Classic Sci-Fi Social Satire About the Power of the People
"And Then There Were None...." By Erik Frank Russell, 1951
A novella about a planet settled by oddballs that the Empire had lost touch with since landing. A ship was dispatched to investigate and if necessary reacquaint them with the Empire's ways. But the people are strangely recalcitrant. They have their own ways and manner. They call themselves Gands, after Gandhi, their inspiration.
They don't have money but rather an economy of bartered obligations, that is cleverly considered, and a folk tale about freeloaders that enforces a community norm. Asked where the capital was, no one can tell them. (Monty Python, "Who lives in that castle over there" energy.) The world is just small towns, with no hierarchy or larger government, and in the end.... well, I'll let you discover that.
Russell was born in England in 1905 and published his first novel, Sinister Barrier in the inaugural issue of Unknown magazine in 1939. He wrote nine novels over the next quarter century, and a large number of short stories in the horror, fantasy and sci-fi genres. His humorous story about bureaucratic inefficiency (noticing a theme?) "Allamagoosa" won the inaugural 1955 Hugo for short fiction.
The enclosed story, "ATTWN" was later incorporated into 1962 "novel," The Great Explosion (perhaps closer to three novellas), which was inducted into the Prometheus Hall of Fame in 1985. The story itself is widely anthologized and surprising well beloved.
There is a browser version I found that is pretty easy to read and free of ads. It's 25K words in length FYI.
It might be at your library, on libby or what-not, but this guy also did a reading because his dad liked it so much, he wanted others to be able to experience it. (Warning: It's a novella, so it's 3 hours.)
Internet Live Music Archive
Lots of Amazing Live Performances
There is no better testament to the original, hoarding impulse of the web than Wikipedia and the Internet Live Music Archive. The entire concept of taking concert tapes, which are something of tremendous value that never winds up being monetized, and would, without intrepid archivists would be lost to the tides of time.
Instead you can get live shows from everyone you can imagine. I'm not gonna let you into my mind, but I was blown away by the stuff on here. Live sets going back maybe 40 years from your favorite bands.
It's the kind of cheap/free pleasure that use to be the internet's raison d’être, but which is rapidly disappearing as everyone retreats behind paywalls, in an attempt to scratch out a living amidst the utter collapse of the creative economy.
On that happy note, let me point you toward the internet's version of crate digger's heaven. Go buck wild.
