The SFFaudio Podcast #872 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Hour Of The Dragon by Robert E. Howard

The SFFaudio Podcast #872 – The Hour Of The Dragon by Robert E. Howard (8 hours 56 minutes) read by Mike Vendetti, followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Alex (Pulpcovers), Cora Buhlert, and Mike Vendetti

Talked about on today’s show:
Weird Tales, December 1935 – April 1936, the chronologies, which order to read them in, the writing order, a summary, the first chapter, I was a mercenary, a pirate, a thief, one of the last ones written, Conan’s greatest hits, with an overarching plot, the Del Rey versions, an offer from a British publisher, in comics, the way it is serialized by Marvel the first time, very serial, the text itself, the individual sections, King Conan (the comic), Savage Sword, Red Sonja comics, Robert E. Howard’s horror fiction (with Cthulhu on the cover), Lovecraftian homages, Cora’s first Robert E. Howard, Conan The Conqueror, original Lancer in good condition, very very evil American trash, this is educational, terrible trash, pretty good, pastiches by Robert Jordan, committed suicide, every paperback, every introduction, 19898/9, there are risks, writers die of suicides, the guy who wrote Conan the Barbarian, the FBI didn’t kill Howard but…, Ernest Hemingway, two things, Lord Of The Rings, the phrase: The Return Of The King, an object that needs to be gotten rid of, thrown into the sea, hold up fantasy writers, polar opposites, low fantasy/high fantasy, the structure of this, the morality is completely different, contempt for kings, a king who doesn’t want to be a king, bother with all the Aquilonia stuff, reading enough of the Savage Sword, heads to North America and has adventures with the Aztecs, a novel there, Galactic Journey, Aztec dragon boats, Juhn Buscema, Ernie Chan, Roy Thomas, Alfred Alcala, amazing, Ben-Hur and this book, the movie, a downfall and a quest for vengeance, crawling back up, how Robert E. Howard wrote this, a map of Hyboria, thee same old map, Sygia is Egypt, Shem is Palestine or Israel, Shemites with blue beards, probably read Lew Wallace, he did, correspondence, did Tolkien steal it from Howard, not liking it, Cimmeria is Ireland, an Irishman, Asgard and Vanheim, the scando countries, fake europe, Aquilonia, Charlemagne style France, Nemedia, Zingara is Spain, Argos, placenames, there’s no Mediterranean, Kush is on the map, a tour thorough the Hyborian lands, a galley slave for all of 5 minutes, you’re my slave now, slave revolt, nice try, history as Amra, sailed with Belit, saves the black slaves, Conan is a good king, he’s been poor a lot, treats people well, let them worship their stupid gods, they’re transporting arms and armour, associated lands, Kull was a galley slave, a grist mill, wheel pain, to make Conans, a Conan factory, no other purpose, water or wind, an awesome scene in the movie, one guy on twitter shits on it, it’s not true to the stories, let’s talk about the Kevin Sorbo in the room, look at it without listening to it, it is put together like a film, the tone is wrong, Kevin Sorbo as Hercules, goofy, problems taking Conan seriously, Clonan series, Thongor the Barbarian, the He-Men, masculine muscular, the butt of the joke, a condescending article, slush for Strange Horizons, a rebuttal, academic scholarship, academic work on Robert E. Howard, too much, a pulp fiction “journal”, don’t feed the trolls, lay it out a little more, a huge chonky book, a great book, in comparison to Lovecraft, a sense of identity that comes from his family, a country gentleman out of time, much more unstable, aggressive with his arguments, a piece of propaganda that’s excellently done, Jews are just like us, a story of the Christ, Christianity is awesome, well done, how do I incorporate the ideas of Christianity into my life, surrounded by Christian people, in order to not be overwhelmed by it, a statement about the world, just reject it, ignore it, rebut it, his greatest hits, sell a book, religion, Conan’s religion has no substance to it, wants to be left alone, Robert E. Howard’s perfect god, somebody to swear by, Mike is waiting, link above, will leave a mark on you, engaging, look I can be in the world to, is this the only Howard story, we’re the good cult, dark gods, witchcraft with old ladies, she’s great, evil cults, Mitra, ineffective, share?, cults!, the Ashurrities, Roman era Christians, we got Mike, the movie with Charlton Heston, his response to Ben Hur, the chariot races, the galley slave incident, he’s in opposition to Ben Hur, all kinds of opposition, learning to let go of vengeance, suspicion, suspicious, played by Harvey Fierstein, Jubba, gender swapped Xaltotun, fine with the gender swap, The Spy Who Loved Me by Ian Fleming, From Russia With Love, loved him from afar, respected him as king, king by his own hand, By This Axe I Rule, smashes the tablets, no more law, one of the best scenes, the best Kull scene, a response, helps explain why it is a bit weird along the edges, so many characters who are part of the bureaucracy and power structure, a lot of guys who keep track of, The Phoenix On The Sword and The Scarlet Citadel, a woman’s waist, an early trans-person, not as manly as Conan, this is what he looks like, in what way is this story working, C.L.A.I.M., descriptions of colour, arms being lopped off, the colour of black lotus, amazing lotus, when reading Isaac Asimov, everything was in my mind, no actual description of them, robot stories, a black man, the two novels, The Naked Sun, American robotics investigators, narrating up a Robert E. Howard Conan, how long is that, 26 hours and 18 minutes, 21 stories, The Black Stranger and some later stuff, The Tower Of The Elephant, his best little story, magazine compilation copyright, Wikisource will have it, everything that was there, Robert E. Howard doing Conan, just so imagely rich, every sentence is almost a poem in terms of description, approaching a city, so much text, so flowery, this gets you an incredibly detailed image in one or two lines, very very right on, a blonde female, son’s fiancé doesn’t like blondes, Margaret Brundage, her Conan is the scrawniest, he’s not a skeleton, Robert Valentino Conan, he looks powerful, masculine, completely limp, need some Yul Brenner energy, laying down, we get a legit monkey fight in this book!, the movie adaptation, he’s sort of a half-simian something, remakes of Planet Of The Apes, you could give him a really good Thak, give him a cape, a gorilla face, Mighty Joe Young but a little small, the monkey’s stronger than Conan, he doesn’t say my guy is the chosen one, the son of god, or a devout believer, a canny survivor that comes from good morality (by not being a civilized fuck), being a barbarian, all the people who were sold into slavery, in the comic book adaptation, almost a wedding party, the Marvel one, Dark Horse, too asiany and too dark, the Cimmerian one, Aquilonina girl tied to an altar, the book is not about Zenobia, make the comparison, brass bra, in the sky is all the other Conan loves, Belit, Red Sonja, Valeria, queen of them all, Groucho Marx, in the internal chronology, the Aquilonias think he’s dead, no son and no descendant, sexual interest vs. moral interest, that witch with the dog, kingdoms, lineage, he has no heir, the whole plot is essentially about a lack of authority because of a lack of attention to that future, a rightful heir, conspires with the Germans, the Prussian invasion of France, you need to have succession, he rejects empire, it has to be the end, king stories don’t really work, usurping some guy, just playing RISK, someone is trying to usurp him, our period now, The Goblin Emperor, half-goblin, weird half-breed, who murdered, finding himself in a position, a good person in a difficult situation, the bad side of the family, William the Conqueror (aka William the Bastard), as you do, he has legitimacy because he has royal blood, he’s super-anti-royal blood, King Kull is also a barbarian, effete, the slight against one of the Aquilonian court, a description, they inherited their stuff, Xaltotun is in his tent and smoking hash, he’s a wizard, undead vampire, she’s great, more of her, cultists, Conan crashes the resurrection, the high priest of Set, he walks back into the pyramid, Aquivasha, also undead, hookin up and rulin the pyramid, pyramid and mummy interlude, Xuthal Of The Dust, The Slithering Shadow, they never go outside into their garden, instead of watching tv, high on lotus juice, slug monster from Cthulhuville, his commentary on non-outdoor work, being cozy, my uber eats delivered to the door, all live indoors, Red Nails, the one with the laser beam, stegosaurus, top 2 Conan stories, problems as a narrator, do you remember the weather you forecast, it just goes away, in six months, a reexperience of the book, a sequence of things, fathers and upwards respect, towards the emperor, surrogate fathers, towards a legit Jesus, generous with water and food, wants to heal the sick, wants people to be honest and nice, do the people of Aquilonia deserve Conan?, the hero they need right now, get some drinks, the gold isn’t power, surrenders, to the Nemedians, the knights, Provenance, protect the city, they came too late to the battle, they roll over, reading this again as an adult, 1933/34, Conan riding across the devastated Aquilonia, destroyed plantations, the utter fury he feels, the rise of fascism in Europe, hated Mussolini, hated Hitler, Europe in flames, the Prussian invasion of France in 1870, WWI, scorched earth, a conquering, they took the city, but they left again, Alsace/Lorraine, the Border Kingdoms, a German speaking minority, ballistas not canons, war devastation, the responses of the people to power, getting things back together, feels quite complex but the messaging is fairly simple, the driving thrust of the book is a series of interesting tours, the Heart of Ahirman, the most McGuffin McGuffin that’s ever McGuffined, The Fire of Asshurbanipal, a terrific one, a lost city, they find a magical jewel, a different jewel, more dangerous somehow, a little bit like The Ring, Xaltotun doesn’t want it, his phylactery, he’s a lich, a soul box/jar, hide it, keep it safe, hot potato, silly, a review on YouTube, it shouldnt be named The Hour Of The Dragon, a flag of Nemedia, Conan the Reconquer, invisible friend on the internet, a pivotal time of crisis and opportunity, destruction power and rebirth, the mix of the european and asian dragons, monsters, water creatures, they’re lucky, dragonboat festival, rebirth/rains, the guardsman of the king are the Red Slayers (in Kull), the Black Dragons, there isn’t a central female character in it, he sleeps with one of them?, doesn’t have sex, the original Conan movie, about to be executed, set pieces, puts on his outfit, kills the guards, rescues the woman, on the cover of Conan The Conqueror (Ace double), in any other story she’d be the love interest, Count Trocero of Poitain, he does sleep with her, he stables with her, in a cave, like in a manger, another scene out of Ben-Hur, I am Zalata, child of the night guiding armed men, the raven, not at this point, the answer fantastic, mounted the rocks, circuitous path, an eagle, an uncanny thing, she’s like Circe, she commands multiple wild animals, she lead the way, the great wolf trotting at her side, a narrow precipice of stone, half-hut/half-cavern, dethroned, now’s our chance to fuck this witch up, settling scores, the children of the wild are kinder than the children of men, brooding in the silence of glens, vs. city streets, my children, your sword, those Nemedian dogs, the foolish villagers in the valley, my answers angered them, you’ll be king one day, she tries to eat him or suck his blood, throws her into the fire, wow, scary, old women in Robert E. Howard stories, young maidens or ancient goddesses, she’s millennial old from Ancient Acheron, she told me she was 19, played for comedy, a very Kevin Sorbo line, her minion, damage from his face, you promised me blah blah blah, the line from The Empire Strikes Back, I’ve altered the pact, he’s kind of alien, when Orestes comes back, so much worse than we knew, normal good human ancestors, the absolute, he’s from Python, where they squeeze you death, resurrect a dead empire, necromancy on a national scale, drag the world into the past, the actual present world, really nasty strain of conservatism, make Archeron Great Again, Make Acheron Again, people rise to power for different reasons, it’s kind of an accident, it happens offscreen, super-competent, merit matters, you should be able rise, your skills should enable you to rise, king by his own hand, The Hyborian Age, the Probable Outline Of Conan’s Career, son of the blacksmith, in America you can become president, 10,000 years ago, Greek democracy and Kings or Emperors, the other direction, that tour of Stygia, the big evil snake is on the street, a theocracy, the Egyptian system, King Kull story, Exile Of Atlantis, fell in love with a Lemurian pirate, burned at the stake, he throws his dagger at her, Atlantis: I hate it, forbidden love, laws are against it, wondering about existence, really existentialist, no progeny, an analogue for Robert E. Howard, racially mixed marriages, Lemurian pirates and Atlantean maidens, The Curse Of The Golden Skull, Bran Mak Morn stories, a Weird Tales filler story, better than Tolkien, the Battle Of The Five Armies, Bard shooting the arrow, great incidence in The Return OF The King, I am no man, it’s a girl!, a thief sneaking into a temple, million year old vampire lady, a scroll, Jewels of Gwahlur, that suspicion usually pays off, she gets a reward (him), the opening, plot’s not super awesome, little short stories, details, the weird goblin people, that’s so cool, the powerplays, becoming a pirate again, bite sized bits of story, loosely strung, From What Hell Have You Crawled, bring back chapter titles, The Haunter Of The Pits, all comes together, there I won, it’s just over suddenly, him wanting to get paid, more words, Almuric, never completed, more Otis Adelbert Kline, Dennis Archer, went to Weird Tales in 1935-1936, summer of 1936, the anniversary of his death, the grave, leave little gifts, alcohol, he drank beer, leaving spirits, a Robert E. Howard bar guide, off twitter now, switched over to Bluesky, post everything four times, look into Solomon Kane, Conan as a character, Solomon Kane stories, more our world, 1600s/1700s, maybe this guy is just insane, purposely religious, African witch doctor, not Christian but good, the staff of the biblical Solomon, immortal vampire woman, zombies, vampires, flying monsters, innkeeper, the shortest one, Rattle Of Bones, Red Shadows, Men shall die for this, he’s like The Punisher, found her on the side of the road, swore vengeance, Wings In The Night, will they sell, a little cachet, second tier, still before Kull, El Borak, and the boxing stories, books about war, Ambrose Bierce, An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge, What I Saw Of Shiloh, All Quiet On The Western Front, Cora got PTSD from the movie, Through The Wheat by Thomas Boyd, 1st infantry division, the disillusionment of young men going to war, Jack London, the Japanese invasion of Korea, he liked being first hand, War by Jack London, pre-WWI war, that really amazing Jack London hit, Tales Of Soldiers And Civilians, too many people watching, dying but not dead yet, remember forever, vividly to this day, Belgium, much better balm, too young to appreciate it, WWI letters, WWII all the time, Dolce Et Decorum Est, WWI poetry, Soldier’s Home by Ernest Hemingway, everywhere he walks in the town, as if there is purpose here, a tiny little branch of hope, a younger sister, his only connection to not killing himself, the dedication, so powerful, captured the experience of so many soldiers all over the world, Erich Maria Remarque museum, cottage industry, Die Brücke (1959), The Razor’s Edge by Somerset Maugham, he doesn’t fit in with everybody anymore, goes off to Asia, told from the POV of his friends, George Time, stealing food from a dead German’s pack, a ring off a corpse, so many stories we just let go, the right questions to ask, Cora’s great uncle, born in 1897, WWI German sailor mutiny, locked up, home in Bremen, the Bremen Soviet Republic, run of to the US, died in the early 1980s, surname, want to ask but don’t, family secrets that no one talks about, Nazis, these people were bad, we don’t talk about them, German POWs, Fort Riley, a powerful statement, least of all an adventure, a generation of men, escaped the shells, destroyed by the war, the modern movie, completely ruins the story, a grunt’s eye view of the war, ruin the end, Paul gets killed on November 11, a quiet day, Wonder Woman (2007), Twelve O’Clock High (1949), written for Jimmy Stewart, had PTSD in spades, I can not go back there, Flight Of The Phoenix (1965) with Hardy Kruger, the bombing raid, I was on the other side, almost killed, it was a long time ago, Hal Clement, Gene Roddenberry, last time I was here I was bombing the place, terrible stories of the bombing nights, graphic descriptions of hiding in bunkers, an American airbase, practicing on the moors, low flying noisy miliary airplanes, born in 1938, taking potshots at him, these people, Stephen Crane, his graphic description, The Red Badge Of Courage, The Bride Comes To Yellow Sky, The Open Boat, Manacled, it’s vivid, an epic poem, Storm Of Steel by Ernst Jünger, chiming in, the most powerful war book, weird answer: For The Temple, the Roman sack of Jerusalem, the first Horatio Hornblower book, the entire collection, not public domain, short stories, C.S. Forester, E.M. Forster’s The Machine Stops, it does everything, everything was provided for people, the plot is almost non-existence, guy calls up his mom on Microsoft Teams, the machine stops, the plot is not the story, utopian literature, English 12, reading science fiction in school, Germans don’t use the word dystopia, Brave New World, Nineteen Eighty-Four, won’t survive reentry, the machine stopped, lost without the internet, our phone, my navigator, literally lost, try to by a map now, the B.C. Ferries are trying to make people reserve your ticket and space online, not the winged creatures, if it has to be online, no ebay store, amazon store, government services, reserve bus tickets on your phone, scan a qr code, clipboard, to use the bank machine, it is the machine stops, old/poor/homeless, really hard to get stuff, government service, access to the road, the Amish will win, we’re competing here, the Leigh Brackett book, really interesting, a better short story guy than a novelist, for a guy who only wrote one novel, some of the best short stories, also wrote a lot of poems, he’s so good at it, they just didn’t sell, here Merry sing a song at a pub, Gandalf talking about Mordor, he wrote a suicide note 3 days before he killed himself, more than once, a year after his suicide, so amazingly powerful and rich, that rich language he’s so good at, a Robert E. Howard movie that was funny, Dennis Dorgan, Sailor Steve, a Breckinridge Elkins is a cartoon, a dumb smart guy, Popeye style villains, A Gent From Bear Creek, they don’t advertize it, MFA creative writing woman, his suicide note as a poem, June 18th 1937, The Cross Plains Review, The Tempter by Robert E. Howard, dream away the ages, who are you, I am Rest, Alpha and Omega, lusted for the resting, set me free, this world of human cattle, long I sat, never free, huger grew the phantom’s figure, through the fogs of old Time came striding, gliding gliding, from the shadows into day, he put the trigger in the poem, why would you write your suicide note in rhyme?, because he’s a poet, a trigger warning, cause people to commit suicide, never talk about war, just let everybody learn it on their own, “died of suicide”, you have to coddle everybody, you don’t go outside, comfortably nesting, she’s a podcaster, she’s a streamer, Australian music in the 20th century, 3 viewers, that’s us now, a yard party, on this note, we all should, see you all next time, Mike is 84 years old and looking at the world a lot differently, a good morning/afternoon, lunch/dinner.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Reading, Short And Deep #517 – Chinoiserie by Clark Ashton Smith

Reading, Short And Deep

Reading, Short And Deep #517

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss Chinoiserie by Clark Ashton Smith

Here’s a link to the story |PDF|.

Chinoiserie was published in Philippine Magazine, November 1931

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Reading, Short And Deep #511 – Dragon On Somerset Street by Elmer Roessner

Reading, Short And Deep

Reading, Short And Deep #511

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss Dragon On Somerset Street by Elmer Roessner

Here’s a link to the story |PDF|.

Dragon On Somerset Street was first published in Esquire, November 1951.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!

The SFFaudio Podcast #862 – READALONG: Project: Earth by Philip K. Dick

The SFFaudio Podcast #862 – Jesse and Will Emmons talk about Project: Earth by Philip K. Dick

Talked about on today’s show:
Imagination, December 1953, copyright renewed, pirate your way, other stories, Rog Philips, Evan Hunter, Hal Annas, Salvatore Albert Lombino, The Last Spin by Ed McBain, initiation ritual, default, for Philip K. Dick, strong relationship with, rewarding, most adult relationship, Robert E. Howard fanboy, Conan fanboy, colour your relationship, a grown man’s passion, Robert E. Howard’s prose, unfiltered, infinitely rewarding, science and fantasy, which is it?, a trick question, a story of imagination, reasons for thinking it’s fantasy, references the bible, not a good criteria, what’s so funny about it, We Can Remember It For You Wholesale, no implanted memories, who is Edward Billings?, intentional ambiguous, the agency for whom Edward Billings works, could be right, The Rapture (1991), David Duchovyn and Mimi Rogers, the rapture happens, being swingers, the rapture is real, hard to explain, not science fiction probably, the way Philip K. Dick did it here, Christian adjacent, evangelicalism, millinerian thing, popular in the 90s, weird Christian novels, some kind of subgenre here, fantastic, involve the supernatural, god’s agency in the world, peices of media, in an earnest way, a Dickian way, bristle, they ought, The Builder, building something in his garage, the guy’s two sons, build that thing, sickmyduck.narod.ru, a great person in Russia, 1954

“What makes it run, then? I don’t see any sails. What kind of motor is in it? Steam?”

Elwood bit his lip. Strangely, he had never thought of that part. There was no motor in it, no motor at all. There were no sails, no boiler. He had put no engine into it, no turbines, no fuel. Nothing. It was a wood hull, an immense box, and that was all. He had never thought of what would make it go, never in all the time he and Toddy had worked on it.

Suddenly a torrent of despair descended over him. There was no engine, nothing. It was not a boat, it was only a great mass of wood and tar and nails. It would never go, never never leave the yard. Liz was right: he was like some animal going out into the yard at night, to fight and kill in the darkness, to struggle dimly, without sight or understanding, equally blind, equally pathetic.

What had he built it for? He did not know. Where was it going? He did not know that either. What would make it run? How would he get it out of the yard? What was it all for, to build without understanding, darkly, like a creature in the night?

Toddy had worked alongside him, the whole time. Why had he worked? Did he know? Did the boy know what the boat was for, why they were building? Toddy had never asked because he trusted his father to know.

But he did not know. He, the father, he did not know either, and soon it would be done, finished, ready. And then what? Soon Toddy would lay down his paint brush, cover the last can of paint, put away the nails, the scraps of wood, hang the saw and hammer up in the garage again. And then he would ask, ask the question he had never asked before but which must come finally.

And he could not answer him.

Elwood stood, staring up at it, the great hulk they had built, struggling to understand. Why had he worked? What was it all for? When would he know? Would he ever know? For an endless time he stood there, staring up.

It was not until the first great black drops of rain began to splash about him that he understood.

Nanny, do you understand, as a child, prized possesion, Hannah Barbara time travel bible story cartoon, archeologist on Noah’s ark, child culture, fun animals, the time that god killed everyone, a rainbow, how primitive culture stories are similar to each other, the stories of the vikings, natives in north america, Raven plays a role in both, spirits that run things, Eric S. Rabkin, a dragon, a hero has to slay, making his bed for 10 years, the saga of the Volsungs, particular spin, specific spot, shave away the descriptors, the kinds of stories, people are the same all over, tapped into this stuff that no one else is, no one else is like him, what is this story about?, about the Fall and how it happens, the inevitability of the Fall, who is Edward Billings, a mandate from God, an alien?, he is God, people he needs to report to, he knows everything he’s got a book, the CIA World Fact Book, how big the army is, how much literacy there is, briefing people, the good purpose, a crisis over there, eat the kool-aid, quite useful, square km of wheat in the Ukraine, the proximate creator of this set of little people, Tommy and everyone else on the Earth, Earth B is us, Earth C is gonna be the fairy people, squeaks and stuff, A is the angels, some of them got away, they did things, so funny, so silly in so many respects, back up this theory, what kind of genre it is, Edward Billing’s space, kids spying on a man in their house, the upstairs rented, kid from the neighbourhood, sneak in, to get some dirt, the garden, his eye to the crack, the moment of creation in Genesis, shapes forms, beyond the wall, an immense old fashioned desk, it’s been 7 days, his vest pocket, the great watch, naked and bleak, elderly bird, then he put his glasses on again, expert fingers, reared up before him, the typewriter, the ominous booming, insistent beat, him typing, the sound echoed hollowly, Prominent Author, dark and littered, in heaps, charts, charps!, astronomy, signs of the zodiac, chemical bottles, a stuffed bird, grey and drooping, greek and hebrew dictionaries, a bone letter opener, a wizard’s lair, laboratory, very alchemist room, flypaper, gas heater, a magic lantern, able to identify that, heaps, an image from his youth, The Father Thing, Scott Miller narrated recently, a horror story about a father being replaced by an alien, Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, a place of importance, a pool of sticky water, dried butterflies, the huge old man, gosh!, working on his report, if it is all metaphor, it has to be, Philip K. Dick rationalizing the events of the bible and extrapolating on them, putting them in their proper context, The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, the radio drama, the Earth is destroyed, the mice were the laboratory technicians, the dolphins, So Long And Thanks For All The Fish, a series of rug pulling outs, ok now what?, let’s go to The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe, hanging out with cave people on the new Earth, Sunday school, could this all be the explanation, we’re never going to know, the questions we have are wrong, two bad words to describe what is going on here, an Ark in his garage, that rain’s going to continue, only he got the message from God to build that Ark, a little bad boy, does this amazing thing, you can’t just take them from me, I have free will, race C, the little people, a very Philip K. Dick thing too, marbles, that was how it was, he’s accessed this memory, kinda like pool, you win, he wins completely, he has the spark of god in his thumb, what we would call God, we’ve made a mistake, we think of him as that guy, so powerful in our lives, the Garden he’s making on his deck, office/laboratory/room, bucket full of dirt, spark glass into red hot fragments, he’s tired, Tommy carries the bucket, these little people, their new earth, our Earth is their Earth, just the garden in the Garden of Eden, just that it be there, a myth symbol, making out his report, they had escaped, they had gone, his repetition, that’s what happened, they enjoyed playing games with this kid, he taught them, he prepared them for this, going back to Heaven, dazed from the shock, Project C was already, beyond control, the contamination had spread to C, immobile, silent, thoughtful, happened before twice before, each project would carry the discontent to the end, the evasion of the plan, slowly he opened it, they would all be equal, equal failures, they had clothes on, little suits of clothing, the same trick, he’s trying to solve these questions, what if this is true?, turn it into a cycle, resolving the mystery, religious visions, a guy who could have used that for evil and start a cult, he uses it to explore, how could this be?, is that a science fiction story?, not really, is it a fantasy story?, maybe, just for conversation, genre conversation, a set of rules or something, what stories do, useful to talk about, this doesn’t fit the criteria, there’s not consequences of technology, chemical, words, the questions that the boy asks of the man, where are they?, yes and also not, god is everywhere, you can’t find him under the table, is he down by the corner store?, three kids are bored, curious about this old man rooming in their house, is he a communist?, doesn’t have a beard so he can’t be a spy, the parents, you won’t have any dinner, a snake?, in the garden, Theodore Sturgeon’s Microcosmic God, much more explicitly a science fiction story, whatever institution he is a representative of, looks like a bird, a bird in the Noah story, is God a bird?, does that make Tommy the Devil, talking snake, the fairy people, isn’t Tommy also Prometheus?, he’s a thief, for a good purpose, he’s freeing these people, did he also save us?, an implanted memory, he once had a healing rod, the aliens who gave it to him, you saved our spaceship, be the hero of mankind, superpowers, project my mind out into the solar system, the messiah complex, Damien G. Walter, I am the prophet, let me tell you about the Mythos, the fate the Angels had happen to them, fairies out in the world, like Conan Doyle, cigar box, is this a great story?, interesting, a nice little retelling of the fall with a little extrapolation, the character work, they’re his, a very boy thing, the guppies that you found, you’ve read great stories, definitely likeable, at least as high as The Builder, more exiting things here and there, delighted by Philip K. Dick, terrific, better than Prominent Author, a joke, a meditation, page 105, that?, what’s in there?, they?, the things, the bugs, the netting, if you’re interested, a weird man, right before this, has to be able to run in case the old man is like a molester or something, twisted the netting loose, eyes wide, you can see what they are, whistled softly, “I thought maybe they were.”, little tiny men, not exactly, his rickety chair, a pipe, not exactly men, gaze down into the frame, tiny huts, they gazed up at him, tiny pink creatures, naked, that’s why they were pink, look at their heads, go get the glass from the desk, the technology, now tell me what you see, arms, legs, some were women, their heads., what’s the matter, a philip k dickism, they’re queer, they’re not queer, there’s nothing wrong with them, deep in silent thought, did you make them, squiggle missing word, they were lent to me, the trial group, very new, sell one of them, they were not quite men, ending in knobs, similar to men, except for the antennae, Mars, Venus, a hard question to answer, the question has no meaning, that is awesome, what’s the report for?, the thing you’re doing, how long?, that can’t be answered either, your questions are wrong, kid, getting near the end, he’s 11, what are you going to do with it, my superiors, are they here in town, yes and now, maybe someday you’ll…, by writing a fiction story?, it’s about us, I looked at it, about the Earth, you’re not from here are you, outside, the solar system, I can tell I have ways, what is it for?, Billings considered a long time, that depends on those, how Project C works, each project is planned carefully, “factors”, these guys are ents, new arrangement of the cognitive faculties, greater flexibility, lose in libido energy, individual experience, less stereotype thinking, a recipe for what’s wrong with humans, almost no dependence on innate drives, more adaptable, we don’t love as much or hate as much, they don’t breed like rabbits, they’re more Vulcany than us, Philip K. Dick being an autodidact, suspicious of the herd, situation control, Tommy was lost?, dim in my mind, wings, too much self dependence, pride and honour, atomized antagonistic factions, finished smoking, our first attempt at high level organisms, certain of success, group orientation process, the critique of this story that’s coming out, people are too herdy, subject to group learning rather than individual experience, greater supervision, what did the second kind look like?, this bird like man, associated with the wings, looking at God is a mistake, harrowing, you don’t want to look at me, cmon’ God, can I?, Moses gets a gander, the face of God, fractured away, self determined groups, instrumental in influencing, should have the exterminated, you’re Project B, final disposition, out of jurisdiction, the Vogons, no longer functional, 9 little people, not an Adam and Even, numerology, a reason for the 9, not just 2, a breeding population, suffer genetic damage, not equal male and female, they’re queer, can swap, a plan was dawning, rigid, rigidity, Roog, the garbage men are aliens, or a dog getting upset at a garbage truck, going?, I have to go, goodbye, you will, why does the old man want to see him again?, doesn’t seemed to have hoped, ruminate for himself, lonely?, to describe God as lonely is funny, why did humans create robots, they’re lonely, paperbag full of bottlecaps, bright yellow, pennants, groupthink, a team of people you don’t know, hockey jerseys, Evan likes baseball, playing baseball, a distinguishment, shirts and skins, which guy to check, on you team, uniforms for that, make it your team, stolen valour, reasons, William Faulkner really wanted to be in the airforce, Canadian Air Force, added a u to his name, wear his Canadian Air Force uniform around town, the main reason, cowards who wanted to have the benefits, a Lebron James jersey, cosplay, seeing yourself as, distinguish themselves, Marines are first in last out, esprit de corps, middle class energy, what the pennants are, Philip K. Dick is not a normal boy, the big dresser and mirror, brush and comb, they wanted to break off a tine, pictures of baseball players, a paperbag of bottlecaps, why he stole the people, the small radio with it’s cracked plastic cabinet, the broken magic lantern, his dad’s cigars, Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain, I’ll trade ya, Titus Groan, teen girl, leaves and rocks, annoys her maid, a fantasy but not really, most popular blogpost ever, a big chonky thing, 21 hours, very easy to be a Tolkien fan, hard to be a Titus Groan fan, feel seen, understand it, Tolkien explainers, cite their sources, media related, a movie, bizarre choice, true of Dune, therefore crying, a castle, one swordfight, a guy climbing the side of a castle, 2nd most popular blogpost, audience captured, small audience, narrowcasting, reviewing magazines that nobody wants to hear about, the typical paragraph thread, what was funny about it, how to search for it, tweetable, etexts, some of them are really hard, Chuck Wendig one, locked down, about that ip thing, archive.org sharing content, pro ip activist, bumped to a landing, stubby trucks, scoops, what the hell is a jitney, something to do with the nickel, unlicensed taxis, Lovecraft’s goes on for 5 tweets, The Alchemist, Robert E. Howard, from his perch, caught his sworddbelt, grinned his thanks back to her, Edgar Allan Poe, replenished my goblet, story about a guy who drinks himself into a pile of bottles talking to him, the Jack London one, Kipling, Sitka Charley, ye have again forgotten, the poor devil’s bliss, so awesome, he has the Indians speaking in King James, like Thor, effete, carry this woman into the Yukon, happy are gonna die, haven’t taken on the white man’s morality yet, typical John Scalzi paragraph, peanut butter toast, a peanuty smear, Hera, friggin, the mission critical world of parking garages, William Gibson paragraph, high sharp cheekbones, slavic faces, the reek, swaying train, a frozen park, a different kinda writing, Elmore Leonard, wee wee, the doggies not the ladies, he likes that, colloquial, stylized, Voltaire paragraph, Zadig answered, quite right replied the eunuch, you have seen her then, Herman Melville, Turkey, Nippers, other respects, a temperate young man, his vintner, brandylike disposition, potations, as if the table were a perverse, superfluous, Bartleby The Scrivener, Ursula K. Le Guin, until shot off, Chevek thought, assuming the latter, a pleasant tickling blast of warm air, small blue spots, Uras?, so groomed, ready for a contrast, typical Chuck Wendig paragraph, finding a toilet seat warm, he might find it pleasant, posteriors, seat of pleasure, worshipped by pink lips and tongue, salad, sandwiches, calypgian, rumination, like a mime wiping away expression, typical Robert Sheckley, reptilian race out near the center of the galaxy, Ian Fleming, a lot of combs today, you’re a good girl goodnight, must look my best on the scaffold, Ernest Hemingway, now things were done, he had made his camp, a good place to camp, now he was hungry, Papa Hemingway, a good place, same style of writing, there’s art to it, repeating in a way, not thinking about licking women’s asses, the last one, Donald E. Westlake, in a vocational high school?, air conditioning repair, The Axe, all those people are writers, in the same language, around the same era, the past is always with us, am I crazier or is the writing getting shittier?, maybe Ted Chiang will come back from his retirement, this concern that chat gpt will take over people’s writing, John De La Roz thread, pretend that Paul is a bad person, ai everything, time spent reading ai text is very long, need an ai to read the ai books, indie author guys, part of their hustle, being a crypto bro, political position, selling twitter or whatever, they can be wrong, delete would be better than what we have now, people who don’t make any ip want no ip, the regulations inhibit, under copyright, his children are elderly, copyright office, post office, patent office, least worst, everyone has access to whatever they want, illegal, hypocrites, audible.com, hard to extract yourself once you’re in, an Amazon ebook guy, ebooking compared to audiobooking, hard to know, used to be the case, doesn’t give your time back, not his best, for what it is doing it is excellent, good story, Donald Westlake, interested in the post, you can pick up any random pulp novel, you have to learn these things, digest vs. pulp, bedsheet, slick, early issues are huge, digest size at the end, more pulp size, hardboiled and noir, dieselpunk and steampunk, not cyber, solar panels on his hat, speaking from the position of any random author, Richard Prather, Gold Medal books, paperbacks, Westlake’s published in there, not a random author, a Jesse biased list, biased negatively, bias against, sequels after sequels, essential reading, throw on a Margaret St. Clair?, two topics of conversation, the only science fiction they’ll read, excited about an author, tend not to read the short stories, poetry, Shirley Jackson, her novel and her short story, 2 novels, unfinished, Dick it’s always novels, more people to be his champion, during his lifetime, rediscover Robert Sheckley, a Deep Space 9 novel written by Sheckley, tie-in novels, 12 hours, a commitment, 2 things in its favour, read by the author, apparently he really wrote it, if a man like that actor had success in life it was Garak, spoon on his forehead, Garak being gay, outside of Julian Bashir, he’s a spy, with a female, half-cardassian half-bajoran, tailor is kinda gay?, well groomed, at least 10 years ago, about the new shows, Maissa as a suggestion, written in the form of a letter to Bashir, after the show is over, inquiring about my health, a 12 hour letter, quite fun, high hopes, stretch out from the conventional stuff, can’t do Philip K. Dick every week, a good character on the show, a Worf novel, got the jist, his son’s return, a son from TNG, I don’t like you, he’s a man now, kind of a geek, he’s from Earth, making fun of him on the spaceship, Worf’s arc, the writer saying we didn’t really think this through, get rid of him, you’re a disappointment, fuck you, dad!, telling stories about the ship’s mascot, the swordbearer, he’s the flower girl, Evan got it right, the Klingons can be best explained as cosplayers, be more like goats and hit each other, where they explain it, virus or something, Memory Beta, Memory Alpha, Enterprise is not good, their culture is made up, a product of their history and what they choose to believe, it’s not genetically built in, get a jumpsuit, armour, spine armour, batleth, Batman’s sword, batleth?, Khaless’ batleth, student is here, time for coffee, on the twitter.

Project: Earth by Philip K. Dick

Posted by Jesse Willis

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

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

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

The Tissue-Culture King by Julian Huxley - AMAZING

The Tissue-Culture King by Julian Huxley

Abbie

Posted by Jesse Willis

Reading, Short And Deep #481 – What A Man Believes by Robert Sheckley

Reading, Short And Deep

Reading, Short And Deep #481

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss What A Man Believes by Robert Sheckley

Here’s a link to the story |PDF|.

What A Man Believes was first published in Fantastic, November-December 1953 .

Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!