E.T.A. Hoffmann – SFFaudio

The SFFaudio Podcast #746 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Shadows In Zamboula by Robert E. Howard

The SFFaudio Podcast #746 – Shadows In Zamboula by Robert E. Howard – read by Mark Nelson for LibriVox. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the story (1 hour, 26 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants include Jesse, Paul Weimer, Connor Kaye, Alex, and Cora Buhlert

Talked about on today’s show:
Weird Tales, November 1935, The Man-Eaters Of Zamboula, a better title?, conforms to the Weird Tales title aesthetic, the problem, a second meaning, shadows is nebulous, cannibals, all in one night, just before dusk, the evening, a little sleep, a naked lady, a little adventure, buys a horse, leaves town, the magic ring, a roomful of gold, it makes a person irresistible to the opposite sex, lesbians are acknowledged, a gay subtext in one scene, the strangulation, Baal-Ptor, any temple wench, devil dick, the Hannuman temple, a penis, a strangle-off, his boss calls him that, that’s pretty gay, a great scene, I started with babies, and he dies, pro-cannibal, who is put in what position and why, Mark Nelson, Aram Baksh, Ralph Bakshi?, a lot of mistakes in various people’s analysis, he’s not bearded in Savage Sword, the Ablaze, he’s a bum, they’re companions, Bedouin, a middle eastern , they’re on a team, stole a horse from the satrap, don’t stay there, hookah bar, gambling den, the sword maker’s bazaar, yelp reviews, unchronicled adventures, random desert tribes, the kind of thing he tends to do, Doctor Who, for plot purposes, what city it was supposed to be, Constantinople, the western edge of Turan, Mosul, Palmyra, the comic version, Conan recognized her from the start, assumptions, 2nd to last Conan stories, he knows what’s up, full of things that should trigger people and alleviate those things, supple warriors, hawk-faces, the lords of Zamboula, ancient glories, over reading much, glowering about ancient glories, flaunting their myriad colours, loving, towers and minarets, an infodump we need to be surprised lady, judging, smote is a negative, they’ll think he’s a wizard and eat Paul, delighted as all heck, but it might stink, open sewers, third world places, Kathmandu and Nepal, loud, the Ottoman Empire, multiculturalism, hybrids and mongrels, Cross Plains, Texas, modern day Lebanon, influenced the crusader stories, cities are described negatively, civilization is corrupt, what’s cool about this story, everybody’s got their angle, subsidize sales by selling the stuff of his guests, Robert Bloch, an H.H. Holmes story, Solomon Kane, A Rattle Of Bones, The Inn In The Spessart aka The Spessart Inn by Wilhelm Hauff, join our gang or we’ll kill you, film adaptation, how they got put into that position, meat as part of their religion, let out at night like cats, steal from their masters, as they should, our heroine, they’re too valuable, they’re our property, Zamboula is dependent on their slaves, let them eat travelers and street people, Nefertari, secure her position, what happened and her story, she makes it up on the spot, the Ablaze adaptation, literally naked, her hair is covering stuff, a standard trope, the R-rated, a loin cloth, we never see a nipple, important to understand, of course we want titillation, her clothes would giver her away, silken robe, a slave who’s mute, she’s just lied to that guy, you can trust him he’s not a man-eater, Aram Baksh gets his tongue cut off, don’t eat me!, the moral, the better put together this story is, a murder mystery, set piece scenes, a conan pastiche person, The Curse Of The Monolith just rips off that hole idea, magnetic table, the Virgin Conan The Barbarian computer game, a worldwide phone company, a DOS game, a bridal sword, live out the fantasy, Virgin Bride, a bug, what we see in the Conan movie, what’s in the comics, somebody did some research, you’d lose your sword, slip that ring off the finger, he doesn’t tell us until the end, very well put together, looking for something, Conan has already stolen it, worldbuilding and setting, oh yeah that’s right, back to Paul in a flash, an article, Charles R. Saunders, quibbles, all of Sword And Sorcery, as a black person, fascinated by Africa, boxing fans, a bad website, Howard vs. Lovecraft and Clark Asthon Smith, Black Gate, Bob Byrne, Steven H. Silver, why Man Eaters Of Zamboula is the best of all time, the most quintessential, is that defensible?, the most Conan of the Conan stories, best ever written, best story of all time, compelling points here and there, part of a contest they’re having, when you’re arguing for something like that, worse stories by Robert E. Howard, worried about getting this one, a terrific story, Vale Of Lost Women, with some issues, a higher high within it, this isn’t even close, Red Nails, Queen Of The Black Coast, what happens, become more refined, word choices, a mighty theme, the theme in here is strong, what you need to do in life is be the smartest man in the room and have strong hands, offering sex, this story undercuts our expectations and goes away with a bag of cash, getting tired of writing Conan, an amazing finish, really interesting thesis in the center, laser beams, magnets, electrical magnets, the magic in here, science, superscience, radium gems, the priest is all gadgets, toned down, science or magic, cannibal slaves, the colours are more muted than other Conan stories, the setting, he gambled it away, he knew what he was doing, brawn, smarts and skill, a complete Conan, a stupid brute, play dumb, subvert your expectations, fresh to civilization, a Conan who’s seen some things, wily Conan, miles under his belt, confident enough in himself, professional strangler, an intense scene, Conan the conartist, The Jewels Of Gwahlur, Pelishtim, the mercenaries that guard the city, Nefertari, Nefartinti, Stygian, worships Set, the monkey god, on the cover of Savage Sword, clothes on and blonde, the scary monkey god, his representative, his boss,lusting after our girl, Yog, the Darfari slave god, Crom, Erlik, competing ideologies, some to swear with, strong demands, promote human happiness, sacrifices, go to the casino and lose all your cash, every man the strengths of his hands, a god for atheists, cosmicism without reference to the cosmic, prayer doesn’t make any sense, what would Evan say?, what the slaves are thinking, it fuckin sucks to be a slave but we get to have a religion, foreign bastards who are enslaving us, I’m the guy who sells you bodies to eat, they want to revolt, leave the citizens away, their shields on their back, the most powerful woman in the city, Hanuman’s temple, the heart of the story, marble walls, there’s no gate, each building has its own wall, horns, an Agatha Christie sort of scene, barbarian senses, a high perception tense, the reason he has such good hand sensing is because he’s a meat-eater, not a human meat eater, to get revenge, a man-eater too, a secret door, a giant hand, little maze, our guy sitting on a divan, back and forth allusions, The Odyssey, the guest host relationship, a really big theme, a bad relationship with the guest or the host, when they get broken bad things happen, the host comes home, Circe’s island, turn my men not into pigs, a reinforcement of this value system, how to be in a person’s space, that’s what we have here, taken by many different owners, a rival, this door is barred from the inside, climb over the wall, that pit, the slaves can leave the city, they can’t leave, they’ll die, imagine this: and we do, sexual stuff, dragon fight, stuck in somebody else’s feud, more adventures, a central core, he’s really saying something here, who else can do that with this material?, role playing things, Stygian origins, Turan, nightstalking Darfari cannibals, covetously eyes, intrigue and adventure, compared to Shadizar the Wicked, a spider god at the center of it, John Milius stole from every story, he stole from the best, Set’s temple, springing up in all the cities nearby, a power struggle, I salute you, I got a job for you, go get my daughter, snake vs. elephant, sneak into the temple, the satrap is going to be happy, rage induced coma, captain of the guard, its a job, she dosed him, she’s bad, everybody here is bad, a woman naked in the city, slightly deceiving, I’m sorry I lied to you, Conan doesn’t react, Conan doesn’t ever lie, not being chivalrous, nobody has any honour, he saves her from the cannibals, they were stealing her, if they ate the mistress, supplant the satrap, ruled by his mistress, went wild and tore her clothes off, street bum prophesying doom, his hand on Conan’s arm, speaking to him as a brother, a mini-version of the whole piece, his instinct for story is better than almost anybody, writing for a particular market, the chapters and the headings and the nude scene, the scenes that he has to have, the girl threatened by a magician, a similar scene, this ancient mummy, People Of The Black Circle, pretending to be a statue, clothes swap, a whipping scene or something, if he doesn’t get the cover he doesn’t get the bonus, magic, not in The Hour Of The Dragon, all the cities have wizards, John Dee scrying on his mirror, they fucked up, resurrection is a bad plan, that’s how Christianity started, self-ressurection, Jewel Of Seven Stars by Bram Stoker, a pretty damn good story, the Ablaze adaptation, naked the whole story, the art, black god, wonderfully portrayed, undialogued pages, Æon Flux, she looked off the whole book, to actually depict it, naked as the day she was born, a person naked in an unwalled city, at the end, she drops her lover off, is it because every piece of clothing would give away who she is?, giving Margaret Brundage a chance, the cover with the cobras, not unusual for her, how she normally dresses, that very pale skin, on a pirate ship topless, pale is beauty, the guy grew up in Texas, not a wise idea, shock the other guys by flashing them, she’s acting as a goddess, the colour distinction, the palest of pale skins with black hair, Cora is trying to make it make sense, a magic toe ring, breast bobbing, at night, hide from the Pelishtim, when we see the guy’s eyes, contrast with Conan, gets a feel, resisting eating her, playing off each other, lascivious men, the priest wants her to be his, a friend who says look bud, a man who drinks to much is crazy, tearing her clothes off, minutes ago, dragged away from his own bed, not the first time it happens to him, Black Colossus too, a nice theme, as is the reader, puts off his vengeance, a side story, get your priorities straight, save the boyfriend, kill this priest, her motivation is no one can no, I need an outsider, Vera Cruz (1954), Burt Lancaster at his hottest, don’t do that movie with Burt Lancaster, Gary Cooper, he’ll blow you off the screen, old cracked faced men in westerns, way more charismatic, the main attraction, the plot is kinda similar, mercenaries from the American Civil War, working for Emperor of Mexico, an Austrian guy, see each other at this dance, a beef with a high mucky-muck, the glove, you’re not even important, give each other the chin nod, the Kirk and Bones gif, Denise Darcel, Sara Montiel, cowboys not European royalty, why westerns are really cool, stole a horse, shooting each other in the streets, the Winnetou stories, River Of No Return (1954), Duel In The Sun (1946), The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), meta-westerns, a baby across the desert, when is Connor gonna do Howard’s western stories?, how many westerns there were, Steve Costigans, Breckenridge Elkins, his bread and butter, better and more promptly, Action Stories, Fight Stories, a bigger market, niche, how many western TV shows, a legacy, leftovers, westerns now, spaghetti westerns, silent westerns, Western Von Gestern, what Alex Baldwin tried to do, the way TV was supposed to look, westerns or war movies, all the men were old, pulp westerns, Zane Grey novels, short stories from the pulps, something you have to come to appreciate, a set of tropes, its a genre, values that are different, follow the law, follow orders, soccer match on Christmas, what happened to the guys who did it?, war movies serve a purpose, westerns are bottom up, American mythology, do they study SF at university now?, do they study westerns?, Astounding is the training for our engineers, leave town, go to the west, a national mythology, looking backwards, Clint Eastwood, looking at the future, a generation after the west was closed out, the kids or the grandkids of the generation being portrayed, they don’t study romances at university, specialized academics, finding a science fiction class was pretty hard, the Women’s Studies, looking down because it is bottom up, and some women, Range Romances, one of the longest running pulps, Railroad Stories, railroad fiction, you want a union? fuck you, good pay, high tech, like being a truck driver, dangerous, long hours, no time off, bad healthcare, Germany vs. Australia, considered a good job, a secure job, capitalism hasn’t taken over Germany completely, Space Viking by H. Beam Piper, four weeks in a row, people have weird desires, women, man, The Venom Business by Michael Crichton, Rocket Ship Galileo by Robert A. Heinlein, Unseen-Unfeared by Francis Stevens, The Hopkins Manuscript, Alec Nevala-Lee, The Crawlers by Philip K. Dick, The Golden Slave by Poul Anderson, off to farmville, Skull Face, a Steve Harrison story Names In The Black Book, Coming Attraction by Fritz Leiber, never been done before, don’t waste Connor, on Conan duty or Robert E. Howard duty, The Thing On The Roof, a cool description, hear the nipples on the roof, Robert E. Howard doing H.P. Lovecraft, “Hooves In The Night”, Unaussprechlichen Kulten, German speakers, a Justin Joffrey poem, August Derleth, wonky, Canadian public domain, M.S. Corley art, comic book adaptation, a Marvel Chillers version, weird tales sort of material, you get hooked, Howard via Conan, gonna make you a Nazi, Lancer paperbacks, really good, pastiche, boxers who go sailing, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, based on publication date and renewal, nothing to do with death, Robert Silverberg, Harlan Ellison, Condé Nast, work for hire, hero pulps, written under house names, Howard horror, Pigeons From Hell, Old Garfield’s Heart, Steve Costigan, Francis X. Gordon, a useful resource, Mark Finn, the far future, The Devil’s Elixir by E.T.A. Hoffmann, an early robot story, The Sandman, ignore the interesting good for the dull, unsuitable for teenagers, 12 hours 24 minutes, four months, E.T.A. Hoffmann and Edgar Allan Poe, doppelgangers, this story is that story minus all the long parts, The Oval Portrait, a lot of overlap, Poe inspired The Student Of Prague (1913), retreat on the shore of Lake Geneva, Bohemian ghost stories, German romanticism and gothic literature, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Influence Of E.T.A Hoffmann On Edgar Allan Poe, Connor is sick, regular sick, Hard Case Crime, epub or mobi or PDF, Google Books, look at screens all day long, screens less, had you not known a pirate…, 3kb, a remainder bookstore, ebook device technology, eink colour is not rich, snow?, vasculitis, autobahn, bahn means train.

Shadows In Zamboula - ad from WEIRD TALES

Shadows In Zamboula - Margaret Brundage cover for WEIRD TALES

Shadows In Zamboula - Vincent Napoli illustration from WEIRD TALES

Shadows In Zamboula - art by Margaret Brundage

Shadow-God Of Zamboula

SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN - Shadows In Zamboula

Neal Adams and Tony DeZuniga - SAVAGE SWORD

ABLAZE - The Man-Eaters Of Zamboula

CIMMERIAN: The Man Eaters Of Zamboula - art by Mike Krome

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The SFFaudio Podcast #619 – READALONG: Lies, Inc. by Philip K. Dick

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #619 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, Marissa Vu, Evan Lampe and Will Emmons talk about Lies, Inc. by Philip K. Dick

Talked about on today’s show:
also known as The Unteleported Man, a movie title, confusing the audience, this whole book is basically terrible, very dream like, Trails Of Hoffmann, Philip K. Dick gets grit in his brain and like Lord Runningclam starts forming a pearl around it, E.T.A. Hoffmann, an opera, kinda Poe and Philip K. Dick combined with fairy tales, The Sandman, one of the vignettes,the seed for this name, the seed, a 1975 Philip K. Dick interview, shooting the shit, Richard A. Lupoff, getting out the the field, you cant trust anything writers say, that’s bullshit, I was chatting up his wife at the bar…, the Lupoff’s that in here, lots of gems, reconstructed and constructed, its got everything, leadies, why are leadies in here?, another Plato’s cave analogy, recycling, Faith Of Our Fathers, the para-universe, written around the same time, flapples (one for the rhetorizier), the labour forces, The Crack In Space, human kipple, Malthusian logic, a good novel inside of this mess, a 1950s Dick novel, that frontier stuff, in the 60s he turned on the frontier, the moral core of the novel, a pastiche, dip into everything, I’m going to do Philip K. Dick for you, the rat, so familiar, Doctor Bloodmoney, Doctor Blood, so Philip K. Dick universe, conapts, if you were writing a rhetorizer, better works, more coherent, not put together, The UnUnTeleported Book?, he’s dealing with Nazis again, looking it as a coherent whole (even though it isn’t one), its Stalinism, Treblinka, Zyklon B, distinct experiences, here’s a twist…, spending 11 minutes describing every Philip K. Dick book, this is a really weird book, The Man In The High Castle, its not really our reality, not our world, its the ovens, there is no teleportation device, Mindwarp (Doctor Who), a microwave, Ben Applebaum’s job, there to prove the ovens are real, rumours of the Death Camps, the Germans have taken over the U.N., deNazified and running the space program, The Man In The High Castle, The Simulacrum, Doctor Bloodmoney, “I’m worried the United States is becoming a Nazi nation”, Now Wait For Last Year, African space war, the first Dick novel Will ever read, the giant LSD sequence, so weird, the out of place, the THL soldier, the chapter in Doctor Bloodmoney that’s out of place, super crazy heat without airconditioning, A Scanner Darkly, Faith Of Our Fathers, The Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldritch, enjoy your mind expansion, another opera connection, The Flying Dutchman, The Wandering Jew, Richard Wagner’s anti-semitism, let’s celebrate Flying Dutchman day, eighteen years later, Dick knew Wagner better than any of us, gotta find love, Roger Zelazny, Marie Celeste, sening messages to people long dead, Brigadoon, Marissa’s opa, his opaness, he’s talking about himself, Oomphalos, Dick going in to get his car impounded, a sexy meter-maid, articulated breasts, the new fropntier isn’t a death camp, The Expanse, Frozen Journey by Philip K. Dick, blacks and browns being frozen, The Crack In Space, extended dreamtime, busy shaving, cheeseburger crumbs, Fred’s gonna take my string, this is how dreams are, dreams and writing lies (fiction) are related, sending messages that the police are your friends (propaganda), accessing Dick’s dreams, when he starts getting these images into characters minds, the women a little less so, a terrible car collage of good Philip K. Dick stuff, looking it as dream notes makes it more valuable, the end, such a cool story, it unraveled, read more novellas, less than half the size, 29,000 and 31,000 of new material, put three stories together, the ped runnels, Our Friends From Frolix 8, We Can Remember It For Your Wholesale, flapples (deflapple), if you kinda squint, a consistency despite it being so messy, autofacs all over this book, from a different phase in his career, Dick is very bothered by the solipsistic experience of dreams, why is CAN-D better than CHEW-Z, a gestalt experience vs., what’s so great about Galactic Pot-Healer, a church community, Faith Of Our Fathers, a diversity of experiences, a shared experience, a shared reality, para-worlds, something that joins us together, Eye In The Sky, Evan should write a book on Philip K. Dick, Evan has unlocked the key, a foundation for solidarity, striving for a shared perspective, we’re afraid of cohering, the true reality behind everything (is horrific), quantum stuff, his other works, a jarring thing, it becomes real, getting into politics, American politics, a very American ideology (to not want to talk about something is wrong), a similar cultural background, murky things, the hypothetical natives, from Chapter 13,

Hoarsely, its voice thickened by the mouthful which it still continued to chew, the creature said, “Good morning. I have your book for you. Sign here.” One of its pseudopodia convulsed and its tip lathered in a spasm which, after an interval, fumbled forth a bulky old-style bound-in-boards volume which it placed on a small plastic table before Rachmael.

“What-book is this?” he demanded, presently. His mind, numbed, refused to interfere as his fingers poked haphazardly at the handsome gold-stamped book which the creature had presented him.

“The fundamental reference source in this survey instruction,” the cephalopodic organism answered as it laboriously filled out a long printed form; it made use of two pseudopodia and two writing instruments simultaneously, enormously speeding up the intricate task. “Dr. Bloode’s great primary work, in the seventeenth edition.” It swiveled the book, to show him the ornate spine. “The True and Complete Economic and Political History of Newcolonizedland,” it informed him, in a severe, dignified tone of voice, as if reproving him for his unfamiliarity with the volume. Or rather, he realized suddenly, as if it assumed that the title would have overpowering influence alone, without additional aid.

“Hmm,” he said, then, still nonplussed-to say the least. And he thought, It can’t be, but it is. Paraworld-which? Not precisely as it had manifested itself before; this was not Blue, because his glimpse of that, ratified by the other weevils, had contained a cyclopsic organism. And this, for all its similarity to the Aquatic Horror-shape, had by reason of its compound multi-eye system a fundamentally different aspect.

Could this actually be the authentic underlying reality? he wondered. This macro-abomination that resembled nothing ever witnessed by him before? A grotesque monstrosity which seemed, as he watched it devour and consume-to its evident satisfaction-the remainder of its eyes, almost a parody of the Aquatic Horror-shape?

“This book,” the creature intoned, “demonstrates beyond any doubt whatsoever that the plan to colonize the ninth planet of the Fomalhaut system is foolish. No such colony as the projected Newcolonizedland can possibly be established. We owe a great debt to Dr. Bloode for his complete elucidation of this complex topic.” It giggled, then. A wet, slurred, wobbly giggle of delighted mirth.

his eyes swim, this is The Book Of The Calends from Galactic Pot-Healer, Evan doing a meta-interpretation of Dick, shifting realities, what is humanity?, Dick thinks there is a truth, in what Dick novel is there not a truth?, there’s always a truth, in the end there is a reality, although there are all false fronts and shifting realities there’s always a truth arrived at through some sort of solidarity, unpack the natives, what might be the objective truth, why Galactic Pot-Healer is the best Dick novel, it has Nick And The Glimmung as its Silmarillion, a deeper history, you know…this book was wrong, what is this book really about?, its not about teleportation, why did the Jews get killed in ovens, for immense amounts of human history people have been colonizing new lands, going back to the Flying Dutchman, the people that stayed behind, how does it make you feel to see people leaving the country, the Jews, here comes the officials, a new place where you will colonize the east, a BIG lie, that turn is a very Philip K. Dick thing, kinda like Glimmung in shape but not in power, the way the Book Of The Kalends works in Galactic Pot-Healer, he is subject to the author’s need to find community and meaning, raise Haldscalla, they form a union, they fight their demons together, disconnected and an LSD sequence, it doesn’t resolve in the way we want it to, the 1966 verison:

Thinking that, he paused before entering the area of light; in the darkness of the side street, unnoticed by passers-by, he scrutinized Freya Holm a long, long period.

“Hmm,” he said, half aloud. Contemplatively.

“What are you thinking about?” Freya asked shyly, her dark, full lashes trembling as she returned his stare. “The years of deep sleep ahead of you?”

“Not quite that,” Rachmael answered. “Something a little more this side of sleep. But connected with it.” He put his arm around her.

“Gee,” Freya said after a time.

In his pocket the container of components hummed happily.

almost like a sex metaphor version, The Unteleported Man (1966), the version we’re hearing in audio, when Evan did his episodes on Lies, Inc. and The Unteleported Man, we need some rogue cuts, Dick is doing something here, what is the objective truth in this novel, there’s an authoritarian state in Newcolonizedland, where does the delusion come from?, the LSD dart?, the teleportation itself?, the cultural image is Stalinism, the natives are not there, terra nullis, the eye-eater super-spy, Ben Applebaum is the Jew after the Germans, Arab-Israeli, undercooked, its because its a dream, he can bring it all together, bringing it into a beautiful bow, all the boob looking, all the fake coffee, here we don’t have that, its front heavy, 5 or 6 revisions, from Fantastic, a 1965 version, a 1979 version, Paul Williams’ found 3 segments, the 2003, Philip K. Dick is actually a really good writer, a mashup of notes, an August Derleth(like) collaboration, his 18 year journey, a really good story there, it has all the makings for one of his classics, his business is crumbling, such a Philip K. Dick setup, analogizing his own life, Matson, it puts an idea in your heads, they’re a private investigator firm, his motivation is the Truth, the company maintaining the lie is not Lies, Inc., Listening Instructional Educational Services, that game at the start of Galactic Pot-Healer, two visions of the internet, when you’re bored at work you engage at various games, puns and book titles, the other vision of the internet is The Book Of The Kalends, books are not popular, a lot of Moby-Dick, he’s doing a Jonah, the heart of the darkness, strike strike what’s beyond the mask?, a new study in Nature about the relationship between elevated rates of autism (and related) in transgender and gender diverse – is untalkableabout – underneath the mask of identity is more onion, I am nothing, there’s nothing there underneath, Ishmael disappears, the universe fucked me by giving me birth, he aims his hate at a particular whale, it is challenging me by its very existence, get on board with this creative project, all the Project: Plowshare stuff, are you willing to use the reality distortion weapons?, there might not be any natives, it breaks Jesse’s ability to understand a book, Max Brand’s The Untamed, anti-romantic, the incoherence of the natives is the incoherence of the novel, Dick deals with indigenous people in several novels, The Crack In Space, Dr. Futurity, Time Pawn is beautiful to read, we could do another show on Time Pawn, the editing is worse than the weird chapter in Doctor Bloodmoney, less like a novel than fixup by someone else, why not just read the originals, they’re not available, it doesn’t exist, you can’t access it, NESFA press, the public domain part of it, an editor said: I will buy this, squeeze another novel out, he was a slim volume writer anyway, Herman Melville from chapter 58:

“Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures glide under water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously hidden beneath the loveliest tints of azure. Consider also the devilish brilliance and beauty of many of its most remorseless tribes, as the dainty embellished shape of many species of sharks. Consider, once more, the universal cannibalism of the sea; all whose creatures prey upon each other, carrying on eternal war since the world began.

Consider all this; and then turn to the green, gentle, and most docile earth; consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a strange analogy to something in yourself? For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half-known life. God keep thee! Push not off from that isle, thou canst never return!”

his ship is gonna be impounded, the amount of delay, that menace that conspiracy, when you live in a police state, the police are our friends, the FBI is out to get you (just not you specifically), the NSA’s official line: collect everything, the wellness check, Nancy’s not answering the door, what the hell Nancy?, the nosy neighbour, this is a reality, a nightmare, the govt of Quebec was trying to convince people to vote for them using a wedge issue, religious headcoverings, didn’t the Saudis have it right all along?, they had good reason for it, someone not wearing a mask?! how dare you!, reflecting, there was a reason for abstaining, that kind of positive conservatism, there might have been a reason for that fence, Philip K. Dick is exploring some really cool stuff, Philip K. Dick’s greatest book: LIES, Inc., more connections, the nexus book for all of the Philip K. Dick stuff, it is the oomphalos!, not a pessimistic writer, his authoritarian states, Orwell’s Nineteen-Eighty Four, The World Jones Made, The Man Who Japed, that settler family, a symbol at the end of that tyrrany, A Scanner Darkly has some hope, Radio Free Albemuth, a chickenhead, the West coast, travelled across the continent, they’re not farther West, the sympathy that dick has for those that stay behind and those that want to flee is a really interesting theme, the colonial fiction of the British Empire, the world is their planet, going home is not a big deal, maybe a class issue, who are the people who move to the States?, the poors, the second sons fleeing murder convictions, free land, fleeing persecution, those who are left behind, isn’t our country being brain drained?, a chance to begin again, sex robots and farm robots (slaves), suspicious of it and attracted to it, he’s talking about something very important to human beings, the US never got over the frontier, Turner’s thesis, build a log cabin, remaking democracy with the frontier experience, culturally you have the Western and Science Fiction, and the Pacific (the Philippines), how the Philippines was colonized, Clark Ashton Smith had a story published in a Philippines publication, appreciating life in the Philippines, the same kind of occupation, Rudyard Kipling had his first stories published in a railroad publication in India, Afghanistan, they don’t live there, you send your sons off to fight those wars, the fear of what’s on the otherside of that train journey east, reading the newspapers, oh my god!, we didn’t have the complete story!, the official lies that are being told, he is the product of his environment, loving these German operas, having a German name and being fearful of Germans, Black Earth: The Holocaust As History And Warning by Timothy Snyder, Hitler was trying to make his own frontier in Eastern Europe, how much Hitler was influenced by the colonization of the American West, Kentucky is not naturally part of the United States, Dick’s intention, a lot of the fascism conversation in science fiction, John W. Campbell vs. Joseph Campbell (being Nazis), Hitler was a romantic, romantics are dangerous, practicalists are dangerous in a different kind of a way, Karl May, they have adventures together, turning the non-threatening into a Crusade, theoretically motivated by a real book (a fictional story), the romantic idea, he is engaging to get out of the house and conquer, get out from under, the send off point, the Germans were the first ones to fight the Nazis, there are good Americans, another anniversary of Hiroshima, two planes that dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they didn’t have aircraft that could hold the two nukes, it almost was the case the British dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and Nagasaki wasn’t the original target for that day, I’m glad its overcast because now I’m not dead, the luck of Kokura, the Japanese were not going to give up, Dan Carlin’s Supernova In The East, the military was 100% in charge but from the bottom up, Pearl Harbour was a naval effort, can you make any analogies to the United States today, healthcare and a living wage, more aircraft carriers and war with Venezuela, Russia, and China, Russia’s got a vaccine and nobody believes it (scientists and others), two Jesse rap battle, all the American liberals refusing to take a Corona virus vaccine, its very easy to forget where stuff come from when you benefit from forgetting from where it comes from.

The Unteleported Man illustration by Lloyd Birmingham

Fantastic Stories Of Imagination The Unteleported Man by Philip K. Dick

The Unteleported Man illustration by Harry Borgman

Lies, Inc. by Philip K. Dick

ACE - The Unteleported Man by Philip K. Dick

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Reading, Short And Deep #221 – The Coronation Of Mr. Thomas Shap by Lord Dunsany

Podcast

Reading, Short And Deep #221

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss The Coronation Of Mr. Thomas Shap by Lord Dunsany.

Here’s a link to a PDF of the story.

The Pet Shop was first published in The Sketch, March 1, 1911.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson

The SFFaudio Podcast #492 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Morella by Edgar Allan Poe

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #492 – Morella by Edgar Allan Poe – read by the great and powerful Wayne June. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the short story (17 Minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants include Jesse, Paul Weimer, Mr Jim Moon, and Wayne June!

Talked about on today’s show:
A Tale, The Southern Literary Messenger, April 1835, Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine, November 1839, you will not believe how Lovecraftian it is, very Edgar Allan Poe, The Thing On The Doorstep, Hypnos, turns of phrase, Cool Air, shall I say it was gelatinous?, The Statement Of Randolph Carter, the moment of Morella’s decease, its tenement of clay, an interest in a woman, there’s nothing more romantic than the death of a beautiful woman, The Philosophy Of Composition, Berenice, The Fall Of The House Of Usher, Elenora, Morella, berry-nice, Ligeia, a ghost, I’m gonna burn the house down, The Raven, crack the house open, the movie adaptations, Roger Corman’s Tales Of Terror (1962), Vincent Price, Edgar Allan Poe’s The Haunted Palace is an H.P. Lovecraft story, redeeming value, interesting, shedding what doesn’t happen in the story, what is the name of the main character, the unnamed narrator, get shocked, the narrator is passive participant in the events around him, active in his twisted perspective, an unreliable narrator, statements based on assumptions, The Black Cat narrator is 100% a liar, a victim, he’s nuts, a weird lifestyle, a weird lifestyle, reading German philosophy, this text is hard to read, a comic book version, an adaptation of the 1962 movie, Amicus anthology film, Elenora, Leonora, “hey you, child!”, “my beloved”, Gideon Locke, more like the The Fall Of The House Of Usher without the friend, The Haunting Of Morella (1990), Countess Elizabeth Báthory, bathing in maiden’s blood, lots of nudity, lots of lesbianism, scared topless, Busty Coeds vs. Lusty Cheerleaders, Gothic romanticism, Richard Corben’s adaptation, 19th century education, familiarity with Plato’s Symposium, personal identity, a nodding acquaintance with Fichte’s accused pantheism, Pythagoreans, Wayne did so much research on this story, it’s no wonder that people don’t get it, this is amazing, its beautiful, high level vocab words and giant sentences, it is creepy too, the epigraph, in vino veritas, in praise of Eros, he didn’t find her sexy, erotic love, a phenomenon capable of vanquishing man’s natural fear of death, conquering death itself, preserving her consciousness in reincarnation, forbidden books, those Pressberg chicks, the mere dross of early German literature, Locke, John Locke, Poe says: “Wow, this is some heavy shit!”, a witch, a lich, a way to renew life, the motifs that are in here, none of this is translatable to film in a non-commercial style, plant growth, the flowers and the vine, the hemlock and the cypress, persistent, frequently planted in graveyards, funeral decoration foliage, The Tree by H.P. Lovecraft, an olive tree of oddly repellent shape, autumn, a metaphor of renewal, there’s a lot to it, life after death, her disappearance from the tomb, as Morella lost life her daughter takes her first breath, a sense that Morella is not evil but rather she is mistaken, not addressed, the all importance of personal identity and survival of the consciousness, replace or become, the self-same person as her daughter?, displacing her daughter’s identity?, theological ideas, Catholic dogma, morally gray, light grey, dark evil, Poe was a reviser, laid vs. placed, tinged with tainted, subtle polishing, these vs. those, this and that, a way of pushing things away, a whole omitted section to do with Catholicism, a rainbow from the firmament, Sancta Maria, it totally changes the story, that makes her a monster, pushed into the evil camp, comparison to Mary, Hail Mary (1985), your daughter, her daughter, parthenogenesis, Jesus is a girl dressed as a guy, she looks identical to her mother, making a clone, your own genetics, a fantasy story, a science fiction story, the Catholic stuff distracts, a failed experiment, it really changes the tenor of the story, The Case Of Charles Dexter Ward, health problems with the clones, the naming, the true name, speaking the name breaks the spell and kills the child, Wilbur Whateley style, a tale of possession, Doctor John Dee, philosophy, alchemy, why is he doing that?, a symbolic story, how hard grief is, seeing a dead relative in the next generation, a symbolist story rather than a Gothic one, mysticism vs. science, Lovecraft as a science fiction writer, instead of characterizing her as a witch he characterizes her as advanced arcane philosophy and science, lower as in closer to the ground, what is identity?, how he talks about his daughter, two lustrums (ten years), my child and my love, now he’s the father, a mother figure, guiding his hand in his reading, enkindling and disquisitions, he become that for her, like Alia the brother of Muadib from Frank Herbert’s Dune, imbued with the mind of a reverend mother, someone much wiser than she, Annabelle Lee, there’s no visualization of their home, they have their own family tomb, the black slabs of our ancestral vault, baptism/christening, a cemetery connected to a church, fate, like flitting shadows, the wind in the firmament, a very Poe-ism, a semi-manorial estate, a big library, an isolated or cloistered life, Miranda, The Tempest, sexy times, it has to be symbolic, a witch or a litch, hot vs. beautiful, curly black hair, a broad white forehead, to encompass all those brains, her erudition made her happy, the art in Wayne June’s YouTube video, a wild interpretation, what if this is a gender flipped story?, what if Morella is Poe, he was a wooer, wooing with poems, devotion, vocab, she represents his respect for erudition, deep thought and philosophy, immortality, 178 years later, a powerful set of images, oblique quick references, losing his fascination with Morella, being fearful of Morella’s studies, the promised land, Hinnon became Ge-Henna, sacrifices to Baal and Moloch, a huge oven, not milk and honey but burning babies, Heaven and Hell, son of Dagon, God’s not the only god around, as to the nature of our studies, terrible studies, reluctant fascination, Warren always dominated me and sometimes I feared him, firm and fat in their tombs for a thousand years, some heavy shit, where is this text from?, when is he telling the story in relation to the events?, is he telling his doctor, I am writing this under an appreciable mental strain, The Hound, an unequal partnership, the whole Poe as Morella thing, strange meaning, like Poe and Lovecraft’s intertextuality, full of references, a deep dive to uncork meaning, the pinnacle of the educational stuff, this is an audiobook story!, then then, when pouring over the forbidden pages, a Roof Bear Morella drawing, inhabiting him, a forbidden spirit, her cold hand, rake up from the ashes of a dead philosophy, hour after hour I would linger at the music of her voice, those two unearthly tones, reading like a woman and slowly the voice changes to that of Wayne June, two unearthly tones, too unearthly, so far from the Earth, hypnotizing him, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Parasite, voodoo town, Jamaica, it’s a whole thing, Metzengerstein, Facts In The Case Of M. Valdemar, how to get girls by hypnosis, 3D glasses, hernia supports, that’s how Poe gets girls, the girl does that to him, he’s gender flipped it, the object of mourning rather of action, disabuse Jesse of this, Jim’s up, Jesse convinces Mr Jim Moon of his crazy theory, hard to get, The Cask Of Amontillado, The Masque Of The Red Death, so straightforward and so beautiful, adding poems, The Conqueror Worm, Poe was canny with getting sales, booze doesn’t buy itself, paper to write to girls, The Island Of The Fay, The Science Of Kissing!! by Charles Peterson, super metoo movement, it’s great to be Turkish because they really know how to kiss, as practical as that, foreseen to foretold, what demon urged me, ebb and flow, the repeat, horrible horrible death, knell to fell, a tiny little polish, an iterative process of refining, the definite version, all in Greek, pronouncing the Greek phonetically, a maniac on style and form, The Philosophy Of Composition, that certain sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain thrilled me, except for Hawthorne, Poe’s nickname was Tomahawk Poe, hated by his peers (those who didn’t admire him), collected a lot of scalps, “Itself, by itself solely, one everlastingly, and single.”, the ability to establish personal… identity, what the French call an orgasm, la petite mort, Aristophanes, hermaphrodite, lesbians belong to this category, the different kinds of attraction, nothing is off limits for the Greeks, wanting to grow together, Plato’s theory, being a hermaphrodite sphere was cool, love and eros, the beast with two backs, why we seek a soul mate, my better half, what is the it in “itself”?, if you achieve perfection of appreciation of beauty you will be unifying your existence with that which is the beautiful, she has a beautiful mind (but not face or body), she lives only in the regard of the narrator, Poe is immortal but only as long as there are people to read his stuff, denuded, existence is not continued, sad and sad about the lost of a loved one, the ghost comes back and says “it’s okay”, a suicide note, this is why I did it, Poe loves to play with the formatting, The Oval Portrait, how the narrator came to be wounded, it doesn’t add to the symbolism, its a beautiful message, the events are less important than the creation of that beautiful images, undiscussed details, up to the reader to decide, what demon urged me to breathe that sound?, literal?, daemon, a personal spirit, his muse, a program running in the background, the Greeks knew it all,

What fiend spoke from the recesses of my soul, when, amid those dim aisles, and in the silence of the night, I whispered within the ears of the holy man the syllables—Morella? What more than fiend convulsed the features of my child, and overspread them with hues of death, as starting at that scarcely audible sound, she turned her glassy eyes from the earth to heaven, and, falling prostrate on the black slabs of our ancestral vault, responded—”I am here!”

what a shocker!, she had her eyes on the Earth, falling backwards, ending in the last seconds, what happened to the body?, a stupid ghost story, the vegetation, planted from a seed, growing up, the roots going deep into the cellar, who knows what horrible juices they suck, as the second Morella has grown, the end of the cycle, she’s a lich who failed, the new body lives until the point that she’s named, women jr., Ivanka, a secondary world society, the right name for her, a terrible dad, she lives longer but she doesn’t have a full life, oops she died, foiled again, given her another name, Dude, you have to name me something else, a lich story, a fabulous story, how concise it is, this much work, very few, very dense, so effective, exactly as long as it has to be, Gothic romance,

German gothic fiction is usually described by the term Schauerroman (“shudder novel”). However, genres of Gespensterroman/Geisterroman (“ghost novel”), Räuberroman (“robber novel”), and Ritterroman (“chivalry novel”) also frequently share plot and motifs with the British “gothic novel”

a nun in New York who wrote about haunted castles on the Rhine river, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Undine, Lorelei, mere dross, worthless, rubber, dregs, those mystical writings, her favourite and constant study, the philosophy of the day, Shelling, the dross of philosophy, presuppositions, authority, it goes against the Ship of Theseus, every cell and molocule and atom is replaced, eating and breathing and pooping changes, carbon dating, when the ship returns home no part of it is the same piece but all the pieces resemble the same thing, attains or regains, like Plato would have us do in the Realm of the Forms (The Republic), suddenly she gets that last little piece of the puzzle, overload, you get the impression she died right then and there at her baptism, the exact wording, they’re just rich, murmured ever more, the opposite of the adaptations, a different sort of feel, her from the moment of birth or earlier, the breath thing is so important, spirit, undfeatable, a thesis for the ages!

Morella - illustrated by by Frederick Simpson Coburn, 1902