The Book Cage: Episode 120
Time Gladiator
In the far off age of the 21st century, people in the capitalist/socialist West are forced to compete in gladiatorial games based on their caste, but sometimes not in their caste. Beware the politics of academia. But also, beware the actual politics of a very confused vision of the future, as only Mack Reynolds can write. Join me in the arena, this Friday, 5pm eastern.
@Brendan!™ ! The bringer of Rex Moran returns!
The original young socialist
The Tweed Anarchist
hahaha
That dude was born in 1910s America, so I don't know if I believe that, but there you go
"Mother, who is Comrade Jesus Christ" sounds like satire
The kind of book or TV show they'd show kids in a dystopia designed to illustrate the corrupting menace of Communism
Apparently some of his books are meant to be satirical, so maybe. Hard to tell given how old they are
This one will be interesting, I'm mostly just picking it for how baffling it is
Baffling is always a treat
At the very least, this is an actual book, unlike Police Patrol 2000AD
Thank god. Rex Moran was a delight, but that book as a whole was a mess
He should have just made it a compilation of the short stories instead of trying to weave them together
Really weird how I took over this channel after reading nothing from the years 2010 to 2020. Thank God for @Fatamatician: The Curator
Glad to spread a love of books 😁
I mean that
I am happy my weird book love inspired so much here. The Book Cage is such an amazing event.
Levar Burton would be proud
Thank you for your unending dedication
Most British moment from my current Crab book
You are the progenitor
I never knew @Fatamatician: The Curator 's love of books created the Book Cage but I will now treasure this fact like a precious stone
Yeah, I stole Steele from the tipline hot-dog-tipline
Of all the relationships I tried to start with a Steele book, this was the only successful one
Worth it
I will always take credit for introducing @gellaho to the hardy boys case files
My king has returned in his promise of our darkest hour.
A little under an hour until Time Gladiator. Beware the net!
Will we ever be done with narrators correcting their own narration to show how messed up something is? If only! Oh, if only...
Feels misleading to call the fella with a trident "the net man". That's a trident guy, idiot
LET'S GLADIATE!
BOOK CAGE!
Time to begin the gladiator
BOOKbookbookbok....... CAAAAAGEcagecagecage
Nice
Nice
Hi, @gellaho ! Hi, @Tom Owns Diebel's Grave ! Hi, @Velo !
Numbers
Hell yeah, not just gladiators but TIME GLADIATORS...........oh fuck its one of the ones that feels like it needs to tell you about seating capacity.
The great hero: Denny
His special move: The Grand Slam.
Hear the tale of the unfortunate scalper
Someone get me an abacus
Hi, @FlippantSausages Daddy Lightning ! Hi, @Rachel, Sex-Positive AKA a slut !
That scalper? Was Steve Jobs.
Hello darlings.
Wolzniak made all the fake tickets for him though
Sounds like the cognoscenti to me
Hors de combat
You are a bad gladiator if you cant kill a dude while you have a big ass shield.
Hors de combat are fight skanks, right?
Neigh
Denny didn't get a cool nickname despite being one of the most excellent physical specimens in the land
you get turned into horse armour
They would call him, the Grand Slam.
Ironically, Zero's special move is Moon over My Hammy.
Fat Funker was the name of my first album
Feels like he should get a cool nickname
Odds of zero making it through alive are... well, they aren't great
He should have eaten more of his gruel, it turns out if you come in fat they have a harder time stabbing your organs.
"make this a boring one, the crowd wants a nap"
Denny faces one of his fiercest foes: Philip
Hey, I heard philip was great
Philip Philip, master of the trident.
He's huge in macedon
Never forget.
I herebow bestow unto him the third cool nickname from this of cool nicknames I found: Blueberry
Denny falls for the granny net shot
but, he thought, interrupting his previous thought, what if, no, he paused, halting his thoughts before they could overwhelm him, , , ,
Real nice of Blueberry to crack the top 5 like that
BLOCK IT WITH YOUR SHIELD YOU DUMB FUCK!
Luckily, Tommy Wiseau charges in to rescue Denny, so don't worry about it.
You have a fucking scutum!
there's no need for that kind of vulgarity
Pocket sand!
Deadliest Warrior does not approve of this
The shield he was pissing and moaning about having not five minutes ago.
Denny won because of his faith in the christian god
Well, and the lions were full up
Also sand, the best friend of the unprepared.
Denny finds himself drawn to succor
Someones looking to get their dick sucked in the gladiator kennel later.
Hi, @GDC's Quivering Thews ! HELLO, @Brendan!™ !
Denny is ready to plow
Homosexuality? Please sir, these are Romans.
Foemen
Aw
He seemed cool
His enemy has multiple decoy bellies
bye Foemen
You can't call them that!
You can't just call people retiariis anymore
I don't think you're allowed to call someone a Retiarii any more
Fuckin scooped by the best
Also GDC
No offence gdc
The rare triple scoop
time gladiatorial combat just has the maximum opportunities for racism. Bring it on.
Some nicely thumbed bellies
I was just thinking about how triarii were the best units in rome total war
inward thumbing was my first album's name
Hi, @disculpa mi tulpa !
Polish him right off
Oh hai, Denny
Booooooo Denny you dont get the coveted Crazy Martinius's Carpet Barn sponsorship with weak sauce kills like that!
Denny have you considered setting your oponents on fire?
Fire solves all sorts of problems, Denny
Denny seems bad at this
"my skirt is ruined"
Randius the Gaul tore a man clean in half once, Denny.
Good thing there aren't any important arteries there
You say clean
Denny what is your shield for? No, that's not rhetorical. Sit down and tell me what your shield is for.
Thighs grow back
it's for rabbit punches silly
Bring out the sexagenarian slingshot dwarves
don't fall for it denny
"fake it until the gong sounds" that's bait
You can't call those retiarii dwarves anymore!
This is boring. Flood the arena, let's have a mock naval battle.
Denny does not make it look good
Denny sucks.
"boo, not very good, we're not into it"
work on your cardio brah
Better yet, bring out Nitro in the Atlasphere
Really not good
God damn it Denny
That guy who's bleeding out is really sandbagging
just kill him Zero
No one has ever been sad about a Denny
When your name is Denny, this has to be an everyday occurrance
Jabbing and jagging
He just wants to earn his freedom and start a chain of restaurants specializing in breakfast.
You think this is bad, you should have seen his fight against Chris R.
people always stabbing you and then demading a Grand Slam
Is this what "jagoff" means?
It's great TV
This is the rest of the book
I think that's the Navy's legal department
By the halfway point, Denny is more tendons and tears than man
Zeroing in as Zero zeroes his weapon on Denny.
whoa what a reveal that was on the front cover!
Well, that is lucky
That is how I describe most lawyers
This is like that old tv show, saved by the gong
The crowd starts throwing natty lite cans and batteries.
Next up, Harold Howard vs The High Executioner
Also, it wasn't that bad. Denny's just a weenie
The arena clinic takes one look at Denny and vomits
Not from the wounds
Told you, Denny, you GOT to eat your gruel, get that thick coat of dude meat.
Denny lost a lot of blood but they have buckets of the stuff just lying around
Bulk up so you look like a walrus went to the gym.
The Spanish style, also known as Spanish
In case we say it wrong? I guess.
I would give this Denny's Zero's stars if I could.
Too late I'm calling him Jesus
Imagine the look of disappointment on your kids' face when they realize they're actually going to Dennyland.
You need some dill when you are dealing with a curd
I'm compromising and calling him Anubis
So the premise of this book is that entertainment climaxed in ancient rome?
dill and cottage cheese sounds like the start of a good recipe though.
Ride after ride going past a scrawny doofus getting punched while crying
Denny goes on to become king of Dennisland, aka Worse Iceland.
I'm not disagreeing, I've seen Two Broke Girls.
I'm sure the author thinks he's writing an "it can't happen here" cautionary tale
but with time travel, so it CAN happen here.
Saving this for no reason worth iterating
I mean its only a matter of time til someone thinks "Hey what if American Gladiators was literal?"
We've got dill and curds, we just need some gravy and fries and we've got a poutine going
Im for it.
Time for Mack Reynolds to begin unveiling this book's confusing socio-economic system. Starting with getting paid in Variable common shares
Again, the Atlasphere would improve things dramatically
The Church of Malibu will worship a golden Motaro
Zen off
Which is similar to the Socio-Capitalism of Police Patrol 2000AD, but not quite the same
Im pro anything that mgiht result in a super jacked hot lady tearing lesser humans in half.
Zen yes!
"Zen, no" what? Oh their society is evil because they worship that false God, the Buddha
If this turns into gladiator econ and doesn't stop, I might never stop applauding the audacity
Save your fetish requests for my onlyfans
Fuckin nerd
lol
we need the last christian, preferably a blind man with a sword, to step into the arena and become a shepherd of men
They sent an economist to a deathmatch
I love this future
he studies etruscans?
"Vrard!" growled Best Buddytron, "We're losing seventeens skzzlaks a grawk at this rate!" He shook his head, lamenting the team's depreciating assets in the common currency of the Time Republic.
Nerd!
You talked me around
Mack also displaying his amazing grasp of Eastern religions with Zen.
wow, yep
Total cloddy move
This guy skews the data on how often guys think about the roman empire
"Nobody read it and now I'm making another" summarizes a lot of what we read here
lol he started taking strip mall karate and now he's a national level athlete.
The strict caste system of the West-world Welfare State
"you know, the not-insane games"
"non productive" oh that's a good sign
so he willingly joined a club that had the power to vote him into the games without his consent, just so he could do a bit of ancient rome larping
not even once, kids
I remember the hunger games sucking less than this
I'm starting to see why making these men kill each other became the preferred entertainment
Cop yourself a wound
I could probably be talked in to approving of it
You remember wrong but that doesn't make this good
Grope yourself an injury
Funked Out was the name of my second album
I dunno i could go for some cake decoration camo right about now
"CHERYL!? ZEN IS A PERSON RIGHT? WE DO CHRISTIANITY, AND HAVE CHRIST SO THAT TRACKS!"
"Let's get the funk outta here" is the 70s blaxploitation phrase I always hoped would find context
I missed this bit so much
I'm a Mid-Low-Up-Mid-Low-Side-Top-Under-Middle myself
I give them each 2 meow meow beanz
Bouncing a caste is when you get one of those inflatable structures for a birthday party
This book is basically Rx with an overdose of exposition.
Sticky bouncing cloddies
This society's caste system was model on english football leagues
"CHERYL! WHAT DO YOU MEAN I CANT JUST COPY THE CLASS NAMES FROM ROME?! FUCK IT! ILL JUST MAKE UP MY OWN! HOW HARD COULD IT BE!"
It's undignified enough being lower class without being lower-lower class
The poor gladiatorial widows and orphans
It's sad but the mid-middle class disappears a little every day
Lousy gladiators abusing the welfare system
Widows are cool but orphans can do like the rest of us and go work at the Dick Sucking Factory.
It's fine, its unionized.
oh shut up Denny
Nobody likes an asshole who donates winnings to charity.
Your mistake is assuming this society is entirely based on Rome. Mack Reynolds would never pick one thing
I moved up to management. The benefits are nice but I do miss doing an honest day's labour.
Oh shit, did i not give Mack enough credit? Did he read a bit of the Vedas or something?!
bring on the Neanderthal warriors. Let's make this REAL time gladiator shit.
Men with children have no business becoming Time Gladiators. They should send their children through time to do it and return with an army of descendants.
Cave men vs Astronauts on triremes when?!
There is definitely time travel in this book. Definitely.
Definitely
lol
ha, now I feel like it's going to happen in the last chapter
Anyway, Denny finds himself taken by Zero's Latin flavor
If you think about it, aren't we the time travelers, man? Like, whoa
The characters move forward in time every chapter
Technically all books involve time travel. Going into the future at the rate of one second per second.
To the factory we go
jfc "the quick lithe movement of the Latin"
Denny admits he trusts on impulse and doesn't regret it
I was not wrong about the abundance of incoming racism
I mean he wouldnt be the first person to be enchanted by a Cuban man named Jesus.
his face was inclined to be open, as the medics hadn't stitched him up yet
Nor the last
<sigh>
Is it racist if it's sexy?
Yes
Howdy, just finished work
How much pain we in?
Hi, @P.Boart vs Knockoff Xenomorphs !
well, if you're latin, you're too quick and lithe to be in pain 😄
A real rank professor
Denny decides Zero has good phrenology.
Zen!
you see guys, without the REAL Jesus, things are pretty bad
Adjunct, Assistant, Associate, or Full professor?
jfc, I won't be surprised when public educators get new job titles
It is pretty funny
YOU CHOSE TO JOIN THAT CLUB DENNY
Denny is in academia and doesnt fully understand jokes.
YOU FUCKING DORKUS