From Armada to Argon

A few months after I'd listened to their podcast series taking a humourously skewed look at Ready Player One, Mike Nelson and Conor Lastowka started talking about Ernest Cline's second novel. I had kept looking back at their podcast's home page every so often, but didn't leap at the chance to listen to their take on Armada. Even if that novel seemed much less in constant deamnd at my local library and therefore easier to sign out to "see what they were talking about," my old uneasiness about what sort of putdowns the "Rifftrax" Conor might help write and Mike might help voice might have left me thinking I ought not to push my luck.

I still didn't leave the home page altogether alone, though, and one day I saw another post go up on it. This time, an electric shock of realisation flew through me. With the works of Ernest Cline used up for the moment, Mike and Conor were turning to an earlier work of "notable bad fiction." Not only was it one I already knew about, I just happened to have first learned about "The Eye of Argon" by Jim Theis via an altogether unofficial take on Mystery Science Theater 3000, Adam Cadre's MSTing.
( First things first, though )