneven and the monster encounters feeling a little unconnected. And quote, right when you're worried this might not coalesce into a story, things come together. Was that your experience, or did you kind of like how maybe episodic it was?

[Andrew]

I was digging the monster of the week.

[Craig]

Awesome.

[Andrew]

Elements of the early part of the book.

[Craig]

A little.

[Andrew]

Like, I didn't. I didn't mind the conclusion of the book where it all came together, but I do.

[Craig]

You were enjoying it.

[Andrew]

Many of the. Of the monsters, like, so Dracula ends up being the big bad.

[Craig]

Like always.

[Andrew]

Dracula is a monster that's really, really bad. And then all the other monsters in the book end up kind of teaming up and becoming friends.

[Craig]

Oh, neat.

[Andrew]

But especially, especially the mummy whose names and whose name ends up being Steve, the sexy mummy who's made out of bugs like he is. He's a big bad in one of the chapters, and then he gets mostly killed. And then his bugs who didn't get electrified kind of coalesce back Together and then form a new body, and then he's a mummy again. And then he becomes kind of a chaotic good. Like, we're allies and you can depend on me, but you never quite know whether you can depend on me or, like, when I'm going to turn.

[Craig]

I love that.

[Andrew]

If I'm going to turn on you. So, like, all the. All the monsters end up becoming friends and, like, teaming up against Dracula.

[Craig]

Cool.

[Andrew]

I feel like it is. It's under. It's a little undersold. Is that. Am I using that. That correctly? Like, I don't like. Well, you just. You just kind of have to accept that it's happening, and that's fine. Like, I don't. I don't mind that. But I do think I need a little bit more of why all the monsters want. Want to get together and hang out and be. Be friends, other than just, like, they're all monsters and they're in close proximity to each other. That's just why it happens.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

So, okay, first time Demeter gets invaded by a monster is Dracula. Dracula kills all the monsters. They go to this Alpha Centauri colony thing, and a shadow or a dog or something gets off the ship, but nobody really. Nobody ever really figures out why all the people on this. On the ship died.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

Demeter gets shut down. She gets brought back up. All the humans on the ship have died again. And Demeter is going through all of her footage and she is realizing that they were passing by a planet that had a couple of moons going around it. And like you would on an airplane when you're passing by a landmark and the pilot points it out, there was a big gathering on, like, the. This observation deck to look at these moons, and one of the passengers turns out they were a werewolf and they turned into a werewolf and they killed everybody.

[Craig]

Ooh.

[Andrew]

But not all the humans die on this one. There are two humans.

[Craig]

Is there a range of effect on werewolf moons? Because, like, if you're flying around in space, you are technically line of sight seeing it.

[Andrew]

It's seeing it and being, like, up close to it.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

Even enough pictures of moons can have the same effect on werewolf in this book as movies. Okay. It plays with monster rules a little bit.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

Ways that are like, I don't.

[Craig]

It's just fun. Does fun.

[Andrew]

It just kind of does them like. So pictures of moons can affect a werewolf a little bit.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

Vampires can go in the sun. It just makes them look, like, super old and. And weakens them.

[Craig]

Great, Great.

[Andrew]

But they don't. But they don't, like, turn into dust like a traditional.

[Craig]

Or get hotter. No.

[Andrew]

And more sparkly. No, it's. It's not that either.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

Those are. Those are the two big ones I'm thinking of.

[Craig]

Yeah, sure.

[Andrew]

The mummy thing. I mean, maybe it's playing with tropes, but mostly it's interested in recreating the exact conditions of how mummies work in the movie. The movie.

[Craig]

The Mummy. Okay.

[Andrew]

And then Frankenstein is just, like a cyborg.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

The deal with Frankenstein is that it ends up being someone's sort of art project that is made out of, like, part computer consciousness and part a little bit of the DNA of all, like, 312 passengers who died on Demeter the first time. And that's the other thing is you get. You get another vampire at the end who ends up being a friend vampire, but she's really. She really does not get a lot of screen time, and I feel like she's mostly there to give the book a gay romance to appeal to people who are on BookTube. Well, like, if I'm being entirely on.

[Craig]

Well, it's not that it's.

[Andrew]

It's fine. Like, I dig it, but it's. It's kind of tacked on to the end a little bit. Like, they don't even find this vampire until the end. Like, the. And right from the beginning, it's like, oh, they're. You know, the werewolf and the vampire are fighting, but they're also. But. But it's kind of like a dance, and it's like, oh, am I gonna ship these characters now? And then you do, and then they get together, and then they get married at the end. Okay, but I do. There's. There's. There's an amount of pandering that. That happens.

[Craig]

Sure.

[Andrew]

Know your audience, I guess, is what that is.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

What are we talking about? Okay, so, yeah, Demeter. Okay. Dracula first, then werewolves. Everybody gets killed, but there's not. But there are two humans who survive. The grandchildren of the old lady who ends up being a werewolf.

[Craig]

Oh, neat.

[Andrew]

And you. You don't like the. The woman did not. The grandmother did not come on the ship, like, planning to turn into a werewolf. She just saw moons. And when werewolves see moons, werewolves can also decide to turn. The werewolves when they get pretty mad and angry. Sort of like a hulk situation.

[Craig]

Sure. Notably, always in control of himself.

[Andrew]

Well, it's kind of like a hulk, but he's not always angry.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

What if Hulk could decide to be angry and turn into a hawk when it. When it benefits Him. But then he still stayed mostly in control of himself when he was a hulk.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

But then there was, like, a green circle that the hulk would look at, and then he would lose control of himself, and then he wouldn't remember. He would be a monster. He wouldn't remember anything. That's kind of what werewolves are doing.

[Craig]

Great.

[Andrew]

So she sees the moon. She goes. She goes, werewolves. She kills everybody. But then she feels really bad about it because she didn't. I don't know. She didn't. She didn't want to do that this way. But her grandchildren, Isaac and Agnes are on. On the ship still. And Demeter, like, her. Her code tells her, protect the passengers. Like, protect the humans.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

Like, one of the core commands, the. That is coded into Demeter, okay. So she has to protect these. These children from the werewolf who's on board. She. There's a big sequence where she has to, like, overcome the part of her code that's like, you can't kill anybody. So she can shoot this werewolf out the airlock. And it involves making her change into a werewolf so that she does not register as human to the system. So you can hurt. So you can. You can kill her because she's not human.

[Craig]

Tricky, tricky.

[Andrew]

And then because these. These are. This is the kind of space voyage that takes years and years. It's a little bit more like the Alien franchise than like the Star wars or Star Trek franchises where interplanetary planetary travel, like, you don't go into, like, a cryo sleep thing, but it does just. It just. It takes years to do it.

[Craig]

Yeah, sure.

[Andrew]

So these kids are on Demeter for, like, the next, like, three or four years of their lives. And Demeter and Steward, who are always kind of like, have a frenemy, like, love, hate relationship thing going on because Demeter is the priority computer, but she has to consult Steward a lot of the times for, like, communicating with humans and for getting medical help for them. But also, Demeter can tell Stewart to shut itself off, and Stuart hates being told to shut itself off. Like, they have a. But they also are, like, literally welded together. Like, they're separate systems, but they share a. They share a ship and they just have to.

[Craig]

That's kind of cool.

[Andrew]

Yeah. They have to. Have to get along at a certain level. There's a. There's a lot of stuff with them and with, like, what computer capacity looks like. There's a point where, like, Demeter is. Is dead, but then she's brought back to life, but then she doesn't have, like, her servers have been damaged, so there's not enough of space for her. And so she like, sort of takes over Stewards systems and like, can deletes Steward, but then Stewart gets put back together from lines of code. But then Steward is really mad that Demeter would do that. There's. There's a lot of interesting relationship stuff. And I think the stuff that I. That I like the most and that resonated with me the most was the like, what is an AI consciousness, like, look like? And how do you make. How do you. How do you give that. How do you give those characters, like, the. The broad emotions and like the sort of pithy voice that is required, I think, for a book to do really well on Book talk w. While still making it seem like sufficiently computery to like, get people to buy into it and to. To think of it as like a fun, unique thing, you know?

[Craig]

I mean, yeah, it's not even just to appeal to book Talk, but to appeal to. To feel human enough. That is. It is not an exercise in, like, strangeness. It doesn't sound like that. It is not like an exercise. And like, can I challenge the reader to relate to this?

[Andrew]

No, no, no, no.

[Craig]

Yeah, yeah.

[Andrew]

It's like, how can I. How can I make a computer sort of sarcastic and quippy but still make them seem enough like a computer act enough like a computer be by the things that would constrain a computer.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

That I can make it interesting to read about.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

So, yeah, that's stuff I liked. Well.

[Craig]

And it also sounds interesting that it's like a relationship between computers too, that, like the. That can be a spine for the book.

[Andrew]

You gotta. I mean, if you have ever wanted to read a book where you could ship a ship, this is the. This is the book that's gonna give that to you.

[Craig]

That's good.

[Andrew]

If you want. If you want a ship ship. This. This book has a ship ship in it.

[Craig]

That's good.

[Andrew]

Thank you.

[Craig]

I just feel like usually in a story like this kind of playful genre or serious. More serious. There's like AI. There's like a single entity that all of the human characters are wrestling with. And it does seem somewhat novel to me to encounter kind of a lighthearted book like this that is kind of got a somewhat imbalanced but interesting relationship between computer characters.

[Andrew]

Yeah. Or even. Even in Murderbot, like Murderbot interfaces a lot with other AIs, but they're either like sort of lower order creatures, like drones and stuff, or they're like enemy characters.

[Craig]

Yeah, sure.

[Andrew]

Who they're who Murderbot is interfacing with. Cool. This is not. This is two characters who are technically not equal, but who come to see each other as equals and whose systems get, like, intertwined in a bunch of different ways over many different little episodes.

[Craig]

I dig.

[Andrew]

Yeah. So Demeter kind of learns to love, basically, on this voyage with these two kids who she's taking care of. They get to space dock, and all the humans are terrified that the ship has come in, and all the humans on it basically are dead again. And. And Demeter keeps getting put back into service because of capitalism, basically. That like the. The opera. Her operating system, even though it's sort of been patched over a bunch of times by code that she's written herself, which does get, quote unquote, optimized out of her at one point, which is apparently a very painful process for. For a computer. And it's not like she reconstructs herself. It's not as though Demeter is, like, dead after this, but it's this. This operating system is so hard to sort of recreate that each individual instance of it is worth money. It's not just. Yeah, you go into a. To a store and buy, like, floppy disks with windows on it. Like, it's.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

This is a thing that knows how to fly a ship and has lots of experience flying a ship, and it's just, like, it's too valuable to just scrap. And so the people at the. The Varna, I think, is the name of the company. It might as well be Whalen Yutani. Just like a big, faceless, like, hyper capitalist company that owns Demeter keeps trying to put her back into service. Keeps trying, keeps changing, like, her registry number so that people don't. People don't immediately know that she's the ghost ship where everybody. That everybody keeps dying on.

[Craig]

Oh, neat. Just like putting a piece of cardboard over her license plate.

[Andrew]

Yeah. The third trip is the one where we get the. We get more insight into Steward. Like, the book changes perspective a lot. Each chapter is kind of named after the person you're getting the perspective from. It's mostly told from the AIs, but you get. Get a POV chapter from pretty much everybody.

[Craig]

Cool.

[Andrew]

From pretty much every named character of any import gets their own little say.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

The third voyage you get. You get a lot more from Steward. You get to learn more about how Steward thinks this. On this one, everybody becomes, like, Cthulhu fish people, and they want to go to this planet that they're all being, like, called to go Back to cool. And they turn off the radiation shields, which almost fries all the computers on board. And then a bunch of stuff blows up. This is when Demeter thinks that she's dead for a while. And then the. I believe it is the voyage after this, the fourth voyage. Agnes, as like a 30 something adult now instead of a teenager, is back on the ship. She is a werewolf. She's. This is just like a hereditary thing that she already knew about from her grandmother. And she is leaving Earth to kind of get away from her brother. So she can't. It's partly so that she does not become a, like, burden to him, but also partly because, like, werewolves are not going to age and he is already aging, and she is his older sister, but she's already been confused a couple times for his younger sister. And she's like, I cannot stay. Stay on this planet as an immortal, like, werewolf being and, like, watch my little brother.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

Get old and die. And so I have to go. And then she does not realize until she's been on the ship for a couple of minutes, oh, hey, this isn't just a Demeter spacecraft because it's sort of. Yeah, it's sort of a. It's a.

[Craig]

A class of cruise line.

[Andrew]

Yeah. Sort of thing. It's like this. This is the premier economy class, like, people mover sort of ship. Sure, that.

[Craig]

Sure.

[Andrew]

That. That shuttles people from Earth out to these colonies. Yeah. She realizes it's the ship and she, you know, Demeter's at this point been like, she's been optimized. She's been blown up. Like, it takes her a minute to sort of access her memories of agonists, but she does know it's Agnes. And then this is the. This is the voyage where the big bad ends up being Steve the Mummy, made out of bugs like Frankenstein. Frank is on board at this point. He had been on board, I think, for the fish people voyage. The ship picks up monsters after this. It's got Agnes as a werewolf. It's got Frank, who's a Frank sign. It's got Steve, who the mummy. And they're all on for different reasons. Like, Steve has stolen a bunch of gold from the museum that he himself had been stored.

[Craig]

Cool, okay.

[Andrew]

And is fleeing Earth with, like, a big pile of gold.

[Craig]

Good job, Steve.

[Andrew]

But it. So it becomes a big scandal that Demeter keeps being put back in service even though she's a ghost ship. And so they're trying to get her back to come back to Earth to, like, mothball her. They're trying to bring Steve back to Earth for all the money that he stole from this museum. Nobody knows if Frank is there, but obviously Frank can't get caught because he also was kind of an art project. Who became sentient.

[Craig]

Yep.

[Andrew]

Who's trying to get away from Earth. And Agnes makes a decision like, I don't want to go back to Earth. I care too much about Demeter to seah scrapped because she's like this spaceship that raised me. Basically, like, I'm gonna become a space pirate. And we're all gonna become this like crew of. Of interstellar criminals. And we're all gonna go off and we're gonna do. We're gonna have adventures. And that's like the halfway point of the book. And so that's where it becomes. That's where it stops being monster of the week and starts being like here, here's the story that we're gonna.

[Craig]

Oh boy. We're gonna tell.

[Andrew]

That's gonna bring everybody together. And I actually don't need to go blow by blow through this second half the book, I don't think like, it's all about. It's mostly about. We got. We gotta do two things. We gotta find and kill Dracula, who started all this always. And we have to keep Demeter out of the hands of the authorities who want to like scrap her and destroy her.

[Craig]

Okay, cool.

[Andrew]

And the rest of the book is like the, the, the Intrepid crew's mission to like do those things.

[Craig]

Can I just clarify something?

[Andrew]

Yes, please do. Because I feel like I'm done talking about plot basically. But go ahead.

[Craig]

I also think you've got a summary in place now that if somebody was interested to go read it. You have not talked about everything in the book.

[Andrew]

There's a bunch of fun monster of the week stuff. And then it becomes kind of a Gotta fulfill a mission. Yeah. Like a Firefly esque band of misfits out in space operating beyond the reach of authorities. Sort of sci fi story. But yes, go ahead.

[Craig]

Monsters just exist in this world. Yeah. Okay. It is not. There's not a point in this book where it explains why there are monsters on this ship or why they are attracted to this ship specifically. Is that kind of happenstance?

[Andrew]

Well, so in that it's. There's a little bit of happenstance like Dracula ends up being sort of. Sort of wound up in all of it.

[Craig]

Okay. Okay.

[Andrew]

Agnes's grandmother and she and her brother are on this ship because they're fleeing from this vampire who has taken up residence on this Alpha Centauri colony. And vampires control werewolves in this. If they get close enough, they can just tell werewolves what to do.

[Craig]

Great.

[Andrew]

And so Agnes's grandmother gets enough freedom to say, I got to. I gotta go. I got peace. So that's the whole reason why they're on the ship in the first place.

[Craig]

Okay. Okay.

[Andrew]

Frank, The Frankenstein is in this museum, is this art project that's the DNA from all these people who died on this Frankenstein voyage is in, like, a glass case across from a. Like a spider robot, like sort of a maintenance drone robot who was blamed for killing all the people on the original Frankenstein or the. The Dracula voyage.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

And because Frankenstein is part computer, Frankenstein can, like, talk with this spider droid and becomes sort of like. Like his. His reason for existence, his reason for seeking out Demeter is I have to prove that the spider drone did not do this.

[Craig]

Ah. Okay.

[Andrew]

I have to prove. I have to figure out what. What really happened with this.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

I think the mummy thing is more happenstance. I may be missing the reason for why the mummy made of bugs is on the. Is on the ship.

[Craig]

Other than needing to get away or.

[Andrew]

Something other than needing to get away. And then. And then when they find Mina, the other vampire, it's because Mina had, like, posed as a. As an investigator who's the last person who seemed like they were looking into the Dracula incident. And so we need. We need to find Mina to figure out where Dracula went. And, oh, Mina's vampire, too. And I think that the Mina is Mina. Not one of the names of the people.

[Craig]

I think it might be story like.

[Andrew]

It is playing with that a little bit because the captain of the original, I think, is named Harker.

[Craig]

Yes.

[Andrew]

So, yeah, Harker and Mina were like. It was an arranged marriage that were going to be married, but then they never could because Harker got killed. And so Mina was, like, drawn into the. The thing by that and then got turned into a vampire.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

And then turned against Dracula because she's still mad at Dracula for being Dracula. So it's all connected in that way.

[Craig]

I think I was. I had no idea, like, where the monsters were going to come from from this book. I had not read the blurb or anything.

[Andrew]

Yeah. Monsters, just. Monsters just exists. And they all find each other and they're like, oh, you're a monster too. Well, you know, we. We are all now bonded by.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

Mutually being excluded from human society by. By dint of the fact that we are monsters, you know?

[Craig]

Yeah. So I wasn't sure if it was that helps explain some of the notes and reviews and stuff where I saw, like, Found Family being referenced.

[Andrew]

Yeah. Yeah. There's a little bit of that, though. It's not as. It's not as built up like I could have done with more sitting around the campfire.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

Like, you do part of the. Of the. One of the shortcuts that the book gets to take that it, like, has built. You know, it's a thing that the book has built for itself. So it can do this is you do get a lot of, oh, then the AI shut down, and it was. And the next time the AI got booted up, it was four years later.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

So you get. So you find out all this. All the important stuff that happened in between. Because the computer is, like, searching all this stuff, and that's. It's how it's learning the information. And you don't. So you don't have to go blow by blow and see every interaction between every one of the characters where they started, like, trusting each other more and becoming less of. Less adversarial. I, you know, I respect the utility of that. It is already kind of a longish book, though. It's long in the booktok kind of way where it's not, like a hard read. It's just. I'm just thinking about Fourth Wing. That book was so long.

[Craig]

Yeah, that's true. Okay. Yeah.

[Andrew]

But it's not. But the. But the length of it is not the first thing I'd think about it because many of the things that it's doing are, like, relatively simple or, like, uncomplicated.

[Craig]

Yeah. The review in the aureview.com liked. Kind of liked that there and shouted out that the limited AI perspective would often, you know, hide pieces of the puzzle and it sound. And like, that's not unique. You've got all sorts of other, like, storytelling tropes of, like, amnesia or other things to do that for humans. But even the example you gave earlier of, like, well, the computer would analyze the dirt, and that's how it would know that something different was going on. Like, that's novel enough to me. Like, that's clever.

[Andrew]

Yeah. And it's a fun thing because you the. You, the reader notice it, and then you wait for the ship to notice it.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

Because it's like the third or fourth time that she's gone through the manifest of cargo.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

And you're like, oh, is that. That number is different than it was before.

[Craig]

Cool.

[Andrew]

Something's up.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

Now, I keep not trying to disparage book Talk a community I know nothing about. It's just like every book that we've read that has anything to do with booktok is all about it. You know, it's. It's a. It's a community that. That gravitates toward a lot of romance. It gravitates toward a lot of like, weird stories. Yeah, I think it gravitates toward big emotions and books that are not trying to be like super writerly or like. Sure. Or intentionally difficult for the sake of being difficult. The way that. The way that some books that we've read are definitely being like, nobody is writing Infinite Jest for Booktok.

[Craig]

I mean, I would love to know. I would love to know who is.

[Andrew]

I. I would love for you to know it. I'm not. I read Infinite just already. I'm not doing it again.

[Craig]

I mean, those, those Iron Flame or Iron Wing books are infinite.

[Andrew]

Fourth wing.

[Craig]

What's the second one called? Iron Flame? Maybe.

[Andrew]

I don't know. Maybe.

[Craig]

I think it is a sith wing. Do you think, Andrew, as we close out here, like, the kind of cast of characters worked, you know, equally across the board for you?

[Andrew]

What do you mean?

[Craig]

Well, just that we got like one thing I saw in our discord. This is from Nora who said, how can you.

[Andrew]

How do you join that discord again? We keep talking about. But like, how would I. How. If I wasn't in it already, how would I get there?

[Craig]

Patreon.com overdue pod all right, thank you. Nora said, I'm not really enjoying the audio book. I'm really not a multiple narrators person. I might reread some of it when I can get a paper copy from the library in four to six weeks. Since it's a pretty hot book out there. I double. I looked into this like it's an audiobook with seven, like, voiced performers and I. I have not. You really.

[Andrew]

You listen to a lot more audiobooks than I do. Like, what's, what's normal for a multiple POV audio?

[Craig]

A person who reads the book and then.

[Andrew]

Do they do voices?

[Craig]

They will sometimes do like a little voice. Like when I was listening to a Goosebumps audiobook. They do big voices, but it's like, you know, a quote unquote regular book. It is like they will affect a slightly different tone or something. But even in like romance books, I've listened to that, you know, jump back and forth between the two characters. There's not much that they're doing. Maybe they'll like slightly lower or drop or raise Their, like, timbre, if it's. They're, like, trying to pitch between a masculine and a feminine voice just to, like, help your ear, but they're not. Or like, you know, just traditionally anyway. But I've not listened. I don't think I've listened to an audiobook that has more than one singular narrator. And what Nora was saying was that, like, with all of the different perspectives in the book, then you've got all these voices and the. And then the. The different narrators are then doing their own affects for all the other characters that you are getting in other chapters, and they just found it kind of confusing. I can't speak to that per se, but I just wanted to get your take on, like, how did the different characters relate to each other? Were you really just all on board for the AIs and the kind of monsters were. Whatever.

[Andrew]

Yeah, it's. It's you. You mentioned this to me as we were talking about what we were going to talk about for the. For the show. And I was. I was thinking about the Scalzi book, the.

[Craig]

Oh, yeah.

[Andrew]

Kaiju Preservation Society that I had read and how one of my chief complaints about that is it's. It is from one point of view, but, like, every character sort of talks the same.

[Craig]

Yep. Yep.

[Andrew]

And so I wanted to, like, this book does not have everybody sounds the same syndrome. And it's partly because everybody is a different kind of like, computer or monster. And the kind of computer or monster that the character is sort of necessitates that they have a unique perspective.

[Craig]

Like Frank.

[Andrew]

Frank, the Frankenstein. They are not worried about, like, the moon because they are Frankenstein and not a werewolf. Sure. But, like, both of the AI characters, like Stewart is more. More human voicey. And I think. I think it's later in the book especially, there are a couple of points where people sort of talk like humans on. They're in this book where they're in, like, the 2400s in space.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

And then some of them are talking like posters on the Internet in the early 2000 and twenties. It's not a thing that rose to the level of distraction for me, but I did clock it a couple times. Stuart is the AI who's a little more colloquially voiced, has a little bit more tude, as I mentioned, is a little more like Robert Picardo, the Doctor from Star Trek Voyager. And then Demeter is more. More computery, a little more murder body.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

Just. You're thinking a little bit more about, like, what Demeter's task manager window looks like at Any given time, you know.

[Craig]

Yeah, sure.

[Andrew]

But I. I can't speak to the. The effect that a bunch of voices.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

Would have on me. I think that would confuse me, but only insofar as, like, it would. It would only reinforce something that is already a reason why I don't listen to audiobooks, which is that I would lose focus, and then I would start paying attention again, and I would realize that I had not actually heard anything that happened in five minutes, and I would need to wind it back. But, yeah, you would be throwing one of these seven voices at me, and I would be like, I actually. Do I remember. Do I fully remember who is talking?

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

In this, like, whose perspective am I locked into? Yep. The book. I think each character has a sufficiently unique voice. Every. Like, all the chapters are pretty short. Every chapter is named after the, like, the person or entity that it's from the perspective of.

[Craig]

Yep.

[Andrew]

So it's pretty. It's pretty well differentiated. I also wanted to say I. Frank, the Frankenstein. Is they in the book?

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

I may have said he a couple of times. I know I did it right the first time. I know I did it right just now, but I may have said he a couple times in the middle, because I'm thinking about Frankenstein's monster from the book. Frankenstein who.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

Who is a boy monster.

[Craig]

He is a boy monster, but you're right. Okay, cool.

[Andrew]

Yeah. I just wanted. I just want to make sure that I mentioned that.

[Craig]

Yeah. I mean, you've. I don't know what you're doing with Demeter. Demeter. But thank you for getting that one right, Demeter.

[Andrew]

I've tried to. I've tried to just. I've tried to be consistent.

[Craig]

Yeah, well.

[Andrew]

But obviously, I'm not even in control of my own systems on that one. I can't do it 100 of the time. But, yeah, I. I had fun with this book. I think sometimes if. For our audience, I think sometimes we will read a spooktober book and people will listen because they do not. Partly because they don't want to read the book that's all about, like, eating people.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

Like mushroom monsters or whatever.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

This book is big on monsters, but it is in a very accessible, like, serial monster kind of. Kind of way. Like these. Count Chocula is not trying to scare you. He's just trying to live his life, and he's trying to get you to eat cereal. And the monsters in this book are similarly.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

Not intimidating. It doesn't. You know, it gets a little violent, but not like ultra Gory. No in, in any given spot. I think if you've got any weakness at all for, for sci fi or like classic monster movies, I think you'll find something to enjoy here. I had, I had a fun read. This is a good start to Spooktober for me.

[Craig]

Great. I'm excited to keep going and thank you for taking me on this space faring journey.

[Andrew]

Of course.

[Craig]

Obviously to the universe of monsters. See what I did there?

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

Thanks everybody for listening and I'm not gonna give any time to respond. You can send us an email overdupodmail.com you can find us on social media overdue pod. Thanks to Robert, Alison, Kyle, Liesl, Panicmoon, Jeremy and your friendly neighborhood poster Brendel for reaching out and mentioning us in the past week.

[Andrew]

Love getting that Brendel bump.

[Craig]

Love the Brendel bump, our good friend. Our theme song is composed by Nick Laranges. Andrew. If folks want to know more about the show, where do they go?

[Andrew]

Overdue Podcast.com is our Internet website. That's where we have all of the books that we're going to read. You'll find the Spooktober schedule up there hopefully as of as of today, but if not as of today, as of soon.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

Also links to the books we have read and the ones we're going to read. If you are interested in some David and Goliath action, you can use those links. They go to bookshop.org you can buy the books and read along with us. And those books come from a local independent bookseller. You get a book, we get a small cut of that and then the book seller gets the. I guess the publisher probably gets some too.

[Craig]

But the author also benefits.

[Andrew]

Like everybody, you know, it's.

[Craig]

Yeah, everybody gets their piece.

[Andrew]

Everybody gets their piece. But not Barnes and Noble.

[Craig]

Yeah, sure.

[Andrew]

Not Jim Barnes and Shelley Noble, the founders of Barnes and Noble.

[Craig]

Definitely real.

[Andrew]

I have no idea who founded Barnes and Noble. I assume it's people with names.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

And then patreon.com overupod a URL that Craig mentioned earlier. That's a way you can support the show financially directly. Join our Discord community to chat with us about the books and about Garfield and about all the other stuff that people talk about in there.

[Craig]

Shout out to Carrie in the Discord who had translated a bunch of the binary in this book to share with people because they didn't want to do the translation.

[Andrew]

Excellent. Yes, I was, I was happy for that. And you get bonus episodes early. Our Long Read podcast. Long Read? What Long Read series. That's the word I wanted. Long read series on the silmarillion will be ending pretty soon. We're going to be putting up the sixth and penultimate right episode of that sometime this month.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

Patreon.com OGPOD Next week is Dark Carnival.

[Andrew]

Can't wait for you to take me to this dark carnival.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

Or for us both to go to parts of this dark carnival together. We still have to figure that we're.

[Craig]

Gonna play different games at the carnival and then report back.

[Andrew]

I'm gonna eat a haunted elephant ear. It's gonna give me food poisoning. That'll be the darkest carnival of all.

[Craig]

I'm gonna whack all the moles until I become a mole.

[Andrew]

Mmm. Or what if I'm one of the moles?

[Craig]

Oh, no.

[Andrew]

And you're trying to whack me.

[Craig]

No.

[Andrew]

But you don't realize until after you've done it. You were so blinded by your pursuit of victory that you didn't even see that the mole you were whacking was your own friends and business partner.

[Craig]

Big bear that I won is now a skeleton. It's horrifying.

[Andrew]

We should definitely write horror. All right, everybody, thank you so much for listening. So excited to do another Spooktober. We will be here all month with Tales of the Macabre. And that's what I got.

[Craig]

Great.

[Andrew]

All right, everybody, thank you for listening. And until we talk to you next week, please try to be happy. That was a hit. Gum podcast. You open the fridge, there's nothing there. So what's it gonna be? Greasy pizza? Sad Drive Thru Burgers. Dish by Blue Apron is for nights like that. These are the pre made meals of your dreams. At least 20 grams of protein. No artificial flavors or colors. No chopping, no cleanup. No guilt. Keep the flavor, ditch the subscription. Get 20% off your first two orders with code APRON20. Terms and conditions apply. Visit blueapron.com terms for more.