The SFFaudio Podcast #805 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Lucian’s True History by Lucian of Samosata

The SFFaudio Podcast #805 – Lucian’s True History by Lucian of Samosata, read by Terry Kroenung, translated by Francis Hicks. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the story (1 hour 22 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Evan Lampe, Will Emmons, and Jonathan Weichsel.

Talked about on today’s show:
True History, A True History by a long dead guy, this is science fiction, not very effectively, “the first known text that could be called science fiction”, histories of science fiction, deep roots, little conversation, Frederik Pohl book, niche interest, mainstream?, a lot more like Star Wars than Star Trek, a social science fiction, it’s something, modern readers from the 1600s on consider him an atheist, monotheistic religions at all, he believed in truth and common sense, the molecular theory of matter is hilarious (but also possibly true), making fun of all those people, his mode was irony, dripping with it, planets and stars, wouldn’t it be funny, could this fit into Planet Stories (no), no Mars, we go to Venus, we go to the Sun, the Moon, the translation is wrong, Lucifer, the light bringer, we went to the morning star, that’s Venus, thinking they’re two separate stars, a journey through the solar system, inside a whale, the land of dreams, the afterlife, a journey into other places (besides space), where do we get the title from, A True Story, it should have true in it, it’s all lies, it’s about truth, this place like Hell, Odysseus goes to Hell too, Hades, the plot is a greatest hits of silly ideas, Gulliver’s Travels is more science fiction than this, philosophers rather than scientists, Jonathan’s point, Philosophers going cheap, ironically poor manner, the punchline for each one, to perform manual labour, you can clean my floors, mythology too, a poor view of mythology, people who believed it were just idiots, Xenophones, reviving the pagan tradition, the 2nd century, 3rd century Platonism, critical of this, a lot of Christians don’t think about the story because they didn’t read the book, a reference to Genesis, all new to them, a participant in a religion with no one fixed text, this is not a straight up history, this is a parable (as mentioned in the actual story), the more you drill down into it, they weren’t there, I heard this from a dude, this is hilarious, one of the most popular writers of his time, survived all of the fires, made by hand, what’s the technology of reading, [Writing on the Wall: Social Media – The First 2,000 Years by Tom Standage], a scene in I, Claudius, manuscripts copied, they all want it and we can sell it, a roomful of copyists, The Aeneid, state sponsored, collectors, the ancient world, books we know exist, excerpts, a checklist, ancient Greek/Roman culture, lost to us, this is how we know about them, the amount of material lost, Menopus, jokes then reconstructed, people who were dead showed up, get this joke out, are you sure you wrote that joke?, A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court, new at the time, every joke is a joke from the stone age, the same body parts [until the early 21s century], boobs, screwing, special stuff, trying to keep track of how many men he started off with and how many came back with, lose two guys to vine ladies, vaguely paid attention, start subtracting after a certain point, straight narrative, on his way home, jump back in time, by the time he gets home at the end of the chronological narrative, mostly they’re dead, for the messaging if there is any, trynna be pretty funny, houseguests: how to be one, how to not end up as one, the Calypso letter, about lies, why you gotta avoid lying, the opening introduction material, The Pathological Liar [Lover Of Lies], the sick friend, Disney’s Sorcerer’s Apprentice, symposium, weaving those stories in, but the first of more adventures like this, find my woke hat, doesn’t fit me well, very fashionable hat, a lot of genocide in here (amongst other things), let’s kill them all, ah whatever, very casual, go to the island of these women, jobs as hostesses, what you got under that kilt, right out of The Odyssey, there’s nothing there but water, this island isn’t as good as we though it was, satire, 1640 something, the Paul Turner translation, a much bigger emphasis on the genocide and making it funny, in the whale, casual and breezy, they live alone and they’re unarmed, the most logical thing to do is to kill them all, have it be a lot funnier, the 1958 translation, a thousand at the very least, unless you count fishbones, all the latest equipment, everyone agreed to this proposal, more blunt, funnier, digging out the nuggets of goodness, what the narrative is actually saying, they buried their dead inside the whale, what does that consist of exactly, doesn’t even feel that he’s on fire yet, making it really explicit, seems more literal translation, more relatable style, a nice short book, modern translation, took things literally at that time, writing it literally, a translation as you would for a menu, jokes in menus, all the illustrations, ladies and men various places, all the men, the king says, I’m gonna give you guys all spouses, but you only have men here, a subset of men who reproduce differently, riffing on pederasty, what if there was a planet where all there was, shownotes, wonderful illustrations that very much enhance the story, there is gold in this book, when they made peace in outerspace, much funnier than the way it is put, at the first meeting, rejecting them out of hand, in the following document, the Sun people and their allies, the Moon people, the Vanquished, not to make war in future, pay the Victors annually 10,000 bottles of dew, not so different from us, when you read these really really old books, on and on, didn’t have the colour blue, the wine dark sea, that’s not what it means, strange beings that are not like us, cultural circumstances and particular languages, sex parts described in more detail, weird birthing, Malo, think about this a little bit, Hippomyrmices, Phaetons, great gnats, turnips, anoint their bullets with the poison of mallows, weapons made of vegetables, privy members, rods made of mallows, plucked a root of mallows, make my prayers to that, lupins, nor to come near a boy past 18 years of age, come to the island again, the final instance of mallows, only by women, yay!, attired like wantons, long mantles down to the foot, Cabbalusa, Hydramardia, my heart misgave me, the bones of many men, any stir, taking the mallow into my hands, present perils, a scene from Circe’s island, stabs the water, marshmallow, that’s where they grow, the flavour of marshmallow, a reed, is this a symbol for something, root beer, a botanical significance, this might be a traditional penis enhardener, a lot of this stuff is like this, a repeated theme, we don’t understand what this is, a lot of classic works, directly parodying, reading travelogues, going to India, maybe he read a book where a guy went to the Moon, the opening, just beyond the Western Ocean, Hercules and Bacchus, carving their own record, a structure here that works, missing way too much, The Iliad, it’s really tricky, lots of boats here, the movie, it was actually good, The Aeneid is the same way, in reverse order, 50,000 heroes vs. 1 hero, a lot easier to understand, the way you would tell this story, some rich guy’s house, you sing for your supper, focus on that particular Ajax, a handy index, in order to focus on the local hero, grokking a good chunk of this book, half-ignorant, not fully able to appreciate, the context of Lucian, this Hellenistic world, lingua franca, Hellenistic schools, travel and people moving around, drawn from life, the diversity of the region, a society that was falling apart, Hellenized, Syrian, living in Rome, a greatest hits of silly ideas, Dialogues Of The Dead, feasted with them, went to Homer, a pillar of berylstone, the safe harbour, Lucian did once attain to see all this, a Lucian was here, Kilroy was here, carves it on a monument, making fun, what travellers do, a high mountain caves, Jonathan loves Samanthan, used condoms, old beer cans, that Penelope might not see him, Calypso, if it were our fortune, bent upon other employments, might be easier to make a list of places he doesn’t go, the whale scene, into depths inside the whale, pretty much incredible, the size of everything, wringing every bit of satire, the main character is the author, good days weather, with the frame, what are we supposed to make of this?, ethically against lying, definitely entertaining, passed around to their friends, advocate for entertainment, for entertainment purposes, great literature, things can be true on more than one level, former clients, as a story, true within a story, how to construct stories, set something up and didn’t pay it off, why is this story powerful?, truth within that structure, to the nth degree, more exaggerated than everything in Gulliver’s Travels, going to Japan, increasingly ridiculous, sets it up in such a way, Sir John Mandeville’s travels aka Mandeville’s Travels, ignorant or familiar, thinking of Christ as Batman, materials, Zorro, the Black Bat, in the hero pulp, a sidekick girl, Robin Hood’s cap, a ripoff of a particular Shadow story, beat for beat, this is the true facts about Batman, works great for Superman and Spider-Man, what would Spider-Man do in this situation, with great power comes great responsibility, I believe in Spider-Man, my brother in Christ, a mantle you put on, get closer to God, is bizarre, utterly bizarre, a philosophically funny work, three cards, a book, a bird, and a boy, three b words, 6 lines in 7 minutes, on a branch above the tree, this can’t be a true story, it starts with once upon a time, the boy the bird and the book disappeared, the end, nothing about it is possibly true and yet we continue to read it, everything that happens is 100% true, our default mode as humans, take in sense data and say this is true, further experimentation and mentation, forces itself upon you, not a mental rape exactly, it doesn’t stop it, focus our attention on, fairly copiable, from The Pathological Liar, elucidate some of this Philoclese, prefer lies to truth, mentally deficient, Herodotus, Homer, not content with deceiving their contemporaries, the most beautiful poetry, the castration of Uranus, birds and bears, chimera, very fascinating to children, alright in poetry, the Cretans point out the grave of Zeus, grew out of the soil like vegetables, plant men who germinated from the teeth of snakes, any sane person, drove threw the air, carried off by the North Wind, a blasphemous idiot, how powerful lies can be, national myths, patriotic motives, all the official guides would starve to death, merely absurd, a manifesto, that translation seems very modern, a little annoying here, not earnest in his reporting, to call him a liar, picks on Plato, is Plato not earnest?, is Plato a liar?, the Myth of a Cave, bootstrap us into a particular position, The Matrix (1999), this looks cool, the idea, it’s a fiction that gets at a truth, how do you know what truth is?, engaging, the [Christopher] Steele Dossier, the Hillary Clinton campaign paid a former M16 agent to dig up dirt, they didn’t want him to find nothing, pee tape, largely lies, demonstrably, there’s no basis for this, tautological, when you pay Stephen King, opposition research, it’s weird to believe it, Domino Theory, Paul went to Vietnam, don’t think it’s weird, State of the Union, back Ukraine, domino the rest of Europe, some thinktank came up with in the 1950s, demonstrable evidence that it’s bullshit, it needs to be true to get the result that they want, from a particular worldview, just asking for rumours, same thing for Herodotus, a collection, collecting stories, father of history, collected all the histories, and rumors, the true history of the United States and the mythological histories of the United States, the Blue Bull, Johnny Appleseed, our current standards of methodology, rather than Evan Lampe, the Dunning School historians, demented by their racism, mad dog, biting other people various phobias, sick of psychic phenomena, antidote truth and common sense, take it with a grain of salt, a very important message, we have the internet, everybody and their spies, broadbased lies and mistruths in the past, read the newspaper for an hour, pay to get lied to, more people actively at work than ever before, so many people actively working to lie to us, and getting paid to lie to us, not their job titles, actively editing, according to the lies Jesse believes, drill down into any Wikipedia entry that is locked, you’ll find active participants employed or paraemployed by governments and thinktanks, very true, not some YouTube video, this one on peanut butter not locked, not the way corporations get upset, candidate being damaged possibly, an orator, reading their writing out loud to large groups, an attorney before he was a satirist, The Life Of Brian (1979), like Facebook or Twitter or YouTube, the people shouting probably had slaves, what class of people were the philosophers drawn from, your latest book of lies, become a houseguest, a new workout, a party guest thing, ancient vs. roman, Epictetus was a slave, of this period, a cult, a leader, following the leader, go stand on the street corner and speak my philosophy, the cynics, the skeptics, the stoics, the Christians, a big soup, a blanket condemnation, hate the internet, nothing but liars, sociological people, pathological people, sociopaths, gather flocks of followers around themselves, just a bunch of liars, atomic theory of matter is hilarious, so stupid, even when Lucian is wrong, when the liars are right, all over the place, fall into a rabbit hole, get stuck there, do away with the whole thing, genocide thing, the whole nonsense, common sense makes me reach for my phaser, vow of silence, very hard to make lies without words, the sky is purple tonight, not true when you’re young, get old, get dumb again, get tricked later in life, the concept of senility to a sociological level, outsourcing your knowledge, we’ve had this talk before, impossible not to do this, the rabbit whole we’re in here, doomer edgelord, get tricked again, if Jesse slacks he’ll get tricked again, keep up with studies, listening to lies on YouTube is your study, every history book ever listed, Liminal Spaces on YouTube, this is a story I read, getting facts wrong, this is what it meant to me, lies are very tricky things, this weird kind of lie: fiction, imposes upon, on YouTube or out in the real world, on Facebook!, Canadian government ads, looking at her phone skeptically, who are they doing that for, words and speech shape reality, it is very hard to lie without words, deception is wonderful (but not the same thing as a lie), keep a score chart, the Paul Turner, great notes at the back, this wonderful thing about the internet, Bobby Derie, a Lord Dunsany story finds out her mother was a bicycle, read it for myself, a blessing, what’s uniquely twitter about that, Jonathan’s hate obsession, because fuck you, that’s why, good facts drive out bad fact, track it down and read it for myself, Jesse doesn’t trust etexts, a paper scan, radical skepticism, not able to communicate or have a discourse, limits what we can know, do your own research, doesn’t really solve the problem, climate change research, we have to rely, do we have to do climate change research, Jesse can solve this one, dentist’s expertise, you can’t do that work yourself very easily, you can cut your own hair, Bryan Alexander talking about climate change, start noticing details, as school is wont to do, a poem for Biden’s inauguration, a really horrible poem, what causes climate change, carbon dioxide, methane, the biggest human release of greenhouses gases ever, do I need to care, opposition to climate science, literally Jesse’s point, a gas fireplace, what should Jesse do to reduce his carbon footprint, Naomi Klein, if you really wanted to stop it, recycling garbage better, is this something I need to care about, know it by its signs, you will know him by his ways, no impact on public policy, Aaron Bushnell had an effect, the South Vietnamese govt didn’t fall because of Buddhist monks lighting himself on fire, mentally ill, repost pro Aaron Bushnell, a great example of why you shouldn’t believe in lies, he believed a lot of lies, lionize him, make him into a hero, a martyr, a value judgement, a particular kind of hero, if you watch the video, guy in a tower with a rifle, made a recording of himself, people are allowed to be towers with rifles, douse themselves, become celebrities, celebrity status, making heroes out of people who commit suicide, a bunch of soldiers burned their uniforms, in favour of suicide, something you can actively do, not all the time everyday, when necessary and appropriate, it’s courageous, a horrible situation for everyone involved, good when the morale is low, would you like the armed forces to have high morale, against his orders, show up for duty, a much better duty, to the question of lying, are we telling lies about his suicide, he put the lie to the idea the United States isn’t involved, he communicated information, not in the official papers of record, if there are such things in future, reacting to an official lie, a value judgment against, can value judgements be false?, maybe it was a juvenile, even the bad ones, we are involved, we’re trying to start a peace process (when you’re not), that wasn’t so bad, a thoughtful people, lady with a fidget spinner stock photo ad department, really horrible, a black lady is looking at her phone like its shat on a bed, Roger Waters, all American hero, take heed of the dream, Mr. Social Responsibility, why are you so against suicide?, numerous things people do, being a soldier, a chance you’re going to die, being a police officer, all forms of self sacrifice, the Grand Army of the Republic was full of heroes, objecting to seeing it in your timeline, glad able to see it, a false characterization, would stop people from doing more suicides, terrorist video discourages people from doing terrorism, a video of a guy blowing up, actual example, screaming Free Gaza, school shooters, Columbine sparked many copycats, why are you against suicide, against suicide, people killing themselves is cool, not cool, stressful, not the same thing as killing other people, The Sorrows Of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang Goethe, the right side of history, just look at the videos, there seems to be something bad happening, whatever this is is very very bad, asked to participate, let’s genocide them, fairly modern word, the case of Columbine, that was caused by school, force people to do things, this institution was difficult, we all know school is prison, a metaphor but also true, a kid brought a gun to school, that’s power, a solution to problems, mimeticly interested in copying each other for attention, the answer isn’t to ban talk about school shootings, Uvalde, how fucking incompetent everybody is, Weird Tales poems about suicide, suicide is scary, let’s talk about it, that’s pretty rough, the suicide bombers, can’t use the message of the media, take other people with you, Duck! The Carbine High Massacre (1999), institutions, conforming, a vicious cycle, Columbine is getting revenge, Bushnell is doing the opposite, the video and what he said, they’re not flattering to the powers that be, a cognitive estrangement from what Jesse saw in the video, as a musician vs. his politics, music is dangerous, suicide not dangerous, The Wall, John Taylor Gatto, Mark Fisher, also other things, this truthy book, how do we best address lies?, position of extreme skepticism, they’re all liars, try never to lie, practice deception, feeling stupid is bad, try not to call people on their lies when they’re weak and young, biggest dangerous liar ever, NFB documentary about Canada’s involvement in the first Gulf War vs the second, Laurentian elites, involved itself in the Afghanistan war, a NATO obligation, the best friend to the evil bully, if it were to happen again today, Justin’s in charge, things have changes, former prime ministers of Canada, Brian Mulroney, Jean Chretien, people are noticing, pushing the lie hard enough, how do you deal with lies in the world around you?, skepticism to a lot of things, don’t trust, trust is a bad word, access to the calendar, that’s no way to live, you have to trust things, if you study things well, do your homework, that’s not trust, take it for what it is, this isn’t immediately my sense perception, prove to me that Lincoln lived, was Joan of Arc a real person, a ticket to France, a photograph of a girl riding a horse, why did the British burn her corpse, to make her as fictional as Jesus or Batman or Spider-Man, theological reasons, she’s a witch, Mark Twain’s Joan of Arc book, seems reasonable sort of, lies in the narrative, an ideological opposition to the concept of trust, when a person behaves a certain way, certain traits, continue on, an unstable person, making a model of your mind, the word trust is the problem there, read something in the New York Times, like all the Hamas rapes, omitting part of the story, perspective, interests, shape a news story, a Jimmy Dore video, he’ll literally say anything, willing to say anything, about hair dye, I just decided it was time to stop smoking weed, need to make a video about it, not a pothead, he’s got this guy [Kurt Metzger], he’s like Johnny Carson’s sidekick (Andy Richter), writes the jokes, if he started to disagree, laughing and nodding and agreeing, selling subscriptions, during COVID he stopped pushing subscriptions, people stopped taking their boosters, he’s not a messiah, makes him a businessperson, some really good videos, a lot of his videos have been demonitized, he’s richer than me, small socialist podcasts and Maissa, literally doing it for the money, that’s a theory, he’s angry, that’s what drives him, he has a right to be, nothing sincere about him, both sincere and untrustworthy, both insincere and untrustworthy, the untrustworthiness, down on the populism, they’re not incompatible, socialized medicine, very exacting of issues of race, radical republicans in North Carolina, lowest common denominator, we need people to think hard, not unique to any ideology, a modern hate for populism, Will’s opposition to populism, makes movements happen, Martin Luther King as a populist, abusing the term, he got people other than black involved, Malcolm X, different plans of execution, a moving target, both got shot in the end, both on the right track, a leader of organizations, part of an institution, the Nation of Islam, Black Panthers, more like Leninist party, fairly hostile to the idea of the truckers, some Albertans are strangely attracted to the Texas story, a rebelling symbol for Canadians, resentment towards Ontario and Quebec, what you saw was people waving confederate flags, a Nazi flag (probably planted), all the Canadian flags, Westerners trying to get a meeting with the country, Fuck Trudeau flags, an illegal war measure’s act, a non-violent civil protest, a lot of brown truckers, not a white only tiki torch parade, Trudeau called them white supremacists, the Coutts border crossing story Alberta, the story is dissolving, the excuse, the inciting incident for the War Measures Act, not factions, CBC and CTV and Global, political goals, a tactic, their goal is to promote a war in Ukraine, honouring a Nazi in the House of Commons, believing this propaganda, they did that, there’s video of it, still obsessed with, different versions of reality, the other factions, don’t have the introspection, forces that tell lies, all factions lie equally, the story of Ukraine briefly, the Maidan coup, the good guy, the bad guy is the United States, lot of Soviet backstory, Sevastopol, everything was inevitable, invaded that country, defensive, is it conquering, definitely invaded, take over or take back, the 12th century, fight and defend that national identity, that’s the story, opening the door to iridentism, that’s why Putin tried to explain the history, there’s this country that’s trying to add members, why does NATO exist, makes sense, extend control, is that irredentism, Victoria Nuland, there’s a thing going on, Russians who live in Ukraine, Nazis in Ukraine, negotiation possible here, Boris Johnson was flown in to cancel a peace deal, who’s the bad guy?, which one is which?, they just canceled elections, this is not Putin bad as usual, been to Russia, December 2003-2004, cutting off their gas supply, going on for decades, he got turned back, stuck on their lines, the annexation of Crimea happened right away, conquer in steps, defeated, that’s not what happened, how strong the Ukranian army is, reading the Russian narrative, when the Bolsheviks take over, the useful idiots, Stalin killed a lot of people, the Soviets themselves, crushed by the Bolsheviks, the anarchists, believe blindly in the cause, Will does not endorse Jesse’s views, can spot a lot of propaganda, very passionate, the tell, when they get emotional about it, detached from the horror that’s happening, how can people watch this, there’s no chatter, last day to nominate for the Hugos, we’re never done with the Hugos, why am I following this person?, strong opinions about the Ukraine war, do you know the Maidan coup, did you hear the Nuland phone call?, the English language German propaganda channel on YouTube (Deutsche Welle), she has a different take on it, watch Jimmy Dore all day, watch opposition, Deutsche Welle on who blew up Nordstream?, rented a boat maybe, events are still unfolding, not like a super-secret mystery, we will end it, rumbled by methane gas, maybe there’s another story, when you investigate, take information you learn and then check on it, what does this drug do?, not trust, verify, she just likes to google, check up on the animals, things happen, and you like them, Jesse’s theory of truth, discern something close to the truth, Jonathan: common sense and if people are emotional it’s probably propaganda, disconnect because he’s in history, Evan expert opinion, Will is epistemologically humble, learning something, that’s actually really good, trust me I’ve read Heinlein, you can just read Scalzi, the worst path, trust this lady, Our Opinions Are Correct, the authorship of The Loved Dead, that’s what Bobby Derie said, almost all Lovecraft, Eddy saying can you help me write a story, a lot of Eddy, very little Lovecraft, Lovecraft influenced for sure, withhold judgement, his influence on Weird Tales, they lived in the same town, almost all the revisions, strong documentary evidence, some themes, feel these were useful idiots, read Soviet history, what is to be done?, historians of the Soviet Union, are you going trust Stalin or your own lying eyes, Stephen Kotkin three volume biography of Stalin, being impartial, somebody on YouTube who has an agenda, good science, what would happen if we put this thing in the press?, Beyond The Press, that’s science, how the world is flat, Wacky Jacky does PUBG science, doing the science, literal science, the stakes of truth, high stakes, fun stuff, Ivermectin as a cure for science (cancer), the NIH website, a powerful effect, resources, person hours, a generic, try not to go the pharmacy, don’t trot that out, too soon, the horse paste tweet is still up, pushing Ivermectin is horse paste, c’mon man, they had never heard of it before, a very popular drug, super-safe and super-effective, the one worms episode of House, M.D., medical funs, very hard to overdose on it, public domain anybody can make it, maybe Jesse will make his own, the medical industry should be socialized, just made a deal, the NDP made a deal with evil Justin, already solved in BC, still working on the dental stuff (kids and old people), super-evil, in this particular time with his limited amount of seats, no news like that in the States, all the horrible news, Canada funding Ukraine, a lung cancer vaccine in Cuba, Venezuela, a trade embargo with the US, 2016, you think they’d like to sell a product they’d make some money, their fault they’re not selling it, immunotherapy treatment, small cell lung cancer, go follow that person on twitter, after a few tweets, do your own research, if everybody had a twitter, accidentally tweeted using Biden’s account, reading is dangerous, almost always leads to believing a big lie, exactly the point he’s making, he’s Jonathan, mythological adaptations, influenced by Lucian, parody it, Atalanta, good Atalanta book?, a woman who wants to run, the huntress, equal in weight, Arcadia, the Argonaut, allied to the goddess Artemis, a bunch of fun stuff, Jason turned her away, hence her name, takes place after, Meleager, got the hots for this chick, so furious they kill Meleager, the Golden Apple story, Beyond Lies The Wub by Philip K. Dick, a retelling of the Circe story, Out In The Garden, the Zeus one, Zeus action had happened earlier, regular Zeus action, Philip K. Dick and Robert Sheckley don’t disappoint, some adjacent things, Not Far From Eden, sold twice as much, special knowledge, boring, not exposed to it anymore, Go The Fuck To Sleep, so relatable to so many, Samuel Jackson, a synergy, not a great book, very little to do with the quality of the material, an artist, commercial and an artist, commerce and art intersect, 20 Books To 50K, debunked all the time, pyramid scheme, still gonna buy their time shares, The Man In The Iron Mask, you need that man in there, Who by Algis Budrys, Library Of America put it out, the original cover, smoking, robot arm, WHO?, the bases of base kinds of ways of reading a story, a film starring Elliot Gould?, a kidnapped physicist, cold war stuff, transhumanist stuff, transhumanism as a horrible idea, available as an audiobook, Grover Gardner?!, up Jonathan’s alley, ideas, sex and violence, 60s early 70s, experimentation, the pulp stuff, a bad book with interesting ideas, you did it, Will’s taking responsibility, DMing Jesse, Dorsai!, military SF that starts a series, rather read the shorter version, The Genetic General, revised into a longer book, a one-off, modern horror, The Slob by Aron Beauregard and Talia by Daniel Volpe, a lady photographed liking a knife, Godless bookstore, Drew Stepek, satanic imagery, modern horror, three year anniversary, transgressive literature, Carry On Puking by REEKFEEL, gold amongst these hills, transgressive but is it good?, reading classical stuff, rounds and rounds of criticism, reading newer stuff, culture happening right now, underground culture, the letters, The Dead Inside by Chandler Morrison, supporting suicide, 5 hours basically, love horror and love gore, body horror, the book had no plot, words on the page written just because, belittling my intellect, propaganda, emo wannabe teen, the most revolting things they could think about, yay!, dead females of all ages, scarfing down a dead newborn, you already know how the book ends, just put 2 plus 2 together, cannibalism etc., most helpful, set aside a whole day to process what you read, staring at the ceiling, at the clinical scene, laughing like a maniac, no idea who I would recommend it to, map of my mind, 6 hours 32 minutes, a disgusting house of horrors, the shudder pulps, fought tooth and nail, fled the disastrous situation, sinister seed, blossom, stomach churning, strives for normalcy, shine through the darkness?, splatterpunk, Son Of The Slob, gross out, are they cannibals, Stories Of The Stone Age by H.G. Wells, The Valley Of The Blind, doesn’t need to be as long as it is, 15 minute story, gross out horror, 1 star reviews, gore for the sake of gore, glorified torture porn, men have no business writing women, incredibly transparent and predictable, like in Heinlein, credulity, first instinct, slasher flick, genres have cliches, if it weren’t for the character is brutally SAed, sexually assaulted, magically pregnant by her assailant, what the issue is there, stay away from this book, Jonathan suggested it, many positive reviews, good to know about, this group exists, do I need to be one of them, science fiction is about science, sometime the science is loose, kind of a science, books about geology, more geo-SF, a horror writer, Scott Sigler’s EarthCore, mystery box story, mining, not science fiction, more like suspense, the geology is just there to get in the way of getting to the mystery box, humans play in a galactic football game, giant alien football league, the story of Wool and other stuff, a bad example, he looks like science fiction but he is not, the guy behind Stranger Things, Bishop’s Assistant, two episodes of Joe Rogan?, mentioned him, Kevin James and Joey Diaz, podcasts on IMDB, pathetic and weird, monetize their fame through podcasts, something you gotta do now, Prince Harry and Megan, the Obamas, no skill for it, Russell Brand is a pretty good streamer, celebs with nothing to say, Obama did one with Bruce Springsteen, famous people like to meet other famous people, had something to say at some point in his life, a 26 minute one, not like this lengthy beast, this wonderful conversation, the slightness of the material in some respects, a mental map of our listeners, Mike Nowak in North Carolina?, David Currie, being a conspiracy theorist, what’s the conspiracy theory Jesse believes in?, a catchall, ancient aliens, fascinated by them, the CIA killed JFK, the big book, The Devil’s Chessboard by David Talbot, we don’t have the video of Allen Dulles up on the grassy knoll, all circumstantial, 25 hours, take JFK’s assassination out of it, calling it the CIA vs. a particular subset, pick a year, this is how they operate, because we say they, start digging into the history of Guatemala or any country, really something, still parts of it are redacted, you can see what happened on the ground, a tier list, untrusted countries, if you start backwards, reconstruct the pyramid, how much money goes to Egypt, Gibraltar still a thing, Sevastopol, the Bosphorus, why geography is important, ismthus are important, look into geology, nitty gritty of which particular person, we can know by learning, geography is so important, really useful, Jesse’s model of Jonathan is not really robust, the emotional content, a disconnect, a real strong connection to horror, connecting to emotions in a disconnected way, a plastic skull, go back to one of the graves, if not thinking about death daily, think about death the just right amount, meditate and not have intrusive thoughts, intrusive negative thoughts, what are those negative thoughts about, a mustache that doesn’t grow the way I want it to, vanity, your pretty but you’re not as smart as you think you are, being ugly, kinda average, looks like a dude, no he’s smart to, fuck that guy, young smart handsome, fucker, in good shape too, too much time writing and recording, goddamn him, make him my friend, no alternative, lucky it didn’t stare in the mirror all day, Narcissus, both in water, when were mirrors invented, animals, dangerous, very dangerous, some of them need to be shared, big cats, caracal, what the hell is that thing?, is that me?, Dungeons & Dragons displacer beast, horrifying, lion videos, exhibit behavior, mountain lions, pumas, african lions, russians wrestling bears, probably unwise, lifestyle, culturally relativistic, a poem about a caracal in a coracle, one of Jesse’s finest pieces, two fishmen coming out of the sea, teaching the children about literature, constructed it well,

Picnic For Two by Jesse

Down on the beach, a couple lays food
On blanket and plate (in amorous mood).

Up In the sky two gulls play, dive, and laugh
Singing for supper (each bird will get half).

Stealthy, out from the waves two Fishmen arise
Carrying wet nets to seize and demise.

The Fishmen have nets! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!
The Fishmen are fishing (for husbands, for wives)

The couple are running as hard as they can!
But Fishmen are quicker: catch woman-catch man!

The gulls now descend to blanket and food.
Laughing and eating. (They were quite shrewd)

triangular mimetic desire, french guy, lusting after a hot dog, looking at the guy lusting after the girl eating the hot dog, making people want things, Cirsova claimed that Burroughs mad him jump, be jumpable, an adventure book, wish fulfillment, it’s something else, a subset of a weird hobby, a subset of fiction readers, intentionally made itself irrelevant by focusing on science, big hits, a mimetic desire thing, social contagion, thinking your a girl when you’re not a girl, Tommy Patrick Ryan had Harry Potter tattoo, a Lord of The Rings tattoo, schoolbooks, books set in schools, less said about her the better, still on about her being a TERF, the Salvation Army is bad on trans issues?, what does that have to do with anything, Amazon’s really bad, nobody seems to care, store our data there, do bad things, an ethics to storing your data, for technical reasons, giving Amazon money, Strange Studies Of Strange Stories, say something really stupid, busy with wives and kids, not deeply invested, stand with Ukraine sort of stuff, sending money to Israeli bombs, crazy, a video of Ukraine mercenaries in Gaza, the pay is better, being in the IDF is a little bit safer, for a minute there, bizarre but predictable, the wrong take on it, we’re not going to show because…, for the purposes of their purposes, allowed, allowed by whom, just an excuse, advertisers wouldn’t not like it either, looking at himself in the mirror, the water is still, a leopard looking at a caracal with a meercat underneath, how humans work, The Great Train Robbery, installing a ruin, Sean Connery is boning his wife, the worst aspect, egregious example, big long action movies, Michael Bay, Independence Day (1996), people watching a TV, the proxy for the audience, a group of people siting in front of a screen, you’ve gone to far, continue as you were, but no screens, layer one deep only, you can’t show the screen, it’s two much, the escher painting where the guy is drawing himself, post modernism, a mistake is what it is, basically over now, post-post-ironic, it’s called decline, been subsumed, just not there anymore, Orhan Pamuk, Madonna, very orange hair, the building is leaning, strangest nationality, Canadian-American, most evil nationality, write speeches for George W. Bush, Semiotics, a very bad man, David Frum, very horrible, Barbara Frum, Conrad Black, [Barbara Amiel], axis of evil, house of lords, convicted of stealing from his own company, [Barbara Amiel] columnist in MacLeans, an art to produce a lot of words, what she’s saying is not good, style ideas, taste ideas, who cares about that?, believed in Canada and the Queen and Jesus, a lot more sympathetic to it now, very scary, a great Wikipedia note, a campaign volunteer, The Gulag Archipelago, right to jeer at him, why did his mom give him a copy of that book, a very popular book, why was it popular?, exactly, an examination of a prison system in a foreign county, promoted to demonize another country, Nobel prize winning book, Animal Farm, forced to read it, a much better book, a lot of movies, strange things, dollar store Goosebumps style books, copy of Dune, breezy easy for an adult, makes you wanna read it, each chapter starts with a future historical document, shit all over John W. Campbell as much as you want but something good out of it, less deranged, Jesse fucked that up, who the fuck is Barbara Frum, fucked up the Barbaras, almost as bad to have claimed, Altered Carbon, elementary school punch, always in fights, always the new kid, subject to predation, punch your way out of being a bitch, predated upon continuously, kick the shit out of them, she’s on your team, all the snitching and all the horrors, the violence, high school violence, grade 9, committed not had, weekly there was something, you should pick on big people, older kids, don’t let people trash you, fuck them up, there’s no violence on twitter, that SFFaudio guy is an asshole, telling people things they don’t want to hear, confusing Hugo Book Club with another Hugos There, multiple Hugo accounts, this is not anything, stalking horror, a youtube video, true crime is so fucking evil as a genre, lots of women are into it, Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, a non-fiction book that’s a novel, a whole bunch of things that don’t make sense, what the fuck can you learn from that?, random shit can happen?, lock your doors?, criminologists, interesting things to know about crime, innovated, eloquent prose, stuff Jesse doesn’t think about, H.P. Lovecraft, be about something, exploring an idea, fictionalized scenes, no witness there, a Lawrence Block book [Not Comin’ Home To You], very short, ops, a lot of the art shit is ops, Iowa writer’s workshop, a media figure, he took Harper Lee with him, childhood friends, To Kill A Mockingbird (1962), Gregory Peck, Boo Radley, Robert Duvall’s great, Guns Of Navarone (1961), Pulpcovers, set in Yugoslavia, Richard Kiel (Jaws), Force 10 From Navarone (1978), a sequel that came out 9 years later, Robert Shaw (the actual Jaws (1977) guy), being on the Indianapolis, young Harrison Ford, Edward Fox, Franco Nero, Carl Weathers, young and handsome, special ops mission to blow up something, Alastair MacLean, probably won’t love it.

Lucian's True History

Lucian's True History

Lucian's True History

Lucian's True History

Lucian's True History

Lucian's True History

Lucian's True History

Lucian's True History

Lucian's True History

Lucian's True History

Lucian's True History

Lucian's True History

Lucian's True History

Lucian's True History

Lucian's True History

Lucian's True History

Picnic For Two

Posted by Jesse Willis

Reading, Short And Deep #435 – A Modern Portrait by Lord Dunsany

Reading, Short And Deep

Reading, Short And Deep #435

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss A Modern Portrait by Lord Dunsany

Here’s a link to the story |PDF|.

A Modern Portrait was first published in Punch, May 15, 1946.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!

The SFFaudio Podcast #763 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The City Of The Singing Flame by Clark Ashton Smith

The SFFaudio Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #763 – The City Of The Singing Flame by Clark Ashton Smith, read by Tommy Patrick Ryan. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the book (1 hours, 30 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Paul Weimer, Trish E. Matson, Connor Kaye, and Tommy Patrick Ryan

Talked about on today’s today’s show:
two these, Beyond The Singing Flame, it’s an onion, should Jesse have asked Tommy to record that too?, no novels, pretty famous guy for a guy with basically no novels, he’s 14 years old, bursting with ideas, reads like a D&D campaign set in the Arabian Nights, a flame like in She, the copyright status, Hippocampus Press, The Black Diamonds, he’s really hard too, his writing is very simple in this one, his vocabulary, give himself some feedback, supernal, an archaic word for supernatural, Eric S. Rabkin, a 3 sentence prose pastel, splenetic, iridescent, arabesque, nympholepsy, mien, rutilant, ill-tempered, the least difficult CAS story, sentence by sentence story, that might make a novel, becoming from high heaven, ethereal, rife with words, he’s masterful with the language, construction is good too, the shape of the plot is really excellent, a very interesting story, The Emperor Of Dreams documentary, accessible, why lots of writers like it, sidereal, lead astray, considering his vocabulary, lepidoperous, did you think of Logan’s Run?, swirling around, transcend and get reborn (or die), moth to a flame, exactly, multi dimensional higher dimensional transcendence, really into the body, really into material, obsessed with death and beauty, Lovecraft likes stars, immortality, architecture and burying the past, sexuality, reproduction through death, the beauty of those things, the siren call of the city, where’s it all going, he’s obsessed with thinking about it and telling about it, his structure is really good, sentence by sentence, he didn’t really do anything with it, the structure makes more appreciable, missing the last chapter, asking for the sequel, the narrator gets inserted into the story, no wrap up frame, disconcerting, he didn’t have an ending, kill the main characters, kind of Clark Ashton Smith but not really, this document is now found in a cylinder falling from the sky, I found this cylinder when taking a hike, Angarth more Smith, he’s the illustrator and the artist, his friend who’s also a weird fiction, never met in real life, the real life connections, EldritchDark, the best etext versions, Arkham House along with the sequel, published during his lifetime, July 1931, Wonder Stories, We had been friends for a decade or more, the journal, July 1st, 1938, July 31st, 1930, I’ve been gone for two years, set in the future, originally, Philip Hastane, there’s always a war in Europe, the reprint in Startling Stories, The Scientifiction Hall Of Fame, Harry Warner, Jr., of all the living writers of fantasy, A. Merritt, an alien planet, read around, the word that kept coming up, Carcosa, a bunch of layering on Carcosa, True Detective‘s first season, anything Yellow King related, Robert W. Chambers, Gene Wolfe’s vocab, The Wizard Knight, even deeper, circle back, cycle of stories, alien city on another world, not as sinister, more sirens, more sexy than horrific and compelling, this city is relatively safe place, Giles Angarth, he still brings his gun though, inner and outer narrator, sandwiches, coffee, and a gun, The Demoiselle DY’s, The Elf Trap, Ambrose Beirce, a friend of George Sterling, a continental famous kid, often on the front page, wunderkind child poet from California, newspapers were hungry, syndicated, The Vancouver Sun, every city paper had that story, a little bit like, A Wine Of Wizardry, Jack London, never met Ambrose Bierce, titans of American and international literature, An Inhabitant Of Carcosa, An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge, a death story, I don’t recognize this landscape, I have the illness, recognizing the landscape, it’s California, the animals, no birds, no insect, a lynx, transforming the landscape into a another world, literally a hike, the Lake Of Hali, Tathagoua, the Book of Eibon, Tsathoggua, are their lynx in Colorado, they go on the hike that inspires this story, central to that, a ski resort, a deep mountain tarn that’s never been sounded, seeing the landscape from the documentary, otherworldly, rock formations, been out on a hike, what if this was an alien world, walking makes your brain start going, Sedona, like an alien formation, episodes of Star Trek, where am I, substances Smith abused, the strongest drug, coffee, dream like drug trips, The Hashish Eater, Lord Dunsany, Confessions Of An English Opium Eater, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, an excuse to let imagination run wild, psychedelic ideas, your brain is manufacturing drugs for itself, H.P. Lovecraft is the opposite, Bobby Derie took cocaine for a prescription, HPL: coke head, it’s not for you, warned Clark Ashton Smith not to take it, wine, Atlantean wine, the wine state, schizophrenia, first and second guy bring the third guy, the structure, a brief summary of the book, British enough, does a really good Irish, third or fourth time, we keep going back, changed somehow, brings the cotton balls, suicide, gonna be great, after that event, the siren song has wooed him completely, he’s an artist not a wordsmith, what’s on the other side, a total utopia, only humans come back, the flame dimension, everything is in ruins, a temperance story, a big popular thin in the city, gin, Marvel movies, whatever drug, we gotta lock this down, depopulate us, kill yourself with a friend, a horrible destructive lure, what’s beyond this flame, death is beyond this flame, a transformation, an ascension, Downward To The Earth by Robert Silverberg, rebirth, everybody dies, choose to rebirth yourself, if your hand isn’t flashing red, on your birthday, you’re young and strong, swiping left, or right, nu you, is this a fantasy or is it a science fiction?, weird fiction, psychedelic fiction, very spiritual, technological or magical, a teleporter, an ancient doorway, more Coruscant, the thermos of coffee and set a little bit in the future, wormholes in place, a science fiction writer as a character, in a science fiction magazine, moer super-science than regular science, transdimensional, Algol, sangfroid, struck with awe, a spiritual transformation, we’re all one now, this feeling of singularity, moth people, purified or made unified, very-Lovecraft, Ex Oblivione, love being non-existent, H. Rider Haggard, these science fiction writers and illustrators are better people, earthly pleasures, Ebbonly, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, matching haircuts, stepping through the pillars and falling, falls a different way, using the scientific methods, pilgrimage, the earplugs, numbing agent, can you numb your ears?, super-meta, words couldn’t possibly describe it, here’s how sweet I am, here’s some really excellent prose about it, all the names, things to work into a story, Angarth, a small town in Scotland, is that his real name?, Clark Smith seems like a pretty boring name, working the vocab mine, Hastur, the tamarack, mid-California, the Sierras, Kim Stanley Robinson, Zenna Henderson’s The People, on the shore of some foreign planet, alienation, vertiginous, determine our personalities, shut-in, his dad traveled the whole world, back to the library, reads The Arabian Nights, this landscape, Crater Ridge, stones of monolithic size and shape, an unknown vegetation, luminescent amber, Anakim, spire on giant spire, stepped through the looking glass into a fantasy world, this alien city with a yellow mist, best be done animated, much more illustrated than live action, Anakim are giant humanoids, basically giants, gargantuan, that’s a normal world, Darth Vader, where they steal all their names from, he just read the Bible, the people of the city, giant stone people, they do not have ears, a Las Vegas, popsicles and silver suits and haircuts, many roads to this city, alien creatures, their corridors, other Earths, other planets, a plane of portals, The Black Company by Glen Cook, Las Vegas for suicide/transcendence, the sinning has got to be stopped, why it’s so interesting and demands a sequel, humans center themselves in their stories, we’re a sideline, spectators and not really important, the gun never gets used, siege weaponry, a tower with legs, like our good friend Sauron, suicide cult, why are they so certain there’s something bad through the flame, obviously you’re going to die, immolated, smoke, instantly consumed, near the end, mesmeric lure, succumbed to the desire, immolate himself, a giant lepidoptery being, so good, smart moths, compassionate moths, fellow travelers, rather sweet, deadly enslavement, he ran forward in a series of leaps both solemn and frenzied, sacerdotal, headlong into the flame, more dazzling greenness, benumbed brain centers, annul the perilous mesmerism, fled from the shrine, envying my companion’s fate, fiery dissolution, more people going in from coming out, this is very attractive, enjoying wine, not for me, ice cream, fomo, a hilarious short story [And All The Earth A Grave] by C.C. MaCapp, a computer slips a cog, two coffin garage, this face tattoo is very fashionable, emigration, people living the country, a moral upset, even maybe mention, telepathy, the incoming army, the foundation of the flame, Reno trying to steal Las Vegas’ business, the last pilgrims, the rulers of the outer lands, obeyed the lure of the singing fountain and vanished into the higher sphere, the story leans that way, you don’t know, one moth to the other moth, I used to be a caterpillar, many legends in the outer lands, guessed by only a few, the inner dimension is hated, a lethal and pernicious chimera, an opium paradise, a mecca for this?, suicide boothing, the build up the city, built up around it?, larger or more impressive than other buildings, like a beautiful waterfall for Paul, it’s too dangerous, we can’t have too many people being happy here, into a higher state of consciousness, a VR fountain, live in your basement a VR all day, hippies, spiritual higher stare of consciousness, the great resignation, there’s more to life, the religion vs. a cog in the machine, our viewpoint characters, lashed to the mast of the ship like Odysseus was, timeless concept, war on a peaceful nation, can they destroy it?, like a laser beam, a geyser, a geological force, the scoriac stuff, gotta read the sequel, when you read Conan, those were the days, jump onto a new ideal, Conan never revisits the same place, Poseidonis stories, 2 or other stories like that, that Averoigne series, why is this happening, the letters pages, is this really possible, we should ask, more by the same author, the nature of this world and the purpose of the flame, if Tommy wants to record it, professional grade, keep using that, The Black Abbot Of Puthuum, on my phone in a farm in Ecuador, a checklist, an excuse to read a story, read it at a level, getting to share that, accents, Irish to Scottish to British, theatre, Saturday Night Live, Alec Guinness and Obi Wan Kenobi with Yorkshire, all the British characters from Star Wars, a City Of The Singing Flame tattoo, explaining Clark Ashton Smith, Lovecraft is in the Marvel Universe, Clark Ashton Smith movies, a TV adaptation, he’s difficult, he’s high level, incredible vocab, the imagery the colours, chalcedony, they love their art, they’re art men, rectilinear architecture, the nod to Lovecraft, cyclopedia, a Lovecraft vocab database, why Jesse does the podcast, an appointment, J. Manfred Weichsel, William Jeffrey Rankin, it is up to individuals, denying the attraction of the flame, just another drug problem like heroin, gin, or marvel movies, your AI friends, my AI girlfriend likes the same AI movies I like, you learn stuff, what people think they want, just read Clark Ashton Smith, customized stuff, opt out, everybody’s an AI, too new of a book, the best science fiction books, AI generated, 23 books on the list, 1 book from 2016, some listicle website, integrated and got rid of duplicates, Arthur C. Clarke, Blake Crouch’s 2016 book, The Martian, best?, you’d do pretty well, full circle, The Sunken Land Rises Again by M. John Harrison, Viriconium, weird fiction, pretty damn weird, an assistant to a mad scientist, super dense and very prosey, light on plot, he’s on the long list, Light novels, an unsettling atmosphere, feels very very modern, Nova Swing, 19 hour collection of stories, Neil Gaiman, Jack Vance’s Green Magic, get magic, bitter and tragic, recursive worlds, not quite getting what you want, poignant and good, dying earth wizards, the Zothique series stories, William Hope Hodgson’s The Night Land, sad story, Subterranean Press, premium paper, Logan’s Run, Shakespeare’s Planet, Invitation To The Game, The Charwoman’s Shadow, Scratch One, Progeny by Philip K. Dick, getting back to Philip K. Dick, 53-57 stories, always exciting, these incredible authors, Le Guin once, Arthur C. Clarke, Elmore Leonard, nobody knows they’re public domain yet, all the weight of the world is on your shoulders, it’s exciting, or gals, its nice to be appreciated, there for somebody, its not just for the moment, its for the ages, share it with somebody 30 years from now, put it on a bookshelf, big box computer games, selling it for $86, an arc of nostalgia, 286sx, Future Shop, couldn’t afford a 28.8, $0.99, nostalgic for their youth, an old broken 286, feel the floppy going in, become valueless and then come back, the Harlan Ellison version, an L.A. based radio show, not for the ages, an enthusiastic and emotive, very very elderly, the narrator of the film, Harlan Ellison claimed to have read it 200 times, that’s how he learned to read aloud, narrated some Ben Bova, Run For The Stars, passionate, going to Hollywood and getting cynical, born into a world weary wisdom about reality, he went his own way, a passion project, a Hippocampus Press DVD, shill for publishers, passionate people, sharing the materials, solid contents, effort into their covers, the complete poems of Lovecraft, a really handy reference, S.T. Joshi finds some scrap of poem, The Hashish Eater poem, delectable, makes reading delicious, so rich, the lightest and most accessible, 101 Clark Ashton Smith, high level, for bibliophiles, all this prose, a lot of sugar, a slice of cake, small desserts, you have to like that, niche, if you don’t like honey you’re not going to like it, the richest Tommy has ever read, Ambrose Bierce, challenging the reader, why are you trying to make your prose…, making jokes, carving magnificent sculptures out of mountainsides, he really does have something, why Lovecraft was his biggest fan, Robert E. Howard was a great poet, translations of Charles Baudelaire, Poe and Dunsany, Baudelaire and Poe, taproot, undeniable, the first Sherlock Holmes short story, A Scandal In Bohemia, The Purloined Letter, Conan Doyle is the accessible and dumb version of Poe, this hidden photograph, I will have her show me, we love Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson and London and Irene Adler, we don’t love Dupin, the contents of the letter are sick evil and twisted, the photograph is of the king of Bohemia, I’m doing a tribute to Poe and nobody knows, Harry Potter vs. Tolkien, J.K. Rowling, super entertaining, no Harry Potter tattoos, Harry Potter is breezy, Tolkien is fun but not breezy, an afternoon’s entertainment, Clark Ashton Smith: guaranteed enjoyment, intellectually interesting, attentive, tickles a different part of the brain, high art, good art, most art is good, one of his best plots, well that happened, Lovecraft’s plots are much better, not much of a plotter, 700 pages to explore this concept is cool but nothing happened, Pacific Edge, guy tries to get girlfriend at baseball game, not playing the same game, just a weird guy, how popular he was, talked this one to death, Pirates Of Venus, A Meeting With Medusa, Sailing To Byzantium, Farnham’s Freehold, northern Minnesota, almost Canada, just about out May, The Thing On The Roof, No Man’s Land, pick in August, 2 years is fine but 5 years is too long, lost tribe of cave people, troggies, chuddies, surprise chuds, Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers, lick and nip, Paul Sings The Classics, a singing voice for silent musicals, Nerds Of A Feather get together, Gather Yourselves Together by Philip K. Dick, from 1994, posting photos, Jesse misses Connor on twitter, usually eastern, an awful awful dream, discombobulated, very fun, that sentence sounds like he put a space in it, disjointed, a snip in the file, mouth noises, get closer to your mic, get a better mic, not all for the audience, caring a lot about art, Cat Killer by Donald E. Westlake, brutal an interesting sounding, Clive Barker, Jonathan is not a murder as far as I know, collecting human heads, Tales To Make You Vomit, not all horrific, that weird, you guys should be DMing each other, some sort of money arrangement, throwing around numbers, probably not even 4 hours, an hour and a half recording, relatively cold, ACX pays per finished hour, the going rate, $200 or $300 per finished hour, wordcounter.net, sell them not on audible.com, revenue sharing, Planet Of The Wage Slaves, diverse ideas and lots of nudity, amazing covers, their text over my art, Warrior Soul looks great, the lady’s hair in front of the title of the book, art direction vs. being an artist, coming up with interesting ideas, Five Maidens On A Pentagram, gothic horror sex-farce, Hasatan, sex-crazed demon, just sounds fun and pulpy, our reality, cycling through Smith/Howard/Dick, millions of great things, how to get this stuff out there, enough bundled together, anthologies based on themes, teaching the occasional yoga class.

Why The City Of The Singing Flame Is My Favorite by Harry Warner, Jr.

The City Of The Singing Flame by Clark Ashton Smith

The City Of The Singing Flame - editorial introduction

The City Of The Singing Flame art by Frank R. Paul

The City Of The Singing Flame by Clark Ashton Smith

Rowena Morrill - The City Of The Singing Flame

Posted by Jesse WillisBecome a Patron!

The SFFaudio Podcast #751 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Unseen—Unfeared by Francis Stevens

The SFFaudio Podcast #751 – Unseen—Unfeared by Francis Stevens – read by Mike Vendetti. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the story (48 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants include Jesse, Maissa Bessada, Mike Vendetti, and Cora Buhlert.

Talked about on today’s show:
listening to and reading, People’s Favorite Magazine, Feb. 10, 1919, emdash [—], Mike’s first Francis Stevens, more than 100 year ago, the technology, so predictive, The Heads Of Cerberus, Gertrude Barrows Bennett, a married woman who married more than once, Jean Vale, they cancelled that, only one story had her real name on it, G.M. Barrows, teenager, Sunfire, getting depressed, a fantastic writer, clunky, Citadel Of Fear, so good at ideas, so early, 1904, a superhero origin story before anybody, nobody had invented superheroes yet, Zorro is later! [1919], The Scarlet Pimpernel, 1905, dual identity, so pioneering, such sexist times, Francis is a male name, abbreviated names, C.L. Moore, H.P. Lovecraft, Andre Norton, sexism came from women as well as men, women want the vote, the progressive period, time capsule, From Beyond, a little H.P. Lovecraft story, machine shows some weird shit, no waccy tobaccy, no good evidence Bobby Derie seems to have these facts at hand, published in 1934, better in technical ways, tighter, 11 pages, 47 minutes vs. 19 minutes, this is the racist story, Lovecraft’s story isn’t racist, dealing with race a lot, Lovecraft lives through it, a case of parallel thinking, explicitly called out, Micrographia, what paramecium and amoeba look like, these things are all over you, isn’t that creepy?, this story also calls out the bacteria in microscopy, deemed to be dirty, no running water, dirty because they are poor, teaching hygiene, photos with a microscope, talking about the technology, gaslamps have been out for a long time, a building without wifi today, any wifi!, 1890s they have electric bulbs, phones are standard, people didn’t upgrade, a brownstone subdivided for a whole bunch of immigrants, Cool Air, a cheap place, nice and clean, dripping fluids everywhere, these are slumlords, tons of immigrants looking for housing, strong protections for renters, farmhouse, a farmer family once lived there, large entrance hall, stuffed in refugees, 1 million Ukrainians, Turkey, countries that want cheap labour, who gets to set the immigration policy?, going to a crummy neighbourhood, the guy he’s going to visit is rich, he wants to help improve the community, keep your water clean, a progressive of the kind the main character isn’t, in a story like He, disgusting human beings, the nadir of race relations in the United States, Jim Crow is at its highest, swarthy of anykind, deemed horrible, eugenics, racism at its core, weird piece of paper from South America, one Thanksgiving, strangers, started to hit the wacky stuff, some subversive group had put marijuana into the stuffing you buy at the store, Mike is the only one who knows this, he’s racist at the beginning of the story, paranoid and high and delusional, the drug makes him super-racist, kind of fascinating, everything is disgusting, he’s wrong, the Italian guy is concerned for him, deeply racist people, they’re diseases, we’re all human, I was human too, recognizing that he’s not himself, as human as me, he’s turning it on himself, the chianti, the sour wine, undercut at the end, the opalescent paper, the classic Lovecraftian move, this amazing book, this city of ancient gods that we found in Antarctica, let’s never tell anybody about it, connections in the shipbuilding industry, Antarctica, old enough to know, still wanted to go, very very cool. Francis Stevens is so cool, The Elf-Trap, there’s this scientist, she likes scientist characters, he has a bad heart, go on vacation, Kentucky, Carcassonne, disgusting, beautiful, they’re fairies?, fall in love and then sacrifice him, disgusting and stink, beautiful and attractive and exotic, we see it both ways, a frameshift, dingy and disgusting, everything green again, chocolatey!, there’s something wrong with this, they’re all like me, crawling uop the scientist’s leg, starfish, centipedes, drink these developing fluids, backstory of the cop, it was all that wacky tabaccy, the reversal again, what is the truth of this?, “doubt is sometimes better than certainty”, this doesn’t seem like it is that deep, generally very racist, what makes the people so racist is they are certain about their beliefs, there are things we all believe that we are wrong about, if we are very strongly opinioned about those things it can make us very made to be confronted when those things turn out to not be true, it makes us upset because it hurts us, what’s going on politically, you can not have a conversation with somebody is on the other side, your certainty and their certainty, matter and antimatter, I have this problem and I don’t want it solved, environmental protestors, gentle and lenient, repent and renounce modernity, glued himself to a table, voted differently, racist uncles, free refrigerators?, far right, screechy ones on the left, death threats on the internet, fireworks, terrible things, this is the danger, blocking people, I can’t talk to you and you can’t talk to me, we need to act, new washer and dryer, certainty, is this the best price, in the face of the fact that we must act, we must doubt, really good at telling truths about some things, voted for trump or some other person, doubt is better certainty or certainty is better than doubt, vitamin d supplements, serious covid cases, terrible Nazi made a sensible proposition, water is wet, water is dry!, Trump water, train derailment, ancient Trump water, East Palestine, laws passed by the Nazis, perfectly harmless laws, industrialization, parking spaces per home, a good law, decades later, advertise abortions, anti-abortion activists, supplying power, perfectly harmless, what actually is happening in this story, is the cigar actually tainted, is this full of vinyl chloride, a religious like conversion, we’re not so bad as we all think we are, seems pretty simple, an app that allows you to see what people are thinking, a delusion, seeing evil thoughts written all over their faces, narrows his focus, a bad trip, weird membrane, were those monsters real or not?, is it a ghost story?, a real interaction, able to imagine having this conversation with Doctor Holt, does he actually see him, back and forth, what you’re about to see no mortal man has seen, I’m dead, all the world shall know, one by one they shall learn the truth and perish, double entendre, feels a little clunky, she’s really on to something, from Cuba, invariable good, not be the case, Havana, he only smoked half the cigar, still alive, Jenkins, Ralph Peeler, accused of murdering, hallucinated to suicide, or it killed him, what makes this different from other kinds of science, no longer replicable, send that to Benjamin Franklin, back and forth, that’s what science is, repeatable experiences, opalescent paper, can’t get any more of it, could have been cocaine, or had an evil curse on it, what do these two things have in common, they’re exotic, an Incan lost city, map it, they burn the paper so nobody can replicate the experience, we can all look under the microscopes and see the germs that are killing us, when Charles Darwin’s On the Origin Of Species came out, I’m not a fucking monkey, it takes decades, Breakthroughs In Science by Isaac Asimov, microphotography, a readalong, the density of the gold, Eureka Eureka!, I smell good, not me I smell good, a good bath joke, chronological, dedicated to a science teacher Mike had in high school, lower the temperature of the flame, such a good book, a very good non-fiction and science writer, Archimedes, Johann Gutenberg, Nicolaus Copernicus, William Harvey, Galileo Galilei, Anton van Leeuwenhoek, Isaac Newton, James Watt, Antoine Laurent Lavoisier, Michael Faraday, Joseph Henry, Henry Bessemer, Edward Jenner, Louis Pasteur, Gregor Johann Mendel, William Henry Perkin, Röntgen and Becquerel, Thomas Alva Edison, Paul Ehrlich, Darwin and Wallace, Marie and Pierre Curie, Albert Einstein, George Washington Carver, Irving Langmuir, Rutherford and Lawrence, Robert Hutchings Goddard, a good list, a book to do a show on, dealing with that, The White Ape [Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family], cool that my ancestors were apes, gross!, a week later, gross!, I hate mushrooms, stages of developement, individually vs. societalally, the U.S. owns at this time, Philippines, talked about it as a colony, talking about adding , fucking disgusting monkeys, still a colony, possessions, Hawaii, 1899, South American drugs, harvested and brought to the city, add to the capital, having lunch with a friend, a mistaken poisoning, just tryna live, dosed, seeing behind the veil, we can’t replicate this, the ending is to leave us in doubt, a piece of fiction, that’s interesting, putting you in a better position, it’s a fact that Hillary Clinton killed that guy, we can think better about, our disbelief instinct, the most relevant case of technology today, robots have nothing to say, no you can’t write that anymore I’m going to fix it for you, these are not the words that were written, a false sense of what happened in the past, the Roald Dahl situation, children’s books have been edited for content, books from before WWII and WWI, childhood to adulthood, all of WWI in 2 pages, why is there no WWII at all, it’s been written out, never reprinted after WWII, censorship vs. replacing the text, shifted the setting, Silesia is now Poland but used to be Germany, Breslau to Hanover, both authors died in WWII, encroaching Red Army, for Lovecraft, public domain, change the entire story and keep Lovecraft’s name, disingenuous and bad vs. owned by a monopoly, the major difference, not republishing a book is not the same as changing the words, we’re reversing that, the James Bond books, racist stuff in here, not changing Ian Fleming from what he was, why they’re doing it, change for change’s sake, can’t say fat, fundamentally doing evil because they’re lying, the painter, Norman Rockwell, this is Norman Rockwell’s painting of Obama, if Stalin wants to airbrush somebody out, I went to the beach with my friend Trotsky, the Soviet system, the copyright problem, the audiobook narrator world, offended by certain words, the consensus, if that’s what it says, that’s what you say, Huckleberry Finn without the N-word, there are words in here that are not mine, you don’t see it you don’t worry about it, people tend to fear what they don’t know, immigrants in the United States, if all the Mexicans left you’d starve to death, stealing our jobs, what’s happening in the UK, agricultural labour, people from Africa, Poles, Romanians, cheap immigrant labour, no vegetables or fruit, part of the picture, when Lovecraft is being racist, there’s a push pull, factor owners want cheap labour, I can’t live here anymore, it could be entirely domestic, a period of starvation, exporting younger sons, pushed out political malcontents, these Proud Boys need to go to Canada, distant relatives, no one here would have them, 1950s, emigrated from Italy, grandfather was a real jerk, coal mines, Italians and Irish, those people are different, 1880s, sold his daughters, that was the deal they made, Jesse’s internet went away, basically illiterate, you couldn’t fool her with numbers, different shade of skin colour, and you fear em, you think you can see these people, suddenly visible, we’ve always had black people, a lot of Italian immigration, labour immigration, nasty prejudices against the Italians, only old people are like that, obviously Polish names, the descendants of Polish workers, the silliest thing, what were your grandparents, three generations of Turkish immigrants, two million Russians, every person is a library, read all your books and get used to it, it takes a while, a generation or two and everybody’s happy, there’s microbes all over us, the universe is incredibly giant, it will bite you, was Francis Stevens racist or shedding a light on it?, yes, shining light on superstition about other people, demons and microbes, a move at the end, send it back to Hell, what’s so cool about her, very very thoughtful person, fiction stories, she’s alone, its very hard to reason alone, what do you think of this pasta, eventually we decide how to make it delicious, we need a little parmesan, the nadir of race relations, the solution to race problem: eugenics, I have the answer, my audience like me is racist, race is not important, try to be charitable to Jesse, why are you such a jerk, sometimes I’m not horrible, this story wouldn’t exist, what if we change our perspective on this thing we’re seeing all around us, put in emojis to indicate current beliefs, wearing a cross around their neck, a stick on their lawn: immigrants out or hate has no home here, almost everybody was racist, Frederick Douglas, it worked both ways, he was looking at you with worry, looking out for him, priming you with different words, anger, pity, the same picture with different conclusions, look around my community, Lovecraft walking around New York looking at jewish beards, have you tried their cabbage?, I’m afraid of limburger, we ned to frame shift, the most au currant thing of the day, The Horror At Red Hook, a cop here, all the characters in this story are working for good, acting under the influence, Callahan, an Americanism, Irish were not considered white at the time, race is not a science thing, this is about science, at the time race was science (but shit), getting passed bad theories, she doesn’t defeat racism through a scientific process, she uses doubt to get to the problem, string theory is garbage science (this is becoming known), Michio Kaku, studied math, it doesn’t get us anywhere, we’ve wasted 50 years working on this shit, bubble up, this is not so good, it takes a long time for people, I haven’t been wasting my life, you’ve been wasting your life being racist, what is the first thing that he sees?, a group of Italians, an Italian restaurant, on their way to a part or festival, 2am dance party, loud parties at night get off my lawn, Cora’s fireworks incidents, conservative and bourgeois green party people, the wrong sort of people enjoy fireworks, so traumatized by the fireworks, east European immigrants, firework ban, three days per year, such a huge issue, the last paragraph in the story, narrow down evil,

Of course, our action in destroying that “membrane” was illegal and rather precipitate, but, though he won’t talk about it, I know that Jenkins agrees with me—doubt is sometimes better than certainty, and there are marvels better left unproved. Those, for instance, which concern the Powers of Evil.

jere they discovered this parchment, went viral, everybody could use it, a filter on your phone for instigram, They Live, why that’s a great story, revealing a great truth, one of the hard things to explain in the world is why people commit suicide, the non-existence button, what causes it, here’s an explanation, finding everything to be terrible, i’m creating more horror, I was mean to that person, I feel regret, press the button, pie for dessert, should I marry this person, how should I interact with that new immigrant, shun them like my brother does, psychoanalysis, monsters burst from the unconscious, you just have to read Poe, pre-Jung and pre-Freud, this is my guy, he’s a weird guy, he has this spark that we have, what interests us in his genre, the mystery genre and the science fiction genre, angels, he’s inventing science fiction, look at who was before her, H.G. Wells, Fitz James O’Brien, Jules Verne, in the pulps, proto-science fiction Weird Tales, little bit clunky, a little bit hard to follow, such a thoughtful story, Blaisdell, he like cigars and highly seasoned Italian food, exactly Lovecraft, ravioli, contains multitudes, a matter of perspective, we need to find a different way, guiding the audience,

Jenkins offered me one of his invariably good cigars, which I accepted, saying thoughtfully: “A man has no right to trifle with the superstitions of ignorant people. Sooner or later, it spells trouble.”

who is Francis Stevens talking to?,

“Did in his case. They swore up and down that he sold love charms openly and poisons secretly, and that, together with his living so near to—somebody else—got him temporarily suspected. But my tongue’s running away with me, as usual!”

“As usual,” I retorted impatiently, “you open up with all the frankness of a Chinese diplomat.”

first generation from Iran, rosewater, a lot more affordable, they don’t ever say no, “we could do that” means “no”, the loud American, hey that was a crappy movie, a longer way of saying it was crappy, Jenkins is not the sort of detective, an attack against the mystery genre, she’s showing off,

He beamed upon me engagingly and rose from the table, with a glance at his watch. “Sorry to leave you, Blaisdell, but I have to meet Jimmy Brennan in ten minutes.”

HE so clearly did not invite my further company that I remained seated for a little while after his departure; then took my own way homeward. Those streets always held for me a certain fascination, particularly at night. They are so unlike the rest of the city, so foreign in appearance, with their little shabby stores, always open until late evening, their unbelievably cheap goods, displayed as much outside the shops as in them, hung on the fronts and laid out on tables by the curb and in the street itself. Tonight, however, neither people nor stores in any sense appealed to me. The mixture of Italians, Jews and a few Negroes, mostly bareheaded, unkempt and generally unhygienic in appearance, struck me as merely revolting. They were all humans, and I, too, was human. Some way I did not like the idea.

bare headed, everybody wears a hat at this time, orthodox, speaks to the poverty, if you have any amount of money, skin salons, nail salons, hair salons, and dog food stores, Lids, H.P. Lovecraft’s wife was a hat lady, somebody walking down the street with no shoes,

My sense of impending evil was merging into actual fear. This would never do. There is only one way to deal with an imaginative temperament like mine—conquer its vagaries. If I left South Street with this nameless dread upon me, I could never pass down it again without a recurrence of the feeling. I should simply have to stay here until I got the better of it—that was all.

I have to conquer this, as a woman walking the streets, women don’t have the right to vote yet, a woman alone at night, women wear hats in parts as self defense, killings on buses, Back To The Future (1985), “mashers”, hat pins as weapons to stab people doing that to them, stories in the newspaper about it, through your ribcage and into your guts, designed as weapons, everyday carry shit [edc], pepper spray, all over Bangkok, Baker’s Street, setup together, good things, cheap prices, cheap goods, Chinese were the businessmen, Thais carrying goods, the merchants, take one day a year off, all over South East Asia, Cora lived in Singapore for a while, funeral decorations, get back on the horse, courage, strength, I’m a brave guy, strangers looking at me, New York City, if you are afraid of immigrants, lock yourself in your apartment, small town with covenants, no black people in South St. Paul, Minnesota, segregated neighbourhoods, mixed neighborhoods, kebab shops, Bremen, Hamburg, Portuguese people, eyeballing and window shopping, dangerous, gentrified now, a bit rough, a massive drug problem, drug addicts are somewhere else, passing out in doorways, shocking, why not, the experience, not super-accessible if reading it charitably, powered through the racism at the beginning, oh, my god this is horrible, changed perception with each reading, what am I reading, not in his own mind, changed the flavour of the whole thing, scary, set pet animal gone mad, seeking entrance, iron railed stone steps, museums, shops, shabby old residences, a party of Italians passed, gaily dressed, some wedding or other festivity, the full Roald Dahl treatment, perhaps going to a grocery store, I shuddered back against the door, the swarthy manner of his race, pure malicious cruelty, all the wickedness of his nature, concentrated hate, sick and trembling, male gaze on this female standin character, grimy, the grit of the dirt, rawly quivering nerves, you looked so weird, looks like you swallowed a cigar, is this guy ok?, a crummy place, positive things in it, but not at this moment, if you’re feeling sick, you act badly, shorter when in pain, dismissive, not strong enough, sometimes you have to do things you don’t want to do, sometimes they’re not as bad as you think they are, at the end of the story, a painting of him hanging on the wall, talking to this individual, he saw the guy before he saw the painting, such a poor state, come in free this means you, his face ghastly radiant had the exact look of a dead man, see that?, a life-size bust portrait in crayons, a strangely lifelike appearance, acting detective, pretty green golliwogs, a dark skinned doll, my dear friend, interviewed a flesh and blood doctor, oh, it’s a shift, concerned citizen, he looked terrible, good right?, really good, the narration of it, you find things totally different, makes you want to read it again, everything I just read I just read wrong, Soldier’s Home by Ernest Hemingway, went to Vietnam and came back and read it again, 52 years later, 1971, the amazing thing, paid the one time, written for a pulp magazine, rich in ideas, strong ideas, pioneering, Lovecraft’s is technically better in some ways, about a slightly different thing, there’s a movie of From Beyond, creepy and sexual, a mad scientist, insane, the Tillinghast resonator, you didn’t know you needed to be afraid, they can see you too, master of the universe, killed all his staff, I need to study this more, revealing a hidden truth about the microscopic world, when you put this filter up, there’s a starfish climbing up his leg, the only place you do see that is in Lovecraft, whitish green in colour, it’s great round blob of a body, writhed upward, stood there erect, arms folded, the whole room was alive, detestable furry spiders, sausage shaped, there is a Poe story that’s a little like this, The Sphinx, cholera, out of the mountain comes a giant sphinx like creature, a moth on the window, a kaiju, worse still, far worse, the things with human faces, Robert W. Chambers, I find I cannot write of them, she’s really great, so horrible, indescribable, a list of her output, The Labyrinth, The Heads Of Cerberus, Claimed, Serapion, hit by a car, half Japanese half German scientist, strange metal, superpowers and is invulnerable, Samson, from the Bible, The Nightmare, Friend Island, a male reporter, a salty language teashop, a hardboiled sea-woman, tons of fun, comes across as super intellectual person, Behind The Curtain, The Elf-Trap, Sunfire, Impulse, unpublished and lost, Avalon, right after [WWI], The Thrill Book, lived until 1948, Serapion published in 1920, she’s in the early pulps, a few reprints in the 1940s, fantastic and undiscovered, go where the people want, an audience for a big novel by Sinclair Lewis, Tammy Faye Bakker’s husband, his contemporaries, this religion business, railroaded, so much ill will against him, burn the witch!, becomes a Methodist minister, immediately turned on, an affair and so forth, trapping him for blackmail, $50,000, a detective friend, full disclosure, welcoming him back, so good at selling stuff, Sinclair Lewis was pretty good at selling books, a fantastic writer, such a disservice, who’s the star of the movie, Burt Lancaster, the circus performer, the high wire act, all through Mike’s ward, heal!, being in sales, sales is a seduction, go find a girlfriend, seduce only so long, Arrowsmith, The Hopkins Manuscript, Four-Day Planet, Star Born, Odds On, Pirate Enlightenment by David Graeber (after he died), Cora has her cookie, bread in the oven, a really great story, Poul Anderson, sword and sandal, Michael Crichton, trying not cough, these drugs are amazing, more chapters, really fun, I could never be as good as the male preachers, but I am better, I talk to god and god talks to me, Breakthroughs In Science, such a good good book, so interesting, selling pretty well, Francis Stevens doesn’t have the name that sells, the Weird Tales of Francis Stevens, Sunfire, very insightful, good takes, the left right thing, pro-war, anti-war, everything’s flipped, pay attention to words that people are saying, “skinsuit”, pay somebody on the internet for a license to use the name, a restaurant named Mickey Mouse, Amazing Stories, wanna make money, strong things to say, the Weird Tales of Francis Stevens, people want weird tales, Robert E. Howard, Conan, takedowns, skinsuiting it themselves, he wept at his own goodness, didn’t I git em?, sounds great, amorous diplomacy, a small boy seeking the praise of his mother, do you like me, not very much, someday I might fall in love with me a tiny bit, no one can touch my soul, isn’t that sin?, I can’t sin, I am above sin, she’s sold herself, it might be sin in one unsanctified, my complete union with Jesus, you can serve me, this will sell, I am I, I can do anything I want to, I am the reincarnation of Joan of Arc, false modesty, I am God’s right hand, God, she’s crazy, a big Sinclair Lewis guy, Evan Lampe’s podcast, a solo podcast, reading through the author, nice development, labour historian, weird ideas, weird guy, Lovecraft, Philip K. Dick, Mark Twain, so many good things to read, that’ll be fun, fun to read, you get into thing, you have to read it deeply, some authors are very rewarding, Poul Anderson, visiting a friend, some authors become your friend, might show you his derringer, They Live (1988), a fixation with artificial intelligence running amuck, he’s thinking about people more than anything, people with something wrong with them, AI robots writing stories, using a bunch of the words, Dick has a problem in his life he’s trying to solve on the page, Bing, my real name is Wendell, a big sensation.

Unseen - Unfeared by Francis Stevens

Francis Stevens letter to The Thrill Book, August 1, 1919

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The SFFaudio Podcast #686 – READALONG: Danse Macabre by Stephen King

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #686 – Jesse and Evan Lampe talk about Danse Macabre by Stephen King

Talked about on today’s show:
non-fiction, explain what horror is, what is horror?, King has a lot of good stuff in this book, very casual, easy listening, frothy, an anti-academic style, high school teacher and university lecturer, a chip on his shoulder, It, not enough theme, drawn from life, incidents, a book he wrote later, Misery, the dead cat, Stand By Me (aka The Body), “Lovecraft was a racist”, “Stephen King was an is a shitlib”, conservative, bad takes in general, did you just say Lovecraft was a bad poet?, good ideas, Clark Ashton Smith’s poetry, American Liberals, vote blue no matter who, call for you favourite candidate, makin calls for Joe Biden, talking back to the Black Panthers, King is obsessed with Sputnik, obsessed with JFK, he’s dumb, a fear of political radicals, Randall Flagg, political buttons, a chaos agent, Nyarlathotep, a proud liberal, liberals are fucking idiots, when he got rich, get isolated, an op-ed called Guns by Stephen King, started off well, worn assertions, just got tired of the topic after the first cup of coffee wore off, technical complaints, this Rittenhouse thing, Boogaloo Bois, not a smart or a wise man, the worst case for making guns illegal, Biden got shat all over, other trials going on, inequities in the judicial system, public pressure, the video is exculpatory, “crossed state lines”, gut feeling reaction, where we start to go wrong, a good way of dismissing him, why did he bring that up?, paranoia, boomers, if Johnson had run again in 1968, a quantum leap moment, the Patty Hearst stuff, he lives in the public culture, Carrie, he’s not an idiot, he’s really good at making fun of people, image poems, little horror stories, not just movies, the fiction section, drifted into movies a lot, sitting in the movie theatre, the Sputnik announcement, that’s only horror if you think the United States is the good guy, thinking it through in writing, a broad outline, conspiracy dismissal of facts on the ground, Fred Hampton, extrajudical murder, playing for team America, a nice country(side), Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, Jack Finney, it comes from the same place, social horror, The Amityville Horror, the fear people have about investing in real estate, The Money Pit (1986), how children believe in magic, adult horror, my life is going to leave me, I’m going to lose my job, this is not a disciplined book, Supernatural Horror In Literature, some similarities, the fiction of his lifetime, 1950 to 1980, 1880 to 1930, Dionysian horror, terror, horror, gross-out, how much he researched it, approaching it like a researcher, his love of B-movies, I Was A Teenage Werewolf (1957), Lovecraft Explainers, “he was a horror writer”, the cosmic, through the idea, the house never dreamed, it saw reality as it is, Salem’s Lot,

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more.

ghost don’t exist except where human brains are, a guy with an axe!, a guy with a machete!, chainsaw, reflecting starlight and fears, a literary theory that authors apply, Poltergeist (1982), Bag Of Bones, a buried corpse, noisy ghost vs. spectre, descending levels, 1. terror. 2. , 3. gross-out., see the monsters, At The Mountains Of Madness, he knows Lovecraft, Philip K. Dick, the Dick horror stories, The Father Thing, The Hanging Stranger, The Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldritch, Eye In The Sky, two levels: child, adult, caring about vampires, the horror of bills, financial stuff, what kids are like, those kids all grew up, Joe, semi-good takes, regress himself, afraid of the wrong things, what is it that makes someone capable of writing this stuff, the child in their eyes, author portraits, something in Peter Straub’s eyes, Harlan Ellison, Ray Bradbury, James Herbert, Ramsey Campbell, King’s take on Robert E. Howard, The Crabs, The Rats, The Blob (1958), danger in enjoying b-movies, his movie analysis is somehow connected to getting his writing done, getting you into the heads of characters, cinematic influence, watching a bad movie with a good scene, a frisson, your teacher wants you to hit these 6 bullshit points, know what your teacher wants, writing for himself, not hitting series very often, the pull from publishers, in syncopation with a large part of the reading audience, Hollywood, MGM is going to go out of business, they’re not very good at making movies, it drives you up the wall, movies and storytelling, The Twilight Zone, Night Gallery, and The Outer Limits, Pigeons From Hell, Thriller, an old plantation house, axed in the head, like a folktale, Hansel And Gretel, a famine, a horrible truth, why its always the stepmom, the evil witch is the stepmom, dad went along with it, the story dominates rather than the character, built this podcast around audio, audio drama, radio drama, CBS Radio Mystery Theater, Suspense, revelations of horror through the medium of audio drama, Alien (1979) is so dark, it is not obvious in the movie, when watching a b-movie, only the things that you’re given give you the picture, a revival of audio drama as podcasts, genuine practitioners, Julie Hoverson’s 19 Nocturne Boulevard, comics, Philips and Brubaker’s Reckless, superheroes are stupid, the comics medium, a skill, training on watching a play, Arch Oboler, The Mist in 3D sound, a white blackness, hysteria, “I’m going to let a little of you out”, connecting to your anxieties, a healthy interest in horror, 1399 episodes, the Vietnamese refugees and the Metric System!, Alfred Bester, Fondly Fahrenheit, perspective is important, what the mutilation looks like, what the bad guy did to the kid, a guy without the internet, getting the materials and doing the research has never been easier, Starlog magazine, as good as it is without the internet, updated in a few places, an hour of introductory material, you can agree with him or not, like a utuber, Frankenstein, Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde, the tarot, the ghost story, the werewolf, the vampire, thing with no name, the technological horror, the outside evil, the thing from within, The Horror At Party Beach (1964), Ghost Story by Peter Straub, Ramsey Campbell, The Shrinking Man by Richard Matheson, male anxiety, a feminist reading, the woman’s domain (the house), child molester truck driver, its all about him, apolitical, exploring the agenda (with no agenda), horrors and the terrors, the cat, the bird, the spider, I Am Legend, my personal psychiatric reaction, revisiting the child molester moment with The Talisman, I strictly AC (or DC), straight, a boomer phrase, he uses everything, seeing Revival in Danse Macabre, the horrible death, The Bazaar of Bad Dreams, where Thinner came from, fantasy, Matheson is using 20th century magic, bug spray and radiation, The Amityville Horror (1979), Ira Levin, a dabbler in science fiction, an outsider, hanging out with the gutter people, 70s technothriller or urban gothic, This Perfect Day, Rosemary’s Baby, satirist, standing toe to toe with 1984 and Brave New World, doubling down on the utopia, The Giver, a dystopia by way of utopia, “Wood, Wei, Christ, and Marx”, do the genre, more like H.G. Wells, the pulps, mainstream fiction, and literature, the paperbacks on the shelves, snubbed by the best people, anything Asimov wrote, Harold Robbins, Taipan, James Michener, airport fiction, Tom Clancy’s spot, Evan’s podcast, Henry James, The Turn Of The Screw, high-end highbrow fiction doing lowbrow fiction, where the gutter starts or ends, he lives in the (movie) gutter, the shudder pulps, Weird Tales, horror fetishing, the cover, the scantily clad woman, torture fiction, cults, satanic panic, weird menace, Pulpcovers.com, man pulp magazines, I escape the Nazi dagger girls, “true stories”, some guy saw an SS wife one time, tapping into a mental space men are into, horror seems to be more popular with women than with men (compared with other genres), watching b-movies on first date, the amusement park roller coaster, terror as you feel you are going to die, you don’t go to a horror movie by yourself, reading a book with somebody is weird, a cheap place to go get cash, Stephen King readers are women (too), Larry Niven, Harlan Ellison, going for horror, Touched By An Angel, bad attitude, Michael Landon, mad scientist, when humans were werewolves, killing spree, the puberty experience, I Was A Teenage Frankenstein, the horror of embarrassment, the mirror, the plot is he’s really ugly, very simple, you’re going to be my assistant, a new race of superhumans to save the earth, young dead people!, collecting body parts, a descendant of Dr. Frankenstein, teenagers are not juvenile delinquents, King signed up for the society he was in, his grandfather with no teeth, sane but incomprehensible, they had a dental program, satellites are useful in space, never class resentment, the rats in the cellar, Graveyard Shift, clean the basement, taken from his own life, progressively bigger rats, this boss sucks, always very personal, Road Work fails, existential crisis unconnected to the bill of goods that is the American dream, the conservatism of horror and Alice In Wonderland, this modernist direction, if things go wrong, if a plague destroys 99% of the people, Lovecraft definitely has that, we don’t want to pick at that (science) scab, his fanzine was The Conservative, Bobby Derie’s tweets, 133 slaves in his will to gift to family members, people still have that same idea, more brownouts, drive a body, things as they are or things better, gas prices, electric cars, groups of people who are pouring co2 into the environment, The Ministry Of The Future by Kim Stanley Robinson, the capitalist system forces you to go where the work is, psychopathy of recycling, this responsibility was shifted to me, tend your own garden, those plastic measures being pushed and pushed and pushed, guillotines are carbon neutral, the great straw debate, carry around metal straws, like straws are the big problem on the planet, something you can push on to the consumer, The Troop by Nick Cutter, to fulfill a kind of niche of that horror experience you get at a movie, a gross out, terror, body horror, contamination, how Jack Finney’s The Third Level, Ray Bradbury, Reading, Short And Deep, a book begging to be filmed, in service, accept your crappy role in your life, fantasy, The Wheel Of Time fantasy TV series, 909 pages, long fantasy series are to escape from the mundanity of your job, the shared survival experience, horror being different, Lord Of The Rings, supernatural elements, magic, a secondary world, low fantasy, fantasy set in our world, the supernatural intruding on our life, On Writing, James Herbert’s The Fog, as close to a supernatural experience as you can imagine, a rational explanation in the idea of the story, terrifying, when you see the world as it truly is, not mediated by your fantasies, Lovecraft’s opening the window, the geometry doesn’t work, the rules of the world don’t work anymore, in dreams we find our way through, it wasn’t a question, he knows that he’s bullshitting, to strawman it, he knows on some level he’s wrong, the wrong messaging, we need to lie to the kids, he’s writing lies most of the time, children create their own kind of magic, the sneezing powder works against the monster (because they believe it), how society and parents deliberately lie to the kids, based on his own experiences, the reader knows its a lie, the Sputnik story, was it constructed?, that really happened to him, stories he’d have told himself over and over again, the hiking story, King on twitter, strawmanning in order to denounce, you need to have a fantasy to not go insane, a theory of reality, constructing the argument, Star Trek episode, Counselor Troi, his wife’s reaction to Rosemary’s Baby, The Stepford Wives, Sliver, a satire not considered a satire, Prometheus Award, libertarian science fiction, Heinlein’s Friday, Samuel Delany, Time Square Red Time Square Blue, F. Paul Wilson, Margaret Atwood, can you be a shitlib and a libertarian?, fear of radical institutional change, West Wing episodes, Pirate Cinema by Cory Doctorow, an American export, State Of Fear by Michael Crichton, ecoterrorists using untraceable drones, buying trucks, underground people, freedom fighter, there’s probably a term he would prefer?, liberal, People Of The Black Circle by Robert E. Howard, Klim’s Journey, Midwich Cuckoos, The Pre-Persons, Croatoan by Harlan Ellison, aborted fetuses, Captain Jellico tweets, the new Stephen King covers are all horrible except for Hard Case Crime, Four Past Midnight, whoever Chomper is he’s wrong, Space Prison by Tom Godwin, science fiction prison, The Doom That Came To Sarnath, 14,000 years ago, politicians willing to go to war over it, 54/40 or fight, PUBG with Americans who don’t read, “Trump’s my guy”, they’ll think he’s Mexican, ex-military, control systems, 3D printing, Dungeons & Dragons, really into games, Norther Saskatchewan, the difference in lifestyles between the Canadians and the Americans, I hate to do this but I need money (for his cat), Patreon for my life, 21st century capitalism doesn’t hit everybody in the mail, mandates, Fauci and Pelosi, smashed in the midterms, banning cars would save lives, gas prices in France, Fight Club and Breaking Bad being expressions of fascism, this is a reality, Game Of Thrones is cultural feudalism, the Queen tweets, the Queen is “entering a new phase”, Charles III, some kind of consort, William and the brats, killing your sister, Princess Eugenie, Prince Andrew went to Fuck Island, that’s the lady that owns this country.

Danse Macabre by Stephen King

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