Reading, Short And Deep #435 – A Modern Portrait by Lord Dunsany

Reading, Short And Deep

Reading, Short And Deep #435

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss A Modern Portrait by Lord Dunsany

Here’s a link to the story |PDF|.

A Modern Portrait was first published in Punch, May 15, 1946.

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The SFFaudio Podcast #789 – READALONG: Gilgamesh The King by Robert Silverberg

The SFFaudio Podcast #789 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, Terence Blake, and Jonathan Weichsel talk about Gilgamesh The King by Robert Silverberg

Talked about on today’s show:
serialized, 1984, simple question, science fiction or fantasy novel?, how could it be, other than crude financial reasons, a novelization of the oldest epic that we know of in any great detail, The Road To Science Fiction volumes, an excerpt, claimed, adopted, annexed, interstitial material, fragments, and a whole lot of Silverberg, the major events are seemingly from quasi-historical sources, demystifies the fantasy, a rational explanation, the epic shares, the novel shares, the search for transcendence, brought back down to earth, losing out to imminence, immortality, Dickian, the basic formula for science fiction, come back transformed, wants and needs, wants a lot of sex, wants immortality, needs transcendence, the immortality is in the work he does, living out his life the way it can be shaped, who is the survivor of the flood?, Zeusasudra?, that guy presents, I didn’t say that, you’re inferring that, how not to die rather than how to live forever, 1984, maybe one day, that’s such an impressive statue or temple, passing from a living being into a mythical being and written about by Robert Silverberg, a bit of Ozymandias, fragments of the wall and the epic itself, we look up this book and despair at its length, writer and artist, other intellectual activities, 1.7 speed, unpleasant to listen to that fast, the first 3rd or first half, the part he invented himself, Game Of Thrones, more dynamic and less descriptive, 2x speed, he changes the story, the first third was painful, tedious?, a boring story, really dragged, this isn’t really, because we’ve done a number of Silverbergs, his beats are all out on display here, chasing after women, concerned with death, the solitude, The Book Of Skulls, a Charles Stross novel, when Schweitz showed up, Enkidu, comfortable garden, kicked out of the city, comes back, kinda like Conan as a king, bored on his throne, kickoff, the interesting bit, greater acceleration, experincing this book, a flashback to Hayy Ibn Tufail, raised by antelopes, wise with the wisdom of nature, a man coming out of nature, Tarzan, before all that, the granddaddy of them all, he resonated with the idea, this isn’t the only book into this series, Scott asked Jesse a question, the same Gilgamesh as Gilgamesh In The Outback, a road trip across the United States, not a hero as much as a drug user, Downward To The Earth, once administrator of, a lot of tourism, he sees himself as this character, pushes her breasts into his face, what, I’m six, autobiography, Gilgamesh believes but Silverberg doesn’t, a potion, he’s sprouting hairs, a placebo, rejects the teaching the of the religion, is she sincere?, the political subplot, his conjecture, makes the wrong decisions, the lens he looks at everything [with], a volcanic vent, it’s both, translating, one of the big successes, the difference between poetry, philosophy and religion, William Blake, really a volcanic vent, psychic perception taken too concretely, he’s got epilepsy, Gene Wolfe, head injury, he see the gods, Wolfe being Wolfe, meeting the same characters over and over again, the fantastic is supposed to be taken as partially real, a concrete example, the sick tree scene, three demons in it, making bricks and fuckin ladies all day, the leaves are all falling down, thing’s he’s wrong about, cuts off the sick branch, worst poison, pours it down the hole, the demon being a snake, all fun stuff, the concoction is probably manure and it fertilizes the tree, the three demon problem, what a shaman does, things in all directions, really there’s one thing in there that works, decoration, trying to impress people, his presentation is as the king, having sex with everybody, goes to far with that, loves the bricklaying too much, he abandons the city, he is Man, lessons for men, if you’re going to be a man, very Jordan Peterson, Inana, he thinks she killed the previous king, not fully fleshed out for her, why is her face fucked up in the end, a disease, venereal disease?, leprosy, of love, war and political power, Venus or Aphrodite, a bloody good time, psychologically, they’ll laugh at me, reason for rejecting her, he knows the story of going to the underworld, he’s afraid, points in the story, a showmanship part of this I’m not really a goddess, role model, a Candide naive adherent, he didn’t have a dad, the manly arts, doesn’t have a friend, wrestle and become best friends, ruled by affects, addressed in the text, we were not lovers, doth protest too much, all the women he’s having, we can’t read this on a subversive level at all, the bull of heaven, not an earthquake, the explanation is made to fit, a woman’s jealousy, mask off, what’s going to happen, obvious he was going to kill her, for the last time, he’s going to banish her, shuts her up in a hole, uh huh, yup, he’s the king, nothing complicated or delaying of satisfaction, ruled by his emotions, a foreign prince in another city, not subversive, writing from an atheistic perspective, very minimal, the closest we get is when he goes off to get immortality, the magic pearl was lost, feels like a fantasy, he goes off to Africa at one point, wooly haired, visitors, Yemen?, Qatar, China, placenames, this place used to be called that, guessed it, sort of saying, a rational explanation for everything or is there?, the science fiction aspect as well, the myth of the flood, no longer an immortal, tell the story like it is, a huge downpour, no ark, a miniversion of this book, a legendary story and so is this, “‘euhemerism’ 1. the theory that gods arose out of the deification of historical heroes. 2. any interpretation of myths that derives the gods from outstanding men and seeks the source of mythology in history.”, what if this actually happened, psychological stuff too, a modern novel, told first person, very reliable narrator, perceives in a different way, I, Claudius, you don’t need to bring the gods into it, two thirds god, it doesn’t make sense, a two father point of view, Lord something who is divine, two fathers and one mother, he’s not a demi-god, a step up, the god come into him, the ancestor of Hercules, Prometheus, Ulysses, doesn’t steal fire form the gods, a titan, he’s a builder, side note, a historical Gilgamesh, Civilization 6, don’t judge us, yes we can be friends, wrestling with him, that can save you on higher difficulties, demystifying, mostly historical alternate history straight, vampires and zombies, Zeusy, pocahontasy, Heroes In Hell, To The Land Of The Living, one of the fragments not included in the Epic Of Gilgamesh, his shade comes back, dirt farmer, preferred to be a fisherman and not a great scientist, hindsight is 2020, 0202, straight up, post-modernism, read an old text, what if this was real, Alan Moore’s Watchmen, zero irony, The Calydonian Boar Hunt, no situational humour, her boobs in his face, the sex is really enjoyable, not a normal book, too mundane, not wild enough, it doesn’t get crazy, becomes subversive and undermines the society that he lives in, needed a drug dealer, a subversive element, the premise is double, what if people really saw the gods and the world in this way, Julian Jaynes’ two hemispheres hypothesis, the right side of the brain, the irrational intuitive side, the left rational side, a dissociated way, people in 2023 talking about prayer, in a dialogue with god all day, students, what people meant by prayer, what does that even mean?, kneeling at the bedside hands in prayer mode, Gilgamesh is writing his own story, always on about, write an essay about things that are bad, self-dialogue and self-talk, I need to pay attention to mummy and daddy, it was you who was listening, I have a relationship with god, bizarre but real, more so long ago, secular mindfulness, Buddhism, very popular, journaling, accountability tweets, Carl Jung, what she says and what the wise old man says, get dialogues going, objectively, chat gpt is the god I ask to write up my journal, multiple personalities like we see in dreams, traveled around a lot, strange or exotic beliefs, believe in ghosts, seeing ghosts, ghosts are 100% real, you shouldn’t go hiking at 4 oclock in the morning, the fear of things, taking in data, the screen of reality, The City In The Middle Of The Night by Charlie Jane Anders, similar length, firs book in a series, Leonidas, Conan and Ted Nugent, learned so much from this novel, old myths of Gilgamesh, what the story was trying to tell me, baffled, mid-3 stars, the ratings 11,322 vs. 901 ratings, what’s your point?, people don’t read old books, the editor of iO9, this is an old book, people just don’t read old books, making an assumption, not sure that’s a proven assumption, audience is extremely online, Silverberg’s is older, not fully supported, just looking at one thing, this is not a famous book, the novelty of being new, what’s a good book to read?, a book I’ve heard of that’s good, go by author, a Clarke award, a Locus award, a Hugo award, thousands of good review, by helpfulness, how goodreads sorts its review, likes, probably some algorithm, everything is in 3 star range, Amazon bought goodreads with the intent of killing it, just strangle it, Luke Burrage, disable features, the science fiction book, Lord Of Light by Roger Zelazny, a higher high, the similarity there, when the god manifests in him, the power of the god in him, survivors of a space travel crash, the Hindu pantheon, wield an attribute specific to that god, a precedent, Dune, the got-it-all-wong hypothesis, the bene gesserit, manipulating everything, not exactly a messiah figure, a savior for the city, The Cosmic Puppets by Philip K. Dick, a male feminist, misunderstanding Anana, he’s paranoid, Gilgamesh is the misogynist, I don’t see it, full of the juice, had to go and break into the wedding ceremony, on my way to have sex with the wives, mentioning, sex scenes early on, five women a night, it’s not five!, lay on the psychology, really well done, plodding rather than tedious, walking along telling his story, set pieces, the tree, the demon in the forest, the meeting with Enkidu, the things that are special, getting his emotions, good inference in what’s going inside Enkidu, presume some jealousy there, sex once a year, nothing otherwise, temporal vs. spiritual power in the third millennium B.C., trying to kill him, he’s a bad king, abandons the city, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, trying to kill him out of jealousy, a smear campaign, trying to hell the city?, he was lousy, transgressing the limits, cleansed means killed, he is a bad king, his job is to fix all the city problems, the councils, I’ll think about it, who’s going to fix the walls, what the priestess wants, go out and build that wall or the temple or fix the tree, the reason he comes back, threatening to take away his kingship, A Time Of Changes, a life in business, that coming back is what he’s supposed to do, to Australia and to hell, Conan is a funny case, the problem with being a king, just like Kull, campaign against other kings, the domestic sphere, a tension built into the story of Gilgamesh, a man is domesticated, she gets more power, yes, sitting there horny, carousing with his buddy, a fundamental dynamic going on there, I’m going to have sex with you when you’re older, not a guy who believes in kings at all, he’s bad at it, he does things to much, your soldiers are exhausted, nobody has the strength you have, yeah I have a giant dick, but do be jealous I have premature ejaculation, the first time he leaves, almost identical scenes, the new king, he grew up in a cloistered environment, when he comes back to see his brother, this awkward meeting, the same emotional set, pock marks vs. worry lines, prematurely grey, busy being king, uneasy lies the crown, footloose and fancy-free, experience the depravity and luxury, the full exercise of being a man, that’s in the afterword, Leonidas, Gerard Butler in 300, an alpha male, an ursine manliness, manly manless, gave myself ten pushups, fun and entertaining, three times as many, comparable to a lot of Silverberg, still alive, there’s overlap, remarking on twitter, two Silverberg novels on LibriVox, pre-fifties, a break in there, throughout the eighties, putting em out, multiple novels per year, fairly unknown Silverberg novel, doesn’t compare well, we should focus on things that people can do anything with, learn how to pirate, put these up with the story, whoever happens to be familiar, make it as easy for as many people, rigamarole, all the affiliate links, all the links die, this website has been online, wasn’t a good idea, SFFaudio isn’t a commercial project, send people to the source if possible, a different Herculean task for another day, Passengers, really into writing, short light things, The Sword Of Welleran, if this hadn’t been assigned, not as high a high, not as sparky, very insightful, he did a great job with the worldbuilding, a lot of research, William Coon, quay, draught, he’s so slow, very early in his narrating career, speaking of friends of yours, Kevin Hearne, Iron Druid, Luke Daniels, many many great narrators in the world, the theme of death, I’m gonna die some day, the origin story of the Buddha, come back and do your job, the crazy religious stuff is killed at the end, hurt by Enkidu’s death, stumble into the underworld, Conan doesn’t have an Enkidu, the only consistent character is Conan, after Belit dies, a paragraph in the middle, the adventures, fights hawkmen, the Black River of Zarkheba, buries her with her treasure with a viking funeral, sad, ten second pause then back to it, it’s too dumb, the colour palette, a great story, slowmo, a brown filter, too much green screen, the story and the emotions are strong, in the Conan stories, more Kull, he’s more human than Conan, likes sex too much, works his men too much, get your head screwed on right, clean your room, a thematic thing going on, he plays it perfectly, he’s enjoying it, from Wikipedia, reception, Neil Gaiman, Imagine Magazine, David Langford, White Dwarf, a gaming magazine, explains the fantastic, you have to kill a friend, a celibate priest doing rituals all day, do the work, he did the work, Larry Niven, the Draco Tavern, the men who lived forever, our hero the bartender, make it worth enough, the premise is like the Lord Dunsany Jorkens stories, The Callahan series by Spider Robinson, hard SF jokes, Zaphod Beeblebrox style stories, Asimov did some too, Arthur C. Clarke, a fun mode of storytelling, scientific love stories, from The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, Ray Cummings, Cautionary Tales, Limits, good at mathematics, Convergent Series, the one with the demon, July 1978, hence the title, that’s gonna make Jesse into a pearl, the Russian movie made by two brothers, don’t usually click on what Jesse sends, the trailer is in English, subtitle auto-translation, an amazing plasticine animation movie about gladiators, two female characters voiced, 9-0 minutes claymation gladiatorial combat, super-solid, anti-Russian, a raging anti-Semite asshole, insistence, limiting in general, trolls, patently bullshirt, convenient, reach me elsewhere, the problem with Skype, pornbots, inundated, messenger, social media just twitter, but…, delete the app your done, pity twitter, Elon Musk did something bad, the controversy this week, anti-white hate, sue Media Matters, like Scott had, the fucking trolls, more hatred, until Elon Reeve Musk is gone, hurtful meme, an exercise in antisemitism and personal attacks, after five years, pinned tweet, the frustration, a lot of work, your handle remains your own, Charlie Brown, take him at his word, get a bluechek, cut out, a really sensitive arrow, reactived to deactivate with more courtesy, going to Australia, 32,000 words, weekends off, why open a used bookstore, like Harlan Ellison, nobody here, a destination right beside you, a yoga salon, nail salon?, culture isn’t an important thing here, X-Box, bowling, Black Box Theater, you need a date for that, spend money, play games, 2 or 3 days a week, when not eating or pooping, the desk people, on their phone, sit on the bench on their phone, watch a video, swipe up swipe up, filling the hours between grave and birth, weird fuckin channels, figuring out how to preserve laserdiscs, laserrot, the technical know how, weird shit, as a percentage, ripping it through the coaxial output, processing involved, special developer kit, an even better signal, straight to the analog, more fidelity than you get from your screen, the animal videos, here’s a puppy with a duck friend, very poor, not a wealthy area, New Jersey, where the servants lived, closed highschool, where they sent the black students during segregation, a third of the storefronts are closed, there’s no train anymore, just empty, a small performing art school for kids, state run, the park, a housing project, the people who are incapable of living on their own, walk around, an opportunity to build something, do signings, advertise it, build a local culture, a place to store your books, an anchor, the story of Austin, how horrible it was under covid in California, industry, a liberal democratic section of Texas, Portland Oregon, keep it weird, you need something like an anchor, 15 bookstores on the same street, live above the store, use it as your workspace, some weirdo gets lost on the way through your town, games with Yelp, the internet stuff, a hair salon, we are upen, English is not a language you’re familiar with, can you pay the rent?, the banks approve the loans, charge a higher rent, the whole scam going on in New York City proper, business vacancy rate, 17.4%, at least half empty at street level, some empty apartments as well, this artificial thing, a foothold, physical infrastructure, shifts with the sands, do they have bookstores in China, we have no serious emptiness in business, people moving in, the economy is not a total train-wreck, people don’t buy physical books except at Costco and Chapters, lifestyle shit, desperately trying not to be in the book business, in the used market, regional authors, you have to visit my store first, you have to do a signing, phone stores are popular, bookstores are not popular, how much is rent going to be?, set up an LLC, this is going to be on the podcast, a cafe, people like coffee, a latte, I wanna try this latte, brought into the 21st century, sells an addictive product, relatively inexpensive to make, a relatively high price, a couple towns over, they always are older, they got a rent deal a long time ago, move or go online, I would love to own a restaurant, all the signs point to this being a terrible idea, you cannot fix the country on your own, FDR fireside chats, he was speaking via radio to a specific group of people, Wall Street was against him, he was treated like Trump, Smedley Butler, he went on record, the wiped him from the record, totally true, that was in the past, like Caesar, his uncle was president, the deep state and the billionaires were against him, this is what you need to do, this new innovation, 40 different alphabet agencies, you can’t will your city into not being fucked up, most people’s solution is to leave, a hobby that’s going to fail, fit enough books in there, it would be good to have customers, Walmart killed that business, by 1998, ebay, we should start selling on ebay, Sears catalogue pickup, extra foot-traffic in, by 2005, that business was still alive 2 years ago, figure out a way to not have the rent be an extravagance, unless independently wealthy, the George Washington Bridge, it would be about bitcoin and supermodel asses, cat videos and making fun of celebrities, Elon Reeve Musk is a bad person, what they say about a Nazi bar, it’s called censorship, it’s not a bar, much more like a public square, annoying when people have different ideas, let me hear their story, walled garden, Threads, Bluesky, Mastadon, Truthsocial, Media Matters is an evil organization, a functionary of one of the political parties, David Brock, the people who donate to it, institutions are naturally corrupted, institutions are evil, what if you’re a tenured professor, a staunch institutionalist, Eric is an emeritus professor, The New York Times, New Jersey, the had a Ted Chiang story, still big, that goes for art, a received opinion, animated movie about a kung-fu panda, the same school as Donald Trump, Denzel Washington, Colin Powell, Rudolph Giuliani, army, they don’t want to hear dissent or questioning, literally did that, at least it’s not an Ivy League school, H.P. Lovecraft, the decorative ivory, the building is old, they like the way it looks, they trim it, old east coast university, a Jesuit school, if you think institutions are right you do evil, I’m outsourcing my decisions and actions to a thing outside of myself, pirates stabbing liches, controlling things from beyond the grave, pirates are anarchists, piracy, I don’t trust this Dick Cheney guy, but I’ve been in this thing my whole life, what will happen if I don’t shaking Richard Nixon’s hand, like Smedley Butler, the supreme leader of China, would you still call him a dictator, it’s just a slur, what makes him a dictator, not Roman position anymore, regime, just a slur, autocrat, the guy gets shit done, he forces his will upon people, 23 years, he arrests dissent, a whole January 6th thing, they forgot to bring their guns, Huey Long, a collective action, literally what happened to Caesar, guns on the assassin, Lone Star Planet by John J. McGuire and H. Beam Piper, H.L. Mencken, The Malevolent Jobholder, Woodrow Wilson, arrested his opponents, revered by the institutionalists, his 14 points, Julian Assange, nobody has repealed it, he railroaded that war [WWI], a fascinating guy, they called Trump a dictator, he modeled his speaking style after Hitler, a little folksy, Bernie Sanders with a more humorous presentation, become obsessed, maybe there’s a science fiction tie in, populist, socialist, his family, revere him as a hero, like Caesar, he gets his power from his army, the whole thing happens because of slaving and genociding, to overthrow the old order in a particular town, successor, still going to do slavery and all that but less civil war, on the right path of doing something good, Gerald Ford, the Manson Family CIA assassination group, the deep state in action, Richard Nixon, Spiro Agnew, somebody so dumb, speaker of the house in Canada, everybody in parliament was clapping for a literal Nazi, the Speaker resigned, his boss is the prime minister, he chose to resign, a cuck job, prestige in the states, considered equal, head of state, head of congress, add some balance, the speaker is a cuck in Canada, run things when the king or queen is not in parliament, they choose their prime minister afterwards, a little bit of reverse order but functionally identical, a machine that should work identically, if they force the vote they can choose somebody else, changed the rules, the guy who has an owl for a wife, Newt Gingrich, he quit, a brand new rule, rules they are imposing on themselves, owl shaking Trump’s hand, an isolated incident, Democrats were cucks for Democrats, what happened to the Squad, chose not to force the vote, a little bit of backbone, a rule for them, once a rule gets written, that’s a not a law, a mode of operation, a coup in Australia, refusing to do the job, a mask off moment for the United States controlling Australia, now you gotta resign in disgrace, had an unwritten constitution, make Donald Trump speaker, that would be hilarious, wrong, a sergeant at arms, to enforce the speaker’s will, an actual mace sitting on a table, when the queen’s not in town, a shooting in parliament in Canada, copied from England, kidnap one member of parliament, no torture involved, they have a hostage, formal formality shit, all cucks to the queen, how Hitler came to power, he was appointed, side with the rightwing nazis, didn’t realize it would sound bad later, Hillary Clinton on a talk show, she thinks she’s smart, a warning or a threat, fear is the best tool, if we don’t do this one thing something bad will happen, an effective tool, Ross Perot, had some good ideas, if you look at his charts, perfectly reasonable, a billionaire businessman, the conspiracy theory or the truth, left thousands of POW/MIA in Vietnam, the official line was the sonic weapon from Cuba, compensation for something that isn’t real, literal people killed in Vietnam, unrecovered bodies, eaten by a tiger, movies that would support that, Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985), Missing In Action (1984), Chuck Norris, Uncommon Valor (1983), reignite the Vietnam War, weapons of mass destruction, re-invade the country, drops out of the race, still on CSPAN, all 12 hours of it, kind of a naive guy, the October Surprise, these terms, false terms, a bag you stuff an uncertain set of ideas, I feel your pain, what makes you think there’s a distinction, a heel and baby-face, I like my girls like I like my…, what makes somebody left wing or right wing, campaigning on it is a trick, RFK, Jr., take votes from somebody, these are theories I want facts, 100% in favour of war, traditionally republican, both parties believe that, siphon the money off, George H.W. Bush, except for losing the election, circular reasoning, a robot or no vote, electoral college is a separate thing, it’s all a scam, institution totally gamed, senators in Canada, all paperballots all counted in front of witnesses for any parties, recorded, this vote is ambiguous, voting machines, a stylus pen, an anonymous ballot, there’s never going to be an overage, seems like it’s way more gamed, 50 state elections, are there any paper ballot states?, vote by mail, Alaska is hand count and optical scan, a real point of weakness, ballot stuffing, the Kennedys, Edgar Allan Poe may have died from this, the Chicago political machine, still ongoing, there’s video, ballot harvesting, just the official elections, the party elections, cheating members of the party, not working very well, people are not very good at choosing candidates, in the 70s and the 80s, internal vs. formal corruption, Hillary Clinton cheated Bernie Sanders, Donna Brazile, she wrote a book, pledged to support, inside party politics, taking advantage and cheating, neutral arbiter, when leaked emails showed, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Seth Rich, the “hack” which wasn’t a hack, the company that did the audit, ex-NSA guys, this is impossible, it had to have been a flashdrive, an unsolved murder, Robert Muller, working hard to say this is 100% untrue, the Christchurch shooting in New Zealand, Hunter Biden’s laptop, The New York Post, the twitter account was removed, overt censorship of true things, if people thought Biden’s family was corrupt, very relevant, very interesting timing, given it wasn’t a hack vs. a leak, kinda boring, exciting movie style, what that whole House Of Cards, Kevin Spacey’s career went flush, just delete it man, a lot of audience on there, pornbots, women who joined twitter 2 months ago, clogging up followers, suddenly to get your message, in Hollywood, the talent, it doesn’t matter it is fake, the decision makers are so stupid, fake followers, if you enjoy twitter tweet, it has utility, the complaint from the girls was, thumbs up emoji, it’s not natural, make jokes and people get offended, a good scrap-board, becoming less and less useful, get off this hellsite, funny, a scenester, like an institutionalist for a scene, the SFWA scene, takes his queue, age gapped themed short story, makes himself a victim, a huge follower count, in the scene, its outside of the acceptable, on the downlow, prudish, beautiful naked women, paintings, Bettie Page, they tend to be beautiful, PulpCovers, a practicing Catholic, he’s very liberal, it has flipped, not libertarian, artistic representation of nudity, twitter is not the universe, politicians are on there, people who right books, Instagram, blogs were destroyed, Alex from Cirsova, what twitter is good for, sending files to people, all sorts of good things happen, where the people are, some who are leaving or have left, people are being crowded out by bots, there’s North Korean agents, people misrepresenting themselves, delete or not delete, Jack Dorsey, why twitter is good, seeing the video of the kids’ heads opened, the war in Israel, nice that it’s not being censored, there’s fake shit, just happened 10 minutes ago, also give out news, everything’s an op, more public domain books, good audiobooks, good covers, emotionally manipulative, if you want censorship, he doesn’t want to be confronted with opposing ideas, get’s really noisy, a jumble of information, a very reasonable number, an exodus, the consensus says you can’t be on here, I don’t want to give Amazon money, he’s angry, that sort of anger makes you not want to be angry, put on your Paul hat, believe in nations, personal sovereignty, large corporations, Bezos and Zuckerberg and the Virgin guy, rocket guys, having a lot of fun, Bill Gates, lives in a mansion, is that fun, lives in a little box, making bullet proof cars, MSNBC, humiliated, a pie in the face, trying to not be hated, own things, manipulate reality, fun and useful, electric cars are a scam, ethanol cars, he knows its a scam too but he’s having fun with it, he loves rockets, makes jokes about rockets, sucking off the government teat, he’s wrong in many cases, Starlink is very good shit, making internet not stuck to cable, provides it to Ukraine, providing it free, Boeing or Lockheed Martin, circumventing the US government, gives him decision making power, battlefield decisions, he’s very personally powerful, smoking Joe Biden, that genius who’s not demented, if you want to cow that military power, information power, computers, they go through the U.S. military, unilaterally decide, the enemy, it’s good that people can share shit, to guide rockets, the Russians have their own system, give Cubans the internet, more powerful than actual governments, whatever his staff tell him, quasi-state like, more powerful than many states, more powerful than Canada, the global world order, Eric did not like it, my favourite billionaire, Bill Gates is intruding into my apartment, Elon Musk forces jokes on me, he trolls me, he’s a threat, he’s dynamic enough, like Apple used to be, they need him, bring him to heel, whoever you’re saying the government is is super incompetent ignoramus and clowns who can spell, they’ll tell you your grammar is bad, institutions, amassed an enormous amount of power, states have armies, he has rockets though, amazing how well he’s been able to navigate that shit, we can be done, two hours of Jonathan and Jesse talking at the end.

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Reading, Short And Deep #434 – The City In The Sea by Edgar Allan Poe

Reading, Short And Deep

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.

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The SFFaudio Podcast #788 – READALONG: The Terminal Man by Michael Crichton

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 long

measuring 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 turning

on 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 marked

tapes. Those soft shapes,
shadowy inside

the 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.

The Terminal Man by Michael Crichton

Tuesday May 9, 1972, in the NEW YORK TIMES

The Terminal Man (1974)

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Reading, Short And Deep #433 – The Retroactive Existence Of Mr. Juggins by Stephen Leacock

Reading, Short And Deep

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.

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The SFFaudio Podcast #787 – READALONG: Lowdown Road by Scott Von Doviak

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.

Lowdown Road by Scott Von Doviak

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