Tag: Clifford D. Simak

The SFFaudio Podcast #892 – READALONG: Ring Around The Sun by Clifford D. Simak

Jesse and Scott talk about Ring Around The Sun by Clifford D. Simak

Talked about on today’s show:
Galaxy 1952, 1953, one of his earliest novels, Cosmic Engineers, Empire, not really Simakian, very Campbelly, Campbell rejected it, City, guess the right answer, what does the D standfor, the D stands for Philip K. Dick, this book is superDick, kinda wild, a kitchen sink, so much happening, under the discipline of a competent writer, a great writer but competence is not the word for him, not natural, tons of wild ideas, under control, why does the little girl show up in the first scene?, cookin breakfast, infodump, why are you not married, this book is largely about childhood, child-like, we’ve been following an android the whole goddamn book, growin a beard, getting hungry, the big conflict is he’s fighting with himself, split into three, given his essence, what kinda book is this?, fairyland, as one might, familiar with fairyland, the topped stripes, a very strange book, David Pringle, a critic, The 100 Best Novels 1949-1984, an English Language Selection, 2 simaks, Way Station and City, 1949-1984, this is a good book, a Tall Tale, too complicated for its own good, prose style, a new plot twist in almost every chapter, a very ornate book, the McCarthyite era, economic speculation, technological panaceas, telepathic androids, robots who are also hungry, a very good Simak novel, after reading Shakespeare’s Planet, Way station, good book, sparkier, All Flesh Is Grass, Stephen King, parallel structure, not just because it has androids, a forever car, at the end of his career, a ton of Simak, keep going, recurring things, revist these things, houses, something was in the house, a bit of mental separation to avoid conflation, coming from everything you witnesses prior, every person has in common, they had some sort of childhood, even if you’re six and im sixty, graduation, your first job, your first love, start with the basics, always a possibility, Simak is not a boy, gotta get that top, almost Bradburyesque, the system that we live in, the economy, Star Trek economics, the forces, people protecting what they have, extraction, it doesn’t seem possible, not as good as The Visitors, almost all the parts, false notes, so many sparks, as maturity sets upon you, that theme I touched on earlier, very mysterious, setup pretty early, rumours of a forever car, it’s cheap, when things are happening in the economy, participate or not participate, cultural discipline like the Amish, they have to review it, they have to make the case, a benefit vs. a disruption, assailed by iphones and androids and robots and waymos, you can’t control what your government decides to subsidize or ban, all you can do is see what’s happening, the solution, the pretentionists, super-interesting, grilling him, what his particular cosplay is about, a sign of what’s going on, the conflict, there is technicality conflict, partly fighting with himself, why is this disruption happening, Simak would like some alternatives, razor, lightbulb, everything is free, how close they are, comin out of WWII, this cold war thing, spread outside of the cities, a big country, no target, constant extreme disappointment and hopeful, the mob is in the background, he doesn’t let that get him down, not a black pill book, locking us into ways of behavior, he’s searching for it, can’t we just all agree, a nice walk, changing of the seasons, an agrarian populist, doesn’t want cities making all the rules, we need farmers, making sure that way of life is protected, rustic rather than agrarian, people who love the countryside, people’s views on policies, one colour another colour, different motivations, the people have needs, one needs a truck and the other needs a subway pass, the uniparty (whatever flavour) doesn’t give you the cheap reliable bus or truck, supersmart, what if we take the idea of automation and use it as an application of disruption for the benefit of people, teetering on the edge of being evil, Crawford is a representative, a think tank, a billionaire class or higher, deep down they’re all the same guy, essentially just Simak, we’ve got to do something, the doing something is writing this book, for serialization in Galaxy, Simak was a newspaperguy, the Minneapolis Star, keeps you in a world, an academic, who the president is, tax policy, you have to understand it and get it out there everyday, being a political advisor, the politicans don’t do any research, so many things going on in this book, what’s the motivation behind this, even the Cold War might be wrapping up, set in the 80s (or 77), worries about the economy going bad, the word carbohydrates, we don’t just need foodbanks, soylent green, a FOOD episode, Gravy Planet aka The Space Merchants, on a parallel earth, manufacturing carbohydrates, wood goes in cellulose comes out, the scene on one of the covers, exploring the factory, bringing in raw materials, who is paying for all those robots, selling at a subsidy, inputs are free, drill down, what his economic solution, nobody gets paid anything, all profits, everybody gets everything, communism, altruism, Crawford is a sympathetic evil guy, I wanna let you live, make me understand it, you can’t threaten the way things are, the alternate people who seem leaderless, Robert A. Heinlein, By His Bootstraps, time doesn’t exist, this book has a lot going on, a coup happening, a breakoff civilization, agrarian populist, there’s no voting, there’s only opting in or dropping out, this is not an evil book, Beggars In Spain, Slan, mutants, quasi science fiction, his first sale is published in 1952, 1953, Clifford Dick Simak, Dick’s not influenced by this, this is a parallel extraction, Dick cites Null-A and Van Vogt, Realms Of Fantasy, renfaire shit, Society For Creative Anachronism, the 70s, mutant = X-men, rebellion, The Golden Man, the danger room, his subversion of mutants, what if they’re superattractive to women but don’t know how to read, women with three breasts, so mutated they look like slugs, so mutated we don’t recognize them as mutants, what John W. Campbell was asking for: more mutants, mutant stories, in essence, you’re supposed to think I’m a SLAN, we the people who can see the future, man walking on the Moon, telepathy, an autist when it comes to tops, he can think about childhood real good, I can read a different science fiction next week, the podcast mutant, observation/joke/question, people on twitter, how much to spend on editorial revisions/covers, they’re in the bubble, you’re the weirdo, as a percentage of the population, people who read 10 books a year, they absolutely exist, 1 guy Tony C. Smith, discovered science fiction as an adult, got excited about reading like a kid, knew how to read, just didn’t do it, book addicts, get books cheaper, give books cheaper, can’t afford them, and thus SFFaudio was born, a family of readers, both sets of grandparents, reading something non-fiction, an immediate upbringing, ancestrally, school teacher, shop teacher, great uncle, voracious reader, great grandparents, their book collection if they had one, you inherit things you don’t even realize, they have different things, are you ashamed of your books, gi joes, transformers, music, a personal culture for each family, used to be anyway, figuring out what this book dealing with, it’s so big, society and the personal, the weirdest aspect, that’d be loving himself?, the most broken part of the book, too spinning in on itself, wow, an interesting thoughtful guy, recurring, hopefulness, knowledge in the stars, Time Is The Simplest Thing, disrupting the economy, read this week, chapter 33, so he was an android, an artificial man, the cunning of man’s mind, the mutants did!, even he himself would never know, artificial women too, and a host of other gadgets, wreck the race from which they sprang, China is disrupting our economy!, good jobs, the mystery of the story, how he composed the book, it mostly fits together, the mystery is less important than rumniating on the topics themselves, sparky full of ideas, flying witches on broomsticks, steal ideas, bring them home through Mexico, Walmart style disruption stores, wow, rejected by the girl’s family, fairyland of youth, memory, super-hilarious, the past is the most interesting place, a hilarious and interesting genre, the Merryland books, 1672ish, Erotupoia, Bettyland, a genre of fiction, a visitor reports back on a place he went to, a geographical version of a woman’s body, hills over there, rivers down here, having fun, making fun of the genre, with childhood, that Bradburyesque sense, certain scenes, endless summer, how come we can’t live in a good world, feel that, meanwhile, boardroom tables, privacy policy, extract more from you, televisions are so cheap, they’re using the tv to influence, Netflix button, put ads in your operating system, Enshittification by Cory Doctorow, the whole point is to extract from you, a car you can hand down to your grandkids, forever clothes, forever razor, Stressed Out by 21 pilots, momma sang us to sleep, build a rocketship, you need to make money, getting out from under, whoever’s doing this, Vickers says, and his parents need to be thawed out, so it turns out…, horrible capitalist system, all my contents are correlated, he was the guy behind all of this, go talk to the robot, the plan is to make things better for people, doing these things to the economy, the importance of knowing what your doing, mindfulness sounds really bad, pitchfork and torch, we’re gonna do this to accelerate the badness that’s happening, the evil people in our world, saying to themselves, if they think of you at all, we have a mandate to make profits for our shareholders, Cora’s tweet: every time I see this guy I want to punch him in the face, Albania’s ai minister, power good government with good solid nuclear power, the disruption happening seems familiar to us, the forever car, how people think about Teslas, tended to be publicly enthusiastic, the promise of them, the batteries won’t, in the frame, bends the frame, throwing the car away, the cars have televisions in them, all the smart cars, Windows 10 isn’t supported anymore, your Ford Focus isn’t supported anymore, Ford Mustang from 1964, a throwback pickup truck, can fix it yourself, anyone can fix it themselves, emissions are why, you can’t achieve good emissions without electronics, waiting at the light the engine is turned off, save theoretical emissions, the biggest expulsion, it’s all gamed, theater, try not to play any games you can’t win, the casino, not gonna win, not gonna go, Bryan Alexander travels a lot for work, an endless nightmare of airport problems, sleeping in the airport, much rather not, it’s incredible that we’re here, what air travel is going to look like in the future, bar lounge area, seats too small, crammed in, extracting you, the Chinese with their flying cars, not allowed to disrupt our world, the pretentionists, Samuel Peyp diarists, pretending to be cats and dogs and birds, my area of study is Aztecs, online video games, Balder’s Gate III, escapism, building games, Minecraft, the biggest genre, survival, farming, sandbox games, everything’s easy, 2 seconds to mine, crafting, rock and stick and 2 seconds later you got a handaxe, 10 minutes later log cabin, building your own log cabin, pretty satisfactory, digital log cabin, didn’t have to get sweaty, I live in my game, the people at the renfair, jousting, friendly and together, conventions, leavin the world, a bubble for 4 days, similar interests, I was somewhere else, Robert Silverberg is still alive, every science fiction convention, during COVID, theoretically left science fiction for a while, he feeds on the same interests, people that read a bunch of books, grinding horror, driving across the United States, the next 2 Dortmunder books, if you’re painting a warehouse, a lot of ceilings, intense labour, a kind of pretention, you’re out of your head, drudge work, great experience of another world, arms and eyes, appreciating some thoughts goin on, a really amazing thing, a kind of dissociation, something going on in this book, MK Ultra, The Manchurian Candidate sort of stuff, CIA, human robotoids, wipe people’s memories, implanted memories, very Philip K. Dick, for political control, assassinations, interrogations, send messages, the Jason Bourne series, MK Ultra fiction, extensive in the United States and farmed out to Canada, we have to invest, at least 20 years, the Chinese are doing it, maybe the Russians are doing it, POWd by the North Koreans or the Chinese, act strangely, obviously brainwashed them, we need to be able to brainwash, how can he be an android, fully functional, a scene where Data has a beard, can he control the growth, you can imagine a model of Data that has that ability, everything about him is a man except we’re told he is not a man, people are programmable, you learn these languages, something that humans have that dogs don’t have, responding to their environment, programmed to learn human things, Simak is reading the paper and reading between the line, Philip K. Dick was not a connected guy, he worked at a music shop, this is not public at the time, from the Nazis originally, news stories, the Korean War, they must be brainwashed because they’re rejecting the United States in favour of North Korea and China, on the wrong team, other possibilities than mind control, the most powerful street is Madison Avenue, both are scary, K Street, think tanks, the justifications, the oligarchs to do what they want, Crawford is not as bad a guy as we thought, come on friend, he said softly, Simak doesn’t want war, a lot of horror, he doesn’t know the way, hopin to make the place better, less of a Catholic book than his other ones, not a Catholic guy, some of the thoughts, more of a spirtual level to it, how Arthur C. Clarke’s The Star, a jesuit, a relationship to the stars, pathos and suffering and understanding, more scattered, touch on it a few times, page 178, end of chapter 39, how he came to be, his purpose and his end, a tool of immortality, the orderly progression, the next step, law unto the entire universe, the strength of human face, divinity, terrible need of faith, question and doubt, no need of faith, faith replaced with knowing, questing, a lot of great stuff in this book, so sparky, continually impressed by him, so philosophical, idea books, not stuff happening books, thoughtful and exploratory, an OCR, the fire wheel dog formula, the formula of the mutants, an earlier forward step, fire, cook things, pull things, dogs?, bows, plumb line, technologies, ssomethin super interesting, an extinct [breed] of dog, canis vertigus, the turning dog, manor house, run on the wheel to turn the spit, a small dog with curled legs, literally three technologies all together, replaced by motors, technology leads to technologies, a border collie, different labs, different from goldens, programmed differently, retrieve birds from swamps, love your children, take you on walks and be happy to see you, herding, keeping their sheep in their proper place, moving them from place to place, talking about technology in that way it is science fiction, you can’t have science fiction without connection to technology, it isn’t engineering fiction, mine the asteroids, that isn’t about how to make the rocket go, atomic pile!, what will it do to the people?, if there is a main thrust in this book, products that will no longer have to be manufactured or repaired, intentionally destroying society, a tv with spyware built into it, well you’ve got food that free, who is being evil?, the oligarchs, want progress to stop to maintain the status quo, conserve their profits, pretend I was somewhere else, more interesting or better or not like this, zombie apocalypse games, Project Zomboid, ambulance driver or cop or teacher or athlete, survive for as long as you want, an endless game, no victory conditions, Sid Meier’s Civilization, if they’re trying to hurt you, doing it and don’t care, changing it to help me win this game, taking stuff from you and putting it in my pocket, Crawford is from the old guard, America 1950, the other world mutants, help the population, he makes a film, talk to the pretentionists, evacuate the earth to these other worlds, on to the stars if necessary, a temporary solution to this particular crisis, we in our present, people out of work, carbohydrates are the solution, going off to be pioneers, let’s do enclosures, fill it full of sheep, goodbye people, crimes that can get you exported as your punishment, free land in an empty continent, more profits for Hudson’s Bay Company shareholders, love or indifference or hate, probably not going to be neutral, “mutants”, not telling what’s going on, we spread this out, $500 per room, trade that in, they’re not trynna make a profit, the help is accelerationist, for a not religious guy, lying is evil, deception is not necessarily evil, you shouldn’t lie to people, the oligarchs are hurting society somehow, the mob, trynna hunt people down and kill them, offscreen in the book, “populist”, kind of a slur in the United States, people getting what they want, close to fascism, we bind you up together, a whole bunch of farmers, get our voices heard together, the popular voice vs. the bound stick for violence, on team Simak, a bit of violence, story is about conflict, Hamlet the play, the first detective story, when does the ghost appear, the soldiers see Hamlet go talk to the ghost, the ghost of his father, the rest of the play is him trying to testing his hypothesis, does my mom know?, to know or not to know, should I just go along?, a philosophical investigation, everybody dies, Ophelia dies, he kills Polonius, the ultimate answer is maybe you, do I want to turn over this rock of knowledge, feel something, catharsis, detective fiction comes out of Poe, when it hits with Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie, a little bit of science fiction and a lot of mystery, this essential question in us, not being satisfied, a conspiracy book vs. a mystery book, turns out it is a third of me, what a book!, so good, glad to have read it, YouTube video, different things there, what Simak next?, May 2nd, The Handle by Richard Stark, gonna love it, Way Station, All Flesh Is Grass, 1965, how many did he write in the 70s?, lots in the 70s, A Choice Of Gods, Enchanted Pilgrimage, The Fellowship Of The Talisman, The Werewolf Principle, The Fisherman, a rusty rocket, a scene in the book, so rich, he’s the man, overcountry travel, he’s the flyover country science fictionist, New York guys, Bradbury in Los Angles, Missouri, Colorado, California, Orson Scott Card in Utah, when you get to the west, Wyoming, east of, Ohio, Kansas, is Kansas the west, right in the middle, Shaun D. Standfast, passed away, notebook lm, 9 interviews, living in Minnesota, geographic and philosophic backwater, east coast, New York, distinct effects, professional isolation, the science fiction swim, tied closely to his desk, a lot of publication with John W. Campbell, rely on letters, a Clifford Simak letters set, Isaac Asimov and Jack Williamson, Minneapolis, Poul Anderson and Gordon R. Dickson, tell me more, the distilled info, people that like audio, an audiobook, make it feel like a real conversation, shaving and smoking, pops out an mp3, my android ran out of cigarettes and is grateful to have some more, how much Dick have you read, not as coherent at novel length, some of the images, his best novel, very disputed, Galactic Pot-Healer, very funny, it ends like a flat tire, great scenes, not exactly a Simak novel, what makes it so great, if he’s Tolkien it is his Lord Of The Rings, rougher and sillier, the basis as a place to escape, wasting time on the internet, gets a call from god, raise a sunken cathedral, other pilgrims, yarrow stalks, The Man In The High Castle, how great Dick can be, what did we settle on, All Flesh Is Grass.

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #889 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Travels With A Donkey In The Cévennes by Robert Louis Stevenson

The SFFaudio Podcast #889 – Travels With A Donkey In The Cévennes by Robert Louis Stevenson (3 hours 51 minutes) read by Patrick Wallace for LibriVox, followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion are Jesse and Maissa Bessada

Talked about on today’s show:
1879, blanked out on the Cévennes part, a CBC ideas, travel writing, a Mark Twain, couldn’t do the show, abandoned the book, sad sad story, travel literature, living in Egypt for two years, everything is different, letters home, describing what’s happening, bringing up baby, Bringing Up Baby (1938), exaggerate a little bit, Travels by Michael Crichton, private about a lot of the stuff, public about a lot of the stuff, travels with his sister, before he died, a bunch of things that happened to him, picked from earlier and later things, his parents, what income bracket they’re in, guessing, early stuff is all travel stuff, exotic locations, Spain, very good writer, extraordinarily thing to write down, scuba diving, the bends, not enough air, lucky to be alive, I had to resist that quite strongly, an incredible thing to say, in the desert, elide the relationship, some movie start, a spiritual retreat or something, not a super-spiritual guy, nobody understands, profound effects, hike Kilimanjaro, tall, weird, super-smart, a wealthy background, might have been CIA, lot of people’s dads were CIA it turns out, more like a memoir, not exactly travel, being in medical school, attitudes towards corpses, young horny guys who think they are able to cure all diseases, resisting that, The Terminal Man, writing on the side, instead of being a doctor, more of his stuff, that’s definitely true about him, travel incident, Paul Theroux, The Old Patagonia Express, Eric Idle, travel writing, A Year Off by H.P. Lovecraft, does this sound familiar, a grand tour, really?, a travel guy, so expensive to travel, it fits, the poetry of it, over the top, he’s so cheap, he’s a dreamer, the dream, an inheritance, a small budget, Let’s Go Europe, Let’s Go Central America, a cheap place to eat, you’ve got to if you can, travel broadens the mind, going everywhere, much cheaper: read about those places, we don’t always agree on everything, animal abuse, I’ve made Modestine my slave, it has to have been, he’s much softer that the average person, he felt guilty, he’s in love with her, he had the good manners to cry about it as he’s selling her, wait a minute, I’ll cry now, a new boss, locked herself out of the school, she had her bible group there, a rumor about Jesse, show a student something inappropriate, wallpaper, Mort Kuntsler painting, no nudity, a painting of a woman, offended a student years ago, Predator (1987), just 3 years older than me, go down the street to the bookstore and read the novelization, books don’t have literary restrictions on them the way games do, in this book there’s a scene where Robert Louis Stevenson after a cow, he calls them sluts, referring to Modestine, her faults are based on her race and sex, it’s hilarious, disparages women left right and center, a word for female women, [wench], other than a physical journey, a lot of religion, the least religious parts, going through time, donkey pilled, donkeys are cool, cat pilled, dog pilled, a she ass, a jenny would be the right word, jack and jenny, second in his estimation, even though the wife can read and the husband can’t, they’re inferior, second class citizens if even citizens, up and down stuff, catholic vs. protestant, non-christianness vs. christianness, geopolitical landscape, I’m a lame woman who can’t get out of bed, go next door, it’s like time travel, he’s alive while we’re reading the book, casual sexual partners, a woman with low standards of cleanliness, going into a monastery, not converting, very reasonable, finest set of wrinkles on her face, we won’t meet again because I’ll be dead, my man is completely ignorant of everything, these are all real encounters, shades of his interpretation, just 12 days, felt like months, the audiobook not in the original, it doesn’t fit the book very well, it is not the journey, and now the book is starting, reading with your eyes vs. reading with your ears, following characters, from moment to moment, a section that really caught me, some thoughts are the most beautiful things and then they vanish, wow I love that, so beautiful, “vanish”, more deeply, an atmosphere of pleasure, so disposed my spirit, in another country, in a different time, done me good, scan their features, a god travelling by our green highways, ope, the lighter about our business, I dined with a pair of Catholics, captivated by him, the one that everybody knows, Doctor Jekyll And Mr Hyde, a guy who’s one guy who’s two guys, transforms like The Hulk, all the superhero stories are derived from older stuff, nothing that isn’t, Silver Surfer, Galactus is god, Spider-Man, Superman is the most simple, he has no characteristics, he’s from space, his wife didn’t like it, he threw it in the fire, you could have fixed it, he wrote it again, the sparks of his wife, it was supposed to be a surprise, go in with no spoilers, The Sixth Sense (1999), oh he’s a ghost, not art films, fell asleep while watching the movie, the little boy’s saying: I see dead people, Bruce Willis and the kid, it’s dark, slow paced, a build up, the whole point of the movie, so heavily on the twist being the thing that makes it good, you know who the hulk is right away, the origin story is just to get to the thing, unassuming New Yorker, tension there, with great power comes great responsibility, they’re the same guy, that was the sensation of the book, doing something nobody had really done before, reading Edgar Allan Poe, The Black Cat, axes his wife and burns down the house, The Tell-Tale Heart, murders in the domestic sphere, it’s a parody, he’s making fun of something, a guy who drinks too much, out of perversity he kills his cat, the cat comes back the very next day, a curious colouration, who owns this cat, he kills the cat a second time, that’s the question: why does all this stuff happen, you drink too much, it’s about teetotalling, what is The Tell-Tale Heart about?, feeling so guilty, the narrator, he’s so upset about what he’s done, he’s hearing the heart under the floorboards, a powerful piece, we interpret him at the end, they can hear the sound of the beating heart under the floorboards, nervous very dreadfully nervous, the hidden thing inside of Poe, late last year, it’s about his adopted father, disowned him, John Allan, Poe and his older brother, orphaned, father disappeared, mother died, this one child, they broke up the kids, explains so much, of this famous actor pair, stage actors, adopted mother who loved him, was jealous of him?, win back their relationship, the richest guy, fucking around with Poe, Poe was a handful, a lot of stress, a great artist, I have to be forgiving, a professional writer, they traveled to Scotland when he was a child, early 19th century, wouldn’t fund his education, gambling debts, why the psychology is so awesome, he has massive passions, gave nothi9ng to Poe, his illegitimate children, enmity, some trauma, The Cask Of Amontillado, revenge for something never stated, people’s interpretation, all coming from the personal, hwy he’s going anywhere, an affair with a married woman, trying to walk it off, still living with his parents, get some life experience, Fanny Osborne, adopted the son, Jack London revered Robert Louis Stevenson, makes total sense, Jerry Of The Islands, Call Of The wild but in the South Pacific with a Terrier, boat life, Brother Of Jerry, a Pacific guy, Japan’s invasion of Korea, massive success, big career, very short, Wolf ranch, he buys a boat, many other science fiction stories, he goes to where RLS is buried, Tahiti/Samoa, traveling for his longs, a weak constitution, consumption, photos of him old, 44, brain hemorrhage, a lot of coughing, not good for ya, he wrote a ton, a few famous things, A Child’s Garden Of Verse, age 7, young man, wearing a fez, huge 20 hour biography, précis it, Requiem, by Robert A. Heinlein, the starry sky, poetry of them, almost the people were the problem, sleeping inside, outside with his stars, oh here’s the desk, we don’t use it, the horror of this book, causing so much strife, strife between people, an ultra-right wing, crazy woke leftist, not religious at least in clothing, 1 protestant region, a lot of governesses, their religions are compatible, peaceably together, exporting their people, the means of dividing people, the one paradigm, things are happening in the world, that guy is a demon, he’s just demonic, doing demonic things, if you literalize things too much it clouds your thinking, the way to escape this, alternative points of view, not hiding things from your kids, not allowed to DM any more, keeps kids out of trouble, creates love of vocabulary and reading, positive things, explore morality in ways that are safe, ruinous, never lie to them, tell the kids about stuff, etymology, pencil, pen, peninsula, a male body part, that’s the root of it, penne pasta, it is cool, whenever we’re talking about vocabulary, not bird or bark, metaphor roots, understand, misunderstand, not as things to memorize, a list of SAT words, not designed to last, inscribed, cut into written into, epitaph, euphemism, Phemie’s not a name, well spoken, a name from 6000 years ago, number one and number, I gotta go, misinterpret, the word piss pisses people off, the letter, the letter p has now become a word, caca, don’t mention the t word, the trump word, manupulae comprehension, banning words, banning speech, correcting people’s speech, without censorship, the word “nigger”, the offensive word, changed it, censorship is a kind of manipulation and control of people, a good person in a weird time, in the religion discussions, changing words for other words, that was beautiful, he’s insightful, I learned a lot about a dead donkey, her and her personality, she’as pretending it is too heavy, giver her a switch, times in the book where she’s running, approaching something, sharing his meals with her, not just master and slave, words in the book, horses react to spurs, that’s why spurs exist, give it the heel, the programming that you want to communicate, they enjoy running, if Will were here, girls love being chased more than boys love being chased, little girls, “chase me”, why?, boys want to hit each other with sticks, jungle gym, jumping over rivulets, not going to disagree, it’s built in, knows how to stand up, books allow us to communicate not just by modelling our parent’s but with the ancients through codexes, naughty girls, in the context of it, tripwires for people, how much has things changed, I have a goad!, a pinpricking stick, that’ll make it go, almost nobody rides horses anymore, a famous streamer shocking his dog, shock collar, it wasn’t, it’s not a shock collar!, to stay on the bed, part of the set, a very horrible person, those shock collars are legal, enough pressure, relatively unpowerful, animal abuse, shocking part, for training, prevent them from doing damage with their teeth, contemptible, dogs are tools, protection for our animals, comfort creatures, we are in a strange relationship with animals, 1878, definitely different, haven’t touched a real animal, Alex (Cirsova), the farm animal part of the zoo was the most popular, books about cows and pigs and chickens, that screen, a farm in the middle of Toronto, kids want to see these things, we live in light pollution, behind screens, screens and screens and screens, a donkey braying, go to the feed store and pet the cat, we need to and we don’t, most of them don’t have pets, most people didn’t have pets until the 20th century, menageries, a collection of pets, Poe in The Black Cat, monkey, birds, a cat, an attack on teetotalling, drinking is bad, the love of animals, central, cat moms, fur babies, a little overboard, oh yeah, Cévennes, not super far from Spain, what we know about the world, only partially correct, French wasn’t one language for a thousand years, small languages that came together, English has changed significantly in that same time frame, England invaded by the French, Norman French, right near Paris, the borderlands, North of Nice, more towards Andorra, a country between Spain and France, a valley, a little valley, kinda related, the first modern nation state, the borders of France as they are today, let’s get everybody on the same system, meterize gods, the god of justice, the French Revolution, a pretty simple language, a funny thing early on in the book, in the Scottish, answer a question with a question, a hippopotamus or a alligator, I just need to know where I’m going, the water your swimming in, the people of Quebec, still a colony, evolved somewhat, old France, not wholly frozen in time, a time capsule, a colony cut off from the empire, when they import French teachers to be their tutors, also twice removed, the Acadians, regular French, the accent’s going to be different, the culture, an effort to rationalize French, that French rationalization was much harsher, a fashion to add new words all the time, kids fighting against that, the official discipline of it is pretty strong, recreate his his journey, the prequel part, floundering, the kind of book you need to be with it, nice and short, more and more and more, I really like this book, went on a journey with it, probably should be excised, why some things should be excised, The Sinking Ship by Robert Louis Stevenson, Fables, half shaved, to the philosophic eye, she is settling fast, the expression is a strange one, time is only relative, in Davy Jones’ Locker, by parity of reasoning, the position of the ship, spoken like a good officer, the spirit room, there is nothing new in our position, he’s predicting his own death, struck by lightning, something inside you might burst, eating dinner, money in the savings bank, too far gone, or whatever it is, getting drunk since they came aboard, an old salt, good god cried the captain, as she were going down, nothing new in our position, a man’s handsome fashion, hope to be eternal, omit to take a pill, or doing anything at all, perfectly conclusive give me a cigar, a glorious detonation, really really really great, his parents get a doctor, might as well start digging his grave now, find a lady to like me, to lie under the stars with me, where did this person come from?, all of my eggs when I was born, she came into existence around the time of the big bang, I don’t think you take my meaning, the captain has a philosophic eye, his trainee, the wine dark sea, the new day is always rosy fingered dawn, a mental trick to fill time and remember what happens next, Homer is not the author, a beautiful morning, the next day, once upon a time, Brothers Grimm world, When tigers smoked, bad arguments, greeks not having the colour blue, a metaphor, the sea tosses you left and right and makes you a drunkard, when you drink too much you vomit, it’s all metaphor, the effect of drinking unmixed wine, drink wine at parties, put a lot of water in it, tipsy and fall over, snoring on the couch, the host’s duty, mix the wine at the right amount, fell out of fashion, drinking as a vice, a way to make your water purer, we can’t have nice things, when gin came into the UK, blasted drunk, small beer, reading something a little bit older, a lot wiser, bible study, you need read to more than one book, don’t just listen to the one guy’s interpretation, stories from the bronze age and a little later, stories about Spider-Man and Batman, a really good character, trouble in the world, Superman, good hearted, pay your taxes, circumspect, your relationship to the good, old books making think good thoughts, out of the horror of the current thing they want you to care about, a way of engaging, be honest all the time and damn the torpedoes, a man condemned to death, I’m still gonna be me, blowing up early, fits both ways, or do anything at all, convinced by the argument, everything is shaped by what you know, don’t know what cancer is, making really scary faces, smoking causes cancer, the propaganda was, the message little Jesse received, misinformed, skin cancer, what you put into the minds of little boys, looking at it for a long time, schizophrenic, in order to make him less schizophrenic, calmed it down?, afraid of it, a little shaky, gives us a little buzz, a little speedup, largely afraid of alcohol, mothers against drunk driving ads, be a control freak about things, addictive and expensive, if you mix your wine properly, heavy marijuana users, positive effects, chill me out, medical marijuana, stop vomiting, you can sue when they spike your shit, a grow house, filters on cigarettes, a half measure, tar in cigarettes, the disease was solved by having woodsmoke in your home, peanut allergies, exactly, celiac disease, gluten intolerance, glyphosate, why you can’t have any bread, the poison they put on it, our food is contaminated, if you go to Italy, genetically modified wheat, blame autism on Tylenol, when your baby is growing inside of you, folic acid, a good diet to begin with, how did people survive without all the supplements, sold a bill of goods, what happened to consumption, name a guy who isn’t Doc Holiday or Edgar Allan Poe’s wife, the diseases get less worse, at Christmas, with this last name, alcohol drinkers, smokers, 6 uncles, drinking was dangerous, smoking was a bad idea, sailors smoke, everything is explained by looking at the backstory, abstinence from alcohol, get rid of this scourge, husbands to beat wives, cheap alcohol is a tech, fix itself by giving it enough time, China was addicted to opium, a revolution against their occupiers, fentanyl, smaller, cheap spirits were the problem, from too much gin, alcohol poisoning, nobody’s going to be talking about it in 1000 years, maybe we’re talking about, teams and brave talk, our telepathy works fine, cursing you, had faith, chose right, in 2 weeks for a Dortmunder book, space brain, Misha Burnett, Killing Time, this book is great, reading it again, so easy to read Westlake, see the hands spreading apart, audio drama, aphantasia, do you think the way I think, in dreams, see when I’m dreaming, look at the blue ocean, there is a sea, an ocean, rosy fingered dawn is just breaking over the horizon, the sea is wine dark, what colour is the sea, imagine it, good at drawing?, draw a boat, a rowboat, a dinghy, a fantastic artist, another guess, no, do you see things in dreams, the same part of your head, you don’t have conscious access, pink, the colour of wine, the darkness, its deep, hiding its contents from you, why it is evocative, Pulpcovers recorded Rogues In The House, full of colour, a very angry gorilla, takes his cape, I am the master now, monkey see monkey do, a red caped monkey, why is it a red cape?, little red riding hood, all subject to metaphor, monkey men are men who act like monkeys, what’s the difference between us and an animal, a Simak recently, The Visitors, kinda like War Of The Worlds, the invasion of the Earth by slabs from 2001, obelisks, colonizing the planet, bales of cellulose, have a fantastic day.

Travels With A Donkey

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #888 – READALONG: Bank Shot by Donald E. Westlake

Jesse, Scott Danielson, Maissa Bessada, and Misha Burnett talk about Bank Shot by Donald E. Westlake

Talked about on today’s show:
everybody knows their places, the 2nd Dortmuner novel, Bank Shot, the movie adaptation, DNFed that thing, it existed on dvd, just to confirm, be completist, artificial eyebrows, a record for biggest eyebrows, stunt eyebrows, very cartoonish, the broad characterization, pretty close, the money is on fire, the vocab word that best applies to Dortmunder is hapless, luckless, hap means luck, what happend, Maissa?, I’m feeling really happy, luck’s been with with me today, happenstance, how did it fall out?, what went wrong?, character and cartoonish, Herman X, we’re looking at his menu, a negroni, black beans, everything added to the menu is black, how black is he? even his drink is black, just so funny, movies out of Westlake stories, I’m a movie maker, make a great book into a good movie, it almost never works, what killed the movie?, they didn’t follow the book, starts with him in prison, something ridiculous, Upjohn Ballantine, a Dukes of Hazard kind of a way, where you buy the name of the book, they did pass a bank that was in a trailer, the temporary bank was in a trailer, the acting was horrible, melodramatic, one of the actors was Boss Hogg, the fake lawyer that came in to visit, Karp, he’s in one of the James Bond movies, that boy’s out there doing it again, it’s like a movie, this would make a terrific movie, why deviate, this is dead on, the scriptwriter complains about the movie, the film failed due to the direction, never truely done justice to Westlake, slightly tilted, a charming idea, stealing the whole building, into a farce, a marvellous stage director, simply wasn’t deft, ruined what I thought was a good piece, bitterly disappointed, it doesn’t translate, it’s so careful, it seems to flow super easy, everything is funny and fun, and endless mistake, you can’t quite do it, it is the way it is told, a lot more cops, great stuff, up on a hill, mobile headquarters, too much coffee and danishes, want some?, aiming to do what is done in the book, it doesn’t translate to film that well, Brer Rabbit, the Uncle Remus stories, these are cartoons, Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, talking animals betraying each other, a pixar style movie, it works best as a book, Shakespeare is not a novel, when you see Shakespeare performed, you can’t mess with it too much, performed on stage is where it is, location shooting, Westlake lives in the text, he doesn’t live in the plot, his character direction that’s the fun part, betting on cards, two sixes, the whole thing’s moving, too long as a movie, the movie adaptation of A Travesty, A Slight Case Of Murder (1999), a cat just knocked over a bunch of things, James Cromwell, accidentally murders his girlfriend, blackmails him, told first person, breaks the fourth wall, points his funny face towards the camera, a comic murderer, pack in all the plot, knock over a bank, why the book is good, how deftly he handles it, The Blonde Lieutenant, the reason Dortmunder is called Dortmunder, worked as a “snow top”, white helmeted Air Force police, he’s filling in the little details there, a blog, the car crash, smutty books in the back, those were all Donald Westlake, the etext, dig around, the complete dot txt, you jammed on your, Kelp, the Pinto, a row of stores on the right, an alley between the two of them, the storage area, full of paperback books, one was called Passion Doll, Man Hungry, Strange Affair, Off Limits, Call Me Sinner, Apprentice Virgin, his topcoat flapped, you were talking about the cops, why don’t you bums get off the road, what you’re gonna get is cops, every character in this book is him or somebody he knows, he’s Dortmunder but also the cousin, making radio dramas, all the pulp magazines, he wasn’t a regular cop, aspects of his own life, scold you, insurance is in this book, multiple times, an insurance scene, two many knees in the way, observational humour, Merch’s mom, the getaway driver, he’s a car thief, his mom is the cab driver, the pinto, an AMC Javelin, making noises as if it had just eaten a Pinto, making fun of everything, he doesn’t stop, a spinoff of his hardboiled series [the Parker series], come in on the seconds, the seconds are better, a heist, something goes wrong, a revenge book, writing The Hot Rock, getting too silly, leaned into that, being hapless, on the Donald E. Westlake, what’s the one that’s on the SFFaudio website, “I believe my subject is bewilderment”, insurance is a hedge about the bad things happening, that’s this whole book, what can go wrong now?, just pushing what could go wrong, teetering on the edge, very improv, and and and, Castle In The Air, many turrets, a megastructure, what a novel is, what’s going to happen next?, where’s Westlake getting all this, out of his life and his observations, they use the book as the template, what they’re lack is the Westlake, lacking the central core material is him, painting in the characters, vignettes as well, build the scene up and have the rug pulled out, the number of Parker movies, Dortmunder movies, they’re all bad, getting it right never works, they can’t do what the book is doing, a Terminator or an andorid, programmed to do stuff, need sleep or something like that, producing the results, doesn’t do anything that’s inefficient, it’s not science fiction, Data goes back in time on some planet, a character who has no personality, in a film you wouldn’t, Mel Gibson, Robert Duvall, Lee Marvin, Jason Stathem, none of these are hits, they take the template and it doesn’t fit, a book writer, The Stepfather, different and dark in tone, a screenplay for The Grifters, Jim Thompson, hits you like a bag of oranges, really bad and good, a writer’s writer, it is astounding, they flow so easy, the characters are great, the dialogue is fantastic, Michael Kramer is so good, just playing, playing out beautifully, when a paperbook goes out of print, a new version, a new cover, new formatting of the pages, it will have a new font, garamond, my favourite, the Frank Muller collection, I’ll read any Frank Muller book, George Guidall, Bronson Pinchot, too performy, what else has he narrated, to become a chameleon, from Eastern Europe accent, as an actor would, George Guidall narrated Dune is the best version, saved this from cassette, almost none are available, the entire Parker run, the Dortmunder run, he was excellent, the epic fantasy nowadays, super popular for that, The Wheel Of Time series, Brandon Sanderson stuff, a little Wikipedia entry, starting in the 1990s, other ones we could do, a Stark, The Man With The Getaway Face, they’re all drop in, The Axe, fantastic book, No Other Choice (2025), the Koreans would do a good job, you will want to, the premise, laid off, fun fun name, drastic cost cutting measures, the 7 men who could take the job, it’s brilliant, William H. Macy, told from the point of view of this person doing horrible things, brings it tight, ensemble pieces, Robert Redford and 6 other actors, a heist, bring it in tight to the one guy, a French version, a Michael Caine version (not an official version), really new, not hit the services yet, Ebert’s site gave it 4 out of 4, Oldboy (2003), are we bringing in Misha Burnett?, a little awkward, working so many hours, traveling for work, sometimes on a Sunday, Bank Shot as a sequel and the foundation of a series, the franchise starts with the 2nd, an excellent example for people, expanding one book into a series, what to keep, what to show, the comic caper genre, prior to Westlake, he basically invented that, the background of The Hot Rock, too goofy for Parker, needed a character, Dortmunder’s confederates, builds such an incredible cast of secondary characters, in every single book, and May, Victor, extraordinary, the person who got me hooked on Westlake, a homosexual encounter, deciding whether he’s going to have sex with a man or a woman tonight, from the outside it looks just like an ordinary garage, foolin around together, he’s a fanboy of radio drama, he’s not looking for sex, dissatisfaction with eh FBI, never even held a submachine gun, he’s very self-aware, secret lair, comin out the the pulp era, drawing from it, did a lot of science fiction as well, the caper itself follow the outline or precedent set in The Hot Rock in being over the top, you know… I bet, Drowned Hopes, the undertow’s got it, a valley that’s gonna be flooded, rob the bank that’s under the water, one of Westlake’s truly chilling villains, in prison for 20 years, they dammed the lake and drowned the village, blow up the dam, kill a whole bunch of people, something Stark would consider, scuba gear, what could go wrong?!, his secondary characters, the cops, that scene, the safe company, the trailer company and the bank, just like on the edge, how far to push a caricature and keep it believable, on the borderlands of a cartoon, something went wrong in the process, we got all these great actors, Robert Redford is not Dortmunder, George C. Scott would have made a great Parker, Gary Oldman [Gary Coleman], Dortmunder is us, we seeing him on screen, muppets might work, that hyper-realized, just Michael Caine is the bank manager, way on down the series, taking out the casino in Vegas, a lock man, you have to be able to introduce characters, ancillary character, Nobody’s Perfect, Good Intentions, scamming encyclopedia, the phone went tick tick tick, two small ticks, arguing with Kelp, I wonder who they’re after, rear ending the car with the books in the trunk, pseudonymous sex books, Adios Scheherazade, a left handed guide to how to write or how not to write, be a real writer, wants to be a real boy, friend with a spy series, his ideas end up petering out and going nowhere, really sad, how sad it is, The Hook, it’s about Amazon, well before Amazon, hot writer, best seller, once you’re in the system you can never grow past a certain point, I’m gonna put my name on your book, a murder sort of story, he’s better at standalones than he is at series, even when he has a noble failure, Humans, we have more possibilities, thank you for your time, something Simaky, Ring Around The Sun, in about a month, building a carwash, good listening time, 10 – 12 hour days, painting a room, commuting is a big deals, if you’ve got a good book, your arms and your neck and your back, I’ll go in tomorrow I got six more chapters, almost like a drug, makes the time go by so fast, miss my exit, where the series really come in handy, even with Westlake, they’re premium, his Grofield books, not more Parker, they’re adventure, 3 Grofield books, The Dame, The Blackbird, Lemons Never Lie, a job that’s gone sour, Slayground, Parker went into the amusement park, a split, two different experiences, insurance, seeing it all the time, the bank being insured, a real funny subtle one, and you’ll have access, our researchers in Omaha, Nebraska, Anguilla?, a non-fiction account of a coup there, Under An English Heaven, the photograph of him on Wikipedia, the thesaurus, in the news happening, Chernobyl, what would God make of all of this, a bet against the future, Scott Adams, Pascal’s Wager, convert to Catholicism on my deathbed, Somebody Owes Me Money, sitting at the table, some way he can make it pay for him, there’s gotta be a way, this game, getting some food at Walmart, a ricecooker, do you want insurance on that, a $20 item, we don’t get that extra profit, gameifying, take maximum money from suckers, The Handle, a casino off of Cuba, saving up money for his summerstock, since been confirmed, the criminals don’t think of themselves as criminals, a sideline, their real business is something else, Victor is not representative of a stock character, representative of that kind of thinking, he collects cars or something, whatcha doin, the tape’s still going, of the heist while it is happening, the plots, the premise, it’s all about the character touches, had been an MP, a regular day job, health and house decisions, spending am lot of time thinking, using every part of the animal, that kind of treatment, just let me go get my purse, playing Dortmunder, this is a scam, she’s tipped to it relatively early on, only $10, keep talking, meeting again, a slot, put a Parker in there, The Handle, Don’t Ask, Stark stuff, the comedy, formulaic, when you know it is a continuing character, his standalones, The Fugitive Pigeon, the nephew novels, Trust Me On This, the National Inquirer, Baby Would I Lie, Branson, all built up, it’s a Tom Selleck style actor, used to be on a tv show, mystery detective, lives in Los Angles, Samuel Holt, the pseudonym and the character, Paul Kavanaugh by Lawrence Block, One Of Us Is Wrong, didn’t finish it, would have paid more attention, him under a pseudonym, do what he’s doing in The Hook, Stephen King with Bachman, I get these numbers in the mail, his script writing career, been to Florida a few times, Kenya, Kahawa, coffee smugglers, mercenaries, dangerous people, Westlake fans were horrified, very well written, a feel for the utter insanity that was Uganda under Idi Amin, Two Much, other than the premise, seems like it is a light comedy, one pair of the twins out, twins was the whole point, a French adaptation, they don’t play it up, he’s a fuckin horrible murderer, did a show on it not too long ago, give away the ending, like a huge kick in the balls, the last line, sent a joke, I don’t get it, he’s lost his sense of humour, in order to gain all of the money, didn’t really hit me until later, he’s very mature, it’s not manipulation because you don’t feel it, it all gelled, it all worked, never gonna have a sequel to that, The Hunter, Point Blank, the first Parker book is bad, the least best Westlake books, even his noble failures are good, Ed Topless, disses it, a good movie, not a Westlake movie, not a Stark movie, the heist in Jimmy The Kid, Child Heist, it’s a ransom, it doesn’t fit the formula, Parker as a kidnapper, you want to steal something that can move and talk?, the efficiency, when Parker is doing something, going against my better judgement, nobody gets whacked in Dortmunder, bad luck, the rainstorm in Bank Shot, the rain washed the paint away, made the search less active, the captain of the police, funny names in there, one of them is named Block, guys he plays poker with, a book with Brian Garfield, doing cameos, pot-bellied, when the book came out, some diet stuff in there, the doctor character, the backer, Kelp, no matter what he said, “that’s a shame”, it’s money in the bank, we got a good shot on this one, he left the keys in it, you stole the man’s car and turned around and asked him for money, an AMC Javelin, we’re supposed to think it’s the same car, he only drives doctor’s cars, the doctor did fine, it’s double, I’m not in the right business for some things, Help I’m Being Held Prisoner, Ed McBain, Money For Nothing, you have been activated, many years he’s been receiving cheques in the mail, a sleeper agent, Downtown by Ed McBain, as one should, a lot of bad stuff was going on at that time, because of Yoda, the little green guy?, backwards you are, The Empire Strikes Back, stay with me, helping your friends is a mistake, alone in my cult, unfinished, a serial, the first one is done, saves the galaxy, wins the heart of the space princess, the respect of the scoundrel, you did not avenge your father, physically embodied as a ghost, Joseph Wambaugh, his 87th Precinct books, came out of Manhunt, like Westlake and Block, changed his name, went to Hunter College in Evanston Illinois, a more marketable name, a less ethnic name, police procedural, writing what you know and getting the facts wrong, flipped Manhattan on it’s side, when you get the facts wrong, he’s not a cop, he’s a writer, the mugger, the killer, Hill Street Blues, NYPD Blue, with more consistent characters, a rapist in town, getting there in a circuitous route, On the Sidewalk Bleeding, has to suppress, he’s read the guys, An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge, what good wiring looks like, the intersection, from the 50s until the 60s, it wasn’t a detective magazine, it was a crime magazine, series in there, the characters won’t survive the story, only some of them, like a writing school, getting good stuff out there, a pastiche, I Bludgeoned My Brother To Death Over A Sex-Doll, Whatever Lola Wants, Switchblade Magazine, a heinous crime for the best of reasons, the writer not being a cop, he was a cop, The New Centurions, The Glitter Dome, the movie, there is/was an audiobook of it, Trent Reynolds’ review of Downtown, kinda cool, there are other good writers to find, running out of Westlake, other writers to read, in the mood for a really good book, reliable, painting that room, putting that carwash together, China Mieville’s The City And The City, a dimensional portal fantasy, the aspect that it has in it, occupy the same territory, agree to ignore the other one, The Doomed City by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, randomocracized every year, the librarian is now a janitor, shake things up, when the revolution comes, brushin the streets like the last emperor of China, what are we really talking about here, they’re in hell, not a torture hell, purely psychological, learned, the people from one city have a psychological blindness, not hit each other, consciously repress the knowledge of the other, on screen, really good science fiction on screen, what planet we visit next week, an adaptation, do the same job, film is very different, the latest Parker movie, based on the trailer, they just mention going to a casino off of Cuba, a mishmash of several stories, bits an pieces of seven different scores, City Of Industry (1997), a good scene in it, the end of some book he laughs, he is able to have some kind of human connection, a sexy blonde on a beach, on archive.org, slash fiction, Parker/Grofield gay slash fiction, he’s just saying you’re a part of the team, I find you sexy, handled in this book, I’m not sure if I need a man or a woman tonight, things get stressful, men are too difficult, that fun of Westlake is why, suppressing the humour, the jokes are muted, looking for new authors, Jason Pargin series, John Dies At the End, David Wong, listen to the sample, strong and prevalent, comes across almost immediately, very strong voice, several in a row is too much, we’ve booked The Handle for the 11th of April, knock off a casino, there’s a boat in that one, has to travel 3 or 4 states south, regulation number of lights on it, an experience, this guy is not writing out of his ass, rent a truck, gotta get some insurance, it’s fuckin red herring, right along with it, three sixes, suddenly the whole van’s moving, Merch’s mom, hearts, shoot the moon, she is shooting the moon, get the lowest number of hearts, 13 points for the queen of spades, the low score wins, you get everything, poker I do, both doing it in the same place, him having fun, what the hell is happening, decorated the place up, in the other room blasting, it’s pure comedy, they didn’t really fuck it up, the magic of the book, the magic of the writer, a movie improve on a book, I don’t need a movie version of Parker, or a slash fiction version of Parker, they would go together wouldn’t they?

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #887 – READALONG: The Visitors by Clifford D. Simak

Jesse and Scott talk about The Visitors by Clifford D. Simak

Talked about on today’s show:
the art for one of the covers, the Del Rey paperback, a 2001 style slab hovering, fleeing, or are they running to it?, genuinely surprised, isfdb.org show all covers page, the big black slab, chances are?, the story by Clarke, this is War Of The Worlds but done by Simak, conflict not so much into it, the war part that’s missing, let’s shoot at it, twice, immediately vapourized, interesting vapourization, not oblivious to human nature, wants to minimize, the conflict exists but is repeatedly dodged, when the president wakes up, still asleep?, not quite Reagan, set in the future slightly, a space station and the shuttles are up, the Soviets have their own space station, Skylab?, repurposed Apollo, everything still works the same, functioning tech, a pretty good book, the regular humans, hated the politician stuff, why we spent so much time in there, a flawed concept, what’s so good about Simak, the personal, boyfriend likes fishing, the opening scene, getting a haircut, a “bigot”, shoots himself, look at thing I’m gonna shoot it, stopped, kinda what the barber said, your way of attacking me, gone out of fashion, racist, nazi, people say words and don’t know what they mean or where they come from, being shaped, a harsher word for something, talking like Jesse, people being programmed, making the Jesse argument, it is a weird word, it sounds harsh, it is unclear what it means, you can almost hear the French accent, what it means what it does, bi as in bicycle, the German of god, two beliefs, good for my people, bad for your people, could be religious, a synonym for being small minded, this is gonna be the theme of the book, the aliens come down, the little speech that he gives, they won’t let us fish on our land, in the context, it colours what the end is, is this War Of The Worlds, Visitor of the Worlds, visiting the Motel 6 of the universe, this image of 2001,would have been aware, even on the original serialization, the wheel in space, like sheep trying to get to the center, communal, some technology, they give birth, they hold your hand, they take you inside them, the ending and the suggestion is excelllent, the government stuff, not boring exactly, on the nose and naive, newspaper guy as a long time, wishful, very accurate, but accurate for what?, if you spend any time with people, what they’re about, the artifice is gone, just deflection, experts on these things, easy to do soundbites, hard to do 3 hour podcasts, if they read the book or not, not naive about newspapering, super-accurate, loving touches, writes the editorials, covers all the stories, the paper gets printed and he does it all again, I dont want to be a center of the news, a tree researches, a ufo kook, very reasonable, what stories like that do to people, revel in it, more painful for most (than pleasurable), the way the book works best, Ray Bradbury feeling, the third one with the shadows, very suggestive, making your mind spark up, what’s going on in that house?, a 1 star review, if you don’t resolve it I’m not interested in your book, ambiguous and then ignored, glossed over, really really great, it could be anything, found a house, made a copy of a human, it being open, much better than if it is closed, what would that mean, the dealing with the indians, the problem with the whiteman, it breaks you economy, about a redaction, they submit their last story to the government, a panic scene, drowned, get his free car, not super reflected in the book, something is free, people like free, all of Jesse’s ancestors were effected by such things, free land in Saskatchewan, I like free, economy in europe, laws against everything, go there and occupy it for a certain amount of time, at that time, lived there for a generation or so, moved west, Alberta, British Columbia, job opportunities, world wars, what they think of what will be Canada, the stories your hearing, the exact same thing, it wasn’t to vote for Democrats, your loyal to Canada, you came in under this flag, everything is so weird, get a free flying car, do they need to eat more cellulose later?, the free cars are the the gunpowder that gets you into the system, that’s what all that political stuff is about, wreck the economy, introduce it all slowly, if it turns out it wasn’t some rando, we’ll be able to communicate, as an idea, a couple of Philip K. Dick technologies, Minneapolis, a honey of a line, cold shivers up your spine, would have scared the pants off him, methodically crossed out the paragraph, too scary, not enough concrete evidence, did you see it yourself, you can’t imply that, what was the result, it topples because too many get on, that mad rush for free, free iphones!, the power of the newspaper, very soft, there will come soft rains, it’s suggestive, a mix of War Of The Worlds and Rendezvous With Rama, a show with Eric on Clarke’s first short story, 1937, Travel By Wire, a bunch of scientists playing jokes on each other, no families, very sterile, when Clarke fakes that stuff, a disaster movie as a book, Simak likes girls, he likes dogs, he likes children, it wasn’t what he wanted to write about, the sterileness is very minimal, Science Fiction Review from 1981, Sue Beckman, Summer 1981, “biologic black boxes”, little bit of Canada, the beasties are nice, used cars, a forestry student on a fishing vacation, the big momma, this writing has personality, divine their ultimate intentions, the surprise endings, a poor reason to plod, an audiobook, it can flow, consider this, disrupt commerce, invulnerable to attack, naw, a newspaperwoman, “cute”, Roadside Picnic, pussyfoot around, on target, “pest-control”, bearing gifts, contemplating a new kind of world, a new way to live in it, the classless society, post-scarcity, page 133, this may have been true, benefactors, a sub-theme, white man invades indian land, imperialism, dubious, not well developed, an interpretation, might just have well been working for the Daily Planet, spent his life in the newspaper business, cartoon characters, a bunch of deceitful knuckleheads, 1979, an entertaining short story, Simak can do much better than this, a shorter story, a novella or novellete, very proficently done, an old man’s novel, 75 in August 1979, gossip, the bureaucrats in Washington, the Washington pieces, tedious and unconvincing, come up with no ideas, they don’t add anything to the book, dithering, loose ends dangle, dissected, that’s true, rewards, generally a positive review, They Walked Like Men, disrupt the economic order of The United States, Simakian fantasy of beneficent aliens, dreamy vengeance on industrial capitalism, though hurried, a never never world, a miraculous restoration of the status quo, typical of Simak, we’ve had lengthy discussions about Star Trek universe economics, cable companies, satellite tvs, laws protecting the cable companies, what has happened since then?, impede and slow down, cut ties with cable really early, except lately, Malad, cut cable, Logan, never watched the tv, couldn’t have internet alone, keep their business model afloat, it wasn’t just internet, what internet could do, long distance phone calls, North Vancouver, Coquitlam, pay to make a phone call to my grandma, ridiculous, they would make the argument, these cable lines need to be pay for, Jesse, phone calls to everybody all over the planet, Skype Out, landlines, not everybody was, a revolution, long distance phone calls are still a thing, they don’t even try anymore, making something expensive inexpensive or free (essentially), more efficient, member when television would offer you bundles of channels, get the access, I want to watch Babylon 5, broadcast tv, involved with the subsidization of giant telecoms, only interested in getting closer to the thing without as much hassle, they don’t break down, lower the barriers to trade, making things flow, getting the things to the people that want them, physical barriers, drive a truck over there, accessibility with cost, there’s no GDP when Christopher Columbus comes over, they don’t have a moentary system to facilitate trade anonymously, the grease in the wheels, this is our resource, we’re the monopoly on trade on this, this is also the story, when these aliens come they don’t trade, supposed to be the analogy of what the indians saw, this is for export, why do you want the gold so bad, gives me status there to have this thing, we completely understand it, we’re soaking in it, baby’s first bank account, shopping cart, look at all this free stuff, a story on the internet that’s persistive and evil, stories about animals trading leaves for food, cat goes in with a leaf in it’s mouth and trades it for a fish, animals don’t understand trade, they do understand trade, make arrowheads out of coins, oh hey, living animals here, let’s look at it, examins this guy telepathically, they like cars and houses, european invaders, Simak doesn’t say this is good or bad, what if?, there isn’t any judgment by Simak on all this dithering, what killed the alien?, why did it die?, one point in the book, it was given, not ruinous to the book, supposed to be engimatic, when you read Clarke stuff, what the hell are these things, if you read the script, interact with the black things, things change for humans or prehumans, there is no narrator, my god it’s full of stars, when we’re with the regular people following along very closely, that’s not so important?, the classic of science fiction, it doesn’t kick you in the guts or in the pants, not so important, we put an awful lot of stock in this leadership and politics, the people are handling things just fine, competent people, bank holiday, shut down trade, chill out for a minute, when they get together in their evil cabals, their regular meetings, turn the economy off, to stop the spread, invited to the meetings, not my mom and pop, devastating effects, what meet call the economy, when you lose your restaurant that just makes more room for banks, a nice analogy, different technology, it’s dead on, it’s not North America, it’s the Earth, the War of the World, the conquest of Mexico, wars involved, Evan Lampe and Will Emmons, there’s no wars invovled, it’s really odd, some Europeans were granted every piece of land that drained into Hudson’s Fur, do you have an furs?, I have these pots and pans, the forts were to protect them from having the good stolen, you have trade, 54 40 or fight, we are stockholders, roll it all out, one big Canada, this colony in Red River, fill this right up, asleep for 60 years, what happened to the indians, instant things that start changing when you can get free stuff, the Hudson’s Bay Company, why this book is good, the consequences are unpredictable, “visitors”, again Clarke, Childhood’s End, no cancer anymore, a good economy, but you can’t look at it, we need your children, the fundamental earth shattering change, the gentle invaders, sumthin huge, destroy the status quo, better or worse, leading to optimism, rare, modern science fiction, Children Of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky, humanity is way out there, still fightin each other, the same systems we have created throughout history, they all fail, not do those things, communist!?, a society based on insects, they’re different, very cool, depending on the insect, her plan was to take some monkeys on a terraformed planet, assist the evolution of these beings, the monkeys died, the spiders got it, knock on the door and there’s a spider there, clearly very different, really really tremendous, 21st century science fiction that isn’t terrible, Shroud, a trilogy, and a fourth book, Children Of Ruin, sometimes rarely sequels can be good, but The Two Towers was good, one big book, the first part of the serialization, Biolog, talk about the author. J.K. Kline, 1 pg biography of Simak, 75 years ago, married for 50 years, 32 year books to his credit, Cliff[ord D. Simak] was raised in a country atmosphere, rode a horse to his high school, graduated second in his class, the horse graduated first, Minneapolis, retired reporter, an avid reader of the available science fiction, 1927, 1931, the editor’s peculiar habits of delay, World Of The Red Sun, Astounding Stories, Analog, you don’t mention the competition, on another network, Hellhounds Of The Cosmos, modern era title, Rule 18, City, Huddling Place, and Clerical Error, Horrible Example, The Big Front Yard, the surest sign, not a writer for money, you can feel it, I tackled westerns at a time I had a writer’s block for science fiction, disgusted with myself for writing them, he loves it, talking with Cirsova on twitter, these are his Oz book, a dog that’s a robot, off to see the wizard, it’s where he lives, it’s where he’s captured, Heinlein did that too, John Carter of Mars and Oz stuff, got in them early, staying young, doesn’t feel mature exactly, he’s tired, the guy off fishing, even the editor are the young Simak, a guy sitting in a room making decisions, another time he wrote for money, Destiny Doll/Reality Doll, trim this down, give us back the money we paid this for it, to underline, horrified, authors can, Smith Of Wootton Major is Tolkien’s greatest work!, not actually sinful, doing a disservice to his readers, not being true to the thing, a fine-line, written under a pseudonym, a magazine of only one author, a deceptive practice, sometimes the reason, picking it up for the first time, who to read, when one picked up, looking at those names, maybe one of those would be good, the game of reading, I read him before you did, I knew Harlan Ellison before you were born, follow that person’s career, a lot of people who amount to nothing, that possibility of finding a new great…, some doofus on twitter, there aren’t even 1000 great books of Fantasy, how many books they read this year, six really short story is more productive than reading 1 of the same length, the reason we number these podcast, for the file directory, you don’t want to miss one maybe, when podcasting first started, podcasting now mostly refers to videos, some of them are both, read some of the names of the episodes, having all the numbers is misunderstanding what the game is, even ranking, is this best Simak novel?, where’m I gonna place it, juggling them up and down the charts, definitely a good book, boring parts with people who don’t or shouldn’t matter, thrilled to do it, nice little site that someone put together: https://www.simak-bibliography.com, at this point, more to look forward to, plenty, before Project Pope, good ideas, Highway Of Eternity, Where The Evil Dwells, Michael Whelan cover, a girl who knew too much, an Oz book, a Destiny Doll kind of a book, he’s got those modes, road trip ones, non-road trip ones, The Fisherman, comin up, Shakespeare’s Planet, Madeleine L’Engle, unicorns and time travel, a report card, sounds right, Fellowship Of The Talisman, full fantasy mode, Enchanted Pilgrimage, a nice cover, we got to do these before we go the way of Shaun Standfast, a good life well lead, got to read all the Simaks, the one you were saving, wait wait I have one more!, the tragedy, next for us: Ring Around The Sun, thank you sir, on twitter, a post about Star Trek, a retweet by Jesse, something to the effect of, a review of Deep Space 9, Red Letter Media, 2 guys talking about an old tv show was more popular, they probably exist, the same people, how those economics work, a lot of fakery going on, what expensive fakery, the juggling act has been going on for a long time, Star Trek Discovery, Strange New Worlds, more tolerant of it, a Star Trek babies show, Starfleet Academy, whoever that is, stuck at home, stuck in their family nest, exciting and enjoyable, people who are a little older, mostly fake, Bruce Springsteen and Obama had a podcast, it’s fake, it’s real, there’s no demand for it, all sorts of different kinds of fake, they’re just wrong, in this book, we find money scarce, two incomes, more expenses, money is fake, for us it is scarce, in the “elites”, for example, influences, funny sad and scary, financed by billionaires, make people do things by using problems, a plumbing problem, things are like this, things are not like that, “bounties”, this set of words and certain number of hits, $5k or $7k, this private groups, through cut-outs, get people to say things for money, artificially inflated, having your numbers be high, a streamer, lots of voices with no actual human support, true for things other than politics, is it a genocide or not a genocide, fake things all over the place, the aliens know what they’re doing, a little digression there at the end.

The Visitors by Clifford D. Simak

The Visitors by Clifford D. Simak

The Visitors by Clifford D. Simak

The Visitors by Clifford D. Simak

The Visitors by Clifford D. Simak

The Visitors by Clifford D. Simak

The Visitors by Clifford D. Simak

The Visitors by Clifford D. Simak

The Visitors [to Christina's World]

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #885 – READALONG: Destiny Doll by Clifford D. Simak

Jesse and Scott talk about Destiny Doll by Clifford D. Simak

Talked about on today’s show:
a prediction, cut you off, “liked” and somewhat similar to “Special Deliverance”, Shaun D. Standfast people, stopping watching, second read, liked it even more, about a year ago, felt familiar, much more into it, one of his better ones, it’s great, some theories, what’s going on, Way Station and City, casual search through twitter, new audiobook, this is my favourite novel, that’s really odd, I like it too, even if we made a list of all the Simak writings, the top slot, really?, what is the phenomena, objectively, not particularly cohesive in terms of being an original sort of thing, Philip K. Dick, short stories vs. novels, designed to be a thing, aim at a target, which is the best Philip K. Dick novel, Evan Lampe, psychedelic feeling novels, Galactic Pot-Healer, fairly similar to this, Tin Men and Cowardly Lions, another Oz book, really spoke to people who read them at a certain age, you can’t disabuse people that those books are bad, why you can love this book, Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, the message is more of a question, what is our relationship to the artifical rather than the real?, it’s a what if?, what if America was occupied by the Japanese, mind expanding ideas, work and meaning, this is about art, your relationship to higher meaning, there’s a god, restoring the sunken cathedral, it has everything, what is it about?, I have no idea, it’s great, a starship captain, rich big game huntress, mixing of fantasy and science fiction, hobby horses, very Ozish, talking toys, don’t you say they’re robots, Star Trekish, triggered captain Kirk in me, finally found Lawrence Knight, fawning over the guy, the “tomb world”, not the person but the skull behind their face, steppin through doorways, what makes Simak so special, didn’t discover him earlier, almost no exception, he has this quality, more things in the universe than we understand, an unorganized religion person, there is a God, mythical layer, keeps appearing, appreciate it a lot, a line in here, the doll itself, Friar Tuck, like this book for some people, near the end, the captain guy, the only one left, back in the city and just thinking, philosophical thinking, they built this city, there’s something even older here, they built stuff, the carven plains of that saddened face of the doll, another race, the church-like edifice at the city’s age, the carving of the doll, the planting of the trees, that’s beautiful, this item, this art, a greater feat than all these buildings, calling out to the darkness, speak to you, old fantasies, Lord Dunsany and older, this quality, a quest novel, on a trek, a mythical quality that simak brings to the discovery, Rendezvous With Rama, a much more sterile book, an awe there, a mythical depth, it has that, they’re looking at the city, landscapes, who did this?, an emotion in here, touching something that’s transcendent, thinking for pages, he’s alone, amazing the thought that he has, pushed along by destiny, throw some facts down, kinda serialized, in one issue of Worlds Of Fantasy, Spring 1971, a note explaining it, a piece of an interview, 1978, 1971, Simak himself, the problem with Destiny Doll, a companion magazine, Worlds Of Fantasy, condense Reality Doll, cut it half and ruined it, what had had to be done, nominated for a Nebula, Destiny Doll was never nominated, interesting note, strictly for money, Westerns, spent the weekend reading them, cowboys as heroes, other people out west, I had things to say, 1949, this genre he’s writing, 5 fingers on it, Shakespeare’s Planet, whatever qua means, guy, girl, robot, weird monster, alien planet, no plot, roll the dial back, The Fisherman, plot driven telepathy, magic is real, the tin, man the cowardly lion, the scarecrow, an alternate dimension, they stop at an inn, they meet some creatures, some possibility of danger, quickly dispensed with, Simak is against conflict, where’s the conflict, the neighbours are a bit worried, spying on him occasionally, gets out the laser gun, centaurs, thousands will die, dude chill, the superior version according to Simak, unless included in anthologies, huge difference, one would presume, Lester Del Rey’s title, turns toward the Philip K. Dick aspect, shifting realities, Small Town, making changes to reality, outside the borders of his yard, the little model of it, takes out the bars and puts in libraries, look at this objectively, meet the characters, the blind guy and Friar Tuck, hobby horses run up to them, let’s go, suspicious, they go elsewhere, customs inspection, some gnomes, chapter 2 is the backstory, our Han Solo style roguish, back to our planet, that’s the whole book, adventures continue, they never leave back to go to earth, similar scenes, Cemetery World, the building are all white, robots, telepathic rhyming robot, what is this if not, the Final Frontier, checkbox, Shakespeare is in here, maybe she has a tattoo, check, religious elements?, check, strange planet, check, a place people go to and don’t return from, they’re all dead, Humans leave earth, dog starts to arise, The Faithful, religious elements, revisits, refines, The Visitors, Project Pope era, this is Simak, a lot of writers don’t have that, this is a Clarke novel, the perversity, got to put his perversions in there, you didn’t know I was a nudist?, let me drop some nudism in there, theses, at some point in every novel that’s a good novel the novelist reviews his own novel in the text, chapter 3, chapter 23, chapter 24, the DAW paperback, not synchronicity it is special attention, near the end of Chapter 3, the dune was no longer there, in it’s stead was silence, an insane crying, my friend is back again, super mysterious, the whole purpose in their journey, a venus fly trap, a honey trap, ships that come to this planet do not leave, is this God?, is this the sweet call of death, unusual for a Simak character, aggressive and yelly, shut-up!, that silly sickening look of ecstasy painted on his face, a creature from out of the desert world, that night that had lain over the white world, blocked out, no sign of the hobbies, earlier in the chapter, all good stuff, reading text, near the end of chapter 23, page 177, wispy filaments, wind whispered overhead, campfire smoke, something was chuckling softly to itself (that’s Simak), Shakespeare?, had it been Shakespeare?, how had Roscoe known of Shakespeare?, carried his knapsack, Shakespeare is a book, actual Shakespeare you have to read the actual Shakespeare, writing with an outstretched finger, also Simak, here’s the review: blue and high, stars ahead, and blue, blue laughter, think unhard, slowly I picked the words apart, blue foreverness, runners after nothingness, talk is nothingness, nowhere comes the answer, it was gibberish, worse than gibberish, the gibberish went on, page 52, far is distant, neither short nor long but deep, no stick to measure with, purple leads to nowhere, there is nowhere to lead to, to prevent the pages getting out, strange enchantment, Midsummer’s Night’s Dream, even if she knew, page 181, near the bottom, totally unintelligible, an utter moron, why my thesis is so true, laughing at himself, seemed to make some sense, blue and purple knowledge, all spectra of knowing, lonely planets, far lost in space, in the blue of time, trapped it is, a time of golden harvest, another tomb world, great orchards of mighty trees, down at the city, up at the city, the whiteness of the sky, the whiteness of the ships, as other planets soak in the golden sun, seeds trapped with knowledge, fruit is many things, sustenance for the body and the brain, it ripens and it falls, nonsensical rambling, thinking about his own thing, you can’t have that it the short story, a short story is like a device, like a pencil sharpener, it can be elegantly put together but it is not a dress, … a novel is like a wedding dress, why their stories suck, why does this guy have 6 brothers, the best stories, 1 character is enough, 2 is more than enough, in order to write a Simak novel you have to have a bunch of character, squid alien, Hoot, seems like a threat, immediately not a threat, are we not friends?, I sucked the poison out of you, what is he doing on this planet, we needed a cowardly lion, the man behind the curtain in the end is always Simak, let’s go, another Oz adventure, a formula that works, sit around a campfire, gets angry, calms down, a group on the road somewhere, one guy and a mystery, The Canterbury Tales, very similar to a lot of Simak, people on a pilgrimage, progress down the road, it’s ancient, told 1st person, and yet, when people disappear they disappear from him, lots of quest books, Nebula Grand Master, one of the fist ones, audio at an awards, dentures, 1977, a Stoker Award, Fritz Leiber, Frank Belknap Long, 1987, died in 1988, The Grotto Of The Dancing Deer, Hugo, Nebula and Locus, an early start date, before everybody, Murray Leinster, first short story, The Cubes of Ganymede, Campbell rejected it, many such cases, The Cosmic Engineers, Empire, a LibriVox version, not terrific, Project Mastadon, Mastadonia as the novel, Grotto Of The Dancing Deer and The Big Front Yard, when doing multiple stories, contrasting authors, H.G. Wells vs. Robert E. Howard, Conan vs. Conan Doyle, The Adventure Of The Cardboard Box, the one story that’s more interesting, they both have merit, having contrasting food, some real salty fish, some sorbet, completely, sherbet, sorbet, playing with ai (Gemini), notebook LM, 9 Simak interviews, ask questions, source documents, to make a podcast, one of the options, what it is useful for, a learning tool, make me a podcast and focus on his religious views, the NPR people, more interesting than good, people learn that way, ancient Greece, some aspect of ancient Greece, food in ancient Greece, educational mentors, BC Civil Liberties guy, [John Dixon] advisor to Minister of Justice, promoted to Prime Minister, politicians are good at shaking hands, they’re not geniuses, getting elected, they need smart people who know how to understand the world, all of them have them, dumb people as their advisors, he was not dumb, thoughtful, good taste in movies, write up something, write up a paper advising, busy gladhanding, what should be done, what should your policy position be, they’re not people, solve a bank problem for me, they’re untrustworthy, you don’t know who they are, a super racist Robert E. Howard story The Last White Man, a race war story, collaborated with the Asians somehow, one last man on the hill, as a man in a racist world, go max on Irishness, they say great things about it, there’s no sense of how stupid it is or how funny it is, no personal reaction to it, all the worlds associated with religion, a large language model, grey NPC character, that’s true of these products, which is Clifford Simak’s best novel, it really spoke to me, not what the tool is for, is Simak a religious person, testing this tool, list things that he talked about, here’s where you find that, a position paper, people are doing that right now, use data in some way, this group rated, Goodreads, pointing to the Shaun Standfast show, every book on Goodreads is 3.6, no one has read, the finest book I’ve ever read, modern stuff, it’s a thing, picking 4s, 4.5, gamified, to read a 3.5 would be absolutely not, movies and tv shows that are new, bots, work on the show, the corporation itself, there can be a rerelease, the same on utube, likes subscribers, in the end, I like to read Simak, he seems to reward me, I believe it, John W. Campbell, overrated, shit on him right now, good at coming up with ideas, go with Simak, go with Donald Westlake, part of their equations, the only other time, a journalist, a newspaperman, many such cases, strictly for money, pumpin em out, sounds familiar, feature length, super well produced documentary, Linotype, the business of paper and ink, answers so many weird questions, tears books apart, little marks beneath the page, an artifact, publish coordination mark, very kind of key, trays, electrical, you type a letter, a tray full of dies, negative dies, every line of the column, page 83, one column across, all a magazine styles with two columns across, this is the amazing thing, the letter that got inked were made of lead, the letter as you need them, every size every comma, that makes a slug, lead castings, same lead bucket they came from, like a printer that prints one line at a time, astounding, incredibly complex, the kinda training that nobody else will ever get again, just happened to come at the tail end of it, no demand for it, xeroxing, this is what made newspapers possible after the time of Benjamin Franklin, changed the world of knowledge and knowledge production than anything else, the machine the size of your kitchen, it’s big and you sit at it, hot lead spurtin out of it, Pay For The Printer by Philip K. Dick, a being from another planet, it copies the cup, very tired, the colour is faded, for making newspapers, every newspaper had one of these, technical people, superinteresting, people who run trains, not this job, bigger, every city that had a newspaper, every book publisher, guys, Mr. Pulpcovers, how well produced, I watched the whole thing, nice to learn things, thank you, a happy new year and merry xmas and a bruiseless boxing day, go Cowboys, which team is kicking the ball better, some kicking, throwing, running, some carrying, can you make a novel out of it?, some deeper purpose, too fun, cheerleader with a tattoo on her breast, collected fiction, spread out his best stories, sell em all, kindle, audio.

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #884 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Valley Of Spiders by H.G. Wells and Valley Of The Lost by Robert E. Howard

The SFFaudio Podcast #884 – The Valley Of Spiders by H.G. Wells (24 minutes) read by Robert Dickson for LibriVox and Valley Of The Lost by Robert E. Howard (41 minutes) read by Tommy Patrick Ryan, followed by a discussion. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Alex (Pulpcovers), and Tommy Patrick Ryan

Talked about on today’s show:
other Jim Brill stories, The Mound, set in Texas, the same character in both?, a southern accent, a cowboy, valleys and spiders, other stories with valleys and spiders, a novel by Samuel Delany, listening to him talk about it, gay garbagemen who open a pornographic movie theater, later on they become handymen for a lesbian colony, asking around the robots, fetches reviews, the spiders are metaphorical, dude, spiders and spiderwomen go together, the female creature, a gender flipped vampire, brides of Dracula, Carmilla, LEGO minifigs, Medusa, the Spider Woman, Tiger Girl, a story here, 10 minutes to read aloud, connect these 2 stories, The White Death by Don Mark Lemon, he was an American, Virginia, South America, Mexican guide, in Tarantula Valley?, is it a pestilence of some kind, a snake?, no senor, poisonous gases, banditi?, half savage as he was, queer, policy, treble it, American gold, stack a mortgage, a Catholic, meet the White Death, superstitious, well armed, Winchester, the infernal poet, a diseased poet, with one by his side, sylvan charm, two burros, snake, buzzards, a half-wild burro, somehow, the man fools around the ear of a friend, such quick tracks, three dirty streaks of light, strangest of all, the witness of his own eyes, collections of bones, a open air cosmopolitian graveyard, the cat tribe, a cow, skeleton of a man, the prey of a month or so, a second collection, bleaching in the sun, the third day, what manner of thing it was, a great panther of some kind?, a huge snake?, then he struck gold, down the river in search of game, the latest feeding ground of the Thing, a cool million, try to bag something, proceed to watch, a huge collection of boulders, scratch her sweetheart’s name in the dirt, her name, his own name, more like spades than the human heart, his brains were tangled, 6X3 is 18, squatted upon the pile of rock, he couldn’t do other than watch, not the slightest noise, a gigantic spider, large as a full grown tiger, why, talking or thinking, the light that came out of the eyes, deprived him as the power of motion, the long white hair, intense heat, the 30 foot spring, maudlin lips, “mother”, flashed before his soul, the face had the mouth of his sweetheart, laugh foolishly like a baby, flaccid and flabby, through the hot air, horrible fangs, now I lay me down to sleep, he’s amazing right?, intense little story, a giant snake, massively oversized, the two covers, Forgotten Fantasy, guy on a horse and spider, 1966, Magazine Of Horror, guy on a horse and a giant spider, barely got any spiders in it, a spider cover, super-science fictiony, familiar, The Noseless Horror, another one, werewolf in Louisiana, the mummy one, the dude who went to Mongolia, it is kinda awesome, the number of things that Robert E. Howard does in that story, stack up, a laser beam, a tv movie in the 1970s, The Stone Tape, Nigel Kneale, audio recording company, they bought a castle, the resonance of this chamber, recording people’s experiences in the actual stone, tape doesn’t exist when Robert E. Howard was writing this, television is legit, Electrical Experimenter, recipes for making your own television, mechanical television, amazing and terrible, cathode ray tubes make it viable, so much science fiction ideas, transforming into Genghis Khan, give my wife as a gift to the mongols, jammed together in 10 pages, the Philip K. Dick and the Anne McCaffrey, Alex is fine, in spanish the vowels always make the same sound, unless dipthong, British Columbia goldrushes, reading along, it was good, the better one, of the three, the Wells had a certain ambiance to it, the gaunt man, the silver bridled man, Chinese accent, an Austrian, Arnold Schwarzenegger, it was fine, the Robert E. Howard, the aftermath, they’re escape, the disintegration ray, still happening, still talking, nothing useful, so much stuff that happens, the D&D escape from the castle, more like Gamma World, it’s not a weird western, it’s science fiction with a cowboy, a revolver?, acp 1911, he’s a cowboy, draw really fast, a cowboy in Mongolia, adapted into a Conan The Barbarian Annual drawn by Gil Kane, a whole battle sequence, Hyrkanians, a mission from Nemedia (not Texas), whenever lifting from the descriptions of the actual story it is good, to fill out the length there’s a circle around twice, Afghanistan, where the evil super-science lives, Genghis Kahn’s tomb, off-limits, sounds found, a forbidden plateau of leng, pretty small, not super important, giant spider, he did a monkey man, runs off screen, save it for the show, a great loneliness of tableland, a woman who has fled with one of the native servants, muted, mestizo, metis, mixed people, a summary of the story with characters, where are you getting the character names from, in the actual text, desciptions and pronouns, “the man”, “lord”, courser companions, waxed mustache, half-breed tracker, poet-like?, explicitly triggered, the insight about ai, Our Opinions Are Correct, people who don’t think like Jesse, science fiction related, on bluesky, almost enough said, don’t get tricked, WWII, Tolkien would hate that, he abhors allegory, Gandalf is kinda like Churchill, if Tolkien denies it later, “so done with Lovecraft”, an interview with Alec Nevalla Lee, Buckminster Fuller, the boss of his community, editor of weird tales, gross and disgusting, pejorative stuff, ugly red hair, the ugly part, good or bad, the argument describing it as good or bad, the one we weren’t supposed to do, awesome, the most interesting and difficult, pursing, mestizo, mixed race, started questioning about the H.G. Wells story, combing it for facts, not explicitly, not Africa, a little too much happening, where is the spanish?, half-breed, silver bride, Argentina, hint, Latin America, a tracker, west, commands a whole city, they have swords, Winchesters, why this story is so weird, medieval armor, a Norman helmet, why it is so interesting, what are all 3 of these stories about?, they’re all about going into unknown places, before we lose this thread, just waking up for Wells, picturing Eastern, New England, England, West Virginia, escaped woman, Appalachian weird, Deliverance (1972), not explicitly wrong, a hallucination, or interpretation, the Howard is pretty good and very fun, fun to read, compelling, what was going to happen, 25 minutes, the Howard dragged at the end, superfluous, paid by the word, rough draft, submitted, rejected, couple of weeks tweaking it, an afternoon pass, an incredibly confused history, stories published later, mistook this story for another story, The Lost Valley As Iskander, Afghanistan, crunchable media, submitted to Strange Tales, announced in the last issue and then never published, profiting by it now, multiple magazines, a story by Jack London, no supernatural element, what kinda story this is, War by Jack London, guys on horses at war at an unknown place at an unknown time, comb through it, the only indication of where it is, apples grow all over, a temperate zone, a deciduous forest, winters and summers, the point of that story, people in combat are on two teams, there’s no context clues, that’s deliberate, trying to read it as South America, make it super generic, so as to create and effect, sorted soon, the mistiness, the effect he was going for, it could be anywhere, what they’re skin tone was, are they white men, pictured as white, the kinda jerks they are chasing down this woman, whatever the deal was, white men tend to be the kind that control other people, happening subconsciously, there is one point, these white men, incredibly present, names and locations, kinds of trees, white is pointed out, the lord is shitting on white horses, the back end of the story, damned white horses, what is the final line of the story and why is that?, as he rode he picked his way, many dead spiders on the ground, feasted guilty on there fellows, in the Conan adaptation, their time had passed, a winding sheet ready, a nautical term, where we get ghosts from, could do him little evil, flicked with his belt, dismount and trample them with his boots, spiders he muttered, I will spin a web, a very weird ending for this story, 3 guys go looking for a half-caste girl, towards colonialism, the target of this story, the class system, there’s three guys, two a servants, questions the leader, the back end of this story, I’m better than you, I’m also a coward, what makes you better?, what defeats the one guy in his pursuit is nature, white men?, white spiders, what does he mean by this, deliberately so, spins a web and waits, figure out a way to trap her, why valleys and spiders go together, a place that’s protected, an attic is full of spiderwebs because their webs will last, maybe the Robert E. Howard one is the one that doesn’t fit, most of the setup for the story, The Last Valley (1971) with Michael Caine, our wizard, he’s a scientist, a chain blocking the entrance, a roadblock, get zapped, electricity explained, he’s a wizard, quite terrible, elktro, I’m out, one of these stories is not like the other, there’s more than one, a bunch, in both, what could it be in the valley of the tarantuala?, Shelob, Ungoliant, Tolkien’s spiders the valley of shadows, the valley of nightmare, a valley in the first age, consumes herself, birthed out some children, regular spiders, a sign of his genius, the disintegration ray, point it like this, press this button, you will be our king, followed the instructions, Princess Leia on that gun shooting Genghis Kahn, a 6th or 7th level spell, press a button and have things turn to dust, Thanos-like, snap the fingers, genius yadda yadda, hot Chinese dancing girl and nobody wants her, I got a girl back home, he didn’t care for Chinese women, very hot, languorous view of her body, not gonna look too long, a White Stripes song, pretty good looking for a girl, that would have been weird at the time, Skull-Face, our hero goes after the Chinese girl, Egyptian or something?, dark haired foreign chick, the scary race shit, I’m fine with being Genghis Kahn, the most interesting part of the story, meditating Genghis Kahn’s chamber with a rock from outer space, what we see in The Grisly Horror, the werewolf story, from Tibet, Black Hound Of Death, to get the guy who got away, Texas to Mongolia, The Island Of Doctor Moreau, mutating, building man-creatures, degenerating people, the finale in the trailer, almost Big Trouble In Little China, that can’t be right, Buckaroo Banzai, fun for the whole family, the climactic fight sequence, what do you need him for?, he is the sidekick, point of view character, go to Chinatown, as a non-chinese person, almond cookies, the viewpoint, Jim Brill, Steve Brill?, Conan is reused, also a Conan story set in England?, a Bran Mac Morn story, why the Wells story is so interesting, stripping away things, The Valley Of The Blind, genetically blind, he thinks he can see things, acts like an asshole, the two hot things under his brow, very symbolics, the colour of these spiders is white, did the girl get away?, how did she get through, a day ahead of them, the spider wind might have missed her, some native knowledge here, a burrow in both, Don Mark Lemon, so delightful, now I lay me down to sleep, he turns into a baby, killing everyone and everything in the valley, two donkeys, talks to his donkey, that’s odd, maybe I should get my rifle, it’s beautiful I think, Wells is trying to make a point, different kinds of assholes, hubristic assholes, the little man, we’re both cowards, why are you my lord?, the amount of text devoted to it, where the Howard puts action they ave this conversation, both made of the same material, write you into this story, it isn’t really about spiders is it?, is this a science fiction story, giant monsters, nailed it on the Wells, his bridle is silver, two minutes later he abandons him, a wealth distribution thing, he’s trying to make it universal, that half-breed could be anywhere, people realizing this is an asshole, there is no justice, in the Howard there is justice, get konked on the head, Kim Stanley Robinson, great ideas, almost no plot, full of good ideas, what happens and what’s the point, besides entertainment, body horror, turning Japanese, moral horror, what’s it all about, gettin paid, more in the Wells, prefer the narrator did the Howard, British accent, these white men, deleted the word white, does it change the story at all, absolutely not about racism, defy his racial purity, half-caste, let’s look at the actions, colonialism has happened, as a modern thing, that guy who thinks he’s better than me, just fun adventure, inventive and fun, didn’t trust the natives, beautiful fun, he doesn’t pick up the rifle, the anti-Robert E. Howard, our mad scientist, he’s not a hero, what is the white death, a giant tarantula that’s white, mesmerism, 4 giant piles of bones, imma keep looking for gold, dialogue back and forth, really happy, back in Virginia, leaps 30 feet, white hopping death, funnier, The Black Cat, where Jack London was first published, the art is always cats, mushrooms growing, a piquancy, this magazine has a flavour, The Mansion Of Forgetfulness, very Edgar Allan Poe inspired, lost their girl, sits u in a chair, a purple ray makes you forget, he lost his girl at sea, you don’t remember me, meeting again for the first time, the Poe character names, science fiction before Amazing Stories, Howard is a much better entertainer, a pointed stab at people, something beautiful about the simpleness, spoilers is a 21st century invention, Luke Skywalker stabs the guy, podcasting and stuff like that, editor of old Weird Tolds, C.C. Senf spoiled the H.P. Lovecraft, they read that story because it sounds good, every H.P. Lovecraft story starts: yes it is true i sent 6 bullets through the head of my friend, but trust me, bro, you’re going to love this story!, go back to Nemedia, sex with her along the way, that’s not Jim Brill, the honorable guy, clearly in love with this guy’s wife, less honourable, in the middle of nowhere, for honour, if he were not so honourable, makes Tommy’s skin crawl, she was pretty, who is the hero?, we know, Jim Brill’s story Jim Brill is, in the Wells there’s no heroes, man is against man, what is the point of The White Death, well written, he sees in the face of his mother his girl’s lips, he turns into a baby, the white nape, going through the list, featuring the White Death, camping for the next three weeks, Lozo, how did he know not to go there, do not mention my name, I don’t know, anybody who goes there doesn’t come back, a very short story, some white thing, this white thing took them, a little gem, a little placer gold, playfully written, bent toward Robert E. Howard, the most enjoyable story to read, a complete story, not making the same kind of point, a little horror story, pretentions of literary fictionness, dreamland with no details, class and cowardice, what does that mean?, feels like a rough draft, which would be a good movie, a Twilight Zone that’s terrible, a great cartoon, not getting the comedy out of it, rewriting, so many good movie things, more work to do, rewrite a lot of things, she’d be there with him, Temple Of Doom, Willie Scott stuff, absolutely tolerable, not the actress’ fault, we’ve done the three now, as expertly read by Alex,short to the point, extra stuff, the Wells is in the middle, the most relevant, the most important, what is Robert E. Howard’s point? buy this magazine, entertainment value, social commentary, the one they give you at school, at least it is short, Reading, Short And Deep, another precursor to Weird Tales, funny little story, I love living in this house with you, goes to the hardware store for a hammock, follows a butterfly, comes back, can you get me a hammock?, three times, she doesn’t know what I’m talking about, she’s a spider-woman, his eyes had grown more accustomed to the dark, glue covered cords, a thing that had two luminous eyes set in a woman’s face, what is the point of this stupid story, making nests and trapping men, that’s really funny, is it sexist?, I’m in favour of it if it makes me laugh, keep seeing the signs, talking donkeys, it’s a cartoon, reading it on the page, random capitalization, name brand, where nothing is capitalized in the Wells, taking away all allusion, a giant tarantula that eats everybody, a tiger sized tarantula, explicitly set in Mexico, it’s South America, the Mexican was Catholic, Mexicans can travel to South America, I don’t speak Mexican, Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish, cross the border into Norway, these are our Norwegian hats, Spanish in Latin America vs. Argentina vs. Spain, my name is Thomas, s into a th, they really shuh, swallowing a potato, Australians, Kiwis, Britain, French Guiana, Mayor Pete, in Peru, people from France, working at a hostel, he knew Englsh, you speak so fast, your accent was weird, is it easier for you to understand me, the Pepe Le Pew accent, laughable, we are speaking French now, German accents = speaking German, you’ve got the accent, an impression of someone speaking Spanish, what was that word, the current Pope is an American, right after Tommy became Catholic, a new Pokemon, multiclassing, do yoga and sing in Sanskrit, when he speak Italian now, the Pope’s Italian is easy to understand for Americans, The Great Impersonation by E. Phillips Oppenheim, The Case Of Charles Dexter Ward, a wizard guy, drunken destitute British nobleman wandering around Africa, Eaton, Sandhurst!, mission from the German government, man do I love the Kaiser, still a nobleman right?, found a diamond mine, getting into British politics, car sound, bolted down, packing in, Clifford Simak, The Ablest Man In The World by Edward Page Mitchell, cyborg short story, unscrew the top of head, public domain Asimovs, The Man That Was Used Up by Edgar Allan Poe, 1839, no electronics, 19th century cyborgs, replacing body parts, lots of French, A Tale Of The Late Bugaboo and Kickapoo Campaign, all his body parts are artificial, the brain, compare and contrast, Sunfire by Francis Stevens, from Weird Tales, no previous experience, just did it, couple hours, read stories around with the kid, Treasure Island, before people started this let’s read on our ebooks, people read aloud, snitches and snatches about Poe and Dickens, I read this aloud to my wife and now she’s mad, everyone should do it, why not Mona, Sweet Slow Death, Grifter’s Game, hooks her on heroine, 145 pages.

The Valley Of Spiders by H.G. Wells

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Valley Of The Lost by Robert E. Howard

Posted by Jesse Willis