For Founding Members of The Mark Steyn Club, we continue our serialization of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's novel The Tragedy of the Korosko. For Part Two of our adventure, click here and log-in.
For yesterday's opening episode, click here.
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We only launched The Mark Steyn Club last weekend, but I'm immensely touched by all those readers from across the globe who've signed up to be Founding Members. As I said a few days ago, founder membership isn't for everyone, but it is a way of ensuring that all our content remains available for everyone - all my columns, audio interviews, video content, all our movie features and songs of the week. None of it's going behind a paywall, because I want it out there in the world, being read and being watched, and maybe changing an occasional mind. The point of The Mark Steyn Club is to come up with a way to keep funding some of the more logistically complex and labor-intensive stuff, like my interview with former Aussie PM John Howard. So I thank those longtime readers and viewers who've volunteered to be part of that.
That said, we are introducing a few bonuses for our Founding Members - not locking up our regular content, but admitting members to a few experimental features, such as this brand new audio series. In Tales for Our Time I'll be revisiting some classic fiction I've mentioned in books and columns over the years - old stories that nevertheless speak to our own age. We'll post an episode a day, and you can either enjoy it as a book at bedtime twenty minutes before you lower your lamp - or pile up the chapters and listen to the whole thing on a long car journey. I always like reading stories, and I did do a little of it professionally a zillion years ago. So, if it works, we may put it out as an audio book on CD or eight-track or whatever. And, if it's a total stinkeroo, we will never speak of it again.
But for the moment it's an exclusive bonus for our founding Mark Steyn Club members. This first audio adventure played a big part in the finale of my book America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It: It's a novel written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, in 1897 for Strand Magazine, and published between hard covers the following year. The Tragedy of the Korosko deals with the 19th century version of Isis and al-Qaeda, the Mahdists of the Sudan, and what happens when a group of western tourists fall into their hands. The parallels are striking - but so are the differences between Conan Doyle's time and ours. To hear Part One, prefaced by my own introduction to the book, please click here and log-in.
Founder Membership is for a limited number and a limited time only. And, aside from Tales for Our Time, it does come with other benefits:
~A free personally autographed book or CD
~Exclusive Steyn Store member pricing
~The chance to engage in live Q&A sessions with yours truly, starting next week
~Transcript and audio versions of our video content
~My new quarterly newsletter The Clubbable Steyn, the first issue of which ships next month
~Advance booking for my live appearances around the world
~Customized email alerts for new content in your areas of interest
~and the chance to support our print, audio and video ventures as they wing their way around the world.
To become a Founding Member of The Mark Steyn Club, or to sign up a friend, please click here.
Please note that all subscribers to our Se'nnight of Steyn weekly digest automatically become Basic Members, at no charge. It doesn't confer the benefits above, and you can be dragged from your seat and up the aisle by airline security at any moment, but you do get to enjoy special member pricing on books and CDs, etc. On the other hand, if you're a Se'nnight subscriber and you'd like to upgrade, you're also welcome to click here.
One other benefit to Founder Membership is our Comment Club privileges. So, if you like or dislike the first of our Tales for Our Time, then feel free to comment away below. I prowl the comment threads myself from time to time (as you can see in my reply to Lynn Foster here), so do have at it...
