Reading, Short And Deep #434
Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss The City In The Sea by Edgar Allan Poe
Here’s a link to the poem |PDF|.
The City In The Sea was first published, under that name, in The Broadway Journal, August 30, 1845.
Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!
Jesse, Paul Weimer, and Terence Blake talk about The Terminal Man by Michael Crichton
Talked about on today’s show:
Terry!, Playboy, March 1972, a novel in book form, where they features author, Playbill, the Jules Verne of our time, a Fellow at the Salk Institute, three pseudonyms, Dealing, a Warner Bros. release, a lot of money in 1972, re-write Frankenstein, rewriting Dracula, take my own life in 1973, 15,000 words per day, he’s going to direct, where Crichton starts ramping up, The Andromeda Strain was huge, 1971 film, directed by Robert Wise, Westworld (1973), that could have been a novel, very visual, Westworld RPG, it’s its own module that kills itself at the end, a wonderful one-shot, no one and dones, not anymore, take advantage of all of your successes, this weird phenomenon, the people who buy jigsaw puzzles, it’s like a romance novel, lacquer them, such a weird phenomenon, is this a science fiction novel?, arguing at the end, unless there is strong evidence, my Tolkien ripoff is a science fiction, not science fiction, speculation on what would happen, we have that technology, you might be scared, this stuff is being worked on, Terence wondered, a preparation for writing a science fiction story afterward, the question comes up, why?, why did he say it is his least favourite novel?, we can think of one that is worse, heavily didactic, the plagiarist?, a huge amount of effort trying to make it realist, the chapter on the operation, how good this book is, also a bad book, communicating what’s actually possible, people were doing that, the least realistic part was the plutonium, plutonium for pacemakers?, smart, plausible, squish the plutonium into the atmosphere, a spill not a dirty bomb, contaminate an area, it’s not a bomb, technically possible, fitting a cigarette sized thing inside of somebody, Penfield mood organ, Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, for fun, more explicitly science fiction, robot humans, is he wrong?, sentient machines control him, showing his technophobia, his later crappy novels, he was inspired by real life cutting into people’s brains, not only that, the computers are coming against us, trends in computers, the chapel and the computer room, Crichton’s feelings about computers made manifest, Elon Reeve Musk’s neurolink, he needs to read this novel, there’s no telling Elon Reeve Musk what to do, Grok AI, against AI research, anti-technology, an ambivalence, Prey, nanotechnology, Jurassic Park, standard Frankenstein monster story, awesomely meta, never see his POV, Mr. Harry Benson, the creature, who is Doctor Frankenstein?, the medical system, and the criminal justice system, and also Harry, inferences, a lot that’s identical, shortened, the crisis of his brain, 6:04 to 3:02, the number of attack scenes, knife not microwave, girlfriend, the perseveration of the knife, stuff you have to do for film, seeing it on the screen, we only get his words, he forgets what he does, in a fit state, violent actions almost like a zombie, dance round him, he can reason with you, he’s robotic, he doesn’t look robotic, his whole program is making him violent, a very bad movie, bogged down in the wrong computers, he goes to a grave, hoping he would kill himself, the funeral procession, doing a symbolic thing, the ending of Frankenstein, after he tells the story, there’s no frame here, the woman doctor, Janet Ross, most sympathetic, Minnesota, Paul is a little biased, good writing, so many ideas, this amazing promise, Harry thinks robots are going to take over the world and maybe they already have, how he got into this situation in the first place, scheduled for surgery, under charge, volunteered or agreed to surgery, pre-research, did his violent act to get arrested so he could get into the hospital, he put himself on a path, this stoner who wants the surgery, man it would be really cool if I could self-stimulate all day, the tasp, Larry Niven’s doing science fiction, just science, self-stimulate all day, so close to it here, mundane science fiction, it’s science and it’s fiction, nonetheless, Terence is right, is The Martian science fiction?, live off of potatoes grown in Martian regolith, nothing that’s beyond, hasn’t happened, if we’re going hard SF, it could be, but just isn’t, breast surgery, radioactive enough, contained enough, the speculative element, what do you mean safely?, this is not done safely, haywire, they can shield it, what was the grainage?, off the shelf-technology, plutonium is shieldable, there’s a good reason for that, routinely put into people, pacemaker plutonium pack, never been done?, now its a science fiction novel, speculative, form q, research division, biological organs, speculation within the book, in 15 years if we follow this, MacPherson is speculating, the author speculating not the character, that’s the interesting part, The Andromeda Strain doesn’t feel like science fiction, except through ancient sources, A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, pusillanimous, a good connection, the way that book plays out, a feely idea of science fiction, something strange about the feel, technothriller, techno-science fiction, stuff on feminism, MacPherson again, the philosophical implications, when the link goes both ways, two brains communicating, Gödel’s theorem, laying in and throwing in, a rich dense book that doesn’t quite pay off, Drug Of Choice, sparking up my brain, Mr. Benson, the computer’s perspective, if he’s right, feared and hoped that he was right, the book doesn’t tip its hand, same disappointment, this book fucks up itself, missing a scientific element, in the description of the operating procedure, computer guided, psychiatrist Janet, interlinking routes creating unpredictable phenomena, aliens might, Southbound On The Freeway by May Swenson, 1963, May Swenson
A tourist came in from Orbitville,
parked in the air, and said:The creatures of this star
are made of metal and glass.Through the transparent parts
you can see their guts.Their feet are round and roll
on diagrams–or longmeasuring tapes–dark
with white lines.They have four eyes.
The two in the back are red.Sometimes you can see a 5-eyed
one, with a red eye turningon the top of his head.
He must be special-the others respect him,
and go slow,when he passes, winding
among them from behind.They all hiss as they glide,
like inches, down the markedtapes. Those soft shapes,
shadowy insidethe hard bodies–are they
their guts or their brains?
the movie Cars (2006), complexity science, interaction between two computer programs, nasty and vice versa, bureaucracy of the policeman Anders, well chosen, not getting the information you’re supposed to get, in different media, complexity producing unpredictable results, traffic app, a computer projection, unrealistic, novelty in the first week, a six minute delay, here I’m using my new iphone cell phone, it can connect to the internet and the world wide web, the robot computer in the body in the car, how computers never make mistakes, an earlier podcast, show coming out, we think about an issue and then 7 months later we come back to it, its still there, computer programmer who wants to fix his brain, doing bad things, avoiding decision fatigue by having it all ritualized, Mr. Benson’s boss, a ping pong machine, an actual table, a sphere coming towards you you want to deviate, the Iron Dome idea, Ted Kaczynski, working on top secret military projects, his home, nothing modern, to kill her or to be saved by her, complains about her furniture being uncomfortable, the thing we’re trying to understand is the brain, not exactly Frankenstein, becomes vengeful, blackouts and doing violence, alienating his family, manipulates the situation, outwitting the cops and the doctors who think they’re smart, the bag with the wig, I did know, a gun in it, the cop doesn’t inspect the bag, necessary for the plot, what does he do with those screwdrivers?, nothing, explained as everybody has things that make them comfortable, did he anticipate, pleasure cycle that is a learning cycle, is that what the plot of this book is secretly about?, the master plan is to destroy the computer, this is illogical, he doesn’t ask, he has the plans, names the model, has the blueprints, once the surgery is complete, he doesn’t do that, did that on purpose, we can’t know that he knew that would happen, he’s of two minds, Ted Kaczynski-like, I can’t stop what’s happening, try to make a warning, the ideology of the deed, anarchy is better than monarchy, an exemplary action, can’t stop light switches, what he can do is shock the system, bring people’s attention to his ideology, already is, tries to escape, he goes to the sex bar, Doylesian and Watsonian, to pad out the plot, Crichton not Benson, not staying on task, how would destroying this one computer could help him, Logan’s Run, making him to want to do the surgery, he has mental instability, makes sense to him, it’s his game, [Binary], finally comes back to the hospital, of two minds, really good, the emergent new phenomena, new experience and new behavior, a demonstration, two brain Benson, go to the title, the new messiah, a good title, the last man, a new step has been made, two brains on an equal footing, the gateway to acting out on all his impulses that were suppressed before, the turnover point, he’s freed himself, we’re all going to be like that, cool and frustrating, other ways of reading the title, he’s the last man, he’s the first post-human, he terminates man, he terminates himself, love each other by pressing a button in your head, a short story where an old guy, Alfred Bester?, maybe not, all these prosthetics, [The Die-Hard], a podcast episode on that, a refutation of H.G. Wells’ story, a radio impulse that gives you perfect happiness, The Poison Belt by Arthur Conan Doyle, perfectly happy, pleasure center stimulated, a cunning psychopathic murderer, this book could have been one of his best, figured out a way, maybe Crichton didn’t know, it isn’t a manifesto, what the movie’s gotcha line, you didn’t stop to think if you should, basic readings of Frankenstein, not the best strands of science fiction, don’t play god, what Niven does with the tasp, just got addicted to hyper-opium, electronic opium, the Doylesian reason, what computer games, gambling games, Candy Crush?, they’ve hacked our brains from the outside, mapped the pleasure centers, training you to like things, play computer games all day long, electricity in my wife’s basement, just pleasure center, Jesse you’re a technophobe, isn’t it interesting that I’m a robot controlled by other robots, sending letter bombs to people seems wrong, that transcendence you get with a great Philip K. Dick ending, The Electric Ant by Philip K. Dick, manipulating reality, this novel promises something and almost delivers, not having the great revelation or the great insight, speculativish, doesn’t speculate hard enough, movie makes it pretty bad, but nice and clinical, like The Andromeda Strain, what he’s bringing to the table, the institution of doctoring, am I wrong?, there’s something about the feel of the book, nonetheless our feel is wrong, really pleasurable, chock-full of ideas, too much of a message, sociologically informed pictures, all very fine, one of the doctors has a leg injury, all that stuff, what Janet Ross says, no absolute difference between health and (mental) illness, spectrum, acting out of his anxiety, the family is mind control, the school is mind control, a haze of ideas around this cutting edge surgical procedure, he’s railing is about being blasé about it, intrigued and entranced with this tech, helping patients, seeing the list of things that have happened in the past, the very last one is fictional, seeing it as a progression, inflection point, the catastrophe, the cracks in the dam, the waystation point, the computing power, was that actually true, depends on how you calculate, what is the terrabyte capacity of my brain, really big, bigger than an 8tb hdd, but also pretty lossy, remember The Terminator better than The Terminal Man, the entire credit sequence, a couple of frames, doing the test on him, a ham sandwich on rye, rye can be spelled wry, quite ironic, dry humour, some wry humour, a fairly well done scene in the movie, at an awards dinner, Mr. Benson has escaped, some of the dialogue is identical, the surgery scene is just as long if not longer, the middle of the night, all the doctors are whispering, all trying to solve this problem, nothing big about blame here, get to the patient before something bad happens, what to tell the cops, if they say it the wrong way, when they categorize him eventually, a patient in need of medical assistance, how this is going to impact their careers, how to solve the problem, a meta-point, the female psychiatrist, she’s not the only one, one thing Terence thought was interesting, come back to the hospital, we want help you, take care of, the ethics of care, the human approach, the inhuman approach, treat me like a machine and repair me, in the doctor’s language, a machine approach, seeing everybody as a machine, the cognitive estrangement, we have been replaced with machines without knowing, doesn’t put a button on it, he’s almost got, too dumb to get it, in the way that he needed to, too timid, the crazy man has that perspective, all the evidence, language no longer means what we think it means, a greater book than The Andromeda Strain, we are now through the rabbit hole, this next chapter is going to be retelling, anticipate it, never reveals itself, better as an enigma, shown to be a fool in 100 years, memory tapes are erased, makes the noise, static, in the book, the movie and the audiobook, learning effect, 1.15x, 1.2x, 1.5x, after 10 minutes, up to 1.7x, the voice was so good [George Wilson], Blue Thunder, Roy Scheider, looking at his digital watch, his explanation to his new partner, the first thing to go is your sense of time, a minute can feel like an hour, Dan O’Bannon wrote all the good movies: Dark Star, his worst movie, watershed week, Star Wars, Alien, Dead And Buried (not actually written by him, despite the name being in the credits, he lent his name to a friend to get financing), Heavy Metal, Return Of The Living Dead, Lifeforce, Blue Thunder [is] underrated, did he direct it?, Mike Hodges, does horror films, The Great Train Robbery, narrated by George Guidall, Donald Sutherland and Sean Connery, a very solid film, based on true events, an action movie done as a comedy, the book is more serious, Travels, Eaters Of The Dead, Beowulf with Ibn Fadlan, he combines the two, The Thirteenth Warrior, he’s a liar, stuff on the copyright page that’s part of the metatext, very playful, he wouldn’t have changed the title, after Jurassic Park, John McTiernan, when does that turnover start, too successful to be edited, they don’t push back on anybody now, successful, maybe they pushback, they’re pulling on him, when he does the sequel, The Lost World, Disclosure, Rising Son, smell a little topical japanophobia, kind of a boring movie, haven’t done Timeline, bad torture cinema on Skiffy And Fanty [podcast], done that, A Case Of Need, where things have gone south, beyond human comprehension, he’s making money, you’re being a bad writer, a bunch of people die, suddenly oh no they didn’t die, Michael Crichton’s next book coming out in 2024, posthumous collaboration with James Patterson, a fusion of two different IPs, along with the ghost of Tom Clancy, what they can do… dump the entire IP into AI and say I would like a new Michael Crichton novel because I’m his wife, some bad books are out, we’ve had natural ai in some of the books I’ve read, pretty much done, a nap!?, decision making tree is chopped down, Gilgamesh The King, just had her dad die, terribly bad, Paul out, the emergency, it seemed impossible on Friday, very sad, a discussion, a message Thursday, see if we can move it, decision fatigue, next year when Cora would be available, her life is unpredictable, the default: don’t fuck around with things, G.K. Chesterton’s fence, a principle, the rash move, a polar by behind that enclosure, you can’t open doors sometimes, nice concept, plan my life so I don’t have to make decisions, make the fewest decisions possible, automated systems, what makes decisions harder is not having enough information, which leads to depression, I statements are statements of depression, I never win these things, I is an inhibiting factor, life is suffering, winning happens, running around chasing after happiness, forget the etymology, hap, happy, lucky, how things panned out, fell, not a very depressive sort, no contrast to it, not fined grained enough to describe anything much, a lovely dreary day, a Jungian analyst, James Hillman, virtually everything is depression, you shouldn’t identify with your depression, precise about the image, life is suffering, tell me more, won’t spoil the ending for you, a good talk, seven minute writing, Lab Partner by Jesse, closing up the back of a robot, the robot’s slender legs swung off the table and hit the floor, here in my basement laboratory we can be naked, the clear plastic raincoat from Blade Runner, his great grandfather’s secretary robot in his grandfather’s attic, pulls up the blinds and looks outside at the dreary day, naked female robot, solved this story problem, opened up a computer and put new ram in it, a garden of Eden story, put on a raincoat, writing the dreams down, seeing inside your head in retrospect, dreary, what we can program ourselves to do, Cora, dealing with all of her cleaning of her dad’s stuff, Cartsen Schmitt, dreamt i fell in with a growing band of, Tacoma to Anaheim, wild west rodeo show, ship to ship missiles, The Lost Boys aboard, some garlic in the galley, circus players, the surgery, a little bit’s there, vampires, very interesting, we got lucky, we got a good book, a thoughtful thinker, full of ideas, haze is a good one, a fuzzy novel, mindmaps, doesn’t mean anything to me, anti-story, anti-memory, anti-everything, an amazing experience, taught English in a technical school, senior high school, taking on all sorts of students that couldn’t get into or were not wanted at other high schools, first choice, alternative school, wastebasket, a basket of deplorables, strange people not meant to for the school system, cater to their presence, didn’t understand anything in English, get students working on stuff, strange people, there was a diagram, one of the tools, my friend has a problem with his girlfriend, an amazing use of mindmaps, continue the wrong direction, doesn’t give a shit about school, gets punished for trying, a guy on youtube, for finding weird shit, convinced, diagnosed with 70 iq, shitty jobs at McDonald, raising his iq, the insights you get from somebody who’s had experience, 18 dimensions, not paying attention, hours studying, early 20s, only study for five hours, not knowing what studying is, read a lot, that’s not studying, proving the theorems, not connected to studying for school, why does this movie still resonate, all the sexual spying, fly to the Hollywood hills, is she giving us a show?, that’s part of the point of the movie, cops using surveillance to spy on people, a very 80s thing, what’s striking about it, how timely it still remains, drones before drones, The Poison Belt, cameras, an essayist in your pocket, maven, in the style of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, we can say it is not the end of the world, the creative work instead of the representational work, point to a vocab word, bird, ma, all long words are made of parts, all long words are dead metaphors, let’s hang some stories on it, a circle with hooks, different ways to access the meaning of the word, tyre vs. tire, motor car vs. automobile, the history of why they’re called that, hanging meanings and feelings, a colour or a drawing, a way to learn how vocabulary works, you’ll get the feeling of what the word means, students know this already, you’ve seen “mal” before, malodorous, break it down six different ways, circumstance, a circum around and a stand, understand, a big thing hanging over you, we forget that they’re metaphors, pump a little life juice into them, horrible experiences in teacher training, no that’s wrong, didn’t apply to all cases, not a universal rule, a sign Terence was inexperienced, fail out of teaching school, Dead And Buried (1981), a girl wearing a red dress, famous photographer?, I could model for you, good vacation so far, she offers him sex, sex on the beach, flash photography, they’re all taking photos, she takes a photo of him, they beat him and light him on fire, then the sheriff investigates, some other stranger is murdered, the guy didn’t die in the hospital, camera wielding maniacs, the sheriff’s wife, a book on voodoo and a voodoo knife, teaching the kids, as he should be, the killing of strangers, the students are loving the stuff they’re learning about Haitian voodoo, a really great ending, a good movie, a horror comedy?, not really funny, art film, a Twilight Zone episode, we like not knowing what’s going on then getting an explanation, on youtube, an & where the and is, dig em up then bury them again, tweets are buried very quickly, fun and weird, a little snapshot of what you were doing that moment, Downward To Earth by Robert Silverberg, Gilgamesh The King, a chat about it, Jonathan’s going to join us, fun takes, dry sense of humour, unusual culture.
Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!
Reading, Short And Deep #433
Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss The Retroactive Existence Of Mr. Juggins by Stephen Leacock
Here’s a link to the story |PDF|.
The Retroactive Existence Of Mr. Juggins was first published in The Popular Magazine, August 15, 1913.
Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!
Jesse, Cora Buhlert, and Terence Blake talk about Lowdown Road by Scott Von Doviak
Talked about on today’s show:
2023 novel, so contemporary, Hard Case Crime, this cover looks cool, who are these guys on the cover, a new one, good to try new things, spilling the tea, Skeletor figure, sold three or for copies, owes Cora some kickback, didn’t pirate this book, pay real money, Audiobooksnow, Black Priestess Of Varda, convoy movies, the truckers, those trucker movies, a 70s car chase movie in book form, The Dukes of Hazzard, Knight Rider, crashing cars, evil and violent and not funny, Baby Driver (2017), private TV came to town, RTL, The A-Team, Alarm For Cobra 11, The Fall Guy, the German ones got steadily better, amazing car crashes, one car crash before the credits, funny banter, Turkish character, honour killing victim, oppressed wife, well made entertainment, French car chase movies, Australia has some of the best, The Road Warrior, Mad Max (1979), one of the best revenge movies of all time, the Saw series, Cannonball Run III (1989), Matt Frewer, Brooke Shields, Jamie Farr, Roger Ebert, read my lips, it is not funny, he’s wrong a lot, best car crashes from Alarm For Cobra 11, an okay movie, John Candy smoking in a car, he’s trying to polite, what are you doing between my legs, went to soon, great and funny, Eugene Levy, really funny people, the point of the Cannonball Run movies, a curmudgeon who’s watched too many movies, or an autistic person, he gets a lot of movies wrong, a kind of snobbery, Smokey And The Bandit (1977), mustache, not funny, its fun, playing with hotwheels cars, a car chase book, it is very hard to write car chases in books, Hicksploitation, a big continent, cars are important, lived in the city, took taxis, Gene Siskel, get in cabs, they’re not car guys, you have to be a car guy if you live in a big place, Australia is massive, Canada, driving across Canada is not a small thing, a road trip is a thing, cars are dangerous, stop for gas, stretches of road, cows, more road, farmhouses, the most boring stretches of road, in Germany city people use bicycles, in the countryside you need a car, public transport is bad, 80 kilometer ride, an interpreting gig in court, highway was closed, How I Won The War (1967), bikers and biker gangs, Terence’s parents never had a car, what!, enthusiastic, small towns out, rural France can be very very lonely, sold the car, car chases are very easy to do on film, the Fast And The Furious series, driving over the furniture, the opening scene, road trip, dialogue driven book, late summer of 1974, On The Road, no mythical resonance, a nice story, except for the structure of having the beginning at the end, particular ideas, wacky and crazy, surprised at the same thing, killing the characters, when Chuck got killed, one of the main characters, Gwen on the cover, the girl on the cover is the girl who hopes to get pregnant, she’s the Daisy Duke, boom she’s dead, a so it goes book, Kurt Vonnegut, Harrison Bergeron, this is implausible, isn’t that funny we’re so stupid, Galapagos, evolving into small brained seals, stupidity again, people are stupid, couldn’t hold a train of thought, interrupted, supposed to be teaching, civil engineering, holding back, it’s a solid story, Jesse hates it, pretentious, irony or arch is not a solution to problems, Nineteen-Eighty Four is an indictment, Brave New World is a warning, avoid the wrong path, a book in dialogue with a very specific period, road movies and car-chase movies, just two old boys never meaning no harm, Uncle Jesse operates a moonshine still, they live in a corrupt community, backwoods Tennessee, stock cars, NASCAR, builds into the 1970s, the inspiration, nobody dies, he’s got a headache, violence has consequences, an alcohol store, former partner in crime, 1969-1974, pulled over, the reversal, she’s set him up, every subsequent scene where somebody gets killed, surely this can’t continue, they all deserve it, I made a big mistake, a kill or be killed or just kill world, Julian didn’t deserve that, Antoine was half a good guy, Dean, all bastards, likeable bastards, a fun book, they don’t match one for one, Dean and his cousin, blow a tire, backwoods family, mentally deficient, overconfident, old man smoking cigarette while on oxygen, wants his seed, all cousins, kissin’ cousins, we’re back country folk, I need you to fuck my niece, rob this place, we’re moving in, I need to get pregnant, playing with the idea, they’re all distinct, much longer in the original draft, Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), like Deliverance (1972), backwoods people, this high class low class thing, the cop who doesn’t want to be a cop, working class, not by much, about breaking laws, transporting cigarettes across state lines, Cannonball Run is based on a real incident, race of cars from New York to California, road testing your vehicle, Le Mans, 24 hours of continuous driving, a Cannonball Run movie zero: Gumball Rally (1976), friendly races, the prize is bragging rights, a mix of country hicks, and a Saudi Sheik, and Roger Moore, James Bond, a Goldfarb, playing with the idea of cars being for all classes of people in the United States, Blue Ruin, low class muscle cars that were fairly affordable, a Dodge Challenger, Gumball Rally 3000, all the exotic cars, kids of the ultrawealthy, a rally across every continent (including Antarctica), Batmobile, it’s only for wealthy people, quite dangerous, cars are dangerous, only for rich people car and trucker movies were entertainment for the poorest people, almost a little bit of CB radio stuff, a precursor to internet web culture, a lot of autobahns, main routes through Europe, CB radio was a thing, a way to jam the cops, communicating about where the cops are, where to get sex on the side, a good sandwich, wild and unregulated, a huge phenomenon in the UK, three low class guys get in cars, drive them, and make jokes, the number one show, a drivers license, younger people can’t afford cars, idiots who glue themselves to the highways, it was necessary for life to have a car, you could walk, if there’s a bus, a way of getting out of the utter poverty, he’s not getting it, resentment for being forced to watch movies like that, something you don’t like and being forced to deal with it, another fairy tale retelling, this stupid TV show, no award, people who never get out of the big cities, what life is like outside Berlin or Hamburg or Munich, hyper-reality, the amount of people killed over such a short period in this book, hits him with the paper towel dispenser, he’s dead?, this book has incredible stakes, at no point in it do I think it is realistic, jump over a creek every episode, the backstory for the Snake River jump, supernatural flying things, machine guns, the cars are always brand name German cars, wrecked for entertainment, German car companies lining up, attractive to these things that cause death, give us so much, working on a taco truck, mobility, get yourself across the continent, James Cameron, cars will run you over, a police puppet show, a traffic Punch, schoolyard with actual cops, riding a bicycle, physical unpleasant, it hurts, probably dead, not answered in the book, Evel Knievel, September 1974, he and the rocket floated to the canyon floor, live in movie theaters, the cars, four year old car, Vanishing Point (1971), existential car chase movie, Zabriskie Point (1970), the Cadillac Ranch, what’s in the afterword, stunt cycle toy, a lot of this is real, he failed, there were no murders on site, someone somewhere probably found one, Ford Mustang, Dodge Challenger, Corvette Stingray, whole television shows are based around these cars, Calgary, Alberta, Stingray, get to see his car from various angles, a thirty year old car, mystical stuff about these special cars, every character had a special car, turn into robots, Transformers, will be my best friend, we can fight evil, temporarily stealing things, light, car chase movies, smuggling drugs or alcohol, why would you smuggle that, late 60s, new Hollywood movies about anti-heroes, Easy Rider, Billy Jack, I’m Captain America, symbol of freedom, Dolly Parton’s ex, Burt Reynolds, Pontiac Firebird, his success with that and the sequels, like pure money for Pontiac, a new Firebird for the rest of your life, where’s my car?, you can’t drive all those cars, driver movie series, Transporter, concept movies, taking the little kid who liked playing with cars, get that nostalgia into the kid, increasingly small segment, that’s what they’re doing with their money, young people can’t afford cars, cars are turned into safety vehicles, a used car that is still running is pretty impressive, hurts their ability to get jobs and keep things, get a van and live in it, steadily badly for 50 years, they cracked down, 14 in Alberta, a bicycle with a motor, tractor at 15, a relationship between and their ecnomic status of people and their car, the last new cheap car, Yugo, Dacia, still affordable in Russia, the price of a car is 20,000 at a minimum, a Volkswagen Golf, very beautiful and very bad Mustang, Citroen 2CV, the collectors have gotten to them, Volkswagen Beetle, the title again, called out in the book, on the down low, hiding, for black people in the USA it means gay, just another character, the characters on the cover, who are these people, bottom left, Jim Carrey, a good old boy, the central guy, Dean, Roy Scheider, off brand Burt Reynolds, Samuel Jackson, sheriff, Jack Elam was the doctor in Cannonball Run, guy with the weird eye, too old for the role, wearing the Daisy Dukes, Stephen Spielberg’s Sugarland Express (1974), Jaws (1975), similar to the plot, Goldie Hawn, our son has been adopted, escape from prison, a chase across Texas, a slow strange car chase, William Atherton, based on a true story, the husband’s dead, the wife is put into prison, Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid (1969), sympathetic criminals, Bonnie And Clyde (1967), they die at the end, based on a true story, an intensive media presence, every town they pass through, a James gang or Robin Hood story, not doing any harm, the circumstances of capitalism, they come from a low class, regular normal people are heroes because they’re bucking against the state, we are the media presence, this book doesn’t have any intellectual heft at all, a throwback period piece, analyzing vs. recreating, making a new story, Hicksploitation, another Hard Case Crime book, heist book, Charlesgate Confidential, doofus, Scott Von Doofus, a night palate cleanser for Cora, we don’t think of them as badguys now, what are they doing that’s so wrong, kill a lot of people, it’s never thought through, bad cops you see in American movies, quit his job cop, the sheriff is bad, drawing and quartering, artificial fuel, biker gangs are bad, first quarterback, in the chess club, going to Vietnam, doesn’t feel like a perfect book, very Elmore Leonardesque, all very eloquent, hyper-real, hyperreality, feels like a play, snappy dialogue, no word other than said, he said archly, crime fiction critic, named after Melville, probably be a pretty good movie, We Can Do It Differently, <strong>No More Mister Nice Guy (1993), communist or nazi, some kind of house somewhere in East Germany, legal files, manor house, killing people, kick up a deserted Soviet Soldier, pick up a woman, shot and killed, Russia at the time, a failed state and there’s nothing there, Thelma & Louise (1991), big surprise, bbq and happy, still an American production, relentless deaths, not trying to make a sequel, not a heavyweight book at all, enjoyable for the ride, most of Hard Case Crime, it’s not a mystery, set your cars rolling, do some jumps, playtime’s over, Jim Thompson, James M. Cain, Double Indemnity, Postman Always Rings Twice, wrong Thompson, 1958 novel, Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger, McQueen and McGraw, Dynasty or Dallas, Sorcerer (1977), give her a role, a movie with only men, bullshit job, Roy Scheider, The Getaway, The Grifters, Angelic Huston, John Houston, Donald Westlake, The Killer Inside Me, blows you off the page, psychopathic small time sheriff, of course I had to destroy him, based on his own life, moonshine and drug runner in the oilfields, noir and hardboiled, Stephen King gave a blurb for this book, short novels, Pop. 1280, The Killoff, This World Then The Fireworks, hell, incestuous relationship, incest play, incest arguing, comes across as horror, hardboiled and noir, everybody die, Chinatown (1974), big twist, 50 year old movie, betrayed by your family, besides showing up in dreams, Confessions Of An English Opium Eater, The Seventh aka The Split by Richard Stark, the movie, he’s funny, the seventh Parker novel, playing a fun game, title games, idea games, Donald E. Westlake, Travels by Michael Crichton, New Years Eve evening, Dinner For One, James I would like to retire, now do it in the style of the Colonel, two versions, the real one, key moments in this video, attention span is so low, can’t enjoy an 18 minute short film, automatic, a benefit, let’s see the car chase, that’s no way to enjoy a film, no, it’s art, Foundation TV series, earn the Mule, a podcast about season 2, Paul Levinson, Alcibiades, The Plot To Save Socrates, a media studies professor, seems to be a nice dude, blogging for a long time, nobody uses tags anymore, in the feed, Light On Light Through, funeral costs, burial and grave, 2053, dying is expensive, extended again, always 30 years, split the cost, expensive tombstone, much cheaper to just disappear like Ambrose Bierce, it’s time for me to go to Mexico, don’t tell the government that, as long as they get paid, solar panels, fight with the power company, steal a taco truck and drive across Germany, food truck guy, sausage stands and trucks, chicken trucks, whole roast chickens on a stick, pizza trucks in Nice, street food, kebab shops, migrant background, doner, donair, sandwich de turk, sad when people can’t enjoy good things, messy but delicious, life is messy, 50-70 years, an immigrant neighbourhood, Turkish, Lebanese, Syrian, what does Terence cook?, simple things, vegetables, whatever protein we come across, fish, cod, cheap and nice, quiche, leeks, whatever we have we stick in, small child, neighbour’s cat, have to be vague, deny the cat, whoever’s around, I’m not a cannibal, cannibal murder case in Bremen in the late 40s, gay guy who killed a lot of young men, preyed on refugees, Silesia, Polish and Russian, stuffed into sausages, east Prussian sausage, roadkill hogs, early school shooting, 1912, take over the world, Catholic girl’s school, kids made no sense at all, wool spinning factory, Catholic immigrants, Poles in Germany, we are German we hate those immigrants, culturally German, idiot walked in, barely ever talk about it, Germans are largely to blame for the school systems around the world, The Terminal Man, a big long life, all these humans are getting old, they all died early, one aunt left, indestructible, terrified, very active, health issues, biological grandmother, do you like her or not?, city Nazi grandma, surplus extra grandmother, I hate this woman, keeled over on holiday, in Hungary on holiday, Kiel, if Hungary on holiday go to Turkey, goulash food truck?, adopted by the Germans, make proper goulash, photo a lot of food, a good winter food, tinned mushrooms, 1982, Iron Curtain still up, cheap holiday destination, died on the toilet, break open the door, getting the body back, smuggling out important information, exporting bodies is really messy, death certificates, medical death certificates, bad James Bond movies, Roger Moore movies, Sean Connery, Diamonds Are Forever (1971), Mach 1 Mustang, GoldenEye (1995), Leicester Square Odeon, had Charles been there, the tank chase is great, distinctive, the opening sequence, chemical weapons lab in a dam, do the bungee jump, Arecibo, the story explanation, communicating with an old Soviet satellite, Famke Janssen having orgasms whenever she interacts with someone, Sean Bean, a double agent, ancestors were Cossacks, returned to the UK under Operation Keelhaul, doing revenge for his grandfather’s being sent to the Soviet Union, spaceborn weapon to paralyze stuff, took the recipe, named after the house in Jamaica, a complete confection, rather than at the core there’s this idea, turn your brain off, 5 year gap, License To Kill (1989), first modern Bond film, she’s not fantastic, subtext running through the whole film, constantly emasculated, kind of sexist, found funny, shitty cars in Eastern Europe, the film works but it is not good, Skyfall, the invisible car, Pierce Brosnan, Michelle Yeoh, heavy product placement, let it die, a legend of martial arts cinema, Singapore, Robert Carlyle, Bernard Cornwell, Richard Sharpe, super-hero movies, Halle Berry, make it a period piece, done as a comedy, much crueler, occasionally stern, suave and makes jokes, what they’re doing with Craig, you’re taking away the fun, all memberberries, the Goldfinger car, not a British car, came out two years before he was born, don’t think about that, terrible, a twitter essay, when the James Bond movie series really crashed, only did two movies, the Russians are not the badguys after, friendly rivals, worked with James Bond, James Bond fucks Russian women, gave him the highest Soviet medal, occasional competitors, mostly it was capitalists, a Nazi capitalist, a Rupert Murdoch type guy, under Craig they made Julian Assange the bad guy, child star in France, tastefully rendered sex, La Boum (1980), release all the private docs the British empire did, turning into propaganda, they were the opposite, talk about the Soviets being crazy, a rogue Soviet general, eagerly watched these movies, cool gadgets, the animosity is very much one way, then high school equivalent of an essay, which Red Scare?, the one today?, why is this important, because we’re having one again, people calling people McCarthyites, the first Red Scare, super-evil top down, you’ve gone too far, the army is not full of communists, they don’t even believe it, a way of tarring your enemies, Sarah Hoyt, not mentally very well, even if you are worried about communism, Vietnam communism is not Cuban communism, Justin Trudeau is not a communist, fighting socialized dental care, for war with other countries, he is the Liberal party in Canada, Russia – Ukraine war, a horror show, they didn’t know, only the Russians are evil, from the Baltics, Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians, the biggest sin there is, they look like twins, you killed my family, wars, resentment caused by individual people in power, his dad had a beef with Iraq, an excuse to do something, a precedent for this, not a good thing, atrocity, killed the dog, if people want to be kings, you have to show people, we’re not going to do kings, they brought the king back, still a movement to put him back in, the Pantheon of Rome, the reinstatement of the Italian monarch, we should be done with monarchies and oligarchies, Kaiser relatives around?, King of England, Prince Louis Ferdinand, aristocratic, increasingly irrelevant, huge inheritance taxes, a punk girl, popped out a few kids, tabloid celebrity, terribly conservative, used her celebrity appeal, an actor, Young Indiana Jones movies, dukedom, private railway station, finished in 1916, can’t mingle with the common people, museum now, city government buildings these days, something to eat, Monday it is, strong painkillers, doped up, coffee, an extra hour’s sleep.
Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!
Reading, Short And Deep #432
Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss Catherine And Frederick by Bros. Grimm
Here’s a link to the story |PDF|.
Catherine And Frederick (sometimes Frederick And Catherine or Simple Kate) was first published in German in Children And Household Tales (Kinder-Und Hausmärchen), 1812.
Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!
The SFFaudio Podcast #786 – The Radium Pool by Ed Earl Repp, read by Thomas Copeland (for LibriVox). This is a complete and unabridged reading of the story (2 hours 43 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Maissa Bessada, Will Emmons, and Terence Blake
Talked about on today’s show:
in Earth language, sorry everybody, Sophie Wenzell Ellis, another radium filled story, avoid radium, taking a long time to get started, WHAT!, so many explicitly catery characters, outer narrator, professor who explains things, meet a guy who who is looking for another professor, another professor, infodumper, chapter 9 tells us despite the counter evidence, that makes sense, me too I agree this story makes a lot of sense, if H. Rider Haggard were boring, Inception, oh yeah, that was a thing, awkward framing, August and September 1929, The Moon Pool by A. Merritt, an early popular science fiction story, sequels, sorry, cool cover with a lady in yellow, old science fiction, some shitty science fiction out there, completely unfuckin scientific, despite the gestures, Jovians from Jove, lovesick guy with a gun, getting the better, cheated by using telepathy, tentacles, a scientific fact, other than it’s a planet, a gesture at the distance, whatever, this story is so fuckin bad, Mars has already been done, there are good stories set on jupiter, Call Me Joe by Poul Anderson, The Radium Poul, Lester Del Rey, good ideas, not being so long-winded about it, Maissa speaks for Will, the same as Avatar, grow a Jovian, as in the original Avatar, a telepathic link, guy just lives in the new body, a centaur with a big axe, Poul Anderson likes vikings, downloading yourself into an avatar in reality, what Justin Trudeau is trying to do, become a leader of the people, the first 2 Avatar movies, waiting til we are ready for it, why they’re all the same, he’s good at what he does, Titanic (1997) is his worst movie, a long and a prequel for Avatar 3, do your own serialization, might as well just talk about Avatar, Jake Sully is fundamentally untransformed by becoming an indigenous leader, a football coach from Cincinnati, for the Navii that’s exotic, why he’s not so boring to them, what’s really happening in Avatar: the American audience inserts themselves into Jake Sully and downloads themselves into the movie during the running time of the movie, six years old and think its cool, he’s not a character you aspire to be, he is you, no qualities, the most frequent expression, the bad guy in the first one, too bad they brought him back, there’s a reason we don’t do a movie podcast, most movies aren’t very deep, playing with the water theme, The Abyss, a cool Cold Equations scene, you need to drown in order for us to live, with a solution, the aliens thing at the end, crazy guy with a nuke is enough, better than Terminator 2, radioactivity coming into its own, radium was touted by doctors and scientists, rejuvenation, it kills cancer, it killed all those women, Marie Curie, watches are time and immortal, some sort of high before you die, unobtanium, when radium is in abundance it has other qualities, scaling, a big pool full, also power your spaceships, homeopathic doses of radium, the opposite, it can eat off your fingers, burn the end of the barrel of your gun, garbage story, something very bad, we’ve all done bad, a humiliation ritual to cleanse, something special about it, from the period it is, a taste of 1929 is very refreshing, the way we think, Jules Verne, hollow earth fantasy, four levels of characters to explain one muscular action, too space-opera in fashion, E.E. Doc Smith, Triplanetary, 1934, the swing of the pendulum, Creatures Of The Light by Sophie Wenzel Ellis, Antarctica, Death Valley, you can’t stand being their too long, lack of research, infodumps, guys feelings, partners for a long time, alien shows up, I turned your girlfriend into my throne lady, a Sleeping Beauty moment, I can throw words at pages, diverges, the peridocity?, Astounding, Science Wonder Stories, more science, throw everything into this pot, king of the university, robot sentry and a wagon and a gun, editor at the journalist desk, we’re not reading the newspaper report, chapter 9, somehow I found it incredibly plausible, pad his expense account, this is not the newspaper report, another step out, censored at the end, plausible we can go to Jupiter, first they’re going to have to find some more radium that wasn’t drained away, a lot of Doctor Who, a serial, Enlightenment, the fifth Doctor, Peter Davison, companion pets, materializes on a ship at sea, Edwardian era sailing vessel, all the officers have telepathy, Turlough and Teegan and the Doctor are thinking, they’re racing in space, solar sail race, crewed by humans, the grog doesn’t work, the aliens who look like humans, so bored, there’s stuff here, cheating, treating the humans like pets, learned a word: ephemerals, word in back pocket, being bored and nothing to do, you can’t waste your time because you have to live forever, three score years and ten, in June Terence will be 70, somebody becoming immortal, mine shit, lord it over, big long speech at him, quite taken with that girl, best possible tautological name: Alley Lane, Jimmy Olsen, just plain ordinary folks with superhuman friends, Spider-Man, earnest reporter who’s on the beat, the twist is he’s reporting on himself, here’s a market for stories about pools, suckered in, pretty girl, not as green as expected, 40 years in the desert, hoping to meet her, got a bad rep, something super-redeeming, this doesn’t have that much, not as tedious as it should be given how it doesn’t pay off, it’s naive, not meta-level at all, several layers of explanatory sauce, a magic formula, I have to put the ingredient of scientific realism in, that way nobody can say, radium parfait, Mimic by Donald A. Wollheim, film’s not great, the problem with the film is just jump scares and has to fill two hours,
“the original MIMIC, the 1942 story by Donald A. Wollheim, is abt as close to perfect a science fiction story as you can find
1. HEAVY EARLY INFODUMP✔️
2. PAYOFF WITH A TWIST BASED ON INFODUMP✔️
3. 4PGS LONG✔️MIMIC is highly suggestive. leaves u in awe. leaves u with ideas.
the movie takes 1 hour and 45 minutes – the story takes less than 9 minutes to read with your eyes, 13 minutes 34 seconds to read with your mouth
the movie takes 1 hour and 45 minutes – the story takes less than 9 minutes to read with your eyes, 13 minutes 34 seconds to read with your mouth”
stars some lady, Mira Sorvino, Charles S. Dutton, young Josh Brolin, Thanos, Cable, a fun actor, Jeremy Northam, Charles S. Dutton is a cop, buy food from local street vendor, now in the present, killed in his apartment, a metal box, the window is open, not actually a human, literally an insect that looks like a human, his trenchcoat is a carapace, some other animal mimicking another animal, swarm of its babies, chimney suddenly transforms into a predator, there are creatures out there that mimic humans, the awesome infodump, paid off, takes it one step farther, what if…, backstory about cockroaches spreading a COVID-like disease, Guillermo Del Toro, tweeting about Microcosmic God being in the public domain, neoterics, capitalism trying to happen, steal his ingeniousness, Theodore Sturgeon’s great classic, classic mad scientist buys and island and does Edison work all day, make a race of creatures do the work for me, tiny people, meth and probably radium or whatever, an evil god, materials and compounds and alloys, he steals their patents, that guy’s got too much power, same techniques, a nested idea of the story of Edison as a mad scientist creator, it’s also us, we need to build cave walls and sunscreen and french fries in order to survive, Blood Music by Greg Bear, usually he’s a horrible writer, a collection, Wind From A Burning Woman, who’s talking, what’s going on?, children born with mutated organs, wasteage, incredibly intelligent, takes most of the novel, slow with lots of information dumps, Vitals, you’re not good, had he died tragically it would have been must better for him, dead to Jesse, Darwin’s Radio, so slow, even the novel is good, the grey goo problem, make a machine that can make stuff automatically on an atomic level, the paperclip problem, the Grogu problem, cute animals from twitter, should I be sending this?, some sort of deermouse with peglegs eating lettuce, quite relevant, somehow enhanced, here’s a baby muskox eating some lettuce, incredibly racist, two racisms in a row, grappling with the king of the Jovians, a white beast, mental leap to Octavia Butler’s Dawn, tentacles, creepy crawly little tendrils, seem ugly to the explorers, arrogant and condescending, making shit up and throwing it on the page, having characters tell each other its very plausible, the radium powered plausibility machine, drink the pool, how dare you do this to a white man, something about a ‘spic, completely unnerves, Sands, you look like a ghost, you don’t look like a white man yourself, by jingle, second childhood, not the opening character, outback hicks who are racist, I’m second in charge of everything, I could destroy you with a wiggle of my tentacle, then I give a big long speech about how I like your girlfriend, and I keep her on this throne for reasons, and I’m going to take her back to my planet, for reasons, with her dad!, and you notice your gun doesn’t doing anything to me, well that won’t stop you from shooting me later six times in the head and that will stop me, I’m telepathic but I thought you were dead, I hit my wordcount, accepting a lot of shit, as an artifact it is a valuable lesson, understand the progress and changes, there’s some shitty stories too, the S effect, Nerves by Lester Del Rey, revealing atomic secrets, this story doesn’t reveal anything about anything, if this story came out today, would not be popular, the attack vector, it’s dangerous for children because they’re going to eat radium, manipulate the watch, a darkroom to show you that it worked, radium in its pure state, tritium glows green?, is there a dye?, radioactive isotope of hydrogen, luminous because of the alpha particles, phosphorous, most volatile, little bit of green maybe, copper, if you had it in a pool, you experienced the radium pool, no research done, fake fainted a lot, Freud started treating hysterical patients, hysteria was more common, one explanation, so oppressed, rebellious of deviant feelings through their bodies, listened to women, more narcissism, no real feelings, a social change, the evolution of the symptoms, how tight their corset was, special radium ribbed corset, keep your shape, as much as she wanted, marriage ceremony right now, have you forgot I’m a pastor?, the opposite of Chekhov’s gun, Munchausen’s threads, ends suddenly when Alexander the great comes in and chops it off, why should she faint?, telepathically knocked out, they don’t eat anymore, whatever, if you’re immortal, they ate all the radium on Jupiter, the story is stupid, in V they want our water, Michael Ironside, a Dutch historical story about occupation by Nazis, we call the the Visitors, V for Victory, V for Vendetta, the aliens that look just like us, they have to wear sunglasses, sex with the lizard man, lizard baby, the resistance against them, the Nazi party, Nazi occupation of Europe with aliens that were lizardmen, Alien Nation, the show was amazing, oppressed migrants, a movie with James Cann, hardboiled cop buddy movie with an alien partner, the human is racist against the aliens, mild mannered, strange culture, alien lady with no head, they solve murders involving the alien, manufactured by other aliens, the masters are not their, a shipwreck with 100,000 aliens, Fox show in the early 1990s, contemporary with Star Trek The Next Generation, is it weird to have a guy sleep with your wife, dating one of them, 1 full season and then 6 movies, a film first, parallel with, archive.org or youtube, it helps to be able to see things, the 80s is a weird time, women in the work place sort of stuff, Murphy Brown, ten seasons, presidential debate, there’s nothing going here, a different time, weird period of time, of this terrible story, not everything in the past is good, the Olemas sequel, why would I hurt them like this?, The Ones Who Stay And Fight by N.K. Jemisin, condescending and fascistic, goes off into an alley, quote mine it, an alternative universe, send information between alternate universes, observing our universe, our TV shows, a very American world, one of Jesse’s big objections, horrific videos of people being bombed to death, you condescending lady, the Heinlein solution, if you’ve been infected by observing our earth, I know what mis-mal-disinformation, you’re not equipped, its my burden, Ursula K. Le Guin, maybe she’s wonderful, mummy knows best condescension, mommy knows the right people to drop the bombs on, it just takes a few good surgical strikes on what people know, everybody Eloi, one Morlock, the worst treated proletarian, magically, more politically correct, our horrible racist evil world’s ideas, the CIA and the FBI, the secret judges and jury, killing people with the wrong ideas, apologize and sit still, it won the Hugo?, wow powerful story, am I offering good solutions for humanity, patting myself on the back, given what’s happening in Palestine right now, double down, the holy shit people are protesting, 500,000 people in London walking together can’t stop it, the price of being on the wrong team, let’s make a long list, always an excuse to drop bombs and kill people, object to the trolley problem I have to make a choice where the trolley goes, some people are not going to accept it, the response, a response to a false Omelas, a straw-man of Omelas, very much a Bartleby, The Scrivener, grit in the system, taking the metaphor literally, I’m better than Le Guin, sanctioning Biden sending arms and ammunition, I’m going to give you a condescending lecture, a movie that’s an antidote to all of this, Dream-Speaker (1977) TV movie, Cam Hubert, Angry 11 year old orphan Ian Tracey burns down his school, meets an Indian shaman and his mute companion, the authorities find out, blonde white boy, reform school, he’s hung himself, cut back to the Indian and his mute companion, please place me in a tree as was traditionally was done, school is a horror, institutions, it just is a horror, asking kids why they set things on fire, what am I supposed to do with this, residential schools, doing pretty well with their broken family out in the forest, an instinct in people to try to solve problems, cogs to be solved in problems, no alcohol should be imbibed, you think you’re fighting for something good, is there a possibility that you’re wrong, arrogance, interesting, more artistic trolley problem story, another objection, 3829, 1200 and something for Omelas, a lot to prove?, flourishing details, random paragraph, wear wings too, some are invisible, forbid the emulation of beasts, all honored, all sounds very nice, the triggering word is honoured, honouring her feelings, don’t honour feelings, not something to be venerated, kids don’t have the experience you have, couch it in another way, not the right way to frame it, stupid feelings, that was a silly thing to feel, you can wear as many wings as you want, we can still be friends, you need to be destroyed, targeted at race, 2018 and still talking about race all the time, racism exists, ingrained in a racist society, the nadir is the lowest, pinnacle, the worst kinda racism period, look at this huge problem and what caused it?, the kenosis, self emptying, on an ordinary level, maybe one day I will, grope around in the dark, starting with the idea that I don’t know, a big part of the solution, anti-kenosis, infodumping, solution dumping, moral dumping, best done through parable, that’s not a parable, oh my little sweetie, it’s okay that mommy runs drone programs, you’ve got something wrong with your car, sledgehammer, gets rid of the problem by getting rid of the people saying the problem, just delete youtube and twitter channels, mute it, give a warning, violence by having a video, goodreads, Omelas is pornography?, this is about abortion!, offended her kid was told to read, in her school English class, what ever happened, spirit and refreshment, she may not like it, millions of murdered babies, billions of dollars the abortion industry…, pornographic literature, demonic desensitization of our young people, the punishment of a child, about capitalism, if she was standing in line at the grocery store, Peel District School Board, emptied everything pre-2008, unfathomable, somebody talking about the red scare, number of professors fired for being communists, anti-woke (not censoring), a kind of hysteria that’s going on now, writers telling other writers you don’t need to read anything past 10 years ago, because other better writers, and token John Scalzi, you don’t need to read a Lovecraft story, lies you’re telling yourself, trust me the homework’s not worth doing, school library is a place to hide in the school, even in prison they have books, prison book programs, escape the horrors they’re locked in, a bulldozing non-thinking tactic, super-retarded, those people shouldn’t have those jobs, in favour of humans doing ok, because they’re ignorant fucks, mommy or daddy knows best, mommy vs. daddy, daddy’s meaner than mommy in the stereotype, oh sweetie, condescending like I got a boo-boo, old fashioned radium pool drinking black pilled anarchist with tendril face, giving lectures to professors, trolling me, a very bad story, it had a nice cover, produced, not much meat on these bones of the story, what did I do to my friends, not very deep, Thomas Copeland’s narration, university professor in English, his recordings of Paradise Lost, his productions, long stuff, Orlando, Furioso, Jerusalem Delivered, a classical education, unjustly forgotten science fiction, worthwhile, rock bottom, we’ve fasted and we’ve prayed, skeletons hanging on the wall, Lowdown Road by Scott Von Doviak, The Terminal Man by Michael Crichton, watch his movies, an ancestor to cyberpunk, science fiction-ish, watch The Andromeda Strain, good science fiction, race-against-the-clock, he knows his shit, Gilgamesh the King by Robert Silverberg, The Sword Of Welleran by Lord Dunsany, on the other side of the state, find the length, his novels are a little longer, he’s fun, fun and short, Hobbits!, Marimna, a dream story, the kings of all the countries, a cute story with beautiful description that he subverts somehow, Lord Dunsany’s in a restaurant, crazy man runs into the restaurant, The Hashish Eater, a doesn’t think about race at all Lovecraft, whimsy, entertainment for toffs, cozy, even when dishing out, quite cozy, In A Dim Room, a ghost story, a tiger in India, all the subsequent fracas is on Jorkens, very palate cleansing sort of reading, half-sold, Through The Gates Of The Silver Key by H.P. Lovecraft and E. Hoffman Price, The Weirwoods by Thomas Burnett Swann, reactive and doesn’t pull his punches, a sparky conversation, Arkansas, Kentucky, another Kentucky, mountains and hillpeople, reputation for being backwards, very foreward thinking, Sirius by Olaf Stapledon, smart dog book, they all want to get kisses instead of doing podcasts, The Cave Girl, no bad books, just less good books, a good way to start the year, The World That Couldn’t Be by Clifford D. Simak AND The Worlds Of If by Stanley G. Weinbaum, a double good show, the titles, inspired a magazine, kinda like an ACE DOUBLE, chocolate and peanut butter, that will be the homework for the podcast, draw a straight line from, modalized titles, Return From The Stars by Stanislaw Lem, Dark Carnivals: Modern Horror And The Origins Of American Empire by W. Scott Poole, strongly suggested, nuke Nice, take hostages, political experts, political views, The Devil’s Elixirs by E.T.A. Hoffmann, Matthew Gregory Lewis’ The Monk, minor capuchin, said by scholars, sort of a pioneer of a lot of interesting stuff, Poe ripped him off, 200 year old novel, Confessions Of An English Opium Eater by Thomas De Quincey, Drug Of Choice, At Time Of Changes, with beautiful art, mentioned in a Lovecraft story, interleaved the art, of things that are hot, 41,000 views over 11 years, 5 hours, comments on this video, transformed my life!, all addicts?, this is really interesting, learned more about drugs by not taking them, read it 50 years ago, well written, hallucinatory style, not modernist prose, from the era of the Romantics, 1821, here’s what I found, no image remains, the pains of opium, a BBC In Our Time, still a good show, podcast, did we miss anything?, parodied in Elder Scrolls, Morrowind, Scottish opium eater’s POV, Mount Analogue by René Daumal, the surrealists really loved it, symbolically authentic non-euclidean adventures in mountain climbing, treated in a science fiction way, famously finished on a comma, an audio comma, producing a short film festival, have lunch, commune, participation, fear to recommend, that would be homework, trick-or-treaters, not a light to turn on to summon them, never big in france, society is going to hell, can’t wear masks and demand candy?, protestors, invite them in, makes Jesse cynical, she’s popular, take it at face value, a good reply to Le Guin, way worse ideas, a big answer rather than posing a question, very American and not very universal, take it to Australia, right to be distressed, James Wallace Harris’ review, fairly bland takes, very clear writer, not a radical, doesn’t have strong opinions, angry ripostes, that’s sad, Lester Del Rey is a bad writer and great writer, Greg Bear is a great writer and a terrible writer, banger after banger, filling my brain with interesting stuff, is this the same character as the one on the previous page?, so good at sparky ideas, full of anger, go on to write Halo novels, so horrible despite the good ideas, despite the fact that Blood Music is great, he didn’t ruin it, Asimov ruined his stuff with Silverberg, married Poul Anderson’s daughter, fairly litigious about estate shit, nude pics of her cosplaying of Dejah Thoris or Red Sonja, Karen Anderson, 85 now!, temporary and long term, just recent stuff, Hardfought, great!, an old telephone operator switchboard, 10 hours on youtube, from Recorded Books, fake audiobooks, that’s not a human, Bears Discover Fire by Terry Bisson, the idea yes, cozy American, marshmallows around the fire, they don’t need fire, look manually, read with your mouth, creates an image, read with fingers, counting on your fingers, precise title, Frederik Pohl, Luke Burrage has mentioned it, an essay, Consumership by Margret St. Clair, Meem, kind of light, a lot of good worldbuilding for no reason, Three Worlds Of Futurity, A History Of Science Fiction Without Holes, The Man Who Sold Rope To The Gnoles, the title, take an ordinary expression and interpret it literally, one of the big secrets of science fiction, he knows diddly squat about science, there’s a Bevatron, even if he’s not New Wave, that forces you to be in a scientific background, go one step further, the whole and your life that way, that’s Philip K. Dick, a pure case of science fiction, being able to solve things, somebody tried, wanna use this for the cover of your book?, seven minute stories, need to be inspired by something, this is a really good story, Jesse, sent it to Eric, an excellent little story, pioneer uplift stories, build a robot and marry her in your basement stories, why everything is working, weird, and arrogant, The Basket by Jesse, this is a very good story, why shouldn’t you do a show on it?, lead the dance, maybe it is a great idea, not having other authors on to talk about their own work, what’s there to discuss, brings stuff out, not Dickian enough, The Exegesis, but what if, where’s that goddamn novel?, put on a different hats, story about hats and baskets, this picture is a story, how writing techniques work, The Man In The High Castle with the I, Ching, what’s the penalty if they don’t, get their grammar fixed, students play the game, boys love competition, they think it’s treat, Isaac Asimov’s Super Quiz, Bruce Jenner will be in there, pick a card, get to keep the card, aka the smartest person in the room, defeated their brother or this other kid in the room, that’s how kid brains are actually, busywork, makework, indoctrinated into school horror, sometimes it’s super-hilarious, who got up?, Bobina, young kids who need, could do anything, the program was more and more edulcorated, putting sugar in, the final exam, we’ve removed 1 result from this page, the only result has been censored by a copyright claim, medieval latin, India Love, the pornstar’s onlyfans, Instagram, allegedly infringing boobzone, a sex move, very rapidly, exam copies, straight-away, count as correct even when it wasn’t, very hard to get bad marks in English on the exam, special methods, minimum knowledge, some very short stories, half page stories, three minute videos, a minute and half, I’m against school, I’ve failed my life, I’m a school teacher!, that’s why we don’t like it, egodeath, killing your conformist self, the whole literal, Edward D. Hoch, the most delicious sin, the ancient sin, what is this sin?, mummifying himself, the story is profound because I don’t know what it means, suicide, this Karl Jung quotes, the one is the shadow of the other, seems interesting, psychological types, the four functions, the rival psychologists, Alfred Adler, Friedrich Nietzsche, like that Luther show, beyond Jung, Elmer Gantry audio, I could grow to love me, she’s a lot like the characters in The Fountainhead, a dominatrix, real love has all sorts of elements, I like reading his stuff, sharing his works, deeply flawed novels, dreading his phonecalls, shitty love, purified form of love, I don’t want to have power over you, hence the job of parent, more to make you think, a schema, will to power is not power over others except in its lower forms, to will it over and over again, because it has the name attached and picture, too guru, an all or nothing sort of thing, very ultimatumy, not even true for Jung, his alchemical phase, tortures and crucifixions, weird hermaphroditic result at the end, it has the shadow in there, a sentence, is that true?, this sounds interesting, makes sparks start flying, Omelas makes sparks go, you’re a monster, am I supposed to think you’re a monster?, a feel good libertalia, she’s tough love, I kill you if you think the wrong thing, maybe they read it and say you are so evil in this story, Beggars In Spain, yes, I’m a slan, the Hillary Clinton mentality, the most qualified person in history, whip me harder, mom, hence Trump, he has the right enemies, the joker card, a card working under cover for another card, he only works for him, all about him, the existence of billionaires, not a deep man, not my first choice, capitalism creates egomaniacs, one is an honest egomaniac, why this Jung stuff is so interesting today, all shadow projection, this Cirsova guy (Alex P.), we go back and forth, his critiques are pretty good, Paul has a problem with him, integrated into the microcosm, he’s on a team, reacting what’s going on in Israel and Palestine right now, same story as Ukraine but more heated, The Jimmy Shore Show covered Ryan Long’s skit, it would be really convenient to be a coma right now, at the end they’re dead, the reason the left hates Nazis so much, because they killed 27 million communists, pretty sure she’s not, see something they don’t like inside themselves, just trying to hate that person, poor vocabulary, Justin Trudeau, literally calling people to Nazis and then giving a standing ovation to a guy who worked for Adolph Hitler, there’s Nazis in Russia, what Putin is saying: we’ve got to root out the Nazis, they are definitely on the Nazi team given the Nazi imagery, totenkopf is one thing, dumped the imagery but kept the guys, kept the unity and the symbols and dumped the Jew hatred, nothing political on twitter at all, good for jokes, for links, get to meet people that way, either hyper-religious and autistic or mentally ill, I never see that, might be a listener to the podcast too, Roof Bears, weird people to get new insight into the world from, most of the time no feedback, one of them will bring good reaction, for maybe 10 years Jesse’s been poking Wayne June, what ancient wisdom was ruthlessly torn from the sacred archives?, are they fit?, what twitter is good for, poked Jonathan, a great sense of humour, ok robot, he’s very very dry, too dry, piss off?, hard to do tone, his communication system is too different, The Wall (1982), big long music video, Roger Waters words, politics, he gets stuff wrong, a great attitude, love Dawn Of The Dead (1978), it needs to be seen by political people, responds by becoming a fascist, The Quiet Earth (1985), Jesse is not a music guy, must be missing something, Wagner’s good, philosophy, science fiction, nothing, Tangerine Dream, music over the end credits, a beat in a scene where you get a montage, that’s something you like, we don’t need no education, political speeches, active politically, 1979, 1982 in the cinema, wife to be, Blade Runner (1982), The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), El Topo (1970), acid western, Jodorowsky’s Dune (2013), this new Dune movie, dumbing it down, what they did to Jessica, can’t stop weeping openly, we’re not allowed to have narration or voice overs, one-dimensional, like a Cliff’s Notes, multidimensional, the TV adaption, why Lynch’s Dune is reviled, a book medium, people decoding each other, even Heinlein, The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress has some action and some visuals, the martian one, Stranger In A Strange Land, of his adult novels, Dune is better than Stranger In A Strange Land, you need the ideas, you need the doubt, you need the multidimensional, different grids, good science fiction in writing, you need a demanding film, how much Blade Runner is able to extract from the novel, Mercerism, the owl, that’s enough, the dove, he’s a video guy doing a video medium, a little bit of this book, no fake police station, I want more life, fucker, the elevator scene, the eye scene, Gaff, a real idea movie, little stick man, a robot and robot love story, why the sequel is a failure, here’s the bad guy for the next movie, pretty good for being what it is, Ridley Scott has dumbed himself down, we didn’t need Harrison Ford, children and garbage, the political woman, we all whole through that, very N.K. Jemisiny, film editing, The Matrix (1999), took everything out about Zion out as irrelevant, take away the battery scene, The Thirteenth Floor (1999), eXistenZ (1999), David Cronenberg, he can’t help his fetish, bodies, opening them up and getting weird, Barry Convex, tripping over his own fetishes, kinda gross, long live the new flesh, even The Fly (1986), Crash (1996), vagina surgeon twins, Dead Ringers (1988), lingering over body trauma, reaching into his belly and inserting videotape, Lovecraftian, Videodrome (1983), with some judicious editing, The Electric Ant, he likes boobs, mainstream fetish, fit them in regularly, they don’t rot or explode or melt, very William Burroughs, with RoboCop guy, Peter Weller, Naked Lunch (1991), like a Cohen brothers movie with Cronenberg added, non-intellectual class, this is basically a film about cockroaches, Brazil (1985) a similar movie with political resonance, comedic riposte to Nineteen Eighty Four, the state we’re in right now, kids don’t get to mine back movies, old movies, almost impossible to find anything old on streaming services, the Orson Wells movie with the sled, people who enjoy making movies, Citizen Kane (1941), William Randolph Hearst, stuck with the dross, unwatchable, Oppenheimer (2023), Barbie (2023) by other means, a big ad for that, very meta, socially critical, unless Red Letter Media covers it, seeing this as a science fiction film, Tenet (2020), paradoxes, does the universe re-arrange itself, you’ve seen it played through hundreds of times, nonetheless, really clear, Goddard movies, traffic going by, Robert Goddard made movies?, Breakthroughs In Science by Isaac Asimov, lots of stuff in common between his fiction and popularizing history and science, the Roman Empire and the Roman Republic, see Foundation in a new light, figuring out the worth of things like that, don’t read anything since 2008, throw dice for the Hugo finalists, unfortunate, not in the microcosm, when some of the Hugos made sense, read science fiction all alone, starved for good books, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Franz Kafka, fan clubs, media people, like dressing up, they found their people, a little like university, you’re going to have a lot more interaction with people who like books, just enough true, Greg Bear was there, Harlan Ellison, Connie Willis, Robert Silverberg, Larry Niven falling asleep, the panels were like very weak shit podcasts, so many names mentioned, going through the list of all the names mentioned, here’s a long list of reasons why SFFaudio Podcast hasn’t won a Hugo, that’s exactly what it is, read a trilogy, three years too late, very time based cheerleading, we can still talk about an old book and be happy about it, a cheerleading squad for people in our niche, mostly not good, mostly very fluff, that show is so fucking long, goes hours and hours, Luke Burrage did an exercise, focuses on new books, some fantasy stuff, Alzabo Soup podcast, the Gene Wolfe Literary Podcast, The Fifth Head Of Cerberus, made it real enough to plunge into the stories, Marooned On Mars podcast, novel by novel, Kim Stanley Robinson, the other podcasts who follow new writers, some of them are good, somebody else’s job to read it for Jesse, that 1812 book, kicked around for 200 years, probably something to it, Hayy Ibn Yaqdhan by Ibn Tufail, two ibns, more intelligent than us, how dare it!, a good phrase, a Sufi scholar, re-written in the first person, Robinson Ibn Tufoe, in A Time Of Changes, without language you can’t get access to reality, it was good, reading all Silverberg is a life, Scott Miller’s Lost Sci-Fi Podcast, The Thing Behind Hell’s Door by Robert Silverberg, inside out world, a really good source, his enthusiasm, famous authors and some obscure thing, some obscure science fiction author we’ve, Watchbird by Robert Sheckely, going Sheckley crazy, shitty Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett humour, Sheckley was there first and better, a more diverse range, a lot like Philip K. Dick a little more sane maybe, R.A. Lafferty and John Sladek, Harry Harrison, The Stainless Steel Rat, just having fun, Bill The Galactic Hero, the narrator who did the whole series for Brilliance, what’s going on on facebook, heterosexual man got nude pictures from a teen girl, he was a good narrator, maybe he broke a law, Phil Gigante, Commentary, Rusty Rockets, Russell Brand, they took his monetization away, they should promote cancelling people, so very public, keeping him on there is pure profit that week, almost 5 hours.
Posted by Jesse Willis