The SFFaudio Podcast #627 – READALONG: Don’t Panic by Neil Gaiman

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #626 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, Scott Danielson, Marissa VU, and Maissa Bessada talk about Don’t Panic by Neil Gaiman

Talked about on today’s show:
Douglas Adams, about Neil Gaiman, ten years younger?, only 8 years younger, how young Douglas Adams died or how old Neil Gaiman is, 80s vs 90s, only 49, heart attack, don’t work out, jogging is not something you should do, don’t climb rocks, just sit, have a lie down, Starcraft for 72 hours, InfoCom’s The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, InvisiClues, h2g2 site, some visual elements, a buffered analgesic, a radio show first, a novelization of the radio drama, the TV show, the novel, the radio drama, the movie, the record album, just awesome, why he was such a big hit, the graphics, Richard Dawkins and Lala Ward, Dirk Maggs, on YouTube, Hulu, the history of this book, David Dixon, M.J. Simpson, the stuff that happens in between, the plot, how storytelling works, the 1988 publication, the narrator Simon Jones, Arthur Dent, Peter Jones, the chapter titles were quieter, a cute addition, not ever being a possible romantic lead, typecast forever, he’s wearing a bathrobe right now wherever he is, he has his towel, how interesting it is as a reaction to Doctor Who, his characters are not cooperating, they’re kind of jerks, make plot happen, the opposite of Doctor Who, John Pertwee, Tom Baker, The Green Death, the environment, the plot, the reveal, colonialism, frakking, peripheral to the plot, the writing of the plots, the ideas they are exploring, he does these stunts, blows up the earth and then continues the story, my friend Maissa, Douglas Adams style of humour, the jokes are at the forefront, the funny situations, so unusual, he breaks all the rules of what writing is supposed to be in the novel form, building the train track in front of you as the train’s going, save it for the podcast, seeing where the road takes you, writing was a process of panic, living right at the very edge, Paperback Swapping, this is not for everybody, its not really for kids, its for 14 year olds, what Douglas Adams was, somehow monetize that, fulfill the contract, what job qualifications he had, sexual requests, the kind of answers characters would give, did you do any research, 100% hell no, extincting animal, everything in his life gave him his first book and his first radio series, his personality written down, crystalizing it, an exam, he would never give answers until he fully understood, he was late to deadlines, formal and real, enough wisdom to write it down, how weird the series is, so meta, a book about a book, all the firm ground we think we live on, the parallel with the destruction of his home, HOME, So Long And Thanks For All The Fish, 42 and towel, a whale is falling, the flower pot, it’s about existence, it’s about our place in the universe, our own ridiculous, Oolon Colluphid, its about philosophy, popping into existence from nothing, just brilliant, it connects in some way to life, big ideas, big questions, it makes you feel smart when you read it, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, the Ted Danson, the last adventure, a kind of a sadness, throughout the books, really sad things, lots of lonely people, Marvin, not just Fawlty Towers absurdist character humour, Last Chance To See, The Meaning Of Liff, Stephen Fry, a similar personality, an obsession with words, English Delights, Ancient Greek myths and heroes, academic, depressive, the impact of this guy, a Dirk Gently TV show, zany rather than deep, it missed the mark, an idea Asimov would work on, if it all turns out to be stupid answer at least we’ll have an elegant question, informed by Science, H.P. Lovecraft, deep time, the mice and the dolphins, it’s important, the B-Ark, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: Live in Concert, just fantastic, the Dove Audio audiobooks, the definite reader for his own stuff, sell em again, what estate he had, gadgets, so many Macs, it makes total sense, digital watches, what a ridiculous monkey descendant I am, very much of his time, no shame in it, how shameful it is, an encyclopedia, pre-dating Wikipedia, when the internet’s a thing, much more like him, Rickmansworth, Mostly Harmless, adding to that insignificance, all of human history is summed up in a galactic encyclopedia is just two words, the guide was updating itself, when Arthur Dent is trapped in the distant past of Islington, there wont be a train for 10 million years, absurdist, insulting everyone in the universe, Paul in high school, a Hitch-hiker stan, I’m partying with Vogons tonight, an instant connection, Brandon Sanderson, you’re in the group, Lois McMaster Bujold, that whole marketing and stuff thing, an ad in Rolling Stone, free books, creating the word of mouth by bootstrapping the thing that actually works, putting bums in seats on the first day, when you have something you really know works, this book is hilarious, the Wednesday night thing, The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), a 25 foot inflatable whale, marketing for book 3, we have a new book to promote, hopefully writing very rapidly, dodged another one, it lets you know, that guy whose stuff you like, Paul is a pretty connected, the most connected person in the science fiction world, a whaleogram, that same sort of weirdness, how inspired was Maissa?, a similar personality, Zaphod’s head, Last Chance To See, audio is the way to do this, what the advantages of audio are, there’s just something about it, magical world creating in audio, the listener is a participant, let the imagination fill that, activated imagination, you can’t shut your eyes to the audio, Nightfall: The Room, Fred Greenhalgh, Good Omens, on YouTube as well, who else is like this?, obsessed with the Norse gods, Gaiman is much more disciplined, structural, controlled, The Lego Movie, imagination, the multiverse of LEGO products, the reality outside, the metaness is there, movie friendly, a LEGO audio drama, Robert Sheckley, sweet and depressing stories, his main thing is philosophically exploding the possibilities of free floating in the universe, Reading, Short And Deep, Keep Your Shape by Robert Sheckley, feeling the constraints of their society, its an analogy for repressing homosexuality, freed from restriction, reality is not what it was before, Mindswap, Total Recall (1990), so zany, grounded in a philosophy of what difficulties we have as human beings, Kurt Vonnegut, who am I, what am I all here for?, oh yes this is very Adamsy, that kind of specialness is very rare, Neil Gaiman is not really about the funnies, who else is there?, Harry Harrison, The Stainless Steel Rat, endless possibilities, Jasper Fforde, Tom Holt, K.J. Parker, Terry Pratchett, A Canticle For Leibowitz, wry, arch, satirical, Philip K. Dick in Galactic Pot-Healer, what am I doing here, a bowl of Martian fatworm soup, reaching and stretching for outside, Red Dwarf is not the same thing, the characters in Red Dwarf are idiots, its amazing that it works at all, somehow he manages to bumble his way through to almost truths, standup comedy, the beast in The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe, solving a lot of the vegans problems, “my hindquarters are incredibly tender”, the problems were all faced with, we’ve been thrown down on this planet, Pilgrimage To Earth (aka Love, Incorporated) [it was copyright renewed: (In Playboy, Sept. 1956) Love, Inc. Pub. 1956-08-15; B00000608703.], mordant sense of humour, Zaphod Plays It Safe, Genghis Khan, a serious output problem, Bureaucracy, standard difficulty, very gamey, you could entries in the guide, beer, Canada, thousands of entries, this is amazing, 5 and a quarter, yo, bag of invisible space fleet, no tea, very philosophical, the same as flying, the first computer game an author wrote his own work, who wrote that Philip K. Dick game? [Blade Runner (1997)], by Robert Holmes, prominent credits, executive producer, the front and center, Sid Meier, Police Quest, King’s Quest, Betrayal At Krondor by Raymond E. Feist, Starship Titanic, PUBG, appendices, they’re still making it while you’re playing it, go to school to write videogames, aspiration, dialogue to write, Fallout, Red Dead Redemption, L.A. Noire, history to bone-up on, nobody knows the people’s names, better pay, Pillars Of Eternity, constantly pouring out new games, novels were the premiere medium in the 17th century, short stories were in the late 19th century, new BBC Radio dramas have the stupidest format, telling a story as if it were a podcast, why is that a better medium?, H.P. Lovecraft, pretending to be a podcast, they’re making the Blair Witch and putting it on TV, Douglas Adams did a metabook on radio, pan-galactic gargle blasters, he’s never done, Dirk Gently is just as good and more timeless, so of its period, more earthbound themes, so influential, so many people read it, the writers of The Next Generation are aware of the possibilities of The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, it worked out pretty good, the sauna, I don’t have to be consistent because its not really about the plot, asking questions not giving answers, parallel universes, did anyone cry?, the eulogy, blessing, it just came out of nowhere, the way he died, how cool he was, we’ve made the world worse, Jesse did not cry.

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The SFFaudio Podcast #443 – READALONG: Ubik by Philip K. Dick

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #432 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, and Marissa VU, talk about Ubik by Philip K. Dick

Talked about on today’s show:
1969, the third most popular PKD novel, not much new in here, a lot more costumes, very familiar things, a pretty good book, the top half of the bottom half, for Dick connoisseurs like us, a tonne of Philip K. Dick, the end of the most lucid stage, things are starting to slide, conapts, strange realities, mysterious forces, a relatively coherent whole (except for the last chapter), we’ve done 40 episodes on Philip K. Dick, thank you, a Ubik ad, one of the first Philip K. Dick books Marissa read, well put together, loving this crazy guy’s writing, a different appreciation, What The Dead Men Say by Philip K. Dick, Virgil Finlay illustrations, this novel contains one page of that novelette, some crossover, names and concepts, no Joe Chip, amazing illustrations, a lot fewer angry wives, “wife”, become my wife, now you’re just a girl, that scene where some guy comes by with a girlfriend for the main character, Lord Runningclam, you’re depressed you need a girlfriend, G.G. Ashwood, on coffee and cigarettes and speed, a nice big fat commission, a sad sack Dick protagonist, Galactic Pot-Healer, so many connections, who is the Glimmung in this book?, strange messages on packages, notes, Ubik is the Glimmung, a thing or a tool?, a McGuffin, a random line, “I am”, God talking (from the Bible), one of those bathroom revelations, I am alive!, Chapter 17, “before the universe was, I am,” my name is never spoken, I am called Ubik, the little bon mots at the beginning over every chapter, “only as directed”, Christ Sally!, but now – wow!, the enterphone, my apartment’s a mess, a vague memory of going shopping the night before, the conapt’s super-maket, a green ration stamp, all drugs, expensive coffee, soporific, ubiquitous throughout the novel, in our higher moments, drug induced experiences of god, Ubik as an anti-psychedelic, legit, his novel is decaying, the world is regressing, Runciter, amphetamines, delusion and paranoia, Faith Of Our Fathers by Philip K. Dick, ubik reifies reality, after the explosion on the moon who is alive and who is dead?, are they all in coldpac?, is the entire novel a false world?, the facile answer, the central attraction of the novel, managing the question, a screenplay, skillfully done, Solar Lottery, an anti-telepath, the twitching of the bottle, feeling the echoes, Eye In The Sky, Ten Little Indians by Agatha Christie, a bomb, Impostor by Philip K. Dick, the bevatron novel (Eye In The Sky), Deus Irae by Philip K. Dick and Roger Zelazny, they’re all merging into one, Time Out Of Joint, recycling, somehow it still works, all the pieces fit together, good writing, comedy, horror, The Cookie Lady, a little boy named Bubber, a retelling of Hansel and Gretel without Gretel, a bundle of rags and a tumbleweed, the sick my duck website, Chapter 16, fades, “an evening wind rustled at him”, a real feeling, super-coffee, perked up, he let his unconscious take over early in the book, the Hour 25 interview, $0.06 for every novel sold, Ubik my dear sir, Gresham’s law, Ubik The Screenplay, 1985, a digital ebook, he’s kind of like us, reinterpreting his own work, visual metaphors, being told what you’re seeing, clothing description, playing up against the retro elements, 1939 -1933, dressing like Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band members, captain’s hats, when Pat comes, she starts taking her clothes off right away, you don’t remember, hence this, her breasts wagging forward, take-off, electric yellow cummerbund, knee hugging hose, gauntlets, “Gosh Jill, I wish I knew what was wrong with me lately”, inertia inertial, tousled woolly hair, luminous gypsy, jangled taughtness, wagging a goatish beard, gold lame trousers, kelp green minty blouse, cowboy chaps, a weak nosed young man in a maxi-skirt, hippie-fashion, green and tumbled stones (for eyes), tumbled eyes, tumbling black hair, is it a mistake or something he’s coding into the book, eye-colour changes, tipped me, here’s what good is and here’s what bad is, genocide is a bad thing, increase the amount of suffering make more things that can suffer, getting eaten or crushed by a rock, it doesn’t end well for any piece of life, Fred Saberhagen’s Berserker books, kinda makes sense, H.P. Lovecraft, The Turning Wheel, life is suffering, escaping from the cycle, life is the only thing in the universe that is anti-entropic, trying to fight entropy, God is the one who created life in the mythology, hence all the suffering, the demiurge, what half of PKD novels seem to be about, a booster-strap for life itself, the sub-worlds of Runciter, the final narrator, the Gnostic interpretation of Ubik, a coin with Joe Chip’s face on it, Inception is the movie adaptation of this, The Matrix, time is frozen, coldpac and moratorium, we’ve seen that in other Dick novels, racist, Dr. Futurity?, there sitting to close together in the freezer, The Crack In Space, escaping from entropy, the fundamental grounding, the Gaurdian article: it’s squishy, there’s no firm ground, life is very problematic, the horror of entropy, never a permanent solution, the DNA breaks down, fiction, especially novels can be preserved, the preservation of the text is like the preservation of DNA, finding the earliest publication, Edgar Allan Poe’s The Valley Of Unrest, as time goes by in the publication industry people fiddle with stuff, italics, a poem is a super concentrated story, each sentence is an image, Jesse do you like pizza?, who likes pizza is the question, the question of the correct text, a novel is a fixed thing, does the font effect it?, formatting, outside of our reality, a way of preserving history, in a meta-context, he’s holding some ubik in his hand and it starts regressing, the changing context showing there’s no escape from the dread horror of entropy, we don’t want it to change anymore, constructing it on the fly, coins at the beginning, her special psychic power is to change reality in the past, some politician coming on to TV to talk about What Happened, is that really what happened?, our default is to just believe what we hear, we believe our sense, we start with believing our senses, everything is deceiving including our memories, if everyone around us in believing it, if everyone is delusional, they have to hang together, their tomb world, another TOMB WORLD!, invoking the name: Palmer Eldritch, what is an S. Dole Melipone?, he doesn’t know what he’s doing yet, the entire last chapter:

Chapter 17
I am Ubik. Before the universe was, I am. I made the suns. I made the worlds. I created the lives and the places they inhabit; I move them here, I put them there. They go as I say, they do as I tell them. I am the word and my name is never spoken, the name which no one knows. I am called Ubik, but that is not my name. I am. I shall always be.

Glen Runciter could not find the moratorium owner.

“Are you sure you don’t know where he is?” Runciter asked Miss Beason, the moratorium owner’s secretary. “It’s essential that I talk to Ella again.”

“I’ll have her brought out,” Miss Beason said. “You may use office 4-B; please wait there, Mr. Runciter; I will have your wife for you in a very short time. Try to make yourself comfortable.”

Locating office 4-B, Runciter paced about restlessly. At last a moratorium attendant appeared, wheeling in Ella’s casket on a handtruck. “Sorry to keep you waiting,” the attendant said; he began at once to set up the electronic communing mechanism, humming happily as he worked.

In short order the task was completed. The attendant checked the circuit one last time, nodded in satisfaction, then started to leave the office.

“This is for you,” Runciter said, and handed him several fifty-cent pieces which he had scrounged from his various pockets. “I appreciate the rapidity with which you accomplished the job.”

“Thank you, Mr. Runciter,” the attendant said. He glanced at the coins, then frowned. “What kind of money is this?” he said.

Runciter took a good long look at the fifty-cent pieces. He saw at once what the attendant meant; very definitely, the coins were not as they should be. Whose profile is this? he asked himself. Who’s this on all three coins? Not the right person at all. And yet he’s familiar. I know him.

And then he recognized the profile. I wonder what this means, he asked himself. Strangest thing I’ve ever seen. Most things in life eventually can be explained. But – Joe Chip on a fifty-cent piece?

It was the first Joe Chip money he had ever seen.

He had an intuition, chillingly, that if he searched his pockets, and his billfold, he would find more.

This was just the beginning.

ravelling around Runciter, Jesse casts a spell: Counter-Clock World,

“I was dreaming,” Ella said. “I saw a smoky red light, a horrible light. And yet I kept moving toward it. I couldn’t stop.”

“Yeah,” Runciter said, nodding. “The Bardo Thodol, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, tells about that. You remember reading that; the doctors made you read it when you were-” He hesitated. “Dying,” he said then.

“The smoky red light is bad, isn’t it?” Ella said.

“Yeah, you want to avoid it.” He cleared his throat. “Listen, Ella, we’ve got problems. You feel up to hearing about it? I mean, I don’t want to overtax you or anything; just say if you’re too tired or if there’s something else you want to hear about or discuss.”

“It’s so weird. I think I’ve been dreaming all this time, since you last talked to me. Is it really two years? Do you know, Glen, what I think? I think that other people who are around me – we seem to be progressively growing together. A lot of my dreams aren’t about me at all. Sometimes I’m a man and sometimes a little boy; sometimes I’m an old fat woman with varicose veins… and I’m in places I’ve never seen, doing things that make no sense.”

“Well, like they say, you’re heading for a new womb to be born out of. And that smoky red light – that’s a bad womb; you don’t want to go that way. That’s a humiliating, low sort of womb. You’re probably anticipating your next life, or whatever it is.” He felt foolish, talking like this; normally he had no theological convictions. But the half-life experience was real and it had made theologians out of all of them. “Hey,” he said, changing the subject. “Let me tell you what’s happened, what made me come here and bother you. S. Dole Melipone has dropped out of sight.”

A moment of silence, and then Ella laughed. “Who or what is an S. Dole Melipone? There can’t be any such thing.” The laugh, the unique and familiar warmth of it, made his spine tremble; he remembered that about her, even after so many years. He had not heard Ella’s laugh in over a decade.

“Maybe you’ve forgotten,” he said.

Ella said, “I haven’t forgotten; I wouldn’t forget an S. Dole Melipone. Is it like a hobbit?”

consulting the dead in order to make corporate decisions, we just drop it, what’s he visiting her for, there’s no business in this book at all, the business of being alive, an excuse to go to Switzerland and see his dead wife, step-up your TV ads, you need to send off more manuscripts, Ella, it’s a cryogenics book, it’s all bullshit, it’s just a way of avoiding death, if you’re living in a half-life, fundamentally there’s a really weird long part of the interview that’s pretty interesting, how the Soviet Union that had scientists that wanted to talk to him, from the Soviet embassy, I played dumb, classic Dick, A Scanner Darkly, he’s both the drug deal and the drug cop, he’s informing on himself, worlds inside worlds, to connect it to our reality, we only have access to the constructs of reality, What It Is Like To Be A Bat?, swapping genders, Philip K. Dick creating these characters, if you have a fixed text you can escape from your shared reality, it isn’t as squishy as regular reality, its only you who change between readings (we hope), the anomalies are the clues, that wouldn’t negate the point, after the explosion when they’re all on the Pratfall II, Glen Runciter’s POV, his transparent plastic casket,

Removing the plastic disk from its place, its firm adhesion to his ear, Glen Runciter said into the microphone, “I’ll talk to you again later.” He now set down all the communications apparatus, rose stiffly from the chair and momentarily stood facing the misty, immobile, icebound shape of Joe Chip resting within its transparent plastic casket. Upright and silent, as it would be for the rest of eternity.

Sarapis, plastic rosebuds, “A man that vital. And vitalic.”, that’s a weird error, upright, her sagacity, a wisdom not based on knowledge and experience, maybe the whole thing is in Ella’s world, the cop with little blonde pig-tails and red shoes, she’s changing characters, maybe they all fit together, the Technovelgy website, artiforg = artificial organs (also artificial and forged) = a fake fake, automatic apartment maintenance, homeopapes are Twitter feeds, high gossip vs. low gossip, physiognomic template, a tranquilizing gum, amazing technobabble:

“What is Ubik?” Joe said, wanting her to stay.

“A spray can of Ubik,” the girl answered, “is a portable negative ionizer, with a self-contained, high-voltage, low-amp unit powered by a peak-gain helium battery of 25kv. The negative ions are given a counter-clockwise spin by a radically biased acceleration chamber, which creates a centripetal tendency to them so that they cohere rather than dissipate. A negative ion field diminishes the velocity of anti-protophasons normally present in the atmosphere; as soon as their velocity falls they cease to be anti-protophasons and, under the principle of parity, no longer can unite with protophasons radiated from persons frozen in cold-pac; that is, those in half-life. The end result is that the proportion of protophasons not canceled by anti-protophasons increases, which means – for a specific time, anyhow – an increment in the net put-forth field of protophasonic activity… which the affected half-lifer experiences as greater vitality plus a lowering of the experience of low cold-pac temperatures. So you can see why regressed forms of Ubik failed to-”

Joe said reflexively, “To say ‘negative ions’ is redundant. All ions are negative.”

complete bullshit, this is how people buy products, all that babble mixed with the Amazing promises, Deepak Chopra, self-criticizing, chapter 16:

Under a streetlight he held up the spray can of Ubik, read the printing on the label.
I THINK HER NAME IS MYRA LANEY, LOOK ON REVERSE SIDE OF CONTAINER FOR ADDRESS AND PHONE NUMBER.

“Thanks,” Joe said to the spray can. We are served by organic ghosts, he thought, who, speaking and writing, pass through this our new environment. Watching, wise, physical ghosts from the full-life world, elements of which have become for us invading but agreeable splinters of a substance that pulsates like a former heart. And of all of them, he thought, thanks to Glen Runciter. In particular. The writer of instructions, labels and notes. Valuable notes.

like the Glimmung, Jesus: Don’t worry guys I’m going away for a while buyt I’ll be back!, they are Jesus for each other, the Inception situation, there’s no top level, there’s only the outside of the book, the writer is dead (Dick) but he’s in half-life becasuue we can read his book, maybe we’re all dead, Ubik is real!, Jesse’s Satoshi Nakamura theory, why graphics cards are so expensive, video cards are reality simulators, BitCoin, he’s gone dark, Satoshi Nakamura is a benevolent AI trying to fix our world, economic theory, an indefeatable unstoppable way to subvert the power of the banks, like the Glimmung, it’s not all powerful, it’s just an AI, it’s a demiurge of some-kind, kind of what Neuromancer is, the end of True Names by Vernor Vinge, Neuromancer also has a half-life in the form of a hacker on a ROM-chip (Dixie Flatline), thanks for helping me pull this heist, turn me off, a completely different kind of writer dealing with the same kind of stuff, hack to hard, episode 136, while trying to crack an AI, the lesson for Runciter, does it even matter what the status, it’s the old trick, the best trick there is, he’s always pulling the same exact move and you see it coming, getting close to book length, the swerve, curling back on itself, peak Dick, most popular Philip K. Dick books in order of popularity, Martian Time-Slip, what you’ve read of him before, Evan Lampe’s American Writers: One Hundred Pages At A Time podcast, how Philip K. Dick is always thinking about the frontier, the horror world, The Father Thing, The Simulacra, The Pentultimate Truth, the big surprise Now Wait For Last Year, Valis, the titles all flow together, the alternate titles for Ubik: Death Of An Anti-Watcher a new spin on the last chapter?, who is dead?, One theory: everybody died except for Runciter, The Half Life Of An Anti-Watcher?, a story about a dead-guy: Runciter, Runciter is the main character, the pixie-like Pat, maybe she is Ella as an older woman, there’s no answer here, who is that Ubik girl, ultimately Marissa and Jesse are figments of Paul’s imagination, this is Philip K. Dick doing Philip K. Dick.

Blackstone Audio - Ubik by Philip K. Dick

What The Dead Men Say by Philip K. Dick - illustrated by Virgil Finlay

What The Dead Men Say by Philip K. Dick - illustrated by Virgil Finlay

What The Dead Men Say by Philip K. Dick - illustrated by Virgil Finlay

What The Dead Men Say by Philip K. Dick - illustrated by Virgil Finlay

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #434 – READALONG: The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammet

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #434 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, Julie Davis and Maissa Bessada talk about The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammet

Talked about on today’s show:
Peter Lorre is not in Dracula, 1929, Black Mask, Sam Spade, The Dain Curse, 1941 movie, Star Trek: The Next Generation: “The Big Goodbye”, Mr Leech, Laurence Tierney, Cyrus Redblock, Sindey Greenstreet, Gutman, Brigid O’Shaughnessy, The Black Bird (1975), Wilmer, The Twilight Zone, Effie Perine, his mom is his secretary, watching for kicks, seeing the bird in colour, Satan Met A Lady (1936), the BBC Saturday Night Theatre adaptation, John Huston, Constantinople became Istanbul, we disagreed!, too right to fool with, we agreed!, Raymond Chandler vs. Dashiell Hammet, same genre, so heavy on description, a Pinkerton man, doing the right thing (for different reasons), hard-boiled to the core, a narrow code, moral problems, big on description and framing scenes, immersed into the world by following the words, seeing the movie in the book, seeing the power, an ‘impatient grimace’ is stage direction, text devoted to description, the opposite of a Philip K. Dick novel, what film does, the scene where Bogart leaves after pretending to be angry, that shaking hand, best screenplay adaptation, unlike Philip Marlowe, who is the homophobe? the author or the character or both or neither?, a perspective, we notice like she does, don’t blame me for being a fake, is there a homophobe?, Brigid is baiting Cairo, the one you couldn’t make, when you’re slapped you’ll take it and like it, you could make a strong case, Jesse was baiting, what Spade is doing, who is the gay man in this story, Wilmer gets the slurs, Joel Cairo, smells of gardenia, fruity, a Greek passport, speculation that Gutman is gay, a gay gang or a queer gang, genial, William Dufris’ narration of the novel, thinking for oneself, a blonde Satan, the teeth thing, a trademark, Humphrey Bogart, another kind of gay man, “the boy” “Wilmer you’re like a son to me, but sons can be replaced. There’s only one Maltese Falcon”, a really strange family, where Julie goes for her gay family information, Wesley Crusher’s mom, touching Picard, a weird family meeting in Picard’s ready room, the Klingon, Data the Pinocchio character, the characters in the holodeck story, the detective friend, all after “the item”, what makes the dynamic so awesome, the highest point in the film, “I spent 17 years looking”, let’s go to Constantinople, Peter Lorre has purpose and meaning, they invite Spade to come along, the movie makers loved, it the audience loved it, and that’s how we get Casablanca, reuniting over and over, three kinds of men, the tough cynical tough guy with a code, the sycophant (the leech), I need you stand with your hands behind your neck, every future episode, that pistol, that is why we love Joel Cairo, the Gutman Sidney Greenstreet is so dynamic, I love talking to a man who loves to talk, the palming of the $1,000 bill, I have to have my games, apologizing while insulting, the key to his relationship with Wilmer, Gutman loves manipulation, find me a character that isn’t manipulating, even Effie is manipulating, everybody is manipulating everybody, what the hell!?, a hetero sort of version of the gay team, Archer’s cheating, there’s a woman out here, she’s a spectacularly bad judge of character, everybody is cynically manipulating everybody else, even the cops are in on it, the Star Trek adaptation, sharing pickled pig feet, not with those caps, here to offer insight, Julie’s going to disagree halfway through, why does this novel work so well, as opposed to any of the other Dashiell Hammett novels, chasing a whatsit, almost identical plots: Ronin (1998), an international cast, San Fransisco, “I need a kiss”, everybody is manipulating each other, the great whatsit, the McGuffin, Mike Spillane a glowing suitcase, the room lights up and you’re face comes off, Pulp Fiction, why does this all resonate, in a world without God we do not have any purpose for existence, the price of the Maltese Falcon goes up and up and up, it could be worth an infinite amount of museum, something worth chasing after, maybe my life can regain a purpose, we get a sense of ‘oh yes, this is something can chase after’, why we love they don’t kill Gutman is they are allowed to go one along with their quest, that god shaped hole, high five, Scott! Scott!, the Flitcraft case in chapter 7, looking at it very obliquely, death is real, not the life he wants, he recreates the life he was living, the proper pronunciation of “Spokane”, what’s the point of the Flitcraft story, Spade telling a story, fleshing Spade out, how Spade wound up in San Fransisco, coming out of the mists, backstories, a ball of snow rolling down a hill, Cairo’s backstory, that’s why he’s a private detective, captured by pirates, lost in France for history, not Mr Wells’ history, a history of humanity, a micro-story,

He knew then that men died at haphazard like that, and lived only while blind chance spared them.

“It was not, primarily, the injustice of it that disturbed him: he accepted that after the first shock. What disturbed him was the discovery that in sensibly ordering his affairs, he had got out of step, not into step, with life. He said he knew before he had got twenty feet from the fallen beam that he would never know peace again until he had adjusted himself to this new glimpse of life. By the time he had eaten his luncheon, he had found his means of adjustment. Life could be ended for him at random by a falling beam: he would change his life at random by simply going away. He loved his family, he said, as much as he supposed was usual, but he knew he was leaving them adequately provided for, and his love for them was not of the sort that would make absence painful.

how perfectly fascinating, she’s always lying, Tacoma, you’re never going to change, she doesn’t get it, I’ve lied so long I don’t know how to do anything else, s specific note, a specific word, thank you for saying “fuck”, this book had censorship, the word “gunsel”, punk, a male prostitute or sex slave, projecting homophobia, a back and forth exchange, in the lobby of a hotel, “the fairy”, New York aren’t you, Baumes’ rush (the 1920s equivalent of the three strikes law), bums and hobos and gunsels, shove off, you can tell G I said so, he never brings his eyes up, he’s almost not there, shove off, performance art, that would go over big on 7th avenue, censorship, sailors, where sailors go to pick up…, to shake loose information, he’s employing homophobic language to provoke, Miskatonic.org Rara Avis (the rare bird), bulletin boards, amateur scholars, he can’t act, a Lux Theatre adaptation, Hollywood actors recreating movies as radio dramas, Edward G. Robinson as Sam Spade, a strange line, You’re the sister of the boy who stood on the burning deck, Casabianca, we don’t know how Casablanca came to be, a great classic out of a filler, a wonderful confluence of events, strange international relations, Vichy France, the Nazis, that great speech, a romantic positive speech, come around to me in 20 years, do you think either one of them loved each other?, his philandering, they’re all angels, what does love leave to them, he’s the hetero version of Cairo, sent to sleep with the Russian, a fun speech (pure bullshit), the ending of Casablanca, this could be the beginning of a beautiful…, Jesse’s independent research, the letter of transit is the Maltese Falcon, they ripped this off!, a solid but unspectacular hit, a work of genius, standing the test of time, you’re principles, she’s worth and so is the boyfriend, cipher, what does that amount to?, not a hill of beans (in this crazy world), here’s my code, I’m not playing the sap for you, low spirits, by late 1941, the cynicism, a comedy by accident, comedy, you’ll forgive me but it’s not good for me to be alone with you, poor Joel Cairo, we can give up you, it’s really striking when they replicate that relationship, Spade made a cigarette, Lauren Bacall, a kind of remake of Casablanca, To Have And Have Not, Bold Venture, Slate Shannon and Sailor Duvall and King Moses, set in Havana, playing to type, ideas vs. character, a story full of ideas – but demonstrated, Hammett leaves you to put it together, what was going on his head?, Red Harvest, even leaner, his style is amazing, he’s super-smart, he doesn’t put genius into the characters, people make movies about his life, fought in both WWI and WWII, evil mercenaries operating for giant evil corporations, Lillian Hellman, HUAC, throw a veteran of two world wars thrown in prison as “unamerican”, The Thin Man, The Adventures Of Sam Spade, talking everybody’s space away, the original Rat Pack, Errol Flynn, Eva Gardner, quite a pack, the den mother, a good to do list for anybody, she’s wise beyond her years, self-possessed, a match for any man, You Must Remember This podcast: Bogie Before Bacall, Bacall After Bogie, so 1945, asking Peter Lorre for dating advice, another really wise guy, better five good years than nothing, go for it you idiot!

Black Mask, September 1929 - The Maltese Falcon
The Maltese Falcon and Humphrey Bogart
The Maltese Falcon (Folio Society)
The Maltese Falcon meets The Call Of Cthulhu - illustration by DOUGLAS KLAUBA
The Maltese Falcon - art by Tim Foley

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #430 – READALONG: The High Crusade by Poul Anderson

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastDr. Dimension Master Of Spacetime Raising Mullah by S. Ron MarsThe SFFaudio Podcast #422 – Jesse, Scott Danielson, and Paul Weimer talk about The High Crusade by Poul Anderson

Today’s podcast is sponsored by Hotspur Publishing’s Dr. Dimension Master Of Spacetime Raising Mullah. Written by S. Ron Mars and narrated by Fred Wolinsky, this is a comedic Science Fiction audiobook available now on Audible.com

Talked about on today’s show:
A Canticle For Leibowitz, the framing, a thousand years later, the manuscript, make a universe as a playground to play in, feudal Englishman running rampant in interstellar space, appreciations, Eric Flint, David Drake, Greg Bear, rollicking, Astrid Anderson Bear, a rollicking romp of medieval mayhem, fun Catholicism, A Case Of Conscience where the conscience is a little lose, the horrible movie adaptation The High Crusade (1994), it could make a good movie, Monty Python And The Holy Grail, George Pal, no budget, no script, no director, John Rhys Davies, the trailer, a really good trailer, blue skin, Quest by Poul Anderson, this seems to be the Holy Grail, here’s a story where they tried, a little too sloppy, a gaming system, Ares, Poul Anderson wrote a ton of great stuff, paperback reprints, an upbeat ending, grim or ambiguous, a different tone, The Broken Sword, Three Hearts And Three Lions, Philip K. Dick’s Waterspider has Poul Anderson as a character, Call Me Joe by Poul Anderson, Avatar with fewer explosions, following in a line with Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court, our knowledge, awesome mistakes, no defenses, lucky Scott, fun, super-entertaining, history, a healthy respect for factual history, not technically a lie, Babel, an undercurrent of humour from charging knights to launching nukes with trebuchets, historicity, the fall of Rome, barbarians, the Roman Empire, the creation of the dark ages, their own past and their own future, fiefdoms, the church, practicality, stiff armour costumes, almost a complete retelling of what’s going on in Europe, a local chieftain, keep the system going, pastiche, we have to buy so much, rusty axes, pretty hard to buy, a light touch, undeniably well working, L. Sprague de Camp’s Krishna novels and stories, looking for princesses, green skin aliens, an Easter egg, all their conquests, the crusades, the Wersgorix, defeat the horde of Englishmen, Saracens, ripe for a fall, what made Alexander The Great so great, technical definition: a shitshow, sacking Constantinople, attacking the wrong people, loose collectives, a charitable term, mercenary motivations, the sack of Alexandria, they too the wrong turn, the Northern Crusades, the French Crusades, Baltic pagans, holy wars, Christian jihads, radical extremism combined with mercenary avarice, he must speak Latin because he’s a demon, sharp knives and tortures and laughing, it’s all fake, not being horrified, the entire town from Lincolnshire goes to liberate the Holy Land, an enjoyable romp, edible, digestible, enjoyable, nicely, lightly, briefly, reconstructing scenes, reliability, circumstances, third hand, it’s wonderful to be an Englishman, his declensions are atrocious and what he does to irregular verbs can not be mentioned in gentle company, Patricia Kennealy-Morrison, Celts in the stars, Catherine Asaro, Mayans in space, Star Trek, space Romans and space Nazis, the Traveler RPG, Traveler 3000, seeding wolves and humans, plenty of little planets, plucky humans, star empires, elves, wolves in space, building empires, dying in character creation, The High Crusade tactical board game, chits, Avalon Hill, flaws and strengths, tactics, dry ’80s-style war games, actual battles, great cover art, the idea of primitive technology defeating higher technology, Ewoks vs. the Imperial Storm Troopers, Return Of The Jedi, buckskins (Ewok skins), a comic light touch, different kinds of swords, gladius -> longsword -> rapier -> no swords, the heraldry, to learn how to run a spaceship, you don’t even know how to read to learn, ignorance, history, they’re not knowledgeable enough to think they can’t win, hand-to-hand, contrast, thrall army, fort destruction, ionic storm, heresy, playing the heresy card, history, religion, science, space battles, awesome, scenes and jokes, the workings of the physical universe, an inversion, knights with holstered ray guns, laser guns, the English learn quickly, never give up the horses, poor Ansby was left almost deserted, the loading of the ship, a Noah’s Ark story, a good idea, a lot to swallow, so much sugar, worldly goods, what happened to this village?, everybody’s gone, all the cupboards are bare, there’s a story there, “almost deserted”, I’m not getting on this thing!, other races, clever but nuts, the opening framing, a document vs. a novel, The Green Meadow by H.P. Lovecraft and Winifred Virginia Jackson, the most preposterous story ever, alien summer night, socio-technician, modern languages, creatures, thunder and blow-up, hard to believe, no rest for the wicked, impressively ancient, uncials on vellum, a prosaic typescript, home was a long way off, a mystery, pretty cute, they did well, still there, an English Empire stretching down the spiral arm, 2300 A.D., has the Holy Land yet been liberated?, a funny funny book, this book can’t really age, the alien technology of the ship feels very 1950s, their navigator is called an “astrologer”, The Enduring Chill by Flannery O’Connor, Stephen Colbert, a comedian should narrated this novel, John Cleese, the Book For The Blind, massive archives, there has never been a commercial audiobook release of The High Crusade, The Broken Sword, collections, Brain Wave, Tau Zero, Three Hearts And Three Lions, dealing with elves and trolls, Icelandic and Scandinavian myths, Lest Darkness Fall by L. Sprague de Camp, The Man Who Came Early, dark ages Iceland, Eifelheim by Michael Flynn, split time-lines, everything’s short, 180 pages, a big impressive story inside a few number of pages, packing a bigger punch, Harvest Of Stars, these science fiction writers in the 1960s and 1970s were doing idea exploration, The Broken Sword is a classic, Paul will wind up crying again, catharsis, faking us out, “these creatures”, the Owain treachery, the same thing in Quest, double jointed knees, more faithful than everybody else, a planet named Lancaster, there was hardly a peasant who hadn’t been knighted, Alexander’s generals, regional governors founding dynasties, hay stuck in his hair, very strange very funny, the promise of all series novels always offer, all the adventures happen between the page turns, Sir Roger’s cunning, the Wersgorix had no special affection for their birthplace, King John (and the Magna Carta), the rule of law vs. the rule of the word, “don’t you wish you had a plan?”, siege-craft, “when I had been picked up and dusted off”, no simpletons, to reap so rich a harvest, winning with cunning, courage and brute strength, a little pope, the younger people are not careful, Parvus means “little”, my nickname when I was a kid, a good catch, can we trust this document?, of course we have to trust it 100% because it’s cuter that way, why would it lose to anything?, another religious novel, a different kind of humour completely, a very dry humour, what else was nominated?, Rogue Moon by Algis Burdrys, Deathworld by Harry Harrison, Venus Plus X by Theodore Sturgeon, The Longest Voyage, the Tor Double, To Marry Medusa, Far-Seer by Robert J. Sawyer, mini-tyrannosaurs rex, Galileo, a telescope, his “planet”, Poul Anderson’s inspiration, making marvelous wonders, a great story to build on.

The High Crusade by Poul Anderson - illustration by H. R. Van Dongen

The High Crusade by Poul Anderson - illustration by H. R. Van Dongen

The High Crusade by Poul Anderson - illustration by H. R. Van Dongen

The High Crusade by Poul Anderson - illustration by H. R. Van Dongen

The High Crusade by Poul Anderson - illustration by H. R. Van Dongen

The High Crusade by Poul Anderson - illustration by H. R. Van Dongen

The High Crusade by Poul Anderson - illustration by H. R. Van Dongen

The High Crusade by Poul Anderson - illustration by H. R. Van Dongen

The High Crusade by Poul Anderson - illustration by H. R. Van Dongen

The High Crusade by Poul Anderson - illustration by H. R. Van Dongen

The High Crusade by Poul Anderson - illustration by H. R. Van Dongen

The High Crusade by Poul Anderson - illustration by H. R. Van Dongen

The High Crusade by Poul Anderson - illustration by H. R. Van Dongen

The High Crusade by Poul Anderson - illustration by H. R. Van Dongen

The High Crusade by Poul Anderson - illustration by H. R. Van Dongen

The High Crusade by Poul Anderson - illustration by H. R. Van Dongen

The High Crusade - illustration by Larry Elmore

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #367 – READALONG: The Prince And the Pauper by Mark Twain

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #367 – Jesse, Julie Davis, and Maissa talk about The Prince And the Pauper by Mark Twain.

Talked about on today’s show:
1881, 1882, Julie’s Mark Twain obsession, realistic fiction, children’s literature, reading with teenagers, old books teach you their vocabulary, quasi-historical fiction, Tom Sawyer, something classier, Sir Walter Scott, like Dickens-lite, sooo Dickens!, Huckleberry Finn, young people of all ages, anything public domain was marketed for children, appealing to children, sympathetic characters, lacking wry cynicism, less biting, he’s an anglophile, making points, how do we treat people, trading places, The Pickwick Papers, Nicholas Nickleby, Bleak House, the progress of an author, everybody knows the story, enters the popular culture like a fable, a meta-issue, where’s the science fiction and the fantasy?, Jesse’s thinking, The Prisoner Of Zenda, Ruritania, inspired by, precursors, an immediate classic, that Ringo (1974) movie, Carrie Fisher, that Monty Python thing, so much fun, and his talentless half brother, Vincent Price, John Ritter, chock-full of fun, The Man In The Iron Mask by Alexandre Dumas, Double Star by Robert A. Heinlein, this phenomenon, replacing the king, Citizen Of The Galaxy, the influence of Twain is in SF, Three Men In A Boat by Jerome K. Jerome, Great Expectations, David Copperfield, the Wishbone adaptation, way down into the culture, Dave (with Kevin Kline and Sigourney Weaver), Moon Over Parador with Richard Dreyfuss, in that continuum, A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court, research and divergence, footnotes, Edward, Lady Jane Gray, Star Trek: Mirror, Mirror, parrallel worlds, Freaky Friday, so many avenues, Big with Tom Hanks, swapped identity, genre defining, what it says on the tin, parody versions, The Monkees, 25 minutes of ridiculous, The Monkees a fake version of The Beatles, Twain’s Joan Of Arc book, incredibly well plotted, dreaming the life of a king, Tom is the king of Offal Court, crazy, King of the Gamecocks and King Foofoo, Miles Hendon’s story is parallel to Prince Edward’s plot, it goes really deep, Tom’s two sisters, Nan and Bess, Mary and Elizabeth, everybody gets to be king or queen for a day, queen for nine days, Mary’s short reign, Elizabeth’s long reign, a lot of pain and torture and unjust punishment and superstition, the psychological irony, every king should live by the laws of his subjects, the Blue Laws, pardonings, wise judgement, chapter 22/23, not a joke book, situational humour, doing the Robin Hood thing, the Ruffler, a beggar who refuses to beg, threatening the tinker with a soldering iron, a thief who won’t steal, putting a clime on him, a cant term for an ulcer, a slatternly woman and a diseased baby on the side of the road, an here’s the recipe, the mother daughter witches, witchcraft, the wisdom of Solomon from the mouths of babes, foolishly wise, native common sense, hath it always this dread effect?, a parallel scene, when Edward is in gaol as Tom, the crime of being Baptists, who burned?, burned at the stake, Tom had watched a procession, crisp flesh, some gruesome stuff, not a satire, straightforward historical (romanticized), Errol Flynn as Miles Hendon in the 1937 movie, the Oliver Reed movie adaptation (1977), tainted by Ringo, too heavy, Ernest Borgnine, Rachel Welch, interchangeable beauty, you monster!, he’s Errol Flynn-ing it all over the place, a heavy focus on the Miles story, Charlton Heston as Henry VIII, he was every historical male figure, all the time travelers form the 1970s movies, Miles’ brother is sent to the American colonies and becomes a politician, making it more satirical, the 1977 adaptation is very faithful to the novel, comedy, Edith, the children’s hospital, when Twain visited Europe he bought a lot of books, after his ordeal, teachings out of books, The Merchant Of Venice, reading the classics, I’ll make a classic tale, as if it has been with us forever, absolutely historical fiction and yet…, a Disney version, a timeless story, remember the humanity of the people around us, applying your humanity, anchor in reality, the kids, forgoing the crazy laws, I’m going to honor children always, meta-stuff, a short reign, the romantic relationship, she spurns Tom and marries a rich old Earl, Romeo And Juliet, twin brother from another mother, Ivanhoe, close enough, about as far away from SFF as Jesse will go, Moby Dick, Wrath Of Khan, William Shatner is the white whale, Patrick Stewart, the whipping boy, “to cheapen miracles by wasteful repetition”, he’s going places, what do you do with your time?, the Prince’s eyes flashed, speak on, we wade and swim in the canals, reality was so dreary, be careful what you wish for, the grass is always greener, delicious irony, adults child relationships, Mark Twain’s relationship with Dorothy Quick, on a trans-Atlantic crossing, a Disney movie about their relationship, Dorothy Quick was a Weird Tales poet, a New York Times obituary for March 16th, 1962:

DOROTHY QUICK, POET AND AUTHOR
Mystery Writer Dies – Was Friend of Mark Twain

Mrs. Dorothy Quick Mayer of 880 Park Avenue and East Hampton, L.I., a writer who treasured a childhood friendship with Mark Twain, died yesterday at her home here after a long illness.

Miss Quick was a girl of 11 in 1907 when she met the famous author on an Atlantic crossing. She was returning to Plainfield, N.J., from Europe with her parents, the late Mr. and Mrs. Henry Quick.

Recognizing Twain (Samuel L. Clemens) by his wavy hair and white suit, she walked around and around the deck, passing very slowly by his chair each time, until he finally came over and introduced himself.

“It was the beginning of a friendship that was to last until the very day of his death,” [1910] she recalled in 1954.

After the voyage she received a telegram from Twain asking whether she would prefer as a birthday present “one elephant or 10,000 monkeys.” She replied that she would prefer his books – which he sent her, along with a tiny white elephant.

Her memories of Mark Twain were published last year by the University of Oklahoma Press under the title “Enchantment.”

Miss Quick was married in 1925 to John Adams Mayer, who died in 1940. She continued to write under her maiden name. Her collected poems were published by the University Press, Washington. She also wrote mystery stories and contributed a weekly column for many years to newspapers in East Hampton and Riverhead, L.I.

Since 1960 Miss Quick had been honorary president of the Mark Twain Association of New York. Her other literary memberships included the P.E.N. Club, Pen and Brush, the National League of American Penwomen, the Brooklyn Poetry Circle, Women Poets of New York, and the Society of Composers, Artists and Authors.

over-sexualizing everything, Jack London and H.G. Wells, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville, Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe and Charles Dickens, a persuasive fan letter, Poe and Dickens had a private lunch, my pet raven, the end of Barnaby Rudge, a can of leaded paint, Poe had been struggling with a particular poem: The Raven, Dickens is the epitome of success, his reviews, there’s a reason why, put that in, worth a reread!

Mark Twain and Dorothy Quick

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #365 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Dunwich Horror by H.P. Lovecraft

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #365 – Jesse, Bryan Alexander, and Mr Jim Moon talk about The Dunwich Horror by H.P. Lovecraft.

Talked about on today’s show:
Weird Tales, April 1929, set in 1928, the Wikipedia entry, “one of the few tales Lovecraft wrote wherein the heroes successfully defeat the antagonistic entity or monster of the story”, the heroes were a nice family who kept to themselves, hounding the downtrodden, the story structure, the lily white mom, a virgin birth to an extraordinary son, an invisible brother, the holy trinity, it’s Jerusalem all over again, another fallen world, Dostoevsky’s The Grand Inquisitor, she’s sooo virginal, towards racism, non-human entities, deeply inset, the whole of Dunwich is inbred, more sanctified, extreme exogamy, Wilbur Whateley’s literary model, Frankenstein’s monster, yellow skin, lustrous black hair, hounded by the community, nudism is not a sin on your own land, they’re non-Christians, persecution, one of the great problems of Frankenstein, the creation of new life in a socially horrible way, for lack of a better appendage, some of the things Wizard Whateley says are troubling, Wilbur’s strangeness, reserve books, deny all access to this kid, the Call Of Cthulhu RPG is modeled on this story, Yog-Sothoth’s appearances in other stories, Through The Gates Of The Silver Key by E. Hoffman Price and H.P. Lovecraft, the opener of the way, Randolph Carter, Wilbur’s diary, the clearing off of the Earth, a lonely teenager, contempt for his mom, her albinism, somewhat deformed, gestures and hints, her unnamed son, Wilbur is dark, another step down the albinism route, The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells, the Alan Moore and Jacen Burrows Providence adaptation (issue 4), Robert Black, the Wilbur stand-in is Willard, the audio drama, family photos, the madwoman in the attic (the mad brother in the attic), dad’s always feeding him, he’s just a big kid, wonderfully atmospheric, he’s a horror writer, the normal way to read this story, weird fiction, The Colour Out Of Space, science fiction, Providence, Rhode Island, Athol, dread and horror, straight-up horror, Lovecraft and race, Lovecraft and class, poor white people are monstrous and horrific, inbred and weak, a fun Malcolm Gladwell piece, To Kill A Mockingbird demonized poor white folk, Trump-bashing, Oswald Spengler’s The Decline Of The West, have we peaked?, patronizing the poor, this is shocking, Theodore Dreiser, Jacob Reese’s How The Other Half Lives, Dracula by Bram Stoker, Degeneration: Fear Of The White Race Declining, war, we’ll all be Teddy Roosevelt and Baden-Powell, WWI, prohibition, the first U.S. propaganda committee, the end of The Shadow Over Innsmouth, rural threat, The Terrible Old Man, a cultural flip-flop, the rural folk as the other, the tipping point, urban migration, canary women in munition factories, the yeoman past, the gold doubloons, where did that money come from?, practicing alchemy?, Keanu Reeves, a ghurka knife, Dracula’s money belt, poor Wilbur, dogs wanna eat him!, dogs are mean, barking at things we cannot see, the dog as index of character, good people feed you bad people eat you, unlike the whippoorwills?, The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen, Wilbur is a little goaty, concepts and styles, the gods having union with humans and birthing the monstrous, a neuroscientist, a gibbering wreck, a trail of destruction, literal devolution, absolute corruption in human form, Helen Vaughn, a mystery story, disturbing hints, an enturely different story with entirely different tropes, a classic bad seed story, a giant monster on the loose story, a New England kaiju story, the Moodus Noises, hollow earth stories, lost race stories, Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s The Coming Race, ravines of problematic depth, Lovecraft casts a spell upon the reader, entranced by the language, landscape description, Elmore Leonard, stage-setting, the river as a serpent, oddly suggestive, feeling uneasy, the weird tale aspect, a little too round and a little too even, pulling down all the stones on all the hilltops, At The Mountains Of Madness, Dreams Of Animals, other families, the etymology of panic, somebody’s panic face, red scares, yellow perils, bank panics, the god Pan,

The word derives from antiquity and is a tribute to the ancient God, Pan. One of the many gods in the mythology of ancient Greece: Pan was the god of shepherds and of woods and pastures. The Greeks believed that he often wandered peacefully through the woods, playing a pipe, but when accidentally awakened from his noontime nap he could give a great shout that would cause flocks to stampede. From this aspect of Pan’s nature Greek authors derived the word panikon, “sudden fear,” the ultimate source of the English word: “panic”.

multiples of Pan:

Pan could be multiplied into a swarm of Pans, and even be given individual names, as in Nonnus’ Dionysiaca, where the god Pan had twelve sons that helped Dionysus in his war against the Indians.

a scapegoat, panic is the sense that everything around you is alive, 1806, a beautiful valley, a few cows, not interested in the modern economy, industry “didn’t take”, party line telephones, gossip, no phone at the Whateley farm, are they all practice hidden religions, The Horror Of The Burying Ground, a humor piece, an experimental embalmer, Herbert West: Embalmer, they’re alive!, everyone goes to their graves alive, gothic horror, comedy, set in Vermont?, Will Murray, Lovecraft’s revisions, tongue in cheek, blackly comic self-parody (almost), The Horror Of The Museum, Hazel Heald, in the 19th century everyone was afraid of premature burial, Edgar Allan Poe, a New York City echo, the different adaptations, the 2009 SciFi channel version, Jeffrey Combs, Dean Stockwell (Dr Yueh), the 1970 movie adaptation, a satanist movie, a lot of the story is in it, an anti-hero, Professor Armitage, Dennis Wheatley, cosmic horror, a beholder from Dungeons & Dragons gone berserk, a staff with a thunderbird totem, don’t go near the hills on certain nights of the year, a resentment, the degenerate side of the family, the opening credits, the love interest, the natural order, the big interpolation, an abomination, like Philip K. Dick, a source for films (mostly bad), The Resurrected, Blade Runner, Total Recall: 2070, Minority Report TV series, The Man In The High Castle TV series, the problem is there’s no real hope…, exactly the opposite of Dick’s idea, what that means for us, the medium shift (from book to movie), The Stone Tape (the BBC radio drama adaptation), checking out a book as a plot point, the Suspense radio drama adaptation of The Dunwich Horror, OTR, The War Of The Worlds, a Lovecraftian flavour, a sense of weirdness, using the whippoorwills, the Dark Adventure Radio Theatre adaptation, Wayne June is Mr Creeps, The Great God Pan, Out Of The Earth, The Thing In The Woods by Margery Williams, Ooze, an episode of Lovejoy, Ian McShane, regular uncursed artifacts, Deadwood, Dunwich On Sea (or In Sea?), a Swinburne poem, Stone Angel, The Ancient Track, Lovecraft’s description of other books in poems, a restatement of the Whateley family, Jesse reads a poem, Mr Jim Moon quotes from Zaman’s Hill, Lovecraft Country, Massachusetts and Vermont, very rural, Wizard Alexander, so articulate, glib stereotype, it would be childish to say it was indescribable…, a master of horror with a deep seated love of humour.

The Dunwich Horror by H.P. Lovecraft - illustrated by Hugh Rankin

The Dunwich Horror - illustration by Rowena Morrill

BART - The Dunwich Horror by H.P. Lovecraft

Lancer Books - The Dunwich Horror by H.P. Lovecraft

Posted by Jesse Willis