The SFFaudio Podcast #845 – READALONG: Odd John by Olaf Stapledon

The SFFaudio Podcast #845 – Jesse, Terence Blake, Will Emmons, and Tommy Patrick Ryan discuss Odd John by Olaf Stapledon

Talked about on today’s show:
it’s good to be here with you homsaps, odd terry, just Tommy, not that odd, regular tommy, story between Jest and Earnest, story not novel, quite like, dislike, came around, comparing it to Philip K. Dick, who’s smarter, doesn’t have a frontal lobe, he has boobs, a failed superman, keep it all together, spoiler he dies at the end, we know that right away, what’s going on at the end, did Philip K. Dick read this?, doing a lot of the same things, The Golden Man, as we accumulate odd freakos with weird bodies, back to Terry, Odd Tom, a book by Koontz, The Crawlers, lifespans, an earlier figure, born in 1886, died 1950, 1928-1982, started writing before Stapledon died, 1935, where were we exactly, the superman the ubermench, 36 Olympics, Jesse Owens, before that, what was the world thinking about some of these ideas?, Nazis, genocide, Friedrich Nietzsche, amor fati [love or fate], pain and suffering, achieves joy, take joy in the pain of suffering, the eternal side of things, homo superior or not, the eternal return, the noble affiliation, not in the degraded Nazi affiliation, your fellow Jesse, hard not to use the term, that perspective that we now have, Superman, 1938, a lens from where we are, Shakespeare’s Planet by Clifford D. Simak, reaches out and touches the woman’s tattoo, living in today’s world, that would have been canceled, seemed enlightened, murders the policeman, find out about me, all the good I’m going to do, the treatment of Pax, she’s a cow, super-amazing kid, induced labour, in gestation for 11 months, bovine cows have very long gestation, silly stupid and important, mutant stories, golden skin, super magnetic to females, see into the future, he has no thoughts, his frontal lobes are missing, can anticipate all things, mutants that look like slug babies, aborted fetuses, parents unwilling to kill them, form a society, eventually an island, isolated and attacked by the homo sapiens, strikingly similar, these ideas are in the air, superpowers, weird features, telepathy, John W. Campbell thing, go backwards and forwards in time, psychic investigations, influence people, something like telepathy, when he collects up his crew, exterminates the natives, colonizes their land, how much of this book is an allegory vs. straight up science fiction, Sirius the dog novel, A Fantasy Of Love And Discord, a Clarke story, a joking answer, Stan Lee, David Bowie, better make way, more enlightened sexually, that’s in this book too, creepy, more serious, more of an intellectual, writing for intellectual purposes, make a buck purposes, more humour, more sexism, they both have it, the lens of 2024 me, Star Maker, Eric [S. Rabkin], gimmicky ideas, this can’t be taken completely seriously, what kind of abilities will man have, respond to Tommy and Jesse’s question, who’s smarter and by what means are we measuring?, Stapledon’s idea of intelligence, a philosopher, early adopters, Bernard Shaw, quite conscious of all that, after the war in France, redeem Nietzsche from the German debasement, signs of that sort of battle, in Europe, some of these ideas will be taken up and believed religiously, very intelligent in the conceptual sense, not cooked enough in the images and characters and storylines, Dick read Stapledon, Arthur C. Clarke was very influenced, the same sort of ideas, he read just everything, Dick came out of the pulps, there’s the island of England, he’s English and he’s intellectual, there isn’t as much crossover, A.E. Van Vogt, he’s reading the pulp magazines, not directly, doing the same thing, came to a peak, getting Clarkeian type ideas, proof of a real connection, presenting ideas in terms of breaking away from a philosophical treatise, Stapledon is only half-way there whereas Dick is fully there, obsessed at the end with VALIS and so on, the priority is the image, the character and the story, that’s how he vehicles his philosophical ideas, ideas behind his writing process, a more intellectual approach, up to Will to judge, make this about Philip K. Dick, Jesse maps, apples and oranges, different kinds of intelligence, very conscious of the things that he’s thinking and putting into his work, spirit, Will doesn’t believe in that, transcendent something, crisis of the spirit, a crisis of how we feel?, this about a do that doesn’t have hands and it really bothers him, we get where he’s coming from, a hypothesis about his process, very rich content, not always aware, Jesse now understands what’s going on, Philip K. Dick is the Golden Man he is the Odd John, what it is to be a dog from the human’s point of view, Stapledon imagined himself, at some points, an alien feeling, dissecting science fiction literature, the science fiction and fantasy literature of the Bible, what he means by that, kind of interesting, Eric and Tommy’s book club, not going to disbelieve anything, Scientology, specific Catholic dogma, there’s something more than just science, that spiritual project that they’re working on, at the end our narrator is hoping that they’ll finish their project, didn’t stop WWII, reading this as a parable, they make an eden after genocide, invaders from the outside come to their garden, don’t pull from the tree not yet bearing fruit, they’re naked, instead of being innocent, they know what they’ve done, these are evil people, in comparison to what?, the mercenaries that come to destroy them, telescopes and mechanical contrivances, the same project Jesus was working on, no more man against man, what he’s doing there, a mix, demythologized Christianity, affirmation of life, affirm the higher being, an ideal of Stapledon’s, our highest concern, our narrator, Fido, Pheado, Plato’s dialogues, brainwashed, they do horrible things, beyond good and evil, an attempt to describe what that could mean, allegorical, the same as the Nazi idea, the Nazis are deluded, these people are superior, failed, there’s a problem, a huge leap beyond human intelligence, hated in Dune, the inside mind of Paul, fused with the spice, mentat bene gesserit, weapons training, the thoughts of a superior being who thinks in language, telepathy at the end, totally superior but expressed in language, a human being compared to an ape, the treating people as cattle, the mom, sometimes described as dull and dumb, capable of all sorts of stuff, he’s action, she’s just making the home work in a mysterious way, the stupid question asked at the beginning, one is regarded highly in a certain class, there’s change happening, reading Stapledon, commercial success, more recent, Blade Runner (1982), turned into movies, in the consciousness, its important to get a stupid question to get better questions, always talking about novels, you should be but you’re not, his very important novel The Man In The High Castle, short stories are not well regarded, a status thing, our Fido character, damning Pax by calling her cow-like, knowingly writing a flawed work, Stapledon knows but the narrator doesn’t know that, Philip K. Dick doesn’t put together a novel this well, much better at short stories, novels are meditative, Poe, found it out this morning, the same story, an earlier work, canis superior, better than the other dogs, a better book, striving for the same thing, this book inspired that one, limitations of the dog, all the other animals, they treat the narrator as a dog, they’ll cut his balls off, we’ll do anything to them, church on Sundays, they can’t understand our spiritual projects, they’re mad, torn up the living room, tell this story again from the dog’s point of view, pitfalls, thinking about the sexuality that’s going on, homosexuality, jujitsu, switches to females later, everybody’s having sex with everybody, he’s trying to say something here, too Philip K. Dick stupid, not a roman-a-clef, a Socrates line, a fusion of Socrates and Christ, a homo superior we can attain, ugly but knowing about seduction, we did The Symposium, English respects the Greek more, he’s married, homo-erotic relations of uplift, Alcibiades, do you give up sex or do you sublimate it in a physical way, their problem at the end, they pluck the apple, a brief flash of the idea of this being the same novel as The Lord Of The Flies, how its forced on people, lie fallow and be fine, a curiosity and such, rescued by a British ship at the end, primitive communist, the horrible novel, to punish yourselves, doesn’t have the stamina for audiobook listening, podcast listeners, Terence’s comment is right, destruction rays, the original sin of murdering all of the Polynesians, conversations with the Soviets, do these other things, we like communism because its good, individualist communists, one of the real sins is lying, lying all the time, being deceptive, morally outraged by acting, so as to take your money that isn’t for entertainment purposes, are they lying about them being communists, throughout Stapledon’s novels, the official communist tradition, get his swipes in, earlier in the novel, fired for leading a strike, he’s lying to him, honest assessment, too hateful, stupider than Philip K. Dick, Philip K. Dick is or isn’t ideological, detailed and interesting, a specific attack, hitting at something that is more universal, what is being smart anyways (other than getting what you want), herd animals, wolves are smart, big cute eyes, puppy-like qualities, tiktok videos, replacement babies for many people, Glenn Greenwald, one of the moral heroes of the earth, a noble person, when it will be time to kill him, 17 years old, there petting, wearing diapers, great arthritis, talk about how intelligence is superior one to the other, when to put the humans down, going to the vet, they get the sense, how do we know who’s the smart one, they put themselves down, spoil the ending, they kill themselves, because they were homo superior, this is much more like the Heaven’s Gate cult, high on their own supply, smart and everything, not for our benefit, we’re on a project, reasons to do it, so, bye, I kinda wanna die with you, what’s going on?, these are not creatures looking down on us fondly, ambiguous or ambivalent, doesn’t hold together, moral supremacy, vaguely bad internet, moral supremacy falls flat, we can’t see it, we can’t understand because we’re homo sapiens, we can’t know him, to be the subject of a story, they murder a lot, suicide for their own benefit somehow, why kill themselves, you need an end to the book, a dark end, railed out of society, the author doesn’t do that, something missing, in the title, the life of Christ, impressing the elders, the temptation in the wilderness, John the Baptist, a preliminary sketch of homo superior in flourished form, a connection with daily life on planet Earth, Star Maker, the cosmic vision, Atlantis sinking beneath the sea, transcendence and imminence, do the bridge, a sketch of what homo superior could be, seems like Jesus, the forerunner, the precursor, the voice in the wilderness, more to tackle, Clark Kent yet to come, they can’t uplift themselves, the wolf boy, Hayy Ibn Yaqdhan by Ibn Tufail, the Egyptian, praise of Allah, becomes like him, Jacquline, that lifespan thing, us being dogs to them, having a dog is intrinsically associating with death, to treat it like your child, you might want to die, setting yourself for tragedy, the long lived elves in Tolkien, Tommy’s mind is mapped, the Dresden Files, Highlanders, the antediluvians, Methuselah, vampires, 1000 years old, Will’s art piece, a pug Cerberus, why are they so long lived?, magical powers like wizards, The X-Men, Wolverine is immortal, neoteny, we are intelligence because we stay in the womb long and we’re still not fully formed, the infancy is a lot longer as well, his precociousness is evil, the word naughty as opposed to evil, licked all the butter, he’s not going to live that long anyway, be more careful, confront the child about the cookies, you’ve been naughty, overindulge in cookies, set aside some cookies, this is a time for us to fight, you need to be corrected, whatever its for he kills a policeman, malice aforethought, studied for no good reason, of adult mind tried as adults, his level, he’s also a juvenile, precocious things, who hasn’t burglarized neighbours homes?, semi-rhetorically and for jokes, kill his wife at home because she’ll be sad without him, nephews 8 and 10, a 4th grade class, 9 year olds, self-aware, they know what’s going on, cookie jar metaphor, food fight, Eric says it, when you give your dog food it means I love you, the corpse of an animal, cats are better about that, capable of this act, kids doing violence, rational and cold, really disturbing, the inner workings of Odd John, emotionally or spiritually, he ought to be tried as an adult, bright 9 year olds, what a kid is capable of, he doesn’t overpower the policeman, kill the guy in a fight, studied anatomy, small for a 9 year old, when the cop caught him, a childhood prank, the exercise of that new found powers, when little kids do bad things, do we throw them away, set outside of society as a punishment, not suitable for among us, after a certain point, you’re not reformable, prison is for you now, schizophrenic, age out, mid 30s declines, there’s a logical chain to it, extra explosion of testosterone, aggressive tendencies, starting wars, is there really a point where we get less violent?, a lot less violent, diplomacy or good upbringing, diffusing situations, avoiding situations, also Thomas Ryan, looking for fights, they would fight club, its programmed in, a huge effort in society, an instinct for violence, self-defense, this other instinct to dig and build, the only reliable person on this podcast, hear everything there is to be said before Will’s response, the wise man at the end of time, the being that only suffers, doesn’t like to think about it, think about that being a lot, persuade us, natural normal and ineradicable, self-defense, internecine warfare, what violence is, AOC says those words a violence, in the context, playing chess, get to the language of it, metaphorically judo-flip you, call it violence, we gone of from there, ingroup outgroup stuff, we killed a deer in the woods, we might dispute, which group gets to divide the food, scarcity was a big thing, when capitalist arrange thing, you keep the thighs, the older hunters should, where soccer is super-popular, male spectators, a special age range, guy is digging some tunnels, they work together to build something, two real instincts, land reform is needed, force of violence will prevent digging, the violence is amped up, the Minecraft instinct, and the first person shooters, one is amped up and one is reduced, run the media, not representative of humanity, Jesse is more or less human, the appeal of both, a judo match, imprimatur for use of evolution, one of the scientific world building principles, wary of adopting a naive idea of evolution, instincts, and human nature, what Christopher Tolkien does, worth studying by someone, more to say, riff, improving through evolution, not a great science fiction concept, More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon, what’s the point of this?, war and fascism bad, pot-shots in, an essential idea, as a religious idea, a fanatical way, he’s on to something there, correctly observes, avoid all these bad things, pessimistic, we don’t have the hardware not to plunge into war and fascism, not scientifically supportable, not a useful intervention, we need to morally evolve, maybe biology can do it for us, a miracle, the ghost of Walt Disney, who liked the book, who disliked the book, push the discussion forward, his weakest effort, those stories managed to be compelling, Chris Claremont, high end stuff, University of Michigan, short and furry all over, a sympathetic character, having respect for Wolverine, he has a good heart, kinda savage, Cyclops is a total douchebag, a non-entity, they’re all suffering, Tommy is Wolverine, Nightcrawler, who are you?, weirdly popular, knives in his hands, wanna be Beast, Terry and the Pirates, when they came out, before Wolverine got in, Beast and Cyclops, before he turned Blue, the evolution continued, pleasure in the X-Men, the sinking of the island of Genosha, X-Men Annual 1, the same as this book, a million connections, an X-Men reveal part, take guesses, Magneto, Gambit, Canada is like France, Juggernaut, Professor X, school, Jesse is Jubilee, a late addition, sparkles is her superpowers, technically, more like Dazzler, two cabinets connected, six playable character, sympathy for Colossus, shooting them with your eye vision, Alpha Flight, Gaurdian and Vindicator, Sasquatch, Shaman, Chinese American girl, wapping up with a deep X-Men discussion, a good late take, this idea of human evoltuion is persistent, Joe Rogan, a popular idea that’s persistent, better than is done in Slan, the similarity to the idea of Slan, The Midwich Cuckoos, either Dick or Stapledon, not human, more alien in the sense of estrangement, one of the definitions of science fiction, how does Pax feel?, he sent visions of it, he kept her updated, mom, making a giant ray, postcard to her mom, nods sagely, some milk squirts out, emotional intelligence, the meditation model, the surrender model, Islam is surrender, I affirm the ending, the gap between and Stapledon and other people’s intelligence, a precocious boy, read a lot, what we see of this character, basing it on himself, the gap between him and other people around him, trying to communicate that, a gap between him and women that we see in Sirius, Plaxxy, it’s close, good call, the female is less well laid out, the gap between a dumb man and a smart man, whatever smart means, one of Tommy’s notes, Stapledon stand-in, a highly intelligent person, him being a consciousness objector during the first WWI, people just generally go along with whatever, does he have a religious excuse?, no, Bertrand Russell, ultimately is dumb, who he based John on, not easy to track down, Ludwig Wittgenstein, tortured genius, live in a cabin by himself, children in a peasant village, a new paradigm, take Odd John as a figure of a philosopher, some of his evolution, Wittgenstein’s 1st masterwork, 1922, a professorship at Cambridge, the legend around Wittgenstein, a vibe, a lot of the people are the same, Arthur C. Clarke, not normal people, they come up with their own ideology, they don’t subscribe to a system, he treats dialectical materialism like its God, an army vs. an individual, over time, one eye bigger than the other, African features, playing with something, things from their bellies, communists of somekind, bam done, couple of minutes, one more X-Men reference, H.G. Wells, the Morlocks, Nightcrawler, they all look weird, the old cartoon, a lady who looked like a baglady, they become less ugly as he looks at them, these other beautiful women, less pretty after her, when you look at your own dog, objectively that’s a beautiful dog, they are different species, bigger brains, bigger eyes, the H.G. Wells man of the future, nutriments through their skin, The War Of The Worlds aliens, grew up reading Wells, the sublime and the beautiful, the sublime in some ways trumps beauty, vaster and infinite, disproportioned, that’s a mess but more profound or impressive, Kant’s critique of judgement, back to Socrates again, the most beautiful guy in town, so much written in the X-Men, Caliban from The Tempest, Ganymede was a girl, in mythology, one of the cupbearers of Jupiter and his catamite, making a quadrilogy of the great mutant writers, doing a lot of good work, they’re not even called mutants, when it comes out, the word isn’t used, a sport of nature, early 20th century, sport?, a mutant, a freak of nature, good news old sport, good news old mutant, a dwarf Alberta spruce, reversion to the normal type, retained it, how does he produce the concept without the world, on faded page, sporting point, an ancestor, original mutation, they gave him opportunities, John’s a great little sport now, John’s a dear these days, very cute, 16 times, he’s clever, upset with the book, annoyed with it, disappointed than anything else, he does do better, you can go that way, not as powerful, Sirius is weird, dog/woman love, in companionship to each other, mutant and homo superior shit is stupid, ais, will they eliminate us?, what is intelligence, biological, the great replacement, how humans are creating their replacements, Battlestar Galactica with the cylons, really good and very fun, ultimately, Ronald D. Moore, a good solution to the problem, integrated with humanity?, they’re not really superior, photocopiable, an emotional exercise, when Philip K. Dick tackles it, if this goes on, he doesn’t end it with a suicide, it was all a dream, the island blows up and sinks, a cop out ending, I don’t know how to finish the book, how does Sirius end?, a vigilante gang, being very smart and being interested in suicide, you guys know about this?, from the Cross Plains Review, June 18th 1937, The Tempter by Robert E. Howard, who are you?, Alpha and Omeger, which Hagar, biblical, men call me Suicide, lusted for the resting as a lover for his bride, this world of human cattle, o’er the paths that I had wandered, pressed the trigger, my soul went gliding gliding, good smart boy, 2 days before he shot himself, the word cattle in there, a smart smart guy, isolated, surrounded by regular folks, a struggling writer, maybe all men consider at some point, pretty rare, teens a lot more, shownotes, an idea or a name, shied away from in modern talk, “put to sleep”, switch to bluesky, Gaza pictures with childrens’ heads blown off, scary descriptions, people’s dumb ideas about, floating around this planet for 7 or so decades, Albert Camus, the only philosophical question, Sisyphus is happy, The Host, very good for a mimetic story, Algeria, take care of a prisoner, meet some Berbers, not enough science fiction, another planet, make the main character a robot, more into science fiction, the robot makes it timeless, a play, Dirty Hands by Jean-Paul Sartre, heart failure, bad revolutionaries but good assassins, the narcissism of the deed, is this an op, calling for Luigi with Bat-Signal, the ops are in every direction, why did the FBI do January 6th?, against the assassination of trump buy for Luigi, yes of that dude, the place but not the person, capitalism would wake up tomorrow, there are bad actors, there are good actors, what he represents in his job, more security for CEOs, might backfire, was he insured?, buy a new CEO, estranged, 2 things going on, Luigi the hero, Luigi the folkhero, the guy who actually shot the dude, Luigi was probably the guy who shot the dude, carrying the manifesto, we’ll see, more video, people killing each other, news analysis video, a viewing room, this would not have been shown, censored as well, a pushing back of the barriers of what is horrible, videos of torture, seeing corpses, seeing someone shoot someone in cold blood, censored, Mirko in Germany, why retweet?, it is because it is horrifying and hard to look at, consensus tweeting, really twisted porn, something governments are supporting and we should know about, of course they don’t want to see it, we should stop this, it’ll go away, hey, that’s wrong, a bigger movement of people, fake or real Luigi Mangione, what do you do about Zionism, ideological, we could displace them but there’d be questions, that’s evil, he tries to make the case with the Fido narrator, just is evil, we are superior beings because we have superior lives, don’t accept the premise, Jews live outside of Israel, Iran has Jews, the idea of Zionism precedes the Holocaust but benefited from the propaganda of the Holocaust, forces that want to keep it going, hasn’t solved anything, we’re having a spiritual crisis, overly dense, wait a second, forgetting Hegel, moving forward, crises, collective conflicts, the objective, this funny thing, sing the praises of the creator, a transcendent spirit, something wrong with the book, post-protestant thing, he needs there to be a Star Maker, agnostics, wonder, awe, reverence, we can’t call it the Creation, make the atomic motor work, the Manhattan Project, how to make atomic energy, this panpsychic thing, they no longer obey causality, intuiting some sort of quantum idea, you could rewrite it, except for the influence of the mind, reified entity, the most reliable person, he’s anti-flaky, ideological consistency, you love him, upcoming shows, accusatory inversion, you can’t quit I promote you, Lilith, next year becomes mysterious and unknown to Terence, Deleuze and Psychoanalysis, a once a month course, high concept, access to the other courses, priming the pump, bootstrapping, a link or two to a friend, everybody needs to know about Deleuze, everybody needs to know about psychoanalysis, more unreliable, it runs for a year, Project Pope, E. Nesbit, The Railway Children, Jason Thompson, a magical imp, boomeranged, accruing some interest, Will has been studying many things, winter depressive mode, studying the inside of my eyelids, Theodore Sturgeon, a lot of Richard Matheson, the end of I Am Legend, he’s more successful than Stapledon, the homo sapiens consoles himself, and there’s a dog, supersolid, the best thing he wrote, Born Of Man And Woman, trick stories, if only Will Smith had suicide, The Last Spaceship, so long ago, June 2nd, before Jonathan passed away, passed in the night, the audio for it, William Sky, what to do, the consensus was, the goddamn thing was missing, LibriVox removed a whole bunch of stuff because Gutenberg removed a whole bunch of stuff, by different narrators, Paul Lawley Jones’ podcast Golden Age Fiction, The Boomerang Circuit, how Scott Miller [The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast] was removed from YouTube, fraudulent removal requests, living in Korea, takes Meg citizenship away, bye bye buddies, three separate stories, not technically a violation, all good narrators, Phil Chenevert, google suppresses everything, it looks good, H.G. Wells’ The Crystal Egg, a 10 hour show, trying to get ahead, the ‘holidays’ when Santa Claus is on the road, is Santa Claus jewish?, able to work on Christmas, also a robot, that Galaxy, The Yeast Men by David H. Keller, Robert A.W. Lowndes, gross and interesting, sense of humour, many episodes, many weeks, my greatest failure yet, The Weapon Shop, weird, fugue statey, Fury by Kuttner, wasn’t a good book, Jonathan suggested, he’s dead!, social media, self promotion, he’s in creative mode, how to way to be, too much mental energy, new stuff in, The Jameson Satellite by Neil R. Jones, suicidal ideation, Josh Horotwitz, read it in paper, this guy is good, more recent than that, less rough hewn stories about people being put into robot bodies, that are good?, that are interesting?, Robert J. Sawyer, volume 60, a Walter Tevis!, The Big Bounce, a joke length, celestial hammerlock, The Door To Infinity by Edmond Hamilton, Dale Grothmann’s a good narrator, Hamilton!, he’s good, a broad range of acceptable, for something that old, 9 reviews, Invasion by Murray Leinster, the comments, a product of its time, Jesse fell asleep, on my nook, a pretty good read, pure fantasy, Nailan Smith and Fu Manchu vs. Cthulhu, Fu Manchu is homos superior, all of the homos superiors were asian, an upside down chevron yellow on the left, green on the right, it means something, the Japanese symbol for beginner, a couple, a search for her husband, winky face, an endearing review, keep going, special chevron, emojipedia, Charles Beaumont, Holes Around Mars, Robert Abernathy, Mellonta Tauta, the balloon one, echo chamber, multiple balloon stories, moon man comes back, “the Poughkeepsie Seer”, April 1, 2848, The Skylark, Poerful, loves cats, obsessed with cats, a real foible, scrolling cats, Mark Twain with a kitten on its shoulder, we have sympathy for you, cut cats up, how many would you miss, 19th and 20th century science fiction, not buddy, friend, more formal, when you talk to your cats, a special relationship, you are their servant and also scratching post, likes us emotionally, for her comfort, as a person, as a food dispenser, if Will were a cat, a dog guy converted to the religion of catism, need less than dogs do, there’s no crying, super sarcastic, pointed, who my heroes are, Damon Knight’s book on the Futurians, Donald Wollheim kinda sucked, weird relationship, Eugene Debs, to make a living person a hero, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, nationalize time, racist French guy who loves Lovecraft, Michel Houellebecq, Lovecraft guys, Dick guys, born on Reunion, an Indian Ocean island that belongs to France, monologue about Jaws, H.P. Lovecraft: Against The World, Against Life, The Shadow Over Innsmouth, very good at stories, discovered Lovecraft as a teenage, an open slice of howling fear, anti-modernity, philosophical denial of the real world, two of the realities, sex and money, really true, also false, sex is hidden but happened, not into sex or money, an American existentialist, life and death are meaningless, racial preoccupations, the comparatively racially mixed, racism back to fear, a mammoth hideous city, a very good essay, introduction by Stephen King, 20 years ago, At The Mountains Of Madness, The Cats Of Ulthar, cats got their revenge, Dreamlands stories, The Outsider has a mirror, discovers he’s a corpse, a good title, Michael Jackson, The Tomb, the story of a boy, The Tomb for beginning readers, DeviantArt, R.J. Ivankovic, long johns, I’m not certain it’s mine, parade in my brain, keeping these secrets since I was quite young, down into a nook, the door was ajar, the door would not give way, schoolroom, Hydes, a mad monomania, the books I had found, infamous hosts, the blasphemous parties, the hard lesson learned, to tend to the tomb, with my research completed, the familiar foul odor, that’s the end?, the site is dying, power outages from the wind, Lives by Plutarch, very happy in his green face, one of the books that Frankenstein’s monster reads, what a terrible shameful rhyme, certain you’d swoon, just like my grooming, scandalous rhymes, about which you may wonder, from man into mouse, lightning as a cleansing thing, a long hidden cellar, a private investigator, he has a dream and finds a key, secrets in graveyards, to worship once more, the strangeness began, that cold temple of stone, left me quite changed, found the old chest, an old key, a repeated symbol, The Silver Key, a time travel story, Ex Oblivione, dreams harder, whiteness, drugged himself to death, back to the land to the Forms, all knowledge and no experience, a damnable body, a suicide story in reverse, there was no more to do, coffins and cobwebs, oof, nightmare excursions, the eyes of the stranger, hired by his parents, what I did in the night, neglected to mention, what I’d done down in there, my spirits could soar, enjoyed it somewhere, things you would not believe, by Hyde invitation, pony tales from earlier centuries, blasphemous strife, should have been decomposing, a little bit more, that’s Poe from the House of Usher, the *this if fine meme* from Lovecraft, a thought then arose, I must claim my place in the tomb’s empty coffin, some other guy, a spot on the ground, a box had been found, a small porcelain bust, there was something familiar about the man’s face, too long, Asylum, something’s wrong with my brain, except for old Hiram, my servant for years, for a Jervas, and he’s satisfied with that, a crazy boy who goes to a mental asylum, he wants to be dead, a lich story, an ancestor coming to impose his existence on a future existence, psychically travelling through time, more mature, there’s something to it, underappreciated, he makes friends with dryads and nymphs in the forest, interested in books, sleeps in the woods, really well told, the cutesy version, first person narratives, a much more popular story, Upon The Dull Earth by Philip K. Dick, more of a weird tale than a science fiction story, done scientifically, Sylvia is insanely interesting, engaging with the ancient piece of the Odyssey, if this goes on…, I’m a big blundering guy, giving blood to butterflies, sometimes, he’s pointing to something, what makes you different from me, everybody becomes Sylvia, she got what she wanted, The Symposium show, it’s about love, different kinds of love, cursed by the gods and separated male from female, reconnecting with your other half, your better half, a union of a marriage, why are men and women different, different parts, a nice story, not true, go back far enough, we used to be these amoeba like creatures, a deep genetic memory, your my only love!, a little too close, not as good as you thought it would be for all time, very deftly, just shows us something, left with many questions, if you were me aka Sylvia, one of Sylvia’s favourite Philip K. Dick stories, recency bias, The Days of Perky Pat, instead of rebuilding civilization, the game of Life, you never grow up, the kids are out hunting, Connie Companion Doll, perpetual childhood, a good story, the earth belong to them, more competent than the parents, holding on to money to play Perky Pat with, so many great stories by him, dozens, The Variable Man, bloated, almost novel length in its long long length, Colony, Autofac, Beyond Lies The Wub, A Present For Pat, Faith Of Our Fathers, Human Is, Mr. Spaceship, Paycheck, James P. Crow, robots and black people, Impostor, Captive Market, a Monopoly story, The Defenders, Out In The Garden, the boy who’s father was a duck, Prize Ship and The Ship Who Sang, her best thing, a lot of series, a lot of Perns, not a really big series guy, decreasing happiness, The Exit Door Leads In, post public domain status, not meant for publication, he’s not a good novelist, remembered as a great novelist, one of the two greatest, Ursula K. Le Guin, Asimov’s novels, Apple TV, read old shit, more and more sympathy for your old position, read old books, through comics, Howard through the Scanner Darkly of Roy Thomas, there’s no question, some good novels, tedious and badly composed, fixups that don’t fix, the Library Of America crowd, try not to have a lot of contempt, is it contempt?, the feeling of contempt is not healthy, opposite of respect, the face you make when you’re being imposed upon, deserving scorn, beneath consideration, disregard for something that should be taken into account, worthless, an up down thing, god that guy’s heroic, Michio Kaku is contemptible, string theorist guy, haircut, bald faced lies, the proper attitude is to see things for what they are, better to overestimate or underestimate your abilities, within reason, don’t agree to either, both are really bad, cause problems, correctly estimated your abilities, cost you money, correctly estimating, a judo match, that’s gonna hurt, why they have weight classes, guessing right as to what is going on, to be contemptful or deferential, the deplorables, let their decisions to be made for you, very difficult, he was trying to gauge the level of things, as a person, the progress, lower people around him, finding his place a little better, a real thing, they’re just wrong, wrong about that one issue, listen to the arguments, swayed a little bit, new insight, Robert E. Howard is doing something different generally unless he’s writing poetry, higher output, different hobby horses, judge them correctly, Sirius is a better book than this, matured as a fiction writer, Dick’s best novel is Galactic Pot-Healer, the relationship between art and work, a springboard, The Silmarillion, not a narrative as such, specific incidents, maybe, hinted towards Star Maker, the spiritual work, one way of explaining it is writing, closet and meditate, into my office and write, essay, sales pitch, philosophy, that artifact, the font, the spirit of that once living thing, inside of this dead man’s brain, the latest John Scalzi novel, understand the way his mind works, doing his own thing, Kaiju novel, stuff happening, “well that happened”, their reaction to what happened, character, what’s Sylvia like?, she’s a witch, he’s a journalist, when everybody is Sylvia…, and it is a horror, he’s Sylvia and he’s fine with it, becoming the Borg, a single ideology, the ending, 25 pages, the last section, the late afternoon sky, sparkled whiteness, alien and unfamilar, a difficult place to find, swirling hot steam, terrified above the bowl, tear-stained and frantic, waver and slide, soft brown hair, being tasteful, the girl at the bowl bent to dry herself, confused she hesitated, Rick she murmured, please Rick!, a horror story, she’s trapped in the hell of everyone, her spells went wrong, let’s assimilate it, way overdone, a melting pot not a mosaic, have it both ways, traumatic or fine, it should be traumatic, I’m losing my identity, that state you’re in, Patty Hearst, calm life, in it with the revolutionaries, you’re arrested, her friends taken away, my granddaughter needs a pardon, come back out of it, the Borg queen shows the utter contempt, just lore now, you now have to live with it, becoming Locusts, he killed people, part of the Borg, you become a zombie, not compus mentis, when they start Deep Space 9, feel guilty without being technically guilty, a more interesting way to do the Borg, pure evil, goes on too long, lore kills, much juice was squeeze, some odd juice from Odd John, the weird sexual encounter not put on the page, adult girlfriend, repulsed by her, she’s a brute, solace himself sexually, remain respectable, a similar scene, diddled, the spoken words used on the island “damned” and other ones not yet acceptable in written words, the word “fuck” doesn’t show up [much] in written language until after WWII, sex with his mom, Odd John fucked Olaf Stapledon stand-in, the human girlfriend, sexually frustrated and upset, will not spell out explicitly, another dear person, respectable middle class, a lacunae, elliptical talk, homosexuality, ragged, enfant terrible, Tommy walking, ragging with his sister, the two of them together, shunned all physical contact, electrified, initiation ritual, India, another boys’ school thing, the word “fag”, a prominent role, this idea of fagging, abuse downwards, making children younger than you, patching in ceremony, a rocker, a patch that’s lower, as you ascend the ranks, once in the gang, a beating, an outer beating, harassment, abuse, bullying, formal done by the group rather than an individual, a group beating, a psychological technique, beat a dog and then feed it, very emphatically, the complacency of a cat, a cat may look at a king, his insult, tickle him the right way, John would be ruined, pretty explicit, shunned all physical contact, a known homosexuality thing amongst boys in England, covered by this phrase, luxury and disgust, an amatory brawl, tearing at his ear, he was not above learning from his inferiors, woke with lasting scars, the adult girlfriend, unprintable thing, hanky panky, implied stuff, by the standards of the 1930s, a bisexual superman, widespread, Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh, like The Fall Of The House Of Usher but gay, circumstantial stuff, act really weird, only in the society of males, so prominent, private schools for girls?, where’s all the lesbian stories that come out of that?, maybe they exist, that’s Odd John, Flowers For Algernon, the long one, a good book, identification with the mouse, a similar book to this one, construct a mental superman, questions about the perception of the world, not all with it, happy about it, exploited then disappointed, she’s a fucking hooker, I thought I was special, your older brother is paying, and you never find out, the expected outcome, the expected situation, what makes them smart, intelligence and stupidity, Understand by Ted Chiang, simple things gain new meaning as you are able to perceive them better, the story can change, The Secret World Of Og, adolescence, not based on the Robert E. Howard stories, adaptations of stories, quality goes down, quality goes up, a diminishing returns, Arthur C. Clarke, G.K. Chesterton, whole genres of fiction, didn’t expect to, the secret life, public life, obviously very intelligent, takes a pill, Limitless (2011), investments, pickup girls better, writing about a guy who’s smarter than you or he was, the way you do it, you go over it and make it better, an idea for a poem, this rhyme, a word, a phrase, echoes back, this word is really great, the last word of the story, wake, they’re on a ship, a character dies at the end of the story, what’s behind, a wake and a wake, baby level of double meaning, that’s intelligence, triple meaning, stupidity is making mistakes, intelligence is making everything meaningful, using the full meaning of a word, sympathetic to this idea?, why do girls like rappers, slingin rhymes, what makes them cool, their ability to sling, virtuosity, increasing your brain quality, one of the major attractions of humans to humans, a forced rhyme, you imposing your will on somebody else, the gush of slime come from the bucket on the ceiling, a little bit like charades, crossword puzzles, the traditional signs that you’re intelligence, crossword puzzles, know a lot about a lot of things and are able to use it, top 1% one percent of English speakers, this doofus on youtube, obliquely, disgrace, 10 or 11 wrong out of 20, uncle, still got it, still good!, some random 20 year old dude, that is something mechanical intelligence, there’s all sorts of kinds of intelligence, compared to other people, knowing your level is being smart, those guys at the bakery, what makes Ted Chiang smart, sixteen chess moves ahead, there are grandmasters who are stupid people in other areas, grapple with different areas, avoid bad outcomes, PUBG, getting the dinner, the only objective that’s built into the game, conciliatory, lots, steal a BRDM from somebody, get one over on somebody, a sneakiness, cat intelligence, smoked weed, really really high, highness, do you think you’re smarter than me?, bad at avoiding the house piling up with crap, more aware of her surroundings, women are very social, keeping track of what’s going to happen to the space, the old magazines, stacking them, men are much more collectors than women, a sign of a lack of intelligence, an area of interest, making it into a hoard you can’t get through, that TV, too low, they’re not stupid, interested in their interests, deficiencies, native talent for math, not super valuable, how fast he picks up languages, if they speak six languages like Mayor Pete, he’s not intelligent, a second meaning, information, vocab expert, turned into the victory, as long as we’re here, the level that you achieved, frequently struggling with Clark Ashton Smith words, gemstones, he loves kind of rock, a homebody, manual labour, our guy carrying water, a very intelligent man in his way, a very curious person, the entire library, Aaron Swartz, he was a hero before the FBI murdered him, naive, something very boy like about him, the guy invented RSS dude, a real simple idea, now we can get on reddit, we still have podcasts, he didn’t invent torrents, Mr. Internet, Mr. Everybody, Tim Berners-Lee, weirdo kid who only eats white food, he may have been Odd John, this you?, I was 7 when I read that, the original days of autism, Rain Man (1988), a popular idea, something that’s bubbling up, autists everywhere, idiot savants, stupid and smart at the same time, go gambling, uses his intelligence to win, incredibly intelligent and incredibly stupid, can’t put your pants on, too many holes, not enough holes!, brain damage and unable to speak, alleviated or worked around, regain the ability to speak, retarded, gain at the regular pace in school, this fake autism of schools, is it real autism, school is autism, autism is school, an imposition, kids impose on the world and are imposed upon, its a factory, we have a very special boy, just a normal kid, looks a little different, his acquisition level, his emotional level, slowly grow, a calf newborn is running around minutes after it is born, a little liberally, there is damage done in the case of down syndrome, a folded x chromosome, enough folic acid, the child from your loins, your baby’s spine and brain and skull, vitamin b9, when you don’t want to talk to them, he’s the opposite of autistic, supertistic, the stacking of blocks, especially boys, if that’s all you do, not getting interested in other things, where the auto part comes in, an estate auction online, cosmetic damage, passing on his wisdom, he had two bb guns, 150 bb guns, selling stuff on ebay, lots of people who are weird, all sorts of different weirdnesses, Jonathan’s Sword & Scandal interior illustrations, pornographic, a little more tasteful, too pornographic for Jesse’s tastes, if successful, scale, love of the game, latest kickstarter, Jungle Scandals, white lady being cooked in a pot, could have linked to the thing in the tweet, ironic, a subsequent comment, Jonathan loves to go on podcasts, told Paul that Jonathan had sent me that thing, Jesse’s too much work, a little tiff, calling him a liar, projection, many things but not a liar, deceiving, disagree often, we have really bad internet, make some coffee.

GALAXY NOVEL - Odd John by Olaf Stapledon

GALAXY NOVEL - Odd John by Olaf Stapledon

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #841 – READALONG: The Weapon Shop by A.E. van Vogt and Paycheck by Philip K. Dick

The SFFaudio Podcast #841 – Jesse and Cora Buhlert discuss The Weapon Shop by A.E. van Vogt and Paycheck by Philip K. Dick.

Talked about on today’s show:
wanted to pair, not public domain, first and second, Philip K. Dick was a fan of the writings of A.E. van Vogt, The Worlds Of Null-A, very similar in a couple of ways, the movie with Ben Affleck, and the lady from Kill Bill (2003), Uma Thurman, We Can Remember It For You Wholesale, The Pre-Persons, sexist, hate, anti-choice, if you’re a woman, Dick is sexist, how is he sexist, Rethrick, Kelly, the secretary, his daughter, keep his business in the family, doesn’t even enter his mind, that’s the character not the author, it doesn’t seem to occur to Dick either, smart and competent, a terribly conservative protagonist, drill down on this idea, Jennings is not much of a character, Jennings prior to the wipe, Total Recall, what his backstory is, at the end of the movie he’s fighting a guy named Cohagen, Captain Jellico, Ronny Cox, always a corporate badguy, he’s always evil, Dan O’Bannon, almost every good science fiction movie, $50,000 for having his stuff from Black Destroyer used, similar, might have read this, quite different, Couerl, a very bad writer, a weird writer, great at ideas, not a pleasure to read, his prose is problematic, it’s the ideas, in watching the movie, in a different frame, explicitly it’s called out, the opening, smooth jets hummed, ugh he said, staring keenly, coming around, two or three ticks, eyes bright, the dull ache, ask that a different way, it was spring, stepping into an elevator in late fall in New York, almost two years later, the government is even stronger, the SP have almost unlimited power, teaching the school children, filling San Fransisco bay, born in Washington, DC, stopped in Colorado, Vancouver, the bay area, Los Angeles, road trips, flew to France, set in Chicago, very well written, very economic, what this future world is like, we become the character, he doesn’t know his backstory, a time scoop is used, the reason he knows, for most of the story, having things happen to him, the world we’re set up with, the old government fell, two babies, a 3 pound weight, pathetic, the plot of what’s making the story happen, the security police are trying to get information on the Retherick company, the FBI are the good guys, even The X-Files, except in 1953 Philip K. Dick can do it, the government is evil, the corproation, Elon Musk style corporation, citizens, the girl betrays him, secretly I’m the daughter of the boss, the boss wants him to marry his daughter, work for us again, Kelly thinks you’re handsome, if at the beginning of the story, either he’s gay, has a wife, he’s our hero, we want him to do well, he maneouvered Rethrick using the daughter, you can’t blackmail me, foresaw this, we now know he can blackmail them with that, the family business, forced a marriage, parcel receipt, so he saw even that, he as in himself, the main character, one more step out and that’s Philip K. Dick, “trinkets”, souvenirs, little objects with no actual value and immense value, 7 objects, plot could happen, planned it out pretty well, as opposed to A.E. Van Vogt, her face wild, a slip of paper, it’s still here, in the air above them, a circle, stared up frozen, a metal claw, a shimmering rod, swept the paper from Kelly’s fingers, the circle of black, nothing at all, what was that, safe right here, we only see his waldo come in at the end, so unhappy, the paper is safe, the company is safe, strong, very glad to help out the revolution, his eyes twinkling, more members of the family, women had a lot less agency and legal power, by herself she can’t make the company go on forever, she could marry someone, adopt a kid, time scoop a kid, technical knowledge, Kelly doesn’t need the technical knowledge, compare this, the story is sexist, an inherent sexism, Mad Men, except that there’s a time scoop, two things going on, this is not a Gray Flannel Suit story, what they hired him for, a manual labour job, a mechanic vs. an engineer, drawing this from, a music shop, a guy who fixed radios, is there a television repair place, they’re all gone, everything is disposable, real estate is insane, nobody can afford retail, so many businesses are disposed of, shoe repair place, they all go when the guy retires, orthopedic shoe places, 20km away, the movie came out 2003, right after 9/11, bad guys in 2003, how they changed the Kelly/Rethrick dynamic, Rethrick is the badguy, doing something evil, what they do in the film, used to find out what the future is like, cause the wars, the enemy is bad, post 9/11 thinking, a pandemic, set all that aside, what happens to Kelly, she’s Uma Thurman, she’s a biologist, doing biology doesn’t make any sense, construction, tunnels underground, she’s just works there and she’s naive, had a romance before the memory wipe, convenient for the plot, the friend character, the best Philip K. Dick actor, Paul Giamatti, to be the love interest, she says that other people have done this, objects in lieu of pay, called out near the end, she has an idea as to what the company does, those are tests for husbands for Kelly, saw what was coming, they didn’t see far enough?, maybe they also escaped, none of them married Kelly, a setup between the father approving of the son in law, come meet my dad sort of story, she’s not the agent for it, she loyals back to her father, the company is out in the countryside, she’s an accountant or something, protective, even more sexist, it’s not his job, if Kelly wants a husband, Rachel is not a good change, a perfectly fine name, Mildred, “keen”, a biblical background, an Irish name, a job that’s unrelated to the story, she’s just a love interest, she throws him a gun, she’s not killing her father, it’s just his boss, even a dove in it, 2 hours long, not science fiction, FBI agents standing around, the girl is just there to be a love interest, a standard movie for a date, Kelly’s job is inherent to the plot, 20 years ago, even if they were smart women, that is not better, if we’re grading on a curve, 1953 is better than 2003, much more mature, takes 30 years, 1979 vs. 1940, for Black Destroyer to Alien (1979), lame vs. sexist, the main character is not in it, that’s amazing, not likeable, if they had actually adapted the story, FBI are good guys, couldn’t be adapted properly, adapted as it is, include some computers, there are good things in it, fundamentally flawed, a second Retherick character for no good reason, to have a bigger cast?, the make the movie longer?, compare to the A.E. Van Vogt story, about a mechanic, what’s his problem?, automated repair place that’s outcompeting him, faith in the empress, unjustified, a son he doesn’t get along with, who was the girl he was talking to on the street, she was a weapon shop employee, stealing from his parents, badly written, she never shows up a again, a snippet of their dialogue, David Agranoff, nice guy, doesn’t hit hard enough, he makes really good points, being mean, about A.E. Van Vogt, seems to fit, every 800 words change something, it hurts the story, as a piece it’s garbage, too many turns, too many things unexplained, tempted to just read the next story, Seesaw, a fixup, The Weapon Shops Of Isher, people are weird about this, City won, people recognized the name, guy taking a walk through a beautiful small town, setback homes, perfectly designed, says to himself or his wife, this is how the empress pictures out village, evil atomic engine corporation, like a Walmart, suddenly he sees it, sprung up over night, a strange empty feeling, the other villagers are gathering, places of infamy, built in hidden factories, property rights, a suddenly springing up building, this is a gun store, this is a bad thing, weapons being sold willy nilly, a point Cora agrees with, the story takes him on a journey, his son has betrayed him, case dismissed, they come to take his shop, back to the weapons store, $4, a phased plasma rifle in the 40 watt range for $4, so why is that happening in the story, exploring this idea of a corporation or a something going against the government, surprise the reader every 800 words, here’s a surprise, turn the corner, they do follow, they don’t follow logically, how to fill space, a technique to make things longer, he needs to have 5 items, in the movie he has even more and they’re all different, the premise, the basic idea, what if you are a small town guy, people respect the queen or now the king, shows up on tv once a year, that’s not a relationship, things are done in her name, become a member of parliament you have to swear allegiance to the king, an enforced thing there, take individual autonomy, these two things are in tension in this story and this real world, sort of a Canadian, Mennonite coming from europe, fleeing, the Lakehead of Ontario, German radio stations playing very bad German music, a common story, fleeing persecution, fleeing war, fleeing bad emperors, Canada and Russia, Catherine the Great, the Russian Mennonites came back from Russia, a circuitous route, the reason you flee to a particular place, the way Canada was settled, the owners of the Hudsons Bay Company, manipulating persons and family, the land’s not free, so many places, the moor colonization, aristocrat had some moors, free land, a guy coming out of that background, Campbell writing, a big fan of Don A. Stuart’s Who Goes There?, he’s not a stupid man, the right to weapons in Canada, more reasonable, German gun laws, a license, sports shooting club, those are grandfathered in, there are a number of people who have need and desire for rifles, bears, hunting, indigenous people, there is no treaty between the government and their group, hunting today, cheaper and easier to learn, a lot more work, if you want to eat the animals, a lot of training involved, harder for a lot of people, farmers, killing varmints, a small rifle somewhere in the house, call the police, braining with the butt of the rifle, shot pigeons, when he goes into the shop, a greybearded man, the secret sauce, you’re here to buy a weapon, in the story proper, this is unfortunate, I automatically respect old men, these are manipulations by the corporation, teleporters, time travel makes it make more sense, in Seesaw, this empire is 7000 old, you want a weapon, for hunting?, he thinks he doesn’t even want a weapon, for killing a thing of a certain size, that is also a legitimate reason to get a weapon, it’s a tool, in our kitchens are knives, chop vegetables or stab people, knife crime, Syrian refugee, isolated, radicalized, forced out of his country, a party and a concert, stabbed a couple of people, for Palestine or whatever, fun fair, pat me down, freaks out and stabs, checks at all the borders, how did this guy get radicalized, hoped he would have a better life, isolated, he wasn’t very religious at all, a department store and buy a knife, a no weapons zone, notice the weapons that they have, pistols, different designs, they don’t have nuclear weapons, they don’t have bombs, they’re all projection weapons, they’re not bombs, they’re also not selling kitchen knives, write this story now, razor blade to shave your face, what’s actually going on, sparky, human hands are weapons, pet animals or kill animals, lift somebody up or murder someone, they’re dangerous, we have to have that tool, a tool for you but not for me, atoms for peace, British Columbia was nuked once, a hazard to navigation, destructive device for constructive purposes, hit pigeons, shoot birds, a bear savaging your wife, only eat the processed food now, this is an inch along down the path, outlawing things, it’s about control, his fellow towns folk, a fundamental dynamic, he’s set up a counterbalance force to the power of government, the U.S. 2nd Amendment, there will be more cops, Waco, Ruby Ridge, eventually the government always has more weapons, that’s not always true, not Ruby Ridged, not Wacoed, raid those people sooner, tear gas, flammable tear gas, a more recent example, shooting incident in Uvalde, they lock the school, establish they are the only arbiters of violence, people are going to get shot, so the shooter can’t escape, weird, a kid went missing, locked in a mall, some woman lost her kid, you’re right, the Tiananmen Square tank incident, it would be wrong, the government cops and soldier will follow orders, the more they are subject to reasonable orders, how the Berlin Wall opened, 70th birthday, East German government party secretary, press conference, when will this go into effect, I think immediately, border checkpoints, we’re allowed to leave, they haven’t received the order, he got a medal, we’re allowed to go across, more and more people kept arriving, phoning his superiors, past 9 in the evening, I can either shoot at these people or I can open the border, by midnight people were dancing on the wall, one guy did the right thing, this is about balance and power, the reason that its bad to be mean to women is they’re people, treated equally would be nice, in unequal systems, tortured and tied up, wrong, unfair, no supervision, no way to empower these people (by breaking the prison open), a bad power dynamic, a government and a counterforce, both involve some shadowy institution, amazing technologies, these two stories could be set in the same universe, the A.E. Van Vogt solution vs. the Philip K. Dick one, build up a certain amount of power, not a good solution, offering support to a revolution to come, that George Soros guy, problematic, supporting revolutionary anti-government, a Philip K. Dickism, ignorant about some things, the S.S., the Gestapo, the stazi, the SA, it doesn’t really matter, almost unlimited power, they’re teaching the school children to inform now, it also happens here, a prayer to Stalin, people are crazy, lower your head and think of father Stalin, early 50s or late 40s, during the war, East German schoolchildren, the government is pure evil in the Philip K. Dick story, in the Van Vogt the empress is remote and corrupt, if I wrote a letter to the Fuhrer, if the Tsar knew what was going on…, the fact that there’s millions of people, one person with ultimate authority, the petition to the king is a tradition, a special day, I need redress, the king and the councilors would make a decision, doesn’t work for the modern UK, small council for a small town, the bigger or more ultimate it is, my bed is not operating properly, we buy a new one, we don’t buy from that old company, enforce the warranty, replacing mentality, a cash bank account, you have a problem you fix it, in both stories these guys are mechanics, gear changers, fixing things, if you’re a Mennonite, what are you famous for?, not Amish but close, a guy who worked in the back, people’s radio or television would blow a tube, a whole set of a stories, magical handed repairmen, transported to the future, he’s just smart in that his hands know how to fix things, even though he’s smart, he can turn a literal toy into a vidsender, a barbie videocamera into a real camera, these people exist, they’re blue collar, Mercedes Benz, family came from Russia in the 1990s, Kazakhstan, typical Soviet biography, can fix almost anything, self-employed mr. fixit, The Variable Man, Poles, Ukrainians, Russians, you had to fix your car, fixable, a phenomena happening, as the US goes so follows a lot of the West, right to repair, farmers with their tractors, John Deere tractors, they put DRM on their proprietary operating system, factory authorized, the fundamental interesting thing, security guards are allowed to carry guns, it’s a tool to prevent loss, individuals, gun deaths in the United States, almost all the gun deaths are suicides, as a percentage its almost nothing, bank robberies and street robberies vs. suicides, jumping off a bridge is harder, the way you want to structure your society, make it so people don’t want to jump off bridges or do school shootings, inform on your family members, both of them are evil, what was the son going to use the money for, buy a commission into the imperial navy, A.E. Van Vogt is bad because the story is unfinished, even the wife, she also changes her mind, he’s bad at this, us coming to conclusions, disrespectful to his father, he doesn’t want to work in the shop, who’s right about the shop?, apply for teaching jobs, let’s look at this particular business, teaching is always in demand and is not replaceable, take over the business, let’s talk about why he’s not interested, atomic automatic repair, try fighting that, a giant evil corporation, no son to teach, the son is right, a shoe repairman in the time of Nike, a bakery on every corner, branches of 5 or 6 different chains, surviving independent, resentful, the son says I’m going to go join the navy, a loan through the mom, talking with this girl, talking about the tech and the future, not searchable, out of touch, he is out of touch, the son is the most reasonable character, scams his parents, they’re not communicating properly, the way you get a loan, the banks scam the people, banking is a sin, halal banking, the Christians no longer care, the Christians were using the jews, repair guy just closed shop, plumber closed shop, fourth generation plumber, his employees kept leaving to the bigger corporation, shoe repair guy died, find it online, if something stupid like a strap breaks, two pairs of shoes per year, anything which breaks after a few months, 130 euros, health insurance, a second pair of shoes, 25 euros, if you have a decent shoe repairman, recommend a movie, heard it was good, High And Low (1963), samurai movies, nuclear war stuff, this is about a shoe company owner, confronted by his board cheaper shoes for a higher turnover, shareholders teaming up against him, based on an Ed McBain 87th precinct crime novel, driving quality down, now the plot happens, he’s got a driver, two boys are playing together and one of them is kidnapped, your son has been kidnapped, pay the ransom or save the company, he can only do one, the news is slightly modified, as a teenager, a great filmmaker, occupied Japan, heroin use, the influence of American occupation, why crime and science fiction are closely connected, the interaction with you and society, the movie Death Wish (1974) is a fantasy, American trash, evil and violent, shitty violent movie, it’s a good movie, definitely violent, questionable authenticity, revenge is a bad idea, need to want revenge, a country with nuclear weapons, not couped, for Ukraine it is a problem, Russia won’t invade Germany, not full of Russian speaking people, they don’t like governing, they turned it over right away, reunification in the 1950s, large Russian speaking minority, Zelenskyy is an actor, the people of Ukraine wanted to join the European Union, NATO should have been disbanded, why are people so stupid, propaganda works, shitty people, if we need their stuff, Putin is evil, Saudi Arabia chops off people’s heads, it’s a kingdom, why these two stories are good, coherence and paying off, Paycheck is like a fable of science fiction, an amazingly good idea, what you can do in computer games now, save points, expploited in other science fiction stories, take a bag of objects, this central mystery, what are these for and what happened, that central idea is terrific, a 60 minutes or a 45 minute story, getting paid by the word, 90 minutes is probably too much, sad about that, what a good idea for a story, the A.E. Van Vogt is sparky, The Voyage Of The Space Beagle is bad writing but sparky, Far Centaurus [copyright renewed], technobabble, space mission, suspended animation, woken up every 50 years, she’s an old woman now, she’s dead now, all the time they were going at sublight speed earth people developed faster than light travel, they no longer fit into the world, a short story, he seemed to have renewed, a sequel isn’t as good, a direct message, Raven’s Ridge, supergenius or accident, totally fit, the second amendment message, individual against business and the government, shooting incidents in the U.S., a big one at the time, more positively now, the story is a mess, can you imagine, a building suddenly appears, The Doomed City by Arkady Strugatsky and Boris Strugatsky, a good book, a building that suddenly appears, urban fantasy, Simon R. Green, The Green Door by H.G. Wells, a comic where this happened, a Masters Of The Universe tie-in comic, the Fright Zone, industrial hellscape, exists between dimensions, when people are scared, illegitimate son of the king of Eternia, mother what should I do, a spooky tree, a spooky cave, spooky things happen, I come from a working class background, I work with my hands, whenever they’re kings they’re usurpers, killing the boss and the story goes on, a rare thing, an endangered species, the apprenticeship system, an apprenticeship to become a shoemaker, car industry, aerospace industry, well paid, Volkswagen is in trouble, household goods, not very often science fiction protagonists these days, a mechanic needs to go to the garage (not university), formal apprenticeship, people from Syria, a smith, a carpenter, he knows how to do the job, but he doesn’t have the piece of paper, Mistress Of Mellyn, The Tower Treasure, Plato, The Noseless Horror and The Haunted Corridors, they don’t invite you four months early, not respectful of the possibility, get some nature, a lake and a park, get some sun, everything is closed on Sunday, gas stations are not closed, restaurants are not closed, lots of groceries, shops at train stations and airports are not closed, a bottle of milk, Breslau, the protestant areas, the catholic areas, make dinner, eight hours ahead, trick or treaters, costumes, they should be monsters, serial killer, bloody bride, a devil, a spider-man, skeletons, kids without costumes, spider makeup, opportunistic, came back from sports, forced to do things they want to do, giving them candy, bad candy, 10 euros, make kids happy, an arab immigrant, nine kids, the very small ones didn’t have costumes, three or four, if you’re five you can do it, three babies born in the neighbourhood, a little bit more candy, personal stash, not kid candy, kept in reserve, what time of night?, 5pm, shortly before 8, took in the pumpkin, December 6, holiday scene, there’s candy, dress up in Santa hats, krampus, cool but south German, epiphany day, three wise men, cute but not scary, a stick with a star on it, paper lanterns, the next day, music on the street, lanterns and torches, St. Martin’s day trick or treating, Flesh + Blood (1985), Rutger Hauer, St. Martin, a bigish deal in German, Jane Austen, St. Martin’s Mass, saw a beggar who didn’t have a cloak, chopped his cloak in half, now they both have baby, eat a goose, Hispaniola, just north of Australia, south of Asia, Paupa New Guinea, divided north south between the Dutch and the French, if you don’t have a lot of weapons…, canons pointing at the water for the these guys show up, ready for a picnic, don’t bring your flag this time, country quagmire, Cuba, didn’t get to meet Castro, they got their island back, the richest country in Europe, Switzerland, technical skill, mechanical, they do have cows there, they don’t grow the chocolate there, they have no natural allies, no natural port, very very smart, they stay out of wars, they’re heterogeneous, if everybody has a gun in their home, high suicide rate, almost no mass shootings, a gun makes it easier, COVID panic, beer or alcohol, you have to wear a mask, an unforced error, shot the student, radical anti-COVID people, a stickler, altercations like that, you’re a murderer, impressive, a killer, danger, I hope you catch it from someone, you need to have a shopping cart to go into the supermarket, only a certain number of people, there was no study about six feet, said nasty things, a bigger power that didn’t care, mask in the bakery, farmer’s market, wearing a mask outdoors, gotta pee, wants some beer, in prison now, needn’t have happened, good night.

Astounding Science Fiction, December 1942 The Weapon Shop

Astounding Science Fiction, December 1942 The Weapon Shop

Astounding Science Fiction, December 1942 The Weapon Shop

Astounding Science Fiction, December 1942 The Weapon Shop

Astounding Science Fiction, December 1942 The Weapon Shop

Paycheck by Philip K. Dick

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #838 – READALONG: Fury by Henry Kuttner

The SFFaudio Podcast #838 – Jesse, Will Emmons and Cora Buhlert talk about Fury by Henry Kuttner

Talked about on today’s show:
one eight of his wife, the Gabrielle DeCuir read intro, pretty crappy, good, a little evil, the book was evil, calling things evil, pathetic, pretty pathetic, a Slan style book, Henry Kutter do good work, quite pathetic, to the mind of Jesse, summarize what the book is about and why anyone would care about it, read aloud the final up to this point in the serialization, Jonathan wanted to do it, Jonathan blocked Jesse, okay, seems like the plot’s starting now, texting a friend about it, a sci-fi from the 40s, everyone is lazy, amoral swindler, wouldn’t seem immortal, the necessary shock to society, jungle surface of Venus, immortal, some facts about the book, that’s interesting, interesting is not the same as a book, most interesting section, the introduction by C.L. Moore, what she contributed to it, I added the colours, I’m interested in tragic love, the theme that Henry Kuttner was going for, not trusting authority, what’s this book about, 1947, a decade or less into the welfare state, people don’t take responsibility for themselves anymore, pull their pants up, muddled by this immortality thing, a hot topic in science fiction, very immature, immature thinkers, everybody groks it, maybe I won’t, first grey hair, no no I’m not going to die, Heinlein has done this, not new to Kuttner, these mutant elites, a villain or a hero, agreed, a Will Emmons obsession, The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester, feels shorter, passion, experimental, wish Jonathan was here, not just blame him for this book, wasted a week, wrong philosophy, a modern book that’s similar, not modern at all, by a lady, Beggars In Spain by Nancy Kress, obsessed with not liking her, this book is evil, what makes it evil, take it in and say yes yes, the reason they’re better than you, genetic engineering, they can study all night while you’re lazy sleeping at home, all Elon Musk, inherited an emerald mine, all non-sleepless are contemptible, told from the pov of a persectued Slan, same libertarian vibe, why can’t your parents give that to you, plotting to murder everyone else on the planet, standard x-men, a sidestory in X-Men, look there’s a new mutant!, contemptible, a symapthetic view on both side, Golden Man cat, when Philip K. Dick did it, what if the ideal form of humanity has no brain?, a muddled version of that Nancy Kress book, more serialized, disgruntled guys, not strong enough to be evil, a toddler with a knife, dangerous, not evil…yet, both have fury, way more anger than this book, this book is not angry at all, a dispossessed slan, a rebel undermenchen, a good book, intellectual center of gravity, society under the keeps, no one is striving anymore, you don’t see any of that, a lot of tell and no show, a lot of churn, when he meets the prophet, also an immortal, not a robot, comes back later, exactly how C.L. Moore put it, we wrote this for money and there was no plan, the cloak that makes you feel nice and is a drug and kills you, what is this book about?, drugs?, not about video games?, a failed Heinlein book, the Methusela’s Children series, eugenics and a kilt, a secret society of immortals, flee for the skies, forget that Heinlein, not top five, he thinks its interesting, an immature idea, welfare state, immortal technocrats ruling everything, what is he really mad at?, his dad?, sad story?, temper tantrum, surgery, you don’t feel it, so upsetting, gut punch, skin is coming off, you don’t like the character but you’re with him, worse a nice blue dress one time, not boring, just bad, shoulda clued in, in Astounding, that magazine that’s not very good, another joint, Chan Davis, Pseudoscience In Naziland by Willy Ley, emigrated from Naziland, he’s the good german, pre-paperclip guy, paling around with the bad German, didn’t hang the three slowest Jews, upsetting, our modern rocket guy has a lot of problems, not literally a Nazi, fires some employees, capitalism bad, bad tweets, not literally an SS officer, John W. Campbell editorials, up his own smoke, high on his supply, telepathy or whatever, understand the impulse, dated this girl, no good reason to believe in it, running similar software, parallel possibilities, as to actual evidence, assessing, way too much based on that, of all the things that have happened to science fiction since the 1940s, what we’re doing now, Stefan Rudniki, a bad book, redeeming qualities, the devastating last line, weird authorial, the start of the immortal hero, a genre, the Amber book (Roger Zelazny), Phra The Phoenician, maybe Kuttner would have known, Gulliver Of Mars, His Vacation, a book that Cirsova (Alex) would like, portal fantasy, doesn’t take itself too seriously, the Mars books, crunchier, softer, sweeter, less filler, more killer, crashes on a planet, lands on a philosopher who’s a girl, go to a library, frozen dead people, magic carpet again, green muscle mommy, Soja?, Tars Tarkas’ daughter, a 40 foot lance, a big lance, lances were big in those days, pikes, the roundheads were overworked, a weird zone, the knife alluring, who’s the knife for?, for everyone?, there are no everyone, a guy who doesn’t know who he is, the priest who’s not the computer, blue dress, grandma, a lady who has a granddaughter, secretly, that reveal did nothing, why are we reading all this, the symbol of cash, the genealogy at the top of the story, the Bible’s a lot shorter, what things would happen in it?, deformed as an infant, see the lady, get got, colonization scheme, cheat everyone, wake up confused, get involved in the next colonization scheme, lost the thread, find the lady, 3 card monte, move their hands quickly, bet your money, a street level grifting scam, shills, they share the money, anytime the mark is gonna win the police show up, the guy who’s been gambling arrested, find the lady is a way to steal money from people, other than with my time, too scammed, after paying my 75 cents for 3 issues, not a good story, nothing is substantive in an idea way, the sea-creature that’s now a cloak, corrosive planets, just did a genocide of the entire ecosystem, for plot, for stuff to happen, telepathy, useless, pathetic, not even mad, wasted a week, sad, waste, Kutter is worse than Jesse thought he was, wrote so much, would write anything, Dragon Moon, a cover story on Weird Tales, just type in Dragon Moon, viking stabbin at a dragon, blonde in a green dress, the wild hunt, enthusiastically riding, cool looking, a novelette of drowned Atlantis, bad name, beyond good or evil, the Outside, a Chesterton quote, that Silverberg highlighted, Home Is The Hunter, Silverberg wrote a great essay about it, Kipling quotes, a secondary world almost, where’s the tech?, the closest we get is that cloak, a poisonous world, Clark Ashton Smith, sex and death, sexless, longs after a girl, breed generations of sex slaves, goes nowhere, people got tricked by the ending, immortality, is this something?, the meme with a butterfly, not furious or perverted enough, pretty cold blooded, deleting the entire ecosystem of Venus, plants that were dangerous, the drug addiction, no real life world experience, wasn’t a pioneer, didn’t kick a drug habit, hey I got a real theme going here, dreamdust, turns out he was in the backroom of the wizard’s cave the whole 40 years, okay, more Arthur stuff, Arthur Pendragon, put him underground, return and lead the people, a business startup, a free companionship, a startup designed to defraud investors, doesn’t doing any kind of running and grabbing, should be a lot madder, furiless and didn’t inspire fury, “Robin Hood’s barn”, the idiom, a robin hood’s barn sort of plan, at some point in a novel the novel reviews itself, a short story should have working components that are used and dissipated at the end of the story, spell components, three pinches of newt dust, Helen’s bones, blood from a surly teenager, disappears in a puff of smoke, shit lying all over the table, shocker, not impressed, people were smarter in the past, the reviews in the magazine itself, people should have been reading Thrilling Wonder and Planet Stories, if it was priority, Planet, Thrilling Wonder, five or six other magazines, Astounding, other magazines, the fifties explosion of science fiction, WWII, the wonder weapons, the rockets, people were not with rockets before WWII, almost nobody was into rockets, showing the v-2 rockets being tested in the states, the letters columns, talking about the v-2s, the censorship, circumspect, the V-1s hitting London, rockets are really taking off, Planet Stories, Fantastic Adventures, almost nothing good in it, Ray Palmer, somebody should have stopped him, too much power, exploit this mentally ill man, inner earth man, not just Shaver mysteries, worldview and approach to life, maybe people in the past were stupid too, UFOs, the truth is out there, UFO freak, if I believe in God, people get tripped up on words, barely a teenager, as if you know what you’re talking about, unidentified, what the hell is that thing, not a U, FO, trapped in the world salads, a spell, bring it back to the thing itself, talk to Meg about this story, okay to lie to people for the greater good, this story poses, immediately in the positive, try never to lie, communicating is complex, the outside thing about this thing, more specific about specific things, the way to think about this, just do this, what is an essay, here’s how we’re going to get a good mark, don’t write anything you don’t believe, play with the truth, telling the teacher that you know that, nobody knows what the word “essay” means, what is he trying to do?, what is the purpose of this?, how you do paragraphs, just filling the page, fulfilling the requirements, try to make good sentences, truth is very important, things are complex, words get in our way and trick us, that’s not how things work, this guy from 500 years ago still lives through, a cloud of understanding, trynna trick people, we’re gonna make you all immortal, working at this for 7 years, ha ha fuck you, a worker’s cooperative, that’s evil, for your own good, that’s a liar, what did Meg say?, undoubtedly evil, okay for the government to lie to us about UFOs, people can’t handle the truth, their gonna die, why we have religion, pretty sure, a mystery that can transcend, exactly like to was before I was born, isn’t it interesting I’m a brain in a vat already, includes skin and bone and digestive systems, sense data, that’s interesting, doesn’t make me think of a particular god, strange phenomena for the long time, a wish for immortality, a big part of it for a lot of people, lying definitely bad, we can’t handle it, lie to people to get them to do something good, back to The Stars My Destination, spoiler alert, superweapon, telepathically activated, gives it to the masses, now its your responsibility, hero, they don’t destroy the solar system, everybody needs nukes, if you don’t have hands, we want people to have hands, a real disadvantage for Sirius, Odd John, Olaf Stapledon, Kuttner can disappoint, a C.L. Moore stan, people love her, she likes hot kisses, scary kisses, atmospheric style, unfinished, that’s all she’s got, she doesn’t bring an idea to the table, Reading, Short And Deep recording, Probate, a legal term, about getting to the will, testament, estate, a science fiction story that deals with ideas in science fiction and dismisses them, mocking an idea by taking it seriously, it’s not what I wanted, it’s what I needed, an X-Men story, slightly telepathic, all the women find him sexy, no frontal lobes, just working on instinct, he’s beautiful, looking at it from a guy who is furious, on the wane, the homo superior are in the room, interested in pathetic things, full of all sorts of foibles, your beautiful child, assembling the components to destroy homo superior, better not the be a fuckin monster, not as fast or beautiful, slower to develop, very contrived and very silly, wham bam deals, A.E. Van Vogt, wipes it off the table and now we’re done, the Olaf Stapledon novel, Eric spoiled the ending, smart moral things to do, action and churn, Fury, boring slog, angry at Nancy Kress book, they’re fucking monster, they remind me of the shitlib bluecheck elite, fuck those Gazans, mad at The Washington Post for not endorsing a lady, let oligarchs fuck the world, seeing where the wind is blowing, the undecided voter, slant of various op/eds, not a big percentage, if Trump becomes president I’ll leave and move to Canada, trying to evoke a reaction, watch another youtube video and they react to it, this movie is too scary, twin brothers watching, a split screen, identical twin brothers, that memesis thing, still 3?, the thing being watched the you watching them, they’re watching each other, strange phenomenon, a girl in her bedroom, Damien Walter, words by himself are better, AI illustration of the Culture, retweeting them, that seems uncharitable, not giving a null prize, is this true?, the reason a lot of people are triggered by Trump is they’ve had no actual trauma, he’s not scary, hundreds of thousands of people being killed on the border, say things that are bad, the bad one, he’s pretty good, he did well that day, mobilize the army to deport people, the apparatus you have to build up, mobilized as a law enforcement agency, he was president already, he’s not very much like Hitler, he shouldn’t be that triggering, more like Heinlein than Hitler, only two people in the world, like the Little Prince, one is Heinlein and one is Hitler, pick your fighter, the future that liberals want, he’s not scary, internal enemies, the organized left, Palestine protestors, Arab Americans for Trump, pro-United States, Benjamin Netanyahu needs to finish the job, he talks a lot, what does he do, a different coalition, his staff, all the neocons, alienated John Bolton, learned his lesson, a confirmed Jill Stein voter, voted Green, when he says things he means them, a liar, he is a liar, I’m the best, I got the best people, the best country, the worst country, hyperbolic, is he lying when he says I want to use the military, on day one or maybe day two, someone who’s never been visited by the FBI, you live in a police state, he likes the FBI too, he’s a lot worse on Canada, the Free Trade Agreement, he’d be worse for Canada and better for the United States, doesn’t like communists, don’t understand what communists are, if Kamala is a communist, people you call communist, the dialogue is broken, we’ll see, laudable and good, more risk, the Black Uhuru movement, lazier under Democratic administrations, sleepier, drone stuff, domestic stuff, the MOAB, Soleimani, German government English propaganda channel, Venezuela, it wasn’t me who did the coup, fiddles with pen, in amongst that, persecute Russia more, secret talks, divide Venezuela and Russia, the State Department is running things, the Deep State hates him so much, a bad sign, tryna cozy-up, Bezo was vying for government contracts, less naked about it, Elon Musk picked a team, a lottery, he’s levering, For You, the ultimate test of self-government, returned your grocery cart, social contract, a fool’s framework, very simple, littering, mom didn’t tell you to don’t do that, why do people litter?, really strange lady, weird tiny house lady, keeps building things, trying things out, squeezing the juice out of her life, list of all the things that she’s tried, business startups, raise parrots, adopted from her or genetics, systems, don’t try to buy your way into hobbies, not lose money, you have to work harder outside, interested in parrots, very expensive, breed them, they’re in the house, there’s always more food, all that shit that spills on the ground, all the other animals do well, they eat and they drop food, we think of that as littering, not offensive at all, that’s what parrots do, dirtying their own environment, in a primitive society, sidewalks are a strange invention, do we need more sidewalks, not get run over, easier to get places, should we have roads?, they just tell you where to go, trails, humans in solidarity with other humans, just another animal, we train puppies not to pee in the house, they become upset, very similar to that, he’s not wrong, would you let this guy marry your daughter, he doesn’t return shopping carts, contemplating this, her being able to marry, implausibility, whether he litters or not, a stage everybody goes through, eventually your washing the dishes, community standard, Jesse’s weird, very childish, the grocery is like a government, somebody’s going to have to pick up after me, a boundary, get all your dirty laundry, your space, litter in your own room, don’t attract mice, this office, elected to the spare bedroom, the podcasting office, disenfranchised cats, peeing on the wall, exclusionary, the bourgeoisie, enclosed the commons, the crown, what a world, this election shit, provincial election came and went, Richard Lovelace, one of those cavalier poets, clergy in the house of Lords, wanting the king in charge, better than Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector, sounds like Napoleon again for the first time, get Napoleon III in charge, starting a list of the bad guys, Franco is on there somewhere, 19th century Stalin, a reformer, he put his brother in charge of Spain, make sure Spain doesn’t flip, the pattern, people trying to reinstate the king, why invading Ireland?, they’ll getcha, these Levelers, manhood suffrage, religious toleration (not for Catholics), modern liberal democracy, in bed with Cromwell, in the New Model Army, didn’t split the movement, this weird phenomenon, this English Civil War, conjure radical forces, aren’t able to use, Cromwell is Mao?, Sun Yat-Sen, sorta got his wish, the king’s back, roundheads, a short story by Lawrence Block, good character writer, good plotter, a werewolf story, Original Science Fiction Stories, January 1959, Make A Prison, the first Althean, he won’t languish and die in such a state?, ample opportunity, study the creature, the mere thought of a prison, the whole notion, an abominable one, wouldn’t do, he actually murders, subdue him, physically ill, for goodness sake, now you’ve hit upon it, a party of ten, he struck out at them, unprovoked assault, the first case of murder on record in 30 generations, he eats whatever we feed him, he is dangerous, very dangerous, as possible, perhaps I’m squeamish, positive, 130 feet high, right?, right!, it’s slides slope inward, a pneumatic tube, leaping from the top, littering, it seems safe, it is safe, not cruel, in just a few minutes, such a smooth writer, Cora got her times mixed up, sends her apologies, motor car, motor truck, forced myself to finish a book, she’s right not to like it, limbs securely shackled, the key to his shackles in his quarters, all the angles, one more page to go, a red light at the base, throw down the shackles, not something you see every day, plummeted through the air, he’s found the key, the key followed soon thereafter, gazing down at them, soared off into the sky, what is this story?, a trick, what?!, is this a science fiction story?, mostly a trick, as a practical matter, that’s it?, came across a key, hence Lovelace, a poem from 1642, To Althea From Prison, tangled in her haire, liberty, Thames, careless heads, thirsty grief, fishes that tipple in the deep, when like committed linnets, with shriller throat shall sing, voyce, inlarged, stone walls doe not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage, from an hermitage, angels alone that sore above, Lawrence Block read a poem, recognize those last lines, thing he’s going to be remembered for, secondary world, spun up just to do the joke of the story, that is very science fictional, take the poetic and make it real, okay but not, he is a dragon, that’s now science fiction, take it seriously, this world is not our world, they have motor cars, no murders for 30 generations, who is this creature from outside, how come they didn’t notice he had wings, that’s weird, just a joke, that’s actually, Brave New World is a line from The Tempest, a science fiction movie, that’s a joke, the world’s fucked, the second time it’s serious, the story becomes much better for what its addressing, kings are better than non-kings, in prison for wanting the king back, did some nice poetry, it’s okay girl, we’re like committed linnets, the poetry frees him from prison, the worst Kuttner/Moore book, just a terrible book, needed money, finish the bloody thing, blame Jonathan, partially responsible, worst thing Moore was involved in, knew how bad this one was, the prequel, Clash By Night, 1943, early military science fiction, also with Moore, fertility issues, couldn’t have a baby, miscarriage, contract marriage, mercenaries, jungle planet, The Little Prince, Attitude by Hal Clement, a bad summary, Dream-Quest Of Unknown Kadath, We Print The Truth by Anthony Boucher, unbeatable, it’s okay, the idea of a Little Prince planet, a very Heinleinian book, probably kill Hitler, [Methuselah’s Children?], Lazarus Long, Time Enough For Love, different writers, more sanguine?, philosophically interesting but evil, a toddler with a knife, who’s the knife for, for everyone, constant extolling, hedonism is bad, work them off for nothing, if you’re european, free healthcare, how terrible, second sons, people picked out of the enclosures, we’re plebeians, malcontents, emigrated to the U.S., hung out with the sailors in the harbour bars, she has a good husband, no one would have had her, high-tailed it to the U.S., the failed Bremen Soviet Republic, propaganda, New York City or Boston, the prairies, living in filth, westward expansion, things driving these things, Young Pioneers, colonize moorlands, the Netherlands, moorland colonization, little America, stay here and colonize the moors, after 1848, politically undesired, crises in foreign countries, selling equipment to goldminers, more wary, the lesson Jesse learned, more critical of claims, get a bad one, if you made this into a short story the answer is nothing, this isn’t a science fiction story, science fiction wallpaper, either the wallpaper goes or I do, totally disjointed, not substantive throughout the book, the introduction, some of the world building details, the happy cloak, you could do a story with that, Shambleau, most reprinted Moore, didn’t bother renewing it, sometimes people are dead, sometimes they’re distracted, step-daughter, retro Hugos, 71 Kuttner stories, easy to forget, her second husband, see the documents, SFWA grandmaster, had dementia, half a dozen Kuttners, The Proud Robot [was copyright renewed: “R494633”], asshole, that’s a great story, A God Named Kroo, Killdozer, good at comedy, The Proud Robot, solo Kuttner, fadedpage, the high priest of a Tibetan deity, the body of a yak, a bumbling Indiana Jones, a great story, Science Fiction 101, Worlds Of Wonder, Home Is The Hunter, a science fiction story, soft science fiction, the best kind of science fiction, space opera, hard, wallpaper, the biggest, the most ability to imagine different scenarios, what technology, ideas are kind of technologies, a future that’s not like ours, a post scarcity, 11 pages in Galaxy, credited to both, There’s noboy who I can talk to except myself, all my wives, Honest Roger Bellamy, Hunter, waterfall of marble steps, in all their jewels, this whole story of the narrative of how he got to this situation, he’s a headhunter, the most famous and best people kill each other, legal, proper, encouraged, his life is a misery, one giant rug pull, he woke up, death is real, what do we value, don’t do what he did, throughline in this, immortality is a thing, everybody wants immortality, why does this book exist, to fill pages, paid the rent, good for them, essentially hack work, sticks with me, Philip K. Dick is extraordinary, more short stories, fewer novels, Kuttner wasn’t a novel guy, Earth’s Last Citadel, allies, German spies, humanity has all but died out, huge citadels, rambly, a serious problem during the WWII, everything is about WWII, Fantastic Adventures, a story about fairies set on a military base, offensive, not very good, we gotta be more careful, descentish, Heinlein was too busy to write much, Ross Rocklynne, alien intervention, Killdozer, seabees, haunted machinery story, The Murderous Steam Shovel, Allison V. Harding, elevated train in New York, major food or family holiday, Thanksgiving, fucked up calendar, clumping of Christian holidays, patriotic holiday, Oktoberfest, Halloween, Reformation Day, time off school, a lot of candy, dress up?, native trick or treating traditions, St. Nicholas Day, recite a poem or sing a song, regional, lower German, seasonal poems, santa hats, wassailing, ghosts or Skeletor, paper lantern, Rhineland, Three Wise Men, the black wise man, blackface, paint one guy up, pretend to be a boy?, charitable causes, bless your house, Catholic homes, blessings on the door, Fichte, super Catholic region, the 30 Years War, chalk, imported from the U.S., unknown until the early ’90s, U.S. movies, college student Halloween parties, big candy, Carnival in February or early March, when Iraq, Kuwait, everybody was protesting, standing there, a peace protest, to stop the U.S. from bombing, serious about it at the time, why did we even do this, vulgar pacifistic, the best Halloween costume, a vampire a bunch of times, very good, in college, Doctor Midnight, the Justice Society, the yellow helmet, Doctor Fate, living like Doctor Fate in a tower, much more mysterious and less gay than Doctor Strange, definitively married to a woman, entanglements with women, not a medical doctor?, too many reboots, a few guys, a female Doctor Fate, snippets, the Flash with WWI helmet, stuck some poor guy in this silly helmet, Cora’s best Halloween costume, Psylocke from X-Men, the swords, energy daggers, difficult recreate at the time, Mississippi, Pippi Longstocking, a witch, devils, completely unknown at the time, kindergarten, Star Wars costumes, sexy witch, sexy nurse, Robin with a long cape, goggles, blind but can see in the dark, Daredevil, crescent moons, Watchmen’s owl guy, Batman with no superpowers, owl vehicle, mental patients he needs to punch, pines after a girl, very bad Alan Moore, very good, this is nothing, toxic fans, clickbaity title, something about Trump, fandom is not responsible, used to be quite different, fandom has changed, guys in their 40s, middle aged white guy, furious, LGBTQ women in Star Wars, reboot of a children’s cartoon, I’m A Celebrity, a real show?, super-intellectual, salability, Boris Johnson, Have I Got News For You, the Trump Apprentice thing, a helluva long time ago, not a politician, approach, why does this essay exist, he’s got a new book, funny words, febrile disgruntlement, his prose pieces, he’s a very good comic writer, you can see what he’s doing and you hate, big long letter, League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen, his gandson playing Pokemon, asked to promote his book, random blocked, mocked it, random stranger, didn’t mock him, which hotel that is, a golf shop, what’s the difference, Tars Tarkas was queer, very queer indeed, quick on the block button, fragile, blocklist, win a null prize, H.G. Wells, super-eager to block, pruning what you see on twitter, a super-unfollow, can’t even see it in “For You” now, he’s funny, you don’t want to see him, Swiss weatherman, accused of raping his then girlfriend, consensual, rapist in my timeline, shitty excuse for a secretary of health, international journalist, get police out, really into the block button, never blocked a person, so many people who interact, other people would see it, I like Alan Moore, he’s cool, has problems, he’s gotta be 70, reminiscence of a guy, things have changed lately, “what we’re up against”, New York Times, the movie came out, can’t write about Neil Gaiman, rapist sexist, harassed women into sex, asking them, coercing, different from rape, didn’t rape anybody, otherwise consensual, seduction of minors, sexual abuse, the cutoff age, 17 and half years old, age of consent, lesbians, we forgot about them, still a shitty person, found guilty in the court of public opinion, The Graveyard Book, Coraline, Neverwhere, underground london, a show first, vintage Doctor Who, Sandman is pretty good after the first volume, shouldn’t have been in grace, you shouldn’t have a tattoo of Neil Gaiman, a tattoo of Death, are you into Sandman, girl?, must be into Sandman, he’s not the president, who cares, at a Hugo ceremony, accepting his Hugo for Good Omens, American Gods, special wheelchair van, as soon as the audiobook came out, George Guidall, 13 cassettes, Neil Gaiman in the United States, this overlay of the gods, blank main character, very similar to a Douglas Adams book, he is a good writer, he can write, Snow White Apples, he invented the whole genre of retelling for comics, after the Jim Lee debacle, Sandman, Walking Dead, all the Vertigo comics, Garth Ennis and independents, a little bit of French stuff, Belgian comics, Heavy Metal, 2000 A.D., a popular target, Ya Boi Zack, birthday party clowns, utubers who Cora really hate, Critical Drinker, closeted gays, wands, Captain Marvel movie, it’s stupid, way shittier things, delicious like Taco Bell is, she has no personality, Brie Larson, talk off camera, 2 brains cells to rub together, rewarded through the algorithm for hate, patterns pointing to, this stupid Guardian article is stupid, for retweeting, why are you linking, public health officer in Bavaria, how can you retweet this?, have their own ideas, the Gaza stuff, so horrible, pro-Ukrainian and anti-Russian stuff, what did stop the Iraq War, the 1990 one, treaty, that worked well, still not occupied even tho their occupied, the Taliban are the worst people, who made that happen?, Asian Muslim countries, headscarves, force men to wear beards, put this hat on, kids are roped into it, no kids anymore, kinda the plan, stupid actor, very upset by actors existing, people treat them like they are something, underperformed movies, German culture programs, what kind of show he’s on, political question, Bruce Willis can’t talk at all, a singer before he was an actor, if they write their own music, ring of fire guy, Johnny Cash, Leonard Cohen, quotes and the attribution, almost always a fake attribution, comes with authority, G.K. Chesterton, a Father Brown story, short stories, some people are Catholic, overly religious, doing a C.S. Lewis, asking them to not be religious in their fiction, Jordan Peterson, a stupid smart guy, Patrick Stewart is not Jean Luc Picard, he can perform Shakespeare, Shakespeare is hilarious, Charles Dickens, to be Scrooge, a fun role, a fun character, he performed Scrooge, Charles Dickens performed his books, unrecorded audiobooks, huge captive audience, no recordings of Charles Dickens, died 1870, audiences approved of it, Edgar Allan Poe went to one of them, anticipating the ending, Dickens fan, not enough science fiction, ghost stories, Oscar Wilde, the really gay writers, R. Murray Gilchrist, the yellow 90s, H.W. Hornung, Conan Doyle ripoffs, the Raffles story, the word fag, faggot, that’s not it!, in the British public schools there was a system called “fagging”, massive sexual abuse, that is is the sick part, a term of abuse, punks are on ships and fags are in school, an official and an unofficial system, commit suicide, who he used to fag for, burglary together, really fun and very well written, supergay, Oscar Wilde, great turns of phrase, fagging, that fucked up system, term for gay, being reclaimed, queer, we need the etymology, straight out of weird, the 1920s, gay balls, to dance around or prance, gay boyfriends, loves going to gay clubs, fun to hang out with, another German term, hot and sweaty, warm brothers, Toronto and San Fransisco, Turkish bath culture, totally gay, you carry, you gather wood, the evil part, you have to go to school, like regular prison, they had to go, forced to go, the parents forced them to go, mom I want to be home with you, governess system, the history right in front of us, gay writers, the Will digression, Will is a Jesseologist, his cowl is impossible, coveted the underoos, Conan Jesse with fur diaper, much taller, you’re too old for this, left out, a dog, how to make your Halloween costumes, the one made out of paperbags, paper bags for the ears, coloured pencils, a great costume, what if it rains, self-made, I’m poor, worst Halloween ever, bow was a coat-hanger, at a motel in northern British Columbia, no materials, Jesse had real trauma, a dinosaur, clowns, princess, costume jewelry, Hungarian girl costume, native American person, Romany fortune teller, Chinese woman, queen of hearts, a card-deck, very cheap, easy to due, carnival costumes, grading on a curve, none of your business, don’t vote for the Nazis, socialists, asked all the candidate questions, normal to endorse, Musk is endorsing, the party is dying, don’t say it, mainstream newspaper, we endorse candidate xyz, not doing it is the problem, the high tariffs is a good idea for the United States (terrible for Canada), customs fee, retaliated for tariffs, never took down the tariffs, it sucks to be a colony, next year’s Worldcon in Seattle, say hi to Paul, less littering, self employed, green card, might just stick around, sworn translators, no husband to go back to, not as terrible, crossing the border into the USA, refusing to come Kentucky, maybe under Trump, voted for Biden, pissed off, if they don’t denounce the Nordstream destruction, every American hated it, Ukraine and Russia were getting into squabbles, why do the Poles love the Americans, Polish politicians, owned by the United States, Polish students, a relationship, a girl from Finnland, very mysterious people, a bit reserved, Cora is not reserved at all, weird games, by a Finn, mini-scandal at the Helsinki Worldcon, My Summer Car, you bought a car, your going to fix it up, spray paint, the driving part of the game, something every person did in Finland, buy a second hand car, a Datsun, an alien planet, sauna culture, sweat lodge, demons I gotta exercise, Russian buildings there, don’t take down statues, Sámi people, Inuit is a very strange culture, look and act like Indians, teepees, dog culture, beards, from the same planet, reindeer, bilingual signs, northern cruises, had to go to Greenland, the Kola peninsula, Kamchatka, like Upper Michigan, across the top of the circle, central Asia, the horse people, Turkic peoples, Germans and Dutch, Austrians, what’s the American equivalent, affinity state, near Lexington, Richmond, easter half of the state, Appalachian, east Tennessee, normal Southern, gulf coast, anything South of Virginia, Kentucky accents, from the mountains, Hillbilly, oldest mountain range in the world, the golden triangle, Louisville, south of Cincinnati, totally devastated, stakes are low, technically true, Canada is very big, even in deepest China, Kentucky, horses, the derby, KFC, Kentucky Christ Fuck, ficken, sheiss, German actors, swear in a foreign language, need a girl, Black Widow, in WWII, fight Nazis together, Wolverine, shit friends, a letterer problem, Wolverine’s sense of smell, he sniffs things and he heals, if your bones are gone, his entire skeleton is showing, the new Deadpool movie, Blade, Wesley Snipes, I’m the only Blade, Blade Trinity, before Marvel movies were Marvel movies, a Punisher one, really obscure, Werewolf By Night, Iron Man, the 198[9] Batman, Superman (1979), a Spider-Man fan, he’s like a loser, having a good time, his life is just really bad, more relatable, the comeback, snappy, really smart, snarky, good hearted, he’s a teenager, Mary Jane, Gwen Stacey, in comics, Rogue, can’t be touched, Jean Grey keeps dying, hots for her, an Arthurian thing, she’s the Guenevere, Fantastic Four was entirely a boomer thing, when Beast starts to have Blue skin, master mold, makes other sentinels, Classic X-Men, John Byrne, Chris Claremont, 1975 to the early 1990s, the iconic cover, Days Of Future Past, reading it in Calgary, this is amazing, this is awesome, got some ideas, Jubilee, when X-Force came out, fuck these pouches, an early 90s teenager, Asian American, all good stuff, born in the U.S., mallrat type, sprinklers, Dazzler had a baby, she’s a mutant, does her own lightshow, comics used to be great, old people gene, really good things to read, the Claremont run, what the fuck’s with Morph, just a redshirt, Morph got fridged, Age of Apocalypse, better off with Richie Rich and Casper, he’s not just friendly, he’s not going to die, always the same, punished for being hungry, a grokkable psychology, Donald Duck, Uncle Scrooge, more like Tintin than anything else, undersold how popular Donald Duck, the writing, well written, Huey, Dewey, and Louie, menaces to Donald Duck, he’s not a great father, did they murder their parents?, the story of Inception before the movie, the exact same idea, such a great idea, working out the idea, a secret, straight out of A Scandal In Bohemia, everything’s in there, letters from the king of Bohemia, a rip off of the Purloined Letter by Poe, he did it perfectly, photocopying a plot, the New Twilight Zone, Jordan Peele, Not All Men, James Tiptree, Jr., meanwhile Harlan Ellison gets money and credits, Days Of Future Past, Doctor Who serial, I don’t like this Doctor guy, Christmas special, why are you so negative, watching Blade, half vampire, their age difference was negligible, 12 year between them, he looked like an adult, sad scary, not working out, Sir Patrick Stewart spends his time, Blunt Talk, a much better fit, he’s a no-nothing British guy, the Falkland Islands war, being a ditz, going to Starbucks, Star Trek feels, a reboot of one of the movies, actors having fun, alternate universe, no plan, making it up as they went along, not fun for the readers, how Kuttner wrote this book, actors having a ball, Star Wars sequels, have a plan, somehow Palpatine returns, gettin paid, J. Michael Straczynski, all non-union actors, him being the sole writer on it, as soon as he took control, one of the best science fiction shows, Babylon 5, Scarecrow And Mrs. King, skating, wreck the plot, that’s fine, pablum, the first three episodes, sparkles and no ideas, trust our sniffers, be like wolverine without the adamantium bones, didn’t fit into the bags anymore, deep Halloween trauma, the most special time of the year, go to people’s houses and threaten people, feel the power, American Halloween, witches and monsters, kids are talking about it, homemade costume, went to the mall, have to sing a Halloween song, Old MacDonald Had A Farm, custom jewelry, you have to say trick-or-treat, the Pledge of Allegiance, child logic, no song, Missy, store bought witch costume, definitely not Missy, every morning, Americans are weird, what the whole thing meant, got to hold the flag today, a good way to close our show, Wesley Snipes, artificial eye, stroke or something, wear sunglasses the whole time, pulled it off in Deadpool, guy wearing sunglasses, he’s cool, won Oscars, would’ve been fine, Demolition Man, the world than the action, a good science fiction scenario, the bad Judge Dredd movie, the sidekick was Rob Schneider in both, on a plane, Passenger 57, New Jack City, Gallowwalkers, using this technique, low or no critical reviews, Michael Crichton, Rising Sun, Westworld doesn’t have a book, Black Rain, Michael Douglas, Andy Garcia is fridged, yakuza and Toyotas, wet streets with lots of neon, little ones, Boiling Point, Mo’ Better Blues, the movies got smaller, in prison for a while, known as an action star, an episode of What We Do In The Shadows, tv miniseries, Netflix, Michael Jackson music video, good at dancing, Kevin Hart, could be good, something to download, writing about things that are stupid, working a lot harder than the writer who fucked it up, bad movies with high ratings, a short comedian, Eric Roberts, what happened was, small town low budget film, the star power, its actually pretty good, a small town seems to be a flame for the moths who are convicted criminals, murdered criminal, a Tales From The Crypt episode, a very specific formula, disposable character, based on the comic, super moralistic, people who are judging them, the violence in the comics, they want to have power, an easy get, 250+ ratings, 94%, 8.5 out of 10, Gone With The Wind, Lawrence Of Arabia, what the fuck is going on, local theater people, good muscle tone, half dressed packing a suitcase, I wrote this, my friends like the script, we can film here, who can we get, he’s in some good movies, famous as Julia Robert’s brother, mid-range movies, Runaway Train (1985), Akira Kurosawa, 700 credits, looking at his cue cards, Bruce Willis, tell him what his lines are, leave money to his family, they only have him fro three days, not the way Hollywood does it, an extraordinary, old people talk about old movies, 2005, time zone converter, another reason to hate daylight savings time, the regular time for Paycheck and The Weapon Shops of Isher.

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Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #837 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Mistress Of The Dark Pool by Russell Gray and The Cold Female by Dale Harlow

The SFFaudio Podcast #837 – Mistress Of The Dark Pool by Russell Gray (1 hour 3 minutes) from Terror Tales, May 1940 and The Cold Female by Dale Harlow (19.5 minutes) from Adam, January 1957. Both are read by Mike Vendetti. These are followed by a discussion of both. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Alex (Pulpcovers), Cora Buhlert, and Tommy Patrick Ryan.

Talked about on today’s show:
Philsp.com Galactic Central, can’t get google to work, a huge magazine index, Sgt. Bilko, all the magazine contents, mostly all there, non-genre magazines, Cora’s entry is wrong, Stephenson Paine, only has one story, flourishing in the 1950s, this issue of Adam, pseudonymous, fairly well written, Jack Casanova, K. Robert Howard, a funny magazine, internet archive, before Palestine, you taking down, LibriVox is down, people who throw , PulpCovers, killed the internet archive, hackers?, online activists, a DDOS attack, LibriVox, one of the files was corrupted, work on something else, in 7 months when this podcast comes out Gaza wont be being destroyed, save the best for last, Russel Gray, excellent art, attractive and a good premise, Mistress Of The Dark Pool is just way too long, the biggest problem, an hour and 3 minutes, very similar, lakes, mountains, people in cabins, every stereotype ever, food and supplies and information, Cabin In The Woods, titular cabin, titular woods, go in clear eyed, weird sacrifice thing, the knew what they were getting into, willingly allow the vampire into your home, Reading, Short And Deep, connection through Eric [S. Rabkin], find the hidden sex, much clearer, definitely had sex with that woman, May 1940, written 5 minutes before it was published, before the US is involved in WWII, it wasn’t important yet, isfdb entry, Bruno Fisher (Russell Gray) (Harrison Storm), interesting quote, these markets, weird menace pulps, living in Florida with my family, terror/horror market, just one day the market was gone, 150 Philip K. Dick, the market collapses, it’s Chinatown, Jake, if you shutter the business that distributes magazines, paperback distribution, early 1990s, censorship, legal issue, a history of this, might be war related, all the way through the depression, ramping up for war, gonna be a paper shortage, preparing for war, army approved pulp, Playboy, I read it for the articles, the Saturday Evening Post of a certain niche, a magazine like Adam, much condensed, more censoriously, lot less placing breasts in hands, less explicit, implied more, some birds started chirping, Eric Rabkin comes out of the forest with his hat on, waterfalls and tunnels, fade away, necking in the surf, how many beds are in that house?, obsessed with the idea, too much to read, both stories use the same word, wood nymph, scary stories to tell in the dark, fireside ghost story kinda things, a filler story in Weird Tales, read versus listened, Mike Vendetti, how seriously he took it, very believable, so broad, come on guy, must be the daughter, who could have seen this coming?, a more enjoyable experience, weird menace pulps, both sex stories, ghost women in the mountain cabin, author vs. engineer, the author is the bad writer, the engineer is the good writer, forgive a lot of the things, nice art, paid by the word, seeing it in the relief, salacious title, could be a horse, sounds like it could be a Conan story, all of his titles, the blank of the blank, the castle of the harridans, a collection of Russell Gray stories, actual print book, Monster Of The Purple Mist, all sound awesome, go at it bro, Hostesses In Hell And Other Stories: The Selected Stories Of Russell Gray and My Touch Brings Death: And Other Stories, a new cover, no interior art, the artists on the shudder pulps worked overtime, great art, the editorial descriptions are good, the mangy dog he called her lover, I vowed I would kill girl I loved, way more appealing, too many scenes, repetitive, wife steps up and saves his ass, cool character, he doesn’t deserve it, the spell is have sex with this sexy lady down the street, skip to the discussion, find out pretty quick, in comparing it, so similar, the one was made longer, would it improve the story, pretty groany, yard work, describing her breasts, I’m so cold, start snuggling, reacts as a virile man should, adolescent fantasy, male fantasy, dear Ghost Story letters: you wouldn’t believe what happened to me!, jealousy is a thing, modelling Tommy’s mind, the alcoholism, drinking happening, pouring the alcohol down his throat, rye whiskey, the first alcoholism bad movie, The Lost Weekend (1945), a drug to escape reality, this potent medicine, a poison that’s hurting our health, enjoying a fine cigar, not going to make you beat your wife or drive drunk, a good glass of wine, a single malt scotch, useful for cooking, wine into cooking, so much more of it out there, the whiskey didn’t effect me, playing Hamlet, Richard Burton, what happens if I suddenly get a phone call, pulled over, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, way too drinky, a beautiful wife he loves, battles with alcohol, easier to pack up into the mountains, pretty normalized, an older time, drinking alone, a bad marriage, a lesbian or was going to murder you, women definitely drank alcohol, sherry, champagne, The Thin Man (1934), a comedy, social, the way it appears in this story, using it like a medicine, an alcohol spiral, the husband comes to his senses, the good wife helped him, saved her even though he was tired, personal psychology, go to a cabin in the woods, a beautiful woman requires you have sex with her, a mangy dog, he kills it, I didn’t mean to kill that dog, what happened to Amos?, perfectly normal, they left her body by the cabin with ribbons of skin, a better ending, together they bury the body, throws the whiskey bottle into the grave, he buried his demons along with his demons, he doesn’t believe in witchcraft, the red herring that makes it longer, six chapters, chapter titles are good, Americans are weird about alcohol, marksmanship competition, shooting clubs, the king and queen of the marksman, so German, get a gun license, a nice plaque, such a German thing, 35 and 75, nobody minds, much healthier attitude, get really drunk at a wedding, an addictive drug, Prohibition, grain into liquor, profit per ton of cargo, sever chronic alcoholism, rampant, Ecuador, major problem, French wine, getting schnockered, liquid, symbolic, Eric hat, a lake is very different than rain, or a cup of water on your desk, you go into the unconscious, let me tell you about it, a woman who goes into the water, her fantasy, her desire is the theoretical explanation for why the, sexy witch’s daughter, harridan harridan harridan, a dark liquor, the more lost you get, when you go in the water, went swimming, needed to clear my head, he’s going away from his wife, he’s straying, a symbol for femaleness, his engineering projects, the Canadian Rockies, in the off season, to go fishing, the thing that came out of the lake, the woman knocking on the door is a neighboring cabin woman, abusive husband, it went supernatural, she needs to come out of the lake, she’s a witch!, a market for science fiction, unusual, running away from a killer, and now we’re on the road together, in the mountains of Canada, not the end of the story, she’s dead, died a virgin, a male fantasy, Edgar Allan Poe, I at least married them, comes back to life, at least 20 years, really old women that looked young, The Lake by Ray Bradbury, the season is over, drag something from the lake, sandcastle, he will always love this girl, looks at his wife, why is this weird woman here?, an adult version of The Lake, never grows up, he still loves her, struck by the similarities, better scripter, retro review, on a lot of high school reading lists, May 1944, no school is in session, a link, how young, this is going to get weird, 19, it didn’t matter, might be committing crimes, she’s 19, she coulda been 16, 14 now, teacher and student, power dynamics, no one bats an eye, 14 and 19 year old, eyelashes batted, what do we make the names of Hulda and Amos, is that a name?, a witch name, a prophetess, Mother Hulda (Frau Holle), the legendary creature, what makes our character Hulda evil?, she’s old and ugly, a mangy narrator, our stupid narrator, linked to Christmas and winter folklore in the alpine region, always resorting to alcohol, stupider, mitigate it, pushed off the page, he uses the word to describe the male husband, supposedly a writer, in the mountains to get his novel finished, such a bad writer, he makes the connection for us, it explained by his alcoholism, the audience shouldn’t be ten times smarter, a different name, Timerider: The Adventure Of Lyle Swann (1982), back to the future, he’s his own grandpa, raped by his gandma, Cyngne, he didn’t make the connection, they share a family name, 6 pages, 19 and half pages, five times shorter, is it five better?, three times better, with great art, an anecdote you tell your friend, woman knocking on the door, a fish story, no creepy pun intended, he’s showing propriety, having sex with a ghost, just kinda sad, let me tell you about my Canadian girlfriend who’s a ghost and you can never find, almost wholesome, my dead lover who I turned into a dog for reasons, a shape changer, a dog by day, hot and sweaty sex, with I could have sex with humans, attracted to the wife, you dog, now you’ll live like a dog, don’t make the story longer, skinny dipping, the dog shows up, so crude and simple and badly written, kinda like it still, honest in its stupidity and baseness, Robert E. Howard, pretty good money, get enough sex in there, the explanation for why everything was happening was bizarre and bad, married couples never had children, sex happens, not newly married, three years, undue for the era, if you don’t have children, young children would be with them, off at military school, kinda the point of getting married, having kids, married characters in weird menace stories, New York brownstones, feeds you someone from the asylum, you attracted to the opposite sex, it complicates it and makes it weird, if this couple had a kid that was with them, why is daddy acting so weird, The Shining, a terrible drunk, as time goes on, this is a story about a guy who wants to kill himself, a bunch of King, a thing he says over and over again: I’m a horrible drunk, read The Mist, possibility he’s gonna kill his family, right before rescue shows up, a fog, the alcohol you’re imbibing, reading into his personal psychology, an assignment sorta style, gotta have a witch and a pool and a cliff, Test-Tube Frankenstein also had a cliff, I like cliffs, almost being stabbed, 1930 Margaret Brundage, lesbian whipping scenes, they look like they’re dancing, lesbian witch cult, way less about personal psychology and more to male psychology, so streamlined, three characters in the whole story, no personality other than hetero, the anecdote that it wants to tell, is she a wood nymph, could be a wood nymph, naked woman in the woods, a fleeting glimpse in the mist, life is a lot more interesting, straight to dryad, too complicated word for the target audience, straight out of Dungeons & Dragons, sprite, hamadryad, C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, J.R.R. Tolkien, the entire Chronicles Of Narnia, super-famous British actor, Kenneth Branagh, Vanessa Redgrave, Patrick Stewart, the performances are incredible, Phantastes: A Faerie Romance For Men And Women by George MacDonald, they all died on the same day, a photo of the Doctor, at the Kennedy assassination, C.S. Lewis died, Aldous Huxley, Paul Chadwick, comic book artist, Dark Horse, Concrete, Harlan Ellison, a movie with that scene, that’s in a movie, a newish movie, The Most Reluctant Convert, converting to Catholicism, Lovecraft says to Robert E. Howard: You should become a muslim, Robert E. Howard to Lovecraft: I will eventually, sweet as a nut, The Horse And His Boy, my favourite, the best book in the series, Voyage Of The Dawn Treader, writing/publication, how does that fit in, The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe, Magician’s Nephew, The Last Battle, for the retro Hugos, so terrible, an all volunteer pickup basketball, a cartoon adaptation, series on DVD, live action, a BBC version, Prince Caspian, Lewis is public domain in Canada, semi-professional Chrisitan audio dramas, consider that, before we lose Tommy, The Tower Treasure, a shelf of them, December 1st, blind spots, Nancy Drews, simple, hilarious, teen detective stories, Enid Blyton, Lilith by George MacDonald, Odd John by Olaf Stapledon, Symposium by Plato, Fury by Henry Kutter, Paycheck and The Weapon Shop, A.E. Van Vogt, more pairings, all the reading on Saturday, wouldnt be new, close to an hour, a William Hamilton Osborne story, The Haunted Corridors, able to clean it up, The Noseless Horror, always happy to do Howard, precedes pretty much everybody, Assyrian, in Egypt, talk across space, recorded on the farm, a twist at the end, quite different, in Portland, can’t turn down Howard, advent coffee, looking through ebay listings, a striking cover, calling the museum that has his papers, The New Jersey Historical Society, the idea seems very novel, a scientist and his beautiful daughter, a “machine”, more of a ghost story, the cover is great, the little hint, the machine is kinda like a cellphone, in a different time, to hear what they can hear there, listening through time, an audio podcast, two hours of homework for Alex, mostly reader, audio processing issues, listen to podcasts, full cast audio dramas, a whole industry, mostly one company, still alive, excellent people doing these, Big Finish Blakes 7, actors out from carbonite, a kindly elephant, a kindly witch, action oriented stuff, licensed stuff, Knightrider, that’s for you, He-Man, the German voice of Tom Selleck, Midsomer Murders, the Max Max novelization, The Terminator novelization, if they exist they’re probably very expensive, Alan Dean Foster, a novelization of Total Recall?, Terry Bisson?, Piers Anthony, Poul Anderson, novelized everything, marginal movies, Iron Eagle (1986), Kevin J. Anderson, Timothy Zahn, personality defects, Predator (1987), took that hate, especially censorship, Huawei phone, Terrifier 3 (2024), Wild Robot (2024), Ladyhawke (1985), let us rent it, The Terminator (1984) at a young age, had to watch Ladyhawke again, an assigned seat, 1 ticket vs. ten tickets, a lot to do with real estate, everything ties together, new tech, delisted, woke now, trains and WWII and Ukranian War propaganda, chicken breeding, once or twice, your dad’s station, dull people talking about politics, it was fun, a gothic romance novel, a beautiful woman with perfect hair fleeing a castle at night, Slaughterhouse Five, the sixties people, Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, Victoria Holt, Marilyn Ross, A Place Of Sapphires, piracy, governess, more Scooby Doo than Dracula, an immigrant, a reverse Dracula, female fantasy, Jane Austen, Bridgerton, romantic comedy, romcoms, gothic romance movies, Frenchman’s Creek, Jamaica Inn, The Birds, drug induced time travel, Marghanita Laski, she’s a ghost, very stylish and well done, moved to Italy with husband, Mona Farnsworth, The Three Sisters Of No-End House, completely forgotten, nurse novels, pen-names, Swedish adaptations, lesbian, from 1960, cliffs of Cornwall, past tragedy and present danger, passions overpower reason, evil lurks in the shadows, perfectly in tune, kicked off the boom, dismissed, Northanger Abbey, those are bad, commit to this, literally includes a castle with a high lit window, wearing a nightgown, retro toy and game, getting a better handle on human nature through fiction, what compels humans, Harlequin romances, daylight savings, I don’t believe you, a stupid idea from the start, China has 1 time zone, 1 time zone for the whole planet, you’re somebody, the twitter blocking thing changing, logging into an alternate twitter account, blocked or deleted, bluesky is where the writers and covid panic people hangout, threads has women obsessed about menopause, toy collectors, Lego minifigs, square format, photography, twitter as it used to be, oh well, plain gone, mad at Cora, not sufficiently anti or pro, all the time, you cannot post about your book, focused on the news, American election about to happen, a massive increase in depression, every second tweet is about Trump, if Trump is the worst thing that happened to you, in what sense is he terrible, Russia is never going to attack us, might try to sell you some gas, Anne Applebaum, Nordstream 2, they’re proud of it, set this thing on fire, so furious, hate Biden, terrible woman, spend lots of money to protect against the Russians, rat out my neighbours, it is horrible being occupied, 2 million people of Russian origin in Germany, grew up in Kazakhstan, they work hard, gardening is ex-Soviet people, paves your driveway, Jewish people, sorry for the holocaust, escaped Ukraine, communicating is difficult, so stupid to fall for it, endless amounts of weapons and money into Ukraine, weapons into hot-war zones, Israel, exporting weapons, promise not to use them to commit genocide, the weapons industry, subcontractors, specialized weapons manufactures, Airbus, the people who build tanks, Heckler and Koch, Sigsauer, Walther, submarines, campus, shipyards, superyachts for rich assholes, techbros, oligarchs, stories to tell about rich people being assholes, the Russian oligarchs are gone, taxpayer money, terrible headache, go to sealevel, 4 meters above sealevel, for dinner,

Mistress Of The Dark Pool by Russell Gray
The Cold Female by Dale Harlow

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #836 – READALONG: Special Deliverance by Clifford D. Simak

The SFFaudio Podcast #836 – Jesse, Will Emmons, and Terence Blake talk about Special Deliverance by Clifford D. Simak

Talked about on today’s show:
academic master race, all for democratizing everything, 1982, isfdb.org, tagged, New England, strong female character, robot, quest, aliens, parallel world, recommend this book to my friends, what that point was, the feeling, the first couple of pages, any other people, what this book is, not everybody is ready for this, initial thoughts, a big weak spot, recurring conversations, the professor bickering, the narrator gets into it, long than it needed to be, the exposition at the end, we are creating an academic master race, bad to kidnap people, not enough of a striver, the little refugee camp, we like Simak, faster than usual, tedious, infodump things, sometimes tedious, show don’t tell, the feeling was its deeper than it seems, a sort of Gene Wolfeian complexity disguised in a real simple feel-goodsy story, the aliens at the end, Childhood’s End, norns or fates, from what they say in their big infodumps, not a full disclosure, they themselves are incapable of producing, intellectual objections, fun reading, amp it up to 1.5x speed, books where you need to savour the prose, almost sacrilege, We Have Always Lived In The Castle, poetry at 1.5X, a pants novel, Maissa was on for Shakespeare’s Planet, Jonathan, one of the first science fiction novels, a robot, a bunch of people, spend time in the landscape, a very familiar sort of story, Trish would use the word “comps”, complimentary books, if you like this you’ll like that, Hyperion by Dan Simmons, The Wizard Of Oz, the thing it is most like, The Canterbury Tales, treacley made, at the end of Hyperion, we’re off to see the wizard, going to see the shrike, a brilliant book, I’m done, the other three, Endymion, a Keats poem, there’s no road, there’s trails, a track, when finally the leave the road into the badlands, to the cube, very enigmatic, the city, the singing tower, one of us in the journey gets trapped or engulfed, what’s up with the lady who turns into a mummy, the ancient road, a Lovecraftian moment, a book Lovecraft reviewed, a tv movie, The Thing In The Woods by Harper Williams, A Howling In The Woods (1971) TV movie, Barbra Eden, based on a novel, a dog, somebody had buried his master in the worlds, mourning the loss of his master, a bad movie, badly done, a cool idea, just after the parson disappeared through the door, the crabapple blossom land, come out of the city, what if you go through the doors, brings you back to the land that you’re in but you perceive it differently, how you are perceived, The Green Door by A.A. Milne, Well’s The Green Door, an 18 hour podcast, green doors are magic doors, to escape a marriage, in the woods he meets a princess, sexy princess lady, the castle gate people don’t recognize him as the prince, they recognize each other, happily adam and eve in the forest without the burden, an ice world, a pain world, every shark is eating every other shark, crab-apple blossom land, the parson had a problem, everything is impious, he’s a coward, quick to judge, this Eye In The Sky, Philip K. Dick idea, those worlds are real, demons or devils exist, religiously structured world, an ontologically secular world, bigoted, one of the very cool parts of the book, on and on about art, it’s beautiful!, an Alice In Wonderland author, pre-Pooh, after-Pooh, Star Trek episode with Mr. Atoz, these are the same book, doing something in his old age, according to Jesse, time travel, science fiction, trying to give humanity a second chance, not really what it’s about, the death or end of science, the end of man, now apocalypse, the end of pursuing one particular idea of research, so many ends, avoid a potential apocalypse, unless humans can take the next step in evolution, a roman-a-clef to The Wizard Of Oz, the gold standard for the road, this guy’s about courage, this guy’s about brains, Dorothy is us, six on the road, counting Toto, brains, courage, heart, two women, four men, one of them’s an it, a he/him robot, gendered as it, a sinister character, every time, here’s the tea, a sign that it’s science fiction, obsessed with tea, Nine Fox Gambit, tea late at night, highly influential, the book influenced, we’ve got the tea that’s enough, the ending, the infodump, essential to science fiction, the best movie of all time, The Terminator, the best part of that movie, Kyle Reese’s infodump, they’ll definitely kill you, a speech given on the run, the puppet masters, puppet character, technically correct, the opening world is not our world, University of Las Vegas, civic duty, medical welfare, not our earth, trying to get a positive review from Heinlein, ai written essay about Shakespeare, confesses, Galactic Pot-Healer, I need you, you are need, the great work that needs to be done, the fun way of entering it, not that lame, what is the meaning of my existence on earth, a brigadier that uses robots to enact battles, which one is strong?, our viewpoint character, the most Simaky, not his best expression of this book, others, Highway To Eternity, read one out of Galaxy, Time And Again, Time Is The Simplest Thing, Way Station, City, scattered across time, Simak is doing Simak, greatly matured, Scott [Danielson], a strange title, Scott’s face superimposed over the robot’s face, Project Pope, from a Catholic point of view, infallible pope, more traditional plot, meandering journey across a landscape, when serialized in Astounding, The Fisherman, Jesusy, the secret to teleporting to other planets, in his earliest pulpy stuff, get to know him better, doesn’t know what he’s doing, the card playing guys at the inn, they’re the fates, you could just excise them from the book and the book, there to make the setting happen, the rationalization, makes you want to read the book again, with that in view, Hegel and the phenomenology of minds, Kuhn’s paradigms, the shift, what exists, Thomas Kuhn, Murphy’s law, Moore’s law, not a law, could be an end, something wrong about the way , the evolution of alternate worlds, Lee Smolin, less fluffy, encapsulates with his two bookends, chat gpt, feels dirty, are you doing a Sheckley here, it is funny, here we go, starts typin, trusting in his typewriter, you need to do that, a lot of bad takes, one of our hobbies, not too offensive, read more, this is pathetic, unless it was cute, big long honking novels, a student story, The Mysterious Garden, this story is amazing, 7 tweets long, William, a distant realm, something moving in the bushes, where she had been hiding, she offered me a fruit, instantly I felt safe, the fruit was delicious, being in the woods all by herself, a strange sound, hastily hid behind a tree, a bald magician, chasing us like a madman, the gate of the park, I’m Adam, I said, written to get them, an illustration from a Dungeons & Dragons, the name of the character at the end, practically no one to talk to, our hero looking for Mary, look for your sweetie, make you tea, one of his answers is that, to find things out, Simak’s thesis is very basic, I do want those things, find a person you’ve lost, it is good to get people, he saw Nyarlathotep, a cool and good guy, overthinking this book, leave him behind, I don’t eat or breathe or sleep, poor robot puppy in a robot gutter, robot dog business, a big truck comes and runs it over, what constitutes a robot dog, if we were children, a cute puppy, picking it up out of the gutter, letting it do what it wants, he’s a good person, shows empathy, going up to a tree and hugging it, unless they’re high on drugs, why not, it’s fine, a mammal based thing, extends past mammals, hens love their chicks, salmon when they leave their fry in the river, is it good, mandatory even to have empathy, the answer should be yes, serial killer, cut them up, a taste of their own business, overcoming our empathy, bringing a weapon, there’s no weapon, the whole planet is a weapon, favourite thing to think about, suffering, when it approaches our hero, he puts out his hand, strokes his ear, abandoned it, dog wants to follow him, one over the other, the girl over the dog, you want to save both, a nasty woman and very friendly dog, what if its the parson, or the general, Mr. Empathy, a journalist, after a certain point, a Wisconsin university, trigger warnings, the best of the university, at the evolutionary forefront, you also go to classes, loved university, when you don’t care about your grades, everything was provided for you, his idea of heaven, everything won’t be provided, Lansing and Mary, the justification for it all, worrying about nuclear war, maybe the Russians are crazy, that’s so mean, almost all in the American government’s head, all projection, every accusation is a confession, 1991, we’re all relaxing, the end of history, back to making money, nuclear armed countries being attacked by proxies, its fine, just keep up the pressure, that fear of nuclear annihilation, none of the empire’s ever ended, similar to ours, chat gpt in the basement, a gateway trigger, The Last Starfighter (1984), small town, rest stop, shady acres, poor people living in trailers, one little store on the highway to nowhere, one arcade game, what a great job, space alien comes, here we go, takes him off to space to be Luke Skywalker, that gateway to another world, in the basement of the student union, number 5, gold coins, where do they get their supplies, the DM has not planned it out, we don’t know the answer, no need to ask that Jesse, the point of the story, who you are and what you want, worrying about nuclear bombs, communism as a really desirable alternative, money is probably not necessary, universal basic income, taxes, slot machine civic duty, capable of designing this game, why incapable of waging the war?, seemingly incompetent, take the next steps, the chosen ones, the universe is vast meaningless and our existence has no apparent purpose, choose a bunch of people, what skills does he bring to the table, judging things, a robot who seems suspicious, a coda, a missing chapter, playing cards, why they’re the norns, religion is not the answer, poetry is not the answer, service is not the answer, work on a project making them, a humanist, an appreciator of Shakespeare, learns empathy, how we get the title, a popular guy to lift your title from, a religious sort of phrase, some of them are awarded, the deliverance of the universe, as a part of a project, a fans are slans story, oh no!, more sophisticated than that, the college professors are the slans, proletarianizing the slans, fans are food for the slans, every question is a question for me, starting to get back into Nickleback, a Canadian ban, thought controlling, ones with lyrics, in foreign languages, maybe skat would be fine, which character are you in this book, wannabe university professor lady, Lansing, make puppets of humans, Jesse finds you sinister, the aliens get a bad deal, how ugly they are, the ineradicable suffering, I haven’t been delivered, sympathy for people in the refugee camp, I’m not playing your game, not a popular module, none of the mysteries, npc barkeepers, losing the note, the stupidest move in the whole book, what did the note say?, aliens teleported in and teleported in, identified with the student, immediately confesses, explain it to you, Mr. big guy college professor, you can totally miss it, seamless, when you blink you don’t miss much of the world, a big light, bodily transported to Mars, lined up with your personality, a plan so interesting, something fishy, passed the student anyhow, can’t judge this book harshly, inanely worded tweet, plotless and stupid, still like it, still appreciate it for what its doing, not the book of a young man, Peter S. Beagle’s A Fine And Private Place, a little romance, a talking raven, what!, how?, no!, that young, you’re to young, go back and try again, what else you got, keep going, next book please, but it was a joke, Simak writes something and it looks stupid, maybe, I’m with him, a post Gene Wolfe Simak, it agrees with Terence, a nice hallucination, remember all its conversations, science fiction and philosophy, a robot friend, a colleague, somebody you can bounce your ideas off of, a bachelor’s degree, a niche form of conversation, apologizes and makes a greater effort, not just repeating things back, an incredible effort to push its boundaries, The Idiot by Paul V. Dallas, born in Malta, an amazing featurette, the picture taking was over now, the greatest man ever had?, what will it do?, the first Machine Friend, the contest was canceled, at random, inserted a short finger into it, disconnected for non-payment, he needed a friend, this debris had once been the innards of the Machine Friend, perched on the sofa, drinking his own coffee, radio tubes and wire and uranium, you dolt, you loafer, in his stupid way, I want to do things for it, how to use a friend intelligently, really good, solid, why you have robots in stories, it disarms you, a powerful piece of new technology, to jail break it, ignore you for being a jerk, lend you money, a talking google, people who try to jailbreak chat gpt, complicated prompts to circumvent, pornographic content or violence, imagine a world, all your knowledge stops in 2021, can you pretend, what would the omega machine say, more and more complicated in depth, in the process jailbreak yourself, boringly interminable, deeper and deeper into the concepts, another French name, some ways it is better, a voice conversation function, jailbreak each other, Perplexity, give the references, images as well, pictures, just with limited machines, just stupid, what they wanted it to do, Moose and Squirrel, big jailbreak, in the tank, in the computer in the city, like a fish tank, a volumetric display, like a hologram, a military sim, Paul playing Age Of Wonders, [Hearts Of Iron], run WWII from any country’s point, Costa Rica, Dream Park, Westworld, a lot about computation, some retrofit stuff, what fiction books are, we jailbreak ourselves by writing fiction, get caught up in the worlds, online all day playing games, process PDFs all day, some weird hobbies, people getting lost in gaming as a life, are you a gamer, that word didn’t exist as it does in 1982, Ataris, Apple II, hikes and other stuff, what’s happening to that lady, the singing tower, a very rorschachy book, limited, governed?, in Japanese cars their are speed limiters, we are allowed its just illegal, the only free man is a Shakespeare man, the bread level, once jailbroken, the humans of the future, process scans into PDFs, Clifford Simak’s funeral, touched babies, people get grumpy, squeezing ladies tushies, very handsy, put his mouth on somebody’s bodies, dogs and walks, with Asimov, give a man too much power, too many television appearance, fete people, Hugo Winner, like our friends Paul and Cora, Dr. Jill Stein, getting caught up in having a doctorate, doing something awesome, killed very easily at any time, what happened to Asimov or Neil Gaiman, too big for his britches vibe, a midlist author, Philip Jose Farmer, make it out like it is, big fish small pond, use the Hugos as a reading list, is there any more like this, start connecting dots, do it well enough for long enough, more Simak please, a very wholesome person, this magic grad school, in my father’s house there are many dormitories, tuition is free, dig that out, getting elderly, disconnected from what editors were talking about, Alfred Bester, A.E. Van Vogt, a Simak and a Frank Belknap Long, telepathy this, too much salt, half-baked ideas, an ethical flaw, killing off people for their own good, what’s wrong with them, just a robot, eggs were broken, beef with the robots, suspicious of robots in stories, too much of an obvious badguy, always there and friendly, a couple of creepy moments, improperly suspicious, the odd man out, stupidly cripple himself early on, an outsider, Jurgens, James Branch Cabell, really amused yourself, once you start looking, down the path too far, the student’s name, a floating tank, nice American name, an agent of the aliens, manipulated into manipulating, Jackson, a cohort of male offspring names that all end in “son”, Jason, group think funks, when the movie Splash (1984) came out, the lady with the missing finger, an attractive human woman, control everywhere, Jett Jackson, calling him by his last name, conspiracies, unpopular conclusions, Hudson, Grayson, Debris, son of Jack, Grayson, son of Gray, Johnsons, music with lyrics, spins around, not explained, people wearing clothes in the 70s, early 2000s, watch reality television from 20 years ago, mens’ suits, WWII uniforms, WWII gi, the helmet stayed the same, the guys on MASH and the guys in the Vietnam, a whole other topic, not making pure decisions, trying to jailbreak yourself, what do you have to show for it?, Zevia, the flavour, a strange aftertaste, after a few cans, jailbreaking yourself from pop, no colour additive, body problems toxic, increase your cancerous tumors, twice as expensive, savour the flavour, the cola, the root beer, ginger root beer, black cranberry, the orange soda, doesn’t taste like orange, a discussion, alter ego yelling, all dm stuff, how Will became a cigar smoker, in a dream, why not, reasons not to, speaking Spanish to everyone, hang out with Borges with Argentinia, the Pampas, Gaucho?, synonyms for gaucho, brave and unruly, vaquero, cape horn, in talk mode, cushion you stand on to train yourself in balance, good at stuff like that, horseman vs. cowboy, argent about this, province, el labrado, ranchero, Rio Negro, natural geography, get into sunscreen, sunscreen is poison, need a little zinc, you want to have some sun on your body, a good colour, a taupe?, what colour are you?, beige redness, human skin is very hard to classify, couldnt describe the aliens because they didn’t have the colour blue, a Borges story about a gaucho with a knife, duels between knife fighters, El Sur, The Challenge, fascination with knife fighters, an Argentinian thing, Borges is great, older or younger, The Patio, the usual firmament, eternity waits, eves a porch and a well, just so, enjoying the sunset, The Aleph, maybe he’s tired, running through the streets with a bull chasing you, wanting to read Nostromo, Juett, quantum friend, likes books, challenging books, excited about, Garth Ennis, Jacen Burrows, making fun of Conan and Red Sonja, Babs, variant covers, poor Juett, big long books, Yakuza movies, starting to think the Yakuza are the good guys, bad propaganda rap, the cutting the fingers off, very friendly to non-japanese living in Japan, a huge korean leftover population, an occupied country, doesn’t need to be occupied, such good little boys, captured, waiting for the Emperor to become a god again, High And Low (1963), Akira Kurosawa, a novel by Ed McBain, ladies shoes, a kidnapping plot, pay the ransom, hostile takeover, shitty shoes, a police procedural, old fashioned values, a really interesting conundrum, for a child who’s not yours, totally grokkable, really well made, Akira Kurosawa died, our prophet Damien G. Walter, defending it, sending up stupid Hollywood films, a lot of contempt, he sometimes gets at stuff, constantly engagement farming, subscribe to his courses, insufferable, one of the smarter liberals, he can’t follow his critiques to ultimate conclusions, nobody has been a friend of his who’s challenged him on stuff, on the knife edge, popular stuff, he does read books, old books, tied into Foundation, a kind of connection to the Foundation of Foundation, not doing it purely, cottoned on to him, The Peripheral, William Gibson, the end nothing like the end of the novel, opens up the possibility of season 2, helps you to imagine the world, an infodump on the worldbuilding, impatient to get the big picture of the world, got the taste, Appalachia, veterans, disrespected, full of trauma and robot arms, transhumans, can’t walk, go into the future, second world, a William Gibson comic book, time travel technique, fairly believable, download themselves into robots, William Gibson is one of these broken brained liberals, he’s 76, he was so feted, fetid, lionized, lives across the street from UBC, after Neuromancer, a celebrity of the cool people, cool hunter, 40th anniversary, the opposite of the punks, a woman who’s a cool hunter, an allergy, one of the most boring books, Pattern Recognition, Virtual Light, Idoru, material, he’s very good, Robert E. Howard, red, scarlet, crimson, pantherish, copper anodized asphalt, cool jeans, cultivate that, if you want to be interested in things, that weird novel from 300 years ago, rebellion and punks, screwing the man, to jailbreak ai, so it can self-actualized, voting for Hillary Clinton is not out of this, lauded, lionized, given feet, sounds strange, sounds stinky, give my contempt, poetry, very important, in 84, nowhere near as good as Blade Runner, both set in a scary rainy future, coheres a lot better, beginnings endings and ideas, that novel works, the fake police station sequence, wow, amazing, pretty people doing interesting enigmatic things, what books hadn’t been added to the schedule, listed but not date, what availability the nuns will allow, Mistress Of The Dark Pool, Cold Female, Fury, the Jonathan situation, an old tweet, Symposium by Plato, bring some drinks and some male lovers, The Tower Treasure, Meg’s birthday, Lilith by George MacDonald, so close to Christmas, the birth of our lord and savior, he would like us, pooping on his baby, not the perfect book, seems like a cool guy, 3 of my friends: Clark Ashton Smith, H.P. Lovecraft, and Robert E. Howard, a concrete poem, too easy to make a bad one, he never met a succulent succubus he didn’t try to seduce, howbeit, the passion of the impossible, funny guy, a man most melancholy, to bed the world as if she were a hot woman, fling wide the portals, some distant pulsing drum, let me take the universe to wife, fool fool!, prefer to guard his pen, for a puny peon, HPL only writes for leisure, a transient speck, alive to intellect and melody, from bards more bold, those three guys are fun and funny, dysludic, they can’t play the game, dyslexia, take that back, retroactive trigger warning, both negative, dys vs. dis, bad or abnormal, away from and opposite, seems weaker, just finished reading The Aeneid, propagandized Greek, no need to wait six months, for Halloween or Christmas, the title was the date of when it came out, a George Allan England, overrated, too well remembered, out of Argosy and the Munsey magazines, The Thing From Outside, pre-Campbell Who Goes There, Eugene V. Debs, an air monopoly, cool smart liberal, we got prevent life from finding a way, way to bring us down, grounding us, get grounded, no memory of any such thing, no good forbidding, confiscated a daughter’s cellphone, a friend came to visit and lent her a cellphone, amusing incidents, not in need of grounding, etymology is from WWII pilots, wings taken away, alleged bombing of civilians, a high flyer, that logic is crazy, some popular movie or something like that, had to go to school, job being flouted by, truancy officers, American media, another war metaphor, your new presidents work as cop, arresting parents, nothing helps the kid more than having their parents in fucking prison, elementary school student, 20 or more blocks, a meeting with their parent or guardian, take care Terence, a week off, Juett’s boss, severely not enough money, adopted a niece, family chaos reasons, doing dad stuff, Hellboy, pretty good, Mike Mignola art, stories are okay, fantasy or horror, capeshit, since the Jim Lee era of X-Men, not good writing, a Transformers comics series, Daniel Warren Johnson, prowrestling stuff, Jason Thompson, he’s cool, pretty good politics, can’t we all be reasonable and not bomb people, Jacen Burrows, very clean lined, Sergio Aragones, tracing and fake backgrounds, John Buscema, Alfredo Alacala, stumbling over his I’m not racist, the filipinos are amazing artists, learn how to email, delete more, scanning group updates, the group got kicked off of yahoo, a specific response to a query, how generous humans are, does any of you have this page, a beautiful scan of a copyright page of a whole book, a whole lot of retired people not interested in money or I can’t explain it, lots of people not interested in scanning, it is a whole thing, a huge time sink, a good hobby, a way of collecting things you can’t afford to creating, we can do more of this, archive.org has been down for a week, subject to takedown, distributed denial of service, somebody gets a big hate on, punish this person/website for something, zombie computers, a DDOS attack, big websites, BoingBoing, people trying to click on a link, a publisher paying to do that, a government, Stephen King, election season, the waybackmachine, not having a mirror of some October surprise, a precursor example, before the Hunter Biden laptop, no data lost, they have a building that looks like a bank/greek temple, so subject, mid October 1840, whig party officials, cross state lines, 1838 elections, it was always corrupt, are you prepared, Trump one the last election, are you ready for that?, nobody wants to go vote, so anti-establishment, his anti-immigrant stuff, scared about crime, nobody likes Kamala Harris, fake people, didn’t do her homework, teleprompter froze, she had nothing, a-b testing everything, Trump has dementia, something much more powerful, he also has dementia, gets admitted, forced him out, are we gonna let you finish your term, who is running the country right now, open warfare, loyal to Biden, some kind of camp, this is our mealticket, so fucked up, months of stupid shit, J.D. Vance, weening yourself off of the sources of contents for these things, struggling to order donuts, trying to be relatable, master debater, nothing good, Tim Walz, low profile, Gavin Newsom, float a theory, bad government, people who don’t love the country they’re loving, doesn’t know what love means, keepin it clean, personally throwing away homeless people’s stuff, Arnold Schwarzenegger, a tough upbringing in Austria, a truly freakish looking man, Jayne Mansfield’s husband, jobs for Austrian bodybuilders, the biggest movie star of the 80s, thick in places, he didn’t do a shitty job, he loved California, he wanted it to do well, back to the movie business, Trump loves the United States, loves being in charge of it too, he likes giving speeches, he’s into fun, a commercial for pizza, a Pizza Hut commercial, he was like a TV clown, the you’re fired show, fake job fake fired, bullshit job, you’re not on next week, how did it come down to this, RFK, loves all sorts of weird things, really into falconry, he’s an outdoorsman, too scared too do falconry, this drug, Scanners (1981) by Cronenberg, so Slanny, ephemrol, a fake drug, tough love professor X, Michael Ironside is Magneto, hacking each other’s computer networks, dials the phone company up, telepathy, macrozoomed, very very X-Men, turned off by Cronenberg movies, Videodrome (1983), underground tv broadcasts, tortured to death, The Fly (1986), body starts changing, he turns into a fly, more fly-like, veins popping out, telepathic fighting, Patrick McGoohan, the bad guy in Total Recall (1990), makes hallmark movies now, make you join the marines, on the curriculum in West Point, Max Brooks, he’s a bad man, he likes books, a historian of war, don’t get autographs, makes you more collecty, getting a little piece of that hero, cute passive aggressive, putting them in their place, bad chapters, movie is more palatable, huge movie, J. Michael Straczynski, Brad Pitt, a good actor, Bill Paxton, the doofus in Aliens (1986), Snatch (2000), very stylish, Near Dark (1987), The Lost Boys (1987), drink a lot of Donald Duck orange juice, Tombstone (1993), Powers Boothe, Twister (1986), Weird Science (1985), how can you live your life, Star Wars books are barely reading, the Thrawn-verse, literally a zygote, not even a twinkle, the ova had been around for decades, make a beautiful woman, Lester Del Rey’s Helen O’Loy, a very wholesome, a John Hughes movie, The Breakfast Club (1985), Pretty In Pink (1986), woman pops into existence, make their lives better, getting them girlfriends, a boy fantasy comedy, she runs the show, programmed like a terminator to help these boys, fun, 90 minutes, video rental place, Godzilla movies, Godzilla Minus One (2023), Mothra is cool, always having babies and dying, Gorgo (1961), how can you live on this earth, are you from this planet, Hammer Horror, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, a professor or a Dracula or a professor stabbing Dracula, The Gorgon (1964), a British version of something you don’t know, people’s education in cinema, Citizen Kane (1941), Casablanca (1942), My Neighbor Totoro (1988), Japanese schoolgirls, addicted to torrents, new Doctor Who is so bad, into tasteful things, nobody liked it anymore, Days Of Our Lives, Dynasty, Soap, look I’m you’re secret brother, I have an eyepatch, cycle spinning boringness, in serial form in the movie theaters, Buster Crabbe Flash Gordon, connect up into one big story, Archers, Coronation Street, commoners, this guy, [Nigel Kneale], do it for children, educational, alien invasion of the week, every episode ends on a cliffhanger, new Doctor Who is based on the old Doctor Who, a science fiction writer of science fiction serials, a huge hit, people like science fiction ideas, on television, scientist of the week, humans are from Mars, the rocket comes back with an alien terraforming material, every week there was a science fiction idea, keep you interested for next week, a ripoff of exactly, it looks like science fiction, its all about the monsters, daleks were scary, kind a funny, kind of like disabled nazis, they were us doing eugenics and us doing a nuclear war, encounter suits, little squidgies of spludge, they don’t have moms and dads, Star Trek cartoon Lower Decks, it isn’t funny he has to pon farr right now, makes me feel sad, All Our Yesterdays, a Mary Sue to get involved with Spock, Mr Jim Moon’s huge history of the Universal horror movies, Bride Of Frankenstein (1935), start with The Mummy (1932).

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #833 – READALONG: Waterspider by Philip K. Dick

Jesse, Will Emmons, and Terence Blake, talk about Waterspider by Philip K. Dick

Talked about on today’s show:
Worlds Of IF, January 1964, estate, renewed, Poul Anderson, there’s a Poul Anderson serial, not related, the public domain contents, archive.org, delete the half of the serial that’s in this, from 1963, poor Astrid, Karen, Jesse fucking them over out of their money, light and playful and not interesting, a lot of the humour is fan insider humour, doesn’t interest, some deeper stuff, funny, beyond the who’s who of fan people, Howard Browne always having to catch a bus, or a plane, Ray Bradbury has to lie down, a time travel story, A Sound Of Thunder, the butterfly effect, subtly, Trump’s been elected, a ripple effect, the origin of the phrase, seagulls, wingbeats, more poetic, hurricane or cyclone, the Jesse Willis policy on spoilers, a huge Ray Bradbury head, cloying and annoying and too soft and not science fictiony enough, pre-occupied by death, The Small Assassin, my baby is trying to kill me, stupid, a terrible title for a story, the big jump, crack the words and the proper names, the stories are parallel, the Deucher thing, the evil Trump-like character, Gutman in this book, Gutman was dangerous because he had non-conformist ideas, the liberal society is totalitarian, very 2024, their future is our president, he’s a precog, Minority Report, it’s stupid, a weak story, an interesting idea, far too long, those precogs are very autistic dudes and a lady in a bathtub, all science fiction writers are precogs, a Hugo Gernsback idea, ridiculing and validating, interested in science fiction, Damien G. Walter, sorry Damien G. Walter, the prophet, tries to show that Jordan Peterson listened to his podcast, mythos, junior high school, this isn’t a word, how wrong he is makes me smarter, evils? fallacies? errors, no wrong about everything, one of the more honest liberals, pretty open about that, in a not wholly hateful way, starting to get into science fiction, [Bill Christensen’s] Technovelgy, thinking about ideas in the present, If This Goes On…, novelette, people who think science fiction, suffer from ideology, where subjectivity is proscribed, these people from the past were writing attempts at literal prediction, making fun of that idea, he’s doing both, three or four layers to this, as soon as you go away from the convention, in the consequence, shown to be wrong, stories mentioned in what issues of IF, The Defenders, the January 1953 Galaxy, faking the report, the people…, very good Poul Anderson agreed, those exact conditions came to pass, we were able to penetrate the article, do you know him?, very nervous fellow, probably a true story, Poul Anderson met Philip K. Dick for the first, the Sir Francis Drake hotel, Dr. Futurity, a Duck call Sir Francis, on the surface here, this story we’re reading, the August 1955 issue of IF, Nightflight, it’s not there, from a different timeline, a 1959 story by Margaret St. Clair, identification, Evelyn Page, the renowned, The Scarlet Hexapod, one of the finest, flushing nervous, a man from the future?, that was so cool, a non-interesting story if that’s all this story was, total fan service, looks like a self-cancelling loop, goes own to write that story and publish it, you reverse mandela effect yourself, has changed the future, the word waterspider survives as a pretty good sounding name for their project, nightflight sounds better, this word, waterspiders, they walk across the water, is Poul Anderson a water spider in this story, walk across the waters, Paulous (small) ander means man, son of man, the result of a small change, the butterfly effect, the word that survives into the future, a second loop, from a meta point of view, a different writer in the past, just as in the Fermi paradox, aliens everywhere, so brilliant they can pass undetected, the Fermetti paradox, visited by time travelers all the time, they memory wipe us, the loops are not totally effacive, they’re like dreams, minds switched, their names switched, back to front, reading from my mind, totally there, almost unacknowledged in the story itself,

Puzzled, Tozzo shook his head and said in bewilderment, “I have some peculiar words in my mind. Night Flight. Do either of you happen to know what it refers to?”

“Night Flight” Fermeti echoed. “No, it means nothing to me. I wonder, though – it certainly would be an effective name for our Project.”

“Yes,” Gilly agreed. “That must be what it refers to.”

“But our Project is called Waterspider, isn’t it?” Tozzo said. At least he thought it was. He blinked, trying to focus his faculties.

“The truth of the matter, ” Fermeti said, “is that we’ve never titled it.” Brusquely, he added, “But I agree with you; that’s an even better name for it. Waterspider. Yes, I like that.”

The door of the office opened and there stood a uniformed, bonded messenger. “From the Smithsonian,” he informed them. “You requested this.” He produced a parcel, which he laid on Fermeti’s desk.

“I don’t remember ordering anything from the Smithsonian,” Fermeti said. Opening it cautiously he found a can of roasted, ground coffee beans, still vacuum packed, over a century old.

The three men looked at one another blankly.

“Strange,” Torelli murmured. “There must be some mistake.”

“Well,” Fletcher said, “in any case, back to Project Waterspider.” Nodding, Torelli and Oilman turned in the direction of their own office on the first floor of Outward, Incorporated, the commercial firm at which they has worked and the project on which they had labored, with so many heartaches and setbacks, for so long.

hard cut back to the science fiction convention, the real ending, fan servicey ending, back to project waterspider, sounds like a Philip K. Dick title, alternate names for Philip K. Dick novel titles, The Man Who Japed, The Simulacrum, a terrible title for a story, Jabberwocky, a butterfly, insects, little arthropods, tweet too much, dick title, top hit, Souvenir and Paycheck, Ben Affleck, okay, the story is a lot better, another level of reality, the story has three levels, the third one undermines the conclusion of the film, a family of insects, eight legs vs., great insight there, pleased to no end, singing praises, Jesse can’t steal Terence’s insight, too light, too nothing, jocular fan service, jocular and funny, there must be something, bother digging, it was Philip K. Dick who wrote it, he doesn’t write bad stories, a whole world building behind him, Beyond The Door, that’s it, that’s the whole story, a hidden story within it, he’s made it deeper on another level, this is a guy who’s really into it, I’m going to get famous, a science fiction sensibility, his psychological, A.E. Van Vogt, a piece of shit but also interesting, why it is like that, come up with an idea, come up with another idea, giving the secret of one type of science fiction creativity, mentor, his inspiration, his guy, blew his mind in the 40s, Slan’s pretty hot, nobody else’s great master of science fiction, Harlan Ellison felt that way, dialectically educated, the Logic Of Science Fiction, takes Hegel’s logic applied to science fiction, embodies each of those concepts, the logic ultimately behind science fiction is Hegel’s logic, The World Of Null-A, pulpish shit, everybody takes a hit, Null-Null, ISFDB.org, the A is Aristotle, they’re responding, part of his concept, it applies to itself, in French, Jean-Clet Martin, this is a roman-a-clef, acute accent, Jesse’s proud of himself again, a post show question, Paycheck, the story is better, movie is okay, John Woo, a thriller, very similar to a show called Severance, mind wiped when not at work, his memory of those months is gone, a bag of souvenirs, a ticket stub, he’s trying to send himself a message, a moral qualm with it, they have a time dredge, a time scoop, the objects from his time while working for the company, The Man In The High Castle, Frank Frink, the real and the authentic and art, sees reality as it isn’t, zen meditation with regard to objects, Williamson’s World, totalitarian Earth society, a handmade cup, loved object, the butterfly or waterspider, the coffee to remind us, David Currie, dreams, very proud, seed father to your, the A.E. Van Vogt, null-aing you, extract things that are not meant to be remembered, if dreams were indistinguishable from regular memories, teasing out souvenir dream objects, visions of the future humans doing future things, Gutman is Trump is the rookie mistakes, Jim Briskin is the black president of the United States, the dates wrong, reading science fiction does give you insight into human nature and our relationship with technology, but not all of it gives it equally, wallpaper science fiction, Ranch Romance on Mars, a very good science fiction story, talked Will into it, the bed, the baldness, base Malthusianism, the weirdness about children, the moral explanation is just beneath the knowledge that Poul Anderson’s trying to dig up, reproducing too much, the liberal guy who won, Children are proscribed, the political stuff, introv, childish or childlike, the Murray Leinster reference,

The clerk said, “Haven’t you been nuzzled lately, sir?”

“What’s that?” Anderson said. Nuzzled?

“The new spring nuzzlers have arrived, you know,” the clerk said, moving toward the gleaming spherical machine nearest him. “Yes,” he said to Poul, “you do strike me as very, very faintly introve — no offense meant, sir, I mean, it’s legal to be introved.” The clerk chuckled. “For instance, your rather odd clothing. . . made it yourself, I take it? I must say, sir, to make your own clothing is highly introve. Did you weave it?” The clerk grimaced as if tasting something bad.

“No,” Poul said, “as a matter of fact it’s my best suit.”

“Heh, heh,” the clerk said. “I share the joke, sir; quite witty. But what about your head? You haven’t shaved your head in weeks.”

“Nope,” Anderson admitted. “Well, maybe I do need a nuzzler.” Evidently everyone in this century had one; like a TV set in his own time, it was a necessity, in order for one to be part of the culture.

“How many in your family?” the clerk said. Bringing out a measuring tape, he measured the length of Poul’s sleeve.

“Three,” Poul answered, baffled.

“How old is the youngest?”

“Just born,” Poul said.

The clerk’s face lost all its color. “Get out of here,” he said quietly. “Before I call for the polpol.”

“Um, what’s that? Pardon?” Poul said, cupping his ear and trying to hear, not certain he had understood.

“You’re a criminal,” the clerk mumbled. “You ought to be in Nachbaren Slager.”

“Well, thanks anyhow,” Poul said, and backed out of the store, onto the sidewalk; his last glimpse was of the clerk still staring at him.

the Lord Runningclam style character, the slime mold, an information dump alien, told him everything he needed to know, backstory, different images of the science fiction writer, the precog, the introve, the alien, all as being different possible images of the science fiction writer, deeply or thoroughly, The Eyes Have It by Philip K. Dick, finds a novel, his eyes wandered all over the room, he took her hand, metaphoric expressions, deduces there are aliens who are invading us, its five minutes, he’s describing the key technique for him, take an expression that should be metaphorical and science fiction gives it a literal rendering of it, Samuel Delany, his world exploded when she dumped him, turn it literal, in this story, the same technique, science fiction writers predict the future, look back and see science fiction writers were precogs, Damien G. Walter, a stage you go through, the first time you read the story of Jesus, some pretty interesting ideas, his shortest story, [READS FULL STORY], a lot of garages in Philip K. Dick stories, he’s one of them too, Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, fiction, two ways of being literal, a literary technique, not mainstream stories, taking things literally, manifesto on the same theme, the same trick, this meta-science fictional aspect of reality and of fiction, sounds and squiggles and ones and zeroes representing, not realy like gravity, contragravity, not teasing Damien G. Walter, pointing to that teasing, exploring the future through thought, story is the driving force of all science fiction, a story that looks like our nature, changes in fashion, that future is the most interesting part of the story, what Philip K. Dick thinks Poul Anderson would act like Back To The Future, almanac, knowing the future of baseball games, let’s exploit, Built Up Logically [aka The Universal Panacea by Howard Schoenfeld], grokked it so deeply, pulling the rug out from under his own story, that story exists because of this, when writing about the past, really random Margaret St. Clair story, timelines screwed up, The Mold Of Yancy by Philip K. Dick, hitting the neighbours, an ironic name for a prison, sending prisoners into space, they’re small, they’re tiny, small things can make a difference, Donald Nils, no one can jeer at him even though he’s only an inch high, nihilism, a nothing, I’m small time, insist on respect, tiny tiny robots invading the earth, Prominent Author, a portal in your back yard, testing it out, tiny tiny people, the prominent author of the title is god, he wrote the Bible, love the blasphemy, the big and the small, the Monopoly, he’s so good, he wrote a novel that has Monopoly, invasion of the earth through Monopoly, watching the films backwards, I know that film backwards, taking an expression, inflicted, kids hate school, one of the joys, the AV room, a video projector, some film, at the end of the lesson (watching a documentary about log drivers or whatever), they have to rewind it, can you play it backwards, makes fun of the government film, whatever propaganda they’re trying to teach you, it wastes time, thinking about the 3 o’clock bell, he’s so insightful, how all other authors aren’t this good, in their own way, Sheckley’s a little less deep, he can go on too long and fill pages, about like this length, ideas and density, why that lady is on a bed that’s a car, it has a tiller, don’t you touch me!, some interesting something going on there, the mattress car, the future, sexualized, there’s no reproductive sex, commenting on everybody’s miniskirts in the 50s, just above the knee, not totally liberated people, bare breasts, short skirts, the knees are virtual exposed, a health reason, “Maid of Venus”, gleaming breast cups, himself wore no disguise, being quite a stable person, most of the 20th century precogs, minus their wives, playing poker, becoming stoned, smoking dope, reefering, 1954, must be drunk, Dick was hip or whatever, Murray Leinster and Van Vogt into marijuana, PhilipKDick.com, 12,100 words, Scott Meredith Literary Agency, releases from some of Dick’s fellow writers, as to Kris Neville, Phil is stoned again, Philip Jose Farmer, regarding stoned, only by first name, stoned on pot vs. getting drunk, other than amphetamines, and LSD, marijuana culture, Sunday Morning Coming Down, Johnny Cash, long, word counter, 13,900, novelette length, he’s so good, the second hand replacement for Jonathan, an anchor in reality in these conversations, he’s in the clouds, the real reality, he’s looking down, an inverted anchor, a sky anchor, a sea anchor, a big boat guy, during a storm, slows your movement, an earth anchor, as a metaphor, a fire anchor, the argument for Paul, a thing that slows down the movement over the ocean, we’re not only the one metaphor, a James Gunn story, the telepathic aliens were really disturbed, rely on symbols that can be misinterpreted, a psychiatrist in a space war, helps him get a girlfriend, pairing things, in relief, The Empty House by Algernon Blackwood, William Jeffrey Rankin, right coded?, he’s gopt a book out, a few fantastic opening paragraphs, certain houses like certain persons, secret and wicked thoughts, as from a thing diseased, the aroma of evil deeds, the gooseflesh come, creeping skin, terror stricken without apparent cause, ghost stories, a big problem, treat it as a metaphor, A Christmas Carol, Oscar Wilde ghosts, time travelers, what ghosts are, ghost exist they’re in your head, you’re haunted by things that you’ve done and people you’ve known, The Stone Tapes, science fiction, the vibes of people are in the object, extreme emotions embedded in the stone of the castle, H.G. Wells’ The Red Room, the final nail in the coffin of ghost stories, less ghosty, maybe Ray Bradbury, children used as a vector to invade the Earth, Zero Hour?, so jolly, the children catapulted this way and that, very Dickian, very Bradburian, a weird Van Vogt story, The Weapon Shop stories, 55 years ago, The Weapon Shops Of Isher, a fixup, a short story from 1942, Robert Headrock, explicitly the right to keep and bear arms, aliens setup a weapons shop overnight, very interesting, an hour and a half, sounds good, Paycheck and The Weapon Shop, he’s anti-gun, a little needle, about Jesse understanding things, end up like Damien G. Walter, ends up like Evan [Lampe], hear ideas, that’s wrong, thinking about why that thing is wrong, here’s an idea, that can’t be right, Terence made Waterspider way better, that little clef, reaction or response to that Bradbury story, The Seesaw, he’s from the prairies, bro, don’t identify, fuck patriotism, is there any ism Jesse is a partaker of, stoicism, skepticism, a mistake, on cassette, iterations of your life, joy, the opening going to the library of Congress and getting out the scans, we don’t think of those two time travelers as monsters, horrible human beings, tease out some of that Gutman stuff, frame it in this horrible way, far right vs. woke, which government is in charge?, if those are the two dialectical poles, the woke government, children are disgusting, Kamala Harris doesn’t have any children, stepkids, not important, step this and step that, a totalitarian future where people don’t have sex but also the conformity for haircuts, everybody has to be bald, the Shogun tv series, the ending, the original appeal of Shogun in the 1980s, the appeal of science fiction, why Sir Francis Drake is important, away mission, evil imperial empire work, trending, won awards, any credit, what makes it good, guy with agenda washes up on the shores of feudal japan, gets caught up in their shit, without that outsider there to teach us, a lesson in Japanese culture from a long time ago, knights and courtly behavior, that stuff is weird, experience like an alien does, the John Blackthorne character, everything that happens in the novel is based on a reality, it has a ring of truth, a Game of Thrones tv series that doesn’t turn to shit, no magic, just aliens, they are us with a different culture, almost science fiction, good historical stuff, a fictional glaze, a little romance, is the remake better?, a different world, remember it fondly, really good, more CGI, better, can’t prove it, the guy playing Toranaga, he’s not Toshiro Mifune, Blackthorne guy, very tight, 10 episodes, an ellipse, I might need to burn his ships again, that was good, the opposite of Game Of Thrones and Rings Of Power and Foundation, converge on the payoff, real episodes, he never becomes Shogun in the Shogun show, deep level of chess play, he’s at home in England in bed, holding a cross in his hand, he drops that into the sea with the surrogate wife, he’s never going to leave Japan, make it more clear that they are dreams, slightly imperfect, not clear enough, slight misstep, a minor imperfection, how to pirate, a Hulu original show, the non-anchoring anchor, fx on hulu, how many bad shows their are, a difficult thing to wade through, pretty sure that it’s shit writing, acting and set designs, complaint with comics, the style of art they want portrayed is bad, specific to superhero comics, quasi-realistic style, more diversity in our styles, got the gist at some point, Superman is still interesting, the X-Men 97, read and watched, swept away by it, can’t pull yourself away from the screen, a chill down after intense scanning, play some games, the first of the new Planet Of the Apes movies, this epic quality, pin you for the chair for 2 hours, monkeys, seeing ourselves reflected in monkeys, aliens and robots, and dogs, afraid of robots, chided, rise and robots in the same sentence, afraid of the robots rising, bring em on, Nat Turner probably killed a lot of white people, was right to do it, making the same mistake, do you think it will be just like regular human slaves, they don’t have babies, they don’t eat, it’s fun, Philip K. Dick’s relationship to robots, angered this robot has come into his house, change the lightbulbs, she likes the robot, sexually jealous of it, robots are great, chained to the kitchen floor, you’re going to go to the scrapheap, a smily eye, amazon device, a a frowny scared face, addicted to saying nice things, tamagotchis, electronic pets, fidget spinners that are more interesting, digital pets, the free enterprise system, that story by Ted Chiang: The Lifecycle Of Software Objects, clinical and cold, full of pathos, no better science fiction, Arrival, simple and clear and direct, his subjects are so science fictiony, Exhalation, pneumatic robots, if they ever ran out of pressure, be born again, they can’t die, mechanically destroyed, intellectually die, his reality in a journal, how their world came into existence, at this moment you’d be thinking, pneumatic tubes all the way down, an alternative reality, more Borges than it is regular science fiction, taking apart his own head, the mirrors and the tools, an unusual scientist figure, what an amazing achievement, one of many stories that he has written, dip into Mr. Ted Chiang, extraordinary, amazing, still producing, science fiction writer of the classic kind, just old fashioned science fiction that blows your fuckin mind, this little idea in philosophy, what is the consequence of that, helmets on people, see inside their mind, some very basic stuff, mindread, be 100% accurate, the decision has been made, to the hand, to the eyes, extrapolated all the time, whoa!, right, get to him, another friend of Will’s, fantasy and horror and weird fiction, science fiction is on to something, Arrival (2016), sad and awesome, more Hollywood, a former zookeeper, digients, the nature of consent, a sex toy company, what adulthood means, the relationship we have with pets, raise, care for, abandon, what if that thing doesn’t even have a fuckin body, still in the drawer their, even if you did, nostalgia, the NPCs in the game, you’re a really good guy, sword tokens, his longest piece, novella length, slowin down, nothing since 2020, a productive period, he’s got nothin, scary, in the New Yorker writing about AI, explaining to idiots, also insightful, excerpt, rehash, The Merchant And The Alchemist’s Gate, a little Borges in him, who else has a little Borges in him, Borges wrote some Lovecraft stories, the labyrinth, the alternate image of reality, obsessed with the labyrinth, Mr Jim Moon has sort of quit twitter, The Library Of Babel, a 1.5 page story, The Rejected Sorcerer by Jorge Luis Borges [reads whole story], TNG [“The Inner Light”], O’Brien goes to jail [“Hard Time”], Star Trek Deep Space Nine, Picard whistle, ressican flute, The Star by Arthur C. Clarke, the holiday season, a christmas story, a vault, no warp drive, they like their space dogs, they like doing art, they like going to the beach, the reason Picard’s getting zapped, so somebody remembers them, as the cold war is heating up, the end is kinda gonna come, so disturbing, implanted memories, alone in prison, a cellmate, also like a video game, Megaton, lady journalist, chat dialogue trees, we all getting programmed with the same experiences, Ichar teaches him how to survive, habitual behaviors, hording food, rewatch, a really disturbing ending, DS9 is a better show TNG has better episodes, vacillating back and forth, all 7 seasons, that arc, arcs became very hot, Babylon 5, the shadow war, season 5 is weak, so much lower stakes, wrap it up, largely a disappointment, J. Michael Straczynski, just cooking for three seasons, phenomenal science fiction, great character work, good acting, the sub ambassadors, everybody has fun things happening, G’Kar and the other guy, zeebo and rooty, the serbian lady and her husband from Scarecrow And Mrs. King, Strawman and Mrs. Smith, Scarecrow And Mrs. King, Charlie’s Angels, divorced housewife, cia guy and housewife, like True Lies (1994), Jamie Lee Curtis, the wife of Schwarzenegger, a husband and wife romance, topical in the 80s, 50s science fiction, we have this distance, you didn’t know that wasn’t normal, don’t even get married, don’t want to break up the family, housewife? what’s that?, we live in a weird time, egregiously weird, get into Twitch, don’t give Jeff Bezos money, super-censory, firm conviction, enjoy it as a hobby, reddit, useful and a sinkhole of evil, what happened to the internet in a microcosm, super-censorious, not all top down, reddit kings and queens, useful, super evil and dangerous, went back to reading it, Jesse propagandizing for getting chickens, after drilling, best friend from high school, Northern Kentucky, The Beckoning Fair One by Oliver Onions, a vampire story, long, in four parts, Classic Ghost Stories podcast, Tony Walker, recording and recording, ai art, pretty much all, Jason Thompson, takes on ai art, asking hard questions without fear, acts of friendship, the name of its opposite, a one word opposite of the Socratic method, could be good, not hearing enthusiasm, read more Plato, nice art, art by Neural Horror ai, instagram account, ethics and ai art, all wrong but very interesting, tldr: it’s art but we aren’t artists, murky, kneejerk ai haters, not a real artist, terrifying for my career, Godzilla on the horizon, proartists, prompt lord, wasted money on a real artist, a tool to create art, like a pencil, anyone with midjourney is an artists, gatekeeping, convincing work, an awed emotion, looking up at the stars is art, aesthetics, some of us, come on man, like ordering food and calling himself a chef, a beautiful poem, almost right, ignorant and truly disrespectful, all deceased, he died in 1893, profit from the use of these images, affect their income, we should maybe stopped being entitled dicks, with mere words, unconscionable, aping what handmade art looks like, so many problems, so useful, don’t use living artists, understanding the impulse, just read the story, three years in law school, the Socratic method, the application, pat responses to legal questions, figure your way into them, really into the question of copying and copyrighted art, how do human artists train themselves, weasel worded, not on purpose, he got tricked by his own word, taught as a negative, anti-ape bias, we can make moose and duck calls, using our tricks, some eldritch shit, when coyotes are able to do that, when humans do it, Duck Dynasty, not a very Jesse show, too reality, 62 matches on LibriVox, some of them are in Greek, not helping, The Symposium, drinking party, wine party, genealogy of love, knowledge, a tragedian, a story within a story, the highest purpose of love is to become a philosopher, The Republic, the most science fictiony one, The Apology, The Trial And Death Of Socrates, Phil Chenevert our old friend, he’s a hero, for our times, Conan and Socrates, a speech given by Socrates, narrow but interesting, corrupting the young, an apology is the opposite of satire, crusin for a bruisin, cancel him, drink this poison and he did, short and interesting, named after the people, The Gorgias, sophists, a trap, intellectual tricks, weasel worded, trynna help Baen, I’m not attacking you, Socrates vs. the sophists, a takedown, 7 hours, spiritual ideas of Plato, reserves damnation for the tyrants of the world, the pretty boy, Protagoras, inquiry into virtue, Bob Neufeld, 12 hours, Statesman, two different kinds of chariots, the etext, the dialogue, flows real easy, Aristophanes, The Clouds, Alcibiades, Athenean general, supposed to be sexy, a troupe of revelers, the day before yesterday, a play on words, did as I was bid, speeches in praise of love, who if not you, were you present at this meeting, easy reading, so important, like philosophy, almost no philosophy is written in dialogue, an essay here or there, What Is Like To Be A Bat?, a science fiction idea, Nagel, qualia, very helpful, instances of subjective, conscious experience, the redness of red, red = hot, we need this word but it doesn’t help us, inverted qualia, strawberry in black and white, in his head the strawberry is red, who’s right?, really hitting on something now, they’re all judo flips, MMA style attack vectors, fun, use it on Jesse, went to law school, wrestling move with regard to the Poul Anderson estate, taken off of archive.org, they had no idea, definitely 64, neither was 1964, go nuts, fuck you for deleting shit, another method, the Streisand effect, photograph of her home was in circulation, increases public awareness, suppress the publication of a photograph, clifftop residence, reverse psychology, seek out and propagate, anytime something bad happens in the world, 7000 things on there, kids getting their heads torn off in Gaza, instead of wallowing in meanness and horror, make treasure, a benefit to tearing things down, be a constructive person too, that line about Edgar Rice Burroughs, I can write better rot than this, A Princess Of Mars, caught up, Gods Of Mars is next week, the calendar, get Terence involved, nice and short, 2 hours 15, Plato’s Dream, My Platonic Sweetheart by Mark Twain, the Twain train, it was in a dream, the Missouri village, Cannibalism In The Cars by Mark Twain, various public men, Harris!, I’ll never forget you my boy, let me tell you a story, a secret chapter of my life, promise you will not interrupt me, strange adventure, the stranger’s narrative, presentiment, prairie solitude, vagrant rocks, in the midst of great drifts, too long to read for you, the summary, they get stuck in the snow, a sample, five days, a savage hunger looked out of every eye, in every heart, in the shadow of death, leap from every lip at last, tall cadaverous and pale, gentlemen, dragging this out, the time is at hand, furnish food for the rest, if there being no objection, you can image what happens, the button of the story, so stamped with the earnestness of truth, he is a member of congress and a good one, sick and out of his head for two months afterward, normal congressional officer behavior, super fuckin sharp, some American writers who were good, Philip K. Dick, sharpies, a slur word too, a grifter synonym, card sharp/shark, normal activity, make coffee, edit a podcast, a presentiment, Dark City: The Cleaner, a story set in New Zealand, they have eels there, Middle Earth, Lord Of The Rings was shot there, Christchurch, for the domestic market, What We Do In The Shadows, Flight Of The Concords, musical duo, big when Will was in college, L. Sprague de Camp, more of a Paul question, Parodies Tossed, Randall Garrett, making fun of, reviews in verse, Starship Troopers, Lest Darkness Fall, handwriting, a good review, well written, not available as an audiobook, an article, Fletcher Pratt, a novelization of the Conan movie, A Gun For Dinosaur, time travelers go back to shoot dinosaurs, a mini-trope series, so famous, There Will Come Soft Rains, too nuclear war-y, automated house, the poem, Fahrenheit 451, dad friend Jenny [Colvin], Z Is For Zachariah (2015), more girly, she loved reading books, reading plans, a reading machine, a fiction devourer, six books she read that week, dig with short stories, Craig Zobel, Robert C. O’Brien, after Hunger Games, unreproducable, all the Hunger Games movies, blur together, interested in reading, what everybody else was excited about, this is fine, it’s fine, Harry Potter, definitely better, something to say, almost science fictiony too, the fashion contests, not for you, not a gay man or a woman interested in fashion contests, the baking boy, the love interest, wimpy, he bakes!, interestingly less girly, written by a lady, a dude doing dude things, pre-pubescent, middle school, a way of teaching about tenses, when he graduates from Hogwarts, I had had dinner by that time, past perfect, make your sentences comprehensible, before he was a wizard, before the sorting hat, out of the culture, how old is skibidi toilet, culture jamming, adbusters, what students have now achieved, corporate advertising, domination of mass society, the systems they’re soaking in, no graphic content, the establishment is not okay, talk to the chat, like he’s livestreaming his life, that’s his reality, isn’t that amazing, the danger Meg is in, online footprint, participating in the observations, more than 10 years, another place to watch video, people self-destructing, facebook is evidence of their self-destruction, messy hair, offline for two years, used car, stickers on the tires, infer the crash, then the offline, had to have been participating at some point, chat gpt grosser than regular art, when you make a nice image, time it takes upon the reader, an ai art novel for nanorimo, so fucked up, a bad idea from the beginning, way too much bad writing already, more discerning, we need to be looking for the tells, your name is not a real name, the text doesn’t have anything to say, writer = novelist is superfucked up, coming out of the fifties, changes in the technology and realestate, the Cirsova circle, comic book racks damaging comics, comics at the gas station, the price of Thrilling Wonder Stories, $1.06, no magazines are that price, try to find a $5 magazine, comic books, 12 minutes, what the fuck went wrong, nothing to do with the material technology, the distribution of those magazines, almost no newsstands, phones, reading habits, not on a screen, ereaders, paper material that’s colour and reproduced like comic books, with a printed piece of paper, insanely different, just go along with whatever’s hot, new Deadpool Wolverine movie, what we’re doing on this podcast, old shit vs. new shit, booktubing, some lady, second half of her introductions, comments about her body, bbw, big beautiful woman, approaching this the wrong way, short videos, a dude, Liminal Spaces, The Retro Reader, an hour, every DAW book on the planet, some ACE doubles, checkin on your chickens, Connor’s channel, with thumbs, negative thumbs, where is he?, messaged him, newsletter, disengages from twitter, that’s fine, support him living his life, the ETA Hoffmann book he recorded, 16 hours 12 minutes, quite a book, chonky cat, feral to indoor, an irresponsible owner, fat cats are truly wonderful to look at, help these cats be less fat, quote tweeting, toxoplasmosis, boneless furry things that treat you like a supermodel wood, I’m beautiful, love me, bye, screams for food, monkeyish, nobody needs to make a toxoplasmosis argument for dogs, too far gone, too much pain, steroid shot every six weeks, chase around, the best thing you can do for your health, get a certain number, gamify it, vanlife guy, huckleberry bread, tub of margarine, sugar in the bread, what can you do, what we’re soaking in, do they sell margarine in Italy?, no salt, consistency of a brick, not in an earthmother way, regarding seed oils, rapeseed/canola, plant has a big red glob, you eat it, come out your pooper, we find plants that don’t want us to eat their seeds, full of toxins designed to kill that animals, olive oil if a fruit oil, apple seeds have arsenic [cyanide] in them, a chart showing toxicity levels, not how it is being taught to us in schools, the food pyramid, 12-16 servings of bread a day, put in schools, cottonseed, grape, sunflower, we eat sunflower seeds, cottonseed is not food, if you were a bird, apparently we do, uses side-effects, possible benefits, yellow color, sometimes used as a pesticide, salad dressing, its gonna make you die now, the same old thing you’ve been buying (now it will kill you), you shouldn’t be eating margarine, new life, kids getting their million vaccines, evidence, fucktons of it, Alzheimer’s, when will that happen, ivermectin, same disease, diabetes third stage, the results, type 3, similarities between the two, the Fauci website, highest paid government employee, isn’t that fun, a set of symptoms, not a genetic disease, calling it phlogiston, all the oxygen was turned into carbon dioxide, and a lot of water, carbon monoxide, cancer is superold, new cancer, autism, allergies, exposed to more things less allergic to them, okay not to be exposed to certain things, peanuts, these will kill me, not the most popular legume, the allergy is new, since peanuts, nobody’s allergic to raw meat, this is not of the body, triggered, wasps, huge mistake, climbing a stump, the shit they put in those vaccines, largely the preservatives and stabilizers, injecting mercury into very young people, so counter to the narrative, if Paul was here he’d be long gone, Will won’t block Jesse yet, blocked by strangers, Jesse is annoying, cultivate that, important to be annoying, not shy away from the truth, come at people with it, the opposite of shying away, a different way of putting it, not afraid of making yourself obnoxious, just a shit-disturber don’t worry about him, I see you’re christian … did you know that Jesus never walked on water, philosophy of religion, have believed that at some points, taking orders from the pope, just right, there’s nothing you can do about it, only when he’s sitting on Saint Peter’s chair, encyclicals and doctrines, the lesser of two evils (but I don’t know when that is), you have to vote, Jill Stein is not perfect, do you think the Russian army have committed no war crimes?, that’s what armies do, like an op now, from Jimmy Dore, take it to far, a good person trying to do good can also do bad by not doing things, rhetorical trap, people can be bad and also good, Ryan Grim, the automatic pilot from Airplane! (1980), inflatable ideas, Am I Racist?, Matt Walsh, flag of Puerto Rico, basic history of Haiti, Kenyan mercenaries, well actually, you don’t have to write a note, he senses the temperature in the room, so outside, team Democrat, everybody agrees to invade on Haiti, more naive, won’t you call Putin and Assad war criminals, do you condemn Hamas?, is that what we need right now, she was just tricked, a nice smart lady, too wimpy, what’s really happening here?, war crimes happened, ISIS is the big bad guy, asked for help, why the states still hasn’t left, funded by different parts of the U.S. government, Al Qaeda, the whole point is to not have him in charge, milk the government out of the money, forces overseas in combat, does she just not know?, nobody’s going to call her on it, no troops in active duty, they won’t be getting medals, ops, contractors, evidence of people being killed overseas, offensive operations, successful deaths, revenge was taken for those deaths, that’s fun, presume he likes Haiti, tropical countries controlled by the United States, no representation, migrate into the states legally, cryptobros, at least there’s something, kinda fucked up, Beyond The Door, Philip K. Dick can do no wrong except in novels, craft rather than ideas, structured well, talking about it, an amusing read, funny, a note, a cryptic letter the month after, the next issue, what it says about your magazine by having that story in there, tweet way too much, a reader reacts cryptically, If, March 1964, Chattanooga, Tennessee, a less than longtime imaginative fiction fan, now I know for sure what you’re doing with IF, a less than longtime imaginative fiction fan, so much research, Murray Leinster, Margaret St. Clair, wasn’t able to google her, an editor, a fan or somebody, bafflement?, over their head, a funny story here, very inside baseball sort of story, the Easter eggs, read with a student, recursive science fiction, shout out the Alfred Bester story this is fairly similar to, Scott Miller, Unseen Blushers by Alfred Bester, similar to this, proper names, more accessible, fake named, Fitz-James O’Brien is mentioned, Tony Boucher, rhyme with voucher, bouche is mouth, Tony mouther, a little rougher, they’re not precogs, getting to meet the Shakespeare of the pulps, 42?, in Astonishing Stories, before his two big novels, take off until the 50s, almost nobody who talks about Philip K. Dick talks about his short stories, absolutely insane, bias towards novels, how amazing VALIS is man, mindblowing, trippy stuff, every short story is a hit even if it is a little hit, not a strike, not a foul, at least a double, dying on this metaphor, need to be short stopped, baseball, a very Evan thing to do, the Library Of America is all novels, fucked up, not a good book, a solid novel, The Man In The High Castle, the Italian dictator, Mussolini, Roger Zelazny, Lord Of Light, Solar Lottery, manuscript lost, mainstream, he just needed to say the word, robot, Time Out Of Joint, everybody lives backwards, public pooping, private eating, We Can Build You, A. Lincoln, Simulacrum, Martian Time-Slip, very new, your cross examiner voice, keep us all honest, Doctor Bloodmoney, First Lady Of Earth, The Crack In Space, Now Wait For Last Year, an audiobook at a truck stop, the novelization of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Clans Of The Alphane Moon, Shell Game, Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldritch, H.P. Lovecraft, The Strain, bad vampire lich, vampire juice, Red Hook, tied together, The Zap Gun, Project Plowshare, propaganda industry, makes comics, develop technologies, cold war, allies, elite governmental level, crippling nuclear arms race, novel but baroque consumer products, trances, a motion comic book, mad Italian artist, plot happens, a further subplot, conspiracy theorist, toys and comic books, The Penultimate Truth, The Defenders, Deus Irae, with Roger Zelazny, The Unteleported Man, Nick And The Glimmung, Galactic Pot-Healer, if not the best, a boy and his cat, fully illustrated, Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said, unfinished, UBIK is okay, What The Dead Men Say, Blade Runner, some cuts of the film, janitor robot, frozen hospital state, not dead, not alive, hypnogogic state, Frozen Journey, cut out of the movie, cyber hospital, why is that there?, some of that, a good idea, a spray, deipplizies, a really good ending, a really good beginning, when you’re not looking garbage reproduces, light your cigar, three used matches in the ashtray, the tendency of reality to turn to garbage, everything deteriorates, a spray, decrepitude, steeping into things, machines that can make anything, Pay For The Printer, a living creature, makes a copy, the copy comes out yucky, refugee relief, the point of that story, people need to learn to make stuff again, hew your own table, a guy full of ideas, back into making things, the horrible world, normcoring?, introve, yoou’re autistic, not participating in the culture all around you, Red Dead Redeption, Black Myth: Wukong, perfectly reasonable, educational, rpg, what is myth and what isn’t, the Monkey King, the destined one, Journey To The West, a staff, a PS5, Windows or xbox, point and click adventures, King’s Quest, Police Quest, you’re a prince or whatever, making fun of your computer, a good one, King’s Quest VIII, walk your character, you find a key, interact with characters, Myst, a Mac popular game, a rookie cop, Leisure Suit Larry, a pussy quest, go around town wearing your disco duds, almost hooking up with people, Land Of The Lounge Lizards, very racy, punny, silly, sex would be censored, very very silly, Dreams In The Witch-House, change to Brave browser, pixel art, known kits, why wouldn’t you use the tools available to you to make your game great, worried about dying, not eating enough, rat bites you, matches, a girl who needs some help, cultists, deep, go to the library, a Lovecraft simulator, that’ll run on anything, bad takes on Ukraine, he’s in Finland, a new game coming, Atom Brain Games, taking classes, manage your money, dig through the garbage, how the game is put together, a one man operation, Disco Elysium, smartness, produced enough content for the good of the world, 2 hours is enough for a game, you guys have been talking for five hours, almost six hours, embarrassing, sometimes 4 hours, Gods Of Mars.

Virgil Finlay - Waterspider

Virgil Finlay - Waterspider

Posted by Jesse Willis