The SFFaudio Podcast #731 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Badge Of Infamy by Lester Del Rey


The SFFaudio Podcast #731 – Badge Of Infamy by Lester Del Rey – read by Thomas Rose for LibriVox. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the novel (3 hours 20 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants include Jesse, Paul Weimer, and Tony De Simone.

Talked about on today’s show:
a short novel, half of an ace double or a maga books double, on LibriVox, The Sky Is Falling, aces are Dos y Dos, children don’t even what a paperbook is, two books in one, the Tor doubles, a better gimmick, a problem for shelving, two covers, makes the book shorter, written pretty quickly, science fiction vs. quasi-fantasy, a three hour drag, a one hour drag, the topic is interesting and topical for today, interesting worldbuilding, the role of government and quasi-government entities, Heinleins, people on Mars, the inexplicable girl falls for him (she’s his wife!), she falls for him all over again, a terrible harridan, they like each other again, I don’t hate you anymore, a strict bossy or belligerent old woman, Ethel Merman, is that how she is?, Doc Feldman, negative character traits, a perception thing, the mores of the time, the pattern, write women this way, let’s examine, a caduceus on the sidewalk, he’s a bum, fifty cents, 2100, generous, he’s bitter, the reason that all happened, a flashback to a weird hunting incident, accidentally shoots himself in the chest, very suspicious, a mechanism to defrock him, the ethics, sustained in practice, politics, a corrupt union, anti-union sentiment?, if you’re not super-rich, define our terms, if you have six houses…, the .1 percent, get on your plane and fly, the outcomes are worse, is that the fault of the medical lobby?, in our reality, the drug lobby, the American Medical Association, a medical doctor, practicing medicine, herbalists, surgery, my kidney really hurts, charged with a crime, laws being weaponized, abortion clinics, restrict abortion, it’s not in the book, anti-union?, thinking of it as a union?, the lobbies, the most interesting parts of this book, it’s the world building, a story set in that world, the idea of a frontier and having had a history where two big lobbies control the United States, the space lobby and the medical lobby, other lobbies, the PR lobby, is there a public relations union?, admit members, the U.S. Bar Association, guild, being anti-guild, Del Rey excoriates, stuff on the ship, getting radiated, terrible for society, the name of the book, a badge mentioned, he’s had his badge taken away, his badge is being a pariah, a grey suit, he had to have taken it with his ticket, sloppy writing, a sloppy suicide scene, notoriously a fast writer, Space Pariah, a stupid title, an interesting place to search, a free-floating phrase, did something dishonorable, a badge of infamy, freedom is heady stuff, you can’t acquire a taste for it second hand, anti-authoritarian, afraid of the tyranny of the bureaucracy, a negative effect on the world, why did he try to kill himself?, against the policy of the lobbies, being encroached upon, you have to have a taste for freedom, recent events, recent politics, I see the rise of authoritarianism, do people want to be free?, we want both, “them”, screw those people, the demonization of the other, those eggheads, standing at the top of the dungheap, I’m going to pull him down with me, an undercooked U.S. Revolution against the British Empire on Mars, a whole plot going on that’s boring, the villages are fomenting rebellion, FREEDOM!, the have brackiweed, the solution to the problem, kind of convenient, huh?, positive portrayals of smoking, Tolkien approves, they do it because they enjoy it, a fantasy a smoker might have, a defense of smoking, a government conspiracy to keep us from having fun, womens groups, temperance, a puritanical streak, in Iran, not wearing their clothes right, your hijab is not tight enough, people not liking other people wearing their mask on the chin, even outdoors, an extremely crowded place to see fall colours, close proximity jostling, during COVID, over now?, just quoting the president, in this matter the president of the united states is an ass, in 7 months, talking with Eric (S. Rabkin), some grocery store clerk, did the kid not know?, the most autistic person on the planet, the girls and women in Iran wearing the mandated headwear, space virus, being more holy, some people wear masks as a way of protecting themselves, in their car while they’re alone, they’re so lazy, some people like wearing masks, it’s freeing, sunglasses, they’re hiding, they’re cool, man, people can’t see your eyes, they can’t know your real feelings, the Murderbot series, a robot programmed to be cool, watching a lot of TV shows, their governance model, the plot doesn’t allow it, Luke Burrage and Julianne, we feel for this character, people projecting into the robot, explain it to me like I’m hyperautistic, some people would like to be that robot, a lot of evidence that reading helps support the growth of empathy, maximum empathy, Parable Of The Sower, feel people’s pain, back to our brackiweed story, they’re not like normal union, it requires that you join it, training required, abide by its rules, the lobby controls things, a union works for a larger institution, directed at Elon Musk, would you consider yourself the founder of the Space Lobby, he’s read science fiction, I want to be the head of the space lobby, start thinking about it that way, the lobbies are essentially a part of the government or control the government, taking on government functions, tendrils, more of a corporation than a union, the lobby that is not mentioned, very topical, the military , Raytheon and Mcdonnell Douglas, promoted tweets for the F35, 10 times, organized special interests, the mob, the hoi polloi, third arm of government, the old farm lobby, big farmers, little farmers, the farm vote, foods and crops, corn syrup, the corn lobby, Sprecher root beer, the last of the great lobbies, last in development, the funny way he writes, probably, who’s this narrator, Stephen King does stuff like that, grew up so fast, Russia, the first hunk of metal above the atmosphere, a myth of national prestige, sputnik, NASA, the aircraft industry, war or threat of war, a few sharp operators, subcontracts, spread profits so widely, lobby block, the first mention of recession, a continual war since WWII, Linda Nagata, the economy will tank, presidential veto, The Red, defense contractors, video on the oversight of the banking industry, they’re having a very cordial meeting, she’s going to be leaving us and going to join you guys, I hope you take care of her, her father already works for us, the men placed in government agency came from its own ranks, a medical lobby, conservative group, treatment and payment, a long series of retreats, “socialized medicine” is gonna fuck up the medical system, government spending, doctors working on a fixed fee, competence no longer managed much, as exemplified by the lobby, pretty subtle, quality vs. quantity of care, a thesis of the book, why our hero is kicked out, a tightly held belief, running up the national debt and the quality of healthcare will go down, if you look at neighboring countries, your conservative friends are factually wrong, without money involved they won’t be inspired to do anything, it could decline (eventually), its possible in the distant future, the experiments running for the last 50 or 60 years, Cuba, one of the poorest countries in North America, preventative care, not the evidence so far, there is a waiting list for a lot of stuff, you have to wait in line in the States too (unless you’re really wealthy), stuck with the system they’ve got, a lot of propaganda from the PR lobby, the focus on preventative treatment, spend extra money, local block doctor -> community clinic -> local hospital, you couldn’t have Breaking Bad happen in Canada, except for the fantasy of the blue meth, one of the hardest things about that show, fucking up your kid’s life, lying to your wife and getting divorced and fucking up your kids future, a big point of the show, a morality play, Better Call Saul, what’s ethical and what isn’t, dying of cancer, very reasonable, to make drugs that people want, murders happen because of it, that show can’t happen in Canada because its implausible on the surface, you might have to move, go down to Winnipeg to get treatment, hospital jets, very American, if cellphones are involved, for movies especially, horror movies, it took a worldwide plague, the plague began in old china, a few madmen planning to conquer the world, it might have been a laboratory mutation but nobody could ever prove it, COVID most likely did start in a lab, no it did not, it did not start in a lab, Jesse, deny facts, look into, not a biological weapon gone wrong, the unfortunate nature of virulent disease in the modern world spreading like wildfire, a matter of contagion, monies going to the lab doing gain of function research, lab leaks happen a lot, a movie book plot, right out of this plot, a narratively disorderly way, those evil Chinese, wouldn’t it be evil if it was, most plainly not, political purposes, a political effect, conspiracy theorists with a political agenda, highly conservative, doing it on a podcast right now, those guy in that bar in Philadelphia, It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, it wiped out two billion people, an obscure scientist found a cure before the epidemic hit America, the plot of this book, foreshadowing?, a pariah, Rutherford Ryan, America ran it, the bad writing again, what is the it here?, the world?, America runs the world, the two effectively ran the world, none of the smaller lobbies could buck them, as under the Roman Caesars, false democracy, a man belonged to his lobby as a serf belonged to his feudal landlord, abide by standards and practices, equates to serfdom, end of the first chapter, Christmas in the year 2100, wrong about a lot of stuff, plot that happens, prescient, thought provoking, kind of a bad book, Deeper Than Darkness by Gregory Benford, Lester Del Rey, Faith Of Our Fathers, Helen O’Loy, two dorks making a girl in their basement, the original Weird Science (1985), uplifted dogs and gorillas getting together after humans have died off, outdated, she’s a very mechanical lady, an ideal woman from the 1940s, she cooks and cleans and loves you, nagging, The Faithful, he read The Island Of Doctor Moreau, way down the road David Brin said hold my beer, he gets to the point and doesn’t linger over it, clunkily written, he compliments her quite a bit, suspicious of her, her face was shocked, Forget it Chris, you can’t find a man strong enough to rule, in relationships, it didn’t work on Earth, what could be done with a new planet, their relationship is like the divorce between Earth and Mars, Earth is dependent on the brackiweed, those are the dreams that made a mess of the old one, second hand brackiweed smoke, trends and forces over time, besides once you get back to Earth you’ll forget what happened here, what she could have been, research, what else?, they were researching together, she’s a doctor, she’s royalty in the Medical Lobby, him breaking one of their rules, some Tibetan plateau, bystander laws, if we’re operating properly, ideal conditions, sued for any reason for any time, medical malpractice, if you’re the wife or husband of the most powerful person in the medical lobby, very simplistic, if we had never found, more plausible, when he’s in the flophouse, he needs the massage and the hot water, getting whipped, authoritarian for sure, if you break one of the lobby’s rules, The Space Merchants by Frederik Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth, the PR lobby dystopia, Coffeeist, floppy, if you cross the lobby, addicted to three different substances, that book is funny, this book is humourless, Star Surgeon by Alan E. Nourse, somebody has confused this book with that book, it’s not a juvenile, Little Fuzzy, cute fuzzy aliens, boring adults, young people learning the ropes, smoking, Dal Tigmar, earth medical school, interstellar emergency, good at medicine on Earth, specialist, uniformed, the grey uniform, pediatrics, exobiology, making jokes, pink for gynecology, brown for proctology, fun but silly, empathize with a semi-humanish alien, 1959, Sector General, James White, medical alien space things, Machine by Elizabeth Bear, interested in biology, electron microscopes, the triheaded thing, the disease from earth, measles, some background for this fake medical disease he’s curing, Jesuit bark, quinine, the same idea, PR lobbies from the early 20th century, advertising for smoking, the back of any slick magazine, medical benefits, some cases (edge cases) where the effect of smoking tobacco is not wholly bad, coffee, detriments, shakier, more nervous, keeps you awake, pee more, smoking makes you poo?, would explain a few occasions, pipe tobacco cigars, when you dig down deep into medical history, poisons are medicines, mercury, its terrible for you, water can drown you (misapplied), skillful that he puts it in early enough, enjoy smoking, old school sci-fi writers, tricked by that, not fully thought through, synthetic food vs. real food, we have a lot of synthetic food now, replicator sense, processed and artificial ingredients, people cooking real food, Sisko and Riker, like people like riding horses, a few real books in his office, status symbol, the office is the status symbol, real unreplicated food is slightly better, a prejudice or a real thing?, they never say: this is better for you, he’s prejudiced, always the same, slightly different, chocolate ice cream of number 67 flavour, AI program with the same recipe, Chrisopher Pike is also really into cooking, cooking in space, replicating the ingredients, a giant egg, replicated blankets, a gift of an egg, taste better, when Riker is cooking or Jake is cooking with his dad, Eric Rabkin talks about food in science fiction, food is love, we are on the same team, I love you as a parent loves a child, nourishing, the ritual of love, they want to spend time together, stimulant, enjoying the act of dishwashing, a novelty, an experience, electric dishwashers, pass them the dish rinse it off, drying rack, social, two strands of food, synthetics are the cheaper kind, outside the snow was still falling, no work shoveling snow, stolen the guy’s boots, if he’d had socks, synthetics, he’s hungry, a real meal on synthetics, scavenge something edible (dumpster diving), he clutched the quarter and turned to look , to which his metabolism had been switched, there’s two classes of eaters, real food, synthetic food, adjusted to synthetic (because he’s poor), this is a class thing, prescient, processed foods are way cheaper, go shopping for bread, imported foods must be listed too, manipulate terms, savvy, monosodium glutamate, plant cell walls, either of two forms, isomers, either form was digestible, the isomer to which it was adjusted, processed food, once you’re on sugar it’s hard to get off sugar, Martian plants produce different isomers, really confusing, an enzyme that could handle either isomer, the cheapness of synthetics, fudging the science a little bit, milk has additive, cereal additives, energy drinks, decaffeinated coffee, Tom Standage, a good writer, a good researcher, a bad magazine, urine and caffeine are closely related, Fritz Haber, some major role in the disease too, the red herring that wasn’t, specific point, an Earth meal and a Mars meal, if you eat the wrong one…, the food lobby in the United States is causing people to get fat, processed foods, fatter and fatter, The Dorito Effect by Mark Schatzker, hacking people, good takeaway, desert towns had joined, unmanned rockets loaded with atomics, demand surrender, he and Chris had put in every spare minute, that would be the montage, normal food, a handful of people, 80 of Earth’s population ate synthetics, synthesize normal food, 20% in a powerful lobby, the richest part of the United States is the communities around Washington, D.C., where the lobbies do their lobbying, don’t eat that we make that, I only manufacture that for the poors, a cynical view, the dentist who also owns a candy store, Mark Zuckerburg, Meta world is designed to increase that interest, Second Life was interesting but it wasn’t good, another Lester Del Rey story, an interest in medical stuff, The Science Fiction Hall Of Fame Volume IIA, Nerves, still a good story, a more coherent way, by modern standards, a medical thriller, his impact on science fiction, an editor, a reviewer, his wife too, a half handful, Police Your Planet, Preferred Risk with Frederik Pohl, insurance in the future, why is insurance a topic for science fiction?, read more, he doesn’t take two years to craft anything, written at a furious pace, still has value, the experience of reading it, wrong about a lot of things, right about a lot of things, in real life, Doctor Kevorkian?, Christopher Duntsch, our guy’s a hero in the book, out of genre examples, geology, Galileo, [Alfred Wegener], handwashing for doctors, corpsey hands, a good way to cause people to die, Mr. Lister, Lavoisier?, Robert Malone, super-negative headlines, false claim, the development of MRNA technology, Pfizer and Moderna, produce the spike protein, an early skeptic about the effect the MRNA vaccines would have, Wikipedia is the website that anyone can edit, his listing on Wikipedia, he is not one of us anymore, attended several conservative conferences, the “sponsored by Pfizer” supercut, holding patents, they’re turning him into a piriah, he’s not invited on TV anymore, the drug lobby vs. the medical lobby, the military industrial corporations, what gets served to people at the grocery store, pretty good for a guy from the 1950s, lesser examples of science fiction, genuine science fiction, Ted Chiang, cold and clinical vs. rough and smokey, emotional but clinical, blue colours, a science fiction approach, Robert E. Howard’s style is muscley, Lovecraft, languorous, Asimov is jokey, Lester Del Rey is smokey and clunky, William Gibson is cool, non-fiction by Del Rey, a history of science fiction, a good book, New Wave science fiction, style over idea, he’s doing science fiction, setting a story in a science fiction universe (its in the future), about idea, the lobby idea, the core of this, stodgy science by having a big powerful medical lobby, the F-35, the new Top Gun movie, Jesse likes movies, F-18s, very expensive, orders of magnitude, F-22, F-14s, we need the thing that will work for the film, not showcase the technology?, its product is bad now, maximizing profits vs. maximizing benefits, intellectual property vs. helping people, the fentanyl crisis, sell max product, heroin, now you can’t use it any more, ivermectin is out of patent, Rachel Maddow and Rolling Stone, a story from August, fake stories that get spread around, official license from the government for broadcast, the bluecheck system (on twitter), the FDA gets funding from corporations, jobs in the industries lobbying the FDA, not viral enough, so depressing, constant lies all day, a comic strip, survive everyday, what effect it has on you, the poodle industry, more homeless poodles, dogs that need homes, abandoning pets, everything effects everything else, you have to inject this shit into your body, blood clots caused by the vaccination, look at the record, not true, they were lying, hoping, before they changed the definition, those clips are there, they don’t have their YouTube accounts deleted, this is how we sell it, most people are too busy, while you’re not paying attention they’re fucking you, good luck with that, born as a rich kid, the provincial premiere gets cancer treatment at the same hospitals, hesitant to take a chance, Paul got his 5th shot, a near death experience, paying attention when people get hurt, vaccination injuries are real, they seem to be ineffective, Cinnamon Sam, Coleman, Lexy-Lou, make some babies, Lake Norman Humane, cat trap, why am I in this cage?, a domesticated cat, lack of food security, a new cat owner again, you’re appreciated, Pursuit by Lester Del Rey, exploding cats, how can this not involve aliens, entertaining description, Dale Grothmann, only a two hour commitment, Black Priestess Of Varda by Erik Fennel, Nudist Camp by Orrie Hitt, The Pink Panther (1963), Lawrence Block, The Black Stranger by Robert E. Howard, he’s really good, A Night In Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny, Edgar Allan Poe, Blaze by Richard Bachman, The Cosmic Computer by H. Beam Piper, Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain, narrated by a dog, interior illustrations, Gahan Wilson is an acquired taste, The Starmouse by Fredric Brown, they make good microphones and good monitors, business practices and stinginess, premium materials, a true mono, the PDF page, The Clock That Went Backwards by Edward Page Mitchell, Back To The Future II (1989), a grandfather clock, New England, it’s a time machine!, the Netherlands, spawning the line that creates themselves, 1881, before everything, “All You Zombies”, super-creepy makes it good, The Monster Maker aka The Surgeon’s Experiment by W.C. Morrow, doing bad stuff in there, an illicit doctor, he’s a pariah, full circle, euthanized, he has some theories, super-scary, turned into The Hulk, becoming more primitive, no eyes and no ears and fed through a straw, a super scary horror science fiction story, 1887, a Victorian era science fiction story, published in a newspaper, At The Earth’s Core by Edgar Rice Burroughs, reading with your eyes, reading aloud, monks copying books, some house is on fire, the Mad Tea Party, Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland vs. Alice’s Adventures Under The Ground, the mad hatter, the Gribcast, David H. Keller, Futurama’s “snu snu” episode, The Little Husbands, a comedy piece, Amazon women, dress them up like little dolls, they could use them as dildos, implied, out of context comics, the writer’s barely disguised fetish, he was a psychiatrist, designed to be entertaining, male female relationships, sexual dimorphism, a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode [Angel One], Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Sweeper Of Loray by Robert Sheckley, a Sheckley expert, he’s different sometimes, Mindswap, Immortality, Inc., The Status Civilization, Dimension Of Miracles, what happened to John Hodgman?, he was the PC, The Daily Show, Coraline (2009), more Sheckley is always good, a novel by Sheckley, a contest, too many fucking Draculas, which racial slur?, cancel stamp, nobody cares, Olaf Stapledon, science fiction but not a novel, The Silmarillion isn’t a novel, legally they have to call it a novel, other fiction types, making an argument that’s supportable, Jesse is unpickable, Odd John by Olaf Stapledon, 194 pages, John Wyndham, A World Of Sound, a guy goes to the opera, falls asleep, has a dream, a musical world, Jesse’s analysis of it is beautiful, Paul won’t play Jesse’s don’t understand reality game, some things you can’t talk about, sometimes you have a really good show, a metaphor that makes the story better, Peter And The Wolf, pop star lyrics, its art but its not drama, Gustav Holst’s the planets, the new Bill & Ted movie, George Carlin, Rufus’ daughter, Gravity Falls, What We Do In The Shadows, Bogus Journey, nostalgia attached, saved the world, that’s your philosophy so much, one of the few things out there, music is dangerous, music is used to manipulate and control thoughts, expressing emotion, reading had a lot to do with it, read a lot more poetry, Ursula K. Le Guin’s poetry, The Next War, Deep In Earth, Shel Silverstein, Lovecraft made fun of one of his friends, a poem as a wedding speech, Strephon And Chloe by Jonathan Swift, no mortal race, such cleanliness from head to heel, no noisome whiffs, squat on her hams to make maid’s water, this goddess walking the Earth, cut to the bedroom, giggling, Jonathan Swift’s advice: 1. don’t drink too much beer or tea, 2. you have a special responsibility to the person you’re married to to not disabuse them of the ideas they have about you, reaches under the bed and puts something under herself, American Gods, eats him, she’s peeing into the chamber pot, a man’s job is to ignore women not being creatures not from heaven, its a woman’s job to not make them think that they’re not, The Hunting Of The Snark by Lewis Carroll, Mark Twain, this dangerous jingle, a plot point in The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester, a defense shield, ads, words control you, judo flip, if you don’t know this word you’re subject to this word, Babel-17 by Samuel Delany, language works as a weapon, Luke Burrage, too New Wavey, mid-period, his early stuff, Embassytown, The Dispossessed, the things that matter are locked, the things that don’t matter are unlocked, dispute the propaganda, Jimmy Wales is always begging, weaponizing facts, citations, a slightly better reputation is bad news, the wild west, academic research, a good starting point, academic papers are garbage, extra super nerdy, tons of these fake papers, American education vs. Canadian education (all one big evil family), Aye, and Gomorrah, a revisionist take on Scanners Live In Vain by Cordwainer Smith, not doing it for style, reaction against, we’re leaning into this shit, generally true, overlong, literary, the opposite of Lester Del Rey, a low tolerance for pretentiousness, Ursula K. Le Guin doesn’t show off, David Brin is not a supergenius (he’s okay and bad), so hit and miss, a period of science fiction where people were throwing crap at the wall, interesting, C.M. Kornbluth’s experiments are interesting, had he lived longer and written more Science Fiction, having co-written a famous book, bigger than Harlan Ellison, novels are really important for making him, nobody reads Harlan Ellison novels, he didn’t write science fiction!, Ray Bradbury makes a better case, lyrical spaceguy, a weird guy, reappraise Ray Bradbury, he wrote too much, nostalgia, anti-nostalgia, good short stories, as a percentage?, The Martian Chronicles is 1/80 of his output, The Toynbee Convector, four titles for one story, A Literary Nightmare.

Badge Of Infamy by Lester Del Rey

Badge Of Infamy by Lester Del Rey

Badge Of Infamy by Lester Del Rey

Badge Of Infamy by Lester Del Rey

Badge Of Infamy by Lester Del Rey

Badge Of Infamy by Lester Del Rey

Magabooks - The Sky Is Falling and Badge Of Infamy

ACE DOUBLE - Badge Of Infamy by Lester Del Rey

2 Complete Novels By Lester Del Rey In One Book

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The SFFaudio Podcast #689 – READALONG: The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #689 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, Maissa Bessada, and Trish E. Matson discuss The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham

Talked about on today’s show:
we’re all taking the black pill today, The Day Of The Triffids, Chrysalids, Margaret Atwood, she’s on the stamps now, first president of Canada, just birthed a new monarch, stealing from Barbados, very John Wyndham, cozy catastrophe, Brian Aldiss, the John Carpenter movie, John Carpenter’s The Village Of The Damned, In The Mouth Of Madness, more sinister, surprised and pleased, the 1960 movie and the BBC audio drama, all the homework, the sequel movie, its in the public imagination, The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin, this book is very very dark, nicely mannered, really dark, escape to New Zealand, where they are accepted, the main character doesn’t blow himself, darker than how it ends on the page, most of the book, pods, every recorded place, the implication, we’ll be back, you’re going to kill us, picking up on the hints, what people get wrong, they make a big deal about the hands being cold on the initial night, zapped, fiddling with their hands, a symptom, based on both, it was cold, worst John Carpenter movie ever, Ghost Of Mars, Vampires, a good bad movie, Kirstie Alley was terrible, she looks nervous, Christopher Reeve is mostly just tall, David being different, not hive mind across genders, an excuse to get a kid away, Virginia Madsen, maybe goodness can survive, you need to feel suffering and loss in order to be a good person, dwelling in the graveyard, “the one who’s made for me”, they don’t gestate inside of themselves, probes, the aliens were not human shaped, the actual aliens, breaking the rules, Seanan McGuire, an ambush predator, Mimic by Donald A. Wollheim, Sarah Selby, very much X-Men, derivative of the period of mutants, New Mutants, the origin of this novel, The Golden Man by Philip K. Dick, sparkly skin, weird hair, xenogenesis, parthenogenesis, not marketed as Science Fiction, hard SF, how to setup societies, a very talky book, how to believe things, what to act on, mass hysteria, clipping a kid, the current real problem in society of doctors not believing women and people of color, swallowing it in little bits and pieces, we’re the ones eating that barley sugar, set in the 1990s, abortion is available on demand, home abortions, taking very hot baths, hanging themselves, Roe V. Wade, $6000 a month, you can abort with us, an on purpose death, pickle it, an alien, handled very badly, deftly handled, all euphemism, have a nice cup of tea, cuckolded, this book cuckolds women as well as men, the Zeleby nose, experimenting with this idea, a dog version of an alien in Alien 3 (1992), asking and answering questions, was it an alien spaceship that landed in the middle of the town, a deliberate landing, remote villages, on different dates, one ship on a mission, time taken between the needles, the kids don’t lie, refusing to answer, the behavior of cuckoo birds, sibling eggs, you’re just genes, your instinct is to kick the other eggs out of the nest, you mature faster, you’re meaner, you’re more aggressive, the sympathetic mother POV, mothers (and sometimes fathers) must be doting, you must live as the jungle does, sugar coating it, trying to tell us something about ourselves, it is not an allegory, our relationship to our children and each other and how we interact with the world around us, the cows start giving birth to strange looking cows, cows and dogs, we think of ourselves as top cow, we do that to dogs and cows all the time, we treat them the way aliens are treating us, this book is very old, women of child bearing age are implanted, a 17 year old, as young as 9, British nutrition in the 1950s, get the right pickles, girl power!, dreams: keep your baby, how are they going to handle it?, why won’t they do twelve year olds, perfectly accurate biology would be too toxic, some people think we couldn’t handle it, we don’t like thinking about it, guy shotguns himself after shotgunning a kid in the head, 1950s people vs. 2022 people, what about all the women who are women who weren’t born women, a trans man with a uterus, they won’t touch it in the show, there’s a difference between scientific accuracy and being an asshole, biology trumping everything, we need more sugar or it will be rejected, its medicine, facing facts as they are vs. believing what they want, the big lie and the big truth, COVID, The Death Of Grass by John Christopher, over in China something bad is happening, rust on wheat and rye, the stuff that keeps the topsoil from disappearing, a planetary catastrophe, hoarding, a veneer, a busy body, amped up, starvation, the safe zone, turning on a group that is outside of us, when the Russians nuke their small town, atomic cannons, Starship Troopers, Ogre, Ogle, the grange, like Hermione Granger, time to pay up, the Lord owns your land, the bailiff, the Lord hall, the kids move into the Lord’s hall, the serfs are denied movement off of the land, an accidental metaphor, the narrator is talking about his wife, because it was my birthday, John Wyndham is the main character, everything is soft, pleasant, lobster and chablis as Wheelers, Ustinov’s latest extravaganza, enjoyed the bathrooms, fascination with other people’s plumbing, why did they have to zap the birds, whatever living thing, which one of theses looks like its in charge?, speculation, this is God, can we disprove it?, a lab test, divine punishment, barrenness vs. fecundity, the greater god: the God of the universe, H.G. Wells, I’m doing an H.G. Wells story, colonialism coming back to bite you in the ass, what we do to the Earth, nature finds a way, Jurassic Park, stupid humans find a way to fuck themselves, we can fuck ourselves, an infodump philosophy dump, mother nature being misnamed, a book about infanticide, Charles Stross, Nyarlathotep, a nanny for supes, Now We Are Nine, Christopher Robin, emphasizing the two hive minds, chapter titles, No Entry To Midwich, All Quiet, Midwich Revisited, Midwich Comes To Terms, Matters Arising, Interview With A Child, Impasse, Ultimatum, Zeleby Of Macedon, all of the Spartans, Leonidas, assassinated by whom, who will rid me of my awful husband, what happens in this chapter, he kills himself, a suicide bombing, the right an proper thing to do, right?, by the standards of homo sapiens, I want humans to win, a primitive matter, will you agree to be superseded?, The Forever War by Joe Haldeman, one collective Adam and one collective Eve, what’s the appropriate action?, you can’t take the law into your own hands?, a stiff police officer, playing an interesting game, an alien invasion story that’s an examination of the humans, the primitives, esquimaux, Monlogia, Russia, the iron curtain, sleeping with demons, a second crop to come?, in Australia they all mysterious died, a dingo virus?, why they didn’t put all their eggs in one basket, they lay their eggs wherever there is a willing basket, words, Midwich, wich = a bundle of thread (a nest?) or an old English settlement, all of them were midwich, little nests, are they keeping track, this is how we do it, droppin their spores, fire and forget, lay and forget, Invasion Of The Body Snatchers by Jack Finney, something going on the 1950s, The Puppet Masters by Robert A. Heinlein, communism?, collective individuality, collectivism, trends in science fiction, we talk about stuff, fleeing the cities, jamming the highways, in Washington, DC, meanwhile in Kentucky…, 1930s science fiction, Stanley G. Weinbaum, will this book have the international aspect?, what does that do to the story?, this is a resource for exploitation, not because they’re humans in need of money, resources to exploit, getting the birth rate up, soldiers, armies, the children’s desks, mini office desks, lots of good framing by Carpenter, the house from Halloween, recycled from The Fog, the house looks like a cuckoo clock, zoom in and pull back, popping out like a cuckoo clock, the audio of a cuckoo, the word cuckoo, it isn’t a crazy bird, perfectly natural, a gaslighting bird, the baby doesn’t say I’m one of you, the behavior that is not learned (its genetic), “crazy”, “insane” as a legal term, crazy means “don’t understand”, very efficient, cruel, women are supposed to act a certain way, time to kill, time to take whatever pill, he did the right thing for the survival of the (human) species, an alternative, this is Ceti Alpha Five, genetic better humans, cruelty is as old as life, barley coloured, a bullseye, the sequel movie, set around the same period, Children Of The Damned (1964), the aunt, just a blonde, the audio drama was excellent, they forgot about the first movie, a UN guy giving intelligence tests in Britain, unmarried prostitute, go get killed in a tunnel, respective London embassies, the barn or the grange, a church, a dog they can command, to harness the power of these kids, use these kids as cold war weapons, more sympathetic in the second movie, varied skin and hair colours, batch two they blend in better now, can’t we all get along, leave us alone but bring us food, a screwdriver, a metaphor for tools, a knife is good for stabbing and cutting, knife technology implies knife fights, using people as tools is immoral, countries using people as population for their offices, to service the capitalism, blackpilling, they don’t teach field-hand skills, typing?, teaching about the Aegean, some island somewhere, if nations use people as tools that’s wrong, that’s why the cuckoo people are bad, using us the same way we use animals, the cuckoo people are to blame (but the kids aren’t), you can’t easily kill the kids, we’re here to be killed, why are you here?, we don’t know, why are any of us here?, the second movie was solid, as a reflection, a little unrealistic, a counterbalance, behind the Iron Curtain, left with a lot of questions, the new Doctor Who episode, fashioning the Doctor’s companions into weapons, shaping people to do things, is it right?, an amoral alien with alien ideals, space hobo, The Littlest Hobo, Patrick Troughton, the show has evolved, the second movie is a reaction to the first, that’s their reaction to this idea, the sign of a really good book, an abandoned sequel, she definitely knows about science fiction, Chrysalids is (was) assigned in school in Canada, Chocky, The Trouble With Lichen, slow down the aging process, Quirks And Quarks, The Outward Urge, The Kraken Wakes, Stowaway To Mars, off-earth, Tyrant And Slave Girl On Planet Venus, Wonder Stories, the sucess Wydham had in the UK, zilcho reputation in short stories, the market, the town he moved to, thought out the plot of his next book, what kind of a setting for a story would this be, writers are very strange people, Donald E. Westlake and Lawrence Block, writers who only do writing for their job, tapped into the psychology of 1950s Britain, why did that happen?, destroyed industry and commerce, I thought they won WWII, a devastating peace, used themselves up winning the war, really good aircraft industries, what point are you trying to make here, Jesse?, what happened to the Empire?, Australians were mailing care packages to England in the 1950s, paying back some loans, the war had to be fought, Hitler was a bad guy?, how did it get started in the first place, the Treaty of Versailles, prideful assholes , there’s always a connection, benign censorship, when we do the censorship its benign, about power relations, you are just a thing to be manipulated, objects vs. subjects, no birth control is not allowed, the House of Lords?, oh its cute, he’s leading up to that ending, means to ends, a glancing reference to the Dionne quintuplets, the dirty newspapers, don’t embarrass the government, Wyndham thought about a lot of things, it isn’t about entertainment, super-cozy, it feels mainstream, a pyrotechnic ending, Stephen Fry does English women so well, a wonderful narrator to listen to, Jim Dale, a delightful reader, a Homer for our times, a poet from 10,000 BC, a very literate fellow, super-fresh audiobook, the SKY tv adaptation [then forthcoming], a known name, hosting TV and radio shows, [here’s Jesse’s scan of the paperback], scanning difficulties, make your own version of John Wyndham’s the Midwich Cuckoos, The Twilight Zone, It’s A Good Life, Jerome Bixby, its a good thing you took mommy’s mouth, that’s a good thing, Wandavision, 1953, something in the water, it was injected into them, Philip K. Dick, Jerome Bixby, John Wyndham, Robert A. Heinlein, cosmic rays have come into our brains, world events, Jack Finney, it wasn’t a bad review, Eric S. Rabkin, YouTube video viewer counts vs. like counts vs. comments, almost nobody comments on anything, Gresham’s Law, comments, 70 emails an hour, boner increaser is where the money is, so you don’t have a lot of cuckoos in your nest, cuckoos and cuckolding, Beyond The Door by Philip K. Dick, super-short, he gives her a cuckoo clock, why was everybody in the 1950s into cuckoo-clocks?, why did your grandparents have cuckoo clocks?, fuck those British guys, 2 seater sports cars, cultural output, 60s British TV and movies, the British Invasion, Hammer Horror, Doctor Who, shot on video tape, high class acting and really good writing, supported by the British tax-payer, medical coverage, marmite and vegimite, is it vegan?, Veganism, guess what decade Veganism started in, 1944 in England, making a virtue of a necessity, a vegetarian movement, movements, seedlings, 25 founding members, a newsletter, the official vegetarian zine, and cheese or eggs, fish, a section just for them, the first three letters and the last three letters veganism, sanivore, what veganism is, does anybody know these amazing facts?, a fascinating history, people are starting weird cults and organization and religions, trampled on seedling, big giant unweildly organization, fruitful and bountiful, sometimes religious, a reaction against farming practice, physical culture magazines, modeling the perfect body, the perfect woman, the perfect dude, body sculpting, going to the gym is a spiritual belief, look pretty, eugenics, percolating in the background, take the black pill, read the Wikipedia entry pill, following the links through, how to look at reality, bringing it back somehow, Michael Pare’s character, I’m driving so don’t distract me so I’ll crash, I’ll quit smoking when you decide to get pregnant, helium, a big smoking pile of smoke (he broke his word), what you put in your body, females feeling what males could feel like, Prometheus (2012), cuckolded as a species, the woman’s instinct and the men’s instinct, you did wonderfully, I feel like I’ve done something wrong by telling them to keep their babies, Angela’s speech, well written, thoughtful, weird science fiction pulpy short stories, Arthur C. Clarke prose, cosy literate, something different about the British mid-1950s science fiction, Brian Aldiss, who are the damned?, a terrible title, how damned shows up a lot, swearing in the title, Fuck The Movie, biblical, The Midwich Cuckoos is not a good movie title, a children’s movie about little birdies, the British book industry, Children Of The Damned is even more confusing, damned to live on the Earth, a podcast listener, two dinosaurs are looking at the fireball, what do you suppose that is Steven? nice!, life causes more suffering than happiness, we are born to be cowards and cling to live, we lack the crucial choice, thank you for the stimulating conversation, radically alter the climate, wanna get some lunch, sure, Paul would not have worried, is it dark tho?, a reflection of reality that we have, Existential Comics #423, a webcomic, something even darker, goes back in time to the womb and he kills himself, a Quantum Leap suicide, The Butterfly Effect (2004) extended director’s cut guy, Ashton Kutcher, Journeyman, trying to reboot Firefly, how long did it take Star Trek to get a reboot, Wesley’s shirt and haircut was 1980s, cut things in, is there a pill list?, this is what people do instead of having decent lives, incels, fatalism, a fun conversation about nihilism, the hardest to swallow red pill, depraves you, comedic, Kevin, the blue pill implies the existence of the red pill, a narrative process of creation, its all alright, Maissaville, a nice surprise, not very blackpillish, a really nice tweet, hybridmind, you can’t have parthenogenesis, Jesus was secretly a chick, clones so we don’t have to happen, centrifuge, clone army, monocultures are vulnerable to diseases, just backstory, old profitable books from the 50s, Smithsonian.

The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham

Posted by Jesse WillisBecome a Patron!

The SFFaudio Podcast #682 – READALONG: The Screwfly Solution by James Tiptree, Jr.

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #682 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, Scott Danielson, Evan Lampe, and Trish E. Matson talk about The Screwfly Solution by James Tiptree, Jr.

Talked about on today’s show:
Racoona Sheldon, Analog, June 1977, special women’s issue, Eyes Of Amber by Joan D. Vinge, Analog, not just for men, Ben Bova, a 1970s thing, Women Destroy anthologies, all Harlan Issue, throw all the women in one basket, J. Michael Straczynski, a sausage fest, representation by gender, a piss per job, one woman per this episode, making room for women, what her logic was, Angel Fix, to suit different markets?, James Tiptree, Jr had to intervene on behalf of Racoona Sheldon, Robert Silverberg had to make a huge apology, it was very clear James Tiptree, Jr. was a man, the Andre Norton story, she was not hiding, a quasi-medieval romance, rationalization, this story is about rationalization, the whole religious cult element, super hard SF, as a historian, certain biological experiences (like love), fairly universal across humanity, across time however…, culture, movies, love songs, something physically is changing in these men, all the cultural baggage would be dispensed, morality wouldn’t win out?, the first time a zombie wakes up, turning some aspect up to 11, to set the society’s norms, urges, the story of Adam and Eve, uncomfortable, people use it for whatever they want, good science fiction, why Jesse likes adaptations, The Twilight Zone adaptation, the new Dune movie, The Masters Of Horror adaptation, the 90210 guy and Elliot Gould, commas missing in the PDF, the narrator of the story has comma problems but the characters writing the letters don’t, her diary entry, a fun format, enough material for a hefty novel (or a quintology), if Steven Baxter wrote this story, a hard topic to fully satisfy everybody with, like H.G. Wells’ The War Of The Worlds, horrific, creeping dread, clamping down on the news [censorship], the horror of the nice rational scientist, feels himself changing and can’t stop it, bestial/primal instincts, awakened by the aliens, existential dread, we are the monsters, we’re all going to die, humanity is going to kill itself, people do it to themselves, completely chilling, On And Off A Mountain Road, metaphors, cursed film episode Cigarette Burns, a slasher, the focus is on the micro, the outer image, Alan in Colombia, his job is what the aliens do to us,

the 2019 reboot of THE TWILIGHT ZONE has an episode called “NOT ALL MEN” which is credited to Heather Anne Campbell

it seems to be an uncredited remake of the MASTERS OF HORROR episode “THE SCREWFLY SOLUTION” scripted by Sam Hamm

Not All Men / The Screwfly Solution

except the latter is an adaptation of a 1977 story by James Triptree, Jr.

and the former isn’t

evidence:

Both have family dinner parties

The Screwfly Solution DINNER

Both have cakes with words written on them (“welcome home” and “happy birthday”)

Not All Men DINNER

Both have women being murdered by men

Both have the military showing up

Both have atypical meteors showers

and

Both have their respective blonde female protagonists driving around by day, and being chased by night, in identical yellow Volkswagen Beetles

on the left TWILIGHT ZONE on the right MASTERS OF HORROR

Not All Men / The Screwfly Solution BEETLES

THE SCREWFLY SOLUTION is biological Science Fiction and visceral Horror – an alien invasion story like THE WAR OF THE WORLDS by H.G. Wells, as intellectually rigorous, but brutal, scary, and gripping

NOT ALL MEN is decidedly not – it is almost a comedy, but there are no laughs

THE SCREWFLY SOLUTION suggest we are victims of biology

NOT ALL MEN suggest everyone has a choice and most men choose to be bad

the MASTERS OF HORROR episode makes a character from the short story gay, and makes him resistant to the biology that effect most men

the TWILIGHT ZONE episode has a gay character who chooses to be resistant

and both have females disagreeing, in their yellow Volkswagen beetles, about how to understand what is happening to the men around them

THE SCREWFLY SOLUTION is full of conscientious men and women, scientists, trying to figure out what is happening and how to help their families and the world

NOT ALL MEN has basically no scientists (@ the end, maybe?) but has a marketing company doing some sciencey or something?

THE SCREWFLY SOLUTION has the most brutally noir ending imaginable, an ironic one given the characters we follow around for the story, perhaps the last woman alive on earth watching the new tenants of Earth arriving and knowing humanity is finished

NOT ALL MEN ends with a deus ex machina, with cops or the army saving our viewpoint characters, fade to black

blood tests turn up nothing

a twist ending that throws out the main idea they’ve been pushing (the red meteors were a red herring)

there a line at the end of the episode that supposedly explains it all:

“The meteors…they were a placebo.”

then we get the cut-rate Rod Serling closing narration:

Jordan Peele (cut rate Rod Serling)

“Tonight, Annie Miller found herself in the center of a mysterious and violent epidemic. What she encountered was no material disease but rather a plague of conscience. One that gave men permission to ignore decency, consent, and fear. And tonight, all it took was a few an
innocuous little rocks to turn men into monsters here in the Twilight Zone.”

at one point during the craziness in the streets one guy says

“Fuck your feelings”

And this is the level of analysis and writing we are dealing with.

more than 2000 imdb ratings for each

IMDB RATINGS

4.8/10 for THE TWILIGHT ZONE “Not All Men”

6.4/10 for MASTERS OF HORROR “The Screwfly Solution”

Finally, both were filmed in British Columbia

THE SCREWFLY SOLUTION is set in several places, including Texas, Michigan, and British Columbia

i don’t think we know where NOT ALL MEN is set (other than a really lame corner of The Twilight Zone)

The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street, Volkswagen Beetle, understanding the point of the original, we might be unable to control ourselves vs. choosing to be bad, just attacking, just aggro, one of these is science fiction and the other is something else, nightmares, mass hysteria and people’s choices or an alien disease, the hope of the species, woken from crazy aggressive killings, In The Mouth Of Madness (1994), The King In Yellow by Robert W. Chambers, a meme vs. an enzyme or a hormone, social pressures vs. biological pressures, do you read Sutter Cane?, if so you’re infected, the reason I’m killing you is because you’re a communist or a homosexual, explaining inexplicable impulses, a phenomenon we see in reality, Trump as a symptom, the Cult of Adam, “angels”, interesting things in a compressed space, Dracula, the epistolary format, the personal and the broader picture, different perspectives, perfectly expressed, something terrible is happening in England, layers and layers of intertextuality, this is all a suicide note, yesterday I saw an angel, a real estate agent, a devastating last line, all the adults over six years old, feral kids, like a lot of Star Trek episodes, we did it to ourselves!, higher doing what we do to lower or higher species, Huston, Huston, Do You Read?, gender dynamics, women disposing of men, this thing called kissing, Y: The Last Man, a response to When It Changed by Joanna Russ, ovafusion, all female civilization, Sheri S. Tepper, a whole genre conversation, The Children Of Men by P.D. James, The Last Hawk by Catherine Asaro, gender reversed romance plots, men are the hysterical, the second most dangerous primate, another primate note, the rhesus monkeys, spider monkeys, chimpanzees, biological similarity, not well discussed at the dinner table, mating behaviors, Fritz Leiber, opinions from twitter, wishing people would read it, even the uninfected nodded and saw the killing as natural, the result is extermination, God’s will, committees, kill camps, bad things are happening, no one in authority, the mundane aspect, being called to Florida, a car flotilla [aka a convoy], the NIH, Triptree lived in Washington, D.C., her husband and her were both CIA, part of the interest here, Deep Impact (1998), a bunch of people in a control room, the media, something weird is happening in India, 150 adulteresses in Saudi Arabia, very similar headlines, “so-called Sharia Law”, Michael McKean (of Spinal Tap), #YesAllWomen, scarier and scarier every day, an over-reading, anonymous submission, George Sand, other reasons, “trans-phobic”, whatever else, transphobic by structure, a binary opposition of genders, gender binarism is real and meaningful, structurally queasy, men as naturally pedophilic, socially compelled into a straight marriage, there’s a lot there, you gotta consider the context of the story, Heinlein was, reading transphobia into texts [from 1977], Trish is cancelled, a failure of imagination, phobia is without meaning, outside the scope of what she’s exploring, how they turn on the boys, a non-binary view of sexuality, reading too much into this?, aggression hacked sexuality, a less binary reading of sexuality, she’s thinking super-hard, what is sexuality?, this strange focus on a part of science that doesn’t get a lot of attention in Science Fiction, our hero Alan, his relationship with his wife, it gets hot, he starts fantasizing on the airplane, crushed the Coke can, you need to kill me if I show up, I should throw this knife away, really good hard SF, he knows there’s something wrong with him, he should kill himself, killing (and possibly raping) his own daughter, slightly misreading what’s going on, the chase mentality is real, ovulation in some animals needs this, kinda Kinsey, the weaker have been killed, artificial wombs, Podkayne Of Mars, freeze your zygotes, Lois McMaster Bujold, people’s wrong takes, the most devastating counterargument to #NotAllMen, they are connected, an expression, traction after #MeToo, the defensive reaction, downgrading the impact of #MeToo, #BlackLivesMatter vs. #BlueLivesMatter, sarcastic uses, #AllMen, aggressive seeds, bombing Dallas, men are evil, seeds of violence, misogynistic in structure, a jihad against women, in order to do evil is to choose evil, we are biologically determined, human beings are more than their biology, condemned by our biology, its not a disease, on the ground, isn’t it horrifying that we are biologically determined?, the hashtag vs. the Twilight Zone episode of the same name, explicitly rejecting Tiptree Jr.’s idea, we should summon the will, what if we are biologically determined to do everything, an MRNA injection, a hard bitter pill to swallow, what the story is suggesting, it helps Scott make choices, seeing this in all its horror, if we don’t have choices in reality, the illusion of choices?, what about the screwflies?, they’re just flies, we write stories, we’re not as complicated as we think, slaves to our hormones, he doesn’t kill himself, noir, not pulling its punches, biological determinism or mostly biologically determined?, influenced by stories, closer to chimps or rhesus monkeys, bonobos?, sex as a way of saying hello, a dispute over a sandwich settled by sex, institutions and ideology shape how we interpret and overcome biological, the birth control pill, change society, what science fiction is, geology, how old the Earth is, life-changing, a very good science fiction story, harder than H.G. Wells’ The War Of The Worlds [not The Time Machine], take the war to Mars, maybe somebody’s working on something somewhere, so good, 1 hour to read, that fake stuff that’s 16 books long, fake science, 2 north 75 degree west, anthropology, WHO inoculations, just watched an episode of Masters Of Horror, Cordwainer Smith, off in Africa with her parents, the horse latitudes, bringing experience to the table, its not because she’s a girl, long short story format, The Women Men Don’t See, The Woman Who Was Plugged In, semi-interesting, externalize evil, religions antagonists fighting god, the devil is trying to put bad thoughts in your head, avoiding responsibility, easier, Alcohol Anonymous’ plan, accept the higher power because you’re weak, these religious pamphlets make so much sense, Genesis 3:16, women: feel the pain of childbirth and obey your husbands, short stories are a technology for delivering ideas, don’t be anti-good story, some people are willing to put anything into their bodies, good short SF is a vaccination against long terrible series that do you wrong.

The Screwfly Solution by James Tiptree, Jr.

Posted by Jesse WillisBecome a Patron!

The SFFaudio Podcast #475 – READALONG: Dragon’s Egg by Robert L. Forward

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #475 – Jesse, Paul Weimer and Maissa Bessada talk about Dragon’s Egg by Robert L. Forward

Talked about on today’s show:
1980, hard science fiction, Mission Of Gravity by Hal Clement, first contact, the surface of a neutron star, moving the idea Forward, 2016, Tantor Media, this is a terrific book, a Jesse book, big ideas, the human characters, the ideas of this book, how do you do biology on a neutron star, a civilization running much faster, the writing brought it down, the TV Tropes page, minor details like plot and character, very heavily written, really different aliens, a culture, a society, an arc of civilization, from the Stone Age to the Space Age, the religious subplot, forgive them they know not what they do, the Wikipedia entry, this isn’t a metaphor for us, I’m doing a little thing here, the sex scenes are hilariously interesting, all of my egg sacs, body-stiffening, touching all the sensitive parts, under their eyes, I haven’t drooled that way since I was an eggling, made of neutronium, the opposite of Star Trek, The Orville, Star Trek: Voyager, they surpass us, the way the cheela deal with the humans, a slow robot for fast humans, early culture and early problems, visiting H.G. Wells’ writing career, the hominids, cave man society, cave cheela, inventing math, seeing how you can get from there to here, agrarian farming, the tasting plates, knots, the 2001: A Space Odyssey moment, Thus Spake Zarathustra, putting on a book like a new pair of pants, in the constellation of Draco, 30au, more poignant now, giving up on the space program, set in 2020-2050, the Soviet Union, neither government is willing to spend the money, a spacefaring civilization, an old relic of a book, a big dumb object, how the cheela perceive reality, this is amazing!, magnetic lines, the hard direction, bootstrapping that, seeds, full of idea science fiction, what I want from my science fiction, slowing down, let it wash over you, hard to understand, carrying a slide-rule around while you listen, problems that need solving, trusting Forward’s math, getting the gist, loving science, not about bullshitting, why they would visit the neutron star, mechanically putting the plot together, delivering the ideas, “a textbook on neutron star physics disguised as a novel”, monopole technology, a theoretical concept, handy for Larry Niven novels, Infocom’s Starcross, mining monopoles, what are monopoles?, regular matter, 80s novels, generating monopoles from monopoles, nuclear fusion, if we had a hammer…, a bonanza of hard science fiction and medium soft medium hard sf boiling around in the 1980s, space opera, napoleonic war in space, technologies, math is a kind of technology, James Burke’s Connections, the creation and invention of tools, how the airplane got made, streamline the parts, a made up rhyming history of our technology, dismissing new tech that is unuseful now (is a mistake), blockchain technology, valuable properties, cryptocurrency, inventing or discovering an element or a property, wait 50 years, when you’re zipping through time, million times faster, turns, a guy with a sword, Maissa got knocked out, knocky, no leftover sexism, predominantly female, failed tyrant queen, immortality by vegetation, barracks emperors, megalomaniac, kill all the scientists if they fail, eating their dead, they’re not humans, Soother separating her eggs from the others, Pink Eyes, a religious conversion, out in the desert for 40 turns, laugh out loud moments, the antics of these tiny cute weird creatures, nobody’s getting married, their culture is based on their biology, their biology is based on their chemistry, their chemistry is based on their physics, minimal ecosystem, Flatland: A Roamance Of Many Dimensions by Edwin Abbot, afraid of math, written by A Square, invasion, straight lines are females, invasion literature, a Cosmos episode, The Orville, our world is shaped like an egg, having a ball, real worldbuilding, long rectangular lines, big and sticky, Eric Rabkin, thousand, why is the world named mescaline?, a math book, what beings would have to be like at the surface level, a thousand times faster, slow as in stupid, turning up the speed, 1.5 times speed, gear up (with a lot of coffee) operating at a higher speed, certain countries, the day seems to go longer, we are able to operate at a higher speed, Luke Burrage’s Science Fiction Book Review Podcast, getting certain things done, running around naked, crystalline vegetable matter, they don’t have oral communication at all, tremor sense, marching up the hill, give your peace cry, don’t get punctured by a woman, how would this work?, no wheels, a game of Civilization, many barbarians to conquer, sad news, curing breast cancer, flood her with x-rays, Robert L. Forward died of cancer, you don’t need a sequel, we didn’t need that, planting little clues, “here read this!”, no Prime Directive, Machiavelli, Napoleon, just a phase, Larry Niven, Lucifer’s Hammer, Lester Del Rey, Isaac Asimov, Charles Sheffield, John Campbell would have loved it, Frank Herbert, more interested in ideas than anything else, let’s go on another adventure with the serial numbers filed off, the same but different, psychological thrillers, the fan of real science will love a book like this, narrator Todd McClaren, funny and hilarious, very sexy grains of sand that want to be sandwiched, Downpour.com, I really like Dragon’s Egg, take a book and pass it to your friend and they like it, the joys of an author and their work, I need more rubles for computer time, a good mix of people, pretty cute tuckerizing, more messed up, if a neutron star entered the solar system, robot space probes, no Hoffmann transfer orbits, all Greek?, anecdotal scenes, superconductivity, this is a vacuum, aerospace physicists, extracting electrical energy from the vacuum by cohesion of charged foliated conductors, Hendrik Casimir, the Casimir effect, quantum vacuum fluctuations, getting energy from nothing, free energy from reality, as we go…, spending money, dropping more dumb bombs, never look forward, seeing more clearly when you look backwards, why were we so obsessed with that thing at that time, what’s this like?, kind of silly, energy levels, regenerating, wish fulfillment, seeing changes in its society, Olaf Stapledon, blowing along through geologic time, struggling against, they’re vegetables?!, god hand-wavy world creation, how to get the kind of brains we have, advancing when going in the hard direction, we have overcome to advance, I’m not getting this, cuneiform accounting a brilliant book.

Dragon's Egg by Robert L. Forward, 1980

Tantor Media - Dragon's Egg by Robert L. Forward

Figure 1 - Dragon's Egg

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #466 – READALONG: Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #466 – Jesse, Paul, and Marissa, talk about Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer.

Talked about on today’s show:
clones, doppelgangers, eidolons, 2014, the 2018 movie, gifting the book, Finch, City Of Saints And Madmen, new weirdness, The New Weird, The Weird, appreciating the book, appreciating the movie, understanding why people talk about the book and the movie the way they do, justifying their ratings, framing it wrong, the Wikipedia entry, The New Yorker, Area X as a hyperobject, Paul would know, big dumb object, Ringworld, Rama, going into it and experiencing it, the original and the interpretation, what?!!?, better experienced as audiobook, the cool thing about the audio version (it is ephemeral), you can’t skip or skim sex scenes, a dream like quality to the words, pronunciation, how things read on the page, The Man Who Japed, juveniles = Juvenal(s), fucking with the reader by changing the text in a kind of fungal growth, experimental, fairly successful, not easily digestible, the book is a manifestation of Area X itself, screwing with the readers’ heads, Alex Garland, seeing the movie first and then reading the book, Blade Runner: 2049, the theater experience, the painful trauma of childbirth, Sunshine, a science fiction movie that doesn’t care about science at all, Ex Machina, nuking the sun back into starting?, the metaphor for Sunshine, not a good idea for a movie, Solar Crisis (1990), Hard Sun, doing good things with bad ideas, not a perfect movie, interpretation, we can’t do that, narrator, from an internal point of view, a kind of version, inspired by, the book is all about words, no big piles of documents to read, The Man In the High Castle show, pointing to something without saying what it is, an art film for a mainstream audience, Andrei Tarkovsky, expectations, characters with names, outside of Area X, setting expectations, imagine its a different expedition, the tower the tunnel, Steen, what do you remember about it?, it’s “this kind of book”, no proper nouns in the whole book, signposts on your journey, taking down all the signposts, a sign there’s no signposts, an initial “S”, Ghostbird, Area 51, a word you use in place of a word, Operation Overlord, H-Hour, D-Day, designed to prevent you from knowing, in the mode, shift gears, losing your spot, so dreamlike, hypnotic, hypnosis, as a trope, hypnosis was huge in Science Fiction for decades, not a Science Fiction book, who likes this book, literary fiction, very lit-fic, horror elements, weird fiction, a reworking of The Willows, inspired by Algernon Blackwood’s The Willows, H.P. Lovecraft, Arthur Conan Doyle, Supernatural Horror In Literature, something more than secret murder and bloody bones, a certain atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread of outer unknown forces, the assaults of chaos and the demons of unplumbed space, an attack on the fixed laws of nature, a wrinkle in reality, what’s it like to experience that, if you squint a little bit, a metaphor for the scientific process, scientists, AR-15 or M-16s, a nod back to the book, everybody has one, the same uniform, a military expedition but twisted in a certain sense, the second and third books, cancer as a motivation, the disintegrating marriage, having an affair, pathetic and sad, set a little bit into the future, any evidence that it is set into the future, everything in the book is completely without specificity, he went through it with a comb and took away information, the word Lovecraft loves to use “certain”, a great adjective, the pig creature is a bear in the movie, Vietnam War upside down and inside out, the biologist is in love with the swimming pool, the characters in the film are cannon fodder, the conversation in the boat, taking away the centrality of character, a framing story, Benedict Wong, the tie-up scene, her fingerprints are moving, a lift from The Thing (1982), paranoia and suspicion, really bullshit, they’re all on Xanax, passion about biology and ecosystems, we only see the Xanaxed version on the characters in the film, we don’t see what the love, sympathy isn’t enough, evoking place, the black pine forest, a derelict lighthouse, untroubled landscape, Florida or the Georgia coast, filmed in England, cool ideas, Southern Reach, SR, an institution, two things that don’t tell you what they are, the same time zone, a lack of specificity,

“After leaving Vienna, and long before you come to Budapest, the Danube enters a region of singular loneliness and desolation, where its waters spread away on all sides regardless of a main channel, and the country becomes a swamp for miles upon miles, covered by a vast sea of low willow-bushes. On the big maps this deserted area is painted in a fluffy blue, growing fainter in color as it leaves the banks, and across it may be seen in large straggling letters the word Sumpfe, meaning marshes.”

the crawler, the thing without the name, the Swede, the narrator’s name, as if he is in the room, utterly transformed, just that, I am not returning home,

“See,” he said quietly, “the victim that made our escape possible!”

And when I peered across his shoulder I saw that his stick rested on the body of a man. He turned it over. It was the corpse of a peasant, and the face was hidden in the sand. Clearly the man had been drowned, but a few hours before, and his body must have been swept down upon our island somewhere about the hour of the dawn—at the very time the fit had passed.

“We must give it a decent burial, you know.”

“I suppose so,” I replied. I shuddered a little in spite of myself, for there was something about the appearance of that poor drowned man that turned me cold.

The Swede glanced up sharply at me, an undecipherable expression on his face, and began clambering down the bank. I followed him more leisurely. The current, I noticed, had torn away much of the clothing from the body, so that the neck and part of the chest lay bare.

Halfway down the bank my companion suddenly stopped and held up his hand in warning; but either my foot slipped, or I had gained too much momentum to bring myself quickly to a halt, for I bumped into him and sent him forward with a sort of leap to save himself. We tumbled together on to the hard sand so that our feet splashed into the water. And, before anything could be done, we had collided a little heavily against the corpse.

The Swede uttered a sharp cry. And I sprang back as if I had been shot.

At the moment we touched the body there rose from its surface the loud sound of humming—the sound of several hummings—which passed with a vast commotion as of winged things in the air about us and disappeared upwards into the sky, growing fainter and fainter till they finally ceased in the distance. It was exactly as though we had disturbed some living yet invisible creatures at work.

My companion clutched me, and I think I clutched him, but before either of us had time properly to recover from the unexpected shock, we saw that a movement of the current was turning the corpse round so that it became released from the grip of the willow roots. A moment later it had turned completely over, the dead face uppermost, staring at the sky. It lay on the edge of the main stream. In another moment it would be swept away.

The Swede started to save it, shouting again something I did not catch about a “proper burial”—and then abruptly dropped upon his knees on the sand and covered his eyes with his hands. I was beside him in an instant.

I saw what he had seen.

For just as the body swung round to the current the face and the exposed chest turned full towards us, and showed plainly how the skin and flesh were indented with small hollows, beautifully formed, and exactly similar in shape and kind to the sand-funnels that we had found all over the island.

“Their mark!” I heard my companion mutter under his breath. “Their awful mark!”

And when I turned my eyes again from his ghastly face to the river, the current had done its work, and the body had been swept away into mid-stream and was already beyond our reach and almost out of sight, turning over and over on the waves like an otter.

all the evidence is gone, the explanation in the movie is as much The Colour Out Of Space as it is the novel Annihilation, 12 expeditions, the shimmer is gone, possibilities, the asteroid, something extraterrestrial struck the lighthouse, the “S” word, he’s not her husband, he’s the duplicate, the shimmer in the eyes, more subtle, the thing he’s doing, a comet, meteorite, dwarf planets and planets, Ceres, a meteorite vs. comet, the object is white, aiming at something, the earth is a giant egg and the comet is a sperm, a tunnel and tower, slipping into Eric Rabkin mode, designed to be seen in the unconsciousness (if not the consciousnesses), a tunnel and a tower, becoming a being, fungus all over the walls is white, cell division, an egg developing into a person, cancer, ovarian cancer, the all women cast!, what is it like to have a being growing inside of you that is a mutation of you, the childless relationship, off to fight in Pakistan again, reunited, the happy ending is a new beginning, isn’t pregnancy scary, the real immortality cells can have, cancer vs. a baby, kinds of immortality, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, the film works at what it’s doing, the movie is a prism for the book, a very filmic version of the book, it couldn’t be an audio drama, very very very metaphorical, a comic book version, in the backgrounds, Alex Garland’s story, the words scrawled in the tower/tunnel,

“Where lies the strangling fruit that came from the hand of the sinner I shall bring forth the seeds of the dead to share with the worms that gather in the darkness and surround the world with the power of their lives while from the dimlit halls of other places forms that never were and never could be writhe for the impatience of the few who never saw what could have been. In the black water with the sun shining at midnight, those fruit shall come ripe and in the darkness of that which is golden shall split open to reveal the revelation of the fatal softness in the earth. The shadows of the abyss are like the petals of a monstrous flower that shall blossom within the skull and expand the mind beyond what any man can bear, but whether it decays under the earth or above on green fields, or out to sea or in the very air, all shall come to revelation, and to revel, in the knowledge of the strangling fruit—and the hand of the sinner shall rejoice, for there is no sin in shadow or in light that the seeds of the dead cannot forgive. And there shall be in the planting in the shadows a grace and a mercy from which shall blossom dark flowers, and their teeth shall devour and sustain and herald the passing of an age. That which dies shall still know life in death for all that decays is not forgotten and reanimated it shall walk the world in the bliss of not-knowing. And then there shall be a fire that knows the naming of you, and in the presence of the strangling fruit, its dark flame shall acquire every part of you that remains.”

dreamlike biblical word salad, going to that church, its just weird, negative reviews of the book, you’re never going to get an explanation, very meta, the narration is unreliable, or the universe is unreliable, she’s in a coma, none of this is happening, The Dreamquest Of Unknown Kadath, Providence, seeing sexuality in everything, Rapunzel is only a sex story, hair growth like plant growth, a retelling of the Garden of Eden, underneath a lot of stuff is sex, about the cosmic, makes Jesse sad, Alan Moore and Jacen Burrows, a big stream of white cats up to the Moon, a sex dream, once you start looking, what it makes us different from rocks, the formation of rocks, we can’t compare ourselves to electrons, not mammal sex, why that weird world salad sentence, a tunnel, spiraling, a helix, just words, words are magic in the same way that genes are magic, let’s write some words, what does it mean?, certain coding, creating and casting a spell, speech-writing, amino acids into creatures who build and use firetrucks, this is literally Marissa’s job, where the spell is breaking, a piece of tape, seeing the book as a text in reference to texts and weird fiction, the word “thing”, that’s why the word shows up in so many weird fiction stories, uncanny horror, between fantasy and science fiction, body horror, Re-Animator, coming back to life as parts, seeing those fruiting bodies on the dead corpses, let’s take some samples, guts fall out, the more Marissa learns about biology the more grossed out she gets, designed to, very very movie, intestines, fear, scary gross out scene, Aliens (1986), the perfect film movie for what it is, taking certain aspects of Alien and amps them up, Terminator 2 is a remake of Terminator, Hudson becomes the hero, switching over to science mode, horror mode, you’re allowed to switch around as much as you want, why so many love it and hate it, contamination story, pregnancy story, creeping dread, taking all that potential out, taking it as it is, watch the movies first, preferring the text, reading the subtitles, as a film the characters are Xanaxed humans, placing themselves in our reality, are you polishing your Pashtun?, grounding, the Southern Reach is a metaphor for the continual war on terror?, 17 years in, he should have made it a real art film, unrelatable, are we all 12 years old?, being talked down to, people on CNN, everything that isn’t set in the shimmer hurts the film, the environmental disaster, a military screw up, Stephen King (The Mist), angry at the movie, a slow creeping dread, so disappointing, the plants that look like people, the twinned dears with flower antlers, very excellent language, the hints about the journals, this is all in a journal, that’s the moment they knew the most, are they losing information, we start with more information, if you re-edited the film, we all lost time, this is the afterlife, this is dream state, if I was religious I would read everything that way, the pool, the pond, tower tunnel, how her husband was traumatized by something in childhood and it was a film, the shownotes for the Altered Carbon show, how memory works, how important childhood memory is for laying your personality down, what memories are even real, that was a different person, the crisis actor thing, misremembered, .005% error margin, interrupting an attempted murder, strangling and cover in blood, missing limbs, the screaming thing in the bushes, self-reinforcing, the spiral of words, in 10 or 20 years, Authority by Jeff VanderMeer, an agency in dysfunction, Kafkaesque, so mundane, The Castle, in second person, sudden jarring cries, dripping out, the, the movie poster’s tagline “fear what’s inside”, psychological head-space fear, flowers sprouting from her arms, the better parts of the film, filmic explanation, the anthropologist in the tunnel/tower, the psychologist, did she lie?, that’s a story, the story doesn’t make sense as a straight up story, hypnosis as used in Robert A. Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, very science fictional, The Parasite by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, [Jesse has already done a show on it], a decent movie and an even more interesting book, Marissa wants Jesse to read the sequels, a marketing gimmick, readings for podcasts, revisiting as a concept, three big pieces of a puzzle, what’s wrong with the word “spoiler” is the word has the opposite meaning (for Jesse), knowing more makes Jesse more interested, the lady goes off in a boat (maybe), and leave her journal behind (maybe), it would be much better as a found footage movie shot on videotape, shaky-cam, The Ritual (2017), four guys go out for a hike in the woods, a psychological haunting that happens, not being able to act, the psychology works amazingly better, Norse mythology, a hike movie (!) Marissa’s in!, Swedish mountains, we’ve been completely destroyed, why is called Annihilation?, special pleading, “nihil” means nothing and “a” means not – annihilation is a nothing of a nothing, titles are important, the trigger word, The Slithering Shadow by Robert A. Howard, something to talk about over beers, having something to do is really important in a world with no meaning, Jesse has nothing in common with his students, the only thing we really share is the text, before and after class, having that ritual of three interesting things, Matchstick Men, there’s no heaven, try to get through it until the cancer comes, less Xanax more coffee, The Voice In The Night by William Hope Hodgson, a becalment, do you have any food, a ship covered in fungus, an island covered in fungus, eating the fungus, becoming the fungus, the pool body,

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #417 – READALONG: The Gripping Hand by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #417 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, and Maissa discuss The Gripping Hand by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle

Talked about on today’s show:
1993, a sequel to a 1974 novel, a long digression, Protector, where does Larry Niven end and Jerry Pournelle begin?, Larry Niven is the aliens, Jerry Pournelle was the humans and the military, what’s happening?, too many battles, a secret tramline, plot beats, The Mote In Gods Eye is more muscular, a second first contact, the empire is slipping, privileges vs. responsibilities, doing duty, they were shinier, WWII, the least interesting duty ever, graft, echo, the circular spiral of the Moties and the parallels with the human empire, the only difference between the Moties and the men is the differences, codicil to Horace Bury’s will, Isaac Asimov’s Foundation, too many space battles, a spacesuit full of watchmakers, kill them with fire, snow ghost, space Mormons, Reflex, A Spaceship For King David by Jerry Pournelle, the Langston field, read the Wikipedia entries before reading the books, a quasi-magic force-field, handwavium, wormhole subways gets stuff done, Babylon 5, He Fell Into A Dark Hole, kinda-sorta, feel and see the Niven Pournelle overlaps, the Janissaries novels, they’re gonna run out bullets soon, murderous centaurs, Inferno, Lucifer’s Hammer, it is interesting, a 70s disaster novel, Oath Of Fealty, Footfall, Legacy Of Herot, Fallen Angels, the Prometheus Award, anti-environmentalist, The Burning City, the Magic Goes Away universe, hit by the Niven and Pournelle hammer, Escape From Hell, sequels,

Jesse’s laws of sequels: The First Law: The second law is a sequel, and thus unneeded.

health problems, who named a planet Sauron?, too obvious, super-soldiers, military SF, war porn with laser guns, it doesn’t change the battlefield, first person shooter games, the whole point of technology is it changes things, dinosaurs, having done The Lord Of The Rings, a 2 cassette abridgement of The Gripping Hand, coffee, mispronunciations, pooping all over this book, Julie Davis, ruined the first book?, a visit to Mote Prime was missing, asteroid civilizations, the midshipman are a dead end, that’s cool!, birth control pills, the guy who invented a condom, Crazy Eddie, lifespan, tragic fatalism, bottled up, the explanation for super-conservative people, I got mine jack, it’s a fools errand…, all boondoggle, many such, 18 different levels of policing, the weed police (bylaw enforcement), just make a new agency after every crisis, anti-Greenpeace books, Cloak Of Anarchy, libertarianism is completely nuts, green crunchy granola, into that basket of deplorables, we don’t need roads, gold extraction as a proven technology, dude what are you doing?, greeners, let’s go the other way, nothing Ayn Rand ever wrote was wrong, Bury didn’t leave the bathtub, poor Kevin Renner, culinary adventure, he was the Errol Flynn of space, a girl in every port, breeding Blaines, motie rats, more Niven less Pournelle, the UK title: The Moat Around Murcheson’s Eye, mote vs. moat, more planets, helmsman full speed ahead, Sparta, the geology and topology, no map, good touches, unfair to Dr Pournelle, agricultural land reserve, mountains and islands and mountains, the Okanagan, reserving land for agricultural, the Lower Mainland of British Columbia, Coruscant is just the city world (and complete bullshit), the Fleet Of Worlds has four farming planets, almost worth reading just for such touches, why I read Science Fiction, The Mote In God’s Eye was great, the Xindi from Star Trek: Enterprise, everything in TV and movies has to be simpler, the specificity of it, totally cool, you just abstain, progress since the 1970s, lying liars, abandon all orders, in comparison to Protector, it’s all about fate, there’s very little of free will in a motie, an inescapable cycle, going crazy eddy, less well expressed, where’s our stuffed space-marine in the museum?, publisher’s deadline?, they were hot shit in the 1980s, all space battles, families taking over the legacy of their parent’s writings, firmly make this commitment, one and done Dune, use The Gripping Hand of the Protector, focus on the family, free will, Ringworld and The Ringworld Engineers, the Puppeteers, what does this mean when we maximize it?, a second stage, vs., please do not write this book Paul, seeing the world from the master’s perspective, seeing inside their brain, the x-ray laser, the time machine element, the whole idea of crazy eddy is a great idea, Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, amazing, or a crazy Bernie, fairy-duster, you must allow the bloat of the military continuously.

The Mote System
Trans-Coal Sack Sector Of The Empire Of Man

Posted by Jesse Willis