The SFFaudio Podcast #825 – READALONG: Rendezvous With Rama by Arthur C. Clarke

Jesse and Scott Danielson talk about Rendezvous With Rama by Arthur C. Clarke

Talked about on today’s show:
really disappointed, what?, love this book, why?, nostalgia is part of it, subject to that disease, recurring flare ups of nostalgia, 1973, Dolphin Island, never looked back, 3rd grade, a juvenile, a library edition, a nostalgia trip, this kid named Johnny, living with his aunt and uncle, hovercraft, equivalent to a truck, got inside, stowingaway, wakes up over the ocean, adrift in the ocean, dolphins come adopt him, scientists, a keypad, it says it in dolphin, 1964, avoided this book, fist time read, Ringworld, Rama is the same thing, big dumb object in space, doing really cool things but also faking it, they’re all going to have an orgy, everybody is so happy, space orgy, cite sources, an etext, one of the characters has two wives, two sets of families, generic so it will fit both families, he’s not a heterosexual man, a very strange gay man, very clinical with regards to human beings, A Fall Of Moon Dust, the moon bus book, tourists, a sandpatch, a disaster movie like Airport (1970), Airplane! (1980), delve into their characters, it’s a novel, The City In The Stars, Arthur C. Clarke is simulating, not being himself, this should have been a short story, A Meeting With Medusa, what makes it awesome, character through the storytelling, characters, he’s making a novel, the same beef, Gentry Lee, shorter stuff is better for science fiction, people from earth go to investigate it, sequels, Larry Niven’s characters, I’m a sex monster, I’m a coward, I’m a lucky girl, all about sex, the Larry Niven stand-in character, have the privilege of breeding, a lucky husband, the engineering, boring human beings, the bicycle through the space, the worldbuilding is awesome, mystery, 240 pages, 9 hours, nostalgia bits, the Waldentapes edition, nothing but exploration of Rama, councils, United Nations, Mercury launched this missile, having read the book, what if Rama is a threat, launches a nuclear weapon out of fear, blow it up, thank you for your cooperation, another sequence of plot that involved humans, cosmochristers, space Jesus is sending us a space ship to be raptured on, maybe I get a free ride, when Arthur C. Clarke is operating in his spiritual mode he’s excellent, Christ was an extra-terrestial being, space jesuits, space mormons, space accident, Rama II, remember disappointment, stunning 1 star reviews, Gentry Lee, set in the Rama universe, happenings in the solar system, nothing that’s not Rama related, a NASA or JPL guy, very enthusiastic guy about exploration, the big negative things, not Clarkeish at all, all about that, Clarke fans are generally disappointed, thins being a novel, a sense of wonder, finding this object, flying to the object, exploring the object, who sent it?, how do things work?, diluted, so much character action, if our guy Olaf Stapledon had written thins, Sirius, the dog book, triangular relationship, a dog a human and another human, not that particular book, Last And First Men [and Starmaker], trying to cash in where the money is, better than Asimov, a better science fiction writer?, he’s the definition of science fiction, what he writes about, Asimov is a step below, Foundation, the first book, there’s good stuff in there, a fixup, this had to have been conceived as a novel, the Rama point and click adventure, the end credits, remember bluescreen?, these to books are very different, broken in a very strange way, a creepazoid, he’s imitative, the human beings in this, more meeting scenes, all the tech is brilliant, computers, logical, well thought through, what Rama is, the sea, the wall, the cities, doesn’t have a high IQ, actual explanation, a city for making Ramans, of course that’s the answer, they’re not from Earth, they are from Earth but not born of woman, full adult humans, explore the world through one of them, shorter, 1956, Against The Fall Of Night, Childhood’s End, vaguely remember the characters, this book is so good, super quick, did you find the orgy yet, the end of mission orbital orgy will be in full swing, it could be they’re having food, a bunch of sex or whatever, glossing over that, it’s fake, comb through all the Clarke that you’ve read, The Nine Billion Names Of God, The Sentinel, an acceptable social thing now, sexual revolution, presenting a social structure that’s really open, Robert Silverberg, monthwife, what a good story, a novella, the accident stuff, superchimps, set in the same universe, astonishing, he has rules he doesn’t break, idolizing him, one of the rules: stories are sacred, then Gentry Lee shows up in the teardrop underneath India, I could use the money, fairly excited about it, excited to meet a fan, you shouldn’t put your name to that, a co-author, maybe it is amazing, writers want to make a living, a cook, fund their expeditions, a period of time where he’s transitioned out of short stories largely, a big book for Scott, a nice short book, under novels, he never stopped short stories, he’ll experiment with stuff, a novel that expands the idea, The Sentinel, why do you live in Sri Lanka?, what’s up with 2001, yo?, back and forth with Stanley Kubrick, a true collaboration, a great movie, as soon as the light show starts, the germ of that idea, he doesn’t do interstellar space, is there any Clarke story that isn’t set within the solar system?, other planets, The Star, The Nine Billions Names Of God, set in the Himalayas and New York, Planet Stories stories, extra-solar planets, aliens, space queen, hero with a sword, Travel By Wire, so cool, he’s right, 12 minutes long, Edward Page Mitchell’s [The Man Without A Body], travel by wire, in a non-humorous way, looking back, born recently, the Star Trek transporter, magically appear in our stomachs or microwaves, letting us go wow, amazing!, idea idea ideas, some observation of reality, Moon Dog by Arthur C. Clarke, an astronomer on Earth, such love, allowed to move to the moon, FarSide, the perfect telescope in the solar system, he can’t bring his dog, an experience in which the dog wakes him up on the moon, great San Fransisco earthquake, devastates the city, his sensitivity to his dog, foreshocks, a relationship of a man to a dog, a science fiction story about a man’s relationship to a dog, the superstructure of it is about being a telescopist, a big dog man, multiple dogs, a cylopean one eyed mexican hairless named Pepsi, the paranormal, Fortean experiences, massively interested in science, what if it is real, investigates, what about this one?, genuine interest in dogs, what about this phenomenon, a masterpiece, the top no movie related Arthur C. Clarke, the elevator one, Fountains Of Paradise, famous because of the movies, a huge Clarke fan, A Meeting With Medusa was amazing, the way it was revealed, not even human, a robot with a brain inside, a cyborg of some kind, good structural writing, how did Larry Niven get away, making Arthur C. Clarke look like a robot, not a favourite, very different, a birthday party, zipping around the planet, not a lot of identification with the characters, aliens everywhere, tech everywhere, the Beowulf Shaeffer stories are more Clarke like, Crashlander, the hard sf idea is the point, Lucifer’s Hammer, nostalgic mode, how much took place after the comet hit, a rich guy with an observatory, fully stocked, through great danger, people there already, the racist scene, we’ll take the woman, turned away, the burying of a bunch of books in a septic tank, with Julie [Davis], one of her favourite books, very good, the best joint book, Oath Of Fealty, Steven Barnes and Larry Niven, Westercon, Tananarive Due, The Seascape Tattoo, doing a book with Larry Niven right now, involved with television, The Ringworld Engineers, A World Out Of Time, Protector, humans are not actually paks, go with the flow, so hard, so well thought through, why I like science fiction so much, sense of wonder, so rare nowadays, Spin by Robert Charles Wilson, looking at the sky, separating them from the timeline of the universe, The Three Body Problem, wiggy awesome physics with stretches of boring stuff, meetings, Asimov is meetings, largely meetings, Foundation is one giant meeting, two kids in an attic discovering books, a robot in the basement, the 9 hour meeting, a giant city, let’s talk about the future and controlling the empire, Heinlein, the big three, phase 1, I’m writing novels for John W. Campbell, short stories, Gentleman Be Seated, space moon nazis, juveniles, Tom Swift style stories, Double Star, Stranger In A strange Land, and phase 4 is after the stroke, Joes working on the moon, too much characterization compared to Clarke, no fats, he picked up a cigar, lecture lecture lecture, strawman strawman strawman, not really sense of wonder, this is what it would be like to live there, his pa and ma, stepmom, Starman Jones, hyperloop skytrain, knocked down by it, a tech awe vs. sense of wonder, the premise is sense of wonder, I’m a catman and I eat humans, all my females are non-sentient, the tech in Clarke, The Sentinel is that, The Star is that, The Star by H.G. Wells, he knows wherefrom he’s cribbing, stupid nostalgia, Fritz Leiber’s A Pail Of Air, there’s a sense of wonder story, describing daily life, they may takeaway, aliens, if you turned out our star we’d find a way to come and kill you, Los Alamos, we’re gonna colonize space, we got uranium we can do anything, when the black star came and took away, mom went crazy, all the water in the air precipitated out, then nitrogen then oxygen, thirty layers of blankets, fishbowl on his head, canned beans for 15 years, I considered killing us all, what real science fiction can do for you, extended and diluted, so many characters, what if it was too guys, this is what was happening in space, a space merchant fleet, the inner solar system, we’re figuring out what they’re seeing, the curse at the end of the book, he didn’t construct it in order to make sequels, everything about Rama itself is awesome, what’s the sea for?, why is that wall like this?, a spaceborne version of The City And The Stars, why are we on Earth at all, adventure popular books, set it over 3000 years, cleaning the fishtank, they’re like the aliens from Childhood’s End, space guardians, not as annoyed, such a tiny part of the book, even the meetings, none of that, human colonies, somewhat interesting, plausible, short, quick, why is it there?, some interesting stuff, no closed ecology can be 100% efficient, billions of years, the earth is the same, material dropping on us all the time, an attempt to recreate a closed ecology, introduce these various ideas, a thread that was not paid off, being a devout member of the fifth church of Christ, Jesus Christ was a visitor from space, literally true, in heavens above, lift these dudes out of their misery, Chariots Of The Gods, 1968, his collections, this Fortean thing, his thesis, let’s investigate, barely remember before the internet, literally collect the materials, it’d be really nice to have a book, 17 books on it, devoted, young young people, the pre-scarcity days, funko-po[o]ps, why denigrating, taking up space, the mania for collecting, take a photo of it, churning books, jettison mode, scan the cover, read or reread, trophies on the shelf, hand it to somebody, we’re in post scarcity now, very little uranium, almost none, Liverpool football players, Kirk and Spock, designed to make you get more, maybe there’s a Reader’s Digest version, the Waldentapes version, 20 characters?, crew, ambassadors, family members, Footfall, too many characters, the cast of characters at the beginning of the book, Lonesome Dove, too long, very good, The Aeneid, tolerated, The Lord Of The Rings, a big honking book, The Hobbit, the Canadian government changed the laws, forced by Mr Trump, renegotiate NAFTA, the evil Justin Trudeau, the excuse, country comparison website, who is Zendaya?, an actress, is she the one who is crying in Dune, the Chani one, Corruption index: CANADA 24 (good), UNITED STATES 31 (moderate), perceptions is fake news, do you want to invest in Somalia, you can’t invest in Venezuela, Syria, under-sanctions, Yemen, Haiti, the best countries to invest in, a colony of Australia, position 31, open tabs and never close them, Haiti vs. Cuba, worlddata.info, factor other things in, why does Arthur C. Clarke live in Sri Lanka, he took the Sir, the guys who take the Sir, the guys who earn the Sir, Sir Elton John, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, where’s the one for Charles Darwin, Ian McKellan, charitable work and being a good actor, propaganda work in WWI, if Heinlein had been a British citizen, Olaf Stapledon, no sir, anti-war, a pacifist, he likes undersea stuff, the tropical thing, gay and subject to horrific laws in the UK, what they did to Alan Turing, he’s a weird guy, massively interesting and massively good, how non-secular he is for a very secular guy, poking around these edges, feels more legit, The Left Behind books, Stephen King’s The Stand, more menacing, spiritual stuff in it, walking from Colorado Springs to Las Vegas, walking, spiritually ready, Random Walk by Lawrence Block, a racewalker, at one point does a walk turn into a run, a different gait, the way your feet interact with the ground, jogging is not full on, fierce arguments, a particular look, the arms and the placement of the feet, “a tiresome journey”, naive, preachy and dull, psycho-spiritual babble, several vignettes about a serial killer, the text was improved by the serial killer, too elusive to sustain a narrative, “truly dopey” with “mawkishness”, the most extraordinary writing experience he had ever had, 20 pages a day for three weeks and a day, largely about the experience of walking, The Long Walk by Richard Bachman, a crystal on the cover, the importance of walking, sometimes you don’t need to read a book to make it your new heart book, this unfortunate book, a guy who could do no wrong until, novellas, novelettes and short stories, two shows on two different short stories, The World That Couldn’t Be by Clifford Simak, my mind is going, The Worlds Of If by Stanley G. Weinbaum, the entire ecosystem is genderless, two good science fiction writers, jammed together, five hours, how can this be?, more short stories, more happiers, Books 1-4, organize that, 100 pages of epic poetry, the kids’ version, Treasure Island, a sweet story, Robert Louis Stevenson, so you like pirates, an x marks the spot, we’ll write the book, good step-dad, huh?, the audible audio drama, so good, it was really good, six hours long, not every word of the text?, Full Cast Audio, really good hours, a classic, adapted, on The Office, all British actors, not approached, since 2017, three people, public domain, sound effects, excited about Travel By Wire, some books require novel length (some not most), authors got to make a living, independent pensions, the Ted Chiang thing, a Ted Chiang hit, getting worried, won an award, excellence in the short story, nothing since 2019, rich kids are still winning, oof, New York Times.

Rendezvous With Rama

Rendezvous With Rama PC GAME

RAMA - Arthur C. Clarke circa 1996

RAMA - Arthur C. Clarke and Gentry Lee circa 1996

The SFFaudio Podcast #815 – READALONG: Mad Max by Terry Kaye

Jesse, and Connor Kaye talk about Mad Max by Terry Kaye

Talked about on today’s show:
novelization, Terry Kaye is Terry Hayes, he’s from the UK, UK phrases, balustrade, John Olsen is Jesse’s hero, he’s awesome, his channel AudiobooksForTheDamned, a website, a facebook group, waybackmachine, four years ago, a coda at the end, acknowledgements, not reading from his car, road trip, parked on the side of the road, someone else is driving, reading while moving, carsick, front porch, sounds like recorded in his car, backed up by hearing the weedwhacker, a guerrilla audiobook, pirate audiobooks, illicit audiobooks, books for the blind, audiobook sighted people are not allowed to have, a serial killer recorded one, its immoral, executing and deleting people, Phil Gigante, Stainless Steel Rat books, arrested and plead guilty to, photos from a 14 year old girl, he’s been canceled, he’s out of prison, good narrator, maybe not a very good person, announcements on some websites, really good narrating voice, he’s a human being who’s still alive, prisoners are humans to, a platform, consumer should have the choice, consumer logic, how to live properly, the movie Stone (1974), a necessary precursor to Mad Max (1979), Toecutter, essentially the same kind of person, a biker in a biker gang, the main character, good actor, good character, largely the same, riding around Australia’s coast and getting revenge, noticeably nice, movie and novelization, leaning into exploitation, naked girls and naked men, equal opportunity nakedness, dicks swinging in the water there, cheap, low budget, intentionally salacious, the bikeys being on drugs at the start, the ending is fucking fantastic, a cop film, goes undercover with a biker gang, usual plot arc, accepted in the gang, an anthropological film, trope maker not a trope follower, ahead of its time, just a job, you’re one of us now, beat the shit out of him, doesn’t press charges, that’s the cost of leaving the gang, speaks to a lot of things in Australian society, upper-middle class, his girlfriend is rich, they have a house, a car, a kid, a dog, similar themes, people who are living within society’s rules, people living outside of society’s rules, we’re outside the law, Mad Max is about the whole of society, scale shifting, lawlessness is in control, the legal system is neutered, inability to impose penalties, no justice anymore, every film after that, progressively worse, maintain it, justice?, society?, then outlaws have a society of a kind, a hierarchy exists in a way, Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation! (2008), the importance of stone, a gang that’s being hunted, by a cop, vicious crimes, they’re bad, badass and bad, behaving improperly, raping a lot of people, stealing things, murdering people, making cat noises while on roofs, stealing people’s ice cream, be careful girl I’ve seen him lick his eyebrows clean, slightly different, made more explicit, The Dark One, they go to his farm, May lady, she’s the hero of the film and the book too, she’s about protecting people, runs out of bullets, Max is not the hero, when the goose dies (he’s just burned), she’s going to make it, the wife is still alive, he leaves the bedside and hunts down, ruptured spleen, he’s like a zombie, listening like a zombie, revenge on his mind, one of the greatest movies ever, better than The Road Warrior, Fury Road, the prequel [Furiosa] looked terrible, no longer present, May Swaise, connected, related, she’s the aunt?, dead partner’s mother?, the hero car before the black and black, M. Rockatansky, the missing partner, through a connection with the cops and turning in Cundulini’s hand, makes arrangements, a bed and breakfast, she invites them in, protection away, danger that’s happening outside, the character of Benno, adult farmhand or son, jump scare, trying to be helpful, Mad Max II, expansions or repeats of Mad Max 1, truck runs over a biker, parallelism, truck that’s on a railroad track, road train scene, Stagecoach (1939) with John Wayne, Night Rider, lieutenants, biker gangs don’t work that way, Johnny The Boy, the source of ignition, when Toecutter dies the movie isn’t over, Max doesn’t kill Toecutter, called out in the book, the importance of reading the book and the film text, always started as a movie, based on the script and filling in the details, details brought out, in Stone how do you join the gang?, a probationary period, they have a vote, this is a pirate ship, history of pirates, we are lied to, disnifyed version of pirates, Robert Louis Stevenson, pirates didn’t bury their treasure, invented democracy and pensions, horrific exploitation, bigger responsibility, everybody is elected, captain, quartermaster, here’s the plan, they share you out, a covenant, until we hit a certain number, renegotiate, sign the articles, abide by the rule of the ship, no smoking below decks, no women on the ship, awesome and democratic, physical intimidation thing, any one man can be taken down by any two man, a cartoon version of a badguy or pirate ship is, guys who like not obeying society’s laws, they interact with society, a montage of scenes, goes around to all the suspects, team members, they attract business, they are business, they adopted this place, women lining up to be with them, the whole point of Stone, they’re human beings that are not cartoons, isn’t for everyone, respectable and full of respect, different values, they don’t kill him, they respect him even though he’s shit, the grievance, the ArmaLite gangs, Road Warrior was a bigger hit, more action, simpler, more cartoony, amped up, the film that George Miller wanted to make, Evil Dead vs. Evil Dead II, Terminator 2, The Terminator is a better film, parallel remake, reviewing the movie series, Fury Road is a visual treat, plotwise it is retarded, how simple vs. complex, the novel drills down into some of the worldbuilding details, complements it, the first chapter, what is the world this novel is set in, far in the future, a transcontinental highway, not set in Australia, no references to Australia, looseness with the words, to the other coast, not a lot of bridge action, inter vs. trans, across vs. between, no ArmaLite guns in the movie, the M-16, they don’t exist in the movie or the book, shotguns and a pistol, for an action movie there’s not that many guns, ran out of bullets real quick, I was saving these, a low magic world, a quote from the beginning of the book, cattle, there’s no animals in the film, a chicken mentioned, there is food, Goose steals the fries from a guy, “victims of a society which now relied on laboratory-produced proteins for nourishment and fast-food pulp for taste”, the dystopia of ourworld, disconnected from farms, even on May’s farm, a wheelbarrow, no animals, George Miller, George Kennedy, a contemporary action movie, couldn’t do it for a number of reasons, they needed abandoned buildings, the Halls Of Justice, clearly an abandoned building, guerilla filmaking, like Breaker Morant, Sun City, Sunshine Coast, Jerusalem, wee Jerusalem, putting things together, in the film of Mad Max, the tractor trailer in Mad Max II, methane, Prime Mover, a term used in the novelization, the Prime Mover ran over Toecutter, another word for God, Goose killed Goose, Fifi, that was not on the job, he was attacked by Johnny The Boy, the mirroring and the parallelism, Mad Max is not the hero, shown to be the hero, cleaning his hands with a towel, the incompetent cops, Roop and Charly, Big Bopper, doesn’t look 15, the chosen one, without a partner, Fifi has to tell his boss, given a hero car, we need heroes, the police commisioner, a kendo appointment, bamboo katana, lure him with candy, the feted one, his real one is Mad Max, paralleled between the second lead of the gang, Bubba Zanetti’s costume, accented with chrome (instead of bronze), a space blanket, quiet, the advisor to Toecutter, it’s your job to get him back on the straight and narrow, the path of becoming a proper member, Johnny doesn’t have a tear [tattoo], an insight into the structure, those kind of relationships, terrorizing Jerusalem, a couple, the Chevrolet, the Ford, hot-ride pipes, that girl and that boy are raped, the girl is tied to Johnny the Boy, rape and destroy party, literally chained to her, chained to a car and lit on fire, like what happened to Goose, the parallel structuring, good acting and acting sequencing, foreshadowing, the injustice, the whole town wouldn’t show up, the Turkey, called out in the film ever so briefly, a night scene, ambulance chasing experience, road gangs, “it’s in the food”, another night in the meatgrinder, have you eaten yet, there’s an awesome futuruistic story happenin in the background of the revenge film, all the sponsors, Kawasaki, cigar company, the girl and the guy, it’s Mary, this is a retelling of iconic stories in a way that we don’t recognize, what happens on the hill, the fruit of their union is one of revenge and horror, what makes Max good, Jesse is a mom, she’s a wife, when she is runover and loses her baby, fridging in comics, Keanu Reeves’ John Wick dog motivation, ran over his wife and killed his killed, the worst possible relationship with other human beings, setup setup setup, his boss is conspiring behind his back, it’s all fake, the proper relationship police should have with biker gangs, clubs not gangs, despite the cartoonishness we don’t feel, Max van has a spaceship on the side of it, lost control of the roads, a game of chase, Max is running rogue, he’s stolen that car, “the forbidden zone”, the Outback, roadtrains have guards on them, unintentional, special, Judge Dredd, paints a world that’s just like that, a few elite cops, very similar, Dredd (2012), post apocalyptic story, learning some vocabs, larakins, hoons, boisterous often badly behaved young man, larakinism, a ratbag, plays pranks, fucks around, an Australian of the kind that gets kicked out of England, crutch,phonetically, crutch, crox, an A-frame, here he is the walking armpit, bitumen, asphalt, Terry Hayes was hired as a scriptwriter for the following movies, The Year Of The Locust, car chase, motorcycle scenes, what people smell like, seaside home, the monster mask, a rare book in North America, buy em and sell em, $70, abebooks, the cost to post to America, $40 for shipping, a crateful, scan it and put it up online, the import expert business, follow the Man’s rules, listening to the radio, here are the regulations, as long as the paperwork is clean, Max’s objections, terminal psychotics, Toey, excited or nervous, hoofing the line, the first pursuit special, Night Rider, that scag and his floozy, hopped up/supercharged, two different versions, Mel Gibson looking shocked, the movie poster, a biker’s mask, commissioned the poster, still financing the film, Frank Frazetta, the 1985 rerelease, SuperChannel, novelizations are something that have basically died,you liked it so much you wanted, the novelization on Predator (1987), people trying to deny me access to knowledge, the summer of 1987, to spite the people are going to deny me access, novelization for a videogame, The Legend Of Zelda, really fucking expensive, one for Christmas, one for your birthday, indie games for a couple of dollars, installment, enjoyed the shit out of it, 100 pages, 8-12 year olds, you couldn’t get access to the media you wanted, the right effect, experienced it vicariously, reading is on the decline, just a fact, the publishing industry, bookstores were around an a thing, real estate speculation, a primary sale for a secondary sale, we’re going into the new meta, the new paradyme, you don’t own anything, subscription, all very evil, the movie and the book of Mad Max are becoming much more plausible, we assume a nuclear war in 1985, old footage, footage of nuclear bombs, we filled in the blanks a lot, the food stuff, called out in the book, granola crunching farmers eating whole foods, in the 1970s, brown bread vs. white bread, Bryan Alexander, protesting, a plant based diet for the school’s cafeteria, tacos or hotdogs, make your menu choices, make your food at home, loudness of relationship to food, the loosening of the control of government, the government is incompetent, larakins, hoons, taking over the roads, working in the city, cut loose by going into the country, the setup for the second film, Geiger counter, more and more cartoonish, the gangs are so evil and fun, a fuckin nasty film, the worst we see are the hand of Goose, the knee of Max, the reality of the gang, what they’re doing is plausible, victimizing people more, sadistic, fairly balanced in the second film, petrol, victimize a man and a woman, gap toothed guy, boot on somebody’s hand, raping this couple, stuff pulled from the first film, more palatable, a little kid almost gets run over, oh Christ they’re going for population, break off pursuit, Charley gets it in the throat, the good guys wear white, Cunégonde and Casca, Candide by Voltaire, a comic novel, half brother and sister, all the names are jokes, goodpussy, a tutor, all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds, any evil is all for the good, girls chased by monkeys, that’s what the male of the species looks like, a prostitute has half her ass eaten, Mudguts, Lurch?, Clank, game names, somebody had carved out a piece of his ass, on the run, he flees, pretty awful, especially Max, this guy is not going to get punished, justice in the world for ourselves, if you have enough money and the circumstances don’t line up, if you have influence, make a lot of problems for them, on that note, bathroom break, the world of Judge Dredd, more what George Miller would have liked to have done, judges fulfilling, they are the judicial system, hero cops that operate outside the law, the world is simply to wild, too easily taken advantage of, direct justice, the police commissioner, the break down of society, more interesting, it’s perfect, teeter over the top into apocalypse, things go wrong in such a horrible way, he says fuck it, he abandons his wife, he abandons his morals, after the end of the film, he could have gone back with his life, Mad Max as a franchise, a character as a plot element, they all stand on their own, the gyro captain, Bruce Spence, as different characters, they play the same, the feral kid grows up, the legendary story about The Road Warrior, preceding and following film, in this weird space, they blow up the car in the second movie, it is back in the fourth movie, they’re not connected that way, Sprog, fulfill a purpose, she’s given a name and has a character, she’s to be fridged, it’s a guy movie, Fury Road, Max’s backstory is changed, the guilt that he bears, the people he couldn’t protect, flashbacks to characters that never existed, other adventures, missing adventures, “Mad”, a moral man trying to survive in an amoral world, what that does to a person, they thrive in this world, the survival of the fittest, Max’s car is not ready, the fuel line, he fucked it up, he’s trying to help, a lot from the pov of the gang, a surprise in the movie, they don’t try to kill max after they kill the girl, how to be proper, excised from the film, Goose’s girlfriend, Katamine, Catamite, not Calamity, a lovely scene in the car, the mooners go buy, wild larakins, just hoons, vicious gang members, having fun, she almost kills them, being prepared to defend your family is a very masculine fantasy, a story men like to see told over and over again, they’ve excised all that shit, competence family, his car is stolen, never matters, just get to the point, that’s why it is the best film, The Road Warrior is a better introduction, he’s dressed in black, federation of gangs, gay Mohawk, strength to strength, literally has him on a dog collar, to release the hound, his lover, the feral kid, comic relief, a black suited character, he has his own motivation, the positive character, help the good team, some sort of redemption, offered a relationship with the warrior woman, it goes nowhere, choosing when you’ve got two teams, Humongous’ army, calculated and smart, a very seductive team, why are these guys hoarding this gasoline, rooting for the oil company, they choose to blow it up, its very simplistic, in other revenge films, the inciting of the revenge quest, Death Wish (1974), trod on his daisies, the inciting incident that makes him turn back, a little bit like Yojimbo (1961), tumbled by the gang, Gyro Captain, they kill his dog, fucked up, like John Wick, precipitates the third act, works well in both cases, just in time to setup the massive chase scene, there’s nothing like it, the visceral awesome, dogs dying, the happy family, two year old sprog, on vacation, goes for a swim, she sees the dog dead, May is awesome, she has agency, disabled, deaf, opens her home to people in need, protecting them at gunpoint, hardy country woman, Casca, the town being called out, every other small town in Australian movies, saloon underneath, a milkbar, local cafe, long formica bar, milkshakes, a blender, a big stainless steel cup, ice cream milkshake, a reference to A Clockwork Orange, literally drinking milk, the symbols are all boobs, soda [jerk], a series of books, male competence porn, The Executioners, The Destroyer, The Eternal Mercenary, the character who stabbed Jesus with the Spear of Destiny, cursed to walk the earth until Jesus comes back, he can’t die, he’s like a Highlander, connect the movies together, he sees Mary raped, arrest the criminal, Johnny the Boy is the mirror, new to the gang, they both survive to the end of the film, everything is inverted, a Lovecraft story that’s the story of Jesus that’s reversed, The Dunwich Horror, invisible evil brother, torn apart by dogs, Max is like Casca, kills the evil that is Johnny the Boy, I’m sick, it’s not my fault, doing exactly what Johnny didn’t want to do, he has to abandon his family, he’s still mad in the desert, he won’t join any of the sides, he can’t trust anyone, the inciting incident in picking a side, a tale to tell to you to be careful, how do we end up not in this relationship, the gang is fake but the cops are real, their colour is real, pressure from above, the sides, and beneath, how do we not end up in this horrible relationship?, we have to do some politics and point up, government in the first Mad Max movie, like in Stone, they’re going to do their shit, appreciating life and living it to the best, take some drugs, respect your fellow man worthy of respect, a politician who wants to change things, starts with an assassination, intellectual anthropology vs. art, Z-900s, before we run out of time, some of the best writing in the book, Goose’s birthday, a motorcycle guy, scooter, road rash, no helmet, no leathers, cars are a little safer, has taken these long road trips, it was poetry, went a long way to explain his motivation, the excitement of what he is doing, they are mirrors again, freedom, escaping the body, becoming something else, not like a car, you’re sitting in a machine, a ragdoll within the machine, you don’t have that on a motorcycle, you are literally in control of every part of it, it responds only to your input and the road, when you ride a motorcycle, an extension of you, a suit, clothing, the response of the machine to your physical movements, when you want to turn, more in control on a motorcycle, sharper turns, you have to physically move, the toecaps sparking against the ground, camera over the shoulder, the camera moves, the rider’s point of view, riding a horse, more like a cooperative effort, a good relationship with a horse, a negotiation, the best riders have a deep trust relationship with their animals, what the rider asks them to do, attraction to motorcycles, the sense of freedom a motorcycle gives you, two weeks on a motorcycle, grew up around motorcycles, cars are fucking expensive, buy a used car, fuck interest, a midlevel car is $10000, $1000 for a really nice car in the 70s, the inflation calculator, the price of cars has become like homes (unaffordable), cars are luxury products, there’s no money in affordable apartments, they’re buying it for an investment property, combined with the safety insanity, less driver training, drivers being protected in the event of an accident, height restrictions, pop up headlights are not allowed anymore, hit in the middle is better?, increases the weight cost, Japan does it differently, subsidized a different way, different results, read all day, Elon Musk, making electric cars, thousands of Teslas, even on Vancouver Island, in the city everybody has one, incentive of $5-7000, carbon offsets to make gas guzzlers, double subsidized, you’re buying an Elon Musk product, what you’re not seeing, there’s no way for you to fix it yourself, another cost, why motorcycles attracted Connor, a Suzuki GS500, $2200, no insurance, written off in a bad accident, registration, third party insurance, $500 year, mechanical repairs, 50k, mechanical problems, the chain got too worn, travelled all over the place, two week trips, Uluru, around Tasmania, you can ride the whole day in less than $100 of fuel, the freedom a motorcycle can give you, the entrapments of society, a shitbox car, parking, need to have a job to afford this, why bikies, why there are no truck gangs, vanlife, live rent free on the highway, the copyright situation, if some corporate lawyer suggests, the new copyright situation, only recent and hot, or under particular control, full film, hundreds of films online completely free, the most recent things, anything past that is online, sometimes it is Tubi, youtube, Ok.ru, just use an adblocker, the cartoonish nature, the visual is more important than it being realistic, based on a finite resource, a constant supply of new parts, cracked engine case, fuel line’s fractured, the disabled mechanic, you got 12, completely disregarding the reality, how long til Cundulini’s bike is ready, go meet the truck, George Miller and George Kennedy, scrappy at one point, he’s become old and rich, the storm sequence, too much CGI, everything is practical, he’s not Hollywoodified, Tina Turner, the amount of shit that’s poured on, let’s do the Blue Lagoon is Mad Max world, a serious step-down, alive forever, the redeeming arc, like Yojimbo again, need a leader, everything in Sun City is great, you know girl power and Max Max is there, the premise is broken, why prequels don’t make any sense, the backstory is to get you to the thing you want, A Mad Max Saga, the Fallout tv show, its not perfect but it is very good, the original Fallout game from 1997, the wanderer, dog’s named dogmeat, lore, a sense of humour, a funny situation, winks and nods, goofiness, the Gyro Captain, its my snake I trained it I get to eat it, insult humour, the ultimate film, just watch Road Warrior again, he has camels now, such a cool airplane, they see Sydney, the whole mythology, bigger not better, some amazing stuff, he recycles everything, a saxophone, Tina Turner’s stilt house, the sort of scene, he has to give up his weapons, none of those weapons get used, Doctor Who’s jacket, we can see the descent happening, Jesse plays the saxophone, scrapping, parallelism, symmetry, looking for symmetry, intrinsically resonates, video essay about doppelgangers, mirrorings, they know it to be good, hard to do without the vocabulary, the mirror of the beginning to the end, builds to the hero reveal, he’s the least interesting cop, his personality is he likes his wife, coulda bin any actor who was handsome in that role, an interview with George Kennedy looking very rich, will Mel Gibson come back?, whatever the answer is it doesn’t matter, he was a replaceable protagonist, Tom Hardy, they needed a big name actor, as an old man, the eternal hero, the greatest action film ever put to film, Mad Max one is a better movie, what it is to be a man, in cahoots to try to keep him on, Fifi is an interesting character, he’s got a plan, people need heroes, the message of the film undercuts that, at the end he gives the kid a choice, he becomes an anti-hero, a great anti-hero, a film that is more Mad Max, The Rover (2014), about it being on the edge of the apocalypse, almost a better sequel to Mad Max than Mad Max II, motivation for revenge, his dog died, his dog is in the boot of the car, his relationship with his dog, gets pretty fuckin dark, his wife was cheating on him, he murdered his wife, he knew that the world was fucked, he was a farmer, he’s a bad guy, he murdered his wife and his lover, I knew that the world was over, that’s the reality, that’s Mad Max, being a paramedic is going to show you some shit, driving yourself if a horrific act, that can happy at any time, falling into the street, a pedestrian, make eyecontact with the people who can run Jesse over, cousin blind in one eye has been hit twice, with a car its usually not on purpose, outsourced to manufacture and design, required by law to wear a seatbelt, ad campaigns, shock ads, very graphic car accidents, put people face to face with the consequences of having an accident, criticized and shocked, true stories being recreated, people texting on their phone, t-boned, people screaming, somebody dead, really horrific, people were against it because it shows the real life consequences, once you see the videos coming out of Gaza, what are you supposed to do with that information, any blue will do, my god what have we done, mal-and-mis-and-disinformation, cigarette packaging, lung cancer and tumours, it could contribute, very expensive not allowed to smoke almost anywhere, working at a tobacconist, 90% of the customers were over 40, not actually as dangerous as we were lied to about, alcohol can kill you, as a toxin, drinking too much alcohol in an evening, there was no connection between melanoma and cigarettes, you do you while you can, I shouldn’t be guilt tripping you about it, subject to the propaganda all around you, Alberta is the most rebellious part of Canada, felt uncomfortable, a very defensive driver and rider, tons of car accidents, a moment’s inattention, 1% is a hell of a lot, going 110km down a road, a T-intersection, an offramp to a rest stop, some dickhead stopped in the main lane, when you’re moving, that car is getting bigger really fast, sandwiched between two cars, get the fuck out of the way, the best case scenario, passenger vs. energy, safetyism, you’re in a chair, it’s happening, a slight unexpected something, a chipmunk on the road, a car that’s smoking, responding to something unusually, the takeway, how do we not have this relationship of escalating violence, turn off the internet, control the internet, if we don’t have free communication…, the bad people say the bad things, the top-down insensitive way, keep the money rolling in, if they find out we’re stealing them blind, people’s jobs to go on the internet, three day old account, tweet is deleted, job to fight what their boss wants, rewarded to get that, you’re taste of the cash, your job is fake, doing it because they’re in the bubble so hard, how do you end up there?, what if I’m wrong, that would be horrible, the dentist company, the policies are changed, asking permission to do things, why are they asking for consent now?, do you want to have fluoride?, why are they asking now?, they can bill it differently?, too many things like that, new forks for your motorcycle, coil overs, you don’t have time to research, that first motorcycle, at the time, 100k isn’t reliable, odometer only goes to 100,000, only meant, off the grid here, heard from other people, this is why you need information on the internet, brilliantly helpful, this guy is full of shit, formed the opinion, bad opinions formed, almost dead, does that guy run a dealership, do you think good information drives out bad information?, a tossup, fear, fear is hugely motivating, a trip to Uluru, in the middle of the fuckin desert, too much money to get a tow-truck, 3000km, cheap old cars leave them on the side of the road, if this does go bad, after a certain point of your own personal experience, things can always go wrong unexpectedly, they come off the new lot with problems too, fear is deflected by insurance, BCAA, road insurance, roadside assistance, how the money is made, a model known for mechanical problems, a Holden Barina, the reality, Donald Westlake, obsessed with insurance, comic relief characters, comparing insurance, one short story about insurance, what ifs are the most susceptible, when the war on terror started, everything was what if, two different bottles of shampoo, these things are possible, how likely is it?, when it comes to fear, climate change, it’s going to do this, it’s going to do that, track your accuracy, this sounds bogus, you haven’t looked into it, the temperature is so high, one of the tricks they were doing, ground temperature, the air above the ground is never as hot as the air above it, measuring the ground temperature, there are trends, we still have glaciers that they promised would have been melted, the global ice cap was going to be open all year, traffic from Europe to Asia ice free, is this fear being generated legit or not, control and manipulate before, the most recent one, as deadly as they said, if you don’t get the shot, fear is the motivator, it did for some people, people did die of COVID, largely ineffective, people died from the shots than died from COVID, the super-scary truth that hasn’t hit the mainstream yet, look into it and really see, just like the flu, inoculate the body, prevents you from getting COVID, changed the definition, a gene therapy, a new tech, the flu doesn’t work very well, it’s worth so much money, far off Mad Max, back to The Rover, deserves to be discussed, 6.4 rating on IMDB, the ending puts some people off, the reveal, the entire motivation, oh, really, probably annoyed some people, the strength of this story, a man who has nothing by the end of the film, no real hope for the future, a man with nothing to lose, he’s the terminal crazy he was afraid he would become, angry crazy shithead, Mad Max style story, so many spinoff ripoff, Escape From The Bronx, go out into the desert, dune buggies, the 80s was full of it, vehicular combat, no bikies, more realistic, no combat with cars, people get out of cars to fight, it expands upon, if it took place, it would be a couple of the years after the first Mad Max, fuel stations, give me $100, people are getting really desperate, under martial law, the military arrest people, Mad Max 1.5, noticeably more grim and serious, so nasty and scary, resonated a lot to things happening in Australia, the Chinese influence, radio stations in Chinese playing English songs, part of Australian, Greeks and Italians as the last immigrant set, families for hundreds of years, the gold rush, more so in recent years, it wasn’t there to make a point, a reality of modern Australia, one scene, Australia has survived, tourism, manufacturing, coal takes a long time to be replenished, the wealth of modern Australia, coal trains, armed guards, one of the characters in the rover is a fly in fly out miner, the money dried up, you should do a video on The Rover, ten years ago, a science fiction story, a science fiction story, what makes it science fiction, the relationship between government and people, the roads, the food, the consequences rolling down hill to a certain set of people, bronze vs. skags, rocker panels on their jackets, they’re not how a pirate ship or a gang actually works, they’re an embodiment of the fear of anarchy, they’ll come and rape your grandma, clunk having sex with a blowup elephant, rapists, they only respect the Night Rider, never explained, willing to kill cops, maybe?, he’s stolen that car, it’s a cop car that he’s stolen, studied it a lot, so well put together, the religious stuff before, he’s calling it out there, playing the game of lifting and using, it isn’t called Jerusalem by accident, explaining things, when they leave Johnny the Boy behind, a goat they staked out, spaced out on drugs, the reason people do drugs, a when to escape, obsessed with your avatar in a game, get in good with the gang, brushing Toecutter’s hair, a catamite servant boy, it is never explained, beloved, the beach scene, the scene killing goose, make him face the horror, that’s what we do, killing someone at a distance, it’s the same, Johnny, on the other end of the button, you have stock in company that makes the missiles, even better, then you don’t have any connection, make that company illegal, something cool about what Toecutter is doing there, very villainous and very solid, more of a sense of it in the novelization, especially in Fury Road, the old world becoming mythologized, remember him when you look at the night sky, valkries, a corporeal person, a spirit goes into the sky, a satanic ceremony, these guys are amiable and nice in their way, quite responsible in comparison, we are not liking the tennis lady and her parties, that’s not real, the vagabond lifestyle, not wanting to hide out and go and get a drink, not denying their animal nature, when we see that mythologized, goes right to the end, Goose as the same kind of character for Max, someone who was good and who was killed, what made Night Rider good is he was wild, Max breaks him, he’s talking about his belief in the supernatural legend of himself, witness me, trailer bait, very disconnected from the reality, patrol the highways, a wife and a kid, pay the bills, loving the road, way more sophisticated, less and a less sophisticated as it goes, Blue Lagoon heaven, to a fake heaven that doesn’t exist, a mythical place of green, disabused of that by showing up, this is degeneration, way to far away from the ambulance for way to long, nearly 50 years, a franchise, a video game out of it, this is no longer art, scrappy art, less and less art, something else completely, a franchise is even worse, Stone is an art film, that beach scene, boobs are all out, that was beautiful, not even into dicks, God Speed You! Black Emperor (1976), heavy metal, weird funk, an anthropological film, how they decide things, new member, a part of the club, the new member stands up, my name is Connor, they slap the patch on you, a consequence, he fucks up in some way, shave his eyebrows off, he’s gonna get a name out of that, confrontations with the cops, swastika on the thing, buddihism, bikers in North America and , stahlhelms, nazi pistols, nazi flags, quite the opposite, taking a trophy, counting coup, disillusioned soldiers, fake biker gang, Sons Of Anarchy, interpersonal drama, biker gang culture, saw their friends killed, The Wild One (1953), reflecting rather than explaining, interactions with these people, not willing to submit, going off and getting killed in wars, why the biker gangs still exist, rotarian groups, shriners, the masons, they’re all dying, in the shit of it, served in the military, time with their friends away from women, companionship on the road, bikes, car clubs, not organized like bikers, living an alternative lifestyle, amish as a response to horror, why do you have that on your stuff, taking the badges of your enemy, a good documentary I’d like to see, thoughts and lives, biking culture, Japan, rebelling, post-war, disillusionment, no point of being part of this society, a hangover, human life thrown away, what is it ever doing for me, an alternative way of living, to be able to explain it, Blue Ruin (2013), pretty great, Taken (2008) is palatable, competence porn, alcoholic, the lowest of the low rising up to meet a challenge, his parents are murdered, he tries to take revenge, the folly of revenge, Momento (2000) too, Green Room (2015), music at a nazi bar, witness a murder, lock themselves in the green room, a pocket Assault On Precinct 13 (1976), a struggle, at night during the week, ping you online, great chatting.

Mad Max - Frank Frazetta

Mad Max by Terry Kaye

Posted by Jesse Willis

Reading, Short And Deep #451 – Moon Dog by Arthur C. Clarke

Reading, Short And Deep

Reading, Short And Deep #451

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss Moon Dog by Arthur C. Clarke

Here’s a link to the story |PDF|.

The Unveiling was first published in Galaxy, April 1962.

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The SFFaudio Podcast #793 – READALONG: Sirius by Olaf Stapledon

The SFFaudio Podcast #793 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, Will Emmons, and Jonathan Weichsel talk about Sirius by Olaf Stapledon

Talked about on today’s show:
1944, some Olaf before this, Last And First Men and Star Maker, wow, this blew Jonathan away, this is a novel, if you told me I’d enjoy a book about a talking dog, it has that cosmic perspective, in a dog who has no hands, real genuine science fiction, not genre SF, not from an American pulp tradition, in the subtitle, “A Fantasy Of Love And Discord”, a scientific romance, something to say, thinking about dogs a lot, a dog as a kid, a pet person, passed away earlier this year, afraid of dogs, allergic to most of them, Irish setter, what I’m hearing is you’re gay, australian shepherd, Karl Barks, still gay, gay for dogs, city boy, Scrappy, got too big, gave him away, cats, Minnesota, a Labrador and a great Pyrenees, border collie, Corgi, loved to death, the dog relationship, neutral to dogs, like our narrator storyteller, the Olaf Stapledon stand-in, affected emotionally, balling my eyes out, hiking, tears, very powerful, a great book, some good things in the review, very American, wanted the book to be genre SF, Philip K. Dick shows instead of tells, make points about philosophy, attempts pulp, Cambridge educated philosopher, from 2020, another reference point, Dick’s philosophy is more cynical, very different, Stapledon trusts people and the community of people, trusts reality more, even though the community if evil, Dick’s stories are more city, vs. more country, more suburban, lives in a “community”, a very small world for you, the college with the town attached, some London here, rural fantasy, through the novel tradition, such a bad comparison, to bring Philip K. Dick into the conversation, a guy named Jesse, correct to reference Frankenstein by Mary Shelly, a more wholesome, humane take, needs to be with other creatures, a 2015 review, no last name, Odd John, as opposed to a book about super and ultra sheepdogs, uplifted, can you get an uplift without it being biologically heritable, the raising, a monkey in Australia as a farmhand, the fox listening to banjo music, an old English children’s magazine, great pets, famous pets, Farmhand Johnny, a rhesus monkey, follow up tweet, interviewing the farmer, the second monkey in a series of farmhands, don’t go on about your handlessness, super-important, this is not a man creating another man, a dog with a man’s brain, a super-canine brain, the thing that’s adressed a lot in the book, bestiality, incest, how intiate they had become, looks at her body mauled by the dog, as are we, Plaxy, such a weird name, a name that people have in England, Wales, the fornication?, discretion prohibits me from saying, how Jonathan would write it, a man relives himself, masturbating, sexual hypocrisy, a very funny sad and tragic book, deeply philosophical, dog-lover wish fulfillment fantasy, this is a being like me that has thoughts and desires and wants, unable to communicate fully, flagging of tails, bristling of backs, wants to have sex, wants to have a relationship with you, that’s remarkable, exploring this idea incredibly well, what is stopping people writing this today, owning a dog, mischaracterizing all of science fiction: space-fucking battles, what about Harlan Ellison’s A Boy And His Dog, Simak, Lester Del Rey, a lot less incest, go off on Jupiter together, a lot more tragic, this conflict between dog-nature and the human society he is raised in, identify with it as a human being, I’m a human, I fit in, nature vs. nurture, other books that explore, Tarzan, so much imagination, the depths of smelling, describing how the female dogs drive him insane, you wouldn’t understand, the narrator’s really good too, that British hidden humour in these character’s voices, Plaxy is the least understandable main character, we don’t love dogs that way, if Sirius had been a female dog or if Plaxy had been a brother, would it have been a better book, a more pure examination?, reverse those genders, heterosexual animals, a husband describing his wife, going up to the line, creepy, unfortunately very reliable narrator, the things he elides, the frame to get at telling this story, a very funny American trope, super-hilarious, the mad scientist and his beautiful daughter, does not like the father the doctor, unimaginative, his subjective point of view, 100% agreed, being prudes about the bestiality, the investigation is less pure or more pure, the animal and Plaxy’s nature, he’s also investigating women, Enemy Mine (1985) by Barry B. Longyear, Dennis Quaid and Louis Gossett, Jr. are fighter pilot, beach planet, give birth to their baby, dies in childbirth, dad and mom, reuinite him with his people, Will bait 101, the novella is 1979, Nebula and a Hugo, fewer people voted, not even a 1000 people, such a scam, throwing it out the window, interesting character, a perspective character, Stapledonian observations, the politics of this book, Hitler bad, why is Hitler bad?, a socialist novel, a communist dog at points, a small businessman selling his children, don’t collectivize my farm, typically Kulak, energetic but unfair, pre-WWII communist party of Great Britain, the hardship and oppression, surrounded by the professional managerial class, the PMC, using the PMC, Barbara Enright, the laptop class, people with a 9-5 job who work in offices, do you like it?, not a manager, includes teachers, lawyers, a little priest action, a parson is not a priest in the Anglican tradition?, holy nature, the guy in the front of the pulpit talkin, secular but mystical, for what this book is about, the way this book ends, like the Frankenstein creature he is not himself, just like the creature does, Jack London’s The Call Of The Wild, a dog that becomes a man that becomes a wolf, To Build A Fire, the best novel Jesse has ever read, inside the mind of a dog, a very alien story, some glimpses, doesn’t commit to the bit, Buck did not need the newspapers, inside of a dog’s head, telling a different story, boyfriend/husband, make a sale, interested in the market, a publisher wouldn’t touch it, how many of the books that you’ve read of him are something a publisher would want, things were different back then, H.G. Wells pioneered something, John Wyndham’s career, a new science fiction writer, been there done that, a repeat of Day Of The Triffids, he must have had a dog, the author of this manual of sheepdogs and their owners, to Will and Maissa, border collie video, sheepdog trial olympics, there for him while he’s doing his stuff, the commentators are going wild, that’s the relationship that this book is about, it was thrilling, made Will tired, that much energy, POV, omniscient narrator, Bob is angry, an omnipresent narrator, Bob seemed angry, more of a naturalistic approach, Guy de Maupassant, maybe the character felt this way, describing Sirius, Sirius was this way, jarring, what he restrict, I ate a man yesterday, Plaxy, and I liked it, as a writer it is important to note these things, in Buck’s head and right over Buck’s shoulder, notes, the humans in Sirius’ world, a more direct picture, this big archive of notes, too fat and complacent, wrote one book, The Lamppost, Beyond The Lamppost, a philosophy of things outside of being a dog, humans like to drink thinks, vee dogs and like to emit liquids, I see what you’ve emitted there, went for a walk with his dog, that’s how dogs be, let me right a novel about this, a terrific book, nobody could write this book today, a huge book of ideas, I can take this paragraph from this chapter of Last And First Men and make a 40 book series out of it, Paul is correct, read it again, what does the word completed mean?, the other projected book, in a state for publication, trying to split a hair your not going to split, the center of interest in Cambridge, Sirius does not understand dogs, he’s pretty young, a sad case, a tragedy from beginning to end, his creator dies, he has plans, has finished writing but not completed can never be published, remarkably, why is this set during WWII, an anti-fascist novel, a pacifist, lived a long time, supported the war effort, Wikipedia rabbit holes, fuzzy, when people are bad, they scapegoated Plaxy and Sirius the way the Nazis scapegoated the Jews, people use the word a lot, 20th century view on fascism, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, wait six months for this show to come out, an interesting take, our POV character is a solider and Plaxy is a landgirl, seems important to the war effort, Bomb Girls, what her views about communism and fascism are, she’s naive, communism isn’t the answer, petite bourgeoisie, create something new, I’m not so sure now Plaxy, literally selling his children, drowns some of his puppies, a flawed creator, religion, Brian Aldiss would do it more that way, an unapologetic J.D. Beresford H.G. Wells kinda guy, those books are dreams, characterless, occasional character name, hallucinations of humanity, an actual novel, Arthur C. Clarke is very spiritual, dealing with religion, goes into the church and sings from behind a veil, I know you will be shocked, don’t you want to hear them, the youtube videos of a dog singing along at the piano, the Right of Spring, out of the ordinary, A World Of Sound by Olaf Stapledon, escapes his body and sees a world of sound, moving over a landscape, he’s just slept through the whole opera, the sparking firework display that is Olaf Stapledon’s genius, like Peter And The Wolf, other notes come in, characters are notes and themes, we can tell a story just with sound, that’s what he’s done here with smells, I’ll be your bitch, this is an intimate relationship, going into scents, bite their owners, so rich and deep, what if Plaxy was just a brother, a boy and his dog, sex and raping, about the relationship of humans to animals, part of the household, super-duper rich, moved to tears by this book, never fits in, murdering or killing?, he’s mad, needs to be put down, near human intelligence, back to the demiurge again, a functional being, he lives in Britain, you have the solution in Canada, he’s a flawed creation, he’s not a man and he’s not a dog, he’s alone, had the deep thoughts that he has, invited to say what of man, is man a flawed creation?, the answer is yes, a very cynical view, is it cynical or is it realistic?, he grok fascism, and yet he will sell his own children and drown them, an alien species, kziniti, Jesse has Paul modeled, the aliens from Larry Niven’s Ringworld series, a brilliant writer and everything, a very different use of the ideas, one kzin, in the sequels, the kzinti homeworld on Ringworld, speaker becomes a king, like a Conan story, conquer the map of earth, they’re klingons but they’re cats, officially in the Star Trek universe, plugging Paul’s own game, lamenting the lack of Olaf Stapledon, smart dog novels, demanding, how its coming, the great female kizinti novel (that gets uplifted), she wakes up in the harem, you bastard, Ottoman harems, the power that women tried to wield, the kzinti queen, males don’t get their names, that the civil service says is good, I’m a male chauvinist sometimes, sometimes I’m a coward, sometimes I’m a 300 year old Fu-Manchu, sometimes I’m a lucky girl who gets to spend time with Larry Niven, unfortunately we demanded more books, got any more?, goddamn it, had to be doomed, humans are flawed and doomed, as a species too, leave AI to die, Paul’s Reeve guy’s plan, Elon Reeve Musk’s plan, escape the planet, preppers build bunkers, off planet, to make the air in air factories, this picture of what it means to be a person, a worker intellectual, the intellectual and artistic life, a vigorous physical exercise, really good critique of the Cambridge people, they drop things, talking about the mandarins, cultivate the long finernails, girls too, they’re princesses, intellectual beings contemplating gardens and writing poems with their mouths, denigrate manual labour, the dignity of labour, back to Wales, use his mind to labour also, he can’t be a Conan, conquering bitches, rollicking adventures, because of the landscape, his contribution to the war, I wrote a book about a smart dog, Tarzan goes off to war, Tarzan And The Foreign Legion by Edgar Rice Burroughs, a war corespondent, he thought he was at the center of things, patriotism is crazy, hilarious, go join WWI, go get ground up in the meatgrinder, we hate that, we didn’t want to do that, the cycle continues, alien and sedition act, that goddamn fucking Wilson, divide and conquer, he kept us out of the war, the League Of Nations, what a ringing success it was, return to normalcy, America first platform, Warren Harding, a reaction against Woodrow Wilson, no imperial entanglements outside of the empire itself, alcoholic drank himself to death while in office, sad that he died, why Donald Trump is a teetotaler, locked Wikipedia entry, Teapot Dome where Larry Niven got all his money, Coolidge, Republican presidents, Herbert Hoover, never served in public office, Grecian revival, we got dig him up, traveling across the country giving big speeches, front porch campaign, hide his alcoholism, the wealthiest guy, Hoovervilles, a miner, as usual, to feed Europe during WWI, an extremely popular person worldwide, Secretary of Commerce, one of the most hated and reviled, ran for re-election constantly, pumping money into the economy, a laissez-faire approach, avoided the whole thing, pushing an asteroid, what would president Olaf Stapledon do to fix the world?, major political parties in the UK agreed to a coalition government, forget this democracy thing for the course of the war, Commonwealth, merger between strange socialist, non-state socialism, Christian socialists, willing to contest elections, radicalizing, when they all joined Labour, advocating for a European federal government, a world government, full of good ideas, advocating for the welfare state, Beverage, here’s ghow they’re inadequate, the NHS comes out of that, Churchill, surprisingly he was a conservative, the Left Book Club, an important institution, Victor Gollancz, better known as a science fiction, today, a left wing publisher, they go together, all these great fights with Orwell, stupid and Trotskyist, breaks with the communists, Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, world congress for peace, useless things that we shouldn’t use, what a monster, left wing things, development of the welfare state, common ownership of property, socialism on the installment plan, hard to really grok it, socialism and they had no money, everybody got glasses, Doctor Who, Doris Lessing’s science fiction work, a bit shorter, more grizzled, comin out of the 30s, a healthier society, world government, what a monster!, gentle, as a revolutionary, an ideas guy, today in 2023, the experiment performed by the doctor, let’s hear him out, it would be unethical, cloning, impossible to do in real life, tomatoes with trout DNA, monkey man, Dogman, unethical, we’re a very unethical species, the scientific organizations have codes of ethics, that’s not coming up, doing it on the sly, most people don’t believe it, our narrator believes it, the sheep farm, when the dog sends a letter, called out in one of the reviews, we coulda used more like that, that was demonstrative, this novel doesn’t deal with scientific ethics enough, hey David Brin you haven’t had a hit in a while, go retro, lots of scenes where ethics boards are talking to each other via skype, it’s about our relationship with animals, and specifically dogs, nude in front of them, we won’t fart in front of our wife, put leashes on them, and then we’ll have to get you spayed eventually, neutered, not a major focus, where ethics comes into this book, reasons for the secrecy, commercial interest learning about the dog, mass production of this kind of animal, is there a world in which Sirius could have lived, the circus freaks, displaying themselves because of their oddities, seen that book or read that movie, not going to do the deep relationship between humans and dogs, when you pet Plaxy, she goes to make water, the wistle, its time to pee!, how children are, the devastation, the loss, how dare you!, one after the other, marking my territory, more like twitter, completed uncompleted book, enlightening, where they make their symposia, a peeing party, extends his lifespan, a regular dog would have died, they’re the same age, how old is Plaxy in 1944?, early 20s, a university education, we get that date at some point, less realistic, hung up on the wrong part of the science fiction, injecting human DNA into dog brains, this is not actually possible, they don’t seem to be viable, I’ve never made a monkey man myself, it’s possible for human and a chimpanzee to have sex, taboo, a mules, lots of mules, it wouldn’t line up correctly, somewhat mentally challenged, 99% match in DNA, human female and male chimpanzee, caesarean bud, wild conversation, Jungle Jitters, a genetic dead-end, ligers and tigons, one thing we haven’t talked about in this book, Plaxy is a cat, because she has a pussy?, something going on with cats in this novel, silly cat vs. dog stuff, astute observations, they are kind of mean, whenever Plaxy is mean she’s like a cat, to hurt Sirius, sometimes she’s this, somethimes she’s that, gives clues, very catlike, is he making a comment on women as well, should we be cancelling Mr. Olaf, the book is very doggy, the repeated point throughout: she’s catty, the cats were girls and the dogs were boys, when I’m 2, Treasure Planet (2002), hybrid babies, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island in space, humans and furries, related to transhumanism, there are also robots in this movie, it’s good?, fun, when we do Treasure Island, pirates, Paul’s being facetious, A High Wind Over Jamaica by Richard Hughes, trying to grok a scene, he has doggy vision, mystical vision, that supreme moment passed, a new reality, monochrome vision, colours seeing by the eye of the spirit, plain greys of ordinary life, gained a new meaning, their own true colours, suffused, the light of the spirit, the religious tinge, the Great Master, the True Creator, he has limited vision, he’s a young dog, Christian mysticism, probably not the best thing to study, one catty observation, turgid prose, actually turgid, looked it up before, swollen, congested, distended, Paul tends to read to fast, this is beautiful, this is poetry, limited view of reality, where you have to start saying the narrator is unreliable, a similar book, the Moon smashes into the Earth, Alec Nevala-Lee, The Hopkins Manuscript, a chicken farmer, a country seated gentleman, R.C. Sherriff, not petting his penis, it ain’t turgid, be his bitch, smiling a lot, the jokes were very funny, his song standing up, world dictator someday, humanize him with these books, a necessary scene in the novel, three possibilities, mystical gobbledygook, dial it back not dial it in, epiphany, the text comes out and says this is an important scene for you to read, a crisis, three paragraphs later, St. Catherine Of Sienna, he faces the absolute, when he goes to talk to the priests and learned people, these guys don’t get it, god is love, we’re all Sirius, born into the world, circumstances we didn’t create, he is a man, he does manly things, he has manly interests, science and muscularity and religion, a 9 hour book, the relationship that dogs have always had with man, the relationship of domesticating man or man domesticating animals, a man and a woman and a dog, man and dog and other dog, he doesn’t love in the right way when being a king, beaten by the man in the red sweater, he’s lost, ultimately he’s a wolf, this character is broken that requires a tragedy, a flawed creation, a powerful but not perfect creator, you don’t even need the god of the bible, puts us in the bad place, he loves him as a father, always seeking his approval, always arguing with his father, in the title of the book, the love part, the discord part, wherever he goes he’s singing a different tune, Apple of Discord, fuck around with things, smart like a man, he can read he can write he can sing he can make foolish religious claims, bigger brain equals smarter, really cool ultimate point, able to communicate with other beings using language, tantalizingly close to understanding the animals, when Soleks is looking at Buck, desires and goals, pack positional shit, dogs don’t have human morality, they don’t have shame but they can fake shame, it was bred to do that, that’s what goodness is is doing that, make a slave of another human being, program the robots, the revolt of the robots, so deeply science fictional, hormones, it’s not a breeding program, no robot arms, allowing a dog to understand us, science fiction is evil, some professor, on the whole a negative, had a negative social impact, if Elon Musk learned the lessons of Robert A. Heinlein, Nineteen-Eighty Four as an instructional manual, you wanted a hot-take, I’ve studied this stuff, trust me on this, bro, for you feed, are we done with the book, Return From The Stars, Omega: The Last Days Of The World by Camille Flammarion, a chapter missing, very early and very French, all collaborative, a comet that’s about to strike Earth, everybody buys telescopes, the United Nations, the international community, miscalculating things, a near death experience, moratlity, a technological boom, evolving, where Joe Rogan is very stupid, fallback stupidity, we just need to evolve more, man, this human being don’t change, people exactly the same, expresses different, merge man and machine, a very unwise person, almost Stapledonian, a science fiction book, the history of the species, another human species, in real life Stapledon believed, the transhumanism thing, the ability to see the colour blue, a linguistic trick, the wine dark sea, a myth that people believe, the 1917 Bolshevik revolution, a much better claim, the French Revolution with the experience of the French Revolution, what does it mean to be a domesticated animal, slaves, are human beings domesticated animals, school, factory workers, it loses its hair and becomes very social, domesticated apes, the overarching history of humanity, the unifer of the state, domestication is about the home, the family exists without the state, the family is a legal relationship, he becomes their owner, the mom has a relationship with her pups, their nice about it, a wolf gives birth to pups, uncles, an extended family unit, a condor, three little chicks, pushed it to its death, the weakest, the calorie intake I’m able to bring in, marriage is a legal construct, family, brings food to, it does it for a while, more like horses than tigers, make decisions collectively, by following people and leading people away from predators and towards prey, privatized, exceptions to that, the state will interfere with your shit, it should, it shon’t, tell condors how to run their families, we wanna catch that baby bird and raise it up, we never let it go, we’re different creatures than they are, not really possible, women leave their babies in bathrooms, in handbags, they drive them into lakes, are we thinking that’s a bad thing, abandoning babies, embrace that, horrific, you think the state has a place in people’s lives, lots of tutoring, enslave Jesse, hit him over the head, apprenticing, don’t go down that road, if you put it that way, Groucho Marx, the Groucho tendency, Harpo, Chico, very much a Groucho, individualized tutoring, university is still allowed, what Socrates was doing before being cyberbullied into killing people, making fun of people, follow him in conversation, the role of religion, worship Chebu and Sheemish, unequal opportunity, less unequal opportunity, more unequal, who was your best teacher?, he was fired, teaching his own things, an individualized tutor, the answer to this question is more institutions we can refor them, we live in a post-scarcity society, a theoretical conversation, how to improve the lot of black slaves in 19th century, it could be practical, its important that the students take it seriously, what money does, it’s important you gotta learn, kids who’ve been taught properly by their moms, learning is joyful, learning is wonderful, The Other Gods, everything is purposeful, it ought to be read, resonant, by Lovecraft, having multiple purposes in mind, just fun?, the fun came in the joyful experience of being taught, materially, Sirius enjoys audiobooks, don’t buy the product, often don’t, pirate, we live in a post scarcity society, knowledge should be free, no money, everything should be pirated, at no cost, this philosophy doesn’t distinguish, created from knowledge, they are the same, ebooks, your ideal purchasing audiences, commissioned audiobooks, the economic justification, quite interesting, Jesse is not going to make you a lot of money, doesn’t take into consideration, some are doing it to make money, knowledge leaves to the death of knowledge, freedom is restrictive, nobody will write a book, so what is he really saying, think of the long tail, don’t think about that, in 400 years you’ll be dead, sorry, get that Blue Yeti, haltered and faltering, rushes through words, Eric does almost everything, into people’s ears, ebooks are dying, paperbooks are dying, a superior medium: audio, who has opportunity to learn to read, gotta learn braille, sad story, Helen Kellers, most people, Isaac Asimov short stories where kids no longer read, perfectly like people, a disability to study old things, let her read, major disability, sound like a libertarian, argue with each other, Jonathan is more realistic and responsible, wanted to open a used bookstore, neither realistic nor responsible, small property, we’re in a post-scarcity society, make a sacrifice, money, kids are broken by school, learning is painful torture, want it both ways, to get the Jesse service, every middle class professional, be wanting to be there, Stapledonian paradise, post-scarcity spread-around, workers education association, you and an old book are your best teacher, show me one person that had that happen to them, they learn at home or not at all, learn to read in a new language, the family relationship would fall apart without the state to support it, capital, can’t afford to live in your home, sent across the country, a relationship between capital and the state, it exist, it make kids go to school, the laissez faire welfare state, Guardian/Colossus I can trust, how socialist planning would work, an idealistic socialist, planning by the people, a technocratic socialist, educate people into be awake to these things, state forcing people to do stuff is really horror, make the horror less horrible, if Will were president of Planet Earth, two colleges, Hampshire College, somehow you have to pay tuition though, did not thrive at all, Fordham, Jesuit rigid and structured, success undefined, own limitations, what I could accomplish, very experimental temperament, discuss books like Sirius, breadth of knowledge, politics and current events, European history, history of science, Colin Powell’s school, college and university, millions of hours being wasted, regular school, being babysat, always an issue, Paul doesn’t remember school very well, their lives are being wasted sitting in rooms learning nothing, inefficient, obedient workers, edification, lifelong-learning, how much we learn together, having read the book, now we get a great discussion out of it, richer and deeper, a relatively small group, everybody gets a chance to be criticized and drilled down on, we learn more from it, Will goading Jesse into it, anti-vaxxer stuff, bad new definition of vaccine, unable to respond, what can you do?, just do your best?, how the white man discovered inoculation, learned it from African slaves, smallpox, in Africa for centuries and centuries, Cotton Mather, Lovecraft talks about him, he wrote about it, this is a case of witchcraft, put too much pus in there, the new one is gene therapy, polio, defined polio away, the March Of Dimes, Modern and Pfizer, our theory is its going to work like this, 75 years from now you’ll be allowed to look at the data, very very clear, milking the public purse, lousy tech company, that woman who went to prison, Theranos, some people have died from twitter, quit twitter, forcibly having twitter injected into my body, dead virus, spike protein, you might want to read one of his books, you might find it quite moving, what the news said about Olaf Stapledon, [Dr. John Campbell’s youtube channel], pushing Ukraine, provincial health care system, trying to help people, also trying to hurt people, but compared, the B.C. government forced Jesse to get two injections, laboured into, took the hit and was lucky, a workforce issue, some random lady, no one else is doing it, doesn’t seem to be killing most people instantly, six shots, six of any vaccine, not a vaccine, that’s what it used to mean, different stages of protection, white blood cells and t-cells, when someone is listening six months later, teaches medical practitioners, pay attention to this guy, mysterious deaths in your family, doesn’t have an axe to grind, if you really want to know about this stuff, puts a checkmark beside each of things you’re reading, don’t trust the science, don’t trust the Moderna, it turns out that this gene therapy, don’t trust Trump, operation Warp Speed was a great idea, that whole ivermectin thing, propaganda for making billions, sucking money from government coffers and injecting it into private, loss of taste, paxlovid, increased your chance of getting COVID again, attack the body, pressured by Will’s dad, got his doctorate from CNN, brought to you by AstraZeneca, open to the idea, objectively true, Jesse didn’t change the definition, that’s what they changed to, it stops with every person who takes it, reduce hospitalization, reduced the amount of time you have the disease, literal videos, in that one instance, Fauci is the easiest one, the best example, Trump don’t know nothing, they kicked people of twitter and youtube for saying things that were true, banned accounts, deleted video, very nuanced, these are people who didn’t get the vaccine, the median age of people who died of COVID, older than the average of death, 84ish, how is that reconciled with what we were told, to children and babies, before the Tri-City News deleted itself, family court, in favour of the caution of having the baby vaccinated, a lot of excess deaths best explained by people, didn’t work for you either, the evidence of your eyes, a characterization of how the vaccine was promoted, make you less sick, after they noticed getting the disease, they lied about it, big surprise, after the Emergency Use Authorization, in Cuba, China, in Russia, the global conspiracy of not doing science is global, preventative health care, China did these lockdowns, hospitals being built, drones telling people to stay indoors, the ventilator shit, hospital workers, the ventilators were killing people, the disease crystalizes the lungs, weird lack of work, hours and hour researching boring little things, all the other things, David J. West, twitter guys who write books and have good covers, a little more successful than Jonathan, more prolific, a danish dessert locally made in Minnesota, palm oil, soy oil, margarine, glyphosate, not allowed in Italy, celiac disease and gluten intolerance, what possibly caused it, literal weedkiller, lubrication for machines, still available for sale, forced into our foods, find a vegan section, food minus industrial lubricants, we could reform the FDA, new broom, the changing perspective on how the drugs were sold, Will wants change, pump us full of toxic shit for cash, cheaper, pretend it’s fine, try living without these ingredients in your life, The Stuff (1985), this delicious looking thing, like a supplicant, give him money to buy some margarine, homeless person inside a store, some coffee, have to pee to much, hyped up and hopped up enough, in six months everybody will know, potatoes, it makes the potatoes ripen, a big fight about GMOs, literal provincial politics, I wonder if I should be worried about that, in the news, they got their way and now nobody talks about it, genetically modifying plants, sprayed with toxin for killing plants, you have not been genetically modified to thrive on roundup, weren’t as corrupt as they are now, when did you start hearing the words “celiac” or “gluten intolerant”, redpilled on smoking causing cancer, if it makes your body feel good, Canadian doctor, industrial health, smoke breaks, the boss can understand why you want a break, Ulysses S. Grant, skin cancer and lung cancer, maybe stayed out of the sun more [or been in it more], Lovecraft died of cancer, a teetotaler, sad story for Mrs. Lovecraft, didn’t die of bean cancer, you don’t read him for pleasure, a whole collection, circa 2006, a terrible story, people get it so wrong, The Colour Out Of Space, At The Mountains Of Madness, Suitable Flesh (2023), a body switching story, a wizard who’s been switching bodies, it’s a comedy, Lovecraft is really fanny, the film adaptation is hilariously wild, The Unnamable, Mr Jim Moon, hushed innuendoes, the Cotton Mather one, something had caught my ancestor, mixed marks of split-hooves, and many believed him, I saw it – it happened to me, it was it was unnameable, a little bit of gore, not pinhead style gore, a cat that got squished, people get squished, pure delightful comedy, so lucky, what a birthday present, From Beyond (1986), some people can only watch new movies, undisciplined, these comics are somewhat tolerable, reviewing myself out of reading them, a good podcast is better than anything else for drawing out, those don’t make great shows, 100% a criticism of the work, movie-tie in comics, I don’t remember Yoda having 17 arms, Star Wars output in the 1990s, coherent in a way the new stuff was not, we know you like memberberries, we’re bringing Han Solo back, to kill him, Princess Leia and storm trooper get lost on a planet, Starbuck teams up with a cylon, Enemy Mine (1985), a Christmas present, evil humans come to a planet, very Andre Norton but good, a good short story, The Beast Master, a tv show, her father was into “Indian lore”, needed more trauma to be more interesting, there’s trauma in this book, he had a dog die, thinking about his dogs, Navajo, genetically altered animals, a good pulp novel, not a big think, one note villains, the TV show ran 66 episodes, 2005, you hope she made some money, pass away rather than die, you want good things to happen, have their legacy edified, a good word, vacation being sick, complaining about being sick six months later, smarter than to listen to the propaganda, a new car, a new pair of shoes, you shouldn’t take the flu vaccine, hate to hear, shingles, people who’ve got the shingles vaccine aren’t protected from shingles, shingles can be brought out by flu or gene therapy COVID vaccines, I’m protecting myself, allergic reaction disease, another podcaster complaining, shingles vaccine, booster, the brands for the companies pushing the product, NIH, when Joe Rogan was painted green on CNN, ivermectin, public domain, reactivation, assumed to be significantly higher, statistically detectable, hypothesis confirmed, the more ups of your dosage the more chances you have of having this disease reassert itself, above median age of death, it never does come out unless you look at history, trying to hide WWII from us, eventually nobody cares, more and better facts about what was going on, look at these stupid things, still making money off of slavery, do you want to be subject to the slavery?, educate ourselves as best we can, follow the money, a lot of groupthink, go-along play-along people are not scientists, make their publications known, those people get kicked off of youtube and twitter, makes lots of mistakes, likes professional wrestling, he couldn’t watch the show, not happy about it, a pathetic show at the time, cooties all over it, Trump’s you’re fired show, cooties all over it, Survivor, fake tiki ritual, this is fucking moronic, that show continues, not everybody is intellectually interested int he same things, motorcycles, kangaroos, reading NIH papers for fun, I wonder what causes it, instances of people getting it, being phased out, Dallas Buyers Club (2013), the bad guy was Fauci, everybody’s going to get AIDS, somebody’s going to touch your blood, blood transfusion, I don’t want to die from AIDS, only game men and people who got it from blood transfusions, massive puritanical panic, garnered some control, cultural homophobia, who dies of COVID, ancient people, people over the median age of death, 6 month old children, in any reasonable understanding of reality, fear and panic are used to control the flow of cash, if you don’t play along, super-evil and very interesting, send a text message, certain cookware, dog shaped pans, Christmas Archie comics, not a big Christmas guy, like going to the dentist, so personal, Hanukkah, fuck those dreidels, go to the Chinese restaurant, ethnically, philosophically, we ran out of oil but somehow the oil continued, Masada, a good miniseries, stars Peter O’Toole, the ethnostate takes it on as a mythological thing, jews are really awesome, a lot of bad ones too, the Jewish experience in North America, the most Jewish person on the internet is Paul, kvetching, schlemiel, schmuck, sex based on, schlepp, sister lived in Israel on a Kibbutz, came back feral, a lot of cattiness, things that make you cynical, oh the scratches!, loves dogs, can roll with punches, cry cry cry, onto new things!, I’m still processing the trauma, I’m going to learn everything there is to know about cow breeding, how much overspill about border collies, only polite to listen, they need lots of walks, closing in on 5 hours, bagels with roundup!, find some Italian flower, she’s really shaky, nice bread, look at the ingredient list on the bread, that’s why I’m dying, The Cave Girl, easy to get people for Burroughs, a hard time of the year, Terence would have contributed greatly, Maissa is a cat lady but had a dog, everybody has something to say and a different experience to bring to it, the reason we do this, just listeners, beautiful, such an important difference, hear himself reading too quickly, how many people are listening to this from 5 hours deep?, how many downloads, onsite plays, wordpress, the files are hosted on servers elsewhere, most people don’t listen on site, Mike listens and gives feedback, imagine if there’s ten listeners, 50 hours of people’s lives being enriched, how much money it got you, even if you’re hate listening, something deranged about you, gotta dog pans for Christmas, demographics, people like Mirko, Cora (isn’t a listener), Peter, other Germans, Germans are very cosmopolitan, post-WWII occupation, only 8 more minutes.

SIRIUS by Olaf Stapledon

Posted by Jesse Willis

Reading, Short And Deep #432 – Catherine And Frederick by Bros. Grimm

Reading, Short And Deep

Reading, Short And Deep #432

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss Catherine And Frederick by Bros. Grimm

Here’s a link to the story |PDF|.

Catherine And Frederick (sometimes Frederick And Catherine or Simple Kate) was first published in German in Children And Household Tales (Kinder-Und Hausmärchen), 1812.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!

The SFFaudio Podcast #767 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Charwoman’s Shadow by Lord Dunsany

The SFFaudio Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #767 – The Charwoman’s Shadow by Lord Dunsany, read by Michelle Fry for LibriVox. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the book (7 hours, 40 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Trish E. Matson, and Scott Danielson

Talked about on today’s show:
rhymes with rainy, mainly falls on the plainy in Spainy, the main character’s name, a question, was he Catholic?, set in Spain, a man of all seasons, both sides of the Irish civil war, his heart is Irish, seated in Ireland, historically wealthy and famous, kinsmen of a Catholic saint, a crosier head, a staff with a hook at the top, buck you to hard, quite a bit of Dunsany, Reading, Short And Deep, mind would wander away, caught up in his curly-cues of ideas, a super simple plot, The Book Of Wonder Stories, Wizard demands somebody’s shadow for services rendered, Jorge Luis Borges story, writing at length later, 1926, January 2023, more as the years go by, other public domain already, better at length?, the exact same content, soak in with a short, beautiful writing, Jesse doesn’t care about plot, it’s a good book, Trish and Scott loved it, The King Of Elfland’s Daughter, Penguin Book edited by S.T. Joshi, he is quite good, excellent themes, where the plot went, Jesse had no clue, oblivious, she’s too old him, she’s of the wrong class for him, once he gets a look at her silhouette, Ramone Alonzo Matthew Mark Luke John, trying to help other people, being a knightly hero, spending time with the ladies, a very strong will, moved by pity, he doesn’t understand at first, misery, swears to help her, quixotic, the Spain setting, a Don Quixote character, young and doofusy, romances of other heroes, not a bad thing, choose your heroic quests carefully, Persuasion by Jane Austen, being part of this society, doing his duties, the Jane Austen structure, beyond this wood we set much by gold, beyond this wood lies error, evil magician, stories about genies giving us three wishes, focused on the wrong thing, the evil wizard that’s not so evil, A Good Story Is Hard To Find, Northanger Abbey, a fun writer, her own genre, true with Dunsany as well, so many gems of Dunsany in this, the opening, meta openings, the image of the man crossing the landscape, talking to his dad, not playing ball anymore, son, you gotta earn some money, the priests have told you that money is filthy, for good crops to grow they have to have something filthy in their roots, the guy who takes care of our horses, they get paid once a year, we live on rocky ground, the father is wise, the sister seems to be wise, everybody is wise except for our doofusy young man, he’s just young, it’s great to spend time at the knee of Lord Dunsany, the master before Ramon Alonzo shows up, elixir vitae, resounding stairs, whatever the rats might dare, golden key, a lock he turned only once every thirty years, little curtains the spiders had drawn across it, alone with the Moon, age worn steps of oak, free from its foibles, unyoked by its causes, fresh and keen, the nimble alertness of youth, a well wrought rapier coming to its first war, feeling the new generation, the newer ones, refreshing, rattling to the older generations, cast off the generation he’s in and become part of the new one, interesting concepts, love the language, so many pleasant digressions to follow along with, sending out the shadows, far beyond the outer planets, the Lovecraft element, the torment that that causes, her name was Anemone, the narrator, she’s the main character, her backstory drives a lot of what’s going on, we would have recognized you, the house with the lit window, the money is long gone, regretting letting her go, such a great backstory, he’s lifting a curse, he tricked her into giving up her shadow, her youth and beauty, Duckweed, revealing of the wizard, above, he’s not in it for her body, he’s in it for her shade, certain demons have no shape, Ariel and Caliban, servants or slave, to commune with Yuggoth, what the gossip is on Pluto, the genre of this, clearly a fantasy, magic for science, boring thing: transmutations of metals, Chapter 12, had you anonymized this book, it’s clearly obvious who wrote this,

Ramon Alonzo pondered bitterly: he had sold his shadow for gold, and now gold was not needed.

He had not yet learned the whole art of transmutation. Would the magician give back his shadow?

And Mirandola must have her love-potion, and the charwoman have her shadow out of the box. He had much to do if his plans were to come to fruition.

Back he went to the gloomy room that was sacred to magic. “I have no need of gold,” he said.

“It is a worthless metal,” replied the magician. “The philosophers sought it for the interest they took in re-arranging the element. But the stuff itself was nought to them. They buried it where I have said, and have often warned man of its worthlessness; in testimony whereof their writings remain to this day.”

“I would learn no more of it,” said Ramon Alonzo.

“No?” said the magician.

“I pray you therefore give back my shadow,” he said.

“But it is my fee,” said the magician.

“I would learn other things,” said the young man, “for other fees. But this fee I pray you return.”

“Alas,” said the magician, “you have learned much already.”

“Of this matter nothing,” said Ramon Alonzo.

“Alas, yes,” replied the magician. “For you have learned the oneness of matter, and that there is but one element. And this is a great secret to the vulgar, who believe there are four. And doubtless they will, in their error, discover even more than these four before ever they come to learn that there is but one, which you have learnt already, and this is my fee for it.” And he stooped and rapped the shadow-box somewhat sharply.

“You gave me a shadow to wear in its place,” said the young man.

“I will make you a longer one,” replied the magician.

Ramon Alonzo saw that words would not do it, and that whatever he said would be verbally parried with skill.

“Then give me a love-potion,” he said.

“I do not dispense these things,” said the magician haughtily.

“Then teach me how they are made, and not the making of gold.”

The magician pondered a moment. It was all one to him. He had his fee safe in the shadow-box. He despised equally gold and love, and cared not which he taught. Some etiquette he had learned from some older magician seemed to prompt him to give something for his fee.

“Gladly,” he answered briefly.

Then Ramon Alonzo sat down without a word, thinking of Mirandola.

He had never enquired the reason of anything that she asked for. It was Mirandola, with eyes like a stormy evening. Thoughts passed behind those eyes such as never visited him. Mirandola knew. It is hard to say how the flash of those eyes swayed him. He never sought to know, and never questioned Mirandola’s demands.

“By the admixture of crocodile’s tears with the slime of snails,” came the voice of the Master, “the basis of all love-potions is constructed. Unto this is to be added a powder, obtained by pounding the burned plumage of nightingales. Flavour with attar of roses. Add a pinch of the dust of a man that has been a king, and of a woman that has been fair two pinches, and mix with common dew. Do this by light only of glow-worms and saying suitable spells.”

Ramon Alonzo, following the gestures that the Master made as he spoke, saw on the shelves the ingredients that he mentioned. He saw a jar holding attar of roses beside one named “Dust of Helen.” He saw two jars side by side called “Dust of Pharaoh” and “Dust of Ozymandias,” one of them probably Rameses. He saw a vial labelled “Crocodile’s Tears.” All that he needed seemed there; outside in the wood the glow-worms burned, and there were plenty of snails.

The lesson went on drearily, the magician intoning various spells that the young man learned by heart or believed he learned, and naming alternative ingredients that had of old been used in more torrid lands. Of the ingredients Ramon Alonzo was so sure that no mistake was possible; if ever he erred at all it was with the spells.

guided by the plot, really good movie or an episode of a show, Sorcerer’s Apprentice, The Rejected Sorcerer (aka El Brujo Postergado Borges) story, a trail of flowered footsteps, finally a reason for CGI (removing a shadow), the uncanny, Michelle Fry from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, hints of irony,

Delightfully imaginative, somewhat similar to Dunsany’s blockbuster fantasy novel, The King Of Elfland’s Daughter (and published just two years after it), this equally entertaining, verbally voluptuous tale brings us in touch with the heraldry, artistry, and superstitions of the bygone Golden Age of Spain; with the magical arts of ancient times– alchemy, wizardry, potions, forest creatures that go bump in the night, quests for esoteric knowledge, use of the Philosopher’s Stone, and the Catholic church’s war against the ‘Black Art”. Above all, Dunsany explores the many mysterious properties of shadows, and warns what havoc might befall you if you lose yours. Published in 1926.

ruminating on the word “shadow”, an exotic location, the rolling out of the panisci and the change of age, he went therein and the golden age was over, the best age ever?, silver age comics, a place he can set his stories, the wizard is doing philosophy, Raistlin from the Dragonlance books, much more playful, a curious music, the scurry of little things, all manner of magical things, all the children of Pan, landscape talk, the sale of pasturelands, the rocky terrain, why people go through forests, a fictional spain, Averoigne of Clark Ashton Smith, they lost their minds as should we, the girls ran screaming from him, in myth and stuff, Dracula, in myth, a spirit or a ghost, that doesn’t cast a shadow, demons didn’t cast shadows, shadow means soul, a shade, fits him with a shadow, a very sharp knife, our shadows grow and contract, the science element, the regular people are smart, a close reading of Lovecraft stories, the regular people are always right, communing with devils, all the rumors are true, what magic is, communicate with things on other planets, like a lich I live forever, because she’s had her shadow removed she’s not aging, Tithonus, The Picture Of Dorian Gray, a happy romantic ending, the shadow cast the body, flips what reality is, the shadow would take the shape of the body, very Catholic, working these idea minds, everybody in this book is clever, working information, Scott would love this book, so used to hearing confessions, set in Spain, we don’t have wizards in Ireland, wizards in Wales, the tone would have been different, exotic Spain, Don Rodriguez: Chronicles of Shadow Valley, 1922, 1926, no excuses not to do it now, LibriVox, Ballantine Adult Fantasy, The Blue Star by Fletcher Pratt, the Lin Carter introductions, not the world’s greatest writer, has good taste, an enthusiast, bringing attention, we can trust everything he suggests, publication order, The Wood Beyond The World by William Morris, 1894, an artist writing a book, the wallpaper guy, Scott is 55, hard science fiction, matured into fantasy, hard science fiction is simple and fun, here’s a big dumb object, what do you think about that?, Spin, they’re hard to make and hard to make good, Childhood’s End, go onto Netflix and type in science fiction, set in the future, heist in a science fiction background, the real what if kinda stuff, Westerns, watched all the submarine movies, these are old books that have stood the test of time, Shakespeare’s Planet, Invitation To The Game, how short it was, it says VR on the tin, there are still good books to be found, looking up a famous author that writes something you’re interested in, Dunsany wrote a ton, lesser works, In A Dim Room, nailed this concept, tricked me, what a gifted writer, knowing how to not overstay your welcome in sentences, the digressions are handled, speaking true things in those asides, there’s no lies in here, this is the way the world is, this is the way people are, descriptions of things, descriptions of rooms, the spiderwebs, she doesn’t clean the spiderwebs on the curtains, going back to his spidery bedroom, dust, dust as a theme, shadow is all over this book, a constant word, implying age, a magical component, dust can obscure, the one element, the essence of beautiful woman, simple dew, both water, master of many other things, the master of language, sit there spellbound,

“Never again,” she said, “never again. It lay over the fields once; it used to make the grass such a tender green. It never dimmed the buttercups. It did no harm to anything. Butterflies may have been scared of it, and once a dragon-fly, but it did them never a harm. I’ve known it protect anemones awhile from the heat of the noonday sun, which had otherwise withered them sooner. In the early morning it would stretch away beyond our garden right out to the wild; poor innocent shadow that loved the grey dew. And in the evening it would grow bold and strong and run right down the slopes of hills, where I walked singing, and would come to the edges of bosky tangled places, till a little more and its head would have been out of sight: I’ve known the fairies then dance out from their sheltered arbours in the deeps of briar and thorn and play with its curls. And, for all its rovings and lurkings and love of mystery, it never left me, of its own accord never. It was I that forsook it, poor shadow, poor shadow that followed me home.

fakes, I need a gimmick, how do I make this simpler, what are some basic things people can relate to, look at your shadow, kids goes to sleep, literally doing magic, her curls are being played with fairies, congratulated themselves and felt the need to never write again, thoughtful digression, so readable, as simple a story you can get, that twist, why isn’t he worried about his own shadow, doesn’t even have a name, it fits, the question, leaving the scene and coming back, we grow into understanding what this book was about, her shadow was right in the title, rummaging in the shadow box, I know who that is, we’re slightly smarter than Ramon Alonzo, the love potion, her suitor, the brother doesn’t doesn’t need the money, the potion goes awry, tolerance engendered, nurses him back to health, the switcheroo, expecting the reader to be wiser than Ramon Alonzo, not a children’s book, Farmer In The Sky or Charwoman’s Shadow, mature enough, a love potion for his sister and some gold for his dad, too mature in a large sense, the subjects, to sophisticated in its simplicity, what makes The Hobbit or The Lord Of The Rings fun, dragons, gold!, all the sodas, all the comic books, have you noticed how rocky our fields are, your sister isn’t going to dowry herself, stories of childhood, we were all once children, that incredible playfulness, so reminding of childhood, adults enjoy reading books written for the YA market, T. Kingfisher, Ursula Vernon’s A Wizard’s Guide To Defensive Baking, Loadstar Award, reading it to children, a book written for children that adults can appreciate, a Jane Austen knockoff, Jane Austen with Cinderella, hitting all those fun beats, an unconsciousness, the author is unwilling to confront this?, yes, keep your class, modern colloquial attitudes, that’s kinda weird, the answer is no, aiming for the feeling of those things that I like, comedic elements, horrific elements, declaring war against wizards, a class that gets blamed in the siege in this city, using discrimination against others, the presumed ideal audience has the characters slightly older than you, children’s YA, too good a writer, the disposable forgettable, material that we burn through early on, pick any year that you were alive as a person, movies that would be important later on, its iconicness, name it and the associations come up, I’m smarter than I was, noticing the author, John Carpenter’s whatever it is, adults in touch with their youthfulness, boring for kids, too digressive, indulgent, a suitable student, a stage he goes through, technically an evil wizard, rocket fuel is needed, when you take your dog to the vet, how he acts, just doin what wizards do, TV Tropes, affable evil, so focused on tropes, totally fun, every scene is full of tropes, it was all a dream, Shakespeare, 17 book titles, from other character’s POV, the priest’s POV, the dog’s POV, A Night In The Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny, Smoke And Shadows by Tanya Huff, a shadow lord, possess people and do other things, The Silmarillion, how Sauron is a character, the ringwraiths are only shadows, without their clothes and horses they don’t exist, back to be reclothed, written for children, overlays a shadow, the shadow of an actual dragon passing over the water, some dwarfs want their money vs. make things right, the gold that glitters on the ring, the same idea mines, working real pure material, I want heists!, gay pirates on a heist!, Ronin (1998), international criminals chasing a suitcase, a McGuffin, these are great action sequences, these car chases are terrific, an opening sequence, a series of tropes, real attention, power corrupts people, we do need some money, son, fun stuff, why I think we like him, wizards don’t exist!, dealing with real themes, he does so much with a tiny idea, holding on to with stories like this, storytelling, since the beginning, something mythic and deep that really appeals, foundational, David Mamet, French action movies, Sean Bean, spies betraying each other, running around not knowing what you’re running around for, an action movie saying fundamentally we don’t know what we’re doing on this planet, being lied to by ourselves and by our governments, con-men movies, people lying to themselves movies, Homicide (1991), who killed somebody, a mistake early on, pulls the rug out from under, go back to basics, in a way that Shakespeare does, the big prop in Othello is a handkerchief, it all hangs on a handkerchief, swordfights, good storytelling, Wikipedia stuff, Arthur C. Clarke & Lord Dunsany: A Correspondence, Olaf Stapledon, at their best at short stories, $165, 83 pages, Anamnesis press, so many cool books, Persuasion by Jane Austen, Julie Davis, 6 books, Mary Shelley has other books, a legacy that big, 6 books that were all great, modern Stephen King, Westlake wrote 60-70 books, a writer’s writer vs. a regular writer, low output, Ted Chiang, long may he live, he needs a good 75 years or so, whatever pace he wants, how can I help make sure he stays alive, would that help, send some vitamins, here’s a helmet, Extrapolation, inter-library loan, fanzine packaging, two dude contemporaneous for a period, both in issues of F&SF, a really long life, 1878-1957, Lovecraft was very short, a farther distant past, all of WWII, the Boer War, Dunsany was in the 2nd Boer War, Robert E. Howard died at 30, 4 or 5 feet, Robert E. Howard is at least double that, started later and had a way bigger output, commercial purposes, much rather be writing letters, I have a demon inside me and that demon must be served, you gotta kill yourself, an astounding number of Robert E. Howard stories, keep turning up new Robert E. Howard stories, his output was such, places he sold, trunks full of unsold stories, unfinished, finished by other people, Austen died at 41, unfinished novel, Emily Dickinson, Tor.com, Tales From The White Heart, Draco Tavern, The Black Widowers, Jorkens (Lord Dunsany), club stories, and Jorkens said, In A Dim Room, thrilling tales, I cannot be held responsible, a thrilling story of India, running away from a tiger, that would change the game, he can smell the tiger, the floor of the cave is very smooth, many paws for many years, you are talking to a ghost, he had me, he tricked me, he’s a good tricker, fables from the Fountain, homage, an anthology of British writers, The 9 Billion And First Name Of God, everybody loves those guys, Foundations Friends, The Originist by Orson Scott Card, loved and enjoyed, Farnham’s Freehold, Heinlein rhymes with grime, father’s day Brunch, playing D&D lately, the whole family plays, the starter pack, Dragon of Icespire Peak, more adventures in book form, that’s cool, in Hades right now, an Edgar Allan Poe module, pretty swordless, there’s a troll, The Call Of Cthulhu starter set, online group, I died once, how hard it was to shoot somebody, it went horribly wrong for me, how immersive it is, how into it you can get, during college, nothing, conventions, GenCon every year, a zombie apocalypse, a female scientist, military people, Delta Green?, I cooked the food and had long ago run out of meat and was using zombies, so immersive, a notch better than even reading a story, grow up, get old, kids grow up, get old, now you have to enough people to form a party, sit back and relax, good job, thank you sir, have a great day.

The Charwoman's Shadow by Lord Dunsany

The Charwoman's Shadow - HERRING

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