Genre: Recent Episodes
Jon & Zac & Bob
Each month, we pick a genre to deep-dive into. Novels, short stories, and film-- each conversation builds off the last as we try to understand what makes each one tick.
We were of two minds on this one.
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Big man, no home.
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The Gang Invades France
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The Falstaffiad Continues...
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Commence the Falstaffiad...
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Sad King Richie
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International Man of Mystery
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Call it, dammit.
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The Proust of the prairie, they called him.
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Anti-Human Human Club
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Full episode up now on the Patreon.
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The Moby Dick of the West.
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Woah there, Wister — save some tropes for the rest of us.
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Cosmic intellectual pessimism-core.
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Satan is real; he rides a UFO.
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Full episode on Patreon.
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Revel in the repulsion.
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An age of extremes, but nobody loves it.
Cody is joining us from The Hugonauts, an excellent SF podcast. Go check them out!
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Psychohistory, eh?
Brent is joining us from The Hugonauts, an excellent SF podcast. Go check them out!
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Never go full baby...
We're joined by Maya, Melissa, and Olivia of Twilight Phase!
Find them @twilight_phase on Twitter and IG
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Is Helen O'Loy a romance wearing the clothes of SF, or vice versa?
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Can a hopeless romantic and a death cult transfixed novelist fall in love?
Thank you to The Witty Banter Book Club , with hosts Maddy and Courtney, for this recommendation.
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Full episode on Patreon
The Witty Banter Book Club with hosts Maddy and Courtney.
They also have a YouTube channel, Instagram, Pinterest, and hella cool bookmarks.
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Remind me to stop crying.
The Witty Banter Book Club with hosts Maddy and Courtney.
They also have a YouTube channel, Instagram, Pinterest, and hella cool bookmarks.
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The moment Zac and Bob became Danielle Steel superfans.
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Johann Gottfried Herder the bar room bruiser, always spoiling for a fight.
Find the text:
https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691135359/shakespeare
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That's right! We're reading all of Shakespeare over on our Patreon.
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That's right! We're reading all of Shakespeare over on our Patreon.
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Protect Theresa Shackelford at all costs.
Find Ryan Britt
https://ryanbrittwriter.com/
https://www.instagram.com/ryan.britt
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We salute our fallen soldier, Jon.
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Somehow, Saruman returned.
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They say that Treebeard was based on CS Lewis.
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Tom Bombadil fan club.
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Oh, John Ronald, what are you on about this time?
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A wizard, a dwarf, and a man with hairy feet walk into a bar...
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Zac and Bob love the clock.
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That sad moment in every teenager's life when they realize their dad is boring.
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When pure evil masquerades as a small-town simpleton.
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Philip Marlowe wades through the hideous world of crime like a flood through the jungle.
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Team Bruno.
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These are being published simultaneously with the episodes on the main feed.
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The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) directed by Tay Garnett
Strangers on a Train (1951) directed by Alfred Hitchcock
The Big Sleep (1946) directed by Howard Hawks
The Big Clock (1948) directed by John Farrow
What is love? Baby, don't hurt me.
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After the road trip has come to an end, the Catholic Church dies, lives, and dies again, all to hunt down a bunch of hippies.
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The gang flex their philosophy degrees.
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The ultimate road trip novel.
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Intergalactic Face/Off?
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Everything you worry might happen, happens all at once.
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Gerontophilia.
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William Gibson meets Raymond Chandler.
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Dan Simmons also writes essays.
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De-age me, daddy.
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The greatest poets need only 9 words: f@ck, sh$t, p%ss, c#nt, godd*mn, m@therf@cker, a&&hole, peepee, and poopoo.
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Ooh, Shrikey Likey...
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A priest, a mission, and the faceless lumps of clay he ministers to.
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We're watching four adaptations of Bram Stoker's Dracula.
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• Tod Browning's Dracula (1931)
• Werner Herzog's Nosferatu The Vampire (1979)
• Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula (1992)
• E. Elias Merhige's Shadow of the Vampire (2000).
Fear the half-human child of Yog-Sothoth.
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Where you gonna go? Where you gonna run? Where you gonna hide?
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Zac and Bob 'unwrap' the mysterious and morbid threads of Arthur Conan Doyle's "Lot 249."
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Drac is back! All right!
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You know we had to give it to 'em.
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Yes, this is just book 1. No, we don't know why there is a short story that takes place in the frozen north.
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Welcome to Crunchem Hall. If you can't do your times tables backward, Miss Trunchbull will hurl you through the window and then slam you in "The Chokey."
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The last book I would give to a child....
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In a world where a golden ticket awaits in every stormdrain and chocolates look round, Charlie Bucket takes over the world's greatest chocolate factory.
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Neverland, the collective unconscious of children's literature.
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Jack London is a Nostradamus for Marxists.
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Too many sleeping pills, now he's king of the world.
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Piggy, aptly named, is THE LAW.
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We have changed the name from Genre to Wheel of Genre. It's still the same podcast with Jon, Zac, and Bob, but it's so much easier to search for on Spotify now. Visit our Patreon for the after-episodes!
A no-faced man, a two-minded man, and a good-lookin squid walk onto a film set...
We have a Patreon.
Detective Imran is a fool! A genius! A poet! A snake charmer and a bubblegum chewer! What kind of man chews bubblegum? The kind that can solve the labyrinth of illogic known only as THE HOUSE OF FEAR.
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James Bond vs. a billionaire, an army of mustachioed nazis, and a nuclear warhead headed for London. Who will you root for?
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Can spies have identities? Can spies fall in love? Are we all just drunken louts punching out butchers and scaring prisoners in jail?
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Does anyone really love anyone in this unconventional romance? Or is it all a web of lies?
3rd book in our Romance pileup. Is this even genre-fiction, or a satire of what we set out to read?
End of the line for the Genre boys as we are left without another entry in the series. What will we do now? Where can we turn? A discernible note of gloom descends over us in this episode — indeed, it was not so much the end of Dune, as it was the end of our careless youth.
Is that a T-probe in your urethra? Or have you just mastered the three hundred steps of orgasmic amplification?
Three men walk into a bar: a man with robot eyes, a man with no eyes, and a big pile of sand. The bartender looks at the pile of sand and says, "What is this, a joke?"
What do a fatherless boy, a genetic eunuch, and Shai-Hulud have in common? Join Jon, Zac, and Bob as we get addicted to the spice--man.
Today we talk about the Universal Childhood Experience that is Muppet Treasure Island. Laugh, cry, sing, and weep with us. We're going on an adventure.
Formerly known by the much scarier title "THE SEA COOK", Treasure Island is a perennial favorite of anyone who ever dreamed of having parrots for friends and hooks for hands.
"The curse of the Foul Fiend upon you, John Kulrek!" In this our journey into Hell/the ocean shanty we with a witch, a wench, and Lie-Lip Canool. Aye! And John Kulrek, a man of brutal deeds, blood and brawn, and bullshit. Just as there is a just war, so is there a just curse. SEA YOU IN HELL, JOHN KULREK...
How many ways can you die in a lighthouse? Did you know Poe died from delirium tremens, heart disease, epilepsy, syphilis, meningeal inflammation, cholera, carbon monoxide poisoning, and/or rabies? I ask you now, how is this possible? Did Poe fake his death? Is he still in The Lighthouse?? Find out now in Genre Ep. 67.
Westerns! That wraps it up, folks, with the tale of Jesse James and that lying, cheating, backstabbing, lilly-licking, little-livered, frog hoppin', horse whippin', pistol tote'n, ROBERT FORD. A coward, if there ever was one. John Ireland kills it, as usual.
John Wayne is back, baby, and this time he's one baddy daddy. How many bodies will be buried to make Texas his own? How many cows can a filmmaker squeeze into a single shot? Do we love Cherry? Oh, we love Cherry. STAAAAAAAAMPEDE.
A man and his barber. What does it take to restore law order to a city made of sin? A God. Damn. Haircut. ..you hippies...
Neuromancer and Wintermute (both superintelligent A.I.s) manipulate a ragtag, drug-addled crew of console-cowboys to take down a corporate dynasty and unite as our world's first sentient matrix.
Cyberpunk! This is surely the perfect place to make a Dick joke, (Phillip K, that is), but it's too hard to think of one right now.
Samurai swords jammed in your computer? Us too. Join Zac, Jon and Bob for Snow Crash, part drug-virus, part Tower of Babel. Is that a nuclear bomb in your sidecar? Or are you just happy to see me?
Zac guests on Film Friends Podcast, where we watched "Good Time" and "Cosmopolis". Check it out wherever you podcast.
Episode 1 of 5 with cyberpunk fiction. It's a lot like The Outsiders, if everyone dressed like they just woke up from The Matrix.
Spies 5 of 5! Our second Eric Ambler goose chase, and possibly the first book that all three of us did NOT like. Yikes!!!!
Also published under the title "A Coffin for Dimitrios"
Spy Fiction, 3 of 5. A Tale of Truth, Lies, and Vacuum Cleaners. I don't know about you, but I think half of my heart is in Havana (ooh na na, heyyy).
Spy Fiction! 2 of 5 in our series. This week we’re on the run with John Buchan’s endlessly adaptable 39 Steps. Chased by airplanes, policemen, and Germans, our man Hanney chameleons his way into Scotland and (kinda) saves Europe from the brink.
Spies! 1 of 5 in our spy series, book 2 of James Bond, we go deep undercover in three American lands of death: New Orleans with Baron Samedi, Florida w/ oldies clacking false teeth, and an island in the Caymans haunted by Captain Morgan and Mr. Big.
Lost Worlds! The first Allan Quatermain book, supposedly the first lost world tale, and my personal favorite appearance of dentures in all of adventure fiction.
Lost Worlds! A super-man, a every-man and a mad-man walk down into the center of the earth...
Join your three favorite boys as they step into darkness and come out riding dinosaurs.
Lost Worlds! Our protagonist knows jiu-jitsu and is trapped on an island filled with dinosaurs. One part Indiana Jones lecturing in a university, one part Rambo of the south seas, this one left everyone with more questions than answers.
This July, we're hitting snooze!
See you in August for a fresh round of adventure novels featuring lost worlds. Up next, The Land That Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs!
Last call for the Knights of the Round Table! Prison literature at it's finest, though the prose reads like the old english equivalent of a wikipedia article or booklet of cliffnotes. Must love jousting.
Alliterative Arthur on a rampage against Rome. Arthur hacks down an ogre who wears a coat of dead king's beards and eats children from a stew pot. Arthur hacks down the Roman army man by man. Arthur takes on the world and is hacked down by his own nephew, Mordred, the ender of Camelot.
Arthurian tales! Why oh why does Troyes hate the Welsh? Gawain is back from his previous misadventure with the green knight, but this time, he loves thee faire maidenes. Also, that king with an open wound in his "thigh"?
Arthurian Romance--- Let's play a game of headsy cutsy. Watch-- Gawain struggle to keep on his armored pants. Learn-- how chivalry is more than opening car doors and saying "m'lady". Wonder-- at the random line about Gawain going to war against worms.
The thrill of the West! Shootouts and men with smiles on their faces. Is the Western the best genre for blowing off steam? Or is it the best genre for learning to be a good man? Whatever it is, it's fun as Hell.
Western! Classic tale of love and death on the frontier. Also, one of the few film novelizations that stands on its own. Let's ride!
Westerns! An old gunslinger learns he is ill with terminal cancer. As word spreads across town, who of the many lil' pistol-whippers will get to him first?
Westerns! Who has true grit? The one-eyed marshal with a body count well over thirty men? The smooth-talking, spurs-jingling sharpshooter of Texas? Or the fourteen-year old girl who fights off forty rattle snakes with nothing but a dead man's severed arm?
Post-Apocalyptic! An old man recounts to a reporter the terrible things he saw when the Chinese government colonized Venus. But does anyone still care?
Post-Apocalyptic Month! Mutants, strange forms of Christianity, and psychic New Zealanders abound in this classic novel.
Post-apocalyptic! Is language useless? Do we lose humanity when we lose the word? Or do we become shadows of our former selves, playing cops and robbers and showing up drive the bus? Join us, as we venture, grunting, nodding and gesturing through post-epidemic LA.
Post-Apocalyptic! Screaming worms, a master painter with no arms or legs, and the god of wrath himself. A collaborative novel that was a direct inspiration for the Fallout game series.
Post Apocalyptic books! What motivates this enraged massive supercomputer? Is this story a duck or a shed? Why does Harlan Ellison repurpose plot structures?
Dystopian month, final book! What do you choose, happiness or freedom? What's up with love in these kinds of stories? How does the narrator world build using the industrial language?
Next up in dystopian month-- Have you ever been to Salem, Oregon? Well, to make it as perfect as it is (festivals in the green, green grass with beautiful naked people, ribbons flowing in their hair), they trap an innocent child in a dark, dank basement and make it suffer day in, day out. Is it too high a price to pay? Tell me: will you walk away from Omelas?
Continuing Dystopia Month, we ask: How does the author turn social criticism into plot? How does populating it with animals change the allegory? How does the narrator fail to integrate into the dystopia?
It's the start of our Dystopian month! How do we draw the line between utopia and dystopia? Where is Ellison drawing his unique style from? What are the ethics of the protagonist versus the society?
Final episode in our Utopian Fiction month! Does Butler himself hate machines as much as his forgotten society does? How does satire effect the message that he is trying to communicate?
Next up in our Utopian fiction month, Herland! An ancient lost civilization in which all women reproduce asexually, and no men have lived for thousands of years.
Next up in our Utopian fiction month: space communists from Mars! Bogdanov's 1908 novel creates a utopia amongst the stars. But does it work? And what happens when an Earth-man enters their red paradise?
The first book of our Utopia month! Welcome, brothers and sisters, to the wonderful nowhere-land of Utopia, where children wear gold chains and gemstones and adults shit in gold bedpans. Don't you dare say a goddamn bad word about my Utopia. If you do, we'll pull your arms off. Sit back and relax after the six-hour work day with Zac, Bob and Jon as we lace up our Nike Tailwinds and knock back this 'satirical' Kool-Aid.
The final book of our Mystery month. Cocaine! Sherlock Holmes as Tony Montana at the end of Scarface. Cocaine! Watson cleverly disguising his engagement story within a mystery plot. Cocaine!
Continuing our Mystery month. What do soup accidents and broken windows have in common? So asks Europe’s greatest mind, Detective Valentin, in hot pursuit of the world’s dastardliest criminal, Flambeau. Join Zac, Jon and Father Bob in this G.K. Chesterton masterpiece.
The next book in our Mystery month. What the heck is a denouement? Is Hastings our first literary loverboy? And what are the 10 rules of detective fiction?
The second book of our Mystery month. BAM! Mike Hammer kicks down your door and makes you shotgun a twelve-pack. Are you ready to crack another case? Strap on your .45 with Zac, Bob and Jon and find out just who murdered Red, the love of Hammer's blood-gushing life.
The first book of our Mystery month. Welcome to the podcast Jon! Is C. Auguste Dupin motivated by money, patriotism, or revenge? Is Arthur Conan Doyle a plagiarist? Are private investigators and beat cops the oldest frenemies in the history of literature?
Tip another log in the fire, and rest that cocoa on a hot plate, we'll see you in January for Mystery Month!
Catholicism's greatest novelist, Graham Greene, pits a cynical Englishman against an American optimist in a triangle of love and war. Who is the better man? He who believes in and dies for something, or he who wants to die and believes in nothing?
Can a ping pong stance reveal a baddie? Is our protagonist more James Bond or Mr. Bean? What separates espionage fiction from cozy whodunnit mystery?
James Bond in his first adventure, undercover as a wealthy Jamaican playboy. How much did Ian Fleming write himself into the character? Which amphetamine does our villain inhale while playing baccarat? And what's up with Flemings poetics of the sea?
Secret codes, disguises, political and personal intrigue, oh my! Join Zac, Bob, Kim and the lama as they travel through India for a little bit spiritual journey, a little bit secret spy mission.
ATTENTION: ARE YOU IN POSSESSION OF ANY MATERIALS TITLED "CTHULHU CULT"? If so, it might already be too late. Join Zac and Bob as they plunge into the depths of our dreams, dragged into the dark recesses of the bottomless Pacific Ocean by the skyscraper tentacles of ancient CTHULHU.
Before we ever saw Robert Pattinson naked, we saw Lord Ruthven ashamed. Join Zac, Bob and Lord Byron's personal physician as they spring up from their coffins and fly into The Vampyre.
How to terrify an entire century's worth of people? Write the most terrifying thing you can think of, then say it was all real! Join Zac and Bob as they fly into the past crash right through the roof of The Castle of Otranto.
Sherlock Holmes goes toe-to-toe with Dracula in this radio drama thriller. Join Zac, Bob, and the bloodhound Toby, as they tail Watson, Holmes, Dracula and Van Helsing.
Are vampires giant bats, sparkly bad boys, or the world's greatest storytellers? Join Zac, Bob and renown adventurer Sir Richard Francis Burton as they climb into the graveyard, sit under the flaming tree, while the vampire begins spinning his tale.
Forget everything you know about Will Smith. Watch our hero, Robert Neville, piledrives crowds of vampires while reeking of alcohol and garlic. Also, are this and Harry Potter the only stories with "monster world orders"?
Send questions to genrepodcast@gmail.com and read along with us for our next book, "Vikram and the Vampire" translated by Richard Francis Burton.
Is Herbert West a madman or the greatest scientist of the twentieth century? Can he really cure the world of death? Join Zac and Bob as they reanimate and crawl out of their graves, it's time for H.P. Lovecraft!
Heads will roll! Grab your battle axe with Bob and Zac and slay evil! Sorcerer Thoth-Amon and droves of conspirators try to assassinate King Conan. But you won't let it happen, will you?
Following The Caves of Steel, The Naked Sun has our detectives investigate a murder on a strange planet where everyone has been social distancing for 300 years.
The game is afoot! Get out your magnifying glass and tobacco with Zac and Bob as they ask, what makes the Sherlock Holmes the world's greatest detective?
Is the most famous western of all time just a romance in a cowboy hat? Saddle up with Zac and Bob and ride down into the purple sage to find out!
Making vampires scary again, Eshbach throws a cute couple off their yacht and into Hell. Cliff must use his wits to resist evil, defeat the undead and save Vilma from a horn-tooting super villain, Corio, the vampires familiar. Join Zac and Bob on their journey into the center of this classic undead Hell!
A human and a robot detective try to solve the murder of the robot's creator. This is a classic buddy cop plot with plenty of science fiction and mystery tension.
Mike Hammer, hard-drinking, door-kicking detective, is a comic-book exaggeration of the hard boiled Private I. Mike Hammer loves women, chicken and beer. Join Zac and Bob as they scrounge for clues in Mike Hammer's dirty apartment. What makes a mystery? What makes a detective?
A moral tale for marionettes and bad boys, The Adventures of Pinocchio is at once an adventure story, a picaresque novel, a fable frame-story, and a bildungsroman. But is it children's literature? Join Zac, Bob, and Pinocchio, the homicidal marionette, as they journey into the belly of the whale!
Is this 1907 novel a parody of spy novels? Or the first spy novel ever written? Join Zac and Bob as they pull their trench coats high above their noses and bang their heads against this book. Just what are you, Secret Agent?!?
Zac & Bob read "Shane" by Jack Schaefer. Clothing as character, children as narrators, old tree stumps, and weird love triangles.
Zac and Bob read Jack London's "The Call of the Wild." The language of romance fiction, weight loss as character development, and city slickers lost in the woods. Let's go!