The SFFaudio Podcast #909 – READALONG: A Murder In Hollywood by Michael Crichton

Jesse, Maissa Bessada, and Alex (Pulpcovers) talk about A Murder In Hollywood by Michael Crichton

Talked about on today’s show:
a 2026 novel, Michael Crichton, evocative, the narrator, Ray Porter, sorta simple, which detective he’s modelling, a theory, Hercule Poirot, Sherlock Holmes, H.P., except for the egg part, fussy, bragging about how great he is, a good beach read, fast paced, well told, Hollywood insight, the document we’re reading is supposed to come from, I can bring up those details if you want?, supposed to be talking, a recorded conversation, an after action report, seduce some co-ed, self-aggrandizing, in a bar with a double scotch, exactly where he is, who actually did the murder, second reveal, not a full reveal, the title, an accident in Hollywood, why are there ten more pages, oh the murder, film sets, kinda know what a gaffer is, was a film director, in 1973?, even while in medical school, The Andromeda Strain, the people at med school learned he was writing, the book is Binary, A Case Of Need, made by Blake Edwards, didn’t age well, Breakfast At Tiffany’s, A Shot In The Dark, The Great Race, The Pink Panther, Westworld is filmed in the west, like a period piece, set in a fictional old west town, already a meta of the thing, when did Michael Crichton go to Arizona, a 1959 article by Michael Crichton in the New York Times, the forward to this book, wow!, 13, pesky kids, prodigious kids, he had a typewriter, when Clark Ashton Smith hit the newspapers he was very your, California boy writes poetry, a big deal, thick thick, Lovecraft was all over his newspaper, a column on astronomy, what’s going on in the skies right now, arguing with astrologers, can all this novel be explained by Michael Crichton being a Scorpio, way to simple, throwing that in there, not supposed to make that character look good, our narrator is kinda like Dr Watson, A Study In Scarlet, it doesn’t quite fit, the least popular Sherlock Holmes thing ever written, a fakeout at the core of the murder scene, RACHE, written in blood, German for revenge, a lot of stuff like that, trying to solve the mystery, taking note of the camera, and the repeated mention of the nitrogen ram, fell and hit his head, the window open, for the insurance, Sherlock Holmes cares about justice, Perkins, I’m not the police, reporting to the studio heads, so thorough and so Sherlock Holmesy, I like to think no, dismissed Clete so thoroughly and quickly, Alex is right, he’s also a mercenary, the very first line of the book, we’ll make it right, how you gonna keep Clete out of it?, what he was hired for, very damning of Hollywood, everything is corrupt, those girls at the airport, fancy meeting you here, our hero is the cut-out, how are we getting this text, it doesn’t matter what’s real, renovating his place, painted to look like real wood, in the 70s, such a modern complaint, obviously been on a movie set, shadowing Robert Wise, if this was from 1973, if he was going to publish it as John Lange, hurt him a little bit, so revealing, lost in the shuffle, switched to writing as Crichton, finished book, super-polished, nice and concise, it can get quite ponderous, a hefty paperback, it’s not more than what it is, almost reads like a novella than a full length novel, very tightly written, dwell on a lot of things, red herrings to distract you from an important, this girl is crazy, a lot of characters, keeping all the names straight, the names in this, distinctive and memorable, map them to real people, who’s the Yul Brenner in this book?, part of the point of what he’s doing, our ultimate villain, killing his own stuntman, what the plot of Blood Rock is, a time of transition, teaching old values, what we get of the script, revenge, stealing women, acting on stage, people standing and giving lines, the way it is cut up for film, stand around doing nothing, somebody dropped a prop, the actors have to keep the show going, a Murder on the Avon, related to the film being axed, turned out great, made money, Madame Bovary, stunts, tripped going in the house, a drawing room, the Moana remake, a clip floating around, runs down the mountain, greenscreen, The Sound Of Music, slide, you couldn’t possibly expect…, westerns, reliable, horror movies, as a murder mystery this is a good book, was he murdered?, an open question, we gotta replace the writer, blackmailing, to get more money, he didn’t deliver anything, the female lead, Sally Oldman, Sally Vega, Suzy Vega, a name to give to a blonde, fired for incompetence, she’s blind and no one knew, can’t hit her marks, we got a really good insight into studio staging, on location, he’s great at what he does, wrung out the possibilities, a little lesson, the publicity guy, he has to be everywhere he has to do everything, he knows every person who has any responsibility for making the movie a success, the perfect piece to pick, calling it out, how could it possibly be a series?, the assistant to Perkins, insurance fraud, why Murder She Wrote is stupid and funny, wherever this lady goes there’s suddenly a murder, Cabot Cove’s murder rate, a cosy farce, stolen things, blackmail letters, very few murders, submarine plans went missing, fairly high-tech, bicycling, bodybuilding, the power of bicycles, you don’t have to feed it, you don’t have to house it, faster than walking, to increase your power, you’re there, very empowering for women, run over or poked, turns out to be protecting her, totally up for more Michael Crichton, by another hand, assume what a sequel will look like, accurate, how much drugs were happening in the 70s in Hollywood, they’re all on pills, nobody was sober, the psychiatrist to Marilyn Monroe, axed, only the one scene, that guy aint good, killed herself/murdered, she did not have a happy life, a huge star, that song is so annoying, recycled that for her, very Hollywood, the Oscar list of stars who had died, who they don’t put on there, Stagecoach (1939), a period piece, not enough name recognition, Jurassic Park movies, people love Dinosaurs, the brand, Prey, Rising Sun, Disclosure, Netflix could do a thing with this, they do a lot of terrible things, the original Westworld on Netflix, a staple of HBO, the audience for it is not a film audience anymore, Prime, a subscription, promoting things, they’re so focused on kissing scenes, this is not the movie audience, too expensive and too few things looking forward to, experienced well in the movie theatre, being in the theatre, wasted my fucking money, who is the audience for A Murder In Hollywood as a film, break up into 6 episodes of someone, isn’t it weird they translated that, Westworld the movie, some of his best novels are movies, instead of writing the book, Looker (1981), reading Predator, We Can Remember It For You Wholesale and Total Recall, make ai actors, it’s a murder mystery, it stars Albert Finney, a plastic surgeon, a little fix, an evil James Coburn is an ai bro, the liferights to the ai actor, there is no book, the book is the movie, a great read, a great movie, which one is better, the film stock, still set in a similar time, Runaway (1984), as a book, his ideas are what makes him a great filmmaker and a great writer, he could throwaway something like this, leave that in a drawer, the dinosaur hunting one, and the pirate one, another drawer novel, digging up fossils, early paleontology, some stuff about how fossiling has always been an industry for faking, fake hominids, H.G. Wells, entertainment, drawing an audience, the most accurate representation changes every 10 years, what looks cooler?, about the size of the chicken, sharper teeth, the Jurassic World movies, the new super-dinosaur, we built them that way, designed to look cool, none of this is real, Triumphs Of A Taxidermist: A Confidential Conversation by H.G. Wells, the history of candy, rot and corruption, name drops, Paul Newman and Robert Redford, Blackstone picked up all the John Lange books, the new one, one of the few independent publishers, readable books, magic professional version, twice in recorded history, in 1066 we invaded England, 1634 moved to Maryland, persecution, English recusant Catholics, Lord Baltimore, the title, an Irish name, lose the lands, learned a thing or two, a fun book.

A Murder In Hollywood by Michael Crichton

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #866 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Detour by Martin M. Goldsmith

The SFFaudio Podcast #866 – Detour by Martin M. Goldsmith, (4 hours 8 minutes) read by Ben Tucker for LibriVox, followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse and Alex (Pulpcovers)

Talked about on today’s show:
1939, only four novels, the movie, the movies, the 1945 one, an incredibly close recreation, everything with sue, identical lines, cut out, just over an hour, the car is a different car, set after the war, a prewar car, a 1941 car, war production cars, a whole history of wartime industrial policy, all civilian production, consumer goods, more volume, keep the people at home happy, not as many cars, models from 1943, the car is described, a gray buick with a rumble seat, ’36, set a year before it came out, “the rumble”, really good read, had to stop listening, so good, bang this out, at a swim meet, 7:30, done by 9, there’s no drag, no ending, the first two thirds of a really good book, the tweet, holding something, suddenly stopped, something happens in the book, save the rest, think about this for a book, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity, 99 pages, judging for hugos or edgars, novella, the kind of book, addicted to paperbacks, I’m off the bus, what a great book, how come all books aren’t like this, noir gut punch, it’s dark, there was a point in the book, Vera gets the car, where’d you put the body, what do you say to that, in their conversation, is this a surreal novel, is she gonna kill him and continue down the road, endless highway to Los Angeles, a Twilight Zone episode, wrote 2 episodes, 1964 season, this thing is never gonna end, caught me out, suddenly have chapter 2, Alex Roth, his girl’s pov, Sue, totally jumped, that was his girlfriend, she’s gotta whole life going, a parallel story, what’s cut out of the movie, the two stories don’t really touch, flashback stuff, she reads the article about him, the only interaction, thematically it fits, wasn’t extraneous, just in memory, more surreal, waiting faithfully, we don’t know what she’s like, she is not a nice person, the Vera in the movie, also not a nice person, Sue is pretty horrible, incredibly selfish, somehow even worse, justify everything to herself, putting these two together, catching up to her, parallel stories, one’s an aspiring actress, professional violin player, seeing Sue from Alex’s pov, she seems like a nice kid, seeing what she does to Raoul, Alex and her roommate, you’re just not that good of a lover, he kinda deserved that, she just does this to everyone, she is a monster, what won’t I do to be a movie start, degrade myself in every possible way, a little bit like Sunset Boulevard, how terrible Hollywood is, it’s very good, film noir from that period, the book is just crackerkjack, in a police cell telling this story, bummin around, can’t go to New York, Los Angeles or Phoenix, regretful, all a confession, arrested for his own murder, no I’m the musician, your dead dad, the only one who knew about the scar, nope, I’m with Raoul now, already had a wife, screw his almost ex-wife, the point, we like our Alex Roth, too deep in with him, tired, sunstroke, can’t believe his luck, a hamburger, a sign, delay you, they do go off the road, changing the top on the car, the guy he’s replacing, this guy’s a monster, stole his mom’s wedding ring, took his brother’s eye out, any human that isn’t a total monster, brother in New York, roommate girl, side character, sleeping in the same bed, they’re poorer, literally in the same room, not a king sized bed, girls are a little smaller than people, the reveal, reveal, reveal, Hendrix, I strangled her, what!, wow!, where am I, this is about half-an hour before she died, in the movie he does strangle her it is kind of an accident, the marks on her neck, so squishy, so bendy, when she pivoted at the waist, her head being floppy on the top of her neck, strong images, Vera takes the phone and runs into the bedroom of the hotel, tangled up in the phone line, a little bit less deliberate, the movie is more censored in terms of sexuality, what’s the worst you can do rape me?, douche, books are completely uncensored, tended to be across borders, you can’t get Lady Chatterly’s Love imported, straigh up porn literature, it’s just hard and noir, striking, comparisons, magazines had more censorship, sent through the mail, delivered by trucks, how they got comics too, we might have to look at regulating, EC comics goes out of business, stop for the border checks, the fruit of livestock, provincial stuff too, whatever animals infesting the fruit, seemed weird until asking about the fruit, going back to the character, Haskell, he’s got something wrong with him, he was dead before he hit his head on the stone, these are all excuses, utterly fails, impulsive, he can explain, look it wasn’t me, the worry about him rolling the guy, the Fredric Brown, The Screaming Mimi, it didn’t record, just go read [it], a real ending, funnier, entertaining and interesting, nervous laughter, what to think about some of the things going on, intial impression, maybe the car was stolen, his angle, the scars on his wrist, the scar on his arm, he raped a girl, sometimes girls get passionate, she nails you, makes light of it, if you see a pharmacy wake me up, smoking marijuana cigarettes, why is he doing that, pain?, mental pain?, somethin’s wrong with her, it was Vera, she was the one he was having sex with, the woman on the page, fuckin dangerous and evil, sympathy for her, she is definitely dying, she wanted to have a real life, she wanted to be a star, cynical and pouting, he picks her up, why?, she’s a girl, this kinda book is about this idea, hitchhiking, a dead thing, pretty much dead, no one’s going to stop and pick you up, probably a serial killer, serial killer picks up another serial killer, first experience of this book and this novel, The Hitcher (1986), roadside diners, driving through the desert, Rutger Hauer, C. Thomas Howell, somebody to talk to, lonely, people need people, keep awake, talking keeps me awake, he buys our hero dinner, and breakfast, a steak, driving across country by yourself, a huge long drive, so helpful to the hitchhiker and it costs you so little, normal people, we’re all in this together, being a little more kind to our fellow man, Christmas and it is snowing, poor stranded motorist, what a scenario, rewatching it, what the hell is his motivation, repressed homosexuality, he wants to be killed, a very iconic and strange movie, Eric Red, the same scenario, the story changes you, taking on the persona, his billfold in your pocket, his name, he’s wearing the man’s clothes, driving the man’s car, this road is an endless highway, she got out of that car, she met someone who was her but a man, reading the letter he didn’t send to his dad, I’m selling bibles to churches, a good business investment, a number on the horse, the fix was in somehow, the roommate, sympathy for Raoul, seducing waitresses where his wife works, a weaker less aggressive version of Alex and of Sue and Vera too, binder full of narcissism, commercial for toast, actors care about their image, make emotional connections to other humans, because it is about the road, New York and Los Angeles, poles of Americanness, he can go anywhere, a piano, where is his fiddle, he sold it, he can get any old fiddle anywhere, his music teacher, everybody has to make a connection, she’s an interesting strong character, motivations: spite, companionship, some company in her last days, terrible to everybody, kidnapped him, takes all the money and everything, this scam, get 7 million dollars, take the $700, a bird in the hand vs. $7 million in the bush, playing cards, gettin ripped, smokin, not a kind word, these are broken horrible people, she’s quiet and she’s sleeping, pretty hard, the wonderful line, ancient primal, she was Adam’s wife, Noah’s wife, archive.org, read it in the browser, on your phone it scrolls, mostly the phone, a really nice clear scan, it is public domain, filthy like that, without a mask of cosmetics, primitive geezer would have gone for, she’s getable, as a passenger, he’s feeling great, drivin the car, being generous, give em big tips, only a few hours to live, final supper, ultimate supper, makes a joke, come back soon, a cute little joke, a grim joke, cynical, come out to Los Angeles, you don’t need to be faithful to me, she understands men, I ain’t going to be faithful to you, very naive, so James M. Cain, so hardboiled, at the end our hero doesn’t die, the free gas the goverment gives you, that Arizona perfume, ISFDB, set in realtime, the bombing of New York by the Nazis, an America bomber, multi-stage rocket, NASA guys with German accents, Doctor Strangelove, everything goes back to somewhere, are they prescient or is everything cyclical, bigger than the War Debt, WWI, the War in Europe, income tax, inflate everything up, people on the road trynna make a life, controlled by their human instincts, nice to spend time with people, change your location, our description of Alex from Sue’s perspective, beating people up all the time, the outside POV of him, he’s pretty nasty, until strangles Vera, a screenshot, 80% through the book, he’s doin his best, a good point, the cops aren’t just gonna believe him, this setup, who’s gonna believe he didn’t do it, our narrative of hitchhikers are dangerous, understanding what happened there, a first person perspective, I strangled her, from whatever Vera did to him, he was pretty sluggish, doctors on the side of the road in the rain, the cop comes by, what are you doing down there, oh I see, button that up, peeing, a very fate book, on a highway headed in a direction, be generous, saying to yourself, just kept driving, it’s the same car, a million Teslas half of them are white, sitting in the same car, the ashtray’s in the same position, that instinct to make human contact fucked up his whole life, it wasn’t going well for him, 4 people, each of those people is completely fucked up, and Raoul, dumped at the end, when Sue is reading about Alex, jumping off the Hollywood sign, fits with the media, he is a weak man, this girl hurting him by calling him a name, all about herself, I love him, I hate Alex, he’s dead anyway, I’m still married to your co-worker, send this letter of to her boss, I’ll never marry him, so petty, mid-early 20s, she’s about 24, comparing the movie to the book, identical, the used car dealer, the number is much inflated, ten years of inflation, WWII, that was nasty, used car dealer, haggling over a price, a world you do not want to operate in, I like fishing vs. the fish packing industry, beef, steak, sausage, the killing floor, the cynicism, I’m better than that, I have people for that, scrub my toilets, almost like an existential book, the hardboiled and noir books, femme fatales, murdered, destroyed, more mayhem, seeing Vera on screen, Sue in flashback, nice singer, powerful on the screen, the TCM intro piece, good little essays, going over to the actress’ house, in her 60s at least by then, come into my bedroom, get down on your knees, look under the bed, neatly laid out, I’ll participate but you need to know about all that, Hollywood is a hard place, high and low Hollywood, Boogie Nights, The Player, Robert Altman style, small piece of real estate, he’s got a big dick, [The Nice Guys] with Ryan Gosling, 2002 was 23 years ago, best movies of the 21st century, the list, best comic book movie, nothing you hadn’t heard of, Everything Everywhere All At Once, as long as your arm, there are still good movies, the writing is very strong, as much, a cheap movie to make, hard to find a book that’s a really solid short read, long long books with a small idea, swap identities with a corpse, consequences to it, the writing process, for writing appreciation, why is It’s A Wonderful Life Not A Christmas movie, Die Hard style, set at Christmas, kind of a Detour, see his wife, New York detective, the Christmas party, then Alan Rickman happens, the family is reunited and together, essential the same plot as A Christmas Carol, 3 ghosts, 4 ghosts?, Marley’s ghost, three visions of reality, the transformation we see with Scrooge, go get a Christmas goose, parallel structure, he doesn’t like Christmas, the Christmas spirit, he’s a waste, this angel comes down, not so he has a great Christmas, Thanksgiving, pretty subtle argument, those are the best arguments, something to the writing in here, the coincidence, a tweet Alex was participating in, one big coincidence, Edgar Rice Burroughs, that’s where he lives, never important, they’re the same size, this fun idea, all Chinese look the same, weird ties, you can kinda see it, same hump on the nose, fine with it, that’s a big coincidence, that he picks up a hitchhiker, allow that, that’s fine, takes it in to that almost Twilight Zone level of awesomeness, what do I know about reality, the Alex that we remember, him taking swings at people, he’s so polite to Haskell, a class thing, digging through the bags and finding more reefer, nice luggage, if he was a bum, they’d pin the murder on him, more like this please, more books like this book, solid twisty almost surreal, a different end, faking out the dying father, if he’d run into Sue, something, a turning back, the way they had come, you never get there, the highway is endless, rest stops and dusty highway gas stations, Sisyphean hell, Desert Saints, a mechanistic society, H.P. Lovecraft, railroads, automobile engines, anything that replaces human or animal labour, distanced from each other, physically distanced, Oregon Trail, cars are a thing now, drive across the country, a pre-war book, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Mildred Pierce, painting pictures of early 20th century American capitalism, the dirty 30s, go build a dam somewhere, FDR’s NRA, a later organization, hugely popular, fascism!, pushing back against oligarchs doing other things, struck down by the corpse, what a rumble seat is, my brother back in New York, cousin in New York, something’s wrong, when he lies to Haskell, I’m from Detroit, he aint a good soul, a rotten bugger, keep lying, Greek gods for the modern era, this kind of fiction is like a Greek tragedy, Oedipus Rex, fun and good, upcoming, Hombre by Elmore Leonard, The Thing On The Roof and The Nameless City, The Assassination Bureau, Ltd., Jack London, Goliah, The Red One, ancient astronauts, room soon, a short story, guy says I’m gonna fix capitalism, send letters to the oligarchs, come to this meeting, go to this ship in the harbour of San Fransisco, zapped out of existence, the next round of guys, they get zapped, a giant computer ai in the South Pacific somewhere, just a guy, remote zapper, really good thinking stuff, technology to change society, weird communist socialist guy, Jack Johnson, Korea, sleepin with the bums in London, a hobo march to Washington, not all equally good, The Unparalleled Invasion, 2000 years in the future, a period of time in our future, germ warfare, everybody in China, colonizing the remains of China, doing that all before WWII, what this month is doing, things are progressing, those will be easy, the one with the toad temples, hoofy noises on the roof.

Detour by Martin M. Goldsmith

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #858 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Tissue-Culture King by Julian Huxley and The Tachypomp by Edward Page Mitchell

The SFFaudio Podcast #858 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Tissue-Culture King by Julian Huxley, read by Brian Fullen (1 hour), AND The Tachypomp by Edward Page Mitchell, read by Ben Tucker (33 minutes), both for LibriVox. The discussion of both with Jesse, Will Emmons, and Tom Pace begins at 1 hour 33 minutes.

Talked about on today’s show:
a mistake at the end of the recording [excised], Steven Page Mitchell, musician?, Canadian band?, singer songwriter, Bare Naked Ladies, the music at Jack Layton’s funeral, narrator, weird story Will, even more racist, super rich with one central idea, publication, important to the text, 3 publications very early, Amazing, August 1927, Yale Review, 1926, Cornhill Magazine, suspicious, a different text, we’re getting the Amazing text, Yale and Amazing are in the states, 15,000 words, 6,000 words longer, the rest of the paragraph is missing, a swamp the size of Yorkshire, and so on throughout the day, steamy mess, at last we were out, dotted with big trees, like a fortification, a word change, spiky barricade, the green wall, trackway, alert, caravan, guttural exclamation, ponderosity, second head, remarkable monstrosity, supernumerary eyes, lost to view, a man-made path, abridging, doesn’t damage the text, redundant writing, some details, description of the man they’re peeping on, added stuff, the voice proceeded from an enormous negro man, 7 foot 6 or 8 foot high, prayer or incantation, a little carved ebony stand, about the size and shape of a microscope slide, what the fuck’s going on?, the exact location: equatorial Africa, cut down for the American publication, pretty amazing for some things, there’s stuff in it, tin-foil hat, not called tinfoil, not for microwaves, for telepathy, pretty interesting, what you want out of science fiction, a mishmash, biological ideas, hypnosis and psionics, interesting historically, not interesting as science fiction, can we treat it metaphorically, telepathy, Astounding, a dominant thing in science fiction, The Demolished Man, entirely dependent on telepathy, John Wyndham, as a metaphor, setting aside the racism, a little thread from January 2024 on last year, edited by Leonard Huxley, his dad?, subtitled “a biological fantasy”, a more general meaning, a science fiction story in the style of H.G. Wells, the father of Julian and Aldous, super dystopia book, utopian, before the white men got there, tissue culturing, I’m an old man, drops the mic and runs away, what the core of this story is, “tissue culture”, when it was getting really popular, late 19th and early 20th century, produced this way, tissue cultured garlic, a university in New York explicitly referenced, “an institution”, Halcombe, The Rockafeller Institutes, higher education for medical people, buncha women, service these cultures, make the king everywhere, culture the king’s flesh, focus on the really interesting part, a cellular network of mind control, alive or dead exists in tissue cultures and controls the state, genetic experiments on people, fat thighs, big asses, nicki minaj, making dwarves and giants, and perfect dwarves, metaphorical way of looking at it, science is evil, scientists are evil, propaganda, on the money?, science is integral to everything going on, this pure thing, I believe in science, always doing something, working for someone, one set of powerful people here, The Tachypomp, one tutor doing everything, Edisonian mythology, massive staff, prop up the god king stuff, ancestor worship, not exclusive to one group, pretty west African, China, burning money to give to your ancestors in the other place, the one word, pointed out to Boogala, the doctrines of kingship, archive.org, multiply the king’s tissues indefinitely, quantity, mode of life, agreeable to the king, undreamt of power, such innovation, great resistance, the average businessman in their lack of prejudice, as a dig, read this subversively, the end, as to the best methods, in our scheme, scientific advertising, war propaganda, regal tissues, from the ranks of the nobles, sacred tissues, laborious and expensive, a portion of the royal anatomy, sub-culturing, a new way of doing your religion, totalitarianism, making the king everywhere, the television watching you in Nineteen Eighty-Four, Kira on Deep Space 9, the caste system, revert to that, damaging to our society, just goes along with it, a terrible artist, reintroducing the caste system, suspicion of religion, submission to authority greater than yours, do my own research, super-evil, using science to do the job of religion, science has more potent effects, a very valuable story, invented the *tinfoil hat*, where is the other story, abridged, story, tended to be the redundancy of the writing, getting to the ideas, overly long as it is, 40 minute long ideas, could have been shorter, the characters are horrible, some more clues, the Amazing text, a microscope, it’s a tissue culture being observed, why is the toad there, genuflecting to the god, pray to the god, growing properly, almost like a cargo-cult version of what’s going on at that Rockafeller Institute, African empire hidden by a swamp, a modern day lost world, intrigue stuff, important, this is the kind of tech, Facebook and Twitter and Bluesky, ai, television, radio, ai, influencing and mind controlling people, the complementary thing, public religion, research would be limited, more resistance, the state is controlling what science is doing, the way the state is fleshed out in this story, eugenics, they were racist about it, clung longer, after WWII, racists like it, too hubristic, the state telling people who should breed together, sterilize those people, the mistake is that it is unwise, unintelligent behavior, so called smart people, what good genes are, special susceptibility to hypnotism and telepathy, our ideas about losing themselves in weird primitive dances, bound up together, the Plateau of Leng, the deep darkest deserts of Australia, underground in Wales, not on any map, 3 days of swamp, 10 years later?, not Julian Huxley, Planet Stories, set on another planet, analog, bootstrapping stuff and using it to get to places farther ahead, even more impressive, early doing a lot of stuff, you could almost question, public domain, fell asleep, fell into a daze, imagined this situation, just like The Tachypomp, a nightmare, this Robert E. Howard story we started with, less seriously racist, hefty, a mature man wrote this, a plan rather than a story, this man should be fought, If I Were Dictator, Thyroid Dictator, evil on the level of Fauci evil, their religion, moderating thing, full of slaving, accidentally got time traveled to the American south during slaving, do something illegal, arm slaves, foment rebellion, monetary means, a colonialism story too, Rwanda, the outer scientist, Hascombe attained to an unsurpassed degree, but to what end did all this power serve?, will to power, a perfectly good end, fasten the yoke of a false religion, religions as true or false, true and false in this connection, truer or falser, the telepathy actually working, the obvious moral, gradually being accumulated for them, the truth about the way things work, condemning institution science, took a little piece of King Charles, when Ferengis die, tissue culture style trays, little discs with a lid, collectibles, pulp magazines in slabs, relics, a piece of Quark, a parody of us, they don’t even bury themselves, sell the body parts, a very solid story, not a good story for Scott Miller, what do I do with this story?, did a podcast on it, pre-show threads, much lighter and also fun, a Will problem, explain this story like I am dumb, not a math guy, it was all a dream, the tutor, the stand in for Edward Page Mitchell, C. August Dupin, Edgar Allan Poe, 1878, a precursor to Sherlock Holmes proper, the sweetest girl, the daughter of his math professor, reason to worry, experiences a dream, increasingly eccentric, not perpetual motion, how to reach infinite speed, layers of linear accelerators, the smoking car, keep stacking linear accelerators, wind resistance, making a vacuum tunnel, essentially invented a particle accelerator, a rail gun, the one at CERN, donut shaped one, they didn’t have the curves, near lightspeed, in inventing that, solved the problem of how to get to infinite speed, pretty simple, dream framework, the simplicity of the idea, square the circle, our inner hero, before he goes into the dream, like a Frank R. Stockton The Lady Or The Tiger?, electrically expensive, when electricity is just starting be the normal thing, all a thought experiment, an expectation that it is real, his friend, awesome excitement, get paid too, students who are not asleep, teach things and learn things, discounting ordinary intelligence, the stern father’s good will, crunchy writing, meager reward, Jean Marie Rivarol, Gutenberg Australia, Alsace, Teuton in nature, by education a German, the dumb guy, good vocab, bad math, Stanley G. Weinbaum’s, Von Manderpootz, Pygmallion’s Spectacles, Manderpootzian, Francis Stevens, half German half Japanese scientist, falls into a vat of some sort of metal, Samson, mix two races, two personalities, Jules Verne, this people are like this, the Germans are rockheaded, Professor Rockhead, Phileas Fogg = Fog Lover, obsessed with time, precision, clockwork, Paspartou, very French, stereotypes about people, mix them together and get science, Lorraine, profession: omniscience, foreordained mysteries, Tahoe water, Lake Tahoe?, unmitigated stupidity, the skirts of the university, a plethora of purse and paucity of ideas, the awesome Jesse hero, transplant brains, occasional in, the names have to be jokes, students good at math, just there, all the other students are good, injection, early Simpsons episode, the gifted school, all the kids laugh, Bart is bad is school, Lisa is good at school, high vocab, we’re dumb, we’re living in a time of stupidity, Polyp University, Professor Surd, Abbie Surd, fun stuff, a comedy piece, The Senator’s Daughter, The Man Without A Body, wired teleportation, a funny story, a science fiction idea, about the problem of how to get to infinite speed, as long as you don’t believe in later stuff like Einstein, this is impossible, a very fun fun thought experiment, what he cares about, my uncle is a judge, nothing to worry about, just needs to come from a good family and be rich, Mr. Furnace, an angle close to The Raven, Poe is influencing here, The Purloined Letter, Murders In The Rue Morgue, central Frenchman, a proto-Sherlock Holmes, sees and observes, one of the most popular characters ever created, explore the idea of can we get to infinite speed, an infinite number of cars, there’s problems with space that could prevent that, acceleration problems, energy required goes up, 40,000 trains going forward, what defeats this story’s idea ultimately, as a kid, nothing that can faster than the speed of light, The Raven is a psycho-pomp, speed, let us discuss the tachy-pomp, quickly send, takes your psyche to the place of the afterlife, the ferryman Charon is a psychopomp, the Neil Gaiman Sandman stories, still haven’t defeated this idea, a special triangular ruler, they tell me I can’t communicate faster than the speed of light, ansibles, subspace communications, make it as long as the distance to another star, instead of sending things along it you turn it left or right, received data on the other side faster than the speed of light, you can’t make a ruler that long, you can’t build one that long, sort of been replicated in some effects of twinning atoms and electrons, make them harmonize with each other, their reactions, what you do to one effects the other, a potential form of this kind of communication, on a subspace level, some fundamental law of the universe level, written that up as a giant triangular stick, knocked out by neptune and space debris, a metaphor for the understanding, he’s right, if Newtonian physics were the ruling physics of the actual universe, subsequent beliefs about what’s going on, made frivolousness, for the entertainment of it, a hole dug, a natural phenomenon, came up through a trap door, clogged up with financial creditors, Kerguelen Islands, the antipodes, what becomes of any poor devil, a comfy looking chair, skeletal arms wrap around you, the only thing you’ll ask for is the bill, a hole through earth’s center, suspected it, Huygens, 1400 fathoms, you stand upon it, Mrs. Grimler’s Cellar, a galvanic experiment on a cat, Re-Animator, a yawning shaft, came up again, the angry Grimler, acquired momentum, 8000 odd miles, time after time, oscillation of a pendulum, I am not slow, a creditor of the trap, a touch of rhyme, outside my chamber door, Poe was getting pretty popular, in the center of the hole, so much air resistance, over that long journey, even if he threw it, velocity in the other direction, follows the same logic, invents with his mind, the antipodes of the Kerguelen, near Antarctica, find Sri Lanka on a map, a couple Iles Crozet, Kerguelen cabbage, a lot of the places there are named after Jules Verne things, explored and named, the Kerguelenn archipelago, where this story is presumably set, to make the train happen, New York, the border of Saskatchewan and Alberta, real but fudging, electrical energy supply, what squaring the circle is, a mathematical thing, alchemy, hermetic philosophy, numbers are a real thing in that they are self consistent and predictable, Pi, what appears to be infinity, we’re doing approximates, the functional version of the theoretical approximate, the perfect perfection that is numbers, fallen asleep, perpetual motion, trip him up, entirely imaginary, tutored in his home, plaster busts of Artistotle, Archimedes and Comte, the benign brow of Martin Farquhar Tupper, he always roosts there, a bird of no ordinary mind, ab is a root meaning from, ab-stract, cut from, cut from the absurd, cut from the same cloth, so funny, my masterpiece, an android, only partially complete, confute the schools, Albert Magnus, Roger Bacon, Sylvester the 2nd, a Brazen Head that held discourses, Thomas Aquinus got wrathful, laws as definite, this is chatbots, this is ai chatbots, a manakin, Reverend Dr. Alchin, Paul Anapest, vulgar fractions, compose sonnets, talk to you about positivism, Mr. Mitchell is good at craft, supposed to be fluffy, startlingly early stuff, sending DMs to Bill Christensen, older science fiction stories, the tin-foil hat thing, not a household name with regard to people who know about science fiction, doesn’t take itself seriously, Douglas Adams is very good at science fiction, a discourse/conversation/fight on Red Dwarf, time travel, implanted memories, played for comedy, idiots and selfish, serious in that it takes its ideas seriously, it doesn’t negate the story, keeps it light, made Will have to do it, so be it, fantasy and science fiction and what the genres do, indie authors, indie publishers, science fiction as different window dressing for fantasy, boring and for nerds, dorks, disprove this point, we’re dorks, dorky, a third story, The Last White Man, not for dorks, for people who like adventure fiction, not fantasy, both of these are pure quill science fiction stories, 1878 no such thing existed, Julian Huxley, maybe H.G. Wells, need not be, scientific romances, for novels, science fiction after the fact, a real thing, do it without self-consciously doing it, seeing how they work, in the context of society, doing something totally different, gotta save the girl, the sword is I got some money, Kurt Metzger on Joe Rogan, Ctrl Alt History, The Terminal Man by Michael Crichton, a brain implant that fucked a guy up real good, ethical stuff, wrapping tinfoil around his head, microwave transmissions, to control his mind, mind control shit, the mind control implant, standing in front of a bull, brain-chip, a little transmitter, what happens in the book, a really great read, experimental brain surgery or face prison for murder, makes a plan to escape, a feedback loop, a killing machine, fugue states, very interesting, two meanings for terminal, through a remote terminal, a keyboard and a monitor, dumb machines that just connect to google.com, what google chromebooks are, none of the processing is happening on your computer, you are a terminal people, can program you remotely, programmed, i’m 50 now I need to get the shingles vaccine, just gonna cause a rift between us, gonna increase your chance of getting shingles, not the common knowledge, people are programmed by society and corporations and governments, perverse incentives, repeating talking points you heard from youtube, state funded media, a very unpopular youtube channel, or from RFK, a righteous underground, do you want to get shingles?, for you to get that, look into it, when you look into it, where’d you get that, lotsa research, wouldn’t give it if you asked for it, not the right age, shingles vaccine, BC health link, a series of 2 doses, flu vaccine, covid vaccine, CDC, all adults age 50 and older, what are the benefits?, the best way to protect you, prevents more than 90%, 70-90%, after being immunized, just so we’re clear, that’s not a traditional vaccine, the NDP has been paid off by Pfizer, Dr. Bonnie Henry, what’s the percentage of people who get shingles?, weakened immune systems, preservatives etc., what caused Paul to drop the podcast, the facts are COVID vaccines increase your chances of getting shingles, this isn’t a zero sum gain, gene therapy, bad things, blood clots, from personal experience, hurt from these lies, Fauci is not a good person, we knew this, not number one on Trump’s list, the flu vaccine, one cut above homeopathy, a reaction to bad medicine, huge abuses went on there, institutions are institutional, turning regular humans into robots, most doctors don’t do any research after they graduate, too uppity about it, why are they pushing it, time usually reveals, why were black people in the USA more resistant to COVID vaccines, they were experimented on before, maltreated by lying doctors, The Constant Gardner (2005), Kenya, a movie to watch, the fictionalized story is what literally happens, PayPal, ebay account, almost 30 years old, before ebay bought it, a reputation, stealing, banning, you can’t send money to truckers, get your account frozen, their Billpoint system, cheques, not an institution in the same sense, still owned by ebay?, probably an evil corporation public traded, an individual, the closely held, family owned business, very trusting of the family in general, grandma vs. a hospital, the bad outliers, bad grandmas, homeopathy grandma, needed a blood transfusion, the local newspaper (now gone), during COVID, a mother and father disputing whether their newborn should get the COVID shot, the judge did way less research than the dad did, this is how you get autism at the massive rates that we have, by what standard does the judge make the decision, two parents in dispute, set a precedent, not mandatory for babies to get vaccinated, 6 months olds and higher, developmental disabilities, the vaccine schedule, the amount of autism has matched, the reason we have more queer people, more free now, more autism friendly, we diagnose them more, a Philip K. Dick novel, it was rare, now it is normal, reboot of Doogie Hauser, The Good Doctor, idiot Savant, an American show based on a Korean show, such a serious problem now, what’s going on here, measles used to be considered a good thing, now it is considered a deadly disease, not yet, adult onset autism doesn’t appear to be a thing, less than 3%, aspergers included, not diagnosed anymore, sometimes the disease are defined away, a “dis ease” as opposed to a “syndrome”, downs disease vs. downs syndrome, old eggs?, just look into it, I should be more skeptical, a lot of money on the line, the devil’s website, the NIH, that NPR chatbot podcast reader, convenient for that, a conversation about an audiobook, a better digestion, sometimes it glitches, the fake laugh, as Terence [Blake] pointed out, put Jesse out of work, for older kids?, more out of work, kids raised by LLMs, language learning model, a prison therapist, when kids have been institutionalized, sent to school, public or private, do these exercises, the hurt, goes in the trash, make a drawing of a horse, I’m putting this on the refrigerator, very rare, publish it in a journal or something, a litmag, The Capilano Review, the number of students, can’t really have care, student teachers ratios, most of the population involved in educating children, watching youtube videos, very obscure channel, very interested in reading, what he’s been reading about, very American based, conspiratorial, psychic surgery craze of the 1960s, dudes in the Philippines and Brazil, seems pretty sus, uses his hands to psychics remove tumors and stuff from your body, exposes after the fact, James Randi, famous for debunking claims of magic, fishguts, not doing it for money, non-financial incentives, the number of people want it, you really don’t want surgery, an invasive healthcare system, injections, replacements, forget about youutube and NIH, what doctors have done to her, left a drill bit in there, we’ll try to get it out another time, put bolts in your ankle, prednisone, a steroid, a whole bunch of that stuff, addictive, causes problems, my cat is on that, a shot every five weeks, the solution to muscles spasm is botox, kills the muscles, immensely painful, full of preservatives, hair falls out, horrible things happen, falling and breaking some ribs, second covid shot, almost die from bloodclots that immediately happen, all actually what happened, a frozen, leg, at age 70 whatever, if you’re just a regular person, not as skeptical as she should be, more interested in breeding chickens than finding out the truth of these things, cases where your relative gets cancer and they don’t have cancer after a number of years, incompetence and institutional stuff, re-reading, Edward Bernays’ propaganda, rich, 2004 introduction, all about real serous guiding, the invisible government, secret influencers of society, heavily invovled with the tobacco industry, poisonous, he made his money he could move on, turn the tables on it, how do you produce a true truth, a corporate truth, LibriVox, well worth doing, it has to be an active sonar or radar, it can’t be passive, actively trying to understand, going to buy a car, you’re fucked, what cars are being made where or why or how, was the case, Japanese cars were the best, year over year improvement, keep refining it, change the direction, this commitment to refinement, a Toyota from the 1990s you can’t go wrong, swapped the engine for a Ford, commitment to year over year improvement was unparalleled, people are there to try and fuck you, perverse incentives everywhere, okay dad, more of an uncle, beautifully naive, the canny individual, being wrong many times, defer to other people’s judgement, two kinds of oil, synthetic or regular, either one will work, fuck and find out, the consequences of that are possibly dangerous, take it to an expert, a corporate outlet, a mom and pop, in it for the longhaul, getting bought up and destroyed, sold his business to a chain of carguys, owned by Blackrock or Vanguard [or Blackstone], not a conspiracy or everybody knows everybody, New York real estate, they’re not owned by individuals, owned by corporations who own blocks of things, owned by stockholders, the company or companies have to crash for that land to get sold, that’s sort of the essential problem, mom and pop business, The Communist Manifesto, 1848, true in England but not in Germany in 1848, a pamphlet, a utopian novel, a manifesto and an essay, leave no Jesse unturned, vampire, children’s fiction, fantastic fiction, six in progress, sort by release date, Ham Jones: Scientist, 16 years, what class?, economics, philosophy, it wasn’t offered, a German studies class, German Socialism, East Germany, 19th century stuff, Dastardly Criminals In Space, Watchbird, Conspiracy On Callisto by Frederik Pohl, Manly Wade Wellman, The Incomplete Theft, Tom Godwin, Robert Silverberg, Bratton’s Idea, “Old Bratton, janitor at the studios of Station XCV in Hollywood, was as gaunt as Karloff, as saturnine as Rathbone, as enigmatic as Lugosi.”, what other radical science fiction authors could we dig up, is it good?, no way of knowing, about robots?, inventions fiction, robots, Mike Vendetti stuff, The Curious Experience OF Thomas Dunbar, the first superhero story, Edmond Hamilton, Weird Tales, apple books, audible listing, imagine if you will, age immediately or regress to when they were youths, nefarious inventor, a lot of money, sound familiar?, causing panic, more adventurey fiction, Spawn Of Inferno by Hugh B. Cave, Clark Ashton Smith, anything by him, a darkness that settled like a black cloud, blackness, a thing from the outer darkness, ghastly appetite, The Thing From Outside by George Allan England, like The Wendigo by Algernon Blackwood, The Willows, badly told interesting idea, badly told?, not well told, we benefited it by being massively abridged, made it shorter, very short, from Connor [Kaye], Who Are The Dead?, we like that about him The Black Abbott Of Puthuum, Averoigne, nice art, Margaret St. Clair, corresponded, fuckin cool, she’s San Fransisco, a real homebody, Tommy Patrick Ryan, still be interesting to have read it, works for Margaret St. Clair as well, her story about fake meat, up on Bill Christensen’s website, Juciveal, technologies in stories, broad beamed, pleasantly easy to answer, Jucipork, Mr. Angst of Gourmond, a culinary editor, Veristeak, Lazarus, an interesting topic, the surprise, it’s alive, it’s made out of meat, Terry Bisson, Chicken Little, The Space Merchants, The End Of The Line, Clifford D. Simak, both Americans, provincial Americans, pastoral, countryside guys, not city-boys, loves the countryside, whole adult life, kept returning to the countryside, Talking Man by Terry Bisson, a wizard, time is a circle, fixing cars, a dude who knows how to do things, the first episode of Doctor Who, two teachers, math and history, a student they have, she’s so remarkable, she could teach the class, she’s fuckin time traveler, gets evasive, eager to learn, follow her home, parents wont meet, a junkyard, the sign above the junkyard, I.M. Foreman, her grandfather, three doctors down the road, John Smith, I’m from the future bro, an alien, subsequent stuff, no alien stuff at all, very fun, alternates between dystopian future or alien planet, historical entries, The Romans, weird episodes, the whole ocean is acid, a puzzle planet, weird amazing science fiction, the closest thing it starts off as is a rip off of The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, companion viewpoint characters, cave people times, the secret of fire, 11, 12, 13?, really well done, science fiction windowdressing, monster of the week, The Pyramids Of Mars, 19th century England, re-doing The Mummy, the mummies are aliens, a tomb on Mars, Osiris was a real character, The Mummy (1932), ancient aliens are gods story, entombed on Mars, 1 tv show a day with dinner with Meg, comedy about a hospital, The Office, St. Denis Medical, animals doing stuff, The Henryiod, straight adaptations, Shakespeare, old school, women played by men, pretty straight, Shakespeare’s great, the histories, Richard III, Julius Caesar, Marlon Brando, British accents for the Romans, I, Claudius, among the top 5 tv shows ever done, if not in the first slot, Derek Jacobi, 6 hours maybe, shot on videotape, stupid British, amazing performances, great blocking, where they place the camera, helps tell the story, receiving the speech, help tell a story, old Claudius, Robert Graves, Augustus through Tiberius, Nero, Caligula, the story of the story, Patrick Stewart plays Sejanus, good acting, getting stabbed, Praetorian, suicided, poisoned, slaves running around in the background, 4 different versions of Ben-Hur, well dressed, no outdoor scenes, in tents, inside a hall, the Senate, by torrenting, that’s drama for you bro, it was huge, so many good actors, John Hurt, Sian Phillips, The Elephant Man (1980), British stage actors, become iconic, high quality production, shot on videotape, they’ve lost episodes of it, animating missing episodes, real science fiction stories, it was illegal to pirate the show, happy to take your pirate copies, owned by the British government, revenue bro, all on tubi right now, the best streaming service, The King Tide (2023), shot in Newfoundland, hard to see things, living on an island, fishermen, mainlanders, a baby crying, 10 years later, miraculously heals, cut-off from the rest of the world, the secret, a child who can heal sickness, adoptive parents, amazing baby resource, human resource, the center of the island’s attention, weirdo drunk guy, while she’s reading a book, lineup to get in, the healthcare provider, having fistfights for fun, poison themselves, she loses her power to heal, she was spending time with some bees, all the bees died, only while she’s asleep, take sleeping pills, this island is fucked, promised never to leave, a kid being abused, this doesn’t go well, everybody on the island dies and maybe the whole planet, the execution was poor but the idea was good, a little bit Lovecraftian, maybe a fishkid, giving her sleeping pills, serving Omelas, make fish appear in the nets, the enrichment, Labrador, on the mainland, a special kind of rum, kiss a fish before you drink the rum, videogames might have been a mistake, kissing the fish, a time suck, accent is similar to Irish, not apart of Canada until 1949, a colony of Britain, out of work, 2-4, 3 hours, too much time writing a few days a week, drink some coffee, smoke a little bit, dive right in, exhausting yourself, a break, accomplished something, 5am for every start, before church, a paper route, still morning, a nice feeling, it’s so late, bedtime, staying up pretty late, awake quite late, up at 4am, when the sun goes down, various weasels, doing stuff since 4am, sick in December, missing work, felt really useless being sick, contempt, drifting from thing to thing, twitter accounts, bitter about Ukraine, angry about Israel, do some stuff, write a book, why video games are a mistake, huge mistake, they’re so fun and non-productive, productive in Minecraft, it’s fake, use it in moderation as a reward for actual production, immediately became obsessed with it, girls and boys, boys love to dig, sandbox, because you’re boy, stacking, chopping, stacked and chopped, housebuilders, natural, monkey with tools, tie things together, Gilligan’s Island, bamboo and string, also Ginger’s cool, the rich guy, the doofus and the boss, girl next door, Mrs. Howell, lovey-dovey, all they have is money, do you ever think about the Black Death?, Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman, gruff knight, very gently, spoil it for me, secretly God, sounds bad, really good, you don’t have the Christianity background, Will’s biggest deficit, Flesh + Blood (1985), the Heinlein movie, Paul Verhoven, lock themselves up in a castle, a statue of St. Martin, their totem to keep them safe, degenerates, contamination, Rutger Hauer is amazing, Brion James, a pretty long movie for 1985, semi-produced by Hollywood, he’s got a lot of good movies, Hollow Man (2000), Showgirls (1995), Black Book (2006), dutch WWII stuff, Soldier Of Orange (1977), national colour, The 4th Man (1983), bisexual writer, ignorant of one of the greatest artforms around, Basic Instinct (1992), Total Recall (1990), RoboCop (1987), become disciplined about it, 4 movies everyday, The Last Emperor(1987), quite amazing spectacle, you don’t watch it for fun, become edified by it, Death Wish (1974), to understand the concept, why there were 8 Death Wish sequels, a Bronson disciple, produced in, I don’t care about Jill Ireland, he really does, that’s interesting, an interesting character, roughest background imaginable, beating eachother for breakfast, coal mine at age 9, a real something to see, 15 – 20 years ago, I have a certain set of skills, Irish actor, Liam Neeson, Taken (2008), spends the rest of the movie killing people, set decades apart, a thread that started a long time ago, dismiss whole categories of movies, have met many men, an example, Lawrence Of Arabia (1962), colonialism in Dune, the personal story, a beautiful film, tube tv, on laserdisc, stunning on a 55 inch widescreen tv, there’s an intermission, really good book, the 1959 Ben-Hur, the 1925, the cartoon version, narrated and performed by Charlton Heston, the 2016 version, they didn’t have movies in 1888, had to do it through books, cast of thousands, before it was a movie it was a stageplay, treadmills, how the medium has changed, on Broadway, the number of horses that died, so round, took a long time to film, seize the medium while it is ripe, get to it before you die, Sorcerer (1977), Tangerine Dream, The Wages Of Fear, driving rotten dynamite across Brazil, the worst roads, leaking nitroglycerine, mostly no talk, William Friedkin, backstory, reasons to flee to Brazil, on the poster is a truck crossing a rope bridge, what’s going to happen, came out the same week as Star Wars (1977), The French Connection (1971), To Live And Die In L.A. (1985), musicals, Jonathan Weichsel, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), fucked women up, Marilyn Monroe, imaginary reasons, conspiracy theory, backed by stuff, feels right, probably true, Will had trouble with the subtlety, “dumb bitch”, she’s a nice girl, dam, ewe, dam, ewe, the projection is hilarious, maybe he’s doing something right, tv work, SVU, victim’s fathers, so for boomers, Law & Order, the one that is so dominant, very special rape, what makes the special, 26 seasons, it’s got what the people want: raped from the headlines, Criminal Intent, Organized Crime, Hate Crimes, this is the one about sexual assault, Law & Order Sex Crimes, Sex Criminals, the first volume, some lurid thing going on, Americans are special in that they’re more prudish, love violence, shaped, broken glass as a standin for blood, everybody has had the experience, cut their foot, it means blood, streaming clips, blood is turned green, when mom walks into the room, paying for your Prime, green mist, green spurt, that’s not blood, reality is shaped by the requirements of the prudishness of a certain set of people, in 15 years, radio stations, exactly 100 years old, first radio stations, Hugo Gernsback, ham radio guys, KDKA, in the car, to avoid commercials, BBC radio, it shouldn’t be, declined during covid, if television is around in 15 years, radio is dead, in the car, an old car, drive around town, it was a thing, SNL, vanishingly rare, half the year, Timothee Chalamet, what the current liberal hivemind is thinking, who’s famous right now, that one video, vote for Kamala, reviews phones or cars, Jerry Rig Everything, breaking phones apart, a Mormon, pretty diverse, a disabled wife, wheelchairs, wealthy from youtube, always getting wealthy, busy getting married and networking, supports getting rich, support, a nation within a nation, busy breaking phones, what phone should I get, ads for phones on tv, phone services, drugs, insurance, car and house, iphones and samsungs, free phone, phone plans, co-op advertising, talk over the ads, while the tv is yapping at you, while the tissue culture king is praying on your mind, actors from SNL, tattoos and dates, tattoos removed, other reasons, Sarah Sherman, droopy dry, dandruff shampoo, subject, fancy bath products, a nice experience in the shower, go beyond a neutral experience, if this were the middle ages, a perfumed bath, audiobooks in the shower, racing the alarm, just stop showering, sorry to listeners, pee and coffee, Eternal Lover/Savage.

The Tissue-Culture King by Julian Huxley - AMAZING

The Tissue-Culture King by Julian Huxley

Abbie

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #856 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Exploration Team by Murray Leinster AND The Velvet Glove by Harry Harrison

The SFFaudio Podcast #856 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Exploration Team by Murray Leinster, read by Ben Tucker (1 hour 40 minutes), AND The Velvet Glove by Harry Harrison, read by Gregg Margarite (44 minutes), both for LibriVox. The discussion of both with Jesse, Will Emmons begins at 2 hours 25 minutes.

Talked about on today’s show:
2 hours, Ben-Hur, Bill The Galactic Hero, Space Tug, tugboat in space, maritime stuff, zygote, developing in a womb for 38 years, Damien by Hermann Hesse, a bird has to break out of an egg, Ray Bradbury, most accessible of his books, The Glass Bead Game, what’s the cover look like, not a lot of spaceships and dragons, a bird, a flock of birds, a sun with a face in it, Æpyornis Island, accidental father, becomes aggressive, it is very good, H.G. Wells, continuously mean characters, not every piece of science fiction is equally good, better written vs. better ideas, a value judgement, The Velvet Glove, 1 to 2 ideas, much better in terms of ideas, robot underclass, almost like reality as it is, the robot meets a blackman, how many people were lynched in 1956 just for, if you have this book burn it, Scott Miller’s audiobook Robot Strike by Harry Harrison, the better of Asimov, joining this federal agency, The Stainless Steel Rat, first person perspective, pushed in to working for a benevolent law enforcement agency, subversiveness, the craft is a little weak, a me problem, taking his legs off, robot body parts, a strong craftsman, a little repetitive at points, he invented a world, really good science fiction for a bit, I likes bears, the eagle, the setup, the plot is ok, the resolution is fine, mutated bears, a value judgement, galactic manifest destiny, the problem with the robots, we become the servants to robots, how the two stories interact, the background, very minimal, minimal goals, wouldn’t it be cool if you had bears who were your friends?, swat her baby bear, many times, bears communicate with their fellow bears by swatting, how momma cats take care of their baby cats, make them run away, we’re lovin it, that’s the only thing going on in the story, needs to arrest him, illegally colonizing, keeps confessing to crimes, never a real threat in the story, we just lie a little bit on the forms, how we’re gonna classify you in the end, trick readers, trick John W. Campbell, a buncha bears, cool names, why wouldn’t I like this, goddamn big, goddamn small, a very goddamn big eagle, Sitka Charlie, Sourdough Pete, Nugget, Huygens, a tier down from Newton, kinda cool, famous dutch scientist, a hidden story in it, a hidden truth, what is inside of this story?, we have been entrained, entertainment isn’t enough, it’s terrible because it doesn’t do anything, you should read my novel it has power armour, the power armour is the main character, the guy inside, and the power armour has been dead for 16 years, and the power armour is corresponding with his wife, ‘I’m gonna be home soon’, can a man come home if he can’t actually take off his armour?, donkeys are not food, friends not food, food and friend, dogs not so much, mmm donkey milk, wouldn’t be cool to have a bear for a friend, barely science fiction, that’s the problem with it, science fiction adventure writing, dismissing something, wanna be friend, cool to be friends with Scott Miller and a donkey, Man-Hunting Robot by James Rosenquest, dining hall full of skeletons, chased by this robot, like The Running Man, joining the galactic police, galaxy’s most famous criminal forced to join the cops, subverting rather than joining, Ben Tucker’s good, very little to talk about it, fold in, see the hidden story within it, we turn our attention back to The Velvet Glove, Mississippi Burning (1988), Willem Dafoe and Gene Hackman, nice feds, mistrustive of institutions, gritty realism, didn’t look good anymore, a complaint through the grapevine, no teeth, no job, clean clothes, shoes that don’t look terrible, goes down that direction, when the robot gets kidnapped, plot shit, Robot Grapes Of Wrath, Brian Aldiss, the iron fist in the velvet glove, Napoleon, the Iron Hand of Mars, their standard is a literal iron hand, the iron fist in the velvet glove in the flaxen gauntlet, literally iron hands, from the POV of a robot, a way better than an Asimov story in general, the first law in the 92nd chip, kicks ass, the job interview, all downhill from there, the opening, editor of Fantastic Universe, the poor man’s F&SF, they don’t have the money, robots who don’t know their place, New York was a bad town for Robots, John Vennex, so excellent, he would have his leg off in a jiffy, old dead friend, Gregg Margarite, he fixes his leg, the light goes off, the comic strip from the newspaper, infrared light, an Asimov robot story but told from a much better pov, 1st person Asimov?, The Naked Sun, a sense of humour, smooth and easy, totally ripped off for Futurama, rusty on his face when he doesn’t drink too much, Robot Arms, a standing space, playing with the idea, New New York, a story with a story inside of it, robots are never about robots, they should be now, they’re about the division of labour, bro, robots get religion, the way that Philip K. Dick is much more exploratory, working joes with chips in their heads, the bomb and that boring stuff, a drunk guy there, almost hard to follow, down with the truck driver, black man being harassed for being too uppity, put on a livewire, he has instant recall, perfect senses, see things in the dark, a superman treated as an underclass, corpulent man, bumping in, saved by his employer/owner, right after the robot liberation from slavery, this might be a sequel to the robot strike, a loose sequel, the plot is crap, accurate, compelling stuff, hardup itinerant robots, what is this freedom, wishes he was owned, Harrison really had something here, financial incentive, he’s good at characterization, Asimov’s not good at, silly, a promise of more, he’s reading the book, back in the same situation, the closet in his room, please destroy this card after reading, any Tuesday at 5pm, a perfect memory, playing with the idea that he is a man, a superman, undercut by restrictions that Asimov has put on him, Harry Harrison has adopted, the society that he’s in, a forgettable Asimov story with characterization, should have been a classic for the ages, mass meeting, go on strike, one of the laws of robotics, any order that a human or robot gives you, shut down New York City, a whole lotta violence, human on human violence, the Robot Equality Act, drunk woman orders, a bottle of liquor, he couldn’t say no, Deathworld is good, The Stainless steel Rat, Slippery Jim DiGriz, in a fun world, light hearted, Soylent Green (1973), Make Room, Make Room, emotionally moving, The Senator’s Daughter by Edward Page Mitchell, Bill Christensen from Technovelgy, The Man Without A Body, Star Trek transporter through telephone wires, The New York Sun, 1879, 13 pages of text by transcription, Chapter 1, The Small Gold Box, 1937, Daniel Webster Wanli, eating a toilet, a rather elaborate toilet, googledocs, readalong, something Jesse complains about, walk up to a mirror, so funny, so bad, C.S. Forester novel, a first novel problem, you never have H.G. Wells doing that, in the glass he beheld, a perfect oval, short upper lip, he’s Fu-Manchu, dancing pumps, a pure Mongolian ancestry, this story is super-anti racist, but uses all the racist language, so interesting, profusion over the neck and shoulders, nickerboker breeches, intelligent good sense, an easy grace, the voice of his friend, how are we off for time, getting late, curtains, strode in, the Honorable member, prepared to conquer tonight, these frivolities, blush, infernally cold, it is snowing hard in New York, traveling at supersonic speeds, awesome, dressed hilariously, what a dandy, thermal electrode, waltz creditably, a sphere of shining platinum, that feels good, the scarlet bows, what would your constituents say?, th mainstay of the hope of the Extreme Left, knee ribbons, at a fashionable Harlem hop, the Bette Noir, this is very good, raillery, noiseless rollers, wickerbasket, the tech is great, so silly, can’t help but love it, the Contemporary News?, the Interminable Intelligencer, the organ of his own party, the wealth the beauty, unprecedented luster, stately wife, ex-President, sinecure, how funny the contrast here, set in 1937, bitter political animosity, just complaining about his now wearing a suit, Zelensky, guy who wears shorts, John Fetterman, slouch-ass clothes, when Netanyahu came to congress, the Israeli lobby probably paid for the suit, General Kwong, the defeated Mongol Vegetarian Candidate, the Chinese ambassador, strongly marked Asiatic features, the Chinese ambassador is probably a woman, this isn’t a homophobia story, little details, the Battle of Cheyenne, hoodlum fighter, equality of his racist, anti-racist in its racism, a Jesse definition, it could be a correct one, 1879, Chinese Exclusion Act, the ferment, far distant future, 60 years in the future, that’s a newspaper but in a constant flood, this is the tech used from stocks, a stock ticker, wired telegraphy, it’s amazing, what the hell is going on?, the toilets of the ladies are charming, the peacock feather train, give me a dinner, eaten nothing for 15 days, genuine science fiction, oh good, it’s not a small room, it is not hyperbole, the Mongol Vegetarian party, oval in form, a number of grey pastilles, candy, hardly larger than peas, thus do I satisfy mine hunger, vile and degrading, outraging the very laws of nature, the small gold box, with eager gaze, as if involuntary, Schneke, Senator Newton, no small sensation, regarding him earnestly, affected indifference, I think my dear boy, proceed to the capital, totally loveable, as being twitter, constant firehouse of information, ticker at the bottom of cable of news, description of the inauguration, so far, he’s a white guy who likes a chinese guy, very charming, this style of writing, this style of science fiction, owe it to Bill Christensen, science fiction tropes, interested in the origins, she’s an archaeologist, an aztec mummy, comes to life, never dead, suspended animation, I have no soul, come with me and we’ll suspended forever, sounds good, H. Rider Haggard energy, adventure and romance, funny intentionally, also science fiction, disarming you with humour, subversive all over the place, the ball at the capital, a brilliant throng, the rotunda of the capital, delectation, wall of flowers, D.C., not dingy, set in the future, worth noting, temporary interior dome, concavity, oppressive shower of fragrance, a single jet of water, flooding the room with light, as the light of the Moon, gave utterance to the notes, the vibrant tip of his baton, light and blurry and difficult, a contemporary conductor, live music delivered across the ocean, blocking the rotunda’s concavity, nice smell and music, the tech here, gave utterance to the note, so futuristic, for 1879, hydrolecrtic fountain, scientifiction, met and mingled, seized and led of captive, scarcely noticing, exchanging bows, accosted by General Kwong, the campaign of 1936, a repeat, he really wants you to know and note it, the Democrat/Republicans and the Mongol Vegetarians, February of 1937, a Chinesey accent, the senate chamber, retraced his steps, the other extremity of the capital, been there, done his research, all this walking around, the music of a waltz, several hundred couples, apparently an Italian, relinquished her waist, this story is great, holding out her hand, thank you Miss Newton, you may retire Francesco, I shall not need you again, bowed respectfully, this Italian guy, dismissed him like he’s a servant, wasp white ethnic divide, she’s in love with a chinese dude, looking forward to it, glided off together, slap, thanked her with a smile, competent professional partner, sit dismally around the walls, a shade of annoyance, forgive me if I have wounded you, there’s a story by Jerome K. Jerome, The Dancing Partner, novel notes, a good horror story, blood and dancing, a dancing machine for girls, what a blessing, unfinished, a call back to the time in which the story is published, hire our own guys to dance with us, not just progressive in racial terms, also in gender terms, absolutely insane, what he’s laying down, the next one is unfinished, he knows it, a feather’s weight, in society, in her father’s laundry, sampan, don’t you love this, as you well know, Jim, first spacecraft to land on mars, these Tesla batteries, reflecting while they’re dancing, not going to be a popular science fiction story, it’s amazing, an anonymous story, just content, my mom was doing your family’s laundry, isolated rural peasant, Yangtze, Deep Space 9, literally think, a lot like Gene Roddenberry, really strange, neat futuristic stuff, the tech, progressive gets a lot of negative material, that means he’s a shit, people being inferior is wrong, poppa?, tiresome speech against the vegetables, manifest embarrassment, trembling in my happiness, a conservative among the conservatives, this must have an end, an equivocal position, on one bold move, a charming blush, you beloved little puritan, honky, he’s insulting her, a congregationalist, as they passed out of the hall of representatives, she’s racist, I may need your counsel before morning, Massachusetts sweetheart, a screen of palmettos, asked him for food, bit his underlip, heaped with delicate viands, obtain refreshment, I’m going to ask you for a final proof of your affection, a wing of a fowl, a plate of fruit, I’m a vegan, the theory of your party, the political topic of the day, there isn’t a vegan party, demagogy, an absurd and sophistical theory, the radicalism of the rabble, capitalization, political right?, moral right, abstract morality, an upheaval, science and abstract Right, the march of time, his flaming eyes, she could not hide, his manly bearing, long hair don’t care, a beautiful toilet, a dandy, knickerbockers, a cartoon of this, every animal, most insignificant mollusc, children of the common Evolution, the great family, the Australian bushman, the ox, levels to this shit, so heady, is not the butchery of the murder, fratricide?, cannibalism, in the habit of long ages, Benjamin Lay, the nadir for vegetarianism, Hitler, a rise the 60s, whole foods, we forgot this was a big thing, making an argument that only science fiction can make, very progressive, modern shitty racism theory, that description of his body, he has little feet, so crazy, would you elevate them to suffrage, the baboon?, at least not at the present, the right to vote, the ox, the chicken, the baboon, sentence in isolation, hilarious, mind continuously blown, for the sake of a meal, how evolution works, we got there first, the pinnacle of being an organism, where uplift comes from, The Island Of Doctor Moreau by H.G. Wells, those are noble sentiments, the adverbs for everything, he said with a smile and a bit of sadness, they will carry the country of 1940, Mongol-Vegetarian party, a fusion between a pro-Asian party and the vegetarian party, the Mongol Free Love party, I admire your earnestness, even so much as a chicken wing, women didn’t have the vote, almost like a checklist of progressive ideas and tech, with your words still in my ears, a little fruit, the great mass of our party, this story is getting better and better, the laggards up to our line, calmly await ultimate results, how can we escape, the tree, the plant, event the fungus, who can say where vegetable life ends, to uproot a potato, to pluck a grape, to outrage consanguinity, the vocab of the author and the character, a duty to refrain from vegetable food, all living things are born free, is not that a beautiful thought, Canadian humour pop bands, [Arrogant Worms – Carrot Juice is Murder], must we starve to death, what a sentence, the small gold box, her white hand, it will satisfy her hunger, morsel, even if it were poison, nourishment, tasteless, 18 to 25 days, entire 76th congress, more than 20 years, handwavium, nice infodump, proximate principles, fibrin, albumen, by the old plan, muscular tissues of the ox, encumbered, back to the toilet, in the ideal form of food no ladies have to poop, no useless irrelevant matter, the German chemists, the fountainhead of nature, now shall the evils of gluttony, brother vegetables, now shall all this be, the lips I love, stockings have flowers, this man is so elaborate, funny looking, at this point in the story, he’s making fun of vegetarians, how can he be anti-racist and making fun of vegetarians, two things at once, too sophisticated, The Ball At The Capital, pills that are food, Mr. Wallsingham Brown, that Italian dancer, following you like a hound, her Mongolian lover, there shall be no scene, what’s his business, the wingman, racist against the Mongolian, inner party, a rich kid, he’s not from old old money, his parents had a laundry, Pennsylvania Avenue, the bowels of the earth, luxuriously upholstered, to Boston, a pneumatic tube, the New York subway system, the final chapter, The Frozen Bride, 1904, London Underground, 1863, Paris, he doesn’t invent things out of wholecloth, The Man Without A Body, why not physical objects, wired lines, everything in this story makes sense, even that is correct, u can live like that for a long time, still peeing, toxins removed,having some fun, reading it with a straight face, like The Coming Race, we don’t wanna kill animals and eat their flesh, a nice tree, as soon as you say: don’t eat fruit, look at me, a flashing neon sign, come eat me!, kale, cabbage, vegetables don’t want to be eaten, fruits want to be eating, “want”, evolved to be eaten, extend voting rights to apples, too parodic, people might twig to the fact, the suffrage of the succotash, the Narragansett word, before Lovecraft said I’m a native, The Dunwich Horror, bushmen and indians, radical, more radical, undercooked intellectually, doesn’t complete sentence, a short hard laugh, the lower branch, his colleague, the lower house, the upper house, the lower branch of humanity, senators vs. congressmen, Bernie Sanders calls it the House Of Lords, waist of the young Chinaman, because I love him, long afterword, after the story material, Los Angeles apartment, not good craft, that mirror stuff, it is funny, foolish child, profit in the least, sinister operations, deceives himself, won’t even say his name, emotional control, he’s so important, very patrician, as an honorable man, honorable marriage, with a sneer, a prophet, an apostle of Vegetable Rights, let him seek a cactus in marriage, wanton insult, loves his emdashes does Edward Page Mitchell, such is due him, I go with him, a lawyer, the Suspended Animation Act, surely you would not, inhuman, outrageous enactment, for a quarter of a century, Wanli swoons, he swooned, he’s womanly with that long hair, flowery socks, firmly set teeth, another kick in the balls, I will read the text, the ritual of this marriage, female person, maid or widow under the age of 30 years, registered consent, null and void, such parents or guardians, really interesting, marriage is controlled by the states, why is he writing about this?, writing for money, Margaret St. Clair, participate, Harry Harrison, Murray Leinster, other kinds of fiction, western, crime, romance, fill pages, make content, get content, he’s thought about, he’s a Walsingham Brown, laws against that, set it in the future, the punishment for offending is being frozen, since the 18th century, animals that hibernate, 1801, speak for people, for space travel, a gimmick to get somebody into the future, The Jameson Satellite, the first Heinlein novel, For Us, the Living, an evil story, The Marching Morons, not a Good story, an Evil story, the history of refrigeration, Cool Air by H.P. Lovecraft, when his wife left him, crappy boarding house, the slattern who runs the place, boils weird cabbages, an old Spanish man, a zombie, using air conditioning, refrigeration vs. ice boxes, battery powered stuff, first electronic refrigeration, ice truck deliveries, 1913, the idea, the concept exists before it is marketed, freeze people, such a strange turn in the story, the new world struggling to be born, what does it mean?, the cruel sin of the fathers, we must part, as if to dismiss, a bugaboo, 4am, arguing for 2 hours, as cold and self-possessed, frozen, he has frozen me already with his frigid heart, the 27th amendment, according to his pleasure, a means to procure divorce, not superlegal, freeze yourself, a right to put yourself on pause, government paid for?, pause yourself, so as to avoid paying alimony?, get out of your marriage, by going into the future, by waiting for her to die, how did this come up, invents freezing, that’s immoral, 27th seems high, shorten the time between elections, WWII or previous, change the salaries of congress members, Nancy Pelosi is $180 [$240] millionaire, the clergyman, the Refuge, the cloister, soliloquy, his life probabilities, the vital bureau of Washington, Lifeline by Robert A. Heinlein, the insurance companies murder him, cute, claim your bride, another Heinlein one, The Door Into Summer, child bride, frozen husbansicle, age up to “husband high”, tall enough to get married, Wyoming Knot, pale cheeks, womanish rhinelanders, very emotional, dissuade the caucasian, he’s got the tissue ready, fresh rosy, prematurely aged, sallow, flacid, a skeleton, a ghost of her former self, absolute suspension would be death, they gnaw and prey upon, the last and most perfect argument that can be addressed, what if you get ugly?, for my poor beauty I care very little, the little gold box, swallowed it’s entire contents, valances today, she swallows the whole bottle of pills, my duty is with you, the joy of awakening, you have a great and noble order to perform, I think your duty is plain, you’re important, outlive my dad, voting rights to cabbages and carrots, not to fruit, once the chickens get ready, David Brin, in the gray dawn, Cambridgeport, a mockery of grief, grave and silent, tearless eyes, sobbing, cried out all his tears, the congealing chamber, icy embrace, does it have a plot?, does it cohere?, withered husky, is it a good story, no, is it a great story yes, timeline, twenty minutes, typesetting, that tracks, a better science fiction than the other two, it’s great science fiction, completely nuts, gonzo, a real gem, his website has been around forever, based on his references, however long the internet has been around, the text is on gutenberg australia but it is not a reliable text, chronicle.gov, capitalizations and corrections, why is there no Jewish Narnia, what about…, a Jewish fantasist, this is not a fantasy writer anybody has heard of, not in the mainstream, even Tolkien and Lewis, Olaf Stapledon, and H.G. Wells, not submitting to Astounding, they fit, copying Wells, some New York Review Of Books, obscure, the idea holds, secondary world fantasy, a lot of Mormons doing it, the secondary world, totally off the radar of mainstream science fiction, died in 1927, born in 1852, an earlier science fiction writer, The Clock That Went Backwards, 1881, the plot of Back To The Future (1985), a Dutch starvation siege, instead of Doc Brown, Delorean time machine, the progenitor of the whole family, like Time Rider (1982), an excellent science fiction movie, it’s tight, gold to be mined, Tachypomp, Back From The Bourn, The Soul Spectroscope, The Exchanging Of Their Souls, The Extraordinary Wedding, Or War With Monaco, sounds good, The Balloon Tree, 1886, The New York Sun, letter column, handin around, way more disposable, done that day, save a newspaper longer than a day, on a ship, becomes toilet paper, with Weird Tales you can stack em up, participatory, magazines are more collectable, in comes the collecting thing, fill your bins, two stories in the official podcast, almost awesome, enriched, tell Meg about that, tell her the fun parts, bride getting frozen, totally science fiction, not like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Lucian of Samosata, doesn’t scream SCIENCE FICTION at you, the closest competitor Fitz-James O’Brien, weird fiction, in a proper sense, Jules Verne, it depends on the story, 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, From The Earth To Moon, a play for comedy, Stephen Leacock, The New Food, pills as food, a secret story inside of it, Jesse’s thesis, every podcast on two science fiction stories has two science fiction stories inside of it, Professor Plum, all the essential nutritive elements, ordinary article of diet, drawbacks as well, the smiling family, plentiously laid, the radiant mother, the Christmas dinner, resting on a poker chip, lifted the thimble, this is great, an agonized cry from the mother, Gustavus Adolphus, the unthinking child, give him water, a dull rumbling sound, exploded into fragments, a lingering smile, 13 Christmas dinners, exploding baby, a happy baby, The Retroactive Existence Of Mr. Juggins, make a proper handle, a sapling, sharpen up the axe, fix the grindstone, making wooden legs, a carpenter’s bench, never came back, metafiction, really fun, no name for a baby, an allusion to a real person who exploded on a battlefield, it by a cannonball, a good think in the background, LibriVox, The Tachypomp, read by Ben Tucker, The Devil’s Funeral, The Crystal Man, Back From That Bourne, An Extraordinary Wedding, 70 young men, a math story, for whom the limbs of heavenly bodies, spectacular stage?, Polyp University, two weeks where the story is about marriage, a lot of marriage going around, a show on food, throughout science fiction, superfood to animals, he becomes a giant, giant chickens, giant cows, go with The Tachypomp, a picture of a yeti, bigfoot smoking a pipe, a body cleaning product, pharmacy section, wearing a suit, a smoking jacket, pocket, he’s pretty cute, product design, looking at shelves, where the true art is, Coffin Crisp, Coffee Crisp, during Halloween, I love this, make this my desktop, Smarties, Mars bars with bats, the gimmick, almost all art related, Gaza is being holocausted video, a fake meat Margaret St. Clair story, a fake meat factory, 3 shill magazines, the sounds in the vats, tourmaster, made of the meat, fleshy monster, to be cut up to be served, a cute little story that addresses Mr. Wanli’s concerns, she’s great, funny and horrible at the same time, is it terrorism, video slaughterhouses, what a wonder, The Green Queen, bad novel great book, a Margaret’s St. Clair’s Magazine, Asimov is good, series sellout, a Philip K. Dick magazine, the UBIK end, have to be based on her stories, domestic weird science fiction, earthbound, stuff set in space, go back in time and marry her, finds the lady, Somewhere In Time, she renewed too much, Return Engagement, old reliable Ben Tucker, 28 minutes, pair it with another, voles with laser beams on their heads, very Margaret St. Clair, The Gardener, a creepy kind of space horror story, chops down a sacred tree, totemic guardian of the tree, she likes plants a lot, a trans story, she is telling her story, she’s mentally ill, her old wife, she murders that person, I paid for your operation, be in my alien zoo, she murders her old identity, published in nice editions, there’s no audiobook, Mike Vendetti, fantasy by her, they just stopped making books, someone has to create content, series, power armour book, an army of self promoting indie authors, Jonathan’s second Scandals funded, two good looking covers, pretty extreme art inside, made a deal with the devil, the John De La Roz crew, friendly with each other online, taking a stand against Paul based on nothing, Ben-Hur next week, very relevant for the creation of Israel, Americans who support Zionism, people have ideas, it wasn’t all sexual blackmail, Christian zionism, Lew Wallace and the movies, the 1959 movie, sword and sandal movies, Jewish characters are prominently presented, he plays Moses, The Ten Commandments, Charlton Heston playing Jews, just don’t hate on us, we want you in Israel, Exodus (1960), Paul Newman, set in 1948, all the teams coming together, a piece of propaganda saying Israel good, not a lot about the Nakba, what’s the lesson here, he does a lot of work to make Jews good people, very powerful looking film, insane aspect ratio, horses getting crushed, people in the stands watching the show, sets look amazing, the 2016 one, the CGI is quite good, point of view cam, bad dialogue, he goes to Rome, the Circus Maximus, chariot race, Palmyra, done in a minute, Jews are really good people, we really support Israel, the Zionist political movement, Camp David Accords wrong, it’s fuckin nuts, Balfour Declaration, the Rothschild family, Napoleon, mostly secular, ethnic Jews, Millenarian, a book for Christians about Judaism, very well written, the method of storytelling, second person plural, we follow them, first person plural, our attention is drawn to, an experimental thing, this book was bigger than Harriet Beecher Stowe, super-Christian in a good way, probably prompted, a Union Civil War general, Cynical-C blog, Robert Ingersoll, miracles are bullshit, train ride, gotta do my own research, produced Ben-Hur, the story of his beliefs, one of the few books blessed by a Pope, back when people read, pulp style, at least in higher circles, the American frontier, money, books used to be expensive, buying a book was no joke, books are all free, the physical object, I can’t afford that book, access to books, very accessible, they’re all cheap, Costco stopped selling books, we don’t make money on this shit, Amazon’s going to stop selling physical books in 2027 (except maybe as gimmick books), buying books as trophies, too expensive, too heavy, too big, you’re not a library bro, hardcover small press, tradepaperback, pocketsize have been banned (by the system), Hard Case Crime, the old fashioned pocket size mass market, had to go along with it, where’s your distribution for those, weird no longer mass market, extended height for no good reason, sit out more prominently, thank you sir.

Exploration Team by Murray Leinster

The Velvet Glove by Harry Harrison

Posted by Jesse Willis

Reading, Short And Deep #496 – The Nightmare Tarn by Clark Ashton Smith

Reading, Short And Deep

Reading, Short And Deep #496

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss The Nightmare Tarn by Clark Ashton Smith

Here’s a link to the story |PDF|.

The Nightmare Tarn was first published in Weird Tales, November 1929.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!

The SFFaudio Podcast #819 – READALONG: We Can Remember It For You Wholesale by Philip K. Dick

The SFFaudio Podcast #819 – Jesse, Will Emmons and Jonathan Weichsel talk about We Can Remember It For You Wholesale by Philip K. Dick

Talked about on today’s show:
Fantasy And Science Fiction, April 1966, not perfectly representative of everything he can do, Total Recall (1987), very easy to watch, a transitional movie for Hollywood, last big budget, extended CGI sequence, through the X-Ray, all hand drawn, blonde guy with glasses helping Richter, looks like CGI, we can look this up sometime, not in the story, a lot of the stuff that’s in the story is in the movie, he never goes to Mars during the course of the story, the movie is an action film, still also tame, wow, a famous story, famous stories, they don’t meet the hype, a bad relationship with his wife, a bad relationship that week, interesting, it doesn’t have to be good to be successful, Jesse’s Lester Del Rey theory, came out 6 (or 7 months ago), the park bench, telepathically, so not filmic, the ending was a little silly but fine, the ending kid of ruined the story, Hollywood does it a lot, a Rod Serling ending, he’s not writing movies, his way, think about what happens in this, he actually was an agent for interplan, the space police, he’s remembering what happened, replacement memory, suppressed memory, an amazing coincidence, they did a psychological analysis of his character, his deep seated wish, just by existing he saves the planet, Philip K. Dick thumbing the nose at himself, an extra turn of the screw, he fucks them up on purpose, a nice little circle, an electronic animals, fleshy animals, the pulling the rug out from his own idea, there’s no bottom to his solipsism, how to put a button on the story, the movie improves on the short story, the primal cause, the first cause of the story, nobody else could have, make Plato a pulp science fiction story, a terrible ending, silly, his way out, that park bench sequence is so bad, look at that homeless man talking to himself, wouldn’t want to be him, all I have to do is continue my existence then everyone owes me, a manifesto spray painted on a parking stall, when I take things it for you, its not shoplifting when I do it, a guy who’s explaining to the people who visit the store, he doesn’t have a job, he’s saved all of us, the movie is really fun, less grounded in reality, homeless people talking to themselves, delusional people, are they delusional?, turning the clerk at an unimportant desk, a construction worker, why Arnold Schwarzenegger, quail, shiver and shake, vs. Quaid, more like Quatto, prompts, a bad movie, like Matt Damon but the other guy, The Adjustment Bureau (2011), because a dog falls asleep, reality being constructed, out of joint with reality as it is being constructed, make a black man fall asleep on a park bench, why it doesn’t translate well, boobs, dogs, coffee, wives, how do I know what’s real, all of that except for the dog, inside of his obsessions, limiting, its not everything that’s going on with him, The Goblin Reservation, a little bit into the future, Time Is The Simplest Thing by Clifford D. Simak, Martian Time-Slip, Paul Verhoven, interested in what’s going on in America, Showgirls (1995), RoboCop (1987), disgustingly awesomely correctly cynical, pulls back on that, ultimate power, an assassination, a Black Panther, MLK, memory cap, memory blocker, prevent their agent from knowing he did it, a negotiation with them, isn’t there some other way?, if they kill him the world will end, a solipsistic fantasy, awesomely stupid and funny and pathetic, it’s just him, the wife, the secretary with the blue boobs, offering herself to him, an ulterior motive, she needs to offer himself to him, a wish fulfillment fantasy, hilarious, he believes they’ll fulfill their promises, the nearest barracks, he knows what’s going on but also can’t fully buy into it, nice people, Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, Lincoln conspiracy theories, a logical explanation for it, Lincoln’s wife was really into psychics, do not go to the theater, my wife believes in all that, gets assassinated, drinking buddies with John Wilkes Booth, look this up, John Wilkes Booth is Edgar Allan Poe as a time traveler, dies mysteriously, raving about somebody named Reynolds, out there in the universe of broken threads, time travel, dreams in this story, starts with a dream, the dream grew, the dream and the yearning, the enveloping world, are you getting up or not, fierce crossness, okay, Douglas is his go to name, Charles J. Colchester, its times vs. our times, psychology, in a more scientific way, they believed it was more scientific, repressed memories that can’t be suppressed, misused in a different way, what passes as psychology today in the 90s would be dismissed as self-help gimmicks, a scam, infiltrated academia and psychology, Little Miss Sunshine (2006), Alan Arkin is always amazing, by losers for losers, destigmatize, mental health, everybody could potentially have a mental illness, almost everybody is neurodivergent, instead of expanding, limited, self-eating, how educated people thought about it, engaged with psychiatry, mental doctors, getting committed, committed one of his wives, write a story about that, Clans Of The Alphane Moon, it comes in as truth, maneuvers to analyze it, its cute because it wants to kill, accept, ignore, dispute, what techniques you use, how old you are, techniques of training, when Philip K. Dick goes to a doctor, paralyzed by thoughts, needs to engage, shows up in his writing, spiritual enlightenment books, what’s the truth of this?, what’s important, what is reality?, Freud, dogmatically, repression, too much sexual repression bad, run around like savages killing and raping each other, just the right amount of repression, misreading a novel, take the wrong lessons from Nineteen Eighty-Four, this is the only book you need to read, metaphors are fiction, hypothetical examples, speculative theory, not testable, not subject to falsification, what at this story at core really about?, suppressed memory?, the movie Gaslight, gaslighting, I know it by its objects, momentos, Paycheck (1944), The Man In The High Castle, a short story about a snowglobe, a souvenir, in contemplating, martian maw worms, unicellular organism, a sneaky pete pistol, a life rod, a death rod, a tangible connection to a vague memory, how do we know these memories are real, go to Europe, how should I go, a time of film, film was expensive, just myself, a stone from a gravel path in the garden behind Versailles, how do I know, oh yeah, there was that thing that happened, a perfect memory to connect all of our experiences together, whats the difference between suppressed and repressed, the name of the shop is Rekall, a much better story, the movie is much better, engages an idea better, Hauser vs. Quaid, good guy vs. bad guy, Hauser is fucking Melina over, Quaid loves Melina, very masturbatory, how could I have that without doing any work?, the reason why is buried, before he was assigned there, he didn’t want to go to Mars, an assignment, it happened to be Mars, a different layer of consciousness, this person is scared of snakes, a trauma involving snakes, a man flashed her his penis when she was five, suppressed in her unconscious, buried in memory, why did he spend all that time digging around in the Martian memory, the story of Paycheck, the reason he collected these objects, Severance, a very long two seasons, the park bench stuff is slow and boring, what’s the wife’s job in this story, much improved in the movie, an agent?, is she here to watch me, he thinks about it, he thinks a lot, two major boobs scenes, 3 or 4 people, Doctor Lull, Doctor Low, the technicians, refunds, retail, vbery business oriented, the Company, the CIA, InterPlan, they take him back to the retail store, his brain changed not wholesale, why is it called that?, Beyond The Door, over breakfast, a cuckoo clock, I got it wholesale from a friend, women want you to spend money on them, show you’re going to stick around, defeats the purpose of buying an expensive gift, in their own facilities, such a piddly little retail guy he can’t imagine how the CIA actually works, show up at our barracks, the secret police, so piddly and silly, the doctor, I’ll give you half back, motivation, to make money, the stupidest thing, getting the ideas and following through, if he wasn’t so greedy, little note, he’s really a spy, these guys are gonna whack us, give him evidence, silly, Philip K. Dick is naive about the things he knows are really going on, distracted by boobs and a mean wife, pretty damn good, a problem with a Hal Clement, a tweet, June 6th, qoute tweeting Ultra Blast, what about the guy you lobotomized, how human nature really works, schedule a short story, sell it to you retail, what’s going on this claim I’m making, in the movie, Hauser’s using Melina, to assassinate Quato, very Verhoven, Cronenberg was set to direct it, steered away from that, amazingly tight, the trip to Mars, schizoid embolism, just acting out of self-interest and aesthetic appeal, Hauser is a cynical operator, the naivete of his future self to fuck somebody over, why is this human nature, a turtle , you aren’t helping, you aren’t helping, you already know who you are and that person doesn’t help, you see a drowning squirrel or a puppy, untie his legs, take the cat out of the bag, on your way home you see your future self, that’s for that squirrel!, my nut factory anymore, things need to be done, we can’t sit by and just allow things to happen, lunch break, a kid in an empty classroom, building a house of cards, breathing over it, you feel good and bad, tgapping on the table, we have to know that these things are within us, tie up the princess of the train tracks, the guy who tied, Smedley Badwright, human nature is such that we must act, take a model of who we are, I’m not going to do that again,the tattoos, wwjd, model themselves on somebody, what wouldf spiderman do in this situation, that’s what this is about, one must act, you cant live in that horrible office job, a vacation as a solution to problems, two weeks of Saturdays, back to the old grindstone, hat e their job, whatever it is on twitter, self-trolling, insightful into human nature, such a stupid story, non-cynical about political assassination plans, human nature is as human nature does, a bully in a group, that’s cool, that’s not cool, the people are very similar, boys must act, with Quail, wants to be an agent, becomes Lee Harvey Oswald, erase your memory, that doesn’t make 100% sense, plant the wife, this story isn’t quite that far, an office job that doesn’t matter, he was used by the company, with the destroying rod, the tangible objects you find in the drawer, a weird language with a starmap on it, where did that come from?, a destroying rod vs. a healing rod, we have the capability of throwing squirrels and drowning squirrels, didn’t feel guilty about killing the guy, out of patriotic duty, the right thing to do, memory of going to mars and being a spy, does it, old memory back, to the surface, erase his memory again, nice people, like mice, motivated him to become a spy in the first place, a more important story than he does it, pathetic, if we knew that that was your fantasy, maybe it wasn’t a fantasy, why does Arnold Schwarzenegger want to go to Mars, Sharon Stone says let’s go to Saturn, I like sex, settle for this fake memory, optional extras, filling out the survey, what’s the same about you, famous jock, tycoon, he could be a spy, like Lee Harvey Oswald, a lackey and a patsy, these tangible objects, that trip to the beach, why is my wife mean to me, how did I end up married to this person, extraordinarily strange, definitely an outlier, the articulation that’s strange, a late 90s internet guy, hacker zines in the 90s, radical ideas, normal office drones, fantasizing about spies and shit like that, Paul really liked it, it would be okay if I was like a secret cop, they didn’t know, what if I had this alternative, what if I manifest it, bored out of fuckin mind, maybe then, an insight that Philip K. Dick had, wish fulfillment, about wishfulfillment, the wish gets subverted, turns into a nightmare, its horrible, as a subculture, science fiction wasn’t necessarily self-aware about this, the dark underbelly of America in someway, the mainstream culture couldn’t accept, a generative contradiction, Philip K. Dick normal guy ethos, fantasies of being a spy, its weird to have the rug pulled out from underthing, always overquestioning, what science fiction was aware of, processed recently, 1946, Margaret St. Clair, Fantastic Adventures, Introducing The Author, a little bit of the thing you were saying, caught more or less by surprise, a photograph and an autobiography of herself, curly brow covered hair, bangs to cover forehead, [Bettie Page] mod?, usual editorial deadline, about women liking to talk about themselves, 9 or 10 years of age, My Terminal Moraine by Frank R. Stockton, Jules Verne, Hugo Gernsback publication Electrical Something, fair, a story about people, detective and mystery, quality magazines, the same kick, freedom of imagination, ordinary people of the future, present day motorists, essentially true, got married, pet hobbies, carnations, raising dachshund puppies, out here in Richmond (California), terrestrial paradise, no special ambitions, the pulps at their best touch a genuine folk tradition, a balladic quality, The New Yorker, science fantasy fiction, ballad-like, new fairy tales, this story we read today, a fairy tale is a fake folk tale, Hans Christian Anderson, Christian, Aesop’s fables, the Bros. Grimm, Cinderella, a complete Grimm, this is from this region, Bluebeard is Charles Perrault, The Castle Of Murder, before the show started, stories that need responses, stories in dialogue, Isaac Asimov’s robot stories, a collection of folk tales about robots, made by an individual, fingerprints, produced, Snow White, a new narrative, Walt Disney’s fingerprints, R.U.R., a story based on that idea, a collective knowledge about what things are about, Lin Coln, Star Trek episodes, he freed the robots, what is it that fairy tales do, wish fulfillment, folk tales are more functional, if Jonathan had written this story, a warehouse or something, it wouldn’t have the nagging complaining wife, that’s not your kink, boobs changing colours, lights inside of them, based on her mood, purplish/pink, jealous green, bad at his job, he’s the only one doing it, his badjobbedness, in the end, really good, doing it before everybody else, everybody knows Philip K. Dick’s stuff now, all the Verhoven stuff, she’s naked in the story, nail colour on her nails, the non-nakedness, a three boobed lady, Sharon Stone skin, kicking in the balls twice, grabbed in the crotch, swearing, blood packets, primal screaming by Michael Ironside, mutants, prosthetic arms, an infiltrator, even tho a mutant himself, happens everyday, that guy there wearing black from head to foot, that guy there was the fed, shaman hat, freedom!, the naive guy, an insurrectionist, I can’t image the government would ever do something like that, diminished faculties, sucking on the propaganda tit all day, children torn apart by bombs, have your memory changed, not be aware, why Philip K. Dick is so relevant, we don’t got to Rekall to get things done, NPR, those Houthis are bad, do you condemn Hamas?, Jesse you’re weird, just tune it out, he’s calling it out, very good very solid, a technical difference, psychiatrist is a doctor with patients, a psychologist who does therapy, the same trade, a license to prescribe, a university funded by DARPA, rich people love psychologists, talk about themselves all day, explore themselves, instead of having to read, schizophrenic, bourgeois, love the psychologist, this talking doctor, explore himself and his own memories, explain his behavior, the spiritual route, he wasn’t accepting the things he was being told, he’s fighting with his wife, is that really true, is she a hebephrenic?, guiding your thoughts, if he just told you you wouldn’t believe it, no longer done by psychologist, therapists, licensed professional counselors, the worried well, extensive experience, a candy dispenser for medicine, give you anything, a psychiatric nurse, gives a shit, even as this industry expands, the demand, people bad at it, degree mills, an interesting field, another word for horrifying, a vital field, physician is the body doctor, psychiatrist is the brain doctor, Scientology, he was reading a lot, his letters, passing comedic references, Dianetics fully discredited in the science fiction community, in Galaxy, Planet Stories, making fun of it, Writers Of The Future, Galaxy Press is Scientology, bigger, still exists, nothing dies, if you won that thing, blacklisted, the Tor people are the hip group, Reactor Mag, Tor.com, changed its name, the mainstream, any kind of audience, an audience of themselves, Lightspeed, a proofreader, does that for free (of course), Analog in the 1980s, write for Analog, submit your story now, read the magazine to learn what kind of stories we publish, not a pyramid, a lifestyle, something I’ve always wanted to be, I would like to have written, in this story his fantasy is about having done, not doing, what made Philip K. Dick a great writer, go out to his shack and write up a story, do it again and do it a gain, read these artifacts, no where near the top, a Tom Cruise movie, Minority Report, the only thing that’s good about is the idea, a car drives up the side of a building, a robot taxi driver, a guy who says weird things, that person isn’t just an object, imagine he was a subject, star rating, nice things about your clothes, Jesse has never been in an uber, the Church of our Mother, interaction mediated through a cream sweeping machine, a very expensive car, driving a Mercedes, uber guy, delivers pizza, this is how we are now, that’s really sad, nice old Philip K. Dick times, what if we had robot drivers, single taxi drivers making a living, Married With Children, shoe salesman hates his life, two kids, he’s a loser because he’s a shoe salesman, we can’t imagine anybody having their own house and being a shoe salesman now, streaming from their bedroom in their mom’s house, that’s how things are now, driving an amazon truck, what Philip K. Dick imagined, the robot is the box, a robot manager, why did you make such a sharp left turn, his doors that won’t open until you pay them, oppressive and horrific, moving to quickly, postal worker, one’s employed by the government, move like robots, when break time comes, favourite interaction, everyone around here has worked at Amazon, a big warehouse in Lexington, always cry before my shift, it was so boring, this is what our expectations are, author copies, printed in Delaware, Ingram books vs. Amazon books, running out of ink, save money, why aren’t we buying up old printing presses and putting them in our basements, why we’re not doing it, cheaper through amazon, they can be relatively small, the way Benjamin Franklin did it, against the enterprise, Amazon owns everything, Lightning Source, Ingram Spark, everyplace that’s not Amazon, the Ingram family, every commercially published group, a monopoly on printing presses, distribution, conflating the two, you have to play the game to get books in hands or podcasts in earbuds, the middle man, the bookstores are gone, a Chapters in Coquitlam, candles and LEGO, Walton’s, Waterstones?, back into books, many independent bookstores, go to Oregon to find one, we have to travel so far, nail salon, skin salon, dog food store, catalogues, Sears Catalogue, big retail, the internet came, big box retail stores, better than the internet, leaving your house and going out, too soon to tell, Apple’s not giving up on their headset thing, bearish vs. bullish, bearish on VR stuff, for thinking about VR, or AI,companies are already starting to cutback, expensive and inexpensive, augmented reality, students like chatgpt, the people who grade the homework, anti-ai homework service, how do they monitize chatgpt, Scott’s paying for it, if school wasn’t mandatory, when you do crypto, burned an acre of rainforest, big computers, bitcoin, disruptive to the fiat currency systems, isn’t a result of the fake school system doing fake homework, from the fake ai money, the requirement to do or pretend to do, the horror that is school, getting hooked, solving a problem, people’s actual history with school rather than theoreticals, individual teachers, cram, take in then regurgitate, so weird, learned all on my own, we all know this true, busy work, Wordle, the word manga was the five letter word, such a funny story, has to be true, all outraged, such a boomer story, why does it exist, they need to fill time, garden a little bit, people like word games, keep your brain sharp, sudoku, relationship with crossword puzzles, but why?, don’t they have something better to do?, horrified, so unproductive, jigsaw puzzles, pretend to do something else, increases spatial awareness, listerine, advertizing back in the pulp magazines, rupture-easers, never been debunked and never will be, germs, lemon squeezy stuff at the door during COVID, throwing their money away, wrecking the environment, Jesse’s totally wrong about those, second most liberal school, cooked food is bad, stop washing my hair, stop using toilet paper, leaves, pages from books, water, there’s a whole alternative ecosystem, causes damage to your anus, bidets, reinforce, we need bidets, they smelled like shit, don’t wipe for a week, Jesse doesn’t smell like anything, three times a day, days without showering, stopped noticing their own bad scent, small classroom, coffee can do that, cigarettes, cigar people, if Will was stinky Jesse would tell him, in great danger of stinking, curbside pickup, drive thru, could be a danger sign, the bidet will help, occasional daily shower, middle ground on this body product issue, stay off the deodorant, worried about it, stinky notifications, if you get all sweaty have a shower, homeless person, memberships to gyms, change your clothes, stinky feet, stinky anything, not being on the body product chemical stuff, very sensitive nose, vacation to Egypt, far afield, the discussion that we’ve had today, not compelling, males must act, for all mankind, not a compelling theory, they need to do something, what’s the alternative to doing something, being passive, play PUBG, interaction with gamer, against their own interest, a discipline thing too, do you not remember when you’re building a house of cards what happens?, which is easier to do build or destroy, patience and skill, as a child which is easier, gain some skills, you can build, some patience, more satisfying, they’re immature, a pro build person, that’s deranged, liking destroying more than building, creative destruction, Sales Pitch, a commuter going through outerspace, pelted by advertizing for products (including body part replacements), pushy robot, men are looking for relevance, women are looking for security for their offspring, not even human, animal, the biological essence of women, very biologically different, animals don’t think about their gender as much as humans do, psychology or vagina, the psychology, why do people go off to fight in Ukraine when its not their war?, their being is fighting, act as if they should be out in the forest hitting each other with sticks, classroom sort of based stuff, foam sticks, eye protection, how to raise a kid with a knife, not even the same thing as a gun, you’re going threw a piece of broken glass, throwing things in the water is cool, this creature growing inside of me for 9 months, warm and safe when the birth happens, cats or dogs go find a place, motivation vs. psychology, money security, comfort, communal creatures, activities going on in the brain, under the surface, the archaeological record, prehistoric hunter gathers, the men and the women did the same kind of work, pretty up on archaeology, a subscription, middens, big piles of shells, more like regular people, misunderstanding, modern agricultural farming with land rights, less controversial example, human culture, animals are the opposite, that’s not true of all birds, sexual dimophism is a thing, two cockatoos look identical, let’s say he’s only talking about the birds, male turkeys, plumage, scrawny very small, male fish, clown colours, little grey things swimming around, women dressing up, in past human cultures, African American culture in the United States, purple zoot suit, a horse race, little pastel shirts, the Kentucky Derby, what the word dude means, these things are cultural, make money and look professional, he gets the Mercedes, jewelry, watches, anklets, make up and powdered wigs, cultural expectations of men and women, the man asks the woman out on a date, with the younger people, situationship, come up to each other and say “skibidi toilet”, in the 2000s, offline website, Will sent the first message, its not really about clothes, Jesse has this thesis that women’s primal drive is to seek safety and protection, motivated by different things, people have all sorts of narratives, they want to be near the money, basic psychology, enjoy writing like to tell stories, he wants to have sex with a woman, become a famous writer, who are we talking about here?, broken is such a way, make art, it would be good to have that art appreciated, Freud’s theory of sublimation, that energy that’s suppressed needs some place to go, divert that energy, largely done by males, triggered by Jesse, disagreeing, is your disagreement substantive, all the cave art, what is it about, different modes, blows paint over their hand on the wall, we are here, an accounting system, stories on the walls, a lot of animals, game animals, herd animals, herds exist in nature, some prehistoric people, goatherds and shepherds and cattle, natives of the plains, buffalo is a good example, elk or whatever, reindeer, a domestic animal for pulling sleighs and such, a wild animal, semi-domesticated animal, why do they obsessively paint these animals, this is like their religious association with the act of killing, to eat its flesh, take its hide, take its bones, they know that killing is wrong, insects, fish, furry creatures and birds, that’s what we are, we’re cooking flesh creatures, who’s making that art, it’s men, didn’t have stories yet, unlikely, didn’t have language yet, pictograms all over BC, the ones in France, before they were talking, how do you prove this, communicate that to organize into a hunt, bees do the same thing, I just found these flowers, pretty simple, how long does it take to develop language, communication, very few animals have grammar, chimpanzees are living in the stone age, bears in the pre-fire age, looking at peoples bodies stress injuries, a recent Predator movie called Prey, hyper-realistic, the vast majority of human behavior is throwing sharp sticks at food, rock attached to a stick, male work, more upper body strength, at what point are humans humans, are neanderthal humans, which one can rip Jesse’s arm off faster, harem of females, bonobo, female is the dominant one, we’re definitely on the spectrum, massive sexual dimorphism, some tiktok lady, bow-strength, butch ladies, there’s some femme guys, pretty normal, not 50 50, since the early 2010s, the ideal body type for women is athletic, 1920s, women were waifs, big shoulders, Dolly Parton, Kate Moss, Claudia Schiffer, Baywatch, fat women, big butts, hoops in the back, from decade to decade, fashion, my woman is well fed, you’re putting that hoop skirt on her, that archetype, she runs track, karate and jujitsu, female wrestling team at a highschool?, bjj, roles for men, we’re men looking at women, Schwarzenegger and Stallone, Lady Gaga is a throwback to Madonna, chips and videogames, girl gamers, very successful career woman, boyfriend or husband is just like a loser, trailing behind her head hung low, sidegig, uber on the weekends, a reversal [see also the 1894 story THE REVOLT OF… by Robert Barr], economic issues with marriage, breast milk, weird hormones for strange reasons, breast pump, back into the meeting, a ton of hours, the cooking, no hunting going on, any fishing?, did he take your sister fishing?, girls should be allowed to play on boys baseball teams, more motivated, his sister, a fairly good baseball player, Will’s back, that’s like a thing, neighbours who live down the street, a pretty good job in IT, a parent they have to take care of, Meg is pulling down more money, not pumping out kids, Jesse’s pretty strange, a few steps ahead, what happened, to reading Day Million in the 80s, Larry Niven in the 80s, Jonathan has one child, a 10 year old, tend to not to vs. can’t, the history of hospitals vs. doctors vs. nurses, Florence Nightingale, doctors are ancient, Galen, hospitals are from the middle agents, christian brothers, more people visiting the Holy Land, bind each other to a covenant, a safe route for travelers, knights hospitalers, knights templars, hospitality, a modern mecca pilgrimage, filled with patients, doctors come into the hospitals and see to the patients, war hospitals, women want to contribute, swapping out bandages, giving them food and drinks, all those separate jobs are created the behavior of the genders, fraternal orders, they like fighting, shoot crossbow bolts, everything related to violence, theyre the orcs, the consequence of what they’re doing, our vision of Rambo, a useful idiot, pulled back in for the sequels, built into the human boy, not built into the human girl, girls going into the , a Lysenkoist, Jesse loves Stalin, Jesse doesn’t love Stalin, epigenetics, how you get your grant, cooperate and help each other, he got his grant year after year, its embarrassing, why less destiny than genes are, The Not-World, talkin with Cora, a fake Nancy Drew, sounds like girl stuff, she’s so fuckin weird, girls are interested in investigation, and getting tied up, investigating with flashlights, makes sandwiches, figures out a fact, swaps jeans with her best friend who’s probably not a lesbian, Time Is The Simplest Thing, will was on vacation, our friend Scott Miller, a parasocial relationship, franticly dmd, the Ray Bradbury agent estate, either bullshitting or wrong, three strikes then his account is deleted, if they don’t rescind their takedown notice, he’d have to sue them, The Visitor by Ray Bradbury, here’s the source, either their records are fucked up or…, he had to pull something down, more from his podcast?, that’s a bad sign, one somebody’s radar, Don Congdon & Associates, long deceased, Wall Street Plaza address, the take down notice, possible being trolled by another youtuber?, the official website?, their DMCA notices, this is why, if you can’t win don’t play, a rigged game, too much, it is rigged, lots of reasons to not have children, when Will was one, babies are boring, peekaboo is pretty limiting, can’t bounce them too hard, get sad, can’t explain why, crying kids explaining what the problem, temper tantrums, what it was v.s what I thought it was, incoherent, seems like it is pain, some of it is permormative, pretending to do them, podcasting or walking, Land Of Our Fathers, Paul Robeson, travelling around Wales, toy laptops, toy kitchens, fake oven, tiny, my little bakelite, easybake oven, a boy equivalent, easy bake machine shop, easy grill, easy lathe, easy gunsmithery, metal molds, put goop in them, creepy crawlers, bug toys, probably toxic as hell, still not very good at cooking, make your own food, cheaper, better for you, can be a serious problem, here we are childless with all these cats, Mars Express (2023), at the spaceport, a robot that looks like Astroboy, looks like their grandchild, nuzzles the robot’s head, full of that, at every turn, teaching you the plot like a really good mystery movie, the name of the people who made it, French people who like, know and do, the Astronaut’s daughter is really important, I am going to stand in for my sister, must have a dressing contest, it gives away its ideas, too much of it, the dress up contest, first romance with the Mormon lady, Twilight, not good for Jesse, the Olympic Peninsula, rainforest, Indians, girl gas to choose between werewolf and vampire, sparkly qualities, hot native, very loyal, of course she chooses the white man, just so hard to choose, Betty and Veronica , Rebecca Black’s Friday, what will I do?, a mean reading of women’s psychology, look at the options available then choose the best one, uncharitable, vs. men choosing women, a line about beautiful vs. hot, hot is about how one is dressed or undressed, the signals of hotness, hair in a bun, glasses on, pantsuit, not putting out the hot signals, all women have the potential of being hot, distracted by hotness, this other thing, kindness, amiability and kindness, what do you think?, eventually got together, pre-Meg people, propinquity, accessibility, big factor, Pinky, little Chinese girl from next door, the cookie store in Chinatown, how different human beings can be from each other, one of those people, two definitely, only in touch with one, fucked up and broken (but still look pretty), didn’t jive well, fucked up girlfriend, sex addled, similar personalities, similar sense of humour, big schemers, convince other people to do things, you should join this church, an elaborate party in order to get Will a scanner, scanners live with meaning, watching PulpCovers put out weird menace story art, get somebody to read for me, a podcast to edit up, a student, oh coffee, dad and mom and brother for father’s day, an afterthought, Children’s Day, you honour your mother, you don’t have to do homework today, seems dangerous, one day a year where they don’t have to study, all poor kids, out-competing their non-hagwan forced bretheren, univerities jobs, diplomas, it is a scam, the Jesse lesson: can’t win don’t play, forget about the suicides over there, what jobs exist, not at Walmart (for the old and disabled), young and abled work at Amazon, all other jobs are for Koreans, China’s the place to be for an upwardly mobile job, what you actually do in them, what the culture is like, elaborate paperwork all day, grade the kids, needs more of this, fun and funny, off to Korea, throws in something about capitalism every story, The Society, flame, peach and hen, can’t see the end in sight, many other hens, everyone were crazy about peaches, even the hens were framed harmed and killed each other for peaches, in style without curiosity, once foxes blocked the road, they usurped peaches, disturbed other hens lives, masks to hid their expressions, gave up, made a little flame, it began to swallow the foxes, fell into a swamp, the foxes were eaten by the flame, she was tired and the end of the road had come, she could saw a bed at the end of the road, with this the hen’s long journey, doesn’t it see similar to something? right?, it’s society, here is a translate, the road, corrupt politicians, the swamp, pretense, the bed death, awesome, to delight Jesse, he delighted me, so delightful, do it for free, to explain what a sleeve is, how that would come about, my teacher touched my arm, done it with drawings before, more concrete, sniffing and acting and banging the table, the word bruise, ouch it is a bruise, whatever, its tough out there, the good ones make it really good, six great ones, four or five somewhere in the middle, minimum wage approaching Jesse’s wage, a number of coequal workers, asking politely vs. an ability to walk away, other methods, hitman?, tutor privately.

World's Best Science Fiction 1967 - We Can Remember It For You Wholesale - illustration by Jack Gaughan

We Can Remember It For You Wholesale - Editorial introduction from F & SF

Posted by Jesse Willis