
Reading, Short And Deep #515
Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss The Panicle by R. Murray Gilchrist
Here’s a link to the story |PDF|.
The Panicle was first published in The Speaker, March 16, 1895.
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News, Reviews, and Commentary on all forms of science fiction, fantasy, and horror audio. Audiobooks, audio drama, podcasts; we discuss all of it here. Mystery, crime, and noir audio are also fair game.

Reading, Short And Deep #515
Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss The Panicle by R. Murray Gilchrist
Here’s a link to the story |PDF|.
The Panicle was first published in The Speaker, March 16, 1895.
Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!
The SFFaudio Podcast #867 – The Thing On The Roof by Robert E. Howard (26 minutes) read by Connor Kaye (for Eldritch Archives) AND The Nameless City by H.P. Lovecraft (28 minutes) read by Scott Carpenter for LibriVox, followed by a discussion of both (beginning at 54 minutes). Participants in the discussion include Jesse and Alex (Pulpcovers)
Talked about on today’s show:
2 stories, both about 28 minutes to read aloud, something related to the meta-text, Unspeakable Cults, The Noseless Horror, set in England, why is it set in England, big old creepy houses, British guys, one of the stories today, set in England for no apparent reason, something about this plot, the only time H.P. Lovecraft tried to do Howard: The Quest Of Iranon, Lovecraft heavily influenced by Robert E. Howard, Lovecraft wasn’t interested, he wasn’t commercial, Howard wanted to be a full time writer, have that as your job, died at 30, Cowboy Stories, Action Stories, it’d be good to have some beans, that successful commercial voice, Lovecraft wouldn’t have accepted the editorship of Weird Tales, this is the same plot essentially, a different storytelling technique, The Hound, two lovecraftian characters, an evil art dungeon, Manly Wade Wellman?, [Hounds of Tindalos by Frank Belknap Long], black curtains, very exaggeratory, similar in tone to The Mask Of The Red Death, the plot, an amulet in a graveyard in the Netherlands, the monster in the grave comes and kills him, published twice in Weird Tales, The Fire Of Ashurbanipal, how Howard does buddy buddy, he’s Afghan in Arabia, Howard doing Howard, him doing Lovecraft, point to, teaching students how to write, Character Language Allusion Imagery and Message, nameless like the city, almost no backstory, with the Howard, British jerk, rude to his frenemies, rude to his servants, booklover archaeologist, more academic, a Fall Of The House Of Usher situation, we understand them both, the Lovecraftian scholar, he insulted me years ago, offering an apology, I’ve cleared my name on my own, runs off to South America, three month quest, the Doctor Strange movie, the warnings come after the spell, one is more homebodyish, I want treasure, Belloq and Indiana Jones, rivals, H.G. Wells and Jack London, muscular and fast, the Golden Goblin edition, riddled with typos and odd woodcuts, a parody of Lovecraft at that point, very different from other eldritch tomes, grimoires, less than 100 years old, some dude just wrote this, I studied all the weird forgotten cults then I was brutally murdered, found murdered, assembled, slit his own throat with a razor, The Black Stone is a real story, good painted cover, a purple velvet background, Robert E. Howard’s stories inspired by Lovecraft, these are really fun and interesting, basically the same length, the Lovecraft is much slower, a lot more dreamlike, artificial distinction, his dreamland stories and his cthulhu mythos stories, a guy who goes into the desert, crawls into a cave, horrible spelunking videos, head down in a spot, really horrible, in the darkness and suddenly there’s light, how detailed those murals are, conveyed all that information, he’s got timestamps, how does he convey that?, this incredible detail, a little credulous, depictions of funeral rights, a terrible accident or a war, these guys are immortal, That which is not dead, a lot of poetry in both of these, the text for The Nameless City, loose cable, the poet Justin Geoffrey, smashing babies against the Black Stone, Iram, the city of the Pillars, Sheba by Jack Higgins, a sucker for lost desert cities, lost cities are real, one in Turkey, ones in South America, ones in North America, the deep time of the Earth, an aryan mummy, of a higher race than the native indians, racial stuff, Atlanteans, they’re crocodile/alligator people, a previous species on the Earth, something very important, talking about Atlantis a lot, everything is old, no matter when you pick, all you have to do to push that number back is go out and look, not Mormons in space, the deep history of humans on the earth, there wasn’t always just stone age people, men think about the Roman Empire everyday, some of them are thinking about deep history, some scholar writing a book somewhere, Egypt is very obviously an older civilization, Honduras, Guatemala, got the wrong book, Heinrich Schliemann, cable broken again, not quite as good, finding these things, finding some ancient city in Honduras, didn’t find the inner chamber, how The Hound works, a batwinged creature, maybe that has happened many times, the hoofed thing comes and retrieves it many times, keep closing the door, the comic book adaptation, reading it this time, did you hear something?, a hoof on the roof, it’s Santa Claus!, an ox or a horse in the bushes, the final line of the story, an enormous, hoof, slimy, high pitched, a tentacle, jelly like bulk, Robert E. Howard didn’t quite make it clear, the Marvel comic book adaptation, a little frog hopping ahead of him, a separate from from the one he’s using as the key, crystal frog, a toad which hopped ahead of him, they show it, big splash page, jumping out the window to return to Honduras, interpret, a bad translation, they weren’t worshiping a frog, some god that lives forever, the mummy was its priest, the key was carved to look like a toad, a crystal toad, locked in the inner chamber is this other thing, call it toadish, an alien up there, a moon calf, carving it up like veal, try translating kimchi into english, sauerkraut, you’re gonna get something, getting it second hand, hears some horrible stuff, sees the wreckage, foul unspeakable slime, crushed and flattened, they lumber in the night, colossal wings, the meter and the rhyme, very sing-songy, alluding to something, written for this story, Justin Geoffrey is Robert E. Howard, layers and layers of literary stuff, the distancing technique, there is no medium between us and the narrator, we start right there, I’m right there, protruding uncannily, an ill made grave, as I cower in my bed, hiding under the sheets, elbows and noses, a shallow grave, this Howard thing, different segments of his poetry, The Children Of The Night, tread not where stony deserts hold, very Nameless City, why was he doing that?, is he like Tussman searching for this place?, it feels very dreamlike, there’s no evidence for it being a dream, in a style that’s dreamy, The Doom That Came To Sarnath, the city of Ib, the Nile, a confluence there, the striking change, in the darkness, suddenly he thinks he sees a light, the worlds that he sees described, they are always in light to, always light underground, promised this underground place, The Mound by Zealia Bishop (and H.P. Lovecraft), a collaboration, a mesa in Oklahoma, a headless ghost, dystopian nightmare of centaurs, a Spanish explorer, a nested scroll of what his experience was, slavery biotech, under the earth civilization, bio-tech, attached to opium drips, Xthula Of The Dusk aka The Slithering Shadow, something Howard is all about, even crocodile civilizations, down with these reptile people, some societal and environmental problems, why it is hidden from us, poetry injections, amazingly steep, Thomas More, a reservoir of darkness, moon drugs, the jetty sides as smooth as glass, the seas of death, how’s that supposed to comfort you?, what the mad poet said, couplet, comedic attraction, let’s do this, everyone warned me it was a terrible idea, my skin is coming off, sucked down into, the last 3 paragraphs, the grim brooding desert gods, what abaddon guided me back to life, monstrous colossal, when one cannot sleep, cacodaemoniacal, articulate form, the grave, strangely tongued fiends, the luminous aether of the abyss, a nightmare horde, the crawling reptiles of the Nameless City, the ghoul peopled blackness, great brazen door, how are we getting this story, hinting that he got out?, Lord Dunsany, a club story, pioneered that with a character named Jorkens, Fletcher Pratt, Gavagan’s Bar, Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon, invited Jorkens over for lunch, chased by a lion, went into a cave, how did you escape?, freak out and wreck the place, a silly joke story, the end of The Outsider, the tomb, the castle, over the landscape, the moat now a garden, why is everybody freaking out, the doorway is a mirror, I’m the monster!, now I ride the nightwinds with the ghouls, huh?, where’s the end of the story, the great brazen door, brass that’s been heated and colour distorted, Ex Oblivione, hates his life and wants to live in his dreams, in his dreams he finds a gate in a wall, how to find the key, taking more opium, get the door open, all of light, he finds himself dissolved, going to the realm of the Forms, until the time I’m placed in another vessel, the pre-heaven, reincarnation involves pain and annoyance, a low door, became dead, are we there with him?, a first person recounting of an event, he wrote it on a roll of toilet paper, Ms. Found In A Copper Cylinder, a ghoul peopled blackness, hail the rising sun, satisfied buy why?, balancing these two stories, love vs. like, prefer Thing, Howard more than Lovecraft, a sucker for the Nameless Cults, better with language, evokes so much, workaday, rushed through it, trying to sell it, the guy telling the story is fairly sane, the guy is gone, crazier more elevated language, it’s almost like The Nameless City isn’t a story, an episode of The Twilight Zone, The Fall Of The House Of Usher, a narrative from a perspective, this is all an analogy for our world, more of a Howard thing than a Lovecraft thing, The Slithering Shadow, the lady plugged into the opium, she’s watching youtube, she’s watching twitch, checked out, stagnating and dead, present asleep, it’s not like The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster, almost more of a straight horror story, one of the endings of Re-Animator, they don’t like it, a dream fully detailed out, and then I was trapped there forever, we wake up out of the story, Robert E. Howard is way more explicable and copyable, much more like a spell we go under, very dream like, what can we learn from them, learn about these places, always underground, the conquistadors missed this, natives to torture to death, the more Heinrich Schliemann approach, the Temple of Doom, keep reading the book, bro, he wants treasure, he’s genuinely interested, our guy in The Nameless City, a compulsion, he has a camel, he has some tools, he came here, lived only in myth, the explanation is zero, a potion to save his life as a disease, a character with a personality, the swooning in Robert E. Howard stories, forget about character completely, C.L.A.I.M., real poets and fake poets, the language is just amazing, like a magic spell, each sentence builds the spell, visualize what’s going on, what is the message, read the whole book, don’t go messing in old tombs, a good thing has all of this, just dealing in tropes, the pictures, when you read a poem by Howard, sense data, just look at the titles, stories full of imagery, the colour of Belit’s skin, what the dragon looks like in Red Nails, he’s largely imagery, apparently it’s great, Jabberwocky, about nothing, means nothing, vorpal sword, the sound is really important, sentence patterns, the sounds of things, names, Tussmann, a funny name for an Englishman, Herr Tussmann, makes sense, he’s bad because he’s a German, evil because he’s French, the plot, that was fun, how he cast this magic spell, mesmerized by whatever it is, almost more like poetry itself, a Clark Ashton Smithy spell, story count, bang out stories in a week or two, each of these guys, all really into poetry, they don’t get money for that, got no money, just good will, why you doin it?, they loved poetry, people talking about writing on twitter, using ai to crank out, not for the love of the game, build my brand, that fundamental love of poetry, they don’t read enough, not absorbing this text for the love of the text, I played World Of Warcraft, muscle mommy, Orc City thing, that’s something, doing this wrong, his stories to his poetry, Clark Ashton Smith second tier down, better at poetry maybe, both of these are very good, they work together really well, reading them back to back, done differently, you can see Robert E. Howard put in some work, probably took a week, a lifetime of dream-journaling, one is a story and the other is something else, Howard trying to do something a little Lovecrafty, written a decade, Lovecraft doing Lovecraft, something off about this, this is him making fun of Gothics, the pirate one, The Black Stranger, Black Vulmea’s Vengeance, the people copying Howard, I got an axe to grind, Howard doing an Agatha Christie, Howard is a great writer, so commercial, front of the mind, what are they buying, do we want adventure stories?, boxing stories, whatevers selling this month, I’ll tell you whatever story you want vs. I can’t be any other way than I am, Strange Tales, Argosy, Farnsworth Wright, The Sowers Of The Thunder, get paid $40 for it, one of his best?, is that true, top half?, not top 10, he wrote a lot, and he’s really good at it, Tevis Clyde Smith, a shorter and better story, stocked up, real literature, that sounds like a guy who’s proud of himself, July August 1931, 5 years of writing, he got better as he went along, Tamarlane as a fit subject for Oriental Stories, the best story by far that I ever wrote, judge by any standard, seemed to erudite for the general reader, correctly estimating his audience, the Seabury Quinn lovers, my audience won’t like it, too thin, also etc., no attempt at plot, usual stereotype, he could have had the story for nothing, just to see it in print, mid to late August, to Lovecraft, a berth there, yarns, thin plot and light action, formerly rejected it, in the final letter, March 1932, the roof business and the sowers stuff, quite a few praises, get it into The Souk, The Eyrie, better than everything previous?, late Robert E. Howard, Solomon Kane is before this, Kull precedes Conan, the last recurring character, El Borak, James Allison, Kull is 29, Steve Costigan, 29 and 30, everything is 29 and 30 for him, ludicrous how much he wrote, he wrote so much good stuff, The Statement Of Randolph Carter, The Tomb, when you see Tussmann do you say that’s me!, as a character, so obsessed with this, two lines and then runs off, who does that?, an insane life, skull caved in by a hoof, decaying estate, there’s no explanation, he wants the treasure, doesn’t care about his own reputation or name, the backstory is really interesting, having to had to defend himself, so random attack, the Nameless Cults thing, the fake book as a concept, the weird pirate editions of the books, making fun of Lovecraft, buy the Del Rey not the Lancers, so expurgated, allusion is a major factor, an Aesop’s Fable, no reference to Dambusters, no reference to Akira Kurosawa, the couplet that explains what the moral of it is, one and done and we’re done, the more layer of enfolding, a reminder about a story by Poe, The Oval Portrait, almost is all frame, a guy in Italy, just wounded, breaks them into a castle, food on the table still steaming, the wick is still smoking, they find the castle abandoned, turret bedroom, bandits in the original, surrounded in this round room with paintings, armorial trophies, beside him on the pillow is a book that tells you all about the paintings, a build up for the internal story, a painter who painted a woman to death, drawing the spirit out of her body and putting it in her into the canvas, sets up and ends, why lately abandoned, a rich deep interesting story about art, he talks about being wounded, Tussmann’s eyes blazed, shot in the foot, how did that happen?, sealed up chamber, the opposite of our unnamed narrator, purely by chance, a similar sort of setup, it just so happen, it’s a meta-story, the framing making the layering more interesting, no framing at all, comes to us somehow, storytelling, start as far as possible into the story, cut out all the build up, start with action, Basil Exposition come out to explain some plot point, Constantine (2005) with Keanu Reeves, you have to roll with it, not like Blade III, a tv show out of it, at no point does it slow down for the audience, buckle in, why it doesn’t resonate with a lot of people, Robert E. Howard is very good at knowing what the audience wants, force of nature vs. innate skill and temperament for it, doing it for money, Re-Animator and Lurking Fear, let’s get Hour Of The Dragon scheduled, going to the beach again, the Outer Banks of North Carolina, not on for Hombre by Elmore Leonard, The Assassination Bureau, Ltd. by Jack London, Lord Of Light by Roger Zelazny, nominated for a Nebula, really short stories, The Horses Of Lir, a little later, a movie.




Posted by Jesse Willis

Reading, Short And Deep #512
Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss The Inn Of The Two Adventurers by Lord Dunsany
Here’s a link to the story |PDF|.
The Inn Of The Two Adventurers was first published in Maclean’s, March 2, 1957.
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The SFFaudio Podcast #809 – The Stone Dragon by R. Murray Gilchrist – read by Connor Kaye. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the story (1 hour 1 minute) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse and Connor Kaye.
Talked about on today’s show:
doesn’t stand for Ralphie or Raphe, Robert, a lot of notes, psychological angle, weird fiction, obsessive things that he writes about, Lovecraft, art, sculpture, a lot of flowers, honeysuckle, true happiness, a bunch of flowers to a girl, the names and some of the behaviors are extreme, gone into a “brain fever”, Barbara, an interesting name, how interesting is it, obvious about these names, Westmoorland, fictional, the coastal place, on the coast, Furnivaux castle, what kind of accent people would have in that area, the Lake District, fictionalizing things, four stories, just going by the stories, assuming he was totally gay, The Crimson Weaver, super gay, queer coded, gay coded, fairly straightforward, Oscar Wilde was enjoying it, decadents, it’s awesome, a weird tale from the beginning, a straightforward gothic, Mystery Of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe, Mary, 20 novels, Daniel Pietersen, the gloves are awesome, the two mistakes, The Priest’s Pavan, Gethsemane, peculularities, some brain fever issues, the framing of it, the father’s journal, nested narratives, his own journal?, spill the beans, falling asleep, infected dreams, is it in there?, an awesome idea, Barbara is a lich, really strange, old testament era name, foreign or strange, the two daughters, nieces, the same last name, Raphe’s cousins, Raphe’s father’s sister, maternal sister, his mom’s sister, he calls her great aunt, in the same way you see in The Thing On The Doorstep and a reverse of Morella, real brainy, becomes his tutor, teaches him a bunch of philosophy, guiding his hand on the page, in childbirth she dies, my love, my dear, my heart, the confirmation day, he calls her Morella, the family tomb, his daughter’s mother’s body is gone, she knew things from her previous life, there was only one Morella, why she died, some sort of arcane knowledge, a couple of curious things, of her nephew: he cares about the wrong things, “she held no views beyond this world”, an atheist?, superficial, being a busybody, being a matchmaker, interested in deep thinks, frivolous things, a real bitch, visits against the father’s commandment, assumes that he changed his mind, 10 and 12, what does she want?, marry to a first cousin, the incest theme, literally, 13 year old cousin, marry right now, go away for a few years, come back and be committed, it’s not explicitly stated, in response to an imperious summons, no sooner had he reached the portico, a marriage compact, to take place at once, claiming my child wife, implied that she’s a busybody, obscure German philosophy, the secret of life after death, Rachel writes my letters for me, she’s not interested in literature, is it because it’s fiction and that’s bullshit, really a weird thing to mention, just a way of making her leave the room, attracted to, that’s interesting, how it plays out, we see him marry Mary, a famous name, the story of Rachel from the bible, one Margaret Atwood book, The Handmaid’s Tale, a good book, an infertility crisis amongst the rich, fertile women, sent to the rich old men who run the country, the invocation ceremony, a wife of a king who can’t give birth, her handmaid, a maiden to a married woman, that child will be hers, ewe, the lamb that gets sacrificed, a female sheep that has not has a child yet, pronouncing the character’s names, Velrest, Ayer, Eyrie, Weird Tales letters department is called The Eyrie, WellRest, why does she care so much, Barbara dies, why is she so angry?, she has to choose which body to put herself into, interesting, if this is a body swap sort of thing, a position of power, being married to Ralph, she’s gonna die, one possibility, turned to her uplifting luminous eyes, I am Miranda, he Ferdinand, the first man I’ve seen for two years, the servants are all 100 years old in all the stories, 90 when he was a child, fairly active, that’s all about immortality, part of the eeriness of this story, combined with the gloves, your lowly handmaid, be around the older richer woman and be her hand servant, go get this, brush my hair, used in other ways, class stuff, the gaffer’s song, the shepherd, our hero interrogates, all the loyalty of his father’s servant, we don’t get servants like this anymore, the father is a philosopher, high philosophy, airy fairy philosophy, more inclined to less superficial, hedonistic, morality, more of him having an idealized vision of love, fall in love, not by an arranged marriage, implied, because of love, something Barbara might not have approved of, her relation, Ralph’s mother, not as wealthy, he has an estate, these are upperclass twits, fallen a little bit, only have 1 servant instead of 7, megarich, rubbed her the wrong way, great nieces, his great aunt, his grandmother’s sister, convoluted, idealistic, he’s supposed to be wise too, I forbid you from going there, drawn like a moth to a flame, smack talks, he didn’t hear anything from his father, his father’s journal, enlighten me, my aunt, your great aunt, he enjoins him, we know why he’s doing that, the dad wrote down the dialogue, fool, is there no changing you, we get out of the fact that this is a journal right away, no he replied, forced into bondage, beg for his bread, wronged body and soul, the trigger for Jesse, why liches are bad, wills and estates, endowments to various universities, an ability to control the future even after your death, dragons is the same thing, sit on hordes and steal all the girls, the significance of the stone dragon, doesn’t seem to be the main focus, the human skin gloves, pivotal points, Ralph and Mary first get to know each other, commits suicide, she wanted to murder him, she’s very goth, one of my ancestors murdered somebody with them [these gloves], these gloves are important, a story by Arthur Conan Doyle The Leather Funnel, psychometry stories, The Stone Tape, Nigel Kneale, swaps place with Rachael, willing to give up all of her wealth, why is she doing that, which would you rather have life or money, marry me, the only young man she’s ever seen, why is that?, she’s keeping them, this is a lot of Lovecraft stories, The Tomb, Jervas Dudley has dreams, lying around, The Silver Key, occupied by one of his ancestor, atavism, an ancestral state, The Call Of The Wild by Jack London, a wolf sitting next to a cave man, a worry or idea people were playing with in the period, 1894, the yellow 90s, never shouted out, the skin, skin gloves, I’m inside of another person, tricking it me into this idea even if it is not actually there, there’s nothing that shows that that’s not the case, conciousnesses are switched, a mindswap situation, Barbara is possessing Rachael, vicariously live, Connor’s interpretation, somewhat supernatural, the psychological reading, Connor’s youtube video about it, Barbara is a narcissist and a control freak, those readings are correct, leaves out the mysticism, that’s what literary happened to R. Murray Gilchrist, keep the money in the family, translating, back reading into the actual psychology, a way of reading reality not describing reality, werewolves, people kicked out of society, you kill wolves, skinwalker, wendigo, you go wendigo, cultural exile, between cities there’s no law, if we read monsters as symbols, oceans you can drown in, it is like that, this layer in the story that has to do with reading and writing, Philosophical Discussions, held no views beyond this world, what is the nature of good, to stay alive after she’s dead, tiny estate in Northern Italy, a solemn command, retired from the world, Verelst, ver means true, what else means true, the manic work, an unscrupulous woman, the stars declare it, weaving the fatal web, she’s the spiderwoman, the line of Fate, what to advise, justice and love, Earth’s joy is naught in comparison with that which follows, she only cares of earth, what else exists besides what we see on earth, wherever she be, petulant and unreasonable, that delicious summer morning, here I passed 7 years of irresolute work, being as happy as any man who has no aim in life, I became terribly depressed, presentiments, the supernatural powers, foolish people, catastrophe’s that never occur, the greatest possible disasters are affecting our fortunes, mourning, we are plunged into the lightest ecstasy, a new codicil, the craftiness of self, if she wanted to put herself into one of these characters bodies, why wouldn’t she confirm, Eric Rabkin hat, it’s about women not having the right to property, women get their money from their fathers, if you read it the way Jesse is thinking, she has to go into the body in order to keep the estate, it won’t help her, the guy won’t marry, she has to gamble, up unto the point of death, gambling on it being Rachel, point us in amazing direction, it’s put in there, definitely hints at that aspect of it, deeper workings, things happening but your emotions not necessarily be in tune with those things, the livery, old fawn livery with pelicans wrought on the buttons, pelican symbology, scoops up and hold a fish, what is my spirit animal, early church revered pelicans, the pelicans keep their babies in their mouths, controlling people, why not find some local kid, marrying for love, something she couldn’t tolerate, an insult, insulting, she calls him a fool and foolish, he’s smart and she’s dumb, she doesn’t read books, she already knows it all, the lich theory, this is a controlling bitch, she can will herself into making it happen, maybe the daughter had killed her mother with the gloves, Rachael killing Barbara, first cousins with Ralph, previous ancestor, a woman murdered somebody, had her skinned, male ancestors, make it into a book cover, the hands murdering side and the book reading side, page 21, to doff her yellow gown, pale green, Robert E. Howard’s jealous, fastened to her girdle, the colour of the aunt’s eyes claret, burgandy colour, semi-transparent skin, blood coloured, the meal passed in delicious interchange of thought, she was appreciative, reproving her, don’t wear those gloves, the gloves covered them now, a silk picture of a vial and a dagger, tragic accompaniment, ill-luck, he does, gibbeted in these parts, around the time the servant was born, nice couple, poisoned her lord, a strong repugnance, strange humours, our red herring, the little people the gnomes, there’s a lot in it, this scene, the gloves of a murderess, the skin of a murderess, commissioned by a murderess, they’re handed down, the dagger and the phial, there’s a dagger in this story, you hold that in your dexter hand, the sinister hand, the phial is poison, Rachel murdered Barbara, a supernatural/weird element, seemingly a murderer, tender of you, to her lap, ashen and grey, the sharpening, she has a sharp face, she is cold, she is dead, probably poison, wounds Mary with a knife, likely she does kill herself, or the dragon killed her, until she commits suicide, selbstmord, putting on the gloves is the symbolic act of murder, very goth, you literally put on gloves when you’re doing crime (or work), she talks about they didn’t fit before, my hands are swollen with bitterness, calling out she’s a murderer, why she’s attracted to the gloves, largely what makes her weird, the piano makes her weird, fugue state, music dance sculpture, that’s my big discovered, it’s not Cthulhu it’s art, Hypnos, sculpture, Music Of Eric Zann, artists, Pickman’s Model, painting, Lovecraft is obsessed with art, he’s an artist he’s not a pulp writer, the avenue, amateur journalist, astronomer, everything is about art, what an artist will do, why he loves Clark Ashton Smith so much, Robert E. Howard’s poems in Weird Tales, submitting them, people are very artsy, just a thing, all the stories by R. Murray Gilchrist have art, culvers, young girls older guys, unrequited love, marry a 10 year old, she’s 10, 17 and 22, 17 year old girl marrying a 50 year old man, The Crimson Weaver is the gay version, apprentice and master, they’re sleeping together, comes across as very gay, an unrequited romance, idolizes the master, hung up on his dead wife, the door of his heart was closed, captured because of that heartbreak, her lure, sharp, nothing of the patrician in her appearance, passed for a housekeeper, round and russett, an intracate network of wrinkles, sherry coloured, lack of wine experience, Amontilliado is a yellow, amber, her teeth, natural, regular pieces of ivory, sharp, the charitable way of reading it, she inquired sharply, this is about Rachel, one so young, sharp-edged, unmaidenly, colour changes, the Poe piece [The Mask Of The Red Death], grey cloak for grey business, blood coloured gloves, ashen grey, she’s dead, elderly, why did she die?, she killed herself?, Rachael was somewhat of a narcissist too, she can’t stand to lose, the last word in an argument, a need for control, manipulates others, the ultimate selfish act, if she can’t have Ralph than no-one can, if she was less self-centered, those fugue states, she’s got the brain fever, depth mingled, unstable but also deep, allured, oppression, too heavenly purfumed, two centuries ago, she’s been alive for 200 years, a draught of cool air, she’s not infected with this age, is Venice like Mrs. Radcliffe paints in the Mystery Of Udolpho?, attempted murder then self-murder, if you read it strictly, she’s going to go to hell, or there’s no afterlife, to speak to Rachel’s character, dishevelled, living in the forest for weeks, ruin the event and her sister’s happiness, her death will be associated with her sister’s wedding, back for their honeymoon, she sought you at the old stone dragon, right anow, burst out sobbing, he knows that she’s dead, he’s mad at them too, bride’s blitheness, italian garden, Time, a bright web, lichened stone, my darling how much I’ve missed you, web hair, her spinning a web, a flower called crown imperial, a web of red golden hair, called right out there, foreshadowed, she may be weaving the fatal web, what a good story, it’s fantastic, such a shame that Gilchrist is not listed, he will be, bringing him more recognition, Romancing The Gothic, Daniel Pietersen, a collection, Tales Of The Weird, so many, William Hope Hodgson, amazing forgotten tales, an expert on Gilchrist, a nordic sort of spelling, son of stone, all the names are like that, Jesus makes a joke, Peter you are the rock I shall build my church on [“And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church”], Jesus got puns, I Am Stone, an introduction, the original artwork, some photos, tweet em or dm em, the art’s good, photos spread throughout the book, divides the stories into different categories, part 1, Dead Yet Living, part 2, Useless Heroes, he barely does anything, choose the girl that doesn’t creep him out, part 3, Of Passion And Of Death, part 4, Peak Weird, a region called the Peak District, A Witch In The Peak, awesome book, a great lecture, he really goes into it, more traction or inertia, it’s gonna happens, that book came out in 2021, 5 youtube videos with people recording, people are reading his book and getting excited about it, a bunch of money, pretty late, posthumous, read the whole thing, an editor from Valancourt Books, Wordsworth Books, 6 story collections, 4 non-fiction books, Heritage Auctions has really nice scans, we can fix up the insides, pulps get sold coverless, tried to push VHS tapes as a collectible thing, capitalism is so crazy now, pouring their money into fake goods, monkey art on the blockchain, a sealed copy of E.T. from 1985, trynna slab pulps, what they’ve been doing to comics for years, any copy of a comic book and put plastic all around it, you can’t open it up, a terrible thing, preserves them from rain and snow, we need one copy scanned cover to cover, [an issue] Fantastic Story magazine, Back To The Future (1985), a lot of stuff like that, if capitalism makes everything unaffordable, scanners count on cheap pulps in bad condition, people flipping them, pulps were not made to last, a shitload of pulps, old Playboy, Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, the significance of Playboy, Hugh Hefner was a big player in civil rights, the Hustler guy, wheelchaired, people are not buying it for the stories, Hustler, a lot of men’s magazines, they’d make that joke, the quality of the stories is way higher, shots of beautiful women, and good writing, Jimmy Carter Playboy interview, I had lust in my heart, building houses for other people, five or ten dollars, disintegrate, just to have it and feel it, some of these are really small, bedsheet format, Australian pulp magazine called Aurealis, it’s tiny, the size of a paperback, a niche hobby, most people are not trying to read at all, audiobooks, people don’t like reading, computer games, sex websites, shitting on Trumpers, bookshelves, 100 books, 5 or 600 books, you have so many books, call across the planet to two different hemispheres to find somebody to talk to about it, doing a survey, do you have any books, can I see your books, a book somebody gave them, then they didn’t read any more, the continuum, only one genre, only one author, used to be rich, you could track that change in society, looking at the covers of paperbacks, several copies of the same book, original artwork, bins full of books like that, a little bit better, the early 2000s, nobody gave a shit, digital alteration, we’rent paying artists and graphic designers, people kept buying, the frills, how many mergers have caused it, when WWII happened, spawned an industry, before WWII, hardcovers and pulps, after WWII paperbacks are a thing, 1945 and 1985, mass market, other ways, book clubs, book of the Month Club, amazon, goodreads, audible, not coming back, Shakespeare’s still around after 500 years, still a little bit around, much more arts oriented, the movie industry, almost no kids know how to watch movies now, Millie Bobby Brown, can’t sit through a movie, watching people gaming for 7 hour, every media is different, literally training involved, it’s really hard to play Dungeons & Dragons, no learning curve, its free, a video game, more intuitive, doesn’t require you to think as much, the game is as fun as you can make it, not an activity engaged by young people now, it is, how old, 10 to 40s, all kid culture, stopped doing it at university, a lot harder to get together, serious problems with reading and watching movies, other role playing games, a subculture, not a popular activity, smoking weed, even TV out, TV is done, broadcast television was streaming, it wasn’t a million channels, we know what the score is, full circle, some final thoughts on The Stone Dragon, Witch-In Grain, listened while processing, culvers are mentioned, it’s a dove, with human faces in that story, a peacock, birds, a pelicans, birds are symbols, flowers are symbols, so many theories, the wrong mythological thing, a vampire story?, greek mythology?, there is a set of answers, there’s a dragon it was stone, and a very solid weird tale with a lot of decadence, it’s great, The Castle Of Wolfenback by Eliza Parsons, Horace Walpole, 1767, a little after, 1793, recommended by Isabella Thorpe in Northanger Abbey, Midnight Bell, The Necromancer, bald stone, the popular books of their day, referencing an older book, this is something, line by line, it’s dense, gothic horror, gothic romances, 13 year old girls, a lot of time and no time, 30 hours long, they come in volumes, written is a serialized fashion too, this book isn’t finished, let’s see how the first one does, a luxury item, hog wild, Alexander Dumas, the unabridged The Count Of Monte Cristo, who the hell is this guy, where the word subscribe came from, the etymology, Waverley by anonymous author, Ivanhoe by the author of Waverley, Sir Walter Scott, all these anonymous book, you would sub scribe, a piece of paper at the book stores, isn’t that amazing, the call or text you, your new copy’s in, the way podcasts work and all that stuff, Tom Standage, pretty good, works for The Economist, An Edible History Of Humanity, The Writing On The Wall: Social Media The First 2000 years, the Romans had a mail system, who’s getting married, obituaries, when we get to the modern electronic era, telegraphy, all the LOLs was all invented back then, pay by the letter, telegraph, a lot more expensive, humans never change, next big project: Gay Life In Melbourne, so funny, so spicy, we need some funny spice, with Will, moved pretty fast, full of innuendo, smokin hot, some sex worker’s picked up a guy, the reader’s not supposed to know, they knew, steamy and fun, our book on 1000 years ago, out of Arabic, Koran number 1, Richard Burton, 1,001 Nights, Ali Babab And The Forty thieves, Hayy ibn Yaqdhan, old white Europeans, he’s technically in Europe, Tarzan, born out of mud, a crying baby, an antelope comes by and adopts him, invents all our theory of science, a history of science, opens up his mom, her carcass, the heart, 10 years ago is the cutoff, Three Body Problem, wait 1000 years, teach us something, it was pretty funny back then, people were always as horny, it there a more horny animal than the human being, bonobos, grazing moose, fight with males, females observing, peacocks, ostentatious display, how humans go about this, wars literally fought over, Helen of Troy, men are performative for men, women are performative for women, women looking at women on instagram, how to get big muscles, big money, explanations and stories, The Stone Dragon, about reproduction and passing the money along, read Typee by Herman Melville, disposable, fruit is within reach, food is everywhere, and girls aren’t jealous, Donald E. Westlake, An Empty Threat by Donald E. Westlake, girls in the south seas, Madagascar even, the only African country never colonized?, an island, read a book on it, pirates from the carribean moved to the richer grounds of the Indian Ocean, girls don’t demand much, run the business for us, retirement for pirates, a mere 89 pages, a dozen illustrations, an 80 page story, In The Dwellings Of The Wilderness by [C. Bryson Taylor], fun reading too, if not something else good, names of the places, justice to Melbourne, already recorded, end of July, at bad times, Mad Max!, different time schedules, 8pm, three hours earlier, Oscar Wilde, pretty short, Martin Geeson, Confessions Of An English Opium Eater, The Loved Dead by C.M. Eddy and H.P. Lovecraft, controversial, so funny, out in 7 months, slowing down production, not doing music for each one, a Weird Tales, Egyptian mummy, western archaeologist uncover a mummy story, slash vampire, short novel, Lion Of Tiberias, The Moon Of Skulls, H. Warner Munn, The Werewolf Of Ponkert, the one that Lovecraft inspired?, Robert E. Howard’s Wolfshead, a weak story, Bobby Derie, Howard didn’t understand what the person was saying, The Green Room, typos and random errors, a good ghost story, he sticks the ending vs. goofs up the ending, Walter de la Mare, when you’re a gymnast, not a funny guy, falls flat in a horrifying way, scaling back production, all this old stuff to do, producing something every week, not enough research?, I gotta get something, grindcore, there’s people doing everything now, recently updated, this is a really good story, done the next day, awesome gems, a dreamlands style story, House Of The Mummy Men, Hunt The Space Witch by Robert Silverberg, Lawrence Block, Frank Cain, from Manhunt, Mike Vendetti, shudder pulp, Lovecraft and Howard are dead, knock-off magazines, sex versions of Weird Tales stories, spicy horror, Test-Tube Frankenstein, chops up earthworms, rejected by the agent, Theodore Sturgeon’s Microcosmic God, neoterics, imposes restrictions on them, building aluminum structures, he’s god essentially, a banker who’s trying to take advantage, taking the shape of people, they eat people, invents shoggoths, mad scientist Frankenstein, crackerjack, The Flower-Show At Kwaliz by Herbert Tremaine, good enough for H.G. Wells and Arthur Conan Doyle, beautifully illustrated, dreamlands style story, tripped up on a flower contest, middle eastern past alternate dimension, a hundred pound prize in 1920, good stuff to be found, why have we been handed this certain canon, incompetent or non-existent estates, August Derleth is a good guy because…, there are a few situations, the power of the writing mostly sells itself, R. Murray Gilchrist guy, a huge reputation at the time, Robert W. Chambers, popular novels of romance, The King In Yellow and a few other things, this is really extraordinary, this I Am Stone book, copyright is a lot clearer (at least for Jesse), 80 new stuff, two dozen good people, Mickey Spillane, some good writers we’ve kind of forgotten, some way to narrow it, by following the stories that other authors tell us to read, anything Bobby Derie mentions, he doesn’t review, just found a never republished story that’s partially unreadable, a really bad scan from Fantasy Fiction Telegram, The Green Book by Duane W. Rimel, doing it for the love, Mike Vendetti has already done it, this is very Dunsany-like, H.G. Wells said it was good, kinda trust Arthur Conan Doyle, my spiritual afterlife, the original flower fairies that he was writing about, trolled, powned, may have oversold that idea, into spiritualist, seances and stuff, interesting to find out if it is true or not, 12 – 13 years, 10 years, ghosts don’t really make any sense, liches totally real, works either way, people start looking like other people, she thinks he looks like his dad, gotten older, scruffy mustache, sometimes people look like their parents, Mimic, Mothman, spoiled, audiobooked a few times, late last year, a new Westlake novel just dropped on LibriVox, go to a source in the states, amazing good stuff still to do, nobody knows who he is yet, these need to be accessible to people, start to take notice, making a difference, give them a little something that they know, two novels and one short story, Fondly Fahrenheit, superpsychotropic, you must own nothing but yourself,
“He doesn’t know which of us we are these days, but they know one truth. You must own nothing but yourself. You must make your own life, live your own life and die your own death … or else you will die another’s.”
all speaking to all, the premise here is, killed or kidnapped, either a human who owns an android or the android, brain problem, conflating himself with the robot, the only thing he owns is a slave, it’s awesome, subsequently cleared, spurious claim, ignorance or dishonesty, no estate, left his apartment to his bartender, gonna be so fun, who knows?, the name may be enough, queer life, we’re done, Tasmanian adventures, got me a thylacine?, nasty little buggers.
Posted by Jesse Willis
The SFFaudio Podcast #801 – Confessions Of An English Opium-Eater by Thomas De Quincey, read by Martin Geeson. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the story (5 hours, 12 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse and Terence Blake
Talked about on today’s show:
autobiographical book, exactly why Jesse first put the video together, Gay and somebody else, Larence Chaves and Zenna Gay, most popular youtube video, a little more time cleaning it up, putting it together, enchanted by Martin Geeson’s narration, a link to the post in 2012, mentioned in The Crawling Chaos by H.P. Lovecraft, Martin Geeson, the narrator, thou hast the keys of paradise, temporal digression, immense sophistication, a great appeal, nervous?, post-modern, self-awareness, to fix his own identity, aa large part of the whole, lucrative piece of sensational, the London Magazine, majestic neo-classical style, self-reflexive but always reaching out to the reader, a good summary?, a style of the post-enlightenment style, Ada Palmer’s tetrology, Terra Ignota, the theme is romantic, the underlying philosophical basis is the German idealism that served as the basis, Shelling, Ficte, reading German romantics or philosophers, a mixed type of style, a transistion, the enlightenment, reason, romantic exploration of the unconscious, dreams visions, a rational study, its a drug book, brain juice, opium derived products, seen Trainspotting (1996), alcohol is a good counterexample, harmful, a poison, some people buy it so they can kill themselves, the pharmacon, the circumstances and the dosage, quite deliberately, explore the power of the imagination, taking it over, poisoning, he’s had some pain, lived to 76, not dying from it, the movement in English around AIDS, the beginning of the 80s, first person knowledge of diseases, medical treatments, doing your own research, having a cooperative dialogue, reading, all the academic experts, trash, he knows far more about it than they do, doctors recommend drugs, sometimes paid to push them, the authority to prescribe them, inhibitors, I’ve heard you should build a house, keeping your clothes from getting wet, authority on a hill, wisdom in the people who are supposedly untutored, doesn’t have massive contempt for everybody who is not reading ancient Greek, turbaned guy, traveling through Wales with no English and no Welsh, a massive dose of opium, would have killed any set of dragoons and their horses, an abiding wisdom, Cora was feeling ill, Jonathan not liking the narration, not abridged and the narrator is awesome, an expanded version from 1856, a large scale revision of the confessions, personal background, a much weaker beginning, digressions and inconsistencies, a citation, spoiled his masterpiece, vigor and tension, tired prosiness, random critics, raw power that makes a book exciting, H.P. Lovecraft, wrongly biased, the drug experiences, a quarter and a third of the text, I want to get to the drugs, the accumulation, meditations, classical literature, philosophy, conversations with poets, the wider experience was just as much the opium, what is the real opium for him, the brain, tea, loves his tea, tea houses, consternation about the taking of tea, coffee houses were politically dangerous, need to be primed to access a sublime experience, for some people they claim it intoxicates people, it elevates him, nodding on a pile of laundry, walking the streets and talking to people, a mind expansion not an intoxication, this is not the abridged version this is the original version, a charge responded to by de Quincey, I’m not a fictional person this is a true story, changed some names, collapsed some stuff, this is a memoir, there’s a lot of truth, not a lot of pooping scenes, how many times I was unable to poop, a big problem for people who take opium, this book is not abridged [Jonanthan did not say the audiobook was abridged, rather he suggested it was the expanded revised version], there are people who dislike Martin Geeson’s narration, 100% perfect, the voice the accent the tone, became Thomas De Quincey, brilliant solution to a serious problem in audiobooks, leaving names out, first initial then blank, enhances this idea this is a true story, Lord blank, the Dean of blank, did something, as if it was written to aural, translate text into a beautiful audiobook, Alfred Bester’s The Demolished Man, @kins, what you do with children, this is the way we do it, Jesse is a purist, a serious problem, the writer elided the name, the writer wrote p and a bunch of underscores, confronted with this issue, the reader is going to get a false impression of what the text says, he’s hiding the names, that’s awesome, like someone who’s talking, something in Surrey, if other people were here, if Paul was here, spending time with a little girl a lot, one who takes care of his food, snuggling with a little girl in an empty apartment, this is creepy right?, with Anna, sensual desire or comportment, he loved her but not in that way, she was a prostitute, was he a punk?, never hints at it, in the cottage with just one girl, he doesn’t hint, she’s a servant, I didn’t have any carnal desires, more modern, today modern, chaperone, he’s a bohemian guy, an aristocrat in their eyes, the sons of cardinals, he attacks his fellow gentlemen, sons of high priests in the Anglican church, the slightest slight, Jane Austen, become an Anglican minister, hustling, dwindling prospects, whether they like it or not, state sanctioned, like being a justice of the peace, high in a governmental bureaucracy, a weird parallel, an angry hobby horse, mostly about being a homless guy with a weird brain grokking a lot of poor people, early that 1821, late 1790s?, pre-Victorian prostitutes, a respectable publication, the magazine people go to to see what’s going on, confessions, novel and strange, more people than you can possibly imagine, because they’re poor and alcohol costs too much, a political economy, to stupify themselves, laudanum a mix of alcohol and opium, opium grains, a big last fling, mind expansion without the addiction, Winfred V. Jackson and H.P. Lovecraft, Les Paradis Artificiels by Charles Baudelaire, obscure realms, intimate the nature, drawn back into Asia, vast age of race and name, strange memories, there’s two called The Crawling Chaos, a dream that Winifred Jackson had (and Lovecraft improved), analyze the imagery, of the body, a fantastic thing, caffeine, enhance what’s already going on in your brain, practicing meditation, the mood organ from the opening of Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, The Electric Ant, see reality differently, I’ve got access to stuff, there’s some pains, I’m an addict, sometimes making my life worse, orphans, living on blackberries and rosehips, addicted to cheap drugs, not feeling the pain, literally being cold, superfun and interesting, The Philosophy Of Furniture, he describes the perfect room, the curtains, the table, what you should have at hand, 17×27 with a 7 foot ceiling, of course there’s a fire, an ever refreshing teapot, a woman who can pour it for you, look at her arms, a genre of youtube video, the cable TV channels, empty cable channel, the fireplace channel, a crackling fire, a costume of rings and a sweater, pokes the fire unneededly, being in a fire in a cozy room, AI of a cozy cafe, want it but can’t have it, rain pattering on windows, I get there through drugs, youtube is a drug, stream into your brain a series of things that you want, a really good book, many many insights, true insights about drugs, and the drug trips themselves, waking dreams, eyes and ears and mouth and relations, a quote, being a sequel to Confessions Of An English Opium Eater, the introductory notice, the object of that work was to reveal something of human dreams, supposed to lurk, dream of oxen, yokes so vast a majority, without much elevation of thought, the reproductive faculty of dreaming, being a philosopher, I was always a philosopher, a Kantian idea, space and time, other categories of experience, if you’re forced, hardened and reduced brain, reductive experience, speak Greek as a kind, met the poets, Wordsworth, Coleridge, a romantic, this appended thing, the third part out, maybe I’m still addicted, of course the aim of the book was to warn people, it’s the silver key, the master key, a brilliant connection between Poe and Lovecraft and Dunsany, a teetotaler, but he is a great and profound dreamer, find a place to start, Will’s dream, Sylvester Stallone wanting to deputize a little girl in a quest for revenge, a big sheet of butcher paper, late dog, a 20 pound cockatoo, cockatzu, flannel pajama pants, chameloen like ability, stripped her, skinny white communists, markedly skinnier and more erudite, a man with a mustache, William Peter, self-conscious about this mistake, a double decker van food truck, remained obscure, a strong interest in underground music, what I’m hearing is it is time to start growing a mustache, cockatzu (Cocker Spaniel Shih Tzu Mix), designer dog, are dogs brain juice?, they interact with brain juice, wiggle waggle, if dogs had hands they would be touching you in places that would be impolite in public, as probably people do, northern europeans not so handsy, Mediterraneans are more handsy, without their consent, the lick us, Roog by Philip K. Dick, humans have more mouths than dogs, the mouth is something else, correction with your mouth, that’s the sort of thing, that little girl who is being neglected by the owner of that house?, a servant, not fed well, an expose, promoting something that is dangerous, we don’t even think you’re real, the child who has no home, heart of gold, a good value of this book, a rich guy suddenly poor, aka Lovecraft, aka Poe, magically poor and rich, better than all of you secretly, want a connection, not being particularly pretty or intelligent, sharing warmth, standard for marriage in 1790, an insight into it, seems creepy, seems heartfelt and touching, inappropriate, where is anybody trying taking care of this kid?, child labour as well, the political economy aspect again, class, before Marx, Karl Marx, David Ricardo, lacing the book, a social commentary, an aristocratic experience, the first book in the literature of addiction, on the wild side, on the night side, Aldous Huxley, The Doors Of Perception and Heaven And Hell, mescaline, refined experience, refined gentleman, abject, petty or major theft to feed his habit, striding two worlds, his family life, majestic visions that become horrible, a Lovecraftian feel to the visions, his children, he cries, the transition is too great for him, he has to ween himself from opium, the turning point, the good effects without the side effects, your brain squeezes you out some brain juice, squeeze more, brain drugs from the outside, the conscious part says I disagree, serotonin is generated in the gut, a weight loss drug that paralyzes your guts, causing suicides, a take it for the rest of your life drug not a one time, Adam Smith, somebody from that early period, grokked Ricardo, Thomas De Quincey as a philosopher, I’d like to be buried in a nice country churchyard, use my body for science, he’s making fun, the aim of my book, in the appendix, the reason people hate drug books and drug writers, talking about real effects, parents, churches, but why?, support, control, looking out for them?, connect them with other people, They Live (1988), [Eight O’Clock In The Morning by Ray Nelson] something in the water?, a Philip K. Dick story as well, one of six different aliens, drug talk, Travels by Michael Crichton, auras, borderlands of perception, correspond to each other, see Hillary Clinton on the stage and say “contemptible monster”, or “my hero”, a delightful conversationalist, very real, real real good writing, what it was like to be him, defender of the empire, not against slavery, not homeless walking the streets, have his tea everyday, distanced from it, a great rockstar and kind of an asshole, Mel Gibson, you can be both, people were correct about it, some of the comments from youtube, 42k views, from 11 years ago, the best narrator I have ever heard, positively fantastic, agree wholeheartedly, bitching about, complex sentences to have savoured, recovered from heroin, most underrated piece of literature ever created, more intelligent than people give it credit for, influence in France, must have influenced [Arthur] Rimbaud, systematic derangement of all the senses, surrealists, if it really was a philosophical book, a street philosopher, show us the power of dreams, Ralph Waldo Emerson, the poet comes closer to truth than the intoxicated one, Henry Miller, drunk on pure water, the aim is to get similar access to the power of dream and imagination without the drug that brings bad side effects and slavery, sometimes that’s the goal, an ad for inner voyages given to you by opium, hashish, coffee, water, just dreaming, meditate, altered state, control and access, when you are awake, lead to exploring the drug avenue, not the ultimate conclusion, underplay the other thing, he’s in a lot of pain, waiting there like an angel, he doesn’t curse the day, he blesses the day, his pain is physical and mental, triggers his first contact, the death of Wordsworth’s 4 year old daughter, psychosomatic illnesses and medicines, opiates today, treatment of pain, the drug literature, when you are pain it is hard to relax to listen to creative thoughts that are constantly generating, focused on the road, feet on the pedals, what you said, when you are asleep, that part is turned off, what you can feel is the generation of information, suddenly wake up, that stuff is going on all the time under the surface, taking away the pains that cause an inability, get into writing a story, where does it come from, the fingers allow access, creative control, the majority of people talking about how to write, listen to your brain, this is a formula, completely wrong, drug yourself up on opium, the chair under your butt, get that typewriter out, the inner psychedelic experience, Jesse’s advice, the best narrator ever, after the second hour, something completely wrong on the intonation, understanding what he’s reading, my mum came into the room, what’s wrong with this guy, a tinsey winsey concerned about spitting out his denture, snobbish seeming British accent, his mouth is constipated from the opium, the autobiographical main character, the ideal time, precious, high diction, dwelling on the words, savouring the vocabulary, not a note off, great from the beginning, they have to get used to it, having had this conversation via DMs with Jonathan, he couldn’t tell the narrator was an ai, they stop at the wrong places, a good narrator performs the text, when to dwell and savour, an amazing skill, Scott Miller (Lost Sci-Fi Podcast) can perform it beautifully, this guy’s kinda cool, a straight narrator, just doing a straight reading, where he dwells on words it is confessional, closer to the mic, not broad, it is precise and controlled, emotional, but not insane, another narrator, people wanted to read this book, a striking strange cleavage, a very fascinating thing, perception, that’s the connection, what’s different?, the perception, stuffed shirt aspect, that’s De Quincey, Sylvester Stallone could do it betta, harmony with the narrative voice, one objection, the digressions, I’m in a hurry to get to the drugs, a bildungsroman on the education of a philosopher, a line from Milton, anti-drugs, LDS, Mormons, coffee, against opium too, corner store Starbucks, don’t listen to the demons within you, we gotta control what those people smoke, this guy is wild, not coming from the scripture it is coming from within, perceiving reality differently, approaching some drugs in the wrong way, don’t have a bad trip, the brain is the ultimate well regulated drug factory, a way to get to it, ampther really great way, read some Lovecraft, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Homer, the land of the Lotus Eaters, the drugs are dangerous section, drugs in The Odyssey, wonderful stuff, 200 years later, the last paragraph, ends abruptly, one memorial of my former condition, not yet perfectly calm, the legions are drawing off, tumultuous, the gates of paradise, dreadful faces thronged and firey arms, expelled from paradise, the angels guarding the entrance, the implication, an artificial paradise, as opposed to the one in the sky?, an earthly paradise, conversation with the students, I’m Christian, in my father’s house there are many mansions, what is a metaphor?, or there’s room for you?, when Jesus responds this way, he’d never thought about it before, the person in the pew, take in the information, take the received idea and take it into them, engaging with the idea is why it is a metaphor, why it is a good book, let he who is without sin cast the first stone, the person reading it to you, now what do you think about that, they don’t have the podcast afterwards, by the way you’re very sinful, weird religious cult in Russia, cut off penises and boobs, the fruit of sin, a solution, you should have read the book a little better, literal minded, the juice factory in their brain, we gotta engage with this stuff, not going to talk about it, make note of the pains of opium, even before the appendix, he’s not warning people, potheads, smoke for 40 years, head clouded all the time, not an immoral or moral choice, shouldn’t be illegal, dealt with in the same way that gin was, useful at getting at something, offer access to materials otherwise inaccessible, an old book about an old time, what the streets of London were like, what rural Wales was like, not a complete survey, not a lot of aliens beaming in, a note on the influence, The Man With The Twisted Lip by Arthur Conan Doyle, turns that into a character, of the famous Sherlock Holmes story, a non-homeless man pretends to be homeless, murders himself, a professional beggar, a little bit like Kim by Rudyard Kipling or Citizen Of The Galaxy by Robert A. Heinlein, interpretation, what makes a beggar a beggar, a smart dumb guy, knighthood for propaganda, reading old literature makes you smart and dumb, ends on Milton, all this stuff in the poets I read are my experiences, why they are so powerful, the very Platonic thing, kicked out of Paradise, permeated by classical culture, all of literature is mine, he is a philosopher, Kant, an experimental philosopher, stops at the ancient asian civilization, in The Call Of Cthulhu, vastly further back, a grandiose claim, and he did, no progress in literature, whatever progress is, what Newton said about himself, If I have seen further, I stand on the shoulders of giants and I went further, dying of stomach cancer, probably finally became the transcendent guy by opium, August Derleth took a dream written down and called it a story, stories have to have shape, every part needs to fit, oftentimes they don’t transitions too strangely, layers and layers of dreams does not make a good fiction story, how strange, a ten hour video of a [near] still image, don’t have your drug experience interrupted by ads, C.M. Kornbluth, Gravy Planet aka The Space Merchants, cocoa and stimulants, time travel, quaint, looking back at ht oppressive heavy advertising seems quaint, well presented in Blade Runner, Atari, TDK, Japanese lady putting a pill in her mouth, advertising horror, a senator from Coca-Cola, ads are the worst thing ever because they interrupt, injecting you with a drug, defend against ads with adblockers, what is worrisome about Netflix and Amazon, now that we are captive audiences, latest solution, on the tail end of this podcast, Tiny [Windows] 11, a very stripped down version of Windows 11, install a website as an app Brave browser, watching Tubi or YouTube ad free, a bulletproof shirt, armour to prevent you from being injected with random drugs from corporations, the corporate government, fuck you I’m not taking your injections, when the X-Files came back, super-intrusive product placement, almost hit a homeless person, the car logo, nothing to do with the story, that’s really intrusive, corporate broadcast television, now skippable product placement, skipping interaction requests, skips the intros and outros and product placement, a blip on the screen, the resistance to the horror of injected ads into you, this is that at, Smart Tube Beta, works on android TV and Firestick, through github, a google OS for your TV, hook up a computer to a TV, go back to torrenting everything, most people will take the drugs, only drugs that expand my perception, a bit of a leap, a product placement for a product of Terence’s thought, indirectly the source of Marx’s sentence: religion is the opium of the people, Zizek: opium is the religion of the people, mind expanding stuff of (culture dreams) religion, Foundation, an opium equivalent, dumbed down, Paradise Lost to imaginal realms, where can I download that, wrote essays about advertizing in highschool, Youtube banned the Brave browser ad, advertizing for bitcoin, mine vs. buy bitcoin, advertizing is incredibly powerful, a megaphone yelling at you, it’s just a minute, you’re the one who is drugged, my friend, turn off the adblockers, got through, three more times and we’ll cut access, people put up with this, maybe 1%, ublock origin, update itself all the time, saw the real world of the majority of users, a horror show, they’re used to it, they think it is normal, wait til that skip button goes, our job as human beings is advertizing, the water is fresh, the blackerries there, what humans do, copy information from their brain to their mouths, hijacked by corporations, really important, most people don’t see it that way, people who don’t not obsessed with not being injected with this shit, being dosed on opiates all the time, The Seventh, ok.ru, stars Jim Brown, in a renaissance for easily accessible film, Ernest Borgnine, Donald Sutherland, we did it, we did a good book, wanted to do more, record Suspiria, too much time involved, audio translations of a Zizek book, exists in Italian, wanted to do more, the addictive aspect, more influence?, all these poets read both books and thought of them together, the horror genre, might mean he’s died, sections for collaborative works, Oscar Wilde, His Life And Confessions, complete solos, a biography, see what his taste is, narrators not being commercial, they get to choose what they want to do, they bring their interest to it, philosophical and artistic not commercial, none of them say: be an artist, probably not going to write a good book, otium, leisure, refined sense, just hanging around, aristocratic notion, you don’t work according to orders, a latin word, otiose, lazy, useless, digressions, self-realization, creation aspect of leisure, why LibriVox is great, share and be appreciative, argue Jonathan into Bel Ami by Guy De Maupassant, homeopathy, Milton, Brontes, Sophoclese, an LGB, before they invented the ts and the pluses, Alexander Pope, Ivan Turgenev, D.H. Lawrence, The Confessions by Rousseau, 17 hours of the six volumes, The Soul Of Man by Oscar Wilde, a cool dude, writes nice introductions, rhapsodic, joyful anarchic hedonism, a map of the world, Humanity, Wilde wittly assails, life denying ascetics, venal popular journalists, that sounds like a good book, a mere two hours, booking it, what is a black pill and how do I take it?, means nihilist, white pilled, everything is good?, pink pills, yellow pills, why they like their pills so much, donkey pilled, donkey excited about a new ball, sees their old owners, save it for the podcast pilled, still recording?, a gossipy question.
Posted by Jesse Willis
The SFFaudio Podcast #793 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, Will Emmons, and Jonathan Weichsel talk about Sirius by Olaf Stapledon
Talked about on today’s show:
1944, some Olaf before this, Last And First Men and Star Maker, wow, this blew Jonathan away, this is a novel, if you told me I’d enjoy a book about a talking dog, it has that cosmic perspective, in a dog who has no hands, real genuine science fiction, not genre SF, not from an American pulp tradition, in the subtitle, “A Fantasy Of Love And Discord”, a scientific romance, something to say, thinking about dogs a lot, a dog as a kid, a pet person, passed away earlier this year, afraid of dogs, allergic to most of them, Irish setter, what I’m hearing is you’re gay, australian shepherd, Karl Barks, still gay, gay for dogs, city boy, Scrappy, got too big, gave him away, cats, Minnesota, a Labrador and a great Pyrenees, border collie, Corgi, loved to death, the dog relationship, neutral to dogs, like our narrator storyteller, the Olaf Stapledon stand-in, affected emotionally, balling my eyes out, hiking, tears, very powerful, a great book, some good things in the review, very American, wanted the book to be genre SF, Philip K. Dick shows instead of tells, make points about philosophy, attempts pulp, Cambridge educated philosopher, from 2020, another reference point, Dick’s philosophy is more cynical, very different, Stapledon trusts people and the community of people, trusts reality more, even though the community if evil, Dick’s stories are more city, vs. more country, more suburban, lives in a “community”, a very small world for you, the college with the town attached, some London here, rural fantasy, through the novel tradition, such a bad comparison, to bring Philip K. Dick into the conversation, a guy named Jesse, correct to reference Frankenstein by Mary Shelly, a more wholesome, humane take, needs to be with other creatures, a 2015 review, no last name, Odd John, as opposed to a book about super and ultra sheepdogs, uplifted, can you get an uplift without it being biologically heritable, the raising, a monkey in Australia as a farmhand, the fox listening to banjo music, an old English children’s magazine, great pets, famous pets, Farmhand Johnny, a rhesus monkey, follow up tweet, interviewing the farmer, the second monkey in a series of farmhands, don’t go on about your handlessness, super-important, this is not a man creating another man, a dog with a man’s brain, a super-canine brain, the thing that’s adressed a lot in the book, bestiality, incest, how intiate they had become, looks at her body mauled by the dog, as are we, Plaxy, such a weird name, a name that people have in England, Wales, the fornication?, discretion prohibits me from saying, how Jonathan would write it, a man relives himself, masturbating, sexual hypocrisy, a very funny sad and tragic book, deeply philosophical, dog-lover wish fulfillment fantasy, this is a being like me that has thoughts and desires and wants, unable to communicate fully, flagging of tails, bristling of backs, wants to have sex, wants to have a relationship with you, that’s remarkable, exploring this idea incredibly well, what is stopping people writing this today, owning a dog, mischaracterizing all of science fiction: space-fucking battles, what about Harlan Ellison’s A Boy And His Dog, Simak, Lester Del Rey, a lot less incest, go off on Jupiter together, a lot more tragic, this conflict between dog-nature and the human society he is raised in, identify with it as a human being, I’m a human, I fit in, nature vs. nurture, other books that explore, Tarzan, so much imagination, the depths of smelling, describing how the female dogs drive him insane, you wouldn’t understand, the narrator’s really good too, that British hidden humour in these character’s voices, Plaxy is the least understandable main character, we don’t love dogs that way, if Sirius had been a female dog or if Plaxy had been a brother, would it have been a better book, a more pure examination?, reverse those genders, heterosexual animals, a husband describing his wife, going up to the line, creepy, unfortunately very reliable narrator, the things he elides, the frame to get at telling this story, a very funny American trope, super-hilarious, the mad scientist and his beautiful daughter, does not like the father the doctor, unimaginative, his subjective point of view, 100% agreed, being prudes about the bestiality, the investigation is less pure or more pure, the animal and Plaxy’s nature, he’s also investigating women, Enemy Mine (1985) by Barry B. Longyear, Dennis Quaid and Louis Gossett, Jr. are fighter pilot, beach planet, give birth to their baby, dies in childbirth, dad and mom, reuinite him with his people, Will bait 101, the novella is 1979, Nebula and a Hugo, fewer people voted, not even a 1000 people, such a scam, throwing it out the window, interesting character, a perspective character, Stapledonian observations, the politics of this book, Hitler bad, why is Hitler bad?, a socialist novel, a communist dog at points, a small businessman selling his children, don’t collectivize my farm, typically Kulak, energetic but unfair, pre-WWII communist party of Great Britain, the hardship and oppression, surrounded by the professional managerial class, the PMC, using the PMC, Barbara Enright, the laptop class, people with a 9-5 job who work in offices, do you like it?, not a manager, includes teachers, lawyers, a little priest action, a parson is not a priest in the Anglican tradition?, holy nature, the guy in the front of the pulpit talkin, secular but mystical, for what this book is about, the way this book ends, like the Frankenstein creature he is not himself, just like the creature does, Jack London’s The Call Of The Wild, a dog that becomes a man that becomes a wolf, To Build A Fire, the best novel Jesse has ever read, inside the mind of a dog, a very alien story, some glimpses, doesn’t commit to the bit, Buck did not need the newspapers, inside of a dog’s head, telling a different story, boyfriend/husband, make a sale, interested in the market, a publisher wouldn’t touch it, how many of the books that you’ve read of him are something a publisher would want, things were different back then, H.G. Wells pioneered something, John Wyndham’s career, a new science fiction writer, been there done that, a repeat of Day Of The Triffids, he must have had a dog, the author of this manual of sheepdogs and their owners, to Will and Maissa, border collie video, sheepdog trial olympics, there for him while he’s doing his stuff, the commentators are going wild, that’s the relationship that this book is about, it was thrilling, made Will tired, that much energy, POV, omniscient narrator, Bob is angry, an omnipresent narrator, Bob seemed angry, more of a naturalistic approach, Guy de Maupassant, maybe the character felt this way, describing Sirius, Sirius was this way, jarring, what he restrict, I ate a man yesterday, Plaxy, and I liked it, as a writer it is important to note these things, in Buck’s head and right over Buck’s shoulder, notes, the humans in Sirius’ world, a more direct picture, this big archive of notes, too fat and complacent, wrote one book, The Lamppost, Beyond The Lamppost, a philosophy of things outside of being a dog, humans like to drink thinks, vee dogs and like to emit liquids, I see what you’ve emitted there, went for a walk with his dog, that’s how dogs be, let me right a novel about this, a terrific book, nobody could write this book today, a huge book of ideas, I can take this paragraph from this chapter of Last And First Men and make a 40 book series out of it, Paul is correct, read it again, what does the word completed mean?, the other projected book, in a state for publication, trying to split a hair your not going to split, the center of interest in Cambridge, Sirius does not understand dogs, he’s pretty young, a sad case, a tragedy from beginning to end, his creator dies, he has plans, has finished writing but not completed can never be published, remarkably, why is this set during WWII, an anti-fascist novel, a pacifist, lived a long time, supported the war effort, Wikipedia rabbit holes, fuzzy, when people are bad, they scapegoated Plaxy and Sirius the way the Nazis scapegoated the Jews, people use the word a lot, 20th century view on fascism, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, wait six months for this show to come out, an interesting take, our POV character is a solider and Plaxy is a landgirl, seems important to the war effort, Bomb Girls, what her views about communism and fascism are, she’s naive, communism isn’t the answer, petite bourgeoisie, create something new, I’m not so sure now Plaxy, literally selling his children, drowns some of his puppies, a flawed creator, religion, Brian Aldiss would do it more that way, an unapologetic J.D. Beresford H.G. Wells kinda guy, those books are dreams, characterless, occasional character name, hallucinations of humanity, an actual novel, Arthur C. Clarke is very spiritual, dealing with religion, goes into the church and sings from behind a veil, I know you will be shocked, don’t you want to hear them, the youtube videos of a dog singing along at the piano, the Right of Spring, out of the ordinary, A World Of Sound by Olaf Stapledon, escapes his body and sees a world of sound, moving over a landscape, he’s just slept through the whole opera, the sparking firework display that is Olaf Stapledon’s genius, like Peter And The Wolf, other notes come in, characters are notes and themes, we can tell a story just with sound, that’s what he’s done here with smells, I’ll be your bitch, this is an intimate relationship, going into scents, bite their owners, so rich and deep, what if Plaxy was just a brother, a boy and his dog, sex and raping, about the relationship of humans to animals, part of the household, super-duper rich, moved to tears by this book, never fits in, murdering or killing?, he’s mad, needs to be put down, near human intelligence, back to the demiurge again, a functional being, he lives in Britain, you have the solution in Canada, he’s a flawed creation, he’s not a man and he’s not a dog, he’s alone, had the deep thoughts that he has, invited to say what of man, is man a flawed creation?, the answer is yes, a very cynical view, is it cynical or is it realistic?, he grok fascism, and yet he will sell his own children and drown them, an alien species, kziniti, Jesse has Paul modeled, the aliens from Larry Niven’s Ringworld series, a brilliant writer and everything, a very different use of the ideas, one kzin, in the sequels, the kzinti homeworld on Ringworld, speaker becomes a king, like a Conan story, conquer the map of earth, they’re klingons but they’re cats, officially in the Star Trek universe, plugging Paul’s own game, lamenting the lack of Olaf Stapledon, smart dog novels, demanding, how its coming, the great female kizinti novel (that gets uplifted), she wakes up in the harem, you bastard, Ottoman harems, the power that women tried to wield, the kzinti queen, males don’t get their names, that the civil service says is good, I’m a male chauvinist sometimes, sometimes I’m a coward, sometimes I’m a 300 year old Fu-Manchu, sometimes I’m a lucky girl who gets to spend time with Larry Niven, unfortunately we demanded more books, got any more?, goddamn it, had to be doomed, humans are flawed and doomed, as a species too, leave AI to die, Paul’s Reeve guy’s plan, Elon Reeve Musk’s plan, escape the planet, preppers build bunkers, off planet, to make the air in air factories, this picture of what it means to be a person, a worker intellectual, the intellectual and artistic life, a vigorous physical exercise, really good critique of the Cambridge people, they drop things, talking about the mandarins, cultivate the long finernails, girls too, they’re princesses, intellectual beings contemplating gardens and writing poems with their mouths, denigrate manual labour, the dignity of labour, back to Wales, use his mind to labour also, he can’t be a Conan, conquering bitches, rollicking adventures, because of the landscape, his contribution to the war, I wrote a book about a smart dog, Tarzan goes off to war, Tarzan And The Foreign Legion by Edgar Rice Burroughs, a war corespondent, he thought he was at the center of things, patriotism is crazy, hilarious, go join WWI, go get ground up in the meatgrinder, we hate that, we didn’t want to do that, the cycle continues, alien and sedition act, that goddamn fucking Wilson, divide and conquer, he kept us out of the war, the League Of Nations, what a ringing success it was, return to normalcy, America first platform, Warren Harding, a reaction against Woodrow Wilson, no imperial entanglements outside of the empire itself, alcoholic drank himself to death while in office, sad that he died, why Donald Trump is a teetotaler, locked Wikipedia entry, Teapot Dome where Larry Niven got all his money, Coolidge, Republican presidents, Herbert Hoover, never served in public office, Grecian revival, we got dig him up, traveling across the country giving big speeches, front porch campaign, hide his alcoholism, the wealthiest guy, Hoovervilles, a miner, as usual, to feed Europe during WWI, an extremely popular person worldwide, Secretary of Commerce, one of the most hated and reviled, ran for re-election constantly, pumping money into the economy, a laissez-faire approach, avoided the whole thing, pushing an asteroid, what would president Olaf Stapledon do to fix the world?, major political parties in the UK agreed to a coalition government, forget this democracy thing for the course of the war, Commonwealth, merger between strange socialist, non-state socialism, Christian socialists, willing to contest elections, radicalizing, when they all joined Labour, advocating for a European federal government, a world government, full of good ideas, advocating for the welfare state, Beverage, here’s ghow they’re inadequate, the NHS comes out of that, Churchill, surprisingly he was a conservative, the Left Book Club, an important institution, Victor Gollancz, better known as a science fiction, today, a left wing publisher, they go together, all these great fights with Orwell, stupid and Trotskyist, breaks with the communists, Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, world congress for peace, useless things that we shouldn’t use, what a monster, left wing things, development of the welfare state, common ownership of property, socialism on the installment plan, hard to really grok it, socialism and they had no money, everybody got glasses, Doctor Who, Doris Lessing’s science fiction work, a bit shorter, more grizzled, comin out of the 30s, a healthier society, world government, what a monster!, gentle, as a revolutionary, an ideas guy, today in 2023, the experiment performed by the doctor, let’s hear him out, it would be unethical, cloning, impossible to do in real life, tomatoes with trout DNA, monkey man, Dogman, unethical, we’re a very unethical species, the scientific organizations have codes of ethics, that’s not coming up, doing it on the sly, most people don’t believe it, our narrator believes it, the sheep farm, when the dog sends a letter, called out in one of the reviews, we coulda used more like that, that was demonstrative, this novel doesn’t deal with scientific ethics enough, hey David Brin you haven’t had a hit in a while, go retro, lots of scenes where ethics boards are talking to each other via skype, it’s about our relationship with animals, and specifically dogs, nude in front of them, we won’t fart in front of our wife, put leashes on them, and then we’ll have to get you spayed eventually, neutered, not a major focus, where ethics comes into this book, reasons for the secrecy, commercial interest learning about the dog, mass production of this kind of animal, is there a world in which Sirius could have lived, the circus freaks, displaying themselves because of their oddities, seen that book or read that movie, not going to do the deep relationship between humans and dogs, when you pet Plaxy, she goes to make water, the wistle, its time to pee!, how children are, the devastation, the loss, how dare you!, one after the other, marking my territory, more like twitter, completed uncompleted book, enlightening, where they make their symposia, a peeing party, extends his lifespan, a regular dog would have died, they’re the same age, how old is Plaxy in 1944?, early 20s, a university education, we get that date at some point, less realistic, hung up on the wrong part of the science fiction, injecting human DNA into dog brains, this is not actually possible, they don’t seem to be viable, I’ve never made a monkey man myself, it’s possible for human and a chimpanzee to have sex, taboo, a mules, lots of mules, it wouldn’t line up correctly, somewhat mentally challenged, 99% match in DNA, human female and male chimpanzee, caesarean bud, wild conversation, Jungle Jitters, a genetic dead-end, ligers and tigons, one thing we haven’t talked about in this book, Plaxy is a cat, because she has a pussy?, something going on with cats in this novel, silly cat vs. dog stuff, astute observations, they are kind of mean, whenever Plaxy is mean she’s like a cat, to hurt Sirius, sometimes she’s this, somethimes she’s that, gives clues, very catlike, is he making a comment on women as well, should we be cancelling Mr. Olaf, the book is very doggy, the repeated point throughout: she’s catty, the cats were girls and the dogs were boys, when I’m 2, Treasure Planet (2002), hybrid babies, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island in space, humans and furries, related to transhumanism, there are also robots in this movie, it’s good?, fun, when we do Treasure Island, pirates, Paul’s being facetious, A High Wind Over Jamaica by Richard Hughes, trying to grok a scene, he has doggy vision, mystical vision, that supreme moment passed, a new reality, monochrome vision, colours seeing by the eye of the spirit, plain greys of ordinary life, gained a new meaning, their own true colours, suffused, the light of the spirit, the religious tinge, the Great Master, the True Creator, he has limited vision, he’s a young dog, Christian mysticism, probably not the best thing to study, one catty observation, turgid prose, actually turgid, looked it up before, swollen, congested, distended, Paul tends to read to fast, this is beautiful, this is poetry, limited view of reality, where you have to start saying the narrator is unreliable, a similar book, the Moon smashes into the Earth, Alec Nevala-Lee, The Hopkins Manuscript, a chicken farmer, a country seated gentleman, R.C. Sherriff, not petting his penis, it ain’t turgid, be his bitch, smiling a lot, the jokes were very funny, his song standing up, world dictator someday, humanize him with these books, a necessary scene in the novel, three possibilities, mystical gobbledygook, dial it back not dial it in, epiphany, the text comes out and says this is an important scene for you to read, a crisis, three paragraphs later, St. Catherine Of Sienna, he faces the absolute, when he goes to talk to the priests and learned people, these guys don’t get it, god is love, we’re all Sirius, born into the world, circumstances we didn’t create, he is a man, he does manly things, he has manly interests, science and muscularity and religion, a 9 hour book, the relationship that dogs have always had with man, the relationship of domesticating man or man domesticating animals, a man and a woman and a dog, man and dog and other dog, he doesn’t love in the right way when being a king, beaten by the man in the red sweater, he’s lost, ultimately he’s a wolf, this character is broken that requires a tragedy, a flawed creation, a powerful but not perfect creator, you don’t even need the god of the bible, puts us in the bad place, he loves him as a father, always seeking his approval, always arguing with his father, in the title of the book, the love part, the discord part, wherever he goes he’s singing a different tune, Apple of Discord, fuck around with things, smart like a man, he can read he can write he can sing he can make foolish religious claims, bigger brain equals smarter, really cool ultimate point, able to communicate with other beings using language, tantalizingly close to understanding the animals, when Soleks is looking at Buck, desires and goals, pack positional shit, dogs don’t have human morality, they don’t have shame but they can fake shame, it was bred to do that, that’s what goodness is is doing that, make a slave of another human being, program the robots, the revolt of the robots, so deeply science fictional, hormones, it’s not a breeding program, no robot arms, allowing a dog to understand us, science fiction is evil, some professor, on the whole a negative, had a negative social impact, if Elon Musk learned the lessons of Robert A. Heinlein, Nineteen-Eighty Four as an instructional manual, you wanted a hot-take, I’ve studied this stuff, trust me on this, bro, for you feed, are we done with the book, Return From The Stars, Omega: The Last Days Of The World by Camille Flammarion, a chapter missing, very early and very French, all collaborative, a comet that’s about to strike Earth, everybody buys telescopes, the United Nations, the international community, miscalculating things, a near death experience, moratlity, a technological boom, evolving, where Joe Rogan is very stupid, fallback stupidity, we just need to evolve more, man, this human being don’t change, people exactly the same, expresses different, merge man and machine, a very unwise person, almost Stapledonian, a science fiction book, the history of the species, another human species, in real life Stapledon believed, the transhumanism thing, the ability to see the colour blue, a linguistic trick, the wine dark sea, a myth that people believe, the 1917 Bolshevik revolution, a much better claim, the French Revolution with the experience of the French Revolution, what does it mean to be a domesticated animal, slaves, are human beings domesticated animals, school, factory workers, it loses its hair and becomes very social, domesticated apes, the overarching history of humanity, the unifer of the state, domestication is about the home, the family exists without the state, the family is a legal relationship, he becomes their owner, the mom has a relationship with her pups, their nice about it, a wolf gives birth to pups, uncles, an extended family unit, a condor, three little chicks, pushed it to its death, the weakest, the calorie intake I’m able to bring in, marriage is a legal construct, family, brings food to, it does it for a while, more like horses than tigers, make decisions collectively, by following people and leading people away from predators and towards prey, privatized, exceptions to that, the state will interfere with your shit, it should, it shon’t, tell condors how to run their families, we wanna catch that baby bird and raise it up, we never let it go, we’re different creatures than they are, not really possible, women leave their babies in bathrooms, in handbags, they drive them into lakes, are we thinking that’s a bad thing, abandoning babies, embrace that, horrific, you think the state has a place in people’s lives, lots of tutoring, enslave Jesse, hit him over the head, apprenticing, don’t go down that road, if you put it that way, Groucho Marx, the Groucho tendency, Harpo, Chico, very much a Groucho, individualized tutoring, university is still allowed, what Socrates was doing before being cyberbullied into killing people, making fun of people, follow him in conversation, the role of religion, worship Chebu and Sheemish, unequal opportunity, less unequal opportunity, more unequal, who was your best teacher?, he was fired, teaching his own things, an individualized tutor, the answer to this question is more institutions we can refor them, we live in a post-scarcity society, a theoretical conversation, how to improve the lot of black slaves in 19th century, it could be practical, its important that the students take it seriously, what money does, it’s important you gotta learn, kids who’ve been taught properly by their moms, learning is joyful, learning is wonderful, The Other Gods, everything is purposeful, it ought to be read, resonant, by Lovecraft, having multiple purposes in mind, just fun?, the fun came in the joyful experience of being taught, materially, Sirius enjoys audiobooks, don’t buy the product, often don’t, pirate, we live in a post scarcity society, knowledge should be free, no money, everything should be pirated, at no cost, this philosophy doesn’t distinguish, created from knowledge, they are the same, ebooks, your ideal purchasing audiences, commissioned audiobooks, the economic justification, quite interesting, Jesse is not going to make you a lot of money, doesn’t take into consideration, some are doing it to make money, knowledge leaves to the death of knowledge, freedom is restrictive, nobody will write a book, so what is he really saying, think of the long tail, don’t think about that, in 400 years you’ll be dead, sorry, get that Blue Yeti, haltered and faltering, rushes through words, Eric does almost everything, into people’s ears, ebooks are dying, paperbooks are dying, a superior medium: audio, who has opportunity to learn to read, gotta learn braille, sad story, Helen Kellers, most people, Isaac Asimov short stories where kids no longer read, perfectly like people, a disability to study old things, let her read, major disability, sound like a libertarian, argue with each other, Jonathan is more realistic and responsible, wanted to open a used bookstore, neither realistic nor responsible, small property, we’re in a post-scarcity society, make a sacrifice, money, kids are broken by school, learning is painful torture, want it both ways, to get the Jesse service, every middle class professional, be wanting to be there, Stapledonian paradise, post-scarcity spread-around, workers education association, you and an old book are your best teacher, show me one person that had that happen to them, they learn at home or not at all, learn to read in a new language, the family relationship would fall apart without the state to support it, capital, can’t afford to live in your home, sent across the country, a relationship between capital and the state, it exist, it make kids go to school, the laissez faire welfare state, Guardian/Colossus I can trust, how socialist planning would work, an idealistic socialist, planning by the people, a technocratic socialist, educate people into be awake to these things, state forcing people to do stuff is really horror, make the horror less horrible, if Will were president of Planet Earth, two colleges, Hampshire College, somehow you have to pay tuition though, did not thrive at all, Fordham, Jesuit rigid and structured, success undefined, own limitations, what I could accomplish, very experimental temperament, discuss books like Sirius, breadth of knowledge, politics and current events, European history, history of science, Colin Powell’s school, college and university, millions of hours being wasted, regular school, being babysat, always an issue, Paul doesn’t remember school very well, their lives are being wasted sitting in rooms learning nothing, inefficient, obedient workers, edification, lifelong-learning, how much we learn together, having read the book, now we get a great discussion out of it, richer and deeper, a relatively small group, everybody gets a chance to be criticized and drilled down on, we learn more from it, Will goading Jesse into it, anti-vaxxer stuff, bad new definition of vaccine, unable to respond, what can you do?, just do your best?, how the white man discovered inoculation, learned it from African slaves, smallpox, in Africa for centuries and centuries, Cotton Mather, Lovecraft talks about him, he wrote about it, this is a case of witchcraft, put too much pus in there, the new one is gene therapy, polio, defined polio away, the March Of Dimes, Modern and Pfizer, our theory is its going to work like this, 75 years from now you’ll be allowed to look at the data, very very clear, milking the public purse, lousy tech company, that woman who went to prison, Theranos, some people have died from twitter, quit twitter, forcibly having twitter injected into my body, dead virus, spike protein, you might want to read one of his books, you might find it quite moving, what the news said about Olaf Stapledon, [Dr. John Campbell’s youtube channel], pushing Ukraine, provincial health care system, trying to help people, also trying to hurt people, but compared, the B.C. government forced Jesse to get two injections, laboured into, took the hit and was lucky, a workforce issue, some random lady, no one else is doing it, doesn’t seem to be killing most people instantly, six shots, six of any vaccine, not a vaccine, that’s what it used to mean, different stages of protection, white blood cells and t-cells, when someone is listening six months later, teaches medical practitioners, pay attention to this guy, mysterious deaths in your family, doesn’t have an axe to grind, if you really want to know about this stuff, puts a checkmark beside each of things you’re reading, don’t trust the science, don’t trust the Moderna, it turns out that this gene therapy, don’t trust Trump, operation Warp Speed was a great idea, that whole ivermectin thing, propaganda for making billions, sucking money from government coffers and injecting it into private, loss of taste, paxlovid, increased your chance of getting COVID again, attack the body, pressured by Will’s dad, got his doctorate from CNN, brought to you by AstraZeneca, open to the idea, objectively true, Jesse didn’t change the definition, that’s what they changed to, it stops with every person who takes it, reduce hospitalization, reduced the amount of time you have the disease, literal videos, in that one instance, Fauci is the easiest one, the best example, Trump don’t know nothing, they kicked people of twitter and youtube for saying things that were true, banned accounts, deleted video, very nuanced, these are people who didn’t get the vaccine, the median age of people who died of COVID, older than the average of death, 84ish, how is that reconciled with what we were told, to children and babies, before the Tri-City News deleted itself, family court, in favour of the caution of having the baby vaccinated, a lot of excess deaths best explained by people, didn’t work for you either, the evidence of your eyes, a characterization of how the vaccine was promoted, make you less sick, after they noticed getting the disease, they lied about it, big surprise, after the Emergency Use Authorization, in Cuba, China, in Russia, the global conspiracy of not doing science is global, preventative health care, China did these lockdowns, hospitals being built, drones telling people to stay indoors, the ventilator shit, hospital workers, the ventilators were killing people, the disease crystalizes the lungs, weird lack of work, hours and hour researching boring little things, all the other things, David J. West, twitter guys who write books and have good covers, a little more successful than Jonathan, more prolific, a danish dessert locally made in Minnesota, palm oil, soy oil, margarine, glyphosate, not allowed in Italy, celiac disease and gluten intolerance, what possibly caused it, literal weedkiller, lubrication for machines, still available for sale, forced into our foods, find a vegan section, food minus industrial lubricants, we could reform the FDA, new broom, the changing perspective on how the drugs were sold, Will wants change, pump us full of toxic shit for cash, cheaper, pretend it’s fine, try living without these ingredients in your life, The Stuff (1985), this delicious looking thing, like a supplicant, give him money to buy some margarine, homeless person inside a store, some coffee, have to pee to much, hyped up and hopped up enough, in six months everybody will know, potatoes, it makes the potatoes ripen, a big fight about GMOs, literal provincial politics, I wonder if I should be worried about that, in the news, they got their way and now nobody talks about it, genetically modifying plants, sprayed with toxin for killing plants, you have not been genetically modified to thrive on roundup, weren’t as corrupt as they are now, when did you start hearing the words “celiac” or “gluten intolerant”, redpilled on smoking causing cancer, if it makes your body feel good, Canadian doctor, industrial health, smoke breaks, the boss can understand why you want a break, Ulysses S. Grant, skin cancer and lung cancer, maybe stayed out of the sun more [or been in it more], Lovecraft died of cancer, a teetotaler, sad story for Mrs. Lovecraft, didn’t die of bean cancer, you don’t read him for pleasure, a whole collection, circa 2006, a terrible story, people get it so wrong, The Colour Out Of Space, At The Mountains Of Madness, Suitable Flesh (2023), a body switching story, a wizard who’s been switching bodies, it’s a comedy, Lovecraft is really fanny, the film adaptation is hilariously wild, The Unnamable, Mr Jim Moon, hushed innuendoes, the Cotton Mather one, something had caught my ancestor, mixed marks of split-hooves, and many believed him, I saw it – it happened to me, it was it was unnameable, a little bit of gore, not pinhead style gore, a cat that got squished, people get squished, pure delightful comedy, so lucky, what a birthday present, From Beyond (1986), some people can only watch new movies, undisciplined, these comics are somewhat tolerable, reviewing myself out of reading them, a good podcast is better than anything else for drawing out, those don’t make great shows, 100% a criticism of the work, movie-tie in comics, I don’t remember Yoda having 17 arms, Star Wars output in the 1990s, coherent in a way the new stuff was not, we know you like memberberries, we’re bringing Han Solo back, to kill him, Princess Leia and storm trooper get lost on a planet, Starbuck teams up with a cylon, Enemy Mine (1985), a Christmas present, evil humans come to a planet, very Andre Norton but good, a good short story, The Beast Master, a tv show, her father was into “Indian lore”, needed more trauma to be more interesting, there’s trauma in this book, he had a dog die, thinking about his dogs, Navajo, genetically altered animals, a good pulp novel, not a big think, one note villains, the TV show ran 66 episodes, 2005, you hope she made some money, pass away rather than die, you want good things to happen, have their legacy edified, a good word, vacation being sick, complaining about being sick six months later, smarter than to listen to the propaganda, a new car, a new pair of shoes, you shouldn’t take the flu vaccine, hate to hear, shingles, people who’ve got the shingles vaccine aren’t protected from shingles, shingles can be brought out by flu or gene therapy COVID vaccines, I’m protecting myself, allergic reaction disease, another podcaster complaining, shingles vaccine, booster, the brands for the companies pushing the product, NIH, when Joe Rogan was painted green on CNN, ivermectin, public domain, reactivation, assumed to be significantly higher, statistically detectable, hypothesis confirmed, the more ups of your dosage the more chances you have of having this disease reassert itself, above median age of death, it never does come out unless you look at history, trying to hide WWII from us, eventually nobody cares, more and better facts about what was going on, look at these stupid things, still making money off of slavery, do you want to be subject to the slavery?, educate ourselves as best we can, follow the money, a lot of groupthink, go-along play-along people are not scientists, make their publications known, those people get kicked off of youtube and twitter, makes lots of mistakes, likes professional wrestling, he couldn’t watch the show, not happy about it, a pathetic show at the time, cooties all over it, Trump’s you’re fired show, cooties all over it, Survivor, fake tiki ritual, this is fucking moronic, that show continues, not everybody is intellectually interested int he same things, motorcycles, kangaroos, reading NIH papers for fun, I wonder what causes it, instances of people getting it, being phased out, Dallas Buyers Club (2013), the bad guy was Fauci, everybody’s going to get AIDS, somebody’s going to touch your blood, blood transfusion, I don’t want to die from AIDS, only game men and people who got it from blood transfusions, massive puritanical panic, garnered some control, cultural homophobia, who dies of COVID, ancient people, people over the median age of death, 6 month old children, in any reasonable understanding of reality, fear and panic are used to control the flow of cash, if you don’t play along, super-evil and very interesting, send a text message, certain cookware, dog shaped pans, Christmas Archie comics, not a big Christmas guy, like going to the dentist, so personal, Hanukkah, fuck those dreidels, go to the Chinese restaurant, ethnically, philosophically, we ran out of oil but somehow the oil continued, Masada, a good miniseries, stars Peter O’Toole, the ethnostate takes it on as a mythological thing, jews are really awesome, a lot of bad ones too, the Jewish experience in North America, the most Jewish person on the internet is Paul, kvetching, schlemiel, schmuck, sex based on, schlepp, sister lived in Israel on a Kibbutz, came back feral, a lot of cattiness, things that make you cynical, oh the scratches!, loves dogs, can roll with punches, cry cry cry, onto new things!, I’m still processing the trauma, I’m going to learn everything there is to know about cow breeding, how much overspill about border collies, only polite to listen, they need lots of walks, closing in on 5 hours, bagels with roundup!, find some Italian flower, she’s really shaky, nice bread, look at the ingredient list on the bread, that’s why I’m dying, The Cave Girl, easy to get people for Burroughs, a hard time of the year, Terence would have contributed greatly, Maissa is a cat lady but had a dog, everybody has something to say and a different experience to bring to it, the reason we do this, just listeners, beautiful, such an important difference, hear himself reading too quickly, how many people are listening to this from 5 hours deep?, how many downloads, onsite plays, wordpress, the files are hosted on servers elsewhere, most people don’t listen on site, Mike listens and gives feedback, imagine if there’s ten listeners, 50 hours of people’s lives being enriched, how much money it got you, even if you’re hate listening, something deranged about you, gotta dog pans for Christmas, demographics, people like Mirko, Cora (isn’t a listener), Peter, other Germans, Germans are very cosmopolitan, post-WWII occupation, only 8 more minutes.
Posted by Jesse Willis