The SFFaudio Podcast #778 – READALONG: Houston, Houston, Do You Read? by James Tiptree, Jr.

The SFFaudio Podcast #778 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, Scott Danielson, Trish E. Matson, Will Emmons, and Jonathan Weichsel talk about Houston, Houston, Do You Read? by James Tiptree, Jr.

Talked about on today’s show:
a collection of feminist science fiction, 1976, Vonda McIntyre, Racoona Sheldon, what dynamite on my bookshelf, me, and yet you showed up, cardboard box with sawdust at the bottom, The Screwfly Solution, she has a hobby horse, a point of view, Robert A. Heinlein, what people on twitter were saying about this book, interested in what the text says, the audio drama, the acting, the choices that the editor made, the ending, the central metaphor, it’s a pun, girls don’t read, classic history, a lot of sparks, pretty good, time jumps and transitions, what the hell’s going on, in chronological order, the novella jumps around a bit, the audiobook narrator, not great job, textually complex, she wasn’t terrible, all those voices, the Connies and the Judies, Australia, the Canadianism, the one word: aboot, northern Canada, northern Alberta, any kids?, no evidence for that, still under copyright, good prominence, more actively marketed, we are digging this stuff, we readers, we heard good things about this author, Hollywood is making so much Philip K. Dick, the estate is trying to sell that stuff, the Edgar Rice Burroughs estate, not being exploited, getting books into hands of people, Her Smoke Rose Up Forever, especially Andy, a tremendously translated narrator, Oliver Wyman, a vocal chameleon, Katey Sagal would be ideal, a spark of comedicness, a very serious story, a little too serious, I’m holding a skull while reading a book, wry humour, not brought out by the narration, super-subversive, the men were just being drugged and put back to sleep again, being put down like dogs, the “good one”, he has no brain for him, why he drinks the hemlock, Socrates ending, sweet smiles, he’s drinking it willingly, the circumstances are such, antidote for the drug, it makes a choice, he’s saying that unknowingly, pretty horrible, tastes cool going down, peace and freedom or death, so horrible, everybody is making their own decisions, hive mind, girls talk it out, it’s a pirate ship, Jesse, is this anarchism?, the answer is: maybe, approval from them, on a pirate ship, orders when in battle, the platonic ideal, Blackbeard, the golden of piracy, mutineers and slaves, the consequences for breaking one of the articles, quartermaster, share you out, this is not a pirate ship, an anarchist society, how your house works, the husband is the captain and the wife is the first mate, a horrible household, patriarchal households in the US and Canada, religious ones, a lot to say about religion, not organized like a captain, corporations, a lineal structure, flatten the structure, a company vs. a corporation, we never go to Earth, three drunk guys, the entirety of the story, did she have a POV, what people said about this, psychopaths, I’m so glad you are not my boss, this is horrible, quotes, back up your evidence, while Jesse does a search, Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed, The Tyranny of Structurelessness, observations of various feminist groups, the loudest voices dominate, nebulous, a more ruthless power, a world being inherited by woman, this is not facts, migrant, reproduced by cloning, rich white women like herself, Alice B. Sheldon, your faces oh my sister, from the male perspective, a culture of women who no longer have that problem, David Santa something, irradiated itself, quite the read, SinclairJM1987, if all men die, we are already capable of impregnating ova with another ova, in the 1970s, all the human males died, you girl girl!, holy shit!, women studies department, discussions of the books we’re reading, we think cloning is bad, Hitler’s army of clone Hitlers, making millions susceptible to disease, 11,000 different clones, 4 lines, this is a problem, so provocative in this book, the way some people think about Heinlein, good for me, dangerous for you, second wave feminism, Herland, The Yellow Wallpaper, Will should love this, three men get in a balloon, a retelling of The Lost World, a lost plateau covered in women, three American men show up, let’s party, active rape scenes, the sequel book, entirely Amazonian society, women do men’s jobs, so hard, to the nth degree, this is nightmare world, mom killing you, this guy’s a fuckin monster, protecting women from other men, giving no fucks, there are good men, in vino veritas, Thomas Ligotti, Wayne June, that sounds interesting, even harder than The Screwfly Solution, the hard feminism of Tiptree, uncompromising, ruthlessness of a pleasant smile and a faraway look, this is for your own good, sperm samples, Ethan Of Athos by Lois McMaster Bujold, get some eggies, artificial wombs, needing genetic diversity, why did she put it into space, just for the joke?, the pun?, money, farmers, everybody takes turns, four industries, activities, the loom, there for fun, Venus is boring, two million people, interest and work, a very ambitious book, cut down, too much at the beginning, the meat of the middle, the jokes, bad take about H.G. Wells not needing to be read anymore, oh my god, no idea, right away, told by the narration, Andy, androgen, funny jokes, what was the name of the chess move?, Dagmar’s gambit, a real person, a celebrity, mononamed celebrity, like Madonna, Prince, singer, comedienne, actress, stunning physique, dynamic personality, towers over Frank Sinatra, plays dumb but is smart, Judy, the Australian, American and British actor, Cary Grant, Archibald Leach, tripped out on drugs, shoved into the girl’s shower, dick in his hand, such a girl, sympathetic to the women, stereotypes about men, why she’s so dangerous, we don’t need men, set the deck, frustrated with the story, not kind to the women, she’s mean, some ideal utopia, no!, Heinlein’s worlds as utopia, The Boys, Homelander is a hero, she’s suicidal from the beginning, hates the structures, wants change, she wants to smarsh the patriarchy, making a statement, not going to be the ultimate solution, women as cold, things of interest, it’s kind, it’s not like they tortured dogs, a laboratory experiment, almost clinical, rape scene, how are you feeling, deliberately off-putting, she’s making a statement about women, shame and humiliation, power, like a scientist, nobody has had sex in 300 years, is he going to emit sperm now?, emasculating the rape, not about power and violence, how interesting, the male perspective is embodied by these three guys, canny, too much of, Lorimer, most sympathetic, he gives in, impenetrable, need to drink this hemlock, can’t we all get along, written omnisciently, playing a character, hypermasculine stories, unable to write, edited by Vonda N. McIntyre, David G. Hartwell, when her name was found out, her spigot dribbled out, Racoona Sheldon is a new hidden identity, no big gap, gets something wrong, introduction is so interesting, on Archive.org, on page vi of the introduction, The Cold Equations by Tom Godwin, who is sacrificing whom, and return to his own time, the world of the future, his name is on a plaque, we did not mention our epidemic, editorial take, Lorimer doesn’t die in the end, causes the deaths at the beginning, utter buchwa, women on the ship, “our epidemic”, the context, 6-65, as to your first point, space cadre, 0.0, notice the tense, the men’s polio shots, killed virus, childhood diseases, he does not mention their epidemic, x-chromosoming epidemic, they’re gonna die, let this sit for a minute, Y: The Last Man, the premise, one dude and his male monkey, three astronauts, it’s a tour of earth, visiting a whole bunch of women, who’s gonna do this, he’s not really important, he’s a juggler, society continuing on, a much softer take, more ruthless, the simplicity of The Cold Equations, a birth defect, infanticide, suckle, stroke, clean, bury after you strangle, the horror of this story, mischaracterizing Jesse, such a mean lady, we all have aggressive fantasies, pop into your head, society tells you a lot of stuff, finding your identity, this language thing, this history thing, notes of their lives, she’s revolutionizing so many things, couple of hours, she’s brilliant, one image, crucific in one hand gun in the other, volume of information in one image, Zardoz (1974), the gun is good the penis is evil, symbolic heavy, negative female stereotypes, chatty Cathys, if you read this as a woman, that’s so wrong, women don’t innovate, tweaks, legit stereotypes, she doesn’t only do stereotypes, smorgasbord, a buffet, a time travel book, women kill all the men, a female utopia, men need to hurry up and die, who are the sympathetic females, sympathetic, very interesting too, when he’s all excited, I felt like hitting somebody, we need to make one strong for those manual tasks, open this pickle jar, extra hormones, anywhere near queerness, if somebody wrote this today, of course I love my sisters, unrealistic, how much Connies and Ingrids, this is not a sex bus, lose a lot of context, the sex act is consequential for a lot of people, can result in babies, a lot more casual, changes the focus, that’s how the one guy, put up a statue to my penis, they dose them, the truth drug, lack of inhibitions, let’s find out the truth of these men, shade the truth, omit things, unskilled liars, change slightly, the central joke, we do for a fact, our so called great books, who do you read, there’s our future Surak, Shakespeare, not very realistic, talking to other women about books, being frustrated by that, this is not all women, terrible episode of The Twilight Zone episode Not All Men, the consequences of this, let’s take this story and say it is not a cartoon, not a dystopia, humanity has lost its soul, half-species, half broken, trying to keep the language the same, the sick part, where the men won’t understand the women, if you’re not going to write books anymore, real trouble, studying history a lot, not realistic, outside of their experience, Andys perform the roles of males on stage, all set in space, an interesting stage play, when the rape scene starts, hard to watch, we don’t get a travelogue, soulless broken, a knife edge, it could fall one way or fall the other way, nobody is right in here, really mean, very cool, everybody sucks here, Am I The Asshole (a reddit forum), is this really a normal thing, a family of violent alcoholic, hard-ass, is Jesse gonna feel oppressed, smothering, if she was dumber and tried to do this, smart, wise, typical man, they need a gun, kind of American, if written by a non-American, the captain is religious, is that allowed by NASA, he’s number 2 on the ship, Buzz Aldrin, fumbled words from Armstrong, magnificent desolation, prescripted by a committee, a lunar base, that’s not our world, in 2023, circumsolar expeditions, page 14, he often says that too, the sparkle of Spica, like a blonde fu manchu, what’s his plan, evil world domination, those orientals with their devious ancient knowledge, reverse colonialism, planting the seeds for what she’s trying to say, hard to take a good take, what’s the good take, the evil Kirk separated from the good kirk, Scott’s wisdom, the good Kirk can’t make decisions, they’re gonna be suckin my cock all day, that episode is so strong, one Kirk running around the ship raping women, Yoeman Rand, that wasn’t like me, that’s not how women would run things, some women are really fuckin bossy, Margaret Thatcher was a woman, evil lady, city garden societies, more vicious that men, Mayor Daley, that’s the theory, Jesse doesn’t buy it, personal experience, a head nun, the abbess, fraternal brothers order with different characteristics, a benedictine nunnery, who’s most experienced at this particular thing, deferring too much, everyone in this podcast today, Will, Scott, Trish, Jonathan, don’t forget Paul, we’re on a boat in the middle of the ocean, solution solved, Heinlein, anybody been on a boat before?, Jesse has been on a lot boats, who knows how to swim, how to solve this problem, seniority is the traditional way, these are the elders, they have seen many summers, many winters, society, we’ll have a meritocracy, what have they developed, fertilizing ova, some innovations, only 2 million people, all we see is the ladies on the ship, what they tell us, a 17 book series, so much idea to be mined, very easily could have been a novel, keep it small, to the idea, very very good science fiction, it doesn’t even need to be set in a spaceship, the pun first, what’s the difference between men and women, Jesse is reading too much into the play on words, it’s not the focus of the story, having the word read in there, difficulty reading, partially occluded, a very fun metaphor for what she’s doing, we’re partially blinded, Earth should be here, October not April, a tiny little package, it couldn’t be any shorter, 1972, When It Changed by Joanna Russ, a planet settled 30 generations ago, a plague wiped out all of the men, whether the women want it or not, dueling scars, killed three women in duels, dueling scars, German empire, Nazism is a distraction, ova fusion, mainly agricultural society, a couple more generations, overwhelm us, a contrast to Tiptree, violence certainly still exists in this female society, a mayor, other political currents, a different view of an all female society, just one point of view, play on gender in the 1970s, The Left Hand Of Darkness, very New Wavy, Again, Dangerous Visions, a biography out there, 1976, one preceded the other, a male activity of practicing violence, no violence from the women in this book, very soft/passive, not demonstrative violence, men went after getting these scars, dueling class, guards all over their body, fencing, to prevent eye damage, you give the guy a scar, they don’t want to lose an eye, it works either way, put on your armour, if you don’t have one, people would cut their faces, the Nazi ideology, showing their masculinist, a John Sanford book, scatheless, glass fragments to show the boys back home, cutting women in the face, a man with a cut on his face is more male, heightens his desirability, Otto Skorzeny, cheek with the duelling smites, being tall, women are acting like men in that situation, men and women are different, we have more range than that, a lady who’s proud of their dueling scars, Paul can imagine a society where women are in charge, the hot thing, the one episode of Star Trek The Next Generation, where men are tiny and women are amazons, the very male of the audience of the show, lot of heterosexual women liked that, Jesse is not a heterosexual woman, ideas by the footload, it hurts, more other works, Seven Eves by Neal Stephenson, doorstopper, cloning and other techniques, the definite this, the definite that, yet to be , Brave New World is not a cloning book, eugenics, 888 page, is it a definitive cloning book?, quasi-sub-species of humans, traits and subtraits, chemist, farmer, biology is not destiny, way to long, if you like that sort of thing it’s your thing, Jurassic Park is a cloning novel, the scientist in the book, sinister in the book, genial in the movie, sparknotes, analysts say, Cyteen, your definitive clone novel, a masterpiece, the most ambitious sci-fi novel, what makes it so good?, Will’s just a young buck, the concepts of nature and nurture, the basic plot of the novel, multi-generational cloning project, get this brilliant chemist to come back, stuff in the background, free labour, citizens, clone brothers trapped on this compound, attracting all this attention, wheels within wheels, a lot of crunchy intrigue and shenanigans, a secret colony, the whole Cyteen world, cloning and tape learning, the old fashioned way, two ideas of feminist theory that are different, become leaders in those institutions, the women should leave and start their own institutions, radical feminist, maybe that would be horrible, right up to the end of this book, I don’t want to hate her, women are capable of a lot, a contribution to society if given equal rights, wait sixty years, what would happen if women had a society without men, this is horrible, twitter takes, maybe we just need to give them more books to read, getting focused on one part, an idea that a lot of people have, the author is advocating, his vision of the future, the characterization that comes in the movie, smiling handsome children, Doogie Howser comes on with a Nazi uniform, rooting for these Nazis, sometimes Heinlein is bad at his strawmanning, humanity has been strawmanned, reading Starship Troopers as fascism, putting murder in their book, deliberate misunderstanding, a deliberate missing of things, a sophisticated story, Lord Of The Flies, foisted upon children at school, find out what this means, the answers are made up, this is human society?, no girls on the island, hey high school kids, I need to tell somebody about this book, it’s gonna hurt, too strong, it isn’t that subtle, the material is smarter than the scholastic material, always, skipping all the inconvenient because parents would be upset, with a particular ideology, from a fundamentalist perspective, don’t give women any power ever, Scott is that in the Bible?, man is the head of woman, women should submit to men, is he right about that?, should men submit to women?, David G. Hartwell, the way the old human race used to run, bisexual, maybe it’s not as horrible as we think?, trust their words, returning to Earth, pitch pumping, Return From The Stars by Stanisław Lem, different solutions, an interesting parallel case, integrate back, the lost astronaut problem, a Planet Of The Apes story, kind of an asshole, fucking monkeys, kissing one at the end, 247 pages, Will could read that, 1966, a long tradition, deep freeze, coming back from star missions, disruptions to society, in January of 2024, Jesse likes short stories, Sword Of Welleran, Radium Pool, short stories pack a punch, sometimes there’s nothing to say, The Cave Girl, ad 250, in the Koran, 300 years later, no technology has changed, your king is the same name?, a role playing game, we haven’t stumbled over a railroad yet, back in time, a cutoff for the sewers, Romans had sewers, centralized heating, when some piece of tech began, differences between the various steam engines are very subtle, China before Europe, smartphones existed before the iPhone, old social media sites, an unrelated question, start a company called twitter, if you don’t use it you lose it, this tweet doesn’t exist, tweets don’t exist anymore, Skippy Peanut Butter, old Marvel or DC comics that come back, an Unknown Soldier, Obama is giving Batman a congressional medal of honor, if they don’t do it, Superman movies, Captain America with a van, Fantastic Four, serving a particular point of law, it’s not going to work Jesse, laying fallow, Weird Tales is technically still around, they’re separated by incontinuity, all the old titles with any sort of cachet, this is that old thing you like, Babel by R.F. Kuang, what makes a Scott book?, coming into Scott’s orbit, experience it for yourself, did not make the Hugo list, capital R reason, the locus award, fantasy Japanese invasion of China, not a Jesse book, T. Kingfisher, extremely, very charismatic, not a Jesse author, character focused, Jesse hates characters, historical fantasy battles, Evan might like this book, The Oxford Translator’s Revelation, what Evan likes, non-Americans, set in Oxford, Jonathan likes provocative stuff, What?!, oh good, starting to get a sense of Westerns vs. science fiction, hard to get a read on, they like books you would get at the library, the Dragon Awards, less radical, certain subset of fandom, still trying, decrying, this is terrible, own set of blogs, leftists ruining science fiction, evidence, proof, slide into the dms, Wells is archaic at this point, socialism was just a theory, are they trying to look for a fight?, Wombat Soco, a Morlock P. thread, the same mindset, we didn’t know back then, same idea, the strength of Wells is how he presents his ideas, he never says that, communism, socialism, they’re synonyms, a weird and dumb thing to say, even the Our Opinions Are Correct, just a troll of Jesse, okay whatever, don’t read Wells, Wells was passe, they think that, maybe they haven’t read, a chicken or egg thing, otherwise your missing good stuff, fish for squid, hallucinations, fermented kimchi, Heinlein promoted long pig, if there’s a restaurant and it is humanely prepared, thank you Trish, we had a delicious conversation, not even a cannibal, cannibal curious, cannibal flag, we all had mother’s milk, it’s attractive, overstating the case, no cannibal restaurants, lab grown human meat, on a farm for a week, a mink had gotten into one of the chicken houses, summarily executed, deboning two chickens, homegrown rooster, the differences are massive, radically different creatures, very different meats, bones and skin, chicken breeding, 22 rifle, firearms acquisitions certificate, nobody kept the fur, mink in the trap, not of the execution, Evan quit harder, facebook, dms to people, like their comics, what’s life like outside of twitter?, free and easy, focus on particular thoughts, wind in your hair, dog at your side, a playtex commercial, The Mysterious Stranger, more Twain, the Library America, Twain recently, that’s the problem, more definitive than others, the audiobook really shapes it, Francis Stevens, Behind The Curtain, The Elf Trap, we’re booking way into the future, strong ideas, fantasy, the Amber series, very absorbing, tripped out stuff, Robert E. Howard, Conan, doing philosophy, they don’t believe in god, like Triumph Of The Will, a canny hobby horse, gothic novels, hah, defeated it, he’s know for this characters, that’s really cool, Conan is basically the anti-christ (but not in a negative anti-Christ way), he doesn’t die, Trump: I likes sons of god who don’t die, the Christ story is really cool, it relies on love, lust and vigour and love of adventure and love of living, almost falls in love with Belit, he has his good cry, he’s fine with it, comes back with the dead, thank you very much, in the year 6000, reconstructing Jonathan’s personality with AI, what a reviewer wrote about it, that meant that I was in charge, Vomit on the moon book, another leap for human kind, first openly transgenderwoman on the moon, the irony, a lack of progress, satirist, people don’t know what satire is, Adam Chronos, the strong beautiful, black transgender woman in space, who the hell wrote this?, both sides, strength and beauty, what on god’s earth is this crap, missing the irony in the text, a hot topic, in 1000 years, distance, people forget, its much easier to see after a little bit of time, reading Jonathan Swift, the big enders and the little enders, a religious dispute, thou shalt crack the egg, some religious fight, the annotations, Jesse doesn’t trust annotations, the original publications, people’s bad ideas, the guy in the big red shirt wants to murder Jesse, he’s a communist or whatever, even Penguin books?, do tons of research, Schmoop, Trish, Sparknotes, where’s the quote, not quotations, Bokanovsky’s process, just look at the text, that’s illegal, that’s what the news is for, following a lot of libs, a hatelist on Biden, the argument wasn’t about the things that were posted, if it’s true I don’t care, always look at the original sources if possible, clon is not in it, google ngram, clone is a very old world, 1867, it’s happening in the 1940s, copy down what chat GPT says, cloning humans, the mammals don’t survive, a barrier to continuing, not a real viable solution, she’s clever, no, Jesse’s right, Scientific American, Popular Science, this is very interesting, Dolly the sheep stuff, most people don’t read a lot of science fiction, she’s very good at it, The Game Of X by Robert Sheckley, Strange Exodous is Abernathy, also an Italian movie, Seventh Victim, sign up for this game, hunted or hunter, the sevens club, bullet proof jackets, a girl who is suicidal, you don’t have to keep playing, if you’re in the game it’s fine, The 10th Victim (La decima vittima) (1965), The Monsters, Galaxy, H.L. Gold, blow will’s socks off, the newest thing that has happened for some time, where the new thing was happening, a substance resembling fire, on his thick tail, the fifth day of lugat, I have to go home and kill my wife, I’d hate to be late, Mindswap, so many good books to read, wait 10-15 years, the whole series thing, a sequel, everything has to be a series is deadening, counterexamples, The Stainless Steel rat series, Harry Harrison, they’re funny, very enjoyable, making exceptions, the first 3 Dragonlance books, too many, The Weirwoods, gets bad in the middle, good again at the end, plot holes, each one grates on you, a real dip in quality towards the middle, thank you so much.

Tor Double 11 - Houston, Houston, Do You Read? by James Tiptree, Jr.

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The SFFaudio Podcast #774 – READALONG: Farnham’s Freehold by Robert A. Heinlein

Farnham's Freehold - IF - Worlds Of Science Fiction
The SFFaudio PodcastJesse, Paul Weimer, Maissa Bessada, Trish E. Matson, and Jonathan Weichsel talk about Farnham’s Freehold by Robert A. Heinlein

Talked about on today’s show:
unmuted, you’ve probably read my books, a wonderful novel from July 1964, Worlds Of If, very proud of himself, as a teenager, screenshotted, omigod, adding a new element to the story, explore this idea in the most horrible way, the Baen paperback, spoiler on the cover, the last page of the book is on the cover, what’s going on here, who wrote this, the title gives away the ending, what we now call preppers, a newspaper article, a freeholder, inspired by Heinlein, Heinlein’s changing the world, magazines about how to survive a zombie apocalypse, wanting the Walking Dead to be real, Freedom Is A Lonely Thing, what the book’s about, about being a slave, an oxymoron, if you hold something it is not free, held by your daughter/wife, mini biography of Alan E. Nourse, the dedicee, Friday was partially dedicated to the wife, both Navy men, who’s the main Heinlein in this book, former Seabee, decided to retire, 2,000 people under him, a helluva book, the scene where they’re outside and Ponce’s airplane shows up, Duke is going to live in a cave with his mother, some transition scenes, before and ponce and after ponce, three books, surviving a nuclear apocalypse, pioneering, life under Ponce, Karl K. Gallagher, is a pretelling of Starship Troopers, a partial retelling of Tunnel In The Sky, colonizing planets, he’s a YA character, The Door Into Summer, same thing happens, they steal a car, one of the cars is missing, Ponce’s world is also stuff we’ve seen in By His Bootstraps, the most extraordinary thing about this book is it’s set in 1964, there isn’t another novel where it doesn’t start in the future, such an interesting book, does an alternate history count?, Job: A Comedy Of Justice, a Heinlein break/cleanse, Glory Road, fixate on the costumes, such a distaste in your, the long pork, stick with chicken, Farah Mendlesohn’s book, her opinion, off the rails, cannibalistic, laughing so hard, tears streaming down cheeks, so weird, reread, the weakness of this book is the beginning half, skipped everything until the pregnancy reveals, character stuff, well done characters, not likeable, Jesse knows all their names, Barbara and Karen are interchangeable, we know Duke way too well, how real they are, Grace the alcoholic in denial, has her son castrated, I hate this book, if I was gonna stop, off the rails, you’re supposed to hate them, why am I reading this?, how do you fix this book?, change the POV from Hugh, straight out of Tunnel Of The Sky, as soon as Ponce shows up, tell it from Joe’s point of view, Joe talking to Hugh, Joe is sticking it to Hugh, Hugh is not a racist jerk, Karen, set in 1964, legacy racism, present day racism, we gotta stop this, there are still racists, that little joke was there to seed us for the final revelation, two different covers, redid the cover, that doesn’t solve the problem, there is no way to fix this book with another narrator’s point of view, what makes the book great, you wanna hate a racist, if you hate them so much, like Grace, insipid, we’re speculating, would she have cared?, a caricature, the fucking Karen, you fucking idiot Heinlein, he talks about taboo subjects, cannibalism, incest, horrible arguments, repopulate the planet, we don’t need to do incest, muddle through, dad I always found you handsome, what a horrible man, he was right to bring it up, a terrible movie, Noah (2014), pregnant because of Methuselah, Noah’s wife, we’ve increased out gene-pool, and the cat’s pregnant, and there’s a cow and a calf, he’s piling it up, decrease our displeasure, much more obviously as a Jonathan Swift, the grossness has an appeal, he’s an asshole, he made mistakes, authoritarian, sexist?, never chattered when her man wanted her to be quiet, he knows that he is wrong, he never does that, we think Duke is worse than Hugh, when Ponce shows up we shouldn’t have knuckled under, plot armour, or the book continued, muddle through and hopefully plot armour will save you, the first half of the book is a mirror to the second half of the book, as soon as the bombs go off you’re fired, we’re all going to be equal with no employer employee relationship, even Barbara and Karen, an equal prospect to Duke, strike a spark, everybody thinks Hugh’s sexy, my father figure, my best friend’s dad, throwing over his wife for a younger woman, acting irrationally, unreasonably, a history of alcoholism, solve their problems by drinking, decide the way they think it should be, rarely seen in literature, that was all she was, consumed by alcoholism, Hugh tells her story, shacked up with me, tarpaper roof, decadent and fussy, she was admirable at one point, turned to pot, saved all humanity, something Heinlein did himself, built a bombshelter, that’s not bad, female characters, why do women have to become fat and useless, nothing, zero, a Hugh and Ponce book, Kitty, Dr. Livingstone, cannibalism, incest, kittens, infuriating, in here twice, the other hidden theme, transgender stuff a couple of times, pleasant surprises, Doc thinks he is a boy cat, impressive actually, something in Ponce’s world, that idea, 1964 and farming, interesting, reconstruct the world with a few book, books are money, I kill you my son, the mirror universe of the future, including copyright, every kind of Heinlein theme you could want, it’s not capitalism, a funhouse mirror view of capitalism and the United States, an international planetary black supremacist, we should hate it, he’s created a funhouse mirror of American society in 1964 and hate it, wow it’s in the future, Joe is our reverse character, just his skincolour, every single character has an attitude that could be “I got mine”, his idea to get the cards, he’s a negro until he pulls a gun on you, it’s my cave, my machine gun, I know that this system is wrong, I’m in charge, enlightened Greek dictator of a city state, gonna send you back in time for fun, a parallel scene, stacking the deck 100%, to force the plot to accept the time travel bit, as a teenager, the castration reveal, shocked, we knew that it was coming, almost everybody has been tempered, thumbs taken off, what’s happening to all the sluts?, almost exclusively, some European shows up with a ship, you’re a slave now, slave bosses, I went to an island in the South Pacific, a blackbirding island, I stopped telling the story, slavery is wrong no matter what race does it for whatever reasons, we miss it, daddy I always wanted to have sex with you, I’m a sexpot, the little speech at the end, a bait and switch, have your balls cut off and serve me, the same bait and switch, structured very similarly, an annoying habit of making you infuriated, there’s so much to say, hated it less the second time through, a lot more nuanced, efforts at nuance, conflated Barbara and Karen, somewhat relieved, exploration of who should be on top, sacrificing your servants, runaways in the mountains, we are all free to walk our appointed paths, honestly convinced of his own benevolence, a cheap clincher, as a possibility, Christine Jorgensen was literally mentioned in one of the letters, any time travel story where one character is two character it’s incest, broaden our horizons, one character talking to himself all day, one of the letters, handwritten, an literary gabfest, let’s consider Edgar Allen Poe, Poe was the best writer to read or re-read, he could never be milked dry in one reading, the case of the Purloined Letter, when you consider the very subtle, how about Mark Twain next, a coded message to her, spelled correctly, if you can read this answer the same way period, he’s doing what he’s telling us what he’s doing, he’s telling us to read this book that way, consider the name of the cat, descendants of Africans, cannibalism is a planetary thing, around here any more much, serial killers, every Catholic is a cannibal, take in the divine, it’s a metaphor as well as an actual cultural practice, origins of capitalism, eating people’s lives up, different slave mentality works, as a manager of a factory, the same argument slave owners made to their slaves, in that light, it scares us more than it scares Heinlein, Heinlein is more afraid of Khrushchev actually unleashing hell, capital resources, in our timeline, it’s not a hearing aid, it bugs his wife, a very masterful book, he misjudged his audience, more sophisticated, we’re all teenagers when we read it, who’s there to root for, not a sporting event, trying to be satiryical, it’s not funny, a willing sex slave, that’s what all women become, stepping into the room and stepping on his dick, why do you do this to us, you need to have a reason to read, what outrageous thing will Heinlein say next is a reason to read, a tweet storm about Heinlein, memories of this book, To Sail Beyond The Sunset, a funhouse mirror in Ponce’s world, he’s trying to do something, he’s succeeded, we balk at the price and think the caller is an asshole, Karen’s sexing up her dad, I’m just like a black mammy, why did she do that?, she’s racist, the most Heinlein character, you try going through Alabama as a blackman, I gotta be modest here, but it’s not going to stop me, if we didn’t have this book we couldn’t hate Heinlein like we do, I’m the Karen now, an indictment of humanity, H.G. Wells, Griffin in The Invisible Man, the land lady, the bum, the indictment of the book, Prendick, Moreau, The Island Of Doctor Moreau, root for Henlein’s YA characters, Hugh is the least shitty character, Heinlein’s brinksmanship, no way to solve family problems, lifeboat rules, I have a gun to back it up, I read a book, books are valuable, you have to agree with me, you’re dead, bridge, so much bridge talk, contract bridge, games, Sixth Column, playing with a ruler, what is that chess move, what is that bridge move, such a stupid game, an old lady game, world champion bridge player, stay at home mom, will you teach me how to play bridge, my amazing game, a stratum of Americans, social function, aunts, progressive rummy, mahjong, by the book, not interesting to read about, so 1964, Omar Sharif, why is the guy from that movie, a second life, columns on bridge, it’s gone, a social activity, watch people stream, online games, people who play with their kids online, the time has passed, they don’t know what bridge is, the mirror of Hugh and his life, Anne and Alan E. Nourse, the kind of conversations that happen at the card table, hearts, why do you have a social game, sitting around and having a conversation, why do we have to have a book to talk about to have a conversation, it gives shape and excuse to it, it’s about marriage, as usual, one of the richest books, what is freedom, the American Revolution, his target is racism, slavery, American history, serious stumbling blocks by Heinlein being horribly Heinlein, almost certainly a parallel or an answer to Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court, that scene is lifted, a poem: The Congo by Vachel Lindsay, why is it like this, The Golden Faced People, The Crisis, NAACP, a rich white man publishing a story in a black magazine, from a different period of time, equality anti-racist guy, pushing peoples buttons, The Golden-Faced People: A Story Of Chinese Conquest Of America, the trouble with the laundryman, it’s Lincoln’s birthday, 2805, the United States taken over by the Chinese, white people were the slaves until very recently, Lin-Koln, a backwoodsman who freed the slaves, a fun-house mirror of the United States in 1914, he sounds racist but is anti-racist, what’s so extraordinary about this book, semi-forgive, gritty and real, the incest problem, has happened around the world a lot, soccer teams crashed in the Andes, ritualistic, ancestors or enemies, probably not a healthy practice, kings of Hawaii, marrying their sisters, Cleopatra, Pharaohs, royal families of Europe, first cousin, for political purposes, for satirical purposes, sex objects, the drug aspect, religion is missing, two ways of reading this, also science fiction, what happiness is made out of, Seconal, alcohol, their drugs are better (because they’re insidious), calms people down, as a punishment, as a control, buck, slut, we become almost immune to it, wench, literally just means girl, the context, tavern wenches, in our world that’s how its used, a much longer book just set in that world, so interesting, the chosen women are so oppressed we never meet them, we meet the sluts, who would want to live with life, a breaking up of the atomic family, his first family is dead, the family atomic unit, he presents that world so thoroughly, how white women were thought of traditionally in the south, To Kill A Mockingbird, we’re in the household, walled up in the harem, the sluts’ quarters, who Ponce chooses, she’s working against her husband, he’s cuckolding Hugh, as a plot device, consider the nephew, they cry, sexist as hell society, a masculine controlled society, inheritance goes through the nephew, Mentok is quite a good character, interesting, a cabin in the woods, a vacation estate, run off my feet at all times, you will really how things are, so tantalizing, so different from ours, 2000 years pass, lights that turn on, social stuff, line marriage, so different and so good, middle manager, despises the slaves, resents the chosen, genetics racism thing, some blood in him, improve the stock, their own eugenics system, everybody knew there were men somewhere in the stars, set in the same universe, Time For The Stars, a checklist, twins, The Rolling Stones, how was Heinlein raised, his books not his biography, a private man for a public man, in New York at that time, Horace Gold’s poker game, the who’s who of science fiction, C.M. Kornbluth, Fredrick Pohl, a couples thing, another childless couple, food and drink, LBJ, a silver star, man’s magazine, congressperson in the reserves, American bomber tour, he didn’t do anything but survived and came back with a silver star, Duke is Lyndon B. Johnson, publicly Mr. Civil Rights, privately Mr. Racist, the situation was untenable, Lincoln’s story is similar, very liberal, very racist, he’s a momma’s boy, neglected by his father, under Grace’s influence, prejudiced, horny for dad, also racist, she thinks it’s cute, DSM, extremely un-PC, what causes homosexuality, absent father, domineering mother, opportunities with women, a closeted homosexual, in the abstract, just finished law school, he has his own apartment, living on his own, prove it, as distinctly as Trish, we agreed to live as friends, you’re not longer my son, your opinions are welcome, his wife is a Lush, take the alcohol out of her hands, 3rd we’re libertarians, coming from a history of alcoholism, very good, it’s incredible, his personal life, he aint gonna never stop talking about his cats, mom’s a total Grace, watch out for the scissors bub, hardcore, COVID is fake, my son Jeffrey gets all the vaccines, I need to believe that it’s true, what alcohol does to people, call a doctor, there’s no fucking doctors, in the intervening 20 years, did you think Karen was going to die?, structurally, this baby’s gonna die, forgot for a second, so easy, when Ponce tells Hugh, we went and dug up your daughter, I brought a priest, the Koran’s in there, we put every atom back, this is not a throwback society, way better tech than we do, flying cars, we could go to the moon anytime we want, kind of stuck, tame scientists, chosen scientists, dynamism there, translating, reading from Hugh’s point of view, ho we think he should feel, he has a different emotion than we thought he did, that same language from Sixth Column, formal language, very good writing, ranking this book low, roll you eyes and throw your phone across the room sort of scenes, Evan’s [Lampe’s] shows on Heinlein, leveling the shelter, not idea rich, fixed it with dynamite, similar scenes in Tunnel In The Sky, people can make mistakes, a pen for wild animals, commute to the beach, making and argument, the list of things in the bomb shelter, prepper porn, the list of books, he wanted to have ammonia and iodine, you might need to blow up bridges, Red Dawn (1984), John Milius, Nazi staybehinds during WWII, strike back at the oppressor, an uprising after the apocalypse, fight for America, a Red Dawn prep book, inspiration for white supremacists survivalists, teaching Nazis to fish, libertarians, also Indian, neither is good, but the arc of the book, not even a benevolent dictator, whether Heinlein intended it or not, “those people”, that’s not in this book, they’re just cannibals, sub-humans, it’s human nature that whoever’s at the top, plays into, so depressing, nobody will do the right thing, nobody needs to read this book that is not a student of genre history, we’re not wrapping up yet, the list of books, page 50, books were the immortal part of man, rape a defenseless friendly book, I want to bring it in, I’ve got a tommy gun I’m gonna make them read it, so annoying, still a good book, ugh cringey, up to a point, if the book closes up before that, the characters were thin, huge plot holes, not a good book for Maissa, Duke and Karen are entitled baby boomers, Kitten’s a millennial, gen x, what baby say about gen x, limited world view, and her racist jokes, the voice, Tom Weiner, cheerful sarcasm, sarcastic but serious, is Barbara the thinnest character in the book?, a lot of screentime, getting to the plot, getting to the ideas, she’s divorced, Hugh’s divorced too, that’s not fair, since you’re divorced, a Karen move, looking at things as an outsider, most loveable character is Dr. Livingstone, the twins are slobbery, Ponce is strong as a character, Jesse was apologizing for Hitler, that makes Ponce worse, Ponce is not a good person, he’s telling Barbara this, a super-strong argument about the master slave dynamic in the South, I barely tingle them, are you happy?, haven’t I been good to you, technowhips, a work of political angst, also angsty about WWIII, grotesque, trying to solve it, a radical shift, fifth gear to 1st gear, Karen’s death could have been avoided, sets up a Farnham’s Freehold in the end, silver coins, a 45 automatic, towels, knowledge and experience, two children, looting from the gas station, in their own bombshelter we presume, children to breed with their children, they go back to an alternate world, trying to fit it in with his giant chronology, back to the past, slave dystopia anyway, a more optimistic note, good point, Trish!, subtle, some version of him comes back to the original world, infinite world, Karen is always still alive, a very writerly thing, to make you read the book again, what did I miss the first time, time is a flat circle, 30 years later, the cannibalism is a shock the first time, seeded right when they get to that world, he didn’t write this by the seat of his pants, let me construct a massive thing, you’re going to hate some of it, maybe in this universe the chosen won’t rise up, sees the bald guy, I just saw the weirdest guy, how does someone get like that, racist against himself, the car being an automatic, what it implies is the time travel is happening in all different dimensions, why did she had a stickshift?, he could repopulate the earth with himself, don’t tell Heinlein, turning people into food, on the cover, butter and somedays bread, jerked Quisling by the neck, mostly satire, racist trope, Hitler was a vegetarian, Hitler liked dogs, I can have it both ways, the brinksmanship, he (failed to) raise(d) that kid, Karl Joseph, Carl Gustaf, leader of Norway, not a very good Norwegian accent, the Vichy, from 1942-1945, a little after chat, complimentary books, Regnum Congo, mentioned in The Picture In The House by H.P. Lovecraft, In The Barn by Piers Anthony, alternate world farmhand, humans raised as meat, sensory deprivation, thumbs again, makes them more docile, improves the flavour, tempered, slut vs. tempered, made stronger, fine tuned, calmer, a good word, Heinlein was a master craftsman, you’re supposed to, intentionally being obnoxious, made me so mad at him, he’s right to do it, he knows what he’s doing, breeding, slaves bloodlines, The Domination Of The Draka by S.M. Stirling, Steven Barnes’ Lion’s Blood, the black plague, colonized by Muslims instead of Europeans, Irish slave, Africans or whatever, friends in power imbalance, a really interesting book, concur with Trish, a sequel, Zulu Heart, well done, interesting fellow, co-written with Larry Niven, Seascape Tattoo, very impressed with this book, No., Why?, Heinlein!, god damn you!, why are you doing this?!, The Water-babies by Charles Kingsley, anti-science, anti-democracy, how democracy starts, pirate ships, all volunteer, if the leadership changes, the plank, put you off on an island, Paul is going to take issue, Paul is pretty sure, there’s a lot going on, the pirate codes, A High Wind Over Jamaica by Richard Hughes, Paul can leave, abandoning this, caught between two things, Paul is not fine, one of those rights thing, you can’t get your rights back, NYRB, The New York Review Of Books, audiobook, apostrophe s, a good pirate book, a gripping story, post-colonial Caribbean, supposed innocents, atypical setting, the truth of human nature, 1929, William Golding’s horrible book The Lord Of The Flies, Blue Lagoon, Victorian, isn’t as beautiful, disturbing, saw it on a shelf, thoughtful and thorough, tell you all about the book, proof against the standard spoiler wreck, differently distributed, The Strand bookstore, Houston, Huston Do You Read, male astronauts cast forward in time, there are no men anymore, Saturday in December, posed as a male author, such male writing, only a man could have written this, a practical joke, George Elliot, George Sand, Hugh Grant, Impromptu (1991), Emma Thompson, Judy Davis, a little too French and long winded, she’s kinda like Heinlein but meaner, Paul not Jvstin, democracy and pirates, Madagascar, Pirate Enlightenment by David Graeber, richer pirating grounds in the Indian Ocean, Tortuga, the Madagascar women, colonists and natives of the Caribbean, pirate kings, pirate queens, if you’re a captain on a pirate ship, Black Sails didn’t go to sea very much, sailors don’t like sailing, they need to sail, rich people with a yacht, fishermen don’t love the sea, pirates don’t have family, they have addiction, make merry, his share is higher, bosun, they have responsibilities, pirates had to do certain things, drink all fuckin day, a whole mini-version of the political state as the nation state, Caribbean pirates, white slaves in the British and French navies, Jesse’s joke: I was impressed by the British navy’s recruiting methods, your health is fucked, they liberate your ship, why would you attack a ship with no good stuff on it, white and black slave ship sailors, not-chattel slavery, hauling humans, swabbing out shit and vomit, sometimes they’ll sell the slaves, everyone has guns and knives, Heinlein’s paradise, relatively recent scholarship, The General History Of The Pyrates, The Many-Headed Hydra by Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, the term that capitalists use to describe the slaves, you always have to be putting down the slaves down all the time, slave rebellion, history from below, Maroon communities, tri-racial isolates, Evan Lampe, when brought to shore, women were expected to run business, aliens with treasure, Against All Flags (1952), basically The Fast And The Furious (2001) but with ships or Point Break (1991), with the consent of the locals, lying claims, oral traditions and cultural practices, what parts of Africa weren’t colonized?, a pirate utopia, the history that’s coming out of there, a lot of sex for 50 – 60 years, biracial descendants, the European kings, this strange thing called democracy, those Americans in the colonies, a hidden history other than John Locke, Greece, a lot like Heinlein, a historian of the Atlantic, do another one, he’s read enough books, mostly fiction, Will and Ariel Durant, this attitude toward fiction: a character has to be likeable, damaging, some people read for comfort, Hugo books, sequel books, diminishing returns, in any series, characters are there to fulfill the job, no heroes, smiling dashing hero, Red Planet, a lot of people don’t have an identity, changing their genders, somebody gave you a name, you don’t know who you are, growing up, a lot of people never find that, most people don’t read at all, reading as an escape identity, other realities from a long time ago, not surprising but very common, it hurts literature, your characters have got to be likeable, choosing the right things to focus on, grossing out, war in Malaya, Seventh Dawn (1964), William Holden, a tropical version of Dr. Zhivago (1965), Malaysia’s failed war of independence, the British version of Vietnam, chopping people’s heads off and holding the heads of their enemies and smiling, British commandos, ghost writing gig, Catcher In The Rye, punish children.

Farnham's Freehold - IF Worlds Of Science Fiction

Farnham's Freehold - IF Worlds Of Science Fiction

Farnham's Freehold - IF Worlds Of Science Fiction

Farnham's Freehold - IF Worlds Of Science Fiction

Farnham's Freehold - IF Worlds Of Science Fiction

Farnham's Freehold - IF Worlds Of Science Fiction

Farnham's Freehold - IF - Worlds Of Science Fiction

Farnham's Freehold - IF - Worlds Of Science Fiction

If Worlds Of SF, July 1964 - list of books in the Farnham's Freehold bombshelter

Farnham's Freehold - IF Worlds Of Science Fiction

Farnham's Freehold - IF - Worlds Of Science Fiction

Farnham's Freehold - IF - Worlds Of Science Fiction

Farnham's Freehold - IF - Worlds Of Science Fiction

Farnham's Freehold - IF - Worlds Of Science Fiction

Farnham's Freehold - IF - Worlds Of Science Fiction

Farnham's Freehold - IF - Worlds Of Science Fiction

Farnham's Freehold - IF - Worlds Of Science Fiction

Farnham's Freehold - IF - Worlds Of Science Fiction

Farnham's Freehold - IF - Worlds Of Science Fiction

Farnham's Freehold - IF - Worlds Of Science Fiction

Farnham's Freehold - IF - Worlds Of Science Fiction

Farnham's Freehold - IF - Worlds Of Science Fiction

Farnham's Freehold - IF - Worlds Of Science Fiction

Farnham's Freehold - IF - Worlds Of Science Fiction

Farnham's Freehold - IF - Worlds Of Science Fiction

Doug Potter art for Farnham's Freehold

CORGI BOOKS - Jim Burns art for FARNHAM'S FREEHOLD

Paul Lehr art for FARNHAM'S FREEHOLD

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The SFFaudio Podcast #745 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Moon Maid by Edgar Rice Burroughs


The SFFaudio Podcast #745 – The Moon Maid by Edgar Rice Burroughs – read by Thomas A. Copeland for LibriVox. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the novel (6 hour 17 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants include Jesse, Paul Weimer, Maissa Bessada, and Alex

Talked about on today’s show:
Argosy, May 5, 1923, 1926 hardback, two sequels, Paul feels seen, The Moon Men was drafted first, this prequel instead, a setup for a part 2, a communist takeover of the world, Moon Men taking over the world, communist moon men, the Martians aren’t communists, a tie in, hard to get the original magazines, the ad for The Moon Maid, from late April, remarkable imaginative powers, his latest and most fascinating, desolate barren, forbidding, stellar waste, a vivid gripping story, Thursday May 3, 1923, writing to an audience who already knows about John Carter, the John Carter movie, name drop, already in his universe, a different mindset, a different appreciation, not the best place to start with ERB, expecting something they’d already read, standard Burroughs planetary romance, a twist, this isn’t what I signed up for, this cool premise, finally at peace, no such thing as time, 200 years from now, and all my other lives, maybe I’ll tell you later, when we’re both cats, the prologue, not the best Edgar Rice Burroughs books, Tarzan Of The Apes, At The Earth’s Core, Carson of Venus [Pirates Of Venus], Barney Custer, The Mad King, the poorest one in terms of excitement and action, still okay, don’t be sorry, a bit of a disappointment, the dynamic of a hero character who’s always forgiving his enemy who’s always betraying him, this Burroughs character is very dim, we all know she loves him, strange looks, covers, six limbed centaurs, they’re quadrupeds, Gutenberg Australia, four limbs, Frazetta, J. Allen St. John did it, a girl with wings, they have no tails, Frazetta never read any of the books he did covers for, tails, my god sir, something about it that looked human, long limbed bears with human faces, Edgar Rice Burroughs Fan Twitter, vagas, very wide, very different with centaurs, they are much more like bears or dogs, they are definitely not centaurs, half man half horse, more alien, how do they put their clothes on?, if centaurs wear clothes…, little kids riding, the diminutive, goat like, riding on the backs of their moms, so many interesting threads and ideas, science fiction, but he doesn’t care about science, made of radium, science marches on, radium cream, radium enema, glows on the inside, the whole interior thing, recycling, an old tweet, Burroguhs is teaching us not to think, a religious state, H.G. Wells, the two poles of modern fantasy defined, what’s out there, man?, dry and desiccated, just beneath the surface!, The First Men In The Moon by H.G. Wells is a terrific book, rays, a mad professor and a journalist, very Flash Gordon, inimitable Wells style, light and silly, Cavorite, a rock or a metal when unshielded turns up gravity, anti-gravity, suck your way to the moon, push or pull your way to that object, hollow Moon, insects, tremendous strength, a reverse invasion of the Earth, the British Empire, taking their guns out onto the moon, finally at peace, murder as many as he could, Pax Anglo Saxonia, I need more weapons, they point their weapon at an animal, going hunting big game, I’m a master fencer because of course I am, hunt things, conquer and subdue, The Invisible Man is interesting and powerful and well done (but not very fun), a horror movie, Kevin Bacon in The Hollow Man, not a friendly story, pathetic in the end, I have ghost powers, I’m cold and my feet hurt, The Ring Of Gyges from Plato, a pseduoscientific explanation, [The Island Of] Doctor Moreau is morose, The Time Machine is super-interesting, Wells is hard, he always writes assholes, about as light and fluffy as it gets, enslaved by the insect men, gold chains, head explodes in a puff of powder, I can do that too, it’s a romance, he finds an ant lady on the Moon and falls in love, a moth lady, the wings are fake, they don’t have a model of feathers, bats or butterflies or winged toads, the most beautiful toad princess on the satellite, Friend Island by Francis Stevens, same setup, exact same period, All-Story Weekly, able-sailoresses of the poorer type, the lady aviator’s union, a survivor of the age of turbines, a true seawoman, women’s superiority to man, enginewomen and stokers, blue knickers and boleros, women are in charge, that’s why there’s world peace!, an island that was aleive and hated men, a peace ship, the exact same premise, the promise of the League Of Nations, jaw jaw instead of war war, only women can do it, it will only take 50 years of continuous war, he foresaw a lot more war, is he right?, we think of WWII (only 4 years), or China, the Spanish Civil War, Hearts Of Iron, a Paradox game, launched into another conflict, does the Cold War count?, 1967 we’re done, technically that’s what it is, a textbook written 300 years from now, the 100 years war, every summer, sniping at each other, the campaign, a whole different thing, its all one thing, what will the 20th century to a historian in 2192?, starting to fix the terms, time doesn’t have any meaning, the war against Napoleon is a world war, World War Zero, why is WWI called WWI?, the Great War, another Franco Prussian War, entangling alliances, WWIII now, the world wasn’t in the kind of communication that it was, there’s no radio, theater of operations, S.M. Stirling’s Island In The Sea Of Time novels, leftover old technology, we’ve invented a world war, sufficient fighting in the Napoleonic Wars, trans-Atlantic, nothing in the Pacific, Japan and Russia, WWI in the Pacific, tired of continuous war, this other aspect, this one guy is able somehow to see his other lives, he always reincarnates as his own grandson, the planetary species barrier, hinted at, exact verbiage, he’s going to know her, a lunatic, that girl lived them with me, Time capital T, another adventure?, how he is remembering all of this, after we eat you and take your flesh away, their child can remember all his lives backwards and forwards, a funny way to get into this adventure, A Princess Of Mars, he just walks out of a magic cave and says take me, he astrally projects himself there, handwaved, naked, plot happens, he meets some six limbed creatures, taught by a female, a Mars maid, exact same plot, making friends with the six-limbed monsters, a terrific book, Tarzan is fine, tempted to read the Barsoom books, way more romantic, much more exciting, its the future, another future, I lived again in the future, in a shipped called Barsoom, tie-in branding, a shared universe, just change my name, 12 years long service, the wounded badge, he’s an admiral, set in 1967, how does this even make any sense, a received document, a reporter in the future, writing them back in time, the outer narrator is Edgar Rice Burroughs’ grandson, very nested and internal and silly, and the best part, reincarnated on the Moon and the Earth, marrying a Moon man, there is no originated, we’re all existing at the same, can’t transgender, all these evidences, Paul’s headcanon, the evidence in the book, a sample size of two (aka 100 percent), Babylon 5, a space opera universe, J. Michael Straczynski, Valen goes back in time and does something with Minbari souls, read a lot of stuff, I can do this better, John Sheridan, Gandalf the White, the King Arthur, the pit of Zahadum, he’s reborn as Gandalf the White, very Tolkien, wars of good against evil, Alfred Bester, an alien race named after Neil Gaiman (the Gaim), Harlan Ellison, Penn and Teller, there’s some bad stuff in Babylon 5, actively nosediving, back to the Moon, pants means crap, 100 miles an hour trip, he does not understand what it means to travel through space, 15 years of food, even with a Hohmann Transfer Orbit, a very narrow view of how many people are on a planet, Event Horizon (1997), everyone else is dead, his poor wife, a 17 year old boy and two lieutenants, not talking to human resources about personality problems, bringing Moon People to earth, the captain knew, 40 percent of the crew hate each other, I’m gonna kill us all, bad Burroughs, throwing stuff out, he wants to get somewhere else, standard Burroughs ideas, the sequel, that’s the problem with it, trying to set the stage, it shows, Burroughs is always exciting, mutiny on the Moon, get the story moving, meeting new peoples, it goes smooth, his best book?, all the people at the CIA who hate communists, anti-communist book, finding communism on the moon, I am not a slave, I am a prisoner, I have never seen your like before, a little criticism of his critics, I am from Laith, why all this Enmity, who are the Kalkars anyway, the word meaning the thinkers, a long time ago we were all non-communists, the Vagas we bred for flesh, electricly driven trains, ships of the land, The Land Ironclads, visualized, each ruled by it jem’hadar, Deep Space Nine, the children of the poor, there it was our troubles first started, no learning is better than a little, a small coterie, a secret society called the thinkers, those who thought that they thought, more talking than thinking, those goddamn commies, the poor people come from a lower class, so weak, with all of his underlining, we’re gonna do land reform, educate ourselves, end WWI, then the cows rose up and ate them, they’re carnivorous cows, Jesse likes cannibalism, he became fine with it, when he kisses her he’s like mmm tastes like my friend, Robert A. Heinlein, popular in the period, Typee by Herman Melville, Stranger In A Strange Land, the Jesus story, The Number Of The Beast, in the Martians in general, you don’t get Heinlein without Burroughs, cannibalism on Barsoom, The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, tiresome, Farnham’s Freehold, assume there’s cannibalism, disquieting, enlightened, idyllic, H.P. Lovecraft’s The Mound, a utopia with a lot of slavery, a Spanish conquistador discovers an underground civilization, fuckin liars, an iterative improvement, raises the game so much, Paul’s not gonna neg people, CIA trolls, a weak way to go, Richard A. Lupoff, the best non-series, P. Schuyler Miller, from Analog 1970, near Mad King level, Tarzan novels, The Monster Men, Beyond Thirty, The Land That Time Forgot, At The Earth’s Core, maybe The Cave Girl is no good, defrosted neanderthal, we’re gonna frost him later, The Mucker, a deliberate throwback, nutty nuggets, alive into WWII, his legacy is gonna be not so Tarzany, an uncountable number of Tarzan books, that company, producing official books, a little symbol on the cover indicated “this is canon”, if Burroughs wrote it is it really canon?, didn’t care about that, he wasn’t a Star Wars fan, the Wookipedia, we’re the farm corporation we make food, certified food, this label you can trust, there’s no new canon, unless you dig up an old book, like we get with For Us The Living, Dune, the old dead Dune guy, Frank, high end fanfiction, the John Gregory Betancourt, a small world after all, there’s not that many people reading these old books, a John Carter tv show?, they can’t own the IP in the same way, Disney is a legal machine, they just buy IP, a Brandon Sanderson series, we had Xena, John Woo’s The Iliad, Troy (2004) with Brad Pitt, Alexander (2004) was pretty weak, Kingdom Of Heaven (2005), we’re fighting at dawn, balloons and blunderbusses, random blacksmith, the least interesting character, Ridley Scott’s The Moon Maid, Tony Scott died, all 72 Avatar movies, James Cameron, not wasting his time, Burroughs wasted his time with his Tarzan, he succeeded, make art, lot of reasons people to hate H.P. Lovecraft but crass commercialism isn’t one of them, Robert E. Howard, despite being actively commercial… he manages to be amazing, given his circumstances, you have my blessing, a trap of getting too excited about the cash, James Cameron is eating well, a billion dollars a pop, its his baby, he said I’m done, he should be, just a setup for the next one, more churn, not everything is equal, opeople can be wrong, Napoleon for Apple TV, Joaquin Phoenix playing Napoleon, three 35mm cameras side by side, a cast of millions, silent films get no respect, House Of Gucci (2021), All The Money In The World (2017), Alien: Covenant (2017), The Martian (2015), Exodus: Gods And Kings, The Councillor, Prometheus, the auto-doc, Robin Hood with Russel Crowe, A Good Year, Matchstick Men, Hannibal (2001), Gladiator (2000), G.I. Jane (1997), White Squall (1996), out of Blockbuster, 1492: Conquest Of Paradise (1992), Black Rain (1989), a some guy goes to Japan finds it an alien planet movie, Wesley Snipes and Sean Connery in Rising Sun (1993), Michael Crichton, Someone To Watch Over Me (1987), Tom Berenger and Mimi Rogers, Legend (1985), Blade Runner (1982), Alien, The Duelists (1977), I like those actors, across the border with very long swords, communism wins!, some Moon Maid cartoon, weird anime shit, escaflowne?, asagai?, portal fantasy is big in anime, whole subgenres of anime, professionally into weird shit, manga, Starblazers, Robotech, read it backwards, generational?, we’re too old, we’d have to learn a lot to get it, give me your best anime movies, Akira (1988) has style but the story is shit, give me your best classic, Royal Space Force: Wings Of Honneamise (1987), Wings of Mayonnaise is more like it, what’s your favourite American movie?, two kids fall in love playing Street Fighter, high score girl, the board games anime subgenre, the voice of Sailor Moon, Princess Mononoke (1997), celebrating peace day, what are we gonna do with ourselves?, net twenty years, correspondence with Mars, down with Mars medicine, we loves the Mars manga even if we have to read it upside down, everyone is naked, can you have a cultural experience via wireless telegraphy with another planet?, wait 500 years before Shogun comes out, they wear weird clothes and have no furniture but are otherwise just like us, whippersnappers get off my lawn, I got a deadline here, rushing through his old tropes, it doesn’t hang as a whole, “yeah, so I’m basically a Highlander, and I wind up on Mars, let’s go”, what’s with the problems with astral projection? that’s part of being a Highlander, a good excuse, a framing device, the most fun parts, Edgar Allan Poe’s The Oval Portrait is mostly framing device, this newspaper report is in the future, Maissa was all in, always a bit weak with ecosystem, a playground, all the rocks glow, the water, he half-asses worlds into existence, peril from the falls, the strength of the Earth men, not stunningly stronger, jump out of a crater, bottomless pit, circumstantial evidence, The Menace From Earth is about a moon maid, a striking image, a lot more flapping or soaring in dreams, bird ancestors, flying toad ancestors, Paul has tetropod ancestors, ped pod, actual centaurs, following the book, committed at least to that, centaurs are cool, that’s why we want to see the ancient mythology visualized, Rocket Robin Hood and The Mighty Hercules, Prince Caspian has cool battle scenes, epic battle scenes, tonally dissonant, the centaurs looked good, a Christian television network, The Golden Compass, anti-theist, and this is why there’s no god, very Ayn Rand, a Tolkien fest, a director who hated fantasy and a screenwriter who never read the book, a British Christmas special, a solid miniseries, this 1/6th gravity book, prejudiced against manly barbarians, might be a girl thing, Space Viking by H. Beam Piper, Jim Kitchen, Chronicles Of Amber, the ghost of Roger Zelanzy, The Venom Business, Rocket Ship Galileo, moon-Nazis, with the help of an old man, New Mexico or Arizona, 1948, Iron Sky (2012), The Adventures Of Brad Pitt’s Ex-Wife, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004), diesel-punk, totenkopf, take care, Unseen-Unfeared by Francis Stevens, The Heads Of Cerberus, my turn will come, The Hopkins Manuscript by R.C. Sherriff, trying to make this book a thing, the Moon collides with the Earth, a historical document, poultry breeding, eaten by an owl, not a suspect, slept through the murder, the British Lunar Society, the truth can no longer be denied, villagers dig trenches and play cricket before the end of days, The Last Policemen by Ben H. Winters, a tv series out of the UK, a movie, a recent science fiction movie, Moonfall (2022), Puss In Boots: The Last Wish (2022), genuine humans, box office is down 50%, turn the machine off, we couldna foreseen that, the verdict was I’m tired, a setup for the next one, looking good never looked so good, in 3D, make good movies, make the theatrical experience cheap, if there were movies that were good, put some old movies in the theater for a change, the suburbs, a very old theater with really bad seats, a pain in the ass, El Mariachi (1992) and Bad Lieutenant (1992), Treasure Island, Shakespeare’s Planet, something Paul will hate, a Jordan Peterson movie, Camille Paglia, I agreed with your about everything, she’s nodding her head the whole time, Evan’s really mad, they need to read more Marx, I need to read any Marx, his economics is worse than Burroughs’ science, this is what capitalism is doing to people, the way money works, The Communist Manifesto, where to start with Karl Marx, you’re racist you should read more Marx!, you’re no help at all, ask Will, Will shoulda been on this one, he’s not on twitter much, a serious cat wrangling problem, overtaken by felines, most people want to play computer games and escape reality, life sucks I have to work, cats that need to be neutered, the latest one, $600,000 year rent to his dad’s house, that’s the 10% for the big guy, nothing will come of it, its only corrupt when Trump does it, we’re living in the corrupt times, it will go on for centuries, corruption was called business, just have to get used to it or go herd cats, Jesse’s mom has a bull now, one cow two heifer’s and a bull, a cow in heat every three weeks (or months), a long brooding cycle, to make more delicious cows, is there a cow in the field outside?, I bought a cow, there’s not stopping these women, magic beans, an adventure that never happened to Alex, steals from the giant, the golden goose, they were the disinherited, getting his goose back, you have to accept being a peasant, no, I’m going to reach for the sky, folktale vs. fairytale, what Hans Christian Anderson does, Cinderella vs. Puss In Boots, Charles Perrault, how many pages deep?, this part was fun, knocked it out in a day, it had good bits, some of them are not great, some of the knockoffs by other authors, The First Men In The Moon, The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Fu-Manchu, Alan Moore steals everything, he’s better than a lot, a weird Alan Moore take, before he quit comics finally, Garth Ennis’ Crossed, zombie sperm or saliva, anti-Christian sort of thing, like any zombie plague, eating people and walking funny, takes away all your goodness, any pain you inflict makes you orgasm, that’s really bad, the premise is strong, a shitload of money, 100 years in the future, human society has been injured by this terrible plague, stronger than most zombie films, oh that’s terrible, when the mother wants to have sex with her own son, all the mean things, that’s Garth Ennis being a monster, mutated, killed off in their excstasies, the main character is a scholar, reading her journal, he’s invented a new language, word substitution all over the place, A Clockwork Orange, milkbars and rape scenes, a high level comic, a science fiction survey, very Alan Moorey, V For Vendetta, the novelization is better than the movie or the comic, some audacious stuff, Providence by Alan Moore and Jacen Burrows, you can be a flawed person like Jordan Peterson and still have something valuable to say, sorry about that mini-lecture there, Crossed Plus 100, don’t go on the internet and type in Crossed and Garth Ennis, sorry, horror comic, if you can survive that there’s nothing else that can hurt you, stronger shuddering in a corner, enjoy your Roof Bear calendar.

All-Story Weekly - The Moon Maid by Edgar Rice Burroughs

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The SFFaudio Podcast #738 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain


The SFFaudio Podcast #738 – The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain – read by John Greenman for LibriVox. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the novel (19 hours 23 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants include Jesse, Paul Weimer, Trish E. Matson, and David J. West.

Talked about on today’s show:
Or The New Pilgrim’s Progress; Being Some Account Of The Steamship Quaker City’s Pleasure Excursion To Europe And The Holy Land; With Descriptions Of Countries, Nations, Incidents and Adventures, As They Appeared To The Author., Paul’s thesis, 61 chapters, Palestine is the heart of this book, visiting the holy land, places from the Bible, putting his weight on things, casual racism, Samuel Clemens wasn’t super-devout, religious experiences, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, centers of Christianity, Rome, Notre Dame, Europeans by extraction, ancestral stomping grounds, bestselling book, he knows his audience, fairly well off, the ticket price: $1250, $28,000, a cruise of that intensity, a Rafael painting, he’s joking, his beautiful house in Hartford, 1867, Tom Sawyer is decades later, rolling in flow, he’s hanging out with the rich, pretending to be like him, Fletch (the Gregory Mcdonald character), fraudster, not a thief, we’re making apologies for this character, a reporter/investigator, not as ethical as Fletch, dry and reserved irony, sneaking off to the acropolis, gleefully robbing a vineyard of its grapes, villains and ruffians, villainous epithets, taking without compensation is theft, Paul’s not gonna like that, out-and-out targeted uncasual racism everywhere, chipping pieces off monuments, ancient temples, appalling, they’re hypocritical, keeping the sabbath, every church in Europe has part of the crown of thorns, enough nails from the true cross to fill a keg, destructive, leave only footprints, take only photographs, the only petrified tree, a giant fence, this is what we are like, he doesn’t think he’s better than them, chip off a piece of the Sphinx, humans come around, whole continental shelves are falling off, he knows that we are the problem, plastic Eiffel Tower ornaments, pink blobs, the focus on taking the picture, journaling, everybody was journaling, you could sell it for a million!, I wouldn’t write it for a million!, making fun of everybody, a meta-travel book, he’s going to tell you how things strike him, salt crusting over his skin while floating in the Dead Sea, how one should perceive it, the Grand Tour, a long gap of time, a rock from Versailles, gravel to replace other gravel, doing more good, breaking quarantine, Trish didn’t approve, the vandalization, the world has decided to yolo, mask in most public places, all the ports, untreated diseases, did this actually happen?, the ugly American, these people are monstrous, the emperor of all the Russias, his kid’s palace, it was really what it was, rich people traveling around Europe, naming every servant: Ferguson, naming unpronounceable cities: Jonesburg, he’s so honest, so ugly and stinky, colourized the incidents, buying the kid gloves, imagining this scene happening, Gibraltar, you’ve clearly worn kid gloves before, what an innocent, only a gentleman of great class and experience, he takes that pain in and writes it down, super-charming, I love this guy, he’s hilarious, this is the thing I wanted to read this book for, the trains powered by mummies, these peasants burn very poorly, bring me a king:

I shall not speak of the railway, for it is like any other railway—I shall only say that the fuel they use for the locomotive is composed of mummies three thousand years old, purchased by the ton or by the graveyard for that purpose, and that sometimes one hears the profane engineer call out pettishly, “D—n these plebeians, they don’t burn worth a cent—pass out a King”

some famous architecture, literally burning their history, did they actually do that?, they did it with the poor mummies, H. Rider Haggard’s She, surprise, drawn from real life, graverobbing, respecting the past people so little, speaking to the poverty he’s seeing, mostly taken apart Colosseum, and Paul’s like, the Hagia Sophia, Justinian did that on purpose, 12 obelisks, your god lives with us now, that’s the Christian religion, Jews are sitting in Israel enjoying themselves and then some Greeks say “he’s ours now”, super-fully illustrated, they didn’t do much dancing, a civil war blockade ship, sidewheeler, screwtechnology, steampowered, you want to have your propeller under the water, just over a year after the Civil War, we gotta have a vacation, vicarious travel, travel writers, food guy who killed himself: Anthony Bourdain, experiencing the very expensive thing of travel, newspapers had content back then, Poet Lariat, not white haired, feathered pen, wired telegraphy, we are very lucky to have this artifact, in a tradition already, The Canterbury Tales, the start of tourism, the 18th century grand tour, the poor people doing it, I need to visit, amongst rich people, a guide for the non-guided, travel broadens the mind and takes away your prejudices, he calls a lot of people ugly, sexism, everyone is dirty, everyone is dishonest, he compliments the railways and roadways of France and Italy, the men kiss each other because the women are unkissable, red indians, straightbacked, generally complimentary, definitely not, Tahoe, grasshopper soup, those degraded savages, an extinct tribe that never existed, helped them steal cattle, I would gladly eat the whole race if I had a chance, playing to his audience’s prejudices, playing to racists attitudes is practically indistinguishable from racism, very bad, Paul concurs, anti-Indian racism, Trish doesn’t like it, start the ball rolling, make people think and talk about it, I helped them do illegal things, wait what?, think about what he’s saying, it starts the ball rolling, how racist the times were, Twain was anti-racist, Huckleberry Finn, getting free, language that people will object to, his natural ability to sell books, understanding his audience, in liking him, liking his ideas, this was written at a much earlier time, less sophisticated in his ideas, he hadn’t evolved to that point, pretty racist, despise people for being poor and not having enough water to wash with, the baksheesh that never ends, dirt poor, polluting a sacred spring, the city that is full of water: Damascus, poor people are disgusting, blind people, staggering poverty, he’s making light of it, diverging into stories, the book of teenage Jesus, punishment for teachers, its clear that he’s anti-racist throughout, they literally were ugly and dirty, covered, some guy bathing nude, without being moved by their plight, not so sinfully ugly, so mean, the meanness, a real experience, if it happened on tic tok, she’s so sinfully ugly she broke the sabbath on a Saturday

“She was the only Syrian female we have seen yet who was not so sinfully ugly that she couldn’t smile after ten o’clock Saturday night without breaking the Sabbath.”

his meanness is kicking people while they’re down, he did a horrible job of it, confirming people in their prejudices, these dirty foreigners, he knows that, let’s dodge the racism thing for a second and look at it through the lens of the animals, the horse that had no tail, slandered dogs, grinding horrible poverty, the tourism is needed to reduce the grinding poverty, stereotypes about foreign animals, one of their horses died, skin and bones, the saddle sores, why is that happening, grindingly poor, showing the reality, these people are so incredibly impoverished, he makes it tolerable with Twain humour, no malice there, make sure you look at this, it sticks with you, why is she so ugly, the Sunday school grapes, they’re guarding it from each other, not being a tourist city, Paul agrees, roots to tourism, the word itself, a guided tour of a museum, a path established, cruising, the cruise ship industry, excursions, the picnic, picnicers, an overnight bag, a field near some cave, the ages of the passengers, born in the 18th century, the middle of the 19th century, The Love Boat, pleasure trips, baksheesh vs. alms, very different, a religious act vs. a straight giving money, infernal chorus, what are those people saying?, give us bribes, in need of charity, bribe, giving to the poor is not exclusive to Christianity, soliciting alms, mentioned in Dracula, the Bosporus, where Jesse got triggered, spending time with royal people, dead in 50 years, 1917, southern palaces in Crimea, Twain lived to see that?, Halley’s Comet, he’d go out with in, no citation, age 42, all the old people, five men dancing and three women, he’s so mean, the women wore little scarves on their arms, ageism, he’s so funny, there’s no plot, things happening, a journey, the idea of the sequel, shared experiences, Jesse laughed so hard, complaining about the coffee, would you try this from my table, okay tea, some really bad tea or really bad coffee, he does it to himself, Pompeii, the fountain people put their lips to, Paul touched that fountain, this was a thing back then and it is still a thing, no Eiffel tower yet, what a tourism map looks like, emblazoned, symbolic pilgrimage, the Arc De Triomphe, a cartoon map of Europe, the Milan cathedral, a really nice cathedral, why Sydney opera house stands in for the entirety of Australia, opera? who even cares?, kangaroos, Paris has four or five must-see destinations, what does New Zealand have? Lord Of The Rings, sad story, Lynn Canyon Park, suspension bridges, Whistler, whales, the sky needle, what keeps people out?, Olympics, push all the homeless people aside, tourism is a big deal, obviously some crusades, millions of Americans, walks the streets of Jesus, sharp perceptions and human interest, digressions, the stories that people were telling, agog, Heloise and Abelard, a compelling case, you can have ideas about what you’re going to see, as matters of fact, that’s straight out of the book, the point of the title, the lies they were told in Sunday school, when they go to a bar, we ferreted out, our general said, “we”, a stare and a shrug, suspicious of the vigour, this didn’t happen, the uneducated foreigner, a stone fence or an earthquake, a wicked impostor, Santa Cruz punch, 1885, you’re just wrong, Jesse, pan-galactic gargleblasters, a regional thing, these people are completely out of their depth, very Westlakian, spreading hands, the movie adaptation, an American Playhouse version, PBS was into Twain in the early 80s, what a weird idea to do a movie about, this is not a fiction book, The Prince And The Pauper, is there any precedent for that?, compelling, dramatic, funny, make fun of ugly Americans, Roughing It, sections of it were borrowed for Bonanza, written in 1870, daily dispatches, the opening and the closing, in reading what I’ve just written…, sections of the letters, presumption might lead to failure, this book took Jesse’s whole week, a bit of a slog for Paul, a chore, Paul’s bucket list, unduly dismissive, so funny, handful!

At all hours of the day and night the sailors in the forecastle amused themselves and aggravated us by burlesquing our visit to royalty. The opening paragraph of our Address to the Emperor was framed as follows:

“We are a handful of private citizens of America, traveling simply for recreation—and unostentatiously, as becomes our unofficial state—and, therefore, we have no excuse to tender for presenting ourselves before your Majesty, save the desire of offering our grateful acknowledgments to the lord of a realm, which, through good and through evil report, has been the steadfast friend of the land we love so well.”

The third cook, crowned with a resplendent tin basin and wrapped royally in a table-cloth mottled with grease-spots and coffee stains, and bearing a sceptre that looked strangely like a belaying-pin, walked upon a dilapidated carpet and perched himself on the capstan, careless of the flying spray; his tarred and weather-beaten Chamberlains, Dukes and Lord High Admirals surrounded him, arrayed in all the pomp that spare tarpaulins and remnants of old sails could furnish. Then the visiting “watch below,” transformed into graceless ladies and uncouth pilgrims, by rude travesties upon waterfalls, hoopskirts, white kid gloves and swallow-tail coats, moved solemnly up the companion way, and bowing low, began a system of complicated and extraordinary smiling which few monarchs could look upon and live. Then the mock consul, a slush-plastered deck-sweep, drew out a soiled fragment of paper and proceeded to read, laboriously:

“To His Imperial Majesty, Alexander II., Emperor of Russia:

“We are a handful of private citizens of America, traveling simply for recreation,—and unostentatiously, as becomes our unofficial state—and therefore, we have no excuse to tender for presenting ourselves before your Majesty—”

The Emperor—“Then what the devil did you come for?”

so Twain!, punching down, Paul prefers the punching up, how incredibly diseased people are, implicit acceptance, that’s just their nature, Spaniards are just naturally awful, the pitiable state of poor children, any excuse for that condition is rare between, these are not people with names, describing an entire race of people as despicable, time spent in Gibraltar, some beauty in there as well as comedy, disease, dread of cholera, our friends the Bermudians, these are like us, the very last image in the book, a cigar, smoking, fini, it’s backwards, the ship image, briefly in the Hatian navy before being lost in a storm, good podcast listening, an experience, lots of really funny bits, lots of revelations, trying to imitate Mark Twain, he’s the genuine article, pastiche your way, he comes at things from strange angles, he’s like a standup comedian before standup comedians, who is the earliest funny person, ancient Greek plays, Shakespeare’s pretty funny, some caveperson?, black humour, this blood eagle is funny, utterly relatable, Edgar All Poe has humour in him, Eric S. Rabkin, H.P. Lovecraft’s Alethia Phrikodes, his most cosmicism poem, later published, without the opening and closing frame, heroic couplets, orientated towards food jokes, when you’re reading H.P. Lovecraft you don’t usually say he’s a really funny guy, The Unnamable, Herbert West: Re-Animator, in the context, we gotta laugh, looking at the darkness can be alleviated and being playfully funny, deep and dark, a good sense of humour, inherent humour, Moby-Dick by Herman Melville, structurally funny too, I prefer not too, Bartleby The Scrivener, Typee, the cannibals are always in the other valley, the same punchline over and over again, the tragedy of life being alleviated by comedy, maybe Hamlet is not very funny, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, ’70s Doctor Who, The Talons Of Weng-Chiang, Abbot And Costello, R2D2 and his co-equal, a previous episode, Tonto and The Lone Ranger, buddy comedy, Martin Riggs and the other guy, Shakespeare’s the buddy comedy inventor?, Gilgamesh and Enkidu are a comedy team, re-read it to find the humour in it, comic misadventures, To my most patient reader, this volume is affectionately inscribed, his wife’s brother, issued by subscription only, not the way we do books now, eh?, Jane Austen, kickstarter today, 20 books to 50k, the sell-it-yourself model, looping back around, only one publisher, Simon & Shuster & Tor, there’s no big secret, marketing, this is what Jesse is saying, when you run out of stock, Audible, Downpour, boxes full of hardcovers and shipping, up front costs, if it has any legs, you did all the work now you have to pay more, when the author is buying his own cover, narrator friends, when Audible makes a change, the new Audible return policy, soundcloud?, maybe somebody made some money from it once, Jesse is welcome, Jesse’s aged mother, around xmas, next July? [June], five months, solicited in February, Jesse is not a big fan of cholera, Jesse might be baksheeshing himself, would Jesse be a companion to Jon Pertwee?, David would go in 1867, some risk, risk adverse, Corfu, sidetrip to see Palmyra, destroyed by ISIS, Jordan, mainly on topic, Paul is melting down over twitter, despairing, Conan The Adventurer (the cartoon without violence and blood), amongst the dross, Tower Of The Elephant aka The Master Thief Of Shadizar, a red-caped monkey, shurikens made of starmetal, Conan has a shield with a baby phoenix living inside of it, Conan™, barbarian in a fur diaper, WrathAmon™, Isle Of The Iron Statues, The Red-Brotherhood, no lasers, no lost city, mostly clothed, more reasonable piratical, I steal from no-one!, what should we do to these guys, Vilayet Sea, Shadows In The Moonlight for like a second, Shadows In Zamboula is a story about tourism, mummy fuel, Edgar Rice Burroughs, a tiger in the first Tarzan book?, like Kipling, the guys who never went anywhere, the most imaginative, The Moon Maid, find out how the centaurs live, wings on the moon, a [callforward] to The Menace From Earth, when H.G. Wells died, they have to go together even if they don’t want to, enriching, 20 hours richer or poorer.

Mark Twain's The Innocents Abroad

Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain

Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain

Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain

Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain

Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain

Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain

Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain

Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain

Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain

Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain

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The SFFaudio Podcast #721 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe


The SFFaudio Podcast #721 – Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe – read by Mark F. Smith for LibriVox. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the novel (11 hours 14 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants include Jesse and Connor Kaye

Talked about on today’s show:
The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner: Who lived Eight and Twenty Years, all alone in an un-inhabited Island on the Coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque; Having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck, wherein all the Men perished but himself. With An Account how he was at last as strangely deliver’d by Pyrates. Written by Himself., April 1719, the first English novel?, this particular style, it’s its own thread for reality, comic book adaptations, the 1997 Pierce Brosnan adaptation, kids versions, why its so popular, popular with adults and kids, it’s fantasy, a certain cozy and comfortable feeling, vicariously satisfying, This Old House, a whole television genre, buy houses and fix them up, cooking shows, making fun of some things or earnest?, some combination of both?, things they tend to leave out is how fucking evil and racist everything is, shocking, he’s a slave, then he is freed, then he enslaves other people, profits he’s making and gifting are slave profits, you got all your money in McDonnell Douglas, how christian you are, part of the appeal of this book, he builds a fort, the ultra-competent man in the Heinlein novels, largely paranoid and insane, gunports, a stockade wall, then another stockade, then another then another, the cannibals, the cave, the bottleneck, a legitimate fear, not really a legitimate fear, cannibalism in the Americas, of the catholic variety, I’m hungry for man-meat, people went a little chewy, cannibalism is a metaphor for slavery, 90 minutes, changed to a Scotsman, Pierce Brosnan wants to play the bagpipes?, not needed for the story, the actor playing Friday, that nice point in the late 1990s, sets, no CGI, lower budget, a comfy film to watch, a forever published book, still not a draw, a curiosity, so old, 100% sure it was public domain, most people don’t know how public domain works, if you’re in any doubt… Robinson Crusoe, it always sells, Maissa Bessada and Alex from Pulpcovers, The Martian by Andy Weir is essentially this book, shipwrecked on a planet all by himself, eventually rescued by space pirates, Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, a character dressed in goatskins talking about providence, an Easter egg, nautical adventure books, islands named after Robinson Crusoe, the fame of the book, Alexander Selkirk’s island, a pretty great story as well, this fantasy novel vs. the reality of Selkirk, a picture of Crusoe at Alexander Selkirk’s birthplace, conflated into the same guy, Chile, double bang for the buck, fiction and history, remote weird islands, craters named after science fiction writers, the Moon, Mars, the same is true, French South Antarctic Islands, Jules Verne names, a Jules Verne island, the pen sure is mighty, transforming geography in the mental space, Tarzana, California, Edgar Rice Burroughs, mixing of fiction with reality, shipwrecked, sea-sick, marooned, cut out a piece of the world, make a name and a man of himself, a dog and 17 cats he’s murdering, horrible farming practices, the woman is a man, god gave him providence, a tiny version of that, puts his master’s foot on his head, a story going woke, getting his just rewards, Robinson Crusoe is such a horrible human being, he’s the hero, the mindset of the time, there were servants and there were masters, how it is, some people are superior, Frodo and Sam in The Lord Of The Rings, Sam likes being a servant, he’s dedicated to his master, the Gaffer, teaching him how to read, just a kind action, Upstairs, Downstairs, the same kinds of problems, disciplined by the head butler, make people know their place, she’s LARPing what she wants to have her life be, being half French, trying to be better than you are, an honorable servant to a good master, pregnant and out of work, sex out of wedlock, don’t talk about the baby I left there, you eat this lie and put it inside you, learn their Christianity, my master is a good master he only beats the lazy slaves, Australian society, working class people, don’t go to university, turning your back on us, a bizarre mindset, isn’t he a good guy?, he lies to Friday, a good movie and a bad movie, an unfaithful adaptation, we as adult human beings in 2022, friends and co-equals, master and slave, the master is kind to the slave, my name is Master, I lied to you, can’t we live on this island together, what the book gives us, a fantasy of the New World, escaping middle class life, July 29th, 2022, John Scalzi did a tweet: behold my fearful power, culture war nonsense, not even kidding, the white males are the lowest difficulty setting, a very John Scalzi-ism, lowest difficulty setting is about capitalism, the colour of the bandaid, crayons, if you have enough starting capital, what does he have in terms of capital, two fowling rifles, a brace of pistols, a cutlass, so much powder, a lot of tools, a dog, cats, bag of seed for fowl, providence and God, rice and corn and wheat, investment capital, this is a story about capitalism, using your, it’s attacking Jesse personally, a fantasy element to the capitalism, keep growing it and growing it, the ship’s captain, advice, tradeable goods, two gold shillings, silver, hides it in his cave, like a moral lesson about capitalism, like Monopoly, how to do great in capitalism, pro-firearms, Walter Matthau and Robin Williams, survivalism is now preppers, your go back, acronyms, bug-out bags, all fantasy, zombie shows, unironically making weapons to kill zombies, the instinct to like this book, a secret base, cups, a knife, some magazines, traps!, for when the zombies happen, nuclear war, make work, incredibly satisfying, prep harder, prevailing winds, its endless, a fantasy of their real life, accumulating capital, I did the work, Jack, handing out dispensations, he’s the hidden governor of the island, he’s playing god, he was born to it, a crazyman covered in goatskins, organizing fighting forces, legitimate lies, no pants, bristling with weapons, a paranoid madman, killing sprees, what makes them evil?, they exist, right in front of us they’re eating men, Captain Cook, put your head under my foot, they showed him for a while, lessons in the book, how you should act, written when he was 60, conduct literature, pamphlets on how to act, a crazy life, the cherry on top, Crusoe and his father, going against his father’s wishes, if he had just listened to his father, the happiest place in the world is where you are, struggle like the working class, dissatisfaction of the upper class, bad stuff’s going to happen, listening to your parents, religious conversion themes, raving religion, his only book, so thankful to his lord, investment properties, two surrogate sons, the British lord, the other he sends to sea, tops up the younger son, his conclusion is both, the sequel, the further adventures, and a second sequel, back to the island, India, in the Brazil, whose side I’m on, they’re going to do some slaving, the pirates are the badguys, in real life the pirates are anti-slavery, pirates are literally the good guys, they probably fart on you, team human, team liberty, everybody gets a share and their shares are equal, dispense justice, insight from this special book, obedient to god, obedient to me, tongue in cheek, done unconsciously, there’s no evidence, Voltaire, terrible adventures and learns nothing, life can be hilarious, made to suffer by God, a garden of Eden story, he brings capital, the cosmic joke aspect, when Eve shows up she’s a dude, you’re my slave and I can’t make babies with you, Swiss Family Robinson, a Canadian TV show filmed in Ontario and Jamaica, dangerous animals, cheetah stock footage, they build a treehouse, every episode they have adventures, more family friendly, Christians, action adventure for the whole family, a creepazoid story about a madman, whole sequence with a bear, Friday fights a bear, tempting the wolves, a true narrative, a conduct book, how to build up your capital, being born an Englishman, if you picture it in your mind it’s superfuckedup, fortress, his parrot, killing the cats, obsessively counting his stock of sultanas, so unrealistic, after 28 years he comes across some Spaniards, if he could even talk, sign language, speaking Latin, a complete freakazoid, its like he’s mentally ill, raving capitalism, what kind of art does he create?, his journal, no poetry, in line with Crusoe’s nature, everything is practical, constantly building, he builds a canoe, then another, invaders!, how much time he spent building this thing, for what purpose, for didactic purpose, this is how you attract employees, a manual for how to not waste your capital, the culture war is lets focus on the race, these people are inferior because they’re cannibals because they’re not Christians, bears in Brazil?, Columbia or Venezuela, take this horrible story of a guy who couldn’t get along with anybody, William Dampier, scientist/explorer, piratical daring do, avocado barbecue and chopsticks, breadfruit, first to eat flamingo and manatee, less of an insane monster Selkirk, a privateer, the ship is about to sink, a stubborn bullheaded guy, did Dafoe meet Selkirk?, the cats, tropical islands covered in rats, invasive species, a plague of rats, keep the rats down, goats, his clothes rotted away, 4 years vs. 28 years, he could barely speak, trouble forming sentences, what it does to your, solitary confinement, devastating, regained his speech, fairly okay mentally, never as happy as when he was solitary, a minor celebrity, recreate his lifestyle, institutionalized (without an institution), he’s a Heinleinian character, indomitable, Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift, the horse people, Planet Of The Apes, so elegant and refined, the very noble horses, they Houyhnhnms and the Yahoos, taking care of horses all day, an attack on general humanity, a response to Selkirk’s situation, books in dialogue with each other, shipwrecked many times, increasingly improbably places (including Japan), 1726, Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships, what’s actually happening in this book, a story that everybody knows, a family that’s shipwrecked, the resultant product of that environment, a famous pulp hero, Tarzan!, shipwrecked off the coast of africa, ape mom, ape family, king of the jungle, talk with the animals, The Jungle Book inspired Tarzan, a guy from Europe who becomes the master of the forest and jungle and is super-racist, a competency family, an accumulation of personal capital vs. actual capital, investment in the new world vs. how to be a fantasy man’s man, animal friends, Tantor the elephant, instead of having a physical capital, a knife is all he needs, just a loincloth, a beautiful Eden like place, super-literate, just from reading his ABC primer books, in the minds of people in the times when Tarzan was being written?, Swiss Family Robinson with a kid, superman, more fantastical, bound to capitalism, Christian values, family values in a Christian context, Tarzan is religion free, being a superior being, wrestling with apes, super-muscles, the term that people hate, the phrase “noble savage”, this evil phrase, the noble part, they live like nobility, they don’t have horrible work hours, they have lots of free time, post-scarcity, doing art, totem poles, artistic endeavors, dance is not held in record as well, post scarcity in terms of food, building up capital, trading parties, very post scarcity, the leadership is these guys are old, they want to give us advice, not a top down system, move the lodge, how to deal with other people over there, slaving was done to do exogamy, not to accumulate human capital, build up stuff to give it away, a famous case of a European at Nootka on Vancouver Island, on the other end of South America, he gets the seasons right, a narrative you can imagine being a didactic popular book, they bookend the 1997 movie, you’ve got to write up Dafoe’s story, I must write this up, what does that opening do?, A Princess Of Mars, the movie adaptation, Edgar Rice Burroughs is the nephew, the effect of that frame, modern filmmaking theory, unnecessary, the fight for the sweetheart is not in the book, some reason to want to go back, Castaway is Tom Hanks as Robinson Crusoe, his Friday is a volleyball, product placement, Wilson basketball, FedEx, he makes art (puts a face on the ball), that framing device, the front of the book, pirates with a y, an advertisement at the end, not a true story, a true tale, when we’re watching the movie, a film camera looking at a guy reading a book, the conflation, to remind us this is a not a real story, maybe that’s the point, Daniel Dafoe is just a photocopier, slightly bizarre, a good editor would have chopped it out, a fan of Dafoe, essential to the film, kill their darlings, there’s no logic to it, good and stupid, an overturning of expectations, it kind of fixes the book, why are you doing that book, to make money?, play, who wouldn’t want to be Robinson Crusoe, be scared of cannibals, less racist and less Christian, random passages from the Bible, a religious ecstasy, changing names, Crusoe’s name and Dafoe’s name, a German Brit, Eurotrash headed to South America, dispense justice, very redeeming, the Prodigal Son, hat in hand [but hat full of jewels], the ending of The Odyssey, killing people, he sees his dog, he sees his slave, treated well by his wife, a bad slave, killing spree, about colonialism, a very interesting artifact, a product of the mindset, [manifest destiny], all of this stuff was made for us, we are the stewards and also the owners, a slave rebellion in South America, the right to do whatever the fuck you want, a president who ran on war with Britain, “54-40 or fight”, the Columbia River, the Oregon Territory, the Hudson’s Bay Company, Columbia (a Goddess walking to the west with settlers behind her), we will take this last, we will make it manifest, from Ontario to British Columbia, most Canadians live near the border, wrapped up in these phrases, what made Canada look as it does, Canada is defined by the existence of the United States, eastern states are natural borders, British colonists, nominal British control, no treaties, a slave rebellion in Guyana, sugar or rubber plantations, the seigniorial system, overseas timeshares, group buy a piece of land, managers, the enforcement of their will, people are highly encouraged to invest income in the stock market, causing externalities without knowing about it, a slaveholder who doesn’t know it, AOC’s phone, “nice slave phone”, superannuation funds, fossil fuel, giving money to secure their future, you don’t want to know, you just want the money, a slippage between what people want and what actually happens, I like chocolate, employing slaves, make the prices lower, the slave beaters, bad business practices, this is justified, working as a prison guard, most of them didn’t have a trial, rich people don’t have this problem, slave labour, they were jerks because they were criminals, a slave becomes a slaver, the reports I’m getting…, charity money, educate the natives, god says charity is good, did he hate being a slave?, Pocket Classics, Meanwhile I began to think deeply, who am I?, who made the world?, 1823 slave revolt, “Bachelor’s Adventure”, “Success”, get rich quick schemes, absentee European owners profiting from slavery, the Demerara rebellion of 1823, 2 days, poor treatment, a widespread mistaken belief, Jack Gladstone, their church group, John Smith, the coast of the Atlantic Ocean, every property holder has equal access to the water (for shipping), we’re all working together, imported from another continent, it is all about human capital, people who’ve had it hard or easy, without the crayons, equipment and tools, not your skin colour, the natives are ugly, a prejudice that little kids have, actors who are objectively acting, there is no fact of the matter, when we get to know people, more handsome or more pretty, a face generated by a brain, getting hung up on the skin colour, the justification for how you became a slave, his job at the beginning of the book, these people were legitimately enslaved, this is not a stolen good, I did work to get it, a rationalization to the self, the enslaving processed happened but it wasn’t done by me, he’s not even thinking about it, a natural thing that happens, I am master, you are slave, a way to divide the working class (the poors), Apple and Raytheon, a technique to divide the working class: talk about race, they’re lacking capital, I could just take the bus, cheaper to take your own car, the time investment, a lot more time, time is money, times is capital, there are people who are racists, what keeps you from becoming a bookwriter, no time to do any art, hone your craft, a lot of leisure time, that noble savage thing again, extracting value in a different way, farming the sea, good returns on their fisheries, the externalities like we’ve done, shipping across the planet, kiwi fruit from Australia, nitrogen from Europe, a product of the unthinking capitalism, Scalzi’s point, American-centric, based on how things are in America, completely relative, different ethnic groups, exploiting one another, we’re feeling our way into this, May 15th, 2012, how life works for them, privileged, a very Scalzi sentence, your average straight white men, all the times slavery has happened in the world, one group of people marketing another group of people, North Africa, race is a modern thing, in the old days people didn’t think skin colour caused slavery, the temperature of the place that were raised, Egypt is warmer than Macedonia, growing to be lazy Egyptians, Varingian guard: lazy like these Byzantines, take prizes, to bring prizes home to sell at market to get rich, this one can teach my children, acquiring and bringing capital in, music and theater, get decadent, the obsession today is a technique to divide those without capital, their third yachts, uninsightful to itself but explains how we got here, reading something from 300 year hundred years ago, spending so much time in it, strange to us, squeecore is about reinforcing the elites, its okay to be the goblin emperor because goblins, gender neutral emperor or empress, transgenders for emperors, how about pirate ships?, why not that?, reading this book is a valuable experience, how did we get to the point we are, society now, hereditary nobility, wealth is hereditary, more hereditary in the past?, works his way up, at least equal to his father, a brothers, a landlubber, romanticism, go out and make my fortune, the story of the British Empire, go off to Canada or Australia or India, white privileged there, the taking of one’s own fortune from the empire, the silver had gone, he had to rub it to make it silver again, capital not being used, from middle class to upper middle class, not being profligate, don’t be the Prodigal Son, choose your marriage wisely, measure your money, insurance, providence providence providence, the luck of God, how come I’m the only one to survive?, almost nothing happens, because deus ex machina, Crusoe never reflects too much on slavery, talking about God on the island, charity, he delivered himself, the opportunities came, more than competent to meet the situation, the fortification aspect, his stockade is a prison for some mutineers, the book works better in the beginning than in the end, setting up the sequel, not the core of the fantasy, Space Family Robinson, competency porn, we can science the shit out of this, listening to disco, disco becomes his god, part of the capital he keeps on his shipwreck, comes to see the beauty of disco, really tapping into the core idea of what we like, the difficulty of being castaway, living outside of and within society, the fortitude, Dafoe: a human triumph story, Swift: a human foibles story, horses are the only thing of value, the nobility of the horse, people claiming to do science, putting energy from the sun into cucumbers and extracting sunlight from the cucumber, ridiculous experiments, floating above and dropping their shit on people beneath them, a hilarious guy, women: don’t fart in front of your man, don’t romanticize marriage so much, a very thoughtful reasonable thing, you both have work to do, marriage is work, how to make Irish babies for dinner: A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift, a reputable friend in America, its going to make everybody rich, are you serious?, yes, I’m serious, trying to convince you of its rightness, Lone Star Planet, everybody from Texas, Texas sized planet, supercattle and superbourbon, inspired by an H.L. Mencken essay from the 1920s, Prussia’s special court for government officials, the punishments were worse the higher up the chain you are, murdering politicians is legal, a law of taxes, a slap on the wrist, a very Texas book, so American, The Malevolent Job Holder, pull his nose, cut off his ears, how vastly more attentive he would be, how polite and suave, vain fellows, brilliantly remembered, a dozen such episodes, the jails bulged with his critics, a cauliflower ear, a black eye, a scar over his bald head, political appointees, specifically for politicians, this will keep government small, the libertarian Prometheus award, a magazine column, growing corruption in government, how primitive societies made fun of people who wanted to lead, armed society is a polite society, the Uvalde case [the Robb Elementary School shooting], arresting the parents, an instinct to not cede the authority of violence to incompetent job-holders, they might get fired and get a job in a neighbouring town, who is going to arrest them?, power imbalanced, the sequels, a hefty book, to capitalize on his success (ironic), one of the secrets, reading very old books, capital from Jesse’s grandparents, comics, leftover capital, all really good books, an infinite number of public domain books (not really), sits on a shelf for thirty years, the capital is available, sitting around in a house that Jesse had access to, people listening, I’d like to read Treasure Island, usually older than Tarzan, Moby Dick, Poe, decades of accumulated wisdom, whatever book that came out this week that somebody got a Hugo award for, maybe it’s going to be a classic for the ages, thousands of fiction books every year, not too many, read old books you’re more likely to get a profit from it, accumulated a lot of brain capital, human development, edifying, make yourself greater, instruct or improve someone, moral or religious knowledge, uplift, to improve someone’s mind, we are edified by great books, a rip-roaring book, they start copying and making fun of him, 300 years later people still doing it, 300 years later, 4,000 years from now, direct brain stream, 2 robots arguing on other planets, still be able to make fun of ourselves and Robinson Crusoe, he’s such and asshole, I’m glad we met him, why is he the hero of this story?, more books that are lifts from Robinson Crusoe, nautical themed, lists of books, Jesse feels proud of himself.

Robinson Crusoe - illustrated by Walter Paget (1891)

Robinson Crusoe - illustrated by Walter Paget (1891)

Robinson Crusoe - illustrated by N.C. Wyeth (1920)

CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED - Robinson Crusoe

Pocket Classics - Robinson Crusoe

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Reading, Short And Deep #264 – The Garden Of Evil by Margaret St. Clair

Podcast

Reading, Short And DeepReading, Short And Deep #264

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss The Garden Of Evil by Margaret St. Clair

Here’s a link to a PDF of the story.

The Garden Of Evil was first published in Planet Stories, Summer 1949.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!