And if you don’t remember that series, I’ll put a link in the show notes for this video so you can go and check it out. There’s a few dozen episodes there where myself and sometimes a guest would dissect various books and movies. And it’s, I think, an interesting idea, sort of an online book and film club. But I must admit, about a decade ago or several years ago, I had a certain crisis of faith and wondered if there is any value at all to doing an online book club in which most people haven’t read the book and aren’t going to, and yet still opine on a book they haven’t read.

It did strike me as ridiculous at a certain point and I got a bit disheartened and discontinued the series, or at least put it in the back burner. Well, I am going to try it again. So you might ask, what penetrating insight did I have to crack the nut and solve the mystery of how to have a productive and fruitful online book club discussion? I don’t know. I have no idea. I am just putting it out there and having faith that my audience will come through, will read the books, will engage with this material in an insightful and interesting and informative way.

It can be done, right? Well, let’s see. This will be a bit of an experiment. You will know all of this because you saw my recent Solutions Watch on Resistance Fiction, in which I was talking to John C. A. Manley, the author of All the Humans Are Sleeping, about the idea of Resistance Fiction and the inspiration that we can draw from great works of literature. And right there on the spot, you will see that I floated the idea to John in our conversation. You know what? Why don’t I restart the Film Literature New World Order series and see how it goes? And so I’m going to do that.

And John is going to be my first guest for our first discussion of this FLNWO 2.0, and it’s going to be on a book called Powerless by Harry Turtledove. And this book has been described as an alternate history of the United States in which the Communists won the Cold War and took over America. And it is an alternate history that is based on the 1978 novel Essay by Vaclav Havel, The Power of the Powerless. And it sounds fascinating. It sounds right up my alley. It is one of the announced finalists for the Prometheus Awards this year, the Libertarian Futurist Societies Awards that they give out each year to works of science fiction that have to do with freedom and human liberty.

So it sounds fascinating. It sounds interesting. I am definitely interested in it. I haven’t got my hands on my copy yet, but I will any day now and will devour it. And John and me are going to have that discussion at the end of May. So get your hands on a copy of Powerless by Harry Turtledove, link will be in the show notes, of course. And let’s have this book, online book discussion and see how it goes. As I say, this is an experiment just to see if such a discussion is fruitful, if people are interested in it, if people will participate, if there will be interesting, insightful, engaged people who are willing to take this up and have interesting discussions.

So if so, then I will continue the series and we’ll keep going with it. And well, let’s see how it goes. So anyway, yes, all of the information that I’m talking about, all the things that you need to know will be in the show notes for this video at CorbettReport.com. So whether you’re interested or not, anyway, I hope you’ll continue to go to CorbettReport.com. I have lots more material coming out in the near future, so I hope you’ll stick around for that. But that’s going to do it for today. James Corbett, CorbettReport.com. [tr:trw].

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