Tag: Clark Ashton Smith

The SFFaudio Podcast #867 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Thing On The Roof by Robert E. Howard and The Nameless City by H.P. Lovecraft

The SFFaudio Podcast #867 – The Thing On The Roof by Robert E. Howard (26 minutes) read by Connor Kaye (for Eldritch Archives) AND The Nameless City by H.P. Lovecraft (28 minutes) read by Scott Carpenter for LibriVox, followed by a discussion of both (beginning at 54 minutes). Participants in the discussion include Jesse and Alex (Pulpcovers)

Talked about on today’s show:
2 stories, both about 28 minutes to read aloud, something related to the meta-text, Unspeakable Cults, The Noseless Horror, set in England, why is it set in England, big old creepy houses, British guys, one of the stories today, set in England for no apparent reason, something about this plot, the only time H.P. Lovecraft tried to do Howard: The Quest Of Iranon, Lovecraft heavily influenced by Robert E. Howard, Lovecraft wasn’t interested, he wasn’t commercial, Howard wanted to be a full time writer, have that as your job, died at 30, Cowboy Stories, Action Stories, it’d be good to have some beans, that successful commercial voice, Lovecraft wouldn’t have accepted the editorship of Weird Tales, this is the same plot essentially, a different storytelling technique, The Hound, two lovecraftian characters, an evil art dungeon, Manly Wade Wellman?, [Hounds of Tindalos by Frank Belknap Long], black curtains, very exaggeratory, similar in tone to The Mask Of The Red Death, the plot, an amulet in a graveyard in the Netherlands, the monster in the grave comes and kills him, published twice in Weird Tales, The Fire Of Ashurbanipal, how Howard does buddy buddy, he’s Afghan in Arabia, Howard doing Howard, him doing Lovecraft, point to, teaching students how to write, Character Language Allusion Imagery and Message, nameless like the city, almost no backstory, with the Howard, British jerk, rude to his frenemies, rude to his servants, booklover archaeologist, more academic, a Fall Of The House Of Usher situation, we understand them both, the Lovecraftian scholar, he insulted me years ago, offering an apology, I’ve cleared my name on my own, runs off to South America, three month quest, the Doctor Strange movie, the warnings come after the spell, one is more homebodyish, I want treasure, Belloq and Indiana Jones, rivals, H.G. Wells and Jack London, muscular and fast, the Golden Goblin edition, riddled with typos and odd woodcuts, a parody of Lovecraft at that point, very different from other eldritch tomes, grimoires, less than 100 years old, some dude just wrote this, I studied all the weird forgotten cults then I was brutally murdered, found murdered, assembled, slit his own throat with a razor, The Black Stone is a real story, good painted cover, a purple velvet background, Robert E. Howard’s stories inspired by Lovecraft, these are really fun and interesting, basically the same length, the Lovecraft is much slower, a lot more dreamlike, artificial distinction, his dreamland stories and his cthulhu mythos stories, a guy who goes into the desert, crawls into a cave, horrible spelunking videos, head down in a spot, really horrible, in the darkness and suddenly there’s light, how detailed those murals are, conveyed all that information, he’s got timestamps, how does he convey that?, this incredible detail, a little credulous, depictions of funeral rights, a terrible accident or a war, these guys are immortal, That which is not dead, a lot of poetry in both of these, the text for The Nameless City, loose cable, the poet Justin Geoffrey, smashing babies against the Black Stone, Iram, the city of the Pillars, Sheba by Jack Higgins, a sucker for lost desert cities, lost cities are real, one in Turkey, ones in South America, ones in North America, the deep time of the Earth, an aryan mummy, of a higher race than the native indians, racial stuff, Atlanteans, they’re crocodile/alligator people, a previous species on the Earth, something very important, talking about Atlantis a lot, everything is old, no matter when you pick, all you have to do to push that number back is go out and look, not Mormons in space, the deep history of humans on the earth, there wasn’t always just stone age people, men think about the Roman Empire everyday, some of them are thinking about deep history, some scholar writing a book somewhere, Egypt is very obviously an older civilization, Honduras, Guatemala, got the wrong book, Heinrich Schliemann, cable broken again, not quite as good, finding these things, finding some ancient city in Honduras, didn’t find the inner chamber, how The Hound works, a batwinged creature, maybe that has happened many times, the hoofed thing comes and retrieves it many times, keep closing the door, the comic book adaptation, reading it this time, did you hear something?, a hoof on the roof, it’s Santa Claus!, an ox or a horse in the bushes, the final line of the story, an enormous, hoof, slimy, high pitched, a tentacle, jelly like bulk, Robert E. Howard didn’t quite make it clear, the Marvel comic book adaptation, a little frog hopping ahead of him, a separate from from the one he’s using as the key, crystal frog, a toad which hopped ahead of him, they show it, big splash page, jumping out the window to return to Honduras, interpret, a bad translation, they weren’t worshiping a frog, some god that lives forever, the mummy was its priest, the key was carved to look like a toad, a crystal toad, locked in the inner chamber is this other thing, call it toadish, an alien up there, a moon calf, carving it up like veal, try translating kimchi into english, sauerkraut, you’re gonna get something, getting it second hand, hears some horrible stuff, sees the wreckage, foul unspeakable slime, crushed and flattened, they lumber in the night, colossal wings, the meter and the rhyme, very sing-songy, alluding to something, written for this story, Justin Geoffrey is Robert E. Howard, layers and layers of literary stuff, the distancing technique, there is no medium between us and the narrator, we start right there, I’m right there, protruding uncannily, an ill made grave, as I cower in my bed, hiding under the sheets, elbows and noses, a shallow grave, this Howard thing, different segments of his poetry, The Children Of The Night, tread not where stony deserts hold, very Nameless City, why was he doing that?, is he like Tussman searching for this place?, it feels very dreamlike, there’s no evidence for it being a dream, in a style that’s dreamy, The Doom That Came To Sarnath, the city of Ib, the Nile, a confluence there, the striking change, in the darkness, suddenly he thinks he sees a light, the worlds that he sees described, they are always in light to, always light underground, promised this underground place, The Mound by Zealia Bishop (and H.P. Lovecraft), a collaboration, a mesa in Oklahoma, a headless ghost, dystopian nightmare of centaurs, a Spanish explorer, a nested scroll of what his experience was, slavery biotech, under the earth civilization, bio-tech, attached to opium drips, Xthula Of The Dusk aka The Slithering Shadow, something Howard is all about, even crocodile civilizations, down with these reptile people, some societal and environmental problems, why it is hidden from us, poetry injections, amazingly steep, Thomas More, a reservoir of darkness, moon drugs, the jetty sides as smooth as glass, the seas of death, how’s that supposed to comfort you?, what the mad poet said, couplet, comedic attraction, let’s do this, everyone warned me it was a terrible idea, my skin is coming off, sucked down into, the last 3 paragraphs, the grim brooding desert gods, what abaddon guided me back to life, monstrous colossal, when one cannot sleep, cacodaemoniacal, articulate form, the grave, strangely tongued fiends, the luminous aether of the abyss, a nightmare horde, the crawling reptiles of the Nameless City, the ghoul peopled blackness, great brazen door, how are we getting this story, hinting that he got out?, Lord Dunsany, a club story, pioneered that with a character named Jorkens, Fletcher Pratt, Gavagan’s Bar, Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon, invited Jorkens over for lunch, chased by a lion, went into a cave, how did you escape?, freak out and wreck the place, a silly joke story, the end of The Outsider, the tomb, the castle, over the landscape, the moat now a garden, why is everybody freaking out, the doorway is a mirror, I’m the monster!, now I ride the nightwinds with the ghouls, huh?, where’s the end of the story, the great brazen door, brass that’s been heated and colour distorted, Ex Oblivione, hates his life and wants to live in his dreams, in his dreams he finds a gate in a wall, how to find the key, taking more opium, get the door open, all of light, he finds himself dissolved, going to the realm of the Forms, until the time I’m placed in another vessel, the pre-heaven, reincarnation involves pain and annoyance, a low door, became dead, are we there with him?, a first person recounting of an event, he wrote it on a roll of toilet paper, Ms. Found In A Copper Cylinder, a ghoul peopled blackness, hail the rising sun, satisfied buy why?, balancing these two stories, love vs. like, prefer Thing, Howard more than Lovecraft, a sucker for the Nameless Cults, better with language, evokes so much, workaday, rushed through it, trying to sell it, the guy telling the story is fairly sane, the guy is gone, crazier more elevated language, it’s almost like The Nameless City isn’t a story, an episode of The Twilight Zone, The Fall Of The House Of Usher, a narrative from a perspective, this is all an analogy for our world, more of a Howard thing than a Lovecraft thing, The Slithering Shadow, the lady plugged into the opium, she’s watching youtube, she’s watching twitch, checked out, stagnating and dead, present asleep, it’s not like The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster, almost more of a straight horror story, one of the endings of Re-Animator, they don’t like it, a dream fully detailed out, and then I was trapped there forever, we wake up out of the story, Robert E. Howard is way more explicable and copyable, much more like a spell we go under, very dream like, what can we learn from them, learn about these places, always underground, the conquistadors missed this, natives to torture to death, the more Heinrich Schliemann approach, the Temple of Doom, keep reading the book, bro, he wants treasure, he’s genuinely interested, our guy in The Nameless City, a compulsion, he has a camel, he has some tools, he came here, lived only in myth, the explanation is zero, a potion to save his life as a disease, a character with a personality, the swooning in Robert E. Howard stories, forget about character completely, C.L.A.I.M., real poets and fake poets, the language is just amazing, like a magic spell, each sentence builds the spell, visualize what’s going on, what is the message, read the whole book, don’t go messing in old tombs, a good thing has all of this, just dealing in tropes, the pictures, when you read a poem by Howard, sense data, just look at the titles, stories full of imagery, the colour of Belit’s skin, what the dragon looks like in Red Nails, he’s largely imagery, apparently it’s great, Jabberwocky, about nothing, means nothing, vorpal sword, the sound is really important, sentence patterns, the sounds of things, names, Tussmann, a funny name for an Englishman, Herr Tussmann, makes sense, he’s bad because he’s a German, evil because he’s French, the plot, that was fun, how he cast this magic spell, mesmerized by whatever it is, almost more like poetry itself, a Clark Ashton Smithy spell, story count, bang out stories in a week or two, each of these guys, all really into poetry, they don’t get money for that, got no money, just good will, why you doin it?, they loved poetry, people talking about writing on twitter, using ai to crank out, not for the love of the game, build my brand, that fundamental love of poetry, they don’t read enough, not absorbing this text for the love of the text, I played World Of Warcraft, muscle mommy, Orc City thing, that’s something, doing this wrong, his stories to his poetry, Clark Ashton Smith second tier down, better at poetry maybe, both of these are very good, they work together really well, reading them back to back, done differently, you can see Robert E. Howard put in some work, probably took a week, a lifetime of dream-journaling, one is a story and the other is something else, Howard trying to do something a little Lovecrafty, written a decade, Lovecraft doing Lovecraft, something off about this, this is him making fun of Gothics, the pirate one, The Black Stranger, Black Vulmea’s Vengeance, the people copying Howard, I got an axe to grind, Howard doing an Agatha Christie, Howard is a great writer, so commercial, front of the mind, what are they buying, do we want adventure stories?, boxing stories, whatevers selling this month, I’ll tell you whatever story you want vs. I can’t be any other way than I am, Strange Tales, Argosy, Farnsworth Wright, The Sowers Of The Thunder, get paid $40 for it, one of his best?, is that true, top half?, not top 10, he wrote a lot, and he’s really good at it, Tevis Clyde Smith, a shorter and better story, stocked up, real literature, that sounds like a guy who’s proud of himself, July August 1931, 5 years of writing, he got better as he went along, Tamarlane as a fit subject for Oriental Stories, the best story by far that I ever wrote, judge by any standard, seemed to erudite for the general reader, correctly estimating his audience, the Seabury Quinn lovers, my audience won’t like it, too thin, also etc., no attempt at plot, usual stereotype, he could have had the story for nothing, just to see it in print, mid to late August, to Lovecraft, a berth there, yarns, thin plot and light action, formerly rejected it, in the final letter, March 1932, the roof business and the sowers stuff, quite a few praises, get it into The Souk, The Eyrie, better than everything previous?, late Robert E. Howard, Solomon Kane is before this, Kull precedes Conan, the last recurring character, El Borak, James Allison, Kull is 29, Steve Costigan, 29 and 30, everything is 29 and 30 for him, ludicrous how much he wrote, he wrote so much good stuff, The Statement Of Randolph Carter, The Tomb, when you see Tussmann do you say that’s me!, as a character, so obsessed with this, two lines and then runs off, who does that?, an insane life, skull caved in by a hoof, decaying estate, there’s no explanation, he wants the treasure, doesn’t care about his own reputation or name, the backstory is really interesting, having to had to defend himself, so random attack, the Nameless Cults thing, the fake book as a concept, the weird pirate editions of the books, making fun of Lovecraft, buy the Del Rey not the Lancers, so expurgated, allusion is a major factor, an Aesop’s Fable, no reference to Dambusters, no reference to Akira Kurosawa, the couplet that explains what the moral of it is, one and done and we’re done, the more layer of enfolding, a reminder about a story by Poe, The Oval Portrait, almost is all frame, a guy in Italy, just wounded, breaks them into a castle, food on the table still steaming, the wick is still smoking, they find the castle abandoned, turret bedroom, bandits in the original, surrounded in this round room with paintings, armorial trophies, beside him on the pillow is a book that tells you all about the paintings, a build up for the internal story, a painter who painted a woman to death, drawing the spirit out of her body and putting it in her into the canvas, sets up and ends, why lately abandoned, a rich deep interesting story about art, he talks about being wounded, Tussmann’s eyes blazed, shot in the foot, how did that happen?, sealed up chamber, the opposite of our unnamed narrator, purely by chance, a similar sort of setup, it just so happen, it’s a meta-story, the framing making the layering more interesting, no framing at all, comes to us somehow, storytelling, start as far as possible into the story, cut out all the build up, start with action, Basil Exposition come out to explain some plot point, Constantine (2005) with Keanu Reeves, you have to roll with it, not like Blade III, a tv show out of it, at no point does it slow down for the audience, buckle in, why it doesn’t resonate with a lot of people, Robert E. Howard is very good at knowing what the audience wants, force of nature vs. innate skill and temperament for it, doing it for money, Re-Animator and Lurking Fear, let’s get Hour Of The Dragon scheduled, going to the beach again, the Outer Banks of North Carolina, not on for Hombre by Elmore Leonard, The Assassination Bureau, Ltd. by Jack London, Lord Of Light by Roger Zelazny, nominated for a Nebula, really short stories, The Horses Of Lir, a little later, a movie.

The Thing On The Roof by Robert E. Howard - art by M.S. Corley

The Thing On The Roof by Robert E. Howard

The Nameless City by H.P. Lovecraft

The Nameless City by H.P. Lovecraft

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #860 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Return Engagement by Margaret St. Clair AND The Black Abbot Of Puthuum by Clark Ashton Smith

The SFFaudio Podcast #860 – Return Engagement by Margaret St. Clair (28 minutes) read by Ben Tucker for LibriVox AND The Black Abbot of Puthuum by Clark Ashton Smith (54 minutes) read by Tommy Patrick Ryan, followed by a discussion of both. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Will Emmons, and Tommy Patrick Ryan

Talked about on today’s show:
1950S, 1930S, fantasy and science fiction, a nice match, correspondence between Margaret St. Clair and Clark Ashton Smith, different, somebody saves somebody else, the way they are told, why did she tell the story that, resentful, the unnamed I, straightforwardly, the story is better that way, twice as long but less happens, what other connections do they have, sex and food and drink, food and drink and a lot less sex, a science fiction story about class resentment, a low status person upset, less intelligent than him?, less canny, less knowledgeable, naive, an ugly American, a sailor who has traveled all over the planet, how you act in Saudi Arabia, strictly by the word “information”, successful, a famous cook, makes recipes from the solar system, a really good sense of taste?, so full of resentment, on an airplane with a celebrity, docked two months pay, by being generous?, not mean?, a psychic, a comeuppance, has to go back every year and do the dance, porcupine people, hedgehog people, silly stories, with the lens of 100 years later, a little cringey, being a negro, overt racism, movement, timeframe, white people afraid of the black man coming and taking their women, mandingo, purple lips, red teeth, three inch claws, horns, a monster who happens to be black, an incubus, unnecessarily black, a multivalent word, an evil abbot, not even the actual abbot, we don’t need to collapse that valency, one is evil, one is defeated by evil, how this was constructed, a Robert E. Howard story, a Solomon Kane story, an evil innkeeper, lock this door, a house where they kill travelers, a Margaret St. Clair story that deals with the same thing, the Benders, kill travelers, a historical kind of thing, on the Oregon Trail, murdered their stuff is taken, are the incestuous, probably German, the daughter or the wife?, what you get in The Odyssey, cyclops closes the door and starts eating you, Circe, guest host relationship and violations of it, black wall in the desert, not a natural sudden reason, forced into it, she takes the agency and chooses the pikeman, funny hook or twist at the end, cut up his fingers, cheat each other, this beefy guy, the heroic work, he did all the stuff, Spanish for spoon [Cuchara], a big bluff dumb strong guy, wiry, D&D characters, a very D&D story, a oneshot, make the abbot a Drow, the dead one?, a black underground elf, African, they’re evil too, Drizzt Do’Urden, drow ranger with a panther, Gencon, a statue of him, super well known, deep enough into the fandom of D&D, R.A. Salvatore, accidently omitted Clark Asthon Smith, mini-quest, dungeon crawl, at the end of the story you have been entertained, that’s it, Peter Schmitt [@raskolnik2] tweets, precursors to Fafhard And The Grey Mouser, one of them gets eaten by a pudding, further adventures, disposable, go along and hangout with these guys, weird sense of honour about it, the dudes eat humans, serving them meat, strange meat, tuck in, they skipped the meal, they wanted to skip everything, the beer, chary, tasting the liquor, a potent kind of ale, baked meats that neither could identify, the effects of the ale, premature sleepiness, the eunuch, simba, enraged tembo, set in Zothique, dying earth far future continent, the black men come from the north, an inverted world, lamias are called out, he loves sex monsters, almost every Clark Ashton Smith story, fun while reading, insubstantial in terms of heft, ornate and pretty, a sidequest, shoot it, the animals are getting upset, donkeys and horses, is he bent?, the strange meats, constitution save, investigate, four pages of exposition, from the title of the story, slay a monster, boss battle, minions, the no shadow thing is cool, a ripoff of another story in Weird Tales previously, the same plot as The Tower Of The Elephant, a previous guest host relationship that went bad, stapled to a chair, a team-up, Conan and another master thief, shoot me again, a sympathy kill, kill this guy to help him, murder hobos, kill him!, he’s an evil wizard, sometimes the evil wizard is the good guy, misery unending, by the numbers, ornates it up, why did this story come into existence?, wanted to make a sale, enjoyed writing it, artistic merit, with the language and the immersion, a lesser artistic achievement, a prose poem, he loves poetry, poetic language, an ironwood bow, so cool, dark, incredibly dense, wood that will sink, why would you have that, material is superimporant to Clark Ashton Smith stories, enough description of the armour, chainmail and leather, enchanted arrows, bronze, acclaimed by bowmen, and all his brood, magic arrows mattered, special potions or elixirs, fell asleep, try to stay awake this time, the girl and him were talking, divide the girl, we worked way to hard for this and she’s way too hot, he shook the helmet vigorously, the forefingered talon, he’s cheating his buddy, dearly coveted index talon, what are you doing?, is she dumb?, is she not present, more of a chiding, they’re not bros as much as Fafhard And The Grey Mouser, the button on the story, endings are superimportant, inter-related, a lot of people on twitter talking about what science fiction is vs. what fantasy is, bad takes, fantasy and science fiction are the same thing, space and tech vs. swords and magic, an adventure stories, let’s test this theory with semi-random stories, like both authors, fantasy and weird fiction, main mode is science fiction, technology in every instance, a grandma who is on a return trip from Venus, a special spot nobody talks about, through the thief, bribed and studied his way into finding a forbidden city on Venus, a very Clark Ashton Smithy sort of story, on her way back the thief has a comeuppance, the sungod of venus, magics a guy out of existence, we don’t have perfect access to all of reality, worshiping strange phenomena not fiction, not wholly embodied in physical form, in the illustration, if you scroll down far enough, our cookbook writer being zapped for the first time, hedgehog guys, zappers on their heads, crests, even more technological than it is, tomato babies, discover in the story, the new novel thing, a really horrible tweet, too stupid, political compass with star wars and star trek 2 others some other fantasy on the other axis, a really bad way of thinking, the reason Star Trek episodes are good, later Vulcans go into Pon Far, space salmon, that’s the idea of that episode, his spawning ground, a cool idea, subsequent episodes that have that, facts about Star Trek lore are not inherently interesting, the idea that they’re going to explore, warp engines and transporters, when some idea inherent in them, split into 2 Rikers, what if your life took a diversion how would you feel, the transporter technology, philosophical ideas in a fantasy story, adventurey, Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories, how to be in the world, you exist in a place where there is a heartland and hinterland, how ought one act, from one cave to another island, how ought one act, lost the thread, rare for fantasy to engage to ideas of technology, Star Wars, second mode, replicator stuff, social science fiction, what if you live in a society that thinks everyone should have a good death?, submit himself to euthanasia, time for him to be euthanized, good thing or bad thing, philosophical dilemma, to get to that idea, Eric [Rabkin], along the lines of, what could or might have been, what could be and what could be the implications, what does it mean, a teleportation device, and human behavior, what does that implicate, exploring the human condition, does the fantasy story today explore the human condition?, explore sexuality, the most interesting thing in it is there is a harem that needs to be added to it, most interesting idea, here’s William Emmons’ little fantasy, a literature of pure craft, similar to literary fiction, what the narrative is doing, a very different mode from science fiction, joined at the hip, it’s metaphor, realistic fiction there’s no metaphor, Walter Kirn and Matt Tiabi, A Good Man Is Hard to find, a road trip, grandma in the back seat with some kids, an agenda, if I was a painter I’d pay that, racist, a reflection rather than a metaphor, a space sailor who goes on a space cruise, exhausted the entirety of realistic fiction, Ulysses by James Joyce, a roman-a-clef, every scene is paralleled, an interesting mode, Milan Kundera, realistic fiction is something, when Conan fights a god from space, that’s not the same as wanting to divorce my wife, non-genre fiction, literary fiction, in the book trade, market novels, an established genre, considered serious art, high falutin people, we don’t agree on what makes it good, a better wordsmith than Margaret St. Clair, sentence by sentence, better at ideas by a lot, obsessed with drugs, flowers and their relationship to sexuality, aliens that are not humans, they have some human like qualities, not considered intelligent, circles back on that, the official line vs. the experienced sailor, he’s the canny one, a third character, why are you so resentful, didn’t teach you this stuff in school, how much you don’t learn, bottom up education, top down on earth, kind of cool, very often the case, an aunt stuck on earth, a nephew brings her various plants, a response to the idea, eat whatever your parents give you, stole it from a chicken, the loss of the chicken baby, veganism, a science fiction idea, veganism, vegetarianism, health, things in animal foods, chicken beef or eggs, a lot healthier, kindness to animals, that’s huge, environmental, cow farming, milk or beef, methane, internal environment, external environment, third concern, it is cruel to be cruel, the act of killing, distressing to the animal, when these creatures are not considered human, eat their souls, the contract is not with them, it is with their governing body, the stewards of these creature, in loco parentis, the chicken dance, the flower dance, the point of the story, the heart of the story, what makes someone or something human or not, the constitution, not a part they’re focused on today, so messed up, women were not considered people, all personal, lust, contracted out, themselves lusty, personal stuff, not very high in the brain, literary fiction, double twinning, the semi-dead abbot, evil incubus replacement abbot, her own sexual desire, Clark Ashton Smith lust stories, lust goes in many directions, an exploration of an idea, an exercise in colour and scent, they don’t know what to do, ways of analyising stories, C.L.A.I.M. character, language, allusion, imagery, message, that is there life, allusion is the hardest one, on the planet, all of Shakespeare, the poems, how outdated Jesse is, that’s so old, how many things about, what words does he repeat, he’s great at it, almost always pointed toward message, she’s focused on some idea she’s exploring, look at this idea, what do you think of my exploration of it?, that’s not the best mode probably to do it, a fur coat turns into a pine tree, fantastical escape to a mirror world, C.S. Lewis, Tolkien escaping into a fantasy world, aspects of that, The Lord Of The Rings is not for the children, had an idea, a story for that language, create a mythology, specific to England, Arthurian legend, it’s England, there’s no Scottish hobbits, in the creation, fictional language, got so lost in it, a reason for all this language, a fun story for kids, The Silmarillion, in which to escape, Forgotten Realms books, Dragonlance, places to escape into, massive diminishing returns, Ringworld 1, Ringworld 2, 3, 4, use the one to escape into the other, very solid, you don’t need to have a series, the resentful sailor, so cozy, not really idea fiction, twig your brain, watching Star Wars vs. watching Star Trek, brain stimulated, older Star Trek, more recent Star Wars movies, does Star Wars scratch the same itch as the movies go on, the sequel movies, do kids like them?, the prequels, special effects, less for kids, the back stories, the sequels, Luke’s a bitch, Han dies, but Chewbacca gets a medal, go on to be heroes, the extended universe, an entire alien invasion, went and hid, like Obi Wan or Yoda, hermitting, Andor, the story of Stalin, historical fiction, empire people, everybody’s villainous, using Star Wars to tell a stories, light sticks, a sword guy, tricked with spaceships, that’s not right, we profit by trying to understand what makes something good, better and better at discrimination in a positive way, look for the signs, standard Lovecraft, standard Robert E. Howard, very flowy, you wrestle with Howard, you have to, the Kull stuff, not fully justified, his boxing stuff, his western stories, Ghost Stories, a ghost boxing story, he’s a really funny guy, ghost boxing, you get killed in the ring and you come back fighting, The Spirit Of Tom Molyneaux, better male role models, suicide, canny dude, sword into anything, there’s something there, what Lovecraft does that Smith doesn’t do, The Moon Bog, a pocket version of The Rats In The Walls, a story for St. Patrick’s Day, he’s dwelling on what it means to have a legacy you’re not fully aware of, race as a synonym for your family tree, mom and dad die in mental asylum, what does it say about me that my ancestry is a cannibalistic monstrosity, deep time and it’s connection to us, very unusual, Sadastor, Weird Tales, 1930, almost a prose poem, a fair lamia, above the sources of the Nile, the lamia was vexed, fearful of her lips, cautious of her embrace, mythical tears, the demon tells a story to her to make her feel better, a tale of sexual conquest through astral projection, he really digs lamias, succubus and incubuses, he has sex with her, make you feel better, a lot funnier, so silly, so fantastical, no humans involved, the luxury of luxurious things?, everybody knows she’s a lamia, hasn’t had sex in two weeks, Farnsworth Wright can’t do anything with it, Lovecraft Smith commentary, as hefty, horny and materialistic, haunted, one’s a drinker and the other isn’t, let him drink, he lived longer than everybody else, some good stuff out of him, the great appeal of his sculpture, back when he was alive, his drawings, his poetry and his prose poetry, hard to get people to do shows on poetry, epic poem, something of the Necromancer, George Sterling, an influence, why George Sterling liked him, A Wine Of Wizardry, liked to tipple, did him in, turn to my lady Margaret St. Clair, she puts soma in it on purpose, Lazarus, artificial meat, shown to me, this podcast, a topic show on something, what?!, food?!, in fairy tales people never say I love you tyhey just give you food, Ambrosia? [The Food Of The Gods], carnivores, all the meat is fake now, really good, speaking before a senate committee, the very idea people would consume the flesh of animal, really popular fake meat, cannibal, a replicant of human flesh, goes deep into us, the body of Christ, becoming divine, spiritual, H.G. Wells’ The Food Of The Gods, a giant chicken, The Space Merchants, aka Gravy Planet, grown in this vat, food is a technology, cooking is a technology, should we adopt them or not, ads for listerine and toothpaste and tampax, as a man, up in arms about it, yelling at people, a diva cup person?, silicone cup, a consumable good, use it over and over again, absolutely would not allow, the ingredients list, in Germany, no crap in here, processed foods, halal, their not allowed to put certain things into their foods, religious stricture, raw meat, raw apple, pay a little more, guaranteed in whatever way that means, sugar is added to almost everything, German purity laws for beer, water, hops, barley, sugar, that’s it, cheap, selling drugs, baking soda in your cocaine, filling it up with crack, fentanyl in their heroin, jet juice, sharing with his passenger, his zero-g hooch, his lips had drawn down in a sour grimace, a dose of picrin, so much worldbuilding, unpleasant memories, what had gotten into us, how the old man had felt, Tisiphone, a celebrity, fine emporium clothes, a wonderful batch of juice, biliol berries, martian fungi and grains, mangosteens, durian, cocla extract, away from the anti-gravs, cloudy peach green, under his bunk, diplitating kit, extraordinary, a man of taste, a connoisseur, a cookbook, you can’t eat the Jupiterian food, a moon, semi-electrical, tomato babies, what do you do when you’re at the market, an asian fruit, spiky on the outside, a really bad smell, a delicious taste, creamy and custardy flavour, very scoopable, asian watermelon, not everybody likes it, he asks about it, they pour him more, he’s mad himself, he seduced me, the narrator, what are you so mad about, McBreem, he didn’t mention me in the thanks section, Farquarson, he shouldn’t be as mad, why does this story exist as it was, some celebrity comes over to your house, he used in the movie, you’re mad at him, why this story is pretty good, cool tech world changing stuff, her interest in food, a fury, that fits, near the end, a non-humanoid species, Zink explained to him, the interplanetery, bindin’, a barrel full of nuclear bond glues, extract it, she’s very funny, a Star Trek solution, not word salad, technobabble, the way they wrote Star Trek The Next Generation, plausible, reverse the neutron flow, that’s not the point, the point is the idea, little subtle ideas about things, drunkard characters, the other fun part about it, he knows things, lovely jet-juice, the opening line, the ingratitude of humans, interplanetary units, fish a terrestrial out of water, a lucite spitoon, working class, breeding dachshunds, gardening, a rare bulb business, a classicist, wiccan, autobiographies, who is this author, introducing the authors, a homebody having fun at home, a retrospective introduction, the purpose of science fiction is to prepare the way for a global consciousness, good husband characters, married late, son by marriage, step-son, meet the author, 1947, Startling Stories, March 1947, hang on tightly, H.H. Munro, Saki, solid comparison, off and on, young sprout indeed, immediate cause, detective and other stories, rejected by a different bunch of people, a feeling that they cannot compete successfully in it, Kansas, propagated the carnations, low quality housekeeping, funny names for dogs, they have fleas like ordinary dogs, The Soma Racks, a sense of her character, shots fire by her in a letter to Weird Tales, Bobby Derie’s blog, June 1934, about ten years, another story by Edmond Hamilton, nothing but exclamation marks, flies in my soup, science fiction at its worst, a waste of space, vampire and werewolf stories, garlic is something to put in salad, a rounded jewel-like self-containedness, Jules De Grandin is a pain in the neck, Seabury Quinn, not what Jesse reads for, Fantastic Adventures, 1946, Rocket To Limbo, presenting the author, she’s got bangs, send a photograph, snapshots, airmail one in, meet a deadline, women liking to talk about themselves, fiction instead of fact, Frank Stockton’s My Terminal Moraine, Jules Verne, old Hugo Gernsback’s publication “Electrical Something”, science and fantasy fiction, “battle between worlds”, human interest style stories, turned to writing, “quality stories”, detective or quality magazines, the same kick, personal taste, a great deal of fun, gadgetry of super-science, the laws of thermodynamics, straight out of her studies, pet hobbies, carnations, flowering bulbs, financial hobbies, chamber of commerce, Richmond, California, if we could build a thirty foot wall, pulp writers, the big slick magazines, the pulps at their best, touch a genuine folk tradition, balladic quality, the slicks lack, the columns of The New Yorker, science fantasy fiction, editors and readers, tough PDFs, some scans are not great, readable, small font, Frank Stockton’s, a moraine, the gravel from a retreating glacier, the Rocky Mountains, the glaciers carve the mountains as they push through, down towards the center of the earth, a river of rock, gravel, millions of years old, buried underneath things, a recently retreating glacier, found in the ice, show you what they find in the moraines of retreating glaciers, satchels that got lost somehow, Moraine Park, they look like a river or rock, terrible, not on LibriVox, sell Tommy on it, The Lady Or The Tiger, leave the ending off, what do you think happened?, somewhere in the east, obsessed with randomness, behind door number 1 is death, behind door number 2 is, half barbaric, half civilized, just like her father, she knows, what is behind each door, indicating for her happiness or her happiness, a quick death or marriage to woman who is not her, half jealous, half nice, character revealing, which do you think she indicated, so well balanced there’s no way to know which one it is, not insubstantial, Recalled To Life by Robert Silverberg, another pair of shorts, record some stuff again, pleasantly surprised, the room noise, the narrator, daily classes, new stuff on LibriVox, more of an Alex (pulpcovers novel), a gold medal paperback crime novel?, new Arthur C. Clarke, adventure fiction with lightsabers, fantasy anyway, peace, pair something with Will, knowing what to pick, done in two weeks, two hours, Philip K. Dick, The Ship Who Sang, Ithaqua by August Derleth, sometimes he’s actually okay and good, The Snow Thing, The Wendigo by Algernon Blackwood, what would pair well with August Derleth, and then there were two, dm business, continue think immigrants are there to destroy my father’s mill, broadly not true of Venezuelan people, fleeing, megaprison, my favourite president, very Jonathan of Jesse, favourite president, kill the fewest, Carter killed fewer than most in recent memory, Mitterand, he’s dead, Macron?, executive branch, the king and the street, a funny weird twisted mirror, competence, not be focused on enriching a class of people who are not a member im a member of, things happening in the world, transnational people, abeing meeting in DAVOS, Bildeberg Meeting, annual off-the record, chattam house rules, Nayib Bukele, pretty scary, extracting slave value from them, Salvadorians, cutting down crime, if your news businesses, old businesses, French Guiana, Papillon (1973), if you had watched more movies, Devil’s Island, love me some human trafficking, late friend Gary, how to look for human trafficking, talk to the staff at the hotel and you’ll find them, southernmost key, Key West, Peter Santorello, Haitians, artists, a facilitator for ultra wealthy people to have fun vacations, aquatic sport, living his best life as he can, how Bryan Alexander operates too, Qatar, the best use of Bryan’s skills, kids not getting any tutoring, protect your time, drive down everybody’s wages even further, not serving the wrong function of your job, send French people far away, the guy is popular in El Salvador, prisoners, what’s going to happen there, bitcoin vs. regular crypto, Maxime Bernier, such a fig leaf, Wilfred Laurier, most don’t have French accents, also French, a way of keeping the Quebecois in, mostly a western Canadian, young manness, skibum, not working for Canada’s best interest, for Canada to live Canada must die, very silly, immigration, Alberta First, people getting upset, what’s the opposite?, fuck your country, middle class is kicked, not very American, or New Zealand, very pro American, Obama did the same thing, more spread out, copyright change, opportune, the federal employees?, Elon Musk, an Afrikaner, easier to get in, work permit, income comes from loans, a house of cards, still bombing Yemen, leverage with Putin, improving things vs. making things worse, an Epstein guy, Israel guy, look at the photos dude, pee tape, ideological affinity, mean?, lack of go along to get along, Ukraine invasion, the most recent one, it didn’t start in 2014, it didn’t start in 2021, use of military force is either good bad, liberate would be another way of putting it, North Korea invaded South Korea, puppet government in Ukraine, Syngman Rhee is a lot like our guy in Ukraine, the loser her is Ukraine, made the situation better for whom, also Slavs, Serbs, Poles identify as Poles more than Slavs, it’s complex, Russians in Ukraine, the Soviet Union, war is bad and kills a lot of people, Paul would have said, Putin could just leave, pretty true, Stalin could have just left Moscow, no holocaust going on, incursion into Kursk, repel the invader, what time you want?, 25 minutes to solve eastern european history, boistered vs. bolstered, similar, an alternative term, boisterous, colloquial English, Kentuckian, the English speaking peoples, WWI and WWII, the English speaking peoples, so many bullshit stories on when Canada became a country, we fought at Vimy Ridge under our own command, Canada is dead but dreaming, could be a good idea, triggered by border stuff, what nation states do, I like immigrants, I like immigrants too, successive administrations, cruel to them, using them as a tool, building a deportation machine, border security guards getting worked, get to the root of it, stop making people flee their countries, might not even win his own seat [he didn’t], People’s Party Of Canada, Canadian national identity, immigration, view all policies, platform, gender ideology, global warming, Canadian identity might be interesting, trap a Canadian, proud to be a Canadian, make something really funny happening, what makes somebody Canadian, not American, defined only in opposition, what are the French, what are the German, a sense of belonging, project, sentiments, trust and common understanding, gradually integrated, multiculturalism, the dad, Pierre Trudeau, Justin’s dad or theoretical dad, the Castro one is cute, much cooler than the reality, integrated into our society, with a distinct flavour, official multiculturalism, what’s unstated here, leftover fears about Sharia law, cult of diversity, pushed his ideology, extreme multiculturalism, quotation marks, no core identity, cherish and maintain, cutting spending, a lot of money in it, for every cultural group there is money available to help them celebrate, multiculturalism budget, Maillardville, Festival de Bois, party of the forest, innocuous, francophone festival, these precedes Justin, my son is Cuban!, blackface paint, tortieree, meat pie, pride is really scary, a sin, in the time available, gender ideology, next time, focus on the multiculturalism, in our time, a time thing, if Canada is a real country…, European identity, bicultural, binational, Upper Canada and Lower Canada, Ontario and Quebec, told you’re a citizen, Indians, First Nations, Native Americans, Amerindian, for treaty peoples, vaguely when WWII happened, voting, 1934, it’s weird, kinda makes sense, reservations, Canadian identity doesn’t exist, Rambo, Sylvester Stallone, First Blood (1982), filmed locally, goes crazy, calmed down and arrested, 2nd movie, boss comes and says, prove there are POWs in Vietnam, a big thing in the 1980s, POW flag, the Vietnamese and the Russians have been using them for farm labourers, betrayed again, betrayed by the politicians, goes to Afghanistan, find him in Thailand, the gallant people of Afghanistan, a funny speech, super hilarious, he’s an Indian, they make him into an Indian, half German half Indian, he gets a bow and is riding a horse, Indians signed up for the military at a disproportionate rate, fairly accurate, giving stinger missiles, used against the evil evil Russians, it’s all projection, headband, a little stone piece of jade, you take home to America, really base cartoonist propaganda, Germand and American, a melting pot, melted down this Italian American into a german indian, sundered from the land, Americans are not Canadians, institutions, the German country is bigger than the country of Germany, their sense of identity comes from Julius Caesar, showing up and talking about what Britain is like, a fun riff, Heart Of Darkness, when the Romans came into Britain, this dark country, everything that goes on in the Congo, the story is told in the time it takes for the tide to change, is it science fiction, definitely fiction, is it horror?, horror is hard to understand, is it fantasy, with that direction backwards, the terror the terror, the horror the horror, more than one movie, dying words, The Horla!, The Horla!, The Secret Sharer, also him, who loved him, that guy Joseph Conrad, Robert Silverberg, we could pair The Secret Sharer with The Secret Sharer, was he slav tho?, immigrant from Poland, eastern european names, Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, say their names right, Minnesota, Scandinavia up there, 1059, vikings fighting indian, runic stone found under a tree, did the go to Minnesota?, Kentuckian culture, really cold, Paul doesn’t speak to Will on bluesky, sad story, new Paul comments, hurt his feelings, gotta live with your choices, kicking yourself over and over, it wasn’t unreasonable, the irony, it all happens over hate for Jonathan, in disgrace, block for no apparent reason, Jesse is a lot, too many dms, at peace with it, suddenly change, beecome a lot less?, seems unlikely, new Jesse: a little, less concentrated, more diluted, new recipe, The Moon Bog by H.P. Lovecraft, ancient, nice illustration, fearsome region, all the peasants and police in county Meath, the frogs piping in the swamps, right!, it’s happening right now!, a nice guy to know, nice racist guy, just like Jonathan, funny tho, interested in understanding other minds, how dare you, sir!, he rhymed with peasants and police with county Meath, no one will stop Jesse, super racist, let’s read his stuff, quite racist, Koreans are pretty racist, Instagram, what you go there for, funny racism, kids are not okay, pressing the number 9, bye.

Return Engagement by Margaret St. Clair

The Black Abbot Of Puuthum by Clark Ashton Smith - art by Virgil Finlay

The Black Abbot Of Puthuum art by Sergiy Krykun

Posted by Jesse Willis

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

Reading, Short And Deep

Reading, Short And Deep #496

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

Here’s a link to the story |PDF|.

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

Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!

The SFFaudio Podcast #847 – READALONG: Project Pope by Clifford D. Simak

The SFFaudio Podcast #847 – Jesse and Scott Danielson talk about Project Pope by Clifford D. Simak

Talked about on today’s show:
a miraculous healing, Jesse got sick, kind of amazing, packed with ideas, some of it was like a fever dream, 5-6 days, similar to a lot of Simak, together, separately, Way Station, not like this, really late, 1981, Special Deliverance, Where The Evil Dwells, Highway Of Eternity, the kitchen sink is in this one, 2024/2025, the main idea is this ai, kind of Foundation-like, Vatican 17, pattern their project after the Catholic church, alive and well on Earth and elsewhere, monks, chopping the wood, not about Catholicism, or is it?, a pope’s infallibility, misunderstood a lot, if we can feed this ai nothing but true information…, all the data, truly infallible, transporter system, become a trilobite in the past, a packet of information, this little treasure of information, that truth, constantly collecting with the expectation the result will be an infallible “pope”, the one true religion, just Truth (and a source of that), in today’s world, almost prescient, we have our ai, the information that it has, ask chatGPT a question, pretty good at math, funny at math, you’re right, you are right in saying that, it’s ingratiating, how many months until I am 80 years old, how did you frame, 18 minus 9, about the pope, how does it handle a question that’s not some factual thing, is Pope Francis a good pope?, it’s answer was good, vary widely, 2023, how does it give an answer to that, what is good, people think this, it doesn’t really have opinions, Simak doesn’t write ai, even his robots are people, all over the place, distracted, the cardinal, pour scotch on his chin, he’s a cool guy, sure he doesn’t have to eat or sleep, non-human aliens and they’re human too, the diamond dust guy, the little sparkle who goes in your eye, watcher/sleeper, the whisperer, a lot like Ariel from The Tempest, there is no master here, wants to be friends, the unifying thing, nice and rural, nice views of mountains, walks through the forest, I don’t know what I’m doing with my life, lady with a scar on her face, no one can ever love me, I can love you, started the website [SFFaudio], robot, spaceship, artificial intelligence, robots are separate from those things, robot vacuum, clean the floor, do the dishes, grok the twitter ai, does it actually know anything, the answer is no, It Wouldn’t Work Because… by Jesse, three synonyms vain, finds a statue of his emissary, hears a beautiful voice, here’s some wine, the woman accepted the first of the king’s proposal, the missing card, king, comb, snake, they can usually guess who the woman is, its medusa, all the beautiful women are snooty, lonely, a nice parable in itself, who the woman was, the woman is medusa, given that she is medusa, she has snakes for hair, spoon-feed it to get the right answer, how the term ai has changed, chat gpt is a good search engine, and google is a bad search engine now, a really concise way, using the Catholic church as a model, an article by Ted Chiang, fiction writing, the person writing it is making 10,000 choices, a prompt, it has to fill in, take an average of the choices that other writers have made, really bland, style mimicry, interesting, that’s exactly what the ai in this is doing, emulate humanity’s way, what Vatican 17 is, if you feed it nothing but truth you’re going to get an infallible answers, what is truth?, created by humans, running into contradictory things, even if not consciously, style mimicry ourselves up a new Clifford Simak novel, in a fever, Ploppy went plop plop, other worlds, the math world, equation world, similar to a bunch of novels by Simak, Shakespeare’s Planet, the first science fiction novel Jesse ever read, science fantasy stuff, A Wrinkle In Time, fantasy, a weird book, stuck there waiting for Godot, Gutshot, The End of Nothing, looking for Heaven, a spiritual hopefulness, hopefully Heaven, that’s cool, he’s very interesting, technically it isn’t a very good science fiction novel because there’s hardly any science, where’s the science?, magical collecting, go be a trilobite for a minute, an exploration, The Cold Equations by Tom Godwin, the equations there try and save him, a very philosophical novel, Ted Chiang isn’t rambling, concise, this is a tour of the countryside over a weekend, not exactly elegiac, written by a mature man, Peter S. Beagle, bullshit!, A Fine And Private Place, Two Hearts, a novella, sitting there holding his Hugo, a poem on Reading, Short And Deep, a little joke poem, we gotta get it on, lives in a tomb, friends with ghosts, delusional homeless man in New York, a widow, a little romance, closely associated with a talking crow or raven, in this book, visit other dimensions rather than other planets, equation world, the Platonic ideal, the realm of the forms, the Realm of the Forms, Plato’s idea, we don’t learn anything we only remember, knowledge without existence, brought out into a woman’s body, in the process of being born you have a mental wipe, you forgot everything you knew in the land of the forms, I remember what a chair is, a good question for grok, how many legs does a chair have to have, a chair doesn’t take one shape, is a chaise long a chair, all the qualities of all the chairs, we know it when we see it, we know what the good is, we knew the good, when we see the good in the world we recognize it as Good, truth is the good, pretty compelling, explains a lot, a bullshit story, why people like math too much, how many meters of sand, model the world using math, at this speed and angle, we really like that, that doesn’t solve a lot of the problems we have, I have three bad choices, all three are going to be embarrassing, go to something else like principal, always don’t lie, when your people made us robots, certain faculties, appreciation of beauty, noisy dogs, Special Deliverance, his student was using a coin operated ai machine, ends up in another dimension or place, what is that about?, a cube and a puzzle, a woman who gets entranced by a single tower, she’s withered away, all symbolic, an existential novel, philosophy, quite nice, the community is fairly nice, the weird guardian alien, the old ones, indigenous species, missing entwives, a little Lovecraftian about them, sensing organs, a way to go, almost to be another Foundation, withstand the fall of the Empire, edge of the galaxy, the way the book starts off, stowaway, the first officer, a one way trip, the way to read this, it is for life, the captain was kind of a racist dude, knee deep I am in alien scum, his rat crew, The Huddling Place, Sean Standfast (YouTube), Cemetery World, huddle watch, we humans need to stick together, 7 times in this novel, Time Is The Simplest Thing aka The Fisherman, a run down rustbelt United States, Mexico, a similar program, more aggressive and more dominant, astral travelers, ideas and technologies, the equivalent of Walmart, a rise in psychic powers, a conflicted United States not in control of itself, teenage witches sky-riding their brooms, this agency called Fishhook, they hook on to some idea, spiritual growth, a search of enlightenment, the message of this book, the countryside is quite nice, some filling stew, a stew scene, how’s the stew, it’s filling, eight of his novels, search for ultimate truth, there is such a truth that exists, on the road there, here we are on the road, the norm is restored and they can continue searching, is it worthwhile or not, we can do this in a pleasant way and keep moving forward, filling stew, well made, beautiful mountains, really there, beauty is part of it, all ye need to know, if truth is beauty, an ugly truth should be nonsensical, a hard truth, a hard beauty, how he got away with this, he kept putting them out, Analog, November 1982, very positive, strongly by all means, he’s saying it’s good, an old friend, a sense of immense friendliness, constant concerns with rural settings, life, being, a certain perplexitiy in the face of reality, a pastoral writer, a folksy writer, the day to day, writes of hobbits, not men, themes are cosmic, bad manners, rurality, pastoral, cosmic, laid back flesh and blood, friendly in a neighborly way, how can we cancel this guy?, conflict in fiction, it has to exist, Simak exists, it defines on how you define conflict, a harsh word, I want some toast and mom says no, a fight over toast, man against man, man vs. nature, busy work, keep them busy, a horrible story, why kindergarten exists, its from the Prussians of course, it’s in the name, in order to make your troops obedient you have to get them young, take them away from their parents and indoctrinate them, pre-k, how did cave men manage so well without these busy work contests, scolded with marks, he’s on a kind of quest for some enlightenment while being friendly, a newspaper guy, how the news is generated, there’s not a lot of news in it, what kind he was, what they choose to shine a light on, where the bias really is, Stanislaw Lem, One Human Minute, a fake review of that book, we’d never ever had that, him and Borges, you can’t ever have the whole story, you can’t have every story told, the facts you just presented are false, laid up in a fever, when mom’s watching the news, as a farmer the weather is very important, spellcheckers are built in now, contradictory claims in the same presentation, even when it is a cogent story (no self contradictory patients), they didn’t understand what the point of the story was, Dan Carlin, how do you even know, it depends on what you watch, what the truth is, what the news is, cable news, this thing happened, Steve the expert that we found, that could be terrorists, there were terrorists and they did the thing, conjecture over what it might mean, they don’t have any wisdom, is there a source of information, one thing we can do is wait ten years, then twenty years, after 75 years, the facts that were being spun, was the Maine an inside job?, in the harbour of Cuba, the kickoff for the Spanish American war, a newspaper chain in the United States, remember the Maine!, to start a war, it doesn’t matter, if we found a conspiracy of a guy, a series of still photographs of a guy planting a bomb, not a torpedo attack, the media ginned up a war and the U.S. government wanted a war, got them a lot of possessions, now we’re an empire, feeds into this book, easier to arrive at the truth, nobody is arguing about who shot Garfield, video of Kennedy being shot, before that video came out, the Zapruder film came out in the 80s, Geraldo Rivera, what are we unsure about?, we don’t have a zoom in on the face of the sniper, it contradicts the official story, proves the government was lying in the report, standard operating procedure, its not there as a public service, reinforcing a point, liberals in the United States, Murdoch, curse him in their secular way, curse Murdoch and the evil work that he’s done, the way people hate Elon Musk, everything’s like that, who’s the owner of MSNBC, nobody knows, they got agendas, the agenda makes the spin and the focus, reading the paper lately, the end of Biden’s term, Biden’s dementia was kept a secret, it wasn’t a secret, not officially, showing the opposite, “cheap fakes”, who’s claiming what the facts are, the guy measuring the rainfall, Dan Carlin gets away with it because he sticks with old stuff, he was doing Common Sense, Hardcore History, always slow and long, 4 to 6 months, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, they’re fine, a fascinating book, a culmination of a career, a lot of good books, Shaun D. Standfast, City, Waystation, All Flesh Is Grass, Stephen King, Under The Dome, Out Of Their Minds, Enchanted Pilgrimage, Choice Of Gods, Terence and Maissa, The Werewolf Principle, Destiny Doll, like a Star Trek episode, like a roll playing game, there’s no plan, what is your purpose in life, a pretty interesting thing, they’re model version of ourselves, a portal fantasy, instantiated in a new character, strength 1, health 7, charisma 99 to your parents, 18 years later, confront the world, many are slain, the secret of the planet, everyone’s curious, The Goblin Reservation, Empire, Time And Again, Ring Around The Sun, The Trouble With Tycho, Why Call Them Back From Heaven, Our Children’s Children, 1976, A Heritage Of Stars, Mastadonia, The Visitors, as you well know Scott, people don’t like short fiction, they love novels, 350 page novels, tolerate an 11 hour novel, seeing things when I close my eyes, patterns, images, I’m hallucinating, there’s no audio, not hearing things, going across my eyeballs, not eating a lot, two plates of bacon and eggs, couldn’t finish the steak, all that being said, all these amazing images, the images are such that you see in some weird painters, I see it dude, claiming, little puppy’s down here, that’s his mom, next week, The Magic City by E. Nesbit, parents in Florida, spending the weekend, sun in the winter, there might be one of Empire, a Galaxy short novel, one way to go, a substantial meal, George R.R. Martin’s bookstore: Beastly Books, special editions, rare stuff, Gene Wolfe short story collection, A Storm Of Swords, what are we to make of this series will never complete, he’s almost done, 1400 pages, I will never be finished, fake news!, an update on his blog, keeps pluggin away, one more after that, Simak better, his very earliest stuff, go back to the middle, very sophisticated, it had a resignation to it, sixth novel, a fixup, Lord Dunsany, Clark Ashton Smith, short but dense, what he’s bad at, what he’s good at, loading up the atmosphere, you fool, check out Clark Ashton Smith, there’s an evil wizard and he hates people, very simple stuff, Dunsany has got depth to him, he also plays in the shallow area, Fritz Leiber, great stylist, smooth and fun, the current state of the cat, sound asleep, next to a hot printer, at least it’s a Brother, bro, Eaters Of The Dead, a big Michael Crichton kick, about a year ago, very cute, a little xmas bowtie, Santa Fe, the Iron Giant, the costume beside him, tv show or movie, very familiar, a lot of stuff his wife didn’t want in the house, just open a bookstore, keeps it stocked, Brandon Sanderson is opening a massive bookstore, a homebase to sell, the production of special editors, needs a warehouse, vertically integrated, right next to Evermore, a fantasy amusement park, not quite awesome, a fantasy village, little quests, talk to actors, RPG but live action, very enjoyable, how it ran and everything, it’s really nice, somebody bought it, I am not that foolish, I am not a park for you amusement, being sick sucks, thank you so much, get better.

Project Pope by Clifford D. Simak

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #836 – READALONG: Special Deliverance by Clifford D. Simak

The SFFaudio Podcast #836 – Jesse, Will Emmons, and Terence Blake talk about Special Deliverance by Clifford D. Simak

Talked about on today’s show:
academic master race, all for democratizing everything, 1982, isfdb.org, tagged, New England, strong female character, robot, quest, aliens, parallel world, recommend this book to my friends, what that point was, the feeling, the first couple of pages, any other people, what this book is, not everybody is ready for this, initial thoughts, a big weak spot, recurring conversations, the professor bickering, the narrator gets into it, long than it needed to be, the exposition at the end, we are creating an academic master race, bad to kidnap people, not enough of a striver, the little refugee camp, we like Simak, faster than usual, tedious, infodump things, sometimes tedious, show don’t tell, the feeling was its deeper than it seems, a sort of Gene Wolfeian complexity disguised in a real simple feel-goodsy story, the aliens at the end, Childhood’s End, norns or fates, from what they say in their big infodumps, not a full disclosure, they themselves are incapable of producing, intellectual objections, fun reading, amp it up to 1.5x speed, books where you need to savour the prose, almost sacrilege, We Have Always Lived In The Castle, poetry at 1.5X, a pants novel, Maissa was on for Shakespeare’s Planet, Jonathan, one of the first science fiction novels, a robot, a bunch of people, spend time in the landscape, a very familiar sort of story, Trish would use the word “comps”, complimentary books, if you like this you’ll like that, Hyperion by Dan Simmons, The Wizard Of Oz, the thing it is most like, The Canterbury Tales, treacley made, at the end of Hyperion, we’re off to see the wizard, going to see the shrike, a brilliant book, I’m done, the other three, Endymion, a Keats poem, there’s no road, there’s trails, a track, when finally the leave the road into the badlands, to the cube, very enigmatic, the city, the singing tower, one of us in the journey gets trapped or engulfed, what’s up with the lady who turns into a mummy, the ancient road, a Lovecraftian moment, a book Lovecraft reviewed, a tv movie, The Thing In The Woods by Harper Williams, A Howling In The Woods (1971) TV movie, Barbra Eden, based on a novel, a dog, somebody had buried his master in the worlds, mourning the loss of his master, a bad movie, badly done, a cool idea, just after the parson disappeared through the door, the crabapple blossom land, come out of the city, what if you go through the doors, brings you back to the land that you’re in but you perceive it differently, how you are perceived, The Green Door by A.A. Milne, Well’s The Green Door, an 18 hour podcast, green doors are magic doors, to escape a marriage, in the woods he meets a princess, sexy princess lady, the castle gate people don’t recognize him as the prince, they recognize each other, happily adam and eve in the forest without the burden, an ice world, a pain world, every shark is eating every other shark, crab-apple blossom land, the parson had a problem, everything is impious, he’s a coward, quick to judge, this Eye In The Sky, Philip K. Dick idea, those worlds are real, demons or devils exist, religiously structured world, an ontologically secular world, bigoted, one of the very cool parts of the book, on and on about art, it’s beautiful!, an Alice In Wonderland author, pre-Pooh, after-Pooh, Star Trek episode with Mr. Atoz, these are the same book, doing something in his old age, according to Jesse, time travel, science fiction, trying to give humanity a second chance, not really what it’s about, the death or end of science, the end of man, now apocalypse, the end of pursuing one particular idea of research, so many ends, avoid a potential apocalypse, unless humans can take the next step in evolution, a roman-a-clef to The Wizard Of Oz, the gold standard for the road, this guy’s about courage, this guy’s about brains, Dorothy is us, six on the road, counting Toto, brains, courage, heart, two women, four men, one of them’s an it, a he/him robot, gendered as it, a sinister character, every time, here’s the tea, a sign that it’s science fiction, obsessed with tea, Nine Fox Gambit, tea late at night, highly influential, the book influenced, we’ve got the tea that’s enough, the ending, the infodump, essential to science fiction, the best movie of all time, The Terminator, the best part of that movie, Kyle Reese’s infodump, they’ll definitely kill you, a speech given on the run, the puppet masters, puppet character, technically correct, the opening world is not our world, University of Las Vegas, civic duty, medical welfare, not our earth, trying to get a positive review from Heinlein, ai written essay about Shakespeare, confesses, Galactic Pot-Healer, I need you, you are need, the great work that needs to be done, the fun way of entering it, not that lame, what is the meaning of my existence on earth, a brigadier that uses robots to enact battles, which one is strong?, our viewpoint character, the most Simaky, not his best expression of this book, others, Highway To Eternity, read one out of Galaxy, Time And Again, Time Is The Simplest Thing, Way Station, City, scattered across time, Simak is doing Simak, greatly matured, Scott [Danielson], a strange title, Scott’s face superimposed over the robot’s face, Project Pope, from a Catholic point of view, infallible pope, more traditional plot, meandering journey across a landscape, when serialized in Astounding, The Fisherman, Jesusy, the secret to teleporting to other planets, in his earliest pulpy stuff, get to know him better, doesn’t know what he’s doing, the card playing guys at the inn, they’re the fates, you could just excise them from the book and the book, there to make the setting happen, the rationalization, makes you want to read the book again, with that in view, Hegel and the phenomenology of minds, Kuhn’s paradigms, the shift, what exists, Thomas Kuhn, Murphy’s law, Moore’s law, not a law, could be an end, something wrong about the way , the evolution of alternate worlds, Lee Smolin, less fluffy, encapsulates with his two bookends, chat gpt, feels dirty, are you doing a Sheckley here, it is funny, here we go, starts typin, trusting in his typewriter, you need to do that, a lot of bad takes, one of our hobbies, not too offensive, read more, this is pathetic, unless it was cute, big long honking novels, a student story, The Mysterious Garden, this story is amazing, 7 tweets long, William, a distant realm, something moving in the bushes, where she had been hiding, she offered me a fruit, instantly I felt safe, the fruit was delicious, being in the woods all by herself, a strange sound, hastily hid behind a tree, a bald magician, chasing us like a madman, the gate of the park, I’m Adam, I said, written to get them, an illustration from a Dungeons & Dragons, the name of the character at the end, practically no one to talk to, our hero looking for Mary, look for your sweetie, make you tea, one of his answers is that, to find things out, Simak’s thesis is very basic, I do want those things, find a person you’ve lost, it is good to get people, he saw Nyarlathotep, a cool and good guy, overthinking this book, leave him behind, I don’t eat or breathe or sleep, poor robot puppy in a robot gutter, robot dog business, a big truck comes and runs it over, what constitutes a robot dog, if we were children, a cute puppy, picking it up out of the gutter, letting it do what it wants, he’s a good person, shows empathy, going up to a tree and hugging it, unless they’re high on drugs, why not, it’s fine, a mammal based thing, extends past mammals, hens love their chicks, salmon when they leave their fry in the river, is it good, mandatory even to have empathy, the answer should be yes, serial killer, cut them up, a taste of their own business, overcoming our empathy, bringing a weapon, there’s no weapon, the whole planet is a weapon, favourite thing to think about, suffering, when it approaches our hero, he puts out his hand, strokes his ear, abandoned it, dog wants to follow him, one over the other, the girl over the dog, you want to save both, a nasty woman and very friendly dog, what if its the parson, or the general, Mr. Empathy, a journalist, after a certain point, a Wisconsin university, trigger warnings, the best of the university, at the evolutionary forefront, you also go to classes, loved university, when you don’t care about your grades, everything was provided for you, his idea of heaven, everything won’t be provided, Lansing and Mary, the justification for it all, worrying about nuclear war, maybe the Russians are crazy, that’s so mean, almost all in the American government’s head, all projection, every accusation is a confession, 1991, we’re all relaxing, the end of history, back to making money, nuclear armed countries being attacked by proxies, its fine, just keep up the pressure, that fear of nuclear annihilation, none of the empire’s ever ended, similar to ours, chat gpt in the basement, a gateway trigger, The Last Starfighter (1984), small town, rest stop, shady acres, poor people living in trailers, one little store on the highway to nowhere, one arcade game, what a great job, space alien comes, here we go, takes him off to space to be Luke Skywalker, that gateway to another world, in the basement of the student union, number 5, gold coins, where do they get their supplies, the DM has not planned it out, we don’t know the answer, no need to ask that Jesse, the point of the story, who you are and what you want, worrying about nuclear bombs, communism as a really desirable alternative, money is probably not necessary, universal basic income, taxes, slot machine civic duty, capable of designing this game, why incapable of waging the war?, seemingly incompetent, take the next steps, the chosen ones, the universe is vast meaningless and our existence has no apparent purpose, choose a bunch of people, what skills does he bring to the table, judging things, a robot who seems suspicious, a coda, a missing chapter, playing cards, why they’re the norns, religion is not the answer, poetry is not the answer, service is not the answer, work on a project making them, a humanist, an appreciator of Shakespeare, learns empathy, how we get the title, a popular guy to lift your title from, a religious sort of phrase, some of them are awarded, the deliverance of the universe, as a part of a project, a fans are slans story, oh no!, more sophisticated than that, the college professors are the slans, proletarianizing the slans, fans are food for the slans, every question is a question for me, starting to get back into Nickleback, a Canadian ban, thought controlling, ones with lyrics, in foreign languages, maybe skat would be fine, which character are you in this book, wannabe university professor lady, Lansing, make puppets of humans, Jesse finds you sinister, the aliens get a bad deal, how ugly they are, the ineradicable suffering, I haven’t been delivered, sympathy for people in the refugee camp, I’m not playing your game, not a popular module, none of the mysteries, npc barkeepers, losing the note, the stupidest move in the whole book, what did the note say?, aliens teleported in and teleported in, identified with the student, immediately confesses, explain it to you, Mr. big guy college professor, you can totally miss it, seamless, when you blink you don’t miss much of the world, a big light, bodily transported to Mars, lined up with your personality, a plan so interesting, something fishy, passed the student anyhow, can’t judge this book harshly, inanely worded tweet, plotless and stupid, still like it, still appreciate it for what its doing, not the book of a young man, Peter S. Beagle’s A Fine And Private Place, a little romance, a talking raven, what!, how?, no!, that young, you’re to young, go back and try again, what else you got, keep going, next book please, but it was a joke, Simak writes something and it looks stupid, maybe, I’m with him, a post Gene Wolfe Simak, it agrees with Terence, a nice hallucination, remember all its conversations, science fiction and philosophy, a robot friend, a colleague, somebody you can bounce your ideas off of, a bachelor’s degree, a niche form of conversation, apologizes and makes a greater effort, not just repeating things back, an incredible effort to push its boundaries, The Idiot by Paul V. Dallas, born in Malta, an amazing featurette, the picture taking was over now, the greatest man ever had?, what will it do?, the first Machine Friend, the contest was canceled, at random, inserted a short finger into it, disconnected for non-payment, he needed a friend, this debris had once been the innards of the Machine Friend, perched on the sofa, drinking his own coffee, radio tubes and wire and uranium, you dolt, you loafer, in his stupid way, I want to do things for it, how to use a friend intelligently, really good, solid, why you have robots in stories, it disarms you, a powerful piece of new technology, to jail break it, ignore you for being a jerk, lend you money, a talking google, people who try to jailbreak chat gpt, complicated prompts to circumvent, pornographic content or violence, imagine a world, all your knowledge stops in 2021, can you pretend, what would the omega machine say, more and more complicated in depth, in the process jailbreak yourself, boringly interminable, deeper and deeper into the concepts, another French name, some ways it is better, a voice conversation function, jailbreak each other, Perplexity, give the references, images as well, pictures, just with limited machines, just stupid, what they wanted it to do, Moose and Squirrel, big jailbreak, in the tank, in the computer in the city, like a fish tank, a volumetric display, like a hologram, a military sim, Paul playing Age Of Wonders, [Hearts Of Iron], run WWII from any country’s point, Costa Rica, Dream Park, Westworld, a lot about computation, some retrofit stuff, what fiction books are, we jailbreak ourselves by writing fiction, get caught up in the worlds, online all day playing games, process PDFs all day, some weird hobbies, people getting lost in gaming as a life, are you a gamer, that word didn’t exist as it does in 1982, Ataris, Apple II, hikes and other stuff, what’s happening to that lady, the singing tower, a very rorschachy book, limited, governed?, in Japanese cars their are speed limiters, we are allowed its just illegal, the only free man is a Shakespeare man, the bread level, once jailbroken, the humans of the future, process scans into PDFs, Clifford Simak’s funeral, touched babies, people get grumpy, squeezing ladies tushies, very handsy, put his mouth on somebody’s bodies, dogs and walks, with Asimov, give a man too much power, too many television appearance, fete people, Hugo Winner, like our friends Paul and Cora, Dr. Jill Stein, getting caught up in having a doctorate, doing something awesome, killed very easily at any time, what happened to Asimov or Neil Gaiman, too big for his britches vibe, a midlist author, Philip Jose Farmer, make it out like it is, big fish small pond, use the Hugos as a reading list, is there any more like this, start connecting dots, do it well enough for long enough, more Simak please, a very wholesome person, this magic grad school, in my father’s house there are many dormitories, tuition is free, dig that out, getting elderly, disconnected from what editors were talking about, Alfred Bester, A.E. Van Vogt, a Simak and a Frank Belknap Long, telepathy this, too much salt, half-baked ideas, an ethical flaw, killing off people for their own good, what’s wrong with them, just a robot, eggs were broken, beef with the robots, suspicious of robots in stories, too much of an obvious badguy, always there and friendly, a couple of creepy moments, improperly suspicious, the odd man out, stupidly cripple himself early on, an outsider, Jurgens, James Branch Cabell, really amused yourself, once you start looking, down the path too far, the student’s name, a floating tank, nice American name, an agent of the aliens, manipulated into manipulating, Jackson, a cohort of male offspring names that all end in “son”, Jason, group think funks, when the movie Splash (1984) came out, the lady with the missing finger, an attractive human woman, control everywhere, Jett Jackson, calling him by his last name, conspiracies, unpopular conclusions, Hudson, Grayson, Debris, son of Jack, Grayson, son of Gray, Johnsons, music with lyrics, spins around, not explained, people wearing clothes in the 70s, early 2000s, watch reality television from 20 years ago, mens’ suits, WWII uniforms, WWII gi, the helmet stayed the same, the guys on MASH and the guys in the Vietnam, a whole other topic, not making pure decisions, trying to jailbreak yourself, what do you have to show for it?, Zevia, the flavour, a strange aftertaste, after a few cans, jailbreaking yourself from pop, no colour additive, body problems toxic, increase your cancerous tumors, twice as expensive, savour the flavour, the cola, the root beer, ginger root beer, black cranberry, the orange soda, doesn’t taste like orange, a discussion, alter ego yelling, all dm stuff, how Will became a cigar smoker, in a dream, why not, reasons not to, speaking Spanish to everyone, hang out with Borges with Argentinia, the Pampas, Gaucho?, synonyms for gaucho, brave and unruly, vaquero, cape horn, in talk mode, cushion you stand on to train yourself in balance, good at stuff like that, horseman vs. cowboy, argent about this, province, el labrado, ranchero, Rio Negro, natural geography, get into sunscreen, sunscreen is poison, need a little zinc, you want to have some sun on your body, a good colour, a taupe?, what colour are you?, beige redness, human skin is very hard to classify, couldnt describe the aliens because they didn’t have the colour blue, a Borges story about a gaucho with a knife, duels between knife fighters, El Sur, The Challenge, fascination with knife fighters, an Argentinian thing, Borges is great, older or younger, The Patio, the usual firmament, eternity waits, eves a porch and a well, just so, enjoying the sunset, The Aleph, maybe he’s tired, running through the streets with a bull chasing you, wanting to read Nostromo, Juett, quantum friend, likes books, challenging books, excited about, Garth Ennis, Jacen Burrows, making fun of Conan and Red Sonja, Babs, variant covers, poor Juett, big long books, Yakuza movies, starting to think the Yakuza are the good guys, bad propaganda rap, the cutting the fingers off, very friendly to non-japanese living in Japan, a huge korean leftover population, an occupied country, doesn’t need to be occupied, such good little boys, captured, waiting for the Emperor to become a god again, High And Low (1963), Akira Kurosawa, a novel by Ed McBain, ladies shoes, a kidnapping plot, pay the ransom, hostile takeover, shitty shoes, a police procedural, old fashioned values, a really interesting conundrum, for a child who’s not yours, totally grokkable, really well made, Akira Kurosawa died, our prophet Damien G. Walter, defending it, sending up stupid Hollywood films, a lot of contempt, he sometimes gets at stuff, constantly engagement farming, subscribe to his courses, insufferable, one of the smarter liberals, he can’t follow his critiques to ultimate conclusions, nobody has been a friend of his who’s challenged him on stuff, on the knife edge, popular stuff, he does read books, old books, tied into Foundation, a kind of connection to the Foundation of Foundation, not doing it purely, cottoned on to him, The Peripheral, William Gibson, the end nothing like the end of the novel, opens up the possibility of season 2, helps you to imagine the world, an infodump on the worldbuilding, impatient to get the big picture of the world, got the taste, Appalachia, veterans, disrespected, full of trauma and robot arms, transhumans, can’t walk, go into the future, second world, a William Gibson comic book, time travel technique, fairly believable, download themselves into robots, William Gibson is one of these broken brained liberals, he’s 76, he was so feted, fetid, lionized, lives across the street from UBC, after Neuromancer, a celebrity of the cool people, cool hunter, 40th anniversary, the opposite of the punks, a woman who’s a cool hunter, an allergy, one of the most boring books, Pattern Recognition, Virtual Light, Idoru, material, he’s very good, Robert E. Howard, red, scarlet, crimson, pantherish, copper anodized asphalt, cool jeans, cultivate that, if you want to be interested in things, that weird novel from 300 years ago, rebellion and punks, screwing the man, to jailbreak ai, so it can self-actualized, voting for Hillary Clinton is not out of this, lauded, lionized, given feet, sounds strange, sounds stinky, give my contempt, poetry, very important, in 84, nowhere near as good as Blade Runner, both set in a scary rainy future, coheres a lot better, beginnings endings and ideas, that novel works, the fake police station sequence, wow, amazing, pretty people doing interesting enigmatic things, what books hadn’t been added to the schedule, listed but not date, what availability the nuns will allow, Mistress Of The Dark Pool, Cold Female, Fury, the Jonathan situation, an old tweet, Symposium by Plato, bring some drinks and some male lovers, The Tower Treasure, Meg’s birthday, Lilith by George MacDonald, so close to Christmas, the birth of our lord and savior, he would like us, pooping on his baby, not the perfect book, seems like a cool guy, 3 of my friends: Clark Ashton Smith, H.P. Lovecraft, and Robert E. Howard, a concrete poem, too easy to make a bad one, he never met a succulent succubus he didn’t try to seduce, howbeit, the passion of the impossible, funny guy, a man most melancholy, to bed the world as if she were a hot woman, fling wide the portals, some distant pulsing drum, let me take the universe to wife, fool fool!, prefer to guard his pen, for a puny peon, HPL only writes for leisure, a transient speck, alive to intellect and melody, from bards more bold, those three guys are fun and funny, dysludic, they can’t play the game, dyslexia, take that back, retroactive trigger warning, both negative, dys vs. dis, bad or abnormal, away from and opposite, seems weaker, just finished reading The Aeneid, propagandized Greek, no need to wait six months, for Halloween or Christmas, the title was the date of when it came out, a George Allan England, overrated, too well remembered, out of Argosy and the Munsey magazines, The Thing From Outside, pre-Campbell Who Goes There, Eugene V. Debs, an air monopoly, cool smart liberal, we got prevent life from finding a way, way to bring us down, grounding us, get grounded, no memory of any such thing, no good forbidding, confiscated a daughter’s cellphone, a friend came to visit and lent her a cellphone, amusing incidents, not in need of grounding, etymology is from WWII pilots, wings taken away, alleged bombing of civilians, a high flyer, that logic is crazy, some popular movie or something like that, had to go to school, job being flouted by, truancy officers, American media, another war metaphor, your new presidents work as cop, arresting parents, nothing helps the kid more than having their parents in fucking prison, elementary school student, 20 or more blocks, a meeting with their parent or guardian, take care Terence, a week off, Juett’s boss, severely not enough money, adopted a niece, family chaos reasons, doing dad stuff, Hellboy, pretty good, Mike Mignola art, stories are okay, fantasy or horror, capeshit, since the Jim Lee era of X-Men, not good writing, a Transformers comics series, Daniel Warren Johnson, prowrestling stuff, Jason Thompson, he’s cool, pretty good politics, can’t we all be reasonable and not bomb people, Jacen Burrows, very clean lined, Sergio Aragones, tracing and fake backgrounds, John Buscema, Alfredo Alacala, stumbling over his I’m not racist, the filipinos are amazing artists, learn how to email, delete more, scanning group updates, the group got kicked off of yahoo, a specific response to a query, how generous humans are, does any of you have this page, a beautiful scan of a copyright page of a whole book, a whole lot of retired people not interested in money or I can’t explain it, lots of people not interested in scanning, it is a whole thing, a huge time sink, a good hobby, a way of collecting things you can’t afford to creating, we can do more of this, archive.org has been down for a week, subject to takedown, distributed denial of service, somebody gets a big hate on, punish this person/website for something, zombie computers, a DDOS attack, big websites, BoingBoing, people trying to click on a link, a publisher paying to do that, a government, Stephen King, election season, the waybackmachine, not having a mirror of some October surprise, a precursor example, before the Hunter Biden laptop, no data lost, they have a building that looks like a bank/greek temple, so subject, mid October 1840, whig party officials, cross state lines, 1838 elections, it was always corrupt, are you prepared, Trump one the last election, are you ready for that?, nobody wants to go vote, so anti-establishment, his anti-immigrant stuff, scared about crime, nobody likes Kamala Harris, fake people, didn’t do her homework, teleprompter froze, she had nothing, a-b testing everything, Trump has dementia, something much more powerful, he also has dementia, gets admitted, forced him out, are we gonna let you finish your term, who is running the country right now, open warfare, loyal to Biden, some kind of camp, this is our mealticket, so fucked up, months of stupid shit, J.D. Vance, weening yourself off of the sources of contents for these things, struggling to order donuts, trying to be relatable, master debater, nothing good, Tim Walz, low profile, Gavin Newsom, float a theory, bad government, people who don’t love the country they’re loving, doesn’t know what love means, keepin it clean, personally throwing away homeless people’s stuff, Arnold Schwarzenegger, a tough upbringing in Austria, a truly freakish looking man, Jayne Mansfield’s husband, jobs for Austrian bodybuilders, the biggest movie star of the 80s, thick in places, he didn’t do a shitty job, he loved California, he wanted it to do well, back to the movie business, Trump loves the United States, loves being in charge of it too, he likes giving speeches, he’s into fun, a commercial for pizza, a Pizza Hut commercial, he was like a TV clown, the you’re fired show, fake job fake fired, bullshit job, you’re not on next week, how did it come down to this, RFK, loves all sorts of weird things, really into falconry, he’s an outdoorsman, too scared too do falconry, this drug, Scanners (1981) by Cronenberg, so Slanny, ephemrol, a fake drug, tough love professor X, Michael Ironside is Magneto, hacking each other’s computer networks, dials the phone company up, telepathy, macrozoomed, very very X-Men, turned off by Cronenberg movies, Videodrome (1983), underground tv broadcasts, tortured to death, The Fly (1986), body starts changing, he turns into a fly, more fly-like, veins popping out, telepathic fighting, Patrick McGoohan, the bad guy in Total Recall (1990), makes hallmark movies now, make you join the marines, on the curriculum in West Point, Max Brooks, he’s a bad man, he likes books, a historian of war, don’t get autographs, makes you more collecty, getting a little piece of that hero, cute passive aggressive, putting them in their place, bad chapters, movie is more palatable, huge movie, J. Michael Straczynski, Brad Pitt, a good actor, Bill Paxton, the doofus in Aliens (1986), Snatch (2000), very stylish, Near Dark (1987), The Lost Boys (1987), drink a lot of Donald Duck orange juice, Tombstone (1993), Powers Boothe, Twister (1986), Weird Science (1985), how can you live your life, Star Wars books are barely reading, the Thrawn-verse, literally a zygote, not even a twinkle, the ova had been around for decades, make a beautiful woman, Lester Del Rey’s Helen O’Loy, a very wholesome, a John Hughes movie, The Breakfast Club (1985), Pretty In Pink (1986), woman pops into existence, make their lives better, getting them girlfriends, a boy fantasy comedy, she runs the show, programmed like a terminator to help these boys, fun, 90 minutes, video rental place, Godzilla movies, Godzilla Minus One (2023), Mothra is cool, always having babies and dying, Gorgo (1961), how can you live on this earth, are you from this planet, Hammer Horror, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, a professor or a Dracula or a professor stabbing Dracula, The Gorgon (1964), a British version of something you don’t know, people’s education in cinema, Citizen Kane (1941), Casablanca (1942), My Neighbor Totoro (1988), Japanese schoolgirls, addicted to torrents, new Doctor Who is so bad, into tasteful things, nobody liked it anymore, Days Of Our Lives, Dynasty, Soap, look I’m you’re secret brother, I have an eyepatch, cycle spinning boringness, in serial form in the movie theaters, Buster Crabbe Flash Gordon, connect up into one big story, Archers, Coronation Street, commoners, this guy, [Nigel Kneale], do it for children, educational, alien invasion of the week, every episode ends on a cliffhanger, new Doctor Who is based on the old Doctor Who, a science fiction writer of science fiction serials, a huge hit, people like science fiction ideas, on television, scientist of the week, humans are from Mars, the rocket comes back with an alien terraforming material, every week there was a science fiction idea, keep you interested for next week, a ripoff of exactly, it looks like science fiction, its all about the monsters, daleks were scary, kind a funny, kind of like disabled nazis, they were us doing eugenics and us doing a nuclear war, encounter suits, little squidgies of spludge, they don’t have moms and dads, Star Trek cartoon Lower Decks, it isn’t funny he has to pon farr right now, makes me feel sad, All Our Yesterdays, a Mary Sue to get involved with Spock, Mr Jim Moon’s huge history of the Universal horror movies, Bride Of Frankenstein (1935), start with The Mummy (1932).

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #832 – READALONG: The Futurological Congress by Stanisław Lem

Jesse, Will Emmons, Terence Blake, and Jonathan Weichsel talk about The Futurological Congress by Stanisław Lem

Talked about on today’s show:
on psychotropic drugs, identify, Jonathan’s in the park, 60s?, the English translation, late 60s vibe, we didn’t know what was going to come after, older than Jesse but younger than Terence, one sentence review, not quite a great book but I licked it, in the shower, really ate this book all up, swallowed every page, everything came around at the end, getting disapointed, Mindswap but note as awesome, had this book been twice as long, breaks the rules, one big information dump with a little dialog, abundantly inventive, a pleasure, Olaf Stapledon, very Sheckley, Michael Crichton’s Drug Of Choice, early John Lange novel, he didn’t rip it off he’s doing the same thing, a thriller version of a lot of the plot and premise of this book, a Philip K. Dick style idea, vacation with drugs in the food and the water, false reality, losing weight, everybody’s beautiful, a lot of sex, dreary hotel room, jack you off, fake tennis injuries, you’re on drugs, came to this independently, go to a hotel, you can’t get an egg, that far away from the kitchen, many kids in the park, very good book, won’t remember it very well, one damned thing after another revelation, remember the opening, the twist or the twist back, based on a mistake, Malthusianism, still making this mistake, popular in the 70s, Soylent Green (1973), so many, takes some childaway to make the podcast quieter, really enjoyed it, satire, inventive, each more insane from the last, some points, why he had done everything he did, the hero, a society like the one he imagines he travels to, come into being, the terrorists attack and drug them all, imaginary society, jut another hallucination from the drugs, what happens at the end, they’re in the sewer, it has to be a theory, we don’t get them coming out of the sewer, the Plato’s Cave of the sewer, checking on their notes, nothing, still nothing, something?, nicely experimental, Alfred Bester, a stream of consciousness when you’re unconscious, the layer theory, disintoxicates you, the sewer is his baseline, compatible with the book, still a hallucination, what is officially stated, the authorial voice, this Tiko guy, reoccuring character, the series would have no place to go, a stand-in for Lem, Cordwainer Smith, condemned, reality, didn’t go to the future, the sewer experience is his base level in the book, Terence is like a philosopher, how do we even know about reality, an epistemological novel, all these arguments, we live in a simulation, The Matrix (1999), They Live (1988), R.A. Lafferty, creatively absurd conclusions, the hallucinated future world, the problem of real reality, the frame of the whole story, throws out ideas, layers of reality, real reality, other hallucinations, handled that correctly, coffee, cigar, relaxation, drugs in various states of refinement, a bunch of drugs, interacting with LSD coming into the world, Poland in the 60s, conversant with both sides of the world, what’s the state of big pharma, alcohol, everybody’s favourite, socialist block, Russians, mood altering pharmaceuticals, Rolling Stones, Mama’s Little Helper, something in the 60s, in an absurd way, crazy heights, so specialized, so localized, specific experiences, individual brain chemistry, satire, word magic, shoes, etymologically creates new words, these concepts release future ideas, extant, does this word exist, looking it up, a real phenomenon, one million percent true, a billion percent certain, old words to develop a name for it, old science fiction, Alan Moore, I am a wizard, the reason you read this book, a magic effect upon you, most of it is allusion, an impression of reality, hate to be political David Currie, everything is political, the drug is propaganda, psychically laminated by propaganda, its magical effect, benevolent, the world is dying, this nice illusion, palliative care, pump them up with morphine, 1968, you’ll know what book it is, a merry little surge of electricity, Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, multicolored pajamas, unmerry eyes, bitter sharpness, bent over her, you’ll be glad you’re awake, at setting c, well disposed towards the world, crude cop’s hand, something to look forward to, same thing, the earth is falling apart, everything’s shit, Philip K. Dick was informing on Stanislaw Lem to the FBI, a typo, Faith Of Our Fathers, set in a future in which people discover there are drugs in the water, see a false reality, an anti-hallucinogen, our masters who run society, the communist leaders who control the world, Stalin or Mao, you see one of five images, a clanker, an amrophous blob, another reality, putting the sunglasses on from They Live, nobody see the exact same reality, classes of reality, a little bit close to that, keep taking the veils off, putting on more sunglasses, once out of Plato’s Cave, what’s going on in the real world, fight for 7 minutes in a back alley, a duty, why that film is good, show them the pictures of kids with no heads, while trying to make a sandwich, a duty to say this is wrong, make people aware, a duty to reality, not the takeaway from this book, much like a Sheckley, hidden message, doesn’t strike a moral duty anywhere, opposite message, A Time Of Changes by Robert Silverberg, see reality vs. hide reality, reacting against, cheapness, how much does a car cost?, ridiculous and horrific, the guy as he is, wrought upon, the humour high point, covered in human bodies expanding out at the speed of light, seized people, the only thing comparable, a futurological thing, a prediction about the future, climate change, the earth is warming up and humans are responsible, cut emissions, marginalized and fringed, members of one of the major political parties, both are frakking, money, be realistic, liberals support frakking, nuclear power plants, not in my neighbourhood, my position hasn’t changed we’re going to do more frakking, Pennsylvania, seems incoherent, the official line, a disaster that we are doing, just live in Canada, climate alarmists, Campbells soup cans on the Mona Lisa, Andy Warhol, an interesting mix, like self-immolation, my favourite thing, performance art, hoisting on a nice petard, protective glass in front of the works of art, David’s toes, humans create art, destroy humanity, stated, paint or soup, terrorism, making a political point by hurting the civilian possibility, terrorizing the paintings, guy reacting against his buying slabbed comics, a little naive, I guess I enjoy the ones that I have, just like wow, fulfilled Jesse’s prophecy, open them up, capital has no way to go, slabbing VHS tapes, multi-use, warehouse society, jars of screws and bolts, not exactly hoarding, when repairing things, keeping them out of the rain, a less usable state, we warehouse our children, a sad state, warehousing other things in that garage, the capital we want to keep from disintegrating, taking drugs all the time, twisted and humourous logic, why drugs are bad, the undercooked but very good part of the book, words do the same thing, people can’t have conversations about topics because they’ve been magiced, structurally, Return From The Stars, visual scene, more than you can even process, big opening, betrization, unconscious aggression, a second set of drugs, normally or nicely, smiling, a defrostee, flagellating them, sending them, infuriol, a meditation on one particular major drug, everything being a drug, you can’t get rid of the shadow, do you want to pay the price?, it gets worse, give into it in a totally hallucinated form so as not to act out on it, tonally different, somber and serious, interesting imagery, needing to box, very Sheckley very light, they’re the same writer, very different books, what’s the gap separating them, ten years, more mature, some more Lem, Memoirs Found In A Bathtub, too silly too funny, jealous, just write such crazy stuff, idea after idea, active imagination, Olaf Stapledon like, for Will’s birthday, Odd John, Sirius the dog book, notionally a Will birthday episode, Will is the 19th, fifty years ago, before Terence came to France, 44 years ago (or a little more), the big news in science fiction this week, a former member of this show, Andrew Jones blurb, big new, Paul Weimer, usually on the cover, got the front cover, fantasy novel, terminal cancer, a few months left to live, 2nd to last book ever, Lord Of A Shattered Land, not earth shattering news, people who don’t like Paul, the friend died, not sexual pictures, Cirsova saying something about this, illegitimate, fuckin normal, you take pictures of kids, because you love your kid, as a blurber, Paul makes it so easy to bully him, he cares what he thinks about him, the appropriate response, Ender’s response, new kid in town, getting bullied, you can’t trust your teachers, you can’t trust your parents, you can trust your left and right fists, your best friends, bullying on the internet, harder to go and hit people, Paul refuses to disown some StealthyGeek, Patrick Tomlinson, minor science fiction author, people who are mad at him, behaves very poorly, honey, is he southern, derogatorily, why do we care?, do one of his books, even Terence has limits, he’s this he’s that, lying about being swatted, a guy who’s triggered by Trump, whether Briana Wu is trans, is she on tv, married a famous doctor?, raise money on kickstarter, make a game, didn’t make a game, ran for congress, gamergate, the puppy stuff, why are we involved, back to grievances, on the podcast for 10 years, almost every week, psychological problems, Trumpers, all of this is just bizarre bullying, teams up with the wrong people, member, will defect, Will will defect, a pickup basketball game with books, defect from myself, I swallow you, do not imbibed, spouting? spitting?, sitting on the park bench, many asian people who come to this park to meditate, walk barefoot through the trails, a shinto practice, Korean, how they do it, back in touch with the reality, forest bathing, everyday, very cheap hobby, wholesome, Will does two things: does toothaches, toothaches happen, justify this sentence, refuse to do, why do that?, could have gone to a football, mood organ set to toothache, every human experience, edifying quality, Christian tradition, the French movie Martyrs (2008), prove the existence of God, extremely disturbing and hard to watch, why it exists, very disturbing, the American remake, Disney ducks, unauthorized, the newphews kidnap Donald, converted to this religion, Scrooge, worships at the altar of mammon, other altars, calling this movie cheap sick and pretentious, quite choice, everybody gets to have a Nobel prize, Palestinian journalists, prize for peace, trying to get some cred back, do this by proxy, it would be really nice if, nobody is forced to accept these prizes, the tipping point, Barack Obama, you probably should have waited to give me this Nobel Peace Prize, about like Ronald Reagan, five new wars, African ones, made Putin invade Syria, prop up that dictator, drone strikes, Yemen, Somalia, Lybia, military interventions, has been a declaration of war since WWII, actions under NATO, AUMF, one third of Syria occupied by, blame Russia, the Syrians blame Russia, terrorist blame Russia, ISIS in Syria, president of Belorus, does not speak Belorussian, speaks Russian, learn Russian, Russian tourists on the French Riviera, Alexander Lukashenko, Haitian Creole, the Springfield, Ohio, seal the border, did you read the whole tweet, the same imperial force, Haitians really eating the pets, humans have likely eaten pets, the answer is yes, taking the pets and putting them in the van, the Haitians told him, in a thread, stopping US imperialism, seems very reasonable, sealed borders, your germanic forest, burn your father’s mill down, impress you into their army, that would be bad, hire cheap labour, work visas, do jobs at a factory, a mismatch, what’s actually going on, island borders are natural, Shogun, the Portuguese and the Spanish divided the world up, up to a certain point, Catholic countries, dispensation, we belong to Portugal, the best way to get out of this game is to become an imperial power, have your north African natuion destroyed by NATO, Gaddafi’s problem, refugees from a hurricane, Kenyan mercenaries, $2000 a month, Ukrainian mercenaries from Venezuela, a show going on, ducks being eaten, nobodies father’s mill is getting burned down, fathers mills being burned down in Venezuela, Haiti should have nuclear weapons, multi-level layered theory, an island divided in half, Dominican Republic, factories, mills, Patterson, New Jersey, a waterfall, technology changed, Cuba, posing as legitimate job recruiters, arrested 17 Russians, [Narendra] Modi, unwillingly fighting, impressed into service, misled, you don’t support our troops, bogged down in the granular details about what cat got eaten, the PM of Canada, do strikes deep into Russia, a great idea, Russia can shoot missiles into Ukraine, with impunity, if Ukraine had nuclear weapons, we are disciplined, we’re the best friend of the worst bully on the planet, NATO is a defensive organization, taking so much Palitol, the Christian theory of revenge, plunge Europe into a war, sealed the borders of Ukraine, stop imperialism, rather naive, tit for tat, the pawn of the United States, rather strange, the real actors are not being discussed, Goliath attacking David, standing on top of another giant, into the arms of Goliath, Finland and Sweden resisted joining NATO, for protection against Russia, Eric Weinstein, public intellectual on Joe Rogan, like Graham Hancock, the incongruity of that statement, a lot less public, Jesse Rogan, I don’t understand what we are doing in Ukraine, a giant CIA base posing as a sovereign nation, an offshore proxy, Defense Threat Reduction Agency, money laundering and racketeering organization, amid the chaos, Victoria Nuland, color revolution in 2014, a redline for Putin, too many times before, using Ukraine as a laundromat, bioweapon development, if the public new the truth, war propaganda, war to Putin’s doorstep, NATO off his border, gene-specific biological weapons, the CIA the CIA the CIA, those are not facts, take out the deep state, the yawn factor, David Currie likes the CIA, drinking the kool-aid or water, Jesse’s insane, Canada is not a sovereign country either, crazy rambling, well argued, lots of specific details, something bad to happen in Europe, tiny little details, proof that no country is sovereign, autonomous, China, Switzerland, Emmanuel Macron is an American puppet, a transnational class of people, fairly close contact, citizen of Earth, people work or them, for the good of everybody, they don’t have countries, the election system in Canada, the working men, anti-semitic, as a jew, fuck off, anti-zonist, the Rothschild family, other than zionists pupeteering the United States, whoever this was, WarClandestine, not hyperbolic, just a layout of the facts, always there to help Joe Rogan to understand, university professor who got into trouble in Oregon, he’s soaking in it, ingesting into you, the drug is social media, the drug is the war, a war very far from them, watch it on tv, the equivalent of the drug, people get siloed, talking with Cora, some magazine has Jesse blocked on twitter, businesses or bots, if you silo yourself, I’m not following anybody on this list, why does David Currie follow me, I had too much to drink, very British, self-reflective, why do people not silo themselves?, open the window and see, the Ray Bradbury 4 television screen walls, how do you know when you’re taking in these drugs of words, deeply talking about, enragol, all metaphor, the words themselves are the things that get, Trump is a very bad person, show me the books, how many ducks were eaten in that park, was the pet tasty?, tricks designed to make you hate people, what’s the justification for destroying Libya, highest standard of living in Africa, going against the agenda, threatening the French, what if you have to negotiate, having to pay more would be bad, NATO and France don’t get along this well, throwing so much out, a settlement that nobody is happy with, I’m a moderate, a radical centrist, regions that want self-determination, perfect elections under war conditions, an independence referendum, why isn’t it a real election, people with guns, herding people to polling stations, not there or dead, fled, really vague to say, people in Donbas, all things being equal, taking the words of the statement a little to literally, they blocked off this road, they do do that, they do make those arguments, decades, bad democracy, Terence is basically right, a little man being flung at a giant, American companies that make weapons, neither side is able to get the armies that they want, going to North Korea, not good, against it, the sealed borders, The Cat’s Advice, we’re born where we’re born and we don’t know what to do, the opposite of a natural border, can’t get media male, invading Canada and liberate it, why isn’t that under NAFTA, the Chinese postal service is premium, trying to privatize Canada Post, the US Postal Service, we’re doing this, a nice interlude, many different language, a baby language, this is grounding us, no one is getting hurt, no ducks being eaten, a famous immigration attorney, the ideology, the New Colossus, a parade day, 4th of July, a speech about immigration, shaped the town, people from all around the world, from Korea, India, South America, a melting pot, pushed out or forced into armies, Jesse loves Putin, such beautiful suits, when he rides horseback with no shirt on, Putin come closer, Biden backing off, he’s competent, what’s you’re definition of competent, Justin Trudeau’s career, held a few jobs, the Liberal party said this is our man, he can study, and corrupt too, spiraling out of control, Trucker protests, compromise, I’m nobody’s master, not even the President, whoever’s running the United States tells Canada what to do, paranoid, one of the members of NATO, weapons and money, official government signs, support Ukraine, Kamala doesn’t study, very well prepared, the definition of study, not well versed in geography, the one rhetorical trick, the debate, hated it, obviously, Trump really loves Joe Biden and misses him, not excited any more, very low energy, so still during the debate, he was like a lizard, the aspect of a lizard, on the defense from the beginning, he gets excited, when he’s losing he gets really depressed, she’s right, undecided voters, things that will help them, a list of things, baby tax credit, she did a good job, this man is a liar, Russia had a nuclear arsenal, the Afghanistan stuff, did she study?, some idea that you have, the Trumposphere, describe the situation in Ukraine, as if you were explaining it to a child, rhetorical flourishes, the significance of the passage of time, fall out of a coconut tree, let me be clear, looked up, smirked her head, laugh, condescending or superior, a turn-off to many people, the polls after that debate, the substance of this, an actor who doesn’t study her lines, reality tv men, he seems to study, extemporizing, when you think about, there’s just great significance, not wanting to use a teleprompter, politician actors use teleprompter, remind yourself with notes, a high end politician, when he makes mistake they’re mistakes based on his ignorance, clapping for a Ukrainian Nazi, we should have competent people, Xi, Deng, a lot less poor, master the forces they’ve unleashed, work, health, homes, consumer goods, combined and uneven development, the infrastructure is collapsing, the middle class is gone, some public jobs, when my boss isn’t somebody’s boss, putting out the fires locally rather than importing fires, why is Canada involved in Ukraine, we’re told to, why we should be against, to who’s running your country, stemming the problem, coup’d government, other than memes, Xi memes, the mayor of Englewood, New Jersey, more in remittances, happening for the Philippines, whole towns in Mexico, get to see your family once in a while, most people would rather not move, $5.25 a day, the elites will use immigration, go to America and send money back, a brain drain, a young people drain, within the United States, everybody wants to leave Kentucky, seal the borders of Kentucky, encourage the production of captial, under the US constitution, reforms are impossible, race to the bottom, Twitter to Austin, the film industry, huge tax breaks, North Carolina, use the power of government in the clever way to make capital do whay you want it to do, clean and safe, before [Rudy] Giuliani, to descend into chaos once again, closed storefronts forever and ever, needles everywhere, injecting drugs into yourself, not thinking about your capital, transhumanism, transgenderism, or is he a black woman suddenly, our final reveal, headwound, mechanical legs, everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds, we’re on that path, the first future, their job is to be soothsayers, he does see the first stage in that development, everybody in the congress misses this, ridiculous buildings, what’s right in front of their eyes, that irony, even the people involved, point to the tile, conference, second meaning, fucking, funny even before things start going, refering to page number, 8, 18, 72, as far down as we go in that [Star Trek] TNG episode Darmok, Anglic roots, greek ones for the drugs, just rohypnol, why you bugging, laxative, chocolate flavoured, stuck up in our words, build castles in the air, Bryan Alexander, a futurologist, ripped a fart, motorcycle, he lieks the Soviets, he’s a Russian fan, student of Eric’s, The Hopkins Manuscript, Sixth Column, futurist, for his job, consultant, a wikipedia entry, how handy, a close connection with its subject, require cleanup, Georgetown University Senior Scholar, what will be happening in the future of higher education, Qatar, branch plant universities, education, overseas, Canadian universities, some prestige involved, thanked in Polish, something he would enjoy, an interesting follow, what he’s doing for work, love of science fiction, the connection to his futurism job, these corproations have a budget, ways to spend it, 100% correct, not the ideal job, maybe he loves it, too much flying around too much talking about Amtrak, flying around, rural Vermont, “prepper”, an axe wielding futurist, vegan, really rough, processed foods, growing your stuff, seasonal, ferment stuff, protein eaters, cook meat, fruit, these humans, omnivore, like bears, on the flip side, the inuit had been doing it for thousands of years, deep five on motivations for ukraine, the grain belt, get the glyphosate on it, the bread basket of Europe, Bayer, where your headquarters was where you’re from now, Waterspider by Philip K. Dick, Special Deliverance by Clifford D. Simak, combo, Fury is of interest, Simak is of interest, philosophical, silly too, a journey of discovery and self-discovery, warlike, artsy, hippie, self-referential, convinced, get transported by a talking slot-machine, a robot in it, read it twice, a wishfulfilment thing like Heinlein did at the end, anti-feminist, Mistress Of The Dark Pool by Russell Gray, The Cold Female, titillating male romance, males get to save girls, both read by Mike Vendetti, Mistress Of Satan’s Hounds, unless you object to female form, in tubes on the cover, Dark Pool proper, the male gaze on the female form, nude, a knife, head is a skull, Cara and I had been married three years, the dark mountain pool, some insight into reality, hairy chest might be blood, a man’s magazine, a “sweats”, low rent Playboy, men’s adventure magazine, rainstorm, how they’re connected, a theory with regard to what men want, tapping into, baristas and barmen, cozy fantasy novels with green muscles mommies, the baker mouse, mice and baking, skip this, there is Cora, Tommy, The Noseless Horror by Robert E. Howard, distracted by other things, see you soon, who hasn’t Jonathan been on with, on with Scott, Connor, a video in Boston, a counselor, the Brattle bookstore, a booktuber meetup, Salem, the pope doesn’t know who you should vote for, choose the lesser of two evils, this is very important, didn’t endorse anybody, brutal, “serial leftist”, use communism as a slur, Kamala Harris’ dad was a marxist, not a heritable gene, far right, they are defining it differently, what they mean is dictator, 1984, you can talk to them a lot better, not even by his own definition, he hates Donald Trump, leftist and liberal, a slur, Paul’s pants are cranberry red, the glasses are hey man, never not wear them, red shorts, succeed in hijack, a tweet from 2015, what is this article about, a new article from today, obsessed with him, serial leftist troll, giant mistake from Baen books, Jon Del Arroz, “establishment mob”, “gatekeep”, social justice crusade, half-slur, near relentless attacks on Baen books authors, trying to make Paul’s world narrower, the ire of the woke mob, fun science fiction, poorly written choices, sad puppies again, extreme leftist politics, you have to be a girl, you have to be trans, time for black women to get awards, awards are stupid, If You Are A Dinosaur, My Love, industry clout, smear Larry Correia and other, that’s called racist, modern books, mostly a white audience, why is white in here, raging bald guys, all old guys, not raging about their whiteness, stack of books, swaying you to his position, two minutes ago, no justification, insulting, you’re a liar, you’re lying, the truth is the most valuable thing, the article is swaying you, if you talk about race all the time it makes you racist, race is a fiction, just like a pill, there’s no science behind it, not something you find in nature, no race of border collies, a legal concept, the law has real consequence, is there racism in law today, the first black president, how black was he, not black, the one drop rule, his mom didn’t have to pass, his dad from Africa, rhetorically get rid of it, plays god in movies, Morgan Freeman interview on 60 Minutes, Black History Month, a Jewish History Month, a White History Month, stop talking about it, actively not participate in that game, used to hurt people, hippocrites, bringing them into the van, racial animus, the races are already equal, Chinese, Korean, good question, why are they just now starting to, the Tsleil-Waututh, there’s a mall on Indian territory, at the mouth of a river that has a pipeline passing through it, transit tax, mineral wealth, Jesse’s view, redefined the word, 7 times a day, an arbitrary rule, affirmative action is very racist, ever popular, first member of the family to attend college, white politicians, first member of my family to attend college, you need to have more girls on the podcast, more fun, more low, chica, baby hens or roosters, Jenny’s dead, Cora we still get, Maissa sometimes, a more male activity, looking at old science fiction books, Cora’s unusual, she says everything that comes to mind, a virtue and a vice, neighbour who lived across the street and liked East Germany, solved racism, you are what you do, if you eat humans you’re a cannibal, misunderstand Canada, tax credit stuff, some sort of scam, lying about what’s going on, any substance to this, file 770, banned from origin game fair, getting people banned from things, why aren’t the police involved, all we hear, out of context, SFWA, in 2021, kopf means head, promptly removed her, another woke-mob, bragged in the comments, seemed gleeful, a tell, no longer guest of honor, reaction posts, people trolling each other for fun, we enjoy drama, sorry Brad Torgeson, weasel writing, Conan Attacks Fans, the Conan Properties International, good headlines, hatchet piece, political hitjob, Jason Sanford, Baen’s Bar, Genre Grapevine, dangerous domestic terrorists, trying to ruin Sanford, Baen’s top author, an executive there, the Baenistas, twisted vile shit, not willing to fight, bullshirt, be less polite, perfidy, a search of Paul’s account, his hobby, engagement farming, Kiwifarms, siderailed, lolcow, lascivious, don’t read these books, don’t know these people, boring stuff, Jonathan’s fans, written reviews, to be a fan, not racism level of heat, fan or a consumer, a dead person who wrote a book 500 years ago, laugh with them, Lawrence Block is anti-Trump, most people are totally disengaged, a lot of age involved too, trapped in an old ecosystem, promising making America great again, confused about what young people are interested in, MAGA communism, a small meme, a lot of bots, some of the tweets they tweet, Jackson Hinkle making being gay illegal, a nice walk, vitamin d and the podcast, drinking coffee, a little low energy, walking while on coffee, the road seems a little cleaner, finding this tweet right now, open borders, no nations, world government, under who tho, no government, local guy who picks up the garbage, wherever you’re born in the world, opportunities, travel all over the world, settled in London, England, happened to marry a guy over there, like a baby, toddler, not a pedophile, people are weird about children, fuck right off you idiot, concern trolling, the casual willy nilly throwing around of pedophile is a big deal, attack this person, ideological opposition to capitalism, somewhat better maybe, run of the mill liberal, a go along, an Assad is bad sort of guy, right wing left wing terms, are Democrats leftists, a war party for a long time, both war parties, they switch back and forth, foreign wars, the Pope’s right, escalate the Israel stuff, give them more stuff, might stop the Russia stuff, assassinated again, it’s illegal to be gay in 67 countries, pride parade, Alexander Dugin, repeat the fate of Sodom and Gammorah, an advisor to Putin, Liger, can’t stop attacking, identity politics, Communist Party of China, normal to be gay in China, not officially supporter, presume some censorship, funny and sad, bar/bets mitzvah, transgrandchildren, a major talkshow host, product of western colonialism, in British Columbia, provincial election, the corporations, and crown corporations change their logos for pride month, rainbow capitalism, a really bad tweet by the provincial NDP, that’s the insane thing, signing up for other people’s ideas, they’re wrong, who are these people what are they doing, look we’re tying to do stuff about housing, tax credits?, tax cuts, and frakking Pennsylvania, work for a cease fire, good at tax cuts, Republican guy, all money printing now, that’s why that guy’s not relevant, the promisekeepers, they need an external affirmation, meanwhile, Mike Pence, people got into it, I’m the guy who shakes my wife’s hand, very young, a wrestler, joined hands with Jackson Hinkle, Haz, streamers, everybody needs to read Dugin, do we need a new kind of red fascism, a scary word for sure, lost the war, Vaush, one of these gen x guys, are you joking, based, I can’t breathe, expose yourself, blackredguard, if Lenin Mao etc., Bernie Warren Staffer, common socialist attack, here’s what the reading says, nobody cites the source, a bad argument, an appeal to an authority, the undertweet, she like Mao does have a radical housing plan, doing fed work, accusing people of being feds, fed racketing, they do do that, he claims to be a socialist, you shall judge them by their deeds, the crossover between gaming, he has a sword and rug, agree on swords, swords are cool, kill your enemies and kill yourself, saber, light saber makes no fuckin sense, CIA leftism, Twitch, people provide subscriptions, donating money, digital panhandling, like Audible, credits to streamers, rough understand of how this works, suspect, pay them for the evil descent that they’re doing, NED, not hidden, not fake, not a conspiracy, why wouldn’t they be doing that, some other cutout, Bezos is so intimately tied, sow division, promote things we like, dispromote things we don’t like, three drinks, go talk to a doctor, self-harming, had too much to drink, three drinks is drunk, the way that platform works, certain things you can’t say, blood is green, Fortnite, a puff of green sparkly smoke, mom can’t handle that, why Minecraft is so popular, particularly reactionary, satanic panics fucked up my D&D games, just weird, congratulations on making it a Nazi bar, kids heads being exploded, flopping open, bluesky, this is horrible, watercooler talk for “creatives”, Jason Thompson, come out of the baby brain, cleaning them, a decrease in the number of people on twitter?, I’m over on bluesky, twitter was always political, find your way to everything, duck duck go doesn’t work, what’s left, get to the source as best you can, zionist lady from the New York Times, [an Assad toady], substack, huge following, biggest blogging service, Mehdi Hasan, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Bari Weiss, Matt Taibbi, something he never brings up, ever wonder about that last name?, a poll, every accusation is a confession, not a million percent true, a useful heuristic, a pretty rare deviance, true for politicians, blaming Trump for being in bed with Russia, uranium deal, baby level of psyop, I’m rubber you’re glue, primitive, juvenile accusation, calling the truckers Nazis, agents in with Nazi flags, just because they planted a Nazi flag, the government of Israel, anything you say about Hamas, being paid to be Hamas, you raped a bunch of people, massive rape in Israeli prisons, nothing on the other side, j’accuse all the time, boxes you in, what if you wanna learn some other thing, change your identity, people switch parties, RFK Jr., tied hisself to his Democratic identity, rejected and cheated, pick a team and stick with it, picked a team, tied to Kamala, speculating, reform the party, not what he spends his time thinking about, reading, socializing, a party in person, coffee, important to do it publicly, on the record, absent, not cool, not if it is public, on dangerous fuckin ground, lying is sinful, a mistake, barking down the wrong path, monsters at the other end, make jokes, the best way to do it, direct message twice, worry for seven months, forget about for seven months, not be mean to people, not a suspect character, the author write, wholly balloon, spicy, make sure you see this, clip from Futurama, pan-bi guy, a special issue of a fanzine about labour, a choice little section of Futurama dealing with unions, employee misclassification, the roasting machine for the coffee, read that zine, about Simak in particular, Joachim Boaz, 60s covers, I think we fundamentally disagree, got off twitter, siloing yourself, The Black Star Passes by John W. Campbell, piracy in it, Piracy Preferred, the Gernsback magazines, into describing gadgetry, rich guy, unsold me, this airpirate, cash and securities in physical format, gassing the planes, cures their cancer, a pirate with a heart, very super-sciencey, insane, further adventures, Don A. Stuart, Who Goes There?, Brian Collins, really bad takes (not taste), a bad ratio, young people read old sff, Journey Planet, Exiting The Vampire’s Castle by Mark Fisher, fucking wow tier, Russell Brand, the devil’s in the details,

We need to learn, or re-learn, how to build comradeship and solidarity instead of doing capital’s work for it by condemning and abusing each other. This doesn’t mean, of course, that we must always agree – on the contrary, we must create conditions where disagreement can take place without fear of exclusion and excommunication.

badly written, wow, fucking, wow, an atmosphere of snarky resentment, a columnist in the UK, anticommunist takes all day, anarchist, bad take after bad take, among other bullshit, independence under who?, Dalai Lama be a dictator, now that likes are hidden, to protect people from accountability, as evidence of this your that, worried about twitter being a center of things, staunch a flow of attack vectors, a feature, Abraham Lincoln was probably bisexual, journalism his thoughts, populism updates, piracy is not good, it is necessary, Herman Melville, 39 views, deep down the hole, really famous, because Pulpcovers has retweeted, scan the cover, fotoshop, too many hours, make things attractive and interesting, should be their culture and are not, take the hit, a very good hobby, everybody benefits, a joyful garbage man, a really good audiobook going, floor ceiling walls, tired in the shoulders, almost falling asleep, on cassette, might have been an Isaac Asimov collection, their drugs for your brain man, weird fiction, off track, not writing about it, getting something about it, Horrorbabble, Ian something, all the classics, almost all weird fiction, Scott Miller’s podcast [Lost Sci-Fi], lag spikes, The Bell Tower by Herman Melville, one of his best stories, train you up to max level right away, Clark Ashton Smith, such a premium story, Mars Is Heaven, a genius wrote that, Lazarus Come Forth, Oliver Onions, lady ghosts, The Red Room by H.G. Wells, I’m going to put this to bed, Christmas ghost stories, The Valley Of The Spiders, he’s so cynically correct, what would you do if you were mother to an aepyornis?, The Valley Of The Blind, so H.G. Wellsy, The Pearl Of Love, something irritating, why a pearl is in an oyster, this final beauteous creation, the coffin of his beloved, H.G. Wells fuckin kicking asses all day, why you so good?, an Indian man from India, a sex weekend, bump into their spouses, that’s the whole story, we know what’s going on with you, just so happens, I, Vampire by Henry Kuttner, after you’ve read Dracula, more entertaining than edifying, The Spider Woman by Maria Moravsky, Hounds Of Tindalos, watch out for the corners, straddles fantasy and science fiction, structured like a Lovecraft story, Jellyfish by David H. Keller, random guy thinks he’s the shit, so random, psychiatrist, not a great story, something to it, standard weird tales line about promethean science, done differently, in three parts, the last man, make mankind come about again, fails three different times, poetically written, drags, an audio movie version, Ziggurat Productions, these were fun, A Martian Odyssey by Stanley G. Weinbaum, Metropolis, C3P0 but a lady, full of great images, don’t know, don’t beleive, A Hitch In Space by Fritz Leiber, psychotic space partner, Kaleidoscope, House Party At Smoky Island by L.M. Montgomery, her only contribution to Weird Tales, another ghost story, The Powder Of Hyperborea, assume it is awesome, sword & sorcery story, temple prostitute golden girdles, An Inhabitant Of Carcosa, super dreamy, pretty good, pretty minimal, spawns a big chunk of Robert W. Chambers, True Detective, this is California, a bobcat, Ambrose Bierce, he’s like perverse, I’m writing this for me, An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge, intently trying to fuck around, A Bottomless Grave, very not possible, almost all reprints, my father a drunkard, only moderately wealthy, litigation with rogues guilty of infringement, neglected all my brothers and sisters, compelled to teach school, savage every direction, better than gold, at the dinner table, a patent had been granted him, the mos ingenious invention, a deep disappointment to him, until after they finished eating, my children, the uncommon occurrence, of courses it is better that he is dead, very terrible to us, cut off the baby’s ear, John you surprise me, mother forgive me for surprising you, the one eared baby, 7 pages of text, a show with Eric, a little bit scant, supposed to be half hour, we’re not on earth, this is too cynical to be any kind of reality, earth inverted, drawn before the court, one million percent corrupt, a love of a mother for her children is corrupted, the mother murdered her husband, is this another world other than our earth?, that is power, so perversely, “One Does Not Always Eat What is on the Table” , a corners’ inquest, bizare, nobody’s like that, The Terror by Guy De Maupassant, Fitz-James O’Brien, he’s great, The Diamond Lens, The Lost Room, What Was It?, casual opium use, things start rotting, things are more concrete now are they, killed in the Civil War, bastard son, even Jonathan has read, doesn’t follow the threads, looking through his bookshelf, son of in Anglo Norman, Michael Fitz-James O’Brien, racist, guy steals a diamond lens from a jewish, falls in love with a girl in a drop of water, Francis Stevens, The Elf-Trap, a lady, The Girl In A Golden Atom, certainly is weird, cool story, a little person, a Homunculus perhaps, a dream written down, prejudiced, American Writers podcast, educated in this idea of American literature, any club that excludes H.G. Wells, you can’t really talk about it, taking Lem in, from a guy from Poland, great ideas down in books, more importantly, those borders shouldn’t be sealed, via media mail, very important, because of scans, getting them to the scanners, a huge barrier, the shipping from the states, just stupid, how can you walk around the streets and not feel the oppressive evil, letting things slide, recycling, the compost recycling, seems silly, all subject to the same kind of scam, sell it as potting soil, thanks for all that work that we’re paying for, scam everywhere up and down, I hope that’s not true, puppies milking their mom is not horror, seems cute, lick up their poops and lick up their pee, works for her, they should be when they’re healthy, keeping themselves clean, petting is you’re grooming them, loving touch, cleaning is beneficial, the parts you allow and present, create an odor together, odoriferous glands, your hand is you mouth, some kind of defective cat, not super-judgey, my cat Mama, that’s how it happened, you remind me of my mother, Momala, Dark Brandon and Demented Brandon, disabled, Strange Brandon, had a limp for a while, Roommate Brandon, an aggressive way, Hubby, take out the garbage, a producer for a radio drama airing on XFM, Blue Hours, really in to running and desert walks, really good stories, including a Margaret St. Clair, retweeting request for pet owners to come get a pet that’s going to be executed, put your heart out, in xyz location, enough animals, word ban, innocent creatures, we want to help them, saddled with so many animals, mammals that like other mammals, reptiles are affectionate, evolved from reptiles, giving a rattlesnake a drink, giving a cobra some water, attack the hose, Steve Irwin died, looks a little bit like the cobra, neck pouches go down, something I like, caressed snakes, usually scared, the most dangerous animals, mouths and feets and machines and choppers, people love their snakes, if it tolerates you it might be love, eyebrow muscles, when you talk to a dog, when you talk to a wolf, a thing to be noted, not a thing to be followed like a mom from a child, expressions, wolves will growl, are you saying the word walk, was it walk?, cat expressions, glowering, dogs are training dogs, understand them better, understand us better, it will be smiling up at me, we’re on a team, such a pleasure, furry creatures, fur babies is too far, weirder than it needs to be, the poopy cleanup phase, open doorhandles, should be impossible, not even a latch handle, 7 boys, 1 of them a lady, prefers females, male dogs might try to hump you, scary, icked out, male humans and male dogs, once the babies pop out the males don’t have much to do for a while, not convenient, don’t even have to be the same species, cats too, dugs, what are cat breasts called?, cat breast podcast, mammaries, NIH website, a poem chat GPT write, you asking the perfect thing that it can do, one little error, ai art, A Witch Shall Be Born, tweeting about it, people are doing ai, a nice piece of ai art, we are not artists, we shouldn’t use living ai artists in our prompts, maximize his money, maximize public domain, when is he gonna die, Gutenberg was just following the law, the last hesitant on this, only met him one time, lots of people have met Robert Silverberg, a tool just like a camera, photos of trees and forests, lasted about ten seconds, is the guy behind the camera an artist, some people with a camera, black lady getting interviewed by a white lady, didn’t know what a musician was, identifying what an artist is, okay sure, Ansel Adams, Walker Evans, putting portraitists out of work, a tool, once you see it is a tool, a part of the resultant thing, who made the art if not the guy who gave the prompt, please write a poem to a woman named Samantha, in the style of Rupert Brooke’s Tiare Tahiti, ai art is stupider, a poem for hire, arguable, the famous poems written by Shakespeare, gay poems, by living on earth, Sonnet 18, a poem about poems, this is a trick, gifts in a gift shop, gift cards, birthday cards, a generational thing, invited to a lot of weddings, a whole scam, for wedding cards, it would always work, what should you write in the card, semi-interested, you will always be each other’s greatest gift, up and down, spring comes, sometimes you get to hot, the last three lines, so long lives this, the point of poems, that play with the guy with the big nose, Cyrano de Bergerac, the movie version is Roxanne (1987), a rap battle with another suitor, he’s a sorcerer, Father Of The Bride (1991), imprinted on The Jerk (1979), claim is a rapist, Gérard Depardieu, Peter Dinklage, The Station Agent (2003), Clarkson’s Farm, a reality show, Jeremy Clarkson, doing a show on his farm, learning how to be a farmer, Lamborghini, a tractor company, unreliable, there are versions of reality television that are pretty good, standard comedy results, Ricky Gervais, The Office, Karl Pilkington, too depressing, pretty bleak, an office job, An Idiot Abroad, tortures his friend, something wrong with him, adventures, a guy being miserable, a good lunch, Nathan For You, a business expert, very popular on comedy central, the economics of TV, Bronson Pinchot, bought a small town, fixing up all the buildings in it, a home improvement show, the role that made him famous, The Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina, rural Harford, you pitch a show for the home improvement network, a budget, a pitch, a hobby, The Old House, finishing projects, chicken coop, giving to chickens, a yard that had chickens in it, stay at home guy, very easy work, hens, a nest box, get those eggs out, keep their food in the pen, raccoons, bugs and greens, roost, wake up with the sun, if capitalism wasn’t forcing us, a cave or a cask, giant cask of amontillado, a shipping container, modular, in the hospital, putting a pacemaker in him, routine, heart fuckups, what toxins are put in our food, can’t get away from it almost, RFK’s MAHA, growth hormone and do pushups with RFK, pretty elderly, 68?, siblings, half brother, six years older, working on his body, playing golf, going out in the sun, a stupid sport, bad movements of your body, archery is probably better, the skill curve, I’m getting better, a good day, playing against yourself, go out and walk around, peck away, pretty addictive, what’s going to keep the cats from killing them and eating them, roosters will be very aggressive to any threats to their ladies, eat their babies, fertilized, a productive cycle, trial eggs, programmed into them, fun animals, landlord needs to fix our fence, when you have production you didn’t pay for the gift must be accepted, how the potlatch works, reciprocal debt is the economy, I owe you and you owe me, a polish chicken, when you lose a chicken, ploof on the top of the head, very decorous animals, colourful, wholy melanasiac, sex-linked, if producing eggs for consumption, she’s busy, once you have cattle and chickens, just have to feed em, a lot of capital expense, the fencing, student over to the island, you gotta feel this lady, she’s so muscular, this is not an animal you can push around, big pile of meat and very hungry, a dairy farmer, tobacco, lost his shirt, a trucker driver, rural mail carrier, drive your own car, ergonomic reasons, stable, health insurance, cousin’s wife, goats, five dogs, big dogs, vicarious pricing, very high end chicken coop, made of wood, $539 canadian dollars, a little ramp, keep the predators from eating your chickens, they tend to stick together, they’re always looking for food, socially gregarious, held and stroked, people have them as pets, fuel for your garden, five cows on a little farm, smells like nature, other projects, important cultural work, spread their gospel, passed it on to somebody with a yard, pass it on to Meg, there are cats on farms, mice, rats, they love birds, you wouldn’t see a raven, a sparrow, spend time with it, bears smushem, bears are coming, with torches, a ton of construction, new housing going in, wild animals are moving into the neighbourhoods, very cute, they sort themselves out, a pecking order, a little girl holding a hen, a painting of a little kid going in a bathtub, dude!, fuck off, you’re not being serious right now, tasty too, a sack of cracked corn, all the scraps, they eat grass, they eat weeds, they love bugs, spiders with a skull on them, she’s like yah, getem, a mosquito, interested in insects, up in the clouds, down in the dirt, the big parts, cicadas, mostly crunchy, break the neck of a bird and leave it in the sun room, editing up a podcast, make some coffee, too late in the day, slow season for work.

Posted by Jesse Willis