The SFFaudio Podcast #858 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Tissue-Culture King by Julian Huxley and The Tachypomp by Edward Page Mitchell

The SFFaudio Podcast #858 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Tissue-Culture King by Julian Huxley, read by Brian Fullen (1 hour), AND The Tachypomp by Edward Page Mitchell, read by Ben Tucker (33 minutes), both for LibriVox. The discussion of both with Jesse, Will Emmons, and Tom Pace begins at 1 hour 33 minutes.

Talked about on today’s show:
a mistake at the end of the recording [excised], Steven Page Mitchell, musician?, Canadian band?, singer songwriter, Bare Naked Ladies, the music at Jack Layton’s funeral, narrator, weird story Will, even more racist, super rich with one central idea, publication, important to the text, 3 publications very early, Amazing, August 1927, Yale Review, 1926, Cornhill Magazine, suspicious, a different text, we’re getting the Amazing text, Yale and Amazing are in the states, 15,000 words, 6,000 words longer, the rest of the paragraph is missing, a swamp the size of Yorkshire, and so on throughout the day, steamy mess, at last we were out, dotted with big trees, like a fortification, a word change, spiky barricade, the green wall, trackway, alert, caravan, guttural exclamation, ponderosity, second head, remarkable monstrosity, supernumerary eyes, lost to view, a man-made path, abridging, doesn’t damage the text, redundant writing, some details, description of the man they’re peeping on, added stuff, the voice proceeded from an enormous negro man, 7 foot 6 or 8 foot high, prayer or incantation, a little carved ebony stand, about the size and shape of a microscope slide, what the fuck’s going on?, the exact location: equatorial Africa, cut down for the American publication, pretty amazing for some things, there’s stuff in it, tin-foil hat, not called tinfoil, not for microwaves, for telepathy, pretty interesting, what you want out of science fiction, a mishmash, biological ideas, hypnosis and psionics, interesting historically, not interesting as science fiction, can we treat it metaphorically, telepathy, Astounding, a dominant thing in science fiction, The Demolished Man, entirely dependent on telepathy, John Wyndham, as a metaphor, setting aside the racism, a little thread from January 2024 on last year, edited by Leonard Huxley, his dad?, subtitled “a biological fantasy”, a more general meaning, a science fiction story in the style of H.G. Wells, the father of Julian and Aldous, super dystopia book, utopian, before the white men got there, tissue culturing, I’m an old man, drops the mic and runs away, what the core of this story is, “tissue culture”, when it was getting really popular, late 19th and early 20th century, produced this way, tissue cultured garlic, a university in New York explicitly referenced, “an institution”, Halcombe, The Rockafeller Institutes, higher education for medical people, buncha women, service these cultures, make the king everywhere, culture the king’s flesh, focus on the really interesting part, a cellular network of mind control, alive or dead exists in tissue cultures and controls the state, genetic experiments on people, fat thighs, big asses, nicki minaj, making dwarves and giants, and perfect dwarves, metaphorical way of looking at it, science is evil, scientists are evil, propaganda, on the money?, science is integral to everything going on, this pure thing, I believe in science, always doing something, working for someone, one set of powerful people here, The Tachypomp, one tutor doing everything, Edisonian mythology, massive staff, prop up the god king stuff, ancestor worship, not exclusive to one group, pretty west African, China, burning money to give to your ancestors in the other place, the one word, pointed out to Boogala, the doctrines of kingship, archive.org, multiply the king’s tissues indefinitely, quantity, mode of life, agreeable to the king, undreamt of power, such innovation, great resistance, the average businessman in their lack of prejudice, as a dig, read this subversively, the end, as to the best methods, in our scheme, scientific advertising, war propaganda, regal tissues, from the ranks of the nobles, sacred tissues, laborious and expensive, a portion of the royal anatomy, sub-culturing, a new way of doing your religion, totalitarianism, making the king everywhere, the television watching you in Nineteen Eighty-Four, Kira on Deep Space 9, the caste system, revert to that, damaging to our society, just goes along with it, a terrible artist, reintroducing the caste system, suspicion of religion, submission to authority greater than yours, do my own research, super-evil, using science to do the job of religion, science has more potent effects, a very valuable story, invented the *tinfoil hat*, where is the other story, abridged, story, tended to be the redundancy of the writing, getting to the ideas, overly long as it is, 40 minute long ideas, could have been shorter, the characters are horrible, some more clues, the Amazing text, a microscope, it’s a tissue culture being observed, why is the toad there, genuflecting to the god, pray to the god, growing properly, almost like a cargo-cult version of what’s going on at that Rockafeller Institute, African empire hidden by a swamp, a modern day lost world, intrigue stuff, important, this is the kind of tech, Facebook and Twitter and Bluesky, ai, television, radio, ai, influencing and mind controlling people, the complementary thing, public religion, research would be limited, more resistance, the state is controlling what science is doing, the way the state is fleshed out in this story, eugenics, they were racist about it, clung longer, after WWII, racists like it, too hubristic, the state telling people who should breed together, sterilize those people, the mistake is that it is unwise, unintelligent behavior, so called smart people, what good genes are, special susceptibility to hypnotism and telepathy, our ideas about losing themselves in weird primitive dances, bound up together, the Plateau of Leng, the deep darkest deserts of Australia, underground in Wales, not on any map, 3 days of swamp, 10 years later?, not Julian Huxley, Planet Stories, set on another planet, analog, bootstrapping stuff and using it to get to places farther ahead, even more impressive, early doing a lot of stuff, you could almost question, public domain, fell asleep, fell into a daze, imagined this situation, just like The Tachypomp, a nightmare, this Robert E. Howard story we started with, less seriously racist, hefty, a mature man wrote this, a plan rather than a story, this man should be fought, If I Were Dictator, Thyroid Dictator, evil on the level of Fauci evil, their religion, moderating thing, full of slaving, accidentally got time traveled to the American south during slaving, do something illegal, arm slaves, foment rebellion, monetary means, a colonialism story too, Rwanda, the outer scientist, Hascombe attained to an unsurpassed degree, but to what end did all this power serve?, will to power, a perfectly good end, fasten the yoke of a false religion, religions as true or false, true and false in this connection, truer or falser, the telepathy actually working, the obvious moral, gradually being accumulated for them, the truth about the way things work, condemning institution science, took a little piece of King Charles, when Ferengis die, tissue culture style trays, little discs with a lid, collectibles, pulp magazines in slabs, relics, a piece of Quark, a parody of us, they don’t even bury themselves, sell the body parts, a very solid story, not a good story for Scott Miller, what do I do with this story?, did a podcast on it, pre-show threads, much lighter and also fun, a Will problem, explain this story like I am dumb, not a math guy, it was all a dream, the tutor, the stand in for Edward Page Mitchell, C. August Dupin, Edgar Allan Poe, 1878, a precursor to Sherlock Holmes proper, the sweetest girl, the daughter of his math professor, reason to worry, experiences a dream, increasingly eccentric, not perpetual motion, how to reach infinite speed, layers of linear accelerators, the smoking car, keep stacking linear accelerators, wind resistance, making a vacuum tunnel, essentially invented a particle accelerator, a rail gun, the one at CERN, donut shaped one, they didn’t have the curves, near lightspeed, in inventing that, solved the problem of how to get to infinite speed, pretty simple, dream framework, the simplicity of the idea, square the circle, our inner hero, before he goes into the dream, like a Frank R. Stockton The Lady Or The Tiger?, electrically expensive, when electricity is just starting be the normal thing, all a thought experiment, an expectation that it is real, his friend, awesome excitement, get paid too, students who are not asleep, teach things and learn things, discounting ordinary intelligence, the stern father’s good will, crunchy writing, meager reward, Jean Marie Rivarol, Gutenberg Australia, Alsace, Teuton in nature, by education a German, the dumb guy, good vocab, bad math, Stanley G. Weinbaum’s, Von Manderpootz, Pygmallion’s Spectacles, Manderpootzian, Francis Stevens, half German half Japanese scientist, falls into a vat of some sort of metal, Samson, mix two races, two personalities, Jules Verne, this people are like this, the Germans are rockheaded, Professor Rockhead, Phileas Fogg = Fog Lover, obsessed with time, precision, clockwork, Paspartou, very French, stereotypes about people, mix them together and get science, Lorraine, profession: omniscience, foreordained mysteries, Tahoe water, Lake Tahoe?, unmitigated stupidity, the skirts of the university, a plethora of purse and paucity of ideas, the awesome Jesse hero, transplant brains, occasional in, the names have to be jokes, students good at math, just there, all the other students are good, injection, early Simpsons episode, the gifted school, all the kids laugh, Bart is bad is school, Lisa is good at school, high vocab, we’re dumb, we’re living in a time of stupidity, Polyp University, Professor Surd, Abbie Surd, fun stuff, a comedy piece, The Senator’s Daughter, The Man Without A Body, wired teleportation, a funny story, a science fiction idea, about the problem of how to get to infinite speed, as long as you don’t believe in later stuff like Einstein, this is impossible, a very fun fun thought experiment, what he cares about, my uncle is a judge, nothing to worry about, just needs to come from a good family and be rich, Mr. Furnace, an angle close to The Raven, Poe is influencing here, The Purloined Letter, Murders In The Rue Morgue, central Frenchman, a proto-Sherlock Holmes, sees and observes, one of the most popular characters ever created, explore the idea of can we get to infinite speed, an infinite number of cars, there’s problems with space that could prevent that, acceleration problems, energy required goes up, 40,000 trains going forward, what defeats this story’s idea ultimately, as a kid, nothing that can faster than the speed of light, The Raven is a psycho-pomp, speed, let us discuss the tachy-pomp, quickly send, takes your psyche to the place of the afterlife, the ferryman Charon is a psychopomp, the Neil Gaiman Sandman stories, still haven’t defeated this idea, a special triangular ruler, they tell me I can’t communicate faster than the speed of light, ansibles, subspace communications, make it as long as the distance to another star, instead of sending things along it you turn it left or right, received data on the other side faster than the speed of light, you can’t make a ruler that long, you can’t build one that long, sort of been replicated in some effects of twinning atoms and electrons, make them harmonize with each other, their reactions, what you do to one effects the other, a potential form of this kind of communication, on a subspace level, some fundamental law of the universe level, written that up as a giant triangular stick, knocked out by neptune and space debris, a metaphor for the understanding, he’s right, if Newtonian physics were the ruling physics of the actual universe, subsequent beliefs about what’s going on, made frivolousness, for the entertainment of it, a hole dug, a natural phenomenon, came up through a trap door, clogged up with financial creditors, Kerguelen Islands, the antipodes, what becomes of any poor devil, a comfy looking chair, skeletal arms wrap around you, the only thing you’ll ask for is the bill, a hole through earth’s center, suspected it, Huygens, 1400 fathoms, you stand upon it, Mrs. Grimler’s Cellar, a galvanic experiment on a cat, Re-Animator, a yawning shaft, came up again, the angry Grimler, acquired momentum, 8000 odd miles, time after time, oscillation of a pendulum, I am not slow, a creditor of the trap, a touch of rhyme, outside my chamber door, Poe was getting pretty popular, in the center of the hole, so much air resistance, over that long journey, even if he threw it, velocity in the other direction, follows the same logic, invents with his mind, the antipodes of the Kerguelen, near Antarctica, find Sri Lanka on a map, a couple Iles Crozet, Kerguelen cabbage, a lot of the places there are named after Jules Verne things, explored and named, the Kerguelenn archipelago, where this story is presumably set, to make the train happen, New York, the border of Saskatchewan and Alberta, real but fudging, electrical energy supply, what squaring the circle is, a mathematical thing, alchemy, hermetic philosophy, numbers are a real thing in that they are self consistent and predictable, Pi, what appears to be infinity, we’re doing approximates, the functional version of the theoretical approximate, the perfect perfection that is numbers, fallen asleep, perpetual motion, trip him up, entirely imaginary, tutored in his home, plaster busts of Artistotle, Archimedes and Comte, the benign brow of Martin Farquhar Tupper, he always roosts there, a bird of no ordinary mind, ab is a root meaning from, ab-stract, cut from, cut from the absurd, cut from the same cloth, so funny, my masterpiece, an android, only partially complete, confute the schools, Albert Magnus, Roger Bacon, Sylvester the 2nd, a Brazen Head that held discourses, Thomas Aquinus got wrathful, laws as definite, this is chatbots, this is ai chatbots, a manakin, Reverend Dr. Alchin, Paul Anapest, vulgar fractions, compose sonnets, talk to you about positivism, Mr. Mitchell is good at craft, supposed to be fluffy, startlingly early stuff, sending DMs to Bill Christensen, older science fiction stories, the tin-foil hat thing, not a household name with regard to people who know about science fiction, doesn’t take itself seriously, Douglas Adams is very good at science fiction, a discourse/conversation/fight on Red Dwarf, time travel, implanted memories, played for comedy, idiots and selfish, serious in that it takes its ideas seriously, it doesn’t negate the story, keeps it light, made Will have to do it, so be it, fantasy and science fiction and what the genres do, indie authors, indie publishers, science fiction as different window dressing for fantasy, boring and for nerds, dorks, disprove this point, we’re dorks, dorky, a third story, The Last White Man, not for dorks, for people who like adventure fiction, not fantasy, both of these are pure quill science fiction stories, 1878 no such thing existed, Julian Huxley, maybe H.G. Wells, need not be, scientific romances, for novels, science fiction after the fact, a real thing, do it without self-consciously doing it, seeing how they work, in the context of society, doing something totally different, gotta save the girl, the sword is I got some money, Kurt Metzger on Joe Rogan, Ctrl Alt History, The Terminal Man by Michael Crichton, a brain implant that fucked a guy up real good, ethical stuff, wrapping tinfoil around his head, microwave transmissions, to control his mind, mind control shit, the mind control implant, standing in front of a bull, brain-chip, a little transmitter, what happens in the book, a really great read, experimental brain surgery or face prison for murder, makes a plan to escape, a feedback loop, a killing machine, fugue states, very interesting, two meanings for terminal, through a remote terminal, a keyboard and a monitor, dumb machines that just connect to google.com, what google chromebooks are, none of the processing is happening on your computer, you are a terminal people, can program you remotely, programmed, i’m 50 now I need to get the shingles vaccine, just gonna cause a rift between us, gonna increase your chance of getting shingles, not the common knowledge, people are programmed by society and corporations and governments, perverse incentives, repeating talking points you heard from youtube, state funded media, a very unpopular youtube channel, or from RFK, a righteous underground, do you want to get shingles?, for you to get that, look into it, when you look into it, where’d you get that, lotsa research, wouldn’t give it if you asked for it, not the right age, shingles vaccine, BC health link, a series of 2 doses, flu vaccine, covid vaccine, CDC, all adults age 50 and older, what are the benefits?, the best way to protect you, prevents more than 90%, 70-90%, after being immunized, just so we’re clear, that’s not a traditional vaccine, the NDP has been paid off by Pfizer, Dr. Bonnie Henry, what’s the percentage of people who get shingles?, weakened immune systems, preservatives etc., what caused Paul to drop the podcast, the facts are COVID vaccines increase your chances of getting shingles, this isn’t a zero sum gain, gene therapy, bad things, blood clots, from personal experience, hurt from these lies, Fauci is not a good person, we knew this, not number one on Trump’s list, the flu vaccine, one cut above homeopathy, a reaction to bad medicine, huge abuses went on there, institutions are institutional, turning regular humans into robots, most doctors don’t do any research after they graduate, too uppity about it, why are they pushing it, time usually reveals, why were black people in the USA more resistant to COVID vaccines, they were experimented on before, maltreated by lying doctors, The Constant Gardner (2005), Kenya, a movie to watch, the fictionalized story is what literally happens, PayPal, ebay account, almost 30 years old, before ebay bought it, a reputation, stealing, banning, you can’t send money to truckers, get your account frozen, their Billpoint system, cheques, not an institution in the same sense, still owned by ebay?, probably an evil corporation public traded, an individual, the closely held, family owned business, very trusting of the family in general, grandma vs. a hospital, the bad outliers, bad grandmas, homeopathy grandma, needed a blood transfusion, the local newspaper (now gone), during COVID, a mother and father disputing whether their newborn should get the COVID shot, the judge did way less research than the dad did, this is how you get autism at the massive rates that we have, by what standard does the judge make the decision, two parents in dispute, set a precedent, not mandatory for babies to get vaccinated, 6 months olds and higher, developmental disabilities, the vaccine schedule, the amount of autism has matched, the reason we have more queer people, more free now, more autism friendly, we diagnose them more, a Philip K. Dick novel, it was rare, now it is normal, reboot of Doogie Hauser, The Good Doctor, idiot Savant, an American show based on a Korean show, such a serious problem now, what’s going on here, measles used to be considered a good thing, now it is considered a deadly disease, not yet, adult onset autism doesn’t appear to be a thing, less than 3%, aspergers included, not diagnosed anymore, sometimes the disease are defined away, a “dis ease” as opposed to a “syndrome”, downs disease vs. downs syndrome, old eggs?, just look into it, I should be more skeptical, a lot of money on the line, the devil’s website, the NIH, that NPR chatbot podcast reader, convenient for that, a conversation about an audiobook, a better digestion, sometimes it glitches, the fake laugh, as Terence [Blake] pointed out, put Jesse out of work, for older kids?, more out of work, kids raised by LLMs, language learning model, a prison therapist, when kids have been institutionalized, sent to school, public or private, do these exercises, the hurt, goes in the trash, make a drawing of a horse, I’m putting this on the refrigerator, very rare, publish it in a journal or something, a litmag, The Capilano Review, the number of students, can’t really have care, student teachers ratios, most of the population involved in educating children, watching youtube videos, very obscure channel, very interested in reading, what he’s been reading about, very American based, conspiratorial, psychic surgery craze of the 1960s, dudes in the Philippines and Brazil, seems pretty sus, uses his hands to psychics remove tumors and stuff from your body, exposes after the fact, James Randi, famous for debunking claims of magic, fishguts, not doing it for money, non-financial incentives, the number of people want it, you really don’t want surgery, an invasive healthcare system, injections, replacements, forget about youutube and NIH, what doctors have done to her, left a drill bit in there, we’ll try to get it out another time, put bolts in your ankle, prednisone, a steroid, a whole bunch of that stuff, addictive, causes problems, my cat is on that, a shot every five weeks, the solution to muscles spasm is botox, kills the muscles, immensely painful, full of preservatives, hair falls out, horrible things happen, falling and breaking some ribs, second covid shot, almost die from bloodclots that immediately happen, all actually what happened, a frozen, leg, at age 70 whatever, if you’re just a regular person, not as skeptical as she should be, more interested in breeding chickens than finding out the truth of these things, cases where your relative gets cancer and they don’t have cancer after a number of years, incompetence and institutional stuff, re-reading, Edward Bernays’ propaganda, rich, 2004 introduction, all about real serous guiding, the invisible government, secret influencers of society, heavily invovled with the tobacco industry, poisonous, he made his money he could move on, turn the tables on it, how do you produce a true truth, a corporate truth, LibriVox, well worth doing, it has to be an active sonar or radar, it can’t be passive, actively trying to understand, going to buy a car, you’re fucked, what cars are being made where or why or how, was the case, Japanese cars were the best, year over year improvement, keep refining it, change the direction, this commitment to refinement, a Toyota from the 1990s you can’t go wrong, swapped the engine for a Ford, commitment to year over year improvement was unparalleled, people are there to try and fuck you, perverse incentives everywhere, okay dad, more of an uncle, beautifully naive, the canny individual, being wrong many times, defer to other people’s judgement, two kinds of oil, synthetic or regular, either one will work, fuck and find out, the consequences of that are possibly dangerous, take it to an expert, a corporate outlet, a mom and pop, in it for the longhaul, getting bought up and destroyed, sold his business to a chain of carguys, owned by Blackrock or Vanguard [or Blackstone], not a conspiracy or everybody knows everybody, New York real estate, they’re not owned by individuals, owned by corporations who own blocks of things, owned by stockholders, the company or companies have to crash for that land to get sold, that’s sort of the essential problem, mom and pop business, The Communist Manifesto, 1848, true in England but not in Germany in 1848, a pamphlet, a utopian novel, a manifesto and an essay, leave no Jesse unturned, vampire, children’s fiction, fantastic fiction, six in progress, sort by release date, Ham Jones: Scientist, 16 years, what class?, economics, philosophy, it wasn’t offered, a German studies class, German Socialism, East Germany, 19th century stuff, Dastardly Criminals In Space, Watchbird, Conspiracy On Callisto by Frederik Pohl, Manly Wade Wellman, The Incomplete Theft, Tom Godwin, Robert Silverberg, Bratton’s Idea, “Old Bratton, janitor at the studios of Station XCV in Hollywood, was as gaunt as Karloff, as saturnine as Rathbone, as enigmatic as Lugosi.”, what other radical science fiction authors could we dig up, is it good?, no way of knowing, about robots?, inventions fiction, robots, Mike Vendetti stuff, The Curious Experience OF Thomas Dunbar, the first superhero story, Edmond Hamilton, Weird Tales, apple books, audible listing, imagine if you will, age immediately or regress to when they were youths, nefarious inventor, a lot of money, sound familiar?, causing panic, more adventurey fiction, Spawn Of Inferno by Hugh B. Cave, Clark Ashton Smith, anything by him, a darkness that settled like a black cloud, blackness, a thing from the outer darkness, ghastly appetite, The Thing From Outside by George Allan England, like The Wendigo by Algernon Blackwood, The Willows, badly told interesting idea, badly told?, not well told, we benefited it by being massively abridged, made it shorter, very short, from Connor [Kaye], Who Are The Dead?, we like that about him The Black Abbott Of Puthuum, Averoigne, nice art, Margaret St. Clair, corresponded, fuckin cool, she’s San Fransisco, a real homebody, Tommy Patrick Ryan, still be interesting to have read it, works for Margaret St. Clair as well, her story about fake meat, up on Bill Christensen’s website, Juciveal, technologies in stories, broad beamed, pleasantly easy to answer, Jucipork, Mr. Angst of Gourmond, a culinary editor, Veristeak, Lazarus, an interesting topic, the surprise, it’s alive, it’s made out of meat, Terry Bisson, Chicken Little, The Space Merchants, The End Of The Line, Clifford D. Simak, both Americans, provincial Americans, pastoral, countryside guys, not city-boys, loves the countryside, whole adult life, kept returning to the countryside, Talking Man by Terry Bisson, a wizard, time is a circle, fixing cars, a dude who knows how to do things, the first episode of Doctor Who, two teachers, math and history, a student they have, she’s so remarkable, she could teach the class, she’s fuckin time traveler, gets evasive, eager to learn, follow her home, parents wont meet, a junkyard, the sign above the junkyard, I.M. Foreman, her grandfather, three doctors down the road, John Smith, I’m from the future bro, an alien, subsequent stuff, no alien stuff at all, very fun, alternates between dystopian future or alien planet, historical entries, The Romans, weird episodes, the whole ocean is acid, a puzzle planet, weird amazing science fiction, the closest thing it starts off as is a rip off of The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, companion viewpoint characters, cave people times, the secret of fire, 11, 12, 13?, really well done, science fiction windowdressing, monster of the week, The Pyramids Of Mars, 19th century England, re-doing The Mummy, the mummies are aliens, a tomb on Mars, Osiris was a real character, The Mummy (1932), ancient aliens are gods story, entombed on Mars, 1 tv show a day with dinner with Meg, comedy about a hospital, The Office, St. Denis Medical, animals doing stuff, The Henryiod, straight adaptations, Shakespeare, old school, women played by men, pretty straight, Shakespeare’s great, the histories, Richard III, Julius Caesar, Marlon Brando, British accents for the Romans, I, Claudius, among the top 5 tv shows ever done, if not in the first slot, Derek Jacobi, 6 hours maybe, shot on videotape, stupid British, amazing performances, great blocking, where they place the camera, helps tell the story, receiving the speech, help tell a story, old Claudius, Robert Graves, Augustus through Tiberius, Nero, Caligula, the story of the story, Patrick Stewart plays Sejanus, good acting, getting stabbed, Praetorian, suicided, poisoned, slaves running around in the background, 4 different versions of Ben-Hur, well dressed, no outdoor scenes, in tents, inside a hall, the Senate, by torrenting, that’s drama for you bro, it was huge, so many good actors, John Hurt, Sian Phillips, The Elephant Man (1980), British stage actors, become iconic, high quality production, shot on videotape, they’ve lost episodes of it, animating missing episodes, real science fiction stories, it was illegal to pirate the show, happy to take your pirate copies, owned by the British government, revenue bro, all on tubi right now, the best streaming service, The King Tide (2023), shot in Newfoundland, hard to see things, living on an island, fishermen, mainlanders, a baby crying, 10 years later, miraculously heals, cut-off from the rest of the world, the secret, a child who can heal sickness, adoptive parents, amazing baby resource, human resource, the center of the island’s attention, weirdo drunk guy, while she’s reading a book, lineup to get in, the healthcare provider, having fistfights for fun, poison themselves, she loses her power to heal, she was spending time with some bees, all the bees died, only while she’s asleep, take sleeping pills, this island is fucked, promised never to leave, a kid being abused, this doesn’t go well, everybody on the island dies and maybe the whole planet, the execution was poor but the idea was good, a little bit Lovecraftian, maybe a fishkid, giving her sleeping pills, serving Omelas, make fish appear in the nets, the enrichment, Labrador, on the mainland, a special kind of rum, kiss a fish before you drink the rum, videogames might have been a mistake, kissing the fish, a time suck, accent is similar to Irish, not apart of Canada until 1949, a colony of Britain, out of work, 2-4, 3 hours, too much time writing a few days a week, drink some coffee, smoke a little bit, dive right in, exhausting yourself, a break, accomplished something, 5am for every start, before church, a paper route, still morning, a nice feeling, it’s so late, bedtime, staying up pretty late, awake quite late, up at 4am, when the sun goes down, various weasels, doing stuff since 4am, sick in December, missing work, felt really useless being sick, contempt, drifting from thing to thing, twitter accounts, bitter about Ukraine, angry about Israel, do some stuff, write a book, why video games are a mistake, huge mistake, they’re so fun and non-productive, productive in Minecraft, it’s fake, use it in moderation as a reward for actual production, immediately became obsessed with it, girls and boys, boys love to dig, sandbox, because you’re boy, stacking, chopping, stacked and chopped, housebuilders, natural, monkey with tools, tie things together, Gilligan’s Island, bamboo and string, also Ginger’s cool, the rich guy, the doofus and the boss, girl next door, Mrs. Howell, lovey-dovey, all they have is money, do you ever think about the Black Death?, Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman, gruff knight, very gently, spoil it for me, secretly God, sounds bad, really good, you don’t have the Christianity background, Will’s biggest deficit, Flesh + Blood (1985), the Heinlein movie, Paul Verhoven, lock themselves up in a castle, a statue of St. Martin, their totem to keep them safe, degenerates, contamination, Rutger Hauer is amazing, Brion James, a pretty long movie for 1985, semi-produced by Hollywood, he’s got a lot of good movies, Hollow Man (2000), Showgirls (1995), Black Book (2006), dutch WWII stuff, Soldier Of Orange (1977), national colour, The 4th Man (1983), bisexual writer, ignorant of one of the greatest artforms around, Basic Instinct (1992), Total Recall (1990), RoboCop (1987), become disciplined about it, 4 movies everyday, The Last Emperor(1987), quite amazing spectacle, you don’t watch it for fun, become edified by it, Death Wish (1974), to understand the concept, why there were 8 Death Wish sequels, a Bronson disciple, produced in, I don’t care about Jill Ireland, he really does, that’s interesting, an interesting character, roughest background imaginable, beating eachother for breakfast, coal mine at age 9, a real something to see, 15 – 20 years ago, I have a certain set of skills, Irish actor, Liam Neeson, Taken (2008), spends the rest of the movie killing people, set decades apart, a thread that started a long time ago, dismiss whole categories of movies, have met many men, an example, Lawrence Of Arabia (1962), colonialism in Dune, the personal story, a beautiful film, tube tv, on laserdisc, stunning on a 55 inch widescreen tv, there’s an intermission, really good book, the 1959 Ben-Hur, the 1925, the cartoon version, narrated and performed by Charlton Heston, the 2016 version, they didn’t have movies in 1888, had to do it through books, cast of thousands, before it was a movie it was a stageplay, treadmills, how the medium has changed, on Broadway, the number of horses that died, so round, took a long time to film, seize the medium while it is ripe, get to it before you die, Sorcerer (1977), Tangerine Dream, The Wages Of Fear, driving rotten dynamite across Brazil, the worst roads, leaking nitroglycerine, mostly no talk, William Friedkin, backstory, reasons to flee to Brazil, on the poster is a truck crossing a rope bridge, what’s going to happen, came out the same week as Star Wars (1977), The French Connection (1971), To Live And Die In L.A. (1985), musicals, Jonathan Weichsel, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), fucked women up, Marilyn Monroe, imaginary reasons, conspiracy theory, backed by stuff, feels right, probably true, Will had trouble with the subtlety, “dumb bitch”, she’s a nice girl, dam, ewe, dam, ewe, the projection is hilarious, maybe he’s doing something right, tv work, SVU, victim’s fathers, so for boomers, Law & Order, the one that is so dominant, very special rape, what makes the special, 26 seasons, it’s got what the people want: raped from the headlines, Criminal Intent, Organized Crime, Hate Crimes, this is the one about sexual assault, Law & Order Sex Crimes, Sex Criminals, the first volume, some lurid thing going on, Americans are special in that they’re more prudish, love violence, shaped, broken glass as a standin for blood, everybody has had the experience, cut their foot, it means blood, streaming clips, blood is turned green, when mom walks into the room, paying for your Prime, green mist, green spurt, that’s not blood, reality is shaped by the requirements of the prudishness of a certain set of people, in 15 years, radio stations, exactly 100 years old, first radio stations, Hugo Gernsback, ham radio guys, KDKA, in the car, to avoid commercials, BBC radio, it shouldn’t be, declined during covid, if television is around in 15 years, radio is dead, in the car, an old car, drive around town, it was a thing, SNL, vanishingly rare, half the year, Timothee Chalamet, what the current liberal hivemind is thinking, who’s famous right now, that one video, vote for Kamala, reviews phones or cars, Jerry Rig Everything, breaking phones apart, a Mormon, pretty diverse, a disabled wife, wheelchairs, wealthy from youtube, always getting wealthy, busy getting married and networking, supports getting rich, support, a nation within a nation, busy breaking phones, what phone should I get, ads for phones on tv, phone services, drugs, insurance, car and house, iphones and samsungs, free phone, phone plans, co-op advertising, talk over the ads, while the tv is yapping at you, while the tissue culture king is praying on your mind, actors from SNL, tattoos and dates, tattoos removed, other reasons, Sarah Sherman, droopy dry, dandruff shampoo, subject, fancy bath products, a nice experience in the shower, go beyond a neutral experience, if this were the middle ages, a perfumed bath, audiobooks in the shower, racing the alarm, just stop showering, sorry to listeners, pee and coffee, Eternal Lover/Savage.

The Tissue-Culture King by Julian Huxley - AMAZING

The Tissue-Culture King by Julian Huxley

Abbie

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #855 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Mr. Spaceship by Philip K. Dick and Mercenary by Mack Reynolds

The SFFaudio Podcast #855 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Mr. Spaceship by Philip K. Dick, read by Phil Chenevert for LibriVox (1 hour 11 mins) and Mercenary by Mack Reynolds, read by Mark Nelson (2 hours 31 minutes) followed by a discussion of both. The discussion, with Jesse, Will Emmons, and Tommy Patrick Ryan, begins at 3 hours 43 minutes.

Talked about on today’s show:
2 stories, Mr. Spaceship, Mercenary, rankings on Goodreads, .1 higher, 3.6 and 3.7 out of 5, Eric S. Rabkin, who liked the book?, very meh about both, better than Prize Ship, in retrospect, one is way better than the other, thematically they’re very similar, so much time in the setup to get to a gimmick, weird set of rules, pre-1900, a glider to scout out the thing, both stories have gimmicks, a ton of time to setup that doesn’t pay off justified by the length, what the ship does, let’s go visit him in his sick bed, let’s have a cigarette, not his best story, Will weigh in, more generous to Mr. Spaceship, socialist labour party, the United States and the Soviet Union are converging, welfare capitalism, the worldbuilding, the sociology, almost like a gadget story, why are we doing this, he kept that part really short, 2 and a half pages, the ethics of the mercenaries, poor people, complete utter misery, they have their tranqs, Philip K. Dick had the better of Mack Reynolds, half the length, aspects appreciated, social commentary, felt relevant, top 1%, feels relevant today, it took 2 pages, so corny, he’s wrong, pretty richa and a little bit enlightened, romances, listen let’s go, he’s Mario, the audiobook was good, the PKD story, he understands the world in some kinda way Mack Reynolds is struggling with, conflicts between companies and unions, war is a thing of the past, in the thrall of it, Professor Thomas, Rick is a name he uses a lot, both synonyms for penis, your Martha, I’m draining my Jesse, institution, talented people, this is all we’re doing, Cold War America, they’re both about war, so petty, reality TV, more like sports, Rollerball (1975), a hostile takeover, it makes no sense, trial by combat, a really good movie, a short story (not public domain), a really good sportsman at this sport, the point of the sport is to bread and circuses the masses, a glimpse behind the curtain, these guys are all fucking us, even less than that, the very very top of society, wow!, an international group, our oligarchs vs.their oligarchs, continental hovercraft vs. vacuum tube transport, the big game, athletes between teams, when is this battle gonna start?, if you’re a military SF fan, all fluffing before the penetration, no battle at all, no deaths, a promotion, riots, batmen watching this show, cancelling the superbowl would not go well, too much money involved, reviled!, common stock vs. actual stock, a personal victory for our hero Joe Mauser, gonna probably get the girl, for everyone else it is a loss, military shit, supposed to be about tv, the exact same world setup, no waiters or waitresses, everything is automated, the real problem in society is meaning and work, why John W. Campbell would have dug this, this communist, in terms of sales, the world building is really good, meh, all aborted at the end, this same setup, Jesse wants to read a series, just messing with you, Utopia: 2000?, Commune: 2000?, Looking Backward From The Year 2000, William Morris?, Edward Bellamy, scarcity of food vs. scarcity of meaningful work, an Adam and Eve story as usual, a little bit psycho, the solution to war is starting over, born in 1928, 10 years old in 1938, rumours of war, actual war starts, 1940, 1941, 1945, he’s a teenager, an endless thing, all war news all the time, war related, victory gardens, Japanese tanks getting piggy back rides, war-infused, not a period in his life, Korean War, students of a professor, we know he’s weird, kept chickens, had a goat, he’s not watching tv and eatin the propaganda, in touch with nature, this stupid proposal, the setup, annoyed with, mode, lectured by the professor, the infodump finally came, it was cute, The Purloined Letter always gets found, the wife, the moon, some sheep, some cows, going to become God, Prominent Author, the old man in the sky who’s a file clerk with a translation machine, written real small, Reynolds over Dick, a real pro, nothing written unintentionally, stuff happens, jots it out, things in there, interesting, insightful, driving around, kinda starts the story in the wrong spot, trying to make money, a little bit psycho, struggles with psychosis, it’s weird, troubled relationship with women, a Dick aficionado, five marriages, longish term relationships, I like you let’s get married, cagey, living in a different time period, you could buy a house and he did, he bought a house outside of San Fransisco, he was a writer that was his income, getting married, he was 53 when he died, only 53, shocking, he’s famous now, line up all the science fiction writers, not in the top 10, since Blade Runner (1982) and all that, this story is no great evidence of his greatness, his bad relationship with his wife, fuck this job, we have a dog, work whatever jobs we can work online, disembodied brain, the reason this story is stupid, no reason, in The Ship Who Sang, a twitter video, dummy calf syndrome, trauma in the birth, the treatment for dummy calf syndrome, after 15 minutes of squeezing, a disembodied brain, fight a war with some aliens that are exploding mechanical ships, the Zerg, the biological aliens, Starcraft, overlord things, brainships, Starship Troopers movie, bio aliens, an inspiration for that group, these ships are being rejected because they have no minds, new technology?, smarter than any machine could be, sensing it, something about making a decision, blow themselves up, fighting fire would fire, what the aliens were like, if he kept his consciousness, cogito ergo sum, Descartes, I can live on, I’m gonna be a creator, repopulate the world, not friends, students, bad writing, we keep looking for contact, a psychological phenomenon, the mine decides to blow up, these characters: meaningless, we have to infer his character for the most part, bad writing, the setup, a disembodied brain in a spaceship, Anne McCaffrey, she’s a disembodied brain, she makes it a romance, a handsome man and a disabled lady, Philip K. Dick is crazy, new space colony, have babies, he calls out Cain, Cain and Abel, I’m gonna be god up in the sky bringing you animals, in Mercenary, our Mack Reynolds, direct messages, a funny looking guy, in his uniforms in the Philippines during the war, the world building, research scientists, why this story is broken, “mufti”, civilian clothes, “fracas”, a whole language to describe the world he’s getting us into, voting day, he’s condemning the United States system as it is, voting is not what you think it is, the high class people’s days, Boxing Day, you cook the meal for your servants, he’s on to something, this particular story and the battle: boring, he’s attacking the United States system as it is and extending it into the future, stories about television, when they point the camera up at the thing in the sky, we also get it reflected with the batman, a television watcher, he’s gonna die, basketball and football, put on the jerseys of their heroes, it doesn’t feel like an attack, a better story than Mr. Spaceship, everybody on goodreads agrees, cringey stuff, how douchey the rich people were, nobody wants for anything, the inequity, the opiate is tranqs, Max M, tranqs don’t give you a hangover, so 1950s, alcohol, addictive, addictive, how addictive it is, the reason people are taking tranqs, socially acceptable, marijuana stores, people don’t pass out from weed, blacking out, smoke dope and walk tv, a recreation drug, negative effects, used to control the proletariat, the world is great, it was promising us a war story, they never come to it, editorial introduction, two roads, the priest and the warrior, Valium, amongst others, broadcast television, boomers, that tv going all day, 97 year old grandmother, more docile, streaming service, The Incredible Dr Pol, veterinarian, medical shows, binge, just like Jesus, consuming, not going out much, trained to do that during COVID, computer games or video games, playing games all day, you could be doing a podcast or whatever?, thinking of computer games as the new opiate of the masses, compared for television, streams are different, streaming services, broadcast television, you watch that channel, like watching the weather, targeted and mindful, a river, turn on the radio while you’re folding laundry, a new season of What If…?, that’s pretty strange, looking at the ipad, listen to a show, scrubbing the toilet, logistical concerns, walking across intersections looking at their phones, putting away dishes, listening/looking, the action sequence, zoning out, vegging out, couch potatoes, conspiracy theorist friends, rich people want to get rid of the proletariat, so they don’t get overthrown, the love interest, her desire to deal with the overpopulation problem, very Thanos, endgame, a farce?, no-good, election day is tops, just as good as an upper, the one day, everybody has everything, the Roman bacchanalia, parroting back the line of propaganda, we should have a revolution, things don’t work like this, the Sovs, political idiosyncrasies, do they have this in their world?, this future look, capitalism, communism, party members, Joe Mauser, talking to the gal, motivation, trying to get rich, get promoted, be a priest, getting shot at and possibly killed, civil war technology and conditions, boys like fighting, hitting each other with sticks, an atheist, religion distasteful, equating his rise, gotta be the top, cleverness, how he’s talked up by the others, I’m awesome, Joe Mauser’s goals, impressed, very interesting and clever, I wanna be rich, he wanted to be in the top, kinda means that you’re rich, a true capitalist society, today’s world, he’s gotta plan, an unwinnable battle, the highest status, why the girl’s right and he’s wrong, we don’t know anything about her, radical, doctor, she likes Joe Mauser, let’s go talk about goals, if you look at the illustrations, television related, the underlying target, good enough for Dad, you won’t catch me talking about the government, People’s Capitalism, too deep for Max, everybody owns the corporations, we’ve got one optical illusion, the proletariat owns the means of production, the party hierarchy, who can become a party member over there?, commentary elsewhere in the story, only elites can become party members, socialist labour party doctrine, bristle about, natural peace, Westworld, not prophetic, the current president of the United States, they’re not Sovs anymore, we aren’t living in an evenly distributed post-scarcity society, UBI, Andrew Yang, an idea going on back to the 50s, we have mass production, the real problem is overproduction, destroy, can’t we just have more approriate production, a planned economy, vs. an unplanned economy, Colossus/Guardian, Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970), bomb proof robot, Guardian and Colossus merge, the humans quake and quiver, the end of the book, and the movie, the second book, two more books, Italian SpiderMan, respect women, make me a macchiato, Australian, competeing views of Marxism, where does he say the Soviet Union is evil, you gonna get in the glider, Soviet observer, SALT, send observers, seems totally legit, the Russians would send airplanes over the United States, the 90s?, we’ve fallen a long way, our leaders have, the misleaders, a weird world, a peaceful life, future stuff, a big schedule, time to read Ben-Hur, omelette, Watchmen, V For Vendetta, At Mountains Of Madness, what’s on the schedule, The Ship Of Ishtar, the preferred text?, 345 pages on faded page, a massive undertaking, 7 hour book, another pair, more Silverberg, Recalled To Life, and Burrough’s Eternal Savage, Jewishness, a little bit nuts, Pulp Archive, they are from different peoples, the tweet, english language literature, useful associations, Chicago Fantasy: Weird Tales, Narnia and Hogwarts, Cimmeria and Miskatonic, another example of parallel fantasies, different themes, different peoples different stories, the quote tweet, struggled to be included as Americas, not everything’s about America bro, Jewish relatives in Britain, Jewish relatives in Canada, Canadian national identity is so weak, even a shithead Zionist like Seinfeld, Christmas isn’t a thing, got to the Chinese restaurant, very similar, delicious, the idea behind it, Jewish fantasists of the secondary world kind, offended, something about the word, people get worried about the word Jew, the main thing that is going on, there is only this world, when you got to bury a Jewish relative, a very different philosophy, they believe, wait for the afterlife, the messiah hasn’t come yet, [Jesus was] a cool guy, he hasn’t come yet to Earth, do Jews believe in Heaven?, whatever they’re afterlife is, Jeremiah 33-34, the new covenant, heaven or not, believe in something, Dante tried to describe it, the concept of Hell, so vindictive, what is next is a little less certain, a BBC one, reform Judaism, the afterlife is here on earth, a transitory place, so much focus on being a good steward, orthodox Judaism, this approach differs from reincarnation, yeah maybe, Valhalla is a big thing for Pagans, Stovokor if you’re a Klingon, Commander Sisko is mad about it, Weinbaum, Silverberg, William Tenn, Harlan Ellison, Asimov, he’s got hell in his stories, science fiction goes hand in hand with Judaism, really into fantasy: Mormons and Catholics, how come that is, Jews are different, Tolkien and Narnia guy, fantasy: often magic is in play, Gandalf is more or less an angel, a chorus of angels, sing the world into existence, in Harry Potter it’s genetic, a token Jew in Hogwarts?, the Old Testament, Moses can turn his staff into a snake, Avram Davidson’s The Golem, Ukraine or Smolensky, Robert E. Howard, a robot, a knight from the lower class, an Irish knight, there’s no class stuff there, they’re never going to be in the upperclass, famous exceptions, the downtrodden, we can’t have a fantasy of life in the next world, antithetical is more likely, dallying in fantasy, wouldn’t it be cool if I was secretly a wizard, apprentice to that shoemaker, something to this very interesting article, John C. Wright, a self-published authors, before the purge, maybe both of them, Silverberg and Burroughs, Scott Miller, The Lovers by Philip Jose Farmer, Recalled To Life, American science fiction’s greatest living author, Drug Themes In Science Fiction, Bleekman’s Planet, a chariot race, a very Jewish book, Lew Wallace, former Civil War general, former governor, most influential Christian book of the 19th century, a quarter of a century into this century, barely lived in the 20th century, born in 1984, so funny, it’s a Brave New World, going by the year, do the math, good birthday, a recurring event, Professor Thomas, go off in your brainship, snow is all gone, an earthquake, rare, the tires on the car, Port Moody, really wavy today, 4.7, weird things the earth can do, live on a spacestation, fed through a tube, you’d take an orbital ride just to check it out, veterinary visuals, William Shatner, how empty and lifeless it was, your bones stop generating calcium or whatever, an experience, expensive and dangerous, until Elon Musk goes up, we are going to be on Mars, government money on the way, quick trip to space, cowboy hat, famous unfamiliar, like a party, Jungle Scandals, under a pseudonym, horny Tarzan, sell things to markets, a future opportunity, write for your own self, a story about a belt and snake and bowl, a bear a duck and a goose, people in the room and randos on the internet, not very Jewish of you, very protestant, sword and sorcery, the reign of Henry VIII, a heretical nun, some dragons, symbolic dragons, these are dragons and they’re cool, Trogdor,, Homestar Runner, Reign Of FireDragonslayer (1981), steal the scales, very different, the quality of everything has taken a shit all over, Planet Comics vs. Planet Comics, [Fiction House] very pulpy, the text stories in there, more like hero pulps, Tarzan born on Jupiter, Call Me Joe by Poul Anderson, read by Mike Hodel, library card, “world literature”, The Song Of Roland, Damien by Hermann Hesse, Matt Taibbi, Walter Kirn, pirated and up on YouTube, a Russian short story called The Fatalist by Mikhail Lermontov, you remind me of a character in Lermontov, A Hero Of Our Time, the embodiment of the Byronic hero, “interfering with out elections”, much to consider there, a really good journalist, the Twitter files guy, the FBI and the White House, Musk got mad and revoked his access, he’s not a white man, English language newspapers, the drunk guy: Yeltsin, a professional basketball player in one of the Stans, The Exile, Twitter used to be a more interesting place, he’s a drummer, straightforward and interested, old fashioned muckraking journalist, his free podcast, Damien Walter, both talk about literature, pretty obscure, journalists are, interesting funny guys with lots of stories, interviewed for the New York Times, labour journalist, freelance writers, more polemical than journalist, J-school, non-profit goon, where journalists go to cash in, Uzbekistan, the Mongolian [Dennis] Rodman, born in 63, when people talk about stories, listening to The Broken Sword by Poul Anderson, being very Jewish that day, there’s something wrong with their brains, reading a lot of Sword & Sorcery, random contemporary story, this is actually really good, speaking in poetry a lot, a brave choice, that’s ambitious, doomed to fall in love with his sister, eww, I’m like an amoral elf, too Christian, reconstruction, Paul has read it thrice, Will is historically a protestant, a few bibles in the house, the Good Book, a little drunk, what are the best books in the English language: the Bible, names, begats, rules, don’t cook a goat in his own milk, the first one, Genesis is fun, folktales, Exodus, Judges, Song Of Solomon, the horny one, Ecclesiastes, the Psalms, people should a read it, a good session, pick up your Bible.

Mr. Spaceship by Philip K. Dick

Mercenary by Mack Reynolds

Mercenary by Mack Reynolds

Mercenary by Mack Reynolds

Mercenary by Mack Reynolds

Posted by Jesse Willis

Reading, Short And Deep #500 – The Letter In The Vase by Don Mark Lemon

Reading, Short And Deep

Reading, Short And Deep #500

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss The Letter In The Vase by Don Mark Lemon

Here’s a link to the story |PDF| and here’s an exacting transcription, suitable for printing |PDF|.

The Letter In The Vase was first published in The Ada Evening News, Indian Territory [Oklahoma], March 19, 1907.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!

Reading, Short And Deep #498 – Pie For Supper by Margaret St. Clair

Reading, Short And Deep

Reading, Short And Deep #498

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss Pie For Supper by Margaret St. Clair

Here’s a link to the story |PDF|.

Pie For Supper was first published in Mystery Book Magazine, August 1946.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!

Reading, Short And Deep #497 – The Tempter by Robert E. Howard

Reading, Short And Deep

Reading, Short And Deep #497

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss The Tempter by Robert E. Howard

Here’s a link to the poem |PDF|.

The Tempter was first published in The Cross Plains Review, June 18, 1937.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!

The SFFaudio Podcast #851 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Jameson Satellite by Neil R. Jones and Mellonta Tauta by Edgar Allan Poe

The SFFaudio Podcast #851 – Prize Ship by The Jameson Satellite by Neil R. Jones (53 minutes) read by Josh Horowitz and Mellonta Tauta by Edgar Allan Poe (36 minutes) read by Drakaunus. These are followed by a discussion of both. Participants in the discussion include Jesse and Will Emmons.

Talked about on today’s show:
The Jameson Satellite, Amazing Stories, July 1931, Mellonta Tauta by Edgar Allan Poe, Godey’s Lady’s Book, February 1849, also in Amazing Stories, Novemwbr 1933, tweeting is writing, pair it with something, an interesting pairing, thematically connected, a sommelier, tasting notes, one is much better than the other, we can agree, Neil R. Jones, as a story, good narrator, rough, short, intervening period, the sentence are pages long, makes it harder, one over the other, a “better story”, story is the wrong world, a meditation, congeries, a disorderly collection, a jumble, densely packed, a few through lines, human values have utterly changed, we’re told and then we’re shown, the wrong way to approach literature, what to put out there, edifying ideas, Edgar Allan Poe probably believed intuition was stronger than a posteri logic, just sort of there, social criticism, we don’t even care if people die, maybe Poe thought that, a very hard to understand man, 1840s is not our period, a different world, when talking about Poe, had he lived a few more years, the wrong side, we all implicitly know this, you could argue that he wouldn’t of, would have wanted to have been involved, one of the facts, stumbled through, plowed up, people’s takes on this story, his grandfather was a general in the American Army, somewhat inovoled in espionage, tried to become an officer, he went to West Point, cipher stories, stories not considered difficult, he’s gotta show his brain, this mess of a story is amusing and full of interesting things but as a story is terrible, easily captured by interesting details, hooks, you can love it even though it’s not a good story, a very solid story, what?! stupid, being on track, when he falls into the volcano and breaks himself, he calls out psychically to the aliens, your brain is different, suspense shit, artificially make it bad, works incredibly well, similar cosmic scope, 40 million years or whatever, Edgar Allan Poe with his 7 diary entries, given how old it is, 100 years older, super-old, 180 years old, do some math, 2025 – 1848 ?, 177 years old, buy it unbound, copies of that in a bound form, newspaper is pretty sketchy, a flyer, designed to be ephemeral, no waybackmachine for 1849, some weirdo hoarding, basement or loft, a promotional book put online by Land Rover, a 10 year old reading experience, all that stuff is not preserved by the waybackmachine, the audio and the javascript, just think about plays, surreptitiously recording a play, perfomred and lauded and respected, minor notes in a magazine in a newspaper, both of Poe’s parents were actors, you can still go to Ford’s theater, not the same actors, with regards to preservation, a theme of both of these stories, really fun, seems silly, with the radium, when he preserves his body, the story is made of elements, a bad chemistry metaphor, plans to preserve my body, references to the ancient egyptians, all those premature burials, a grave preserved for the lifetime of your loved ones, keep my ashes in their house, for religious people, bodily risen up by Jesus, preserve the bones, coffins and graveyards and memorials, the boomers are moving towards cremation, need land reform for graveyards, people take up a lot of space, morality about bodies, wars are good, the presumption, Solander’s Radio Tomb by Ellis Parker Butler, Pigs Is Pigs, eventually becomes the tribbles story, Martian flat cats, normal stories, An Experiment In Gyro Hats, Radio News, December 1923, a giant radio, speakers, a comedy story, revised slightly, a lich who gets his wish, the things in his will done after his death, a religious radio station, codicils in his will, give sermons, moving their graves out, the changing attitudes, if enough people don’t like jazz anymore, the radio station becomes unfashionable, a very similar idea, orbiting the earth, way past that, there is no character involved, the earth becoming tidally locked with the sun, all very fun, thinking about my own death, first dead man on the moon, sort of useless, an elaborate tomb, a nice bed, a cup of water beside the bed, free wifi, students can drink their starbucks on the steps of my tomb, where it could start, he’s no longer in his own body, he’s materially no longer himself, there’s no left and right anymore, he has no body, ears don’t seem to be thing anymore, or sleep maybe, or eat, autotrophic, a tiny bit of philosophy, sort of benevolent, what’s going on in the universe, great idea!, travel to all those planets out there!, contrast that with Mellonta Tauta, best friend/husband, wants to annoy, Poe is leaning into it, opposite philosophies, death vs. transcending death, a collection of observations about the 19th century and what is real, we are probably in a giant galaxy orbiting a black hole, it’s deep, one is shallowly deep, deep and easily dismissable, good in their way, Will can dig it, the climax, considering suicide, the benevolence, you could come with us, contemplating suicide, staying with the dead thing, staying with the dead earth, bury your loved one, jumps into the grave with the dead person, the alternate way, allow that person to be buried and visit a lot, dead and can’t respond, having been orbiting the earth not just his whole life, very cool, visiting the graveyard all the time, transitioning between life phases, accumulate mementos, throw away part of yourself, throwing away the possibility of being reminded of it, orients us, fixate on those sorts of things, different possibilities, the price of going out into the universe, leave behind this dead thing, a price you pay, he has that thrust upon him, really dramatic moments in the story, it’s fun and interesting and not self-aware, that era of science fiction, not true of Poe at all, gets in the way of himself, the audio version, sometimes excluded is the editorial introduction, hopefully the readers will, hopefully you guys get it, I don’t know, fun and funny, whenever presented with a fact through words, especially through words, it’s blue now, long story short that’s a false claim, you know Jesse’s nature, telling an untruth, in a story especially in print, the propaganda works, January 6th was an insurrection, if repeated enough, McDonald’s catchphrase, I’m lovin’ it, whoever I am, whatever it is, you become the I, more McDonalds, Hardees, Carl Jr.’s, same kind of situation, breakfast later than McDonalds, the getting up late lifestyle, many unhealthy things, physical constitution, Lord grant me chastity but not yet, reiterate, really good science fiction, really naive and fun, that deep time element, most science fiction stories of the period, associate with Lovecraft, The Shadow Out Of Time, vegetable men, aliens, a professor who has his consciousness transported through time, vegetable bodies, a mindswap, from the ancient earth and outer space, have a family, not consensual, they’re not even they’re just explorers, Douglas Adams, how big space is, almost Star Trek, the natural result of keeping down the TNG path, smoothed out and smoothed out, Lt. Brocclis, pursuing the interests, helping each other, eventually what they are, they don’t EXTERMINATE!, talk to them, cutely naive and nice, cynical with takes he wants to give you, our balloon is crashing, whatever!, that’s fine, I wrote it for my own benefit anyway, he’s great, he needed to get these ideas out there, when not drunk, not a good drunk to be around, doesn’t have people he can talk to, experienced with demons, both parents dead age 2, won’t even adopt him, loves one, hates the other, intellectual problems, kinda have money, nobody understands you, too many hormones, be more calm, go by days, sections by days, thematically organized, April 1st, he knows what he’s doing, foredated, displayed until, looking at march magazines on the newsracks, dated ahead, the year is 2848, probably when it was published, early early January at the latest, 1000 years, puzzle stories, largely the inventor of detective stories, other than possibly in China, Judge Dee, an analogy at best, reading Roman novels, watching the latest Star Trek Section 31 movie, it is that different, they don’t map together, Lucian of Somosata, it’s not science fiction, weird laurel, is it science fiction, Hugo Gernsback would say so, self conscious, the materials available, extends to be still valuable, because of its comedy aspect, Now my dear friend, a long gossiping letter, a comedic engagement and science fiction, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, the floating disc places with scientists, he’s taking apart science of his period, a really interesting argument, not really trying to tell us about technology, what science fiction is about, how knowledge of the universe changes us, the ruins of the island of Manhattan, fixing up the palace’s yard, a time capsule, the starting stone of a building, improper deductions, a way of attacking his period, Godey’s Lady’s Book had illustrations, they look like turkeys, April 8th, Eurkea!, a balloon from Kanada, late papers, Amerikan antiquities, a new fountain at Paradise, an island time out of mind, a rivulet, the whole length of the island is 9 miles, densely packed with houses, 20 stories high, the year 2050, wherewith to build up even the ghost of a theory, they were of a great portion of the Knickerbocker tribe of savages, pants, some allusion, a knight of the Golden Fleece, after a fashion of their own, acute in many respects, the poe phrase “monomania”, a kind of pagoda, wealth and fashion, an attack on modern New York, natural protuberance, in the light of beauty, miraculously preserved, a turkey cock and a dromedary, a savage attack on women’s fashion, the contents of the cornerstone, likely to have been a dealer in corn, they must have turned him into sausages, as a kind of science fiction, science fiction-like in many respects, it doesn’t work as a story, it works as an artifact, reproduced in the newspapers, undercooked, why are they on this balloon?, other balloons, above and below, having its gas changed, so infested with people, not fully supported by the story, travelers through the sky, no evidence that they’re powered, floating, travel by train at 300 miles per hour, Pundit and Pundita, people of the future, too undercooked to be a coherent story, two angels talking to each other, a dialogue, those are something but they’re not science fiction, worthy of being included in a science fiction magazine, a curiosity, allow that analysis, the canons of the short story, he’s a pioneer, we don’t know what to expect, The Complete Poe, a story or a fable, subtitles, an essay, The Philosophy Of Composition, how poetry should be made, The Raven, a space filler, the word magazine, the part of the shop where the gunpowder is, argosy essentially means magazine, its full of good stuff, these metaphors extend and change, a piece about hansom cabs, ruminating for a moment on hansom cabs, robotic looking a new technology, a two wheeled vehicle pulled by a horse, watching Sherlock Holmes tv adaptations, a new tech, patented in the UK, what’s it like to ride in an uber, here’s a Poe something, its not a short story, The Premature Burial, articles and anecdotes, a story at the end, The Cask Of Amontillado, a confession piece, Guy de Maupassant, and Hemingway, a form of art, doing a skit is not a play, sing, Shakespearean plays, bums in seats, in the direction of science fiction, precluding it from being science fiction, a way of judging and classifying, this piece is a good piece but not a good short story, is this a good novel?, no, just finished Dune, too long?, seductive, Frank Herbert, he could be wrong, complete and enough, a good novel as well as a good story also an evil story and scary, Paul’s doing what’s right here, not as a 13 year old boy, many 13 year old boys have read it, exposed to moral complexity, great bene gesserit characters, rich and smart, full of the ecosystem shit, wheels within wheels and plans within plans, surprising and scary and revealing, should we use people as objects to accomplish our goals, especially if we want to live, why are the Harkonnens bad and the Atredies good, at least worse, Leto vs. Paul, values people more than anything, muddled, lost perspective, the worm is coming, the scene that shows his character, reunited with Gurney Halleck, equipment vs. people, going in we’re on Paul’s side, that betrayal, they value people, tools to be used, squeeze and squeeze, betrayed by one he was good too, what is the lesson there?, a rich and difficult world, solid solid, Confucius would say, better to be like Leto and die, warrior prince, doomed by our position, what’s good about the book, complex and rich, the more Paul becomes fucked up the better the book becomes, a decent payoff, it’s unexpected and yet inevitable, different readings of it, Frank Herbert misunderstood Paul, snippets on social media, just reference the book, look at what objectively happens, talk about Gollum all day, ultimately what happens, too compelled by that heroin, or Smeagol, a certain intention, what Gandalf said, the author doesn’t matter unless they’re pointing to a particular piece of text, authors can be wrong, whom amongst us knows what’s in our own mind, explains some part of your psychology or interest, more than just intention, actual text, another mind can model it, part of our job, engaging with it and understanding, “Paul was good actually”, he becomes a knife fighter, I’m a friend of Jamus, all his names, the responsibility that comes with having killed Jamus, he’s there to survive, his mom is a user, being used, evil masterplan, Leto was used, have sex with this girl, she is pretty sexy and smart, to his true love, gotta marry the emperor’s daughter, negotiations about the dowry, the sister is so weird, in almost every respect, her position in the book is strange, that’s the trap, don’t fall in, the seduction, the movies of Dune, hurt Will’s reading of Dune, unnecessary, read the wikipedia entry, people like that Dune, what do we know about Neil R. Jones, Hugo Gernsback, so popular, millions of sequels to this story, The Professor Jameson Saga, does not call for a sequel, like TNG, a TNG feeling out of it, cryogenics, cryonics, inspired by this story, the afterlife of this story, what if we made it real, immortality, Herland, the western system of religion, what do you want it for, so I can explore other planets, just afraid of dying, completely dead, the most likely thing, never alive, Io’s got volcanoes, if they don’t have stageplays, their strange morality, Iain M. Banks, just get tired of it, get bored, get done, weird AI ships will store your body for you, a diorama of a historical scene, I’d like to be Lincoln being shot in Ford’s theater, just as long as my beard gets to be blue, highlights, in to being blonde, hair dyed red, pink haired Will, this explains so much, they already think Will’s gay, mortified hairdresser, fire engine red, a lot of work, grow it out, hair smells like smoke, wear a fez, that’s what is fez are for, there’s no brim, it’s not for protecting your eyes from the sun, an aesthetic form, a fashion, a technical device, just like a smoking jacket, you smell like smoke, those wives, a smoking robe, febreze chemicals, an exfoliating scrub, brand loyal, the proximate cause, face feel smooth, sunk cost, pushing us in a direction that’s not good, full body deodorant, don’t do that, you can wash em, you can wash your feet, use soap, hair is the least popular place to use it, don’t use it in your eyes, the mouth, separate mouth products, this stuff called water, actively looking for an unscented shaving cream, can barely walk, one day shaving cream with no scent, blood ox below 98, an electric razor, goatee, patchy and weird, partner/girlfriend/fiance, another thing to worry about, think about brushing, no teeth so no brushing, food chewing device, future pairings, very profitable, two 50 minute stories, solid in their own way, more interesting than fun, Mr. Spaceship and Mercenary, what to do is the question in life, Ben-Hur, The Garden Of Fear, winged men, Connor Kaye recorded it, many other authors, no audiobook that’s public domain, commercial releases, why LibriVox hasn’t got on that, The Hate Disease by Murray Leinster, he’s steady, Gregg Margarite, 2 hours, a possibility, the description, sold already, the Interstellar Medical Service, greeted by a rocket attack, a pandemic of demonic possession, 2010, medical stories, they’re related to science, danger, Alan E. Nourse, [Scott Miller’s] Lost Sci-Fi Podcast, The 54th Of July, social breakdown and what causes that, pretty prolific, he was a doctor, what’s wrong with your penis books, science fiction with a medical twist, Star Surgeon, promoted into existence, Dal Tigmar had always wanted to be a doctor, a silver star of a star surgeon, being racisted at, a medical starship, curing diseases, on the question of length, pairing it with something else, who pairs with Murray Leinster, very pairable, a neutral quality, the opposite direction, not one of the big three, Seabury Quinn, good at making himself popular, a Jules De Grandin collection, who else is in Weird Tales?, David H. Keller, let’s see what’s available, need to read more, The Rat Racket, late for him, Amazing Stories, April 1956, Amazing, November 1931, making it happen, not at 100% yet, a couple weeks ago, rough, still not a good time with Jesse, reschedule, typical to miss those, Jason Thompson, The Magic City, Project Pope, Lilith by George MacDonald, the day before our savior was born, not great, recording’s not great, a difficult story, barely a story, an accident of history, 7 famous stories, they know Poe is public domain, Scott Miller, Spotify deleted 2 Poe stories he put up, how fucked up it is, automated bullshit, a person in the world, friends who are musicians hate Spotify, paid subscriptions, discounted rate, ads, questions about their algorithm, what’s curated by humans, paid to make playlists, YouTube is polarizing, very full of good stuff, heavily censored, manipulative, super-evil, Paul doesn’t like Louis Rossmann, philosopher repairman, fixes macbooks, right to repair, a great video on Linus Techtips, a local computer company called NCIX, computers built there, a giant empire, he’s the number 1 in the world for personal computer construction, personal computer information, lives locally, a scandal recently, product called Honey [browser extension], defrauding or deleting people’s affiliate links in favour of their own, a little kickback from Amazon, using it to monitor you, finding out the bank you were promoting is stealing people’s money, data scraped and stolen, should have said something, Jesse’s hero, psychopathic, personality disorder, everything’s about them, narcissism, you broke this so you owe us, fixing a broken macbook, how do you end up as head of a giant corporation, probably have something wrong with you, our system rewards anti-social behavior, very interesting, seeing it on the edges, attacking adblockers, he gets his money from ads, attacked from his audience, find a way to not be the bad guy, always the victim, that moral victory of just lay out the facts and look at the two arguments, I got a lot of employees, on the side of, the mea culpa isn’t forefront, when the NFL has the superbowl, superbowl ads for fake bitcoin companies, a 3 hour mea culpa, they paid him money to run that sponsored video, so many employees I need to pay, yep, that’s how it works, be like Louis Rossmann yes, COVID stuff, on the wrong side, check to see people being vaccinated, New York, Texas, works for a billionaire, a very cool guy, his own mental problems, ethically he’s very solid, a bad practice, Paul Atredies dangerous, be more influenced by people I actually know, if I have a hero it might be the pope, this particular Pope, Pope Francis, surviving in Argentina, these are different things, he seems good, never worked for the guy, Scott works for him, seems solid, thinking of converting, jubilee year, people of good will, forgive all your debts, forgive him in your bank account, the big magic doom, Will hates himself so he follows a truly evil Israeli literature professor, baby Jesus in the keffiyeh, love without power is totally useless, power without love is very evil, Jesse’s student is here, go to him, end this.

The Jameson Satellite by Neil R. Jones - Amazing Stories, July 1931

Mellonta Tauta by Edgar Allan Poe

Posted by Jesse Willis