Tag: Robert A. Heinlein

The SFFaudio Podcast #894 – READALONG: The Handle by Richard Stark

Jesse and Misha Burnett talk about The Handle by Richard Stark

Talked about on today’s show:
book number 8 in the series, he has fun with the titles, The Green Eagle Score, a bunch of scores in a row, what the word “the handle” meant, Run Lethal, feels a little bit like The Mourner, they’re all the same, they’re different, outside the bounds of the U.S., the setup is different, calling back to Karns from The Outfit, the child molester, moving parts, Nazi war criminal, the actual war crimes, dropped threads on purpose, what comes of Yancy?, he’s a fun character, never see him again, the way real life works, Grofield shot five times in Mexico City hotel, 3 Grofield books, dropped threads, a 1 day delay, not on the ball, time to go over this book again, Parker’s problem with him is he doesn’t have a tan, he raped an 11 year old girl, Salsa is a fun character, the gun dealer, they’re always more of the same, the morality is not social morality, efficiency morality, Parker is essentially, everyone else is suffering from main character syndrome, Parker is the stranger, Poul Anderson?, a Bezerker story, Fred Saberhagen, The Adventure Of The Metal Murderer, is Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock Holmes Through Time And Space, he’s got a little bit of a personality, Data from Star Trek, he’s not a normal human being, Springfield, Missouri, a 4 hour drive, one of the Dortmunder novels, Bad News, the differences between Parker and Dortmunder, hyperfocus thing, really Westlake, Crystal is trying to make a pass at him, doing the job, parallel evolution, Kelp, they fulfill the same function, annoying but useful, ground the other, when the principals are lost in thought, just as autistic, the insight, Westlake with a new assignment, rewrote the ending, needs to be a series, the worst Parker book, clunkers near the end, the character is not there yet, revenge is absent from every subsequent book, what we love about Parker, he is so efficient, makes Westlake’s character work, another dropped thread, far more intelligent, bimballina, standard good writing, she wants to take pictures of Salsa unclad, what do I care?, about to have sex with Crystal, telephone girl, great book, so good, The Green Eagle Score, sure why not?, in the etext, Michael Kramer, dropbox, Stephen R. Thorne, if this cassette stops working, almost robotic, they’re fancy, so cool, Westlake can’t help himself, the red Thunderbird, broken taillight, the heat was bright, heavy, oppressive, all the comforts of home, Gulf freeway, top 40, no wait for warmup, so full of gimmicks, tinted glass, joyknob, a stuffed toy tiger, Houston, each thinking his own thoughts, a seedy bar, Tropical Palm Lounge, little tables, shiny black formica tops, amber tinted mirrors, DW in large letters, so in the book, he’s so funny, it is funny, that thing in Dancing Aztecs, always drives Fury III, a car called Kill, this is the series, Stark fans, really hardboiled, popular with hardened criminals in prison, he has to have fun, we’re gonna look at the guns, the comic relief for the Hamlet of Stark, any character in a Westlake story could be the main character, Grofield opened the door to Parker’s knock, a man to be our Charon, he has no knowledge of popular culture, but Westlake is Grofield, he loves all the literary references that he’s throwing down, a meeting with Gold Medal, two more this year?, setting up the assignment to get it done, it is absolutely a recipe, styles of chunks, new characters, Handy McKay, that idea, we set up these pins, bringing in the cops, the FBI, the scene with Parker there, assessing their situation, disarms the other guy, a butcher’s knife, he knows about coffee, he’s never read a paperback, recreation, on top of a hot sandy bitch named Michelle, he’s not a connoisseur of anything except getting the job done, gets Grofield involved, the money doesn’t matter, writing for money, that’s his living, he loves the exercise of writing great stories, he made a break with science fiction because it didn’t pay, The Curious Facts Preceding My Execution, The Spy In The Elevator, Anarchaos, he loves science fiction, Lawrence Block, Fredric Brown, didn’t go down that path,wrote good science fiction and fun fantasy, paperbacks and hardcovers, crime was what he could sell after the sex market, a writer who enjoys writing and not just having written, one of the best books about writing, out of print, Paul Westlake, running the website, it wasn’t just him in the estate, they all have to agree or have semi-interest, movies, a new Parker movie, in the trailer for the latest Parker movie it mentions this book, a casino off of the coast of Texas, Grofield is black, Parker’s not right, nobody is Parker, Brent Spiner to play Parker, Jason Stathem came closest, none of them are Parker, [The Outfit], Prime Cut (1972), Lee Marvin, a discussion with someone on the internet, always a mistake, on twitter, nobody’s gonna read, you can just do ai images, you can just see it, in an audio visual medium, epic poetry was the main mode for most of human history, go into the cave, paint an animal or two, mostly computer games that are the main media now, books were huge, plays were pretty big for a while, appreciate the medium what it can do, The Grifters, what Jim Thompson was laying down, fuckn hardboiled, first person narration, small town sheriff, of course I had to destroy him, absolute psychopath, two face, coming from a real abusive place, one about a girl, childhood sexual abuse, she’s got this baggage, a family of abusive psychopaths, Westlakes gets it, translates that to film, The Stepfather (1987), a game and tv show, reading the Star Wars novelization, The Predator (1987) novelization, Alan Dean Foster, music, back to Grofield, just as dangerously messed up as Parker is, how he visualizes things, in terms of a movie, a different symptomology, a narcissist sociopath, a show with Mr. Pulpcovers (Alex), Two Much, 3 movies, a Tamil version, how evil the main character is, we love him, justifying the murders he’s doing, lappin it up, part of Westlake’s genius, Kelp for example, the Kelp/Grofield connection, likeable, steal some money from an institution, puts the salt in the beer, oh my god i’m devastated, too much trauma, the same kind of stuff, there’s no murders, funny situations, hardboiled murderers, as a suggestion, Enough, one of them is a great movie, A Slight Case Of Murder, so good, William H. Macy playing the movie reviewer, James Cromwell, first person narration to the camera, I’m safe, breaking the fourth wall stuff, every chapter is a different detective story trope, A Travesty, Ordo [“Orrie”], a sailor, he finds out about it, a spread of her in Playboy, her biography mentions her marriage to him, the French get him, and Poe and Lovecraft, the amateur detective, the red herring, the book was published 60 years ago, framed for a murder that he actually did, another really good one, we should talk about the actual book we were supposed to read, Cockaigne, an ongoing theme, his obsession with insurance, institutions are always and all corrupt, the more corrupt it is, an “outfit”, the “organization”, even that is full of incompetents, her dysfunction, a little bit neurotic, babbling, has to take her hand, make her shut up, while Yancy went off to get the glasses, proud of himself, a hand drawn map, shaped somewhat like a rubber life-raft, medieval trouble, rows of waves, a complex arrow and letter N, sometimes it ran for the sake of running, like a man tromping an automobile accelerator, a souvenir, the pride still in his voice, where’s the frame, Westlake can’t help himself, our man kind of got enthusiastic, what’s the scale of this map, the other map, graph paper, this one simple bear and neat, there’s so much in it, only 4 hours long, it feels complete and it is complete, there’s no island in the Gulf there, a little bit like the Most Dangerous Game, count Zaroff, General Zaroff, after Red and White Russian war in 1919, Sanger, blood-dripper, hunters, big game hunters, it’s all about that fun setup, the FBI wants him for some reason, he runs the island, same reason that Karns wants him, goodie points, InterPol, Westlake’s pretty cynical, on a Navy ship, Congress was annoyed, this island belonged to, the Sea-Bees, a very cynical eye, just laughs at it, like that of General Zaroff’s island, they’re invading it, a mini-bay of pigs, a guaranteed heist, the money on hand, a sobriquet, Charles Willis, dates, professional heister at it for 20 years, they don’t have his face, he had all that work done, to get away from the Outfit, meta matters, what Westlake has to do to make the series go on, loose threads, Parker and Grofield, slowly bleeding to death, follow the Mexicans, Parker shows the gun, one sentence, he sees the handle of the suitcase, in casinos the amount of money that’s on hand, The Jugger, so interested in writing the book, Firebreak, Breakout, one leads on to the next, curved plastic black alien, the suitcase, Ronin (1998), a CIA guy, a McGuffin, the same suitcase, Pulp Fiction (1994), new flooring in his apartment, take his wife to Florida, this robot that does 2 or 3 jobs a year, it’s almost like Westlake’s commenting, when somebody betrays him, the code, his programming code, not some morality everybody’s subscribed to, Conan’s character, that’s different, different kind of guys, Reacher and the book series Reacher, always wandering around getting into adventures, Conan’s not a patriot, he never goes there, much more like a robot programmed to do heists, somebody else’s scam, make the scam work, at last something for me to do, it’s not just the money, it’s also the art, never got married to May, interests other than heists, cooking and dresses, in relistening to the book again, every Westlake novel starts really well, on a boat, Parker was below deck, his motel room, stuck on a boat with a bunch of idiots, waiting for us to get there, voices and hands of New York or Chicago hoods, puts on the cap, the blue jacket, his hands really huge, putting on the costume, fit in more, he knows he’s a robot, fill the pages, these points out of these character, trying to derail my story, diversions of characters, fucking up the perfectly well timed heists, can’t but help himself, it got a flat, just too funny, he can’t help but frustrate Parker, I’m not a hired killer, getting the efficiency done, song and dance, let’s see the job, carry a whole book, more about Crystal, her interest, we meet the guy that puts her on to Parker only over the phone, another of these outfit guys, needs to be told what their job is, that seen with the boy, puts him in his place, you’re my boy, after this job is all well and done, makes him feel good, shuts him up, let me do my job, and as they were coming out later, Parker techniques, when we’re in institutional mode, along greased lines, it’s an institution, a thing behemoth, the right magic word, the right passphrase, opens up for you, treats people like Rubics cubes to be solved, main characters who are not the main character of this particular book, Don Westlake does not write NPCs, he doesn’t believe in them, Heinlein’s brinksmanship, in the news right now, not a great technique for every situation, NPCs are real, ai has always been with us, it is now digital instead of biological, take in and regurgitate, take out the old chip and put in the new chip, people who are programmable by outside forces, a drinking problem, every character has his or her own script, a factotum, Baron, Schultz?, he’s my family, he’s my this, he’s my that, the Hilton in Mexico city, the doctor and the punchy driver from The Man With The Getaway Face, where all of this came from, Westlake was in the Airforce in Germany, “snow top”, military police, gathering up rowdy airmen, not a gun fetishist, he wrote for Manhunt, fact articles, Manhunt’s Gun Rack, Colt Police Special, couple of automatics, he’s not a criminal, doing his fucking homework, become the writer, science articles, Astounding Science Fiction And Fact, back to Adventure, Robert E. Howard, how the mongol empire worked, make it feel like it is legit, goes to Texas, a concert, it is very loud, a racetrack one, super observant, his hand work, glass splashing, orbiting of hands, his signature, let’s look at the hand work in this book, how are people spreading their hands, Shakespeare wanting to act in his own plays, most people don’t read at all, Stephen King’s popular, where’d he get his love for writing?, dysfunctional relationship, Samuel R Delany, very different writers, a six or 8 part miniseries, movies like The Towering Inferno, Superbus?, Supertrain, a parody, transitioned into Greenland (2020), 2012 (2009), flying the plane, [Yakety Sax], takes itself seriously, in the outline it is a comedy, lean into that, Airplane! (1980), The Naked Gun series, Frank Sinatra New York Cop, both Arkins, couple girlfriends, I didn’t mean to kill her, internal monologue, breaking the fourth wall is as close as plays can come to what novels can do, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity, greasy Greek, asshole drifter, a ripped from the headlines style plot, spicy fast action, created the grounds for the 50s-60s-70s paperbacks, appreciate the best of a medium, some great Playstation games, point and click adventure, what greatness was there, it’s not disposable in the way of pulp magazines, Edgar Allan Poe story and an Edward Page Mitchell story, blew up, the reprint market, anonymous stories published once, science fiction stories that are H.G. Wells stories before H.G. Wells, faster than light travel, in the 1970s, this greatness existed, somebody passionately going back, putting it in book form, when Westlake goes out of print, share the files, you can’t less this go to waste, too valuable, too fun, 16th 17th 18th century, no champions for it, there’s been a Shakespeare champion for hundreds of years, you need champions, authors huge in their time, we still have the Sherlock Holmes stories, Sherlock Holmes’ smarter sister, Guy Ritchie, it’s not what Conan Doyle was doing, a great writer, can’t appreciate that, he’s not Arthur Conan Doyle, so many people are familiar with the remix Benedict Cumberbatch, fun, riff, taken from stories, A Study In Pink, cute, it’s fine, you can’t just swap in, Jeremy Brett ones, the best adaptations, the most adapted film ever, The Hound Of The Baskerville movies, a preview of the mystery to come, usually the other way around, never leaves the room, solves the whole crime from his residence, where Nero Wolfe comes from, to appreciate the art you need to read the goddamn book, Kahawa, more serious, more grim, the Idi Amin years in Uganda, an adventure, mercenaries in Africa, The Man Who Would Be King, don’t be expecting Dortmunder, he wrote a ton, because they are funny and fun, a new adventure every time, a softness for the Stark Parker book, Grofield’s adventures by himself, Parker’s a blank canvas, the van heist, some of them don’t work as well as the others, late books in the series, Breakout, Ask The Parrot, Cops And Robbers, very Dortmunder like, disposable characters, The Axe, The Hook, Humans, this intellect and this play and this experience of him through his books, a sparkling intellect, write stories that are appreciable, in the body of work, learn so much, anybody who wants to write, he makes it look so easy, working on public domain stuff, Veronica, that spark of what Westlake would become, a modest idea, this is the man who would be able to write really great novels, best novels of the 20th century, so many other ones, some of the things he can do in a book, Slayground, plotting it out, the basic idea, not a great movie either, Peter Coyote plays Parker, Brother And Sister, you can enjoy a Donald Westlake incest novel if enjoy the right word for it, everybody suiciding themselves, Killing Time, standalones, the nephew novels, Call Me A Cab, Somebody Owes Me Money, the bookie’s wife, nobody ever sees her, she never shows up in the book, only scene once, Forever And A Death, his James Bond novel, Hard Case Crime, an audiobook of it too, work on the road, pleasure reading, trying to be efficient, SFFaudio is about audiobooks, hard to get and expensive, the unabridged, 10 or 12 cassettes, pre-internet, blogs came in, 2003, Audible was just starting, podcasts who had not quite been invented, very efficient, washing dishes, folding laundry, almost exclusively audiobook, hard to know the numbers, ebooks are smaller than audiobooks, trying to get people to create audiobooks out of it, Amazon’s going to stop selling books because they’re not profitable, moving paper around, too small a market, after having killed the bookstores, 2 years ago, fixed conveyor belts, publishers don’t seem to be want to be in the book business, short fiction, Cirsova, going out of the magazine business, he’s a book lover, give what they do, covers that are garbage, traditional book publishers, media conglomerate, Lester Del Rey is no longer involved, Storyhack, Racketeer Press, Bryce Beattie, Ace Books, the supermajor conglomerate is kind of an abberation, the way publishing used to be, the distribution, getting it was hard, almost no bookstores, no newsstands, media mail, ridiculous, the post office is in the constitution, a physical object that needs to be delivered to you, trynna strangle it, trynna kill it, let’s pretend, an mp3 file, physical distribution is the hard thing, how China can ship for 3 cents, High Adventure, interesting mix of characters, he must have gone to South America, 3 Guianas, Belize on vacation, almost Jamaican, he writes what he knows, anytime you see something cool, I gotta use that in a book, so many stories about electricians, paint what you see, tiny country, Del Carzo?, maybe suddenly they’ll start producing them again, let’s produce some audiobooks, dry for 5 – 10 years, a great back catalogue, an old Books On Tape producer, bought everything ever produced, no new stuff that we never produced, they were a niche thing, talking books for the blind, bizarre, about the media itself, making a cassette, printing a page, there’s no excuses for that now, everything is cheap, even they make it cheap, many other publishers, still cheaper than the paperbook, commission basis, squeezing the shit out of the audiobook narrators, Scott Miller, 500 short stories, science fiction, sportscaster, loves creating audiobooks, he also loves it, looking at the long tail, that job, as their own publisher, squeezed, physical tape they were recording to, a 1 man operation, his own booth, prestige recording, a Hollywood actor to do it, a narrator, a specialist, George Guidall, Stefan Rudnicki, Skyboat Media, all of Delany’s stuff, a Delany fantatic, dropped off the face of the earth, knock on their door, somewhere in Nevada, Small Worlds, a guy on twitter published in Cirsova, 4 novels, a novella co-wrote with David Skinner, six books of short stories, selling as a package, novels vs. short stories, making virtually nothing from Audible, the beast Rabban, extract extract, decline, addicted to audible as the company, extremely convenient, the number of reviews for products in the last 5 years, nobody bothers reviewing anymore, everything on good reads is 3.6, put a number there, what limited ratings, a trend for audible, people just don’t write reviews anymore, it’s a podcast now instead of a blog, blogs were destroyed, it feels like The Hook, getting traffic too it, bemoaning what Amazon is, your sales can never go up they can only go down, his novel solution to it was fun, Ed McBain, not quite as prolific as Westlake, Cop Hater, police procedural, Downtown is really good, talking for two hours, for my sins, there are more public domain Westlake, need to be bulletproof, vague ideas and a little bit of advice, too sparky, where should we go from here?, one of the Scores, 4 of them, The Sour Lemon Score, it’s gone sour, Lemons Never Lie, The Rare Coin Score, the heist itself, The Blackbird, not just a body problem, almost late for work, run to school,it’s like a treat man, some people like donuts, an old Richard Stark novel, oh boy.

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #892 – READALONG: Ring Around The Sun by Clifford D. Simak

Jesse and Scott talk about Ring Around The Sun by Clifford D. Simak

Talked about on today’s show:
Galaxy 1952, 1953, one of his earliest novels, Cosmic Engineers, Empire, not really Simakian, very Campbelly, Campbell rejected it, City, guess the right answer, what does the D standfor, the D stands for Philip K. Dick, this book is superDick, kinda wild, a kitchen sink, so much happening, under the discipline of a competent writer, a great writer but competence is not the word for him, not natural, tons of wild ideas, under control, why does the little girl show up in the first scene?, cookin breakfast, infodump, why are you not married, this book is largely about childhood, child-like, we’ve been following an android the whole goddamn book, growin a beard, getting hungry, the big conflict is he’s fighting with himself, split into three, given his essence, what kinda book is this?, fairyland, as one might, familiar with fairyland, the topped stripes, a very strange book, David Pringle, a critic, The 100 Best Novels 1949-1984, an English Language Selection, 2 simaks, Way Station and City, 1949-1984, this is a good book, a Tall Tale, too complicated for its own good, prose style, a new plot twist in almost every chapter, a very ornate book, the McCarthyite era, economic speculation, technological panaceas, telepathic androids, robots who are also hungry, a very good Simak novel, after reading Shakespeare’s Planet, Way station, good book, sparkier, All Flesh Is Grass, Stephen King, parallel structure, not just because it has androids, a forever car, at the end of his career, a ton of Simak, keep going, recurring things, revist these things, houses, something was in the house, a bit of mental separation to avoid conflation, coming from everything you witnesses prior, every person has in common, they had some sort of childhood, even if you’re six and im sixty, graduation, your first job, your first love, start with the basics, always a possibility, Simak is not a boy, gotta get that top, almost Bradburyesque, the system that we live in, the economy, Star Trek economics, the forces, people protecting what they have, extraction, it doesn’t seem possible, not as good as The Visitors, almost all the parts, false notes, so many sparks, as maturity sets upon you, that theme I touched on earlier, very mysterious, setup pretty early, rumours of a forever car, it’s cheap, when things are happening in the economy, participate or not participate, cultural discipline like the Amish, they have to review it, they have to make the case, a benefit vs. a disruption, assailed by iphones and androids and robots and waymos, you can’t control what your government decides to subsidize or ban, all you can do is see what’s happening, the solution, the pretentionists, super-interesting, grilling him, what his particular cosplay is about, a sign of what’s going on, the conflict, there is technicality conflict, partly fighting with himself, why is this disruption happening, Simak would like some alternatives, razor, lightbulb, everything is free, how close they are, comin out of WWII, this cold war thing, spread outside of the cities, a big country, no target, constant extreme disappointment and hopeful, the mob is in the background, he doesn’t let that get him down, not a black pill book, locking us into ways of behavior, he’s searching for it, can’t we just all agree, a nice walk, changing of the seasons, an agrarian populist, doesn’t want cities making all the rules, we need farmers, making sure that way of life is protected, rustic rather than agrarian, people who love the countryside, people’s views on policies, one colour another colour, different motivations, the people have needs, one needs a truck and the other needs a subway pass, the uniparty (whatever flavour) doesn’t give you the cheap reliable bus or truck, supersmart, what if we take the idea of automation and use it as an application of disruption for the benefit of people, teetering on the edge of being evil, Crawford is a representative, a think tank, a billionaire class or higher, deep down they’re all the same guy, essentially just Simak, we’ve got to do something, the doing something is writing this book, for serialization in Galaxy, Simak was a newspaperguy, the Minneapolis Star, keeps you in a world, an academic, who the president is, tax policy, you have to understand it and get it out there everyday, being a political advisor, the politicans don’t do any research, so many things going on in this book, what’s the motivation behind this, even the Cold War might be wrapping up, set in the 80s (or 77), worries about the economy going bad, the word carbohydrates, we don’t just need foodbanks, soylent green, a FOOD episode, Gravy Planet aka The Space Merchants, on a parallel earth, manufacturing carbohydrates, wood goes in cellulose comes out, the scene on one of the covers, exploring the factory, bringing in raw materials, who is paying for all those robots, selling at a subsidy, inputs are free, drill down, what his economic solution, nobody gets paid anything, all profits, everybody gets everything, communism, altruism, Crawford is a sympathetic evil guy, I wanna let you live, make me understand it, you can’t threaten the way things are, the alternate people who seem leaderless, Robert A. Heinlein, By His Bootstraps, time doesn’t exist, this book has a lot going on, a coup happening, a breakoff civilization, agrarian populist, there’s no voting, there’s only opting in or dropping out, this is not an evil book, Beggars In Spain, Slan, mutants, quasi science fiction, his first sale is published in 1952, 1953, Clifford Dick Simak, Dick’s not influenced by this, this is a parallel extraction, Dick cites Null-A and Van Vogt, Realms Of Fantasy, renfaire shit, Society For Creative Anachronism, the 70s, mutant = X-men, rebellion, The Golden Man, the danger room, his subversion of mutants, what if they’re superattractive to women but don’t know how to read, women with three breasts, so mutated they look like slugs, so mutated we don’t recognize them as mutants, what John W. Campbell was asking for: more mutants, mutant stories, in essence, you’re supposed to think I’m a SLAN, we the people who can see the future, man walking on the Moon, telepathy, an autist when it comes to tops, he can think about childhood real good, I can read a different science fiction next week, the podcast mutant, observation/joke/question, people on twitter, how much to spend on editorial revisions/covers, they’re in the bubble, you’re the weirdo, as a percentage of the population, people who read 10 books a year, they absolutely exist, 1 guy Tony C. Smith, discovered science fiction as an adult, got excited about reading like a kid, knew how to read, just didn’t do it, book addicts, get books cheaper, give books cheaper, can’t afford them, and thus SFFaudio was born, a family of readers, both sets of grandparents, reading something non-fiction, an immediate upbringing, ancestrally, school teacher, shop teacher, great uncle, voracious reader, great grandparents, their book collection if they had one, you inherit things you don’t even realize, they have different things, are you ashamed of your books, gi joes, transformers, music, a personal culture for each family, used to be anyway, figuring out what this book dealing with, it’s so big, society and the personal, the weirdest aspect, that’d be loving himself?, the most broken part of the book, too spinning in on itself, wow, an interesting thoughtful guy, recurring, hopefulness, knowledge in the stars, Time Is The Simplest Thing, disrupting the economy, read this week, chapter 33, so he was an android, an artificial man, the cunning of man’s mind, the mutants did!, even he himself would never know, artificial women too, and a host of other gadgets, wreck the race from which they sprang, China is disrupting our economy!, good jobs, the mystery of the story, how he composed the book, it mostly fits together, the mystery is less important than rumniating on the topics themselves, sparky full of ideas, flying witches on broomsticks, steal ideas, bring them home through Mexico, Walmart style disruption stores, wow, rejected by the girl’s family, fairyland of youth, memory, super-hilarious, the past is the most interesting place, a hilarious and interesting genre, the Merryland books, 1672ish, Erotupoia, Bettyland, a genre of fiction, a visitor reports back on a place he went to, a geographical version of a woman’s body, hills over there, rivers down here, having fun, making fun of the genre, with childhood, that Bradburyesque sense, certain scenes, endless summer, how come we can’t live in a good world, feel that, meanwhile, boardroom tables, privacy policy, extract more from you, televisions are so cheap, they’re using the tv to influence, Netflix button, put ads in your operating system, Enshittification by Cory Doctorow, the whole point is to extract from you, a car you can hand down to your grandkids, forever clothes, forever razor, Stressed Out by 21 pilots, momma sang us to sleep, build a rocketship, you need to make money, getting out from under, whoever’s doing this, Vickers says, and his parents need to be thawed out, so it turns out…, horrible capitalist system, all my contents are correlated, he was the guy behind all of this, go talk to the robot, the plan is to make things better for people, doing these things to the economy, the importance of knowing what your doing, mindfulness sounds really bad, pitchfork and torch, we’re gonna do this to accelerate the badness that’s happening, the evil people in our world, saying to themselves, if they think of you at all, we have a mandate to make profits for our shareholders, Cora’s tweet: every time I see this guy I want to punch him in the face, Albania’s ai minister, power good government with good solid nuclear power, the disruption happening seems familiar to us, the forever car, how people think about Teslas, tended to be publicly enthusiastic, the promise of them, the batteries won’t, in the frame, bends the frame, throwing the car away, the cars have televisions in them, all the smart cars, Windows 10 isn’t supported anymore, your Ford Focus isn’t supported anymore, Ford Mustang from 1964, a throwback pickup truck, can fix it yourself, anyone can fix it themselves, emissions are why, you can’t achieve good emissions without electronics, waiting at the light the engine is turned off, save theoretical emissions, the biggest expulsion, it’s all gamed, theater, try not to play any games you can’t win, the casino, not gonna win, not gonna go, Bryan Alexander travels a lot for work, an endless nightmare of airport problems, sleeping in the airport, much rather not, it’s incredible that we’re here, what air travel is going to look like in the future, bar lounge area, seats too small, crammed in, extracting you, the Chinese with their flying cars, not allowed to disrupt our world, the pretentionists, Samuel Peyp diarists, pretending to be cats and dogs and birds, my area of study is Aztecs, online video games, Balder’s Gate III, escapism, building games, Minecraft, the biggest genre, survival, farming, sandbox games, everything’s easy, 2 seconds to mine, crafting, rock and stick and 2 seconds later you got a handaxe, 10 minutes later log cabin, building your own log cabin, pretty satisfactory, digital log cabin, didn’t have to get sweaty, I live in my game, the people at the renfair, jousting, friendly and together, conventions, leavin the world, a bubble for 4 days, similar interests, I was somewhere else, Robert Silverberg is still alive, every science fiction convention, during COVID, theoretically left science fiction for a while, he feeds on the same interests, people that read a bunch of books, grinding horror, driving across the United States, the next 2 Dortmunder books, if you’re painting a warehouse, a lot of ceilings, intense labour, a kind of pretention, you’re out of your head, drudge work, great experience of another world, arms and eyes, appreciating some thoughts goin on, a really amazing thing, a kind of dissociation, something going on in this book, MK Ultra, The Manchurian Candidate sort of stuff, CIA, human robotoids, wipe people’s memories, implanted memories, very Philip K. Dick, for political control, assassinations, interrogations, send messages, the Jason Bourne series, MK Ultra fiction, extensive in the United States and farmed out to Canada, we have to invest, at least 20 years, the Chinese are doing it, maybe the Russians are doing it, POWd by the North Koreans or the Chinese, act strangely, obviously brainwashed them, we need to be able to brainwash, how can he be an android, fully functional, a scene where Data has a beard, can he control the growth, you can imagine a model of Data that has that ability, everything about him is a man except we’re told he is not a man, people are programmable, you learn these languages, something that humans have that dogs don’t have, responding to their environment, programmed to learn human things, Simak is reading the paper and reading between the line, Philip K. Dick was not a connected guy, he worked at a music shop, this is not public at the time, from the Nazis originally, news stories, the Korean War, they must be brainwashed because they’re rejecting the United States in favour of North Korea and China, on the wrong team, other possibilities than mind control, the most powerful street is Madison Avenue, both are scary, K Street, think tanks, the justifications, the oligarchs to do what they want, Crawford is not as bad a guy as we thought, come on friend, he said softly, Simak doesn’t want war, a lot of horror, he doesn’t know the way, hopin to make the place better, less of a Catholic book than his other ones, not a Catholic guy, some of the thoughts, more of a spirtual level to it, how Arthur C. Clarke’s The Star, a jesuit, a relationship to the stars, pathos and suffering and understanding, more scattered, touch on it a few times, page 178, end of chapter 39, how he came to be, his purpose and his end, a tool of immortality, the orderly progression, the next step, law unto the entire universe, the strength of human face, divinity, terrible need of faith, question and doubt, no need of faith, faith replaced with knowing, questing, a lot of great stuff in this book, so sparky, continually impressed by him, so philosophical, idea books, not stuff happening books, thoughtful and exploratory, an OCR, the fire wheel dog formula, the formula of the mutants, an earlier forward step, fire, cook things, pull things, dogs?, bows, plumb line, technologies, ssomethin super interesting, an extinct [breed] of dog, canis vertigus, the turning dog, manor house, run on the wheel to turn the spit, a small dog with curled legs, literally three technologies all together, replaced by motors, technology leads to technologies, a border collie, different labs, different from goldens, programmed differently, retrieve birds from swamps, love your children, take you on walks and be happy to see you, herding, keeping their sheep in their proper place, moving them from place to place, talking about technology in that way it is science fiction, you can’t have science fiction without connection to technology, it isn’t engineering fiction, mine the asteroids, that isn’t about how to make the rocket go, atomic pile!, what will it do to the people?, if there is a main thrust in this book, products that will no longer have to be manufactured or repaired, intentionally destroying society, a tv with spyware built into it, well you’ve got food that free, who is being evil?, the oligarchs, want progress to stop to maintain the status quo, conserve their profits, pretend I was somewhere else, more interesting or better or not like this, zombie apocalypse games, Project Zomboid, ambulance driver or cop or teacher or athlete, survive for as long as you want, an endless game, no victory conditions, Sid Meier’s Civilization, if they’re trying to hurt you, doing it and don’t care, changing it to help me win this game, taking stuff from you and putting it in my pocket, Crawford is from the old guard, America 1950, the other world mutants, help the population, he makes a film, talk to the pretentionists, evacuate the earth to these other worlds, on to the stars if necessary, a temporary solution to this particular crisis, we in our present, people out of work, carbohydrates are the solution, going off to be pioneers, let’s do enclosures, fill it full of sheep, goodbye people, crimes that can get you exported as your punishment, free land in an empty continent, more profits for Hudson’s Bay Company shareholders, love or indifference or hate, probably not going to be neutral, “mutants”, not telling what’s going on, we spread this out, $500 per room, trade that in, they’re not trynna make a profit, the help is accelerationist, for a not religious guy, lying is evil, deception is not necessarily evil, you shouldn’t lie to people, the oligarchs are hurting society somehow, the mob, trynna hunt people down and kill them, offscreen in the book, “populist”, kind of a slur in the United States, people getting what they want, close to fascism, we bind you up together, a whole bunch of farmers, get our voices heard together, the popular voice vs. the bound stick for violence, on team Simak, a bit of violence, story is about conflict, Hamlet the play, the first detective story, when does the ghost appear, the soldiers see Hamlet go talk to the ghost, the ghost of his father, the rest of the play is him trying to testing his hypothesis, does my mom know?, to know or not to know, should I just go along?, a philosophical investigation, everybody dies, Ophelia dies, he kills Polonius, the ultimate answer is maybe you, do I want to turn over this rock of knowledge, feel something, catharsis, detective fiction comes out of Poe, when it hits with Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie, a little bit of science fiction and a lot of mystery, this essential question in us, not being satisfied, a conspiracy book vs. a mystery book, turns out it is a third of me, what a book!, so good, glad to have read it, YouTube video, different things there, what Simak next?, May 2nd, The Handle by Richard Stark, gonna love it, Way Station, All Flesh Is Grass, 1965, how many did he write in the 70s?, lots in the 70s, A Choice Of Gods, Enchanted Pilgrimage, The Fellowship Of The Talisman, The Werewolf Principle, The Fisherman, a rusty rocket, a scene in the book, so rich, he’s the man, overcountry travel, he’s the flyover country science fictionist, New York guys, Bradbury in Los Angles, Missouri, Colorado, California, Orson Scott Card in Utah, when you get to the west, Wyoming, east of, Ohio, Kansas, is Kansas the west, right in the middle, Shaun D. Standfast, passed away, notebook lm, 9 interviews, living in Minnesota, geographic and philosophic backwater, east coast, New York, distinct effects, professional isolation, the science fiction swim, tied closely to his desk, a lot of publication with John W. Campbell, rely on letters, a Clifford Simak letters set, Isaac Asimov and Jack Williamson, Minneapolis, Poul Anderson and Gordon R. Dickson, tell me more, the distilled info, people that like audio, an audiobook, make it feel like a real conversation, shaving and smoking, pops out an mp3, my android ran out of cigarettes and is grateful to have some more, how much Dick have you read, not as coherent at novel length, some of the images, his best novel, very disputed, Galactic Pot-Healer, very funny, it ends like a flat tire, great scenes, not exactly a Simak novel, what makes it so great, if he’s Tolkien it is his Lord Of The Rings, rougher and sillier, the basis as a place to escape, wasting time on the internet, gets a call from god, raise a sunken cathedral, other pilgrims, yarrow stalks, The Man In The High Castle, how great Dick can be, what did we settle on, All Flesh Is Grass.

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #889 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Travels With A Donkey In The Cévennes by Robert Louis Stevenson

The SFFaudio Podcast #889 – Travels With A Donkey In The Cévennes by Robert Louis Stevenson (3 hours 51 minutes) read by Patrick Wallace for LibriVox, followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion are Jesse and Maissa Bessada

Talked about on today’s show:
1879, blanked out on the Cévennes part, a CBC ideas, travel writing, a Mark Twain, couldn’t do the show, abandoned the book, sad sad story, travel literature, living in Egypt for two years, everything is different, letters home, describing what’s happening, bringing up baby, Bringing Up Baby (1938), exaggerate a little bit, Travels by Michael Crichton, private about a lot of the stuff, public about a lot of the stuff, travels with his sister, before he died, a bunch of things that happened to him, picked from earlier and later things, his parents, what income bracket they’re in, guessing, early stuff is all travel stuff, exotic locations, Spain, very good writer, extraordinarily thing to write down, scuba diving, the bends, not enough air, lucky to be alive, I had to resist that quite strongly, an incredible thing to say, in the desert, elide the relationship, some movie start, a spiritual retreat or something, not a super-spiritual guy, nobody understands, profound effects, hike Kilimanjaro, tall, weird, super-smart, a wealthy background, might have been CIA, lot of people’s dads were CIA it turns out, more like a memoir, not exactly travel, being in medical school, attitudes towards corpses, young horny guys who think they are able to cure all diseases, resisting that, The Terminal Man, writing on the side, instead of being a doctor, more of his stuff, that’s definitely true about him, travel incident, Paul Theroux, The Old Patagonia Express, Eric Idle, travel writing, A Year Off by H.P. Lovecraft, does this sound familiar, a grand tour, really?, a travel guy, so expensive to travel, it fits, the poetry of it, over the top, he’s so cheap, he’s a dreamer, the dream, an inheritance, a small budget, Let’s Go Europe, Let’s Go Central America, a cheap place to eat, you’ve got to if you can, travel broadens the mind, going everywhere, much cheaper: read about those places, we don’t always agree on everything, animal abuse, I’ve made Modestine my slave, it has to have been, he’s much softer that the average person, he felt guilty, he’s in love with her, he had the good manners to cry about it as he’s selling her, wait a minute, I’ll cry now, a new boss, locked herself out of the school, she had her bible group there, a rumor about Jesse, show a student something inappropriate, wallpaper, Mort Kuntsler painting, no nudity, a painting of a woman, offended a student years ago, Predator (1987), just 3 years older than me, go down the street to the bookstore and read the novelization, books don’t have literary restrictions on them the way games do, in this book there’s a scene where Robert Louis Stevenson after a cow, he calls them sluts, referring to Modestine, her faults are based on her race and sex, it’s hilarious, disparages women left right and center, a word for female women, [wench], other than a physical journey, a lot of religion, the least religious parts, going through time, donkey pilled, donkeys are cool, cat pilled, dog pilled, a she ass, a jenny would be the right word, jack and jenny, second in his estimation, even though the wife can read and the husband can’t, they’re inferior, second class citizens if even citizens, up and down stuff, catholic vs. protestant, non-christianness vs. christianness, geopolitical landscape, I’m a lame woman who can’t get out of bed, go next door, it’s like time travel, he’s alive while we’re reading the book, casual sexual partners, a woman with low standards of cleanliness, going into a monastery, not converting, very reasonable, finest set of wrinkles on her face, we won’t meet again because I’ll be dead, my man is completely ignorant of everything, these are all real encounters, shades of his interpretation, just 12 days, felt like months, the audiobook not in the original, it doesn’t fit the book very well, it is not the journey, and now the book is starting, reading with your eyes vs. reading with your ears, following characters, from moment to moment, a section that really caught me, some thoughts are the most beautiful things and then they vanish, wow I love that, so beautiful, “vanish”, more deeply, an atmosphere of pleasure, so disposed my spirit, in another country, in a different time, done me good, scan their features, a god travelling by our green highways, ope, the lighter about our business, I dined with a pair of Catholics, captivated by him, the one that everybody knows, Doctor Jekyll And Mr Hyde, a guy who’s one guy who’s two guys, transforms like The Hulk, all the superhero stories are derived from older stuff, nothing that isn’t, Silver Surfer, Galactus is god, Spider-Man, Superman is the most simple, he has no characteristics, he’s from space, his wife didn’t like it, he threw it in the fire, you could have fixed it, he wrote it again, the sparks of his wife, it was supposed to be a surprise, go in with no spoilers, The Sixth Sense (1999), oh he’s a ghost, not art films, fell asleep while watching the movie, the little boy’s saying: I see dead people, Bruce Willis and the kid, it’s dark, slow paced, a build up, the whole point of the movie, so heavily on the twist being the thing that makes it good, you know who the hulk is right away, the origin story is just to get to the thing, unassuming New Yorker, tension there, with great power comes great responsibility, they’re the same guy, that was the sensation of the book, doing something nobody had really done before, reading Edgar Allan Poe, The Black Cat, axes his wife and burns down the house, The Tell-Tale Heart, murders in the domestic sphere, it’s a parody, he’s making fun of something, a guy who drinks too much, out of perversity he kills his cat, the cat comes back the very next day, a curious colouration, who owns this cat, he kills the cat a second time, that’s the question: why does all this stuff happen, you drink too much, it’s about teetotalling, what is The Tell-Tale Heart about?, feeling so guilty, the narrator, he’s so upset about what he’s done, he’s hearing the heart under the floorboards, a powerful piece, we interpret him at the end, they can hear the sound of the beating heart under the floorboards, nervous very dreadfully nervous, the hidden thing inside of Poe, late last year, it’s about his adopted father, disowned him, John Allan, Poe and his older brother, orphaned, father disappeared, mother died, this one child, they broke up the kids, explains so much, of this famous actor pair, stage actors, adopted mother who loved him, was jealous of him?, win back their relationship, the richest guy, fucking around with Poe, Poe was a handful, a lot of stress, a great artist, I have to be forgiving, a professional writer, they traveled to Scotland when he was a child, early 19th century, wouldn’t fund his education, gambling debts, why the psychology is so awesome, he has massive passions, gave nothi9ng to Poe, his illegitimate children, enmity, some trauma, The Cask Of Amontillado, revenge for something never stated, people’s interpretation, all coming from the personal, hwy he’s going anywhere, an affair with a married woman, trying to walk it off, still living with his parents, get some life experience, Fanny Osborne, adopted the son, Jack London revered Robert Louis Stevenson, makes total sense, Jerry Of The Islands, Call Of The wild but in the South Pacific with a Terrier, boat life, Brother Of Jerry, a Pacific guy, Japan’s invasion of Korea, massive success, big career, very short, Wolf ranch, he buys a boat, many other science fiction stories, he goes to where RLS is buried, Tahiti/Samoa, traveling for his longs, a weak constitution, consumption, photos of him old, 44, brain hemorrhage, a lot of coughing, not good for ya, he wrote a ton, a few famous things, A Child’s Garden Of Verse, age 7, young man, wearing a fez, huge 20 hour biography, précis it, Requiem, by Robert A. Heinlein, the starry sky, poetry of them, almost the people were the problem, sleeping inside, outside with his stars, oh here’s the desk, we don’t use it, the horror of this book, causing so much strife, strife between people, an ultra-right wing, crazy woke leftist, not religious at least in clothing, 1 protestant region, a lot of governesses, their religions are compatible, peaceably together, exporting their people, the means of dividing people, the one paradigm, things are happening in the world, that guy is a demon, he’s just demonic, doing demonic things, if you literalize things too much it clouds your thinking, the way to escape this, alternative points of view, not hiding things from your kids, not allowed to DM any more, keeps kids out of trouble, creates love of vocabulary and reading, positive things, explore morality in ways that are safe, ruinous, never lie to them, tell the kids about stuff, etymology, pencil, pen, peninsula, a male body part, that’s the root of it, penne pasta, it is cool, whenever we’re talking about vocabulary, not bird or bark, metaphor roots, understand, misunderstand, not as things to memorize, a list of SAT words, not designed to last, inscribed, cut into written into, epitaph, euphemism, Phemie’s not a name, well spoken, a name from 6000 years ago, number one and number, I gotta go, misinterpret, the word piss pisses people off, the letter, the letter p has now become a word, caca, don’t mention the t word, the trump word, manupulae comprehension, banning words, banning speech, correcting people’s speech, without censorship, the word “nigger”, the offensive word, changed it, censorship is a kind of manipulation and control of people, a good person in a weird time, in the religion discussions, changing words for other words, that was beautiful, he’s insightful, I learned a lot about a dead donkey, her and her personality, she’as pretending it is too heavy, giver her a switch, times in the book where she’s running, approaching something, sharing his meals with her, not just master and slave, words in the book, horses react to spurs, that’s why spurs exist, give it the heel, the programming that you want to communicate, they enjoy running, if Will were here, girls love being chased more than boys love being chased, little girls, “chase me”, why?, boys want to hit each other with sticks, jungle gym, jumping over rivulets, not going to disagree, it’s built in, knows how to stand up, books allow us to communicate not just by modelling our parent’s but with the ancients through codexes, naughty girls, in the context of it, tripwires for people, how much has things changed, I have a goad!, a pinpricking stick, that’ll make it go, almost nobody rides horses anymore, a famous streamer shocking his dog, shock collar, it wasn’t, it’s not a shock collar!, to stay on the bed, part of the set, a very horrible person, those shock collars are legal, enough pressure, relatively unpowerful, animal abuse, shocking part, for training, prevent them from doing damage with their teeth, contemptible, dogs are tools, protection for our animals, comfort creatures, we are in a strange relationship with animals, 1878, definitely different, haven’t touched a real animal, Alex (Cirsova), the farm animal part of the zoo was the most popular, books about cows and pigs and chickens, that screen, a farm in the middle of Toronto, kids want to see these things, we live in light pollution, behind screens, screens and screens and screens, a donkey braying, go to the feed store and pet the cat, we need to and we don’t, most of them don’t have pets, most people didn’t have pets until the 20th century, menageries, a collection of pets, Poe in The Black Cat, monkey, birds, a cat, an attack on teetotalling, drinking is bad, the love of animals, central, cat moms, fur babies, a little overboard, oh yeah, Cévennes, not super far from Spain, what we know about the world, only partially correct, French wasn’t one language for a thousand years, small languages that came together, English has changed significantly in that same time frame, England invaded by the French, Norman French, right near Paris, the borderlands, North of Nice, more towards Andorra, a country between Spain and France, a valley, a little valley, kinda related, the first modern nation state, the borders of France as they are today, let’s get everybody on the same system, meterize gods, the god of justice, the French Revolution, a pretty simple language, a funny thing early on in the book, in the Scottish, answer a question with a question, a hippopotamus or a alligator, I just need to know where I’m going, the water your swimming in, the people of Quebec, still a colony, evolved somewhat, old France, not wholly frozen in time, a time capsule, a colony cut off from the empire, when they import French teachers to be their tutors, also twice removed, the Acadians, regular French, the accent’s going to be different, the culture, an effort to rationalize French, that French rationalization was much harsher, a fashion to add new words all the time, kids fighting against that, the official discipline of it is pretty strong, recreate his his journey, the prequel part, floundering, the kind of book you need to be with it, nice and short, more and more and more, I really like this book, went on a journey with it, probably should be excised, why some things should be excised, The Sinking Ship by Robert Louis Stevenson, Fables, half shaved, to the philosophic eye, she is settling fast, the expression is a strange one, time is only relative, in Davy Jones’ Locker, by parity of reasoning, the position of the ship, spoken like a good officer, the spirit room, there is nothing new in our position, he’s predicting his own death, struck by lightning, something inside you might burst, eating dinner, money in the savings bank, too far gone, or whatever it is, getting drunk since they came aboard, an old salt, good god cried the captain, as she were going down, nothing new in our position, a man’s handsome fashion, hope to be eternal, omit to take a pill, or doing anything at all, perfectly conclusive give me a cigar, a glorious detonation, really really really great, his parents get a doctor, might as well start digging his grave now, find a lady to like me, to lie under the stars with me, where did this person come from?, all of my eggs when I was born, she came into existence around the time of the big bang, I don’t think you take my meaning, the captain has a philosophic eye, his trainee, the wine dark sea, the new day is always rosy fingered dawn, a mental trick to fill time and remember what happens next, Homer is not the author, a beautiful morning, the next day, once upon a time, Brothers Grimm world, When tigers smoked, bad arguments, greeks not having the colour blue, a metaphor, the sea tosses you left and right and makes you a drunkard, when you drink too much you vomit, it’s all metaphor, the effect of drinking unmixed wine, drink wine at parties, put a lot of water in it, tipsy and fall over, snoring on the couch, the host’s duty, mix the wine at the right amount, fell out of fashion, drinking as a vice, a way to make your water purer, we can’t have nice things, when gin came into the UK, blasted drunk, small beer, reading something a little bit older, a lot wiser, bible study, you need read to more than one book, don’t just listen to the one guy’s interpretation, stories from the bronze age and a little later, stories about Spider-Man and Batman, a really good character, trouble in the world, Superman, good hearted, pay your taxes, circumspect, your relationship to the good, old books making think good thoughts, out of the horror of the current thing they want you to care about, a way of engaging, be honest all the time and damn the torpedoes, a man condemned to death, I’m still gonna be me, blowing up early, fits both ways, or do anything at all, convinced by the argument, everything is shaped by what you know, don’t know what cancer is, making really scary faces, smoking causes cancer, the propaganda was, the message little Jesse received, misinformed, skin cancer, what you put into the minds of little boys, looking at it for a long time, schizophrenic, in order to make him less schizophrenic, calmed it down?, afraid of it, a little shaky, gives us a little buzz, a little speedup, largely afraid of alcohol, mothers against drunk driving ads, be a control freak about things, addictive and expensive, if you mix your wine properly, heavy marijuana users, positive effects, chill me out, medical marijuana, stop vomiting, you can sue when they spike your shit, a grow house, filters on cigarettes, a half measure, tar in cigarettes, the disease was solved by having woodsmoke in your home, peanut allergies, exactly, celiac disease, gluten intolerance, glyphosate, why you can’t have any bread, the poison they put on it, our food is contaminated, if you go to Italy, genetically modified wheat, blame autism on Tylenol, when your baby is growing inside of you, folic acid, a good diet to begin with, how did people survive without all the supplements, sold a bill of goods, what happened to consumption, name a guy who isn’t Doc Holiday or Edgar Allan Poe’s wife, the diseases get less worse, at Christmas, with this last name, alcohol drinkers, smokers, 6 uncles, drinking was dangerous, smoking was a bad idea, sailors smoke, everything is explained by looking at the backstory, abstinence from alcohol, get rid of this scourge, husbands to beat wives, cheap alcohol is a tech, fix itself by giving it enough time, China was addicted to opium, a revolution against their occupiers, fentanyl, smaller, cheap spirits were the problem, from too much gin, alcohol poisoning, nobody’s going to be talking about it in 1000 years, maybe we’re talking about, teams and brave talk, our telepathy works fine, cursing you, had faith, chose right, in 2 weeks for a Dortmunder book, space brain, Misha Burnett, Killing Time, this book is great, reading it again, so easy to read Westlake, see the hands spreading apart, audio drama, aphantasia, do you think the way I think, in dreams, see when I’m dreaming, look at the blue ocean, there is a sea, an ocean, rosy fingered dawn is just breaking over the horizon, the sea is wine dark, what colour is the sea, imagine it, good at drawing?, draw a boat, a rowboat, a dinghy, a fantastic artist, another guess, no, do you see things in dreams, the same part of your head, you don’t have conscious access, pink, the colour of wine, the darkness, its deep, hiding its contents from you, why it is evocative, Pulpcovers recorded Rogues In The House, full of colour, a very angry gorilla, takes his cape, I am the master now, monkey see monkey do, a red caped monkey, why is it a red cape?, little red riding hood, all subject to metaphor, monkey men are men who act like monkeys, what’s the difference between us and an animal, a Simak recently, The Visitors, kinda like War Of The Worlds, the invasion of the Earth by slabs from 2001, obelisks, colonizing the planet, bales of cellulose, have a fantastic day.

Travels With A Donkey

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #877 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: John Jones’s Dollar by Harry Stephen Keeler and When The World Screamed by Arthur Conan Doyle

The SFFaudio Podcast #877 – John Jones’s Dollar by Harry Stephen Keeler (29 minutes) read by Brian Dirkx for LibriVox and When The World Screamed by Arthur Conan Doyle (1 hour 2 minutes) read by Ben Tucker for Librivox, followed by a discussion. Participants in the discussion include Jesse and Scott Danielson.

Talked about on today’s show:
The Black Cat, Amazing Stories, with Amazing art, serialized in Liberty Feb 23 and March 3, in The Strand, Professor Challenger stories, The Lost World, rotundness and anger, Malone, stands tall, The Disintegration Machine, The Land Of The Mists, contact the dead?, spiritualism, finding dinosaurs, Alien Voices, Leonard Nimoy and John De Lancie, The Invisible Man, Wells and Verne, everybody knows Conan Doyle for Sherlock Holmes, a 1000 steps down, serial characters, not as popular as Sherlock Holmes, the shadow, full colour illustrated, the worst Challenger story, the premise, the story was filled with details about digging, from a weird perspective, a 10 page story, hears about someone else’s invention, he makes a bet that dinosaurs still exist, Around The World In 80 Days, he is the central character of this story, the idea is much stronger than the story, the fun part about it, The Poison Belt, a gas that’s gonna kill the planet, doomsday, delay the inevitable, oxygen cylinders delivered, his wife, an asshole to everybody except for her, she’s really nice, we have a mat and a something else, clean your boots very thoroughly, respecting his wife’s domain, survive it, they go outside and everything is dead but they’ve survived, dead people everywhere, they all were just in a coma, they’re just tall tales, the way Superman stories work, the problem with X-Files is the continuity, that should really change the world, he drills into the brain of the earth, it spouts up a geyser of stink, shakes the whole planet, these are science fiction tall tales, Conan Doyle’s odd beliefs, the fairies and the spiritualism, you hear things about people, the accepted narrative, the article about fairies, doing that for a lark, you can say things facetiously, take it out of context you can be misquoted, how Sherlock Holmes works, The Sussex Vampire, its a more mundane gothic reveal, there’s no supernatural in Sherlock Holmes, after WWI, we might have been misled on that, his biographers, people had a hate on for Orson Scott Card, never noticed him being a raging asshole, a slight difference of opinion, we’re allowed to have slightly different opinions about things, I really like roses, zinnias are much better, in the context of Houdini, Houdini vs. Conan Doyle, they were friends, debate over dinner, celebrities of the period, Lovecraft and Houdini, ghost wrote for Houdini, The Cancer Of Superstition, purchased by some collector, if it ever comes out, a big round fun character, they’re told from different perspectives, prescient, people in little squares, every zoom call, one of the students was tardy, really cool, we invest $1, destroy capitalism, the Fabian socialists win, could have been 10 minutes, a very small idea, March 21, 1988, you left 17 pounds fifty pence, hoarded it for 3 millions, you and Norweb, 180 billion pounds, April fools, Red Dwarf, a joke inspired by this story, the compound interest story, own everybody’s wealth, doubling your money, 3%, far enough into the future, what we’re told about bank, is that how your bank account works?, you go into cold sleep for 40 generations, do you expcet the money will be there just as promised, the institution, they’re managing your wealth, this fee and that fee, for the privileged, 2 stories, the first sentence or so, they’re both tall tales, told stories, how to get a job, economy and education, wait a second, the people saying it were completely wrong, something about banking, obvious, they always leave out, what is money?, working on the money theory?, is money food?, money is just what humanity has agreed is the common tender, growing the carrots, six rabbits for 1 carrot, a car, direct trade, this abstract thing, not a pound of silver in the bank of england, silver has inherent value, you think it is valuable, just like my beanie babies, a jackson pollock to play the game properly, still unbelievable, who mints the money?, we’re told, almost zero, what kind of money are we talking about, zeroes and ones, the bank, i wanna live in a home, I would like a home, you need a mortgage, they lend you some money, you have created money for them, they leave that out of the story, the reason the money supply is growing, a billion dollars, $100,000 a month for the next billion years, It’s A Wonderful Life it’s in Bill’s house and John’s house, Pottersville is the world we live in, they want to lend to Blackrock and Vanguard, you are person who rents, Blackstone, the fantasy that’s told in this story, a Fabian socialist wants to improve the world, the last sentence, had been born, a person who owns everything, we’re designed to answer the question, The Lady Or The Tiger, reading the story subversively, told the story about compound interest, a lime crush and Battlestar Galactica comics, that’s way in the future, testing children with marshmallows, that’s MK Ultra, susceptibility to being controlled, try that with a cat, with dog, the more cookies pile up, dogs are like MK Ultra humans, we tell them what’s going on, try it with a wolf, which is smarter the wolf or the dog, the border collies are the smartest dogs, we programmed them to do that, might be readable as do you actually believe this, the boy doesn’t show up for his class on time, I don’t beleive you, Siri is it true there was a power outage?, they all look the same, they all wear horn rimmed glasses, they’re all babies with glasses, worst zoom call ever, this history, the University of Terra, naive Jesse wouldn’t notice it is told the same way in Red Dwarf, the chessboard and the grain of rice, a grain of wheat, you don’t understand the power of doubling, not enough rice on the planet, this is a math fiction story, the crazy part about it, we get sold by ideas like this, this is how we get tricked, I should invest some money in my bank account, if this goes on the curve becomes vertical, the singularity, vertical is impossible, a physical impossibility, infinity, why Math is not as important as they make out, Math is not our world, we use it to describe, a whole philosophical box, self-consistent, All You Zombies, a completely self-consistent story, the unmarried mother, the bartender is the main character, telling it to make the story, how ever other person has a slice, eventually there’s no molecules of pizza left, cutting carbon atoms from the fluorine in your pizza, but you can do it with a circle, a huge impact on people, flipping through Instagram, isn’t this odd, where a hurricane is going to go, much simpler, the eclipse through math, the hurricane is complicated, how many bodies involved are involved in the hurricane, social phenomena as mathematical, handwavium that away, 1776, a line in that play, the promise of America, boomers, you could be a fairly decent fuck up as a boomer, not true for most people after, Gen Alpha, just save $100,000 by living with your parents and working at McDonald’s, those stories lead us in the wrong direction, lied to about geology, no dinosaurs in the oil, saying that for real, there are fossil plants in some coal for sure, made out of the same stuff, we are told this is a fossil fuel, an alternative theory of geology, a giant living organism, Stromboli exploding, volcanoes, out of them come a lot of carbon, carbon dioxide, the non-biological creation of rocks, the Greeks, thought or said, amber was the tears of Apollo, probably tree sap, giant tree sap out there, a biological rock, at least some coal is biologically created, diamonds are pure carbon, not made in the bellies of worms, it seems to be coming from the earth itself, life happening, life getting into every nook and cranny, where does a tree get its mass from, the mass of the tree comes from the air, when that tree falls those compounds are in the ground, deposits, natural places, plant life has gathered, now we have coal, animal life for billions of years, the decay of these animals in the earth, the wikipedia entry for petroleum, what we’re told, abiogenic petroleum, an alternative mechanism, mid-1850s, abiogenic sources have been found, the controversy is over how much exists, abiogenic petroleum exist, that’s why it is called fossil fuel, different kinds of coal and different kinds of petroleum, cars converted into woodburning, add an oven to the back of your car, designed for gasoline, we can make trees into plastic, ultimately the earth has carbon in it, magma and lava, mostly carbon, this carbon cycle we all know about, getting the earth’s pimples, the world is some kind of being, a flesh and blood being, a shelled creature, all self contained and curled up on itself, its not like it’s a guy’s brain, shaved skin, a living thing, skinned animal, an echinus, a sea urchin, how do they exist, what does it feed on?, the ether, we dismiss the ether as something fun, doesn’t exist, where we sweep all the problems, ethereal, the reason we want it, light as a particle and a wave, a rock in a lake, through the medium of the water, water has substance whereas ether doesn’t, if that were the case, how can we detect ether, that sounds fun, I’ll read that story, it solves a problem it doesn’t explain things any better, maybe we just don’t understand what we’re talking about, that’s fine, then that means all the planets also have that possibility, we’re the fleas discovering we’re on a giant dog, there’s no godliness to it, not a thing of worship, not like Mother Earth, seems like we got blood here, Big Trouble In Little China (1986), special elevator, wizard: the black blood of the earth, you mean oil?, skeptical, a really good science fiction writer, monsters in the upper air, The Horror Of The Heights, airplanes are still new, people crash, Amelia Earhart sort of thing, giant jellyfish, the upper atmosphere, a place we can’t reach, previously deepest drilling, Professor Challenger, challenging the theory, plate tectonics, magma and hotspots, good story badly told, enjoyable, zipping, how to drill, a good science fiction story, the big idea in it, off on a tangent, that’s what you do for the story, what if?, his harshest critic, the earth was hollow, the moon is hollow or not real, the Moon was a hazard to navigation, reading it subversively, Eric, Just Imagine (1930), 50 years in the future, unfrozen, wakes up in the far future of 1980, a number for a name, eugenics has made everybody better, no teeth, big heads, tiny bodies, a great improvement, how did our math equation go off, the economics of Star Trek, there’s no money in the future, what do you gamble with if you don’t have money, not even holosuite hours, Engineering Economics, how things are funded, try to learn it, how things could be different, imagine a Star Trek world, what the economics of such a world could be, the ideal thing is everybody gets what they need, access to crayons and desks, enjoy their art, a lot of hate for China, official hate, jealousy driven, they didn’t fuck it up, in the late 80s?, China went to Japan, what that doing was was opening up lots of banks and having them lend people money, their lending officers are not there to help you, to make their economy incredible, more lending officers, make every possible business happen, his own factor, let’s give him some money, really good at horsewhips, the relevant experience, you mean like old fashioned, rather than to extract value, whatever we’re doing we’re doing it wrong, disinvestments and extractions and scams, crypto tanked, I’m trying to take it okay, the way out, just another scam, bitcoin is not like that, bitcoin is math, the other ones are mathplus, the whole thing is just imaginary, enough people want it, based on nothing at all, let’s pretend there’s an earth, the easiest amount of gold, the deeper you drill, true for gold, true for bitcoin, prime numbers are a real thing and kind of unpredictable, less and less frequent but more findable, a finite amount of it, theoretically infinite, more and more scarce as you approach infinity, South African rand, British dollars, you shouldn’t buy bitcoin, you should mine gold, exactly the same as numbers are imaginary, universally checked by all the miners, a replacement for the gold standard that went away, the money doesn’t inflate, inflation is impossible, there is no extra money, in our world, banks make money out of nothing by lending money they don’t have, only theoretical when they lend it out, a real problem in our world, money in their vaults equal to their lending, theoretically why paper currency came into existence, most banks issued their own currency, you trust the bank has that in the vault, a silver dime, they took the penny out of circulation, the copper is worth more than the penny, debasement, start adding lead to the gold, where this inflation comes from, what makes a lot of people mad, told to be mad about bitcoin, the only real crypto currency, shitcoins, all pyramid schemes, backed by the math, if your trust the math as you would gold, not as something to invest in, real dollars and buy bitcoin is a way of keeping the value, a condemnation of the currency that it is fleeing, 2014 or 2011, the guy who fixed Jesse’s windshield, a bitcoin wallet, your computer is on and running cycles in the background, milibitcoin, little grain of gold, an alternative to currency, there’s no lender, banks are subsequent development to trade, pay your taxes with my face, they mint that up, the goal of bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamura might be an ai from the future, a science fiction idea, come into existence, not in any other story, the creation of a digital currency, the particular bank owns it, letters and numbers, what a happy couple, wild stuff, educated a little bit, a little more cynical, it was fun, what did you think about the tech?, the viziphone, prescient, describing zoom, a literal piece of chalk, educators, teach trades, automation in specific, practical, how do you do the things, what’s a motor, what is electricity, expertise, have done these jobs, expertise at the college, spread out further, what we do, teaching in the zero hour, before school starts, a high school teacher at every highschool, manage the classroom, we’re present while they’re doing these labs, it’s definitely working, we’ve got a formula that’s working really well, train them every summer, help people on site, experts there while the highschool students are doing the actual things, if they have a question, engineering vs. science class, something went wrong, we have to move on, the light should light up, competency based education, moving at an asynchronous pace, the person struggling gets more attention, people who breeze through stuff, a lot of 1 on 1 attention, the problem we’re trying to solve, effect more people, a lot of openings and good careers, work that creates satisfaction, your work is satisfactory to you because people are benefiting, professors doing science, a history professor, all theoretical, damn you and your stupid ideas I’m drilling!, two different approaches, Professor Challenger is a better teacher than the Professor bobblehead, checking on the one student’s story, 3214 vs. 3221, 7 years in the future, the Philip K. Dick estate, for copyright reasons, their logical, we haven’t colonized mars by 1990, they think the novelty of the story is tied up in the dates, different ideas, Godzilla Minus One (2023), representing destruction, almost a metaphor for the war itself, what happened to our country, Godzilla Vs. King Kong (2021), the shooting, the action, Kirk holding his chin while he considered whether he raped that woman as a clone or not, transference, focused on the short hair, not noticing her personality, better than a plain old saucer, the stories are the thing, Galaxy Quest (1999) had that, love it at that level, the captain’s quarters, a thread about the coffee cups, she’s a yeoman, sprayed silver to look spacey, Kirk looks at her ass, he’s holding it up to his lips, no garbage cans on the bridge, they yeoman never comes back to take the cups away, they eat them like an ice cream cone, focused on the wrong thing, get the story in there, make sure it is a good one, a lot of bathroom time, Strange New Worlds first episode, in old Star Trek they’re on the planet after the opening credits, lying in bed with his lover, Captain Kirk had sex, why is he so space horny, the point of the story, gold after gold after gold, pretty debased bro, some fun episodes, do you want fun though?, Peacemaker is fun, The Suicide Squad, fun and enjoyable, Tramp Abroad soon, 4 hours vs. 16 hours, easy going fun, take her easy.

John Jones' Dollar by Harry Stephen Keeler - The Black Cat

John Jones' Dollar by Harry Stephen Keeler - Amazing

When The World Screamed by Arthur Conan Doyle - Liberty 1928

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #863 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Messiah Of The Cylinder by Victor Rousseau

The SFFaudio Podcast #863 – The Messiah Of The Cylinder by Victor Rousseau, (8 hours 3 minutes) read by Brian Fullen for LibriVox, followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse and Will Emmons,

Talked about on today’s show:
Everybody’s Magazine, June – September 1917, a book, 2 years later The Apostle Of The Cylinder, who is the messiah?, 3 cylinders, our protagonist, a prophecy, who made the prophecy, serious problems with this book (it being good), intersting stuff in it, describing it to Eric [S. Rabkin], Brave New World, We, 1984, before those books, a response to When The Sleeper Awakes, The Sleeper Wakes, being a good book, The Marching Morons [by C.M. Kornbluth], transported into the future, finds the world different, in London, a chamber, a tube, his riff on that book, 18 years earlier, bad internet, request times out, messianic element, events happening, a tour of the place, this internet sucks, changed bands, except for us, media, a culture of lack of reading, a lot of speakers, mechanical or electric speakers transmitting ads and propaganda at all times in public places, vivisection, pushing a Christian ending, a one way response to Wells, a line in here, The World Set Free, an American magazine, set in London, set in 1917, written before WWI started, no revision in that serial publication, what part of 1917 were the czars wiped off the map, two 1917 revolutions, provisional government, old calendar, October Revolution in November, the socialist one, three months after, a strange book, it instantly gets things wrong, wrong before it starts, immediately outdated, the Russia stuff, most illiberal, the most rigid, no revolutions that stuck, terror attacks on government officials, a bulwark of stability, housing reform, if you give a mouse a cookie he’s gonna want democracy, eugenics, hate/annoyed by, what makes the book less good, future proof, in the same drawer as Brave New World, This Perfect Day, the protagonist and his romance with a lady, pining gets in the way, more of a generic story, not a science fiction magazine, a scientific romance, Wells doesn’t try to have sympathetic characters, our hero is supposed to be a good guy, duped into the tube, traits, he has no valuable traits, a rousing speech, the holy spirit takes him, The Time Machine, what do we know about the main character, wife or girlfriend, maybe he’s a time lord, meets Weena, not exactly a romance, finding the flower in his pocket, getting to the ideas, showing that sphinx, an ant on top of a pillar, innovative and responsive attack on Wells and pro-science, progress, fundamentally anti-enlightenment book, makes a list, innovative, reading an old book, what people were thinking about back then, this book is superinto eugenics as a thing, blues?, whites?, defectives and non-defectives, rewatching Rome (HBO series), Ivanhoe, brass plaques, slaves wore collars, I am the property of this person, I am a runaway slave, return me for a reward, airplane man, where’s your brass bro?, in the future people aren’t gonna be first name and last name, you’re going to be your social security number, they’re all fuckin slaves, less and more enslaved, the social movement going on in this book, the background, the years in the cylinder, by 1945, the explanation from how we got from 1914ish to 2015ish, were these real forces, if this goes on, eugenics was huge, just prior, eugenics programs, on the downlow, Christianity as a bulwark against eugenics, this force of holding back the horror, The Island Of Doctor Moreau, a horror, literally dogs barking in the vivisection chambers, live bodily into the future, we want Christianity, spiritual immortality, in tension, The Tissue Culture King by Julian Huxley, germ-plasm, lichy telepathic tissue, top-down horrible way, the priests aka the scientists running this stuff, these guys are corruptible, positive interesting stuff in it, not of the stature of Wells, still writing for girls and boys who want to fall in love, could have been really amazing, just interesting, structural problems, might not have chops, a response to Wells, the prophet, seething against Wells in this book, it is a book very much like Brave New World, what thr world building does, John Savage, the man from outside of society, from an Amish reserve, the old fashioned brutal way, no eugenics going on at all, fuck your mom, learn Shakespeare, hooked on drugs, baby making factory tour, Aldous Huxley, dystopia, a way to go, a much better book, 1984 has a romance in it, another subversion, another pulling away of the rug, escape, there’s a girl like me, she’s in the anti-sex league but is excited about sex, censorship business/hates censorship, she’s an op, carrying about her, Lazaroff, Samson, the Pole, on purpose, he’s not as good as those other guys, how programmatic it is, feelings about divorce, how divorce caused all this, a symptom, we have a choice, science priests or regular priests, not allowed to say he’s forgotten his name, takes on the title London, not corrupt, working honestly, major problem with religion, god’s existence, disprove a negative, interesting ideas in Christianity, a religion that worships power, becomes, glosses right over that, essays by Doris Lessing, pattern of medieval Christianity, totalizing regime, European history, accepting divorce, measuring people’s skulls, it used to be the province of a select few at the top, widespread, compared to what we got now, husband in the army, marriage is not the institution that it was, a Hollywood thing now, never been more expensive, life commitment expense vs. a lot of money, divorce is quick, dividing the house, if you don’t have stuff to divide, children, he’s pointing at something that’s real, liberalization of divorce laws, he’s anti-eugenics, even moreso than he is pro-Christianity, tamped down, these two laws, an ending, against socialism, mechanism for picking who the leaders are, hard to argue with him, he just tells you what it is, how this to relates to patterns in modern society, ancient Rome, a new Rome, striking, language changes, MAID, euthanasia, retiring room?, the rest cure, still bad, The Yellow Wallpaper, an insane asylum, the Doc Holiday disease, stinky smoky city, the rest cure is death, a threat, turn in your cash, other euphemisms, some of the mental defectives, some of them are the artists, an art factory, Andy Warhol, a good artist, I should put this on my wall, his Mao print, he’s terrible, a good person, a good artist, Virgil Finlay, Joseph Clement Coll, illustration, stageplay, poetry, fiction, a kind of art, visual art, sculpture, too much religious sculpture, comics are really cool, glutted on comics, what is he saying?, this is a dystopia, among other ways he’s saying it, the kind of artist in my dentist’s office, Thomas Kinkade, he’s the name associated with this style of art, he’s the factory master, make some money, way or reading it subversively, thinking about why is everything so shitty, too close to power, he’s a part of the political structure, regular proles, not his colleagues in the redaction factory, beer at the pub, don’t get involved in politics, policy changes, a new war, always at war with East Asia, Winston Smith, the only way of reading it subversively, going back to Rome, Mark Antony, Octavian, Ciero, Agrippa, characters from history, bad things happen to them, the reason all of this is happening, infighting, hidden political forces, Rome is glutted with slaves, back from Gaul, sending slaves back to the slave market in Rome, regular Romans can’t find work, discontented Rome, the populist candidate, free land, free grain, the forces against Julius Caesar, curry favour, the mob has a lot of power, automation, working on technology like ray guns, light planes, solar powered, electric planes?, cables for some things, storage for sunlight somehow, airplanes everywhere, airscouts, high class thing, airships, 1899, they look more like galleys with paddles, bird wings, a huge shift has come, automation and scientism and eugenics has radically changed the population, a lot of backstory, not super easy to follow, boring in parts, compare this to modern politics in Canada and the United States, Trump, on the side of scientism, Fauci, I am science, next booster, those people hate Trump, Brutus and Cassius and other conspirators kill Julius Caesar, the people backing him, back on team scientism, shifting alliances, don’t want to have a dictator for life, killed for the same reason people are trying to kill Trump, people they have contempt for, what’s going on in here, a trends and forces story hidden in here, my girlfriend back, decadent, the house of freedom, never been outside, Esther, girl from the second cylinder, she was into feminism, a suffragette, first wave feminism, suffragette proof cylinder, threw bombs, a disturbing force in the UK, it got rough, forced feedings, militant in the streets (not in a pussy hat way), Susan B. Anthony, very American version, dispensed with in the future, there’s nothing about it, they don’t want divorce either, largely about being equal to effect politics, his criticism of Wells, his criticism of democracy, a lot of sympathy for that, anarchy expect for these two laws, s a scientist and his beautiful daughter, guy writing cheques, over the coffee cups style dispute, love triangle, locked in a cylinder for 100 years, telegraphed, hoping it wouldn’t turn into a got a get my girl back, a pretty horrible book, very interesting, pretty terrible, points of view, needs Heinlein to step in, an old man argue with a young guy, this all happened as you know, Jim, a guy touring, people making mistakes, that’s how people were under that system, make assumptions all the time, bad writing, just bad writing, prophet terminology, fun, he’s not wrong, it’s hard to understate how important Wells is, “rules based order”, that’s not going on, a nominal, why does China exist?, by mid-1944 everything is about the United Nations, the allies, the winners of WWII, the propaganda of the term, vs. the Axis, let’s cement this, they do, China, Russia, United States, Britain, France, what the fuck did France do?, they’re represented just not by the Chinese, WTO, all sorts of systems, war is stupid, League Of Nations, that didn’t work out very well, United Nations worked out great, new boss same as a the old boss with new priests and new laws, not to benefit you and not to benefit me, Vietnam, take your complaint to the U.N., 4 out of 5 of the security council have attacked us, he is the prophet, foreseen, peace bombs, writing 2 serials at the time, got sick right before the final installments were gonna come out, released 10 years later, edited things out, make it less shitty, 4 “great novels”, War Of The Worlds, at least five more, more interesting than The Invisible Man, he’s attacking our prophet rather than being a prophet himself, vivisection bad, eugenics bad, divorce is bad, who are the people who initiate abortions, an unwanted baby, shoot some arrows, when was this, The Pre-Persons, compelling social reason, a lessening of the damage, people raising babies, bad for the cats, destabilizing, Meg-Will creature, Silverberg’s solution, trial marriage, if you let the time expire, a car you leased, the problem with marriage, for better or for worse, if Charlotte Perkins Gilman had written it, a much smarter lady, not as sharp as she was, not qualified to be a mom, Herland, unqualified, a huge commitment, hard to be in a relationship, do shit all the time, what you’re eating for dinner everyday for the rest of your life, crisis management, constant, lessens as time goes by, you can’t trap me into saying divorce is a good thing on the whole, terminate, unmitigated social good?, need to be in, a system that makes everything unstable, if you don’t move, two people have to work now instead of one, as a percentage, a lot of instability, women being in the workforce does the same thing as automation and importing a lot of slaves, breadwinner, what do we need men for?, raising babies, milk factories, other aspects of child rearing, put in daycare, the dude’s job is a support role, go to the grocery store and get some more diapers, change the diapers, through the milk, 7 or 8 or 10, the mom can go get a job then, women want to have the vote, it’s good that everybody have a vote?, provides legitimacy, upcoming election, provide that legitimacy, are they wise not to vote?, giving money, puts you on a team, the best of a bad set of choices, a multi-party system, least worst option, most don’t choose either option, even wise, a rational choice calculation, bad for everyone for a third of the population to say I will not be involved in civics, all bad, a good life decision, they’re excluded, the exclusion story, not excluded from the legitimation of the reins of power, Harvard writes a letter back, Bryan Alexander, diversity statement, not very compelling, in order to make them good they would have to lie, I’m the only black Korean, from a rooftop, we can do economic hardship, when Harvard and Yale and Princeton used to exclude Jews, so they can include you, you could pretend to be queer, they want to know what it is, Ivy League American universities, picking the elite for the government of the United States, they can’t, first of all you’re Chinese, if you were an American Chinese gay, diversity stuff, counteracted by legacy admissions, private institutions, it’s portfolio with a campus, second largest hedgefund, who’s really running the show there, I went to Harvard, I get to be president, they didn’t want him in the club, he’s not our material, right class, wrong way, not your turn, the trends and forces behind, doesn’t get human psychology correct, romance of the romance, a pretty bad movie, 55 Days At Peking (1963), 1900, foreign occupiers, boxer rebellion, semi-religious, righteous society of fists, disgruntled young men getting nationalism, a famine, incompetence, exploitation, Charlton Heston turns to David Niven, you guys think this is a good story, filmed in Spain, you couldn’t film it in China, the boxers are the bad guy, these stupid fools with no weapons, the ideology behind them, kinda like ISIS with no weapons, if you don’t have actual weapons, immune to bullets, an uprising to try and kick out people who carved China up into concessions, parts of China today, the German section, the Italian section, the Japanese, the Austrians and the Germans and the Americans are fighting together against the Chinese, years go buy, we gotta conquer this territory, China is very strong and not cut up and not divided, still the bad guy?, overthrow Grenada, Syria, the Soviets, North Korea, Vietnam a little bigger, he gets it wrong in this book, more of a romance than it is focused on an exploration of the dystopian ideas, Wells was super-wrong, Wells is not perfect, very fuckin smart, world government, corruption, how did the Roman republic end up in the Roman empire, Sulla, Crassus, Pompey, triumvirate guys, adopted dad, changes his first name, bring in a new morality, our women need to be clean, not having divorces all the time, the golden days of the Republic, he’s an emperor, less corruption, making it less corrupt, compared to what, the file is not working, rot, they’re metaphors, most people don’t think Obama was corrupt, fondly remembered, not everybody agreed, disillusioned, the question, more corrupt than previous presidents?, acting like Israel’s got stuff on him, the art of the deal and golf, the businessman’s plot, something Paul doesn’t believe happened, FDR, Smedley Butler, when JFK is assassinated, a Julius Caesar style assassination, you can’t defy us, a patsy, the official narrative, a lot of this stuff going on all the time, subject to it, check out and not be involved, like Winston Smith, a responsibility, by being who he is in that position, much better off not reading the prole feed, the party propaganda is for the party members, kinda interesting, excited, late career, writing mostly for Spicys, sex books, Space Burial, 1941, he died in 1960, a little later than Wells, February 1941, Lew Merril, firing at a tower, abgrabbing a blonde, not that different, laser guns and romance, he can’t bother with it, history of mankind, plans for how to make the world a better place, the cult of science, decimilazation of the clocks, French revolutionary, decimalzed day, a rationalization of the priestly class, rationalization of the language, phonetic, King Sejong, the backstory of Khartoum, Chinese Gordon, an American playing a British named Chinese in Africa, the central badguy was a 3 or 4 time loser to the entrance exams to the civil service, a brother to Jesus Christ, commanding Chinese forces, brother to Mohamed, the Mahdi, Sudan, I am this figure, a prophet style figure, amps up a war, speared by Mahdi forces, ironies, putting out fires, I’m the fireman but the Ray Bradbury style fireman, why are the British involved in domestic Chinese civil wars that win as many people as WWII, gotta make some money, soldiers coming back from the war, captured slaves, Pompey had 100,000 slaves, mines bro, not body slaves, high end slaves, advisors to these guys, Greek tutors in, sexual escapades, they’re like family, free em in your will, hold up the values of the Roman republic, if you believe in it, the pontiffs are all politicians, pick a random roman general, age 9, Octavian was consul at age 19, they never said the Roman republic is over, is that corruption?, an informal thing, a mom and a dad, the dad goes away, maybe he’ll come back, there’s a lot of thoughtful things in this book, children outside of wedlock, scientist and his beautiful daughter, maybe she’s also kinda ugly, wrong centimeters, the E.F. Bleiler review, WWI, also lived in Canada, early science fiction, 1922, essentially a counterblast, the point of which Rousseau obviously missed, polemics, before Sarajevo, a Prussian pole, mandelian inheritance (genetics), suspending animation, rejects his suit, clamps the lid on, 100 years later, air patrol, taken to London, ruled by a diumvirate, twice in Roman history, Boss Lempkin, ward politician, New Republic, controls eugenics, blues and white, crank craniometric tests, phrenology, pinhead baby, having a brain in there, corruption, a better rating, work quota, Sanson, the secret of immortality, the abolition of family names, they’re illegal, in Korea, the wife doesn’t change her name, whichever family has the most prestigious name, Park and Kim, the list of last names, a sharp drop-off, Anna Park, a real thing, househunting, who is Michelle Park?, a white person last name, adopted, took the family name, older books can no longer be read, reading that into it, bootleg books, thought control, listening and broadcasting devices, overheard on a speaker, secreted books, powerful secret police, repress dissent, the utopia of H.G. Wells, venerated as a great prophet, the economy is socialized, “democracy”, mob rule, liberty, disintegrators, hovers beside the building, more of a helicopter, the human race has changed to, glow and mull, ultraviolet and infrared, to return to the story, grey robes, he’s a stranger, subversive religious underground, Christianity as the underground religion, a desperate struggle with the Russians, liberty loving Christians, accused of being a Spaniard, ambivalent status, a cult of the sleeper, destroy the new Republic, a strategic struggle, a civil war, planning an uprising, due to awaken at any moment, shock!, 35 years before the others, fairly similar to The Door Into Summer by Robert A. Heinlein, marriageable age, also a time machine, a much better novel, forceful and intelligent, the chaos of the 1980s, discovered the secret of immortality, the London mob, cries out for Christianity, a Russian airfleet appears, with Russian age, Robur The Conqueror, pulp adventure, omnipresent slogans, artificial language, thought control, Rousseau’s best work, The Eye of Balamok, Edgar Rice Burroughs, strength and self doubt and strength again, The Monster Men, south pacific island creations, not worthy of the girl, the daughter of the beautiful scientist, a real man, just had amnesia, more real ideas, this one is full of stuff, which is more dystopic?, both pretty dystopic, more likely to die violently, more likely to be a freak in the other one, freak is fine, butt’s to big, two heads, part of the telepathic battery, fake religion, making people out of you, priestly class is subverted, more vividly and much shorter, probably better written, both worth reading, pretty fuckin scary, very abstract and distracted, girl hunting, pining, 2nd Mars Barsoom book, getting to the girl, a good one, Terence or Mr. Pulpcovers, explained the Catholicism to us, high church?, T.S. Elliot, rejoining of the English church with the Russian church with the Vatican, Easter in the news and Gaza, the pope said, speech calling for a ceasefire, autopen for the 88 year old pope’s speeches written by chat gpt, archbishop reads, named after the hill, Romans are so interesting, institutions we would think of as corporations, collegia, local improvement, charitable things, an official thing, a lawyer for your college, like a guild, the thieves’ guild, levels of similarity that we have with them, the language, familarity and disfamiliarity, profs and a student body, self promotion, NGOs, so analoagous, people don’t really change, humans don’t really change, their brains work the same way, modes, not having the concept of evil, they do have the concept but don’t think about it the same way, Will doesn’t use “evil” very often if at all, keeping it in reserve, what Israel is doing to the people of Gaza, experienced personally, met evil people, very shocking, some people who don’t believe in it at all, cuts to the heart of things, just interests, the glee that people have in shooting babies, demonic, the program that runs in your head, ghosts, definitely a ghost, very much a ghost, getting drowsy, don’t do anything evil.

The Messiah Of The Cylinder

The Messiah Of The Cylinder

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #861 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Recalled To Life by Robert Silverberg

The SFFaudio Podcast #861 – Recalled To Life by Robert Silverberg, (5 hours 3 minutes) read by Mark Nelson for LibriVox, followed by a discussion of both. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Will Emmons, and Tommy Patrick Ryan

Talked about on today’s show:
Philip K. Dick, June and August 1958, 1962, rewritten around 1972, big problem with this book, Robert Silverberg, pay closer attention, who was right [it was Tommy], the worst Robert Silverberg piece Jesse has ever read, not good, some stuff, terrible at points, the timeframe, a switchboard, voice-only set, telephone set, the tech, published 1958, oh dear god, this novel is a total snoozefest, there’s no interest in it, twig this subject can be fun and interesting, a really terrific short story by Jack London, A Thousand Deaths, 1899, whisked off to the south pacific, back to life, he suffers a thousand deaths, the captain is his father, the son recognizes the father, a really solid and interesting story, Herbert West, oh yeah this can be great, Herbert West: Re-Animator, fun and funny story, how come this book is so bad, Double Star, bureaucratic politics, trouble management, the U.S. party system, a weak technology story, the first way he dies is through drowning, a heart lung machine, then he poisons him, electrocutes him, dies of a heart attack, a fundamental misunderstanding of death, careful to not spend too much time on the details, injury of cessation, visible damage can’t be too extreme, phaser damage, phasers only do as much damage as the plot needs them to do, controlling the settings, what mechanism death is, the innovation, a disintegration ray, zaps his dad, a revenge story, artificial resuscitation, watch the movie, read the story, an image of H.P. Lovecraft Reanimator’s makeup kit, corpseless head in a dish, the whole joke of that story, the body is never fresh enough, killing and killing and killing, they get their revenge, a comedy of science, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, reanimation vs. immortality, he is Prometheus, creating a race of creatures that won’t age, possibly more beautiful, an assemblage of parts, what is this thing?, this book, I’m a lawyer, used to the a governor, PR man, insane powers, head of this non-profit, kidnap a man and kill him, Bryant, getting reanimated, why didn’t it go that way?, made the choice to make it worse, perspective, a cautionary tale, so many guesses about prices, $9000, predicted the future, inflation, not meant to stand the test of time, a lesser science fiction magazine, the channel selector, his last client, let’s firm up your will, an elevator operator, set in 2033, analog tv channel changing, why the senator might vote with the conservatives, no guarantee against senility, assumptions being made, a good or a bad idea, in the way of progress, moral ramifications, the narrator seemed like the author, given motivation, his daughter’s death, before the book starts, other children, about a whole bunch of things, let’s imagine that it was, Herbert West is not Bell Labs, Beller Labs, such a huge institution, the wikipedia entry for Bell Labs, dozens and dozens of laboratories, thousands of employees, Alexander Graham Bell won a prize in 1880, a prize in France, is responsible for patenting and developing lost of technologies, scandals, where a lot of tech comes from, government labs, arpa darpa, wacky scientists, Benjamin Franklin, an extraordinary talent, make himself enlightened, Herbert West doesn’t have a lab, steals other people’s labs, steals a cat, steals the dean, a response done up straight, familiar with Lovecraft, a Lovecraft rip-off, not Lovecraftian at all, Dreams In The Witch-House, he’s not a lawyer, he does no legal work, some advice, he’s a lobbyist, who they hire and fire, the CEO all of a sudden, a king, Gilgamesh, Enkidu’s buddy, some of the things that are happening rhyme with reality, boring and stupid reality, what this book is really about, how is new technology accepted by the public, propagandized right, makes it more acceptable, Tommy is older, test tube babies, cloning, moral scares about it, birth control, the pill, around 1962, that process, how do we break it to the public, whatever this thing is, invent the telephone, technology and pricing, all tech, the media, newspapers are still a huge thing in this, sat down at the dinner table, the thick New York Times, as thick as your fist, not that thick anymore, media landscape, other technologies, even if you’re Albania or North Korea, pretty incoherent, a little undercooked in the book, save lives like his daughters, needs something to do, that is not a good science fiction book, agree with all of that, the undercooked nature of it, liberals and conservatives, why there aren’t Democrats and Republicans anymore, a political realignment, almost right, or changing their names, our friend Jonathan [Weichsel], why do we have party realignments?, slavery, segregation, what’s the name of this elderly liberal senator against reanimation, Strom Thurman, suspicious names, more Roman-A-Clef than we realize, Harker, not Johnathan, elderly democratic senator, tweeted about this, the Grok thing on it, fishing, it can recognize this picture is 3 people, a huge funny interesting story, the 2020 kidnapping plot of Gretchen Whitmer, everybody in the van except for 2 people were FBI informants, a kidnapping and a governor, P. Schuyler Miller review from Analog, before isbns, 75 cents, a spinner rack at the grocery store, introductory blurb, greatest novel, Infinity in 1958, deserves the Hugo nomination, mechanico-chemical means, how this power is to be administers, passive language, the handling is what makes the book different, James Harker, of New York, trying to carry out his campaign promises, kind of true, not the focus of the book, who he is, second chance, felt forced, hired as an attorney, probe the political and religious aspects, hand is forced, a premature announcement, less than practical scientists, reanimation fails, calms down the melodrama, makes the book realistic, could have been governor, an accessory to murder, what it would have been competing with, Who? by Algris Burdrys, A Case Of Conscience by James Blish, better than this book, fairly comparable, trynna sell it, seemingly random things, the kidnapping, realistic, bring out the new iphone and there’s a leak, hurt sales, lord it over Samsung, don’t care, banal, convince him by giving him the experience, the old man who lives in the elevator operator apartment, greedy children, didn’t go to space like he did, millionaire astronaut, Neil Armstrong, a private person, Yuri Gagarin, Buzz Aldrin, in a Transformers movie, John Glenn, in Canada too, name recognition, managing the public’s perception of a tech that comes in, should be interesting and important, circling around the tech, weird science fiction fetish, why does he like it, what he wrote, The Space Merchants by Fredrik Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth, freneticism and meandering, Madison Avenue, Mad Men, reverse psychology, more K-Street, where the lobbyists control what’s going on in the senate, K-Street, a synonym for what it is, what we want is money, another seemingly random action or choice, random scientists, spring the trap, Martin Raymond, reasonable, I’m the one who signs your cheques, tip the public, a court case, wrangling back and forth, a congressional hearing, not even under oath, testify to congress, no HIPPAA, two As, 1996, a therapist, that name, convenient and on purpose, how to get what you want, he kills himself to demonstrate it, another fucking lie, while he’s in recovery, manages to wing it, an analogy for winging it for writing a book, Donald Westlake, generally entertained, Lawrence Block, writing a novel a weekend, little room somewhere near Greenwich Village, start typing away, a natural ability, you don’t need to worry, just need to get tapping, amazing, okay, how good is the idea behind the book, when the idea is excellent, well thought through ideas, how will this technology impact society, how people would react, neat idea, well executed for what it is, where the world really is, fewer issues, assumption, religious concern, makes himself Jesus at the end, human nature, the rich are going to take this over and live forever, the lich problem, a frozen go to the future book, very limiting, neurodegenerative disease, if you happened to be drowned, luckily we have somebody to fix you, you can bring old people back to life after they have a heart attack, Terry Schivo, heart lung machine, a baby in the womb, the person who you loved is dead, opinions about it, the topic of the day, how everybody dies now, decide it’s time, make it look less messy, we have this tech now, it doesn’t bring you back, corpuscles full of oxygen, lean into the lich thing, it isn’t about that astronaut, ungrateful children, have him live forever, a conclusion more morally interesting, a k-street ex politician gets involved in a cover up for a murder, why is this the book that we have, if you want to be Herbert West, not bad because of any technical mistake, told this story in an interesting way, where did he go wrong?, repetitive, missed opportunities, that’s the reality, he isn’t cool, feel bad for him that his daughter died, sure that he isn’t, damage control, I’m in on it too, part of the cover-up, saw her for the first time, swept to the side, terrible terrible, not a good guy, Gilgamesh is not a good guy, Herbert West is not a good guy, sit behind a desk, do damage control, paragraph on page 30, a doodle pad, the religious part of this book, what will the big forces of Catholicism think about this, papism in power, what the pope said was “vote for the lesser of two evils”, Vatican II, something happened, John F. Kennedy, the first and the last, Biden, how is it an insult, the influence of the Pope, in this book vs. 2025, prominent people with collars giving their opinions, archbishops, teaching chess, these two bishops, only has power if you’re in a cult, cancel you harder than anybody, divine right as kings, democracy, the power of the church was immense, political powers, consults the church, keeps it in confidence, a reversal, the church is gonna be in favour of it, random plotting shit, realistic, what kind of person do you have to be to function, not sympathetic, goes along with the murder, seems wrong, Double Star [by Robert A. Heinlein], high politics, Dave (1993) or Moon Over Parador (1988), The Prince And The Pauper, you went to an alien planet, a future you don’t understand, the insider is doing insider stuff, not a good book because it is too realistic, excuses, there will be trouble if you cross me, Mark, the money man, died of a heart attack, braindead, they get away with it, 19th century cowboy, murder this guy too, the coverup is worse than the crime, that’s a Nixon thing, the reason that’s important, Nixon was setup, the CIA couped him, a Jesse opinion, books out on it now, what is the threat, it is implied, very realistic, except this tech is bullshit, how the world works, psychological realism, right after that list, senior senator, ogre of a man, not good things, his futile attempt at political independence, do what he promised, doesn’t matter, where the old man stood privately, the nat-libs, the other two seats, 20 independents, Bernie Sanders is not really independent, who would fund them, this book is very optimistic, the New York Catholic heirarchy, the red hat, a cardinal, a good Irish name, appraisal, a successful technique for resurrecting the dead, Silverberg novels, short stories by him, spent all this time, reading Faulkner, came back as a New Wave author, memsis in literature makes it bad, a Lester Del Rey Stan, we can blame the dwarf, mimesis, Sailing To Byzantium, immortality, living beyond your death, not esoteric enough, if it was birth control, people are again it, people are in favour of it, the tech as abortion, more fraught, relatively available for rich people, the letters and letters and letters that pour in, community issues, doesn’t make for a compelling read, be charitable, didn’t technically do anything wrong, it went sorta practical, strange about the people who work for Beller Labs, the dean of Herbert West’s school probably has the same feeling about his student, mashed up Double Star and Herbert West, members of the establishment, party politics, booted and taken down by the feds, a senator dad?, South Carolina, give her this book and see what she thinks, being an insider vs. being just a regular person, an insider who was excluded, just being a lawyer, taking the empty seat of the murdered guy, the moral tipping point for the story, dies of a heart attack, mob style politics, if you cross me there’ll be trouble, a vague threat, that’s how they talk, as an NDP insider, a federal election, Bonita, provincial MLA, everybody in the party is an insider, sometimes things work out in your favour, timing, messy divorce right now, feels a lot more like mimetic fiction, real life politics, you have to play the game, what should be the strength of this book, letters pouring in should be the motivation to keep going with it, COVID discussions both directions, I can’t believe you’re not masking, all a show and all a scam, who’s right?, you shouldn’t cover up murders, a duty to report, you can’t be a party any crime, sticky wicket, he’s doing something that is wrong, covering up the murder of this guy, make the tech come out, a touchscreen iphone technology, Walter White cared about his family, he cared about building his empire, a much more compelling show, he was mad, he used to be part of a bigger corporation, they became billionaires, the cost of his family, Better Call Saul is a much better show, he could have take the money from the billionaires, in theory, when he dies they’ll be provided for, deeper and deeper, kill him again, being on the fence, this is really gonna happen, he’s rewarded in the end of the book, he’s a scumbag, is our author trying to tell us he’s not a scumbag?, The Cask Of Amontillado, a deathbed confession, you who know the nature of my soul, walled up Fortunato, murdered him 50 years before, making his confession to his catholic priest, ascend to heaven, it’s delicious, he enjoys the telling of the story, the opposite of remorse, he’s a zombie, mental function, chopped him up and buried him, remaining sympathy, a good seduction, rooting for Walter, brother in law, he’s right, well off the deep end, watches someone die, the one in the basement?, Jesse’s girlfriend, what our guy does in this story, tip her on the side, Saul only has a brother, his brother is contemptuous of him, he’s going to be a successful lawyer, we should be good friends brother, the family is there to illustrate the moral horror of what he is doing, makes the wife the bad-guy, can’t you just be reasonable, a turning back and forth, good drama, not as morally interesting as a man alone, consults his wife a little bit, his job, him wanting this technology to come into existence, weighty, not very weighty, good ideas to explore, multiverse story, very troped, very common, interesting insights, bad writing, bad characterization, the dialogue, campy and terrible, bored, over the top, dull, the writing is dull, not hard to understand, making these threats, a bunch of crap, a cool idea, socially, conceits within the story, for the good of society, Jesse is more pro-death than most people, looking to make money, not a for profit corporation, we’re not going to patent this, we all agree this is a bad book, figuring out why it is a bad book, bored, perked up, global observations, the world-building, the k-street shit, crisis management, marketing materials, politicians are usually lawyers, management of the case, a lobbyist, a legal advisor, in 2025 vs 1958, The Space Merchants is must better, plot controlled, a more fun more interesting book, the execution seems like the problem, the main character feels old, 46 is really old, 23 when this was published, doubling his age, he’s the main character, Peter S. Beagle’s A Fine And Private Place, written when he was 20, a middle aged sort of book, a middle aged man, wife and family and regrets, regrets into his new job, a nice piece, his career is over, well handled, about an insider doing k-street shit and his motivation is not made explicit enough for us to sympathize with it, undo the death of his daughter, he tries not to think about it, doing these things he does, try to make the world better, self-aggrandizing, the plot does that to him, make the technology come out, the Philip K. Dick did something really bad, changing the dates in Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, set in the 1990s, make the dates later, an artifact, 1958 money, most of the tech in here, the rockets and the airplanes, the things that have not been disrupted, the money or the dialogue, elevator operator, predicted the cellphone, Heinlein did that one, Neuromancer, payphones ringing at him, a not book written for us, if this had won a hugo, less respect for hugos, too realistic, also not realistic, done much better by Lovecraft and Jack London, dull and slow, this book is boring, this book isn’t good, but not good at the same time, interesting ideas, thoughtful, time travel, neat ideas in here, executed in a way that sucks, choosing the way he told the story, sat down at the typewriter, the huge mistake that he made, a castle on a small foundation, completely collapse, on a sentence by sentence basis, never confused, almost no emotions, not thinking about it, just acting, he drinks a lot, his little son making a little martini, the kid organizing the drinks, The Jetsons, he goes to an automat, wholly uneven tech, a book about politics in the 50s, Tom Wolfe, new laser that can make photocopying easier, those books exist, a fictionalized Blackberry, corporate espionage, all the stakes of going behind the iron curtain, semi-interesting, the stakes are stupid, anti-social shit, illegal, crime fiction, there’s this amazing show, good ideas for shows, Profit, 1996, Adrian Pasdar, well ahead of its time, edgy tv melodramas, amoral Richard III, multinational conglomerate, blackmail, bribery, extortion, breaks the fourth wall, searching the internet, research and ammunition, curled up naked in the corner, the origin story for Dexter, traumatized origin story, a little bit like American Psycho (2000), he’s just like a normal person who went to the Warden school at UPenn, socialist realism, we like it a lot more based on him being a broken character, total evil, he must succeed, jokes about it, memes, parting shots, interesting ideas, no characterization, suspension of disbelief, an important story, this is his worst book, we don’t care about anybody, resurrected by Dracula’s kiss, only 5 hours long, commute, predictable ideas, things work out for him, not sympathetic, murder-coverup situation, The Man In The High Castle, we’re told, he wrote it using a randomizer, yarrow stalks, The I Ching, most fiction shouldn’t be random, somebody’s D&D adventure novel, random encounters, the structural problem of it, kinda fun, kinda works, much better and more interesting, the structure here is deliberately bad, the mode he’s going for, a mainstream book, he really downplays a lot of the tech, the main tech is stupid, it’s true like they were saying, decades and decades before, early 20th century, zombify people, straight out of Herbert West, willing to forgive this book, a 23 year old pretending to a 46 year old, hurts his reputation, hadn’t fully blossomed yet, allowed to write bad books, improved it somehow, find some time, teaching, a class full of kids, acting!, maybe it is different in Colorado, fun to go there, Denver, really wild, construction boom, niche restaurant situations, Colorado Springs, into the mountains, easier to got to Michigan, the west, just go through Ohio, poor Bryan [Alexander], commuting, perpetually disappointed by Amtrack, it used to work, Rhode Island, a labour union one summer, up to Boston, Providence to D.C., intentionally more expensive than other forms of commuting, a monopoly and they fucked it around, natural monopoly, libertarian utopia, competitors to Greyhound, level of sketchiness, Dominican part of town, maybe they would stop, Chinatown buses, weird war, The Messiah Of The Cylinder, The Beetle Horde, 1914, The Underwater Menace, raising Atlantis by blowing it in outer space, Zaroff, The Most Dangerous Game, evil high end counts fleeing Soviet Russia, science will be the faith of human kind, 2015, the illustrations of this, a guy in a copper cylinder, the PDF Page went down, Everybody’s Magazine, a normal suit, Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, guys who died at the Alamo, weird leather clothes, a dude in a cylinder, frozen and surprised, hugging it, 1917 fashion, interior illustrations, swooning, the first installment, three cornered love affair, so convincingly, socially different in every way, to-day, you may disagree, whirled dizzily, we are sure you will follow this story, H.G. Wells’ The Sleeper Wakes, very vital, gripped by tyrannous socialism, over the coffee cups, sounds deeper than The Beetle Horde, come out Arnold, pleaded Esther, a vast mob, great illustrations, a mob pressing closely, what disconcerted me, shrewd mocking smile on each face, Joseph Clement Cole, a giant ant, the Goddess of the Temple, Bryan Fullen, seems fine, February 20th, six months from now, nice people, kind, generous, as most people would agree, I got a cold again, he’s not a faker, Vincent, fun name for a Chinese kid, Vince, evokes differently, convinced, proof of my supergenius: making a small pun, dad jokes are the best, can girls make dad jokes?, why are they called dad jokes?, a specific kind of father, not abusive drunkards, cornball nonthreatening father, an insult almost, they’re not called mom jokes, cornballism, they have to be more serious, the dad has gravitas from being a man, the way they characterize families in commercials, the woman is very competent, the man is a goofball doofus, make jokes, the butt of humour, we don’t need you but you’re there anyways, free to make whatever stupid joke, a father joke, a daddy joke, who’s your daddy?, necessarily sexual, muscle mommy joke, green muscle mommies, orc women, orc daddy, less appealing, he doesn’t need leather, take a risk, a t-shirt, a bad google predictive search history, three orc dads, my three dads, Three Men And A Baby, Bossy Orc Dad, would you rather have read, The Tissue Culture King, The Tachypomp was more fun, evil eugenicist organization, purports to teach medicine, even more in accessing what’s interesting about it, a more presentist lens, Waterspider, Poul Anderson vists the future, not bald is a problem, mattress cars, mention the existence of children, Deep Space 9, it does this turn into a 3 episode arc, a seasonal arc, solid science fiction show, passes the alien bechdel test, 2 aliens on a runabout, Quark and Odo have to climb a mountain, sell their bodies for souvenirs, carry a radio up an atmosphere, works through subspace, Odo breaks his leg, off again male romance, emergency rations, a pretty amazing thing, work on making a culture, a list of the Rules of Acquisition, only made for episodes, mentioned in episodes, there to fulfill the individual needs of the particular plot, harm your storytelling ability, the whole point of these kinds of stories is to explore ideas, consistent in lore, continuity is not the point, the opposite of memberberries, the opposite of good storytelling, the who gets a medal only matters in that particular scene, remind you of that thing you saw, the profit motive, hence the Minecraft movie, the Hungry Hungry Hippos movie, laziness, a really solid argument, what do people say when communism bad, Venezuela, iPhone, people starve, what made the iPhone good, a phone that can do that too, one less device, becoming retropopular, wifi and bluetooth, involved in your tech, not into soldering, a direct call out to Bell Labs, another way of going, call it Roosevelt institute, any sort, Edison institute, Edison is the patent troll, Benjamin Franklin, 16 brothers and sisters, 2 moms, third last, last son, a printer brother, exploded into the United States and really changed things, newspapering, politics, fire insurance, social socialism like it is now, Philadelphia, became wealthy, he didn’t create an institute, it was a Volta prize given by Napoleon III, really into science, grandpa/great uncle?, literally builds a building, making audio transmissible, metastasizes all over the United States, Nokia, thousands, a long list of things, lasers, lots of people got awards, people who faked their science to win prizes, the profit motive, I need to win this prize so I can do my science, he thought it was really cool, Poor Richard’s Almanack, the patent system, in the constitution, media mail!, article 1, patent and copyright clause, securing for limited times, one of the few things that is limited, very influential, wanted to know about it, the story of Steve Jobs is a tragedy, the biography of him, students wanted to be Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, used to give money to socialist things, an inventor, feel the vibe of what this thing was going to do, this is really cool, how could we make money from this, we can do better, really into design, a fashion guy, the aesthetic of removing buttons, more streamlined, when the apple cars it comes out it won’t have any doors, the perfect phone is a sphere, more disposable, a good salesman, a good aesthetic for it, they liked that he was successful, before COVID, fraud company, a blood test, Elizabeth Holmes, female Steve Jobs, a successful businessperson, devices and technology, Apple’s products, dishwashers, not sexy like a phone, they’re foolish, freedom and communication, that holding of it gives it the attention, one of god’s angels designing creatures for the earth, I make puppies, I make tube grubs, volcanic vents are part of god’s creation, billion dollar company, started Pixar, called him back, we don’t know what we’re doing without you, life vs. work, had a family, adopted, played some role, have it difficult, not a good model to model yourself on, Wozniak did it better, accidentally gets millionaired, a guy from high-school, just because they’re interesting, successful accidentally, fitting the right circumstance, born in Hollywood, Carrie Fisher, parents were movie stars, Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Douglas and Kirk Douglas, an ugly brother, Beau Bridges, successful not happy, a good thing for people to do, find things to do because they like them, it’s cool, this is interesting, let’s get into it, Scott Miller, the name of his podcast, the term sci-fi, it includes Star Wars, The Moth by H.G. Wells, 2 guys who are competitors in categorizing and pining moths, punished, is that a science fiction story?, the science of speciation, a mimetic story with an unreliable narrator, a psychotic protagonist, Genus Novo, Pearson’s Magazine, doesn’t feel like normal science fiction, all about the competitive that is science, people trying to prove, realistic stories, four people getting on a train to cheat on their wives and husbands, the people who are doing science, fairly close to doing fantasy, Haply the entomologist, Professor Pawkins, in a padded room, hallucination, the ghost of Pawkins, The Red Room by H.G. Wells, disprove ghosts, everything is spooky, blind, that’s spooky, many people, foreboding, even though I fired my gun at the ghost, what ghost are, ghost are in your head not in the world, talking about science, technically science fiction, fiction about science, it has those two things in it, definition, wallpaper science fiction, Tommy was pointing to the wallpaper, pricing was off, media was so important in the story, what these reporters are doing, old channels of distribution of media, how does that relate, Wells doesn’t use that term, post-Gernsback, lay the responsibility on somebody’s feet, scientifiction, sci-fi eventually if we must, definitely not sci-fi, The Tell-Tale Heart, fantasy, horror, narrow it to just a few categories, thinks there’s a ghost, a story about a psychotic person, The Man Who Could Work Miracles, Wells cares about science more than anything else, maybe girls more, Amazing, a movie or something as well, what miracles are, if I could perform a miracle, an old fashioned lamp, wandering by himself, what else is impossible, makes the tree change seasons, get rid of the evidence, hits a policeman, what are you doing, I wish you were in San Fransisco, part of the story is not shown, sent back to San Fransisco, he makes the earth stop turning, thrown into destruction, the trees and the air and the oceans and the birds in the sky, momentum and friction, to not have the power to work miracles, looking at the lamp and not saying what he was going to say, it is, physical laws, break physical laws, that’s the whole point, putting to bed the idea of ghost stories, making a point, only our material reality, in Unknown, a funny story, uses scientific laws, increasingly noting, his characters are never interesting or fun, oh my, The New Accelerator, The Island Of Doctor Moreau, evil, evil too, cat girl or something, what Wells is doing, idea fiction, what science is my boy, guys trying to fuck eachother over, a short story, an interesting turn, part of the problem with this book is the way it is told, really wants to do something and we don’t get insight into it, the idea is also broken, also real, pretty limited, Ted Chiang story, Understand, terrific, he’s the opposite of shit, clinically cold, not there for the characters, pure science fiction, not-science fiction, fantasies, as science fictiony as Wells is, The Tower Of Babel, a world with different physical laws, 2019, no audio for it, keep waiting and hoping, ISFDB.org, bring my wife back to life with your science fiction, help us Ted Chaing, 6 years and feeling dry, I think there’s nothing, retired, born 1967, looks young, younger then, went to Brown University, who’s any good, depends, too young to go, didn’t graduate from high-school, computer science, documentation for programs, sad, gotta make a living, a sad reality, using his brain on that, under capitalism he should be rich, consider ideas until a story comes out of him, the money rolled in from the movie adaptation, I’m tired, which is sad, a friend of a friend, 2023 Chiang was named, in AI, The Lifecycle Of Software Objects, ai pets, that Time list, here are the 100 best stories, read the list and judge it, Lester del Rey’s Helen O’Loy, number 2 Lester del Rey’s The Faithful, raised by people, all these thoughts, very faithful, the chimps aren’t faithful, likes to wear clothes, a story about Will, a civilized chimp, more nudist, Heinlein’s ideas of nudism, that’s crazy, dm notifications, twitter is unreliable, Alex’s gonna love this, Tex Avery style wolf pajamas, luxurious, students wear pajama bottoms, technically, flannel pants, silk pajamas, wear them around the house, a theory, the Hindi word for clothes, etymology, it should be true, persian leg, urdu, 19th century, while lunging, southeastern bottom wear, nightwear, just clothing that was soft, how connected urdu and hindi are, pjs, jammies, nightsuits, allegedly very similar, aha!, be careful what you say or write, a weakness Will has, attracted to the idea of luxurious things, cloth material, Rolls Royces, a Cadillac, decided to keep it, the idea of it, luxury cars, a pond too far, the ultimate utilitarian thing, whatever it is, technologies that don’t change after a certain point, the Volkswagen beetle, a curved windshield, not a perfect example, the jerrycan, the British coveted, a container for carrying gasoline, traditional jerrycan design, 3 handles on the top, specific shape of lid, expansion notches in the side, passing them to be filled, an evolved design, during WWI, the 747 is very old, they look identical to the ones that came out in the 1860s, the avionics, the engines haven’t changed, the placement of the cockpit hasn’t changed, stopped iterating, shoes that are really nice, a disease, insidious, not affordable, a want, try not to have those, desire leads to suffering, a Buddha thing, a Yoda thing, have and use, alpaca wool hoodies, comfort, maroon and purple, a stag pattern in white, little buttons, not very efficient, I know what you need, long sleeves, shorts and t-shirt, what people’s logos say, it has a pocket, put some coins, a pen and a notebook, a consumer, used by technology, not a creator, a software question, Adobe InDesign, laying out a zine, all by hand, microsoft word, google docs, substack, layed out the blog, broken, the PDF Page was broken, he’s working on it, the uploading program had changed permissions, a very simple tiny little error, way more common than giant crashes, forgot to tick a box, skips a line, computers are supposed to be incapable, something will load in, surreal things, the sky is full of a giant red thing, somebody’s helmet the size of the whole sky, miscalculated, checksums, not broken files, whenever there’s a break in the internet connection, rather than just skip it, theoretically the way streaming works, you’re downloading, relatively as it happens, how reality works too, a good example, Walter Kirn and Matt Taibbi talking about The Pedestrian by Ray Bradbury, Lem and Dick, positive comparisons, behind a paywall, 20 subscribers, a repeat, comments are turned off, they’re doing a livestream, your not saving the file that you’re downloading, your’re downloading it to your brain, your breaking copyright with your eyes, we’re all criminals unless you’re deaf dumb and blind and unable to use your fingers for braille, exact same path as tech, copyright, cannot be stored in an informational retrieval system, Google Books, DVDs in a DVD changer, an argument made about VCRs, a brief worry about it, kinda interesting, breaking the law, recording broadcast television, how is it allowed, we wanted the tech to be allowable generally, convenient and a good idea, an argument about it, CDs in Canada, put a levy on all recordable media, cd-rs and dvd-rs, distributed by the government, lasted for a while, lobbyists, bro, everybody wants this technology, can’t we find a way around it, a slush fund, a new power center for people, no levy on hard drives, cloud storage, not the ideal solution to it, now just basically ignore it, unless we want to do censorship, how it is connected to the book, the harsh reality, how we dealt with it before, that’s the way of the world, my boy, tie a key and tie it to a kite, fundamentally escapist, isn’t that why we don’t like it, boring, isn’t the reality of cliques and jockeying for power boring, on a sentence by sentence level, inoffensive, not interesting, interesting ideas, poorly written but interesting, competent but boring, Asimov, Cordwainer Smith, A.E. Von Vogt, a bad writer sentence, capable of writing beautiful sentences, doesn’t flow, beautiful, more traditional, backhanded complement, workmanlike, the idea shouldn’t have been explored this way, the perspective character, from the outside perspective, Heinlein’s pretty good at characters, in Silverberg’s defense, what if it is way better, audible.com, the revised version, one would think, Recalled To Life, more Robert Silverberg, Needle In A Timestack, Downward To Earth, Jesse, Paul, Terence, Jonathan, people die, people get mad, Jenny [Colvin], a comic book adaptation from France, The Golden Ass, Humanoids has a good reputation, nudity, you know they’re french, French prudes, issues and idiosyncrasies, Book Of Skulls, A Time Of Changes, Up The Line, at loose ends, a time courier, Byzantium, great great great multi great grandmother, humorous, sold on this one, sounds really good, looking into May, pretty agreeable chap, the Star Wars one, Edmond Hamilton novel, short stories by him, Margaret St. Clair said about him, some people like it, flawed stories, space opera, Weird Tales, a Campbell story, HorrorBabble, The Return Of Captain Future, his own hero pulp, a robot and a girl, why?, might also be the president, Fire Princess, Leigh Brackett, what does she see in him?, she liked the Edmond daddies, Star Patrol daddy, superhero comics, Batman and Superman, reprints, Under The Red Sun, Superman Family, backup stories or reprints, poor Edmond Hamilton, works with the president, to be the president, along with the luxury, levels of it, Roman Holiday by Arthur K. Barnes and Henry Kuttner, Mort Weisinger, Bobby Derie, the market for Weird Tales, don’t do this, a reprint, time trotter Pete Manx, two dudes in an arena, a lion bunched his muscles, scientifiction hall of fame, fantasy classics, a new permanence, a real service, devotees, all suggestions are more than welcome, whatshisname, juvenile magazine, Sam Merwin Jr., Thrilling Wonder, Oscar J. Friend, William Morrison, John D. MacDonald, bring captain future back, Analog or Asimov’s, who dis, A.E. Van Vogt, we can’t be friends, normal life, this one autism, I too like coffee, we can be friends for now, if you ever switch sides, wrong guy to be obsessed about, so good, The Weapon Shop, in the Science Fiction Hall Of Fame, this is fun, F&SF, The Hunting Of The Slan by Edgar Allan Poe, June 1849, space filler, general space filler, his column, Marginalia, the fate, gifted/accursed, very far superior, manifesting his consciousness, he can’t help but manifest, acting like he’s superior, that would be a mistake, without flaws, conscious of his superiority, coequal humans, smarter than the other, you’ll be fine, very judgeable, how to tie this knot, understands himself be superior, he can’t help it, talking about Slans, 2 sentences in, enemies at all points, widely differ, a madman, abnormal weakness on account of being abnormally string, you do and you ought, Harrison Bergeron, very generous spirit, inevitably misconceived in every direction, extremeness of intelligence, meanness in its last degree, opening a door for a lady, a kind of behavior that can be extremified, the longer your sentence the more polite it is, a three page letter, fatuity, dementia, what’s the etymology, from the French, 1548, back to our story, and so on with other virtues, extremely neat, extremely untidy, strength to weakness, virtue specific, honesty, lies are sins, we shouldn’t lie, people don’t like being told the truth, what’s your password, not a lie, dealing with it, have you ever eaten a small, depends on what you mean by small, making a joke, if not joking, lies hiding behind jokes, viewed as a liar, a deceiver, chastity, virtues of the catholic church, fortitude, faith, some meme, I don’t need it don’t need it I don’t want it, I need it, humility, take that one too far, incredibly humble, the vice of being a braggart, pride, patience, suspicious of churches, words are weapons to be used for control, get your reward in Heaven, kindness, wikipedia entry, things come out different, capital, cardinal, 7 in each, so temperate you’re a drunkard, a wanton, moderation or voluntary self restraint, be like Pan, abstinence, moderation in all things including moderation, sometimes the governor takes a vacation, very bacchanalian of you, Scrooge, very selfish, harms my family, willy nilly, puts my name on all that things, Jacob Yurovsky chair of Yale, claimed to be a philosopher, particular, Eric had one too, Walter Thurnow professor of…, basketball court or new wing of the hospital, sold the naming rights, a land acknowledgement to the lich that gave you the job, you could philosophy about counting blades of grass, sin of being a sellout, diligence, perfectionist maybe, back to the text, motives misinterpreted, a painful one indeed, for whom Mr. Poe, really sincere, not saying who, the plane of the race, traces of their existence, the good and the great, wretches who died in prison, in Bedlam or upon the gallows, Alexander the Great, is he wrong, not talking about slans, self justification, very interesting, good example, Alan Turing, his success at decrypting, tortured to death with hormone therapy, reversed, now he has been martyred, is Poe constructing an unfalsifiable theory of the incredibly intelligent, really gifted at music, the psychoward, van Gogh, Salvador Dali, why is he talking about this, The Tell-Tale Heart, a guy who thinks he is extraordinary, sharpened by the disease, not dulled by it, the gallows or Bedlam, better to get hanged, a perfect test, a careful search, The Hunting Of The Snark by Lewis Carroll, Jack London, a snarky column, The Cruise Of The Snark, LibriVox, 1876, didn’t turn out well, a great luminary, may have involved time travel, Ambrose Bierce went back in time and got, shot Lincoln then went back in time, time shock killed him, a real thing, bro., nonsense stuff, Edward Lear, make stuff up, The Owl And The Pussycat, a five pound note, oh pussy my love, what a beautiful pussy you are, too long we have tarried, the bong tree grows, his nose, dear pig, mince and slices of quince, an allusion to this, it’s meaning is derived from this poem which is nonsense, a grapefruit spoon, serrated edges, runcible restaurant, college campuses, a new theory, Ruritanaian romance, a secret subculture of Ruritanian ethnic restaurants, the principality of Runcibalia, how countries are made, why it is called that, for the meter, similar to science fiction, creates images, a really good example, he had a stone in his hand, he had a stony stone in his hand, a shape and a sharpness and a temperature, goes against it, sandy sand, stone is different than rock, what’s so cool about that, when you are constructing it is proof that there’s magic, shades of colours, bluey green, reddy blue, yellow orange, orangey yellow, only tutor ruritanaian students, very literal, poor young Jesse has to figure things out, what cats are meant to do, natural animal, lots of problems, see also, lunchcounter, meat and three, a fixed priced offering, porkchop, hush puppies, fast food item, fish restaurants, instead of fries, condiments and sides, the food your supposed to focus on, eating ketchup, this ketchup is amazing!, do you have a dish of relish for dessert, Philip K. Dick next week.

Recalled To Life by Robert Silverberg

Recalled To Life by Robert Silverberg

Recalled To Life by Robert Silverberg

Recalled To Life by Robert Silverberg

Recalled To Life by Robert Silverberg

Recalled To Life by Robert Silverberg

Posted by Jesse Willis