News, Reviews, and Commentary on all forms of science fiction, fantasy, and horror audio. Audiobooks, audio drama, podcasts; we discuss all of it here. Mystery, crime, and noir audio are also fair game.
Reading, Short And Deep #009
Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss The Nine Billion Names Of God by Sir Arthur C. Clarke.
The Nine Billion Names Of God was first published in Star Science Fiction Stories (1953).
Here’s a link to the PDF of the story.
Posted by Scott D. Danielson
The SFFaudio Podcast #363 – Jesse, Paul, and Marissa talk about The Puppet Masters by Robert A. Heinlein.
Talked about on today’s show:
1951, the really annoying way Heinlein does things, Paul’s main Heinlein phase (in the late 1980s), when Paul was ten, Time Enough For Love, Expanded Universe, the basic parts of a Heinlein novel (in terms of characters), the Heinleinian triad, the young talented protagonist, the older wise crotchety man, and the red headed woman character, who The Man In The High Castle was, when Dick writes a novel…, when Heinlein writes a novel…, methamphetamine is 100% non-habit forming (?!), Jesse is uncomfortable with surety, Heinlein exudes surety from every pore of his body, orbital mechanics, what women want, Bruce Jenner’s gender switch, Heinlein’s politics, black people, women should be raised up in society, homophobia, Mary’s super-power is gaydar, homosexuality, asexuality, marriage, men and women are identical, “of course husband”, the alien is the husband, the structure, the final chapter, in case the mission to Titan fails, message in a bottle storytelling, first person perspective, surety undercuts it, has Dick ever written in first person?, Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, The Hanging Stranger, identical paranoia, how much he hates the Soviets, Heinlein was rabidly anti-communist, in the commissar’s office, WorldCon, God help us all, he was right but…, imagine if this novel is a metaphor for communism, the Second Red Scare, Soviet and Chinese communism, WWWII, Manhattan crater and Washington crater, projecting brawn, getting tanks to North America, the evil of the puppet master aliens, orgies on TV is bad, also gladiatorial combat, they kill cats!, no effect on Soviet Russia, hygiene, scabies and lice, parasitism, cranked up to 13, Saddam Hussein, U.S. politics, if it were re-written today…, core fears, 24 was that, looking at the structure, avenging the cats and dogs, a master of the craft, Luke Burrage, that is good writing, so different from Philip K. Dick’s books, a straight line vs. how did I get here, all the sins that Time Enough For Love, naked people standing around in cushioned apartments talking about legal matters regarding the decanting of babies while a cat walks into the room, get passed the cat, Pirate the cat, casual nudity, Eric S. Rabkin, making it absolutely necessary that the society go nudist (and never go back), Hyperpilosity by L. Sprague de Camp, combs, even in Heinlein’s kids books, in their dome homes the heat is cranked up, was Heinlein a nudist?, Hollywood, downhill after The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, I Will Fear No Evil, an old white guy living in the body of a young black woman, the US Navy, hate and love for the military, this weird guy from Missouri writes his consciousness into his books, Job: A Comedy Of Justice, Friday, rape, when Heinlein talks about rape…, an artificial person, an inferiority complex, a fascinating society, the movie of The Puppet Masters, the fun stuff, the cat, the alien was kissing, being devoured by a woman, Eric Thal opens his mouth whenever possible, Sam, Mary, why does everyone hate this movie so much, Donald Sutherland, Keith David is always fun, unlike every X-Files this was competent, yeah look it’s a fake, the slugs are really smart, were they smart?, the sequence where Sam first gets a slug on his back is one of the best bits of Science Fiction, its almost as if he doesn’t know, more insidious and more scary, tying it all together, helicopter vs. skycar, Heinlein loves incest, they do juice you up, the addiction metaphor, had Dick developed it…, an Olympic athlete, what’s undercooked, who is in charge of their own minds, choices under some conditions but not under others, if we all had slugs on our backs…, getting married to Mary, love of a good woman ends addiction, black and white, Joe Cinidella is actually Italian until he becomes a Nazi, a flipped switch, turning on the waterworks, operating as a slug, Glory Road, set in fairlyand, Nebraska, all about the contract, an ambivalent relationship with marriage and law, The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, alpha husbands and beta wives, primae noctis, you get into their psychology, really weird people, WWII and methamphetamines, go pills, tempus fugit, chasing the cat, is Heinlein challenging us?, Star Trek: Operation: Annihilate (aka Planet of the Pancakes), Maissa Bessada, resetting the show at the end of the episode, another point of Vulcan physiology, Kirk’s brother is named “Sam”, Mary is the vessel for world piece, Heinlein sued the makers of The Brain Eaters, Star Trek: The Next Generation, there’s no money until the Ferengi show up, Gene Roddenberry’s philosophy of the post scarcity economy, maybe women did act that way in the 1950s, a sequel in which Mary is saved from her marriage, 1980s tropes, sex scenes, Mission Impossible movies, developing out of taboos, the PG-13 effect, “they’re boffing, ok”, Alien, giant penis monster, Aliens, James Cameron’s problems with Harlan Ellison and The Terminator, The Outer Limits, The Brain Eaters, lifting things out of literary SF, Avatar is very good lifting, redoes the the first movie and the first, Luc Besson, The Professional, adding a baby doesn’t make things better, Ellen Ripley, the corporate military mission, Newt (from Aliens) is Mary (from The Puppet Masters), garbage bunk vs. good orbital mechanics, feral child, the structure is the same, spacesuit -> fighting suit, ejecting from the ship -> ejecting from the planet, a powerful story, Alien 3, Paul fulminates, the nine day fever (Venusian Jungle Fever), encephalitis, The Puppet Masters is a retelling of H.G. Wells’ The War Of The Worlds, here’s how I would do it, H.G. Wells was a cynical asshole, monstrous, liars, jerks, and racists, our CIA operatives know what they’re doing, the NSA, “you just killed a guy for no reason”, it isn’t uncaring wisdom that save humanity it’s man’s ingenuity, root em out and kill em all, it’s the end of Starship Troopers, the Elves of Titan, Independence Day aliens, Welcome to Earth scene, Have Space Suit, Will Travel, Willy Wonka-style, a space alien cop (the Mother Thing), “who lives like that?”, if Heinlein had had a kid, the serial was slightly rewritten by Horace Gold, the unexpurgated version, 1980s movie style, a hook-up with an anonymous blonde from a bar, the trope for James Bond, Virginia Heinlein, Stranger In A Strange Land, it is not better, weird names, Biblical names, Mary’s real name, Sam’s real name is Elihu, in the Book of Job, Elihu’s big speech
Elihu states that suffering may be decreed for the righteous as a protection against greater sin, for moral betterment and warning, and to elicit greater trust and dependence on a merciful, compassionate God in the midst of adversity.
putting us on the right path, x is so bad that we have to put all our trust in…., our precious bodily fluids, if Heinlein were alive today…, Ray Bradbury, the NSA, anarchism, Mary’s backstory, the Whitmanites, an explicit mention of the Doukhobors, Heinlein just likes nudity, Heinlein likes his women to older or a lot younger, physically young but actually older, a young secretary with an old man’s brain, The Cat Who Walked Through Walls, lots of surgeries or whatever, shrugging it off, a different experience than back in the day, you must read ancient authors, for another podcast, you don’t know SFF if you don’t read…, shame at not reading The War Of The Worlds, can you find Heinlein books at new bookstores?, Alfred Bester is great but he wrote two books, genre defining or pioneering, well-written idea SF, almost no science, a bit of politics, marriage, you don’t know SFF if you havent read a Heinlein novel, a long discussion for another time.
Posted by Jesse Willis
Reading, Short And Deep #008
Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss Dream-Land by Edgar Allan Poe
Dream-Land was first published in Graham’s Magazine, June 1844.
Here’s a link to the PDF of the poem.
Posted by Scott D. Danielson
The SFFaudio Podcast #362 – Jesse, Paul, and Marissa talk about The Game-Players Of Titan by Philip K. Dick.
Talked about on today’s show:
Ace Books F-251, December 12th, 1963, The Man In The High Castle, nominations, a worthy follow-up?, a high bar, somehow I ended up in a taxi with no memory of how I got there, whaaah?, bluff (the game), the landed class of a depopulated earth, Monopoly, Candlyland, Liar’s Dice, the game of Life, dice, cards, spins, their powers of imagination, just so ridiculous, Marissa really liked it, a short story by Dick, Jupiter, test the game on the kids, there’s something to this, the way we conceive of how Philip K. Dick wrote his novels, we know almost everything about H.P. Lovecraft, but Dick was a talker not a letter writer, one aspect of Dick’s life, the game aspect, sitting around playing Monopoly is an obsessive horrible experience, egomania, weirdly emphatic, very philosophical, if Monopoly was a real thing… (and it kind of is), it has very little to do with skill, lots of luck, Peter Garden had a rough night and got into an argument with his car, the car scenes, the cars are some of the most realized characters in the book, the elevator spills its guts, simulated personalities, doors and elevators and cars, the Rushmore effect, a kettle that reports on you, how the rushmore circuit got installed in everything, the Talky Toaster episode of Red Dwarf, AI circuits, Mork & Mindy, Pocatello, Idaho, Berkley, California, New Mexico, the plot, Earth has been subjugated by the Vugs, nuclear war, immortality, bindmen, the Titanians, that’s not the plot, the Earth-Titan War, sterilizing most of the earth, factions of Vugs, are the Vugs trying to live on Earth, living like humans, a lot of telepaths, The Pirates Of Penzance, Mr. Tagomi’s lin: “Things are seldom what they seem, Skim milk masquerades as cream”, the key for Dick to doing that cool thing, Pete Garden’s visit to Titan, they change the reality of what’s on Pete’s card, Steve Jobs’ reality distortion field, Joe Schilling, that little hint, Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, a really cool cipher, please tell me if I’m human or not, psionics, telepathy, had Dick taken it even farther, Dick and his characters are on speed in this book, checklist of Dick themes, homeopapes, boobs, marital infidelity, the men are the major players, are they trading property and women?, the reason I have to get divorced…, having a baby is national news, somebody in Ontario had a baby, why is their syndicate called “pretty blue fox?”, NATO-style call codes, ham radio enthusiasts, PBF, two or three books back, robot brains on little carts (the Lazy Dogs), childish, Now Wait For Last Year, Dick is teaching his kids, children’s culture that we forget when we are adults, if I was to pop out a baby next year, distraction techniques, maybe as a social dating thing, another glimpse into Dick’s life, a playful book, character names, a couple named Angst, a guy named Calomine, Lucky Luckman, Mr. Gains, a cop named Hawthorne, sin (Nathaniel Hawthorne), the Vugs had initials, E.B. Black, E.G., a clue for us, a moderate vug, a very soft occupation, interpolation of the vugs into Earth’s society, the U.S. occupation of Japan after WWII, okay, I guess we’re playing the game, a way to encourage humans to keep breeding, the depopulated earth, that record store in New Mexico, a village sort of feel to the novel, in other novels, his core set (of characters), a haunted landscape, Peter Garden, Pete as a symbol for infidelity, importing a wife in for him, she bites the rabbit paper, a little more kosher, Garden, a story, a very short story by Dick called Out In The Garden, a wife and her duck, a duck in a suitcase, grocery shopping and getting her hair done, Sir Francis the drake, a poem by Yates, Leda And The Swan, Zeus turns into a swan and rapes a woman, a poem about sexual assault, Helen of Troy, a fantasy story about a woman who has had a relationship with her duck, a guy is cuckolded by a duck, Dick is always worried about his wife cheating on him, Sylvia, name puns, not even probable, Freya, the goddess of fertility, Carol, Pat McLean, an eight year old sought after by a 200 year old man, that crazy big bender, gotta go take all the drugs (like it is his job), the ending fake out with the drugs, getting precog abilities when taking meth, double blind (or double bluff?), a cold war metaphor, like poker with even more random elements, Solar Lottery, pairing books, different cultured futures, what is destiny and fate?, a completely legitimate way to go, instead of a meritocracy or a democracy, let’s just magnify this out a bit, well, that marriage didn’t work out, Eye In The Sky, a group in the same way, Inception, whose dream is it this time?, a clique of people you spend time with, it’s about Dick’s personal life, social dynamics, intruding on things, the outsider vs. the insider, Dick divorces his wife Sally but that’s okay because John likes her and…, Sally brings his new boyfriend in from the east coast, success, the pseudopodia robot cleaner, riper and ready for potential citizens, the non-bindmen, how did that happen?, now you can have all the property in California, the Jack Gaughan cover, what’s going on?, a stack of deeds, there’s not enough detail to reconstruct this game in reality, Jesse says “undercooked” a lot, the human squares, rolling is spinning (maybe), I hate Monoply (but I really do hate it), it fascinates us, a brilliant horrible strategy, controlling the housing supply, brilliant and evil, everything to do with Monopoly is horrible, the origin story of Monopoly (the Landlords Game), showing the evils of capitalism, trusts roll-in, he stole the game, her idea is thrown out and the rules she lays out in Monopoly actually occur, the ironies of Life, a horrible game, it happens within the family, you can see it coming, it’s crushing, what are the vugs playing for?, playing for a life on Earth, what Luckman’s doing, the vugs got so entranced with the game they created that they are subsumed by it, crass to gain power (instead of playing it for a lark), he’s trying to crush the kids, I don’t wanna play that game, Jesse’s housing costs are because of how others are playing the game of life, they’re playing the game wrong, live read books then later die (there’s no winning), a way to spend a rainy afternoon with your kids, the psionic talents, telekinesis, telepathy, precognition, Pat gets a bit of the precog’s point of view, the precogs could be wrong, finally methamphetamine does a good thing, all the layers of deception, it was kind of exciting and leavened with dollops of humour, Max the passive-aggressive car, driving Joe down the bumpy street, so many good scenes, a little bit of Ubik, it’s in our future, a lot of technology talking to characters, coming up soon, AG-Chemi from The Simulacra, like a parallel world, if you take the rules of any one Dick novel…, using JJ-180, I love Philip K. Dick’s mind, The Cosmic Puppets, Peter and Mary, he re-uses names, one could very easily, a Philip K. Dictionary, the checklist, he’s such a fnool, The War With The Fnools, the wonderful thing about a book like this, unofficial Harry Potter encyclopedias and concordances, unlike Lovecraft, S.T. Joshi, Robert M. Price, the Journal Of Philip K. Dick studies, how many of the stories use the name Pete or Peter, homeopapes and autofacs, the rabbit paper, there’s a story called Autofac, we’d buy the heck out of that book, do it as a blog put it together as a book.
Posted by Jesse Willis
Reading, Short And Deep #007
Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss Beyond Lies The Wub by Philip K. Dick
Beyond Lies The Wub was first published in Planet Stories, July 1952.
Here’s a link to the PDF of the story.
Posted by Scott D. Danielson
The SFFaudio Podcast #361 – Jesse, Bryan Alexander, Mr Jim Moon, and Paul Weimer talk about The Circular Ruins by Jorge Luis Borges
Talked about on today’s show:
the dream of Bryan Alexander, the nightmare that is Paul, 1940, 1962, almost a disaster, this story hit them like ton of bricks, Frankenstein, disturbing, a simple plot, leading you in circles, rising action, the horrible Freytag pyramid, creating a person out of dreams, a Joseph Campbell plot, learning Spanish, listen to the negatives, no one was unaware that the silent man, the unanimous night, it claustrophobic cloaks, the beginning of Moby Dick, in The Garden Of Forking Path, Jeff Vandermeer’s Ambergris, the circularity of the text, there is no “collected works” of Borges, Broges’ translations, the language of doppelgangers, the father and son angle, a mediation on parenthood, a god of fire, if Eric Rabkin were here, Prometheus, realizing you’re a dream, a trapped figure in endless circularity, parenting, once the colour of fire and now that of ashes, a grey man under unknown leaves, tributaries of sleep, weaving a rope of sand, coining the faceless wind, a folkloric reference, a Cornish legend, The Lottery Of Babylon, the company knows all, a ruin of a religion that somehow comes true, the most difficult task a man could undertake, an infinite amount of time for the hairs on the arm, not the god of the bible, food and figs, a dream god, a hilarious line from Celephais, I’m a prodigious dreamer, a dream man who dreams a dream man into existence, a dream written down, meta accusations in the post modern school, a hero to post-modern thinkers, The Babylonian Lottery, where the Zend language, characteristics of a society, too much leprosy, Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, the moonness was going above the river, the beautiful language of a dream, Voltaire’s Zadig, a fake Babylon, the book of Zend, The Library Of Babel, real world Greek, this river, bamboo canoe, other burned temples, H. Rider Haggard, double negative, Xenophon’s Anabasis, 10,000 mercenaries, epic adventure, populated or unpopulated, in the aftermath of disaster, Detroit, Peter Jackson’s Lord Of The Rings, yet another abandoned village, The Warriors (1979), an optimistic version of New York, being a vegetarian, Frankenstein’s creature is a vegan, he’s got to dream some meat into being, this is Abel not Cain, where the story really gets cooking, his body is a temple, dialectic dreams, clouds of taciturn students, interpolate him into the real world, a man lecturing the clouds, The Boy Who Disappeared Clouds by Lawrence Block, seeing images in the clouds, people are like clouds in dreams, a two sided coin, the dialectics, dissection theater, in the Gnostic cosmogonies, a red Adam who cannot stand, the world was created by the demi-urge, Valis by Philip K. Dick, addendum to the creation story, Lilith, the red mercury story (a geopolitical urban legend), alchemical texts, a locked Wikipedia entry, the cold fusion of terrorism, a golem, a man made out of clay but without a soul, Adam of dust, Adam of dreams, the wizard is the dreamer, again Frankenstein, why would it have been better?, Edgar Allan Poe’s William Wilson, H.P. Lovecraft’s Hypnos, doppelganger fiction, mirrors, Borges’ philosophy of Poe’s Composition, the literary equivalent of Escher, more like Lovecraft than Dick, aristocratic families, grandparents who were big into books, loved suits, loved their hometowns, Buenos Aires, a love of reading, wrote about writing, letter writers, connected with their readers, strange visionary figures, gregarious men, authors confused (conflated) with his own characters, complex truth and curious parallels, beauty, meaning and the belief in the power of story, how we make sense of the universe and how we interpret knowledge, both seeking to blow minds, Borges read Lovecraft, There Are More Things by Jorge Luis Borges is dedicated to Lovecraft, arguing with Lovecraft, cosmic is the word (not eldritch) or dream, The Call of Cthulhu, interpolate connects us to Dick as well, a bit of sense data, we don’t see just by having the world come into our eyes, we also project, the story is not complete, filling in the steps between fire and grey, Dick, Borges, and Lovecraft are working the world in a different way showing us their dreams, what would a Borgesian city in Kadath (the Dreamlands) look like?, Inception is a Borgesian story, far more concreteized, a heist, the grey man kissed the mud, the blades which were lacerating his flesh, the brambles delacerated his flesh, where did the blades come from?, what is certain, there’s something on the bank injuring him (or the blades are in him already), the crown of thorns, the temple was crowned, from out of the south, almost biblical, interesting, the plaything of forces far greater than he can comprehend, mental terror, the incessant trees, obligation, inconsolable shriek, the birdless morning, the phoenix, the tiger is man, Tyger Tyger, horses as a symbol of force, power, dynamism, and nobility, horse or tiger, domesticated vs. wild, super enigmatic yet we know exactly what happened, the creation of the heart, the moon, fourteen lucid nights, from lucidity to obscurity?, meticulous love, to rectify it with a glance, invoking the name of a planet, Mars?, Venus?, Mercury?, it could be the penis, much more meticulous from, the innumerable hair was the most difficult task, full moon?, starting the cycle again, the circularity of the ruins, re circularity, a disc vs. an amphitheater, the geography of the Library of Babel, a torus, the bottom of an amphitheater, it’s a magic spell, Lovecraft fandom, Cthulhu prayer breakfast, Borges was the darling of the literary set when he was alive, the New American Library edition, Borges is still a god of modern literature, intertextuality, Borges’ made up quotes and citations, Ibid by H.P. Lovecraft, a parody of 19th century scholarship, the adventures of a man’s skull, groundhogs worshiping a skull as a deity, the sense of humour, S.T. Joshi, a classic schoolboy error, BBC Radio documentary, humour in Borges, loops and whorls, sophisticated humour, blades vs. brambles, Poe the prankster, Herman Melville, extraordinary sentences, puckish and wry, apotheosis.
Posted by Jesse Willis