Tag: Arthur C. Clarke

The SFFaudio Podcast #887 – READALONG: The Visitors by Clifford D. Simak

Jesse and Scott talk about The Visitors by Clifford D. Simak

Talked about on today’s show:
the art for one of the covers, the Del Rey paperback, a 2001 style slab hovering, fleeing, or are they running to it?, genuinely surprised, isfdb.org show all covers page, the big black slab, chances are?, the story by Clarke, this is War Of The Worlds but done by Simak, conflict not so much into it, the war part that’s missing, let’s shoot at it, twice, immediately vapourized, interesting vapourization, not oblivious to human nature, wants to minimize, the conflict exists but is repeatedly dodged, when the president wakes up, still asleep?, not quite Reagan, set in the future slightly, a space station and the shuttles are up, the Soviets have their own space station, Skylab?, repurposed Apollo, everything still works the same, functioning tech, a pretty good book, the regular humans, hated the politician stuff, why we spent so much time in there, a flawed concept, what’s so good about Simak, the personal, boyfriend likes fishing, the opening scene, getting a haircut, a “bigot”, shoots himself, look at thing I’m gonna shoot it, stopped, kinda what the barber said, your way of attacking me, gone out of fashion, racist, nazi, people say words and don’t know what they mean or where they come from, being shaped, a harsher word for something, talking like Jesse, people being programmed, making the Jesse argument, it is a weird word, it sounds harsh, it is unclear what it means, you can almost hear the French accent, what it means what it does, bi as in bicycle, the German of god, two beliefs, good for my people, bad for your people, could be religious, a synonym for being small minded, this is gonna be the theme of the book, the aliens come down, the little speech that he gives, they won’t let us fish on our land, in the context, it colours what the end is, is this War Of The Worlds, Visitor of the Worlds, visiting the Motel 6 of the universe, this image of 2001,would have been aware, even on the original serialization, the wheel in space, like sheep trying to get to the center, communal, some technology, they give birth, they hold your hand, they take you inside them, the ending and the suggestion is excelllent, the government stuff, not boring exactly, on the nose and naive, newspaper guy as a long time, wishful, very accurate, but accurate for what?, if you spend any time with people, what they’re about, the artifice is gone, just deflection, experts on these things, easy to do soundbites, hard to do 3 hour podcasts, if they read the book or not, not naive about newspapering, super-accurate, loving touches, writes the editorials, covers all the stories, the paper gets printed and he does it all again, I dont want to be a center of the news, a tree researches, a ufo kook, very reasonable, what stories like that do to people, revel in it, more painful for most (than pleasurable), the way the book works best, Ray Bradbury feeling, the third one with the shadows, very suggestive, making your mind spark up, what’s going on in that house?, a 1 star review, if you don’t resolve it I’m not interested in your book, ambiguous and then ignored, glossed over, really really great, it could be anything, found a house, made a copy of a human, it being open, much better than if it is closed, what would that mean, the dealing with the indians, the problem with the whiteman, it breaks you economy, about a redaction, they submit their last story to the government, a panic scene, drowned, get his free car, not super reflected in the book, something is free, people like free, all of Jesse’s ancestors were effected by such things, free land in Saskatchewan, I like free, economy in europe, laws against everything, go there and occupy it for a certain amount of time, at that time, lived there for a generation or so, moved west, Alberta, British Columbia, job opportunities, world wars, what they think of what will be Canada, the stories your hearing, the exact same thing, it wasn’t to vote for Democrats, your loyal to Canada, you came in under this flag, everything is so weird, get a free flying car, do they need to eat more cellulose later?, the free cars are the the gunpowder that gets you into the system, that’s what all that political stuff is about, wreck the economy, introduce it all slowly, if it turns out it wasn’t some rando, we’ll be able to communicate, as an idea, a couple of Philip K. Dick technologies, Minneapolis, a honey of a line, cold shivers up your spine, would have scared the pants off him, methodically crossed out the paragraph, too scary, not enough concrete evidence, did you see it yourself, you can’t imply that, what was the result, it topples because too many get on, that mad rush for free, free iphones!, the power of the newspaper, very soft, there will come soft rains, it’s suggestive, a mix of War Of The Worlds and Rendezvous With Rama, a show with Eric on Clarke’s first short story, 1937, Travel By Wire, a bunch of scientists playing jokes on each other, no families, very sterile, when Clarke fakes that stuff, a disaster movie as a book, Simak likes girls, he likes dogs, he likes children, it wasn’t what he wanted to write about, the sterileness is very minimal, Science Fiction Review from 1981, Sue Beckman, Summer 1981, “biologic black boxes”, little bit of Canada, the beasties are nice, used cars, a forestry student on a fishing vacation, the big momma, this writing has personality, divine their ultimate intentions, the surprise endings, a poor reason to plod, an audiobook, it can flow, consider this, disrupt commerce, invulnerable to attack, naw, a newspaperwoman, “cute”, Roadside Picnic, pussyfoot around, on target, “pest-control”, bearing gifts, contemplating a new kind of world, a new way to live in it, the classless society, post-scarcity, page 133, this may have been true, benefactors, a sub-theme, white man invades indian land, imperialism, dubious, not well developed, an interpretation, might just have well been working for the Daily Planet, spent his life in the newspaper business, cartoon characters, a bunch of deceitful knuckleheads, 1979, an entertaining short story, Simak can do much better than this, a shorter story, a novella or novellete, very proficently done, an old man’s novel, 75 in August 1979, gossip, the bureaucrats in Washington, the Washington pieces, tedious and unconvincing, come up with no ideas, they don’t add anything to the book, dithering, loose ends dangle, dissected, that’s true, rewards, generally a positive review, They Walked Like Men, disrupt the economic order of The United States, Simakian fantasy of beneficent aliens, dreamy vengeance on industrial capitalism, though hurried, a never never world, a miraculous restoration of the status quo, typical of Simak, we’ve had lengthy discussions about Star Trek universe economics, cable companies, satellite tvs, laws protecting the cable companies, what has happened since then?, impede and slow down, cut ties with cable really early, except lately, Malad, cut cable, Logan, never watched the tv, couldn’t have internet alone, keep their business model afloat, it wasn’t just internet, what internet could do, long distance phone calls, North Vancouver, Coquitlam, pay to make a phone call to my grandma, ridiculous, they would make the argument, these cable lines need to be pay for, Jesse, phone calls to everybody all over the planet, Skype Out, landlines, not everybody was, a revolution, long distance phone calls are still a thing, they don’t even try anymore, making something expensive inexpensive or free (essentially), more efficient, member when television would offer you bundles of channels, get the access, I want to watch Babylon 5, broadcast tv, involved with the subsidization of giant telecoms, only interested in getting closer to the thing without as much hassle, they don’t break down, lower the barriers to trade, making things flow, getting the things to the people that want them, physical barriers, drive a truck over there, accessibility with cost, there’s no GDP when Christopher Columbus comes over, they don’t have a moentary system to facilitate trade anonymously, the grease in the wheels, this is our resource, we’re the monopoly on trade on this, this is also the story, when these aliens come they don’t trade, supposed to be the analogy of what the indians saw, this is for export, why do you want the gold so bad, gives me status there to have this thing, we completely understand it, we’re soaking in it, baby’s first bank account, shopping cart, look at all this free stuff, a story on the internet that’s persistive and evil, stories about animals trading leaves for food, cat goes in with a leaf in it’s mouth and trades it for a fish, animals don’t understand trade, they do understand trade, make arrowheads out of coins, oh hey, living animals here, let’s look at it, examins this guy telepathically, they like cars and houses, european invaders, Simak doesn’t say this is good or bad, what if?, there isn’t any judgment by Simak on all this dithering, what killed the alien?, why did it die?, one point in the book, it was given, not ruinous to the book, supposed to be engimatic, when you read Clarke stuff, what the hell are these things, if you read the script, interact with the black things, things change for humans or prehumans, there is no narrator, my god it’s full of stars, when we’re with the regular people following along very closely, that’s not so important?, the classic of science fiction, it doesn’t kick you in the guts or in the pants, not so important, we put an awful lot of stock in this leadership and politics, the people are handling things just fine, competent people, bank holiday, shut down trade, chill out for a minute, when they get together in their evil cabals, their regular meetings, turn the economy off, to stop the spread, invited to the meetings, not my mom and pop, devastating effects, what meet call the economy, when you lose your restaurant that just makes more room for banks, a nice analogy, different technology, it’s dead on, it’s not North America, it’s the Earth, the War of the World, the conquest of Mexico, wars involved, Evan Lampe and Will Emmons, there’s no wars invovled, it’s really odd, some Europeans were granted every piece of land that drained into Hudson’s Fur, do you have an furs?, I have these pots and pans, the forts were to protect them from having the good stolen, you have trade, 54 40 or fight, we are stockholders, roll it all out, one big Canada, this colony in Red River, fill this right up, asleep for 60 years, what happened to the indians, instant things that start changing when you can get free stuff, the Hudson’s Bay Company, why this book is good, the consequences are unpredictable, “visitors”, again Clarke, Childhood’s End, no cancer anymore, a good economy, but you can’t look at it, we need your children, the fundamental earth shattering change, the gentle invaders, sumthin huge, destroy the status quo, better or worse, leading to optimism, rare, modern science fiction, Children Of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky, humanity is way out there, still fightin each other, the same systems we have created throughout history, they all fail, not do those things, communist!?, a society based on insects, they’re different, very cool, depending on the insect, her plan was to take some monkeys on a terraformed planet, assist the evolution of these beings, the monkeys died, the spiders got it, knock on the door and there’s a spider there, clearly very different, really really tremendous, 21st century science fiction that isn’t terrible, Shroud, a trilogy, and a fourth book, Children Of Ruin, sometimes rarely sequels can be good, but The Two Towers was good, one big book, the first part of the serialization, Biolog, talk about the author. J.K. Kline, 1 pg biography of Simak, 75 years ago, married for 50 years, 32 year books to his credit, Cliff[ord D. Simak] was raised in a country atmosphere, rode a horse to his high school, graduated second in his class, the horse graduated first, Minneapolis, retired reporter, an avid reader of the available science fiction, 1927, 1931, the editor’s peculiar habits of delay, World Of The Red Sun, Astounding Stories, Analog, you don’t mention the competition, on another network, Hellhounds Of The Cosmos, modern era title, Rule 18, City, Huddling Place, and Clerical Error, Horrible Example, The Big Front Yard, the surest sign, not a writer for money, you can feel it, I tackled westerns at a time I had a writer’s block for science fiction, disgusted with myself for writing them, he loves it, talking with Cirsova on twitter, these are his Oz book, a dog that’s a robot, off to see the wizard, it’s where he lives, it’s where he’s captured, Heinlein did that too, John Carter of Mars and Oz stuff, got in them early, staying young, doesn’t feel mature exactly, he’s tired, the guy off fishing, even the editor are the young Simak, a guy sitting in a room making decisions, another time he wrote for money, Destiny Doll/Reality Doll, trim this down, give us back the money we paid this for it, to underline, horrified, authors can, Smith Of Wootton Major is Tolkien’s greatest work!, not actually sinful, doing a disservice to his readers, not being true to the thing, a fine-line, written under a pseudonym, a magazine of only one author, a deceptive practice, sometimes the reason, picking it up for the first time, who to read, when one picked up, looking at those names, maybe one of those would be good, the game of reading, I read him before you did, I knew Harlan Ellison before you were born, follow that person’s career, a lot of people who amount to nothing, that possibility of finding a new great…, some doofus on twitter, there aren’t even 1000 great books of Fantasy, how many books they read this year, six really short story is more productive than reading 1 of the same length, the reason we number these podcast, for the file directory, you don’t want to miss one maybe, when podcasting first started, podcasting now mostly refers to videos, some of them are both, read some of the names of the episodes, having all the numbers is misunderstanding what the game is, even ranking, is this best Simak novel?, where’m I gonna place it, juggling them up and down the charts, definitely a good book, boring parts with people who don’t or shouldn’t matter, thrilled to do it, nice little site that someone put together: https://www.simak-bibliography.com, at this point, more to look forward to, plenty, before Project Pope, good ideas, Highway Of Eternity, Where The Evil Dwells, Michael Whelan cover, a girl who knew too much, an Oz book, a Destiny Doll kind of a book, he’s got those modes, road trip ones, non-road trip ones, The Fisherman, comin up, Shakespeare’s Planet, Madeleine L’Engle, unicorns and time travel, a report card, sounds right, Fellowship Of The Talisman, full fantasy mode, Enchanted Pilgrimage, a nice cover, we got to do these before we go the way of Shaun Standfast, a good life well lead, got to read all the Simaks, the one you were saving, wait wait I have one more!, the tragedy, next for us: Ring Around The Sun, thank you sir, on twitter, a post about Star Trek, a retweet by Jesse, something to the effect of, a review of Deep Space 9, Red Letter Media, 2 guys talking about an old tv show was more popular, they probably exist, the same people, how those economics work, a lot of fakery going on, what expensive fakery, the juggling act has been going on for a long time, Star Trek Discovery, Strange New Worlds, more tolerant of it, a Star Trek babies show, Starfleet Academy, whoever that is, stuck at home, stuck in their family nest, exciting and enjoyable, people who are a little older, mostly fake, Bruce Springsteen and Obama had a podcast, it’s fake, it’s real, there’s no demand for it, all sorts of different kinds of fake, they’re just wrong, in this book, we find money scarce, two incomes, more expenses, money is fake, for us it is scarce, in the “elites”, for example, influences, funny sad and scary, financed by billionaires, make people do things by using problems, a plumbing problem, things are like this, things are not like that, “bounties”, this set of words and certain number of hits, $5k or $7k, this private groups, through cut-outs, get people to say things for money, artificially inflated, having your numbers be high, a streamer, lots of voices with no actual human support, true for things other than politics, is it a genocide or not a genocide, fake things all over the place, the aliens know what they’re doing, a little digression there at the end.

The Visitors by Clifford D. Simak

The Visitors by Clifford D. Simak

The Visitors by Clifford D. Simak

The Visitors by Clifford D. Simak

The Visitors by Clifford D. Simak

The Visitors by Clifford D. Simak

The Visitors by Clifford D. Simak

The Visitors by Clifford D. Simak

The Visitors [to Christina's World]

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #885 – READALONG: Destiny Doll by Clifford D. Simak

Jesse and Scott talk about Destiny Doll by Clifford D. Simak

Talked about on today’s show:
a prediction, cut you off, “liked” and somewhat similar to “Special Deliverance”, Shaun D. Standfast people, stopping watching, second read, liked it even more, about a year ago, felt familiar, much more into it, one of his better ones, it’s great, some theories, what’s going on, Way Station and City, casual search through twitter, new audiobook, this is my favourite novel, that’s really odd, I like it too, even if we made a list of all the Simak writings, the top slot, really?, what is the phenomena, objectively, not particularly cohesive in terms of being an original sort of thing, Philip K. Dick, short stories vs. novels, designed to be a thing, aim at a target, which is the best Philip K. Dick novel, Evan Lampe, psychedelic feeling novels, Galactic Pot-Healer, fairly similar to this, Tin Men and Cowardly Lions, another Oz book, really spoke to people who read them at a certain age, you can’t disabuse people that those books are bad, why you can love this book, Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, the message is more of a question, what is our relationship to the artifical rather than the real?, it’s a what if?, what if America was occupied by the Japanese, mind expanding ideas, work and meaning, this is about art, your relationship to higher meaning, there’s a god, restoring the sunken cathedral, it has everything, what is it about?, I have no idea, it’s great, a starship captain, rich big game huntress, mixing of fantasy and science fiction, hobby horses, very Ozish, talking toys, don’t you say they’re robots, Star Trekish, triggered captain Kirk in me, finally found Lawrence Knight, fawning over the guy, the “tomb world”, not the person but the skull behind their face, steppin through doorways, what makes Simak so special, didn’t discover him earlier, almost no exception, he has this quality, more things in the universe than we understand, an unorganized religion person, there is a God, mythical layer, keeps appearing, appreciate it a lot, a line in here, the doll itself, Friar Tuck, like this book for some people, near the end, the captain guy, the only one left, back in the city and just thinking, philosophical thinking, they built this city, there’s something even older here, they built stuff, the carven plains of that saddened face of the doll, another race, the church-like edifice at the city’s age, the carving of the doll, the planting of the trees, that’s beautiful, this item, this art, a greater feat than all these buildings, calling out to the darkness, speak to you, old fantasies, Lord Dunsany and older, this quality, a quest novel, on a trek, a mythical quality that simak brings to the discovery, Rendezvous With Rama, a much more sterile book, an awe there, a mythical depth, it has that, they’re looking at the city, landscapes, who did this?, an emotion in here, touching something that’s transcendent, thinking for pages, he’s alone, amazing the thought that he has, pushed along by destiny, throw some facts down, kinda serialized, in one issue of Worlds Of Fantasy, Spring 1971, a note explaining it, a piece of an interview, 1978, 1971, Simak himself, the problem with Destiny Doll, a companion magazine, Worlds Of Fantasy, condense Reality Doll, cut it half and ruined it, what had had to be done, nominated for a Nebula, Destiny Doll was never nominated, interesting note, strictly for money, Westerns, spent the weekend reading them, cowboys as heroes, other people out west, I had things to say, 1949, this genre he’s writing, 5 fingers on it, Shakespeare’s Planet, whatever qua means, guy, girl, robot, weird monster, alien planet, no plot, roll the dial back, The Fisherman, plot driven telepathy, magic is real, the tin, man the cowardly lion, the scarecrow, an alternate dimension, they stop at an inn, they meet some creatures, some possibility of danger, quickly dispensed with, Simak is against conflict, where’s the conflict, the neighbours are a bit worried, spying on him occasionally, gets out the laser gun, centaurs, thousands will die, dude chill, the superior version according to Simak, unless included in anthologies, huge difference, one would presume, Lester Del Rey’s title, turns toward the Philip K. Dick aspect, shifting realities, Small Town, making changes to reality, outside the borders of his yard, the little model of it, takes out the bars and puts in libraries, look at this objectively, meet the characters, the blind guy and Friar Tuck, hobby horses run up to them, let’s go, suspicious, they go elsewhere, customs inspection, some gnomes, chapter 2 is the backstory, our Han Solo style roguish, back to our planet, that’s the whole book, adventures continue, they never leave back to go to earth, similar scenes, Cemetery World, the building are all white, robots, telepathic rhyming robot, what is this if not, the Final Frontier, checkbox, Shakespeare is in here, maybe she has a tattoo, check, religious elements?, check, strange planet, check, a place people go to and don’t return from, they’re all dead, Humans leave earth, dog starts to arise, The Faithful, religious elements, revisits, refines, The Visitors, Project Pope era, this is Simak, a lot of writers don’t have that, this is a Clarke novel, the perversity, got to put his perversions in there, you didn’t know I was a nudist?, let me drop some nudism in there, theses, at some point in every novel that’s a good novel the novelist reviews his own novel in the text, chapter 3, chapter 23, chapter 24, the DAW paperback, not synchronicity it is special attention, near the end of Chapter 3, the dune was no longer there, in it’s stead was silence, an insane crying, my friend is back again, super mysterious, the whole purpose in their journey, a venus fly trap, a honey trap, ships that come to this planet do not leave, is this God?, is this the sweet call of death, unusual for a Simak character, aggressive and yelly, shut-up!, that silly sickening look of ecstasy painted on his face, a creature from out of the desert world, that night that had lain over the white world, blocked out, no sign of the hobbies, earlier in the chapter, all good stuff, reading text, near the end of chapter 23, page 177, wispy filaments, wind whispered overhead, campfire smoke, something was chuckling softly to itself (that’s Simak), Shakespeare?, had it been Shakespeare?, how had Roscoe known of Shakespeare?, carried his knapsack, Shakespeare is a book, actual Shakespeare you have to read the actual Shakespeare, writing with an outstretched finger, also Simak, here’s the review: blue and high, stars ahead, and blue, blue laughter, think unhard, slowly I picked the words apart, blue foreverness, runners after nothingness, talk is nothingness, nowhere comes the answer, it was gibberish, worse than gibberish, the gibberish went on, page 52, far is distant, neither short nor long but deep, no stick to measure with, purple leads to nowhere, there is nowhere to lead to, to prevent the pages getting out, strange enchantment, Midsummer’s Night’s Dream, even if she knew, page 181, near the bottom, totally unintelligible, an utter moron, why my thesis is so true, laughing at himself, seemed to make some sense, blue and purple knowledge, all spectra of knowing, lonely planets, far lost in space, in the blue of time, trapped it is, a time of golden harvest, another tomb world, great orchards of mighty trees, down at the city, up at the city, the whiteness of the sky, the whiteness of the ships, as other planets soak in the golden sun, seeds trapped with knowledge, fruit is many things, sustenance for the body and the brain, it ripens and it falls, nonsensical rambling, thinking about his own thing, you can’t have that it the short story, a short story is like a device, like a pencil sharpener, it can be elegantly put together but it is not a dress, … a novel is like a wedding dress, why their stories suck, why does this guy have 6 brothers, the best stories, 1 character is enough, 2 is more than enough, in order to write a Simak novel you have to have a bunch of character, squid alien, Hoot, seems like a threat, immediately not a threat, are we not friends?, I sucked the poison out of you, what is he doing on this planet, we needed a cowardly lion, the man behind the curtain in the end is always Simak, let’s go, another Oz adventure, a formula that works, sit around a campfire, gets angry, calms down, a group on the road somewhere, one guy and a mystery, The Canterbury Tales, very similar to a lot of Simak, people on a pilgrimage, progress down the road, it’s ancient, told 1st person, and yet, when people disappear they disappear from him, lots of quest books, Nebula Grand Master, one of the fist ones, audio at an awards, dentures, 1977, a Stoker Award, Fritz Leiber, Frank Belknap Long, 1987, died in 1988, The Grotto Of The Dancing Deer, Hugo, Nebula and Locus, an early start date, before everybody, Murray Leinster, first short story, The Cubes of Ganymede, Campbell rejected it, many such cases, The Cosmic Engineers, Empire, a LibriVox version, not terrific, Project Mastadon, Mastadonia as the novel, Grotto Of The Dancing Deer and The Big Front Yard, when doing multiple stories, contrasting authors, H.G. Wells vs. Robert E. Howard, Conan vs. Conan Doyle, The Adventure Of The Cardboard Box, the one story that’s more interesting, they both have merit, having contrasting food, some real salty fish, some sorbet, completely, sherbet, sorbet, playing with ai (Gemini), notebook LM, 9 Simak interviews, ask questions, source documents, to make a podcast, one of the options, what it is useful for, a learning tool, make me a podcast and focus on his religious views, the NPR people, more interesting than good, people learn that way, ancient Greece, some aspect of ancient Greece, food in ancient Greece, educational mentors, BC Civil Liberties guy, [John Dixon] advisor to Minister of Justice, promoted to Prime Minister, politicians are good at shaking hands, they’re not geniuses, getting elected, they need smart people who know how to understand the world, all of them have them, dumb people as their advisors, he was not dumb, thoughtful, good taste in movies, write up something, write up a paper advising, busy gladhanding, what should be done, what should your policy position be, they’re not people, solve a bank problem for me, they’re untrustworthy, you don’t know who they are, a super racist Robert E. Howard story The Last White Man, a race war story, collaborated with the Asians somehow, one last man on the hill, as a man in a racist world, go max on Irishness, they say great things about it, there’s no sense of how stupid it is or how funny it is, no personal reaction to it, all the worlds associated with religion, a large language model, grey NPC character, that’s true of these products, which is Clifford Simak’s best novel, it really spoke to me, not what the tool is for, is Simak a religious person, testing this tool, list things that he talked about, here’s where you find that, a position paper, people are doing that right now, use data in some way, this group rated, Goodreads, pointing to the Shaun Standfast show, every book on Goodreads is 3.6, no one has read, the finest book I’ve ever read, modern stuff, it’s a thing, picking 4s, 4.5, gamified, to read a 3.5 would be absolutely not, movies and tv shows that are new, bots, work on the show, the corporation itself, there can be a rerelease, the same on utube, likes subscribers, in the end, I like to read Simak, he seems to reward me, I believe it, John W. Campbell, overrated, shit on him right now, good at coming up with ideas, go with Simak, go with Donald Westlake, part of their equations, the only other time, a journalist, a newspaperman, many such cases, strictly for money, pumpin em out, sounds familiar, feature length, super well produced documentary, Linotype, the business of paper and ink, answers so many weird questions, tears books apart, little marks beneath the page, an artifact, publish coordination mark, very kind of key, trays, electrical, you type a letter, a tray full of dies, negative dies, every line of the column, page 83, one column across, all a magazine styles with two columns across, this is the amazing thing, the letter that got inked were made of lead, the letter as you need them, every size every comma, that makes a slug, lead castings, same lead bucket they came from, like a printer that prints one line at a time, astounding, incredibly complex, the kinda training that nobody else will ever get again, just happened to come at the tail end of it, no demand for it, xeroxing, this is what made newspapers possible after the time of Benjamin Franklin, changed the world of knowledge and knowledge production than anything else, the machine the size of your kitchen, it’s big and you sit at it, hot lead spurtin out of it, Pay For The Printer by Philip K. Dick, a being from another planet, it copies the cup, very tired, the colour is faded, for making newspapers, every newspaper had one of these, technical people, superinteresting, people who run trains, not this job, bigger, every city that had a newspaper, every book publisher, guys, Mr. Pulpcovers, how well produced, I watched the whole thing, nice to learn things, thank you, a happy new year and merry xmas and a bruiseless boxing day, go Cowboys, which team is kicking the ball better, some kicking, throwing, running, some carrying, can you make a novel out of it?, some deeper purpose, too fun, cheerleader with a tattoo on her breast, collected fiction, spread out his best stories, sell em all, kindle, audio.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Reading, Short And Deep #527 – If I Forget Thee, Oh Earth… by Arthur C. Clarke

Reading, Short And Deep

Reading, Short And Deep #527

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss If Forget Thee, Oh Earth… by Arthur C. Clarke

Here’s a link to the story |PDF|.

If I Forget Thee, Oh Earth… was first published in Future, September 1951

Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!

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