Ep.2 – The Great Armored Train by Nick Mamatas

Strangers In A Tangled Wilderness

Episode Notes

Strangers In A Tangled WIlderness can be found at here or on twitter @tangledwild. You can support this show by subscribing to our Patreon.

A more reader friendly copy of the story can be found at https://www.tangledwilderness.org/featured/the-great-armored-train Along with amazing art by Robin Savage.

This story appeared in Nick Mamatas's collection The People's Republic of Everything, published in 2018 by Tachyon Publications.

About the author: Nick Mamatas is the author of seven novels, including Love is the Law, I Am Providence, and the forthcoming Hexen Sabbath. His short fiction has appeared in Best American Mystery Stories, Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, and many other venues. Nick is also an anthologist; his books include the Bram Stoker Award winner Haunted Legends (co-edited with Ellen Datlow), the Locus Award nominees The Future is Japanese and Hanzai Japan (both co-edited with Masumi Washington), and Mixed Up (co-edited with Molly Tanzer). His fiction and editorial work has been nominated for the Hugo, Locus, World Fantasy, Bram Stoker, Shirley Jackson, and International Horror Guild Awards. Mamatas lives in Oakland, California.

About the interviewer: Margaret Killjoy is a transfeminine author and editor currently based in the Appalachian mountains. Her most recent book is an anarchist demon hunters novella called The Barrow Will Send What it May, published by Tor.com. She spends her time crafting and complaining about authoritarian power structures and she blogs at birdsbeforethestorm.net.

The theme music is also by Margaret Killjoy.

Show art is by Robin Savage

The Host is Inmn Neruin. You can find them on instagram @shadowtail.artificery

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 **Strangers In A Tangled Wilderness 2: The Great Armored Train by Nick Mamatas** 

Inmn Neruin: Hello and welcome to Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness...the podcast. I’m your host Inmn Neruin and I use They/them pronouns . Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness is a collectively run publisher dedicated to producing and curating inclusive and intersectional culture informed by anarchistic ideals. This can include stories, fiction, poetry, memoir, non-fiction, theater pieces, comics, books, pop culture analysis, recipes, music, history, podcasts...and occasionally essays and theory. We are looking for content that doesn’t know where it fits in, for people that don’t know where they fit in. On this podcast we have audio versions of our monthly featured zine read by a brilliant voice actor along with interviews with the author. If you would like to hold in your hands a hard copy of our monthly feature, please consider subscribing to our Patreon where you will be mailed a lovely zine once a month along with other occasional trinkets to add to your horde. Our Patreon helps make things like this podcast possible as well as supporting other podcasts we put out like Live Like The World Is Dying. It also helps us pay authors of the monthly features, transcribers, artists, editors and translators. So if you like what you hear, please consider subscribing at Patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. If you would like to submit a piece that you think would shine nicely in our little dragon horde, please visit Tangledwilderness.org for our submission guidelines! This month, we are kind of cheating…We bring to you a previously recorded episode of the now on-hold podcast We Will Remember Freedom. In this re-print episode, one of our collaborators, Margaret Killjoy talks with Nick Mamatas about his short story The Great Armored Train. We feel this story is more relevant than usual considering Russia’s current invasion of Ukraine. This story pits Trotsky’s giant armored train against polish folk magic. I really loved this story mostly because it’s simple and I love learning about magic within resistance movements, but I also appreciate a good critique of State Communism. Much like State Communism paraded this idea of liberating the people, while building a power base for a new oppressive state, Putin claims to be trying to save Ukraine from itself, going so far as to parade that idea that he hopes to de-nazify it. A facist claiming to free people from other fascists. Seems sketchy. And much like during the reign of the Bolsheviks or the quarrels of any nation states, the common people are usually who suffer most and are used as pawns. But as in this story, resistance can be…phantasmal and there have always been echos of stateless worlds, tremors of a bell rung long ago, now ever ringing, “Land to the Peasants” as the Black Army emblazoned on their battle standards as they fought for a free-territory in Ukraine almost exactly one century ago in conflicts with Bolsheviks and Monarchists. Our hearts go out to the Anarchists and anti-authoritarians organizing in Ukraine and Russia right now, and those of you fighting on the frontlines, organizing evacuations, refugees and medical support, for those who stayed and for those who fled and of course for those who fell. We hope the fantasy and comedy of this story can offer some levity and hope within this ongoing conflict, and those exactly like it happening all over the world, and hope if people can empathize with Ukrainian people right now they can see the similarities between this conflict and those in places like Palestine, Syria, and Rojava to name a few. So remember, sharpen your talons, listen for the echos, and keep fighting.

*For a print version of the story please visit http://tangledwild.org *

Inmn Neruin:

 That was Margaret talking to Nick Mamatas about “The Great Armored Train.” Please check out the online version for this story as well as other content at [http://tangledwild.org](http://tangledwild.org). You can even see some amazing artwork done for the story by our artist Robin Savage. I’ve heard many stories of Ukrainian women offering sunflower seeds to Russian soldiers, so that when they die at least something beautiful and useful will grow. I hope so much to hear stories in the future of seeds that spontaneously burst to life inside tanks, consuming them and rendering them useless except as homes to wayward critters. If you would like to learn more about this conflict in Ukraine and those like it, check out our friends at the Final Straw Radio at [https://thefinalstrawradio.noblogs.org/](https://thefinalstrawradio.noblogs.org/) for interviews with Ukrainian Anarchists, as well as our friends at [http://Crimethinc.com/](http://crimethinc.com/) for histories and interviews with Russian and Ukrainian Leftists, Anarchists and anti-authoritarians. If you would like to support anarchists and anti-authoritarians in Ukraine right now check out a link tree for Ukranian mutual aid group Operation Solidarity at [https://linktr.ee/operation.solidarity](https://linktr.ee/operation.solidarity) and an Anarchist armed detachment The Black Headquarter at [https://linktr.ee/Theblackheadquarter](https://linktr.ee/Theblackheadquarter) 

Thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed this podcast please go tell someone about it. Whisper it in their ear, put it on at work, write a review and feed it to the ocean, cry its name to the gloaming daring an owl to answer. If you would like to support us as well as the authors, translators, editors and artists that we work with please consider subscribing to our Patreon. Subscribers receive at different levels: access to digital copies of our archived zines and features, digital copies of new work, Patreon-only content, discounts of printed work and monthly printed copies of our featured zine mailed to you along with whatever else we feel like that month. You can find us at Patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness or check out our website for more free content, including blogposts, zines, books, games, comics, how-to guides and other works we have to distribute. We can be found at TangledWilderness.org or check us out on twitter @Tangledwild. And as always, if you don’t want to or can’t contribute financially please rate and review us, and tell a friend. We like having friends. You do incredible things that we are endlessly marveled by. We would especially like to thank these friends: Mikki, Nicole, David, Dana, Chelsea, Micaiah, Staro, Jenipher, Eleanor, Natalie, Kirk, Hugh, Nora, Sam, Chris, and Hoss the dog for making this podcast and so many other projects possible. If you feel like a stranger that would like to find their story a home in this tangled wilderness consider submitting it; the pages are thirsty.

 Next month, we bring to you something a little bit different. I will be talking with Celeste Inez Mathilda of Liminal Spaces about their zine “Taraxacum Officinale: Dandelion. Break the Binary. Migration is Beautiful” as well their views on the ethics of wildcrafting. Stay Well. We hope you come back. 

Find out more at https://strangers-in-a-tangled-wildern.pinecast.co