Hell is only a word…
This week on Deep Thoughts, the sisters welcome best-selling horror novelist (and Emily’s fellow Kenyon alum) Scott Kenemore to discuss the 1997 cult classic Event Horizon starring Sam Neill and Laurence Fishburne. The wide-ranging discussion moves from the meaning of cosmic horror to the importance of intent when creating new technology to the satisfying dichotomy of advanced spacecraft bringing humans to their ancient fears. Much like the movie, this episode is a ride that will take you places you don't expect to go. (But with more laughter, thankfully).
Where we’re going, we don’t need eyes to see…just some headphones to hear this episode!
Content warning: Mention of suicide, self-harm, and sexual harrassment
Want to learn more about Scott? Find him at
scottkenemore.com
x.com/ScottKenemore
Pre-order his book space horror novel Edge of the Wire through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Bookshop.org (which helps support your local independent bookstore).
Our theme music is "Professor Umlaut" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Learn more about Tracie and Emily (including our other projects), join the Guy Girls' family, secure exclusive access to bonus episodes, video versions, and early access to Deep Thoughts by visiting us on Patreon.
Hell is only a word…
This week on Deep Thoughts, the sisters welcome best-selling horror novelist (and Emily’s fellow Kenyon alum) Scott Kenemore to discuss the 1997 cult classic Event Horizon starring Sam Neill and Laurence Fishburne. The wide-ranging discussion moves from the meaning of cosmic horror to the importance of intent when creating new technology to the satisfying dichotomy of advanced spacecraft bringing humans to their ancient fears. Much like the movie, this episode is a ride that will take you places you don't expect to go. (But with more laughter, thankfully).
Where we’re going, we don’t need eyes to see…just some headphones to hear this episode!
Content warning: Mention of suicide, self-harm, and sexual harrassment
Want to learn more about Scott? Find him at
scottkenemore.com
x.com/ScottKenemore
Pre-order his book space horror novel Edge of the Wire through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Bookshop.org (which helps support your local independent bookstore).
Our theme music is "Professor Umlaut" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Learn more about Tracie and Emily (including our other projects), join the Guy Girls' family, secure exclusive access to bonus episodes, video versions, and early access to Deep Thoughts by visiting us on Patreon.
I'm Emily Guy-Burken and you're listening to Deep Thoughts About Stupid Shit, because pop culture is still culture, and shouldn't you know what's in your head? On today's podcast, tracy Guy-Decker, my sister and I are welcoming my friend Scott Kennemore to talk about the 1997 film Event Horizon. Let's dive in.
Speaker 2:Have you ever had something you love dismissed because it's just pop culture, what others might deem stupid shit? You know matters, you know it's worth talking and thinking about, and so do we. So come over, think with us as we delve into our deep thoughts about stupid shit.
Speaker 1:Today I'm very excited to bring on my old friend from Kenyon, scott Kenamore, born in New York and educated at Kenyon College and Columbia University. Scott Kenamore is the national bestselling author of the novels Lake of Darkness, the Grand Hotel and Zombie Ohio, as well as numerous other works of horror and satire. His next book, edge of the Wire, a space horror novel, will be published by Skyhorse in June. He lives in Evanston, illinois, so welcome, scott. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 3:Thank you for having me. It is fun to do this.
Speaker 1:We wanted to have you come talk about Event Horizon. It's a movie that I saw in the theater and had not seen since until last night, and I remember liking it when it came out. I remember it terrifying me. I also remember having a very philosophical conversation with my boyfriend at the time my high school boyfriend on the way home from seeing it. That pissed me off. So even in 1997, I was having kind of philosophical conversations about the film. What I remember about it is the very bloody, like orgy of death moments and Sam Neill with his eyes gouged out. Those really stuck with me. Yeah, Tracy, it's a good thing you haven't seen this, because it would be too much for you.
Speaker 2:It would be too much for you.
Speaker 1:I just made a face listeners, and I remember thinking at the time that you don't see much in the way of like science fiction horror in terms of like in deep space. So you'll see sci-fi horror of a kind, but like Alien. Even though it's horror, it seems more sci-fi than horror, whereas this is very definitively like scary, first and foremost, and sci-fi second and then. The other thing I remember but I didn't remember the details was, uh, just how beautifully constructed the set design was. In a way that was very. They just clearly put a lot of thought and effort into what this spaceship was going to look like and it is unsettling but really beautiful. So that's basically what I remembered before rewatching it. But rewatching it now, it was really clear just how many different major horror stories had an influence on this, including the Shining which we just recently talked about.
Speaker 2:So, tracy, what do you know about this film, if anything? Yeah, it's so funny when we first started talking about the fact that we were going to put this on list and I was like that's a thing, it really I had nothing. I'm complete tabula rasa, and in fact I thought maybe I I just didn't remember the name of it and when I saw the actors or whatever, I would be like, oh yeah, that one, nope nothing. So this movie came out in 97, which was like I, I did my my senior year abroad that year for for a semester. So maybe that's why I missed it. Maybe it was came out while I was in London.
Speaker 1:No, it was in August.
Speaker 2:It was actually two like two weeks before I left for Kenyon, so I have no idea why I missed this, but I completely missed it and all I can say is that the trailer alone. I was like damn that thing looks scary.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm not'm not gonna watch it.
Speaker 2:It's not your jam, and wasn't then either I love science fiction, like I love spaced stuff, but who? Just the trailer gave me chills, so anyway. So I'm excited to hear why this thing that missed, missed me entirely is, uh, you know, worth digging into. So I'm gonna turn it to you, scott why, what's at stake? Why are we looking at this thing?
Speaker 3:uh sure, so I, I like this film so much. It is, uh like I always feel like I'm going to proceed from the wrong direction, so I like I don't really never know how to start talking about it. But what I like about Event Horizon and what is at stake, is it addresses the question of what can be haunted or what can bring back something from another place that is dangerous to humans or maybe where humans shouldn't go. And what I love about it is it is essentially a haunted house story set at the edge of Neptune in outer space, and um it's.
Speaker 2:Should I just sort of go through the plot or what is Well um yeah, I am going to ask you to go through the plot, so, but that's um. So what's at stake here, if I can just reflect this back at you, is sort of the idea of the supernatural and and where it lives and what, what it can address. I also heard something about hubris.
Speaker 3:Uh, when you talk about where humans should go, yeah, so I I think a sign in in my experience and just like, just tell me to shut up if I go in the wrong direction but I feel like wrong direction.
Speaker 3:It's a conversation um, science fiction and horror are both sort of always at the edge of technology and always wondering, like are these things that we should be doing? What's going to happen if we do them? Uh, people who have a invested, moneyed interest in these things going well and being safe are telling us they're going to go well and be safe. But we know, looking at history, that doesn't always happen, and I think you can look back over a hundred years to see this. One of my favorite examples is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who wrote the Sherlock Holmes stories. A lot of people don't know he wrote a lot of science fiction and horror also, but one of my favorite examples of his early stories because it speaks to this sort of theme and plot is a story that was published in the Strand called the Horror of the Heights, and he wrote this back when propeller airplanes were just becoming powerful enough that people were saying you know, pretty soon we're going to be able to fly above cloud cover and look down on clouds. Humans have never done this before. So the horror of the heights is just about. What about if we start doing this and we learn that, like up above the clouds, they're just always terrifying monsters that we haven't seen yet and they live up there because they don't like looking at us. But when we go above the clouds, just like always monsters, because we don't know, because no one has ever been above a cloud. And I think Because we don't know because no one has ever been above a cloud, and I think you see that in different eras of science fiction and horror authors looking at things like cloning.
Speaker 3:You have works like Ira Levin's Boys from Brazil. There's a lot of great cloning stories. You have space exploration stories. You have space exploration. All of these technological questions have a way of inspiring horror and science fiction writers to sort of ask if we have thought this through completely. And another thing I like about Event Horizon so much is that there are periods in it. I'll try to have not too many spoilers for Tracy.
Speaker 2:No, no, you should absolutely spoil Scott. I want you to.
Speaker 3:I'm going to spoil this completely for Tracy, but there are moments where we get that wonderful feeling, that horror and sometimes only horror does so well of feeling like I thought I knew this situation. I do not know this situation. I thought I knew what was happening here. I don't know what was happening here and then, most crucially, I thought this was safe and if there were dangers, I knew the dangers. And realizing like I did not know all the dangers here, how did I get this very wrong?
Speaker 3:And I think that it is interesting to see that, performed in a space like, literally like a spaceship in the air I think it's 2047, where we feel like because of Death, which imagines space people who are exploring a planet, and in a situation where they just gradually realize like every part of this might not be real in the way we think it's real, our job might be a different job than we are actually think we were contracted to, brought here to do. And I think you see that in in event horizon done just like uh, so, so well, and I also like that it. It marries extreme in the future technology with like the literal most like ancient scary things, like ideas of like literal hell or or literal, like biblical punishments times, and the idea that there's nowhere in existence, that you can't be, that those forces can't find you, even if you're on a spaceship by Neptune and other humans are millions of miles away that also, it gets into one of the things like I actually really believe that the um, the central conceit of horror, like what's the?
Speaker 1:the kernel that's in every horror story is grief, and I feel like this story does a really good job of illuminating that, because all of the true terrors and horrific things that happen are based on the grief of the characters, which is another thing that I think is really cool, because you're setting this in space by neptune in. You know it's now only 20 years in the future, but you know it was 50 years in the future at the time and we're never going to get away from, like, human feelings of overwhelm with grief and uh and regret for how we've lived our lives I think that's exactly right and like just how, like you, you can't escape notions of hell.
Speaker 3:you can't escape your own, the truth of what you actually did, because, in the course of the Event Horizon haunting these characters, they're haunted by bad decisions. They made children they couldn't save or couldn't be saved, someone they left behind in an emergency and that will still come find you, even if you are in a super high-tech, super in-the-future, literal spacecraft. No, getting away from that stuff.
Speaker 2:Right, I got to know, lay it on me. What happens? Let's hear the plot.
Speaker 3:Okay, I love the plot so much. So it begins with um, sam neill is a scientist who is put aboard a vessel with a small crew at like 10 people, something like that that they start out with and, uh, they are going to the edge of neptune and it's sort of gradually revealed that their mission, uh is to is to investigate a signal that has come back from a ship that was called the Event Horizon, that disappeared seven years before and no one knows what happened to it, and it was designed using this new warp drive that could bend space in a new way to allow for far distant travel. And I think they thought that, oh, it just blew up, or the warp drive didn't work or it's just gone. But they've received a distress signal from neptune and this small group of people has been told they're like almost the only people who know the ship is still around and we have to go see what's wrong. And sam neill, uh, who seems to be the main character, is the designer of the event horizon, who sort of like knows its secrets and might know what went wrong. And lawrence fishburne's character is the captain of the ship, and I think it actually event horizon does something really interesting that the first alien movie does, which is the first alien movie people forget. Like tom scarrett got top billing in all the posters above sigourney weaver, and your sort of position is tom scarrett is the captain of the ship, he'll be the hero, and they're like, oh, no different thing, only sigourney survives, right. So, um, as they discover the, the floating dead hulk of the uh event horizon, you slowly realize maybe lawrence fishburne, the captain, is the main character. And we're how much do we know about Sam Neill, the ship designer? Can we really trust him? Is he really the main character of this?
Speaker 3:So they dock into the ship and it's lost gravity and there's like floating dried blood everywhere and they gradually realize that the people aboard the ship have been killed. And at one point in these early investigations they go to investigate this like special warp drive and it's it's just like a beautifully constructed set uh, with this like I thought it was really good for the 1990s of this like strange interlocking series of circles that can open up this interlocking series of circles that can open up this mystery hole into warp space. And as they are investigating it, it sends off this unexpected sort of like pulse of uh radiation or some an unexpected force that crucially, severely damages their ship that they use to come find the event horizon. Um, the lewis and clark, it's called uh. So I love that because it answers the question why do you have to spend the night in the haunted house? And the answer is well, your ship is leaking oxygen. You don't know if you can fit. Unfortunately, we all have to go in the haunted house now and and from uh. From there they sort of gradually realize that what most people would call supernatural things are occurring aboard the Event Horizon.
Speaker 3:Many characters see people who aren't there from their own pasts, traumatic events, and at one point they're able to discover the ship's log of the Event Horizon original crew. And in the course of hearing the original distress signal from the Event Horizon, there was like scrambled language. They couldn't tell exactly what was being said. It was a distant signal, but someone thought, someone thought that the distress signal might contain the word save me, spoken in Latin, something like that. But they realized later that it's actually someone saying save yourselves from hell and then like don't come. You thought you were saying come here. The ship was actually saying don't come here.
Speaker 3:And they begin to see snatches of recordings that would seem to be and this is where maybe it's a little bit subjective but, um, what most people might consider like hell to look like, sort of like a clive barker hellraiser, um, uh, gory scene happening, a traumatic gory scene happening, and, um, I think one of the things you wonder as a, or you're left to wonder intentionally as a viewer, is has this ship like gone to hell and back? And did it go? When it went into this other dimension, did it bring back something, or bring back an idea that says that we've gone where we shouldn't have gone, or we went to a place that we didn't know? Uh, we were, we were going. And then sam neill, the ship designer, seems to be fully possessed, uh, become fully possessed by the sort of spirit of the ship, and there's a recurring theme of people taking their eyeballs out. So he takes his eyeballs out, so he's, he's gone, full event horizon. That seems to be the symbol.
Speaker 3:Um, and then from there it becomes, I guess, maybe a little bit of a conventional action movie. There's Sam Neill and the ship against the crew who are trying to save themselves, eventually escape, very end of it. A small group of crew people seem to have uh, defeated sam neill and found a way that they can use part of the event horizon to launch themselves back towards earth, where they'll hopefully be, um, be, rescued. And then there's sort of like at least a couple of false endings where a main character wakes up and thinks that they're fine, oh oh, but it's Sam Neill is still back, and then they wake up from that. And then in the finals, like I don't know, emily, what do you think?
Speaker 3:The final scene of the film where the doors are closing, like is that just sort of like we've got you too nervous, or is that like maybe this is a dream within a dream, within a dream, and and then and that for me is it goes to the one of the things I like about space horror is you'll never know.
Speaker 3:There's so much that's unanswered about how that part of the universe works. So, yeah, a lot to it. But in a way it us ask complicated questions like should we use technology that we don't completely understand? How much do we know about the universe? Is the universe fundamentally good, fundamentally evil? Does technology mean that we can't be touched by old notions of hell or haunted by our own poor decisions that we've made? Haunted by our own poor decisions that we've made, so that's why I like it so much. I think as we go forward into the 21st century, there's going to be more fiction generally written about these sort of scenarios, because they ain't stopping. We're continuing to launch rockets and satellites and talk about going to Mars, and there's only going to be more of this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, wow, it does sound like it touches on some really fundamental questions about the nature of the universe and humans place in it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I should also mention just very, very fast that a lot of the spaceship is beautiful but it's sort of lit like a 1990s disco and then there's like super like 90s techno at the very end that um like I don't know um exactly who the artist is, but it sounds like you know the first mortal kombat movie very, very strongly sounds like prodigy well, uh, I think it was because paul anderson did.
Speaker 1:He was the um director, he directed the first mortal kombat movie, so yeah, so yeah yeah, well, one of the things that's interesting about the set design is, uh, they apparently were inspired by like notre dame cathedral, and so they, they made the event horizon look like notre dame cathedral. They used some sort of computer program to take the, the different aspects of the cathedral, and, like, make them parts of the, the spaceship. And then the same thing with the, the, the core, the. It's got the three rings and a circle in the middle and it looks like. I don't even know what they're called, but you know those, those kinds of things you see in like Da Vinci's workshop.
Speaker 3:Astrolab or something. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And then another thing that Iab or something, yeah, yeah. And then another thing that I found really interesting, because they're talking about hell and there's Latin in it, and I remember 18-year-old me was annoyed by the Latin because I was just like why is some guy going to be like, you know, save yourself from hell in Latin? I was much more understanding of it this time around, in part because they showed that the original captain of the Event Horizon sends out a message and he ends it with Latin. So clearly that's like his thing.
Speaker 3:His thing yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then you see people who are clearly very intelligent doing stupid shit. So, like Keters is one of the characters. She has a son. It's unclear what's going on with the child, but you see that the kid is in a wheelchair when she's looking at a message from home, and so there's a point where she keeps thinking she's seeing her son and she like follows him when they're like we have got to get out of here, like it's time we got to go, we got to go, and so like she has shown herself to be way too smart for this shit. But I was like, okay, so the ship messes with your head and so, like the Latin I'll forgive the Latin In any case there's quite a bit of like kind of medieval imagery.
Speaker 1:And then I also thought it was really interesting that the names of the characters we've got, uh, lawrence Fishburne's character is Miller, richard T Jones plays Cooper, richard T Jones, tracy. I was like how do I know that guy? He was in an episode of Lucifer. So, um, I was like I know this guy, how do I know this guy? And uh, let's see there's a character named Smith Miller, cooper Smith. And then I was saying like where is like like a dam and like I was, you know just way overthinking it. And then all of the names are very simple, like there's Stark and Peters and Justin, and it all felt very like medieval in space in some ways.
Speaker 2:Yeah in some ways. Yeah, so you mentioned you. You mentioned at least the one character whose son, the image of her son. Can we talk briefly, like we usually talk about gender and I know we've got lawrence fishburne and sam neill with the black eye as the good guy, I guess can we talk about race and gender in these few characters that that they give us?
Speaker 3:can't. We're all white people. Is that okay? No, obviously you. Yeah, let's do it. What?
Speaker 1:should we talk about? One of the things that's interesting is so I was thinking about, because there's only two female characters well, three, if you count Sam Neill's dead wife, who we only really see in like Hallucination or Flashback.
Speaker 2:She's obviously not talking to any other named characters. Yeah, so Peters and Stark talk to, not she's obviously not talking to any other named characters.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so um peters and stark talk to each other, but it's about coffee and it's like they don't talk about the men.
Speaker 2:They talk about, it passes the bechdel test allison said men so all right, so it passes actually it was so funny because I had been like watching and I was.
Speaker 1:I was waiting for this and I wonder is this going to pass the Bechdel test? And that happened. It's just this tiny little interaction. I was just like it's almost like they knew Alison Bechdel. They're like we've got to put this in. So it's like do you have coffee? Yeah, but it's cold, that's it.
Speaker 2:That's the extent of the conversation, okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but something that I do find interesting is I feel like it in some ways subverts the expectations of horror, because in horror you expect the black guy to die and you expect the young, attractive woman to die if she is in any way shown to be sexual Right. So the only two women we've got Julie Richardson plays Stark and I can't remember her name, but Peters, who's the one who has a son and so like the motherly woman, is the one you'd kind of expect to survive. And then Lawrence Fishburne doesn't make it, but Richard T Jones, who is also a black actor, does. And Stark, who's played by Julie Richardson, also survives. So like the young, attractive, so she's the young.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay Cool.
Speaker 1:Theoretically, like the ending is ambiguous and although I think I think it's clear that the ship still has them, but I think it's but she makes it to the end of the movie. She makes it to the end of the movie, yes, so I thought that was kind of cool. Just because the like you were saying, like the expectation, you go into this thinking Sam Neill's the main character and in part because this is only a couple years after Jurassic Park and he played Alan Grant in Jurassic Park and was very much. The hero stuck with me when I saw it originally was how unsettling it was to see, like you know, avuncular Alan Grant become this.
Speaker 3:Yeah, playing against type. I've heard that's called.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And that was apparently intentional on Anderson's part, like I did a little bit of reading and he was like he, he wanted to play against type with that and he also. He's unsettling from the beginning. But at the beginning you're like, ok, he's just grieving, but no, he's, he's scary, yeah yeah. There's that subversion to to Lawrence Fishburne as being like the actual protagonist, and then the fact that we've got these other two characters, who are the ones who make it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no question. When I think about race and gender in this film, I was thinking about how, like, the two characters who do survive, like one was sort of the male was sort of sexually harassing the female at the beginning of the film, and then it's like, ah, I'm trapped with my har'm trapped with my harasser now, but it, you know, maybe the in the nineties, um, you know the, what would have gone before an HR department was not the same as what we have now. But that's something I think now watching it in 2024.
Speaker 2:Yeah for sure, compared to the 1990s, that's really interesting to like the sort of meta of like, if this ship puts the people in it, power in hell.
Speaker 3:That that sounds like a kind of hell to be trapped with one's abuser, harasser sure, and then the the other thing that I think about, um, with, uh, race and science fiction a lot, is have we chosen to write a science fiction world, like where race still exists? Because, um, lots of science fiction is written from the point of view, far enough ahead, everyone will make babies with everyone else, and then, like, there just won't be race.
Speaker 2:And so like.
Speaker 3:For me that brings up like. One example is like Philip K Dick has a novel called Dr Futurity about a physician in California who's magically transported forward in time and when he meets people they're all like like what's wrong? Like are you ill, like you're so pale, and the idea is like no one is totally white anymore. So for throughout the story he has to, like, wear makeup to make himself look like he is different races, because he no one is just white anymore. But I feel you know. So this, this story, is like it's in the future, but it's not like so far in the future so I heard a lot about subverting expectations, that that is sort of the through line for this film.
Speaker 2:I'd love to hear more about that in terms of, like, what is so satisfying about it and you can take this however you want story construction or emotionally or whatever whatever sort of is is alive for you. But I'd really love to hear more about subverting expectations through this movie and and the sort of bigger implications of that.
Speaker 3:Sure. So I guess for me, one expectation that is subverted is what can be haunted. I think I mentioned that a little bit before, but I feel like there are notable works of horror and science fiction where, like we, we, we don't really think of a thing as as potential, as as as potentially being haunted until it is, you know, just things like you know, like the Stephen King novel Christine, like a haunted car seems like sort of a quaint, silly idea, but he did it really well and now it's sort of like. Oh, obviously, like you know, any car has a mind of its own. One immediately, says Christine, and I think that I and again I apologize if I'm repeating myself a little mounted spaceship is so appealing because we, we think of uh, things like the space program and, uh, the technology that would enable interstellar travel, uh, or just interplanetary travel, as as being uh, the, the it has the, the aroma of of something that would dispel myth and dispel the unknown, and it's sort of like. It's like being in a doctor's office, like we have all the answers, all the machines are beeping, there's nothing we're unsure about, and I feel like I'm always cynical to people who have like like one grand unification theory for horror.
Speaker 3:But I think a part of it is always like we were wrong about something. We thought we were safe and we weren't, we didn't know. And you know, we were wrong about something, we thought we were safe and we weren't, we didn't know. And it can be something as simple as I'm really sure that this bunker is zombie-proof and there's no way that a zombie that's just like a head in some spinal column can slither through like a snake and then drop down from the ductwork. I'm really sure that can't happen. And then it does. But it can also be really really big things, like I'm really really sure that ghosts were just something that primitive humans made up to explain the unknown, and that that must be why we haven't seen one in a while. Or you know, you go to, you go to cosmic horror and it you know it must be the case that humans are the most evolved animal, must be the case that humans are the most evolved animal and it couldn't be that there are other creatures that are just sleeping under the ocean right now but going to come back soon, that are way ahead of us and we're basically their pets.
Speaker 3:I also think it has something that I like that horror and cosmic horror does, which can sort of invert or maybe even like pervert is the word sort of invert or maybe even like pervert?
Speaker 3:Is the word the Joseph Campbell's hero's journey story cycle that we see so frequently, where you know a hero is plucked out of anonymity and given a quest and has to be tested and learns from a master and then always, you know, goes into that like other world and then comes back and when they come back they have achieved something. So now that you know, now you're a Jedi, luke or Rey, now you're a wizard, harry or Hermione, but I feel like in cosmic horror it's the same beginning structure. But when you come back from that other place, you're like and now I have to commit suicide, or now I have to tear my eyeballs out, or now I have to check myself into Arkham Asylum because, like I have seen things that are unseeable and unknowable and I feel like Event Horizon with the eyeball removing sort of speaks to that as well that when this ship went to where it should not have gone, I saw things I should not have seen and the only logical reaction is to cut my own eyes out.
Speaker 1:So there's a lot there, the.
Speaker 1:The one of the things that I think is really fascinating too about this is, like what you're talking about is like there's this kind of dichotomy that we see as between, like technology and religion, or technology and myth, and there's this one moment where Lawrence Fishburne's Miller is is saying, like to Sam Neill's character, I need to know what's going on, what's happening, where did the ship go? And Sam Neill keeps saying I don't know, I don't know, I don't know have to protect this technology and and you know all of these different things, and like it's impossible for the things that you say are happening on the ship to actually be happening. That's not scientifically possible. And so I thought that that scene was interesting, because it really underlies how little we do know. Like we have this, the. It's that sense of hubris. Like we do have this sense of like, yeah, we can clone a sheep and we can create AI and we can, you know, fly to the moon and all of those things, and so, like we got it all covered, and yet there's still this sense of like.
Speaker 1:No, there's a lot that we don't know. Like old fears, like old, you know, kind of racial fears I mean, and by race, I mean like human race fears can come in, and then also where religion can come in and all of that. And this movie like very obviously does that, because it names where this with the dimension, it goes to be hell. Now, whether or not that's actually the, I think the the, the big line from the movie is uh, sam neill says hell is just a word. The reality is far worse and so, you know, it may not be like the hell that's described in our sacred books on earth, but it is. That's the best metaphor that we have for it. In this, in this film, and I think that it's is thinking about, like some of the ways in which the way we understand.
Speaker 2:I've never heard this term, cosmic horror, before, scott, so maybe I'll have you actually define it.
Speaker 2:But the way I'm understanding it in context, like I'm thinking about part of the reason that the haunted spaceship is so subversive subversive of my expectations is because I'm thinking haunting happens because of, like poltergeist, where we built the house on top of the old burial ground, right when there's, like, this connection to something very much earth-based that is the source of the supernatural intervention, and so to take it completely extraterrestrial off of this earth and have there still be something supernatural, that feels subversive of my expectations, of how, like the cosmology, how the world actually works. And I think that's really interesting and and corroborates what you just said, emily, that, like you know that no matter where you go, there you are and and all the things that we can't understand go with us, and I'm, my brain, is going both sort of very like macro in the way that you know, a hundred years ago we thought we understood nutrition, uh, because we understood, like, fats and proteins and we didn't even know about vitamins. And now who knows what else is in our nutrients that we're not. You know, like when we, when we thought in the forties that we'd be able to make pills and we wouldn't have to eat anymore, because we really genuinely thought we understood all of nutrition. And now we're talking about macros, you know. So who knows what else, sort of on the macro level, but then also, sorry, micro level, but then also on the macro level, like with other dimensions that are some sort of hell.
Speaker 2:I find that really, really fascinating to bake that in to a plot line, and I'd love to hear your reaction to that, scott. And also, you know if you can give me a more precise definition of cosmic horror. Am I hitting it?
Speaker 3:Sure, I'll try to do both. The first thing, I think what you said is just right on and I think something that when I'm around other horror writers at horror writer meetups and the Bram Stoker Awards and things like that, something that's interesting to talk about is like when you have a haunted house story or a story about the supernatural, if there begin to be natural explanations for things but characters are still in danger and things are still really, really bad, do you, do you lose anything by explaining anything? So, like I would bring up, horror writers love to talk about the greatest haunted house novel of all time. Is it the Haunting of Hill House? Is it whatever?
Speaker 3:And one of the top 10 that are always mentioned is Richard Matheson's Hell House and Richard Matheson he wrote I Am Legend and Duel and many episodes of the Twilight Zone. Just a master passed away, I want to say 10, 15 years ago, but in Hell House there are lots and lots of supernatural things and a team of sort of scientists begin to understand how these things could be sort of naturally occurring. But it's still really horrible that they exist.
Speaker 3:It's so awful for the characters, so does it lose or gain anything?
Speaker 3:So I think you have hit on it's so awful for the characters, so does it lose or gain anything?
Speaker 3:So I think you have hit on something that horror writers talk about and think about all the time.
Speaker 3:When it comes to like, how much do you give a natural slightly differently as as horror that is scary because it affirms that humans are not in the top place in in the food chain or in the universe, or even of any importance, and I I think it's, it's horror that goes to the idea that, like we are, we are small in the cosmos, we are maybe an accident, um, and maybe other creatures are the real tip of the evolutionary pyramid and and we might be something that, just like you know, thomas legati said we were accidentally sentient meat that came alive. But like, this is not supposed to happen and it's not the project and we're not the main thing at all and and um, I like cosmic horror stories because they're they're hard often to to film or put into movies and TV shows, because so frequently the scary thing will just be like, uh, a scientist somewhere like in the Arctic discovering evidence of like, oh, a different story of how humans came into existence. That means like, yeah we're. We're not special at all, we're just like glorified pets or something.
Speaker 1:So that's how I see. That's interesting, that that's how you define cosmic horror, because I think of science fiction like Star Trek, which is very optimistic, but as being like a reminder of how small we are, in a affirming kind of way, like in the like and I personally find it very affirming is not quite the right word, but I find it reassuring when I have a chance, like for any reason, to think about like the just immensity of the universe, or when my kids were really into dinosaurs and thinking about like just the age of the earth, and it makes me feel very small in a very reassuring way. And I feel like science fiction does that where it's like yeah, we're not the only ones out there, and isn't that great, whereas like cosmic horror is the we're not the only ones out there and that's terrifying.
Speaker 1:Isn't it not great yeah and that's like I find that really interesting because, again, that that has to do with kind of the science fiction is often optimistic, and maybe that's just because I cut my teeth on optimistic science fiction. You know, tracy, and I grew up with star trek and and I don't know like trying to think of like day the earth stood still and stuff like that, I mean that's uh, but uh, I do feel like science fiction kind of veers into horror. Once it starts going like and we could be friends or not, you know, it's that. That's. That's when it starts to be scary, is when we start thinking of, like the cosmic implications of like what if they treat us the way we treat lesser creatures? What if they treat us the way we treat each other? And that's when it gets really kind of terrifying.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think you've hit upon something I find super interesting, which is during the same golden age of science fiction, both born in the Chicagoland area, both then moved to California. Very similar. But I think you begin to see differences along the line of like Ray Bradbury, totally uninterested in sex and drugs both in his personal life and as his fiction. He did a lot of script doctoring. He would famously like turn away scripts with sex and drugs in them. He did a lot of script doctoring. He would famously like turn away scripts with sex and drugs in them and yet insanely positive about what technology is going to make possible, like. If there are villains in his science fiction story, they're like humans who've perverted the technology, but the technology itself is going to be so great, we're going to learn so much. It's going to be so existentially satisfying and existing.
Speaker 3:In contrast to that, philip K Dick was very interested in sex and drugs in his personal life and in his science fiction writing. I think sadly, that's probably why he passed away in his fifties from drug use and Bradbury lived to his nineties. But also Dick was like very, very skeptical about will this all be good and when. I can't tell the difference anymore between a real sheep and an electric sheep, or my real girlfriend or boyfriend and a fake girl, like, is that a good thing when I'm able to alter my memories seamlessly? So I think I really took a trip when I couldn't afford to to pay for actually taking that trip. Like is that a good thing? I'm not sure. So I, I, you, you have hit upon something that I see a lot when I'm reading science fiction writers, my favorite science fiction writers, and thinking about, like, what are the patterns I see and are they connected? So yeah, I don't know if that's useful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, that's fascinating. I think that's really fascinating thinking about like it's just, it's a frame, it's a, it's a lens, like we're looking at the future. And are we looking at it with an optimistic or a or a pessimistic sort of cynical lens? I, I think that's I'm my. The wheels are spinning, that's why I was a little bit.
Speaker 1:There's also the kind of like the reiteration of the sins we're already committing, Like have you both seen Ex Machina? No, yes.
Speaker 3:I have.
Speaker 1:It had Oscar Isaac in it and I can't remember the other guy's name. So it's a near future sci-fi where Oscar Isaac plays like a Jeff Bezos type guy and he has created androids that are women, that are completely indistinguishable from human beings, and he basically abuses them as sex robots. And for some reason, I was thinking about that film in connection with Event Horizon also, because it felt like it was doing the same thing that we always do, so like the Oscar Isaac character was sexualizing these robots and and and not giving them their own autonomy. And there's this one scene that like really stuck with me, where you see the like, the footage of like it's a camera in the room that this robot is in and she's like banging her fists against the door to be let out until her arms fall off, like, and are destroyed, and it's like wow.
Speaker 1:And what's interesting is my husband had a very different response to the end of it than I did, because so Oscar Isaac's character is abusive, prick. And then there's a younger character who comes on to do the um, the turing test for one of the, the new robots, and he like basically infantilizes this character and fall the, the female robot, and falls in love with her and so like. For me, she ends up, she and the other robots end up killing the two men and she escapes and it's chilling, but there's part of me that's just like go my husband was like that was terrifying.
Speaker 1:It was like, yeah, but in kind of a good way at the end, because this woman, who has zero morality because she's a robot and was not programmed to, is out loose in the world and no one can tell the difference between her and a regular human being. Anyway, I was thinking about that in terms of, like the idea of hubris, and we consistently recreate the horrors that we've already created. So, like with AI, it reiterates the racism and sexism and misogyny and all of that with those like AI bots that scan resumes. And so with the in terms of like the event horizon, bring it back to the movie we're actually talking about. They're recreating the like, oh yeah, we can handle whatever it is without actually thinking through like what, if there's you know something else there? What do we know what we're getting into? Are we in intruding on someone else's land, or or or or space, and is that going to bite us in the ass? So, like there's, there's so much there. That is just. It's, as I said before, human's gonna human. So there.
Speaker 2:That is just. It's, as I said before, human's gonna human. So that's really interesting, emily, that that this is a, you know, sort of a like a indigenous revenge kind of a film. That's what I just heard you say well, it actually they.
Speaker 1:They do describe it as the shining in space, which, and then, uh, there's like the oh yeah, the, the theories about the shining being being kind of indigenous revenge. So, yeah, yeah, which. There there are some images like there's blood flowing through the area, which is like the blood out of the elevator, and there's a dead woman in a bathtub. So, like they, he definitely took inspiration from the shining Interesting.
Speaker 3:What I think is interesting, emily, you're talking about um, realistic automatons that can can feel upset or can can take revenge on their, their masters, and I feel like that's a thread that runs through so much science fiction. Out of like is, is something a robot anymore? If it's that advanced, like, when are we just creating life like I I won't say his name because you know him, but I remember like. So you and I went to kenyon college together. Emily and I had a friend who had this program on his computer that was like a little pet, uh, robot, dog animation, and you could like play, play with the dog and give it treats, but also you could like mistreat it and like smack it in the face. And my friend was like really, really invested. Like Scott, I'm going to give you my cursor, but you can only treat the dog well, like I really, really want to treat this dog, and it was, you know, ones and zeros. It was not a dog, but my friend at the time really liked the idea of treating this robot dog well and what I think is interesting is that he took something from that and I think that even if things are just, if someone is has antisocial behavior and likes to just like punch people in the face.
Speaker 3:If we create a realistic Android robot and we're like here, like just go punch this robot in the face, it'll scream like a human. That way, you won't be punching any real humans, but you'll get the same satisfaction Like maybe that wouldn't be a good thing because we need to like correct that person and not give them an outlet for those impulses. But also it's just ones and zeros and plastic and silicone. It's not a real thing. And if it's punching the Android, it's not punching me, so do I prefer? I mean there's a whole lot here that has not been written yet.
Speaker 1:I mean there's a whole lot here that has not been written yet. That gets into like you'll often see people when they're talking about incels they're like just give them sex robots and it's like that doesn't actually solve the problem. You know, like don't know, I'm really not okay with that idea. So, yeah, I definitely feel that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, like, are you giving up on a person? If you, if you give them something like that, like you are, you are a hopeless and worthless and there's no point in trying to help you evolve as a person. Is that the best thing to do? I don't know. Write, write novels about that and make movies about that, cause those are big questions that aren't going to go away as this technology continues to evolve.
Speaker 2:It's really interesting. You know I'm this. What you, what you two are talking about right now, is actually about the the difference between intention and impact. Right? So by giving the sex robot to the incel, you're removing the impact, but you're not doing anything about the intention, and and so the question Scott is asking is like intention, and and so the question scott is asking is like is is that enough? I think that's really really interesting. And and when we layer that question on to actually this movie that you brought to us, scott, like and the question of you know the technology that we don't fully understand, and and we the the difference between intention and impact in that question, right, Like both have to be considered, I think is ultimately the lesson underneath this cosmic horror here that both intention and impact have to be considered.
Speaker 3:I agree totally and I also think there's in less sexy examples. But there's still a lot of technology that's being used right now that, if I'm honest, I'm not sure I totally understand. I know that quantum computers are coming. I've read a couple of books about quantum entanglement. I've watched YouTube videos about the double slit experiment. I kind of understand what that is. But everyone is saying like right now Google and Microsoft and like it is a quantum computing arms race right now. I don't really understand what that's going to do, what gateways that will open. I don't think most people do.
Speaker 1:I think most people just want faster movies and you know, fortnite will be a little quicker and clearer or something you can also get to stuff that we do kind of understand, like just when, uh, zuckerberg was creating a online way of rating the, the women at harvard, it never would have occurred to him that it would affect, like politics in myanmar, you know, and like, and would cause people's deaths, so like that. That's the sort of thing where it's like that that intention and impact is is like so completely divorced from each other. And you know, the reason why I think Zuckerberg is a supervillain is because he doesn't seem to care, whereas I think someone who you know actually had some sort of conscience would be like, okay, let's, let's dial this back, although, who knows, maybe that's why he's doing the whole like metaverse, I don't know. But yeah, that that's like.
Speaker 1:Anytime we have new technology, we can't, we, there's no way to think through all of the implications of it, and and so like. Everything is all about unintended consequences, and some of it has to do with how you handle the unintended consequences. And what's really cool about Event Horizon is, like you see, in Lawrence Fishburne's character, someone who is eminently rational, and you know, once they're like okay, we got to get out of here. As soon as Lewis and Clark is fixed, we're going and Sam Neill's like no, no, you can't leave this, and you can't just leave this here. And he's like no, no, I'm not gonna leave it here, we're gonna get far enough out. And then I'm sending missiles to it and destroying it.
Speaker 2:Because it needs to be destroyed. Yeah, yeah, so we've been talking for a minute now. Scott, I want to make sure that you had a chance to share the insights or questions or whatever about this movie that you came on today to share. So is there anything that we haven't talked about that you really want to make sure that we cover?
Speaker 3:Just so. The only thing I can think can think of is that I also think this question of like should we pursue this technology? We're seeing it right now with large language models and chat, gpt and AI, and I don't have to take you through the whole like mutiny that almost happened at chat GPT with their groups that call themselves accelerationists, who are just like. This technology is going to happen, no matter what.
Speaker 3:The best solution is that good people are the ones driving it, because the toothpaste is out of the tube and this has to happen, and not everyone agrees with that, but every time someone's like let's do this slowly and thoughtfully and let's consider if this program for ranking hot women at Harvard could one day be used to create political unrest in Myanmar. Those people, consistently, right now at least, are getting kicked out and losing and the winners are just like no, no, no, as fast as we possibly can. It's a race, got to beat the other guy, and that's the environment we're in right now, and I think that is just the last reason. I'll add that we're entering a time when cautionary tales about unknown technologies are not totally useless.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:Not totally something to not think about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm thinking about Alien, you know, and Sigourney Weaver's character, who was like, uh, I don't know if this is a good idea, just the only one who survived, yeah, Okay, so let me see if I can. We, we ranged far. It was awesome. Let me see if I can, um, reflect back some of the things that we talked about. I'm going to need some help, though, because we we definitely like we took some really cool, fun, fun detours. Yeah, tangents Cross paths, so Event Horizon from the late 90s this is a haunted house in space, which is pretty awesome concept, I think.
Speaker 2:I have to say, though, I'm too much of a wimp to actually watch it. Sorry, yeah, you were scared by Fright Night. Well, I, I mean, there's the jump scares. The jump scares it's not like you gave me nightmares pretty spooky, like if you give me nightmares. Just, there were a lot of those like jump scares, get me, yeah, anyway, um, okay.
Speaker 2:So some of the underlying themes in this movie that are so fascinating to you, scott, are well, one. There's a repeated subversion of expectations, which is kind of Emily, and I have talked about this before. The basis of both horror and comedy is a subversion of your expectations. You think you know what's happening and then you realize you don't know what's happening. You think you're safe, you realize you are not safe and it sounds like in this movie it does that over and over and over again with sort of dream within a dream, within a dream Making. You didn't say this, but what I heard was sort of an unreliable narration, kind of a setup, because you think that you are watching reality and then you realize it was actually sort of controlled by the hell ship. And then you think you're watching reality and you realize that also was controlled by the hell ship, and then you think you're rushing reality and you realize that also was controlled by the hell ship. That's what I heard.
Speaker 3:I think that's fair.
Speaker 2:So we talked about a little bit about it does pass the Bechdel test, but just barely when these two women talk about coffee for like two lines. But you know, cool, that's the bar. It's a yes. No, it is a yes, test and the answer is yes. One thing that, emily, you pointed out about race and subverting expectations is that sort of the horror. What's the word?
Speaker 2:I want to look at the, the trope, the stereotype the stereotype is that the sexualized young woman and the black dude are two of the people who are going to die, and that's not actually the case in this movie, though. A black dude dies, but one of the black dudes makes it, and the younger, more sexualized woman in the sort of maiden mother crone archetypes, the maiden survives, the mother dies. There is no crone, or she's already dead. I guess that was sam neill's wife. Well, no, she's, she's not. No, there is no crone in there is no crone. Okay, cool, let me think now. Now we we went off on some tangents where we talked about sort of the hubris and the foolishness that humans have in sort of chasing technology that is possible, but also places. That I think is both literal in looking backward at stealing land, whether on this continent or australia or wherever, or shit. Where was I going with this, emily? Maybe?
Speaker 3:who has a right to space? Who has a right to space? Who has a right to colonize and explore?
Speaker 1:You were like, whether it's in the past, like in terms of land or like, I'm thinking the future, like in terms of like dimensional travel.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right, so I'm. Whether it's literal exploration of land or space or metaphorical exploration of technology, that has an impact that may or may not match our intent. We talked a bit about impact and intent in fact, within that technology piece, especially where we were talking about automatons, how do you say that word Simulacra?
Speaker 1:Simulacra, simulacra. You know what that's one I've never actually heard said. I say simulacra.
Speaker 2:This is Cylons.
Speaker 3:Cylons is good also.
Speaker 1:This is like what was the word that I always said wrong Ravenous.
Speaker 2:Ravenous.
Speaker 1:It's got the word raven right at the beginning, but it's not ravenous.
Speaker 2:So we spent a lot of time talking about Cylons and sort of the autonomous robots and who simulate human life.
Speaker 2:And at what point does that thing that is not a human or not a dog, because it's really just bits and bytes, but it does have an existence and our interacting with it, it changes us and therefore, what do we owe it?
Speaker 2:I feel like that's a really interesting question that got posed in our conversation about that, spun off of this, this movie, we pointed out.
Speaker 2:I pointed out the fact that one of the things that one of the ways that this idea subverts expectations for me in terms of like a supernatural villain, is that it is off world and I have been taught by things like poltergeist that the supernatural is very much earth based, and so that's sort of a really interesting twist on my expectations that that forces me to question the nature of the universe and the supernatural within the universe, which I think is a really interesting move and one that sounds like is characteristic of cosmic horror, which does so in such a way as to actually be terrifying, because it makes humans not just insignificant in the way that the Grand Canyon makes us insignificant, but insignificant in the way that like the creatures that are actually keeping us as pets makes us insignificant. I'm sure I'm forgetting things, because we talked about a whole lot. What have I not mentioned that you want to make sure you lift back? We lift back up again before we wrap.
Speaker 3:I feel like you got the main point.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the one thing is that kind of exploring that dichotomy between technology and religion or mythology, exploring that dichotomy between like technology and like religion or mythology, and that I think is is really just a fascinating aspect of this movie, and the, and even the fact that they used like inspiration from Notre Dame cathedral as part of creating this technology. So, and then just the, the, as I mentioned early on, just the fact that at the, at the center of all of this is grief, like Sam Neill is like the very first words of the film is he's looking at a picture of his wife and he says I miss you. So it's like very clear from the beginning that the that's the entire film is really about how we torture ourselves with grief that the entire film is really about how we torture ourselves with grief.
Speaker 2:Thank you, that was an important theme about the way that we sort of carry our hell with us and then it becomes exacerbated by the supernatural entity. But it really the characters brought it with them, they didn't, it wasn't imposed upon them. It was the grief or the guilt or the whatever that they brought with them that really was used to torture them. The other thing that you all mentioned that I didn't mention that Emily bringing up Notre Dame Cathedral I think is reminded me of, is the actual visual imagery of the ship itself and how beautiful and, I heard, actually kind of disturbing possibly it is. I think I heard that from you, emily. That's shaking his head.
Speaker 1:No, the actors apparently told Paul Anderson, the director, like we love working for you, but we hate working on this set.
Speaker 3:Like this set is so creepy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they did a nice job with it interesting.
Speaker 2:Okay, any final thoughts on event horizon. Oh, I, I do one. One more that I did here. One more that I did here because you talked about influences on the set and one of the things that I heard from you, emily, was shining, the shining as an influence on the set and just this movie in general, which is really interesting that we just talked about the shining recently, so that the indigenous tie, in which I will link to our shining episode in our show notes, because that blew my mind when we talked about that it really did. It really did.
Speaker 3:I've seen some, some online explanations of imagery and the shining that are pretty mind blowing. Yeah, I think that's also a wonderful story of like why do you stay in the haunted house?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. And also the idea that the monsters came with them. Right, I mean, I'm left from the Shining with the sense that the monsters were Jack and that the house kind of brought them out or the hotel brought them out, but he was carrying them with him when he walked in the door. That's heavy.
Speaker 1:That's usually how we end these. We're like all right, and that's ruined our childhood or that got dark.
Speaker 3:I'm glad to help with that project in my own small way, my tiny contribution.
Speaker 1:We've considered making the like the. The subtitle of this it's a. You know deep thoughts about stupid shit ruining your childhood since 2023 really so well.
Speaker 2:Our guest today has been Scott Kenimore. Scott, thank you so much for coming on the show. Tell us where can we find you, on socials or web.
Speaker 3:So I'm I'm at Scott Kenimorecom, I'm Twitter at Scott Kenimore, and my new space horror novel, edge of the wire, comes out in June.
Speaker 2:Amazing. All right, well, folks, we will link to Scott's socials and website and you can go check out where to pre-order the, the, the book as well where to pre-order the book. Uh, the new book, and there are existing books that they can already go buy right.
Speaker 3:Yes, Tell us about them.
Speaker 2:Scott. What are the titles?
Speaker 3:So I'm probably best known for Zombie Ohio. There's a book called the Grand Hotel I'm pretty well known for, and the most recent was Lake of Darkness about a decapitationist on the South side of Chicago during World War I.
Speaker 2:Sounds way too scary for me, but I am sure our listeners.
Speaker 3:I just like saying decapitationist. I think it's a good word, it's a good word actually. I might be able to read it, maybe possibly I'll send you a copy, just give it a address that's great, all right.
Speaker 2:so, emily, next time, uh, I am going to bring you, I'm going to bring you my deep thoughts about dirty dancing, thanks to a recommendation from our listener, allison. So, thanks, allison, and I think, em, that you have some listener comments that you wanted to share.
Speaker 1:I do. It's kind of interesting that we were talking about the Shining because my comments are about that. So Amanda said I really enjoyed the book White Horse by Erica Wirth. She is an urban Native American here in Denver and a good portion of her book, which she describes as indigenous horror, reworks indigenous representation and involvement from the Shining, while her protagonist is staying at the Stanley Hotel, which is the hotel that the Shining is based on. It's a refreshing take on some of the themes from the movie and the book. I immediately put that on my list. It's called the White Horse by Erica Wirth. And then Andrew said the first season of White Lotus has some shots down the hotel hallway and all I could think was creepy overlook and then also added the book is very different. So Dr Sleep is weird because of it. So I've actually refused to read know, do anything about Dr Sleep? Because I'm like the story is over, I don't need any more, I don't want to, I don't know what that is.
Speaker 1:It's.
Speaker 2:Danny as an adult. Oh, danny, as an adult.
Speaker 1:So Stephen King wrote a follow-up and I'm like I'm good, I don't need this. So, king, wrote it.
Speaker 2:It's not fan fiction, it's King, yeah Well, I mean, and then, but it's fan fiction on his own work.
Speaker 1:So yeah, and Dick Halloran is still alive because he doesn't die in the book. So got it.
Speaker 2:Got it All right, cool. Well, this has been a lot of fun. Thanks again, scott M. I will see you next week. See you next week.
Speaker 2:Do you like stickers? Sure, we all do. If you head over to guygirlsmediacom slash, sign up and share your address with us, we'll send you a sticker. It really is that easy, but don't wait, there's a limited quantity. Thanks for listening. Our theme music is Professor Umlaut by Kevin MacLeod from incompetechcom. Find full music credits in the show notes. Until next time, remember pop culture is still culture, and shouldn't you know what's in your head?