The SFFaudio Podcast #789 – READALONG: Gilgamesh The King by Robert Silverberg

The SFFaudio Podcast #789 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, Terence Blake, and Jonathan Weichsel talk about Gilgamesh The King by Robert Silverberg

Talked about on today’s show:
serialized, 1984, simple question, science fiction or fantasy novel?, how could it be, other than crude financial reasons, a novelization of the oldest epic that we know of in any great detail, The Road To Science Fiction volumes, an excerpt, claimed, adopted, annexed, interstitial material, fragments, and a whole lot of Silverberg, the major events are seemingly from quasi-historical sources, demystifies the fantasy, a rational explanation, the epic shares, the novel shares, the search for transcendence, brought back down to earth, losing out to imminence, immortality, Dickian, the basic formula for science fiction, come back transformed, wants and needs, wants a lot of sex, wants immortality, needs transcendence, the immortality is in the work he does, living out his life the way it can be shaped, who is the survivor of the flood?, Zeusasudra?, that guy presents, I didn’t say that, you’re inferring that, how not to die rather than how to live forever, 1984, maybe one day, that’s such an impressive statue or temple, passing from a living being into a mythical being and written about by Robert Silverberg, a bit of Ozymandias, fragments of the wall and the epic itself, we look up this book and despair at its length, writer and artist, other intellectual activities, 1.7 speed, unpleasant to listen to that fast, the first 3rd or first half, the part he invented himself, Game Of Thrones, more dynamic and less descriptive, 2x speed, he changes the story, the first third was painful, tedious?, a boring story, really dragged, this isn’t really, because we’ve done a number of Silverbergs, his beats are all out on display here, chasing after women, concerned with death, the solitude, The Book Of Skulls, a Charles Stross novel, when Schweitz showed up, Enkidu, comfortable garden, kicked out of the city, comes back, kinda like Conan as a king, bored on his throne, kickoff, the interesting bit, greater acceleration, experincing this book, a flashback to Hayy Ibn Tufail, raised by antelopes, wise with the wisdom of nature, a man coming out of nature, Tarzan, before all that, the granddaddy of them all, he resonated with the idea, this isn’t the only book into this series, Scott asked Jesse a question, the same Gilgamesh as Gilgamesh In The Outback, a road trip across the United States, not a hero as much as a drug user, Downward To The Earth, once administrator of, a lot of tourism, he sees himself as this character, pushes her breasts into his face, what, I’m six, autobiography, Gilgamesh believes but Silverberg doesn’t, a potion, he’s sprouting hairs, a placebo, rejects the teaching the of the religion, is she sincere?, the political subplot, his conjecture, makes the wrong decisions, the lens he looks at everything [with], a volcanic vent, it’s both, translating, one of the big successes, the difference between poetry, philosophy and religion, William Blake, really a volcanic vent, psychic perception taken too concretely, he’s got epilepsy, Gene Wolfe, head injury, he see the gods, Wolfe being Wolfe, meeting the same characters over and over again, the fantastic is supposed to be taken as partially real, a concrete example, the sick tree scene, three demons in it, making bricks and fuckin ladies all day, the leaves are all falling down, thing’s he’s wrong about, cuts off the sick branch, worst poison, pours it down the hole, the demon being a snake, all fun stuff, the concoction is probably manure and it fertilizes the tree, the three demon problem, what a shaman does, things in all directions, really there’s one thing in there that works, decoration, trying to impress people, his presentation is as the king, having sex with everybody, goes to far with that, loves the bricklaying too much, he abandons the city, he is Man, lessons for men, if you’re going to be a man, very Jordan Peterson, Inana, he thinks she killed the previous king, not fully fleshed out for her, why is her face fucked up in the end, a disease, venereal disease?, leprosy, of love, war and political power, Venus or Aphrodite, a bloody good time, psychologically, they’ll laugh at me, reason for rejecting her, he knows the story of going to the underworld, he’s afraid, points in the story, a showmanship part of this I’m not really a goddess, role model, a Candide naive adherent, he didn’t have a dad, the manly arts, doesn’t have a friend, wrestle and become best friends, ruled by affects, addressed in the text, we were not lovers, doth protest too much, all the women he’s having, we can’t read this on a subversive level at all, the bull of heaven, not an earthquake, the explanation is made to fit, a woman’s jealousy, mask off, what’s going to happen, obvious he was going to kill her, for the last time, he’s going to banish her, shuts her up in a hole, uh huh, yup, he’s the king, nothing complicated or delaying of satisfaction, ruled by his emotions, a foreign prince in another city, not subversive, writing from an atheistic perspective, very minimal, the closest we get is when he goes off to get immortality, the magic pearl was lost, feels like a fantasy, he goes off to Africa at one point, wooly haired, visitors, Yemen?, Qatar, China, placenames, this place used to be called that, guessed it, sort of saying, a rational explanation for everything or is there?, the science fiction aspect as well, the myth of the flood, no longer an immortal, tell the story like it is, a huge downpour, no ark, a miniversion of this book, a legendary story and so is this, “‘euhemerism’ 1. the theory that gods arose out of the deification of historical heroes. 2. any interpretation of myths that derives the gods from outstanding men and seeks the source of mythology in history.”, what if this actually happened, psychological stuff too, a modern novel, told first person, very reliable narrator, perceives in a different way, I, Claudius, you don’t need to bring the gods into it, two thirds god, it doesn’t make sense, a two father point of view, Lord something who is divine, two fathers and one mother, he’s not a demi-god, a step up, the god come into him, the ancestor of Hercules, Prometheus, Ulysses, doesn’t steal fire form the gods, a titan, he’s a builder, side note, a historical Gilgamesh, Civilization 6, don’t judge us, yes we can be friends, wrestling with him, that can save you on higher difficulties, demystifying, mostly historical alternate history straight, vampires and zombies, Zeusy, pocahontasy, Heroes In Hell, To The Land Of The Living, one of the fragments not included in the Epic Of Gilgamesh, his shade comes back, dirt farmer, preferred to be a fisherman and not a great scientist, hindsight is 2020, 0202, straight up, post-modernism, read an old text, what if this was real, Alan Moore’s Watchmen, zero irony, The Calydonian Boar Hunt, no situational humour, her boobs in his face, the sex is really enjoyable, not a normal book, too mundane, not wild enough, it doesn’t get crazy, becomes subversive and undermines the society that he lives in, needed a drug dealer, a subversive element, the premise is double, what if people really saw the gods and the world in this way, Julian Jaynes’ two hemispheres hypothesis, the right side of the brain, the irrational intuitive side, the left rational side, a dissociated way, people in 2023 talking about prayer, in a dialogue with god all day, students, what people meant by prayer, what does that even mean?, kneeling at the bedside hands in prayer mode, Gilgamesh is writing his own story, always on about, write an essay about things that are bad, self-dialogue and self-talk, I need to pay attention to mummy and daddy, it was you who was listening, I have a relationship with god, bizarre but real, more so long ago, secular mindfulness, Buddhism, very popular, journaling, accountability tweets, Carl Jung, what she says and what the wise old man says, get dialogues going, objectively, chat gpt is the god I ask to write up my journal, multiple personalities like we see in dreams, traveled around a lot, strange or exotic beliefs, believe in ghosts, seeing ghosts, ghosts are 100% real, you shouldn’t go hiking at 4 oclock in the morning, the fear of things, taking in data, the screen of reality, The City In The Middle Of The Night by Charlie Jane Anders, similar length, firs book in a series, Leonidas, Conan and Ted Nugent, learned so much from this novel, old myths of Gilgamesh, what the story was trying to tell me, baffled, mid-3 stars, the ratings 11,322 vs. 901 ratings, what’s your point?, people don’t read old books, the editor of iO9, this is an old book, people just don’t read old books, making an assumption, not sure that’s a proven assumption, audience is extremely online, Silverberg’s is older, not fully supported, just looking at one thing, this is not a famous book, the novelty of being new, what’s a good book to read?, a book I’ve heard of that’s good, go by author, a Clarke award, a Locus award, a Hugo award, thousands of good review, by helpfulness, how goodreads sorts its review, likes, probably some algorithm, everything is in 3 star range, Amazon bought goodreads with the intent of killing it, just strangle it, Luke Burrage, disable features, the science fiction book, Lord Of Light by Roger Zelazny, a higher high, the similarity there, when the god manifests in him, the power of the god in him, survivors of a space travel crash, the Hindu pantheon, wield an attribute specific to that god, a precedent, Dune, the got-it-all-wong hypothesis, the bene gesserit, manipulating everything, not exactly a messiah figure, a savior for the city, The Cosmic Puppets by Philip K. Dick, a male feminist, misunderstanding Anana, he’s paranoid, Gilgamesh is the misogynist, I don’t see it, full of the juice, had to go and break into the wedding ceremony, on my way to have sex with the wives, mentioning, sex scenes early on, five women a night, it’s not five!, lay on the psychology, really well done, plodding rather than tedious, walking along telling his story, set pieces, the tree, the demon in the forest, the meeting with Enkidu, the things that are special, getting his emotions, good inference in what’s going inside Enkidu, presume some jealousy there, sex once a year, nothing otherwise, temporal vs. spiritual power in the third millennium B.C., trying to kill him, he’s a bad king, abandons the city, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, trying to kill him out of jealousy, a smear campaign, trying to hell the city?, he was lousy, transgressing the limits, cleansed means killed, he is a bad king, his job is to fix all the city problems, the councils, I’ll think about it, who’s going to fix the walls, what the priestess wants, go out and build that wall or the temple or fix the tree, the reason he comes back, threatening to take away his kingship, A Time Of Changes, a life in business, that coming back is what he’s supposed to do, to Australia and to hell, Conan is a funny case, the problem with being a king, just like Kull, campaign against other kings, the domestic sphere, a tension built into the story of Gilgamesh, a man is domesticated, she gets more power, yes, sitting there horny, carousing with his buddy, a fundamental dynamic going on there, I’m going to have sex with you when you’re older, not a guy who believes in kings at all, he’s bad at it, he does things to much, your soldiers are exhausted, nobody has the strength you have, yeah I have a giant dick, but do be jealous I have premature ejaculation, the first time he leaves, almost identical scenes, the new king, he grew up in a cloistered environment, when he comes back to see his brother, this awkward meeting, the same emotional set, pock marks vs. worry lines, prematurely grey, busy being king, uneasy lies the crown, footloose and fancy-free, experience the depravity and luxury, the full exercise of being a man, that’s in the afterword, Leonidas, Gerard Butler in 300, an alpha male, an ursine manliness, manly manless, gave myself ten pushups, fun and entertaining, three times as many, comparable to a lot of Silverberg, still alive, there’s overlap, remarking on twitter, two Silverberg novels on LibriVox, pre-fifties, a break in there, throughout the eighties, putting em out, multiple novels per year, fairly unknown Silverberg novel, doesn’t compare well, we should focus on things that people can do anything with, learn how to pirate, put these up with the story, whoever happens to be familiar, make it as easy for as many people, rigamarole, all the affiliate links, all the links die, this website has been online, wasn’t a good idea, SFFaudio isn’t a commercial project, send people to the source if possible, a different Herculean task for another day, Passengers, really into writing, short light things, The Sword Of Welleran, if this hadn’t been assigned, not as high a high, not as sparky, very insightful, he did a great job with the worldbuilding, a lot of research, William Coon, quay, draught, he’s so slow, very early in his narrating career, speaking of friends of yours, Kevin Hearne, Iron Druid, Luke Daniels, many many great narrators in the world, the theme of death, I’m gonna die some day, the origin story of the Buddha, come back and do your job, the crazy religious stuff is killed at the end, hurt by Enkidu’s death, stumble into the underworld, Conan doesn’t have an Enkidu, the only consistent character is Conan, after Belit dies, a paragraph in the middle, the adventures, fights hawkmen, the Black River of Zarkheba, buries her with her treasure with a viking funeral, sad, ten second pause then back to it, it’s too dumb, the colour palette, a great story, slowmo, a brown filter, too much green screen, the story and the emotions are strong, in the Conan stories, more Kull, he’s more human than Conan, likes sex too much, works his men too much, get your head screwed on right, clean your room, a thematic thing going on, he plays it perfectly, he’s enjoying it, from Wikipedia, reception, Neil Gaiman, Imagine Magazine, David Langford, White Dwarf, a gaming magazine, explains the fantastic, you have to kill a friend, a celibate priest doing rituals all day, do the work, he did the work, Larry Niven, the Draco Tavern, the men who lived forever, our hero the bartender, make it worth enough, the premise is like the Lord Dunsany Jorkens stories, The Callahan series by Spider Robinson, hard SF jokes, Zaphod Beeblebrox style stories, Asimov did some too, Arthur C. Clarke, a fun mode of storytelling, scientific love stories, from The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, Ray Cummings, Cautionary Tales, Limits, good at mathematics, Convergent Series, the one with the demon, July 1978, hence the title, that’s gonna make Jesse into a pearl, the Russian movie made by two brothers, don’t usually click on what Jesse sends, the trailer is in English, subtitle auto-translation, an amazing plasticine animation movie about gladiators, two female characters voiced, 9-0 minutes claymation gladiatorial combat, super-solid, anti-Russian, a raging anti-Semite asshole, insistence, limiting in general, trolls, patently bullshirt, convenient, reach me elsewhere, the problem with Skype, pornbots, inundated, messenger, social media just twitter, but…, delete the app your done, pity twitter, Elon Musk did something bad, the controversy this week, anti-white hate, sue Media Matters, like Scott had, the fucking trolls, more hatred, until Elon Reeve Musk is gone, hurtful meme, an exercise in antisemitism and personal attacks, after five years, pinned tweet, the frustration, a lot of work, your handle remains your own, Charlie Brown, take him at his word, get a bluechek, cut out, a really sensitive arrow, reactived to deactivate with more courtesy, going to Australia, 32,000 words, weekends off, why open a used bookstore, like Harlan Ellison, nobody here, a destination right beside you, a yoga salon, nail salon?, culture isn’t an important thing here, X-Box, bowling, Black Box Theater, you need a date for that, spend money, play games, 2 or 3 days a week, when not eating or pooping, the desk people, on their phone, sit on the bench on their phone, watch a video, swipe up swipe up, filling the hours between grave and birth, weird fuckin channels, figuring out how to preserve laserdiscs, laserrot, the technical know how, weird shit, as a percentage, ripping it through the coaxial output, processing involved, special developer kit, an even better signal, straight to the analog, more fidelity than you get from your screen, the animal videos, here’s a puppy with a duck friend, very poor, not a wealthy area, New Jersey, where the servants lived, closed highschool, where they sent the black students during segregation, a third of the storefronts are closed, there’s no train anymore, just empty, a small performing art school for kids, state run, the park, a housing project, the people who are incapable of living on their own, walk around, an opportunity to build something, do signings, advertise it, build a local culture, a place to store your books, an anchor, the story of Austin, how horrible it was under covid in California, industry, a liberal democratic section of Texas, Portland Oregon, keep it weird, you need something like an anchor, 15 bookstores on the same street, live above the store, use it as your workspace, some weirdo gets lost on the way through your town, games with Yelp, the internet stuff, a hair salon, we are upen, English is not a language you’re familiar with, can you pay the rent?, the banks approve the loans, charge a higher rent, the whole scam going on in New York City proper, business vacancy rate, 17.4%, at least half empty at street level, some empty apartments as well, this artificial thing, a foothold, physical infrastructure, shifts with the sands, do they have bookstores in China, we have no serious emptiness in business, people moving in, the economy is not a total train-wreck, people don’t buy physical books except at Costco and Chapters, lifestyle shit, desperately trying not to be in the book business, in the used market, regional authors, you have to visit my store first, you have to do a signing, phone stores are popular, bookstores are not popular, how much is rent going to be?, set up an LLC, this is going to be on the podcast, a cafe, people like coffee, a latte, I wanna try this latte, brought into the 21st century, sells an addictive product, relatively inexpensive to make, a relatively high price, a couple towns over, they always are older, they got a rent deal a long time ago, move or go online, I would love to own a restaurant, all the signs point to this being a terrible idea, you cannot fix the country on your own, FDR fireside chats, he was speaking via radio to a specific group of people, Wall Street was against him, he was treated like Trump, Smedley Butler, he went on record, the wiped him from the record, totally true, that was in the past, like Caesar, his uncle was president, the deep state and the billionaires were against him, this is what you need to do, this new innovation, 40 different alphabet agencies, you can’t will your city into not being fucked up, most people’s solution is to leave, a hobby that’s going to fail, fit enough books in there, it would be good to have customers, Walmart killed that business, by 1998, ebay, we should start selling on ebay, Sears catalogue pickup, extra foot-traffic in, by 2005, that business was still alive 2 years ago, figure out a way to not have the rent be an extravagance, unless independently wealthy, the George Washington Bridge, it would be about bitcoin and supermodel asses, cat videos and making fun of celebrities, Elon Reeve Musk is a bad person, what they say about a Nazi bar, it’s called censorship, it’s not a bar, much more like a public square, annoying when people have different ideas, let me hear their story, walled garden, Threads, Bluesky, Mastadon, Truthsocial, Media Matters is an evil organization, a functionary of one of the political parties, David Brock, the people who donate to it, institutions are naturally corrupted, institutions are evil, what if you’re a tenured professor, a staunch institutionalist, Eric is an emeritus professor, The New York Times, New Jersey, the had a Ted Chiang story, still big, that goes for art, a received opinion, animated movie about a kung-fu panda, the same school as Donald Trump, Denzel Washington, Colin Powell, Rudolph Giuliani, army, they don’t want to hear dissent or questioning, literally did that, at least it’s not an Ivy League school, H.P. Lovecraft, the decorative ivory, the building is old, they like the way it looks, they trim it, old east coast university, a Jesuit school, if you think institutions are right you do evil, I’m outsourcing my decisions and actions to a thing outside of myself, pirates stabbing liches, controlling things from beyond the grave, pirates are anarchists, piracy, I don’t trust this Dick Cheney guy, but I’ve been in this thing my whole life, what will happen if I don’t shaking Richard Nixon’s hand, like Smedley Butler, the supreme leader of China, would you still call him a dictator, it’s just a slur, what makes him a dictator, not Roman position anymore, regime, just a slur, autocrat, the guy gets shit done, he forces his will upon people, 23 years, he arrests dissent, a whole January 6th thing, they forgot to bring their guns, Huey Long, a collective action, literally what happened to Caesar, guns on the assassin, Lone Star Planet by John J. McGuire and H. Beam Piper, H.L. Mencken, The Malevolent Jobholder, Woodrow Wilson, arrested his opponents, revered by the institutionalists, his 14 points, Julian Assange, nobody has repealed it, he railroaded that war [WWI], a fascinating guy, they called Trump a dictator, he modeled his speaking style after Hitler, a little folksy, Bernie Sanders with a more humorous presentation, become obsessed, maybe there’s a science fiction tie in, populist, socialist, his family, revere him as a hero, like Caesar, he gets his power from his army, the whole thing happens because of slaving and genociding, to overthrow the old order in a particular town, successor, still going to do slavery and all that but less civil war, on the right path of doing something good, Gerald Ford, the Manson Family CIA assassination group, the deep state in action, Richard Nixon, Spiro Agnew, somebody so dumb, speaker of the house in Canada, everybody in parliament was clapping for a literal Nazi, the Speaker resigned, his boss is the prime minister, he chose to resign, a cuck job, prestige in the states, considered equal, head of state, head of congress, add some balance, the speaker is a cuck in Canada, run things when the king or queen is not in parliament, they choose their prime minister afterwards, a little bit of reverse order but functionally identical, a machine that should work identically, if they force the vote they can choose somebody else, changed the rules, the guy who has an owl for a wife, Newt Gingrich, he quit, a brand new rule, rules they are imposing on themselves, owl shaking Trump’s hand, an isolated incident, Democrats were cucks for Democrats, what happened to the Squad, chose not to force the vote, a little bit of backbone, a rule for them, once a rule gets written, that’s a not a law, a mode of operation, a coup in Australia, refusing to do the job, a mask off moment for the United States controlling Australia, now you gotta resign in disgrace, had an unwritten constitution, make Donald Trump speaker, that would be hilarious, wrong, a sergeant at arms, to enforce the speaker’s will, an actual mace sitting on a table, when the queen’s not in town, a shooting in parliament in Canada, copied from England, kidnap one member of parliament, no torture involved, they have a hostage, formal formality shit, all cucks to the queen, how Hitler came to power, he was appointed, side with the rightwing nazis, didn’t realize it would sound bad later, Hillary Clinton on a talk show, she thinks she’s smart, a warning or a threat, fear is the best tool, if we don’t do this one thing something bad will happen, an effective tool, Ross Perot, had some good ideas, if you look at his charts, perfectly reasonable, a billionaire businessman, the conspiracy theory or the truth, left thousands of POW/MIA in Vietnam, the official line was the sonic weapon from Cuba, compensation for something that isn’t real, literal people killed in Vietnam, unrecovered bodies, eaten by a tiger, movies that would support that, Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985), Missing In Action (1984), Chuck Norris, Uncommon Valor (1983), reignite the Vietnam War, weapons of mass destruction, re-invade the country, drops out of the race, still on CSPAN, all 12 hours of it, kind of a naive guy, the October Surprise, these terms, false terms, a bag you stuff an uncertain set of ideas, I feel your pain, what makes you think there’s a distinction, a heel and baby-face, I like my girls like I like my…, what makes somebody left wing or right wing, campaigning on it is a trick, RFK, Jr., take votes from somebody, these are theories I want facts, 100% in favour of war, traditionally republican, both parties believe that, siphon the money off, George H.W. Bush, except for losing the election, circular reasoning, a robot or no vote, electoral college is a separate thing, it’s all a scam, institution totally gamed, senators in Canada, all paperballots all counted in front of witnesses for any parties, recorded, this vote is ambiguous, voting machines, a stylus pen, an anonymous ballot, there’s never going to be an overage, seems like it’s way more gamed, 50 state elections, are there any paper ballot states?, vote by mail, Alaska is hand count and optical scan, a real point of weakness, ballot stuffing, the Kennedys, Edgar Allan Poe may have died from this, the Chicago political machine, still ongoing, there’s video, ballot harvesting, just the official elections, the party elections, cheating members of the party, not working very well, people are not very good at choosing candidates, in the 70s and the 80s, internal vs. formal corruption, Hillary Clinton cheated Bernie Sanders, Donna Brazile, she wrote a book, pledged to support, inside party politics, taking advantage and cheating, neutral arbiter, when leaked emails showed, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Seth Rich, the “hack” which wasn’t a hack, the company that did the audit, ex-NSA guys, this is impossible, it had to have been a flashdrive, an unsolved murder, Robert Muller, working hard to say this is 100% untrue, the Christchurch shooting in New Zealand, Hunter Biden’s laptop, The New York Post, the twitter account was removed, overt censorship of true things, if people thought Biden’s family was corrupt, very relevant, very interesting timing, given it wasn’t a hack vs. a leak, kinda boring, exciting movie style, what that whole House Of Cards, Kevin Spacey’s career went flush, just delete it man, a lot of audience on there, pornbots, women who joined twitter 2 months ago, clogging up followers, suddenly to get your message, in Hollywood, the talent, it doesn’t matter it is fake, the decision makers are so stupid, fake followers, if you enjoy twitter tweet, it has utility, the complaint from the girls was, thumbs up emoji, it’s not natural, make jokes and people get offended, a good scrap-board, becoming less and less useful, get off this hellsite, funny, a scenester, like an institutionalist for a scene, the SFWA scene, takes his queue, age gapped themed short story, makes himself a victim, a huge follower count, in the scene, its outside of the acceptable, on the downlow, prudish, beautiful naked women, paintings, Bettie Page, they tend to be beautiful, PulpCovers, a practicing Catholic, he’s very liberal, it has flipped, not libertarian, artistic representation of nudity, twitter is not the universe, politicians are on there, people who right books, Instagram, blogs were destroyed, Alex from Cirsova, what twitter is good for, sending files to people, all sorts of good things happen, where the people are, some who are leaving or have left, people are being crowded out by bots, there’s North Korean agents, people misrepresenting themselves, delete or not delete, Jack Dorsey, why twitter is good, seeing the video of the kids’ heads opened, the war in Israel, nice that it’s not being censored, there’s fake shit, just happened 10 minutes ago, also give out news, everything’s an op, more public domain books, good audiobooks, good covers, emotionally manipulative, if you want censorship, he doesn’t want to be confronted with opposing ideas, get’s really noisy, a jumble of information, a very reasonable number, an exodus, the consensus says you can’t be on here, I don’t want to give Amazon money, he’s angry, that sort of anger makes you not want to be angry, put on your Paul hat, believe in nations, personal sovereignty, large corporations, Bezos and Zuckerberg and the Virgin guy, rocket guys, having a lot of fun, Bill Gates, lives in a mansion, is that fun, lives in a little box, making bullet proof cars, MSNBC, humiliated, a pie in the face, trying to not be hated, own things, manipulate reality, fun and useful, electric cars are a scam, ethanol cars, he knows its a scam too but he’s having fun with it, he loves rockets, makes jokes about rockets, sucking off the government teat, he’s wrong in many cases, Starlink is very good shit, making internet not stuck to cable, provides it to Ukraine, providing it free, Boeing or Lockheed Martin, circumventing the US government, gives him decision making power, battlefield decisions, he’s very personally powerful, smoking Joe Biden, that genius who’s not demented, if you want to cow that military power, information power, computers, they go through the U.S. military, unilaterally decide, the enemy, it’s good that people can share shit, to guide rockets, the Russians have their own system, give Cubans the internet, more powerful than actual governments, whatever his staff tell him, quasi-state like, more powerful than many states, more powerful than Canada, the global world order, Eric did not like it, my favourite billionaire, Bill Gates is intruding into my apartment, Elon Musk forces jokes on me, he trolls me, he’s a threat, he’s dynamic enough, like Apple used to be, they need him, bring him to heel, whoever you’re saying the government is is super incompetent ignoramus and clowns who can spell, they’ll tell you your grammar is bad, institutions, amassed an enormous amount of power, states have armies, he has rockets though, amazing how well he’s been able to navigate that shit, we can be done, two hours of Jonathan and Jesse talking at the end.

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The SFFaudio Podcast #768 – READALONG: Scratch One by Michael Crichton

The SFFaudio PodcastJesse, Paul Weimer, and Terence Blake talk about Scratch One by Michael Crichton

Talked about on today’s show:
from Nice, our agent on the Cote D’aZur, 1967, early, 2nd published novel, maybe Cora mentioned this before, Lange means long, Dick means fat, John means dick, this book is very familiar, a heist book in Spain, the Spanish equivalent, Costa Brava, generic titles, The Venom Business, Grave Descend, Odds On, knock off holiday resort, not just a fact (also part of the plot), crossing over the bridge, casino hotel resort, something under the bridge, descends the steep cliff, scrambling down and back up, a surprise: flowers, planting a bomb, this actually happened, France and or Spain, sometimes with a girl sometimes without, vividly describes the descent, Egypt, drowned, the Nile, a similar scene in that book, mucking about down near Aswan, just like Richard Upton Pickman, release the Terence, the Negresco Hotel, Promenade Anglais, Avenue Victor Hugo, Rue Biscarra, Avenue Du La Victoire, renamed, after a famous mayor, Cannes, Monaco, not while the race is happening, successfully describes both, warm semi-tropical Mediterranean, seen it in movies, To Catch A Thief (1955), North By Northwest (1959), Roger bumbles, Carr, bumbling his way, add-in the international intrigue of Charade (1963) is public domain, Never Say Never Again (1983), Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968), Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988), also turns out to be a conwoman, a lot of fun, A Good Year (2006), Grace Kelly, Stirling Moss, the restaurant, name drops, by magic romantic resonance, that’s enough, we don’t need to see her haircut, accidental spy books, Michael Crichton’s inspirations are paperbacks (not movies), a searchable thing, an early Westlake, the nephew novels, a case of mistaken identity, gets the mob after him, mistaken identity, there are jokes, it would be funny, attempted murder, Jennings, the nasty murders, this is not a joke, finds everything funny, Alice In Wonderland, hideous torture, that’s the disconnect, characters who die fast, we meet some baddies, what the plot, an arms shipment, are they supplying the PLO?, a disconnect, the comedic situation, the cops, the consulate, it will be good to let him run around for a while, very North By Northwest, God Save The Mark, Somebody Owes Me Money, a tip on a horse, makes book, run around New York avoiding the cops and the actual murderer, a girl who betrays him, standard girl stuff, the narrator’s voice, Australian accent, hard to identify, strong vs. weak Australian accents, definitely Australian, Crocodile Dundee Australia, Australia is not a monolith, Maine and Texas are the same accent, most people are not going to physically violence Jesse, preferring the read, him doing a female voice, Australian female, quite good, romancing, that scene is on the cover of the Hard Case Crime, she’s working for the bad guys, a dancer’s wages, it has to be a good book, extraneous character, he writes some scenes as if he’s fleshing things out, characters we don’t want to be in the book, false main characters, we don’t know that he’s the hero, the minds of other characters, the book is mal-plotted, obliging me to have lots of willing suspension of disbelief, what’s stopping this from being a science fiction book, Ringworld, Dirk Gently, synchronicity and coincidence, everything is tied together, still working on his stuff, novels are very different scene by scene, the opening killings are a lot like a James Bond opening, Smert Shpionam, Money For Nothing by Donald E. Westlake, you have now been activated, a sleeper agent, a case of mistaken identity, it’s a comedy but not funny, horrible torture scenes, our main character is a lawyer, he’s playing the bad guy in this book, he’s way dumber than us, you should tell them exactly what happened, no I am not, the Hugo Award winning fanzine, he’s a bit of an asshole, a gripe against this book, enjoyed, three quick hours, a light read, very light, the way Paul’s mind thinks, possibly going off a cliff, what does he look like?, especially the women, he’s amazingly handsome, he looks like a spy except to know what spies look like, he’s strong, he’s the reader, a paperback designed to be a paperback, Binary, a good book a pretty good TV movie, more things of his own, not a bad book at all, the two paperback scenes, 20 kilos exactly, getting his stuff weighed, the amount was less, he could have sworn his suitcase wasn’t that heavy, airplane reader, light and amusing of no consequence, reviewing their own book, chapter 10, a key scene, she was wearing almost nothing, her body was breathtaking, a few strands of blonde hair, A.C., that’s on the cover of the book, they go by Cannes, it’s not a book about movies, it’s a book about books, Grave Descend, literary based, a James Bond stand-in, the villain has a library, romancing each other, too literal, the gravedigger the whole scene, Thomas Mann, 10 sentences a day, Balzac, furiously writing, Wolfe, dropping finished pages into a wastebasket, Poe who was underrated, (not third rate), Our Opinions Are Correct, Larry Rivers, a nothing, Charles de Gaulle’s memoirs, was he president at the time of this story?, 1959-1969, an intellectual match, a high luck score, agency, a little fake, they need him for that?, ok, maybe, malformed, how to put together a great book, light and fluffy, a floated bid for Nice, where the French live?, a city to live in, where the elderly French come to finish their days, dry and warm, a big tourist city in Spring and Summer, the events, the Cannes Film Festival, the Monaco Grand Prix, near Italy, the coast just adjacent, cigarettes and wine, still using Francs, everybody was Euroing, Donald Trump’s yacht was there, how they gonna catch this guy? too many ways out, there’s no way to catch this guy, when he’s on this journey, drawn from, all lifted, places he went line up, things that happened, poolside lifestyle, in some rich person’s house, his father was a senator, he’s there for a governor to buy a house, talks about the library, selling the house, another place selling to an American, you can’t sell the library, the library is priceless, individual books, thesis: this is really about books, books of this period were often adapted to film, a Westlake novel that was to be a script for a James Bond movie, movies don’t get made, a spy book set in Hong Kong, Westlake wrote a lot lot lot of books, Killing Time is public domain, Brothers Keepers, a monks book, something wrong with the estate, an unusual choice for a lazy day on the beach, the opposite to the paperbacks at the airport, a literary book you have to underline and meditate, she is smarter than he is but doesn’t hold it over his head, he did one deduction, the short swarthy man that came to the hotel and gave him the ring, could that have been Jennings’ mechanic, a leap that I didn’t see coming, the mechanic disappearing, the associates, Algerian, the Italian guy, a library scene, you need not praise him in my presence, the maintenance of this house which I love, money will by the respect, a Maserati or a Bentley, some of my best friends are gangsters, Carr nodded politely, smokes, drinks, many of them must be crooks, dishonesty is their profession, laughs, nods politely, the library remains with the villa, just another rivera villa, Dickens, the Cruickshank illustrations, an interesting line, a phony sales pitch, that guy’s trying to get out, time to yourself, time to kill, time to read, the governor is very busy, he will eventually settle, you feel tired, still in the lead, still at the top, any man who does not do it is a fool, a propensity for saltiness, backstory, what is his price, what is yours?, why he’s in France to begin with, The Woman In Black by Susan Hill, the setup for Dracula, Jonathan Harker, buys an abbey, accumulates a bunch of other people with him, Victorian era, a lawyer agent for a rich person, haunted ghost house, an agent for a foreign buyer, not to reveal identity to randos, the wrong kind of agent, people are trying to kill him or figure out if he needs to be killed, a James Bond scene, shark tank, affable villain, Dr. No, just send sexy lady, the knife sharpening scene, there’s your To Catch A Thief, here’s your keys, the roof being down is part of the plot, agent for a governor, make it look like an accident, not fucking up constantly, they’ve got this Citroën’s axel, gearheading stuff, she’s a double agent, he’s mute, Find Your Fate, A View To A Kill, you are James Bond Secret Agent, a kid’s role playing game book, if you choose wrongly, what more plot is happening, ways to die, other characters with interesting things to say, the protagonist is so, a male heterosexual reader, taking it to Korea, Choose Your Own Adventure, You Are A Shark, Paul read a lot of these, illustrations, people go crazy there, The Curse Of Batterslea Hall, visit your English cousin, fantasy elements, a related phenomena, an ebook author, people think they’re inventing audiobooks, people think they’re inventing audio dramas, I’ll invent this thing, after a few years, nobody actually wants these things, get an audiobook then they put music underneath it, and then they add in sound effects, he lit the lighter, combine the audio of somebody reading the story with a layer of music and layer of randomly place sound effects, people who’ve never listened to an audiobook before, how BBC did it in the 1960s, a reading of a book, audio dramas are performances, a guy reading a book like he’s angry, when parents are sold on the idea of children reading a story about themselves, your daughter in the main role, leave the name blank, gas station keychains, all the common names of people, it has my name on it, a girl who rides a dolphin, kids are able to relate to other people, everything being about me, correct Carr, Carr got in the car, Parker parked the car, Parker left the car on 15th avenue, designed to be humorous, this book doesn’t really work on a humour level, at the airport, all these sides waiting for the same guy, something special about the way he conducts himself, dry humour, he’s literally dumb, he doesn’t say things, the stuff on the roof all fails, he doesn’t die, the chase scene, goes to the farmhouse and makes that phone call, close in on being resolved, the whole Monaco scene, the promise of the ending, go back to America and be married, the trope, she’s smarter than he is, he’s sexy, a good job he’s really not worthy of, ne’er do well does well, Kevin J. Anderson and L. Ron Hubbard’s Ai! Pedrito! When Intelligence Goes Wrong, body double, based on real life, when he was in the Navy, supposedly mistaken for this guy who looks like him, not a great novel, for eternity, he’s fine, about 20 times the word scalpel turns up, medical stuff even from Carr, he can’t help it, medical facts, Le Scalpel estate, the whole building was constructed by glass and metal, occasional use of bricks, tile roofs, in the fight with the guy with the scalpel, you don’t throw scalpels, stick your guts into your mouth to test your own intestines, tonally confused, the villain is much harsher than our bumbling dumb viewpoint character is capable of handling, in a regular role playing game, in this we have no options, things happening to him, playing arcade games on the ferry, a sidescrolling game like Defender, you’re a spaceship, a demo showing what the game was like, the control would respond to your inputs, I don’t have any quarters, the phenomenon of an amazing book, this matches exactly where it was going to go, the demo takes over, this illusion of control, what we think of as engagement, there is no difference, a fascinating phenomenon, disconnects, blithering idiot, a doofus, unable to communicate, a VR pornography, POV, has a camera on his face, the camera goes in every direction, look at the tv or something, looking at the furniture, what piece of furniture that is, a really great novel engages you in such a way, the experience of reading and the experience of experiencing it, slightly different moves, King’s Quest style story, watching someone play King’s Quest, engaging, getting read for sleep, streaming excitement, let other people have a turn playing, Hardcore Henry (2015), a first person action movie, a camera with two arms, the Doom (2005) movie, with the Rock (Dwayne Johnson), fan service, Strange Days (1995), somewhere near the bottom of John Langes, the one set in Egypt is the best Easy Go, Binary, Grave Descend, , where the title comes from, its called out in the book, from WWII, doodled furiously, scratch one nice confused American, the work of the Scalpel, well written, Battle Of The Coral Sea, American propaganda propaganding the domestics, during the Battle Of The Bulge, my general askes you to surrender, “Nuts!”, famous scene, Heroes In Hell, propaganda phrases, the Japanese navy, scratch one flat top, the phrase gets stuck, we have both fired machineguns, went to Harvard to escape the draft, Harvard law school, scratch it out, double meaning, scratch an American doofus and underneath you’ll find a hero, saves the day, lets the air out of his tires, not a man of action exactly, Cary Grant?, alcohol for breakfast, wine at lunch, sociologically accurate, easy girls fantasy, French girls are easier, less inhibited than north Americans, if you can’t find a girl on the Riviera, found a wife in Paris, the part about his dad, the distinguished senator, a business expense, for as long as it takes, four months, they’re just trying to get him out from underfoot, don’t just do work, getting to the other things, got along famously, struck it off instantly, fast friends, slightly debauched with a cherubic face, satyr-like, The Famous Teddy Z, becoming the agent for a big movie star, know all the ropes, John Cryer, satyric, the governor appreciated that, weirdly bonding, like to drink, chapter 2, a childish pudgy face, chapter 11, you know you look like a satyr, looks like Pan, Buck Rogers, a penis with goatlegs, the devil with a penis, a lot of truth of what writing was happening, he knew rich people, for your quote, a suitable replacement, people on vacation are looking for that, going into the Casino, gambling, wanting to lose money, short term thinking, a pleasure out of that, elderly people loving bingo or slot machine, pass the time between sleeps, choppin wood all day, dotting or pulling an arm or pressing a button, dopamine hit, how could somebody act that way, the alcoholism after WWII, drinking problems away, a large phase that people go through, not offered alcohol everytime, keep yourself avoiding, characters who are older than he is, observing his elders, grows up with the phrase, a generational thing, propaganda phrase, collateral damage, the first gulf war with Schwarzkopf, public domain, Schwarzenegger movie, laterally how things were produced, get a phrase, you know that disney movie that was a cartoon from 10 years ago?, it’s live action now, went to Egypt, Zero Cool, finish the set, the John Lange list:

Binary
Scratch One
Zero Cool
Easy Go
Grave Descend
Drug Of Choice
Odds On
The Venom Business

a bodyguard to a friend, Harvard rich kid, nightmare family, evil people, The Last Tomb, eight?, American radiologist, Angela Locke, a Spanish beach, Alhambra, darkest catacombs, a secret lost for centuries, a dark haired beauty with a huge problem, a desperate fight for survival, the audio drama, if you look closely, the Hard Case Crime, she’s reading Grave Descend, a pleasure to podcast, meta, mise en abyme, Mad magazine, the lady in the boat, very exciting, how Jesse gets his jollies, what’s the heat like?, warmer than usual, going for a walk, public garden, doing tai chi, practicing tai chi everyday, better than bingo, a different idea of chance, kills the hours between sleeps, jiu jitsu, Musk challenged Zuckerberg to a fight, colour commentary, an age difference, more like chess, find a way to backdown, he likes fun, very disciplined about it, the Pompey and Sulla, private armies, it doesn’t fit, a coup in russia?, the Wagner group, private mercenary groups, personal combat, very Weird, fight this out in meatspace, good dad, horrible evil, Bill Gates, a generational thing, Steve Jobs, Indian mysticism, ashram, Beatles generation, peripherally amused, what was tai chi’s high point?, big in Asia, seemed distant, Paul does yoga, you want to do something, wants to have cows, gets into cattle, martial applications, picking up steam, Emily In Paris, kids like it, a revisiting of the culture (a little bit), fun French stereotype characters, ideas and scenes, helps alot, filmed in Los Angeles, House, M.D., Bryan Singer is in trouble for sex things, sexual harassments, not politically correct, he’s a weird annoying character, Sherlock Holmes with medical stuff, we have to break into the people’s houses to look for toxins, if they needed to really badly, a fantasy of medical diagnostics, American murder shows, fantasies of how murders are investigated, everybody gets an MRI, that’s only for riche people, the vigilante fantasy, stupid bureaucratic things get in the way, full body irradiation, lupus, prednisone, ivermectin, Wilson’s disease, when reading Sherlock Holmes, doesn’t play fair, Agatha Christie is more fair, stares off in to space, remove somebody’s pituitary gland, you’re an idiot, formulaic and fun, special set, they don’t go outside much, the geography and climate of New Jersey, filming in the actual place flavours the writing, daughter, son, moved to Melbourne, something silly you can watch, a soap opera style type show, You, a serial killer who runs a bookstore, a romantic comedy where he stalks girls, based on a book, no although yes, you’re not upset when he murders people, Schwarzenegger’s Fubar, Citadel, very immoral TV shows now, justifying torture and violence, cartoons, a strange phenomenon, a sequel to the James Cameron movie True Lies, cheating on him with a used car salesman, generic Arab terrorists with a nuke, super competent, Jamie Lee Curtis, the same character kind, his daughter is in the CIA and he didn’t know, not well written, True Lies is also a television show, on network television, the guy from Game Of Thrones, sorta Philip K. Dick premise, memory wiped, Silo, Wool by Hugh Howey, when everybody was excited about Wool, didn’t care much anymore, a duty to read the book, Graham Yost, Terence is not one who necessarily executes his duty, conversations with elderly people, a retirement place, not something really intellecutal, Tulsa King, retired superhero, oui, yes, Jeff Bezos some money (Canadian servers), ratings on prime, IMDB is not reliable (except for older things), it deserves it, a forumal, it goes on from 8 years, 8.7 for House, M.D., Star Trek TNG went 7 seasons, the follow up to Justified, City Primeval, the 3rd season of Star Trek Picard, Terence didn’t see the good part, those movies were not good, not interesting, because Worf came back, fan service good is never good, that’s the best stuff, 30 years ago, time machine, cryogenic chamber, 1987, a holiday residence, we’d done everything that we could, doing all these other things, France at that time just wasn’t into science fiction, talking to students about science fiction series, car racing is very dangerous, the James Bond stand-in figure, flipping cars, a hard-top, pre-WWI pilots, after her first crash she never flew again, just fuckin dangerous, small planes, if you’re trying to race them, the water police, that guy’s dead, that was common, tinkering in the garage working on your motorcar, dirt bike racing, the special hospital for broken necks, that’s how you become a quad: drive quads, mountain biking, the opposite of bjj, out in nature, extreme canoeing, kayaking, at least as good an experience, the Sunshine Coast, a ferry ride away, fjords, inlets, the skookumchuk narrows, fast good ocean, a tide in or a tide out, a giant peninsula, to ride the currents, surfing for kayakers, you wear a helmet, smashed up real good, surfing but more dangerous, skiing, injuries are slower to heal, the risk of injury goes up and up, fun/fast, dangerous, expensive, things were cheaper, lift ticket, cross country-skiing, a way to kill time between sleeps: a retired person’s thing, the side projects of people’s activities, Sunday morning for Jesse, church time, why you going to church, really into politics, civically engaged, highest percentage of atheist, a powerful lobby, list of countries by irreligion, Afghanistan, Czec Republic, North Korea, New Zealand, France 28%, Canada, Australia, 28.6 percent, 16.4 USA, synagogue goers, heavy activity, 3.1% Israel, the problem with Jews, they don’t have to practice, belief in god, a cultural practice, the theory of god, he’s in the book, how to read the book, forming the question will help determined what answers you get, China, by population data, 91% for China, Australia 69%, China is full of atheists, saying India is full of atheist, total atheists, Chinese new year, scaring away ghosts, Japan, Shinto temples, government sponsorship for maintenance, same is true for France, Ireland, U.K., theoretically catholic, theoretically protests, Stephen Fry, atheist pastors, a masking mandate, Daniel Dennett, smartguy, a priest with his fingers crossed behind his back, unbelief among the clergy, begin starry eyed, Santa Claus, way smarter than Sam Harris, like a cartoon of a smart guy, he thinks he is a smart guy, a beef over something, emotional shit, he’s not good at logic, he uses a lot of words, cultivate ignorance in writing, think about what these words mean, that’s the exact explanation, consciousness is the center of narrative gravity, when you get into the brain, doing Phineas Gage stuff with big rods, a continuous sort of experience with reality we think, where is the center of gravity on a teapot, nothing inside the teapot has changed, shot in the head, part of your personality changes, if you remove too much, parts can be removed, Descartes theory, the reason I don’t cut off my finger, it’ll hurt, all those cells don’t want to die, battlefield triage, a person with a missing language, self is the center of narrative gravity, its fiction, another analogy, a fictional character in literature, did Sherlock Holmes have a mole on his left shoulder blade?, there was a truth to the matter, neither true nor false, you have failed to understand, neutrinos, why other people’s theories are wrong, a theory that works, the part of us that gives us I did this for this reason, what our dilemma is, when a book is rubbing us wrong, right to bring this up, what does this guy look like, he has no appearance, describing the main character is usually bad, what does Odysseus look like, Starship Troopers tricks you, a person of colour, exactly exactly exactly, why do stories work or why stories don’t work, Luke Burrage [The Science Fiction Book Review Podcast], gone down the drain, a lot of modern books, something has changed, they’re not science fiction, a weird subset of science fiction, anti-intellectual, not interested in the intellectual part of science fiction, the structure of books, outguess the author, guesses and inferences, not a key theme, Agatha Christie, letting it flow, Jesse writes a ton, 6 sentence stories, amazing, fascinated by his own dreams, almost all fiction is unsalable (including some that is sold), book series, the things that people are obsessed with reading and writing about, will they or won’t they, the romance that happens in this book, no investment in it, isn’t it interesting he’s made the girl an intellectual, sexy, a dancer, car shocks, can quote Shakespeare, opinions on Thomas Mann, and be a girl, too much, you can get all that with money, if she really was like that, like the Amish, make it more plausible, silly, how sexist Paul would think Jesse just was, Buckaroo Banzai, neurosurgeon, physicist, test-pilot, rock star, some actors like to play music, Doc Savage is Buckaroo Banzai without the comedy, supposed to be profound, no matter where you go, there you are, shallowly profound, what is the sound of one hand clapping?, take it as a deep thing, a comedy of a deep thing, a comedy, dream response, analysis of The Road Warrior (Mad Max II), Tina Turner, it’s the best one in a way, Mad Max I is an art film action film, Jungian psychology, dream response, black and white, characters being mirrors and shadows of each other, dressed like animals, claws and spikes, the fight sequences, an oil monopoly is the good guy, white football pads vs. black football pads, Max has one football pad, the outsider, he has no identity, the camera swoops in, we enter the vehicle with Max, Max is left behind, very solid analysis, everybody has violence within them, a symbol, when we enter civil society, a lot of people like to pretend, making a mistake, James Tiptree’s Houston, Houston, Do You Read?, extract, Her Smoke Rose Up Forever, the way people read it, downloaded, a hundred page book, One Light Hour, pretty good, Rossignol, Nightingale, The Screwfly Solution, everyone has aggression in them, take stuff away, its not the essence of men, the essence of a can of sardines, Jesse is afraid of male and female bears, afraid of tigers, tigers eat meat and I am made of meat, men can prey on women, using violence for moral purposes, just download it again, from the mouse, 20 files, Love Is The Plan And The Plan Is Death, a lady who wrote like a smart person, is she the best?, this is very difficult, she’s a good antidote, Ursula K. Le Guin, politically correct, The Dispossessed, The Word For World Is Forest, humans come out as the badguys, it’s Avatar (2009), Poul Anderson’s The Queen OF Air And Darkness, we’ve got prejudices and they have prejudices too, The Left Hand Of Darkness and The Lathe Of Heaven, its fun, she’s playing what if, the 2 film versions, real science fiction, another duty Terence has: Always Coming Home, the strongest strike against Le Guin, hoighty toights think she’s the shit, Octavia Butler, Margaret Atwood is feted by idiots, really good, Silverberg is very solid, better science fiction writers than Silverberg, interested in the hard or soft things, native ability, always in phase with the 1960s and the 1970s, her beauty is fading, people are mad Tiptree killed her husband, not a strike against her, a strike in her favour, too traumatizing to talk about or consider, you’re babies, grow up, put on your big girl pants, these are traumatized people they need to be sheltered, let the injury heal then work to make the injured injury stronger, they’ve never actually had trauma, verbally mean to them, making fun of rape survivors, heard about a rape survivor, their theory, trauma in society, what the government is saying we should be worried about are fictional creations, the narrative is not written from their experience, social influencers, the Yellow Peril is something that was manufactured, ginned up, reflected in popular media, Skull Face, The Insidious Doctor Fu Manchu, Fu Manchu is the hero, putting down this evil genius, the side I would be on, the War On Terror, sound and fury, a war that had been happening that people had been ignorant of, 24, always some threat, COVID, turns out that wasn’t really a thing, another duty, the Russians identify with the orcs, the Elves are Harvard educated, The Last Ring Bearer by Kirill Eskov, we should do a pirate audiobook of that, a symbolic Euro, maybe Archive.org, an amazing number of bootleg audiobooks on YouTube, the official Alien movie adaptation by Alan Dean Foster, published in paperback and never thought of again, The Terminator (novelization), a perfect film, sction science fiction oriented, it’s like a theorem, the perfection of a beautiful theorem, so well thought through, the Champs Elysee, lucky Terence, the budget, what is this?, seems a little short, the NAFO, NATO trolls, troll dog in fatigues, anybody who questions the Ukraine War, a tendency, pro-Ukraine people calling Russians orcs, the dumber side of science fiction fandom (pretty much all of science fiction fandom), orcs are black people, doing the Eloi properly, dumb and pretty, The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, September is okay, Australia in December, Tip-tree, do you read me?, poly-valent, NASA stuff, do you read?, parody of SF fandom (amongst other things), save it for the podcast, already intrigued, Heads Of Cerberus by Francis Stevens, strict with the definition, amongst Jesse’s favourite SFF writers, sloppy and crunchy, amazing concept, a phial, pretty and stupid, but do they have boobs?, pre-pubescent, they’re supposed to be children, Dante?, set in Philadelphia, two burglars, the opener disappears, I’ve killed them, Ulythia, a spider woman there, a weaver of webs, mystical shit, a sphinx over a temple entrance, we’re out of time, a staging area to another reality, Philadelphia 2118, a 1984 style dystopia, their name is either a number or a job title, Prettiest, Wittiest, Strongest, governance of the city, contests, if you fail the contest or challenge you’re thrown into a spiked pit, this future place, cut-off from the rest of the United States, what to do with them?, the game and the story, challenge for prettiest, a fourth guy, Mr. Justice is the cop, not a comedy but very comedic, like a Philip K. Dick novel but better put together, super-innovative, two Mondays from now, LibriVox, cleaned up sound, a super brain in her head, you can tell if you read enough if a book was written by a man or a woman, I saw she had a boob, her hands are not big and veiny, check the hand sizes, secondary sexual characteristics, fingernails, how much attention has been paid to the fingernails, Black House by Stephen King and Peter Straub, influenced by Zelazny’s Amber series, a sequel, parallel realities, Evan likes Stephen King, we exhausted Bachman, 20 hours, Straub died recently, 26 fucking hours, duty books, Progeny by Philip K. Dick, Pirates Of Venus by Edgar Rice Burroughs, 1st books, A Meeting With Medusa by Arthur C. Clarke, another Tor Double, in Playboy, a hot air balloon in orbit of Saturn?, everybody’s favourite: Farnham’s Freehold, he’s fun to argue with, No Man’s Land by John Buchan, planning three months ahead, duty!, Paul: you could take a break, Jesse, your center of narrative gravity says, pumping iron, too focused on image of the body, works for the brain, if you’re living in Ancient Athens, Socrates: you’re looking fat, people doesn’t like Socrates, Plato was a wrestler, footsoldiers, cowboys in the distance, learning to throw spears and steal rifles, they’re not discus throwers, what makes them famous?, what makes them good?, stories on the grape vine, stories that require attention, God Save The Mark is more fun, time travel, amazing theme, the secret hobby horse of Westlake is insurance, talking about insurance, hedging your bets all the time, is the insurance company fucking with you?, what makes things continue to function, David Foster Wallace, taxation, not interesting, a central thing we’re trained not to think about, if I don’t buy anything I can’t be taxed, tax rebate, in British Columbia and Canada, HST, GST, PST, harmonize it!, compared to the states, Justin is horrible, fucking terrible things, generally incompetent, not completely corrupt, negotiating these sales taxes, same as VAT, an 80s thing, we know its going to hurt everybody, luxury tax, the theoretical amount of tax they paid, fuel and food, a relatively good life, without working many many hours, inherited money, mortgage payments for 25 years, under COVID, Biden promised a $2000 cheque, never given it, student loans and all the other things, a standard flat amount for everybody, a statistical anomaly, $2000 a month for not working, condo crisis as usual, you don’t have that business anymore, a net negative for most, lose their jobs, doing podcasts, the difference between the two, something in France, up to a level being able to pay 80%, unemployment benefits, normally more stringent, that formula is interesting, most people were getting less, that flat number, cop still has to go to work, if you lost any work, the universalness of it, the province did other things, crown corporations, BC Hydro, automotive insurance, an actual attempt to lessen the damage, keeping track of it, amazing, right?, fairly well when somewhat interested, the fact that they can do good things is amazing, 1pm, Terence’s wife has gone to Paris for a week, this is good for me, I won’t eat, can’t stop it, might as well allow it, Jesse got that from Will, a post-Jungian, James Hillman, we’re made of stories, we’re made of images, Carl Jung, Jimmy Dore, the reason Jesse hates Michio Kaku, somebody’s got your shadow, there’s nothing shadowy about them, people who don’t call him on his shit, Evan or Paul get upset at people, there’s nothing upseting there, team based, not liking Jordan Peterson, said to be anti-trans vs. anti-trans pronouns, he’s dumb, he does say interesting things, psychological stuff, biblical stuff, basic, whatever he says the opposite is true, he’s a dad for a lot of men with not deads, not that many smart people in the media, John Vervaeke, the Meaning Crisis, charge money for their courses, religious people who nod in that direction, when Jordan Peterson talks about Marxism, probably just ignorant, Slavoj Žižek / Jordan Peterson debate, Peterson didn’t chicken out, talked around everything, a judo thing, he didn’t know what to say, The Communist Manifesto, intellectual flourishing, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Cirsova, Marx starved his own children, he was fucking poor, Victorian workhouses, he’s seeing it all around him, he was preaching about what was being practiced upon him, What!?, most people let it slide, this guy is my brain, end up like Sam Harris, Sam Harris didn’t care how many dead children are in Hunter Biden’s basement, a unique threat, mass emiseration, truth can be gamed, narrative control, largely true for most people, Letter To A Christian Nation, sparky and spitty, Žižek’s thesis, old hat, superseded by Gilles Deleuze, he became good, the roots of what he later elaborated, lots of stuff is useable, trans and woke ideologies, he can get away with it, current events, Benjamin Studebaker, the last American election, Cambridge Oxford same fucking place, annoying in two ways: smart and young, how’d you get so smart and so young, The Lack podcast, Political Science 101, pirate Jesse the side2s, its good to do, there are good ideas, listen to them a lot, Political Science 101 podcast, Nina Power, the three of them write little essays, French cinema, independent movies, a more intellectual Science Fiction Book Review Podcast (but for movies), the price of the book, thinking about his audience, paperback is probably good for most people, a very good sign, the opposite is Robert J. Sawyer, competing with my new book, he was a science fiction writer, turned his hand to trying to make a living by writing trilogies, on twitter in full length, the fundamental problem of what’s going on in the United States, right about everything, TV adblocker version, Lord Enoch, rando talking heads, that guy is a real intellectual on TV, just teeth and dresses and smiles and vague acquaintance with some of the issues, good public intellectuals online, philosopher repairman: Louis Rossmann, completely untrained in philosophy, repairing laptops, recently got hired by a billionaire, projects that are useful to humans, right to repair, farmers should have access to their tractors code, the least amount of interest in vanity of production, the opposite of that, a very solid philosophy, used to live in New York, Bill de Blasio, Paul was not happy about it, snitch out your customers to the cops, Texas, annoying young people who’s smart and good at thinking, no production value at all, people trying to learn to fix their laptops, people who don’t like bullshits, the price of real estate, dead city neighbourhood walkthough, he’s doing very practical present day philosophy, DRM is not something most people care about (even though they should), book management, take in different plugins, stripping drm protection from ebooks, minimizing time in front of screens, printing things up, the searchability, if you find yourself with 26.5 hours, not possible to tai-chi while audiobooks, doing bjj and listening to audiobooks, very strange.

Hard Case Crime - Scratch One by John Lange

Scratch One by John Lange

Scratch One by John Lange

Posted by Jesse WillisBecome a Patron!

Reading, Short And Deep #403 – Born Of Man And Woman by Richard Matheson

Reading, Short And Deep

Reading, Short And Deep #403

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss Born Of Man And Woman by Richard Matheson

Here’s a link to a PDF of the story.

Born Of Man And Woman was first published in Fantasy & Science Fiction, Summer 1950

Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!

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

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

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

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

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

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

who is Francis Stevens talking to?,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unseen - Unfeared by Francis Stevens

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

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The SFFaudio Podcast #567 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Alchemist by H.P. Lovecraft

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #567 – The Alchemist by H.P. Lovecraft; read by Martin Reyto (for Legamus.eu). This is an unabridged reading of the short story (30 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Paul Weimer, Marissa VU, Maissa Bessada, Terrence Blake and Julie Hoverson.

Talked about on today’s podcast:
The United Amateur, November 1916, 1908, 17 or 18 years old, consistently left out, The Beat In The Cave, a straight up Lovecraft story, the very last part of the very last episode of The H.P. Lovecraft literary Podcast‘s last Lovecraft episode, the opening, the ending, peters and swoons, the surprise that’s no surprise, the happiest (funniest), perfect, those words, a dramatic reveal, so inbred, incredibly dense, “ok, boomer”, black death, okay Tithonus, Eos the goddess of dawn, gods are merciful, Endymion, sleep forever, Cassandra, be careful what you wish for, Charles le Sorcier, why it is a comedy, claws for hands, same old clothes from 600 years, ago, skeletal, he’s a lich, Antoine is incredibly dense, weird phenomenon, who is telling this story and why, age 90, who is he telling this to?, subversive ways of reading it, The Oval Portrait by Edgar Allan Poe, set in Italy, wounded somehow, banditi, the scions of the house he’s in, the chateaus are both frowning, metonymy or synecdoche, the head of an old man, wooded around the base and has a head, a less sexual reading, given the crowning, the women are immediately killed, sacrificed to the devil and died in childbirth, 25 (or 32) generations without girls, Crusader Kings II, the painter paints his wife so well, entranced, wrought, THIS IS INDEED LIFE ITSELF!, aghast, FOOL! CAN YOU NOT GUESS MY SECRET?, it is I I I I, I love that ending, do you not know how the secret of life was solved?, I’ve been studying these texts, he speaks Latin, if you stick only to the text, the new document that has been handed down from father to son, why is that gold there?, to rebuild the estate, he never leaves the house, wait another 32 years, Antoine has these secrets now, he kills him with fire, the relationship between the two men and the two families, all about the other, cursed to fulfill his curse, move on, in the comic adaptation, 10,000 generations, feeling sorry for Charles, they live in the same castle, you idiot!, a black blob still alive, look at how many of these have the same theme, The Case Of Charles Dexter Ward, about a lich who inhabits one of his own descendants, The Thing On The Doorstep, ancestral papers, The Rats In The Walls, its within, the H.P.L.H.S. adaptation, De La Pore, the letter is lost, the family curse, an excellent adaptation by Julie Hoverson of 19 NOCUTURNE BOULEVARD, A(udio)D(rama)Infinitum, Maissa’s podcast: The Destiny Of Special Agent Ace Galaksi, free and amateur audio drama, as a comedy, single person narrative, the phone call is coming from inside the house, what he’s doing in that room, House Of Long Shadows, Lovecraft’s little twist on the Gothic, a serial killer, The Castle Of Otranto, at the end of a traditional gothic, traditional Scooby-Doo, a naturalistic explanation, a narrative within the narrative, a framed story, a framed portrait, wooo spooky, the second to last page, disliking the sight I turned away (from the Gothic door), very wondering about his father and his ancestors, his servant Pierre, upon my 21st birthday, of the most startling nature, the gravest of my apprehension, a certain circumstance which I always deemed strange, a certain sandwich place, my belief in the supernatural was firm and deep seated, OF COURSE!, he’s been studying the occult books in the library, at age 90 his beliefs are no longer firm, he literally faints, not an actual curse, the sorcery in this story, the house of C__., straight out of Shakespeare, the magic spell, that was Charles pushing that rock, it IS a comedy, is he the son of the devil?, presumably she gave birth prior to the burning, this story is getting better and better, so many parallels between the two families, one redeeming ray of humanity, a fierce intensity, a more than filial affection, “you killed my stepdad/lover”, he’s an alchemist not a sorcerer, the appearance of magic, I figured out a way to make gold and I also learned how to make the elixir of life, the curse is that he’s cursed himself, the philosopher’s stone, things move around, a liquid stone, the burning liquid, the progenitor, Pierre means stone, is Pierre a golem?, a reagent, a catalyst, there’s this stuff called DNA that’s magic, he passes through the Gothic door, why does Lovecraft do it?, is he making this interesting point?, it MAY have been gold, I was strangely effected by that which I’d undergone, Dark Of The Hillside Thickets, the boy Antoine, the wild ravines and grottoes, dusty forest, it’s The Outsider, in trying to sell this to Maissa, he had a dragon head, he was not allowed to talk to the kids of the village, maybe the castle has no mirrors, the dragon-headed boy that you are, he doesn’t know what he is, there IS no Charles le Sorcier, suckered in with poetry, the gothicness of it, I preceded back some distance, suddenly feel to my experience, its rusted hinges, a dream from 1909, two human skulls, Carl Jung, that’s a death-wish who do you want to kill, a map of his soul, its in the air, a plumbing the depths of your own castle, clothing the hills, The Haunted Palace by Edgar Allan Poe, all skully, all rotty,

XVI. The Window

The house was old, with tangled wings outthrown,
Of which no one could ever half keep track,
And in a small room somewhat near the back
Was an odd window sealed with ancient stone.
There, in a dream-plagued childhood, quite alone
I used to go, where night reigned vague and black;
Parting the cobwebs with a curious lack
Of fear, and with a wonder each time grown.

One later day I brought the masons there
To find what view my dim forbears had shunned,
But as they pierced the stone, a rush of air
Burst from the alien voids that yawned beyond.
They fled—but I peered through and found unrolled
All the wild worlds of which my dreams had told.

David Lindsay’s Voyage To Arcturus, an inner journey, Music Of Erich Zann, Julie’s Lovecraft Five audio dramas are now out in Germany, full of morphine charm and comfortable goose, archetypes, Arthur Jermyn, backstory, The Dunwich Horror is all backstory, C. Auguste Dupin, The Picture In The House, the way it is told is different, at least that’s what I told the police, The Haunter Of The Dark, From Beyond, The Shunned House, a vampire’s elbow, beautiful dead women vs. architecture, a library of an ancient family, is my line cursed?,

The House

‘Tis a grove-circled dwelling
Set close to a hill,
Where the branches are telling
Strange legends of ill;
Over timbers so old
That they breathe of the dead,
Crawl the vines, green and cold,
By strange nourishment fed;
And no man knows the juices they suck from the depths of their dank slimy bed.

In the gardens are growing
Tall blossoms and fair,
Each pallid bloom throwing
Perfume on the air;
But the afternoon sun
With its shining red rays
Makes the picture loom dun
On the curious gaze,
And above the sweet scent of the the blossoms rise odours of numberless days.

The rank grasses are waving
On terrace and lawn,
Dim memories sav’ring
Of things that have gone;
The stones of the walks
Are encrusted and wet,
And a strange spirit stalks
When the red sun has set,
And the soul of the watcher is fill’d with faint pictures he fain would forget.

It was in the hot Junetime
I stood by that scene,
When the gold rays of noontime
Beat bright on the green.
But I shiver’d with cold,
Groping feebly for light,
As a picture unroll’d—
And my age-spanning sight
Saw the time I had been there before flash like fulgury out of the night.

Lovecraft sees a house, The Lurking Fear, the grass is strangely over-nourished, drawing the conversation, what does this evoke in us?, appreciating what’s going on, you’re seeing things better, a different myth cycle, connections between The White Ape and The Picture In The House, what this evolution stuff, the narcissistic wound, we thought we were god’s chosen turns out , a white man in somebody’s basement getting your revenge every 32 years, it seems a rudimentary story, no cosmic or metaphysical element, there’s something about the end, You fool! Warren is dead!, recognize the will, Arthur Schopenhauer, the only way out is to deny the will, he’s a bad alchemist, the eternal return of killing, he’s made a metaphysical mistake, not everyone really lives, The Cask Of Amontillado, you who know me so well, his confessor, Fortunado, I got away with it, why are we being told this story, is he living in an old folks’ home, The Name Of The Rose by Umberto Eco, renewing an old horror?, The Beast In The Cave, The Lurking Fear, became a C.H.U.D., whatchoo gonna do about it son?, so many thing unsaid, Marissa couldn’t stop thinking about it, he has a dragonface, from its machicolated parapet, stones or boiling oil, mounted battlements, worm eaten wainscots, that’s what he does with his time, he explores the ruins, called to the land beyond, the only human creature, cobwebs in profusion, untenanted gloom, dream holiday, bat and alchemist guano, he’s down there sciencing, the kid was fine, Lovecraft’s interest in witches, a political or social charge, sorcery in Saudi Arabia, Russia’s interfering in our elections (with magical ads on Facebook), Russian stooges, the old fashioned way, back to the children being killed, Gilles de Rais, The Unnameable, Mr Jim Moon, Cotton Mather, at the southward there was a Beast, this fellow was hereupon examined, infamous, they tortured him, the eye thing, he’s reading all these old books, he is that guy in the tower, his house is collapsing, he achieved his immortality, Malleus Maleficarum, vanishing testicles, he spent his whole childhood in a castle reading books.

The Alchemist by H.P. Lovecraft - comic book cover art by Octavio Cariello

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #457 – READALONG: The Eagle Has Landed by Jack Higgins

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #457 -Jesse and Paul Weimer talk about The Eagle Has Landed by Jack Higgins

Talked about on today’s show:
1975, not his real name, tabula rasa, genre movies, WWII movies, the 1970s, Where Eagles Dare (1968), Admiral Canaris, the framing device, stumbling over a mystery, “a false document”, the research frame, a secret history, Michael Crichton, John Carter (2012), putting yourself in the frame, Eaters Of The Dead, extensive footnotes, on the copyright page, one of the citations is from the Necronomicon, Ash by Mary Gentle, the onion layers, changes, a compressed time-frame?, Liam Devlin, Molly Prior, an editing-budget problem, Michael Caine, Richard Burton, Richard Harris, an IRA meeting, Donald Sutherland, tics on screen, we only had two days, the preamble, Dakota, interesting parallels, everyone on Earth knows this phrase in 1976, similarly audacious, a suppressed truth, a false truth, flat-earthers, if monkeys could talk, how many colonels do we have in this book?, Steiner, the American colonel, three kinds of veteran, Larry Hagman, a thankless task, Kelly’s Heroes (1970), incompetent vs. hyper-competent, non-Nazi, two polarities, uber-experienced, Robert Duvall, Max Radl, professional competence, dying, the priest, Joanna Grey, the brother-sister duality Philip and Pamela, Himmler-Churchill, the trickiness of Churchill, “Action This Day”, Colonel Pitts is the worst, Devlin is devilish, the last adventurer, the BBC audio drama, kidnap Hitler, The Eagle Has Flown, Michael Caine gets first billing, why Steiner is so charismatic, Steiner gets his shot at the fake Churchill in the movie, he dies with (as far as he knows) having completed his mission, media hype, giant Swastika on every cover, iconic hateable, Cross Of Iron (1977), panzer guys on retreat, Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, Christoph Waltz’s SS Colonel Hans Landa, good Germans, no graphics, Squad Leader, Lucasfilm games’ Their Finest Hour: The Battle Of Britain, when people don’t know what the fuck they are talking about (when you shouldn’t read their book), the Pentagon, building up a beautiful picture, Otto Skorzeny, parallels are so interesting, German and American parents, releasing the hostages, why are you German?, why are you the bad guy?, Computer Ambush, Harry Turtledove, Skorzeny gets to be awesome, seeing the parallels, Prussian style military officer, if we’re going to have WWII movies, other parallels, a love child, Charles Dickens, being Irish and English, dealing with backstory, Steiner’s father story, a major general, back details, Joanna Grey’s backstory, did you think the Nazis invented concentrations camps?, Robert Duvall steals the film, get your family out, Jung and synchronicity, providence, the hand of the author, what if?, The Man In The High Castle, almost everything is lifted, Warn That Man (1943), Went The Day Well? (1942), play by mail, a distant world, the candy bar as the reveal, an obscure movie with a great plot, Jack Higgins was a kid during WWI, his breakthrough novel, a huge hit, the sweet spot for WWII paperbacks, The Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich, Inside The Third Reich by Albert Speer, how are children dealt with in this book, upping her age, the two children, fate and synchronicity, accident, revealing his true nature in the doing, none of this is history, chronologically broken, Steiner saves the Jewess, a material difference, a useless gesture, “Kill Churchill? When we’ve already lost the war?!”, synchronicity has lined it up, an opportunity to do something special, his smoking-his drinking-his hand-he’s dying, some purpose, battle-tested, an ignoble death, 1943, North Africa, Italy, commandos, the Dieppe Raid, a pent-up inferiority complex, none of them has ever been in battle, Dwight D. Eisenhower, the wrong mission, back and forth, undercuts or enhances, it would not have worked…even if…, what was the purpose of WWII, nobody got what they wanted, a grotesque, a miniature version of the war itself, Wehrmacht draftees, countries get away from people, the government is doing things in your name that you don’t approve, “register to vote”, his other books, this is THE Jack Higgins novel, meta-commentary, in the hands of fate, when I got put into this book, I have to do my job, a continual suicide mission, the Channel Islands, caring and doing research, why the records don’t appear, “a true story”, The Andromeda Strain, building up the idea, copyright page and footnotes, a hoaxer-conspiracy guy, citations, archive.org and newspapers.com, just fucking with us, Erich von Däniken, sea-floor deposition, Ogopogo, Sasquatch, cryptoids, Seanan McGuire, an immortal single sea-serpent, could you write this book today?, for people who know, that was weird, Steen Hansen, Today I Learned, o-rings on the Space Shuttle, a short period before, how can you have anybody who has any cultural memory, there’s no one in the Pentagon…, the dinosaur bones of the period after, the cultural legacy, none of these movies are on Netflix, almost no movies that aren’t from the 2000s, they don’t even have a DVD, vicissitudes of streaming availabilities, Westworld, how do you culturally institute this, movies on TV is cheap content, VHS, wanting to see movies from before you were born is a strange, it extends to books as well (in the science fiction book reading community), out of the bounds of this movie, out of date by a decade or more, goodness, The City And The Stars, Ringworld, Dune, it is better to mine the past than to sieve the present, that they bothered to even finish an old book is a good sign, exploring the boundries of what makes something interesting as a good book, its really mysterious, false documentation (or documentation in general), A Plague Of Giants, the framing story, where and when and why, the second person narrative, SS-GB, Fatherland by Robert Harris, did this really happen?, he knows all that, the British Freicorp, they chose unwisely, can’t be de-Nazified, Harvey Preston, sexual assault, who is the traitor?, what does a traitor look like?, the uniforms, a disguise, when Otto Skorzeny was put on trial, “we did the same thing”, during the Battle Of The Bulge, they’re cheating in an honorable way, asking us what makes something noble or legit in war?, this town is pretty horrible, condoning Molly’s mistreatment, “none of your business”, “God bless all here”, the local bully, no policemen in this town (in the book), “male privilege”, sexual assaults are implied, that’s somebody’s family member, a feud, exile was the traditional way, a “pierced eardrum”, a very big book, in sympathy with pretty much everybody, only Himmler comes off really bad (played by Donald Pleasance), Escape From New York is kind of this book!, such a good point, Snake Plisken is Steiner, he’s a traitor, the audio drama of Escape From New York by Bill Hollweg, robbing the Federal Reserve in a dystopia makes him a hero, Nazi Germany is a dystopia, very Snake Plisken, badge patches, reputation: “I heard you were dead.”, taking real life situations and circumstances, incredibly interesting parallels that mirror, a masterful novel, exactly the right recipe, connections to all sorts of stuff far beyond WWII.

POCKET BOOKS - The Eagle Has Landed by Jack Higgins

The Eagle Has Landed

LISTEN FOR PLEASURE - The Eagle Has Landed by Jack Higgins

Posted by Jesse Willis