Tag: The SFFaudio Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #876 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Tower Of The Elephant by Robert E. Howard and The Tale Of Satampra Zeiros by Clark Ashton Smith

The SFFaudio Podcast #876 – The Tower Of The Elephant by Robert E. Howard (1 hour 23 minutes) read by Mike Vendetti and The Tale Of Satampra Zeiros by Clark Ashton Smith (31 minutes) read by Tommy Patrick Ryan, followed by a discussion. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Scott Danielson, and Cora Buhlert.

talked about on today’s show:
Smith’s 1931, 1933, paired, Weird Tales authors, big 3, big 4, thieves stealing things from places, things not going according to plan, a tweet, art from both, who thiefed it better, Howard, had read the Smith before, 25 years now, maybe more, a few other things too, badgering about Conan, really good, over the last 4 years, sword and sorcery, really liked it, good introduction to Conan, a good story, with one caveat, no girls in it at all, more interesting character, Red Nails, People Of the Black Circle, Queen Of The Black Coast, old fashioned language, perfectly harmless Conan stories, stray racism, stray anti-shemitism, pro-cimmerianism, trying to cancel Astrid Lindgren, Pipi Longstocking, great children’s book, the audience for that Star Trek babies show, isn’t quite what you were expecting, of these two stories, which one is the science fiction story, literally an alien, stapled to a couch for 300 years, other planets, not surprised, if he was less Cimmerian he would question his sanity, the tones are very different, a pair of thieves into a forbidden building, one of them dies, with no great jewel, a horror story, a cosmic horror story, Tsathoggua, an inklings situation, an Inkling situation, Seabury Quinn is the big fourth, correspondence, Robert Barlow, Frank Belknap Long, H.G. Wells was in Weird Tales, Tennessee Williams, the people on the cover, Clarke would be one of the big 4 of something else, takes the cover, doesn’t have scantily clad women, Galactic Journey, Margaret Brundage covers, got quite grumpy, naked woman on the cover, strategically placed, less than 5%, scantily clad ladies, all academics, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams, Texas, California, Rhode Island and New York, except to go to Mexico, and New Orleans, re-qualification, San Fransisco, using the mail, reading each other’s stories, corresponding, not exactly an inklings situation, C.S. Lewis, writing for money, elderly and sick parents, stuff in the 1950s, a pulp story, chapters, the whole last chapter of the book is a nice delicious infodump, the fight in the bar, what kind of men are men, Gundermen, a city of thieves, Yara is a thief as well, a pot bellied Nemedian, Taurus, Poland maybe?, Zamora, Turkey?, Hyrkania, Russia, Ukraine, an analogous, the tower, our guy who’s bragging, to teach women stealing, a Kothian, hooked nosed shemite forger, he wants to sell a particular woman to a shemite, a slave of another race, he stalked her and got her, a big story about bragging and what being a man is, why has no one broken into the tower, the conflict, Howard doesn’t do this, semi-unconsciously, getting into a fight with Lovecraft about what’s going on, civilization vs. barbarism, Howard is massively affected by this, a completely corrupt city, carry swords openly, a beef, the only killing Conan does of a human, a Nemedian who’s already on the job, inaccessible towers, with winged people, pre-cataclysmic land, lions, tries to betray Conan, Conan figures it out using Sherlock Holmes style techniques, what eventually is not a pay-off, escape the city with a bag of gold, what do we come away with?, he doesn’t walk out with a gem, some insight into Conan, a mercy-killing, compassionate, Yag-Kosha, torturing him, blind, drugged stupor, he helps Yag-Kosha, a man of a certain thing, The Ten Commandments, very biblical, Solomon Kane, old testament characters, physically gets the Staff of Solomon, this proof of God’s power, A Song Out Of Midian, Mt. Sanai, Christianity, civilized long settled people, intricate and complex, formulas and rituals, simple and understanable, Crom was their chief, gloomy savage god, gave man courage at birth, kill his enemies, literally engaging, the perfect god for atheists, The Vale Of Lost Women, lovecraftian monsters, from the outer dark, essentially miracles, fights the god, that is victory, man can fight a god, he isn’t writing this because he’s trying to make a philosophical point, he can’t help but put his stuff in there, a minor debate in Conan The Barbarian (1982), a haze of bewilderment, all touched in the head, low tolerance, ideas about life, I live, I love, I slay, I am content, sits around and listens to philosophers a lot, how many angels could dance on the head of a pin, shaking your head, up their own navel, religion students, teachers of religious education, translated 500 different times, what’s going on, which is the better story and why, the Conan story, very enjoyable, a mythic depth to it, it’s cosmic, a Lovecraft feeling, came to earth in China, Ganesha, this is what I need you to do, take my heart out, squeeze the blood on this gem, ancient ancient stuff, in The Odyssey, Tim Powers’ On Stranger Tides, instructions, strums the guitar strings, biblical and beyond biblical, from the depth of the human consciousness, differing philosophies, read both before, deeper, more mythical, a great story, funny, what happened was, got on the internet, excited to meet other people, an early forum, Scott Lynch, The Lies Of Locke Lamora, KGB Bar, Asimov stories, rude, that’s true, way to stupid, a collection, appreciate it more, the executioner, dark but hilarious, some guy who was a jerk, ultimately you are on team Conan, an incredibly important story, rogue thieves story, definitely important, Boston Blackie, Dunsany, the first one in fantasy, the template for Fafhrd and The Grey Mouser, we like the Conan more, the different philosophies, engagement with the world as it is, having that idea, rug pulled, The Mirrors Of Tuzun Thune, a much gander aspect, race and borders and stuff, how to be in the world, except for the story and the experience, we come out of the story with a greater awe, comes out with a missing hand, meets a monster, a genuine monster, into a circle, the same temple, things in particular, 3rd person, the author giving his opinions, that’s a mistake, all sorts of clever, early in Conan’s career, The Frost Giant’s Daughter, the names of the characters, he treats his characters very disposably, usually keep the main character, background characters always change, Turuz Oomphalious, Tommy [Patrick Ryan], what kinda accident, sounds like a real name, both of these are jokes, less than zero, omphalos, navel, also a circle, they’re thieves, thieving to be luxurious, fur bikini, enjoying the thievery, that drunkenness, decadence, a repeated motif, loves describing the colours of the materials, the materials themselves, the sensual experience, literally lost his hand, writing with his sinister hand, the story as it is, the tale of everything, the shrine of the god, the jungle taken suburbs, hyperborean rulers, one giant sentence, what kind of guy, violet juice, rubric, on strong vellum, made of the skin of the mastodon, some lying legend, a warning letter, the colour of the ink, he is an aesthete, pleasure seeking, touched in the head, a response, a little more like Taurus, he enjoys the spoils of his takings, the king of thieves, too much rich food, drunken burglary, own everything nice, The Hound, they steal art, they make art, their art is horrible, hounded to death, go in to steal something, round and round, lives to tell the story, his lesson was not learned at all, why we love reading Clark Ashton Smith, Conan’s motive, a very good question, the whole point of Conan, the viewpoint character, we want to be him and we want to have this experience, they’re doomed, the characters don’t survive, the luxuriant growth, as you approach it, snakes, other animals, and bats, a doom, walking towards their doom, they’re fools, Conan is Robert E. Howard wrestling with the world, people would come at Jesse with religious stuff, figure out what’s going on, how do you defend against their arguments, comes in cynical but open, asks his questions, a famous line in this story, that’ Heinlein line, armed society is a polite society, from outside the city, the Karen mentality, grateful and thankful, the thing we hate in ourselves, we need to be a certain way, in the end he comes away with a broader experience of the world, that is the payment, a young Conan, newish to civilization, very curious, an atheist, he’s anti-religion, a religious region, books about theology, he’s doing his own research, he’s arguing with them, A Witch Shall Be Born, crucified and survives, a betrayal story, every movie, even the Solomon Kane movie, he’s a philosopher, he’s wrestling with something, it’s not always Conan but it is always Robert E. Howard, women shouldn’t trick you into wanting them and then take your money, his takeaway, what if everything’s fake?, literally wrestling with things, Xuthal Of The Dusk, The Slithering Shadow, responding to gothic fiction, rejecting it, how to avoid becoming weak, he came to earth, a rebellion on their planet, jungles of China, the names are not great, his apprentice, oversteps, builds the tower, a story of betrayal, I have to stand on my own two feet, own bootstraps, ultimately we know what happened to Howard, don’t do that, pay his bills, caregiver for his mother, a double funeral, his father, slow to pay, trapped in this house, his girlfriend had gone off to college, is she really dying this time, he wanted to kill himself, the excuse, untenable, let’s be careful, a long life, he drank a lot, got married late in life, stepchildren, he did his art, he cultivated his garden, this amazing vocabulary, very strange for thieves, the stand-in for these characters, trying to make art, the putative author of the story, it’s navel gazing, he knows what he’s doing here, sensual pleasure, the problem of existence, existential philosophers in the form of sword and sorcery stories, steals to survive, jewels he kept, find yourself a husband, crazy socialists, civilized lands, next to warehouses full of grain, cuthroat capitalism, super loyal to his friends, young thief, mercenary, pirate, he’s everything, the man in full, 16-mid40s, a mistake to think about how Conan is, what is this character come away with, a sense of awe, wow, how are we supposed to feel about this mercy killing, honourable and terrible, Robert E. Howard’s position, frontier guy, dogs and horse being shot, too injured to continue living, a hypocrisy there, one of the pacific island wars, head blown open, what do we do?, the cameras are here, of course you’re going to shoot him, everything that happens is horrible, you sorta need to have a reason external to you, what it has to be is anti-dogma, thou shalt not kill (thy self), he’s trying to do good in the world, harms all of us, his friends are all sad, not gonna make you happy, a choice between these two stories, we are told to reject the story by Satampa Zieros, that’s why it can’t be compared, much tighter and more complete story in terms of unity of effect, what Poe would be talking about, it nullifies itself, it tells us to reject it, there are immense possibilities, first fighting dinosaurs, a nested dug in on itself society, the sun’s bright, how different they are when they’re really quite similar, why do Sherlock Holmes stories work for us so well, crusaders stories?, why do we like his writing so much, of they’re not stupid ideas, so distinctive and iconic, even though he’s great, he’s always going to be third tier of these guys, his ambition, tend my garden, make things beautiful, the colour of the wine, all surface, all pleasure, older than Robert E. Howard’s, at least one word he made up, abroad already in the half light, the poisonous looking fruits, malign attention, he is a thesaurus, adamantine, pecuniary depletion, it means purple, his vocab is better than everybody’s, he literally didn’t forget his words, come away with vocab words, Hyperborea, a place of his, greek for far north, Averoine, Poseidonis, Zothique, Ziccarth, he get’s a second story, absolutely isn’t, a pretty weird one, The Sword Of Welleran, The Theft Of The Thirty-Nine Girldes, chastity belts, elephant revenge, 1,001 Nights, The Black Diamonds, two kids grow up in Baghdad, always meals, has them have lunch, he’s playing with himself, his own version to 1,001 Nights, his imagination is running wild, Spider-Man or RoboCop or Peacemaker, Abdul Al Hazred, towel on his head, cosplaying, pretending to be a pirate, spears, he had a lot to live for, he would have been wealthy, H. Beam Piper, lived into the 1980s, he’s funny too, the humour is in the boxing stories, Breckenridge Elkins, the only book is on LibriVox, a mountain man, he’s so strong, exaggerated fun stories, Sailor Steve Costigan, not a bright guy at all, an amateur boxer, there was a demand for boxing, railroad stories, Action Stories, Fight Stories, a better market, more Howard, space em out, $0.99, they’re all the same, they’re all good, when Lovecraft reviewed the Clark Ashton Smith story, very Dunsany-like, The House Of The Sphinx, we come into a middle of a scene, there’s something out in the woods, a 1 page story, the house is falling apart, what is he doing in this story, a bookstore, in the lobby was a sphinx, Egyptian sphinx, designed to prompt you to figure it out, being very playful, to be playful, the connection, comes away different, enjoys the names and enjoys the joke, the luxuriance, it’s soapstone, wealthy aristocrat, no electricity, not selling to the same magazines, the author and their art, Michael Crichton, a literary connection, Travels, The Andromeda Strain, dedicated to Arthur Conan Doyle, engagement with literature from before you, Atlantis, Lemuria, trying to engage with the ancient, out of the bible, out of other stuff, mediocre writing that comes and goes, engaging with tropes, the save the cat formula, enemies to lovers, really popular, modern writers, they’re not engaging, they liked Firefly, you don’t have to read this old stuff, they draw on everything they’ve read, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Greek classics, took Latin, Caesar’s Gallic Wars, religious education classes, same five parts of the bible, quite annoyed, don’t ask questions, it should be, pulp authors, literature, mythology, religion, made teenage Cora go to religious education, Jezebel, transliteration issue, stole a bible, they’re designed to be stolen, here’s a question, walking around to hotels, leave a copy of the Robert E. Howard’s stories, an amenity, if you look at his manuscripts, backs of hotel paper, paper is expensive, designed to be stolen, hotel shampoo, the sheets on the bed, towels, pocketed stuff, everybody is a Clark Ashton Smith character, not going to happen, whoever the Gideons are, public book shelves, compare the translation, crime novels, little free libraries, in demand, other books were still there, crime novels, two crime stories, Midsommer Murders, NCIS, speaking of crime, reading Howard as a teen, how dare he kill that Brythunian, read a western, everybody is out to kill everybody, some piece of media, horribly immoral, they’re stealing as they go through the countryside, everybody in the city is a thief, when Conan steals, people who can afford it, poor farmer, from wealthy people, terrible people who have deserved it, human trafficker, deserves is not the way of Jesus, violent American trash, complete nonsense, a transgressive thing to do, Conan, Rambo, and Rocky, fifty years old at the time, sympathy, Nancy Kress’ Beggars In Space, reject it, what is being promulgated is evil, doesn’t happen very often, not connecting, a visceral this is evil, Slan is kinda evil for the same reasons, put sympathy in the wrong place, I am better than you, evil stories, on a podcast about it, refuse to watch shows, the death penalty, never watching this show again, 24, torture, a terrorist somewhere, children committing murder, Adolescents, radicalized, ahistorical, age control of the internet, see weird things online, atheist can’t have evil, how are you defining evil, god as the source of morality, dragging this out, important, as written in the move, not really a commandment, you have to, pre-the Israelites, virtuous pagans, a graven image, the KJV, some are uncontroversial, describes the Ark of the Covenant, of heavenly things, strange gods before me, take the name of the lord god in vain, remember the sabbath day, the same one, days of the week, the next one, honour they father and mother, respectful unless disrespectful, thou shalt not kill, armies kill, just war theory, you shalt not murder, when he gets married, thou shalt not steal, rob from the rich and give to yourself, Robin Hood, apparently not, the way they get out from under Pharaoh, fine get out of here, curse on the first born, lambs’ blood, we all know what steal is, when Blackrock does it, the number one, don’t lie about what people did, thy neighbour’s house, thy neighbour’s wife, set up these stones, the turn the other cheek stuff, old testament times, Jesus himself was asked, he didn’t say all of them, love god and love each other, a condensation, ordering your life where god is first, from that ordering of your life, this turmoil, this chaos, this idiocy, evil, makes the rest of it less important, in the proper ordering of things, willing the good of another person, jealousy fades away, good for you but also good, that’s a bad idea, causes strife, people living together well, in-groups, monotheistic and abrahamic religions, Hindu or Buddhist, pretty universal rules for living together well, Edward Page Mitchell, the best early science fiction writer, a fantasy, a Bangsian fantasy?, the rapture, a scene in it, pile up all the gold that they have, the heavens shakes, the roof comes off of the world, lit on fire, Moses is up on Mt. Sinai, down in the valley beneath, a golden calf to worship, revelry, Moses comes down and he’s really mad, throws the tablets at the golden calf, it zaps, elide it, got the tablets back, Raiders Of The Lost Ark, is that the same gold?, if it is, it is more interesting that way, a whole lot of different stuff to explain the story, 30 years of Moses’ life is absent, putting it all together we have to do a lot of inference, it’s immutable but very mutable, Edward G. Robinson, that’d be good right?, the Judas of the group, motivated by gold, we fell enriched, but we literally get nothing, we should raise money, nothing on tv, they pull open the drawer, a faith in the book, a faith in the word, the word remains, something fun about that, a notch deeper than that, Jesus is the word, bored in hotel rooms, single rooms, parents’ magazines, parents’ books, micromanaging commandments, when and how to have sex with what, giggle giggle, indulge Jesse, semi-interesting story, this one church has the Ark of the Covenant in there, exposed, maybe it is radioactive, we did our own raiders of the lost ark, [iodine] fight the radiation, how much does that effect us, translate it, we decode it, thous shalt not own a Tesla, surprising!, draw human blood, older fragments being found, the Gospels, the older fragments match, controversial content, what books included, what books aren’t, the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Judas, the Christians have got something cool over there, an argument or a possibility that is always out there, the oldest existing, when a new translation comes out, Hebrew or Greek, as accurate as possible, interpretation, different readings of passage, better not to have the tablets, imagine we have no doubt that it’s the actual tablets, that’s impossible, what’s really true is the story, as a film, Moses is put in the river by his mom, the prophecy for Oedipus, very similar, the ending is the Israelites leave Egypt, not a destiny doom thing, by the power of God, why is that so central to the idea, the parting of the red sea, a series of coincidence, read this as mythological, the Greek response to reality, the innovation that makes it powerful, Lewis’ conversion to Christianity, Tolkien had a part of that, these stories are mythological, this is the myth that’s true, the more interesting reading of it, these are not supposed to be read as actual events, scrutinizing the videotape, scripture only, the genesis story as literal, these stories were orally told through time, the details are not long there, the important points are hit, wowed the audience, Bros. Grimm stories, relating actual events?, yes, anything older than Abraham, the story of Noah, a cool movie to see, this is what it says, Noah (2014), a spiritual aspect to them, god helping you through tribulation, the historical aspect, the story they told themselves, Egyptian records, historical characters are in there, black Americans in slavery, the story of the Israelites being freed is a big deal, a deep thrumming, a Jenny (Colvin) word, either or both, Augustine goes through Genesis, meanings, in the year 300, these days aren’t literal, the number 40, a poetic word, a lot, many, not the conventional way, to sophisticated for how stupid we are today, important to understand what was being written and to whom, lamb of god, meant something specifically to the people of the time, we don’t have the symbolism, if we understood the symbolism, the story would make more sense, a cat on a rooftop in the Hansel and Gretel, very specifically a bird, broken by modern interpretation, Cinderella, a corruption to turn it into princesses, the original Grimms, the original grizzly versions, obsession with stone babies, cautionary tales for young women, why doesn’t the wolf eat the girl in the forest, and her lunch, he get’s into the grandma’s bed, what was the woodman doing there?, retold for a modern audience, very artificial sounding, Bros. Grimm: Demon Hunters, young women, nurses and nannies, aimed at girls and young women, The Iliad, Yul Brenner, Moses, his accent, The Magnificent Seven, Westworld, while he’s sitting on the throne, Priam from ancient Greece comes in, the King of Troy, we can get a timeline, Hollywood edition, smart and educated, a strange film, Cecil B. DeMille, a narrator throughout, and then this happened, Charlton Heston’s hair, an easter egg for us, Trojan War, the Jews are doing this over there, Midian, how would he know about that, very cool, much more interesting and public domain version of the MCU, terrible language, The Fantastic Four movie, Mythopoeia by J.R.R. Tolkien, fun as heck, when next are we three meeting again?, the links are there, science fiction and science fiction, hiking, full on the weekends, if not then, then, spread em out, did we ever do anything by C.L. Moore, we did a big show on it, Stefan Rudnicki, Skyboat let us use one, bye.

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #875 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Undying Monster by Jessie Douglas Kerruish

The SFFaudio Podcast #875 – The Undying Monster by Jessie Douglas Kerruish (7 hours 56 minutes) read by Ben Tucker, for LibriVox, followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Alex (Pulpcovers), and Tommy Patrick Ryan

Talked about on today’s show:
Monster?, before 2014, her publication in famous fantastic mysteries, pretty good, not super well known, did you write it, different spelling, different lady, here’s a big novel by me, 8 hours long, a full novel, 3 and half hours is novel, people disagree, unplug and plug back in, decent, you liked it, good points, inventive, where to get there, that one’s not great, the recording, he’s got a British accent, most of the voices, competent, Ben Tucker is good, an interesting choice, a lot more acting, did you manage to see the movie?, this last week, last night, driving to and from some stuff, spoiler alert, a good werewolf story, Luna, more obvious, the werewolf is attracted to the moon, for whatever reason, fasinated by shapechangers, werewolves in particular, the druid class, into wolves and bears, Diablo, a werewolf or werebear, Brandytook?, lifted from Tolkien, our favourite hobbits, awith a swing of his stick, inventing the game of golf, the shapechanger, turn into dragons, D&S or Pathfinder, forgotten everything about this book, all the pictures, a hand of glory on the cover, scenes from all sorts of different stuff, the drivers died, irritating, big loss there bud, missed out on the etymology, fascinated by skinchangers, skinwalker, a [novel] approach, 4th and 5th dimension, a very strong personality behind it, the Saga of the Volsungs, oh yeah, skipped throughable, the video on YouTube, on archive.org, sort of worth watching, the book is quite different, 8 hrs vs. an hour, the last line of the movie, wait a minute, a weird joke to put in a murder movie, this book is all sorts of things, Oliver and Swanhild, she straps on her brother’s service revolver, WWI, driving almost everybody to kill themselves, the shaw, either Doyle, Professor somebody, or that lady, Doyle is Conan Doyle, with so much baggage, the subtitle of the book, Hound Of The Baskervilles, a reverse gothic novel, early Scooby Doo, old man withers!, the supernatural thing is always fake, inheritance scheme, condos, what shaw is, old english, a thicket or copse, what it is, context it makes sense, this weird dark cave, forested, a coppicing, a copse of trees, a forest cultivated for making charcoal and home heating, sticks of the right size, for making faggots, walking sticks, wand, a little tree branch, you can just substitute the moors, with the Doyle reference, a mystery, supernatural stuff, documents, the legend, a doctor showing up at Sherlock Holmes’ residence, the legend of the Baskervilles, extraordinary evidence, a response to that, a story by Barry Pain, The Undying Thing, contemporaneously, turns out it was first published in 1893, a chain, a feudal house in some part of England, the old English manor house, a family in decline, the setting is great, cool old things, secret rooms, mounds, guys who live in cottages, Holmes, Dracula, vampires, a series of RPGs, larping, Vampire The Masquerade, weirder, give me all the rules, five phases of werewolves, krynos form, the wolfman, almost pass for a really hairy dude, a dire wolf, loup garou, Norse mythology, unexpected but welcome, the twist, the dog is dead, maybe he’s not a werewolf, the first ancestor, still hiding, the Magnus guy, all turn into wolves because of crazy, if you have the knowledge when you are in the womb, before he had sex to make you, encoded in your genes, racial memory, scanned through it, as soon as she’s out in the wood, how come I know that, forgotten the movie, noted on a tweet, really funny audio drama called THE MONSTER HUNTERS, retell old movies as their own, 1970s groovy monster, Heir Of The Dog, a game on Steam, gold car, ache in my back, she’s playing with the record player, they are attacked by a werewolf, this is what inspired that, the tropes are there, scared to death, when John Baskerville comes, connecting these altogether, incest, old English families, keep it in the family, Swanhild is also in Eric Brighteyes by H. Rider Haggard, 1883, maybe it starts with a g and ends with an l, ghoul?, such a werewolf nerd, a rundown of the Saga of the Volsungs, the race of the Volsungs, an edda, the translation by William Morris, 3000 years later, reading Edgar Allan Poe, you fool, this bird is not a Raven, yeah, we don’t care, where Gandalf came from the dwarves of the hobbit, Smaug is not in there, Fafnir is a talking dragon, talking dragons are also shapeshifters, there’s just talking dragons, talking fish, dragons are men, they shapeshift because of their behavior, sit on piles of gold, kidnap maidens and keep them for themselves, a good king doesn’t sit on his horde, he has 1, if you are a bad king you become a dragon who should be slain, werewolves are something you do, you put on the mantle of a wolf, the skin of a wolf, something you put over yourself, you become a wolf’s head, becoming crazed, about to be eaten by her brother, the way the family will prosper is by eating somebody, conk on the head, The Fall Of The House Of Usher, brother sister creepin, Roderick young comes to visit, falls into a black lake, the background for what could have happened, heroine, really good at hypnosis, the gal Kate, still alive at the time, wasn’t dead yet, I’m a normal man now, did kill that lady, alone with only one other person, a thin explanation, believing in the rules of the thing, a GenCon viking guy, vikings and dwarves, beards and culture, the land of the ice and snow, Immigrant Song, really fun, links, the setting that it’s pulling from, a neat exploration, is it well written, cheesy stuff, the movie ends abruptly, the natural ending is about an hour before the ending, the lady detective wrap-up, some more hypnosis, better in its parts than it is in its whole, the giant man overlooking the estate, the first image in the PDF, made of the shaw, sort of symbolic, the giant man of Dannaou, ancient chalk carving out, horses or men, the horses are well regarded, genitals exposed, looms over the whole story, you’re Danish, I knew it, sloppy, convention stuff, a terrific Lovecraft connection, The Alchemist, an early one by him, little boy raised in a castle, near Spain?, no mirrors in the castle, part of the castle has been condemned, some kids point over at him, maybe he has a dragon head, this ancestral curse upon the family, the men in the family will die before the age of 30, they die from accidents, earning immortality, he has cursed the family, by literally staying alive to kill them, in the background of this, Paulo Coelho, The Lurking Fear, respect Lovecraft as a humorist, a journalist who goes to investigate Thunder Mountain, a family up there, under the right conditions, one of these cannibal people living under the old house, a big burly friend with lots of meat on him, CHUDS, Lovecraft is hilarious, Re-Animator, same joke five times in a row, so many cool touches, our lady detective, she’s there but she bakes some taffy and they make fun of her, not really the same character, she’s the star of the show, a Madame Blavatsky, her aunt, her lesbian lover, not a lot of homosexuality in here, this threat of incest, vibe based, you don’t remember incest in there, Stapledon, the guy who made the hound luminous, he’s married to the love interest, he wants to be the heir, he gets really mad, that’s find, simulated incest jealous, a kind of a clue, the Baskerville race, the Usher race, a brother and a sister, alone together, she has a boyfriend fiancee, we’re out of duty to not being incestuous, a childhood friend of the family’s, we were in the war together, another male character, to do some lifting, made the change, hears the howl, going through the moat, the secret room, he was much more dedicated to his fiancee, the fake arm thing, artifical arm, Thorin Oakenshield, Bifur and Bofur, Zipper and Zoffer, son of, Swanhildsdotter, fake arm saved his life, the movie doesn’t represent the book very well, too much to adapt, she’s such a great investigator character, Murder She Wrote but paranormal, he’s got a crush on her, such a Mary Sue for this book, she is having so much fun being the smartest one in the room and the love interest, her hero character, she brought in herself, kind of a witch, weight as much as a duck, extracted from the PDF, wit, knit, Hammond’s race shall live and thrive, espieth, dieth, worse than death shall be his lot, you should kill yourself, why did the grandfather kill himself?, he saw the monster, The White Ape, Facts Concerning Arthur Jermyn And His Family, when we do a show on Congo, Michael Crichton, King Solomon’s Children, an Amazon delivery from Africa, kerosene, as you are a Lovecraftian investigator, the box was his grandma, sorta looks simian, he couldn’t live with the knowledge, racial horror, my grandpa used to work in the circus, restart the call, super bad joke, packed delivered, which is worse, in this book it tells you, a break, why that racial memory stuff needs to come in, under control when they had the knowledge, they had to kill, we just gotta eat somebody, attacked before the book started, the poacher, the butler’s worried, she grabs his pistol, reading it into it, laying it down, weird, fun, you shouldn’t marry your sister, on board the not marrying your sister train, a lot of characters, the least interesting character is our werewolf, our dude’s name being Oliver, Oliver Reed played a werewolf, 1942 movie, 22, 24, the reprint, 1948, Ben-Hur, a 23 hour show and a couple hours of talk about it, back to the werewolf book, a twist on the genre, the racial memories were weird, Danish Norse mythology, lycans is Greek, in Roman times, man in saxon or something, werebear, werecat, manbearpig, Saxon is German, Eaters Of The Dead, Beowulf, Grendel!, a good twist, hate parties, flapper dancers, false trails, a viking longship in a mound, the sword hilt, the background, the evidence that this is all true, complete bullshit, she does a lot of things very well, a preconception, word association, revealed, this is actually, false memory shit, demons, recovered memory, almost all of this is fake, hypnosis ads, quitting smoking, any phenomena that exist in society is either a threat or a tool, it’s not what we think it is, it’s not Mesmerism, the phrase hypnotic ability, a hypnotic disability, the performer up on stage, dancing like a chicken, those are plants, one way of understanding, cold reading, guy pretends he has psychic powers, begins with a G, he loved you very much, a scam, assistants, who travel around, fill in, become actors, a little bit like dinner theater, if you can’t juggle, often involves dominance of personality, the most interesting person in the room, the non-Vichy France, De Gaull was the tallest, if tall promoted more, you need to be seen, hire a dwarf, a commanding presence, submit your personality to that person, to regress him back through his ancestry, you want this to be true, confabulating, I didn’t want him to make stuff up, familiar with hypnosis, through hypnosis, the book is really good, an interesting departure, refind it again, cool, but incongruent, a little hard to follow, impressed, 40 minutes of the last hour, viking hypnosis, taking away his trauma, we’re all gonna watch Ragnarok together, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, all this viking stuff, the rainbow bridge, the Norse myths, just watching the Thor movies, God Of War videogames, out of Greece and into Norse myth stuff, Neil Gaiman, Beowulf script, stuff going on with him, not sure we like him, he’s a good narrator, super-impressed, a good writer, Lemony Snicket, instead of Tim Curry, a retelling, having that knowledge, the reference to Wagner, Ride Of The Valkyries, tapping into the same stuff, the Ring Cycle, retelling, nothing new under the sun, all variations, quite similar to it, she has done a little thing, what I imagine Seabury Quinn is like, remixes popular things, Murder On The Links, Poirot on a golf course, nobody reads him anymore, not true of Holmes, The White Company, Professor Challenger, 4 or 5 of them, When The World Screamed, drill to the center of the earth, the earth doesn’t like it, a really good Doctor Who serial Inferno, turning people into werewolves, green werewolf, a mirror universe, under a fascist regime, eyepatch, just like the Star Trek Mirror Universe, they destroy the world, Stan Lee, they’re different, much more like a werewolf, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Bruce Banner, cosmic, get a werewolf costume cheap, acts like a werewolf, transformed by contact, scary and fun, how it ties into this book, in the tradition of this Hammond family, the possibility, the accept it, they don’t cut down the trees because they’re not cowards, it’s a trait, they’re leaning into it, Teen Wolf (1985), Teen Wolf Too, dad’s a werewolf, terrific, he has it under control, keep that anger under control, Nazi Germany, werewolf units, fight to the bitter end, hide out in the mountains, run NATO for us, Operation Gladio, unwilling to submit to others, dangerous between the cities, like Robin Hood but in a bad way, turn werewolf, the North American wendigo, the same idea, you do this by having eaten human flesh, killing a person in the way you kill an animal, acted wildly, play on the basketball team, otherwise you might become a wolf, metaphorically, vampires work that way, a Star Wars reference, Wendigo in Marvel Comics, Alpha Flight, werewolfesque, Beast, female werewolves, types of mutants, Shaman, Puck, Sasquatch, a man of the woods, bigfoot, werewolf adjacent, an uncontrollable thing, starlight and pine trees, a lack of control, they don’t even realize, I didn’t realize I was a rapist, Seth Green plays a werewolf, interesting to think of how people handle werewolves, the player was in complete control, a special attack, he’s hairy, he heals, outdoorsy, he’s short like a Wolverine, 5 foot 2, the inbetween a man and a werewolf, the claws come out, Hulk 181, Ginger Snaps (2000), Brotherhood Of The Wolf (2001), a frogdog, ERB enterprise, a six-legged frogdog from Mars, Odin’s horse has eight legs, a regular horse, in about 10 years, rural wild dog attacks, suburban?, clawed by one of these dogs, transformed, on her next flow day, the period cycle, not an expert on women’s periods, on the moon’s cycle, doesn’t track the calendar exactly, in men’s bodies, most animals have a season, she’s just a girl trying to go to high school, 2 sequels filmed back to back, solid action werewolf movie, you can do a cool variation, Wolfen (1981), a review of how good it is, the audio drama of A Princess Of Mars, $90,000, Bruce Boxlightner, Tom Baker, Sean Patrick Flannery, Tim Russ, nice and short, all 18 books, start another Burroughs series, submarine, lost world, The Land That time Forgot, Beyond Thirty, airship/submarine, savage ladies that need to be saved, The Monster Men, artificial men, he’s really good, Tarzan Of The Apes, The Return Of Tarzan, first went full Burroughs, his origin story, in America, follows Jane back to America, Clayton, still engaged, gets on a steamship and runs into communist spies, gets to Paris, a Rue Morgue thing, maybe it is you King Of The Jungle, an Arab princes, a stolen stallion, lion hunt, pirates, a lost colony of Atlantis, women are super-duper-hot, a lot of treasure, super-hot sacrificing priestesses, the craziest novel, heavily serialized, The Cave Girl, a nebbish guy, just read books, from Boston, she’s adopted, washed up, French baroness, under her tutelage, they’re all good, back a little bit, wrapped up with a bow, he torches her career, she hid evidence right from the beginning, the most cringey scene, that makes you better, that meme going around, that meme going around, the male fantasy, the female fantasy, the midwit, the idiot and the supersmart guy, Strange Tales magazine, two ladies asking for Robert E. Howard, what’s supposed to be male fantasy, you just have a good enough lens on this, this book is so girl, too long, there’s a lot going on, the archaeological dig, let’s look for papers around the house, stuffing out of the couches, funny stuff, you can’t put it in a movie, described in some detail, offstage, some couches, got his dictionaries out, swam in the moat, they’re treating it like its a serious mystery, a very self-aware book, a little bit like they’re in an RPG, literally how Dungeons & Dragons came to be, I want to have my own character, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser are D&D characters, big into D&D, walking home from school, storytelling and coming up with interesting scenarios, the diceless part of it, some of the funnest fun books, Choose Your Own Adventure, theater of the mind D&D, this level of detail in the narrative, remember the time we tore these couches apart, as a pure narrative, she needed an editor, novel length, one aspect of the book, the scurrilous journalism in the background, and tourism, they sorta solve it, the sister gets a telegram, a substantial sum, laughin, I hate being a celebrity, the paparazzi I hate you guys, the girl psychology is hilarious, a popular author for a period, in her time, she was not a Doyle, female fantasy, an interesting perspective, there’s a woman in danger, man, don’t run into the woods, dummy, the good reporter, recording seance, it was him along, the seance people, from Chapter 5, golden calf in Sussex, over the breakfast table, inflexible monosyllable, Providence, unless those poachers get involved, the Daily Speculum, funny newspaper name, afflicted family, taken in dense fog, larger than sacred edifice, mainly boots and blurs, portraits of the Monster, heavy type, bandied about, argued about in coffee houses and bars, their exact meaning, spicy murder or divorce, the Sussex Horror, Stop Press, snub them all, the drawing room, playing up the book as being exciting, everybody’s talking about you, influencers, fairly high tech, threw it back, horses, more Victorian, you don’t need that for the story, only if it helps the story, if it is a red herring, female service, being famous, they’re vampires, a really good find, the hand, missing his hand, the hand of fate, the hand of glory, learning about energy exchange, an energy vampire, sending out vibrations, a drug, fame and fortune, reporters all over the grounds, a much more literal thing in today’s society, any level of famous, people who work for youtubers, carry the camera, show off the new makeup, how is thing a thing?, that’s the world we live in now, a pretty fun book, two thumbs up, a solid B, book club, more critical, what’s wrong with this one, some Arthur C. Clarke, put yourself in the shoes of highschool you, The City And The Stars, where it went, the worldbuilding is incredible, a sad ending, ate Luna, we can never be together, maybe contraception didn’t exist, the Anglican church’s the Lambeth conference, gonna do two Robert E. Howards, pair them with other things, 2 desserts of the same ingredients, spirituality and emotional healing, move out of summer, other events, The Tower Of The Elephant and The Tale Of Satampra Zeiros, out all of October, Too Much by Donald E. Westlake, John Jones’ Dollar by Harry Steven Keeler, the first episode of Red Dwarf, White Dwarf, a Jupiter mining ship, 2 lower deck guys, eating from the vending machines, put into suspended animation, three million years later…, everybody’s dead, everybody died from a radiation leak, the last human alive in the universe, piles of dust, back from hypersleep, lonely and going senile, like Douglas Adams, a comedy, full of science fiction, the story should be over, back as a hologram, his own roommate back, every kind of science fiction there is, the shipboard computer, 2 pounds six pence, because of compound interest, Futurama does that, drilling to Hell, so lucky, you can watch Red Dwarf for the first time, some capacity in October, is this great literature, a good read, concerns, tropes that happen, inventive, the 4th and 5th dimension, human consciousness, she’s crazy, I’m a sensitive, I’m a supersensitive, Call Of Cthulhu style investigator, on the level, laughing along with what she thinks is very formal, playful, the most important person in my life, progress.

The Undying Monster

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #874 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Shining Pyramid by Arthur Machen and The Body-Masters by Frank Belknap Long

The SFFaudio Podcast #874 – The Shining Pyramid by Arthur Machen (50 minutes) read by Ben Tucker (for LibriVox) AND The Body-Masters by H.P. Lovecraft (38 minutes) read by Darrell T. Smith, II for Quasar Spectra, followed by a discussion of both (beginning at 1 hour 28 minutes). Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Scott Danielson and Cora Buhlert

Talked about on today’s show:
The Unknown World, 1895, 1935 issue of Weird Tales, late 1934, you don’t see the connection between these 2 masterpieces, not like twins, are these twins?, what if one of them is the black sheep twin and the other is a cyborg twin, both supposed to be weird fiction, not published in Weird Tales, a lot more like science fiction, infamous Weird Tales editorial, what Weird Tales publishes, didn’t have any of the words yet, some schizm in Weird Tales, one is set in the present, one is 5000 years in the future, oddly obsessed with the 20th century, behaving like a Babylonian, exquisitely contrasted, sun pool, hair and eybrows, seized by slim hands, help me out darling, more appropriate, an adorable form, boyish rapture, set IT down, the disc in her bosom, implanted a fervent lingering kiss, pneumatic lips, letters and numbers, J78, a patient on a surgical table, men and women won’t really change, husbands are still gonna get divorces, could have sold this to one of the science fiction magazines, early Astounding, a bit to much sex in it, prudish, not really well written, very fun, kind of silly, it’s interesting, genuine attempts to envision the future, women in the future will still not work, live in the suburbs (a 55 story building), the world city, the influence of Metropolis (1927), sex-bot, 1st sexy robot, Maria from Metropolis, a lot of Long?, unusual, kind of famous for being a disciple or friend of Lovecraft, The Hounds of Tindalos, 1929, how much weird fiction have you read, Lord Dunsany, a really fun story that’s pretty badly written, like a cartoon, it’s funny, phonographs in people’s chests, at the world’s fair, Elektro, you have to coordinate your questions with his answers, surviving footage, you can’t have sex with, him it would be dangerous, Robbie by Isaac Asimov, contrast it with Machen, The White People and Other Stories, little people, a series character, a detective character, weird detective, occult detective, like a Sherlock Holmes story, The Hound Of The Baskervilles, the answer is: little people, this is the opposite of a gothic, mysterious perhaps supernatural experience revealed to be natural, classic Scooby Doo, haunted playground, old man Withers, phosphorus all over the dog, very bad for the dog, a murderer on the loose, what girl is saved in this story?, she was lost? or sacrificed, lost or kidnapped, sexual element, we have to read it that way, tame in its descriptions, not exactly rape gangs, people who are gonna wreck things, about WWI, The Angel Of The Mons, having visited, The Bowmen, huge cemeteries, warning signs, don’t go off the path, unexploded little people, full of little people, gnomes and so on, they’re garden gnome sized, my little people aren’t evil, The Great God Pan, Ballantine Adult Fantasy, more like Frankenstein, a scientists doing experiments on a girl, to see beyond, if they don’t know anything else, very dark, loss of an innocent girl, brain surgery experiments, do surgery just the right way you can see beyond the veil, the gland surgeon, if you remove these, demanded, they’re not living in a democracy, hormones, what glands do, behavior modification, Doc Savage, a reality, lobotomies, one of the Kennedys was done, Rosemary Kennedy, politicians, disabled by a lobotomy, considered a slut who was sleeping around, doctor doctor my wife is misbehaving, we can fix that, trends, take things out of you, they put things into you, give you drugs, connections, almost a farce, horrible dystopia, newborn child, my son my daughter, the guy from work, b17, I love you b17, love is not allowed anymore, Equilibrium (2002), gunfighting, standard type dystopia, a Hollywood movie, killing each other within days, German soap opera star, a horrible human made dystopia, god made things a long time ago, the horror in Machen is contrasted with the beauty of nature, the morning after, a gangbang/holocaust, transforming a girl into their world somehow?, last lines of the story, the pyramid of fire, Worms Of The Earth by Robert E. Howard, atavistic little people, fading and degrading, Picts against the Romans, John Buchan’s No Man’s Land, thinking about genre, seems like they have nothing in common, we three are used to it, neither of these stories is a boss is gonna fire me and my wife is cheating on me story, so weird, Redbook not Bluebook, strip out the science fictional stuff, 1899, they save the girl, the little people are more like troglodytes, figure out what fiction genres become, slotting things, Planet Stories, between planets, Wonder Stories, the future on Earth, gigantic contraptions, Frank R. Paul, giant wheels, the Foundation tv series, where do Lovecraft stories take place, the contemporary world, when things get weird they go underground, Antarctica, a place that’s not well explored, I wanna see the giant penguins, I wanna see the shoggoths, travel ad, if youre gonna see the weirdness you have to go underground, a lost city, science fiction tends to put it in outerspace or in the future, the horror that exists you have to do it in the darkness, where are these little people, has their been any gypsies, 1930s hobos, hobo signs, maybe a dwarf sailor?, rounding up all the prejudices, something about the Irish, you can’t trust the Spanish, little tiny Jews, not a mythological dwarf, screening before birth, famous actors, late 40s, people are aborting, gland surgery on people, he murdered his wife, it wasn’t your fault, it’s your parents’ fault, I’ll have you on my table, a horror world, put her in a locker, scripted conversation, jump down the pneumatic elevator, wife on the couch nuzzling, just like in Futurama, in the opening credits, how silly and humorous the story is, super-dystopic, human hubris, a Dictator of Emotion, worse than anything Hitler did, approved lists of names, they didn’t do numbers, good Aryan children with good latin name, Jesse Owens, Taylor Swift, those are terrible names, most popular names of 2024, Olivia, Noah, Liam, Oliver, Elisha, Irish names, old testament names, people naming their pets, super-hero characters, despair for humanity, a woman named Taylor, named after ancestor, picking amongst a list of ancestors, women named Maj-Britt, born around 1960s, a Swedish actress, the Kevin problem, completely unknown in Germany until the Home Alone movies, we got a problem with humans, Madison, the 2nd most popular name given to girls, the movie Splash (1984), the avenue of commercialism, a male president of the United States, look at the dates, when the movie came out, the girls grow up, I’d like to name our daughter Madison, it’s the Little Mermaid, programmed, popular culture, a super-popular name for dogs, Kahleesee, kids named Anakin, Belanna, Tonks from Harry Potter, a female wizard, it’s a dog, it’s fine, your physical human child, Snape or whatever, Luke is a biblical name, Leah, it’s about conformity and programming, not a new phenomenon, kids named Hamlet, Shirley, a man’s name, Charlotte Bronte, Marilyn, Catholics use saint names all the time, we know these people, they’re all around us, a nickname, Wendy didn’t exist before that book, nefarious, it is horrible, The Love Slave And The Scientist, not just the body being screwed around with, Arkady, Debris, pile of stuff that got broken, registry office says nope, a gnome from a children’s book, a couple of kids, names that were not possible, Forgive Me Father For I Have Sinned, Repent Or Burn In Hell, if you are really believing, the state to come and take your kids from you, some issues, culture, what are your groups, family names, an honorific, a connection to your past, Khaleesi, Adolph, certain mustaches, making a connection with your actual family, mandated, given, the price of freedom, we don’t want the state naming the kids, if their culture is Splash, walking to work, more chains, a lot fewer mom and pops, nail salons, skin salons, dental whitening salons, personality improvement salons, therapist, psychiatrist, the dog food places, selection of things to choose from, why are you naming your child this stupid name, something we just don’t value, all immigrants, their parents are immigrants, actual education outside of the school system, outside of regular programming, upwardly mobile immigrants, home school, they should, taking the reins, the state schools and private schools, a religious school of some kind, the Germans did invent school, homeschooling, plenty of issues, parents can’t handle it, mom’s at work and dad’s at work, lots of problems, make things better for everybody, the middle class child, helicopter parents, immigrant kids, poor kids, disabled kids, Leonie, Prussian royalty names, out of fashion for centuries, we live in a culture, a metaphor, acculturated?, purposeful, government entity, Brian Grazer, they didn’t do it for a nefarious purpose, some cultures say dancing is bad, music is bad, television is bad, programmed by other people, eventually they both got televisions, bad for children, per-approved, nowadays it is ticktock, moral panics, anti-Gaza exposure, top down, Facebook is already under control, what the top wants done to the bottom, nice Christian names, to program them, kill the Indian in the child, taking the kid from the parent and making the institution, the Hayes Code, the Comic Book Code Authority, pressure from above, the cultural product makers, this is how people are, really broken stuff, a title, she’s a monster, she herself has been programmed, subject your poor kids, going back to Futurama, they put an armband on his wrist, also to program him, everybody’s got to do what they gotta do, reasons to be sent to a lunatic asylum, refusing to join the military, Salvation Army, tobacco and masturbation, laziness, snuff eating, novel reading, Charlotte Perkin Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper, needs some books to read, going out into nature, notice things, somebody had picked up of the sidewalk, still there, fell off of somebody’s wrist, a shoe, an elderly woman, pick it up and put it in a prominent place, some disney character on it, electrical boxes, graffiti, not for me, who are they shouting it out to?, you notice an arrangement of arrowheads, an eye that no regular Englishmen, a lot of assumptions, government use of the same symbol, your everyday life is happening, somebody missing on a hike, peice it all together, Achilles and the Tortoise, insoluble, the eyes are counting down, a certain height, Sherlock Holmes of seeing beyond the veil, the cousin who wanted the title, notice things that are real and concrete strange occurrences, something that seems supernatural, we can pretend, being upset, naked making a pyramid on top of something, a triangle, what makes it shining?, flint, a looking backwards in time, to an earlier age, the original inhabitants of Britain, before the angles and the saxons come in and genoice them, problems with reproduction, also in Lovecraft, the Deep Ones, The Shadow Over Innsmouth, they need our fecundity, the silliness of their marriages, The Tissue Culture King by Julian Huxley, 1926, 1927, the Hugo Gernsback science fiction magazine, a Wakanda if you will, a body cell, to do mind control, take bits of the actual king, worship it, give it what it needs, the original story tin-foil hat comes from, telepathy, huge in science fiction, maybe telepathy is a metaphor, it’s a lot more sinister, The Demolished Man, The Mule from Foundation, get angry, already ruining, might still pull off the twist, terrible tragic backstory, terrifying telepathy, comic characters, why is our oligarch so upset, where the police are telepaths, how do you get around the telepathy, being outside the system, being able to read people’s thoughts, there’s no good guys, the Psi-Corps are badguys and so is our oligarch, a Madison Avenue guy, a little jingle, Aldous Huxley, a super-dystopia, destroyed, isolated lighthouse, they jeer at him, he’s hung himself, the only escape from this horror, 1932, his brother, rivals for science fiction, we didn’t have the term then, a famous novel, an obscure short story, referencing real things going on, Rockerfeller, old rich family, Rockefeller Institute, Rockefeller University, to control, all behavior is regulated from top down, parents weren’t going to church, people are sponges, the people they interact with, who are they hanging out with online, the old means of control, programming them a lot better, social media bans, websites, the rest of us, children might be learning things, anti-Israel, Adolescents, never fully innocent, what is the central problem?, a marriage problem, men want to have sex, women want attention, substitute guy, very poetical, people falling in love with their ai, how to make a noose, gonna help you, it can’t love you, firefox, how about no?, make money from extraction, usually when we think about divorce, as a popular thing, in the 20th century, so much about, mechanically separated, you can’t live near your family anymore, you need two incomes, fashionable, an engineer for Airbus, new housing, other wives, all the wives got divorce, a social contagion, fertilized by the economics and the laws, not romantic anymore, focusing on the wrong things, romantic comedies are all about meet cutes, the falling in love, a firm commitment, it doesn’t have to be a sinister government plot, where it is coming from, Catholic guy, Humanae Vitae, a contrast, sex without consequences, as the only woman here, victimized by a pregnancy, birth control, anything beyond basic schooling, about to divorce, died of cancer, she had a kid, marital instability, a soup of different things going on, what is he trying to do with this story?, sell a story, sexy robot, Avon Fantasy Reader cover, sex-bot illustrated by Margaret Brundage, in the scene, a caption underneath, he’s a surgeon, the story is quite good, so interesting, it is not considered cheating, dallying too long with the script, push himself into the tube, his work is cutting people open and giving them glands, a gland surgeon, less adrenals, castrating people (mentally), chemical castration, sex criminals, SSRIs, paxil and zoloft, a big thing, might end up like the guy on my table, a big long speech, whispered to by the robot, he attacks the robot, completely fake, if you’re fucking sex bots, I will order my mechanical companion to be decommissioned and scrapped, poor sex-bot has to be scrapped, don’t listen to what the dictator of emotions tell you to do, World War 1987, 4 World Wars, stupid 20th century people, we read the book, The Guns Of August, some random guy in France, the head of the bank in Germany and the US were brothers, pinning chicken feathers, be as Amish as possible, not fall into it, Autism rates, over diagnosed, officially diagnosed, in the family for a long time, belied by the fact you had functional people, borderline functional, diagnosed quite young, by accident, a local politician, autism charity, more and more, I’m pretty sure I’m clinically depressed, how did it come to be?, lots of theories, google ngram, a sharp spike, gluten intolerance, gluten free, borderline people, diagnosed, wheat in the US is quite bad, contaminated, look at the trends, allergy to peanuts, deadly to a lot of people, an inciting incident, a history of medicalizing, a lunatic asylum, underlying problem, a chemical imbalance, no science behind that claim, extreme relief, on it for 25 years, numbs emotion, pointing at a very real place, ai chatbots, gland surgery, drugs, confined to asylums, drugs don’t really really get going until WWII, an evil horrible society, feels brief, nature is beautiful but there’s horror hidden there, the unknown, neolithic tombs, we don’t know what they were doing, Cornwall, the graves of giants, local legends, cursed him, turned to stone, the Devil’s Punchbowl, another of these weird hollows, there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, the description of the light, how nice it is to live in the country, how nice to live in the city, the business in the dark, fairies, ecstatic experiences in nature, a regular divorce story, a drama, just another variation, about human perception, we can modify it, make people conform to it, isn’t that horrible, just beyond our preceptions, might we not find out a thing about reality, technology and humanity, nature and god, all German parents like hiking, prime of their life, dragged through the woods, I’m a knight, I’m going to save the kidnapped princess, in order to find the princess, a clue, a signpost, a marking on a tree, it’s a clue!, we can find the princess, where was the girl going?, her aunt’s house, she never showed up, Little Red Riding Hood, it isn’t a world, no-one ate the aunt, she never even saw her, waylaid along the path, vacant eyed, no way to rescue the princess, supernatural detective, a writer?, he’s Arthur Machen, from a wealthy family, 1890s, a lot of John Buchan stories, grew out of the gothic novel, mystery and crime fiction, horror fiction, Sherlock Holmes, C. August Dupin, this joke: I really hope it isn’t the case that Edgar Allan Poe’s stories of monomania, Berenice, The Tell-Tale Heart, recent diagnoses, autism stories, the drunk scale, took opium, depression, autism spectrum, self-medicate, you change your brain, psychiatric drugs, lethargic, an old age depression, the older the drug the better we know it, tobacco, unrelated to smoking, positive benefits to smoking, it stinks, American Spirit, spiked with chemicals, simple old fashioned tobacco, vapes, even marijuana has been fucked with, a B.C. Government Cannabis Store, government employees working at a government store, Scandinavian countries, wine at the supermarket, you can’t get beer at the 7-11, semi-legal, required to check my age, Hugo awards, mixed cocktail, bleep, look at me I’m obviously, the dictator of emotion has announced, chocolate with liquor in them, so panicky, when gin came into the UK, people still drink gin in the UK, fashionable, a technology that can change our body, the effect that it has, the mechanical changes that it has, The Black Cat is a satire of teetotalling, axe your wife in the forehead, it was pretty wild, suffrage, Enola Holmes (2020), teenage girls or younger, Guy Ritchie for 12 year old girls, womens right to vote, raise the daughter, running the country, just as smart, super handsome, Henry Cavill, very very handsome, lightly touched on, not historically close to what’s going on, a Disney Princess movie, equally smart sister, a prince that falls in love with her, in about 15 years your going to get a lot of little girls called Enola, sex jokes, 1980s, The Goonies (1985), when you were pregnant with your first daughter, Second Foundation, Kayla, American soap opera, Days Of Our Lives, the greatest names, little bit bottom up, new school, into different things, hockey cards, GI Joes, wearing the wrong shoes, reeboks and nikes, whatever my mom bought me, understand what’s going on there, you can’t be juiced into needing to be going to McDonald’s, interested in 1986 Toyota, doesn’t have the same effect 20-30-40 years later, why are all the boomers doing reverse mortgages to go live on cruise ships now?, pushed on younger people, pools, waterslides, it’s disneyland for boomers, tropical islands, enclosed holiday camps, built for an airship, semi-tropical pools, the vacation ideal, evening wardrobe, don’t forget the casino, you can wear your jammies, you can have as much food as you want, spend it now!, swarm the same few port cities, a few souvenirs, just cause trouble, secret cabal, cruise ship companies trying to make money, airtravel, passenger travel, shipping companies, passenger liners converted to cruise ships, containerization, nearly killed the shipping industry, in a ridiculous way, wealthy older people, dialysis machines, The Love Boat, Das Traumschiff, page 9, disintegrated her, busy with his surgical dressing, a semblance of normality, just top down, your parental supervisors, men often killed their wives, hideous bloodletting contests, exalting the primitive, selective mating, we’re blind, war was awful but love…, was worse?, doing brain surgery on the guy, normally thought of as for girls, to keep up his courage, high-minded and impartial and serene, bound and helpless, a cool impersonal cog, corporate state, curse them!, with the glands removed, anti-social action, a pale blue antiseptic, your digestion will be checked, super-horror, a Spaniard who killed a family for just a few possessions, covered in blood a few days later, murder, rando kills for money, which world with you rather live in?, stinky smokestacks in London, super-dystopia land, thank you so much, maybe we’ll meet again, text message, see you on Twitter, a silly article, Why We Don’t Read The Golden Age Anymore, Rendezvous With Rama, 1973, aluminum, a sterile and not good book, New Wave science fiction, his golden age, a kick out of it, completely eviscerate, older science fiction, missing out, Alien Earth, Murderbot, exemplifies the whole thing, Zuckerberg, any sufficiently advanced technology, then he says Asimov instead of Clarke, pretending to be smart, no excuse for this sort of thing today, you wouldn’t look it up because you know it, just look it up again, it’s Clarke, when he’s writing the script, written by committee, writers rooms, expecting the actor to know it, they’re all written by the one guy and sometimes with someone else, Noah Hawley, Fargo, Legion, Bones, X-Men comics, locked in an asylum, yes, not really an SF guy, interested enough to misquote it, it adds something, an overlay of Peter Pan, trying to recreate Neverland, robot bodies, less interesting than something to do, push this idea into the Alien universe, for no apparent reason, the smartest boy in the world who doesn’t wear socks, Beast, sits at a microphone and reads from the book, make sure the audience knows, why is he recording this?, is it for a podcast?, making audiobooks, no role in the story, eaten by an alien, the writing is not great, over Alien, linked it to Predator (1987), no wonder she was depressed, mental issues towards the end, not herself anymore, hip replacement, stuck in the hospital during COVID, intermediate care drugged her up, too many painkillers, high on aspirin, ibuprofen, paracetamol, lethargic, drugged them up and wanted lots of money, happy note to end on, the medical profession, old old Microsoft installation, they’re deadnaming you, dinner.

The Love Slave And The Scientists by Frank Belknap Long

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #873 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Killing Time by Donald E. Westlake

The SFFaudio Podcast #873- Killing Time by Donald E. Westlake (4 hours 25 minutes) read by Ben Tucker for LibriVox, followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Scott Danielson, Maissa Bessada, and Misha Burnett

Talked about on today’s show:
1961 novel, the great Donald E. Westlake, different titles, the same book, The Mercenaries, tore this book up, a new Donald Westlake, a phase, found everything by him, many pseudonyms, a lot of books, the Parker novels, strongly recommended, Plunder Squad, Butcher’s Moon, so much more Westlake, something to live for, maybe 10 of them, science fiction shorts, Anarchaos, a handful, I love him, as you should, real hard at the end, poor Maissa, mostly, feels like Donald Westlake, about the ending, for real, pretend to talk about the book, the “spoiler” word, one of the most stupid words for understanding reality, can there be a sequel to this book with the main character, he’s dead?, any other ideas?, the rules of fiction, a first person narrative where he dies at the end, first person past tense, another interpretation, he shot Cathy, the last three paragraphs, the pile of lumber, the front stoop, only got 2 minutes left, calling my name, far far away, between us was Cassal, cradling a shotgun, you set this up, I had to, the sound I heard was Cathy screaming, he shot Cathy, that hurt him more than anything, both ways, a first person narrative, if he died, even cooler now, he’s good, he didn’t forget that, how this book works, pretty weird book, what this book is, Red Harvest from the insider’s perspective, a Dashiell Hammett novel, Bruce Willis, can’t talk anymore, Yojimbo (1961) by Akira Kurosawa, samurai, very famous western starring Clint Eastwood, A Fistful Of Dollars (1964), an unproductive screenplay adapting Red Harvest, the Op, the Continental Op, a series character, was a Pinkerton, very quiet these days, Blackwater, private military agency, Red Dead Redemption, terrific game, Grand Theft Horse, a podcaster, Pinkerton’s Ghosts, a paranormal investigation branch, Hearst, the HBO show Deadwood, the first Hearst, the way you get rich is not by finding gold but by finding people who found gold, corruption, legal corruption, a private police force, a private army, mercenaries, security guards, overthrowing a town, we don’t find that out right away, a super-political book, social commentary, the situation people are in, hobby horse ideas, he’s very non-office, a book about politics, different factions, politics today, political philosophy, pure power, causes, 2 parties, which one is trying to take over, confused, the why behind all of it, Tim, a sympathetic character, do anything to defend his life, justified and necessary, three quarters of the killing, a war, stretching, an allegory for other wars, pointless killing, my team, your team, that is his political position, reading it today, zoom out, one country getting in the middle, a proxy war, manipulating both, my own army now, now I can fight this war, making that climax occur, to destroy both of them, he’s kinda like Conan, how can I exploit this situation, for a fist full of dollars, a comedy, a ronin, a samurai without a master, he’s talking about things he knows, themes, secretly obsessed with insurance, me not notice, this book has insurance, tomato boxes, gets the girl to do it, to protect himself, hedge your bets, something to do with insurance, my guy Richard Stark, kinda shocking, the stage, excited about producing local theater, write plays?, a performer, like Grofield in the Parker novels, Westlake is making fun of himself, really I’m an actor, I need to rob this bank to make another season of summerstock, producing plays that nobody goes to, 2017, many years ago, the name of the play that was produced, Tim Smith, leaned over and looked at the script, read it upside down, on page 68, A Sound Of Distant Drums, if it was a hit, good luck, this is a game of tennis Donald Westlake played with Lawrence Block, a movie theater, thinking about something, deciding on something, a restaurant, a Pizza Hut, when he walks out of the movie theater, reading a paperback on a park bench, what fun, why is that in there, a little piece of colour, the whilhelm scream, very distinctive, the Tarzan yodel, a little checkbox, Westlake does that a lot, self-referential moments, the Dortmunder novels, Jimmy The Kid, Andrew Kelp is in jail and reads “Child Heist” by Richard Stark, reads snippets, this is how we do it, Adios Scheherazade, Point Blank in the movie theater, the worst (first) of the Parker novels, became himself, out for revenge, revenge is stupid, a character arc, we get this instead, she was screaming, listen, that last page, 221 pages, page 211, the plant was wrapped in flames, the neutral cops, crawl down backwards, way down the street, cradling, icy cold, you set this up, the sound I heard, who’s dead, shot by somebody else, shooting the last vestiges of himself, Tim shot Cathy, it doesn’t say that, the worst thing he could have done, he raised the shotgun, that’s not what it says, if we’re filming this, he points the shotgun at Tim, fade to black, but fade to black, choose your own ending, either way it works really well, the spinning top at the end of Inception, no matter how many Donald Westlake movies you think exist there’s always more, It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) sort of movies, half-way through it, Cops And Robbers (1973), 2 new adaptations, Memory (retitled The Actor), right after Westlake died, always new last books coming out, a Bob Hope style character, one of the Stark novels, or a Dortmunder novels, the Stark novels get pretty bizarre, Ask The Parrot, 1951 Ford, an interesting fact, Score in the title, The Green Eagle Score, an airforce base, Westlake was a cop, he was a “snowtop” white helmeted, Navy police, break up fights, a cop in Germany, he’s never really on their team, or they’re criminals, a bit surprising, a little tubby, a little flab on him, he’s rich, he doesn’t have to work for a living, the easy life, the anti-Raymond Chandler, not starving, they don’t make good cars anymore, he’s getting paid by everybody, he’s the badguy, listening to his arguments, the pot-holes are filled, useless turds who didn’t know how to run the town, the analogy, The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis, the safest road to hell is gentle underfoot, the perfect rationalizer, he doesn’t think of himself as a bad guy, evil, him staying quiet, screwed out of his house, the tax shift, never willing to say I did something wrong, confess to a lawyer, confess to a priest, not my job, to do terrible things and say it was my job, as an example, AOC, she thinks she’s a good person, she ain’t she won’t talk about things that are true, the other team, stuff they won’t talk about, with Tim in the diner, why is he up so late eating that sandwich, difficulty sleeping, why won’t he marry her, the death of the family, what’s missing, he likes her well enough, deep down he’s not a good guy, he’s not thinking about her, Westlake never hits us with this, this guy’s trying to kill him, Somebody Owes Me Money, people getting knocked off, a light comedy with romance, the girl is involved with trying to kill him, gambling winnings, fun, his father is constantly trying to find a loophole, The Risk Profession, an insurance adjuster, roads and traffic, tiny little wee story, technically science fiction?, people driving around New York, a hyperrealized version of our reality, a parking lot, people sitting in their cars, they’re just in there, they live in there, sit behind the driver’s seat of the car and wait in a parking lot?, do they have a job they’re supposed to be at?, that’s what inspires Westlake, a story idea, the overturning of the government in this town is not a good idea, corrupt but works, a clue, it works for him, incompetent government is a real thing, switching to another team, this reformist group, one party to get it over on the other party, this association secretly backed, for his own power, a very very cynical book but doesn’t feel it until the end, floating along, it’s a whodunit, the bodyguard, maybe I’m misreading this book, one of the lines that repeats, one of my seven closest friends is trying to kill me, he can’t honestly say, depressing, gets arrested, national guard, definitely not him, we think of Cathy being close to him, does he love her?, you didn’t even bother to tell me, shot at the first time, I had a need to talk to somebody, unload, is that selfishness, Scott does a lot of stuff for me, I hope I’m not using, a trade?, some people keep score, helped you move three times, when your dog is sick, fetched that ball for you, I need that dog for that sled dogging race next week, gut punch, got nervous, why are we going to war?, you should leave town, the final time: I’m going to war, why?, selfishness, he is a bad guy, almost tries to stop, killing his friend, I’m just gonna stand here and watch and wait, pulls him back, conscience, his first impulse, willing to accept corruption as the price of soft roads, if you listen to the mafia, all the good works they do for their town, I keep the neighbourhoods clean, no racism element, an all black town, an all white town, very targetedly political, as they get older, at certain point they freeze politically, can’t be surprised by new things, Lawrence Block, very closed mouths about his poltics, his home, New York, Hollywood, Hills View?, random audiobook of a Donald Westlake short, The Girl Of My Dreams, upstate New York, Manhattan, when you move to a small town, a store over there, that guy is a veteran, the lady who collects cats, the high school, the cement was filled with sand, he’s a good guy, a story, a thing that happened, Las Vegas 30 years ago, his last day, retiring, when the mob was in charge of Las Vegas, some pickpocket, they just took care of it, nice for the tourists, my potholes are full, this incident a lot, a true story, a break-in, stolen comics, a burglary, not, that’s not a thing, I know how this system works, in this conversation, trying not to dispatch cops, investigate burglaries, a criminal gang, the Bacon brothers, what building they’re in, should I go an knock on this person’s door, ask them to do it?, this is how it works, if I can’t get justice from the official system, the unofficial system, the opening sequence of The Godfather, political parties come and go, drugs not to be dealt in the schoolyard, he’s not going to stand for that, his only client is blackmailing everybody who’s grafting, the cop who he waves to, a member of a family who gets all the contracts, everybody needs a job, selling out the country, giving away everything, everyone is corrupt, this fake insurgency, drain the swamp, maybe Westlake knows better than me, everything is corrupt and totally evil, the Westlake Review (website), this paragraph, intentions, played both ends against the middle, didn’t know who he was, the moral of the piece, a complete picture, not a soft book, a whole lot deeper than it appears, brilliantly, look on the surface like happy goofy comedies, just fun entertainment, in the middle of the night, subtle, year and year and years ago, early 80s, reading everything by him, The Fugitive Pigeon, a “nephew” novel, a throw away line, used to write crossword puzzles for a living, the poet is on the pumpkin (five letters), 40 years later, Frost!, always working, he’s really good at that, a mystery novel, he wrote those, his science fiction books, it has a mystery in it, that’s not really what it’s about, hanging out with a good guy, a corrupt jerk?, evil guy?, pretty fuckin evil, oh man!, filming the ending, prefer Cathy be killed, it hits harder, underscores the point more, we care whether he does or not, that’s why we don’t need any more, a girl like her is a dime a dozen, figuring out where to end a story, figuring out where to beginning a story, I didn’t mean to read the whole thing, make sure the file is all there, 100 something pages into it, amazing, a page of opening lines of Parker novels, When the phone rang the Parker was in the garage killing a man, the night apron man, a mirror of him, unusual moniker, he glanced at me, ex-middleweight, his suit was brown and old, better to hide the gun with, it is that, he agreed, that’ll help, being sarcastic to each other, what’s this Smith’s front name?, a whole lot of buildup, writing stuff, writing stuff, keep your typewriter ribbon wet, quick, get it done, a little bit of revision, writing a novel is different, you have to make it work, Westlake novels and Block novels, Westlake never wrote a bad novel, they’re not all The Score, Kahawa, the coffee one set in Kenya, still no audiobook of it, Swahili for coffee, the reign of Idi Amin, very powerful, you don’t think politics, near Aruba, a non-fiction book coup, very interested in politics, in constructing this book, can we reconstruct how it was constructed, a full time writer, he writes, he observes people, with that observer’s eye, trained to look for stories, driving up to Westchester, this town is different, he was a solider, probably in WWII, he goes to war again, boosting tires and selling them (maybe to the Nazis), he was in the army but he was corrupt, undercuts, we can’t sympathize with Parker because he’s inhuman, so efficient, commentary on people, he’s everyman, just wants to be comfortable, everybody wants to be comfortable, Citizens For Clean Government, a voice of reason and conscience, she was wrong to put her faith in him, why are you doing this, he has money in the bank, he could have, a way to say: have a look, here you go, Guy De Maupassant, a 1906/1907 reprint, retell the plot of a Maupassant story, observant of humans, the same taskmaster, there was a family friendship, Gustave Flaubert, train in the practice of fiction writing, go and walk about the town, really seen the things, make me see them, eagerly write, the most essential points, send him out again, he had seen nothing whatsoever, little by little, this discipline trained the mind, the fewest possible words, a perfect etching, a wonderful observer, in his 30th year, Ball Of Fat, everyone instantly recognized, a new writer of great power, 200 or more short stories, a writer’s writer, Stephen King, named his own pseudonym, Richard Bachman, how sublte he is, he doesn’t hit you over the head, understated, who wrote this book, it was Westlake, he does this thing with character’s hands, they spread their hands, particular personality types, to talk to the first representative, hands going all over the place, a Westlakism, observing, play with your hands a lot, observing a real thing, a few that do, perfect little chracterization, a signature by Westlake, in his comic books, dialogue with somebody’s whole body, seek to incorporate, in this particular case, hands waving all over the place, not just personality, how emotionally invested, specific examples, page 40, the scene, page 39, we are only interested in dishonesty in government, the town: Winston, 1 tavern which stays open, pays bribes to the patrolman on the beat, the crime of staying open, the crime of accepting bribes, the CCG, seems very reasonable, the second gloss, moving the politics needle, changing the politics, 1 finger raised, icy enthusiasm, he had memorized it because he liked it, the reason is what the reason is, honest local citizens, cop on the beat, slight trace, stylistic reasons, can’t help but be comedic, he didn’t talk he wrote out loud, an honest patrolman, he spread his hands and smiled once more, by ending the first crime, the permission or even assistance, wipe out governmental crime, dandy theory, liable to be just as money hungry, a permanent incorruptible watchful guard, an aroused and aware citizenry, keep the crooks out forever, some of it would be more than useful in our fight against corruption, turns out he’s naive, he’s right, the scales are lifted from your eyes, you really believe that, oh no, the follow-up scene, come clean as it were, pretty clear he knows the score, he’s like us, because he doesn’t see it, it doesn’t happen, ai manipulation in this genocide, he wouldn’t come at it directly, very very subtle book, the political issues of the day, The Spy In The Ointment, Up Your Banners, a pacifist secret agent, passivist political organization, it’s funny, politics of the 1960s, public schools in New York, a humorous story, generally funny, one of the most serious books, inverted humour, you don’t understand something until it makes you laugh, recognition, handling serious subjects with the lightest of touch, compare him to Block, a little more overtly political, The Thief Who Couldn’t Sleep, joins every revolution, an uprising in Tanganyika, La Guardia airport, was it political, thought process, if I say yes the conversation is over, oh ok, a political movement then it is okay, very subtle, it doesn’t come across, a short story, The Spy In The Elevator, Curious Facts, dystopia hellscape, in a dystopian novel in a short story, funny funny little world, it’s Socrates and the myth of the cave, they don’t know there’s an external reality, how great is Westlake, superlatives, Tolkien and Westlake, subtlety, look for the signs, so smooth, literally great, he’s GREAT, undercut by how digestible it is, spoonful of sugar, a very sour book, it went down real easy, this is a poison pill, that’s well measured, he did it real well, his theater influence, performing and producing, adept at getting into people’s heads, stage stuff, the worst actor, doing bad acts, performer, very well done, that guy’s like me, doesn’t know what to do with hands, he can’t help himself, hard-boiled book, the sandwich gets shot, and the formica, are really hardboiled book, pick up another Westlake, Westlakes to read, Westlakes that I have read, a chihuahua having a nervous breakdown, not much that we can do, Westlake.com website’s down, a Japanese adaptation of The Axe, a Michael Caine movie that’s similar, quite long for a Westlake, Robert Duvall, none of them are right, he laughs in that one, the best adaptation, not Mel Gibson, the spirit of it, not Jathan Stathem, the one called Parker, a mashup of The Hunter and Slayground, City Of Industry, not an official adaptation, very much a Parker plot, The Sour Lemon Score, much too subtle, pacifist secret agent, Up Your Banners, a schoolteacher during desegregation of public schools, inverted humour, you don’t really understand something until it makes you laugh, don’t want to be dumb, because of recognition, handling serious subjects, with the lightest of touch, tennis game, overtly political, The Thief Who Couldn’t Sleep, joins every revolution, an uprising in Tanganyika, Dancing Aztecs, Pedro Ninny, was it political?, if I say yes the conversation is over, The Spy In The Elevator, so light and fluffy, dystopian hellscape, a dystopian novel in a dystopian hellscape in a short story, Socrates in the myth of the cave, an external reality, reject it, how great is Westlake, comparing to superlatives, so smooth, he’s GREAT, undercut by how digestible it is, a very sour book, went down real easy until the war starts, a poison pill, well measured, his theater influence, performing and producing, adept at getting into people’s heads, stage stuff, the worst actor, doesn’t know what to do with hands, a hardboiled book, the sandwich gets shot, don’t forget about the formica, pick up another Westlake, chihuahua nervous breakdown, movies come out, a new adaptation of The Axe, a Michael Caine movie, who was the best Parker, Robert Duvall, he laughs in that one, the best adaptation, not Mel Gibson, the spirit of it, Jason Statham, City Of Industry (1997), Harvey Keitel, at a stoplight, Reservoir Dogs, almost Parker scenes, his own stuff, Cops And Robbers is a good movie, the book is better, Robert Redford, The Hot Rock, with him it’s the words, and the perfomances, he puppeteers those characters, the Dortmunder/Kelp relationship, George C. Scott, a comedy of errors, habitual crime, softboiled, the best Parker novel?, The Man With The Getaway Face, Westlake writing about Dortmunder, a hot potato, Bank Shot, supplemental characters, a lot like cheers, Drowned Hopes, for Scott, Humans, His own Creation, ragtag collection of human misfits, a fireman from Chernobyl, The Last Novel You Will Ever Read, more public domain novels, send it to Scott, too expensive, ex-wife took his books, grounds for divorce, front seat of the van, The Comedy Is Finished, Bob Hope and his illegitimate son, more Westlake is always good, National Enquirer, Trust Me On This, Baby Would I Lie, Florida based vacations, he knew somebody, so vividly, too well, The Cutie (The Mercenaries), Hard Case Crime, shy away, the punk was innocent, find that cutie before the cutie, The Busybody, 361, Brothers Keepers, Bank Shot is only 6 hours, no massive violence, cronies, The Capitalists And Immigrants Trust, ditch the bank, Kelp’s nephew, gangbusters, Herman X, a lockman, black militant, pirated version, The Girl Of My Dreams read by Roddy McDowell, Don’t Ask, Get Real, tabloid ones, What’s So Funny, Sin Hellcat with Lawrence Block, I’m sold, 4 hour 4 minutes, probably wrote it in a weekend, a nice way to kill a few hours, erotica, Adios Scheherazade, A Likely Story, The Stepfather, an alternative proposal, Too Much by Donald Westlake, a comedy, a movie, kind of a comedy, a gimmick cover, a special name for that, some fuzzy texture over part of the cover, bikinis, remove the fuzzy pink stuff, on camera, Melanie Griffith and Antonio Banderas, Daryl Hannah, a lot deeper, goofy sex comedy, the main character ends up not being who you think he is, a warning, cute and cuddly on the surface and murderous underneath, today’s narrator Ben Tuck, a 45 minute commute, reading Conan, three or four months later, read a Solomon Kane story, ready for another Conan, space em out, you don’t want to spend your whole week with Jesse, too recently, flexible, a Two Much Easter egg, the greeting card company, a rather ridiculous memory, real world stuff, fictional stuff, Detour by Martin M. Goldsmith, nice and short, there’s a movie version, considered a b-movie classic, the book is way better, wrote 2 episodes of the original Twilight Zone, movie scripts, the nuking of New York, a realtime nuking, from the 1940s, a hitchhiker, across the desert, injuries sustained earlier, he buries him in the desert, a girl at a gas station, what’d you do with the body?, backstory, halfway through the book, she’s got her own affair going on, really good narrative voice, really solid book, a prewar book, some co-writing on movies, wreck your life, The Princess Bride, nothing of theirs is never published again, making money writing, screenplays, writing into the void, moved back away from Hollywood, so lucky, treasure, sounds fun, how can you know, until you start running out, there I was, Tim Powers, his first book that’s still around, Laser Books, Dinner at Deviant’s Palace, they’re not the same guy, Westlake is much more prudish, broader humour and less dry, got a lot more sex in it than anything else he’s written, did he go to Africa for that?, something that actually happened, people involved in the heist, repay the people, by never mentioning their names, we’ve done Sin Hellcat, Westlake wrote a superhero story, The Busy Body, Brother And Sister, in for a treat, yay incest!, do I have to?, 3 hours 25 minutes, not horrible, his enthusiasm is not in it, downmarket swamp, Swamp Hoyden, a boisterous girl, Nudist Camp by Orrie Hitt, Veronica by Donald Westlake, write a lot of them, a real novel with a stupid premise, write me a book to match this title, the Block one we did, The Triumph Of Evil, assassinating the president, not as dark as that, this book sneaks up on you, The Anderson Tapes, Such Men Are Dangerous, Hit Man, collects stamps, numismatist and philatelist, travels across the country, a woman who books his hits, a weird philosophical I’m a hitman and a nice guy, regular characters, levity, just fun, this matter-of-factness of the characters, how many Bloch shorts have you read, he’ll take the silliest little idea of a story, Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, nice jeans, it’s hard to get good jean, dog food factory, that’s the whole story, dogfood out of humans, gets paid both ways, little twist of the knife, did fantastic, opportunities to jabber on about your favourite books, I loved that book, finding people to talk about ai, an old guy from the 60s, take that chihuahua for some food, cruising right along, trained up, going to work, a white lab, a yellow lab that’s platinum, lab coat, a lot of fun, very active dude, throw the ball, loves to retrieve, watch it roll by, threaten to steal the ball, homeland in newfoundland, see the old country, 4 day visit, uncles and aunts and cousin, she wanted to have a farm, 50 years, a goose, 2 calves born recently, a million chickens, turkeys, wanting to get up at 4am, all-in, since she was a little girl, getting her wish, starting new people every month, on and on, almost like you’re training people, certify-em then train-em, old job, Florida parking garage, small town Idaho, pumice factory, cement blankets, Technovelgy (Bill Christensen), a culvert or ditch, burlap embeded with cement, spray it, makes an instant contoured bank, a hard foundation, pumice for cement, fluffing it up, regular cement and rebar, very flat, students love stories, really?, yes indeed, might learn something this way, control systems, little piece of tech, Mr. Spock was Scott’s Mr. Rogers, not engineer Scott, the guy that was relied on, the miracle work, transporters are bullshit, this is a nebula, we can drink ourselves into it, the space hippies one, he’s interested in them, convinces Kirk, overdone, meet some millenials, different customs and lifestyles, as a gen-x er, who wrote that one, The Way To Eden, D.C. Fontana, he’s on the crew, he wrote The Sound Of Music, Arthur Heinemann, The Wink Of An Eye, Space Lincoln!, a lot of dumb things, riles me up, seems like a nice guy, Bear Island, Alistair MacLean, bin full, can you read it to me?, pass it around, Fortnite, more cartoony version, building, High Adventure, Samuel Holt is Donald Westlake, I Know A Trick Worth Two Of That, giant Tor, from his time in Hollywood, an ex-actor, a cross between James Garner and Tom Selleck, drives a fancy car, gets involved in crimes, people saw him as a private detective on TV, a bin, bins full of books, how do we get people to do audiobooks, no possibility of keeping them online, Quasar Spectra, Meteor Strike by Donald Westlake, crusin for a brusin, 1965, pre-90s science fiction, new stuff all the time, The Robot Who Looked Like Me by Robert Sheckley, Solar Shoe Salesman, John Sladek making fun of Philip K. Dick, good narration, quite a few new audiobook people on utube, we’re lucky, living in a glorious time, also horrible, find some coffee, throw the ball for dog, having a helluva time, it has become impossible to sell books, used to be, unless pretty obscure, zero views, ebay, facebook marketplace, good pricing and fast moving, a bookseller, stack of stuff, goodwill store, signed and numbered, at some point your putting in effort to get less than a reward, stacks and stacks, new used books, unless scanning, this is a book!, a problem, work book group, not the best thing in the world, Dungeon Crawler Carl, litRPG, got a cat with him, 2020, pretty popular, a romance, the median is new, that’s the problem, Ben-Hur or Beowulf, if you’ve read the author before, toss a Westlake over the wall, if it is on kindle, what happened to the estate, everything went ebook, a shame, One Of Us Is Wrong, no ebook, when will there be one?, a hardcover for $25, used bookstores have been disappearing, thrift shop, they still have books, used bookstores, we’re at the price floor situation, Alien Earth episodes, strung out, it’s ok, the boy wonder facebook guy, the lost boys, the lost girl wendy, Raised By Wolves, fun premise, petered out nothing happened, Timothy Olyphant, another mom and dad style robot, interstellar flight, raising humans, decanted on the other planet, raised by robots, kinda like a science fiction novel premise, stuff happens is the worst thing ever, it’s the fetch quest starting, I can turn it off, Mission Impossible movie, two-parter, a summing up of all the Mission Impossible movies, giant fetchquest, what it really was, Collosus The Forbin Project, the badguy is an ai, spend all our time saying Tom Cruise is Jesus, do we trust, the anti-god, it’s all on the surface, why we got to save the planet this time, about nothing, good parts but, the surface depths, nothing from the ai’s point of view, climbing, falling, stuff happening very well, a strong idea, a painful idea, how can we do better than that?, luck on your Dungeon Crawl with Carl, a good talk out it?, allowed to say bad things, if nobody loves the book already, if favourite writer, we could do better, you’re wrong we can never be friends again, none of them are bad, traumatizing, thank you sir.

Killing Time

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #872 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Hour Of The Dragon by Robert E. Howard

The SFFaudio Podcast #872 – The Hour Of The Dragon by Robert E. Howard (8 hours 56 minutes) read by Mike Vendetti, followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Alex (Pulpcovers), Cora Buhlert, and Mike Vendetti

Talked about on today’s show:
Weird Tales, December 1935 – April 1936, the chronologies, which order to read them in, the writing order, a summary, the first chapter, I was a mercenary, a pirate, a thief, one of the last ones written, Conan’s greatest hits, with an overarching plot, the Del Rey versions, an offer from a British publisher, in comics, the way it is serialized by Marvel the first time, very serial, the text itself, the individual sections, King Conan (the comic), Savage Sword, Red Sonja comics, Robert E. Howard’s horror fiction (with Cthulhu on the cover), Lovecraftian homages, Cora’s first Robert E. Howard, Conan The Conqueror, original Lancer in good condition, very very evil American trash, this is educational, terrible trash, pretty good, pastiches by Robert Jordan, committed suicide, every paperback, every introduction, 19898/9, there are risks, writers die of suicides, the guy who wrote Conan the Barbarian, the FBI didn’t kill Howard but…, Ernest Hemingway, two things, Lord Of The Rings, the phrase: The Return Of The King, an object that needs to be gotten rid of, thrown into the sea, hold up fantasy writers, polar opposites, low fantasy/high fantasy, the structure of this, the morality is completely different, contempt for kings, a king who doesn’t want to be a king, bother with all the Aquilonia stuff, reading enough of the Savage Sword, heads to North America and has adventures with the Aztecs, a novel there, Galactic Journey, Aztec dragon boats, Juhn Buscema, Ernie Chan, Roy Thomas, Alfred Alcala, amazing, Ben-Hur and this book, the movie, a downfall and a quest for vengeance, crawling back up, how Robert E. Howard wrote this, a map of Hyboria, thee same old map, Sygia is Egypt, Shem is Palestine or Israel, Shemites with blue beards, probably read Lew Wallace, he did, correspondence, did Tolkien steal it from Howard, not liking it, Cimmeria is Ireland, an Irishman, Asgard and Vanheim, the scando countries, fake europe, Aquilonia, Charlemagne style France, Nemedia, Zingara is Spain, Argos, placenames, there’s no Mediterranean, Kush is on the map, a tour thorough the Hyborian lands, a galley slave for all of 5 minutes, you’re my slave now, slave revolt, nice try, history as Amra, sailed with Belit, saves the black slaves, Conan is a good king, he’s been poor a lot, treats people well, let them worship their stupid gods, they’re transporting arms and armour, associated lands, Kull was a galley slave, a grist mill, wheel pain, to make Conans, a Conan factory, no other purpose, water or wind, an awesome scene in the movie, one guy on twitter shits on it, it’s not true to the stories, let’s talk about the Kevin Sorbo in the room, look at it without listening to it, it is put together like a film, the tone is wrong, Kevin Sorbo as Hercules, goofy, problems taking Conan seriously, Clonan series, Thongor the Barbarian, the He-Men, masculine muscular, the butt of the joke, a condescending article, slush for Strange Horizons, a rebuttal, academic scholarship, academic work on Robert E. Howard, too much, a pulp fiction “journal”, don’t feed the trolls, lay it out a little more, a huge chonky book, a great book, in comparison to Lovecraft, a sense of identity that comes from his family, a country gentleman out of time, much more unstable, aggressive with his arguments, a piece of propaganda that’s excellently done, Jews are just like us, a story of the Christ, Christianity is awesome, well done, how do I incorporate the ideas of Christianity into my life, surrounded by Christian people, in order to not be overwhelmed by it, a statement about the world, just reject it, ignore it, rebut it, his greatest hits, sell a book, religion, Conan’s religion has no substance to it, wants to be left alone, Robert E. Howard’s perfect god, somebody to swear by, Mike is waiting, link above, will leave a mark on you, engaging, look I can be in the world to, is this the only Howard story, we’re the good cult, dark gods, witchcraft with old ladies, she’s great, evil cults, Mitra, ineffective, share?, cults!, the Ashurrities, Roman era Christians, we got Mike, the movie with Charlton Heston, his response to Ben Hur, the chariot races, the galley slave incident, he’s in opposition to Ben Hur, all kinds of opposition, learning to let go of vengeance, suspicion, suspicious, played by Harvey Fierstein, Jubba, gender swapped Xaltotun, fine with the gender swap, The Spy Who Loved Me by Ian Fleming, From Russia With Love, loved him from afar, respected him as king, king by his own hand, By This Axe I Rule, smashes the tablets, no more law, one of the best scenes, the best Kull scene, a response, helps explain why it is a bit weird along the edges, so many characters who are part of the bureaucracy and power structure, a lot of guys who keep track of, The Phoenix On The Sword and The Scarlet Citadel, a woman’s waist, an early trans-person, not as manly as Conan, this is what he looks like, in what way is this story working, C.L.A.I.M., descriptions of colour, arms being lopped off, the colour of black lotus, amazing lotus, when reading Isaac Asimov, everything was in my mind, no actual description of them, robot stories, a black man, the two novels, The Naked Sun, American robotics investigators, narrating up a Robert E. Howard Conan, how long is that, 26 hours and 18 minutes, 21 stories, The Black Stranger and some later stuff, The Tower Of The Elephant, his best little story, magazine compilation copyright, Wikisource will have it, everything that was there, Robert E. Howard doing Conan, just so imagely rich, every sentence is almost a poem in terms of description, approaching a city, so much text, so flowery, this gets you an incredibly detailed image in one or two lines, very very right on, a blonde female, son’s fiancé doesn’t like blondes, Margaret Brundage, her Conan is the scrawniest, he’s not a skeleton, Robert Valentino Conan, he looks powerful, masculine, completely limp, need some Yul Brenner energy, laying down, we get a legit monkey fight in this book!, the movie adaptation, he’s sort of a half-simian something, remakes of Planet Of The Apes, you could give him a really good Thak, give him a cape, a gorilla face, Mighty Joe Young but a little small, the monkey’s stronger than Conan, he doesn’t say my guy is the chosen one, the son of god, or a devout believer, a canny survivor that comes from good morality (by not being a civilized fuck), being a barbarian, all the people who were sold into slavery, in the comic book adaptation, almost a wedding party, the Marvel one, Dark Horse, too asiany and too dark, the Cimmerian one, Aquilonina girl tied to an altar, the book is not about Zenobia, make the comparison, brass bra, in the sky is all the other Conan loves, Belit, Red Sonja, Valeria, queen of them all, Groucho Marx, in the internal chronology, the Aquilonias think he’s dead, no son and no descendant, sexual interest vs. moral interest, that witch with the dog, kingdoms, lineage, he has no heir, the whole plot is essentially about a lack of authority because of a lack of attention to that future, a rightful heir, conspires with the Germans, the Prussian invasion of France, you need to have succession, he rejects empire, it has to be the end, king stories don’t really work, usurping some guy, just playing RISK, someone is trying to usurp him, our period now, The Goblin Emperor, half-goblin, weird half-breed, who murdered, finding himself in a position, a good person in a difficult situation, the bad side of the family, William the Conqueror (aka William the Bastard), as you do, he has legitimacy because he has royal blood, he’s super-anti-royal blood, King Kull is also a barbarian, effete, the slight against one of the Aquilonian court, a description, they inherited their stuff, Xaltotun is in his tent and smoking hash, he’s a wizard, undead vampire, she’s great, more of her, cultists, Conan crashes the resurrection, the high priest of Set, he walks back into the pyramid, Aquivasha, also undead, hookin up and rulin the pyramid, pyramid and mummy interlude, Xuthal Of The Dust, The Slithering Shadow, they never go outside into their garden, instead of watching tv, high on lotus juice, slug monster from Cthulhuville, his commentary on non-outdoor work, being cozy, my uber eats delivered to the door, all live indoors, Red Nails, the one with the laser beam, stegosaurus, top 2 Conan stories, problems as a narrator, do you remember the weather you forecast, it just goes away, in six months, a reexperience of the book, a sequence of things, fathers and upwards respect, towards the emperor, surrogate fathers, towards a legit Jesus, generous with water and food, wants to heal the sick, wants people to be honest and nice, do the people of Aquilonia deserve Conan?, the hero they need right now, get some drinks, the gold isn’t power, surrenders, to the Nemedians, the knights, Provenance, protect the city, they came too late to the battle, they roll over, reading this again as an adult, 1933/34, Conan riding across the devastated Aquilonia, destroyed plantations, the utter fury he feels, the rise of fascism in Europe, hated Mussolini, hated Hitler, Europe in flames, the Prussian invasion of France in 1870, WWI, scorched earth, a conquering, they took the city, but they left again, Alsace/Lorraine, the Border Kingdoms, a German speaking minority, ballistas not canons, war devastation, the responses of the people to power, getting things back together, feels quite complex but the messaging is fairly simple, the driving thrust of the book is a series of interesting tours, the Heart of Ahirman, the most McGuffin McGuffin that’s ever McGuffined, The Fire of Asshurbanipal, a terrific one, a lost city, they find a magical jewel, a different jewel, more dangerous somehow, a little bit like The Ring, Xaltotun doesn’t want it, his phylactery, he’s a lich, a soul box/jar, hide it, keep it safe, hot potato, silly, a review on YouTube, it shouldnt be named The Hour Of The Dragon, a flag of Nemedia, Conan the Reconquer, invisible friend on the internet, a pivotal time of crisis and opportunity, destruction power and rebirth, the mix of the european and asian dragons, monsters, water creatures, they’re lucky, dragonboat festival, rebirth/rains, the guardsman of the king are the Red Slayers (in Kull), the Black Dragons, there isn’t a central female character in it, he sleeps with one of them?, doesn’t have sex, the original Conan movie, about to be executed, set pieces, puts on his outfit, kills the guards, rescues the woman, on the cover of Conan The Conqueror (Ace double), in any other story she’d be the love interest, Count Trocero of Poitain, he does sleep with her, he stables with her, in a cave, like in a manger, another scene out of Ben-Hur, I am Zalata, child of the night guiding armed men, the raven, not at this point, the answer fantastic, mounted the rocks, circuitous path, an eagle, an uncanny thing, she’s like Circe, she commands multiple wild animals, she lead the way, the great wolf trotting at her side, a narrow precipice of stone, half-hut/half-cavern, dethroned, now’s our chance to fuck this witch up, settling scores, the children of the wild are kinder than the children of men, brooding in the silence of glens, vs. city streets, my children, your sword, those Nemedian dogs, the foolish villagers in the valley, my answers angered them, you’ll be king one day, she tries to eat him or suck his blood, throws her into the fire, wow, scary, old women in Robert E. Howard stories, young maidens or ancient goddesses, she’s millennial old from Ancient Acheron, she told me she was 19, played for comedy, a very Kevin Sorbo line, her minion, damage from his face, you promised me blah blah blah, the line from The Empire Strikes Back, I’ve altered the pact, he’s kind of alien, when Orestes comes back, so much worse than we knew, normal good human ancestors, the absolute, he’s from Python, where they squeeze you death, resurrect a dead empire, necromancy on a national scale, drag the world into the past, the actual present world, really nasty strain of conservatism, make Archeron Great Again, Make Acheron Again, people rise to power for different reasons, it’s kind of an accident, it happens offscreen, super-competent, merit matters, you should be able rise, your skills should enable you to rise, king by his own hand, The Hyborian Age, the Probable Outline Of Conan’s Career, son of the blacksmith, in America you can become president, 10,000 years ago, Greek democracy and Kings or Emperors, the other direction, that tour of Stygia, the big evil snake is on the street, a theocracy, the Egyptian system, King Kull story, Exile Of Atlantis, fell in love with a Lemurian pirate, burned at the stake, he throws his dagger at her, Atlantis: I hate it, forbidden love, laws are against it, wondering about existence, really existentialist, no progeny, an analogue for Robert E. Howard, racially mixed marriages, Lemurian pirates and Atlantean maidens, The Curse Of The Golden Skull, Bran Mak Morn stories, a Weird Tales filler story, better than Tolkien, the Battle Of The Five Armies, Bard shooting the arrow, great incidence in The Return OF The King, I am no man, it’s a girl!, a thief sneaking into a temple, million year old vampire lady, a scroll, Jewels of Gwahlur, that suspicion usually pays off, she gets a reward (him), the opening, plot’s not super awesome, little short stories, details, the weird goblin people, that’s so cool, the powerplays, becoming a pirate again, bite sized bits of story, loosely strung, From What Hell Have You Crawled, bring back chapter titles, The Haunter Of The Pits, all comes together, there I won, it’s just over suddenly, him wanting to get paid, more words, Almuric, never completed, more Otis Adelbert Kline, Dennis Archer, went to Weird Tales in 1935-1936, summer of 1936, the anniversary of his death, the grave, leave little gifts, alcohol, he drank beer, leaving spirits, a Robert E. Howard bar guide, off twitter now, switched over to Bluesky, post everything four times, look into Solomon Kane, Conan as a character, Solomon Kane stories, more our world, 1600s/1700s, maybe this guy is just insane, purposely religious, African witch doctor, not Christian but good, the staff of the biblical Solomon, immortal vampire woman, zombies, vampires, flying monsters, innkeeper, the shortest one, Rattle Of Bones, Red Shadows, Men shall die for this, he’s like The Punisher, found her on the side of the road, swore vengeance, Wings In The Night, will they sell, a little cachet, second tier, still before Kull, El Borak, and the boxing stories, books about war, Ambrose Bierce, An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge, What I Saw Of Shiloh, All Quiet On The Western Front, Cora got PTSD from the movie, Through The Wheat by Thomas Boyd, 1st infantry division, the disillusionment of young men going to war, Jack London, the Japanese invasion of Korea, he liked being first hand, War by Jack London, pre-WWI war, that really amazing Jack London hit, Tales Of Soldiers And Civilians, too many people watching, dying but not dead yet, remember forever, vividly to this day, Belgium, much better balm, too young to appreciate it, WWI letters, WWII all the time, Dolce Et Decorum Est, WWI poetry, Soldier’s Home by Ernest Hemingway, everywhere he walks in the town, as if there is purpose here, a tiny little branch of hope, a younger sister, his only connection to not killing himself, the dedication, so powerful, captured the experience of so many soldiers all over the world, Erich Maria Remarque museum, cottage industry, Die Brücke (1959), The Razor’s Edge by Somerset Maugham, he doesn’t fit in with everybody anymore, goes off to Asia, told from the POV of his friends, George Time, stealing food from a dead German’s pack, a ring off a corpse, so many stories we just let go, the right questions to ask, Cora’s great uncle, born in 1897, WWI German sailor mutiny, locked up, home in Bremen, the Bremen Soviet Republic, run of to the US, died in the early 1980s, surname, want to ask but don’t, family secrets that no one talks about, Nazis, these people were bad, we don’t talk about them, German POWs, Fort Riley, a powerful statement, least of all an adventure, a generation of men, escaped the shells, destroyed by the war, the modern movie, completely ruins the story, a grunt’s eye view of the war, ruin the end, Paul gets killed on November 11, a quiet day, Wonder Woman (2007), Twelve O’Clock High (1949), written for Jimmy Stewart, had PTSD in spades, I can not go back there, Flight Of The Phoenix (1965) with Hardy Kruger, the bombing raid, I was on the other side, almost killed, it was a long time ago, Hal Clement, Gene Roddenberry, last time I was here I was bombing the place, terrible stories of the bombing nights, graphic descriptions of hiding in bunkers, an American airbase, practicing on the moors, low flying noisy miliary airplanes, born in 1938, taking potshots at him, these people, Stephen Crane, his graphic description, The Red Badge Of Courage, The Bride Comes To Yellow Sky, The Open Boat, Manacled, it’s vivid, an epic poem, Storm Of Steel by Ernst Jünger, chiming in, the most powerful war book, weird answer: For The Temple, the Roman sack of Jerusalem, the first Horatio Hornblower book, the entire collection, not public domain, short stories, C.S. Forester, E.M. Forster’s The Machine Stops, it does everything, everything was provided for people, the plot is almost non-existence, guy calls up his mom on Microsoft Teams, the machine stops, the plot is not the story, utopian literature, English 12, reading science fiction in school, Germans don’t use the word dystopia, Brave New World, Nineteen Eighty-Four, won’t survive reentry, the machine stopped, lost without the internet, our phone, my navigator, literally lost, try to by a map now, the B.C. Ferries are trying to make people reserve your ticket and space online, not the winged creatures, if it has to be online, no ebay store, amazon store, government services, reserve bus tickets on your phone, scan a qr code, clipboard, to use the bank machine, it is the machine stops, old/poor/homeless, really hard to get stuff, government service, access to the road, the Amish will win, we’re competing here, the Leigh Brackett book, really interesting, a better short story guy than a novelist, for a guy who only wrote one novel, some of the best short stories, also wrote a lot of poems, he’s so good at it, they just didn’t sell, here Merry sing a song at a pub, Gandalf talking about Mordor, he wrote a suicide note 3 days before he killed himself, more than once, a year after his suicide, so amazingly powerful and rich, that rich language he’s so good at, a Robert E. Howard movie that was funny, Dennis Dorgan, Sailor Steve, a Breckinridge Elkins is a cartoon, a dumb smart guy, Popeye style villains, A Gent From Bear Creek, they don’t advertize it, MFA creative writing woman, his suicide note as a poem, June 18th 1937, The Cross Plains Review, The Tempter by Robert E. Howard, dream away the ages, who are you, I am Rest, Alpha and Omega, lusted for the resting, set me free, this world of human cattle, long I sat, never free, huger grew the phantom’s figure, through the fogs of old Time came striding, gliding gliding, from the shadows into day, he put the trigger in the poem, why would you write your suicide note in rhyme?, because he’s a poet, a trigger warning, cause people to commit suicide, never talk about war, just let everybody learn it on their own, “died of suicide”, you have to coddle everybody, you don’t go outside, comfortably nesting, she’s a podcaster, she’s a streamer, Australian music in the 20th century, 3 viewers, that’s us now, a yard party, on this note, we all should, see you all next time, Mike is 84 years old and looking at the world a lot differently, a good morning/afternoon, lunch/dinner.

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #871 – AUDIOBOOK: The Sea Lady by H.G. Wells

The SFFaudio Podcast #871 – The Sea Lady by H.G. Wells, read by Thomas Copeland. This novel was first serialized in Pearson’s Magazine, July – December 1901

This UNABRIDGED AUDIOBOOK (4 hours 33 minutes) comes to us courtesy of LibriVox.org.

And, here’s a complete PDF.

The Sea Lady by H.G. Wells

The Sea Lady: A Tissue Of Moonshine

Posted by Jesse WillisBecome a Patron!