SFFaudio – Page 67 – 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.

The SFFaudio Podcast #676 – READALONG: The Tempest by William Shakespeare

The SFFaudio Podcast #676 – Jesse, Scott Danielson, Will Emmons and Trish E. Matson talk about The Tempest by William Shakespeare

Talked about on today’s show:
not Willy Shakes, first performed on Hallowmass, 1611, a Royal Wedding, the day of the dead, November 1st, his last play?, spoken by Prospero, the conventional thing, ready to give up magic, now my charms are all o’erthrown, sent to Naples, with the help of your good hands, my ending is despair, never Shakespeare, a table reading, Broadway musicals, light comedies, Pride And Prejudice, a Southern Utah Shakespeare festival, a replica of The Globe, Julius Caesar, I’ve been bad but you should forgive me because you’ve been bad too, Prospero is a bad man, accomplished everything, made people acknowledge their faults, what got him into trouble in the first place, good but oblivious, an unreliable narrator, he’s a slaver, multiple slaves, penance for attempted rape, indentured servitude, Shakespeare by Mark Van Doren (1939), the wildest interpretation, it will not yield its secret easily, open to so many interpretations and restagings, five versions of The Tempest, Trish never got bored, The Tempest (2010) with Helen Mirren as Prospera, a stage production at Stratford, Ontario, Or What You Will by Jo Walton, As You Like It, a good reason to read a book, a late 9th century play that became very famous, a spark for every fire, let me not, bare island, your good hands, a Disney movie and a cartoon, audience participation, a device for engaging the audience, Tinkerbell will die unless you start clapping, Prospero is Shakespeare, Ariel is the stage director, a metaphor for being a writer, a BBC version from 1980, you will be free, he’s also talking to the audience, all in realtime, how many hours have passed, we have to get this all done by six, Ariel puts people to sleep to get to the next scene, every adaptation misses the comedy, the technical term “comedy”, the infodump scene at the beginning, they interpret the lines wrong or they cut them, how they got there, mostly Prospero talking, 12 years since thy father was the duke of Milan and a Prince of Power, thy mother was a piece of virtue, I don’t think my wife would have lied to me, do you mark me, sir your speech would relieve deafness, she keeps saying ya ya ya, getting bored, he’s asking the audience, she should be falling asleep, dost thou hear?, he keeps coming back are you paying attention, she retains none of it, its only for the audience, all the preceding twelve years, a different dynamic, dost thous pay attention, yeah I’m getting bored too, Shakespeare is attentive to infodumps being boring, bring your audience up to speed, Alonzo vs. Antonio, a master of craftsmanship, structure, high drama and low comedy, interleaving, assassination plots, a love story, Miranada and her father and Miranda and Ferdinand, costumes help, a tendency to focus on Ariel, Caliban is the greatest character (perhaps), stock characters, Caliban’s resentment, a rebellious slave, worshiping a false master, he’s Gollum, he had something taken from him, the culture, his gabardine, fart and drinking jokes, you want the meatiest role, Trunculo, stage presence, he’s reformed, a weakness in the play, is this play weak?, who is Caliban, he’s a native person, an Indian, bring him back and show him off at home, a native person we can display for money, Caliban is the character to obsess over, find somebody else to be slavish to, he’s too trusting, why people vibe with Caliban, the story is not friendly to Caliban, a 1960 movie with Richard Burton with Caliban, Roddy McDowell, Lee Remick, Prospero telling his slaves to do things, repeating his culture or making a commentary?, The Merchant Of Venice, Shylock, kind (at first), taught him language, tried to rape Miranda, white womanhood, what do we say about people we enslave and how they treat women, the colonized person, a justification for harsh treatment, savage people who need the kindly elevating structure of the colonists, Shakespeare is only interested in politics in what they can do to induce drama, a mini-utopia in it, how to improve Milan, Dido and the wedding, I think monarchy is a bad idea, organize things differently, the drama of the situation can deliver, perhaps the weakness is not there, suckered by Prospero, water with berries in it, and pets him, teaches him language, all the great things on the island, when Caliban wants to make more Calibans, an offense, getting above his station, he’s a pet, manipulate this prince of , not that way sirrah, Miranda is subject to his spells as well, The Taming Of The Shrew, women need to be slapped around, its a horror story, liberated women need to know there place, the third time, Stephano, I will feed your other mouth and the lesser legs, a Three Stooges dynamic, I’m in the belly of the fish, these guys must be gods, 410 years on, the Indians on this island are not going to be so passive, colonization of the new world, being exploited by Prospero (with words), I learned real good, now I’m gonna give up my art, if you want to walk away you have to clap, an intermission, from The X-Men, Asimov’s Robot novels written, same letters as cannibal, Caribbean, a savage, the Bermudas, three pamphlets on a ship called the Sea Adventure, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, a great title, you haven’t seen anything yet, the vocabulary choices, strange 500 times, Milan, A most high miracle, I have cursed them without cause, compass thee about, oh wonder!, three shipwrecked sailors, sexy men, I’ve never seen them before, so many resonances, most current, The Tempest largely responsible for Star Trek, Stuart J. Byrne, Kirking computers, the definitive adaptation of The Tempest is Forbidden Planet (1956), very little in it that isn’t in Star Trek, the planet Altair, an away team, Spock, McCoy, and Bones, Robby The Robot is Ariel, what kind of scientist is it?, he’s a philologist, a lot of kissing going on, the angry force on the planet is Caliban, the newest announced Star Trek is Strange New Worlds, Requiem For Methuselah and What Are Little Girls Made Of?, the influence is undeniable, “wagon train to the stars”, guys who are making Westerns all day, Star Trek The Next Generation named after an episode of The Prisoner, Data is one of the men she sees, transfer his consciousness into Data’s body, what islands are in Science Fiction are planets, Planet Stories, beam people up to the ship to do their play, a native force with a whole backstory going on, Shakespeare is not Q in these episodes, checking up on a lost colony, other works, the opening 20 minutes of Forbidden Planet, the two pontoons of the warp nacelles, a flying saucer with pontoons sticking out, a play about a wizard from 400 years ago is largely responsible for a whole kind of Science Fiction, what percentage are we talking about 99% or 12%, it is the plot of The Tempest, all the characters are analogs, the visual elements, this is very much like an episode, The Tempest is the pilot for Star Trek, The Cage, Where No Man Has Gone Before, ESP powers, Star Trek: Continues, dealing with another form of science fiction, different islands in different states of political movements, Caliban is an alien, treated as non-human, half human, the devil, Setebos taken by Prospero, the only good thing about learning languages is to curse, cursing vs. swearing, breaking podcast rules?, exciting listening, you taught me language, the red plague rid you for learning me your language, hag seed hence, I’ll wrack these with old cramps, his art is of such power, his mom is a dam, make a vassal of him, having to fetch in wood, there’s wood enough within, penis jokes, gabardine scene, these brave spirits within, inherently cute, what makes Caliban ugly, misshapen, he wasn’t symmetrical, spotted, a stinky fish, a live fish, his arms fins, not shaped like a standard human, mixed race, objectively ugly, freckles are nice, he’s a fish man but that’s nice, The Shadow Over Innsmouth, influenced in dreams, double-thinking his concerns, invite him to a swimming party, under Devil’s reef, you’re gonna wear a crown bud, an anti-racist story, subject to interpretation, garments, Prospero’s magic robe, gabardine, the guy in The Goonies, The Shape Of Water, a sex/love object, Frankenstein, a beholder thing, a horrifying monster or too beautiful?, an abused child, a feral child story, Sycorax is a great character that’s not on stage, she taught him a language, gibbering howling noises, we don’t know how old Caliban was when his mother died, mistreated, dispossessed, the different kind of slave mentalities, re-imprisoned, always reward, how the service came to be, make a deal with a dwarf in the forest, you will be my servant, three miller’s apprentices, Doll I’ The Grass, a cat that takes a miller’s son as a servant, my anointed son, you can live with these two rotters, none of that for poor Caliban, “By this bottle which I made of the bark of a tree with my own hands since I was cast ashore.”, pathetic and funny, he swam ashore found the bark of a tree and made a drink from it, he made a bottle of a ship emptied the keg into a bottle, understanding begins to swell and begins to fill the reasonable shore, This Island Earth, “Pheobus’ steeds are foundered, night is chained below”, time time time, 32 x strange, hang cur hang, I’ll warrant him for drowning, an unstaunched wench, typical male Euro view, all the girls on stage except for Kate, many many great quotes, different interpretations, reinterpretations, This Rough Magic by Mary Stewart, Yellow Sky (1948), Miranda In Milan by Katharine Duckett, the modern version, class based relationships, the marriage in Tunis, three mentioned women, Miranda’s mother, a virtuous woman, the exile when Miranda was three, an arranged marriage, not at all eager for it, class/race/gender, sometimes they’re playing dress up, no escaping to the island of the Amazons, maids become wives or become mad and kill themselves, servants, what was Prospero’s beef with his brother, putting the coronet of Milan under the crown of Naples, Milan being the female and Naples being the male, arranging her marriage to the king of Naples son, it’s ok when I do it, all the Roman gods, presumably set in the Mediterranean, in the Roman world, there’s Ariel, Prospero putting away his books, putting away magic, a Christianizing, giving up his servant, Prospero is giving up his paganism, submitting himself to God, submitting to your husband’s desires, Hell is empty and all the devils are here, Ariel recounts it, naturalistic explanation, translating it into the science fiction explanation, a weather phenomenon, ball lightning is pretty obscure, St. Elmo’s fire, to control events, extending that to politics today and the media, this creation of a tempest in a teapot, to shipwreck on the islands, marry his daughter off, to satisfy the needs that he has, control and manipulation and gaslighting, Shakespeare’s stock and trade, abhorrent in the world, does it to characters in Macbeth and Hamlet, players, a very special power to story, it bypasses all of your reason and lodges itself in your head, not logical arguments, the audience goes in with consent (without not knowing what they’ve consented to), at this time in Shakespeare’s career, don’t get jailed, bypassing their reason, in the position of a fool, Alas, poor Yorik, I’m now holding his skull of, how did Yorik die?, Facebook and Biden don’t literally arrests you yet, habeas corpus is still kinda there, famous presidential people, James I and VI, he survived to give his second best bed to his wife, willing to rock boats in other lands than England, the power of story, Ruled Britannia by Harry Turtledove, what if?, Prospero played by woman, why it was gender flipped, Ariel is the traditional gender flip, when you gender flip Prospero it fucks with the text, Duchess, my dukedom, resonances break, Oh the heavens, Prospero talking about his brother, good wombs have born bad sons [siblings], seeing an old woman, a witch vs. a wizard, I like my books, a soft coup, Prospero’s POV, if you’re going to run a state, a city state, New Zealand or Taiwan can lock down the way Switzerland can’t, the guy locked away in his library story, the story of Caliban being a rapist, there’s no issue of consent here, if he’s an animal, two youngsters playing doctor, I’ve but seen to men before, a lot of wood jokes, sad story for him, give meaty roles for women, saving her from an angry crowd, Richard III is Hitler, several versions of Macbeth, Michael Fassbender as Macbeth, Ian McClellan, Hellen Mirren as Lady Macbeth, being swept along by events, notices the swastika on his armband, a more charitable reading of the play, making your own moral choices, their freedom, she’s a mermaid in one story, without a backward glance or with an affectionate glance, mostly dialogue and a few stage directions, different interpretations, all the performances never recorded, the novelist vs. the playwright, Julius Caesar is dramatic, ways people play Prospero: as a dodderer, straight (not wholly arch), he should be knowing, he’s made a mistake and doesn’t want to admit it, make the sword move or not move, his/her magic wand/staff, a great temptation to ham up things that are serious, make meat of everything that you’re given, the stinky fish with lesser legs, two lesser men in the play drunkin around as a comic relief, Ariel is accompanied by other spirits, that’s not in the play, a flexible young person, a robot, Leslie Nielsen’s gun, doing Prospero’s business, Caliban is an invisble monster, a force left over, a Sycorax-like force, studying “liberal arts”, the relationship between Prospero and Sycorax, the powers that he has at his command, graduating to wizarding school, his magic was good, she was a witch, the twin thing, Caliban is mirror by Ariel, one’s good and the other is good, one has power over the air, the other over the land, he’s stolen a kingdom in the way his brother has stolen his, he was evil from the start, that’s a cross not a dagger, think of your Jesus, dagger dagger dagger, fixated on interpretations, we hear about the props, a mininmalistic interpretation has three clumps of wood, enter Mariners wet, conveniently asleep, we can mine it forever, on to As You Like It for Scott, if this were played upon a stage…, Or What You Will by Jo Walton, Among Others, what I’ve been reading, not really a novel, he has been a dragon with a boy on his back, he has been a god, set in Thalia, stop off the wheel of mortality forever, a visit to Florence, a reporatory theater of characters, Romeo And Juliet, Much Ado About Nothing, every part was gender swapped, how the dynamics changed, the male people were the emotional ones, The Last Hawk by Catherine Asaro, another Star Trek episode, getting familiar with Shakespeare, tremendous, very important, still excited, Twelfth Night: or What You Will, comedies having gender swap, a romantic comedy, Viola and Sebastian, Duke Orsino, Countess Olivia, ends in a marriage, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Oberon and Galadriel, in a time when there’s birth control, its Fairyland, it can’t be translated into Science Fiction, a holodeck adventure, when Data is playing all the roles, Merchant Of Venice, Othello, other books to read.

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Reading, Short And Deep #321 – Armaments Race by Arthur C. Clarke

Reading, Short And Deep #321

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss Armaments Race by Arthur C. Clarke

Here’s a link to a PDF of the story.

Armaments Race was first published in Adventure, April 1954.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!

The SFFaudio Podcast #675 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Jetta Of The Lowlands by Ray Cummings

The SFFaudio Podcast #675 – Jetta Of The Lowlands by Ray Cummings – read by Richard Kilmer. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the story (4 hours 5 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Evan Lampe, and Will Emmons

Talked about on today’s show:
a serial in Astounding Stories Of Super Science, Sept – November 1930, The Girl In The Golden Atom, The Diamond Lens by Fitz-James O’Brien, antisemitism precedes other forms of European racism, 600 stories, avoiding Cummings, full of shitty writing, the assistant to Edison, Huxley’s lab assistant, learned science from Darwin’s bulldog, science science science vs. invention, very pulpy, not awesome pulpy, filler, why is it this long?, the reading doesn’t help, the setting is interesting, is the setting that interesting?, it should be, a South American country, ecological disaster, bandit planet, a dull read, why pulp gets a bad name, the characters, a terrible book, acknowledging an error, how do you know?, should Ray Cummings be canceled?, not interesting enough to cancel, the years have canceled him, for those who managed to struggle through the audiobook and are now listening…, reading from E.F. Bleiler, science fiction and weird fiction, Science Fiction The Gernsback Years (page 87), entry 298, economic espionage and intrigue, 2020, north of Puerto Rico (dry sea bottom), Nerita, almost any word you can think of is a village in India, the National Detective Service, a lowlands bandit, mercury smuggling?, Spawn, Debeer, the ending is predictable, pure adventure, super-radio, light rays bent by magnetic fields, the lowland concept, more on this economic relation, a thug of the powerful state, colonial setting, there to take a child bride, Harry Turtledove, Down In The Bottomlands, set in a dry Mediterranean, a geographical lesson, where are the rivers, the seas, the lakes, what does this do to the rainfall, radioactive mercury, just a gimmick, its filler, get out from under Hugo Gernsback and get out under John W. Campbell, uncontroversial, I want you to think harder about this, getting tied up every few pages, a western movie serial, helicopter/airplane, secret gear, he fights science pirate, going to the kernel of the concept, better Ray Cummings, Phantoms Of Reality, different worlds at different vibrational wavelengths, you go to a weird little planet and weird little things happen, dies 1957, not able to adapt himself, about 350 1945-1942, 750 stories in all, a whole bunch of awesome concepts, three or four interesting ideas, like South America, an enforcer of empire, Jetta’s not even sexy, half mermaid?, she’s illiterate, when did the seas go down, a mercury rush, no Indians at the bottom of the sea, no displaced mermen?, what caused it?, one story and one book, Til A’ The Seas by Robert Barlow, a last man, pretty well done, H.P. Lovecraft helped polish it, the imagery is beautiful, Jack Vance’s Dying Earth, Olaf Stapledon-y, set at the bottom of the ocean, one of the biggest writers of the period, Cornell Woolrich, read him because you like tension, H.G. Wells, E.E. Doc Smith, the action sequences of Star Treks, lots of beams, wrist controls, they just invented force fields, Scotty trying to invent force fields and warp drive during the battle, Ted Chiang, Larry Niven, a lot more like Stanley G. Weinbaum and a lot less like John W. Campbell, the deGernsbacking, there was no sense that the reforms were needed, make me a serial out of it, why pulps get a bad name, Buck Rogers style serials, everything’s weird and there’s a lady and he needs to adapt, Flash Gordon, the slicks did it with essentially Superman’s origin story, Edwin Balmer and Philip Wylie’s When Worlds Collide, the exact same plot as 2012 (2009), everything is cliche, a Wonder Woman fetish person, the electrodes on the skin does it for Will, he’s getting a little tingle, that black knife, if it had been 1 hour long, somebody other than Ray Cummings, we learned something, there’s a reason he’s receded, what made pulps disposable, fiction magazines are sort of gone, alternate history, time travelers bring Kalashnikov to South during the U.S. Civil War, Adaptation by Mack Reynolds, how bad John W. Campbell was, a communist getting purchased by a fascist, a red brown alliance, not actually a fascist, Black Man’s Burden, Samuel Delaney is not a John W. Campbell writer, ornate?, do you believe a man at his word, he vibes with Mack Reynolds, colonial Africa, not trying to praise the white man, deep in his dementia, more New Wave than science fiction of the kind Weinbaum was doing, competing theses, a think piece that doesn’t and does resolve, a goofy concept, chill out for a few generations, the Aztec level of civilization at the time of Cortez’s contact, the Italian city states (late medieval early modern period), the Pedagog, state socialism or free market capitalism, the power goes to their heads, the natives run them out of town, a planned economy vs. a free market economy, it argues with the idea that only American style colonialism is good, productivism, forces of production Marxism, the natives appreciate, we’ll consider joining you, the capitalists and the socialists team up, free nations, science fiction writers for an against the Vietnam War, Howard vs. Lovecraft, the origins and the results and what it means for human nature, barbarism vs. civilization, Robert A. Heinlein, is barbarianism our natural state?, competing in the same pages, this story is my argument, we’re after mercury and its being smuggled, why?, don’t care, the only woman at the bottom of the well, that’s why I’m going on this adventure, radiumized!, the Star Trek, Kirk on a motorcycle, Red Matter has nothing to do with science fiction, not idea struggling, what did Evan say about this story?, contextualize it for us?, empire maybe, Wizard In Glass: Dark Tower 4 by Stephen King, an agent of a declining state, fantasy Mexico, a 14 or 15 year old sexy and brave character, the concubine of the mayor, a frontier region secretly in rebellion against the Empire, cool Stephen King stuff, criminal frontier full of bandits, smugglers, science pirates!, lots here about technology and the state, Seeing Like A State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed by James C. Scott, a letter, Ray Cummings should stay in Ray Cummings’ grave, a Lovecraft explainer explainer, explaining Lovecraft to his or her liberal friends, Lovecraft Mythos explainer, this phenomenon, dig up the bones of a guy who was dead before their grandma is born, The Painful Threshold: Why We Can’t Stop Flogging Lovecraft’s Dead Bloated Corpse, why Lovecraft Country is good and Lovecraft is bad, fox spirits, a new Netflix series with a Henry Kuttner and two H.P. Lovecraft stories, Graveyard Rats, Cool Air and The Statement Of Randolph Carter, Guillermo del Toro, missing the class analysis, Bobby Derie, Jesse has never met a racist reader, what was his cat’s name, hahahah, at the end of the serial of Jetta, the Invisible X-Fliers, October 1930, 2021, the Anti-War Department of the United States of Department, the defense department, mechanical invisibility, many men, great scientific discoveries, a new combination of older seemingly impractical knowledge, steal all the right stuff, making the inefficient efficient, almost no role in the book, bending of light rays, the cloaking device from Star Trek, the Martel Effects, two real kinds of currents, pseudoscience technobabble, camouflage style invisibility, Jack London’s rip off of The Invisible Man, Discover is Star Trek and Star Trek is science fiction, warp drive, not totally void of ideas, spore drive, warp drive, transwarp drive, transwarp conduits, the journey to get to the story, The Devil In The Dark, the last of her kind, mining some shit that doesn’t exist, silicon based life form and can we exist with a native population are two radical ideas, mind melds aren’t real, “NO KILL I”, Konglish, bringing in the Klingons again, bringing in the Romulans again, as if Spock is a traitor, who cares about Romulans?, there’s nothing there, we’ve dug you up we’ve had your cadaver trial and found you wanting, she liked to look at pictures in a book, I don’t know about this reading stuff, he’s black (with no skin and a republican too?), Todd McFarlane, blew up the comics industry, too obvious?, no secret keys to the name, a Volkswagen named after the character?, designed to be disposable.

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Reading, Short And Deep #320 – High Beams by Anonymous

Reading, Short And Deep #320

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss High Beams by Anonymous

Here’s a link to a PDF of the story.

High Beams, also known as “The Killer In The Back Seat” is an urban legend.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!

The SFFaudio Podcast #674 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Cats Of Ulthar by H.P. Lovecraft

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #674 – The Cats Of Ulthar by H.P. Lovecraft – read by Steve Mann. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the story (8 Minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Paul Weimer, Evan Lampe, Trish E. Matson, and Jason Thompson

Talked about on today’s show:
The Tryout, November 1920, Weird Tales, Fantastic Novels, Hannes Bok, a girl or a young woman, cats looking very satisfied with themselves, 3 pages or 8 minutes, 88 shows mentioning The Cats Of Ulthar, most of them are not in English, the best introduction to Lovecraft, a lot of little things that work as an introduction, witches, wandering weirdos, foreigners, geographies, are the couple witches?, they’re witch-ish, ogres, frightening, can this be read subversively, sorry Trish, why is this such a popular story, the narrator is present, a murder mystery, The Tree by H.P. Lovecraft, popular to least popular, At The Mountains Of Madness, this fictional list, Old Bugs, The Wicked Clergy Man, a scultping contest, this story sucks, the sound of the bees, the beekeeper tells the narrator, who tells the story, we know, what do you remember?, the reason people don’t like that story is they don’t get it, telegraphed from the beginning, the wrath of Bast, super-simple, people love cats, has cats in the title, not that much racism in it, the mysterious dark foreigners are the good guys sort of, catskins nailed all over the wall, eating them?, a meanspirited old couple, what people in the town are saying, hiding the truth, we gotta burn these manuscripts, a push pull, the beetles, scarabs, Dreamlands, what of their spirits?, did the cats steal their souls?, sucking the baby’s breath, activating the cats, the circularity, who is the narrator?, purring before the fire, the last image of the story (in Jason’s adaptation), sexily vs. hungrily, the dog lies patiently until it starves to death, the cat will eat you, a village full of cats ate a couple, the heroes are the cats, the moral simplicity of an EC comic, questioning the validity of the human eating cats, all he did was jaywalk, The Terrible Old Man, home invade a pirate from 3 centuries ago, gypsies vs. travelers, the Roma people of Europe, India and Alexander the great, the India connection, where the word Egypt comes from Menes, pre-Egyptian, another possible source, the dark wanderers in Idle Days On The Yann by Lord Dunsany, turban wearing, such frightened and passive people, live in a hovel, they’re treated like witches, The Witch-Cult In Western Europe by Margaret Murray, Christians who believe in , a fairy tale, Diodorus Siculus heard it from some crocodile god priests, all the things that are being described, not only Bast, their quiet mien, the referent is missing, the mother of all these cats?, before and beyond human Earth history, definitely (kind of) in the Dreamlands, Polaris on its own, Meroe, Nubia, a lost port mentioned in the Bible, the connections come later, ex post facto in the Dreamlands, resurrect them?, every cat was back, dead or busy feasting, telling fortunes, investigate the cotter’s cottage, still extant cats, cats on a mission, dream like, dream logic, reason to be skeptical, the villagers are always getting it wrong, sacrificed, coyotes are a serious issue, real life experience, gossip, baseless, the villagers sicced this little boy and his magic on that couple and got even though they are innocent, gullible gods, tricking the gods, they show up in the sky, Scooby Doo, no Nancy Drew activities, the follow up to the Cats Of Ulthar, the gods fucked up, the fallibility of the divine, the Greek gods every day of the week, I want vengeance, a devotee, his parents are already dead, almost like a storm, the gods are obedient to those who are believe in them, vernacular tradition, non-institutionalized beliefs, passed on by spoken words, the common people know about it, the Esoteric Order Of Dagon has some metal plates they pass around, folktales before they get written down, the opening sentence, Skai, the Yann river, no man may kill a cat, the species is male?, who are we?, retconned around Kadath time, the past vs. a dream, if only the dream had been set not in ancient Greece, the fairytalishness, the realm of myth, long ago and far away as many fairy tales say, who the narrator is usually matters, the wagon leaving the town, a tour of Innsmouth, the burgers, why are you telling me all their names, look at the list of characters who show up, sustaining a mood, he’s trying to tell us about the purpose of this law is, why?, the burgers pass a law, it becomes a folk belief, mouths to feed, bag in the river, the story of Moses, this Egyptian quality, Egypt is the breadbasket for Rome, food is wealth, the mousers vs. the pets, eatin the rodents that will eat your grain, myth vs. propaganda, what a stan is, Lovecraft is a cat stan, not the dogs of Ulthar, what do dogs do, dogs bark, bears three days a week, there to protect to the property, hungry bears, many many odes to cats, cat love, propaganda for cats, a wish fulfillment story, that tiny black kitten, cat lives are worth more than human lives to Lovecraft, the roving folk, Egyptians in all but name, their magic, their magic show, Evan’s story about losing his cat, knowing how devious Lovecraft can be, The Rats In The Walls has a cat, Delapore eats another man, still defending them, a swarm of rats, the cat is the hero, you’re crazy man, “I, as a cat, will not support this cannibalism”, Jesse derailing, The Black Cat by Edgar Allan Poe, your house burned down because of a cat, The Raven, working on a psychological level, why does it take so long to get to the point, so obviously put together that way, an untrustworthy story, Evan is neutral, the townspeople are dumb, no police arresting people for killing cats, what scarabs were, we don’t know what scarabs are, amulets placed in the wrappings, tradable items, we don’t know why they’re there, Egyptology, Egytpomania, another Egypt-ism, eating of the dead, a cleansing of the evil of what they did, the cleansing mechanism, not a memorable story,

On a verdant slope of Mount Maenalus, in Arcadia, there stands an olive grove about the ruins of a villa. Close by is a tomb, once beautiful with the sublimest sculptures, but now fallen into as great decay as the house. At one end of that tomb, its curious roots displacing the time-stained blocks of Pentelic marble, grows an unnaturally large olive tree of oddly repellent shape; so like to some grotesque man, or death-distorted body of a man, that the country folk fear to pass it at night when the moon shines faintly through the crooked boughs. Mount Maenalus is a chosen haunt of dreaded Pan, whose queer companions are many, and simple swains believe that the tree must have some hideous kinship to these weird Panisci; but an old bee-keeper who lives in the neighboring cottage told me a different story.

a shared studio, the townspeople report, such good friends, the story of the fall,

However, the Syracusans obtained after a while a very splendid statue in Athens, and the Tegeans consoled themselves by erecting in the agora a marble temple commemorating the gifts, virtues, and brotherly piety of Musides.

city vs. country, one is better than the other,

But the olive grove still stands, as does the tree growing out of the tomb of Kalos, and the old bee-keeper told me that sometimes the boughs whisper to one another in the night wind, saying over and over again. “Oida! Oida!—I know! I know!”

hiding the truth The White Ape The Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family, to hide the truth, his grandma was a monkey, there’s sometimes a key, sometimes they are straightforward?, half more again as complex as this one?, The Street, The Statement Of Randolph Carter, The Whisperer In Darkness, At The Mountains Of Madness, The Lurking Fear, pay attention, beefy guys, he needs a lot of meat, The Strange High House In The Mist, a lot of weird stuff happens, not straightforward but simple, this outside frame, we’re not supposed to trust, picky about his own work, Philip K. Dick, a personal favourite, S.T. Joshi, walks in the forest, letters about cats, the College Street address, a gang of feral cats living on his roof, if Lord Dunsany the dog guy meets the cat guy, Dean Spanley, a great sense of humour, The Book of Wonder, a randy centaur, Bride Of The Man-Horse, its the getting there that’s fun part, how men should court women, how centaurs get their brides, a Dunsany imitation in terms of style, 7-10 minutes to read, ebullient detail, once per week, The Idler, filling pages for the idle rich, not the ideal Weird Tales story, a Clark Ashton Smith adaptation, The Dreamquest Of Unknown Kadath, a retconned cosmology, The White Ship and Celephais, a cats themed comic anthology, a comic twist at the end, these smiling cats, ambiguous intent, lest they kill us, who is this law for?, how the Ultharians feel about it, The Doom That Came To Sarnath, the most dreamlandsy one, chronologically, its before people, almost like he’s talking to Robert E. Howard in that one, the psychology is implicit, sometimes a story is just a story, readers in the 1920s, that level of morbidity is day to day for us, extra gross for 1920s readers?, Ambrose Bierce and Edgar Allan Poe, too gross, Wastelands by W. Scott Poole, horror has its birth after WWI, the symbolists, The Troop by Nick Cutter, PG-13, this is not supposed to be a horror story, folktales and household tales, more than humans, add more magic to the story, drag out linger, so much detail, Sergio Aragonés, some guy with nemes on, a German beer stein, there’s beer, what they’re making with those crops, a pseudo Germanic look for Ulthar, the curls of an Egyptian, ankh everywhere, two gods, Ibis, the staff is an open mouth with teeth, Lovecraft foreshadows with a magic spell, repetition a symmetrical thing, all the animals are playing cutesy roles, a wellness check, a kind of horror, a mode, terrible youth trauma, return to the Dreamlands role playing game, their giant noses and their blank eyes and their implements, for the people are simple, four cats suckling, a sphinx, all ayres book of dallaire book of Greek and Norse myths, Echidna the mother of monsters, weird slug woman, the baby hydra and the baby sphinx, exiled to a cave, Cerberus is a they, tentacles, gimme milk gimme milk, added blood, you have to love them anyways, licking their genitals, motherhood is difficult for humans!, firm but gentle, the cats of Saturn, a gamification thing, Jason’s drawing game, Mangacon Cartooner, like Pictionary but producing comics, get the most fame points possible, you have to sell out to whatever trend, so meta, Evan made a huge mistake, fan service, obsession cards, giant sword, three point landing, gamifying his own letters, worldbuilding, the Lovecraft industry is a huge industry, uncountable unnameable, you play dreamers, drawn from Dunsany, The Neverending Story by Michael Ende, the sanity mechanism, go mad or die, memory resources, spend memories, performing marvels, Randolph Carter lost his memories of Providence, creating monsters out of the air, dream logic, Carter remembers he can speak nightgaunt, he always spoke nightgaunt, coincidental magic, conjuring cats, what’s the core activity?, go on dream quests, fairy tale style quests, breaking the pillars of Dreamland, as a responsible dreamer, a plague of fairies, word currency, 300 word cards, make little speeches, blasphemous, wonder, and road, an excuse to be eloquent, the Jack Vance role playing game, The Dying Earth, interesting and fun, dialogue with each other, why don’t you try to make friends with these ghouls?, Horror On The Hill, charisma rolls, neanderthals on the team, DREAMRPG.com, look at this art, its stunning!, that lady with a mask, the watchseller selling digital clocks!, The Call Of Cthulhu: Dreamlands, modern tech doesn’t work, its infinite, continually expanding, the distance between spaces grows greater and greater, like the distances between the stars, low tech vs. modern tech, in Jason’s headcanon…, stuck in the Dark Ages, an existential ramble, a zoog hiding in curtain by the hookah, some lich guy hanging out, the attention to tiny details, “yeah, she’s a medusa what of it?”, where I go to get my equipment for my dreamquest, this is awesome awesome dreamstuff, semi-announced, an Edgar Allan Poe module, an Oz module, Dreamland, Ulalume, a list of dreamers and stats for them, outside of time, they’re dreamselves, established in Celephais, a message in a bottle from two centuries later, Fungi From Yuggoth: Continuity, dream psychiatrist stories, Dreamscape, Inception, trying to tap into deep time (eternity), the Jungian dreamlands, Lovecraft’s conception of the cosmos as an eternal machine, mechanistic, grinding towards the heat death, paradoxes, all night and all day, Jamieson by Margaret St. Clair, just happy to be there, a kind of a Jorkens style story, through the hole in the wall, tiny little grape press, forever cursed to walk the earth, basuto wood and moon grapes for the moonwine, straight out of dreamquest, Dunsany style, epic mythological vs. Terry Pratchett/Neil Gaiman goofy, Paul’s play by email diceless RPG: Strange Bedfellows, set in the world of Roger Zelazny, expanding into a dreamspace, stealing shamelessly, contact the dreamer, Kij Johnson’s Dream-Quest Of Vellitt Boe, a complete stylistic pastiche, The Riverbank by Kij Johnson (a stylistic doppleganger of The Wind In The Willows), when those letters come out, his family is very rich, what dirt he has, is there anybody that’s better documented than Lovecraft?, thank you, kid oriented D&D stuff.