Speaker 1: Gernsbeck has published thousands of science fiction stories since nineteen eleven.
Speaker 1: How does scientists react to his ideas?
Speaker 2: In the early days, that is, before nineteen home and thirty,
Speaker 2: there was a terrible lot of skeptism. Today most scientists
Speaker 2: take me seriously.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Amusing Jews, where we celebrate Jewish contributors and
Speaker 3: contributions to American popular culture. I'm Jonathan Friedman, and I'm
Speaker 3: Joey Angelfield producer engineer Mike Tomren is working somewhere behind
Speaker 3: the scenes. Amusing Jews is a project of a DT
Speaker 3: Cavorine Congregation for Humanistic Judaism, the Jewish Museum of the
Speaker 3: American West, and Atheist United Studios. Hey, Joey, American science
Speaker 3: fiction owes much to Jewish writers and innovators, and the
Speaker 3: term itself was coined by a Jewish immigrant from Luxembourg.
Speaker 3: Hugo Gernsback our guest today, himself, a Jewish immigrant, is
Speaker 3: carrying on that rich tradition.
Speaker 4: We're thrilled to talk again with Alex Schwartzman, a prolific
Speaker 4: science fiction author whose latest novel is the best of
Speaker 4: All Possible Planets. Alex, welcome back to Amusing Jews.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 4: You've had an eclectic career as a writer, anthologist, translator,
Speaker 4: and game designer, not to mention your stint as a
Speaker 4: champion magic the Gathering player. What keeps you coming back
Speaker 4: to science fiction?
Speaker 1: Science fiction has been sort of my first love as
Speaker 1: a hobby, long before I discovered gaming, long before I
Speaker 1: kind of got involved in the laundry list of different
Speaker 1: cool things that you've mentioned. I was devouring science fiction
Speaker 1: books as a kid living in the Soviet Union. You
Speaker 1: know today is Ukraine, but back then it was a
Speaker 1: place that had very limited entertainment options. There were three
Speaker 1: TV channels, and you know, very little of quality on
Speaker 1: any of them. There were a few movies and a
Speaker 1: few different entertainment options available, but they were ample books,
Speaker 1: and so I just read voraciously. I read every science
Speaker 1: fiction short story and novel that I could find, both
Speaker 1: by the Soviet authors as well as in translation, which
Speaker 1: kind of why I fell in love with translation and
Speaker 1: and and everything that it has to offer as well.
Speaker 1: And I never walked away from that. When my family
Speaker 1: moved to the United States, I never thought that my
Speaker 1: English would be good enough to be a writer. I
Speaker 1: was very surprised to learn that I was wrong, but
Speaker 1: also gratified. So but I continue to read throughout this
Speaker 1: entire time. For my you know, five decades of life,
Speaker 1: I've been reading science fiction books, and I think I'm
Speaker 1: probably really well read, even for science fiction fandom. And
Speaker 1: there are some people who are just astoundingly well read
Speaker 1: in that space, because many of the books I've read
Speaker 1: are from the era that are hardly read today by
Speaker 1: modern readers. So like the Golden Age books, you know,
Speaker 1: going all the way back to the time of Hugburns
Speaker 1: back and so I kind of channeled and poured all
Speaker 1: of that love into this new book.
Speaker 3: One of the first science fiction books I remember reading
Speaker 3: was an anthology of Soviet science fiction. I think that
Speaker 3: was the title of it. But I was struck by
Speaker 3: kind of the differences between some of the stories in
Speaker 3: there and the stuff that I was reading later that
Speaker 3: was American science fiction. Do you have any like, I
Speaker 3: don't know, all encompassing view of maybe the distinctions between
Speaker 3: Soviet and American science fiction of that era.
Speaker 1: The Soviet science fiction was very limited in some ways
Speaker 1: because you couldn't express yourself really, you couldn't just tell
Speaker 1: the best story that you wanted to tell. You couldn't
Speaker 1: just entertain the audience. There were certain milestones that you
Speaker 1: had to hit. Science fiction was viewed by the Soviet
Speaker 1: regime much in the same way as it is currently
Speaker 1: being viewed by the Chinese government as the fiction for
Speaker 1: the young people and as a means of getting them
Speaker 1: interested in science. And so the stories had to always feature,
Speaker 1: you know, some kind of victory of socialism and the
Speaker 1: communist regime over the evil capitalists. It had to feature,
Speaker 1: you know, some sort of scientific adventures that would you know,
Speaker 1: entice the potential readers. So there were all of these limitations,
Speaker 1: and even so there were brilliant authors like the stor
Speaker 1: Gott's key brothers like Ki Bolichov who were able to
Speaker 1: work within these constraints and tell great stories. But those
Speaker 1: stories were indeed different from American fiction, where the primary
Speaker 1: goal was to sell the book right, to sell as
Speaker 1: many copies as possible, and they just wasn't part of
Speaker 1: the equation. In the Soviet regime, the primary goal was
Speaker 1: to get the book past the sensors, to get it
Speaker 1: published at all.
Speaker 3: Do you have any opinion about whether science fiction needs
Speaker 3: to include scientific basis or not to be science fiction.
Speaker 1: I think it doesn't have to, and it absolutely can.
Speaker 1: There's some fantastic heart science fiction out there, and that's heard.
Speaker 1: Science fiction is generally how we describe these types of
Speaker 1: stories that are really with the sciences, relatively rigorous, so
Speaker 1: think the Martian for example. But you don't have to
Speaker 1: the great thing about our genre is that there is
Speaker 1: an infinite number of ways to tell story. And in fact,
Speaker 1: the term in the Russian language for the genre is fantastica,
Speaker 1: and fantastica is a term that encompasses all speculative literature.
Speaker 1: There is no quite an equivalent term in English, but
Speaker 1: it basically includes science fiction that includes fantasy, it includes
Speaker 1: speculative horror, anything where I think speculative fiction is probably
Speaker 1: the closest comparison, but it sounds a little academic, whereas
Speaker 1: fantastica is generally accepted. And so I really like that
Speaker 1: term because it by itself, just by using the term,
Speaker 1: it kind of invites you to consider that, like, all
Speaker 1: types of storytellings are possible, and you don't have to
Speaker 1: just be just serve the science.
Speaker 4: Enjoining the show, click like and subscribe.
Speaker 3: You describe your latest novel the best of All Possible
Speaker 3: Planets as a space opera comedy for fans of Futurama
Speaker 3: and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. You use a
Speaker 3: lot of humor in your work, and sci fi and
Speaker 3: comedy in general often blend well together. Why do you
Speaker 3: think that is.
Speaker 1: I think it's not just sci fi and comedy. I
Speaker 1: think a lot of genres tend to work well together
Speaker 1: if you're speaking the language, if you're speaking sort of
Speaker 1: the shrible of your readers. So if you're combining let's
Speaker 1: say you're a huge romance fan, right, and if somebody
Speaker 1: is writing a movie or a book that plays with
Speaker 1: those tropes and winks at the reader of those tropes
Speaker 1: in just the right way, in the way that they
Speaker 1: will recognize, it will work really, really well. And so
Speaker 1: the same is true with science fiction. Because whether you're
Speaker 1: a hardcore fan like most of us, or whether you're
Speaker 1: just a casual person that have maybe seen Star Wars
Speaker 1: and Doune and Star Trek, but isn't necessarily somebody who
Speaker 1: will recognize the Golden Age novels and stuff. You still
Speaker 1: understand the tropes and the references. And that is why
Speaker 1: TV shows that Featurama work so well. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: an incredibly smart show that's written by one of the
Speaker 1: best educated, like you know writers' rooms in the business.
Speaker 1: Like there's so many like Carvard graduates and so many
Speaker 1: actual scientists that were involved with that. But they were
Speaker 1: able to tell the jokes that everybody could understand. But
Speaker 1: if you actually happen to get the inside joke, to
Speaker 1: understand the science behind what they were saying, or the
Speaker 1: formula that was written on the blackboard the in an
Speaker 1: episode somewhere, that easter egg only enhanced your enjoyment of
Speaker 1: the story. And so I tried time and again to
Speaker 1: apply the same strategy to my book, where you should
Speaker 1: be able to read it even if you're a complete
Speaker 1: neophy if you're just vaguely familiar with what space opera
Speaker 1: is and you know what those kind of types of
Speaker 1: stories try to accomplish. But if you actually get the references,
Speaker 1: then that level of enjoyment just becomes much more refined,
Speaker 1: and you will get that endorphin every time that you
Speaker 1: catch an easter and you catch that reference that was intended.
Speaker 4: Is there a name for that kind of fiction that
Speaker 4: makes so many references and easter eggs, Like you describe.
Speaker 1: Well, it could be satire, it could be you know,
Speaker 1: it could just be comedy. I mean, to my mind,
Speaker 1: a good humor story, especially if you're trying to write
Speaker 1: a humor story at novel length, which is very difficult,
Speaker 1: right because humor tends to outstates welcome very quickly. So
Speaker 1: if you write, let's say, a novel that's based on
Speaker 1: nothing but puns, the reader may get tired of that
Speaker 1: by chapter three, I mean, and at some point they
Speaker 1: may throw the book across the room because it's just
Speaker 1: more of the same. Right. So the strategy for that,
Speaker 1: in my mind, is you utilize every type of humor.
Speaker 1: You throw everything at it, and you could have an
Speaker 1: occasional pun, you can have wordplay, you can have satire,
Speaker 1: you can have social commentary, and you mix it all up.
Speaker 1: And as a reader, you don't have to like every
Speaker 1: single joke, but if you find something, if you find
Speaker 1: a few jokes you like in every chapter, you will
Speaker 1: be delighted by the book, you know. So that's that
Speaker 1: kind of kitchen sink approach tends to work if you
Speaker 1: are first of all capable and second willing to kind
Speaker 1: of bland all of those types of humor together.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think you're right that a book of like
Speaker 3: dad jokes from outer space wouldn't work very well. But
Speaker 3: your book, because you're planting all those easter eggs or
Speaker 3: what we call offfee commons, you know, all over the book.
Speaker 3: I think it actually encourages a reread as well, because
Speaker 3: you're going to find something new that you didn't notice
Speaker 3: the first time, or the second time, or the third time.
Speaker 3: So it's kind of a brilliant thing that some authors
Speaker 3: like you do to kind of overload the story with references.
Speaker 3: So then next time, after you've experienced whatever's being referenced,
Speaker 3: you read it again, and now you're going to notice
Speaker 3: that reference in there. Right.
Speaker 1: I did something interesting there because I noticed from my
Speaker 1: early beta readers that it was almost like a race
Speaker 1: to see how many references they could identify, and like
Speaker 1: how many of the in jokes they could catch. So
Speaker 1: I upon one of the many passes, and of course,
Speaker 1: every you know, like the book is never completed just
Speaker 1: when you finish writing it, you do many many passes
Speaker 1: over it. So one of the editing passes that I did,
Speaker 1: I actually wrote down every single reference that I myself
Speaker 1: remembered and recognized, and I got to tell you there
Speaker 1: are probably at least a few that I missed myself,
Speaker 1: because you can you make a joke, you make a
Speaker 1: reference to something, and then you just forget. But at
Speaker 1: the end of the book there's a little glossary that
Speaker 1: kind of gives you all the references that I know
Speaker 1: for sure as an author that are in there. And
Speaker 1: again there are more that are subconsciously there, or there
Speaker 1: are more general references. There are referring to like a
Speaker 1: trow rather than specific specific book. But I think that
Speaker 1: having that at the end of the book is an
Speaker 1: interesting way for readers to kind of go through at
Speaker 1: the end and say, hey, did I catch the reference
Speaker 1: to that? Oh yeah, I definitely, I definitely knew. I
Speaker 1: know exactly like where where in the book that moment
Speaker 1: is that you know, ee, Doc Smith Skylark series is
Speaker 1: read is introduced, for example, or you know, or something
Speaker 1: like that. So and again, that's a g preference. That's
Speaker 1: that's that's something most people will not get, but they
Speaker 1: will absolutely get, you know, the Star Wars jokes and
Speaker 1: the Star Trek jokes and adctrical jokes and all the
Speaker 1: more popular space opera franchises.
Speaker 4: You know, I'm only about eighty percent of the way
Speaker 4: through the book, and I got a reference from Foundation,
Speaker 4: which I was like pretty proud to get from Isaac
Speaker 4: Asimov's Foundation. And I've only seen the TV series. It
Speaker 4: seems like the novel might be or the series of
Speaker 4: novels might be a little bit hard for me to
Speaker 4: get into. So I'm just wondering where that one came from.
Speaker 4: You probably have read it.
Speaker 1: Yes, I have read the novels. I also really enjoy
Speaker 1: the TV series, and I will venture forth an unpopular
Speaker 1: opinion that the TV series is actually batter. So the
Speaker 1: novels have wonderful ideas, but at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: it's a white room with a bunch of men sitting
Speaker 1: around and talking about stuff. It was Asimov's way to
Speaker 1: interrogate sort of like the future history and to write
Speaker 1: his own rise and fall of the Roman Empire. The
Speaker 1: TV series takes the concept and it pushes it that
Speaker 1: much further with interesting characters and beautiful scenery and just
Speaker 1: really really well written you know, episodes on plots. So
Speaker 1: it's one of my favorite TV series at the moment.
Speaker 1: So the reference definitely applies to both. But I think
Speaker 1: the TV series will make it easier for some of
Speaker 1: the modern readers to catch that, like yourself, who may
Speaker 1: not have actually read the books, but hey, like now
Speaker 1: you know, you know who Harry Selden is and the
Speaker 1: what the deal behind the foundation was.
Speaker 4: By definition, speculative fiction imagines the world of tomorrow. With
Speaker 4: the rate of societal and technological changes the days is
Speaker 4: it sometimes difficult to think up stuff beyond what might
Speaker 4: be possible in a year or two.
Speaker 1: The entire genre of space opera essentially was kind of
Speaker 1: built on the shoulders of two giants, and that's Edmund
Speaker 1: Hamilton and E. Doc Smith. Now I'm not saying that
Speaker 1: other people haven't contributed to it, but you know, they
Speaker 1: were really foundational to that. But if you read those
Speaker 1: books today, they're almost painful, right because they're so poulpy
Speaker 1: and so simple and kind of like the characters are
Speaker 1: not well developed by today's standards, et cetera. Science fiction
Speaker 1: in general doesn't tend to survive the test of time
Speaker 1: as well as fantasy, right because whereas you know, Tolkien
Speaker 1: built a society that's sort of you know, it's a
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's like it's a fantasy society that's
Speaker 1: kind of like medieval in its nature or before, and
Speaker 1: it doesn't project, you know, the science into the future,
Speaker 1: whereas any science fiction writer they if they invent a
Speaker 1: flying car, and ten years later somebody actually creates a
Speaker 1: flying car and it's done in the complete different way,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, their idea feels dated, you know,
Speaker 1: and so you kind of take greater risks if you're
Speaker 1: writing science fiction, especially in near future science fiction. So
Speaker 1: so we have to allow for the fact that, you know,
Speaker 1: Asima was in fact brilliant and did a great job
Speaker 1: for his time, but it may not some of those
Speaker 1: books may not read as smoothly today as they would have,
Speaker 1: you know, thirty or forty or fifty years ago.
Speaker 4: Without giving too much away, what's the gist of the
Speaker 4: Best of All Possible Planets.
Speaker 1: Although it's a space opera book, the sort of the
Speaker 1: third rail, the core of the book is it is
Speaker 1: based on Voltaire's Candied and so not only is that
Speaker 1: one of the earliest like black comedy books, but perhaps
Speaker 1: the very first black comedy book ever written. It is
Speaker 1: also an adventure story that has a character chasing a
Speaker 1: mcguffin across the globe, and so at one point a
Speaker 1: few years ago, my son had to read it for
Speaker 1: school and he wanted very much to discuss it with me.
Speaker 1: So I had to reread it so that I could
Speaker 1: be current, because it's been decades since i've read it.
Speaker 1: Plus I've originally read it in Russian translation rather than
Speaker 1: English translation. And when I reread it, my first thought, somehow,
Speaker 1: because it's me and that's the way my crazy brain works,
Speaker 1: my first thought was, Wow, this would make a great
Speaker 1: space opera, And so I wrote a space opera indeed,
Speaker 1: where these characters are chasing a literal MacGuffin across the universe,
Speaker 1: and it's the same character arc in a way as
Speaker 1: Voltaire's characters, but of course it's a completely different plot.
Speaker 1: And the way that I structured the book is that
Speaker 1: they leave Earth looking for a force barrier, a terraform
Speaker 1: and force barrier. They can keep a small plot of
Speaker 1: land on Earth still habitable, because Earth at that point
Speaker 1: is posted apocalyptic and pretty much toorally matched up. And
Speaker 1: of course the spend the entire book chasing the smacguffin
Speaker 1: across across the galaxy, and every chapter they visit a
Speaker 1: different science fiction and especially space opera trope. So one moment,
Speaker 1: they may end up on a space Western planet, where
Speaker 1: I'll make fun of things like Firefly and like the
Speaker 1: Micresnic books and you know, all the all the space
Speaker 1: Western tropes that we see some in Star Trek and
Speaker 1: other places. Another moment, they may go to the planet
Speaker 1: of the Killer Robots, where you play with that whole
Speaker 1: idea of like, hey, like robots or want to exterminate humanity.
Speaker 1: But what I do with each of those concepts is
Speaker 1: I interrogate them and I try to subvert those tropes,
Speaker 1: which kind of has been where I live in terms
Speaker 1: of being a writer. I've always I've always been all
Speaker 1: about subverting tropes and so by by chasing a particular
Speaker 1: trope in every chapter that gives me an opportunity to
Speaker 1: go after them. So and those tropes, like sometimes it's
Speaker 1: a very popular franchise, and I just play with those ideas,
Speaker 1: like there's a couple of chapters that they're dedicated to
Speaker 1: Star Wars. And sometimes it is a subgenre like military
Speaker 1: science fiction, which has many, many many books, but it's
Speaker 1: also something that's relatively fun to make fun of. And
Speaker 1: sometimes it's things like why is there always a British
Speaker 1: style aristocracy in space? What sense does that possibly make? Like?
Speaker 1: Why is that feudal system something that so many writers
Speaker 1: are so excited to uh to structure their galactic empire on?
Speaker 1: So I play with that as well, and and and
Speaker 1: so on and so forth.
Speaker 3: As mentioned, you also translate Russian sci fi into English.
Speaker 3: Has translating helped you develop as a writer?
Speaker 1: Absolutely? By working on a translation, you remove yourself entirely
Speaker 1: from having to worry about developing the characters, or creating
Speaker 1: the plot, or you know, or pacing or a lot
Speaker 1: of the other things that the writer has to think about.
Speaker 1: And you are you have two jobs. Number one is
Speaker 1: to correctly relate the feelings and the thoughts that the
Speaker 1: author is intending to evoke in their readers. But number
Speaker 1: two is to write it in the best possible language,
Speaker 1: to emulate the language of the author and their style,
Speaker 1: so that the translated book or short story doesn't read
Speaker 1: like I wrote it, but rather it reads like the
Speaker 1: author wrote it and it was presented in a new language.
Speaker 1: And so it adds all of these different tools to
Speaker 1: your toolbox as a writer. And the same can be
Speaker 1: true of a lot of different things. If you write
Speaker 1: video game content, if you write comic book scripts. If
Speaker 1: you work on translation, all of these things allowing you
Speaker 1: to learn certain techniques, then you can then take back
Speaker 1: and apply to writing, apply to writing your own works.
Speaker 1: So if you do something particularly well in creative fields,
Speaker 1: all of that experience comes back and helps you as
Speaker 1: a writer, no matter what it is.
Speaker 3: You know, and.
Speaker 1: Especially translation, because it concerns itself with being so precise
Speaker 1: with language, and it allows me to to kind of
Speaker 1: sharpen my pen and be more precise when you know,
Speaker 1: when you know when I'm using words and when I'm
Speaker 1: especially when I'm using wordplay, that that it works in
Speaker 1: a certain you know, in a certain cadence that that
Speaker 1: I may not have been able to achieve before I
Speaker 1: started translating.
Speaker 3: Does it also help you to write in other people's
Speaker 3: voices when you're developing characters, The fact that you've been
Speaker 3: translating other writers, any of those spillover sort of skills
Speaker 3: of being able to write dispassionately or you know, remove
Speaker 3: from the characters in your own books.
Speaker 1: That's actually a really interesting question. I hadn't considered that.
Speaker 1: You're probably right, and it probably does contribute to it,
Speaker 1: but it's not something that I thought about consciously, right, Like,
Speaker 1: I mean, typically, what you want to do is you
Speaker 1: want to make sure that your characters, especially your main characters,
Speaker 1: sound unique, so that they don't all bland together where
Speaker 1: you can't really tell who is speaking without a dialogue tag, right,
Speaker 1: And so you think about that and you say like, well,
Speaker 1: what are the you know, what are the verbal techs? Right,
Speaker 1: Like the thing on Fantastic four is not going to
Speaker 1: speak the same way as read richers, right, And so
Speaker 1: you want to do that for all of your characters.
Speaker 1: But I haven't really thought about it too much, but
Speaker 1: yes it must, right, because it's the same technique of
Speaker 1: being a chameleon and adopting many different voices. To my mind,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter so much if you're writing humor. It
Speaker 1: doesn't matter so much if the technology in a story
Speaker 1: gets outdated, because every science fiction story, and especially every humor,
Speaker 1: every sat para story is in some ways about the
Speaker 1: problems we have today. Whether those problems are you know,
Speaker 1: the climate crisis, the advent of artificial intelligence, or you know,
Speaker 1: all of those things and fears and concerns kind of
Speaker 1: get you know, packaged into the work, and many of
Speaker 1: them may remain universal like, I mean, we're still gonna
Speaker 1: worry about the climate of our planet. You know, fifty
Speaker 1: years from now, maybe we will not worry about AI
Speaker 1: so much. Maybe that'll get resolved one way or another.
Speaker 1: But for now it's current, so I'm not so much
Speaker 1: worried that, like the technology will go in a different
Speaker 1: way in the future. I just want to make sure
Speaker 1: that people will understand the humor for as long as possible,
Speaker 1: in the same way as Golliver's Travels, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: Golver's Travels was very much social commentary. It wasn't about
Speaker 1: giants and little pushians. It was about British people and
Speaker 1: their problems. And so Jonathan Swift did a great job
Speaker 1: of writing that, and I take my inspiration, though not
Speaker 1: quite the same level of quality from that.
Speaker 3: I think it doesn't necessarily have to be funny, because
Speaker 3: I know, with current events and everything else, books like
Speaker 3: A Brave New World and nineteen eighty four and Fahrenheit
Speaker 3: four or five to one become very popular again, even
Speaker 3: though you know, maybe references are outdated. The theme, like
Speaker 3: you're saying, the issues that people are dealing with are
Speaker 3: still very much current and are speaking to problems that
Speaker 3: we're experiencing today.
Speaker 1: Most of those books have been moved into the current
Speaker 1: events section.
Speaker 4: I was thinking about dystopian as a descriptor for a genre,
Speaker 4: and yeah, I think they just scratched out dystopian and
Speaker 4: then refer to it as current events. Maybe yeah.
Speaker 3: Or it's like a dystopian future is just dystopian present.
Speaker 1: You have to have a sense of humor about it, right, Like,
Speaker 1: I mean, I write about some relatively dark things in
Speaker 1: the book. I mean, the book is not a bummer
Speaker 1: of a read, right, Like, It's meant to be positive
Speaker 1: and funny and relatively light. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm presenting Earth that has suffered many climate
Speaker 1: catastrophes and is almost entirely devoid of people because almost
Speaker 1: everybody has left, and we're down to one small settlement
Speaker 1: of human beings on the entire planet. And I still
Speaker 1: kind of present it in a lighthearted and funny way.
Speaker 1: And I take my inspiration from Douglas Adams because he
Speaker 1: did the same thing with Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you think about the way that book starts,
Speaker 1: it's it's a completely apocalyptic book. I mean, it's a
Speaker 1: destruction of our entire planet and an entire species, and
Speaker 1: yet he manages to present it in a way where
Speaker 1: people will just laugh and continue reading and not just go, oh,
Speaker 1: this is just a step too far, like this is
Speaker 1: way too dark man, Like you can't do that. So
Speaker 1: he got away with it, and I'm trying to pull
Speaker 1: off the same heist.
Speaker 3: The forthcoming audio book of the Best of All Possible
Speaker 3: Planets is narrated by veteran voice actor Ellie Schiff and
Speaker 3: features comedian Lewis Black reading from the Gathered Wisdom of
Speaker 3: the Human Species, which opens each of the book's chapters.
Speaker 5: Humans are prone to take any misfortune that might befall
Speaker 5: them as a personal upfront. They bemoan the truism that
Speaker 5: bad things happen to good people without ever pausing to
Speaker 5: wonder whether they are good people. It is demonstrable while
Speaker 5: the universe holds no grudge against humanity, it merely doesn't
Speaker 5: grant any special dispensation. Thus things cannot be otherwise than
Speaker 5: they are. Earthquakes, sinkholes, and stubbing your toe should be
Speaker 5: viewed not as calamities, but rather as stepping stones in
Speaker 5: the concatenation of events that culminate in Earth being the
Speaker 5: best of all possible planets.
Speaker 1: I always wanted to have a truly distinct, amazing voice
Speaker 1: for Airwolt, So every the way that the book is structured.
Speaker 1: There is a quote from this book which is sort
Speaker 1: of poor you know, uh, you know, Poor John's Almanac,
Speaker 1: like by by by Ben flank Franklin, mixed up with
Speaker 1: a few other works, and it's written by one of
Speaker 1: the major characters from the story. Who is the stand
Speaker 1: in for the philosopher you know from from from you know,
Speaker 1: from Candide, uh for the philosopher Panglos. Now in the book,
Speaker 1: the philosopher is Airwolt, which is of course the you know,
Speaker 1: just a donation of the name Voltaire. But I wanted
Speaker 1: a really distinct voice for that, and so I tried
Speaker 1: to figure out who would be the great person to
Speaker 1: reach out to. And I was very, very lucky that
Speaker 1: a friend we have a mutual friend with, Lewis, was
Speaker 1: able to put us in touch and he very kindly
Speaker 1: agreed to participate in this project, which is the first
Speaker 1: for him. He's never done an audio but before I'm
Speaker 1: fairly certain, like there's certain, there's nothing on audiobol, there's
Speaker 1: no and he has just such a distinct voice where
Speaker 1: I've played those clips for friends and they were like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, it's Louis Black, and I haven't even
Speaker 1: told them who that is, so so I thought, and
Speaker 1: I thought he was just perfect for the way that
Speaker 1: he If anybody who's ever heard his comedy will easily
Speaker 1: recognize that voice. But of course he wasn't going to
Speaker 1: be willing or able to just record an entire like
Speaker 1: ten hour book or however long it was going to be,
Speaker 1: and Eli is perfect for that as well, because there's
Speaker 1: so many different characters do so many wacky voices that
Speaker 1: we needed somebody who had that amazing, amazing range. And
Speaker 1: it's been such a joy working with him because he
Speaker 1: is just adopting this variety of voices that makes the
Speaker 1: books sound like I was recorded by a full cast.
Speaker 1: One of the great pleasures that I've had over the
Speaker 1: last couple of months is to receive sample chapters in
Speaker 1: my email every once in a while, and I sort
Speaker 1: of drop everything and take my thirty or forty minutes
Speaker 1: to listen and prove the chapter, which basically means just
Speaker 1: looking for little bloopers that need to be corrected, and
Speaker 1: it's just amazing to hear their interpretation of my characters
Speaker 1: and their voices. So I am super stoppd. I love
Speaker 1: audio books. It is the primary way in which I
Speaker 1: consume fiction, you know, for fun, because when I otherwise,
Speaker 1: when I have time to sit in front of the screen,
Speaker 1: I'll either be writing, translating, or sometimes reading books that
Speaker 1: are not published yet, so they don't exist an audio
Speaker 1: because I'm writing a blurb or doing helping the author
Speaker 1: in some way. So for me to be able to
Speaker 1: just enjoy the book, audio is a perfect format, so
Speaker 1: I can do it while I'm driving, walking my dog,
Speaker 1: et cetera. And so it's really important to me that
Speaker 1: my books are well narrated, you know, and I'm extremely
Speaker 1: proud of how this is turning out to be. I
Speaker 1: can't wait for the audiobook to be out.
Speaker 4: What's the best way for our audience to follow and
Speaker 4: support your work?
Speaker 1: So you can find the book everwhere the books are sold.
Speaker 1: It should be available through library systems, Barnes and Nobles,
Speaker 1: some bookstores. You can always find it online on all
Speaker 1: the platforms as an ebook. And by the way, the
Speaker 1: book is also illustrated with a bunch of original illustrations
Speaker 1: from several different artists, so there's a lot of cool
Speaker 1: stuff to be found in there. The best way to
Speaker 1: find it is that Alex Schwartzman dot com is just.
Speaker 1: One of the advantages of having an unusually spelled name
Speaker 1: is that I was able to get my own my
Speaker 1: own website without having to compete with anybody. And so
Speaker 1: Alex Schwartzman dot com will have a links. We'll have
Speaker 1: links to all of these different websites. You can buy
Speaker 1: the ebook and even the print cup is directly from us.
Speaker 1: You can get them from anywhere, and you know, I
Speaker 1: don't really care, like, don't feel bad about getting a
Speaker 1: book out of the library. People kind of sometimes will
Speaker 1: approach the author and say, oh, I didn't buy your book,
Speaker 1: I only guide it from a library. Well good, we
Speaker 1: want you to read the book. That extra dollar or
Speaker 1: two that we make in royalties is not going to
Speaker 1: make up for an extra excited reader who will tell
Speaker 1: their friends. So whatever way it works for you, get
Speaker 1: the book in that format and in that way.
Speaker 3: Thanks so much Alex for joining us. Thank you very
Speaker 3: much for having me and to our audience. Now back
Speaker 3: to your regularly scheduled lives.
Speaker 4: Amusing Jews is here to amuse you. If you like
Speaker 4: being amused, go ahead and click like, and subscribe.