The SFFaudio Podcast #860 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Return Engagement by Margaret St. Clair AND The Black Abbot Of Puthuum by Clark Ashton Smith

The SFFaudio Podcast #860 – Return Engagement by Margaret St. Clair (28 minutes) read by Ben Tucker for LibriVox AND The Black Abbot of Puthuum by Clark Ashton Smith (54 minutes) read by Tommy Patrick Ryan, followed by a discussion of both. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Will Emmons, and Tommy Patrick Ryan

Talked about on today’s show:
1950S, 1930S, fantasy and science fiction, a nice match, correspondence between Margaret St. Clair and Clark Ashton Smith, different, somebody saves somebody else, the way they are told, why did she tell the story that, resentful, the unnamed I, straightforwardly, the story is better that way, twice as long but less happens, what other connections do they have, sex and food and drink, food and drink and a lot less sex, a science fiction story about class resentment, a low status person upset, less intelligent than him?, less canny, less knowledgeable, naive, an ugly American, a sailor who has traveled all over the planet, how you act in Saudi Arabia, strictly by the word “information”, successful, a famous cook, makes recipes from the solar system, a really good sense of taste?, so full of resentment, on an airplane with a celebrity, docked two months pay, by being generous?, not mean?, a psychic, a comeuppance, has to go back every year and do the dance, porcupine people, hedgehog people, silly stories, with the lens of 100 years later, a little cringey, being a negro, overt racism, movement, timeframe, white people afraid of the black man coming and taking their women, mandingo, purple lips, red teeth, three inch claws, horns, a monster who happens to be black, an incubus, unnecessarily black, a multivalent word, an evil abbot, not even the actual abbot, we don’t need to collapse that valency, one is evil, one is defeated by evil, how this was constructed, a Robert E. Howard story, a Solomon Kane story, an evil innkeeper, lock this door, a house where they kill travelers, a Margaret St. Clair story that deals with the same thing, the Benders, kill travelers, a historical kind of thing, on the Oregon Trail, murdered their stuff is taken, are the incestuous, probably German, the daughter or the wife?, what you get in The Odyssey, cyclops closes the door and starts eating you, Circe, guest host relationship and violations of it, black wall in the desert, not a natural sudden reason, forced into it, she takes the agency and chooses the pikeman, funny hook or twist at the end, cut up his fingers, cheat each other, this beefy guy, the heroic work, he did all the stuff, Spanish for spoon [Cuchara], a big bluff dumb strong guy, wiry, D&D characters, a very D&D story, a oneshot, make the abbot a Drow, the dead one?, a black underground elf, African, they’re evil too, Drizzt Do’Urden, drow ranger with a panther, Gencon, a statue of him, super well known, deep enough into the fandom of D&D, R.A. Salvatore, accidently omitted Clark Asthon Smith, mini-quest, dungeon crawl, at the end of the story you have been entertained, that’s it, Peter Schmitt [@raskolnik2] tweets, precursors to Fafhard And The Grey Mouser, one of them gets eaten by a pudding, further adventures, disposable, go along and hangout with these guys, weird sense of honour about it, the dudes eat humans, serving them meat, strange meat, tuck in, they skipped the meal, they wanted to skip everything, the beer, chary, tasting the liquor, a potent kind of ale, baked meats that neither could identify, the effects of the ale, premature sleepiness, the eunuch, simba, enraged tembo, set in Zothique, dying earth far future continent, the black men come from the north, an inverted world, lamias are called out, he loves sex monsters, almost every Clark Ashton Smith story, fun while reading, insubstantial in terms of heft, ornate and pretty, a sidequest, shoot it, the animals are getting upset, donkeys and horses, is he bent?, the strange meats, constitution save, investigate, four pages of exposition, from the title of the story, slay a monster, boss battle, minions, the no shadow thing is cool, a ripoff of another story in Weird Tales previously, the same plot as The Tower Of The Elephant, a previous guest host relationship that went bad, stapled to a chair, a team-up, Conan and another master thief, shoot me again, a sympathy kill, kill this guy to help him, murder hobos, kill him!, he’s an evil wizard, sometimes the evil wizard is the good guy, misery unending, by the numbers, ornates it up, why did this story come into existence?, wanted to make a sale, enjoyed writing it, artistic merit, with the language and the immersion, a lesser artistic achievement, a prose poem, he loves poetry, poetic language, an ironwood bow, so cool, dark, incredibly dense, wood that will sink, why would you have that, material is superimporant to Clark Ashton Smith stories, enough description of the armour, chainmail and leather, enchanted arrows, bronze, acclaimed by bowmen, and all his brood, magic arrows mattered, special potions or elixirs, fell asleep, try to stay awake this time, the girl and him were talking, divide the girl, we worked way to hard for this and she’s way too hot, he shook the helmet vigorously, the forefingered talon, he’s cheating his buddy, dearly coveted index talon, what are you doing?, is she dumb?, is she not present, more of a chiding, they’re not bros as much as Fafhard And The Grey Mouser, the button on the story, endings are superimportant, inter-related, a lot of people on twitter talking about what science fiction is vs. what fantasy is, bad takes, fantasy and science fiction are the same thing, space and tech vs. swords and magic, an adventure stories, let’s test this theory with semi-random stories, like both authors, fantasy and weird fiction, main mode is science fiction, technology in every instance, a grandma who is on a return trip from Venus, a special spot nobody talks about, through the thief, bribed and studied his way into finding a forbidden city on Venus, a very Clark Ashton Smithy sort of story, on her way back the thief has a comeuppance, the sungod of venus, magics a guy out of existence, we don’t have perfect access to all of reality, worshiping strange phenomena not fiction, not wholly embodied in physical form, in the illustration, if you scroll down far enough, our cookbook writer being zapped for the first time, hedgehog guys, zappers on their heads, crests, even more technological than it is, tomato babies, discover in the story, the new novel thing, a really horrible tweet, too stupid, political compass with star wars and star trek 2 others some other fantasy on the other axis, a really bad way of thinking, the reason Star Trek episodes are good, later Vulcans go into Pon Far, space salmon, that’s the idea of that episode, his spawning ground, a cool idea, subsequent episodes that have that, facts about Star Trek lore are not inherently interesting, the idea that they’re going to explore, warp engines and transporters, when some idea inherent in them, split into 2 Rikers, what if your life took a diversion how would you feel, the transporter technology, philosophical ideas in a fantasy story, adventurey, Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories, how to be in the world, you exist in a place where there is a heartland and hinterland, how ought one act, from one cave to another island, how ought one act, lost the thread, rare for fantasy to engage to ideas of technology, Star Wars, second mode, replicator stuff, social science fiction, what if you live in a society that thinks everyone should have a good death?, submit himself to euthanasia, time for him to be euthanized, good thing or bad thing, philosophical dilemma, to get to that idea, Eric [Rabkin], along the lines of, what could or might have been, what could be and what could be the implications, what does it mean, a teleportation device, and human behavior, what does that implicate, exploring the human condition, does the fantasy story today explore the human condition?, explore sexuality, the most interesting thing in it is there is a harem that needs to be added to it, most interesting idea, here’s William Emmons’ little fantasy, a literature of pure craft, similar to literary fiction, what the narrative is doing, a very different mode from science fiction, joined at the hip, it’s metaphor, realistic fiction there’s no metaphor, Walter Kirn and Matt Tiabi, A Good Man Is Hard to find, a road trip, grandma in the back seat with some kids, an agenda, if I was a painter I’d pay that, racist, a reflection rather than a metaphor, a space sailor who goes on a space cruise, exhausted the entirety of realistic fiction, Ulysses by James Joyce, a roman-a-clef, every scene is paralleled, an interesting mode, Milan Kundera, realistic fiction is something, when Conan fights a god from space, that’s not the same as wanting to divorce my wife, non-genre fiction, literary fiction, in the book trade, market novels, an established genre, considered serious art, high falutin people, we don’t agree on what makes it good, a better wordsmith than Margaret St. Clair, sentence by sentence, better at ideas by a lot, obsessed with drugs, flowers and their relationship to sexuality, aliens that are not humans, they have some human like qualities, not considered intelligent, circles back on that, the official line vs. the experienced sailor, he’s the canny one, a third character, why are you so resentful, didn’t teach you this stuff in school, how much you don’t learn, bottom up education, top down on earth, kind of cool, very often the case, an aunt stuck on earth, a nephew brings her various plants, a response to the idea, eat whatever your parents give you, stole it from a chicken, the loss of the chicken baby, veganism, a science fiction idea, veganism, vegetarianism, health, things in animal foods, chicken beef or eggs, a lot healthier, kindness to animals, that’s huge, environmental, cow farming, milk or beef, methane, internal environment, external environment, third concern, it is cruel to be cruel, the act of killing, distressing to the animal, when these creatures are not considered human, eat their souls, the contract is not with them, it is with their governing body, the stewards of these creature, in loco parentis, the chicken dance, the flower dance, the point of the story, the heart of the story, what makes someone or something human or not, the constitution, not a part they’re focused on today, so messed up, women were not considered people, all personal, lust, contracted out, themselves lusty, personal stuff, not very high in the brain, literary fiction, double twinning, the semi-dead abbot, evil incubus replacement abbot, her own sexual desire, Clark Ashton Smith lust stories, lust goes in many directions, an exploration of an idea, an exercise in colour and scent, they don’t know what to do, ways of analyising stories, C.L.A.I.M. character, language, allusion, imagery, message, that is there life, allusion is the hardest one, on the planet, all of Shakespeare, the poems, how outdated Jesse is, that’s so old, how many things about, what words does he repeat, he’s great at it, almost always pointed toward message, she’s focused on some idea she’s exploring, look at this idea, what do you think of my exploration of it?, that’s not the best mode probably to do it, a fur coat turns into a pine tree, fantastical escape to a mirror world, C.S. Lewis, Tolkien escaping into a fantasy world, aspects of that, The Lord Of The Rings is not for the children, had an idea, a story for that language, create a mythology, specific to England, Arthurian legend, it’s England, there’s no Scottish hobbits, in the creation, fictional language, got so lost in it, a reason for all this language, a fun story for kids, The Silmarillion, in which to escape, Forgotten Realms books, Dragonlance, places to escape into, massive diminishing returns, Ringworld 1, Ringworld 2, 3, 4, use the one to escape into the other, very solid, you don’t need to have a series, the resentful sailor, so cozy, not really idea fiction, twig your brain, watching Star Wars vs. watching Star Trek, brain stimulated, older Star Trek, more recent Star Wars movies, does Star Wars scratch the same itch as the movies go on, the sequel movies, do kids like them?, the prequels, special effects, less for kids, the back stories, the sequels, Luke’s a bitch, Han dies, but Chewbacca gets a medal, go on to be heroes, the extended universe, an entire alien invasion, went and hid, like Obi Wan or Yoda, hermitting, Andor, the story of Stalin, historical fiction, empire people, everybody’s villainous, using Star Wars to tell a stories, light sticks, a sword guy, tricked with spaceships, that’s not right, we profit by trying to understand what makes something good, better and better at discrimination in a positive way, look for the signs, standard Lovecraft, standard Robert E. Howard, very flowy, you wrestle with Howard, you have to, the Kull stuff, not fully justified, his boxing stuff, his western stories, Ghost Stories, a ghost boxing story, he’s a really funny guy, ghost boxing, you get killed in the ring and you come back fighting, The Spirit Of Tom Molyneaux, better male role models, suicide, canny dude, sword into anything, there’s something there, what Lovecraft does that Smith doesn’t do, The Moon Bog, a pocket version of The Rats In The Walls, a story for St. Patrick’s Day, he’s dwelling on what it means to have a legacy you’re not fully aware of, race as a synonym for your family tree, mom and dad die in mental asylum, what does it say about me that my ancestry is a cannibalistic monstrosity, deep time and it’s connection to us, very unusual, Sadastor, Weird Tales, 1930, almost a prose poem, a fair lamia, above the sources of the Nile, the lamia was vexed, fearful of her lips, cautious of her embrace, mythical tears, the demon tells a story to her to make her feel better, a tale of sexual conquest through astral projection, he really digs lamias, succubus and incubuses, he has sex with her, make you feel better, a lot funnier, so silly, so fantastical, no humans involved, the luxury of luxurious things?, everybody knows she’s a lamia, hasn’t had sex in two weeks, Farnsworth Wright can’t do anything with it, Lovecraft Smith commentary, as hefty, horny and materialistic, haunted, one’s a drinker and the other isn’t, let him drink, he lived longer than everybody else, some good stuff out of him, the great appeal of his sculpture, back when he was alive, his drawings, his poetry and his prose poetry, hard to get people to do shows on poetry, epic poem, something of the Necromancer, George Sterling, an influence, why George Sterling liked him, A Wine Of Wizardry, liked to tipple, did him in, turn to my lady Margaret St. Clair, she puts soma in it on purpose, Lazarus, artificial meat, shown to me, this podcast, a topic show on something, what?!, food?!, in fairy tales people never say I love you tyhey just give you food, Ambrosia? [The Food Of The Gods], carnivores, all the meat is fake now, really good, speaking before a senate committee, the very idea people would consume the flesh of animal, really popular fake meat, cannibal, a replicant of human flesh, goes deep into us, the body of Christ, becoming divine, spiritual, H.G. Wells’ The Food Of The Gods, a giant chicken, The Space Merchants, aka Gravy Planet, grown in this vat, food is a technology, cooking is a technology, should we adopt them or not, ads for listerine and toothpaste and tampax, as a man, up in arms about it, yelling at people, a diva cup person?, silicone cup, a consumable good, use it over and over again, absolutely would not allow, the ingredients list, in Germany, no crap in here, processed foods, halal, their not allowed to put certain things into their foods, religious stricture, raw meat, raw apple, pay a little more, guaranteed in whatever way that means, sugar is added to almost everything, German purity laws for beer, water, hops, barley, sugar, that’s it, cheap, selling drugs, baking soda in your cocaine, filling it up with crack, fentanyl in their heroin, jet juice, sharing with his passenger, his zero-g hooch, his lips had drawn down in a sour grimace, a dose of picrin, so much worldbuilding, unpleasant memories, what had gotten into us, how the old man had felt, Tisiphone, a celebrity, fine emporium clothes, a wonderful batch of juice, biliol berries, martian fungi and grains, mangosteens, durian, cocla extract, away from the anti-gravs, cloudy peach green, under his bunk, diplitating kit, extraordinary, a man of taste, a connoisseur, a cookbook, you can’t eat the Jupiterian food, a moon, semi-electrical, tomato babies, what do you do when you’re at the market, an asian fruit, spiky on the outside, a really bad smell, a delicious taste, creamy and custardy flavour, very scoopable, asian watermelon, not everybody likes it, he asks about it, they pour him more, he’s mad himself, he seduced me, the narrator, what are you so mad about, McBreem, he didn’t mention me in the thanks section, Farquarson, he shouldn’t be as mad, why does this story exist as it was, some celebrity comes over to your house, he used in the movie, you’re mad at him, why this story is pretty good, cool tech world changing stuff, her interest in food, a fury, that fits, near the end, a non-humanoid species, Zink explained to him, the interplanetery, bindin’, a barrel full of nuclear bond glues, extract it, she’s very funny, a Star Trek solution, not word salad, technobabble, the way they wrote Star Trek The Next Generation, plausible, reverse the neutron flow, that’s not the point, the point is the idea, little subtle ideas about things, drunkard characters, the other fun part about it, he knows things, lovely jet-juice, the opening line, the ingratitude of humans, interplanetary units, fish a terrestrial out of water, a lucite spitoon, working class, breeding dachshunds, gardening, a rare bulb business, a classicist, wiccan, autobiographies, who is this author, introducing the authors, a homebody having fun at home, a retrospective introduction, the purpose of science fiction is to prepare the way for a global consciousness, good husband characters, married late, son by marriage, step-son, meet the author, 1947, Startling Stories, March 1947, hang on tightly, H.H. Munro, Saki, solid comparison, off and on, young sprout indeed, immediate cause, detective and other stories, rejected by a different bunch of people, a feeling that they cannot compete successfully in it, Kansas, propagated the carnations, low quality housekeeping, funny names for dogs, they have fleas like ordinary dogs, The Soma Racks, a sense of her character, shots fire by her in a letter to Weird Tales, Bobby Derie’s blog, June 1934, about ten years, another story by Edmond Hamilton, nothing but exclamation marks, flies in my soup, science fiction at its worst, a waste of space, vampire and werewolf stories, garlic is something to put in salad, a rounded jewel-like self-containedness, Jules De Grandin is a pain in the neck, Seabury Quinn, not what Jesse reads for, Fantastic Adventures, 1946, Rocket To Limbo, presenting the author, she’s got bangs, send a photograph, snapshots, airmail one in, meet a deadline, women liking to talk about themselves, fiction instead of fact, Frank Stockton’s My Terminal Moraine, Jules Verne, old Hugo Gernsback’s publication “Electrical Something”, science and fantasy fiction, “battle between worlds”, human interest style stories, turned to writing, “quality stories”, detective or quality magazines, the same kick, personal taste, a great deal of fun, gadgetry of super-science, the laws of thermodynamics, straight out of her studies, pet hobbies, carnations, flowering bulbs, financial hobbies, chamber of commerce, Richmond, California, if we could build a thirty foot wall, pulp writers, the big slick magazines, the pulps at their best, touch a genuine folk tradition, balladic quality, the slicks lack, the columns of The New Yorker, science fantasy fiction, editors and readers, tough PDFs, some scans are not great, readable, small font, Frank Stockton’s, a moraine, the gravel from a retreating glacier, the Rocky Mountains, the glaciers carve the mountains as they push through, down towards the center of the earth, a river of rock, gravel, millions of years old, buried underneath things, a recently retreating glacier, found in the ice, show you what they find in the moraines of retreating glaciers, satchels that got lost somehow, Moraine Park, they look like a river or rock, terrible, not on LibriVox, sell Tommy on it, The Lady Or The Tiger, leave the ending off, what do you think happened?, somewhere in the east, obsessed with randomness, behind door number 1 is death, behind door number 2 is, half barbaric, half civilized, just like her father, she knows, what is behind each door, indicating for her happiness or her happiness, a quick death or marriage to woman who is not her, half jealous, half nice, character revealing, which do you think she indicated, so well balanced there’s no way to know which one it is, not insubstantial, Recalled To Life by Robert Silverberg, another pair of shorts, record some stuff again, pleasantly surprised, the room noise, the narrator, daily classes, new stuff on LibriVox, more of an Alex (pulpcovers novel), a gold medal paperback crime novel?, new Arthur C. Clarke, adventure fiction with lightsabers, fantasy anyway, peace, pair something with Will, knowing what to pick, done in two weeks, two hours, Philip K. Dick, The Ship Who Sang, Ithaqua by August Derleth, sometimes he’s actually okay and good, The Snow Thing, The Wendigo by Algernon Blackwood, what would pair well with August Derleth, and then there were two, dm business, continue think immigrants are there to destroy my father’s mill, broadly not true of Venezuelan people, fleeing, megaprison, my favourite president, very Jonathan of Jesse, favourite president, kill the fewest, Carter killed fewer than most in recent memory, Mitterand, he’s dead, Macron?, executive branch, the king and the street, a funny weird twisted mirror, competence, not be focused on enriching a class of people who are not a member im a member of, things happening in the world, transnational people, abeing meeting in DAVOS, Bildeberg Meeting, annual off-the record, chattam house rules, Nayib Bukele, pretty scary, extracting slave value from them, Salvadorians, cutting down crime, if your news businesses, old businesses, French Guiana, Papillon (1973), if you had watched more movies, Devil’s Island, love me some human trafficking, late friend Gary, how to look for human trafficking, talk to the staff at the hotel and you’ll find them, southernmost key, Key West, Peter Santorello, Haitians, artists, a facilitator for ultra wealthy people to have fun vacations, aquatic sport, living his best life as he can, how Bryan Alexander operates too, Qatar, the best use of Bryan’s skills, kids not getting any tutoring, protect your time, drive down everybody’s wages even further, not serving the wrong function of your job, send French people far away, the guy is popular in El Salvador, prisoners, what’s going to happen there, bitcoin vs. regular crypto, Maxime Bernier, such a fig leaf, Wilfred Laurier, most don’t have French accents, also French, a way of keeping the Quebecois in, mostly a western Canadian, young manness, skibum, not working for Canada’s best interest, for Canada to live Canada must die, very silly, immigration, Alberta First, people getting upset, what’s the opposite?, fuck your country, middle class is kicked, not very American, or New Zealand, very pro American, Obama did the same thing, more spread out, copyright change, opportune, the federal employees?, Elon Musk, an Afrikaner, easier to get in, work permit, income comes from loans, a house of cards, still bombing Yemen, leverage with Putin, improving things vs. making things worse, an Epstein guy, Israel guy, look at the photos dude, pee tape, ideological affinity, mean?, lack of go along to get along, Ukraine invasion, the most recent one, it didn’t start in 2014, it didn’t start in 2021, use of military force is either good bad, liberate would be another way of putting it, North Korea invaded South Korea, puppet government in Ukraine, Syngman Rhee is a lot like our guy in Ukraine, the loser her is Ukraine, made the situation better for whom, also Slavs, Serbs, Poles identify as Poles more than Slavs, it’s complex, Russians in Ukraine, the Soviet Union, war is bad and kills a lot of people, Paul would have said, Putin could just leave, pretty true, Stalin could have just left Moscow, no holocaust going on, incursion into Kursk, repel the invader, what time you want?, 25 minutes to solve eastern european history, boistered vs. bolstered, similar, an alternative term, boisterous, colloquial English, Kentuckian, the English speaking peoples, WWI and WWII, the English speaking peoples, so many bullshit stories on when Canada became a country, we fought at Vimy Ridge under our own command, Canada is dead but dreaming, could be a good idea, triggered by border stuff, what nation states do, I like immigrants, I like immigrants too, successive administrations, cruel to them, using them as a tool, building a deportation machine, border security guards getting worked, get to the root of it, stop making people flee their countries, might not even win his own seat [he didn’t], People’s Party Of Canada, Canadian national identity, immigration, view all policies, platform, gender ideology, global warming, Canadian identity might be interesting, trap a Canadian, proud to be a Canadian, make something really funny happening, what makes somebody Canadian, not American, defined only in opposition, what are the French, what are the German, a sense of belonging, project, sentiments, trust and common understanding, gradually integrated, multiculturalism, the dad, Pierre Trudeau, Justin’s dad or theoretical dad, the Castro one is cute, much cooler than the reality, integrated into our society, with a distinct flavour, official multiculturalism, what’s unstated here, leftover fears about Sharia law, cult of diversity, pushed his ideology, extreme multiculturalism, quotation marks, no core identity, cherish and maintain, cutting spending, a lot of money in it, for every cultural group there is money available to help them celebrate, multiculturalism budget, Maillardville, Festival de Bois, party of the forest, innocuous, francophone festival, these precedes Justin, my son is Cuban!, blackface paint, tortieree, meat pie, pride is really scary, a sin, in the time available, gender ideology, next time, focus on the multiculturalism, in our time, a time thing, if Canada is a real country…, European identity, bicultural, binational, Upper Canada and Lower Canada, Ontario and Quebec, told you’re a citizen, Indians, First Nations, Native Americans, Amerindian, for treaty peoples, vaguely when WWII happened, voting, 1934, it’s weird, kinda makes sense, reservations, Canadian identity doesn’t exist, Rambo, Sylvester Stallone, First Blood (1982), filmed locally, goes crazy, calmed down and arrested, 2nd movie, boss comes and says, prove there are POWs in Vietnam, a big thing in the 1980s, POW flag, the Vietnamese and the Russians have been using them for farm labourers, betrayed again, betrayed by the politicians, goes to Afghanistan, find him in Thailand, the gallant people of Afghanistan, a funny speech, super hilarious, he’s an Indian, they make him into an Indian, half German half Indian, he gets a bow and is riding a horse, Indians signed up for the military at a disproportionate rate, fairly accurate, giving stinger missiles, used against the evil evil Russians, it’s all projection, headband, a little stone piece of jade, you take home to America, really base cartoonist propaganda, Germand and American, a melting pot, melted down this Italian American into a german indian, sundered from the land, Americans are not Canadians, institutions, the German country is bigger than the country of Germany, their sense of identity comes from Julius Caesar, showing up and talking about what Britain is like, a fun riff, Heart Of Darkness, when the Romans came into Britain, this dark country, everything that goes on in the Congo, the story is told in the time it takes for the tide to change, is it science fiction, definitely fiction, is it horror?, horror is hard to understand, is it fantasy, with that direction backwards, the terror the terror, the horror the horror, more than one movie, dying words, The Horla!, The Horla!, The Secret Sharer, also him, who loved him, that guy Joseph Conrad, Robert Silverberg, we could pair The Secret Sharer with The Secret Sharer, was he slav tho?, immigrant from Poland, eastern european names, Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, say their names right, Minnesota, Scandinavia up there, 1059, vikings fighting indian, runic stone found under a tree, did the go to Minnesota?, Kentuckian culture, really cold, Paul doesn’t speak to Will on bluesky, sad story, new Paul comments, hurt his feelings, gotta live with your choices, kicking yourself over and over, it wasn’t unreasonable, the irony, it all happens over hate for Jonathan, in disgrace, block for no apparent reason, Jesse is a lot, too many dms, at peace with it, suddenly change, beecome a lot less?, seems unlikely, new Jesse: a little, less concentrated, more diluted, new recipe, The Moon Bog by H.P. Lovecraft, ancient, nice illustration, fearsome region, all the peasants and police in county Meath, the frogs piping in the swamps, right!, it’s happening right now!, a nice guy to know, nice racist guy, just like Jonathan, funny tho, interested in understanding other minds, how dare you, sir!, he rhymed with peasants and police with county Meath, no one will stop Jesse, super racist, let’s read his stuff, quite racist, Koreans are pretty racist, Instagram, what you go there for, funny racism, kids are not okay, pressing the number 9, bye.

Return Engagement by Margaret St. Clair

The Black Abbot Of Puuthum by Clark Ashton Smith - art by Virgil Finlay

The Black Abbot Of Puthuum art by Sergiy Krykun

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #856 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Exploration Team by Murray Leinster AND The Velvet Glove by Harry Harrison

The SFFaudio Podcast #856 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Exploration Team by Murray Leinster, read by Ben Tucker (1 hour 40 minutes), AND The Velvet Glove by Harry Harrison, read by Gregg Margarite (44 minutes), both for LibriVox. The discussion of both with Jesse, Will Emmons begins at 2 hours 25 minutes.

Talked about on today’s show:
2 hours, Ben-Hur, Bill The Galactic Hero, Space Tug, tugboat in space, maritime stuff, zygote, developing in a womb for 38 years, Damien by Hermann Hesse, a bird has to break out of an egg, Ray Bradbury, most accessible of his books, The Glass Bead Game, what’s the cover look like, not a lot of spaceships and dragons, a bird, a flock of birds, a sun with a face in it, Æpyornis Island, accidental father, becomes aggressive, it is very good, H.G. Wells, continuously mean characters, not every piece of science fiction is equally good, better written vs. better ideas, a value judgement, The Velvet Glove, 1 to 2 ideas, much better in terms of ideas, robot underclass, almost like reality as it is, the robot meets a blackman, how many people were lynched in 1956 just for, if you have this book burn it, Scott Miller’s audiobook Robot Strike by Harry Harrison, the better of Asimov, joining this federal agency, The Stainless Steel Rat, first person perspective, pushed in to working for a benevolent law enforcement agency, subversiveness, the craft is a little weak, a me problem, taking his legs off, robot body parts, a strong craftsman, a little repetitive at points, he invented a world, really good science fiction for a bit, I likes bears, the eagle, the setup, the plot is ok, the resolution is fine, mutated bears, a value judgement, galactic manifest destiny, the problem with the robots, we become the servants to robots, how the two stories interact, the background, very minimal, minimal goals, wouldn’t it be cool if you had bears who were your friends?, swat her baby bear, many times, bears communicate with their fellow bears by swatting, how momma cats take care of their baby cats, make them run away, we’re lovin it, that’s the only thing going on in the story, needs to arrest him, illegally colonizing, keeps confessing to crimes, never a real threat in the story, we just lie a little bit on the forms, how we’re gonna classify you in the end, trick readers, trick John W. Campbell, a buncha bears, cool names, why wouldn’t I like this, goddamn big, goddamn small, a very goddamn big eagle, Sitka Charlie, Sourdough Pete, Nugget, Huygens, a tier down from Newton, kinda cool, famous dutch scientist, a hidden story in it, a hidden truth, what is inside of this story?, we have been entrained, entertainment isn’t enough, it’s terrible because it doesn’t do anything, you should read my novel it has power armour, the power armour is the main character, the guy inside, and the power armour has been dead for 16 years, and the power armour is corresponding with his wife, ‘I’m gonna be home soon’, can a man come home if he can’t actually take off his armour?, donkeys are not food, friends not food, food and friend, dogs not so much, mmm donkey milk, wouldn’t be cool to have a bear for a friend, barely science fiction, that’s the problem with it, science fiction adventure writing, dismissing something, wanna be friend, cool to be friends with Scott Miller and a donkey, Man-Hunting Robot by James Rosenquest, dining hall full of skeletons, chased by this robot, like The Running Man, joining the galactic police, galaxy’s most famous criminal forced to join the cops, subverting rather than joining, Ben Tucker’s good, very little to talk about it, fold in, see the hidden story within it, we turn our attention back to The Velvet Glove, Mississippi Burning (1988), Willem Dafoe and Gene Hackman, nice feds, mistrustive of institutions, gritty realism, didn’t look good anymore, a complaint through the grapevine, no teeth, no job, clean clothes, shoes that don’t look terrible, goes down that direction, when the robot gets kidnapped, plot shit, Robot Grapes Of Wrath, Brian Aldiss, the iron fist in the velvet glove, Napoleon, the Iron Hand of Mars, their standard is a literal iron hand, the iron fist in the velvet glove in the flaxen gauntlet, literally iron hands, from the POV of a robot, a way better than an Asimov story in general, the first law in the 92nd chip, kicks ass, the job interview, all downhill from there, the opening, editor of Fantastic Universe, the poor man’s F&SF, they don’t have the money, robots who don’t know their place, New York was a bad town for Robots, John Vennex, so excellent, he would have his leg off in a jiffy, old dead friend, Gregg Margarite, he fixes his leg, the light goes off, the comic strip from the newspaper, infrared light, an Asimov robot story but told from a much better pov, 1st person Asimov?, The Naked Sun, a sense of humour, smooth and easy, totally ripped off for Futurama, rusty on his face when he doesn’t drink too much, Robot Arms, a standing space, playing with the idea, New New York, a story with a story inside of it, robots are never about robots, they should be now, they’re about the division of labour, bro, robots get religion, the way that Philip K. Dick is much more exploratory, working joes with chips in their heads, the bomb and that boring stuff, a drunk guy there, almost hard to follow, down with the truck driver, black man being harassed for being too uppity, put on a livewire, he has instant recall, perfect senses, see things in the dark, a superman treated as an underclass, corpulent man, bumping in, saved by his employer/owner, right after the robot liberation from slavery, this might be a sequel to the robot strike, a loose sequel, the plot is crap, accurate, compelling stuff, hardup itinerant robots, what is this freedom, wishes he was owned, Harrison really had something here, financial incentive, he’s good at characterization, Asimov’s not good at, silly, a promise of more, he’s reading the book, back in the same situation, the closet in his room, please destroy this card after reading, any Tuesday at 5pm, a perfect memory, playing with the idea that he is a man, a superman, undercut by restrictions that Asimov has put on him, Harry Harrison has adopted, the society that he’s in, a forgettable Asimov story with characterization, should have been a classic for the ages, mass meeting, go on strike, one of the laws of robotics, any order that a human or robot gives you, shut down New York City, a whole lotta violence, human on human violence, the Robot Equality Act, drunk woman orders, a bottle of liquor, he couldn’t say no, Deathworld is good, The Stainless steel Rat, Slippery Jim DiGriz, in a fun world, light hearted, Soylent Green (1973), Make Room, Make Room, emotionally moving, The Senator’s Daughter by Edward Page Mitchell, Bill Christensen from Technovelgy, The Man Without A Body, Star Trek transporter through telephone wires, The New York Sun, 1879, 13 pages of text by transcription, Chapter 1, The Small Gold Box, 1937, Daniel Webster Wanli, eating a toilet, a rather elaborate toilet, googledocs, readalong, something Jesse complains about, walk up to a mirror, so funny, so bad, C.S. Forester novel, a first novel problem, you never have H.G. Wells doing that, in the glass he beheld, a perfect oval, short upper lip, he’s Fu-Manchu, dancing pumps, a pure Mongolian ancestry, this story is super-anti racist, but uses all the racist language, so interesting, profusion over the neck and shoulders, nickerboker breeches, intelligent good sense, an easy grace, the voice of his friend, how are we off for time, getting late, curtains, strode in, the Honorable member, prepared to conquer tonight, these frivolities, blush, infernally cold, it is snowing hard in New York, traveling at supersonic speeds, awesome, dressed hilariously, what a dandy, thermal electrode, waltz creditably, a sphere of shining platinum, that feels good, the scarlet bows, what would your constituents say?, th mainstay of the hope of the Extreme Left, knee ribbons, at a fashionable Harlem hop, the Bette Noir, this is very good, raillery, noiseless rollers, wickerbasket, the tech is great, so silly, can’t help but love it, the Contemporary News?, the Interminable Intelligencer, the organ of his own party, the wealth the beauty, unprecedented luster, stately wife, ex-President, sinecure, how funny the contrast here, set in 1937, bitter political animosity, just complaining about his now wearing a suit, Zelensky, guy who wears shorts, John Fetterman, slouch-ass clothes, when Netanyahu came to congress, the Israeli lobby probably paid for the suit, General Kwong, the defeated Mongol Vegetarian Candidate, the Chinese ambassador, strongly marked Asiatic features, the Chinese ambassador is probably a woman, this isn’t a homophobia story, little details, the Battle of Cheyenne, hoodlum fighter, equality of his racist, anti-racist in its racism, a Jesse definition, it could be a correct one, 1879, Chinese Exclusion Act, the ferment, far distant future, 60 years in the future, that’s a newspaper but in a constant flood, this is the tech used from stocks, a stock ticker, wired telegraphy, it’s amazing, what the hell is going on?, the toilets of the ladies are charming, the peacock feather train, give me a dinner, eaten nothing for 15 days, genuine science fiction, oh good, it’s not a small room, it is not hyperbole, the Mongol Vegetarian party, oval in form, a number of grey pastilles, candy, hardly larger than peas, thus do I satisfy mine hunger, vile and degrading, outraging the very laws of nature, the small gold box, with eager gaze, as if involuntary, Schneke, Senator Newton, no small sensation, regarding him earnestly, affected indifference, I think my dear boy, proceed to the capital, totally loveable, as being twitter, constant firehouse of information, ticker at the bottom of cable of news, description of the inauguration, so far, he’s a white guy who likes a chinese guy, very charming, this style of writing, this style of science fiction, owe it to Bill Christensen, science fiction tropes, interested in the origins, she’s an archaeologist, an aztec mummy, comes to life, never dead, suspended animation, I have no soul, come with me and we’ll suspended forever, sounds good, H. Rider Haggard energy, adventure and romance, funny intentionally, also science fiction, disarming you with humour, subversive all over the place, the ball at the capital, a brilliant throng, the rotunda of the capital, delectation, wall of flowers, D.C., not dingy, set in the future, worth noting, temporary interior dome, concavity, oppressive shower of fragrance, a single jet of water, flooding the room with light, as the light of the Moon, gave utterance to the notes, the vibrant tip of his baton, light and blurry and difficult, a contemporary conductor, live music delivered across the ocean, blocking the rotunda’s concavity, nice smell and music, the tech here, gave utterance to the note, so futuristic, for 1879, hydrolecrtic fountain, scientifiction, met and mingled, seized and led of captive, scarcely noticing, exchanging bows, accosted by General Kwong, the campaign of 1936, a repeat, he really wants you to know and note it, the Democrat/Republicans and the Mongol Vegetarians, February of 1937, a Chinesey accent, the senate chamber, retraced his steps, the other extremity of the capital, been there, done his research, all this walking around, the music of a waltz, several hundred couples, apparently an Italian, relinquished her waist, this story is great, holding out her hand, thank you Miss Newton, you may retire Francesco, I shall not need you again, bowed respectfully, this Italian guy, dismissed him like he’s a servant, wasp white ethnic divide, she’s in love with a chinese dude, looking forward to it, glided off together, slap, thanked her with a smile, competent professional partner, sit dismally around the walls, a shade of annoyance, forgive me if I have wounded you, there’s a story by Jerome K. Jerome, The Dancing Partner, novel notes, a good horror story, blood and dancing, a dancing machine for girls, what a blessing, unfinished, a call back to the time in which the story is published, hire our own guys to dance with us, not just progressive in racial terms, also in gender terms, absolutely insane, what he’s laying down, the next one is unfinished, he knows it, a feather’s weight, in society, in her father’s laundry, sampan, don’t you love this, as you well know, Jim, first spacecraft to land on mars, these Tesla batteries, reflecting while they’re dancing, not going to be a popular science fiction story, it’s amazing, an anonymous story, just content, my mom was doing your family’s laundry, isolated rural peasant, Yangtze, Deep Space 9, literally think, a lot like Gene Roddenberry, really strange, neat futuristic stuff, the tech, progressive gets a lot of negative material, that means he’s a shit, people being inferior is wrong, poppa?, tiresome speech against the vegetables, manifest embarrassment, trembling in my happiness, a conservative among the conservatives, this must have an end, an equivocal position, on one bold move, a charming blush, you beloved little puritan, honky, he’s insulting her, a congregationalist, as they passed out of the hall of representatives, she’s racist, I may need your counsel before morning, Massachusetts sweetheart, a screen of palmettos, asked him for food, bit his underlip, heaped with delicate viands, obtain refreshment, I’m going to ask you for a final proof of your affection, a wing of a fowl, a plate of fruit, I’m a vegan, the theory of your party, the political topic of the day, there isn’t a vegan party, demagogy, an absurd and sophistical theory, the radicalism of the rabble, capitalization, political right?, moral right, abstract morality, an upheaval, science and abstract Right, the march of time, his flaming eyes, she could not hide, his manly bearing, long hair don’t care, a beautiful toilet, a dandy, knickerbockers, a cartoon of this, every animal, most insignificant mollusc, children of the common Evolution, the great family, the Australian bushman, the ox, levels to this shit, so heady, is not the butchery of the murder, fratricide?, cannibalism, in the habit of long ages, Benjamin Lay, the nadir for vegetarianism, Hitler, a rise the 60s, whole foods, we forgot this was a big thing, making an argument that only science fiction can make, very progressive, modern shitty racism theory, that description of his body, he has little feet, so crazy, would you elevate them to suffrage, the baboon?, at least not at the present, the right to vote, the ox, the chicken, the baboon, sentence in isolation, hilarious, mind continuously blown, for the sake of a meal, how evolution works, we got there first, the pinnacle of being an organism, where uplift comes from, The Island Of Doctor Moreau by H.G. Wells, those are noble sentiments, the adverbs for everything, he said with a smile and a bit of sadness, they will carry the country of 1940, Mongol-Vegetarian party, a fusion between a pro-Asian party and the vegetarian party, the Mongol Free Love party, I admire your earnestness, even so much as a chicken wing, women didn’t have the vote, almost like a checklist of progressive ideas and tech, with your words still in my ears, a little fruit, the great mass of our party, this story is getting better and better, the laggards up to our line, calmly await ultimate results, how can we escape, the tree, the plant, event the fungus, who can say where vegetable life ends, to uproot a potato, to pluck a grape, to outrage consanguinity, the vocab of the author and the character, a duty to refrain from vegetable food, all living things are born free, is not that a beautiful thought, Canadian humour pop bands, [Arrogant Worms – Carrot Juice is Murder], must we starve to death, what a sentence, the small gold box, her white hand, it will satisfy her hunger, morsel, even if it were poison, nourishment, tasteless, 18 to 25 days, entire 76th congress, more than 20 years, handwavium, nice infodump, proximate principles, fibrin, albumen, by the old plan, muscular tissues of the ox, encumbered, back to the toilet, in the ideal form of food no ladies have to poop, no useless irrelevant matter, the German chemists, the fountainhead of nature, now shall the evils of gluttony, brother vegetables, now shall all this be, the lips I love, stockings have flowers, this man is so elaborate, funny looking, at this point in the story, he’s making fun of vegetarians, how can he be anti-racist and making fun of vegetarians, two things at once, too sophisticated, The Ball At The Capital, pills that are food, Mr. Wallsingham Brown, that Italian dancer, following you like a hound, her Mongolian lover, there shall be no scene, what’s his business, the wingman, racist against the Mongolian, inner party, a rich kid, he’s not from old old money, his parents had a laundry, Pennsylvania Avenue, the bowels of the earth, luxuriously upholstered, to Boston, a pneumatic tube, the New York subway system, the final chapter, The Frozen Bride, 1904, London Underground, 1863, Paris, he doesn’t invent things out of wholecloth, The Man Without A Body, why not physical objects, wired lines, everything in this story makes sense, even that is correct, u can live like that for a long time, still peeing, toxins removed,having some fun, reading it with a straight face, like The Coming Race, we don’t wanna kill animals and eat their flesh, a nice tree, as soon as you say: don’t eat fruit, look at me, a flashing neon sign, come eat me!, kale, cabbage, vegetables don’t want to be eaten, fruits want to be eating, “want”, evolved to be eaten, extend voting rights to apples, too parodic, people might twig to the fact, the suffrage of the succotash, the Narragansett word, before Lovecraft said I’m a native, The Dunwich Horror, bushmen and indians, radical, more radical, undercooked intellectually, doesn’t complete sentence, a short hard laugh, the lower branch, his colleague, the lower house, the upper house, the lower branch of humanity, senators vs. congressmen, Bernie Sanders calls it the House Of Lords, waist of the young Chinaman, because I love him, long afterword, after the story material, Los Angeles apartment, not good craft, that mirror stuff, it is funny, foolish child, profit in the least, sinister operations, deceives himself, won’t even say his name, emotional control, he’s so important, very patrician, as an honorable man, honorable marriage, with a sneer, a prophet, an apostle of Vegetable Rights, let him seek a cactus in marriage, wanton insult, loves his emdashes does Edward Page Mitchell, such is due him, I go with him, a lawyer, the Suspended Animation Act, surely you would not, inhuman, outrageous enactment, for a quarter of a century, Wanli swoons, he swooned, he’s womanly with that long hair, flowery socks, firmly set teeth, another kick in the balls, I will read the text, the ritual of this marriage, female person, maid or widow under the age of 30 years, registered consent, null and void, such parents or guardians, really interesting, marriage is controlled by the states, why is he writing about this?, writing for money, Margaret St. Clair, participate, Harry Harrison, Murray Leinster, other kinds of fiction, western, crime, romance, fill pages, make content, get content, he’s thought about, he’s a Walsingham Brown, laws against that, set it in the future, the punishment for offending is being frozen, since the 18th century, animals that hibernate, 1801, speak for people, for space travel, a gimmick to get somebody into the future, The Jameson Satellite, the first Heinlein novel, For Us, the Living, an evil story, The Marching Morons, not a Good story, an Evil story, the history of refrigeration, Cool Air by H.P. Lovecraft, when his wife left him, crappy boarding house, the slattern who runs the place, boils weird cabbages, an old Spanish man, a zombie, using air conditioning, refrigeration vs. ice boxes, battery powered stuff, first electronic refrigeration, ice truck deliveries, 1913, the idea, the concept exists before it is marketed, freeze people, such a strange turn in the story, the new world struggling to be born, what does it mean?, the cruel sin of the fathers, we must part, as if to dismiss, a bugaboo, 4am, arguing for 2 hours, as cold and self-possessed, frozen, he has frozen me already with his frigid heart, the 27th amendment, according to his pleasure, a means to procure divorce, not superlegal, freeze yourself, a right to put yourself on pause, government paid for?, pause yourself, so as to avoid paying alimony?, get out of your marriage, by going into the future, by waiting for her to die, how did this come up, invents freezing, that’s immoral, 27th seems high, shorten the time between elections, WWII or previous, change the salaries of congress members, Nancy Pelosi is $180 [$240] millionaire, the clergyman, the Refuge, the cloister, soliloquy, his life probabilities, the vital bureau of Washington, Lifeline by Robert A. Heinlein, the insurance companies murder him, cute, claim your bride, another Heinlein one, The Door Into Summer, child bride, frozen husbansicle, age up to “husband high”, tall enough to get married, Wyoming Knot, pale cheeks, womanish rhinelanders, very emotional, dissuade the caucasian, he’s got the tissue ready, fresh rosy, prematurely aged, sallow, flacid, a skeleton, a ghost of her former self, absolute suspension would be death, they gnaw and prey upon, the last and most perfect argument that can be addressed, what if you get ugly?, for my poor beauty I care very little, the little gold box, swallowed it’s entire contents, valances today, she swallows the whole bottle of pills, my duty is with you, the joy of awakening, you have a great and noble order to perform, I think your duty is plain, you’re important, outlive my dad, voting rights to cabbages and carrots, not to fruit, once the chickens get ready, David Brin, in the gray dawn, Cambridgeport, a mockery of grief, grave and silent, tearless eyes, sobbing, cried out all his tears, the congealing chamber, icy embrace, does it have a plot?, does it cohere?, withered husky, is it a good story, no, is it a great story yes, timeline, twenty minutes, typesetting, that tracks, a better science fiction than the other two, it’s great science fiction, completely nuts, gonzo, a real gem, his website has been around forever, based on his references, however long the internet has been around, the text is on gutenberg australia but it is not a reliable text, chronicle.gov, capitalizations and corrections, why is there no Jewish Narnia, what about…, a Jewish fantasist, this is not a fantasy writer anybody has heard of, not in the mainstream, even Tolkien and Lewis, Olaf Stapledon, and H.G. Wells, not submitting to Astounding, they fit, copying Wells, some New York Review Of Books, obscure, the idea holds, secondary world fantasy, a lot of Mormons doing it, the secondary world, totally off the radar of mainstream science fiction, died in 1927, born in 1852, an earlier science fiction writer, The Clock That Went Backwards, 1881, the plot of Back To The Future (1985), a Dutch starvation siege, instead of Doc Brown, Delorean time machine, the progenitor of the whole family, like Time Rider (1982), an excellent science fiction movie, it’s tight, gold to be mined, Tachypomp, Back From The Bourn, The Soul Spectroscope, The Exchanging Of Their Souls, The Extraordinary Wedding, Or War With Monaco, sounds good, The Balloon Tree, 1886, The New York Sun, letter column, handin around, way more disposable, done that day, save a newspaper longer than a day, on a ship, becomes toilet paper, with Weird Tales you can stack em up, participatory, magazines are more collectable, in comes the collecting thing, fill your bins, two stories in the official podcast, almost awesome, enriched, tell Meg about that, tell her the fun parts, bride getting frozen, totally science fiction, not like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Lucian of Samosata, doesn’t scream SCIENCE FICTION at you, the closest competitor Fitz-James O’Brien, weird fiction, in a proper sense, Jules Verne, it depends on the story, 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, From The Earth To Moon, a play for comedy, Stephen Leacock, The New Food, pills as food, a secret story inside of it, Jesse’s thesis, every podcast on two science fiction stories has two science fiction stories inside of it, Professor Plum, all the essential nutritive elements, ordinary article of diet, drawbacks as well, the smiling family, plentiously laid, the radiant mother, the Christmas dinner, resting on a poker chip, lifted the thimble, this is great, an agonized cry from the mother, Gustavus Adolphus, the unthinking child, give him water, a dull rumbling sound, exploded into fragments, a lingering smile, 13 Christmas dinners, exploding baby, a happy baby, The Retroactive Existence Of Mr. Juggins, make a proper handle, a sapling, sharpen up the axe, fix the grindstone, making wooden legs, a carpenter’s bench, never came back, metafiction, really fun, no name for a baby, an allusion to a real person who exploded on a battlefield, it by a cannonball, a good think in the background, LibriVox, The Tachypomp, read by Ben Tucker, The Devil’s Funeral, The Crystal Man, Back From That Bourne, An Extraordinary Wedding, 70 young men, a math story, for whom the limbs of heavenly bodies, spectacular stage?, Polyp University, two weeks where the story is about marriage, a lot of marriage going around, a show on food, throughout science fiction, superfood to animals, he becomes a giant, giant chickens, giant cows, go with The Tachypomp, a picture of a yeti, bigfoot smoking a pipe, a body cleaning product, pharmacy section, wearing a suit, a smoking jacket, pocket, he’s pretty cute, product design, looking at shelves, where the true art is, Coffin Crisp, Coffee Crisp, during Halloween, I love this, make this my desktop, Smarties, Mars bars with bats, the gimmick, almost all art related, Gaza is being holocausted video, a fake meat Margaret St. Clair story, a fake meat factory, 3 shill magazines, the sounds in the vats, tourmaster, made of the meat, fleshy monster, to be cut up to be served, a cute little story that addresses Mr. Wanli’s concerns, she’s great, funny and horrible at the same time, is it terrorism, video slaughterhouses, what a wonder, The Green Queen, bad novel great book, a Margaret’s St. Clair’s Magazine, Asimov is good, series sellout, a Philip K. Dick magazine, the UBIK end, have to be based on her stories, domestic weird science fiction, earthbound, stuff set in space, go back in time and marry her, finds the lady, Somewhere In Time, she renewed too much, Return Engagement, old reliable Ben Tucker, 28 minutes, pair it with another, voles with laser beams on their heads, very Margaret St. Clair, The Gardener, a creepy kind of space horror story, chops down a sacred tree, totemic guardian of the tree, she likes plants a lot, a trans story, she is telling her story, she’s mentally ill, her old wife, she murders that person, I paid for your operation, be in my alien zoo, she murders her old identity, published in nice editions, there’s no audiobook, Mike Vendetti, fantasy by her, they just stopped making books, someone has to create content, series, power armour book, an army of self promoting indie authors, Jonathan’s second Scandals funded, two good looking covers, pretty extreme art inside, made a deal with the devil, the John De La Roz crew, friendly with each other online, taking a stand against Paul based on nothing, Ben-Hur next week, very relevant for the creation of Israel, Americans who support Zionism, people have ideas, it wasn’t all sexual blackmail, Christian zionism, Lew Wallace and the movies, the 1959 movie, sword and sandal movies, Jewish characters are prominently presented, he plays Moses, The Ten Commandments, Charlton Heston playing Jews, just don’t hate on us, we want you in Israel, Exodus (1960), Paul Newman, set in 1948, all the teams coming together, a piece of propaganda saying Israel good, not a lot about the Nakba, what’s the lesson here, he does a lot of work to make Jews good people, very powerful looking film, insane aspect ratio, horses getting crushed, people in the stands watching the show, sets look amazing, the 2016 one, the CGI is quite good, point of view cam, bad dialogue, he goes to Rome, the Circus Maximus, chariot race, Palmyra, done in a minute, Jews are really good people, we really support Israel, the Zionist political movement, Camp David Accords wrong, it’s fuckin nuts, Balfour Declaration, the Rothschild family, Napoleon, mostly secular, ethnic Jews, Millenarian, a book for Christians about Judaism, very well written, the method of storytelling, second person plural, we follow them, first person plural, our attention is drawn to, an experimental thing, this book was bigger than Harriet Beecher Stowe, super-Christian in a good way, probably prompted, a Union Civil War general, Cynical-C blog, Robert Ingersoll, miracles are bullshit, train ride, gotta do my own research, produced Ben-Hur, the story of his beliefs, one of the few books blessed by a Pope, back when people read, pulp style, at least in higher circles, the American frontier, money, books used to be expensive, buying a book was no joke, books are all free, the physical object, I can’t afford that book, access to books, very accessible, they’re all cheap, Costco stopped selling books, we don’t make money on this shit, Amazon’s going to stop selling physical books in 2027 (except maybe as gimmick books), buying books as trophies, too expensive, too heavy, too big, you’re not a library bro, hardcover small press, tradepaperback, pocketsize have been banned (by the system), Hard Case Crime, the old fashioned pocket size mass market, had to go along with it, where’s your distribution for those, weird no longer mass market, extended height for no good reason, sit out more prominently, thank you sir.

Exploration Team by Murray Leinster

The Velvet Glove by Harry Harrison

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #845 – READALONG: Odd John by Olaf Stapledon

The SFFaudio Podcast #845 – Jesse, Terence Blake, Will Emmons, and Tommy Patrick Ryan discuss Odd John by Olaf Stapledon

Talked about on today’s show:
it’s good to be here with you homsaps, odd terry, just Tommy, not that odd, regular tommy, story between Jest and Earnest, story not novel, quite like, dislike, came around, comparing it to Philip K. Dick, who’s smarter, doesn’t have a frontal lobe, he has boobs, a failed superman, keep it all together, spoiler he dies at the end, we know that right away, what’s going on at the end, did Philip K. Dick read this?, doing a lot of the same things, The Golden Man, as we accumulate odd freakos with weird bodies, back to Terry, Odd Tom, a book by Koontz, The Crawlers, lifespans, an earlier figure, born in 1886, died 1950, 1928-1982, started writing before Stapledon died, 1935, where were we exactly, the superman the ubermench, 36 Olympics, Jesse Owens, before that, what was the world thinking about some of these ideas?, Nazis, genocide, Friedrich Nietzsche, amor fati [love or fate], pain and suffering, achieves joy, take joy in the pain of suffering, the eternal side of things, homo superior or not, the eternal return, the noble affiliation, not in the degraded Nazi affiliation, your fellow Jesse, hard not to use the term, that perspective that we now have, Superman, 1938, a lens from where we are, Shakespeare’s Planet by Clifford D. Simak, reaches out and touches the woman’s tattoo, living in today’s world, that would have been canceled, seemed enlightened, murders the policeman, find out about me, all the good I’m going to do, the treatment of Pax, she’s a cow, super-amazing kid, induced labour, in gestation for 11 months, bovine cows have very long gestation, silly stupid and important, mutant stories, golden skin, super magnetic to females, see into the future, he has no thoughts, his frontal lobes are missing, can anticipate all things, mutants that look like slug babies, aborted fetuses, parents unwilling to kill them, form a society, eventually an island, isolated and attacked by the homo sapiens, strikingly similar, these ideas are in the air, superpowers, weird features, telepathy, John W. Campbell thing, go backwards and forwards in time, psychic investigations, influence people, something like telepathy, when he collects up his crew, exterminates the natives, colonizes their land, how much of this book is an allegory vs. straight up science fiction, Sirius the dog novel, A Fantasy Of Love And Discord, a Clarke story, a joking answer, Stan Lee, David Bowie, better make way, more enlightened sexually, that’s in this book too, creepy, more serious, more of an intellectual, writing for intellectual purposes, make a buck purposes, more humour, more sexism, they both have it, the lens of 2024 me, Star Maker, Eric [S. Rabkin], gimmicky ideas, this can’t be taken completely seriously, what kind of abilities will man have, respond to Tommy and Jesse’s question, who’s smarter and by what means are we measuring?, Stapledon’s idea of intelligence, a philosopher, early adopters, Bernard Shaw, quite conscious of all that, after the war in France, redeem Nietzsche from the German debasement, signs of that sort of battle, in Europe, some of these ideas will be taken up and believed religiously, very intelligent in the conceptual sense, not cooked enough in the images and characters and storylines, Dick read Stapledon, Arthur C. Clarke was very influenced, the same sort of ideas, he read just everything, Dick came out of the pulps, there’s the island of England, he’s English and he’s intellectual, there isn’t as much crossover, A.E. Van Vogt, he’s reading the pulp magazines, not directly, doing the same thing, came to a peak, getting Clarkeian type ideas, proof of a real connection, presenting ideas in terms of breaking away from a philosophical treatise, Stapledon is only half-way there whereas Dick is fully there, obsessed at the end with VALIS and so on, the priority is the image, the character and the story, that’s how he vehicles his philosophical ideas, ideas behind his writing process, a more intellectual approach, up to Will to judge, make this about Philip K. Dick, Jesse maps, apples and oranges, different kinds of intelligence, very conscious of the things that he’s thinking and putting into his work, spirit, Will doesn’t believe in that, transcendent something, crisis of the spirit, a crisis of how we feel?, this about a do that doesn’t have hands and it really bothers him, we get where he’s coming from, a hypothesis about his process, very rich content, not always aware, Jesse now understands what’s going on, Philip K. Dick is the Golden Man he is the Odd John, what it is to be a dog from the human’s point of view, Stapledon imagined himself, at some points, an alien feeling, dissecting science fiction literature, the science fiction and fantasy literature of the Bible, what he means by that, kind of interesting, Eric and Tommy’s book club, not going to disbelieve anything, Scientology, specific Catholic dogma, there’s something more than just science, that spiritual project that they’re working on, at the end our narrator is hoping that they’ll finish their project, didn’t stop WWII, reading this as a parable, they make an eden after genocide, invaders from the outside come to their garden, don’t pull from the tree not yet bearing fruit, they’re naked, instead of being innocent, they know what they’ve done, these are evil people, in comparison to what?, the mercenaries that come to destroy them, telescopes and mechanical contrivances, the same project Jesus was working on, no more man against man, what he’s doing there, a mix, demythologized Christianity, affirmation of life, affirm the higher being, an ideal of Stapledon’s, our highest concern, our narrator, Fido, Pheado, Plato’s dialogues, brainwashed, they do horrible things, beyond good and evil, an attempt to describe what that could mean, allegorical, the same as the Nazi idea, the Nazis are deluded, these people are superior, failed, there’s a problem, a huge leap beyond human intelligence, hated in Dune, the inside mind of Paul, fused with the spice, mentat bene gesserit, weapons training, the thoughts of a superior being who thinks in language, telepathy at the end, totally superior but expressed in language, a human being compared to an ape, the treating people as cattle, the mom, sometimes described as dull and dumb, capable of all sorts of stuff, he’s action, she’s just making the home work in a mysterious way, the stupid question asked at the beginning, one is regarded highly in a certain class, there’s change happening, reading Stapledon, commercial success, more recent, Blade Runner (1982), turned into movies, in the consciousness, its important to get a stupid question to get better questions, always talking about novels, you should be but you’re not, his very important novel The Man In The High Castle, short stories are not well regarded, a status thing, our Fido character, damning Pax by calling her cow-like, knowingly writing a flawed work, Stapledon knows but the narrator doesn’t know that, Philip K. Dick doesn’t put together a novel this well, much better at short stories, novels are meditative, Poe, found it out this morning, the same story, an earlier work, canis superior, better than the other dogs, a better book, striving for the same thing, this book inspired that one, limitations of the dog, all the other animals, they treat the narrator as a dog, they’ll cut his balls off, we’ll do anything to them, church on Sundays, they can’t understand our spiritual projects, they’re mad, torn up the living room, tell this story again from the dog’s point of view, pitfalls, thinking about the sexuality that’s going on, homosexuality, jujitsu, switches to females later, everybody’s having sex with everybody, he’s trying to say something here, too Philip K. Dick stupid, not a roman-a-clef, a Socrates line, a fusion of Socrates and Christ, a homo superior we can attain, ugly but knowing about seduction, we did The Symposium, English respects the Greek more, he’s married, homo-erotic relations of uplift, Alcibiades, do you give up sex or do you sublimate it in a physical way, their problem at the end, they pluck the apple, a brief flash of the idea of this being the same novel as The Lord Of The Flies, how its forced on people, lie fallow and be fine, a curiosity and such, rescued by a British ship at the end, primitive communist, the horrible novel, to punish yourselves, doesn’t have the stamina for audiobook listening, podcast listeners, Terence’s comment is right, destruction rays, the original sin of murdering all of the Polynesians, conversations with the Soviets, do these other things, we like communism because its good, individualist communists, one of the real sins is lying, lying all the time, being deceptive, morally outraged by acting, so as to take your money that isn’t for entertainment purposes, are they lying about them being communists, throughout Stapledon’s novels, the official communist tradition, get his swipes in, earlier in the novel, fired for leading a strike, he’s lying to him, honest assessment, too hateful, stupider than Philip K. Dick, Philip K. Dick is or isn’t ideological, detailed and interesting, a specific attack, hitting at something that is more universal, what is being smart anyways (other than getting what you want), herd animals, wolves are smart, big cute eyes, puppy-like qualities, tiktok videos, replacement babies for many people, Glenn Greenwald, one of the moral heroes of the earth, a noble person, when it will be time to kill him, 17 years old, there petting, wearing diapers, great arthritis, talk about how intelligence is superior one to the other, when to put the humans down, going to the vet, they get the sense, how do we know who’s the smart one, they put themselves down, spoil the ending, they kill themselves, because they were homo superior, this is much more like the Heaven’s Gate cult, high on their own supply, smart and everything, not for our benefit, we’re on a project, reasons to do it, so, bye, I kinda wanna die with you, what’s going on?, these are not creatures looking down on us fondly, ambiguous or ambivalent, doesn’t hold together, moral supremacy, vaguely bad internet, moral supremacy falls flat, we can’t see it, we can’t understand because we’re homo sapiens, we can’t know him, to be the subject of a story, they murder a lot, suicide for their own benefit somehow, why kill themselves, you need an end to the book, a dark end, railed out of society, the author doesn’t do that, something missing, in the title, the life of Christ, impressing the elders, the temptation in the wilderness, John the Baptist, a preliminary sketch of homo superior in flourished form, a connection with daily life on planet Earth, Star Maker, the cosmic vision, Atlantis sinking beneath the sea, transcendence and imminence, do the bridge, a sketch of what homo superior could be, seems like Jesus, the forerunner, the precursor, the voice in the wilderness, more to tackle, Clark Kent yet to come, they can’t uplift themselves, the wolf boy, Hayy Ibn Yaqdhan by Ibn Tufail, the Egyptian, praise of Allah, becomes like him, Jacquline, that lifespan thing, us being dogs to them, having a dog is intrinsically associating with death, to treat it like your child, you might want to die, setting yourself for tragedy, the long lived elves in Tolkien, Tommy’s mind is mapped, the Dresden Files, Highlanders, the antediluvians, Methuselah, vampires, 1000 years old, Will’s art piece, a pug Cerberus, why are they so long lived?, magical powers like wizards, The X-Men, Wolverine is immortal, neoteny, we are intelligence because we stay in the womb long and we’re still not fully formed, the infancy is a lot longer as well, his precociousness is evil, the word naughty as opposed to evil, licked all the butter, he’s not going to live that long anyway, be more careful, confront the child about the cookies, you’ve been naughty, overindulge in cookies, set aside some cookies, this is a time for us to fight, you need to be corrected, whatever its for he kills a policeman, malice aforethought, studied for no good reason, of adult mind tried as adults, his level, he’s also a juvenile, precocious things, who hasn’t burglarized neighbours homes?, semi-rhetorically and for jokes, kill his wife at home because she’ll be sad without him, nephews 8 and 10, a 4th grade class, 9 year olds, self-aware, they know what’s going on, cookie jar metaphor, food fight, Eric says it, when you give your dog food it means I love you, the corpse of an animal, cats are better about that, capable of this act, kids doing violence, rational and cold, really disturbing, the inner workings of Odd John, emotionally or spiritually, he ought to be tried as an adult, bright 9 year olds, what a kid is capable of, he doesn’t overpower the policeman, kill the guy in a fight, studied anatomy, small for a 9 year old, when the cop caught him, a childhood prank, the exercise of that new found powers, when little kids do bad things, do we throw them away, set outside of society as a punishment, not suitable for among us, after a certain point, you’re not reformable, prison is for you now, schizophrenic, age out, mid 30s declines, there’s a logical chain to it, extra explosion of testosterone, aggressive tendencies, starting wars, is there really a point where we get less violent?, a lot less violent, diplomacy or good upbringing, diffusing situations, avoiding situations, also Thomas Ryan, looking for fights, they would fight club, its programmed in, a huge effort in society, an instinct for violence, self-defense, this other instinct to dig and build, the only reliable person on this podcast, hear everything there is to be said before Will’s response, the wise man at the end of time, the being that only suffers, doesn’t like to think about it, think about that being a lot, persuade us, natural normal and ineradicable, self-defense, internecine warfare, what violence is, AOC says those words a violence, in the context, playing chess, get to the language of it, metaphorically judo-flip you, call it violence, we gone of from there, ingroup outgroup stuff, we killed a deer in the woods, we might dispute, which group gets to divide the food, scarcity was a big thing, when capitalist arrange thing, you keep the thighs, the older hunters should, where soccer is super-popular, male spectators, a special age range, guy is digging some tunnels, they work together to build something, two real instincts, land reform is needed, force of violence will prevent digging, the violence is amped up, the Minecraft instinct, and the first person shooters, one is amped up and one is reduced, run the media, not representative of humanity, Jesse is more or less human, the appeal of both, a judo match, imprimatur for use of evolution, one of the scientific world building principles, wary of adopting a naive idea of evolution, instincts, and human nature, what Christopher Tolkien does, worth studying by someone, more to say, riff, improving through evolution, not a great science fiction concept, More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon, what’s the point of this?, war and fascism bad, pot-shots in, an essential idea, as a religious idea, a fanatical way, he’s on to something there, correctly observes, avoid all these bad things, pessimistic, we don’t have the hardware not to plunge into war and fascism, not scientifically supportable, not a useful intervention, we need to morally evolve, maybe biology can do it for us, a miracle, the ghost of Walt Disney, who liked the book, who disliked the book, push the discussion forward, his weakest effort, those stories managed to be compelling, Chris Claremont, high end stuff, University of Michigan, short and furry all over, a sympathetic character, having respect for Wolverine, he has a good heart, kinda savage, Cyclops is a total douchebag, a non-entity, they’re all suffering, Tommy is Wolverine, Nightcrawler, who are you?, weirdly popular, knives in his hands, wanna be Beast, Terry and the Pirates, when they came out, before Wolverine got in, Beast and Cyclops, before he turned Blue, the evolution continued, pleasure in the X-Men, the sinking of the island of Genosha, X-Men Annual 1, the same as this book, a million connections, an X-Men reveal part, take guesses, Magneto, Gambit, Canada is like France, Juggernaut, Professor X, school, Jesse is Jubilee, a late addition, sparkles is her superpowers, technically, more like Dazzler, two cabinets connected, six playable character, sympathy for Colossus, shooting them with your eye vision, Alpha Flight, Gaurdian and Vindicator, Sasquatch, Shaman, Chinese American girl, wapping up with a deep X-Men discussion, a good late take, this idea of human evoltuion is persistent, Joe Rogan, a popular idea that’s persistent, better than is done in Slan, the similarity to the idea of Slan, The Midwich Cuckoos, either Dick or Stapledon, not human, more alien in the sense of estrangement, one of the definitions of science fiction, how does Pax feel?, he sent visions of it, he kept her updated, mom, making a giant ray, postcard to her mom, nods sagely, some milk squirts out, emotional intelligence, the meditation model, the surrender model, Islam is surrender, I affirm the ending, the gap between and Stapledon and other people’s intelligence, a precocious boy, read a lot, what we see of this character, basing it on himself, the gap between him and other people around him, trying to communicate that, a gap between him and women that we see in Sirius, Plaxxy, it’s close, good call, the female is less well laid out, the gap between a dumb man and a smart man, whatever smart means, one of Tommy’s notes, Stapledon stand-in, a highly intelligent person, him being a consciousness objector during the first WWI, people just generally go along with whatever, does he have a religious excuse?, no, Bertrand Russell, ultimately is dumb, who he based John on, not easy to track down, Ludwig Wittgenstein, tortured genius, live in a cabin by himself, children in a peasant village, a new paradigm, take Odd John as a figure of a philosopher, some of his evolution, Wittgenstein’s 1st masterwork, 1922, a professorship at Cambridge, the legend around Wittgenstein, a vibe, a lot of the people are the same, Arthur C. Clarke, not normal people, they come up with their own ideology, they don’t subscribe to a system, he treats dialectical materialism like its God, an army vs. an individual, over time, one eye bigger than the other, African features, playing with something, things from their bellies, communists of somekind, bam done, couple of minutes, one more X-Men reference, H.G. Wells, the Morlocks, Nightcrawler, they all look weird, the old cartoon, a lady who looked like a baglady, they become less ugly as he looks at them, these other beautiful women, less pretty after her, when you look at your own dog, objectively that’s a beautiful dog, they are different species, bigger brains, bigger eyes, the H.G. Wells man of the future, nutriments through their skin, The War Of The Worlds aliens, grew up reading Wells, the sublime and the beautiful, the sublime in some ways trumps beauty, vaster and infinite, disproportioned, that’s a mess but more profound or impressive, Kant’s critique of judgement, back to Socrates again, the most beautiful guy in town, so much written in the X-Men, Caliban from The Tempest, Ganymede was a girl, in mythology, one of the cupbearers of Jupiter and his catamite, making a quadrilogy of the great mutant writers, doing a lot of good work, they’re not even called mutants, when it comes out, the word isn’t used, a sport of nature, early 20th century, sport?, a mutant, a freak of nature, good news old sport, good news old mutant, a dwarf Alberta spruce, reversion to the normal type, retained it, how does he produce the concept without the world, on faded page, sporting point, an ancestor, original mutation, they gave him opportunities, John’s a great little sport now, John’s a dear these days, very cute, 16 times, he’s clever, upset with the book, annoyed with it, disappointed than anything else, he does do better, you can go that way, not as powerful, Sirius is weird, dog/woman love, in companionship to each other, mutant and homo superior shit is stupid, ais, will they eliminate us?, what is intelligence, biological, the great replacement, how humans are creating their replacements, Battlestar Galactica with the cylons, really good and very fun, ultimately, Ronald D. Moore, a good solution to the problem, integrated with humanity?, they’re not really superior, photocopiable, an emotional exercise, when Philip K. Dick tackles it, if this goes on, he doesn’t end it with a suicide, it was all a dream, the island blows up and sinks, a cop out ending, I don’t know how to finish the book, how does Sirius end?, a vigilante gang, being very smart and being interested in suicide, you guys know about this?, from the Cross Plains Review, June 18th 1937, The Tempter by Robert E. Howard, who are you?, Alpha and Omeger, which Hagar, biblical, men call me Suicide, lusted for the resting as a lover for his bride, this world of human cattle, o’er the paths that I had wandered, pressed the trigger, my soul went gliding gliding, good smart boy, 2 days before he shot himself, the word cattle in there, a smart smart guy, isolated, surrounded by regular folks, a struggling writer, maybe all men consider at some point, pretty rare, teens a lot more, shownotes, an idea or a name, shied away from in modern talk, “put to sleep”, switch to bluesky, Gaza pictures with childrens’ heads blown off, scary descriptions, people’s dumb ideas about, floating around this planet for 7 or so decades, Albert Camus, the only philosophical question, Sisyphus is happy, The Host, very good for a mimetic story, Algeria, take care of a prisoner, meet some Berbers, not enough science fiction, another planet, make the main character a robot, more into science fiction, the robot makes it timeless, a play, Dirty Hands by Jean-Paul Sartre, heart failure, bad revolutionaries but good assassins, the narcissism of the deed, is this an op, calling for Luigi with Bat-Signal, the ops are in every direction, why did the FBI do January 6th?, against the assassination of trump buy for Luigi, yes of that dude, the place but not the person, capitalism would wake up tomorrow, there are bad actors, there are good actors, what he represents in his job, more security for CEOs, might backfire, was he insured?, buy a new CEO, estranged, 2 things going on, Luigi the hero, Luigi the folkhero, the guy who actually shot the dude, Luigi was probably the guy who shot the dude, carrying the manifesto, we’ll see, more video, people killing each other, news analysis video, a viewing room, this would not have been shown, censored as well, a pushing back of the barriers of what is horrible, videos of torture, seeing corpses, seeing someone shoot someone in cold blood, censored, Mirko in Germany, why retweet?, it is because it is horrifying and hard to look at, consensus tweeting, really twisted porn, something governments are supporting and we should know about, of course they don’t want to see it, we should stop this, it’ll go away, hey, that’s wrong, a bigger movement of people, fake or real Luigi Mangione, what do you do about Zionism, ideological, we could displace them but there’d be questions, that’s evil, he tries to make the case with the Fido narrator, just is evil, we are superior beings because we have superior lives, don’t accept the premise, Jews live outside of Israel, Iran has Jews, the idea of Zionism precedes the Holocaust but benefited from the propaganda of the Holocaust, forces that want to keep it going, hasn’t solved anything, we’re having a spiritual crisis, overly dense, wait a second, forgetting Hegel, moving forward, crises, collective conflicts, the objective, this funny thing, sing the praises of the creator, a transcendent spirit, something wrong with the book, post-protestant thing, he needs there to be a Star Maker, agnostics, wonder, awe, reverence, we can’t call it the Creation, make the atomic motor work, the Manhattan Project, how to make atomic energy, this panpsychic thing, they no longer obey causality, intuiting some sort of quantum idea, you could rewrite it, except for the influence of the mind, reified entity, the most reliable person, he’s anti-flaky, ideological consistency, you love him, upcoming shows, accusatory inversion, you can’t quit I promote you, Lilith, next year becomes mysterious and unknown to Terence, Deleuze and Psychoanalysis, a once a month course, high concept, access to the other courses, priming the pump, bootstrapping, a link or two to a friend, everybody needs to know about Deleuze, everybody needs to know about psychoanalysis, more unreliable, it runs for a year, Project Pope, E. Nesbit, The Railway Children, Jason Thompson, a magical imp, boomeranged, accruing some interest, Will has been studying many things, winter depressive mode, studying the inside of my eyelids, Theodore Sturgeon, a lot of Richard Matheson, the end of I Am Legend, he’s more successful than Stapledon, the homo sapiens consoles himself, and there’s a dog, supersolid, the best thing he wrote, Born Of Man And Woman, trick stories, if only Will Smith had suicide, The Last Spaceship, so long ago, June 2nd, before Jonathan passed away, passed in the night, the audio for it, William Sky, what to do, the consensus was, the goddamn thing was missing, LibriVox removed a whole bunch of stuff because Gutenberg removed a whole bunch of stuff, by different narrators, Paul Lawley Jones’ podcast Golden Age Fiction, The Boomerang Circuit, how Scott Miller [The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast] was removed from YouTube, fraudulent removal requests, living in Korea, takes Meg citizenship away, bye bye buddies, three separate stories, not technically a violation, all good narrators, Phil Chenevert, google suppresses everything, it looks good, H.G. Wells’ The Crystal Egg, a 10 hour show, trying to get ahead, the ‘holidays’ when Santa Claus is on the road, is Santa Claus jewish?, able to work on Christmas, also a robot, that Galaxy, The Yeast Men by David H. Keller, Robert A.W. Lowndes, gross and interesting, sense of humour, many episodes, many weeks, my greatest failure yet, The Weapon Shop, weird, fugue statey, Fury by Kuttner, wasn’t a good book, Jonathan suggested, he’s dead!, social media, self promotion, he’s in creative mode, how to way to be, too much mental energy, new stuff in, The Jameson Satellite by Neil R. Jones, suicidal ideation, Josh Horotwitz, read it in paper, this guy is good, more recent than that, less rough hewn stories about people being put into robot bodies, that are good?, that are interesting?, Robert J. Sawyer, volume 60, a Walter Tevis!, The Big Bounce, a joke length, celestial hammerlock, The Door To Infinity by Edmond Hamilton, Dale Grothmann’s a good narrator, Hamilton!, he’s good, a broad range of acceptable, for something that old, 9 reviews, Invasion by Murray Leinster, the comments, a product of its time, Jesse fell asleep, on my nook, a pretty good read, pure fantasy, Nailan Smith and Fu Manchu vs. Cthulhu, Fu Manchu is homos superior, all of the homos superiors were asian, an upside down chevron yellow on the left, green on the right, it means something, the Japanese symbol for beginner, a couple, a search for her husband, winky face, an endearing review, keep going, special chevron, emojipedia, Charles Beaumont, Holes Around Mars, Robert Abernathy, Mellonta Tauta, the balloon one, echo chamber, multiple balloon stories, moon man comes back, “the Poughkeepsie Seer”, April 1, 2848, The Skylark, Poerful, loves cats, obsessed with cats, a real foible, scrolling cats, Mark Twain with a kitten on its shoulder, we have sympathy for you, cut cats up, how many would you miss, 19th and 20th century science fiction, not buddy, friend, more formal, when you talk to your cats, a special relationship, you are their servant and also scratching post, likes us emotionally, for her comfort, as a person, as a food dispenser, if Will were a cat, a dog guy converted to the religion of catism, need less than dogs do, there’s no crying, super sarcastic, pointed, who my heroes are, Damon Knight’s book on the Futurians, Donald Wollheim kinda sucked, weird relationship, Eugene Debs, to make a living person a hero, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, nationalize time, racist French guy who loves Lovecraft, Michel Houellebecq, Lovecraft guys, Dick guys, born on Reunion, an Indian Ocean island that belongs to France, monologue about Jaws, H.P. Lovecraft: Against The World, Against Life, The Shadow Over Innsmouth, very good at stories, discovered Lovecraft as a teenage, an open slice of howling fear, anti-modernity, philosophical denial of the real world, two of the realities, sex and money, really true, also false, sex is hidden but happened, not into sex or money, an American existentialist, life and death are meaningless, racial preoccupations, the comparatively racially mixed, racism back to fear, a mammoth hideous city, a very good essay, introduction by Stephen King, 20 years ago, At The Mountains Of Madness, The Cats Of Ulthar, cats got their revenge, Dreamlands stories, The Outsider has a mirror, discovers he’s a corpse, a good title, Michael Jackson, The Tomb, the story of a boy, The Tomb for beginning readers, DeviantArt, R.J. Ivankovic, long johns, I’m not certain it’s mine, parade in my brain, keeping these secrets since I was quite young, down into a nook, the door was ajar, the door would not give way, schoolroom, Hydes, a mad monomania, the books I had found, infamous hosts, the blasphemous parties, the hard lesson learned, to tend to the tomb, with my research completed, the familiar foul odor, that’s the end?, the site is dying, power outages from the wind, Lives by Plutarch, very happy in his green face, one of the books that Frankenstein’s monster reads, what a terrible shameful rhyme, certain you’d swoon, just like my grooming, scandalous rhymes, about which you may wonder, from man into mouse, lightning as a cleansing thing, a long hidden cellar, a private investigator, he has a dream and finds a key, secrets in graveyards, to worship once more, the strangeness began, that cold temple of stone, left me quite changed, found the old chest, an old key, a repeated symbol, The Silver Key, a time travel story, Ex Oblivione, dreams harder, whiteness, drugged himself to death, back to the land to the Forms, all knowledge and no experience, a damnable body, a suicide story in reverse, there was no more to do, coffins and cobwebs, oof, nightmare excursions, the eyes of the stranger, hired by his parents, what I did in the night, neglected to mention, what I’d done down in there, my spirits could soar, enjoyed it somewhere, things you would not believe, by Hyde invitation, pony tales from earlier centuries, blasphemous strife, should have been decomposing, a little bit more, that’s Poe from the House of Usher, the *this if fine meme* from Lovecraft, a thought then arose, I must claim my place in the tomb’s empty coffin, some other guy, a spot on the ground, a box had been found, a small porcelain bust, there was something familiar about the man’s face, too long, Asylum, something’s wrong with my brain, except for old Hiram, my servant for years, for a Jervas, and he’s satisfied with that, a crazy boy who goes to a mental asylum, he wants to be dead, a lich story, an ancestor coming to impose his existence on a future existence, psychically travelling through time, more mature, there’s something to it, underappreciated, he makes friends with dryads and nymphs in the forest, interested in books, sleeps in the woods, really well told, the cutesy version, first person narratives, a much more popular story, Upon The Dull Earth by Philip K. Dick, more of a weird tale than a science fiction story, done scientifically, Sylvia is insanely interesting, engaging with the ancient piece of the Odyssey, if this goes on…, I’m a big blundering guy, giving blood to butterflies, sometimes, he’s pointing to something, what makes you different from me, everybody becomes Sylvia, she got what she wanted, The Symposium show, it’s about love, different kinds of love, cursed by the gods and separated male from female, reconnecting with your other half, your better half, a union of a marriage, why are men and women different, different parts, a nice story, not true, go back far enough, we used to be these amoeba like creatures, a deep genetic memory, your my only love!, a little too close, not as good as you thought it would be for all time, very deftly, just shows us something, left with many questions, if you were me aka Sylvia, one of Sylvia’s favourite Philip K. Dick stories, recency bias, The Days of Perky Pat, instead of rebuilding civilization, the game of Life, you never grow up, the kids are out hunting, Connie Companion Doll, perpetual childhood, a good story, the earth belong to them, more competent than the parents, holding on to money to play Perky Pat with, so many great stories by him, dozens, The Variable Man, bloated, almost novel length in its long long length, Colony, Autofac, Beyond Lies The Wub, A Present For Pat, Faith Of Our Fathers, Human Is, Mr. Spaceship, Paycheck, James P. Crow, robots and black people, Impostor, Captive Market, a Monopoly story, The Defenders, Out In The Garden, the boy who’s father was a duck, Prize Ship and The Ship Who Sang, her best thing, a lot of series, a lot of Perns, not a really big series guy, decreasing happiness, The Exit Door Leads In, post public domain status, not meant for publication, he’s not a good novelist, remembered as a great novelist, one of the two greatest, Ursula K. Le Guin, Asimov’s novels, Apple TV, read old shit, more and more sympathy for your old position, read old books, through comics, Howard through the Scanner Darkly of Roy Thomas, there’s no question, some good novels, tedious and badly composed, fixups that don’t fix, the Library Of America crowd, try not to have a lot of contempt, is it contempt?, the feeling of contempt is not healthy, opposite of respect, the face you make when you’re being imposed upon, deserving scorn, beneath consideration, disregard for something that should be taken into account, worthless, an up down thing, god that guy’s heroic, Michio Kaku is contemptible, string theorist guy, haircut, bald faced lies, the proper attitude is to see things for what they are, better to overestimate or underestimate your abilities, within reason, don’t agree to either, both are really bad, cause problems, correctly estimated your abilities, cost you money, correctly estimating, a judo match, that’s gonna hurt, why they have weight classes, guessing right as to what is going on, to be contemptful or deferential, the deplorables, let their decisions to be made for you, very difficult, he was trying to gauge the level of things, as a person, the progress, lower people around him, finding his place a little better, a real thing, they’re just wrong, wrong about that one issue, listen to the arguments, swayed a little bit, new insight, Robert E. Howard is doing something different generally unless he’s writing poetry, higher output, different hobby horses, judge them correctly, Sirius is a better book than this, matured as a fiction writer, Dick’s best novel is Galactic Pot-Healer, the relationship between art and work, a springboard, The Silmarillion, not a narrative as such, specific incidents, maybe, hinted towards Star Maker, the spiritual work, one way of explaining it is writing, closet and meditate, into my office and write, essay, sales pitch, philosophy, that artifact, the font, the spirit of that once living thing, inside of this dead man’s brain, the latest John Scalzi novel, understand the way his mind works, doing his own thing, Kaiju novel, stuff happening, “well that happened”, their reaction to what happened, character, what’s Sylvia like?, she’s a witch, he’s a journalist, when everybody is Sylvia…, and it is a horror, he’s Sylvia and he’s fine with it, becoming the Borg, a single ideology, the ending, 25 pages, the last section, the late afternoon sky, sparkled whiteness, alien and unfamilar, a difficult place to find, swirling hot steam, terrified above the bowl, tear-stained and frantic, waver and slide, soft brown hair, being tasteful, the girl at the bowl bent to dry herself, confused she hesitated, Rick she murmured, please Rick!, a horror story, she’s trapped in the hell of everyone, her spells went wrong, let’s assimilate it, way overdone, a melting pot not a mosaic, have it both ways, traumatic or fine, it should be traumatic, I’m losing my identity, that state you’re in, Patty Hearst, calm life, in it with the revolutionaries, you’re arrested, her friends taken away, my granddaughter needs a pardon, come back out of it, the Borg queen shows the utter contempt, just lore now, you now have to live with it, becoming Locusts, he killed people, part of the Borg, you become a zombie, not compus mentis, when they start Deep Space 9, feel guilty without being technically guilty, a more interesting way to do the Borg, pure evil, goes on too long, lore kills, much juice was squeeze, some odd juice from Odd John, the weird sexual encounter not put on the page, adult girlfriend, repulsed by her, she’s a brute, solace himself sexually, remain respectable, a similar scene, diddled, the spoken words used on the island “damned” and other ones not yet acceptable in written words, the word “fuck” doesn’t show up [much] in written language until after WWII, sex with his mom, Odd John fucked Olaf Stapledon stand-in, the human girlfriend, sexually frustrated and upset, will not spell out explicitly, another dear person, respectable middle class, a lacunae, elliptical talk, homosexuality, ragged, enfant terrible, Tommy walking, ragging with his sister, the two of them together, shunned all physical contact, electrified, initiation ritual, India, another boys’ school thing, the word “fag”, a prominent role, this idea of fagging, abuse downwards, making children younger than you, patching in ceremony, a rocker, a patch that’s lower, as you ascend the ranks, once in the gang, a beating, an outer beating, harassment, abuse, bullying, formal done by the group rather than an individual, a group beating, a psychological technique, beat a dog and then feed it, very emphatically, the complacency of a cat, a cat may look at a king, his insult, tickle him the right way, John would be ruined, pretty explicit, shunned all physical contact, a known homosexuality thing amongst boys in England, covered by this phrase, luxury and disgust, an amatory brawl, tearing at his ear, he was not above learning from his inferiors, woke with lasting scars, the adult girlfriend, unprintable thing, hanky panky, implied stuff, by the standards of the 1930s, a bisexual superman, widespread, Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh, like The Fall Of The House Of Usher but gay, circumstantial stuff, act really weird, only in the society of males, so prominent, private schools for girls?, where’s all the lesbian stories that come out of that?, maybe they exist, that’s Odd John, Flowers For Algernon, the long one, a good book, identification with the mouse, a similar book to this one, construct a mental superman, questions about the perception of the world, not all with it, happy about it, exploited then disappointed, she’s a fucking hooker, I thought I was special, your older brother is paying, and you never find out, the expected outcome, the expected situation, what makes them smart, intelligence and stupidity, Understand by Ted Chiang, simple things gain new meaning as you are able to perceive them better, the story can change, The Secret World Of Og, adolescence, not based on the Robert E. Howard stories, adaptations of stories, quality goes down, quality goes up, a diminishing returns, Arthur C. Clarke, G.K. Chesterton, whole genres of fiction, didn’t expect to, the secret life, public life, obviously very intelligent, takes a pill, Limitless (2011), investments, pickup girls better, writing about a guy who’s smarter than you or he was, the way you do it, you go over it and make it better, an idea for a poem, this rhyme, a word, a phrase, echoes back, this word is really great, the last word of the story, wake, they’re on a ship, a character dies at the end of the story, what’s behind, a wake and a wake, baby level of double meaning, that’s intelligence, triple meaning, stupidity is making mistakes, intelligence is making everything meaningful, using the full meaning of a word, sympathetic to this idea?, why do girls like rappers, slingin rhymes, what makes them cool, their ability to sling, virtuosity, increasing your brain quality, one of the major attractions of humans to humans, a forced rhyme, you imposing your will on somebody else, the gush of slime come from the bucket on the ceiling, a little bit like charades, crossword puzzles, the traditional signs that you’re intelligence, crossword puzzles, know a lot about a lot of things and are able to use it, top 1% one percent of English speakers, this doofus on youtube, obliquely, disgrace, 10 or 11 wrong out of 20, uncle, still got it, still good!, some random 20 year old dude, that is something mechanical intelligence, there’s all sorts of kinds of intelligence, compared to other people, knowing your level is being smart, those guys at the bakery, what makes Ted Chiang smart, sixteen chess moves ahead, there are grandmasters who are stupid people in other areas, grapple with different areas, avoid bad outcomes, PUBG, getting the dinner, the only objective that’s built into the game, conciliatory, lots, steal a BRDM from somebody, get one over on somebody, a sneakiness, cat intelligence, smoked weed, really really high, highness, do you think you’re smarter than me?, bad at avoiding the house piling up with crap, more aware of her surroundings, women are very social, keeping track of what’s going to happen to the space, the old magazines, stacking them, men are much more collectors than women, a sign of a lack of intelligence, an area of interest, making it into a hoard you can’t get through, that TV, too low, they’re not stupid, interested in their interests, deficiencies, native talent for math, not super valuable, how fast he picks up languages, if they speak six languages like Mayor Pete, he’s not intelligent, a second meaning, information, vocab expert, turned into the victory, as long as we’re here, the level that you achieved, frequently struggling with Clark Ashton Smith words, gemstones, he loves kind of rock, a homebody, manual labour, our guy carrying water, a very intelligent man in his way, a very curious person, the entire library, Aaron Swartz, he was a hero before the FBI murdered him, naive, something very boy like about him, the guy invented RSS dude, a real simple idea, now we can get on reddit, we still have podcasts, he didn’t invent torrents, Mr. Internet, Mr. Everybody, Tim Berners-Lee, weirdo kid who only eats white food, he may have been Odd John, this you?, I was 7 when I read that, the original days of autism, Rain Man (1988), a popular idea, something that’s bubbling up, autists everywhere, idiot savants, stupid and smart at the same time, go gambling, uses his intelligence to win, incredibly intelligent and incredibly stupid, can’t put your pants on, too many holes, not enough holes!, brain damage and unable to speak, alleviated or worked around, regain the ability to speak, retarded, gain at the regular pace in school, this fake autism of schools, is it real autism, school is autism, autism is school, an imposition, kids impose on the world and are imposed upon, its a factory, we have a very special boy, just a normal kid, looks a little different, his acquisition level, his emotional level, slowly grow, a calf newborn is running around minutes after it is born, a little liberally, there is damage done in the case of down syndrome, a folded x chromosome, enough folic acid, the child from your loins, your baby’s spine and brain and skull, vitamin b9, when you don’t want to talk to them, he’s the opposite of autistic, supertistic, the stacking of blocks, especially boys, if that’s all you do, not getting interested in other things, where the auto part comes in, an estate auction online, cosmetic damage, passing on his wisdom, he had two bb guns, 150 bb guns, selling stuff on ebay, lots of people who are weird, all sorts of different weirdnesses, Jonathan’s Sword & Scandal interior illustrations, pornographic, a little more tasteful, too pornographic for Jesse’s tastes, if successful, scale, love of the game, latest kickstarter, Jungle Scandals, white lady being cooked in a pot, could have linked to the thing in the tweet, ironic, a subsequent comment, Jonathan loves to go on podcasts, told Paul that Jonathan had sent me that thing, Jesse’s too much work, a little tiff, calling him a liar, projection, many things but not a liar, deceiving, disagree often, we have really bad internet, make some coffee.

GALAXY NOVEL - Odd John by Olaf Stapledon

GALAXY NOVEL - Odd John by Olaf Stapledon

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #827 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Green Queen by Margaret St. Clair

The SFFaudio Podcast #827 – The Green Queen by Margaret St. Clair, read by Mike Vendetti. This is a complete and unabridged audiobook (4 hours 3 minutes), followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Will Emmons, and Jonathan Weichsel

Talked about on today’s show:
into mask art, other, cage guy, Ace Book D176, a shorter version in 1955, Mistress Of Viridis, the opening of the novel, The Scarlet Letter, a crown or something, very good and very bad, interesting ideas, a little too pulpy, structural problems, she churned this one out, she’s brilliant, we listen to a lot of science fiction on this podcast, The Journey Of Joenes, another masterpiece, The Last Spaceship, pretty pulpy, the ideas in it, the bugs, psychology trumps material reality, relationship stuff, good with the ideas, all the telling, central to the plot, an illusion?, the political stuff, uppers and lowers, the uppers live underground beneath the lowers?, a veil over the book, Ulysses by James Joyce, dating a woman, some sort of revolution going on too, a really good goodreads, concrete assertions, listened, spellings, Shalom, too much going on in this book, the plot is told backwards, explanation, the beginning at the end, Jerry on Goodreads

Despite not taking place on Earth or anywhere near Earth, this 1955 story (the serialized version was in Universe Science Fiction, March, 1955, as “Mistress of Viridis”) is clearly tied to Earth. The computers that people use on planet Viridis are “ibims”.

The computers don’t appear to have advanced much as mankind spread to the stars.

Except for the soft whirr and click of the ibim as it sorted the dossier cards, there was no noise.

The ibim, though not a new model, was fast. It had been sorting for some twenty minutes, and it had got through nearly half of the 400,500 cards that represented the feminine population of Viridis. But the basket marked “Hold” was still quite empty.

They end up having to relax their requirements in order to find possible candidates. What they’re looking for is a goddess—or, specifically, someone who can fake being a goddess. They get tripped up by residency requirements, of all things.

One of the interesting things about this world is how much it relies on what it calls “masks”. There are two kinds of masks: Verbal Masks and Veridical Masks. These masks are created by the ruling class to control the Lowers and keep them from rebelling… too much.

Masks appear to be what we would call memes. Verbal Masks are memes that are injected into the population, short stories that take hold of the population’s imagination. Veridical Masks are masks that use more than one sense; while the main character does make an off-hand reference to odors at least once, within this book they’re always or almost always sound and sight.

That is, this world’s population is controlled by a primitive form of Twitter and an advanced form of YouTube.

The main character recently introduced a Verbal Mask about a Green Queen, an embodiment of Nature, who will come to save the Lowers and dispel the radiation that makes Viridis so dangerous. The ruling class is shielded from this radiation; they live above some sort of shield; Lowers live below that shield.

The Green Queen myth turned out to be even more powerful than they’d expected. So they’re attempting to both use it and defuse it, and that means finding someone to take on the role.

The theme running through the story is that the myth appears at some points to be real, something transcending the constructed myth; and at others to be purely a construction of the various factions on Viridis, including one that is completely unexpected. Even at the very end of the story, just after we’ve been reasonably convinced that there was no truth to the myth as presented by the Verbal Mask, it appears to be coming true in a way that could not have been predicted by the real truth we’ve just been presented with.

Hollerith machines, all the Jews who have the tattoos on their arms, looking for the new green queen, salam, Chinese, very good insightful review, peripheral stuff, distracting and interesting, modeled on a whole bunch of things, twitter and youtube, like the way twitter works, we can’t have conversations with some people because they took in the mask, Rittenhouse, stories were told about, the trial, some people were disabused, other people didn’t get those memes or truths injected into them, hashtags are that, what’s the truth about Kyle Rittenhouse, he shot people, other people who were trying to take his gun away, the official line was before facts came out, video, testimony, obsessed with these things, verbal and veridical masks, riot/uprising, what are you getting at, Jesse, racist, illegal things, black people, it was okay that he shot white people then?, clearly white, black lives matter, petty proprietor, helping petty proprietor, better or worse, judgement, the media was portraying, a supercut after the podcast, cui bono?, who’s the upper?, petty vs. petite, baggage, we know that Will is a communist, not a secret, a pejorative, an example, bro, shitlibs, what makes a shitlib vs. a normal lib, doesn’t care and only wants, almost like an NPC, Jesse language, roof Koreans, the Rodney King riots, white people and black people, Korean American convenience store owner, standing in the rooves, defending from burning and looting, every word that we use, Cirsova uses it, the people who used his volunteer services, friends and family come help, small property owners, they’re not Blackrock, they don’t own 2/3rds of Ukraine, every piece of language we use is full, Bonnor, our main character, alcoholic, book length, her short stories are much tighter, her first novel, novels are difficult, your first longer book, a short story plot stretched out into a novel, this should have been 2 hours at most, really good ideas in it, early Philip K. Dick novels, terrible novelist, women’s sexuality, men looking at woman, a male gaze book, the termite queen, you’ve never had a baby come out of your body, the pinnacle of womanhood, fill me up, robot shower, we don’t get enough world building, too much worldbuilding, maybe Bonnar shouldn’t be the main character, he doesn’t really have a lot of agency, a mask maker fooled by his own mask, Madison Ave. executive, you have a job, body servants are servants who have jobs, the lowers have no jobs, Leaf Amadeus, on the nose, underdeveloped, Caroline Uglinger, a seamstress who embroidered her own shroud, Horvindial, Mirakis, eons after her death, Kandia, grey suit, blue hat, the guys who operate the ibims, if Philip K. Dick had handled this, The Man Who Japed, a great book, dealing with some really interesting things, veridical vs. verbal masks, Viridis is the planet, she doesn’t make it clear enough early enough, playing with names all day, latin for green, renewal, springtime, verify, Truth, what’s the secret of the planet, all the radiation isn’t there, “Russian interference” “hacked our election”, “crossed state lines”, bringing firearms across state lines, talking points, when J.D. Vance was chosen as the VP, “weird”, some of them work great, when she’s writing about this stuff in the 50s, “remember the Maine”, rhymey or memey, that whole war was ginned up largely by Hurst, invade Spain, so many things going on in this 4 hour book, radiation is an invisible killer, calibrate it, wartime propaganda, Plato in The Republic, the story about the Golden Age, technology enhances, Make America Great Again is a verbal mask, slogans, rallying cries, language unites people, left out, Hispanic community, Korean community, left out, less extreme example of that, he’s one of me, part of my crew, Trump forehead tattoo, Taco Bell, am I supposed to look at the tattoos or not, African or Maori?, tattoos are hard to understand, had sex with a couch, yolo, go out into the ether, her world vs our world, not top down, official control over social media, demonetized, booted off the platform, suppress or boost, BLM, became top down, special dance with kente cloth, “land back”, specifically made it so it is not racist, the babies, Chinese, looking at people’s bodies, your race doesn’t make you an upper, a class or caste system, the lowers are totally parasites, little glimpses, an upper class woman walking beside a lower class man wearing a kilt/miniskirt, bony knees, his spine, resentful, trying not to take in the bad food, Hinduism, Judaism, Kosher food, radioactive, by eating too much of this radioactive food you’re shortening your life, religious philosophies, Christian Scientists, diet books, preferred diet, is she wrong, Mark Twain hated her, #TeamTwain, food that falls outside of the diet is bad, deeply flawed, pinning down the flaw, first novel problems is our theory?, Jonathan’s first novels are unpublished, John Updike’s first novel is a werewolf story, never publish this book, a university lockbox, so embarrassed, we will eventually get a hold of it, unless the university burns down, there’s value in here, almost a pulp novel, mass market paperback to read on the train, disposable literature, plotting or structuring, achievements in writing novels, filling in details is not the way it should be happening, hit a certain wordcount is the kiss of death unless you’re a magician, a parody of science fiction, long speeches, if you put them in Captain Kirk’s mouth, a little A.E. van Vogty, Black Destroyer, The Voyage Of The Space Beagle, Destination Universe, characters are inhuman, he brings ideas to things, the Weapons Shops stories, future village, snake cult temple, Conan the Barbarian movie, a weapons shop opens up in your town, it reads like the Russians have gone through a loophole and anyone can by an AK, they screen people, superinteresting, not public domain, not well written, disturbance of an idea, every story has ideas in it, cute, bizarre, the spirit of a star, Green Queen meme comes alive, a very Philip K. Dick move, not being able to know what’s reality and what’s not, we can’t sympathize with him, too alien, the cult of the apple pickers, almost Roman, one of the influences, the city of Rome, Christianity, cults around professions, guilds?, trade guilds, longer and fixed, or shorter, if you found this novel in a drawer, you could take the ideas that are in here and make a good novel out of the ideas that are in here, what went wrong, time to money ratio, originally published for a magazine, the original art, a rocketship, the green queen and a guy outside a rocket, she’s zapping him, the art for the original magazine publication, a woman covered in a green starfish, thematic, a woman above a man, out of a spacesuit, the radiation, is it saying that veridical masks masks us to truths about concrete reality around us?, the barrier between castes, what a huge topic to tackle, a character who randomly became psychic all of a sudden, I just sense things, throws everything off, can’t be tricked by the masks, undercut at the end, the history of the planet, she was just a bug!, you’re sitting in the chair and getting Trump tattooed on your forehead, in group, I hate you mom/dad, bought into the ideological belief, seven months ago, back in January, when Trump gets assassinated how weird it will be, going to be very meta, the first week after the assassination attempt, a little bit apologetic, he has to be stopped, he’s Hitler, completely memory wiped, that never happened, endless upper investigation, the bodycam footage, Jesse is just crazy, local news, moments right before and after, I told the Secret Service to guard this building, this is shit!, we’ve got to get the shooter guy, a good video, when Jonathan recounts it, silos of responsibility and dialogue, organizational silos, massive incompetence being promoted to the top everywhere, completely demented, never does her homework, the significance of the passage of time, people who don’t do their homework, failing up, not as senile as you keep on saying, the speech where everybody though he was senile, he’s “older”, legitimately the president, a bizarre theory, having Jonathan on this podcast, Jesse doesn’t see his own veridical masks, not a big mask guy, a constructed reality online, voting patterns, quell dissatisfaction, to make people more accepting of their fate, the uppers resent the lowers, there would be riots and uprisings, pity the lowers, eat polluted food all the time, how Americans view the poors, welfare queens, baskets of deplorable, food deserts, two teams vs. one team, takes on it are slightly different, in what sense are they different, it’d be better if they were both gone, one secret party running the country, institutionally, vote against genocide, which team should I vote for, Jill Stein, foreign policy, domestic policy, infrastructure, bringing jobs back, the thing that they want to do is impossible, can’t stop corporations, capital flight tax, they can’t do that because they are funded, put up tariffs, the most popular electric car in Europe is Chinese, Tesla, more popular than the Chevy Volt, even on Vancouver Island, 3-4 white Teslas, 100% tariff on Chinese electric vehicles, a subsidy, BC subsidized US electric and Japanese electric cars, Walmart’s the only business in town, Chinese are bad and Russians are bad, Nabisco moved to Mexico, food you shouldn’t eat, really mad, how can the politicians stop them, tax on the cookies, a free trade agreement, lower the minimum wage, or import people, foreign workers, that wouldn’t solve the problem of the disappearing jobs, you’re dictator, dictator of New Jersey, the national guard would be unable to defeat the United States, eliding the question, dictator of North America, shut down Nabisco, you don’t like Oreos, cookies should be made by a grandma, maximize profits and minimize costs, Richard D. Wolff, Mondragon cooperatives, start with a bank, if you become unemployed, a lump sum to start your own cooperative, on the dole for 3 years anyway, solve all sorts of problems, the GI bill, infrastructure and jobs, all the veterans, Evan’s solution: universal army, the silly way to do it, grandma doesn’t need to go to drill practice, universal conscription, makes sense for the United States, Kamala’s VP is not a communist, it’s nuts, that’s not reality, driving a MAGA car, looking for a fight, ginned into thinking this is a real thing, the spin for Kamala, so good, least popular VP, memory holed, all these memes, all these ads, white women for Kamala, white dudes for Kamala, The Big Lebowski (1998), Jeff Bridges, beat that fascist, he’s a fascist again, it is hard to know this is a good book, Chip Delaney [Samuel R. Delany], a Farmer guy, advanced readers, coming into literature, throw them off misimpression, same logic as ban this book, anything past 10 years ago you don’t need to read, I know better than you, break into the literature, their mentor, fell off of a coconut tree, fell out of a time machine, not the best introduction to science fiction, in that explicit situation, a great book, hard to know, Jesse does his homework, some books are better introductions to science fiction, Jonathan might be right about this, simple advice, just do what I say, just vote this way, just do that thing, a reality that effects me, the starving children in Gaza, verbal masky, she gives big speeches about it, the Ukraine war, six facts, a smaller country invaded by a larger country, let’s here him out, in the context of an essay, Jeannette Ng, Campbell is a fascist, more money in that, the whole Cat Rambo situation, unforced errors, she stumbled over her own non-dick, Dick or non-dick, as a female book, Ursula K. Le Guin would have some person from Earth come to this planet, can’t be too smart, has to be a good actress, she’s credulous, credulous too great a readiness to believe things, outside the bagel shop, everybody’s credulous because advertising works, hard to have conversations about a popular veridical mask, credulousness, the ibims that they’re using, a D&D character with high charisma and low intelligence, she doesn’t even know she’s not the green queen, a lady talking about ladies being dumb, in Ringworld, he picks this chick, [Teela Brown], a 7th son of a 7th son sort of thing, earth has the technology to physically control people’s thoughts, psychology and advertising, ads, hidden from the masses, put on the population to control the reality that they see, a big problem wit the book, we’re following the badguys, foment a revolution, a more interesting story if St. Clair had decided to follow the revolutionaries, a tiktoker, fucking Eddie Liger?, ACP, be better at tiktok, Scott Miller took a course on how to be a good youtuber, professional youtubers, you can see these patterns, interaction reminders, smartTubeBeta, big long things you can skip, the removal of the dislike [count], removal of the ability to view likes, see what somebody I hate is liking, they’re just hiding it from us, so they can control us better, a way to manipulate people, a personality test, psychology, Timothy Leary, mind mirror, giant personality test, change your personality, scenarios, a tortise overturned, what do you do?, someone gives you a cat skin wallet, graphs your responses, pick a fictional character, Spider-Man, Julius Caesar, most famous dictator ever, the goal is to change the way that you’re thinking, shots of heroin, what the likes are all about, heart, angry, care, pushing the button, creating a map of your psychology, Mark Zuckerberg gets to get it, very credulous, believe the things that they’re hearing, did you quit twitter, keep my friends on twitter, start a guerrilla war against twitter, brink back the dislikes, one of the reasons we care about dislike, good content or not, a really bad ratio, I don’t need to click on that, de-rank it, how to fix your lawnmower, stripped down and simple, Reddit came a little late, gamed and wrecked, after blogs, BBSs, web 2.0 stuff, blogs were destroyed, Scott was abandoning it, a commonplace notepad, IMDB, writing review, bought by Amazon, Goodreads, you have to own your own content, an older movie on IMDB, old reviews, long and in depth, why is this guy writing all these movie reviews, bloggers without a blog, we’re lowers, what Jonathan does for a living, underemployed by technical definitions, jobs at poor pay, play computer games, most people are lowers, most uppers are lowers too, from the Hamptons, lush upscale life, suicide, borrowing money to pay for it, smaller scale, covered in pustules, a fungus, psychosomatic dying, Return From The Stars, Treasure Island is next, by making it Double Star, a space voyage across the ocean, Muppet Treasure Island, everybody is a captain, pirates, smart guy, fun guy, where the YA novels came from, really bad novel, William Golding’s Lord Of The Flies, I hate this book, a really popular 19th century novel, the wikipedia entry, his cave man novel, the neanderthals are kind gentle people, similar themes, The Coral Island, 1857, R.M. Ballantyne, Robinsande, never out of print, civilizing effect of Christianity, named the same, forced to read, its evil propaganda, predict a lot of what happened out of the last decade on twitter, a bad joke, pile on that person, destroy their lives, he’s missing something, he’s got one note, an art novel, pretty description of things, more like The Blue Lagoon by Henry De Vere Stacpoole, despite, Thackery, a LibriVox version, influential, euro popular, 11 hours, a traveler at heart, shipping out to the South Seas, shipwrecked, wonders of the sea, an unexpected source (Jesus?), kinda being jokey, so full of Robinson Crusoe, the thesis he’s making, loves his strawmen, stacked deck, find deep meaning in this very small meaning book, I’d like to do more science fiction too, start a new podcast, books and art that makes people angry, good or evil, challenges you, what good literature does, what book makes you angry?, when Jonathan started doing this podcast, greater speeds, a good speed, getting bored, put the speed up higher, full of good ideas, not well structured or well developed so we can, The Last Spaceship. The Phoenix On The Sword, Will’s review, substantial enough, A Witch Shall Be Born, the cartoon of Conan The Adventure, a phoenix on his shield, the first one in Weird Tales, everything jumps out fully formed, here’s this whole world, king of Aquilonia, been all Stygian, he’s about being a man, man, a story on the podcast, new to Howard, a Solomon Kane story, two big anthologies, a complete narrative, ending as an old guy, read by Phil Chenevert, love you Phil Chenevert, nailed/crucified, novel length, The Hour Of The Dragon, he wanted to make more money, write a novel, after he killed himself, living on money that he didn’t have, a total neophyte, the comic book version, Roy Thomas, stripping out some of the text, John Buscema, Savage Sword Of Conan, astoundingly good, Vale Of Lost Women, not a popular story, because racist, he fights a god and doesn’t lose, a valley full of women that are flowers, fights a god from space, very raw, Jack Williamson, if public domain, the clearance, on audible, The Humanoids and With Folded Hands, Stefan Rudnicki, a good science fiction novel, Joe Biden is president of the world, but not really in charge, dottering old man who suddenly grows six inches, taking care of humans and keeping them safe, the robots come, hurray hurray, I want a cigarette, I must lobotomize you now, how am I going to defeat the robots, The Green Girl, stories about green women, Ray Cummings, collaborative work, The Masked World, Will’s blog thing, anything he really needs to tell, Legion Of Space, Legion Of Time, space opera-y, time opera, Blackstone Audio, before podcasts were invented, tonight’s episode 799, 9 years, run outta numbers but not books, science fiction stories, Algis Budrys, WHO? was enough, more Silverberg, any Heinlein, the one with twins, Podkayne Of Mars, Time For The Stars, set on Mars, really good, this actor, you gotta play the president, Alan Dean Foster, the Alien novelization, drug themes in science fiction, two shorts, a Silverberg and something else, The Happy Unfortunate and The Hunted Heroes, Larry Niven didn’t start until 1966, The Integral Trees, Sirius by Olaf Stapledon, one more, Odd John, Omega: The Last Days of the World by Camille Flammarion, all collaborative, Niven is never going to be public domain, so much Silverberg, and interview with him in the new Galaxy, skinsuit, what happened, die a natural death, walk him around the compound, Biden grew six inches, too many Jose Farmers, Damon Runyon, Mark Twain, Star Man’s Quest, The Mysterious Stranger, Samuel Delany, his criticism, everybody’s mad at, Joanna Russ, The Barbarian, her taking on Conan, I think I would hate this, The Female Man, only one book, How To Suppress Women’s Writing, you’re right I’m shit, Harlan Ellison, a juvenile delinquent in space, angry characters, his criticism, more Stanisław Lem, wait six months, Solaris, Memoirs Found In A Bathtub, Star Diaries, Further Reminiscences, The Futurological Congress, a few in this series, German TV series, the famous one, if standalone, a 1971 black humour science fiction novel, Ijon Tichy, the narrator, comedic stories, send this stuff to Will, shownotes, look at the schedule at the bottom, from six months ago, Woody Guthrie, It Takes Two To Conga, Memoirs Found In A Bathtub, a hermetically sealed underground community, it can’t be deleted now, show up for it, twin gifts, hapless planet Earth, caught up in a local revolution, flash frozen, a funny piece, thinkpiece, comedy, satire, Solaris isn’t a comedy, a straight up ponderous piece, a good memory for books, Arkady Strugatsky, Stalker (1979) is punishing to watch, similar to Harry Potter, recruited for this job, weird group of people, Philip K. Dick, he’s a good guy, sickmyduck.narod.ru, good fun, Monday Begins On A Saturday, an interesting story, two hitchhikers, Karelia, research into magic, Nathaniel Priestly, Adam Roberts, he’s fine, the complete Philip K. Dick, Martian Time-Slip, A Maze Of Death, Now Wait For Last Year, space Mussolini, what haven’t you done, Transmigration Of Timothy Archer, non-sf ones, 150 stories, long or short, contrast, medium length, Waterspider, carefully shaved his head, each man only one inch high, the worst part of the vision, in all probability it was true, Minority Report, very modern, with all the UK stuff, arresting you for what you said on Facebook, different, prevent people from doing crimes tomorrow, its status, it is available, not a great great story, a good think piece, Tom Cruise is running around the city, I didn’t do the crime, 3 autistic people in a bathtub, why they picked that one, unadaptable, an abortion truck, A Maze Of Death, he doesn’t plot novels, a little shack, just speed, psychosis from speed, full of drug ideas without drugs, marrying five women, as a person, ahead of his time, normal guy working a job in the 1980s, anything from the 60s, Retreat Syndrome, Return March, The King Of The Elves, goes psychotic, The Mold Of Yancy, The Trouble With Bubbles, The War With The Fnools, when the magazines die, What Will We Do With Ragland Park, Top Standby Job, Little Black Box, The Infinite, The Eye Of The Sybil, a black man who lives in our reality, it’s raining, on the edge of his business collapsing, convenience store gas station, our king is dying, the king dies, Philip K. Dick is amazing,

IT WAS RAINING and getting dark. Sheets of water blew along the row of pumps at the edge of the filling station; the tree across the highway bent against the wind.

Shadrach Jones stood just inside the doorway of the little building, leaning against an oil drum. The door was open and gusts of rain blew in onto the wood floor. It was late; the sun had set, and the air was turning cold. Shadrach reached into his coat and brought out a cigar. He bit the end off it and lit it carefully, turning away from the door. In the gloom, the cigar burst into life, warm and glowing. Shadrach took a deep draw. He buttoned his coat around him and stepped out onto the pavement.

“Darn,” he said. “What a night!” Rain buffeted him, wind blew at him. He looked up and down the highway, squinting. There were no cars in sight. He shook his head, locked up the gasoline pumps.

He went back into the building and pulled the door shut behind him. He opened the cash register and counted the money he’d taken in during the day. It was not much.

Not much, but enough for one old man. Enough to buy him tobacco and firewood and magazines, so that he could be comfortable as he waited for the occasional cars to come by. Not very many cars came along the highway any more. The highway had begun to fall into disrepair…

skip down, limp and sodden, “I’m the king of the elves, and I’m wet.”, forlornly, silently, gets really dark, a psychotic delusion, Beyond Fantasy, a literal story, Edgar Rice Burroughs books, The Gods Of Mars, the second one, The Eternal Savage, Twilight Zoneish, in caveman times, Beyond Thirty, cross to Europe, hands down, re-read A Princess Of Mars, changes the tone, very atheist, a certain Christian audience, dies in a cave, The God Of Tarzan, people putting on a show, sounds a lot like the book we just did, humorous, John Carter, JC, like/hate, when COVID was just starting, Foster, You’re Dead, his parents cant afford the latest bomb shelter, guess you’re going to die then, John Hopkins (University), account deleted many times, a shit poaster, Mimetic Value, time isn’t linear for God, Jesus suffers a bit more, to incarcerate, Terminator and Interstellar, everything science fiction is Christian, paleo jesus arrives from the future, The Lovers by Philip Jose Farmer, John Connor, in the second Terminator movie, come with me if you want to live [forever in heaven], a lot on Audible.com, your hero and mine, Mark Twain, To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Farmer wrestling, Sir Richard Francis Burton, read his short stories, truly public domain, time travel Jesus thing going on it, The Skull, Paul wasn’t having any of it, guy in the future is a criminal arrested by the cops, go back in time and kill this man, this church that’s been subverting the government, goes back in time, two weeks off, zap everybody, interferes with a teenage couple’s relationship, just like Behold The Man, Conger is a JC as well, stoning him, he’s Jesus, a combination of Terminator and Behold The Man, Joe Haldeman, done The Forever War, more Bester, haven’t done all the Simak, Mindbridge, superhorny, mud turned into the perfect woman, Forever Free, Forever Peace, Camouflage, a collection, a fixup, parts of it are public domain, you shouldn’t do a show on a fixup or collections, understanding none of them, Special Deliverance is very silly, 1982, allegory, ridiculous, selling Will, Project Pope, Simak is worth doing, Heritage Of Stars, All Flesh Is Grass, Time Is The Simplest Thing, A Choice Of Gods, it’s your call, bud, a Simak train, in the suburbs, post-apocalyptic, indians robots, alternate reality, poetry planet?, see what he’s looking at, Jesse’s secrets.

Virgil Finlay - The Green Queen

The Green Queen by Margaret St. Clair

The Green Queen by Margaret St. Clair

Introducing The Author: Margaret St. Clair

Posted by Jesse Willis

Reading, Short And Deep #467 – Scrambled Eggs Super! by Dr. Seuss

Reading, Short And Deep

Reading, Short And Deep #467

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss Scrambled Eggs Super! by Dr. Seuss

Here’s a link to the story |PDF|.

Scrambled Eggs Super! was first published in 1953

Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!

The SFFaudio Podcast #812 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Soul Of Man Under Socialism by Oscar Wilde

The SFFaudio Podcast #812 – The Soul Of Man Under Socialism by Oscar Wilde – read for LibriVox by Martin Geeson. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the essay (2 hours) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Evan Lampe, Will Emmons, and Terence Blake.

Talked about on today’s show:
the individual, therefore maimed, Martin Geeson, productions up on audible.com, some public property I can privatize, hundreds of contributions to LibriVox, almost all of it is poetry, about art, how to flourish with your soul, why Jesse likes Oscar Wilde so much, amused, a student for an hour, grammar, a deck of cards, images of various objects, leaves and bowls and roses, write a story in seven minutes using six sentences, a really good story, a king, a comb, and a snake, a lot of merit, “IT WOULDN’T WORK BECAUSE…”, a blind king who needed a wife, some tasty food, a mystery, there’s beauty there, Circe, Medusa, the missing card, works in many ways, no intended audience, central to the essay, problems as an ideology, that’s what he’s like, Oscar Wilde is also a fairy tale writers, an essay by Lovecraft’s wife, Commercialism: The Curse Of Art by Sonia Greene, she has the write idea, a case for socialism, the duty of society to liberate the audience, the audience for art, what the audience for a theater’s responsibility is, if the works of Shakespeare were presented as if new, Macbeth, counterarguments, long and rambling and strange, appreciated it, lasting impact, a good intervention, historically useful, by Wilde’s own metric, whether a work of art is useful or not, stories are incredibly central to human beings, society has a huge duty to the artist, he bends the stick too far, messaging the Che Guevara wikipedia page, Bill Maher, annoys in the right way, man can subsist under moral incentives alone, the new man, typical revolutionary, work 36 hours a day, student protests, what they’re protesting about, grieving, girl claims to be stabbed in the eye, shirt that says “Jew” on it, Che Guevara wasn’t, keffiyeh, huffington post, full of slurs, start drilling down, good or not, to tell a story that supports his point of view, we’re not socialists in America, a tenant that was talking to his landlord, the messaging has gotten through, we don’t live under socialism, everything is upside down, an interesting guy to read, in the context of a rich country, imperialist value chains that make British wealth possible, make a transition to socialism, socialist state builders in the 20th century, an immediate end to poverty, if we end poverty, through new machines, the William Morris book, News From Nowhere, a much more compelling story, whether essays can be artforms, designed to convince, an attempt, a try, not be prosecuted for your art, British vs. the French, a control of language on the cellular level, News From Nowhere is not plausible at all, how we got there, a pretty nice way, women do fabric art, men make wallpaper, an essay, his only political work, story is how people adopt, asked to teach essays, only the most insufferable people, the slandering of Che Guevara, A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift, undermines bad argument, functions like a story, within it are stories, best fricasseed or make a nice ragout, a series of plateaus, organized with a theme, crime and punishment, motivated by pleasure vs. pain, clusters of ideas, very Žižek in that sense, new paradigm, you can’t argue, counter-intuitive leaps, Terence spoke beautifully, agree entirely, very aspirational, quite beautiful, influenced nerdy graduate student Evan, do history, do podcasts, write it my own way, very juvenile about that attitude, the media, not just accepting the media’s interpretation about what art is, solipsistic, films and series, dumbing down, making everything consensual, why does popular art have to be bad, a democracy of individuals, ignorant schoolmaster argument, he’s in a knot, if this was the only thing we knew about Oscar Wilde, compare it to what happened to him, success and punishment, being publicly gay, physical punishment, a powerful lord, sent into prison, H.G. Wells, doesn’t get a sir, tried the wrong lady, royalty, it’s expected, previous conspiracy, a pretext for sending to prison, non-straight sex, Bill Clinton, he didn’t get punished for his art, lightfootedness, the Popes, the power of kings, a king with artistic sentiment, Voltaire, the curse of the public and their interest through journalism, successful, pandering to an audience, A Picture Of Dorian G[r]ay, a gap between, the abolition of property, the means of production, independent wealthy, a theme that’s in here, kind of, wealth and private property, Lord Byron, they’re not separate, he jumps around, you have to share your toothbrush, doesn’t really define it, the long section on how wealth is a burden to the wealthy, [Andrew] Carnegie’s gospel of wealth, that’s the legal system, entirely about private property, a warehouse is an amazing awesome technology, keep the rain out, books, pencil crayons/coloured pencils, keep your paper dry, personal property but not private, an apartment complex, no idea of transition from here to there, we got there somehow, this great possibility of free expression and individualism, he’s read [Peter] Kropotkin, crafts, automation, nobody should sweep, throw a fishnet into the water all day, quotas of fish, a serious problem with this essay, Will has intellectually warped himself through Marxism, the media does this says this, for what reason, what class do they represent?, the public’s ideas bad?, during the French Revolution, tear down the Bastille, all answered, this is not acceptable, a previous story which controls them, if that story is bad, suspicious of human nature, people progress, people change, how fucked up it was, starving peasants fighting for feudalism, The Third Revolution by Murray Bookchin, bottom up democracy, monarchy, liberals, Jacobins, sections of Paris, met in monasteries and churches, 1792/3, suppressed during The Terror, bottom up faith, Maoist epistemology, communists don’t make history, the masses make history, Wilde finds the masses to be repugnant, their condition, the rebel is good in some way, the thief, those who don’t believe the ideology, resentment is something that makes you ugly, living in squalor and full of hate, accept the squalor, more sympathy for the thief, you should be rebelling, it is right to rebel, it is right to rebel against reactionaries, Chinese factory worker be careful, the western interpretation, who one the Cultural Revolution in the end, too soon to tell, the Lost Decade, vaccination rates, two distinct periods, different factions, boring history, the developmental stuff, chaos, more chaotic than, Wilde’s views about what one’s duty to society is, volunteering to do more work, the barefoot doctors, is that so bad?, extremely useful, artists should be allowed to flourish, what the purpose of artists is, that’s why he’s wrong, all art has a class basis, to paraphrase Mao, the innermost kingdom of the bourgeoisie, who is the audience, the artist is the audience, onanistic, oppression, why this is not a great piece, art or light under socialism, giving you the feel, exactly contemporary, Christology, fun, religious group of people, what makes us so religious, is Wilde speaking to an audience that is Christian, he loves Christianity’s beauty, Catholicism for the aesthetics, Lutheran, the liturgy, aesthetically, a cultural christian, a slap in the face with a fish, Jesus, currently accepted ideology, before the socialist experiments, non-authoritarian, before Freudian type, pain and pleasure, very Nietzschean, robot slaves,

“For it is through joy that the Individualism of the future will develop itself. Christ made no attempt to reconstruct society, and consequently the Individualism that he preached to man could be realised only through pain or in solitude. The ideals that we owe to Christ are the ideals of the man who abandons society entirely, or of the man who resists society absolutely. But man is naturally social. Even the Thebaid became peopled at last. And though the cenobite realises his personality, it is often an impoverished personality that he so realises. Upon the other hand, the terrible truth that pain is a mode through which man may realise himself exercises a wonderful fascination over the world. Shallow speakers and shallow thinkers in pulpits and on platforms often talk about the world’s worship of pleasure, and whine against it. But it is rarely in the world’s history that its ideal has been one of joy and beauty. The worship of pain has far more often dominated the world. Mediaevalism, with its saints and martyrs, its love of self-torture, its wild passion for wounding itself, its gashing with knives, and its whipping with rods – Mediaevalism is real Christianity, and the mediaeval Christ is the real Christ.”

on the road to get healed somewhere, conversations with wives of Bath, a reflection of what artists are doing, a symposium of art making, by one’s self, music, one guy with a saxophone on a mountain top, pretty strong, his heart is in the right place, he himself wants his efforts to count towards social reconstruction, the overman is Caesar with the soul of Christ, one of his passions, art, science, politics, manual labour, craft and crafty, fishing, a self-help manual done right, come together in groups, very individualistic, kinda Ayn Randian, against business, against private property, against class difference, everyone a poet, as capable as him, been lucky, everyone can become creativity, more artists, better art, Roger Ebert, frustrated reviewers, easier to be a critic, snobby, Zack Snyder probably says that, why does he bloody show his movies, show to [Denis] Villeneuve and no-one else, a guy recording in his bedroom, stack of DVDs, free passes, free stuff, free audiobooks (that used to be expensive), becoming twisted and wrong, journalism feeding into bad behavior, cultivating an audience in a theater, utube is very big, hate bait, how to breed chickens properly, in that openness, feeling free to not have a popular channel, more ability to share, sharing is something he’s not fully thought through enough, so focused on oppression, the soul of man is art, whatever a soul is, why socialism is important, free us from the oppression of the property relationship, actual physical repression, the relationship is the oppressive thing, the freedom to comment, the freedom to review, if you don’t have your own printing press and your own distribution you don’t have freedom, mimeograph machine, the internet today, hard to find, the system is gamed against it, how bad google is, there but unseeable, virtually free to do that distribution, drowned out, ai art, an imperfect essay, handwaves a lot of this, the first line, we’re individualists in socialism, not making a program to get there, we’ll be freer individuals under socialism, we need other people to get us there, libertarian socialism, charity is the problem, amusing the poor, the accelerationist argument, the homelessness problem, people trying to solve, you shouldn’t do charity, the majority of people spoil their lives, he comes for the charity people pretty hard, this essay has such a humour to it, slave owners being kind to their slaves, let this outrage happen so the revolution will occur, in his back pocket, a program here, not detailed, it’s not for the masses, bourgeoisie cease charity, charity as a virtue, he’s for sympathy, for human feeling, otherwise socialism is going to be set back, it is immoral, the institution of private property, a personal program, under socialism this problem will no longer exist, places to organize, do what you can, Jesse might actually be right, Jesse is always wrong, a half sentence, the people who do the most harm, the charity degrades and demoralized, “Charity creates a multitude of sins.”, a hard argument, on French TV, presidential elections 30 years ago, equal time on TV, the marginal groups are marginalized even further, a Trotskyist, we are plundered, stealing everything from us, a star dancer at the Crazy Horse, stage name, as close to nudity as you can get, discovered by the head of the Crazy Horse, made her the star that she is today, the Marxist, I’m against charity, running for president to bring about the revolution, something sordid about this poor person elevated to stardom, patriarchal manipulation, charity vs. sympathy, property is theft, stealing $2 in the morning, Spider-Man should bite everyone to give everyone radioactive powers, with great property comes great responsibility, the logic of superheros, superheores are trying to stop the revoltionaries, Doc Oc, always some guy who wants to change things, Superman never zaps the president with his eye, judges shall not be impugned, questions in congress, happened for TikTok right now, you cant be super without lots of subs, sub-supers, The X-Men, homo superior, sympathy for Magneto, The League Of Evil Mutants, the oppressed group, the oppressed group, the oppressed individual, no one will have to seek approval, what’ll make somebody an elite under socialism, harvest more wheat?, an asian Soviet with a pipe [Semyon Nomokonov] who notched the number of nazis he killed on his pipe, 9 children and 49 grandchildren, not allowed to have open factions struggles, a war hero, a different sort of examples, Robert Sully Sullivan, played by Tom Hanks, whuffie, the congressional medal of honor gives credit to living people, Ulysses S. Grant, all the previous guys were all WWII veterans, you can’t give that status, Bush I, you’ve fucked up, can you have an elite, people’s who’s paintings you like, sweeps really good, tending to defer, a different kind of culture, this guy’s teepees are the best teepees, this collective, multiple elites, the stupid utube model, unbeleivable popularity, lowest common denomenator, flaming gold Ferrari, attract most attention for revenue, focusing on repairing fans (the things that you make you cool), Jordan U, why does he have 17th phones in his house, paintings on the wall of the warehouse, people who show off their rare book collections, Will’s greatest sin, scanners live in vain, scanner printer combo, the printer industry is superevil, Brother, Martin Geeson doing what Oscar Wilde is saying, unfortunate that Jonathan Weichsel doesn’t like Martin Geeson’s voice, the way to be popular, distracted by the whole socialism thing, a lot of people don’t get it guys, usually advertized without, its right in the first sentence, judging a book by its cover, talking about oppression, censorship on a basic level, people who can’t use words that they want to use, humanreadable, at symbols and upside down 3s, how much more could he say before he is thrown in prison, if the mood was wrong in the country, they chopped off the head of their monarch, restored the monarchy, Oliver Cromwell, if it weren’t for the Irish, Lord Protector, all cavaliers, now, a true leveller, entry points for people to grok things, start with what materials you have, making things easy for people is difficult, Martin Geeson is choosing interesting books, great voice, soul of an artist, valances with Sirius by Olaf Stapledon, the conditions of the people in England, under some social programs?, bankrupting the empire!, sold everything to win that war, the dog with no hands, the soul of dogs under socialism?, similar philosophy, an individualist quality, thinking together, working together, a particular novelist, Meredith, who that guy, Charles Kingsley, an immoral novelist, George Meredith, forgotten, didn’t have any science fiction books, just read Scalzi, The Three Body Problem [by Liu Cixin], The Dark Forest, Damien G. Walter, boycotting the book, the shows, why you have to do homework for this podcast, this podcast has homework, his sinophobia is facile and dangerous, too positive a view of the Cultural Revolution?, bad for science, the traitor to humanity girl, she meets up years later with the three women who lead the criticism and physical action of killing her father, privileged, before they joined the Red Army, able to better themselves a little during the Cultural Revolution, more complex than his propaganda, so empty, goes on and on, 2 hour things by him, you have to go to your death knowing that, did and didn’t, John Vervaeke, we need a new mythos, trying to determine what is in canon, you can’t do that unless you’ve read a lot, more of a media guy, an article, a list of all the women authors of science fiction not usually talked about, working through the canon, Mildred Klingerman, Margaret St. Clair, Judith Merrill, a great tastemaker, seems all right, writes really interesting stuff, leaning on make sure you get your diversity quotient in there, Madagascar science fiction, the same perspective, you can live in Bali, more about American literature, women writers and black writers, percentage, James Baldwin, first queer writer, Herman Melville, obviously super gay, if the stick is wonky, a qualitative judgement, compensating, black writers and asian writers and women writers, because he’s funny, being obtuse on purpose, Evan’s colleagues, eurocentric, teaching cohort, early modern history, too lazy to learn this stuff, we can tell the history of the world through European eyes, teaching world history, not just white European men, not about seeking out a quotient, not being ignorant about the world, people look for excuses not to read, because its propaganda, we all have to winnow, a bunches novel series ever written, Discworld, stuff without depth, not everything is showworthy, Tales Of The Gold Monkey, Indiana Jones pre-wwwii nazis, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century in the South Pacific, an ex-flying tiger, set in 1939, it’s impossible, no active duty until 1942, a hot lady in a hot tub talking to a nazi dressed up as a priest who wants to have sex with a native named Tiki, skin colour, sounds cool, what they called lived experience, their mom and dad were nice to each other, hung up on the wrong things, they’re all books, nobody talks about those, people need excuses not to read, Fearless Benjamin Lay, can we get more diverse than a Quaker abolition vegetarian dwarf who made his own clothes and lived in a cave, bend the stick to far against the liberals, what’s the baby, official commitments to anti-racism, why do you have a police state, the Deep State replaced Richard M. Nixon, the origin of policing after reconstruction, slave catching patrols, police hitting teachers, the philosophy professor being dragged off, sad but hilarious, I can’t breathe, she’s doing a callback, making an analogy to another situation, political correctness way of protesting, arrested and died, knee on the neck, oh you’re all right, fluids to make him calm down sir, heart massage, CPR, if somebody looks dead, we notice he looked unconscious, Evan is missing out all these amazing, give you you shittiest take, twitter is not good for Evan, talking about Reconstruction, the freedman wanted to be slaves again, quite good at governing themselves, Wilde in conversation with Mao, the greatest socialist intellectual of all time, something Damien G. Walter needs to read, Ursual K. Le Guin has a dangerous philsophy, The Dispossessed, not a lot of amazing art happening on that moon, a position of scarcity, post-scarcity, maybe Cuba has great art, musicians, health care, scarcity, internal production is not as efficient, a very small country, is Le Guin doing the same thing to criticize our man Oscar Wilde?, could be in dialogue, libertarian socialist, more liberal than anything else, attitudes towards copyright, for overthrowing the government, people don’t pay attention to what she says, near the end of her life, given an award, speaking about capitalism, a poem quoted in full on BoingBoing, Cory Doctorow had to take it down, The Master by Ursula K. Le Guin, the passing of knowledge and the mastery of tech, how to learn the slipstick, copyright in China, the argument that is always thrown against China is they steal patents/copyrights/trademarks, a serious problem, there’s a long story about the Tetris game, an ideological opposition to censorship, copyright is a form of that, Mr. Shitlib King, breaking copyright, not in favour of censorship ever, socialist/communist society, what’s the difference?, a communist society vs. a socialist state, a good place to be, philosophy of mugs, a really nice mug, spouse, a cute mug, bad shape for a mug, mugs should be functional, spoons, mug with hole in the bottom, a mug, an indigenous mug, made in an anti-imperialist country, handwashing, a mug is a device for delivering liquids to your mug, a cute mug, hence the drips, take a photo of it then get rid of it, emotional sentimental value, not broken yet, Mao would call that liberalism, use it often and carelessly, you should not be upset when it breaks, point in the direction, deception is allowed, the right shape, efficient, homeless guy who masturbated in the public square, Diogenes, u need a lamp, some onions, Louis CK, stoics, in a mugshell, one mug, thank you for everything, thanks for all the mugs, What Mad Universe by Fredric Brown, a novel, Lawrence Block had a book come out, a writer that Block appreciated, a way of getting into that relationship, a halfway important science fiction writer, a writer’s writer, Mack Reynolds, not his great novels, the fuckin system, after 1963 fuck everybody, copyright for 7 years, so it can be useful to multiple people, works in translation, a holdover from the imperial period, he’s cute, he’s funny he’s smart, a science fiction novel about science fiction, another case for the Baroque Cycle, interesting, long, as a long as a story needs to be, sometimes things need to be longer, this essay didn’t need to be 2 hours, why do we have long books, the cost of a credit, subverted, not why Stephen King writes long books, what censorship, he would never be censored, self-censorship, he’s not following the market, he’s 7 and a half feet tall, he’s not Spud Webb, most people who write long books, unnecessary sex scene, fetch quests, Evan went wild, a popular podcast, Geek’s Guide To The Galaxy, side quests, find the G.E.C.K., representing the game, defending it, The Stand, awkwardly updated the setting, the tone, this is here to sell more paper, he’s living life under socialism, he’s rich, people who are wanting to be Stephen King, writing novels, 7 sentences in 7 minutes, they’re wrong, you have to fill a certain number of pages, you have to have a cover, self-identify as a writer, not a real person, a class of people who aspire, doing a disservice by trying to make shorter or longer, when TV shows are about an hour are not confined by a hard number, when not helpful to the story it shouldn’t be followed, longer is better, big fat fantasy novel, wanted to live in that would, what Paul would say, room to breathe, he goes by instinct, develop a philosophy, make an argument, give me an example Will/Paul, favourite really long book Cyteen by C.J. Cherryh, doorstop books, a person’s whole life, a big Russian novel, wheels within wheels, Dune by Frank Herbert, a lot of plot, long for the period, every sequel by other hands, an important density in there, it isn’t room to breathe, it’s long because it has a lot in it, the Baroque Cycle, characters, packed with ideas, denser, despite being that long, the origins of capitalism, money, the scientific revolution, abolitionism, Anathem, Player Of Games, people who love Culture, don’t need Dune Messiah, bring Duncan Idaho back, that’s stuff happening, the guy has no name, the servant has no name, the lady who it is about has no name, ideas can’t exist in characterization, apple show A Man In Full by Tom Wolfe, an idea in it, military SF is more about gun polishing, ideas are central, fully explored in a short amount of space, the writing quality is less important than the idea explanation, the density, how many books I could read in the time I am reading this book, like Evan with women, build up the body count, women are the opposite of ideas, the people who like Dune too much, being immersed in the world, gets your juices excited, he isn’t heavy on ideas, The Colorado Kid, Mike suggested we do The Flitcraft Parable, a scene in The Maltese Falcon, chapter 7, like a fist when you open your hand, when processing it to consider it, Eric S. Rabkin, a really solid book, 196 pages, didn’t need to by 700 pages, Sam Spade is having sex with Archer’s wife, he’s one of the suspects, mysteries are an interesting parallel to science fiction, exploring our reality, in his rambling short book about the Flitcraft Parable, the length is appropriate to the idea, From A Buick 8, complain about his endings, life just sort of goes on, sets up characters as dominoes, eucatastrophes, shinings, the house forgot about its own boiler, not servicing fans?, intimate relationship with his fans, hurried to finish the Dark Tower, an old woman writing him, shitlibbery caused by a desire to please his audience?, Joyce Carol Oates, not normal for people to be liberals in our society, fucking suffer, can’t have a house, can’t have a wife, people are suffering, his fans are not all boomers, an Xer, Marissa likes him, it doesn’t define him, a 70s vibe, he feels the need to be relevant, comes off awkwardly, the Bachman book that was in a drawer, counter-culture vibes, hippie commune vs. the nazis, so not relevant, this old black lady, just show up, talk to the fascists, eucatastrophe happens, they’re mean and short, they have an idea and the character dies, The Running Man, Roadwork, Rage, The Long Walk, weary, just life, this oppressive thing the state is doing to them, questioning the purpose of life and why we’re here, droppin’ dead, a metaphor for life, an oppresive state, about school, the military and conscription, Carrie is nice and short, The Dead Zone, Firestarter on the backburner, in the zeitgeist, boomerness, what does Joyce Carol Oates represent in the zeitgeist, irrelevant Princeton professor, middle age guy, Killdozer, Marvin Heemeyer, Stephen King when still drinking, Thinner, gypsy curse seems silly, experimental in the 90s, the idea idea idea thing, one series, very meta, not like Hunger Games, a fast reader vs. a slow reader, you have to be in the right headspace, The Alleyman by Philip Jose Farmer, COVID doesn’t help, two boosters once, don’t accept injections unless literally dying, flu vaccine, now is the time to do Jesse’s epistemology, he’s a skeptic, have a police incident happen to you, it’s about that for everything, Sextus Empiricus, sense impressions, what’s a heap, suspend judgement, a lot of baby words, retweet a lot of far right things, show me one, nothing, heterodox, Jackson Hinkle, 1776 revolution, liberating Canada, absurdity, already captured, no need to invade, shampoo, how many of the words on the ingredients list can you pronounce, syllables, sodium lauryl sulphate, if your shampoo has more than syllables your children will have autism, putting all this shit in u, why do people do this?, a little discourteous, we know how long people have been smoking, spike it, most people who smoke don’t get lung cancer, that’s the weird part, a Philip K. Dick story, body parts you need to replace, if you can’t pronounce it why are you getting it in your body, there’s a lot of things I can’t pronounce, cancer too, NaCl (sodium chloride), end up in a whole bunch of cults you don’t know you’re in, dem vs. republican a cult, tribal thing, partisanship, demented tribal leader vs. demented cult leader, more cult like, Biden is in control, obviously he is not in control, reading the parts he’s not supposed to read, just defer to better him than Trump, against team bad, you should be against things that are bad, some sort of use for some shampoo, how an average consumer can know, a silly test, properly fund an independent agency that can check, it’s been corrupted, we’re left with the label, the Food and Drug administration is corrupt, Plato, you have feet, you don’t have the document in front of you, the documents exist, evidence all around you, assume corruption is the default, moms abuse, that doesn’t get us anywhere, there’s a mom over there, she’s doing, the shampoo supply is not safe, the stuff injected into your body, you have to buy food, flu shots, they don’t work, they’re full of chemicals, mercury, a chemical, salt is fine, know what the words mean, reading labels, margarine is not human food, lubricate objects, define mayonnaise, chlorine, basic chemistry, who put this shit together, something for sale, preservatives, calcium propionate, water that comes out of the faucet, no industry, there’s nothing, coast mountains, metal pipes (not lead), perfectly good to drink, bottled water full of plastic, advertised to, there water is terrible, the water in Taiwan, boiled water and bottled water, water dispenser, Coca Cola, drink the tap water, water are the ingredients, do what their parents do, who you probably assume are corrupt, maybe his graduate research, follow all his footnotes, bit the bullet, you could question everything, reasonable suspicion aroused, start questioning, bad puppy, cook that puppy, shot that puppy in an ethical manner, we all have to give up our inquiry, big flashing warning signs, recreate all these experiments home, this tub margarine has been sitting in my fridge since 1981, it doesn’t rot, food rots, alcohol is a poison, designed to kill things, sugar doesn’t rot, this is an industrial lubricant sold to us as a replacement for butter, seed oils and vegetable oils, a food product, you can eat industrial lubricant, your mom gave you butter and it seemed good to you, butter is really good for you, you need fat to live, asparagus fats, is this important, she makes a good point here, anything that is not super old, animals, see if they’ll eat it, when set of grandparents, switched to butter, poison that’s for sale, not human food, the coal butter, that’s what shit is, carnauba wax, employed in food grade polish, making food out of it, see you on twitter.

It Wouldn't Work Because by Jesse

Posted by Jesse Willis