
Reading, Short And Deep #504
Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss Marty by Robert S. Swenson
Here’s a link to the story |PDF|.
Marty was first published in Manhunt, February 1956.
Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!
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 #504
Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss Marty by Robert S. Swenson
Here’s a link to the story |PDF|.
Marty was first published in Manhunt, February 1956.
Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!
The SFFaudio Podcast #858 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Tissue-Culture King by Julian Huxley, read by Brian Fullen (1 hour), AND The Tachypomp by Edward Page Mitchell, read by Ben Tucker (33 minutes), both for LibriVox. The discussion of both with Jesse, Will Emmons, and Tom Pace begins at 1 hour 33 minutes.
Talked about on today’s show:
a mistake at the end of the recording [excised], Steven Page Mitchell, musician?, Canadian band?, singer songwriter, Bare Naked Ladies, the music at Jack Layton’s funeral, narrator, weird story Will, even more racist, super rich with one central idea, publication, important to the text, 3 publications very early, Amazing, August 1927, Yale Review, 1926, Cornhill Magazine, suspicious, a different text, we’re getting the Amazing text, Yale and Amazing are in the states, 15,000 words, 6,000 words longer, the rest of the paragraph is missing, a swamp the size of Yorkshire, and so on throughout the day, steamy mess, at last we were out, dotted with big trees, like a fortification, a word change, spiky barricade, the green wall, trackway, alert, caravan, guttural exclamation, ponderosity, second head, remarkable monstrosity, supernumerary eyes, lost to view, a man-made path, abridging, doesn’t damage the text, redundant writing, some details, description of the man they’re peeping on, added stuff, the voice proceeded from an enormous negro man, 7 foot 6 or 8 foot high, prayer or incantation, a little carved ebony stand, about the size and shape of a microscope slide, what the fuck’s going on?, the exact location: equatorial Africa, cut down for the American publication, pretty amazing for some things, there’s stuff in it, tin-foil hat, not called tinfoil, not for microwaves, for telepathy, pretty interesting, what you want out of science fiction, a mishmash, biological ideas, hypnosis and psionics, interesting historically, not interesting as science fiction, can we treat it metaphorically, telepathy, Astounding, a dominant thing in science fiction, The Demolished Man, entirely dependent on telepathy, John Wyndham, as a metaphor, setting aside the racism, a little thread from January 2024 on last year, edited by Leonard Huxley, his dad?, subtitled “a biological fantasy”, a more general meaning, a science fiction story in the style of H.G. Wells, the father of Julian and Aldous, super dystopia book, utopian, before the white men got there, tissue culturing, I’m an old man, drops the mic and runs away, what the core of this story is, “tissue culture”, when it was getting really popular, late 19th and early 20th century, produced this way, tissue cultured garlic, a university in New York explicitly referenced, “an institution”, Halcombe, The Rockafeller Institutes, higher education for medical people, buncha women, service these cultures, make the king everywhere, culture the king’s flesh, focus on the really interesting part, a cellular network of mind control, alive or dead exists in tissue cultures and controls the state, genetic experiments on people, fat thighs, big asses, nicki minaj, making dwarves and giants, and perfect dwarves, metaphorical way of looking at it, science is evil, scientists are evil, propaganda, on the money?, science is integral to everything going on, this pure thing, I believe in science, always doing something, working for someone, one set of powerful people here, The Tachypomp, one tutor doing everything, Edisonian mythology, massive staff, prop up the god king stuff, ancestor worship, not exclusive to one group, pretty west African, China, burning money to give to your ancestors in the other place, the one word, pointed out to Boogala, the doctrines of kingship, archive.org, multiply the king’s tissues indefinitely, quantity, mode of life, agreeable to the king, undreamt of power, such innovation, great resistance, the average businessman in their lack of prejudice, as a dig, read this subversively, the end, as to the best methods, in our scheme, scientific advertising, war propaganda, regal tissues, from the ranks of the nobles, sacred tissues, laborious and expensive, a portion of the royal anatomy, sub-culturing, a new way of doing your religion, totalitarianism, making the king everywhere, the television watching you in Nineteen Eighty-Four, Kira on Deep Space 9, the caste system, revert to that, damaging to our society, just goes along with it, a terrible artist, reintroducing the caste system, suspicion of religion, submission to authority greater than yours, do my own research, super-evil, using science to do the job of religion, science has more potent effects, a very valuable story, invented the *tinfoil hat*, where is the other story, abridged, story, tended to be the redundancy of the writing, getting to the ideas, overly long as it is, 40 minute long ideas, could have been shorter, the characters are horrible, some more clues, the Amazing text, a microscope, it’s a tissue culture being observed, why is the toad there, genuflecting to the god, pray to the god, growing properly, almost like a cargo-cult version of what’s going on at that Rockafeller Institute, African empire hidden by a swamp, a modern day lost world, intrigue stuff, important, this is the kind of tech, Facebook and Twitter and Bluesky, ai, television, radio, ai, influencing and mind controlling people, the complementary thing, public religion, research would be limited, more resistance, the state is controlling what science is doing, the way the state is fleshed out in this story, eugenics, they were racist about it, clung longer, after WWII, racists like it, too hubristic, the state telling people who should breed together, sterilize those people, the mistake is that it is unwise, unintelligent behavior, so called smart people, what good genes are, special susceptibility to hypnotism and telepathy, our ideas about losing themselves in weird primitive dances, bound up together, the Plateau of Leng, the deep darkest deserts of Australia, underground in Wales, not on any map, 3 days of swamp, 10 years later?, not Julian Huxley, Planet Stories, set on another planet, analog, bootstrapping stuff and using it to get to places farther ahead, even more impressive, early doing a lot of stuff, you could almost question, public domain, fell asleep, fell into a daze, imagined this situation, just like The Tachypomp, a nightmare, this Robert E. Howard story we started with, less seriously racist, hefty, a mature man wrote this, a plan rather than a story, this man should be fought, If I Were Dictator, Thyroid Dictator, evil on the level of Fauci evil, their religion, moderating thing, full of slaving, accidentally got time traveled to the American south during slaving, do something illegal, arm slaves, foment rebellion, monetary means, a colonialism story too, Rwanda, the outer scientist, Hascombe attained to an unsurpassed degree, but to what end did all this power serve?, will to power, a perfectly good end, fasten the yoke of a false religion, religions as true or false, true and false in this connection, truer or falser, the telepathy actually working, the obvious moral, gradually being accumulated for them, the truth about the way things work, condemning institution science, took a little piece of King Charles, when Ferengis die, tissue culture style trays, little discs with a lid, collectibles, pulp magazines in slabs, relics, a piece of Quark, a parody of us, they don’t even bury themselves, sell the body parts, a very solid story, not a good story for Scott Miller, what do I do with this story?, did a podcast on it, pre-show threads, much lighter and also fun, a Will problem, explain this story like I am dumb, not a math guy, it was all a dream, the tutor, the stand in for Edward Page Mitchell, C. August Dupin, Edgar Allan Poe, 1878, a precursor to Sherlock Holmes proper, the sweetest girl, the daughter of his math professor, reason to worry, experiences a dream, increasingly eccentric, not perpetual motion, how to reach infinite speed, layers of linear accelerators, the smoking car, keep stacking linear accelerators, wind resistance, making a vacuum tunnel, essentially invented a particle accelerator, a rail gun, the one at CERN, donut shaped one, they didn’t have the curves, near lightspeed, in inventing that, solved the problem of how to get to infinite speed, pretty simple, dream framework, the simplicity of the idea, square the circle, our inner hero, before he goes into the dream, like a Frank R. Stockton The Lady Or The Tiger?, electrically expensive, when electricity is just starting be the normal thing, all a thought experiment, an expectation that it is real, his friend, awesome excitement, get paid too, students who are not asleep, teach things and learn things, discounting ordinary intelligence, the stern father’s good will, crunchy writing, meager reward, Jean Marie Rivarol, Gutenberg Australia, Alsace, Teuton in nature, by education a German, the dumb guy, good vocab, bad math, Stanley G. Weinbaum’s, Von Manderpootz, Pygmallion’s Spectacles, Manderpootzian, Francis Stevens, half German half Japanese scientist, falls into a vat of some sort of metal, Samson, mix two races, two personalities, Jules Verne, this people are like this, the Germans are rockheaded, Professor Rockhead, Phileas Fogg = Fog Lover, obsessed with time, precision, clockwork, Paspartou, very French, stereotypes about people, mix them together and get science, Lorraine, profession: omniscience, foreordained mysteries, Tahoe water, Lake Tahoe?, unmitigated stupidity, the skirts of the university, a plethora of purse and paucity of ideas, the awesome Jesse hero, transplant brains, occasional in, the names have to be jokes, students good at math, just there, all the other students are good, injection, early Simpsons episode, the gifted school, all the kids laugh, Bart is bad is school, Lisa is good at school, high vocab, we’re dumb, we’re living in a time of stupidity, Polyp University, Professor Surd, Abbie Surd, fun stuff, a comedy piece, The Senator’s Daughter, The Man Without A Body, wired teleportation, a funny story, a science fiction idea, about the problem of how to get to infinite speed, as long as you don’t believe in later stuff like Einstein, this is impossible, a very fun fun thought experiment, what he cares about, my uncle is a judge, nothing to worry about, just needs to come from a good family and be rich, Mr. Furnace, an angle close to The Raven, Poe is influencing here, The Purloined Letter, Murders In The Rue Morgue, central Frenchman, a proto-Sherlock Holmes, sees and observes, one of the most popular characters ever created, explore the idea of can we get to infinite speed, an infinite number of cars, there’s problems with space that could prevent that, acceleration problems, energy required goes up, 40,000 trains going forward, what defeats this story’s idea ultimately, as a kid, nothing that can faster than the speed of light, The Raven is a psycho-pomp, speed, let us discuss the tachy-pomp, quickly send, takes your psyche to the place of the afterlife, the ferryman Charon is a psychopomp, the Neil Gaiman Sandman stories, still haven’t defeated this idea, a special triangular ruler, they tell me I can’t communicate faster than the speed of light, ansibles, subspace communications, make it as long as the distance to another star, instead of sending things along it you turn it left or right, received data on the other side faster than the speed of light, you can’t make a ruler that long, you can’t build one that long, sort of been replicated in some effects of twinning atoms and electrons, make them harmonize with each other, their reactions, what you do to one effects the other, a potential form of this kind of communication, on a subspace level, some fundamental law of the universe level, written that up as a giant triangular stick, knocked out by neptune and space debris, a metaphor for the understanding, he’s right, if Newtonian physics were the ruling physics of the actual universe, subsequent beliefs about what’s going on, made frivolousness, for the entertainment of it, a hole dug, a natural phenomenon, came up through a trap door, clogged up with financial creditors, Kerguelen Islands, the antipodes, what becomes of any poor devil, a comfy looking chair, skeletal arms wrap around you, the only thing you’ll ask for is the bill, a hole through earth’s center, suspected it, Huygens, 1400 fathoms, you stand upon it, Mrs. Grimler’s Cellar, a galvanic experiment on a cat, Re-Animator, a yawning shaft, came up again, the angry Grimler, acquired momentum, 8000 odd miles, time after time, oscillation of a pendulum, I am not slow, a creditor of the trap, a touch of rhyme, outside my chamber door, Poe was getting pretty popular, in the center of the hole, so much air resistance, over that long journey, even if he threw it, velocity in the other direction, follows the same logic, invents with his mind, the antipodes of the Kerguelen, near Antarctica, find Sri Lanka on a map, a couple Iles Crozet, Kerguelen cabbage, a lot of the places there are named after Jules Verne things, explored and named, the Kerguelenn archipelago, where this story is presumably set, to make the train happen, New York, the border of Saskatchewan and Alberta, real but fudging, electrical energy supply, what squaring the circle is, a mathematical thing, alchemy, hermetic philosophy, numbers are a real thing in that they are self consistent and predictable, Pi, what appears to be infinity, we’re doing approximates, the functional version of the theoretical approximate, the perfect perfection that is numbers, fallen asleep, perpetual motion, trip him up, entirely imaginary, tutored in his home, plaster busts of Artistotle, Archimedes and Comte, the benign brow of Martin Farquhar Tupper, he always roosts there, a bird of no ordinary mind, ab is a root meaning from, ab-stract, cut from, cut from the absurd, cut from the same cloth, so funny, my masterpiece, an android, only partially complete, confute the schools, Albert Magnus, Roger Bacon, Sylvester the 2nd, a Brazen Head that held discourses, Thomas Aquinus got wrathful, laws as definite, this is chatbots, this is ai chatbots, a manakin, Reverend Dr. Alchin, Paul Anapest, vulgar fractions, compose sonnets, talk to you about positivism, Mr. Mitchell is good at craft, supposed to be fluffy, startlingly early stuff, sending DMs to Bill Christensen, older science fiction stories, the tin-foil hat thing, not a household name with regard to people who know about science fiction, doesn’t take itself seriously, Douglas Adams is very good at science fiction, a discourse/conversation/fight on Red Dwarf, time travel, implanted memories, played for comedy, idiots and selfish, serious in that it takes its ideas seriously, it doesn’t negate the story, keeps it light, made Will have to do it, so be it, fantasy and science fiction and what the genres do, indie authors, indie publishers, science fiction as different window dressing for fantasy, boring and for nerds, dorks, disprove this point, we’re dorks, dorky, a third story, The Last White Man, not for dorks, for people who like adventure fiction, not fantasy, both of these are pure quill science fiction stories, 1878 no such thing existed, Julian Huxley, maybe H.G. Wells, need not be, scientific romances, for novels, science fiction after the fact, a real thing, do it without self-consciously doing it, seeing how they work, in the context of society, doing something totally different, gotta save the girl, the sword is I got some money, Kurt Metzger on Joe Rogan, Ctrl Alt History, The Terminal Man by Michael Crichton, a brain implant that fucked a guy up real good, ethical stuff, wrapping tinfoil around his head, microwave transmissions, to control his mind, mind control shit, the mind control implant, standing in front of a bull, brain-chip, a little transmitter, what happens in the book, a really great read, experimental brain surgery or face prison for murder, makes a plan to escape, a feedback loop, a killing machine, fugue states, very interesting, two meanings for terminal, through a remote terminal, a keyboard and a monitor, dumb machines that just connect to google.com, what google chromebooks are, none of the processing is happening on your computer, you are a terminal people, can program you remotely, programmed, i’m 50 now I need to get the shingles vaccine, just gonna cause a rift between us, gonna increase your chance of getting shingles, not the common knowledge, people are programmed by society and corporations and governments, perverse incentives, repeating talking points you heard from youtube, state funded media, a very unpopular youtube channel, or from RFK, a righteous underground, do you want to get shingles?, for you to get that, look into it, when you look into it, where’d you get that, lotsa research, wouldn’t give it if you asked for it, not the right age, shingles vaccine, BC health link, a series of 2 doses, flu vaccine, covid vaccine, CDC, all adults age 50 and older, what are the benefits?, the best way to protect you, prevents more than 90%, 70-90%, after being immunized, just so we’re clear, that’s not a traditional vaccine, the NDP has been paid off by Pfizer, Dr. Bonnie Henry, what’s the percentage of people who get shingles?, weakened immune systems, preservatives etc., what caused Paul to drop the podcast, the facts are COVID vaccines increase your chances of getting shingles, this isn’t a zero sum gain, gene therapy, bad things, blood clots, from personal experience, hurt from these lies, Fauci is not a good person, we knew this, not number one on Trump’s list, the flu vaccine, one cut above homeopathy, a reaction to bad medicine, huge abuses went on there, institutions are institutional, turning regular humans into robots, most doctors don’t do any research after they graduate, too uppity about it, why are they pushing it, time usually reveals, why were black people in the USA more resistant to COVID vaccines, they were experimented on before, maltreated by lying doctors, The Constant Gardner (2005), Kenya, a movie to watch, the fictionalized story is what literally happens, PayPal, ebay account, almost 30 years old, before ebay bought it, a reputation, stealing, banning, you can’t send money to truckers, get your account frozen, their Billpoint system, cheques, not an institution in the same sense, still owned by ebay?, probably an evil corporation public traded, an individual, the closely held, family owned business, very trusting of the family in general, grandma vs. a hospital, the bad outliers, bad grandmas, homeopathy grandma, needed a blood transfusion, the local newspaper (now gone), during COVID, a mother and father disputing whether their newborn should get the COVID shot, the judge did way less research than the dad did, this is how you get autism at the massive rates that we have, by what standard does the judge make the decision, two parents in dispute, set a precedent, not mandatory for babies to get vaccinated, 6 months olds and higher, developmental disabilities, the vaccine schedule, the amount of autism has matched, the reason we have more queer people, more free now, more autism friendly, we diagnose them more, a Philip K. Dick novel, it was rare, now it is normal, reboot of Doogie Hauser, The Good Doctor, idiot Savant, an American show based on a Korean show, such a serious problem now, what’s going on here, measles used to be considered a good thing, now it is considered a deadly disease, not yet, adult onset autism doesn’t appear to be a thing, less than 3%, aspergers included, not diagnosed anymore, sometimes the disease are defined away, a “dis ease” as opposed to a “syndrome”, downs disease vs. downs syndrome, old eggs?, just look into it, I should be more skeptical, a lot of money on the line, the devil’s website, the NIH, that NPR chatbot podcast reader, convenient for that, a conversation about an audiobook, a better digestion, sometimes it glitches, the fake laugh, as Terence [Blake] pointed out, put Jesse out of work, for older kids?, more out of work, kids raised by LLMs, language learning model, a prison therapist, when kids have been institutionalized, sent to school, public or private, do these exercises, the hurt, goes in the trash, make a drawing of a horse, I’m putting this on the refrigerator, very rare, publish it in a journal or something, a litmag, The Capilano Review, the number of students, can’t really have care, student teachers ratios, most of the population involved in educating children, watching youtube videos, very obscure channel, very interested in reading, what he’s been reading about, very American based, conspiratorial, psychic surgery craze of the 1960s, dudes in the Philippines and Brazil, seems pretty sus, uses his hands to psychics remove tumors and stuff from your body, exposes after the fact, James Randi, famous for debunking claims of magic, fishguts, not doing it for money, non-financial incentives, the number of people want it, you really don’t want surgery, an invasive healthcare system, injections, replacements, forget about youutube and NIH, what doctors have done to her, left a drill bit in there, we’ll try to get it out another time, put bolts in your ankle, prednisone, a steroid, a whole bunch of that stuff, addictive, causes problems, my cat is on that, a shot every five weeks, the solution to muscles spasm is botox, kills the muscles, immensely painful, full of preservatives, hair falls out, horrible things happen, falling and breaking some ribs, second covid shot, almost die from bloodclots that immediately happen, all actually what happened, a frozen, leg, at age 70 whatever, if you’re just a regular person, not as skeptical as she should be, more interested in breeding chickens than finding out the truth of these things, cases where your relative gets cancer and they don’t have cancer after a number of years, incompetence and institutional stuff, re-reading, Edward Bernays’ propaganda, rich, 2004 introduction, all about real serous guiding, the invisible government, secret influencers of society, heavily invovled with the tobacco industry, poisonous, he made his money he could move on, turn the tables on it, how do you produce a true truth, a corporate truth, LibriVox, well worth doing, it has to be an active sonar or radar, it can’t be passive, actively trying to understand, going to buy a car, you’re fucked, what cars are being made where or why or how, was the case, Japanese cars were the best, year over year improvement, keep refining it, change the direction, this commitment to refinement, a Toyota from the 1990s you can’t go wrong, swapped the engine for a Ford, commitment to year over year improvement was unparalleled, people are there to try and fuck you, perverse incentives everywhere, okay dad, more of an uncle, beautifully naive, the canny individual, being wrong many times, defer to other people’s judgement, two kinds of oil, synthetic or regular, either one will work, fuck and find out, the consequences of that are possibly dangerous, take it to an expert, a corporate outlet, a mom and pop, in it for the longhaul, getting bought up and destroyed, sold his business to a chain of carguys, owned by Blackrock or Vanguard [or Blackstone], not a conspiracy or everybody knows everybody, New York real estate, they’re not owned by individuals, owned by corporations who own blocks of things, owned by stockholders, the company or companies have to crash for that land to get sold, that’s sort of the essential problem, mom and pop business, The Communist Manifesto, 1848, true in England but not in Germany in 1848, a pamphlet, a utopian novel, a manifesto and an essay, leave no Jesse unturned, vampire, children’s fiction, fantastic fiction, six in progress, sort by release date, Ham Jones: Scientist, 16 years, what class?, economics, philosophy, it wasn’t offered, a German studies class, German Socialism, East Germany, 19th century stuff, Dastardly Criminals In Space, Watchbird, Conspiracy On Callisto by Frederik Pohl, Manly Wade Wellman, The Incomplete Theft, Tom Godwin, Robert Silverberg, Bratton’s Idea, “Old Bratton, janitor at the studios of Station XCV in Hollywood, was as gaunt as Karloff, as saturnine as Rathbone, as enigmatic as Lugosi.”, what other radical science fiction authors could we dig up, is it good?, no way of knowing, about robots?, inventions fiction, robots, Mike Vendetti stuff, The Curious Experience OF Thomas Dunbar, the first superhero story, Edmond Hamilton, Weird Tales, apple books, audible listing, imagine if you will, age immediately or regress to when they were youths, nefarious inventor, a lot of money, sound familiar?, causing panic, more adventurey fiction, Spawn Of Inferno by Hugh B. Cave, Clark Ashton Smith, anything by him, a darkness that settled like a black cloud, blackness, a thing from the outer darkness, ghastly appetite, The Thing From Outside by George Allan England, like The Wendigo by Algernon Blackwood, The Willows, badly told interesting idea, badly told?, not well told, we benefited it by being massively abridged, made it shorter, very short, from Connor [Kaye], Who Are The Dead?, we like that about him The Black Abbott Of Puthuum, Averoigne, nice art, Margaret St. Clair, corresponded, fuckin cool, she’s San Fransisco, a real homebody, Tommy Patrick Ryan, still be interesting to have read it, works for Margaret St. Clair as well, her story about fake meat, up on Bill Christensen’s website, Juciveal, technologies in stories, broad beamed, pleasantly easy to answer, Jucipork, Mr. Angst of Gourmond, a culinary editor, Veristeak, Lazarus, an interesting topic, the surprise, it’s alive, it’s made out of meat, Terry Bisson, Chicken Little, The Space Merchants, The End Of The Line, Clifford D. Simak, both Americans, provincial Americans, pastoral, countryside guys, not city-boys, loves the countryside, whole adult life, kept returning to the countryside, Talking Man by Terry Bisson, a wizard, time is a circle, fixing cars, a dude who knows how to do things, the first episode of Doctor Who, two teachers, math and history, a student they have, she’s so remarkable, she could teach the class, she’s fuckin time traveler, gets evasive, eager to learn, follow her home, parents wont meet, a junkyard, the sign above the junkyard, I.M. Foreman, her grandfather, three doctors down the road, John Smith, I’m from the future bro, an alien, subsequent stuff, no alien stuff at all, very fun, alternates between dystopian future or alien planet, historical entries, The Romans, weird episodes, the whole ocean is acid, a puzzle planet, weird amazing science fiction, the closest thing it starts off as is a rip off of The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, companion viewpoint characters, cave people times, the secret of fire, 11, 12, 13?, really well done, science fiction windowdressing, monster of the week, The Pyramids Of Mars, 19th century England, re-doing The Mummy, the mummies are aliens, a tomb on Mars, Osiris was a real character, The Mummy (1932), ancient aliens are gods story, entombed on Mars, 1 tv show a day with dinner with Meg, comedy about a hospital, The Office, St. Denis Medical, animals doing stuff, The Henryiod, straight adaptations, Shakespeare, old school, women played by men, pretty straight, Shakespeare’s great, the histories, Richard III, Julius Caesar, Marlon Brando, British accents for the Romans, I, Claudius, among the top 5 tv shows ever done, if not in the first slot, Derek Jacobi, 6 hours maybe, shot on videotape, stupid British, amazing performances, great blocking, where they place the camera, helps tell the story, receiving the speech, help tell a story, old Claudius, Robert Graves, Augustus through Tiberius, Nero, Caligula, the story of the story, Patrick Stewart plays Sejanus, good acting, getting stabbed, Praetorian, suicided, poisoned, slaves running around in the background, 4 different versions of Ben-Hur, well dressed, no outdoor scenes, in tents, inside a hall, the Senate, by torrenting, that’s drama for you bro, it was huge, so many good actors, John Hurt, Sian Phillips, The Elephant Man (1980), British stage actors, become iconic, high quality production, shot on videotape, they’ve lost episodes of it, animating missing episodes, real science fiction stories, it was illegal to pirate the show, happy to take your pirate copies, owned by the British government, revenue bro, all on tubi right now, the best streaming service, The King Tide (2023), shot in Newfoundland, hard to see things, living on an island, fishermen, mainlanders, a baby crying, 10 years later, miraculously heals, cut-off from the rest of the world, the secret, a child who can heal sickness, adoptive parents, amazing baby resource, human resource, the center of the island’s attention, weirdo drunk guy, while she’s reading a book, lineup to get in, the healthcare provider, having fistfights for fun, poison themselves, she loses her power to heal, she was spending time with some bees, all the bees died, only while she’s asleep, take sleeping pills, this island is fucked, promised never to leave, a kid being abused, this doesn’t go well, everybody on the island dies and maybe the whole planet, the execution was poor but the idea was good, a little bit Lovecraftian, maybe a fishkid, giving her sleeping pills, serving Omelas, make fish appear in the nets, the enrichment, Labrador, on the mainland, a special kind of rum, kiss a fish before you drink the rum, videogames might have been a mistake, kissing the fish, a time suck, accent is similar to Irish, not apart of Canada until 1949, a colony of Britain, out of work, 2-4, 3 hours, too much time writing a few days a week, drink some coffee, smoke a little bit, dive right in, exhausting yourself, a break, accomplished something, 5am for every start, before church, a paper route, still morning, a nice feeling, it’s so late, bedtime, staying up pretty late, awake quite late, up at 4am, when the sun goes down, various weasels, doing stuff since 4am, sick in December, missing work, felt really useless being sick, contempt, drifting from thing to thing, twitter accounts, bitter about Ukraine, angry about Israel, do some stuff, write a book, why video games are a mistake, huge mistake, they’re so fun and non-productive, productive in Minecraft, it’s fake, use it in moderation as a reward for actual production, immediately became obsessed with it, girls and boys, boys love to dig, sandbox, because you’re boy, stacking, chopping, stacked and chopped, housebuilders, natural, monkey with tools, tie things together, Gilligan’s Island, bamboo and string, also Ginger’s cool, the rich guy, the doofus and the boss, girl next door, Mrs. Howell, lovey-dovey, all they have is money, do you ever think about the Black Death?, Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman, gruff knight, very gently, spoil it for me, secretly God, sounds bad, really good, you don’t have the Christianity background, Will’s biggest deficit, Flesh + Blood (1985), the Heinlein movie, Paul Verhoven, lock themselves up in a castle, a statue of St. Martin, their totem to keep them safe, degenerates, contamination, Rutger Hauer is amazing, Brion James, a pretty long movie for 1985, semi-produced by Hollywood, he’s got a lot of good movies, Hollow Man (2000), Showgirls (1995), Black Book (2006), dutch WWII stuff, Soldier Of Orange (1977), national colour, The 4th Man (1983), bisexual writer, ignorant of one of the greatest artforms around, Basic Instinct (1992), Total Recall (1990), RoboCop (1987), become disciplined about it, 4 movies everyday, The Last Emperor(1987), quite amazing spectacle, you don’t watch it for fun, become edified by it, Death Wish (1974), to understand the concept, why there were 8 Death Wish sequels, a Bronson disciple, produced in, I don’t care about Jill Ireland, he really does, that’s interesting, an interesting character, roughest background imaginable, beating eachother for breakfast, coal mine at age 9, a real something to see, 15 – 20 years ago, I have a certain set of skills, Irish actor, Liam Neeson, Taken (2008), spends the rest of the movie killing people, set decades apart, a thread that started a long time ago, dismiss whole categories of movies, have met many men, an example, Lawrence Of Arabia (1962), colonialism in Dune, the personal story, a beautiful film, tube tv, on laserdisc, stunning on a 55 inch widescreen tv, there’s an intermission, really good book, the 1959 Ben-Hur, the 1925, the cartoon version, narrated and performed by Charlton Heston, the 2016 version, they didn’t have movies in 1888, had to do it through books, cast of thousands, before it was a movie it was a stageplay, treadmills, how the medium has changed, on Broadway, the number of horses that died, so round, took a long time to film, seize the medium while it is ripe, get to it before you die, Sorcerer (1977), Tangerine Dream, The Wages Of Fear, driving rotten dynamite across Brazil, the worst roads, leaking nitroglycerine, mostly no talk, William Friedkin, backstory, reasons to flee to Brazil, on the poster is a truck crossing a rope bridge, what’s going to happen, came out the same week as Star Wars (1977), The French Connection (1971), To Live And Die In L.A. (1985), musicals, Jonathan Weichsel, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), fucked women up, Marilyn Monroe, imaginary reasons, conspiracy theory, backed by stuff, feels right, probably true, Will had trouble with the subtlety, “dumb bitch”, she’s a nice girl, dam, ewe, dam, ewe, the projection is hilarious, maybe he’s doing something right, tv work, SVU, victim’s fathers, so for boomers, Law & Order, the one that is so dominant, very special rape, what makes the special, 26 seasons, it’s got what the people want: raped from the headlines, Criminal Intent, Organized Crime, Hate Crimes, this is the one about sexual assault, Law & Order Sex Crimes, Sex Criminals, the first volume, some lurid thing going on, Americans are special in that they’re more prudish, love violence, shaped, broken glass as a standin for blood, everybody has had the experience, cut their foot, it means blood, streaming clips, blood is turned green, when mom walks into the room, paying for your Prime, green mist, green spurt, that’s not blood, reality is shaped by the requirements of the prudishness of a certain set of people, in 15 years, radio stations, exactly 100 years old, first radio stations, Hugo Gernsback, ham radio guys, KDKA, in the car, to avoid commercials, BBC radio, it shouldn’t be, declined during covid, if television is around in 15 years, radio is dead, in the car, an old car, drive around town, it was a thing, SNL, vanishingly rare, half the year, Timothee Chalamet, what the current liberal hivemind is thinking, who’s famous right now, that one video, vote for Kamala, reviews phones or cars, Jerry Rig Everything, breaking phones apart, a Mormon, pretty diverse, a disabled wife, wheelchairs, wealthy from youtube, always getting wealthy, busy getting married and networking, supports getting rich, support, a nation within a nation, busy breaking phones, what phone should I get, ads for phones on tv, phone services, drugs, insurance, car and house, iphones and samsungs, free phone, phone plans, co-op advertising, talk over the ads, while the tv is yapping at you, while the tissue culture king is praying on your mind, actors from SNL, tattoos and dates, tattoos removed, other reasons, Sarah Sherman, droopy dry, dandruff shampoo, subject, fancy bath products, a nice experience in the shower, go beyond a neutral experience, if this were the middle ages, a perfumed bath, audiobooks in the shower, racing the alarm, just stop showering, sorry to listeners, pee and coffee, Eternal Lover/Savage.



Posted by Jesse Willis

Reading, Short And Deep #503
Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss So This Is Death by William J. Elliott
Here’s a link to the story |PDF|.
So This Is Death was first published in Weird Story Magazine, No. 1, August 1940.
Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!
The SFFaudio Podcast #857 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Ben-Hur by Lew Wallace, read by Mark F. Smith (22 hours 49 minutes). The discussion includes Jesse, Alex (Pulpcovers) and Tom Pace.
Talked about on today’s show:
A Tale Of The Christ, 1880, Daylight Savings, fall for a story too good to be true, very embarrassed, no one will know how stupid Jesse is, integrity, feel contempt for, “determined to do his own research”, Robert Ingersoll, not a true story, sounds to good be true, agnostic, civil war union officers, Battle Of Shiloh, there’s no substance to it, an 1874 letter, too good a story to not be true, a giant apology book, you should believe in the Christ, an argument against Ingersoll, The Greatest Story Ever Told, The Ten Commandments, suffers from not having Yul Brenner, kinda similar, the guy he was raised with he grows up to hate, Jesus adjacent, if this was a book written 1000 years closer to Jesus, when they show Jesus it’s from the back, reaction shots, the deturion, so many emotions, no water for him, best performance on screen, the 1925 silent movie, the 2016, 4 by 3, the sea-battle, real triremes, bloop, the music, the intercutting, the chariot race, one of the greatest movie scenes ever, Mad Max II, chase sequence, spectacle on screen, coulour and ultrawidescreen, best not to bother, script problems, make it shorter, the poster, in the chariot leaning to one side, farther into the narrative, wins on one wheel, go up on two wheels, adaptations help clarify, why am I loving it, to Rome with his adopted father, pretty short for a Ben-Hur movie, Areus is not on board the ship, just kind of escapes, this is really important, a story about love of the Father, a theme, God, reaction shots, when people meet Jesus, pays him back, almost like Jesus is your best gay friend, caressing the body of Jesus, if you didn’t know it was Jesus, they’re not gay for each other, a barrier breakdown, one of the themes, he ultimately rejects his adopted father Rome, he rejects Judaism in favour of Christianity, a Roman villa, he does become a Christian, a fulfilment of his Judaism, I’ve left the religion of my fathers, a sect of Judaism, a Greek influenced sect, almost all set in Palmyra, he does race in Rome, a lot of time skips, works against it, everything that it is doing is very well done, how they condense the 23 hour book into a 4 hour movie, shortly after the chariot race, vengeance didn’t give him what he wanted, greater than vengeance, ties better as a theme, 5 years in the desert, no longer directly connected, in the 1925 movie, putting that gladiatorial training to use, they dump that, it is kinda wasted, the Judean uprising, Masada (1981) tv miniseries, Joseph For The Temple, a band of young men, a revolution happening, protect the temple, a militia, the temple burns down, can’t stop history, a slightly outside perspective, dig deep into the story of Jesus, a very well put together book, Balthazar, on a separate quest, the three wise men, almost like a parallel story, that connection, the brother story, you feel his betrayal in the movie, a little bit older, great actors, take him away, that sneer, arrogance, Heston acts the hell out of that, fury, betrayal, golden age of Hollywood acting, the heart of that movie, the heart of the book, overwhelming need to love Jesus, bestselling American novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, slavery is bad, Esther and her dad, Egyptian, a devotee back and forth, in the background the Moses story, a prince of Egypt, the name, the name Hur is in the bible all the time, that fictional line connection, a land captured by the Romans, explaining religion to Chinese kids, they don’t grow up with Christianity, the New Testament, stories about Batman, Joker, Riddler, Catwoman, Joe Chill, stay outta Crime Alley, the backstory, the batsignal, commissioner Gordon, Robin, you don’t have copyright, Spider-Man or Superman, a bunch of apocryphal stories, back broken by Bane, the other Dick, Nightwing, the non-canon stories, Iron Man’s story, whatever superhero, believe it like an adult, religion book club on sundays, a scene from that book, relevant to out lives today, in a different way, in a novelized form, action, betrayal, leprosy and healing, a lot of meat to think about, the premiere of Ben-Hur, Lawrence Of Arabia, Spartacus, based on true events, Quentin Tarantino shift of historicity, Christ Pulp Fiction, accused of being pulpy, in used bookstores, panned the book, wasn’t the best book, why are books so influential, in 2025, Gaza holocaust, Nakhbah part II, getting Israel happening again, Ivanhoe, The Count Of Monte Cristo, Sir Walter Scott, your family has been buried in a tomb, quest for vengeance, the Jew and his daughter, roasted over a fire by the evil Norman, King Richard, Robin Hood, like super-man or batman, Ivanhoe adds to that narrative, emotional change, back from a foreign war, to his father’s house, alternative girl, knightly towards, represents Romans, conqueror’s class, the opening of the book, etymology, how English has multiple word for pork, swines and pigs and pork, also about slavery, huge in the South of the United States, offered a good picture of what slavery was like, a swineherd and a jester, the Rotschilds family, the Napoleonic Wars, baronages out of it, defeated the ottomans, let’s have this zionism thing happen, Americans in favour of Zionism, Jews need a homeland, traceable back to Ivanhoe, Christians in the United States and Britain, prior Ivanhoe, positive descriptions of Jews, racism, racial stereotypes, positive racism, interesting, loving money, a heroic race, the Sheik Ilderim, played by a welshman with shoepolish on his face, a surrogate father, the history of these horses, stars in the sky, astronomy, arabic names, the mother of the horse, connected to his family, connected to Judah Ben-Hur, weird in 1959, Palestine, parallels the story, powerful but disrespected, a little bit like the Mongol trading empire, if you have a pass, get the khans against you, he comes across great in the book, especially in the movie, brings the arabs and the jews close together, semitic races, leaves his father, until Areus dies, becomes the heir, time with the emperor, the movie improves in some ways, before we got to meet Ben-Hur, 4 hours in, the Nativity story takes so long, where isn’t this biblically accurate?, how is it told?, second person plural, hey reader let’s walk over there, a palace in Antioch, a paragraph of description of what is not described, the book isn’t trying to push through to the chase sequence, doesn’t drag much, a magazine serial about the wise men, available separately, a cool series of stories, it became Ben-Hur, LibriVox, Jesse wasn’t raised Christian, Melchior, Balthazar, and Gaspar, the answer is no, basically the same, thought to come from this place, in scripture, assumed to be 3, the magic number, three chairs, three bears, three beds, three wise men, for convenience, adoring the baby at the same time, two separate incidents, makes the detail really vivid, had the effect, when Avatar came out, went to their therapist, I want to be a blue person swinging from vines, blue Tarzan, 90 minute movies, books were the immersive reality of the 19th century, between the book and the first silent film, huge chariot races live on stage, the medium has fallen greatly, the new media spotlight, totally play the fuck out of a Ben-Hur game, Ubisoft Assassin Creeds, collect tokens, the cutscene when Jesus shows up, then hair, your character’s face, the chariot scene, the galditorial scene, if a church isn’t trying to raise money, an immersive experience, the Message, render unto Caesar, ends the same way?, married with two kids, Egyptian princess, turns out he was jackass, no satisfaction, the race goes on, Masala, a very biblical thing, the competitive brothers in scripture, taken on Roman values, those are real, Roman values vs. Christian values, Nietzsche, slave morality, turn the other cheek, interacts in the modern era, times of conscription, conscientious objectors, into battle without a gun, an alternative way to go, really powerful to see unarmed people hit by police, makes them stronger, give them a pass, Nixon being a Quaker, not that kind of Quaker, deep into that, not a very funny joke, how many of the 13 adaptations you’ve seen, on YouTube, that Jesus stuff being born, shows back up over and over again, the thread that connects and reflects, the 10 other adaptations are The Fast & The Furious, sucessively sutpider, Point Break with cars instead of surfboards, DVD VHS combo players, a viscous circle, could be the same character, blonde Keanu, it’s all about family, hot girls and cars, Antioch drift, we love racing, suped up horse, can’t we have it all, join the FBI, that series becomes a cartoon, cars in space, becomes hot-wheels, Ben-Hur doesn’t do that, two videogames, PS2, Circus Maximus for X-Box, Chariot Wars, Blood Of Braves, big in the movie, not very big in the book, a big climax, another third of the book, movies and books are different, interior scenes are less good, unparalleled, Aureus, sees the rowers, attack speed, battle speed, ramming speed, all these sweaty men, pass out, a parallel scene, another test, this is the background for the Conan The Barbarian movie, killed, goes to a mill and become strong, a little bit of background, this particular rower, his body being symmetrical, why is he doing that?, he’s Jewish Conan, gets the revenge that he wants, loses the girl, being taken away, surviving slavery, coming into the full power, bloody vengeance, Conan has two dads, William Smith and James Earl Jones, snake dad, the body you have, that was me, I’m your father, almost buys it, Robert E. Howard’s Conan as a rejection of both the Roman system and a rejection of the Jesus path, Conan doesn’t turn the other cheek, he’s not duty bound in the same way, master mentality, inference in the book, he’s bought into the Roman system, the peace of his childhood, a brother to this family, why he’s doing that, adopted the Roman values, power is everything, I am the determinant of what is good and what is wrong, when he does it it is not rape, when a goddess messes with his head, The Frost Giant’s Daughter, striking, ultimately Robert E. Howard is not a Christian, never belonged to a denomination, generically protestant, Episcopalian, Baptist of some flavour, not sure about all of this, a great story, Batman’s cool, don’t buy the Batman merch, Superman, Indiana Jones?, gonna have to be me, being Batman, how many guys have been Batman, what are the notes that Charlton Heston committed, Judah Ben-Hur, portrayed 4 times, not all the plays and musicals, because it was biblical, printed and pronounced, Encylopedia of quotations, King Solomon, Ben means Son, Ibn means Son, The Thirteenth Warrior, William Wyler, Marlon Brandon, Rock Hudson, Burt Lancaster, Paul Newman, Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, the supportive slave, a gay scene, thought to be gay, in the closet, the sexiest man, women were very disappointed, The Vikings (1958), rotoscope for The Secret Of Nimh, two rats are fighting, Tony Curtis, Jamie Lee Curtis’ dad, generational, Michael Douglas, young people don’t watch movies, they haven’t seen Ben-Hur, on laserdisc, ultrawidescreen, Lawrence Of Arabia (1962), one of the best things in that media ever, the power of Ben-Hur as a book, Nativity scenes, they have fully adopted one set of values of this son of god, powerful arguments, through Esther, they’re all blending together, a parallel course with Jesus, a regular person (a prince), trials and tribulations, navigate through, a shocking thing, how strange the healing is, he healed a woman in a wheelchair, she had long COVID she’s feeling much better, uh-huh, more faith in Jesus, legitimately healing things, in the 1925 movie, passing the mother and daughter, an in camera tehcnique, a different coloured light hits them, an in-camera effect, red welts, red filter, the wounds disappear, it rains and the storm washes away their leprosy, pilgrimages, a huge part of what’s going on, ache in my shoulder, not for healing, people do it, sometimes things happen, very mysterious, theology properly speaking, the framework of Christianity, divine authority, perform a miracle, the reason the miracles happen is to validate their claim of authority, the loaves and the fishes, not like a D&D cleric, cure light wounds, to be able to forgive sins, I’ve seen him do these miracles, anyone there, a narrative testament story, someone’s account of it, when Jesus was walking the earth, different sets, Dead Sea Scrolls, what’s in the canon for Batman, is he really an alien?, was he raised in Smallville, Kansas town, Metropolis, not New York, not Philadelphia, buying into the story, look at the values he’s espousing, can you emulate those values, as cool as Batman, as independent as Batman, swings, beats up badguys, dressed up as a Spider-Man, what would Spider-Man do?, knows and understands, with great power comes great responsibility, the value set, mysterious ones, contradictory seeming ones, I come with a sword, Matthew 10:34-36, not peace but the sword, what happens to him, dividing people, not everybody believes turning the other cheek is the right way, love your enemies, crucifixes, Hero (2002) with Jet Li, separation is only one part, a transformative system, conjunction, hermetic philosophy, togetherness, Ecclesiastes, the meek will inherit the earth, alchemy, the union of the family, the rebus, a multiplicity, the combination then separation, discipline, the hostile brothers, he divides the house, Judah saved Masala’s life, the falling of the tile, what caused the tile to fall, the worst interpretation, added in zealots, anti-Romans, shot the new Roman governor, the sister leans on one of the tiles, Ben-Hur takes the rap for it, not God exactly, supervise the repair of the roof, Masala investigates the roof himself, he knows what he is doing is wrong and does it anyways, getting into Masala’s head, becomes wealthy, steals the fortune, works both ways, extortion, very mafia like, you pay up you pay down, why Joseph is taking his cousin/wife to Bethlehem, the Nazarene, small town Saskatchewan, the story for the background, a manger, a cave, 4 hour detail, ah ha, mm hm, the key to the success of the 1959 movie, in reflection to Ben-Hur, you’ve become Masala, I doesn’t like that at all, Jungian shadow work, why you something bothers you, Michio Kaku talking, you evil fuck, they don’t care at all, you evil fuck, be the opposite, almost irrational hatred, hatred for Masala, adopting the course of the Prince of Peace, attracted to the story, reflective of real experience, that doesn’t sound like The Prince of Peace, what’s happening in the story, the sister and the mom not wanting to be known to be alive and lepers, they love their brother and son, funny and very Jewish, God cannot be everywhere so he made mothers, suckled and swaddled, this guy in the garage, more hands-offish, a bicycle, you’re going to learn to ride, the god that is your mom, more standoffish father figure, same for girls and boys?, to the maximum extent, in the 1925 movie, when Mary looks at people, people really change, on that donkey, lifts her veil, Mary Pickford, a slow smile, a kindly look, swept away by this divine face, the melting of hatreds and false beliefs, how can we have this effect on people in a magical way, the attraction of seeing Christian charity at work, acting out their beliefs, in a narrative, why this book was super-popular, in the States, sales overseas, Gone With The Wind, Harper Bros. claiming copyright over it, you can tell the story of Jesus because he’s totally out of copyright, anybody can write about it, great ambitious books, the Left Behind books, rapture books, very popular, Tyler Perry, Dollar Parton is a billionaire?, Dollywood, a subset of black people, why is he in this movie, he’s massive, a certain subset of people on earth, The Phantom Menace, podracing, the story of Luke Skywalker, betrayed by his uncle Ben?, there might be something to that, George Lucas as a hack, pick interesting things, steal from the best, everything worked, The Dam Busters (1955), they’re kendo swords, sounds cool, looks cool, what happens to Luke, dangerously overthought, Joseph Campbell Hero’s Journey thing, a mistake, free HBO, pirate television, as a young person, Luke is visiting Yoda, you gotta stay with me, you haven’t done your training, a selfish little twit, following the formula, the refusal of the call, the Campbell arc, forcing it on there, back to that falling tile, divided before that, the breech that breaks them apart completely, the straw that breaks the camel’s back, you’re not the man you need to be, my tool in my new job, one becomes obsessed with the other, condemned to the galleys, within the Conan movie, Thulsa Doom isn’t thinking about that little boy at all, for him it was a Tuesday, younger days, steel was the important thing, you’re not narrowing it down, make money, enslave the children, passes from hand to hand, a Vanirman, buys him from the mill, gives him training, pit-fighter, wins and wins and wins, precataclysmic Genghis Khans, to hear the lamentations of their women, living off of Conan, one night mysteriously, unexplainably frees him, the sheik with his horses, weird freedom, the snakes facing each other, now he’s got something to go do, that is another adventure, this is why these stories are powerful, the “save the cat” books, something very fluffy, let’s do heists, one last adventure, that last Indiana Jones movie, go find a really old book, Dial Of Destiny, we got what we wanted, we wanted more of the same, find other books, reading Robinson Crusoe, as you get older, some decision that we make, Fast And Furious 10, catharsis, go to the book, looking at my books, have you done an episode on them?, Gustave Dore, Pilgrim’s Progress, Thomas Merton, a fantastic book, a philosophy, read the old stuff on the shelf, take a photo of it, thrift shop, a book or two a week, two things, The Eternal Savage, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Recalled To Life by Robert Silverberg, The Tissue Culture King by Julian Huxley, son of the science guy Huxley, Edward Page Mitchell’s The Tachypomp, a time traveling clock, The Senator’s Daughter, a Chinese-Vegetarian party, 1879, a nutzo story, everything about it is science fiction, Return Engagement by Margaret St. Clair, freedom, The Eternal Lover, inter-equal, unfrozen caveman, that Pauly Shore movie, Encino Man (1992), Mark Nelson, Nu son of Nu, sabertooth tiger, Tarzan’s in this one, primitive man against, comely cave-woman, the volcanic horizon, Herman Hesse, Steppenwolf, Cora, wild primeval wolf, bourgeois values, carefree elusive Hermoine, the year we’re on?, Steppenwolf, cowed and comfortable, severe dysfunction, thoughts, alternate realities, if people really want to do it, 1877-1962, a possibility of actually doing it, a show where nobody’s there, this amazing ai thing that just happened, google assistant, google lm, generate a podcast discussion of it using ai voices, in real time, it’s not bad except the analysis is crap, NPR voices, that’s a really good point, unbelievable how good it is, kind a scary, it uses a bunch of tricks, makes us question our everyday lives, rhetorical tricks, make it into a Dr Seuss poem, really great insights, Ben-Hur into an epic Dr. Seuss poem, a lot of text to process, 2 followers, so I met this guy, Arrius adopted son of Arrius, WWII in tweets, a great gag, too obscure, in the 2016 movie, played by god, Morgan Freeman, he’s a moor, the Gladiator 2 movie, in reflection against Gladiator (2000), a grudge against Rome, the plot of Gladiator 2, worthwhile, ships in the arena, mock trireme battles, Maximus’ son, the kid from the first Gladiator movie, Blood And Sand, Spartacus, a prequel, kept going on, goes through that cycle, adopting the Roman mentality, the morality of Roman excess, Batiatus and Xena, so good, so evil, Lucy Lawless, act the hell out, sleaze paperbacks, you killed my family, should I take pleasure in this, rebel against Rome, the war against Spartacus, no super-natural elements, the servile war, happened multiple times, more sexy time, consequences for it all, silent, research and fun, trivia pieces, the score, a chunky book, riding bicycles around the set, The Fall Of The Roman Empire (1964), El Cid (1961), Christopher Plummer, Richard Burton, girls liked Cleopatra, Where Eagles Dare (1968), super-smart and the opposite of evil, the podcast out tonight: Gentleman Prefer Blondes, huge at the time, her personality as we know it today, she’s nothing like that as a person, she plays that character for the rest of her life, the book is not a curse, the movie is a curse, Jane Russell, at one point Marilyn Monroe pretends to be Jane Russell, supersubversive, everything she wants in the end, innocently conniving, be a book reader, Skype is going away, a daylight savings day.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Reading, Short And Deep #502
Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss Triumphs Of A Taxidermist by H.G. Wells
Here’s a link to the story |PDF|.
Triumphs Of A Taxidermist was first published in The Pall Mall Gazette, March 3, 1894.
Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!
The SFFaudio Podcast #856 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Exploration Team by Murray Leinster, read by Ben Tucker (1 hour 40 minutes), AND The Velvet Glove by Harry Harrison, read by Gregg Margarite (44 minutes), both for LibriVox. The discussion of both with Jesse, Will Emmons begins at 2 hours 25 minutes.
Talked about on today’s show:
2 hours, Ben-Hur, Bill The Galactic Hero, Space Tug, tugboat in space, maritime stuff, zygote, developing in a womb for 38 years, Damien by Hermann Hesse, a bird has to break out of an egg, Ray Bradbury, most accessible of his books, The Glass Bead Game, what’s the cover look like, not a lot of spaceships and dragons, a bird, a flock of birds, a sun with a face in it, Æpyornis Island, accidental father, becomes aggressive, it is very good, H.G. Wells, continuously mean characters, not every piece of science fiction is equally good, better written vs. better ideas, a value judgement, The Velvet Glove, 1 to 2 ideas, much better in terms of ideas, robot underclass, almost like reality as it is, the robot meets a blackman, how many people were lynched in 1956 just for, if you have this book burn it, Scott Miller’s audiobook Robot Strike by Harry Harrison, the better of Asimov, joining this federal agency, The Stainless Steel Rat, first person perspective, pushed in to working for a benevolent law enforcement agency, subversiveness, the craft is a little weak, a me problem, taking his legs off, robot body parts, a strong craftsman, a little repetitive at points, he invented a world, really good science fiction for a bit, I likes bears, the eagle, the setup, the plot is ok, the resolution is fine, mutated bears, a value judgement, galactic manifest destiny, the problem with the robots, we become the servants to robots, how the two stories interact, the background, very minimal, minimal goals, wouldn’t it be cool if you had bears who were your friends?, swat her baby bear, many times, bears communicate with their fellow bears by swatting, how momma cats take care of their baby cats, make them run away, we’re lovin it, that’s the only thing going on in the story, needs to arrest him, illegally colonizing, keeps confessing to crimes, never a real threat in the story, we just lie a little bit on the forms, how we’re gonna classify you in the end, trick readers, trick John W. Campbell, a buncha bears, cool names, why wouldn’t I like this, goddamn big, goddamn small, a very goddamn big eagle, Sitka Charlie, Sourdough Pete, Nugget, Huygens, a tier down from Newton, kinda cool, famous dutch scientist, a hidden story in it, a hidden truth, what is inside of this story?, we have been entrained, entertainment isn’t enough, it’s terrible because it doesn’t do anything, you should read my novel it has power armour, the power armour is the main character, the guy inside, and the power armour has been dead for 16 years, and the power armour is corresponding with his wife, ‘I’m gonna be home soon’, can a man come home if he can’t actually take off his armour?, donkeys are not food, friends not food, food and friend, dogs not so much, mmm donkey milk, wouldn’t be cool to have a bear for a friend, barely science fiction, that’s the problem with it, science fiction adventure writing, dismissing something, wanna be friend, cool to be friends with Scott Miller and a donkey, Man-Hunting Robot by James Rosenquest, dining hall full of skeletons, chased by this robot, like The Running Man, joining the galactic police, galaxy’s most famous criminal forced to join the cops, subverting rather than joining, Ben Tucker’s good, very little to talk about it, fold in, see the hidden story within it, we turn our attention back to The Velvet Glove, Mississippi Burning (1988), Willem Dafoe and Gene Hackman, nice feds, mistrustive of institutions, gritty realism, didn’t look good anymore, a complaint through the grapevine, no teeth, no job, clean clothes, shoes that don’t look terrible, goes down that direction, when the robot gets kidnapped, plot shit, Robot Grapes Of Wrath, Brian Aldiss, the iron fist in the velvet glove, Napoleon, the Iron Hand of Mars, their standard is a literal iron hand, the iron fist in the velvet glove in the flaxen gauntlet, literally iron hands, from the POV of a robot, a way better than an Asimov story in general, the first law in the 92nd chip, kicks ass, the job interview, all downhill from there, the opening, editor of Fantastic Universe, the poor man’s F&SF, they don’t have the money, robots who don’t know their place, New York was a bad town for Robots, John Vennex, so excellent, he would have his leg off in a jiffy, old dead friend, Gregg Margarite, he fixes his leg, the light goes off, the comic strip from the newspaper, infrared light, an Asimov robot story but told from a much better pov, 1st person Asimov?, The Naked Sun, a sense of humour, smooth and easy, totally ripped off for Futurama, rusty on his face when he doesn’t drink too much, Robot Arms, a standing space, playing with the idea, New New York, a story with a story inside of it, robots are never about robots, they should be now, they’re about the division of labour, bro, robots get religion, the way that Philip K. Dick is much more exploratory, working joes with chips in their heads, the bomb and that boring stuff, a drunk guy there, almost hard to follow, down with the truck driver, black man being harassed for being too uppity, put on a livewire, he has instant recall, perfect senses, see things in the dark, a superman treated as an underclass, corpulent man, bumping in, saved by his employer/owner, right after the robot liberation from slavery, this might be a sequel to the robot strike, a loose sequel, the plot is crap, accurate, compelling stuff, hardup itinerant robots, what is this freedom, wishes he was owned, Harrison really had something here, financial incentive, he’s good at characterization, Asimov’s not good at, silly, a promise of more, he’s reading the book, back in the same situation, the closet in his room, please destroy this card after reading, any Tuesday at 5pm, a perfect memory, playing with the idea that he is a man, a superman, undercut by restrictions that Asimov has put on him, Harry Harrison has adopted, the society that he’s in, a forgettable Asimov story with characterization, should have been a classic for the ages, mass meeting, go on strike, one of the laws of robotics, any order that a human or robot gives you, shut down New York City, a whole lotta violence, human on human violence, the Robot Equality Act, drunk woman orders, a bottle of liquor, he couldn’t say no, Deathworld is good, The Stainless steel Rat, Slippery Jim DiGriz, in a fun world, light hearted, Soylent Green (1973), Make Room, Make Room, emotionally moving, The Senator’s Daughter by Edward Page Mitchell, Bill Christensen from Technovelgy, The Man Without A Body, Star Trek transporter through telephone wires, The New York Sun, 1879, 13 pages of text by transcription, Chapter 1, The Small Gold Box, 1937, Daniel Webster Wanli, eating a toilet, a rather elaborate toilet, googledocs, readalong, something Jesse complains about, walk up to a mirror, so funny, so bad, C.S. Forester novel, a first novel problem, you never have H.G. Wells doing that, in the glass he beheld, a perfect oval, short upper lip, he’s Fu-Manchu, dancing pumps, a pure Mongolian ancestry, this story is super-anti racist, but uses all the racist language, so interesting, profusion over the neck and shoulders, nickerboker breeches, intelligent good sense, an easy grace, the voice of his friend, how are we off for time, getting late, curtains, strode in, the Honorable member, prepared to conquer tonight, these frivolities, blush, infernally cold, it is snowing hard in New York, traveling at supersonic speeds, awesome, dressed hilariously, what a dandy, thermal electrode, waltz creditably, a sphere of shining platinum, that feels good, the scarlet bows, what would your constituents say?, th mainstay of the hope of the Extreme Left, knee ribbons, at a fashionable Harlem hop, the Bette Noir, this is very good, raillery, noiseless rollers, wickerbasket, the tech is great, so silly, can’t help but love it, the Contemporary News?, the Interminable Intelligencer, the organ of his own party, the wealth the beauty, unprecedented luster, stately wife, ex-President, sinecure, how funny the contrast here, set in 1937, bitter political animosity, just complaining about his now wearing a suit, Zelensky, guy who wears shorts, John Fetterman, slouch-ass clothes, when Netanyahu came to congress, the Israeli lobby probably paid for the suit, General Kwong, the defeated Mongol Vegetarian Candidate, the Chinese ambassador, strongly marked Asiatic features, the Chinese ambassador is probably a woman, this isn’t a homophobia story, little details, the Battle of Cheyenne, hoodlum fighter, equality of his racist, anti-racist in its racism, a Jesse definition, it could be a correct one, 1879, Chinese Exclusion Act, the ferment, far distant future, 60 years in the future, that’s a newspaper but in a constant flood, this is the tech used from stocks, a stock ticker, wired telegraphy, it’s amazing, what the hell is going on?, the toilets of the ladies are charming, the peacock feather train, give me a dinner, eaten nothing for 15 days, genuine science fiction, oh good, it’s not a small room, it is not hyperbole, the Mongol Vegetarian party, oval in form, a number of grey pastilles, candy, hardly larger than peas, thus do I satisfy mine hunger, vile and degrading, outraging the very laws of nature, the small gold box, with eager gaze, as if involuntary, Schneke, Senator Newton, no small sensation, regarding him earnestly, affected indifference, I think my dear boy, proceed to the capital, totally loveable, as being twitter, constant firehouse of information, ticker at the bottom of cable of news, description of the inauguration, so far, he’s a white guy who likes a chinese guy, very charming, this style of writing, this style of science fiction, owe it to Bill Christensen, science fiction tropes, interested in the origins, she’s an archaeologist, an aztec mummy, comes to life, never dead, suspended animation, I have no soul, come with me and we’ll suspended forever, sounds good, H. Rider Haggard energy, adventure and romance, funny intentionally, also science fiction, disarming you with humour, subversive all over the place, the ball at the capital, a brilliant throng, the rotunda of the capital, delectation, wall of flowers, D.C., not dingy, set in the future, worth noting, temporary interior dome, concavity, oppressive shower of fragrance, a single jet of water, flooding the room with light, as the light of the Moon, gave utterance to the notes, the vibrant tip of his baton, light and blurry and difficult, a contemporary conductor, live music delivered across the ocean, blocking the rotunda’s concavity, nice smell and music, the tech here, gave utterance to the note, so futuristic, for 1879, hydrolecrtic fountain, scientifiction, met and mingled, seized and led of captive, scarcely noticing, exchanging bows, accosted by General Kwong, the campaign of 1936, a repeat, he really wants you to know and note it, the Democrat/Republicans and the Mongol Vegetarians, February of 1937, a Chinesey accent, the senate chamber, retraced his steps, the other extremity of the capital, been there, done his research, all this walking around, the music of a waltz, several hundred couples, apparently an Italian, relinquished her waist, this story is great, holding out her hand, thank you Miss Newton, you may retire Francesco, I shall not need you again, bowed respectfully, this Italian guy, dismissed him like he’s a servant, wasp white ethnic divide, she’s in love with a chinese dude, looking forward to it, glided off together, slap, thanked her with a smile, competent professional partner, sit dismally around the walls, a shade of annoyance, forgive me if I have wounded you, there’s a story by Jerome K. Jerome, The Dancing Partner, novel notes, a good horror story, blood and dancing, a dancing machine for girls, what a blessing, unfinished, a call back to the time in which the story is published, hire our own guys to dance with us, not just progressive in racial terms, also in gender terms, absolutely insane, what he’s laying down, the next one is unfinished, he knows it, a feather’s weight, in society, in her father’s laundry, sampan, don’t you love this, as you well know, Jim, first spacecraft to land on mars, these Tesla batteries, reflecting while they’re dancing, not going to be a popular science fiction story, it’s amazing, an anonymous story, just content, my mom was doing your family’s laundry, isolated rural peasant, Yangtze, Deep Space 9, literally think, a lot like Gene Roddenberry, really strange, neat futuristic stuff, the tech, progressive gets a lot of negative material, that means he’s a shit, people being inferior is wrong, poppa?, tiresome speech against the vegetables, manifest embarrassment, trembling in my happiness, a conservative among the conservatives, this must have an end, an equivocal position, on one bold move, a charming blush, you beloved little puritan, honky, he’s insulting her, a congregationalist, as they passed out of the hall of representatives, she’s racist, I may need your counsel before morning, Massachusetts sweetheart, a screen of palmettos, asked him for food, bit his underlip, heaped with delicate viands, obtain refreshment, I’m going to ask you for a final proof of your affection, a wing of a fowl, a plate of fruit, I’m a vegan, the theory of your party, the political topic of the day, there isn’t a vegan party, demagogy, an absurd and sophistical theory, the radicalism of the rabble, capitalization, political right?, moral right, abstract morality, an upheaval, science and abstract Right, the march of time, his flaming eyes, she could not hide, his manly bearing, long hair don’t care, a beautiful toilet, a dandy, knickerbockers, a cartoon of this, every animal, most insignificant mollusc, children of the common Evolution, the great family, the Australian bushman, the ox, levels to this shit, so heady, is not the butchery of the murder, fratricide?, cannibalism, in the habit of long ages, Benjamin Lay, the nadir for vegetarianism, Hitler, a rise the 60s, whole foods, we forgot this was a big thing, making an argument that only science fiction can make, very progressive, modern shitty racism theory, that description of his body, he has little feet, so crazy, would you elevate them to suffrage, the baboon?, at least not at the present, the right to vote, the ox, the chicken, the baboon, sentence in isolation, hilarious, mind continuously blown, for the sake of a meal, how evolution works, we got there first, the pinnacle of being an organism, where uplift comes from, The Island Of Doctor Moreau by H.G. Wells, those are noble sentiments, the adverbs for everything, he said with a smile and a bit of sadness, they will carry the country of 1940, Mongol-Vegetarian party, a fusion between a pro-Asian party and the vegetarian party, the Mongol Free Love party, I admire your earnestness, even so much as a chicken wing, women didn’t have the vote, almost like a checklist of progressive ideas and tech, with your words still in my ears, a little fruit, the great mass of our party, this story is getting better and better, the laggards up to our line, calmly await ultimate results, how can we escape, the tree, the plant, event the fungus, who can say where vegetable life ends, to uproot a potato, to pluck a grape, to outrage consanguinity, the vocab of the author and the character, a duty to refrain from vegetable food, all living things are born free, is not that a beautiful thought, Canadian humour pop bands, [Arrogant Worms – Carrot Juice is Murder], must we starve to death, what a sentence, the small gold box, her white hand, it will satisfy her hunger, morsel, even if it were poison, nourishment, tasteless, 18 to 25 days, entire 76th congress, more than 20 years, handwavium, nice infodump, proximate principles, fibrin, albumen, by the old plan, muscular tissues of the ox, encumbered, back to the toilet, in the ideal form of food no ladies have to poop, no useless irrelevant matter, the German chemists, the fountainhead of nature, now shall the evils of gluttony, brother vegetables, now shall all this be, the lips I love, stockings have flowers, this man is so elaborate, funny looking, at this point in the story, he’s making fun of vegetarians, how can he be anti-racist and making fun of vegetarians, two things at once, too sophisticated, The Ball At The Capital, pills that are food, Mr. Wallsingham Brown, that Italian dancer, following you like a hound, her Mongolian lover, there shall be no scene, what’s his business, the wingman, racist against the Mongolian, inner party, a rich kid, he’s not from old old money, his parents had a laundry, Pennsylvania Avenue, the bowels of the earth, luxuriously upholstered, to Boston, a pneumatic tube, the New York subway system, the final chapter, The Frozen Bride, 1904, London Underground, 1863, Paris, he doesn’t invent things out of wholecloth, The Man Without A Body, why not physical objects, wired lines, everything in this story makes sense, even that is correct, u can live like that for a long time, still peeing, toxins removed,having some fun, reading it with a straight face, like The Coming Race, we don’t wanna kill animals and eat their flesh, a nice tree, as soon as you say: don’t eat fruit, look at me, a flashing neon sign, come eat me!, kale, cabbage, vegetables don’t want to be eaten, fruits want to be eating, “want”, evolved to be eaten, extend voting rights to apples, too parodic, people might twig to the fact, the suffrage of the succotash, the Narragansett word, before Lovecraft said I’m a native, The Dunwich Horror, bushmen and indians, radical, more radical, undercooked intellectually, doesn’t complete sentence, a short hard laugh, the lower branch, his colleague, the lower house, the upper house, the lower branch of humanity, senators vs. congressmen, Bernie Sanders calls it the House Of Lords, waist of the young Chinaman, because I love him, long afterword, after the story material, Los Angeles apartment, not good craft, that mirror stuff, it is funny, foolish child, profit in the least, sinister operations, deceives himself, won’t even say his name, emotional control, he’s so important, very patrician, as an honorable man, honorable marriage, with a sneer, a prophet, an apostle of Vegetable Rights, let him seek a cactus in marriage, wanton insult, loves his emdashes does Edward Page Mitchell, such is due him, I go with him, a lawyer, the Suspended Animation Act, surely you would not, inhuman, outrageous enactment, for a quarter of a century, Wanli swoons, he swooned, he’s womanly with that long hair, flowery socks, firmly set teeth, another kick in the balls, I will read the text, the ritual of this marriage, female person, maid or widow under the age of 30 years, registered consent, null and void, such parents or guardians, really interesting, marriage is controlled by the states, why is he writing about this?, writing for money, Margaret St. Clair, participate, Harry Harrison, Murray Leinster, other kinds of fiction, western, crime, romance, fill pages, make content, get content, he’s thought about, he’s a Walsingham Brown, laws against that, set it in the future, the punishment for offending is being frozen, since the 18th century, animals that hibernate, 1801, speak for people, for space travel, a gimmick to get somebody into the future, The Jameson Satellite, the first Heinlein novel, For Us, the Living, an evil story, The Marching Morons, not a Good story, an Evil story, the history of refrigeration, Cool Air by H.P. Lovecraft, when his wife left him, crappy boarding house, the slattern who runs the place, boils weird cabbages, an old Spanish man, a zombie, using air conditioning, refrigeration vs. ice boxes, battery powered stuff, first electronic refrigeration, ice truck deliveries, 1913, the idea, the concept exists before it is marketed, freeze people, such a strange turn in the story, the new world struggling to be born, what does it mean?, the cruel sin of the fathers, we must part, as if to dismiss, a bugaboo, 4am, arguing for 2 hours, as cold and self-possessed, frozen, he has frozen me already with his frigid heart, the 27th amendment, according to his pleasure, a means to procure divorce, not superlegal, freeze yourself, a right to put yourself on pause, government paid for?, pause yourself, so as to avoid paying alimony?, get out of your marriage, by going into the future, by waiting for her to die, how did this come up, invents freezing, that’s immoral, 27th seems high, shorten the time between elections, WWII or previous, change the salaries of congress members, Nancy Pelosi is $180 [$240] millionaire, the clergyman, the Refuge, the cloister, soliloquy, his life probabilities, the vital bureau of Washington, Lifeline by Robert A. Heinlein, the insurance companies murder him, cute, claim your bride, another Heinlein one, The Door Into Summer, child bride, frozen husbansicle, age up to “husband high”, tall enough to get married, Wyoming Knot, pale cheeks, womanish rhinelanders, very emotional, dissuade the caucasian, he’s got the tissue ready, fresh rosy, prematurely aged, sallow, flacid, a skeleton, a ghost of her former self, absolute suspension would be death, they gnaw and prey upon, the last and most perfect argument that can be addressed, what if you get ugly?, for my poor beauty I care very little, the little gold box, swallowed it’s entire contents, valances today, she swallows the whole bottle of pills, my duty is with you, the joy of awakening, you have a great and noble order to perform, I think your duty is plain, you’re important, outlive my dad, voting rights to cabbages and carrots, not to fruit, once the chickens get ready, David Brin, in the gray dawn, Cambridgeport, a mockery of grief, grave and silent, tearless eyes, sobbing, cried out all his tears, the congealing chamber, icy embrace, does it have a plot?, does it cohere?, withered husky, is it a good story, no, is it a great story yes, timeline, twenty minutes, typesetting, that tracks, a better science fiction than the other two, it’s great science fiction, completely nuts, gonzo, a real gem, his website has been around forever, based on his references, however long the internet has been around, the text is on gutenberg australia but it is not a reliable text, chronicle.gov, capitalizations and corrections, why is there no Jewish Narnia, what about…, a Jewish fantasist, this is not a fantasy writer anybody has heard of, not in the mainstream, even Tolkien and Lewis, Olaf Stapledon, and H.G. Wells, not submitting to Astounding, they fit, copying Wells, some New York Review Of Books, obscure, the idea holds, secondary world fantasy, a lot of Mormons doing it, the secondary world, totally off the radar of mainstream science fiction, died in 1927, born in 1852, an earlier science fiction writer, The Clock That Went Backwards, 1881, the plot of Back To The Future (1985), a Dutch starvation siege, instead of Doc Brown, Delorean time machine, the progenitor of the whole family, like Time Rider (1982), an excellent science fiction movie, it’s tight, gold to be mined, Tachypomp, Back From The Bourn, The Soul Spectroscope, The Exchanging Of Their Souls, The Extraordinary Wedding, Or War With Monaco, sounds good, The Balloon Tree, 1886, The New York Sun, letter column, handin around, way more disposable, done that day, save a newspaper longer than a day, on a ship, becomes toilet paper, with Weird Tales you can stack em up, participatory, magazines are more collectable, in comes the collecting thing, fill your bins, two stories in the official podcast, almost awesome, enriched, tell Meg about that, tell her the fun parts, bride getting frozen, totally science fiction, not like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Lucian of Samosata, doesn’t scream SCIENCE FICTION at you, the closest competitor Fitz-James O’Brien, weird fiction, in a proper sense, Jules Verne, it depends on the story, 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, From The Earth To Moon, a play for comedy, Stephen Leacock, The New Food, pills as food, a secret story inside of it, Jesse’s thesis, every podcast on two science fiction stories has two science fiction stories inside of it, Professor Plum, all the essential nutritive elements, ordinary article of diet, drawbacks as well, the smiling family, plentiously laid, the radiant mother, the Christmas dinner, resting on a poker chip, lifted the thimble, this is great, an agonized cry from the mother, Gustavus Adolphus, the unthinking child, give him water, a dull rumbling sound, exploded into fragments, a lingering smile, 13 Christmas dinners, exploding baby, a happy baby, The Retroactive Existence Of Mr. Juggins, make a proper handle, a sapling, sharpen up the axe, fix the grindstone, making wooden legs, a carpenter’s bench, never came back, metafiction, really fun, no name for a baby, an allusion to a real person who exploded on a battlefield, it by a cannonball, a good think in the background, LibriVox, The Tachypomp, read by Ben Tucker, The Devil’s Funeral, The Crystal Man, Back From That Bourne, An Extraordinary Wedding, 70 young men, a math story, for whom the limbs of heavenly bodies, spectacular stage?, Polyp University, two weeks where the story is about marriage, a lot of marriage going around, a show on food, throughout science fiction, superfood to animals, he becomes a giant, giant chickens, giant cows, go with The Tachypomp, a picture of a yeti, bigfoot smoking a pipe, a body cleaning product, pharmacy section, wearing a suit, a smoking jacket, pocket, he’s pretty cute, product design, looking at shelves, where the true art is, Coffin Crisp, Coffee Crisp, during Halloween, I love this, make this my desktop, Smarties, Mars bars with bats, the gimmick, almost all art related, Gaza is being holocausted video, a fake meat Margaret St. Clair story, a fake meat factory, 3 shill magazines, the sounds in the vats, tourmaster, made of the meat, fleshy monster, to be cut up to be served, a cute little story that addresses Mr. Wanli’s concerns, she’s great, funny and horrible at the same time, is it terrorism, video slaughterhouses, what a wonder, The Green Queen, bad novel great book, a Margaret’s St. Clair’s Magazine, Asimov is good, series sellout, a Philip K. Dick magazine, the UBIK end, have to be based on her stories, domestic weird science fiction, earthbound, stuff set in space, go back in time and marry her, finds the lady, Somewhere In Time, she renewed too much, Return Engagement, old reliable Ben Tucker, 28 minutes, pair it with another, voles with laser beams on their heads, very Margaret St. Clair, The Gardener, a creepy kind of space horror story, chops down a sacred tree, totemic guardian of the tree, she likes plants a lot, a trans story, she is telling her story, she’s mentally ill, her old wife, she murders that person, I paid for your operation, be in my alien zoo, she murders her old identity, published in nice editions, there’s no audiobook, Mike Vendetti, fantasy by her, they just stopped making books, someone has to create content, series, power armour book, an army of self promoting indie authors, Jonathan’s second Scandals funded, two good looking covers, pretty extreme art inside, made a deal with the devil, the John De La Roz crew, friendly with each other online, taking a stand against Paul based on nothing, Ben-Hur next week, very relevant for the creation of Israel, Americans who support Zionism, people have ideas, it wasn’t all sexual blackmail, Christian zionism, Lew Wallace and the movies, the 1959 movie, sword and sandal movies, Jewish characters are prominently presented, he plays Moses, The Ten Commandments, Charlton Heston playing Jews, just don’t hate on us, we want you in Israel, Exodus (1960), Paul Newman, set in 1948, all the teams coming together, a piece of propaganda saying Israel good, not a lot about the Nakba, what’s the lesson here, he does a lot of work to make Jews good people, very powerful looking film, insane aspect ratio, horses getting crushed, people in the stands watching the show, sets look amazing, the 2016 one, the CGI is quite good, point of view cam, bad dialogue, he goes to Rome, the Circus Maximus, chariot race, Palmyra, done in a minute, Jews are really good people, we really support Israel, the Zionist political movement, Camp David Accords wrong, it’s fuckin nuts, Balfour Declaration, the Rothschild family, Napoleon, mostly secular, ethnic Jews, Millenarian, a book for Christians about Judaism, very well written, the method of storytelling, second person plural, we follow them, first person plural, our attention is drawn to, an experimental thing, this book was bigger than Harriet Beecher Stowe, super-Christian in a good way, probably prompted, a Union Civil War general, Cynical-C blog, Robert Ingersoll, miracles are bullshit, train ride, gotta do my own research, produced Ben-Hur, the story of his beliefs, one of the few books blessed by a Pope, back when people read, pulp style, at least in higher circles, the American frontier, money, books used to be expensive, buying a book was no joke, books are all free, the physical object, I can’t afford that book, access to books, very accessible, they’re all cheap, Costco stopped selling books, we don’t make money on this shit, Amazon’s going to stop selling physical books in 2027 (except maybe as gimmick books), buying books as trophies, too expensive, too heavy, too big, you’re not a library bro, hardcover small press, tradepaperback, pocketsize have been banned (by the system), Hard Case Crime, the old fashioned pocket size mass market, had to go along with it, where’s your distribution for those, weird no longer mass market, extended height for no good reason, sit out more prominently, thank you sir.


Posted by Jesse Willis