News, Reviews, and Commentary on all forms of science fiction, fantasy, and horror audio. Audiobooks, audio drama, podcasts; we discuss all of it here. Mystery, crime, and noir audio are also fair game.
Reading, Short And Deep #514
Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss The Black Godmother by John Galsworthy
Here’s a link to the story |PDF|.
The Black Godmother was first published in The English Review, February 1912.
Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!
The SFFaudio Podcast #868 – Jesse and Scott Danielson talk about Hombre by Elmore Leonard
Talked about on today’s show:
why did we pick this particular one?, wanting to read, audio stack, he’s a good writer, Justified, his influence on it, the dialogue is amazing on that show, terrific, the Paul Newman movie, the audio drama, a very good story, the better story version of it, the movie, keeps almost everything that’s in the book, no voice over narration, the viewpoint character, just a camera telling the story, the editors, the moviemakers, who the character is, a kid, a lot of his internal thoughts, what he’s interested in, his lame thoughts about things, we get to see the story more purely, on the stagecoach, differences, the innkeeper lady, a little out of sequence, the end of the movie, our guy dead, our man dead, cut, he was the one we were following, top 5 Star Trek original series, a trick, some good episodes not easily nameable, which one was that, the Gorn episode, Arena, most episodes are excellent, dogs or semi-interesting, Amok time, alphabetical order, Galileo, categorizing things alphabetically, Balance Of Terror, Shore Leave, the surprise, Theodore Sturgeon, fun and funny, fantasy humour episode, which of them is Hombre?, you’re correct, who is the Hombre in the Galileo 7, a movie called Stagecoach (1939), the movie, tribute to John Wayne, black and white cowboy, a zoomup, holding his saddle, winchester, lever action rifle, to attract the attention of the stagecoach, two important parts, Terminator 2, a cowboy spinning guns thing, big iron, the plot of that movie, a little bit similar, 9 strange people, Arizona?, Apache territory, stop to pick up the hero, pre-war, post-war western, like Hombre, a revisionist western, the old fashioned western, horses, Hopalong Cassidy, post-classical, subverts the myth, less simplistic view, the main character dies at the end, not typical, western comics, Louis L’Amour, Lonesome Dove, what is this book about, John Russell, racism, hypocrisy, Mexican characters, culturally, his haircut, it is revealed to us, let me tell you about John Russell, he had many names, ideas going on in this book, he is like an Indian if he’s not an Indian, he has a conversation, when you talk about those people, you won’t eat a dog, this isn’t about his identity, scolding people, being frustrated, why does John Russell do what he does?, very tricky, good book?, very good book, a book for men or for women, female characters, prominent, picturing the movie, the movie has overpowered the book, the wife, long history of life in the west, a strong character, the best character that’s female in the movie isn’t in the book, she’s kind of the love interest for the audience, we love her, to take your date to, the other people on the stagecoach, we like the Mexican boss, we don’t hate the kid all the time, we don’t like Doctor Faver, the girl with the Apaches, liking her in the end, why is Mr. Spock the Apache, he’s the outsider, in the Galileo 7 which character is the Mexican stagecoach driver?, it’s Leonard McCoy, he’s also kind of the women, you cold blooded inhuman, it ends differently, a television show, just redshirts, Mr Scott’s there too, providing the plot happening, we have no fuel, what about the phasers, there’s always possibilities, deep story here, an Ernest Haycox short story, the outsider there is the Ringo Kid, pretty rare, Ringo Star, a long list of Ringos, don’t know or care, wears a lot of rings?, an outlaw, he’s not an Indian, it’s not a racism story, it’s a weirder old fashioned western, not to modern tastes, where the story came from a Desilu connection, Lucille Ball, Five Came Back (1939), South America, people pointing to that, semi-legit, Flight Of The Phoenix (1965), Guy De Maupassant, Boule De Suif, Ball Of Fat, a gender flipped version of Hombre, the Prussian takeover of France around 1870, 1880, this short novel, what being a man means, almost heavyhanded in the book, a flashback, Tres Hombres, fights like three men, what’s going on in people’s heads, a stratified society, it’s about class, last stagecoach out of town, it’s snowing, cold rather than heat, complete inversion, as they go over the road, characters and personalities, a prostitute, everybody has reasons for hating her, a high end guy, that guy’s wife, two nuns, a contrast of females, society person, two ugly women, she’s fat, she’s got big boobs, very kissable, the author’s preference, very hungry, a basketful of food, munching, mouth is watering, she shares it out, only one cup, become very chummy, getting along, the we are all getting along, what you talkin bout we?, inside job, stole the ticket from the soldier, really good actor in the movie, The Rifleman, as a kid, Have Gun, Will Travel, Richard Boone, such a bastard, we hate him a lot, more compressed, no inside man in this holdup, stuck in the mud, a Prussian officer, what you’ve learned, everybody hates the Prussians, honest hatred for the Prussians, why they’re leaving, the rich people want to save their money, it comes to pass, won’t let the stagecoach goes, deliver her services, because he’s a Prussian, they all turn on her, why it would make Maupassant into a famous guy, a woman’s virtue, she’s the most virtuous one amongst them, she didn’t have to leave, she genuinely doesn’t like the Prussians, property seized, my property is my business, the most steadfast, get the money and run, she is forced to give up her principles, forced by the group to have sex with the Prussian, the structure of Hombre, two indians go into a bar to have a drink, holdup men, jostles his arm, our hero shows up, hits him in the face with the butt end of his rifle, contempt is not appreciated, doesn’t recognize him as John Russell, recognizes his voice, a parallelism, eating the dogs, they’re dirty, they pick at themselves, her husband is literally starving the Indians, took a great story and turned it, a western, not set in 1899, a transition period, the stage line, the right period, it’s in the west, Arizona, occupation and privation, she implies, the women cut her hair, I’m not going to tell you what it was like when the men had me alone, what was it like?, raping her all day long, contemptuous of her former society, captives by natives, sometimes people prefer it, Dances With Wolves (1990), learns to dance with wolves, we’re pushed in either direction, what was it like, it must have been horrible, matter of fact, possibly they weren’t as horrible as all that, we are invited to speculate but we are not told, the way a Rashomon-style story works, an awe, that’s why the title is important, what do we mean by a man, he does what a man does, you people fucked this all up, probably gonna get me killed, a let’s go try and fix this story, even the Mexican stagecoach guy we like, the capable one, he saved the water, need this guy, their only hope, the pattern works the same, thinking of their station, not every piece works perfectly, until they get hungry, three wives, a bigger version of this story, the mudwagon is much smaller, ovens for their feet, the water is the resource that needs to be watched, a little bit of warmth, food and her virtue, when you read a gender flipped story, a Conanna The Barbarian movie, female barbarian, tougher than any man, males are disposable, that’s what a man does, men are more disposable, let’s go get in a car wrecked, let’s drive carefuller, send yourself out there, that’s what this story is about, that’s what makes him a man or three men, that’s why this story works, why it is such a good story, an aspect of it, the racism, the moral certainty of these people of his character, they ask him to get out of the stagecoach, the Mexican’s reaction, just ride on top, what does it matter, don’t rock the boat, our narrator kid, a former official of the company, I’m officially fired, see that man get kicked out, he doesn’t bully, he’s not a Richard Boone bully, so good, cold dead hand, the shit bullied out of him, just takes his ticket, you called me a bad name, we’re all in this together, we we we, individualism, libertarianism, the message, this is what a man is, this is what a man is like, don’t be like these other men, or is he doing it for the girl?, the right thing to do, what it is, why does he get out of the stagecoach, argued into it, no skin off his nose, just want to have coffee, the final scene in the mining area, to try to save the girl, her whole lifestyle is funded by her husband’s graft, Indian agents, not even a real doctor, a doctor of divinity, a man’s work, preventing a woman from dying, because somebody needs to do it, none of these other people are men, kill us anyway, coulda chucked the money down, they want the water too, why it is so disturbing, in 1967, a disturbing movie, the same story as Tom Godwin’s The Cold Equations, suddenly convert phaser juice into fuel for your aircraft, gender flip it, made the pilot a female, he was going to visit his sister on Woden, we don’t think it a horror, a man killing a girl, it needs to be done, 7 people are more valuable than 1, the same setup, let’s grind em up in a meatgrinder, almost always men, opposition to women being sent into combat, via a draft, distanced from it, in the recent bombing of Iran one of the pilots was a woman, women can do it, the audio drama, only an hour long, keeps the narrator, summarize, set scenes, tricks to making audio drama work, the simplest way (not the best way), the movie does the best version, the movie is clearly the best, the book is good in some of the details, the way of the story being told, Maupassant doesn’t do it that way, third person omniscient narrator, that setup, where the book excels is in the dialogue, Fire In The Hole, they bought the character, two novels, this weird thing with his writing, he starts off for an idea for a story, he’s not really a story guy, he’s a character guy, Karen Sisco, Karen Makes Out, Out Of Sight, let me see how this character walks and talks, Carla Gugino, Pronto, Riding The Rap, Peter Falk, a paid researcher, more co-author than researcher, Tishomingo Blues, local dixie-mafia, high stakes civil war reenactors, Bounty Hunters, The Moonshine War, Swag, The Switch, City Primeval, Gold Coat, Freaky Deaky, Bandits, Get Shorty, Out Of Sight, imdb Elmore Leonard, a Tarantino movie, Three Ten To Yuma, invasion of Cuba, Teddy Roosevelt, A Coyote’s In The House, Westlake and Block, hand gestures vs. dialogue, more westerns of his, male confronting male, a good western, Be Cool, John Travolta, a tv show too, a gangster who moves to Hollywood, I really like movies, a sequel, fairly inconsistent, Block is the most consistent, I thought Elmore Leonard was awesome, a tough guy learning about civil war era underwear, a “farb”, The Rosary Murders, a very scott book, Umberto Eco, The Name Of The Rose, a Scott book, Sean Connery, a mini-series, a nod to Jorge Luis Borges, John Turturro, 8 episodes, do that book one day, a couple of weeks of prep, a short story in between, Elmore Leonard’s The Rustlers, the audiobook version, there isn’t much to say about it, it’s just good, this is Guy De Maupassant retold, Stagecoach is also Maupassant americanized, instead of switching from race to class, Airport (1970) and Airplane (1979), a train or plane full of different kinds of people who react and depend on one person, the burnt out guy from WWII has to fly the plane again, become the man, nuns who speak Jive, characters on the train, characters in a situation, The Towering Inferno (1974) is stationary, The Poseidon Adventure (1972), Hombre hits hard, a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do, listening to stupid people, we gotta fix this shit, buckle down don’t complain do it, the same essential core, everyone has to rely on John Wayne, he’s a criminal, everybody likes him, a similar thing in Assault On Precinct 13 (1976), The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, High Noon (1952), Hombre the movie is more suitable for women as well, go to the used bookstore, a western section, very small, not a lot of women poring over that section, different kind of stories for us, how to be, why it is successful, a darn good story, talking about them today, the best version of the story, Paul Newman, movie star, Cool Hand Luke time, how simple the movie is, how cheap it is, couple of weeks in the desert, couple horses, no special effects, couple of squibs, fake blood, good result, he was old, he’s the guy on the salad dressing, Barbara Stanwyck, shaking people to their core, we need to have more special effects, where’s the action in this?, a punch, a jostle, hit with the butt end of a rifle, machine guns flying, literary kinda, Lord Of Light by Roger Zelazny, not read by him?, out of print for a long time, he’s a good narrator, devoted to him Victor Bevine, Matt Godfrey, maybe it didn’t exist, all of the Amber novels, A Night In Lonesome October, why people love that book so much, the first five Amber novels, started late for public domain purposes, fantasy, sword and sorcery almost, colonizing another planet, in awe of it, world religion, Hindu gods, a Philip K. Dick novel that’s kind of similar, influence on the United States, The Divine Invasion, Linda Ronstadt, The Cosmic Puppets, Virginia, similarly oblivious, intolerant, gonna be the love interest, town drunk, too much detail, demi-gods, instead of having a spiritual journey, man’s role on earth, the nature of evil, using a different set of background assumptions, their different, born in Maryland or Virginia (near DC), he went back to the town her remembered as a child, an overlay, what if things are not as they seem, how Zelazny puts books together, smoking in Amber, self-insert, with Maupassant, he’s everyone, the moral failings of people, bizarre rationalizations, incredibly pregnant, so pregnant, the moral questioning goes in every direction, he’s really good, his novels, Bel Ami, visit the family, leave the dog, there and back long day, a movie each way, listen to an audiobook, look at the road?, book club at work, Just Stab Me Now by Jill Bearup, a spoof or a satire of a romantasy, a little meta, not-uninteresting, a very new book, Burial Rites by Hannah Kent, last person executed in Iceland, still in development, none of these covers are good, just a bunch of fonts and floors, The Haar by David Sodergren, Three Body Problem, Project Hail Mary, Artemis, how couldn’t there be?, 21 hours, Theodore Bikel, Richard Poe is good, the problems with the audiobook are the main character narrator not the actual narrator, that’s coming up, metastuff, how long he’s been workin on the book, such a nothing character, she wouldn’t take my blanket last night, prudish vs. not prudish, slaps you in the face with somebody’s boob, so important to story, Edgar Allan Poe, a western and The Galileo Seven can be the same story, back burner.
Posted by Jesse Willis
Reading, Short And Deep #513
Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss Spectator Sport by John D. MacDonald
Here’s a link to the story |PDF|.
Spectator Sport was first published in Thrilling Wonder Stories, February 1950 .
Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!
The SFFaudio Podcast #867 – The Thing On The Roof by Robert E. Howard (26 minutes) read by Connor Kaye (for Eldritch Archives) AND The Nameless City by H.P. Lovecraft (28 minutes) read by Scott Carpenter for LibriVox, followed by a discussion of both (beginning at 54 minutes). Participants in the discussion include Jesse and Alex (Pulpcovers)
Talked about on today’s show:
2 stories, both about 28 minutes to read aloud, something related to the meta-text, Unspeakable Cults, The Noseless Horror, set in England, why is it set in England, big old creepy houses, British guys, one of the stories today, set in England for no apparent reason, something about this plot, the only time H.P. Lovecraft tried to do Howard: The Quest Of Iranon, Lovecraft heavily influenced by Robert E. Howard, Lovecraft wasn’t interested, he wasn’t commercial, Howard wanted to be a full time writer, have that as your job, died at 30, Cowboy Stories, Action Stories, it’d be good to have some beans, that successful commercial voice, Lovecraft wouldn’t have accepted the editorship of Weird Tales, this is the same plot essentially, a different storytelling technique, The Hound, two lovecraftian characters, an evil art dungeon, Manly Wade Wellman?, [Hounds of Tindalos by Frank Belknap Long], black curtains, very exaggeratory, similar in tone to The Mask Of The Red Death, the plot, an amulet in a graveyard in the Netherlands, the monster in the grave comes and kills him, published twice in Weird Tales, The Fire Of Ashurbanipal, how Howard does buddy buddy, he’s Afghan in Arabia, Howard doing Howard, him doing Lovecraft, point to, teaching students how to write, Character Language Allusion Imagery and Message, nameless like the city, almost no backstory, with the Howard, British jerk, rude to his frenemies, rude to his servants, booklover archaeologist, more academic, a Fall Of The House Of Usher situation, we understand them both, the Lovecraftian scholar, he insulted me years ago, offering an apology, I’ve cleared my name on my own, runs off to South America, three month quest, the Doctor Strange movie, the warnings come after the spell, one is more homebodyish, I want treasure, Belloq and Indiana Jones, rivals, H.G. Wells and Jack London, muscular and fast, the Golden Goblin edition, riddled with typos and odd woodcuts, a parody of Lovecraft at that point, very different from other eldritch tomes, grimoires, less than 100 years old, some dude just wrote this, I studied all the weird forgotten cults then I was brutally murdered, found murdered, assembled, slit his own throat with a razor, The Black Stone is a real story, good painted cover, a purple velvet background, Robert E. Howard’s stories inspired by Lovecraft, these are really fun and interesting, basically the same length, the Lovecraft is much slower, a lot more dreamlike, artificial distinction, his dreamland stories and his cthulhu mythos stories, a guy who goes into the desert, crawls into a cave, horrible spelunking videos, head down in a spot, really horrible, in the darkness and suddenly there’s light, how detailed those murals are, conveyed all that information, he’s got timestamps, how does he convey that?, this incredible detail, a little credulous, depictions of funeral rights, a terrible accident or a war, these guys are immortal, That which is not dead, a lot of poetry in both of these, the text for The Nameless City, loose cable, the poet Justin Geoffrey, smashing babies against the Black Stone, Iram, the city of the Pillars, Sheba by Jack Higgins, a sucker for lost desert cities, lost cities are real, one in Turkey, ones in South America, ones in North America, the deep time of the Earth, an aryan mummy, of a higher race than the native indians, racial stuff, Atlanteans, they’re crocodile/alligator people, a previous species on the Earth, something very important, talking about Atlantis a lot, everything is old, no matter when you pick, all you have to do to push that number back is go out and look, not Mormons in space, the deep history of humans on the earth, there wasn’t always just stone age people, men think about the Roman Empire everyday, some of them are thinking about deep history, some scholar writing a book somewhere, Egypt is very obviously an older civilization, Honduras, Guatemala, got the wrong book, Heinrich Schliemann, cable broken again, not quite as good, finding these things, finding some ancient city in Honduras, didn’t find the inner chamber, how The Hound works, a batwinged creature, maybe that has happened many times, the hoofed thing comes and retrieves it many times, keep closing the door, the comic book adaptation, reading it this time, did you hear something?, a hoof on the roof, it’s Santa Claus!, an ox or a horse in the bushes, the final line of the story, an enormous, hoof, slimy, high pitched, a tentacle, jelly like bulk, Robert E. Howard didn’t quite make it clear, the Marvel comic book adaptation, a little frog hopping ahead of him, a separate from from the one he’s using as the key, crystal frog, a toad which hopped ahead of him, they show it, big splash page, jumping out the window to return to Honduras, interpret, a bad translation, they weren’t worshiping a frog, some god that lives forever, the mummy was its priest, the key was carved to look like a toad, a crystal toad, locked in the inner chamber is this other thing, call it toadish, an alien up there, a moon calf, carving it up like veal, try translating kimchi into english, sauerkraut, you’re gonna get something, getting it second hand, hears some horrible stuff, sees the wreckage, foul unspeakable slime, crushed and flattened, they lumber in the night, colossal wings, the meter and the rhyme, very sing-songy, alluding to something, written for this story, Justin Geoffrey is Robert E. Howard, layers and layers of literary stuff, the distancing technique, there is no medium between us and the narrator, we start right there, I’m right there, protruding uncannily, an ill made grave, as I cower in my bed, hiding under the sheets, elbows and noses, a shallow grave, this Howard thing, different segments of his poetry, The Children Of The Night, tread not where stony deserts hold, very Nameless City, why was he doing that?, is he like Tussman searching for this place?, it feels very dreamlike, there’s no evidence for it being a dream, in a style that’s dreamy, The Doom That Came To Sarnath, the city of Ib, the Nile, a confluence there, the striking change, in the darkness, suddenly he thinks he sees a light, the worlds that he sees described, they are always in light to, always light underground, promised this underground place, The Mound by Zealia Bishop (and H.P. Lovecraft), a collaboration, a mesa in Oklahoma, a headless ghost, dystopian nightmare of centaurs, a Spanish explorer, a nested scroll of what his experience was, slavery biotech, under the earth civilization, bio-tech, attached to opium drips, Xthula Of The Dusk aka The Slithering Shadow, something Howard is all about, even crocodile civilizations, down with these reptile people, some societal and environmental problems, why it is hidden from us, poetry injections, amazingly steep, Thomas More, a reservoir of darkness, moon drugs, the jetty sides as smooth as glass, the seas of death, how’s that supposed to comfort you?, what the mad poet said, couplet, comedic attraction, let’s do this, everyone warned me it was a terrible idea, my skin is coming off, sucked down into, the last 3 paragraphs, the grim brooding desert gods, what abaddon guided me back to life, monstrous colossal, when one cannot sleep, cacodaemoniacal, articulate form, the grave, strangely tongued fiends, the luminous aether of the abyss, a nightmare horde, the crawling reptiles of the Nameless City, the ghoul peopled blackness, great brazen door, how are we getting this story, hinting that he got out?, Lord Dunsany, a club story, pioneered that with a character named Jorkens, Fletcher Pratt, Gavagan’s Bar, Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon, invited Jorkens over for lunch, chased by a lion, went into a cave, how did you escape?, freak out and wreck the place, a silly joke story, the end of The Outsider, the tomb, the castle, over the landscape, the moat now a garden, why is everybody freaking out, the doorway is a mirror, I’m the monster!, now I ride the nightwinds with the ghouls, huh?, where’s the end of the story, the great brazen door, brass that’s been heated and colour distorted, Ex Oblivione, hates his life and wants to live in his dreams, in his dreams he finds a gate in a wall, how to find the key, taking more opium, get the door open, all of light, he finds himself dissolved, going to the realm of the Forms, until the time I’m placed in another vessel, the pre-heaven, reincarnation involves pain and annoyance, a low door, became dead, are we there with him?, a first person recounting of an event, he wrote it on a roll of toilet paper, Ms. Found In A Copper Cylinder, a ghoul peopled blackness, hail the rising sun, satisfied buy why?, balancing these two stories, love vs. like, prefer Thing, Howard more than Lovecraft, a sucker for the Nameless Cults, better with language, evokes so much, workaday, rushed through it, trying to sell it, the guy telling the story is fairly sane, the guy is gone, crazier more elevated language, it’s almost like The Nameless City isn’t a story, an episode of The Twilight Zone, The Fall Of The House Of Usher, a narrative from a perspective, this is all an analogy for our world, more of a Howard thing than a Lovecraft thing, The Slithering Shadow, the lady plugged into the opium, she’s watching youtube, she’s watching twitch, checked out, stagnating and dead, present asleep, it’s not like The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster, almost more of a straight horror story, one of the endings of Re-Animator, they don’t like it, a dream fully detailed out, and then I was trapped there forever, we wake up out of the story, Robert E. Howard is way more explicable and copyable, much more like a spell we go under, very dream like, what can we learn from them, learn about these places, always underground, the conquistadors missed this, natives to torture to death, the more Heinrich Schliemann approach, the Temple of Doom, keep reading the book, bro, he wants treasure, he’s genuinely interested, our guy in The Nameless City, a compulsion, he has a camel, he has some tools, he came here, lived only in myth, the explanation is zero, a potion to save his life as a disease, a character with a personality, the swooning in Robert E. Howard stories, forget about character completely, C.L.A.I.M., real poets and fake poets, the language is just amazing, like a magic spell, each sentence builds the spell, visualize what’s going on, what is the message, read the whole book, don’t go messing in old tombs, a good thing has all of this, just dealing in tropes, the pictures, when you read a poem by Howard, sense data, just look at the titles, stories full of imagery, the colour of Belit’s skin, what the dragon looks like in Red Nails, he’s largely imagery, apparently it’s great, Jabberwocky, about nothing, means nothing, vorpal sword, the sound is really important, sentence patterns, the sounds of things, names, Tussmann, a funny name for an Englishman, Herr Tussmann, makes sense, he’s bad because he’s a German, evil because he’s French, the plot, that was fun, how he cast this magic spell, mesmerized by whatever it is, almost more like poetry itself, a Clark Ashton Smithy spell, story count, bang out stories in a week or two, each of these guys, all really into poetry, they don’t get money for that, got no money, just good will, why you doin it?, they loved poetry, people talking about writing on twitter, using ai to crank out, not for the love of the game, build my brand, that fundamental love of poetry, they don’t read enough, not absorbing this text for the love of the text, I played World Of Warcraft, muscle mommy, Orc City thing, that’s something, doing this wrong, his stories to his poetry, Clark Ashton Smith second tier down, better at poetry maybe, both of these are very good, they work together really well, reading them back to back, done differently, you can see Robert E. Howard put in some work, probably took a week, a lifetime of dream-journaling, one is a story and the other is something else, Howard trying to do something a little Lovecrafty, written a decade, Lovecraft doing Lovecraft, something off about this, this is him making fun of Gothics, the pirate one, The Black Stranger, Black Vulmea’s Vengeance, the people copying Howard, I got an axe to grind, Howard doing an Agatha Christie, Howard is a great writer, so commercial, front of the mind, what are they buying, do we want adventure stories?, boxing stories, whatevers selling this month, I’ll tell you whatever story you want vs. I can’t be any other way than I am, Strange Tales, Argosy, Farnsworth Wright, The Sowers Of The Thunder, get paid $40 for it, one of his best?, is that true, top half?, not top 10, he wrote a lot, and he’s really good at it, Tevis Clyde Smith, a shorter and better story, stocked up, real literature, that sounds like a guy who’s proud of himself, July August 1931, 5 years of writing, he got better as he went along, Tamarlane as a fit subject for Oriental Stories, the best story by far that I ever wrote, judge by any standard, seemed to erudite for the general reader, correctly estimating his audience, the Seabury Quinn lovers, my audience won’t like it, too thin, also etc., no attempt at plot, usual stereotype, he could have had the story for nothing, just to see it in print, mid to late August, to Lovecraft, a berth there, yarns, thin plot and light action, formerly rejected it, in the final letter, March 1932, the roof business and the sowers stuff, quite a few praises, get it into The Souk, The Eyrie, better than everything previous?, late Robert E. Howard, Solomon Kane is before this, Kull precedes Conan, the last recurring character, El Borak, James Allison, Kull is 29, Steve Costigan, 29 and 30, everything is 29 and 30 for him, ludicrous how much he wrote, he wrote so much good stuff, The Statement Of Randolph Carter, The Tomb, when you see Tussmann do you say that’s me!, as a character, so obsessed with this, two lines and then runs off, who does that?, an insane life, skull caved in by a hoof, decaying estate, there’s no explanation, he wants the treasure, doesn’t care about his own reputation or name, the backstory is really interesting, having to had to defend himself, so random attack, the Nameless Cults thing, the fake book as a concept, the weird pirate editions of the books, making fun of Lovecraft, buy the Del Rey not the Lancers, so expurgated, allusion is a major factor, an Aesop’s Fable, no reference to Dambusters, no reference to Akira Kurosawa, the couplet that explains what the moral of it is, one and done and we’re done, the more layer of enfolding, a reminder about a story by Poe, The Oval Portrait, almost is all frame, a guy in Italy, just wounded, breaks them into a castle, food on the table still steaming, the wick is still smoking, they find the castle abandoned, turret bedroom, bandits in the original, surrounded in this round room with paintings, armorial trophies, beside him on the pillow is a book that tells you all about the paintings, a build up for the internal story, a painter who painted a woman to death, drawing the spirit out of her body and putting it in her into the canvas, sets up and ends, why lately abandoned, a rich deep interesting story about art, he talks about being wounded, Tussmann’s eyes blazed, shot in the foot, how did that happen?, sealed up chamber, the opposite of our unnamed narrator, purely by chance, a similar sort of setup, it just so happen, it’s a meta-story, the framing making the layering more interesting, no framing at all, comes to us somehow, storytelling, start as far as possible into the story, cut out all the build up, start with action, Basil Exposition come out to explain some plot point, Constantine (2005) with Keanu Reeves, you have to roll with it, not like Blade III, a tv show out of it, at no point does it slow down for the audience, buckle in, why it doesn’t resonate with a lot of people, Robert E. Howard is very good at knowing what the audience wants, force of nature vs. innate skill and temperament for it, doing it for money, Re-Animator and Lurking Fear, let’s get Hour Of The Dragon scheduled, going to the beach again, the Outer Banks of North Carolina, not on for Hombre by Elmore Leonard, The Assassination Bureau, Ltd. by Jack London, Lord Of Light by Roger Zelazny, nominated for a Nebula, really short stories, The Horses Of Lir, a little later, a movie.
Posted by Jesse Willis
Reading, Short And Deep #512
Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss The Inn Of The Two Adventurers by Lord Dunsany
Here’s a link to the story |PDF|.
The Inn Of The Two Adventurers was first published in Maclean’s, March 2, 1957.
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The SFFaudio Podcast #866 – Detour by Martin M. Goldsmith, (4 hours 8 minutes) read by Ben Tucker for LibriVox, followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse and Alex (Pulpcovers)
Talked about on today’s show:
1939, only four novels, the movie, the movies, the 1945 one, an incredibly close recreation, everything with sue, identical lines, cut out, just over an hour, the car is a different car, set after the war, a prewar car, a 1941 car, war production cars, a whole history of wartime industrial policy, all civilian production, consumer goods, more volume, keep the people at home happy, not as many cars, models from 1943, the car is described, a gray buick with a rumble seat, ’36, set a year before it came out, “the rumble”, really good read, had to stop listening, so good, bang this out, at a swim meet, 7:30, done by 9, there’s no drag, no ending, the first two thirds of a really good book, the tweet, holding something, suddenly stopped, something happens in the book, save the rest, think about this for a book, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity, 99 pages, judging for hugos or edgars, novella, the kind of book, addicted to paperbacks, I’m off the bus, what a great book, how come all books aren’t like this, noir gut punch, it’s dark, there was a point in the book, Vera gets the car, where’d you put the body, what do you say to that, in their conversation, is this a surreal novel, is she gonna kill him and continue down the road, endless highway to Los Angeles, a Twilight Zone episode, wrote 2 episodes, 1964 season, this thing is never gonna end, caught me out, suddenly have chapter 2, Alex Roth, his girl’s pov, Sue, totally jumped, that was his girlfriend, she’s gotta whole life going, a parallel story, what’s cut out of the movie, the two stories don’t really touch, flashback stuff, she reads the article about him, the only interaction, thematically it fits, wasn’t extraneous, just in memory, more surreal, waiting faithfully, we don’t know what she’s like, she is not a nice person, the Vera in the movie, also not a nice person, Sue is pretty horrible, incredibly selfish, somehow even worse, justify everything to herself, putting these two together, catching up to her, parallel stories, one’s an aspiring actress, professional violin player, seeing Sue from Alex’s pov, she seems like a nice kid, seeing what she does to Raoul, Alex and her roommate, you’re just not that good of a lover, he kinda deserved that, she just does this to everyone, she is a monster, what won’t I do to be a movie start, degrade myself in every possible way, a little bit like Sunset Boulevard, how terrible Hollywood is, it’s very good, film noir from that period, the book is just crackerkjack, in a police cell telling this story, bummin around, can’t go to New York, Los Angeles or Phoenix, regretful, all a confession, arrested for his own murder, no I’m the musician, your dead dad, the only one who knew about the scar, nope, I’m with Raoul now, already had a wife, screw his almost ex-wife, the point, we like our Alex Roth, too deep in with him, tired, sunstroke, can’t believe his luck, a hamburger, a sign, delay you, they do go off the road, changing the top on the car, the guy he’s replacing, this guy’s a monster, stole his mom’s wedding ring, took his brother’s eye out, any human that isn’t a total monster, brother in New York, roommate girl, side character, sleeping in the same bed, they’re poorer, literally in the same room, not a king sized bed, girls are a little smaller than people, the reveal, reveal, reveal, Hendrix, I strangled her, what!, wow!, where am I, this is about half-an hour before she died, in the movie he does strangle her it is kind of an accident, the marks on her neck, so squishy, so bendy, when she pivoted at the waist, her head being floppy on the top of her neck, strong images, Vera takes the phone and runs into the bedroom of the hotel, tangled up in the phone line, a little bit less deliberate, the movie is more censored in terms of sexuality, what’s the worst you can do rape me?, douche, books are completely uncensored, tended to be across borders, you can’t get Lady Chatterly’s Love imported, straigh up porn literature, it’s just hard and noir, striking, comparisons, magazines had more censorship, sent through the mail, delivered by trucks, how they got comics too, we might have to look at regulating, EC comics goes out of business, stop for the border checks, the fruit of livestock, provincial stuff too, whatever animals infesting the fruit, seemed weird until asking about the fruit, going back to the character, Haskell, he’s got something wrong with him, he was dead before he hit his head on the stone, these are all excuses, utterly fails, impulsive, he can explain, look it wasn’t me, the worry about him rolling the guy, the Fredric Brown, The Screaming Mimi, it didn’t record, just go read [it], a real ending, funnier, entertaining and interesting, nervous laughter, what to think about some of the things going on, intial impression, maybe the car was stolen, his angle, the scars on his wrist, the scar on his arm, he raped a girl, sometimes girls get passionate, she nails you, makes light of it, if you see a pharmacy wake me up, smoking marijuana cigarettes, why is he doing that, pain?, mental pain?, somethin’s wrong with her, it was Vera, she was the one he was having sex with, the woman on the page, fuckin dangerous and evil, sympathy for her, she is definitely dying, she wanted to have a real life, she wanted to be a star, cynical and pouting, he picks her up, why?, she’s a girl, this kinda book is about this idea, hitchhiking, a dead thing, pretty much dead, no one’s going to stop and pick you up, probably a serial killer, serial killer picks up another serial killer, first experience of this book and this novel, The Hitcher (1986), roadside diners, driving through the desert, Rutger Hauer, C. Thomas Howell, somebody to talk to, lonely, people need people, keep awake, talking keeps me awake, he buys our hero dinner, and breakfast, a steak, driving across country by yourself, a huge long drive, so helpful to the hitchhiker and it costs you so little, normal people, we’re all in this together, being a little more kind to our fellow man, Christmas and it is snowing, poor stranded motorist, what a scenario, rewatching it, what the hell is his motivation, repressed homosexuality, he wants to be killed, a very iconic and strange movie, Eric Red, the same scenario, the story changes you, taking on the persona, his billfold in your pocket, his name, he’s wearing the man’s clothes, driving the man’s car, this road is an endless highway, she got out of that car, she met someone who was her but a man, reading the letter he didn’t send to his dad, I’m selling bibles to churches, a good business investment, a number on the horse, the fix was in somehow, the roommate, sympathy for Raoul, seducing waitresses where his wife works, a weaker less aggressive version of Alex and of Sue and Vera too, binder full of narcissism, commercial for toast, actors care about their image, make emotional connections to other humans, because it is about the road, New York and Los Angeles, poles of Americanness, he can go anywhere, a piano, where is his fiddle, he sold it, he can get any old fiddle anywhere, his music teacher, everybody has to make a connection, she’s an interesting strong character, motivations: spite, companionship, some company in her last days, terrible to everybody, kidnapped him, takes all the money and everything, this scam, get 7 million dollars, take the $700, a bird in the hand vs. $7 million in the bush, playing cards, gettin ripped, smokin, not a kind word, these are broken horrible people, she’s quiet and she’s sleeping, pretty hard, the wonderful line, ancient primal, she was Adam’s wife, Noah’s wife, archive.org, read it in the browser, on your phone it scrolls, mostly the phone, a really nice clear scan, it is public domain, filthy like that, without a mask of cosmetics, primitive geezer would have gone for, she’s getable, as a passenger, he’s feeling great, drivin the car, being generous, give em big tips, only a few hours to live, final supper, ultimate supper, makes a joke, come back soon, a cute little joke, a grim joke, cynical, come out to Los Angeles, you don’t need to be faithful to me, she understands men, I ain’t going to be faithful to you, very naive, so James M. Cain, so hardboiled, at the end our hero doesn’t die, the free gas the goverment gives you, that Arizona perfume, ISFDB, set in realtime, the bombing of New York by the Nazis, an America bomber, multi-stage rocket, NASA guys with German accents, Doctor Strangelove, everything goes back to somewhere, are they prescient or is everything cyclical, bigger than the War Debt, WWI, the War in Europe, income tax, inflate everything up, people on the road trynna make a life, controlled by their human instincts, nice to spend time with people, change your location, our description of Alex from Sue’s perspective, beating people up all the time, the outside POV of him, he’s pretty nasty, until strangles Vera, a screenshot, 80% through the book, he’s doin his best, a good point, the cops aren’t just gonna believe him, this setup, who’s gonna believe he didn’t do it, our narrative of hitchhikers are dangerous, understanding what happened there, a first person perspective, I strangled her, from whatever Vera did to him, he was pretty sluggish, doctors on the side of the road in the rain, the cop comes by, what are you doing down there, oh I see, button that up, peeing, a very fate book, on a highway headed in a direction, be generous, saying to yourself, just kept driving, it’s the same car, a million Teslas half of them are white, sitting in the same car, the ashtray’s in the same position, that instinct to make human contact fucked up his whole life, it wasn’t going well for him, 4 people, each of those people is completely fucked up, and Raoul, dumped at the end, when Sue is reading about Alex, jumping off the Hollywood sign, fits with the media, he is a weak man, this girl hurting him by calling him a name, all about herself, I love him, I hate Alex, he’s dead anyway, I’m still married to your co-worker, send this letter of to her boss, I’ll never marry him, so petty, mid-early 20s, she’s about 24, comparing the movie to the book, identical, the used car dealer, the number is much inflated, ten years of inflation, WWII, that was nasty, used car dealer, haggling over a price, a world you do not want to operate in, I like fishing vs. the fish packing industry, beef, steak, sausage, the killing floor, the cynicism, I’m better than that, I have people for that, scrub my toilets, almost like an existential book, the hardboiled and noir books, femme fatales, murdered, destroyed, more mayhem, seeing Vera on screen, Sue in flashback, nice singer, powerful on the screen, the TCM intro piece, good little essays, going over to the actress’ house, in her 60s at least by then, come into my bedroom, get down on your knees, look under the bed, neatly laid out, I’ll participate but you need to know about all that, Hollywood is a hard place, high and low Hollywood, Boogie Nights, The Player, Robert Altman style, small piece of real estate, he’s got a big dick, [The Nice Guys] with Ryan Gosling, 2002 was 23 years ago, best movies of the 21st century, the list, best comic book movie, nothing you hadn’t heard of, Everything Everywhere All At Once, as long as your arm, there are still good movies, the writing is very strong, as much, a cheap movie to make, hard to find a book that’s a really solid short read, long long books with a small idea, swap identities with a corpse, consequences to it, the writing process, for writing appreciation, why is It’s A Wonderful Life Not A Christmas movie, Die Hard style, set at Christmas, kind of a Detour, see his wife, New York detective, the Christmas party, then Alan Rickman happens, the family is reunited and together, essential the same plot as A Christmas Carol, 3 ghosts, 4 ghosts?, Marley’s ghost, three visions of reality, the transformation we see with Scrooge, go get a Christmas goose, parallel structure, he doesn’t like Christmas, the Christmas spirit, he’s a waste, this angel comes down, not so he has a great Christmas, Thanksgiving, pretty subtle argument, those are the best arguments, something to the writing in here, the coincidence, a tweet Alex was participating in, one big coincidence, Edgar Rice Burroughs, that’s where he lives, never important, they’re the same size, this fun idea, all Chinese look the same, weird ties, you can kinda see it, same hump on the nose, fine with it, that’s a big coincidence, that he picks up a hitchhiker, allow that, that’s fine, takes it in to that almost Twilight Zone level of awesomeness, what do I know about reality, the Alex that we remember, him taking swings at people, he’s so polite to Haskell, a class thing, digging through the bags and finding more reefer, nice luggage, if he was a bum, they’d pin the murder on him, more like this please, more books like this book, solid twisty almost surreal, a different end, faking out the dying father, if he’d run into Sue, something, a turning back, the way they had come, you never get there, the highway is endless, rest stops and dusty highway gas stations, Sisyphean hell, Desert Saints, a mechanistic society, H.P. Lovecraft, railroads, automobile engines, anything that replaces human or animal labour, distanced from each other, physically distanced, Oregon Trail, cars are a thing now, drive across the country, a pre-war book, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Mildred Pierce, painting pictures of early 20th century American capitalism, the dirty 30s, go build a dam somewhere, FDR’s NRA, a later organization, hugely popular, fascism!, pushing back against oligarchs doing other things, struck down by the corpse, what a rumble seat is, my brother back in New York, cousin in New York, something’s wrong, when he lies to Haskell, I’m from Detroit, he aint a good soul, a rotten bugger, keep lying, Greek gods for the modern era, this kind of fiction is like a Greek tragedy, Oedipus Rex, fun and good, upcoming, Hombre by Elmore Leonard, The Thing On The Roof and The Nameless City, The Assassination Bureau, Ltd., Jack London, Goliah, The Red One, ancient astronauts, room soon, a short story, guy says I’m gonna fix capitalism, send letters to the oligarchs, come to this meeting, go to this ship in the harbour of San Fransisco, zapped out of existence, the next round of guys, they get zapped, a giant computer ai in the South Pacific somewhere, just a guy, remote zapper, really good thinking stuff, technology to change society, weird communist socialist guy, Jack Johnson, Korea, sleepin with the bums in London, a hobo march to Washington, not all equally good, The Unparalleled Invasion, 2000 years in the future, a period of time in our future, germ warfare, everybody in China, colonizing the remains of China, doing that all before WWII, what this month is doing, things are progressing, those will be easy, the one with the toad temples, hoofy noises on the roof.
Posted by Jesse Willis