Arthur C. Clarke – SFFaudio

The SFFaudio Podcast #878 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: A Tramp Abroad by Mark Twain

The SFFaudio Podcast #878 – A Tramp Abroad by Mark Twain (15 hours 33 minutes) read by John Greenman for LibriVox, followed by a discussion. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Scott Danielson, and Cora Buhlert.

talked about on today’s show:
1880, western Europe?, France, Switzerland, mostly Germany, 6 travel books, the semi-official sequel, Innocents Abroad, 1869?, the answer is none, Paul [Weimer] and Trish [E. Matson] and David J. West, a really good book, tipped hand, the audiobook, washed over, some gaps, non-fiction, pick it up again wherever, not so much a cohesive story as a series of coorespondences, Travels With Charley by John Steinbeck, very first cruise ship, the start of modern tourism, 9 years later, in full swing, pilgrimage, requisite Grand Tour, 1878, Switzerland, the hotels, makes fun of the German language, difficult to learn, pitfalls, he’s Twain now, much more interesting, Baden Baden, from the South, exaggerations not lies, student swordfights, fraternity, young men, suspicious, still have swordfights, the swordfighting section, Otto Skorzeny, Hitler’s commando, non women at the time, all men, the elites, dueling scars, what killed off these fraternities, post-WWII education reform, people from different areas, left wing liberal, 1848, pro-limited democracy, conservative, 1960s-1980s, own events, steal the caps, a bounty for every cap stolen, much diminished, 2024, just boys being boys, 1933, epee, goggles, nose protection, went into the brain, old universities, student prisons, they still exist, German-Polish border, graffiti the students left behind, that scene is illustrated, smites, very proud of it, so you could see it, that’s why they’re doing it, showing off their manliness, Bismark in prison, writing on the wall, RACHE, means vengeance/revenge, A Study In Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle, a carving in blood or red paint, the police are baffled, Rachel, a red herring, Conan Doyle was an avid reader, where he’s stealing stuff from, stealing from Poe, how dare you compare me to C. August Dupin, very interested in foreign affairs, things outside of London, the KKK, the Mormons, A Scandal In Bohemia, guy from India, rip stories from the headlines, to Reichenbach Falls, Easter Germany, Czechoslovakia, Lichtenstein, Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands, this specific, the Bond movie, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969), George Lazenby, San Fransisco Chronicle, daily correspondence, people tuned into the newspaper everyday, what is this funny guy doing, very sequential, everything is incidents, a travelogue, a diary, bluejays for 3 chapters, whatever strikes him, local legends, the Lorelei, no nymph, no statue, the way the best understood, hilarious exaggerations, close studies, highly accurate, plays it for fun sometimes, an immensely close recreation, the next chapter he’s in France playing the second of a duel, the funniest thing you’ve ever read, the contrast between the two, a journalist, he’s playing it for comedy, choose your weapons, Gatling guns at 15 yards, attendees, apologize and hug each other, some grain of truth at the bottom, climbing Mount Blanc, all the things they bring, tobacco and beds, 138 umbrellas, mountaineering, reason to climb, outlaws fleeing the law, pay a yodeller, endlessly entertaining, stumbling around in his bedroom, a whole chapter, this is what people are paying to read, what’s so striking about it, through movies, he’s Hamburg, Germany gets its sense of identity by what Julius Caesar said about the Germans, this is us, only a united nation for 7 years, small kingdoms, dukedoms, so clean and so nice and so new, in about 2000 years, describe Switzerland to the Swiss, a foreigner coming in, everything that he writes in this book, unimpeachably true, a guy named Harris, in really fun and good American literature, Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas, a travel book, there’s no way to have that experience and be able to write about it, the aftermath of a party in a room, how it looks, what must have happened, these soap bars, journalists, cars haven’t been invented yet, the train, rafting, very Twain, a steamboat guy, Twain was a civil war officer for the South, they’re best friends, John Jakes’ North And South, anti-slavery, his unit disbanded promptly, went off to Nevada, San Fransisco, Travels by Michael Crichton, very different people, romp, tramp, a good genre, pilgrimage to Spain, the medieval pilgrimage, Anthony Bourdain’s show, quality of the narration, the street food, a vacation through the stomach, Michael Palin, Jeremy Clarkson, infamous, popular, what they have in common, the populace likes them, with airs about it, the finest restaurants, the kitchen, German coffee, chicory, a giant vat of boiling water, here’s your coffee sir, real coffee, fake coffee, malted grain, has to be imported, Heidelberg, the coffee ports, Bremen, they have to carry it by donkey, trains, a real guy, Goethe wrote a play about him, the iron hand, fight with an archbishop, he may lick my ass, this book in mind, a radio show, brief in the book, the Lion of Lucerne, carved into this cliff, this is something to see, there it is across the water, a wound in it, dying or dead, in memory of some event, to see it, a tourist destination, a kind of a secular version of pilgrimage, recreating Byron’s life, that book is inspiring, an activity, Antarctica, At The Mountains Of Madness, you hate cruises, literature, how powerful it is, there are countries created out of fantasy, Israel, Germany, the second German empire, what to include, why Austria is separate, the Prussian king, keep Austria out, weird south east European places, into modern Russia, minorities, a book set in Antarctica, Edgar Allan Poe, the act of imagination, William Dean Howells, A Traveler From Altruria, a commune, the secret is that books are incredibly powerful, I would like to go to Europe, Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Karl Mai, an early cosplayer, read for generation, hike the mountains, Kurdistan, why the obsession, why do you go to Baker Street?, a museum, destroyed in WWII, answers letters to Sherlock Holmes, humans are monkeys, monkey see monkey do, tictock dances, I wanna be a cowboy/astronaut, you’ve found your identity, Foundation by Isaac Asimov, archaeology, sociology, a chemist, Paul Krugman, Newt Gingrich, Osama Bin Laden, one of those books, it will wreck you at the right age, travel agencies and cruise operating, free copies of At The Mountains Of Madness, a few other things that are striking, the American who has the same conversation with everyone he meets, what ship did you come over on?, is this your sister?, that personality, you meet people like this, a character sketch, in the previous one, he went into a church, gave a blind woman a gold coin, steals it from her hand, that incident, visiting again, the Acropolis, broke in, climbing over fences, chasing after them, if you’re an animal, see food you eat it, read another of his books, so personable, so relatable, whatever he’s thinking, not crass, what was actually happening there, is this a prostitute?, very young girls, he doesn’t take advantage, Dorothy Quick is great, encouraged her to write, her friendship, they were friends, a really good incident, looking at a woman, how old is she?, are you 18, I’m so glad you came over, how is this person, what did you name him?, not admitting the truth at the beginning, delightful and breezy and easy, still tremendously enjoyable, laughed out loud several times, the essay on the German language, I attack them, so funny, convincing one of the guides to jump off the cliff with the umbrella, let someone else do it, a giant extended joke, how credulous can you be?, he is funny, an appendix on portiers, extinct by now, the American way, giving everybody tips, concierge, high end luxury hotels, the Ritz, Singapore, such a weird thing, still has these, New Orleans, Arthur Hailey’s Hotel, the courier, in chapter 32, courier du bois, the tradesman, this job has disappeared, find some natives, load up with furs, come back to the fort, how Canadian history works, eventual shipment to Europe for hats, not for furs, something else, chocolate coloured, still it was worth it to inquire, ask for the price, above all not to reveal, it’s a hundred francs too much, broken German, a pleasant surprise, please do not let your courier know that you’ve bought it, I do not have to pay you a percentage, 100 francs, twice or thrice, both get a percentage, getting ripped off, travel without a guide is completely horrible, the guides get lost, Philip K. Dick, the assumptions, pulling the rug out from under us, never a maliciousness, not even mean, what he’s doing, it works everytime, met the pope, there was a guide, exactly what to do, get close to the aisle, had bad seats, extremely helpful, knows all the rope, tour guides, a different name now, on the Neckar river, barge, travel within the United States, the air b&b route, a neighbourhood, living like the people who live there live, how to do the research?, people to meet, local guides, a seminar conference, looked up online, see this, see that, an uber, extremely easy, there was a book, Let’s Go Europe, Let’s Go Mexico, Ford Prefect, The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, gets a percentage, canny, a travel agent, cheap the whole way, the cheapest whatever, when the museum is free, largely replaced with online stuff, a paper map of the city, a painting in a museum, on the Rome trip, St. Peter’s, a guided thing, they hired somebody, a historian, spent the whole day there, get around, if you live in a place for a couple of weeks, vs. passing through, the ideal way of doing it, commenting on all sorts of different experiences, schoolboys fighting, get involved, white hats, how many boys fight per day, French honour, very present to whatever it presented to him, take him on a certain ride, disappointed by something, becomes very memorable, the squalor and poverty of the people, the animals, starving to death, very old, a hotel like that, it was a grand hotel, pay the full freight, it doesn’t come across as mean spirited, Edgar Allan Poe tried to start a magazine, she was rich, his hobby of a magazine, died right before the wedding, just wait, 15-20 years later, Mark Twain becomes wealthy because of the popularity of his books, being honest, a savage critic, he would scalp you, he would let you know, the guy who hated him Rufus Griswold, puffed everybody, no matter what you write you get puffed, this crypto-bro scheme of becoming writers, selling on Amazon, 20booksto50k, if you don’t play the game, to not offend anybody, completely non-offensive, the recipe for success, thoroughly entertain everybody, they thought it was bad, kept investing in things, what a great writer, his major stuff, Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, Joan Of Arc, a funny book for him to write, The Prince And The Pauper, Poe mostly wrote short stories and a lot of criticism, as a journalist, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, Cannibalism In The Cars, senators eating each other, the sense of humour, the reverence for experience and life, why do you want to go on a trip to Europe?, experiencing these things, that is what he is seeking, that delight, just the pictures, half the men are smoking, weird old-fashioned pipes, something we pass over now, the same software, there’s no electricity, there’s no electric anything, impressed by the gaslight, what happened to the hotel, entranced, the discourse on Wagner, nobody likes Wagner, you get to like it, the longer the better, serialized chapters, comes at you in waves, go out and pick specific things?, wouldn’t you pay?, they stopped hiring Mark Twain, on tv sort of, Netflix, the personality of the deliverer, also dead, Herman Goutmann, a slightly different personality, an abrasive personality, a witticism for everything, Hermann Gutmann, Dave Barry, The Ultimate Melody by Arthur C. Clarke, every wedding, Lohengrin, pyromania, opera house, sweaty, Angela Merkel enjoyed it, sweatspots, stuffy, talk about Twain for a minute, never fell anything by him that fell flat, whatever he does is super-reliable, the guy you can always turn to, there is a Mark Twain I haven’t read, every book has worked, how he came to do it, very episodic, it’s not the coherence that matters, A True Story by Mark Twain, laughing on the front porch, servant/cook/maid, there is no funniness in it at all, making fun of the maid, she’s making fun of them, that man is alive in that text, a man who’s still with us, this is a living man, Shakespeare, very excited about maybe Shakespeare isn’t Shakespeare, as Borges points out, he’s thinking about how people are actors, players, wherever Mark Twain goes he’s right there, she’s illiterate, all he does is transcribe what she said, it’s not a fossil it’s alive, reading good books, kept comparing, what it looked like in the 19th century, German and American education system, very accurate, university is very specialized, listen to lectures, more school-like today, go in line with, somewhat like this, a lot of freedom, you could not attend a lecture, it’s different now, school-track school-system, gymnasium, academic track, very well educated, more than a U.S. high-school diploma, college in the U.S., the kind he describes, ancient Greek and Latin, 1970s brutalist school, still require Latin, take Latin at school, a year from now?, Following The Equator (More Tramps Abroad), The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner, a reason to keep reading, good book, learned a lot, reduced to Huckleberry Finn man, mean true things about the German language, more John Irving and Anne Tyler, if not the greatest, Westlake, sad story, Two Much next sunday, Simak the week after, Phantasties, Travels With A Donkey.

A Tramp Abroad by Mark Twain

Posted by Jesse Willis

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

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

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

The Undying Monster

Posted by Jesse Willis

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

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

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

The Love Slave And The Scientists by Frank Belknap Long

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #870 – READALONG: Lord Of Light by Roger Zelazny

The SFFaudio Podcast #870 – Jesse and Scott Danielson discuss Lord Of Light by Roger Zelazny

Talked about on today’s show:
1967, a bunch of awards?, a Hugo, nominated for a Nebula, novelettes in Fantasy & Science Fiction, Jesse’s gonna have trouble with this one?, lotsa things, may have modeled Jesse’s mind properly, “like”, Nine Princes In Amber, pile of audio, digital pile, read by Zelazny, an author narrated book, Harlan Ellison, Lawrence Block, the Amber series, A Night In Lonesome October, good reason?, the new copyright when they reprint it, a performance copyright, he’s an excellent narrator of his own stuff at least, the guy for this was fine, one mispronunciation, Shiva, Mitra, Robert E. Howard lore, the politics, the suppression, the whole conceit of the novel, a colonization of a planet, pretend to be the Hindu gods, the whole caste system, the demons in the book, suppressing the people and running the show, accelerationism, do we tell all the people about this technology so their lives improve, if everyone is gods nobody will be, everybody on an equal footing, this way to be better than everyone else, getting reincarnated, moving their soul around to different bodies, flippin their genders, making up Nirvana, slowly working through Clark Ashton Smith and Lord Dunsany, Gene Wolfe’s The Book Of The New Sun, hard to read, looking at a super complex object, appreciate it on that level, that’s an interesting object, complex and cool to look at, obscured things, purposely not telling you things, revealing things, little infodump, really interesting, pretty well written, a style a lot of people aren’t gonna get along with, hard to model the people of the period, the least there: when he goes to a town and sees a bunch of people lined up to use a vending machine outside of a temple, a dig at religion?, is the book about religion?, in the Catholic Church, in the Church now, not with this Pope!, people in the past who have used the church for political power, what the church is, the Hindu deities, Hindu pantheon, sorta retelling things, fantasy or science fiction retelling, is the planet that these guys are playing Hindu pantheon Earth?, the answer is supposed to be no, our hero goes to a new town, how to do your prayers properly, played for humour, something smells like shit, that’d be all the shit I’m keeping in jars, new device called a toilet, backstory improving myself, playing a game with the reader, being a bit provocative, that attack Jesse is about to make, it isn’t just the Hindus, the Buddha, what analogy can I do, pick a religion that nobody cares about: the ancient Egyptian pantheon, worshiping Thoth, when did that end?, well documented, super-super-horrible, approx 1500 gods, very inconvenient, the Romans had about 700 gods, a god for every river, every day of the week, Janus, tons and tons of gods, used to control people vs. make your life better, valuable about it, it is helpful, true because helpful, the words of Jesus in this book, a Christian in the last story, a populist religion, topdownism, it wasn’t the king, eventually that does happen, stop viking, not how it started, a secret religion, contrary and opposite to the Roman empire and the Greek religion, they are controlled by their priests and scribes, you need to learn all of this magic, The Book Of The Dead, magic spells, the ancient Egyptian deep state, theocratic agencies, controlling the person at the top and everybody else, how lawyers run things, if you can’t navigate the laws, Augustus is chief pontiff, the head of the religion and the head of the state, the priests are running things, keeping the pharaohs in a dizzying state, subservient to this massive set of gods, we never get to see it from the little people’s point of view, the deep state fighting with itself, John Brennan, the guy with the mustache who wants to nuke everybody, John Bolton, thousands dying with their decisions, the worst example, I am science, Fauci, when they’re attacking science they’re attacking me, that is not how science is, that’s spellcraft, I am in touch with the gods and you have to go through to me, all mistakes, slight improvements and slight tweaks, peer review, Benjamin Franklin, jockeying between transhumanist elites, a topic of regular conversation, change your gender, become immortal, download yourself into an ai, handwavium, Fury by Henry Kuttner, elites controlling little people, interesting what he did here, looking at it the same way, an interesting object, same territory, admire a lot of the writing, mythic event stuff, Michael Moorcock with Elric, a zoomed out quality, Sam woke up at the beginning of the book, a moment remembered by history, paintings, this was momentous, we need to document this, The Sword Of Welleran, The King Of Elfland’s Daughter, a kid takes up the sword of Welleran, other statues, half an hour long, 8 hours, 350 pages, an interesting question to think about, should stories reveal character or show character growth?, the focus has swung, modern novel of science fiction, science fiction has become a setting, no character development at all, an H.G. Wells story, The Star by Arthur C. Clarke, describing the place that he’s in, not the stuff being produced today, the older stuff, you can’t be nostalgic for things 300 years before you were born, Yama, the Death God, multiple names, fighting the assassin, that entire fight was amazing, the aftermath of the fight was amazing, become Buddhist, against my new mindset or worldview, he knew he couldn’t win, profound, beautiful, good stuff, why people like this a lot, star quotes around you like, things to like a lot, oh yes, he’s doing the thing, page 239, borrow unavailable, the fresh bitten thigh of a maiden, one ought to read this subversively, if you don’t you’re a monster, I’m a Slan, no you’re not, Beggars In Spain, I’m one of the sleepless!, the enlightened one, the goddess of night, Tak the Ape, the coexistence of the animal and the divine, like Lovecraft, not the Sam part, snarkiness, smoking, in that direction, subversive, do they smoke Marlboroughs or Lucky Strikes?, treating it kinda lightly, Dick did the same, Dick is a lot like Zelazny, co-wrote a book together, a sequel to The Man In The High Castle, Dick doesn’t do series, not able to do it, super-interested in religions, writing to the Rosicrucians, instinct, too much garbage there, busy work, when you read the words of Jesus, not legends of angels, not genealogies, he never said he was a deity, perhaps some will not agree, monotheistic religions, more conducive to human value, you know who Odin is, and Thor and his brother Loki, the Marvel superheroes, the adventures they have together, they’re a lot like superheroes, The Avengers, tied up in this book in a footnote, the movie Argo, Jack Kirby, Fantastic Four, John Buscema, other artist, The New Gods, superheroes that are actually gods, instead of Vishnu and the elephant god, or the monkey god, they’re NEW gods, like aliens, when he switches to Marvel, The Eternals, too painful, why people love Roger Zelazny, the best things, massively, 24 Views Of Mt. Fuji, By Hokusai, the new five, much less complex, family oriented, very different, the prose, archaic, old fashioned, just talking to you, very familiar, the 70s, fairly direct, The Turning Wheel, eastern mysticism, eastern religion, traveling for religious purposes, controlling people, nothing good, sympathy for Jesus, he isn’t trying to sell you much, it isn’t about enriching the pockets, or putting you under thumb of someone else, harder to do today, the ability to read and read the words, the encyclical, local language, Vatican II, a good move, pro-Vatican II vs. anti-Vatican II, overall a reverence has been lost by moving it to vernacular, the posture of the priest, facing away, worshiping with us, an impersona Christi situation, South American country, the mass, people who can’t read, the magic has gone from it, a reverence for the language, Harry Potter, Our Father Who Art In Heaven, memorizing the latin, the pater noster, just sounds, a series of sounds, what the point of this is, thy will be done, they may be pretty, no intent, alluded to it, hatin on Poe, American literary critic talking to Lesley Stahl, shittin on Harry Potter, maybe it will lead to better books, go on to Hunger Games, literally better books, capable of enjoying them, take some students to go see Harry Potter movies, the spell scenes, just Latin, it sounds interesting and magical, we only partially understand, the priests in Rome doing their holy stuff, chant, music, sounds beautiful, a lot of randos, music knowledgeable, ska has no words, musical lyrics can be incredibly powerful, incredibly inane, Abba lyrics, why am I having this runaround in my head, makes you stupid, something intitally outside of you, advertizement jingles, brain colonized by Madison Avenue, The Space Merchants is a central work, Taylor Swift, numerous commentators, writes about breakups, she writes a song about it, men are horrible, Halfway to Texas, a crazy little girl, someplace new, trying to be strong, whole thing is wrong, you held me back home, this is inane, useless, if you get some benefit out it, that would be punishment, deeply grok them, too simple, lyrics do matter, Sting lyrics, stories that he tells, exceptions to be found, not everything is equal to everything else, monotheist as an improvement over polytheistic, less subject to loopholes, the definite word on this, chemistry, valances, the periodic table, its based on a reality, how they teach it in school, the supposed to be result was, you didn’t clean your test tube enough, the flame close enough, make you conform and get your marks, confidence in chemistry, metallurgy, charcoal nearby, based in a reality, actual science, macroeconomics, no progress in macroeconomics in the last 100 years, truths we won’t factor in, access to make the purse strings open or close, super-evil shit, what is my purpose here on earth, Jesus has an improvement over anybody in this book, sum up the plot of this book: this old system of the elites controlling things and pleasuring themselves – they’re evil fucks, exploiting and denying, a fantasy, an evil fantasy, it’s false, Robert J. Sawyer books, downloading yourself into a robot, make an ai sound a lot like you, chemical treatments, biofeedback, adrenochrome, it’s evil because its lies, religious trappings, people pretending, actual Hinduism, using this framework, the answer is no, the book would have hit a lot harder, a savage attack, science fantasy thing, Urth, not on Earth, uses a name for Earth, we came from this other place, what his purpose was, religions are this, nothing more than this, a really interesting take, Lord Neriti, an extremely violent dude, it’s not that Christian history doesn’t have armies in it, Sam is trying to subvert things, that Jesus speech at the end, taken into account, the words resonate, they’re powerful, back to the stupid Eternals movie, close to 3 hours or 2.5 hours, at least 10 actors, the guy with the gold arms, the guy from India, the guy from China, came to earth to stop some demons, a more positive version of this, a superhero has to fight a supervillian, fighting a bankrobber and you’re Superman, Batman has to fight an ever expanding assortment of insane people, all the horrible Marvel movies, human beings watching superheroes fighting in the sky, we become observers of these lords of immortality and bulletproofness, alien invaders, all silly and stupid, Daredevil is a little more sympathetic, maybe it’s Catholicism or lawyerness, Batman’s fairly broken, he doesn’t have, progressed to The X-Men, from an alien immortal who is invulnerable, to a guy who has no super-weapons, super-interesting, little little kid, never read comics, Green Arrow, never went to a comic shop, at the corner store spinner rack, buying paperbacks, 8 years old, when science fiction became a real thing, original Mr. Spock, Star Trek, tv guide, wake up to see that every single week, minor Star Trek novels, before that, Dolphin Island, a library in the school, an occlusion, at 8 years old, second grade, The Three Investigators, no comics, missed Robert A. Heinlein as a young person, isolated in love for science fiction, conversations in high school, a funny book, into fantasy, when Shannara started, that list of Ballantine Adult Fantasy books, craft, quality, Audio Realms, that audio version, it had music, a book on Genesis by St. Augustine, symbolism and things we lost as humanity, the Bible was our common story, a lot of them are Christians too, Marvel or Star Wars, Star Trek, see what tattoos put on themselves, money is the driving factor, should have stopped, Thunderbolts* (2025) is good, the story had an end, the end happened, Asmongold, who is that?, what is that?, skibidi toilet, these are not corporate, they might be corpratized at some point, Colbert is cancelled, The View is cancelled, on hiatus, not an audience enough for it, the advertizing revenue is drugs and health insurance?, the medium, listen to the radio, sport radio, country radio, a huge sports fans, all the stick games, all the ball games, the Cubs won, did the guy hit the ball?, The Last Inning by Nelson S. Bond, old baseball player, cut from the last team where he gets paid $5 bucks a game, wakes up in Baseball Valhalla, the games are always good, in full swing, Twilight Zone in 15 minute installments, it’s not a sport it’s a pastime, the best episode of Deep Space 9, football now has taken that over, a football game on Sunday nights, MMA, boxing, conversation at work, football is definitely king, dangerous and painful, fantasy football is huge, pickem games, bigger than any other sport, the up down thing, soccer is a bottom up thing, you can play soccer in your backyard, you don’t even need a ball, not as dangerous, basketball you need a basket, you need a rock, rocks are cheap, part of that is participatory, they played it, in the United States there’s a lot of people who really dislike it, comparative, fits American psyche, impatience, clocks, things like that, 45 minute halves, 1 to 0, why basketball is an American sport, Real Salt Lake, she is done, why do I ever want to watch this again, 3 hours of football in which no one scored, anathema, hockey with regards to soccer, a lot more dangerous than soccer, there’s fighting, NHL, a very Canadian thing, Canadian Football League, frozen lakes, see themselves represented in it, go out on the frozen lake, need a pair of skates a stick and rock, top down vs. bottom up, dressage, horse dancing, a horse, a stable, money, stableboy, saddles, riding lessons, you can’t just teach it yourself, polo, like soccer for knights, the stick is easier than the horse, a space bigger than an apartment building, common experience, could have been better had it been a short story, unless it is radically changed for this, Zelazny is a series guy, what like what we see in Amber, not 9 serfs in Amber, sword and sorcery, Brian Murphy’s favourite sword and sorcery stories, Flame And Crimson is the book, The Tale Of Satampra Zeiros, there’s a pudding, a bowl full of pudding that eats one of the guys, Robert E. Howard, Black God’s Kiss, Dragon Moon by Henry Kutter is public domain, The Tritonian Ring by L. Sprague de Camp, Fafhrd and The Grey Mouser, Ill Met In Lankhmar, David Drake, Charles Saunders, Conan in Africa basically, The Shadow Kingdom, Beyond The Black River, Red Nails, Karl Edward Wagner, at this stage of life, The Tower Of The Elephant, everything comes up except for LibriVox, so fucking broken, enshittification, well done Cory Doctorow, Mike Vendetti, just recorded The Hour Of The Dragon, 3 where he’s a king, I’m a do em all, Jesse, didn’t understand copyright, he can do it and he will do it, gets enthusiastic, Sinclair Lewis, The Broken Sword, that first novel in the Elric series, the Fritz Leiber ones are not mythic, way after, the development, Fritz Leiber reads Conan in Weird Tales, him and his friend as the main characters, taking that dungeon crawl you see in some Conan storties, a team, a team-up, D&D-splaining, the party is Tolkien, they get the fellowship, warrior, another warrior, elf, dwarf, thieves, tpk’d, total party killed, only one of them is killed, Lord Dunsany stories, really cool overlay, a sphinx, that’s awesome, he doesn’t say what he’s doing, who killed chronos, The Nightmare Tarn, The Tempter by Robert E. Howard, Howard at his most philosophical, at his most attack on the deep state, the progenitor of things like They Live (1988), really solid, weird that he’s doing kings, corruption from above, his letters with Lovecraft, civilizations become corrupt and evil, leans in and says yes, they’re evil and old and we gotta suppress this knowledge, a one way influence, his Solomon Kane stories, he’s a puritan, largely adventuring in Africa, voodoo men, this is pure evil, we must go fight it, occupy sounds somebody else’s body, here take the staff of Solomon, sort of part of my religion, a mode of that, a suspicion of magic, just fakery, People Of The Black Circle, a retelling of the Marco Polo story of the Hashashim,, reading things from 1000s of years ago, 1254-1324, a certain valley to be enclosed, every variety of fruit, most elegant, all covered with gilding, he kept at his court, 12-20 years of age, tales about paradise, just as Mohammed was wont to do, some four or six, the deep sleep, the state of stupor, delightful objects, lovely damsels, in Paradise, unwilling to relinquish, commands of their master, put death by these disciplined assassins, been exposed to the emnity of the old man of the mountain, fairly familiar, still in use today, it’s the guy who tried to assassinate Trump, evil company, super-evil, people still do this, government related, lonely needs a girlfriend, an operative paid by the government, let’s go blow up a bridge, 7 people in the van, the governor of Michigan, how do we end up doing this?, ply em with money and wine, this is how we’re told suicide bombings work, arrested, Robert E. Howard did a story on this, set in Vendhya (not India), sorcery circle, his magic is largely fake, all you have to do to survive the sorcery is not believe it is legit, a different way of doing it, fireball damage, Harry Potter wand, sumin exportorum, not getting wet, you have to play along, I’m damned, if you are not a believer, it’s an alien, kind of the same story as the book we read today, stapled to a couch for 1000 years, Howard’s a lot more grounded, The Vale Of Lost Women, a god from the outer dark, an alien, it can fly, it’s not human, not a Christian, what do these stories mean, what does it mean to wrestle with gods?, nice language he’s so good at in his poetry, less toleratnt for the stuff happens fantasy novels, a long way of getting to him being interested in this subject, playing a game with himself, readable as either science fiction or fantasy, his playing the game, starships and cigarettes, him breaking that, it depends, science fiction has rivets and fantasy has trees, science fiction that is not the same, hard Science Fiction, The Cold Equations, that’s not fantasy, a philosophical piece of fiction, we have to think about technology, most of them are completely fake, a vaccine for a disease that doesn’t exist, a spaceship that needs fuel, bootstrapped to get to John W. Campbell’s, power like it does, you can’t just magic everything away, the reason we love Star Trek II, the reason we love Star Trek III is Katras, planning, remember, double eyelids, all well and good, that’s series shit, that’s not the part we love, we set up a mechanical style problem and think about , a really awesome thread, the problem with screen addiction is we’ve always had this problem, a dialogue by Plato, The Symposium, people have always been addicted to screens, cave walls, shadow puppets, magic lanterns, illuminated manuscripts, movie screens, talkie movie screens, just like radio now with added screen, home video game screen, cellphones with screens, picture of the guy in the cave, always has been, your body comes with built in screens, when we look at a screen, early science fiction, visiscreens, they’re looking at a television, you can see the world, submarines do not have any windows, how can you navigate without windows, actually going to build the Starship Enterprise, there’s nothing in space to look at, when a romulan ship encounters a federation ship they’re both right side up, listing, it’s all metaphor, we’re told there’s tech, Day Million by Frederik Pohl, without all the religious baggage, deaging cream, get the botox, deluding themselves, technology is the reason it’s not magic, another axis to put this on, Star Trek: New Worlds, set in space, phasers, not magical phasers, dilithium crystal, the axis of bad science fiction, each individual episode needs to be judged on its own, the giant with the giant cigar, The Doomsday Machine, Kirk can do these infodumps, the writer knows, they built a weapon so terrible, they’re gone now, how do you know that bro?, in 45 minutes, an awesome idea, it works as a metaphor, nuclear weapons, it works in every direction, it is important that Decker try to blow it up, the shuttlecraft is not the important thing?, Star Trek is coming The Tempest, from Forbidden Planet, added a secondary hull and some tubes, things that look like a transporter, operates the same way visually, imagine The Tempest is a science fiction, the no Kill I episode, The Devil In The Dark, don’t kill all the Indians, very good, Spock has another girlfriend this season, some other girl, the cartoon, is it science fiction, some of it is definitely, pick an episode, everybody’s favourite, The City On The Edge Of Forever, The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, what time travel can do, the good of the many outweighs the good of the few, let that lady die, hugs Bones, it’s philosophical, how time machines work, he gives an analogy, how do warp drives, bend the paper, snake oil to get to the story, if evolution is real and things go on as they are, the workers and the effete elites, that’s him making an argument, farther into the future, nothing really matters, a crab on the beach, back to earth, love is real, our time on earth together, two different things that are going on in there, three places in time, he leaves again, is he going to go see Weena again?, she ain’t that smart, not about time travel to the past, god show out of this, Lord Of Light, The Einstein Intersection, Aye, and Gomorrah…, heard about Thorns from Jonathan Weichsel, Chester Anderson, The Butterfly Kid, exists on Amazon, hippies had a new kick from outerspace, Reality Pills, pot smoking poets and musicians, lobster shaped giants from outer space, Peter S. Beagle wrote the foreword, poet, author, and musician, underground journals, new wave movement, Ray Bradbury, his good stories are good, the pirate site, Ten Years To Doomsday, reprint in 1977, an alien invasion novel, republishment, co-authored, misclassified him, probably not a book we need, a ton of fun, standing out as not having read, A Night In The Lonesome October, super-interesting, a request, he is pretty consistent, it’s pretty short, going to wikipedia or whatever, websites memorized, 31 minutes, something to pair it with, comparing the style as well as the subject, the Brian Murphy list, Eric Brighteyes, the main character, novella length, similar length to the Howard, The Barrow Troll, a comic, The City Of The Singing Flame, capital AND, Linortis Reprise, The Ship Of Ishtar, a show from 2010, podcast 091 – Oath Of Fealty, not a good book, the number one problem, 40 or 50 people, hear the idea, at least it wasn’t a huge book, Lucifer’s Hammer, Footfall, The Great Brain, ya, middle grade books, he was really smart, your Encyclopedia Brown, exist outside of Utah?, the first house to get a toilet, charge tickets, he’s gonna invite everybody over to take a shit, making fun of his own book, Salt Lake City, a Mormon thing?, how widespread is The Great Brain, famous illustrator, The Return Of The Great Brain, real books for real children, not Edgar Allan Poe, probably worth finding a copy and looking at it, at the time it was pretty exciting, who stole my wagon?, this person has motive, the two first episodes of Bookish, the setup is pretty good, asks for backstory, we don’t know each other well enough yet, viewpoint character, spinup theories, don’t trick me bro, tried to solve the mystery, setting it up, Nero Wolfe and Sherlock Holmes, who did the murder, a little to character heavy, the UK is going strange, a rebranded itv?, bathroom, save it in a jar, getting better, how am I supposed to take this book seriously?

Posted by Jesse Willis

Reading, Short And Deep #507 – Ultimate Melody by Arthur C. Clarke

Reading, Short And Deep

Reading, Short And Deep #507

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss Ultimate Melody by Arthur C. Clarke

Here’s a link to the story |PDF|.

Ultimate Melody was first published in IF, February 1957.

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The SFFaudio Podcast #850 – READALONG: Eaters Of The Dead by Michael Crichton

The SFFaudio Podcast #850 – Jesse, Alex (Pulpcovers), and Tommy Patrick Ryan talk about Eaters Of The Dead by Michael Crichton

Talked about on today’s show:
under his real name, 4th novel, 3rd book, if it was under another fake name, Professor blah blah blah, tricky at base, a copy of the paperback, just like what he did with The Andromeda Strain, stuff on the copyright page, footnotes everywhere, verisimilitude, a document dump, subversion, see what the score is, a more difficult time, shit information, the answer you would have got 15 years ago, some terrible reddit thread, ai summary of the whole thing, full of fake citations anyway, tripped up, the afterwords, an abridged audiobook, the movie, the dwarves, it wasn’t that good, the scenery was British Columbia, we got trees they got trees, fairly good adaptation, well regarded, late at night, sent late, Antonio Banderas still sounded like he was from spain, what’s with the no beard, Omar Sharif, champion bridge player, Lawrence Of Arabia (1964), his last film, learning the language, John McTiernan, slash, Michael Crichton came in to finish the movie, a very good director, Burt Reynolds tv movie, Norm Macdonald, they had to build a lot, a lot of horses, a lot of extras, rains, not a bunch of big names, European actors, our main warrior, the translator, the main viking for us, Buliwyf, Beowulf, the first 20 minutes, keeping it hidden, another Beowulf adaptation, pretty obscure, the Neil Gaiman cgi version, what if he was a coward the whole time, the sea-serpent scene, how he swam with the sea-serpent, the culture of bullshit, a great book, so ambitious, it’s really solid, the footnotes help somehow, in the middle of a battle scene, a little bit like The Princess Bride, very different from the film, the same structure, William Goldman, maybe we should do that one, it’s fantastic, part of it is the source material, a unicorn movie, really clever, a clever idea, a bet, did it on a bet, The Saga Of The Volsungs, deeply connected to Tolkien, Tolkien’s connection to Eaters Of The dead, at what point does it become complete fiction?, after chapter 4, an adaptation of Beowulf, as witness, historical figure, nicely implied, written down by this Arab dude, you need to tell my story, this wizard lady, lady of death, it can’t be 12 warriors, it has to be 13, Gandalf having the conversation, in The Hobbit, the reluctant participant, The Red Book Of Westmarch, There And Back Again, the same story, a mountain from also which comes a dragon, slay the thing and return home again, kinda funny, it is the premise of The Hobbit, all the rich hobbits were thieves, proud of being footpads, they’re old money, robber barons, they’re just Englishmen, hilarious, an Islamic scholar, drinking the mead, having sex with the slave women, he’s choking out a lady wanting to be sacrificed, wow!, not pulling his punches, very solid book, how good is that?, is this real? all the way through, that style of writing hurt sales, an after action report, setting up the frame, not a good writer, wrote it like an anthropologist, drier versions, giving himself a pat on the back, narrated by George Guidall, his vocal quality, very matter of fact, he had fallen in love, so I’m sitting there, super-hot wife, I enjoyed her for a while, all those locks on the door, an impotent rich man, he’s so matter of fact about it, that’s why they sent me out, the asides, the telling of stories, friend of the prophet’s, bearing his slippers, the miser, big long story, that man was cursed, a Guy de Maupassant story, out of embarrassment, gets fined again, completely destitute, he stole somebody’s shoes, our narrator thought it was a funny story and nobody laughed, cursed, you had to be there (in the culture), that culture’s clash, extended, Hrothgar and his son, faithfully done in the film, accidentally on purpose, beef, fight, quality of deception that they love, deception REALLY GOOD, quashes the growing rebellion, you send for a hero, questioning his loyalty, what did Buliwyf ultimately get out of all of this, and what else do you want?, the movie improved on, it’s good, the viking prayer, lo there, now I see all my deceased relatives, the line of my people back to the beginning, where the brave may live forever, he’s become acculturated, a very good adaptation of the book, any additions are structurally helpful, very streamlined, 6 and half hours, feasible, these books are designed to be picked up at a spinner rack at a drug store, typical Crichton heist novel, very ambitious, succeeds at every measure, the small big idea that it is, made his reputation, so well told, competence of the government agents and agency to solve a chemical mystery, he isn’t a faker, all my friends write novels for nanorimo, some weird idea that I have, an insatiable market for paperbacks, a new thing next week, The Venom Business, read Airframe and report back, Congo, The Great Train Robbery, terrific movie adaptation, funny, fast paced, clever, sexy, him showing off that he can do everything, a fake scholarship novel, not science fiction exactly, technothriller, more like a Robin Cook novel, his movie version of Coma by Robin Cook, Westworld, so solidly, characters, stop repeating yourself, Rendezvous With Rama, character and the idea, Arthur C. Clarke is not a normal dude, normal human relationships, ideas, Kim Stanley Robinson, Pacific Edge, this guy is clever, 2312, 900 pages, no plot, no characters, let me worldbuild, The Silmarillion, more plot, everybody wanted more Tolkien, great worldbuilding, novels, humour, very dry, a lot of writers, successful writers, cool ideas, some of them get awards, highly acclaimed books, this could be one third as long and be way better, he’s great at short stories, The City And The Stars is an amazing book, lean into the commercial success, a disaster set on the moon, A Fall Of Moondust, a terrible novel, The Nine Billion Names Of God, Crichton didn’t write a single short story, A Case Of Need, Dealing, a drug dealing novel, Congo, Bruce Campbell, after Jurassic Park, a date movie, everybody wanted everything from him, universally beloved, kind of a problem, everything is Jurassic Park, elevator pitch, the quintessentially example, Jurassic Park, The Meg, Sharknados, Rising Sun, 1992, Sean Connery and Wesley Snipes, Japanese businessmen are horny and probably bad, maybe too late in his career, one year after the book, 14 years old, moving into high school, he was a movie hit before Jurassic Park, Spielberg’s directing, get the kids going, shorts and boots, Sam Neil, Event Horizon (1997) is a movie, intense, how long is Congo?, chunky, King Solomon’s Mines, very King Solomon’s Mines, with lasers and monkeys, him engaging, writes books with poets as inspirations, big ambitions, gonna be interesting, white apes, intelligent monkeys, a little pulpy, a little longer, Sphere was weird, you can go wrong, Timeline, State Of Fear, weird ideas, talks a lot about science, The Terminal Man, MKUltra, tin foil hat, brain implants to control people, he’s really on it, whatever he’s writing, past Jurassic Park, what happened between 1980 and Sphere, no book for 7 years, in Hollywood doing tv shows, his Travels, sex with movie stars, every year after that there’s a new book, posthumous from there, one last year, with James Patterson, also not writing his own books, his fictional post-script, they’re neanderthals, has become less crazy, 1992, more than 30 years ago now, the state of neanderthal research, Robert J. Sawyer wrote a trilogy, homo sapiens are extinct, sexuality, their females going into heat, our hero describes the culture of the vikings, they are not pederasts, the culture where he’s coming from a pederastic culture, the Greeks, the relationship to females and slave females, marriage, is your wife faithful?, of course she isn’t, they’re your sons anyway, semi-reflected in the Scandinavian culture of today, a southern European thing, lock the women up, you wife may have a child from another man, something people wouldn’t have put in their book today, full of good detail, an adventure, action packed scenes subverted, capturing the alienness, a new york journalism student, basing it on a real document, carries that through, think differently, how influential Ibn Fadlan’s, rip off whole sections, handsome Hollywood actors, shows like Vikings, slavery among the Scandanavians, the worst slaveowners, most brutal, most casual, super-widespread, just kill them, get new ones in the spring, brutal, awful, some of that in here, complete casualness, raping the slaves, so good, choking out the sacrifice lady, she seemed clear in her mind, she was into it, that you’re into it to, god they’re weirdos, they don’t wash properly, the best sort of effect, a single player RPG, you in the final scene doing something horrible, really good writing, a very moral book, he grew into something better, what made it good, here’s this historical figure who really did travel from Baghdad into north country, meat into the story, suicide path, other female slaves, a question of consent, treatment of women, good for sex, procreation, and sacrifice, weird respect for women, treat em well, two female guards to prevent her from changing her mind, character growth, in fiction, the idea of progress, morally progress, technologically progress, from bronze swords to long swords, the Japanese katana is the highest form, the same job, chop or stab, the vorpal sword, light sabers, a cavalry saber, saber doesn’t mean what they do in Star Wars, all sorts of stupid stuff, progress is a mistake we impose on a set of circumstances, there’s change, and there’s continuity, people are not different, culture is slightly different, death cults, people remain the same, an illusion, we do this in story, stories should reveal character rather than show character growth, doing a lot lift, do you even lift, bro?, he isn’t as quick, trickiness and cleverness, shifty, you can change hands, your sinister hand, nobility, this other mode of being, being a tricky bastard, why Loki as a figure is interesting, his brother Thor, wrathful and kind of dumb, H. Rider Haggard’s Eric Brighteyes is a dimbulb, he’s a dimwit, strong and young, she’s playing him the whole book, a dimmy, 14?, he’s got so many good books, really good, a lot of really good books, he was supertall, standing next to Spielberg, 25 novels, Disclosure, 66 years old, older than Eric, born in 1942, he was writing paperback, put himself through medschool, CIA?, his memoir Travels, goes to Belize with his sister, almost dies, almost dead, this urge to have sex, not acceptable, connecting it to previous experiences, world traveler, the danger is these guys are gonna rob us, the physical circumstances, lives voraciously, a viking sort of idea, horny because you almost died, a biological perspective, pretty extraordinary, chakras or whatever, talking to a cactus, the cactus is talking back, sell everything, super-open and very hidden, as Doctors in everything except completion, mysteries to be solved through surgery, you don’t give them the other option, the show ER, long hours, cockiness, treat themselves as gods, that’s no way to be, a man who couldn’t be contained, Alec Baldwin movie, I am god, Malice (1993), ~~The Bear~~ The Edge (1997), Redbelt, David Mamet, House Of Games (1987), Tim Allen, Steven Segal, swordfighting movie, Conan The Barbarian (1982), cooperative play like in Wrestlemania, that’s fake, at dinner, Horatio Hornblower, Beat To Quarters, New Orleans, Phoenix, C.S. Forester, [lembas], healing energy.

Eaters Of The Dead by Michael Crichton

Posted by Jesse Willis