Fredric Brown – SFFaudio

The SFFaudio Podcast #903 – READALONG: For Us, The Living by Robert A. Heinlein

Jesse and J. Daniel Sawyer talk about For Us, The Living by Robert A. Heinlein

Talked about on today’s show:
1938/39, first fiction, before Lifeline, highschool, Robert E. Howard’s juvenalia, 14 years old, terrible and awesome, natural writers, those who don’t force it, self-confession, the natural writers, tipping their hand all the time, Robert E. Howard later on, stupider and funnier, who is this kid, he sounds like Dan Sawyer, fine a writer they like, read more of that, Heinlein’s most popular juvenile, Have Space Suit Will Travel, a capstone, an epitome of the whole series, Farmer In The Sky, an excellent novel, Time For The Stars, the central characters are so horrible, horrible people, 30 years ago, Between Planets, a little bit like Podkayne Of Mars, count it as, the same literary form, the same basic structure, Starship Troopers, a transitional book, suit the new market, to break the contract, walk it across the street, literary genre is more philosophical dialogue, later books, his preferred form is the philosophical dialogue, main weakness, surprised a couple of times, predict every scene, fresh details, 23 years ago, getting old, lear a few things between books, having known when Heinlein was alive and reading, Heinlein-like novels, Annette Kurtis Clause, a cat a girl and a spaceship, she liked Heinlein, The Unincorporated Man, the sequels, The Unincorporated Woman?, triple or double the length, the premise, a really interesting premise, 2008, technically possible that they read this, who isn’t?, alot of podcast, insights, supergenius, transgenderism is always hidden, why is he like this, why?, the same reason, Stranger In A Strange Land, Starship Troopers, as a book, so much shorter, a good length, at least twelve, maybe seventeen, more plot, less rawness, everyone’s main problem with Heinlein, Perry, The Last Days Of Socrates, the strawmen there, well dressed strawmen, more distance, self-satisfied, echo, do a show by myself, Heinlein is too fuckin smart, it makes him isolated, smart at the typewriter, the result of his arguments with other very smart people, Sturgeon, Goddard, Asimov, Jack Parsons, resentful and hectoring, a background, Secrets Of The Heinlein Epic, the occult background, a Thelemite, the rocket guy, figuring out how to make rocketry work, Scientology, gnosticism, a weird direction, through his second wife, the Philip K. Dick story, a foot in that world, a rationalist, not a materialist, all of these worlds, a grand synethsis, modernity had broken culture, Sixth Column, just right after WWII?, the one book he says he regrets, a short story that John Campbell, racism, yellow peril is awesome, The Unpleasant Profession Of Jonathan Hoag, The Number Of The Beast is a grimoire, one thing on top, a whole other thing going on underneath, how to write, in the guise of a really bad novel, The Pursuit Of The Pankera, an adventure story, a nostalgic revisit of The Puppet Masters, a throwback, really readable, a seperate book, rights clearances, that’s crazy, he was dying when he wrote it, license fees, LibriVox, Heinlein, Furure Fantasia, first science fiction somethings, technically his first fiction, this had never been seen before, the guy who tracked it down, lost, naval academy buddy, Leon Stover, sitting the Heinlein archives in four different peices, more from good writers, new Michael Crichton novel, wasn’t published during his lifetime, raw, scraps of notes, James Patterson, a collab with, Vesuvius, Eruption, based on something, the real guy, somebody vibing with Heinlein, the best hoax ever, everything is in there too, nudity, the transgenderism, more and more later, whatever kink thing, Socrates, The Symposium, as a digression, Margaret St. Clair, a few novels, her shor stories, Weird Tales, wrote up into the 60s at least, she was a witch, weird stuff, in the same region, his letters, regress yourself to an ancient roman, weird stuff explainable by the weird personalities, what this book is, News From Nowhere, by William Morris, a utopian novel, William Guest, the socialist league, very Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy, an epoch of rest, the economics, philosophy, no authority, no marriage or divorce, people find pleasure in nature, pleasure in their work, engenders between people, socialism will entail, art life and work, there is a plot, guy has a car crash wakes up, fur coat, nude underneath, a future society, diagonsed as being a guy, punches her old boyfriend, sent for therapy, san fransisco for a minute, a rehab center, tour a rocket factory, winds up in a threesome, much longer stranger, circumnavigating the moon trip, doing Requiem before Requiem, Heinlein got his wish, Door Into Summer, Beyond The Horizon, something from Star Beast, the seeds for everything, mining this book, The Roads Must Roll, the premise for the tech, no strike, the rolling sidewalks are called the ways, Door Into Summer, the rolling roads are in The Door Into Summer, a little bit of Friday in there, so useful, so hepful, Costco, first 10 books for 20 bucks, 2 volumes of Heinlein juveniles in a slipcase, kids interested in reading, how good Harry Potter or Katniss Everdeen, more of the same everytime, different everytime, get kids into reading, when you’re a kid you have to have something in hand, nothing to hand neices and nephews, wish-fulfilment bullshit, he does Tom Swift, quanit and handy, making sandwiches, missing wills, nosy neighbours, not for boys, confident in your manhood, Starman Jones, the most non-memorable book of the whole series and its awesome, orphans, orphan mentality, a stepmom and a new stepdad, homeless bum, very 1930s very 2026y book, guilds, the system is rigged against us, cheating your way into success and meaning is helpful, keeping your soul, how Heinlein got into the naval academy, state senator, went and camped out, impressed or annoyed him to death, a lot of competition, the scions of wealthy houses, a poor kid from the ozarks, look at old magazines, from 1912 up to the 1930s, all the rich people magazines are putting your kid into summer school or military school, Robert W. Chambers, Hastur, The King In Yellow, The Repairer Of Reputations, America’s imperial future, feels like the 2020s, suicide booths, Aleistair Croley and William Morris, The Marching Morons by C.M. Kornbluth, very tounge in cheek, Idiocracy, the same idea, the movie version, an army experiment, a future that’s different, that formula with Looking Backward, The Sleeper Wakes, The Door Into Summer, Rip Van Winkle, not a science fiction story, how funny America is, my how things are changed, everybody’s Heinlein, sitting around the pool, the beautiful naked lady, the slightly fatter naked lady, Jubal Harshaw, his physique, a different experience reading Stranger now, a lot more about the personalities, who all these people are, roman a’clef, an afterword, a special edition, kickstarter backers, general release, Glory Road, adult juveniles, a distinct literary form vs. a target audience, to tell an adult story, drank from the well and I was full, water brother, grokked it well, quite an experience, a scene right in the middle of the book, Rodin’s sculpture of the caryatids, about that scene in the center, the sculpure gallery, the decoder ring for the whole thing, audiobook, moved out into the wilderness, recording studio, August, recording a lot, writing Secrets Of The Heinlein Epic, the juveniles and a few others, distinct in literary history, publicity, keep reading Heinlein’s later works, obviously garbage, derrangement syndrome, Our Opinions Are Correct, this is incoherent, you’re mad at someone who’s dead, mentally model people, there isn’t a little homunculus in your head, that scene from Men In Black, a whole starship full of forces and actors and dicipline, constantly being overriden, explaining their weird behavior, a very diciplined crew, undisciplined crews, driving off the road and getting divorces, what have you, the art of agency, sort your drives out and point them in the same direction, Marvin Minsky, I read every Heinlein, “other better writers”, want to say newer authors, John Scalzi, we don’t need book 2, book 4, Joe Haldeman’s Forever War, you can’t have Orson Scott Card, plays nice, using his blog to promote their books, forbidden, I read Heinlein, I sold all my Heinlein, for Lovecraft, turning over in his graves, fact masquerading as taste, a disservice to everybody invovled, an echo chamber sort of thing, he is his own best echo chamber, at his worst, I Will Fear No Evil, a super-cool book, in terms of literary value, how Heinlein worked as a person and author, Ginny had to pay the hospital bills, Lurton Blassinggame, shortened it, augmented it or retooled it, some really interesting ideas, similar to this book in a way, easy to miss, finding out, newspaper reports of how he died, a fun little scene, still newspapers and stuff, doing great for 1939, the internet from Friday, human invovled search engines, ai tokens, the woman at the beach, her name was Diana, this is all a dream of the guying on the beach, Glory Road, psychotic break, a unique quality of its own, all of them start with death, in most of his books after Stranger, a repeating pattern, a very interesting road, Heinlein was big into reading ancient mythology, an ancient afterlife myth, another aspect of this book, mention a lot, had this been published in 1940 or 1939, a huge hit or immediately dismissed, Ayn Rand, the same thought, she gets way too much fuckin attention in the 20th century, The Fountainhead, a very robotic book, Anthem, they’re not humans, they’re robotoids, mythological abstractions, sadder, university, very excited about college and university, economics, micro and macro, the ideas more interestin than the calculations, of course he’s right, he does another thing he’s really good at, Farmer In the Sky, food, breakfast, strawberries, flapjacks, the long list of enjoyable food, the sensous pleasure, if this was 1939, a Murad!, not a lot of penetration, milk glands, the female form, a nudsit, another Margaret St. Clair connection, a sacramental aspect, occultism, the gnostic and hermetic went their seperate ways, anti-body, hateful of the natural world, Sam Altman, destroy humanity and replace it with the machine god, underlying Marxism, very body embracing, the physical body as the contact point between the temporal and eternal universe, of that tradition, anarcho primitivists, a good cup a coffee, pet a dog, be chased by a goose, his analyis, description of the game, a “master”, the alternate rules at the end, something homeschoolers should be doing, the history of the 20th century would be different, a bold claim, people are highly motivated by ideas, the whole 20th century is explainable, incredibly popular with dentists, the New Deal, look at the economics, projected into the future past us, he predicted UBI, Wisconsin a fair amount, this is not a novel in the normal sense, an educational tract disguised as a novel, the Vril book, The Coming Race by Edward Bulwyer Lytton, triumph of the human spirit, big lady positive, power rods, symbolic, the bullion called Bovril, it was huge, pre-WWI Germany, huge popularity, we are becoming, lay a lot of the histy of the world at the feet of Marx and Engels, the end of the draft, the Moon mission, the draft was ended by Milton Friedman, hilarious and crazy, a friend born in 1946, my favourite billionaire likes rockets, he’s interested in things I’m interested in, he’s interested in satellites, sending my girlfriend, D.D. Harriman, Space X, the books are incredibly powerful, people model their lives on characters in books and television, a citation for that, even the stupidest people, Paul Krugmann, wanted to be the foundation character, Hari Seldon, Peter Turchin, fail upward, they didn’t read the book, they read the ai summary of the book, Al Qaeda, a parallel evolution, a big science fan, 100191, numeralogy arguments, the romans not having arabic numerals, not having punctuation, internal signaling, the USS Cole, personal experience, a learn to read book, 1840 version of Chicken Little, a leaf falls on her tail, runs to tell her mother, out let us run, Duck Luck, Fox Lox, in to my den where we will be safe, the end of the world story, Paradise, 2012 (2009), Roland Emmerich, a really funny comedy, it’s a comedy!, it’s very funny, When Worlds Collide, a retelling of Noah’s ark and the rebirth of the world, all the ladies, we’ll be safe from the falling of the sky, ate em all up, end of story, a very valuable and resonant story, are you the fox?, seeing it with my ears, questioning my senses, what if you’re wrong, when gets things a little bit too pay, cringe, a refrain in the book, his assembly campaign, reading through it, stops and has the exponents of the great future, it serves our needs, it’s not the perfect system, when Lazarus Long gets involved, history doesn’t have an end state, a remarkable individual, George O. Smith novel, Hellflower, scanned it up, find the magazine art, Virgil Finlay, analogy for poppies or heroin, the drug running sort of stuff, “indespensible”, “other better writers have taken up Heinlein’s torch”, writers who are less important to read, for your self, it’s super fucking interesting and compelling, don’t worry about spoilers, how it explores the ideas, there’s never been a book where he half-asses, goes in with both feet, he’s just a man, he didn’t agree with himself, a Wikipedia entry for BRIC shares, cleaning up shelves, what is this?, some sort of investment thing, they were trying to do what Heinlein’s trying to do, the words “social credit”, not the same as the chinese system, the fun part, the authors: Heinlein, Orwell, Aldous Huxley, J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Julian Huxley, The Tissue Culture King, a Wakanda story, a hidden african country, an african native doing some sort of obesicanece ritual, a tissue culture, he’s culturing tissue, they took the king, spreading him around, for mind control, a telepathy thing, a metal helmet, mind-controlled, 1911 area, republished in Amazing, simultaneously published, fuckn weird Guy, T.H. Huxley, H.G. Wells, strange fuckin interesting guy, way into nudity for my personal hanging around, put on a robe once in a while, bro, very big into hospitality, his relationship with Philip K. Dick, a defense of Heinelin, the funniest man ever, broken and hilarious, hitting on everybody, the two most different kind of guys, courtly and knightly, awkward and lusty and sweaty, the mad monk of science fiction, the most influential authors of the 20th century, top down vs. bottom up, literary technique, evolved, technically better writers, also into social credit, one foot in today and one foot out of time, hard to find in any writer, fully of the moment, the fashionable frame, an example, W.R. Bennett, W.A.C. Bennett, the socialist party, currently in power, they were running as “social credit” (socreds), in power in Alberta, they can’t do anything because they’re provinical, they can’t issue money, they eventually become a conservative party, what his dad did, 1871, a very different history, Kamchatka, last colonized, wild, a whole bunch of social construction, from a free enterprise party, those two parties are competing for the attention of British Columbian voters, that’s what Saudi Arabia has done, Saudi Arabia, Norway, taken the extra steps, how fuckedd things up with ai, human flourishing, if this book had been published in 1939, sunk and lost forever, really popular, politicians generally don’t know anything, socializing and getting promoted because of his midwit status, a foothold, defensible, an a b test, in this version of reality, coming late as it does, almost nobody reads at all, same time zone, we used to be neighbours, Vancouver Island, norther part of North America, the Philip K. Dick bay area, nude beach, Heinlein’s old house, cops enforcing nobody on the beach after sunset, they might hurt themselves, the stairs aren’t lit, bring a flashlight, we are run by idiots who didn’t read no fuckin books, British Columbia, west coast time, they decided to do away with daylight savings time, until California acted, they’re so fuckin dysfunctional, the newest, other than Alaska and Tasmania, not as fully corrupt the farther you go back, the more currupt it is, the corruption scandals in the birth of Canada, California was born corrupt, the corruption counterbalanced, we just want to be honest, craziness, 2nd premeier of British Columbia was Amour De Cosmos, tail end of the 19th century, doukhobourss, nudist pacificsts, the tsar’s military, beaten by the cops for being nudist pacificst, pederasts, aristoi, the elites, Socrates and Plato, shorty flatty, a wrestler, UFC guys, but gay sort of but not really, he’s got a wife, that traitor has a sexy body, send the girls out, women were inherited polluting, not out about it, bronze age pervert, a twitter person, a philosopher, a proper philosophy book, bulgarian, Claremont Institute, selective breeding, born in 1980, a weird combination of vitalism and ancient greek homo-eroticism and liberalism, stimulating, books look nice on the shelf, City Of Endless Night by Milo Hastings, gazebo, a book on chicken breeding, one of the William Hope Hodgson set, Bernarr McFadden, a magazine publisher and body builder, super against vaccines, naming his children with the letter b, faking his numbers, an invasion of the United States by the Japanese right after WWI, an under ground proto-nazi civilization, chemical fertilizer food, refused to surrender, just happens to speak German, a lot like this book but as a dystopia, a royalty breeding level, really weird, synthetic creation of fertilizer, synthetic petroleoum, drugs, different levels of the society, where the workers arent, hedonism and breeding all day, Stanley Kubrick, Brave New World, we’re there, the Fabians, Coventry, the reserve system, two more books, more walking around, If This Goes On, a naval aviator, ballistics guy, taking things apart and putting things together, not replaceable, fun and funny, another different thing, Down From Ten, Hadrian’s Flight, a podcast version, narrating things by other people, Suave Rob series, satire comedy series, surfs supernovas, short story collections, southern gothic horror, Time Of The Twins, Kyrnn, Time For The Stars, the girl one, Podkayne Of Mars, visit Heinlein, admire but don’t enjoy, horrible people, horribly broken people, an unpleasant read, night owl, west coast, easier to get up earlier, private tutor, professor obeisance to a lot of things, political parties, I like reading more than one author, a human religion, one of those ones, doctrinaire stuff, all models break down, enough power, pry the Heinlein estate out of their hands, literary agency, not being very aggressive, how many such cases, try and find a book of his on the shelf, Clifford D. Simak’s estate, way better than Clarke, a power in short stories, The Star, about a jesuit priest coming back from a solar system, the short stories were hard to find, The Science Fiction Hall Of Fame, The Nine Billion Names Of God, a classic of science fiction, Olaf Stapledon novels, translated into short stories, orbits and orbital mechanics, The Haunted Spacesuit, the ship’s cat is having kittens inside the spacesuit, he has power, Fredric Brown, What Mad Universe, it’s very good, it’s very funny, very meta, John W. Campbell style editor, a bunch of ribbons, an alternate dimensions, a comedy, in the body of another person, a comedy of customs, a science fiction universe, science fiction is out and westerns are in, recycle other people’s stories, rocket people, beautiful ladies with brass bra bikinis, a cover of Startling Stories, supermeta, an excellent writer, inspired Lawrence Block, the last Burglar book, The Burglar Who Met Fredric Brown, The Screaming Mimi, the writer’s writer, pal around with, admire his writing, see you on twitter, chicken pictures, birds and dogs, no pigs yet, dogs, gooses, turkeys, assholes, eating her pigs, couple geese, tons of chickens, cattle are way less work than chickens, beef, delicious, acreage, goats, straight to cattle, water is difficult, having water delivered, gazebo, the cloth walls come down, a tent cabin in Yosemite, negative 40, 70 or about 20, 32 is zero, grok it, 98 or 32, get those numbers wrong, the freezing point water, the wrong altitude, sea level, boiling point of seawater, now we have to be French about it, Ostreich, little bits of history, okay whatever, Austria’s greatest cultural achievement that Hitler was German and Beethoven was Austrian, the guy always comes from the periphery, Stalin’s from george, Lincoln’s from Illinois, encapsulates the hate, the real life Hari Seldon, grand unified theory, elite overproduction, he needed to be in this conversation in this book, counter elite, corrupt clique of the imperial corps, find a parade and march in front of it, the excellent discussion.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Reading, Short And Deep #530 – The Last Train by Fredric Brown

Reading, Short And Deep

Reading, Short And Deep #530

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss The Last Train by Fredric Brown

Here’s a link to a PDF of the story |PDF|.

The Last Train was first published in Weird Tales, January 1950

Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!

The SFFaudio Podcast #839 – READALONG: The Burglar Who Met Fredric Brown by Lawrence Block

The SFFaudio Podcast #839 – Jesse, Scott Danielson, and Maissa Bessada talk about The Burglar Who Met Fredric Brown by Lawrence Block

Talked about on today’s show:
2022, the last book in a series?, where do you go from here?, very meta, The Burglar Who Counted Spoons, the Mondrian, the Spinoza, read them all, high hopes for super preparation, Burglars Can’t Be Choosers, What Mad Universe?, recommend that one to everybody, no Carolyn Kaiser, becomes a regular, he didn’t know what the formula was, imagine my surprise, selling books, thw worst Lawrence Block book, goes down so smooth, worst book is still great, everything in between, how violent is it?, ptsd from reading, A Walk Among The Tombstones, that series, traumatic, ooh this is dark, Westlake has his normal books, the violent ones, Tucker Coe, Donald Westlake, so many series like that, he used to be in television, now he’s an amateur detective, under a whole other name, so many Westlake, Lawrence Block’s still alive, 2 years old, reading this style, ebay, feels out of place, 1977, Bernie Rhoddenbarr doesn’t age, this happened 12 times, Bern, he would have aged up, a spry burglar in the prime of life, drink all day, a cozy, a weird alternate universe, New York didn’t change that much, a reckoning, you can’t be a burglar in modern sociert, video of you, teetering on the edge of oh I hate this, set in the modern, the ideal version of my reality, google’s still there, but Amazon and ebay aren’t, a fantasy a lot of people want to have, he’s american, more like school shootings or lynchings, he chose the apple pie universe, listened to it, totally recommend it, clunkier, Lawrence Block is a smoother writer, the smoothest writer Jesse has ever read, comforting and cozy, he never puts a foot wrong, the meta aspect of it, swirling whirlpool, he convinced me, Chapter 12, asterix asterix asterix, the superdeluxe handlettered version of this book, he’s never that meta, genuine SF, genuine meta SF, a writer for a pulp magazine, transitions to another universe, a capcitor rocketed to the moon, zapped out of existence, wakes up in another world, a dark cold war, their past diverged 30 years prior, fit in without an identity, investigating a parallel world, what we see here, solipsitic with two characters that had it happen to them, one of many parallel worlds, the perfect world of a guy he didn’t like, all the science fiction he’s writing about is now real, the show coming out tonight, the audiobook and the podcast, very very meta, other bad news, Richard Ferrone died in 2022, it can’t go anywhere from here

novels:
Burglars Can’t Be Choosers (1977)
The Burglar in the Closet (1978)
The Burglar Who Liked to Quote Kipling (1979)
The Burglar Who Studied Spinoza (1980)
The Burglar Who Painted Like Mondrian (1983)
The Burglar Who Traded Ted Williams (1994)
The Burglar Who Thought He Was Bogart (1995)
The Burglar In The Library (1997)
The Burglar In The Rye (1999)
The Burglar On The Prowl (2004)
The Burglar Who Counted the Spoons (2013)
The Burglar Who Met Fredric Brown (2022)

three short stories:
Like A Thief In The Night
The Burglar Dropped In On Elvis
The Burglar Who Smelled Smoke

a movie version of the second book, Whoopi Goldberg, Bobcat Goldthwait, gender flipped the characters, Hollywood doesn’t do the books exactly right, such a literary guy, Peter Peter is reading a book, the manx, Raffles, stealing from this dynamic, E.W. Honung, Arthur Conan Doyle’s brother in law, that’s cool, a burglar version of Sherlock Holmes, shacked up together, the Moriarty of crime, supercozy, similar to one of the short stories, an American boxer comes to town, burly bodyguards, the biggest diamond you’ve ever seen, the master burglar, amateur cricketer, can’t resist, an amateur amateur, help I’m trapped, there’s a scene referenced in here, Ray Kirschman, gather everybody together, that scene is elided, a ripoff of Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe, professional consulting detective, ratiocination, an agent who wrote, his own version of it, a sex quest, Greenwich Village of the 1960s, fishtank instead of orchids, to be his Archie Goodwin, told from the pov of an Archie Goodwin standin, echoing out, if you were a fiction character, being on the typewriter with him, don’t let this all be a dream, the cop-out ending, Lewis Carrol, Little Orphan Annie, 99% literary allusion, when did the plot even start?, The Screaming Mimi, any other Fredric Brown, Arena, Knock, Ballantine, the Star Trek episode, his reputation, a two sentence story, how Knock goes, the last man on earth sat alone in a room, there was a knock at the door, The Case Of The Dancing Sandwiches, Joe Haldeman’s The Hemingway Hoax, alternate universe, came back with Beatles songs, Jefty Is Five, Harlan Ellison, radio shows that stopped existing, books that were never published, really good, read by Harlan Ellison, The Screaming Mimi, read by Stefan Rudnicki, series characters, fantastic stuff, who is this Westlake guy?, Jason Sanford, the Reacher book, that first Reacher book was pretty good, compartmentalized, Fredric Brown’s Hall Of Mirrors, a lock that needs to be opened up to reveal what it is, experimental and thoughtful, doing it seemingly for himself, that meta aspect, an invitation rather than a story, it was a monkey, it was a woman, it was an alien, what made him the last man on earth, couldn’t be much different than this and still be good, can’t really complain, the Burglar series, Sins Of The Father, the Matthew Scudder series, ex-cop, he does his research, his life is a writer, he’s observant, has traveled, a lot of research, found out today, Transnistria, google it and it is real, alcoholic, in AA, a much darker version, fairly cozy, [A Walk Among The Tombstones] Eight Million Ways To Die, they loved the book, would make a great movie, then doesn’t, Reacher is better as a show than a movie, Tom Cruise Reacher movie was fine, more character based, the format, 2nd season in Toronto, a 3rd season, talking with Terence about it, Conan but with a pension, Conan’s not a patriot, other books to read, sitting in a cafe somewhere maybe, the main complaint, the body type, what is Bernie’s size?, taller than Caroline, 99% of this book is dialogue, I opened the cupboard and pulled out some cookies, chili, added some cheddar, whenever that’s happening, throwing down a red herring, that character is thinking, the dialogue is just great, why Carolyn was needed, gets a girlfriend right away, a person to dialogue with, she was the murderer, she goes to prison, lesbian poodle washer, to bounce your dialogue off of, Doctor Watson making notes about what Sherlock Holmes is doing, his writing skill is a combination of limited life experience, deep interest in research, and reading a ton of old stuff he really likes and wants to tell you about, his whole life Lawrence Block’s been a writer, he considered burglary, what’s going on that part of the book, when did the plot start?, in the first book, instead of having money they had credits, instead of a metro card, a subway card, happens in the dark, subconscious time, in the dark, an amazing sequence in What Mad Universe, grab a bunkbed, there’s a blackout right now, aliens are destroying parts of earth, a WWII allegory, a fog of blackness, push through, after getting off of the public transit, somethings walking the streets with canes, a monster coming, meets up with a burglar, drive by dead reckoning, 60 feet that way, then take a right, a super creativity there, a meta-science fiction book set in a science fiction universe, this book is not science fiction at all, influenced, Voltaire underneath all of it, Candide, ties back, back to Spinoza, a rich stew, a chili with cheddar put on top, what you will remember is the coziness, Peter Peter and the four bodyguards, barely remember them, what about the money, stealing from your friend on a ship, doom him again, a cruise ship, assisted living, if he was 30 in 1937, how old is he in 2022, died in a book 20 years earlier, I read all of Lawrence Block’s burglar books just to get all the callbacks, very fun and light, no gore, there’s a dead man in here, Bernie, he’s wearing your tie, Agatha Christie style, a snowstorm, cops can’t come, has to solve the murder, how he writes these books, why don’t we go upstate, takes his typewriter, a comedic element, even death isn’t dark, the apple pie universe, a scoop of ice cream, nobody gets fat, ice cream headache, raising your hand and swirling it, the names, the Cubby Hole, the Bum Rap, just great, this can’t work anymore, New York is unlivable, there’s no customers, what happened to Jesse, went out of business, everything works out in the end, it’s not an uber, your taxi is always there waiting for you, a kind of assisted living, food is good, the Bowlmore being taken down, a commentary on how New York has changed, the bowling alley coming back, because it’s a place where you wear other people’s shoes, multiverse, a strike, a gutterball, a nice metaphor, a thing to bring back, the same setup every time, the thinking, to reframe, the plot’s here!, in the context of What Mad Universe?, swapped for the main character in the other universe, there’s two of them, change places, an interloper, the other Bernie stole something and disappeared, the place broken, the domestic native Bernie breaking into his own shop, there’s a red herring, alternate universe Carolyn, hey there’s a lesbian in my bed and its me, slipped into each other’s minds?, the pocket universe created, dissolved out of existence, he didn’t really write Science Fiction ever, [Make A Prison], Richard Lovelace, he’s not a science fiction writer, other Fredric Brown, doesn’t feel like a science fiction, alternate universes, how does he get there, very Alice In Wonderland, we made it up, oh it happened and we made it up, something Eric [Rabkin], Alice’s Adventures Under The Ground, Alice is bored, the end of the reality, she sees a rabbit, everything after that is fantasy, do that book sometime, should be available, done with metaverses for a while, the Hollywood stamp of a approval, Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022), Deadpool 3 (2024), nothing matters, women are always giving phone numbers, The Burglar Who Counted Spoons, fine, nothing matters, enjoying this book despondently, kill me now, all just here playing our part, even more meta than What Mad Universe, based on a milieu, the cover of the magazine is described, reading this in Startling Stories, #BrassBra bikini, a green space girl costume, this is our uniform, everything about that, Mad Magazine, Colliers, recursion, going deep inside, a story about a writer for a magazine about a story about a writer of a magazine, referencing fans, Surprising Stories, not about science fiction, science fiction is old hat, rocketships in the future, needs to make money, plagiarize Isaac Asimov stories, it was better the second time, that’s the imagination that sparked Bernie into making this universe, the imagination that sparked Lawrence Block, a cat, Nora, a black cat, a Nick?, a dog!, a German Shepherd, therapy dog, dogs with jobs, a lab, even more approachable, naturally good at it, this one will go to school, not Nick, we need a reason to read The Thin Man, Bernie?, Carolyn?, Douglas, dogs named after tree, Douglas Furbanks, his half brother, previous litter, different colour patterns, some stuff on his head, colouration, exhausted this book pretty quick, so entertaining, tell me tomorrow, Bern, star star star, Chapter 37: I explained., we skipped a whole scene, flow so well, not homework, Raffles asking to be fed, dog burglar, keep working on it, two on the schedule, another Simak, Lilith by George MacDonald, 1895, 1969, among the the darkest, the most profound, the cosmic sleep that heals tortured souls, a Christian universalist, salvation is hard won, Mr. Vane owns a library, much like a Raven, the wraith, 351 pages, sounds a little dark for Maissa, children’s books?, Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series, The Wood Beyond The World, might be fun, The King Of Elfland’s Daughter, too close to your xmas, Project Pope by Clifford D. Simak, A Choice Of Gods, Mistress Of Mellyn by Victoria Holt, highly regarded, The Tower Treasure by Frank W. Dixon, Hardy Boys, The Mystery Of The 99 Steps, cozy and hilarious, pretty sure Nancy Drew is a lesbian, skinny dipping, blue convertible, doesn’t have a job, always nice, suspicious but too polite to say, a new suspect, pretty sure this one’s a robot, she’s not eating, a lot to read into it, locking people in rooms, that’s gonna solve the problem, her main device is a flashlight, soft and cozy mysteries, big in Scott’s childhood, The Three Investigators, The Green Ghost, Hitchcock licensing, Tom Swift, Robert E. Howard, spoiled the ending of Odd John, Olaf Stapledon, 2025, crazy, thinking about 2020 in 2001, thinking about 2000, Blade Runner soon, the future is not like I thought, dig back in old books and magazines, Ray Bradbury story, some guy named Oxford, Don Congdon and Associates, copyright strikes, The Exiles, Usher II, read by Leonard Nimoy, a couple of Robert A. Heinleins, The Green Hills Of Earth, the old days, he was on that, 2000X, Yuri Rasovsky, Dirk Maggs, Judge Dredd, Batman, audio drama, normal audio drama, a signature style, Independence Day, Dredd (2012), hyperbolic, 2000 A.D., of all the stories to do, make sense for a British comic in the 70s, a super-evil dystopia, six months in isocube, caffeine is illegal, everything is evil, the guy you care about is the bad guy, a parody of the United States, Mega City One, space judges, death judges, a complete alternate universe of Marvel, super-team this, league of evil mutants everywhere, not allowed to have wives or girlfriends or sex, a whole other universe to explore, a parody of the United States, adaptations, British actors putting on American accents, entertainment from another universe, anime, William who lives in Japan, Dragon Ball Z, waved a wand, computer games for education, they don’t learn anything in school, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, a mission to meet this ancient philosopher, world rich, you learn the things that you’re interested in, time is up!, see you, hear you, an hour early, editing later, Strange Darling (2023), it’s musical, some violence in it, the actor, based on two movies, so out of the loop, movie trailers, movies can be good, few and far between of late, artsy and innovative, 97 minutes, not a rape scene exactly, a choking scene, everything will be okay, prefacing, the opening credits, the movie is deceptive, Kyle Gallner, the lady, very good actors, not super super handsome, good at picking scripts, credited with a name, the demon, the girl, a little conversation, are you a serial killer?, this based on a serial killer, all lies, shot entire entirely on 35mm, that part is probably true, very important, art movies, not boring art movies, a structure, a movie in six parts, chapter 3, chapter 5, you’re gonna love, watch it during the day, cat hair is coming off, The Wild Robot (2024), Pedro Pascal, delightful noting traumatizing, cenobite, not into slasher movies, tricky slippery fun, deceptive, Ed Begley, Jr., plays an old hippie, very beautiful, hyper realistic, red and green, colour palated, Giovanni Ribisi, Dinner In America (2020), an hour 46, set in the 80s for no reason, a punk rock musician, sex letters, a pet store, fishtank cleaner-outer, straight laced parents, it’s like she’s retarded, no diagnosis, this is a romance, you’re rooting for them both, 91%, The Substance (2024), somebody’s back is stitched up, too scary, Bettlejuice Bettlejuice (2024), daily streaming charts, this chart has no value, Conclave (2024), sequester, new pope, Twelve Angry Men (1957), 12 pious men, Isabella Rosellini, good 4 lines, a lot of lurking, moves, stares, Stanley Tucci, its scary, a guy choking somebody, it’s worth it, movies that are manipulative, Pulp Fiction (1994), a buncha country roads in a forest, shot in Oregon maybe, the Red Letter Media guys, accidentally made a Kyle Gallner special, a follow up, at it for a while, he’s not ugly, Jennifer’s Body (2009), Smile 2, Scream 6?, Red Eye (2005), Red State (2011), weird revenge movie, picking good movies, who are not beautiful, pick good stuff, fun to see an actor you like in a movie, Eric Roberts will be in any movie, needs the cue cards, quite good, afforded his budget, not a professional actor, he’s just the attraction to make the movie a little more saleable, you know what you’re talking about, Star Trek: Lower Decks, how much they love it, the actor who plays the male lead, Jack Quaid?, six Jason movies, a crossover with Star Trek Strange New Worlds, cartoon worlds, hated discovery and Star Trek Picard, east to swallow, these are meant to be on in the background, if you’re very young right now, tiktok and instagram, you have to be taught, kids used to get bored, never bored anymore, research and processing, you need to be bored enough to get into somethings, ants, flowers, sucked into watching puppy videos, a puppy licking a Starbucks cup, the cough, winter related, if you lived in Hawaii, warm places in the winter, dysentery in Egypt, fluish sick?, winter weather, closed up, sealed up, what can we do about it, complain, have you noticed, have you looked at your coins lately, don’t look at your coins, some weird king on your coins, threw me into a universe, who’s this guy wearing a crown, a little peek, both old ladies, queen cookie tin, old lady with short hair, different people, a little faceblind, go into her classroom, a portrait of the queen on the wall, less disturbing than seeing this guy, what the hell is going on, about 5% of the coins, loonies or toonies, a disturbin experience, Charles III, still living with your grandmother, Charles III toonie, a quarter, not liking it, devaluing the money, on ebay, $25 for a $2 coin, ebay’s listings are free now, business model, before Amazon, 1999, ebay used to own PayPal, billpoint, spend the money, Skype, ebay used to be huge, recessed into the background, everybody knows about Amazon, a Star Trek Murder Mystery Box, ABEBooks.com, bought by Amazon, started on Vancouver Island, a competitor, this is why we can’t have nice things, the politics of this book make Jesse sad, an apartment that’s paid for, crazy real-estate investment, unaffordable and impossible, like an elegy, have a living and a place to live, go out for drinks, patches of that past, oh and independent store where they sell stuff and a person works there, runaway to escape, we can’t go back, doesn’t do that much tweaking, taxis arrive on time, customers for his store, his perfect little world, old books, visiting a time, when sandwiches cost 5 cents, coffee was 5 cents, a magazine 15 cents, $18 for a magazine, full of ads and super-thin, you have a phone, what the real problem is, real estate is really the issue, massive decline for a long time, middle to late 50s, drop off a cliff, 1953 is the height, in decline since then, 130 men’s magazines, more like adventure fiction, WWII stories, Chatelaine, competing with each other, steeply fallen by the 1960s, a major distributor selling the real estate for distribution, selling that depot is what killed the distribution, a scramble, super-interesting, blame it on television, movie theaters, what killed the movie going experience, COVID, bad movies, movie fans are all getting old now, the young people don’t know what movies are, small town movie theaters, movie festivals, untrained audience, expensive to rent the movies, a lack of availability of housing, not just for people, nothing they did wrong, investment properties, people don’t even know that they own it, Blackrock, you don’t even know you’re participating, private equity, why is the war in Ukraine happening, Blackrock is the answer, the breadbasket for Europe, sell our grain product, buy up all the land, taking all these debts, if this is a conscious plan, spray glyphosate all over it, the terminator gene style wheat, we’re doing all these things without knowing we’re doing them, everybody’s life is in your phone, imagine cinemas, big leather reclining chairs, $5 movies, $5 concessions, slash to this extent, all the matinees, you need to have something to watch that you want to see, Red One, the Rock, Heretic, supposed to be not bad, hires then marries, thriller, a child’s movie, Venom The Last Dance, We Live In Time (2024), Andrew Garfield, Florence Pugh, out of the knowing things business, Gladiator 2, Wicked, Moana 2, keep your hand in there, The Importance Of Being Earnest, such good words, as in it sucked, not in as they slayed, sad story, Mufasa: The Lion King, Sonic The Hedgehog, Wolf Man (2025), Captain America, Love Hurts, on the Island last, new owner coming, a good movie playing, late summer, old movies, a good date movie, I’m not sure we should be watching this, a movie that’s original, does good work, this is what a movie can be like, 90s comedies, dynamics of the neighbourhood, a girl who’s pregnant driving around town, actor became a dude, Juno (2007), Elliot/Ellen Page, those sorts of people, when was Superbad (2007)?, enjoy your movies, by DM.

The Burglar Who Met Fredric Brow by Lawrence Block

Posted by Jesse Willis

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

The SFFaudio Podcast #798 – READALONG: Return From The Stars by Stanisław Lem

Jesse, Will Emmons, Cora Buhlert, Terence Blake, and Jonathan Weichsel talk about Return From The Stars by Stanisław Lem

Talked about on today’s show:
a betterized Terence, what happened to Jonathan, refusing to speak with us because communist dictators, Bibi worship, need more Lem, great, really great, great science fiction, solid novel, there are moments that are excellent, great ideas, amazing scenes, the ending confused, Beyond Atlantis (1973), a 1970s movie from the Philippines, Lovecraft combined with Atlantean, a sexploitation movie, John Wayne’s son, family friendly, the opposite, an adult movie, hits all the beats, competent and funny, Jesse promises, The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre (1948) with Atlanteans, they lost all their pearls, that’s not funny, at the end of Gumball Rally (1976), “gumball”, illegal road race across the country, the bird at the end, the betrazated bird, no wild things exist, unlikely to kill humans, notice it isn’t afraid of the human, taught to be afraid, humans are no longer scary, confusing beginning, first gets on/off the airplane, cutouts, flashing across the ceiling of this tube, end of the book, sitting in the snow, eating snow, going home, acting like a child, pretty good at telling us about what it means, people don’t change, a pretty good theme, describing this book to a dude, guy comes back from space, stronger than anybody else on earth, no other men on the planet, they’ve all been castrated, like John Carter, jump super high, the chairs reach up to comfort you, masculine power has been turned into something useless, John Carter goes to Mars and there’s no problems there, he’s going to go on that expedition, sets up the sequel, turns this book into The Forever War, a utopian/dystopian book, Conan shows up in a kingdom, what’s your problem, ruins Robert E. Howard’s argument, undercurrents of discontent, robots?, drug to undo, an underground supply, we do that too, people consuming alcohol or cocaine, in vino veritas, there’s no escape from a dystopia, a non-dystopia, fell in love with a woman who belonged to that society, the adventure is good side, the final transformation, a star child or a messiah, nobody gives a damn about them, he becomes ordinary, echoes the end, I did not want the stars, crazy/derranged, a man must be completely ordinary, otherwise impossible/pointless to live, testosterone fueled adventurism, espousing conformity, he doesn’t seek betrazation, conditioned by capitalism, seeing creative destruction as good, its own sense and logic, he can never be at home, he doesn’t want to go and do it again, he falls in love with a woman who is ordinary, extraordinary didn’t interest him, chose ordinariness, exhibit D, a page from Teen Confessions, a redhead and her teen boyfriend are falling in love while visiting Washington, D.C., outside looking at the moon and the Capital building, you’d better agree, would there be a penalty?, then I’d kiss you and keep kissing you until you agree, romance comics, girl comics end with periods, in that case I refuse, I’ll keep saying no, thinking while being kissed, end of scene, she’s figured it, so interesting, the scene that’s like this in the book, trouble communicating, jesus christ people have difficulty communicating their wants, animal sex, are you okay with me kidnapping you?, the heart of the problem, when she don’t know what’s she’s thinking at all, she’s betrazized incapable, she can’t ask to be kidnapped and raped, unthinkable, the reason you carry a woman over a threshhold, taken her from her father’s house, a hairpulling thing, caveman style of interaction, maybe she wanted this and that’s why she’s afraid, women do like men and their male characteristics, not just a roleplay, I’m forcing my will upon you, that’s what we’re told by the narrator, he doesn’t know that at the time, that’s how stupid I was, we’re not telepathic beings, words are usually a good way of rationalizing thoughts, you’ve stated it perfectly, dialogues, not knowing what it meant, incomplete sentences, left puzzled, one of the topics of this book, Planet Of The Apes, The Unincorporated Man, its not about understanding it’s about action, it’s about metamorphosis, another possibility, by loving this woman, he turns into a child at the end, how much can love transform you?, he does not fit in, hence his attraction and our attraction to go back to space, ordinary is not the same as conformist, the anti-I Am Legend, he’s just a normal guy with superman muscles, 1961, East European science fiction, space books, the thing to remember, the official doctrine, we will have socialism soon, wonderful utopia, socialist utopia, there will be people who won’t fit in, German science fiction writer, socialism is like Christmas, just sleep a few more nights and there will be socialism, socialism was the endgame, we know this is going to be the future, how do we get there?, what will we lose when we get there?, the women in the book, there were three, progression between the women, no matter where Jonathan went, many such cases, it’s because Jonathan’s a handsome American, do you want me?, $200, pre-fall of the wall, interhotels, similar things in the Soviet Union, women who would do whatever you wanted for western money, she’s kinda like a whore, the screen star, the actress, the realist, she treated him like a whore, he was novel, maybe I can conquer him too?, eventually, figure her out a bit, take her from her husband and go talk to him, Terence came to France (the apes had power), spoke French very badly, a talking dog, quite amusing, fell in love with a French woman, became French, hear from Will, thinking in terms of dialectics, what is a dialectic?, two poles, old style man adventure, the betraized Eloi, John Carter meets The Time Machine, the death drive vs. the pleasure principle, discharging energies to get to a steady state, death drive, alcohol or crazy choices, changing paradigms, always a possibility of setting up a third way, dialectical, this society is impossible, there are contradictions in this society that are staggering, do this poorly, the propaganda version, a school textbook, have you read school textbook, school is designed to indoctrinate, the offical ideology, the robot smelting plant, does it set something up, underrealized, a reel of a realization of that, I’m in here improperly, I’m not broken, really crying out for help, what’s so cool about that, all the humans have become robots, putting them into recycling centers instead of death camps, the robots do the selection, really terrific book, Mockingbird by Walter Tevis, suggested based on a John Lange novel, from there to here, the weird German copy, The Terminal Man, using pleasure to counter the death drive, deep writers, reinforces the murderous impulses, inhibition is A Clockwork Orange, also a travel book, air b and bs, a utopian novel, a dystopian novel, Logan’s Run, the Berlin Wall, traveling was aspirational, Lem did travel, privileged, The Dispossessed, poverty planet, everyone suffers under communism, to capitalist planet, that’s the point of fandom, Donald A. Wollheim, how about reading this book as not a utopian government, fully automated luxury, safe under grandma’s skirts, communist countries were more open, Hillary Clinton couldn’t imagine being a woman astronaut, it was just different, Sally Ride, Valentina Tereshkova, she was a seamstress, this is girl planet, what makes a man a man, the ability to have violence in any conversation, handshakes are a big deal, girls and handshakes are copying men’s behavior, I can’t be pushed over, something wrong with their brain, apologize, farmers hands are all sinew, he doesn’t know all strong, a possibility of violence between us, many skills and not drunk, that potential for violence is always there, the holding up the hand is the unarmed, not a universal human greeting, the open hand, the how, you have to learn it, this is what its for, holding out your hand, as opposed to against that person, refusing a handshake, doesn’t know what to do with his hands, feels weird in his skin, what they look like or what they’re wearing, SFWA dm, the people over here are odd and strange in different ways, luxuries we don’t have, obviously German, weird acronyms, words we have to intuit, legal loophole, sold east German stuff to us, about being a man, many ways of being a man, most masculine hobby is smoking cigars, beer tents, unhealthy, one of the ways of being a man is act as a protector to the smaller female, women cops protecting male victims of crime, moderated, he’s a pilot, traumatized, backstory, why he’s PTSD, an Earth that can’t understand him, boxing matches aside, stolen girl, tell me about this scar, he’s such a wounded animal she can’t resist them, scars on men, a whole German society, a lot of Nazis, right wing, this is a planet that has been feminized, man against lion, the lion is not a threat, holograms, not a robot lion, where does the meat come from?, lion and a lioness, the hologram experience on the rope bridge, dives in and rescues her, everybody has been coddled, everyone has soft hands, physically strong, considered suicide, even the dudes are girls, everyone seems to him like his idea of a girl, a little hyperbolic, bring boxing gloves, I need someone to threaten me, would be as lost, nobody has to work because everything is free, if you want to have a car, the supervisory job, an archaeologist studying an ancient relic of human civilization, a very discombobulating world, becomes a child again, putting snow in your mouth, Jesse would still be a podcaster in this world, Ukraine or Belorussia, Poland was recreated as a state, after WWII, Truman was strongly involved, Stalin decided, after the Russian revolution, the Baltic states, put into houses where German people had lived, traumatic, always upset, uproot us again, Silesia, moved to northern German, literally stopped living, no chance to keep his farm house, a weird guy, felt sorry for him, 1921, survived the holocaust with false papers, always in the subject of the other countries around it, a post national world, does everybody speak the same whatever it is?, esperanto?, the opening is awesome, Lem has a plan, continously discombobulates, how the tech works, why the behavior is so stange, a lot like Logan’s Run without the depth, calling them Eloi, constantly young and beautiful, no predator underneath, even the robots, take this another direction, lead a robot revolt, if you listen carefully to what the robots are saying, reasonable, religious fanatics, a whole bunch of demented people, the other option is a horror, this whole society can’t be fixed, a lot of time in hospital, help me!, get me out of here!, just yelling, looks good on the surface, a totalitarian government, that is totalitarianism, propaganda, hypnagogic tapes, we don’t know who issues those, a smokescreen, they can’t, not wanting to as an excuse, an inhibition, they have all the tech for it, lost their sense of adventure, going to space would be dangerous, can’t place themselves in danger, if Niven took this book, Berlin, kids drowned in full view, their own comrades would shoot them, immigrant kids, people standing around, society is based around several lies, just as bad as the alcoholic, a religious fanatic who is peaceable might be annoying, dysfunctional, less likely to drunk drive you, dysfunctional neurotic, just as neurotic, in a different direct, less manly, there’s no PTSD on this planet, the primary contradiction, incapable of wanting it vs. incapable of doing it, the idea cannot come into their heads, the apologetics aren’t necessary anymore, space rapes, Theodore Sturgeon, penetrating other spheres, ideological belief in equality, no, you’re a homemaker, we don’t put women into danger, men are disposable, the tragedy of a woman being destroyed in space, given this premise, he would try, turn it off, fix it, even rapeyer, pretty rape, The Cosmic Rape by Theodore Sturgeon, castration, violent thought come from the balls?, the totalitarianism, Philip K. Dick’s Progeny, maybe Will is just totalitarianism, the one child policy, a blanket solution, oppressed nationalities, a button you switch on or off, totalitarian style thinking, you’re not wise enough to have children, turn off all these indians ability to have children, when in doubt sterilize, do it on the downlow, not something you advertize, controlling every aspect of reality, nobody has any boo boos, where Larry Niven could take this story, we could do a robot uprising, religious leaders, you could do a lot with this world, has the guy broken in the end, that expedition is gonna solve anything, super-anti-gravity drive, go away forever, unless they’re doing it Heinlein’s Universe style, posit something new, he’s going to inform, evidence against it, he chooses to become ordinary, his children will be betrazated, a profit and loss thing, 50-50, hence he gives in, the central thing that distinguishing, falling in love with one of the dogs, showing your hands in a weird way, incapable of doing the horror, what’s the central contradiction?, the solution to violence, it’s not true, those in power can order a robot to kill someone, money is not eliminated from the economy, money exists for more valuable and rarer things, she’s gotten illegally, the drug, where’s the prisons on this planet, what crime takes place, what makes it illegal, the robots are not the police, the robots will kill you if you’ve gone to far, the robots are the people, the robot might decide, this is a system, she’s studying at university to become an archaeologist, the robot supervisor (husband), wants to secretly confront him, legit there wasn’t a second engineer there, a false flag, an excuse to visit this horror show, compare this very good book to Mockingbird, there are only systems, a secret government hidden in a bunker in Cheyenne Mountain, not because it is illegal, robots don’t get upset, who’s really running things, isn’t this exciting, phones being tapped, the paranoid person from the past, insane, he’s a failure, he’s Conan, he’s Tarzan of the Apes, come back to a world of pussies, don’t, slap the tarzan out of my mouth, will?, like a really good star trek episode, the Betazeds, a trick question, you should be saying it, what kind of fantasy?, an idealist fantasy, a materialist piece of science fiction, not a contradiction between classes, understated, what are the classes, the robots and the eloi, the young and the old, the aging problem, a weird way to go, third childhood, the men try to look as young as they can, women would look for wealth, heroics, scars, we don’t need a biological solution to war, nations are an output of classes, trying to say things she’s unable to describe, no context, she seems to confirm it, wants to be taken but unable to say it, what female genes say: take me take me now, the y chromosomes don’t understand, character posing with two dolls almost kissing, Masters of the Universe collection, this is part of the girl version, the love of the relationship stuff, the Princess of Power movie, the original She-Ra, a continuous storyline, Days Of Our Lives, superhero team movies, don’t care about princess, princesses and magic swords, Sheepfarmer’s Daughter by Elizabeth Moon, The Deed Of Deed Of Paksenarrion, kinda like Red Sonja, Baen, terrible distribution, a fantasy solution to the science fiction presented today, not a series makes it even better, Lem can be very funny, The Futurological Congress, all brain material, super-science fiction stuff, under pressure, The Silent Star (1960), serialized on VKvideo, 5 part 1989 production, very popular for adaptations, a great book, second Lem, One Human Minute, grumpy about doing this one, it was available, The Cyberiad, last week, Jesse tried to pin it on everyone, we are all guilty, no one forced you to sign up for this, all your hands are bloody, the Wikipedia didn’t make it sound great, plot wrong, coming together right now, a little less than Paul, Australia or Poland, twitter is the best way to keep in touch, The Devil’s Elixirs by E.T.A. Hoffmann, in 58 parts, caveat under the audiobook, just during the high moments, an outcue and an incue, barring change, Bremen Soviet Republic, family secret, they didn’t talk about that, Connor is hard to get, 17 hours, Terence has nothing but time, Will studies science fiction right now, lifting weights, kettlebelling your brain, making critical claims, didn’t get the pseudonym of the dictator who went to Mars, always Pulpcovers, Scott Miller, dictator goes to Venus, his title was number 1, you have to infer it, the dictator is Weichsel, read the description of the tweet, Happy Ending by Fredric Brown and Mack Reynolds, whatever it was?, did Stalin like dogs?, Khrushchev? we are not destalinizing the dog space program, miniseries, a late night thing, the lady who plays the hologram, no excuses, Dark Carnivals: Modern Horror and the Origins of American Empire by W. Scott Poole, The Gun by Philip K. Dick, Murray Leinster had nothing to do with it, Mad Planet by Murray Leinster, The Liar is Jonathan’s idea, that was a robot, Demons Of Cthuhlu by Robert Silverberg, Time Is The Simplest Thing by Clifford D. Simak, up to speed on Fredric Brown, that’s a robot dude, that’s a fuckn robot, audiobook with terrible feedback distortion, the DRM?, you don’t have enough audiobook experience, an argument from authority vs. an argument from strength, a british fuckin robot, not a human, just listen, three tenths of a second you can tell, look at the hands, a lady drawing a sword, two handled sword, hilts on both ends, wait for the humans to do the human work, it’s wrong, my life is worth more, not going to pay for it anywhere, it’s not labour it’s love, you could eat toothpaste, fake sugar, aspartame, way too sweet, gotten sweeter, adulterating your toothpaste, toothpaste shouldn’t be delicious, baking soda and salt, East German toothpaste, read by a single narrator, this is where dictator Jesse comes in, can you have all the tools, a robot show, a good place to draw the line, a Margaret Atwood book, dramatic readings on LibriVox, almost incomprehensible Italian guy, Scott Miller looks up fuckin word, he’s a perfetionist, he’s a great voice, so good at producing his show, AI art, he spends a lot of time crafting some of them, Paul’s argument against AI art, not more than the usual mad at Jesse, busy being mad at Chengdu, if Paul was here, chat GPT style things, his argument, gives him a bad answer, you have to work with it, the way you play with your dolls, Lego Minifigures, going into a database of copyrighted materials, AI art is bad because it sucks not because its morally incapable of being good, if we were in power, AI generated picture, extra fingers, a stray head, Jonathan at some point robot narrators may become great, Gregg Margarite has good taste, if we can’t find a good Gregg Margarite, loved what he narrated, if you listen to Scott Miller on his livestreams, he brings the same interest and level of care to the production of his audiobooks, hired an artist, more difficult, Deviant Art, artists who are doing something approximate, rates and other stuff, if you objectively look at Jesse’s tweets: looks at art all day, oh lovely, appreciate/criticize, pretty good taste so far, nudity, sand princess, not nude enough, covering over her nipples is unfortunate, fuck off, artstation, that’s a good cover, hashtag leg cling, posted, tweeted, frickin pirates, hashtag leaked, reign over the museums, what’s allowed to be purchased to the state, handshake isn’t strong enough, the green creatures are around a woman doing things to her, doesn’t have the good taste that Jonathan has, exquisite taste, more minifigs than He-Man, allows them power, chat gpt gives you power, to really appreciate a good essay you have to be able to write one, when acting as an artist, planet’s worst actor, you appreciate good acting, good art, good writing, getting excited about it, little kids are excited about ai art, collage, on a book cover, ai art book covers are better than most industry book cover art prior to ai art, tin ear, the font matters, he’s Ukrainian and Jesse is pro-Russia, not a Nazi?, get out of your bubble, bud, embargo, we’re not going to stop Putin or Lukashenko, we’re not going to stop the Houthis by dropping bombs on them either, Cora doesn’t have sympathy for the Houthis, Appleonster, too cheesecakey, people need an eye for shit, you need to know what to look for, Uncle Horst, bought a bad car, overwhelmed by its beauty, beautiful mistake, ASAP, pirate website, step off, is it illegal?, you wouldn’t download, show me the law, taking a law course, terms of service, DRM interfaces with the law, a license, you can’t steal something that you can’t own, tab city, continuous defollowing, unfollowed 500 people/publications/organizations, mute people, muting Jesse, peak COVID, nothing but COVID, still coviding, we’re all going to die anytime soon now, maximum COVID panic, used to be the argument, verbal sparring, argumentation, loved university, meet a lot of young people, getting into fights, people who were right wing, confusing for people, that star trek planet, you’re not of the body, Operation: Annihilate, spore that go into people and betrazate them, racist, conservative, this or that, a fear of infection/contamination, precious bodily fluids, no brown grandkids, their dancing is pretty cool, put up a wall, dirty/icky/scary, show me the difference between that kind of people and people who are fearful of covid, left winger or right winger vs. liberal and conservative, calling people communists who are not communists, slurs, pro-vaxxer exists, pro-booster, this covid one isn’t very good, do your own research kinda guy, reading, Jesse is a fan, Hugo Book Club and Cora tweets, this is politics of being fans, not a fancast, calling people out, not playing the games, procasts, fanatic yes, fan no, a doomer account, sad, the only kid who masks at the tutoring place, white lady, corporate profits, can’t even process that, we are creating their future habits in realtime, COVID hysteria, long covid since 2020, the profit thing, open the businesses again, keeping the economy open, ruined people’s businesses, livelihoods, happily wears a mask indoors, bribed with hotwheel, people who are deluded, deluded people, seeing reality in the wrong way, the argument for licensing parents, every Jesse button, back to that well, Our Opinions [Are Correct], try not to follow accounts, mainstream comics, feels bad to unfollow people, I don’t value their voice, angry/annoyed/pissedoff, try to keep a good ratio, crown corporations and indian tribes, Jesse always was an indian, he just forgot about it, adopted, first nations, when you go to their indian reserve and you talk to the indians, some indians say first nations, Jesse’s sister, The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), Jesse is Old Shatterhand, Cora is obliged to marry Jesse, Chief Dan George, what privileges does this get, nothing, hired actors to do acting, hiring indians for playing indians to play indians, CBC turned, a little tiny industry was cool, so Paul could get triggered, cool people, land acknowledgement at Davos, Turks and Vietnamese in Germany, Montagnards, pretending to serve food, authentic Chinese people, Italian ice cream parlours run by ice cream, ice cream culture, gelato, good ratio, still working on it, 2 to 1 almost, following 1700 people, bad for your brain, going looking for tweets more sketchy, three bad tweets in a row you’re a candidate, can’t call you out on the podcast, it’s rough out there, listen and learn things, interesting insight, what Puppies are, calling Jesse is not a fan, dealer’s room was the best part, something that will never happen, if they wanted to make the Hugos better they should not do media (tv shows and the movies), suggested for ages, coverage is only for dramatic presentation winners, send a representative, two ladies from Sony Ireland, animated Spider-Man movie, pointing towards an argument, undermines the whole prospect, do you need a Hugo?, Hugo Winner Cora Buhlert, a piece of land with two motorcycles, two cars and two Hugos on it, hanging on to the dream, indians rode around on horses, very few of us ride around on horses, if the Hugos are useful…, a reading list, as you evolved, David Brin’s [Startide Rising], when Harry Potter started getting nominated, late to the game, it all happened earlier than you know, bad book, badly written, stolen from Lester Del Rey, used to be interesting books, that was really good, associating Hugos with that, a learned response, The Wanderer by Fritz Leiber, the second weakest, based on the premise, They’d Rather Be Right by Mark Clifton and Frank Riley, Connie Willis syndrome, it’s her turn!, an Oscar thing, except of Ursula K. Le Guin, All My Cats Did This And That, such a baby, as the new adoptive parents to this new child (Will), The Demolished Man, yea or nay?, The Long Tomorrow, Double Star, The Big Time, A Case Of Conscience, alien Jesuits, Little Fuzzy with Jesuits, was an asshole, bounced off Blish, Starship Troopers (useful to have read), a boy book, not mandatory, you don’t get any vote, Heinlein was not a fascist, a military fetishist, overstated, A Canticle For Leibowitz, Stranger In A Strange Land, if you were a Heinlein character, the round ball that can make cute voices, teaching Will to fish, Clifford D. Simak, Waystation, not as good a book, Roger Zelazny’s This Immortal and Dune, giving people homework?, that’s not allowed anymore, didn’t get along with Dune, very dense, 24 different narrators, George Guidall, he’d be ideal, The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, Manny is the non female robot, the guy with one arm, the head of the revolutionary cells, Heinlein is ridiculous, prison planet, awesome title, love the politics, endless speechifying is a problem, group [line] marriages, swinger club within walking distance, Lord Of Light, a lukewarm review, very 60s hippy dippy, short story, kill an old person to get an apartment, Stand On Zanzibar by John Brunner, so thick, The Left Hand Of Darkness, a big weighty tome, makes you grow up, bureaucratic country, listening to an old person, this novel is everything, Ringworld, the weight of that spinning object in place, let’s go to the ringworld, age-gap discourse, she’s so lucky she gets to have sex with him, just her luck, a very dirty young man, that’s fine, he was asian you’re not allowed to criticize him, To Your Scattered Bodies Go, a tough year, The Gods Themselves, three gendered aliens?, Robert Silverberg, Rendezvous With Rama, big dumb object, Time Enough For Love, Protector is so good, alien can’t do his job properly, chasing after the rumour, not enough people to protect chases down a rumour about an expedition to the far end of the galaxy, shows up in earther’s solar system, humans are not from earth, the soil on earth didn’t have the right stuff, a pupal stage (or zygote stage), tree of life root, power exoskeleton super-thinking machine, offspring, amazing idea, completely wrong, go with the premise, awesome hard SF, cool explanations for things, superinteresting, The Dispossessed, The Mote In God’s Eye, highly recommend both, Cora not the biggest Niven fan (because she’s a girl), Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War, Old Man’s War by John Scalzi, The Stochastic Man, Alfred Bester, The Computer Connection, Inferno, Where Late The Sweet Birds Sang by Kate Wilhelm, Silent Spring, pollution, a Green party convention, Mindbridge, a clone novel, Man Plus, Shadrach In The Furnace, late Pohl vs. early Pohl, Gateway, crazy guy who needs therapy goes to therapy with AI doctor, disappointed, Lucifer’s Hammer, Dreamsnake by Vonda N. McIntyre, The Moon And The Sun, The Fountains Of Paradise, his short stories, his early novel, Eric S. Rabkin, good stuff in here, why is it a novel?, novels is where the money is, collaborations, terrible, The Snow Queen by Joan D. Vinge, Tiamat orbits a black hole, Hegemony, if it is okay, Ringworld Engineers, Beyond The Blue Event Horizon, C.J. Cherryh’s Downbelow Station, Claw Of The Conciliator by Gene Wolfe, Julian May’s The Many Colored Land, Project Pope by Simak, bias against Simak, Foundation’s Edge a book that should not exist, a book that need not be written, very hit and miss, Sword Of The Lictor, Friday by Heinlein, double strength muscular body, the worm turned, wtf?, Brin doesn’t work, nobodies doing nobodies, Anne McCaffrey, 15th Pern book, Robots Of Dawn, Millenium by John Varley, Tea With A Black Dragon by R.A. MacAvoy, an art book, he’s Clark Ashton Smith, art sounds, also cool heist plot, Job: A Comedy Of Justice, Integral Trees, year of Will’s birth, Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card, The Postman, Cuckoo’s Egg, Will is kinda corny, Footfall, teen in the 80s, Blood Music, the short story is even better, Greg Bear, Speaker For The Dead, Marooned In Realtime by Vernor Vinge, Uplift War, back to the shitty old business, coulda been summed up by Lester Del Rey in 15 minutes, When Gravity Fails, Mormons in space, dogs and apes, dolphins is Brin, The Faithful, as an idea man, he’s ripping off H.G. Wells, hold my beer dead guys, reading screens to the audience, he thinks he’s a the supergenius, doing bad work, why awards are dangerous, put bad thoughts into their heads, triggers Jesse more than doomers, Cyteen, bounced off, first third, masterpiece, most ambitious, I’m like a person who like is going to die, a cloning book, over the course of 22 hours, a very dystopian book, lots of unhappiness, lots of everything, 1990, Dan Simmon’s Hyperion, turned really weird, the sequel might have been better than the first one, steal their titles from poems, stealing the structure, it didn’t have anything to say, it has no message, it didn’t have an idea it was exploring, the characters were interesting, when you’re watching a new tv show, ooh this is promising, try not to get tricked, X-Files used to not do that, weird cases of the week are very rewatchable, the lore shit, Lois McMaster Bujold’s The Vor Game, a series of wins, she’s a good writer, Falling Free, space unions, set in the same universe, the modern era, where things show, A Fire Upon The Deep and The Doomesday Book, what I’m hearing is you hate Willises, cut her down to size, needlessly long, oh Mr. Dunworthy, all her characters are british, she has good ideas, needs an editor carving out big section, [Bellwether] the same topic over and over again, girls go back in time and the Blitz, can’t connect to her, some hot officer, very romantic for a girl, an observation, 1993, a big change in publishing in the 1980s, a big fuckin honker, why this happened in publishing, price of paper, hit a certain price point, spinner racks, longer and thicker, the airport bookstore model, Tom Clancy, James Michener, John Jakes, Kim Stanley Robinson, don’t pay attention, scientistis talking to each other, Beggars In Space by Nancy Kress, an evil book, an evil writer, evil readers, Virtual Light, Mirror Dance, Neal Stephenson, Robert J. Sawyer, doesn’t do characters well, The Diamond Age, nanobot lung, more series, Elizabeth Moon, Starplex, a Star Trek novelization, an episode of Star Trek Continues, addictive series, they won’t punch you in the guts, there’s one missing, a better book?, Forever Peace, more mature, Frameshift, Michael Swanwick, To Say Nothing Of The Dog, the subtitle of Three Men In A Boat by Jerome K. Jerome, kinda Jeevesy, through Heinlein, Connie Willis, Have Space Suit, Will Travel, read this book, Kim by Rudyard Kipling, a movie, filmed in Germany, on LibriVox, revisiting it, post modern age, Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, Darwin’s Radio, unreadable, height of Harry Potter hype, Midnight Robber by Nalo Hopkinson, Calculating God, he used to write science fiction, a lot of people are not science fiction people, fakes, she loves science fiction, Robert J. Sawyer is a science fiction writer, just the ideas, that’s it, nothing else, Neil Gaiman, American Gods, Perdido Street Station, ends with an invite to the next book, done with Sawyer, Paladin Of Souls, Charles Stross, Susanna Clarke, stopping to pay attention, two Irons, met three of these people, China Miéville, Michael Chabon, diminshing returns, The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, mainstream stuff leaning in the science fiction direction, The Graveyard Book, Paolo Bacigalupi, you guys hate liberals, The City And The City, Ann Leckie, never have to deal with Hugos ever again, Three Body Problem, N.K. Jeminson again, Mary Robinette Kowal, Murderbots, Arkady Martine, T. Kingfisher, reverse order, retro Hugos, Farenheit 451, a different unimportant novel Z For Zachariah, The Caves Of Steel, heavy quite short, More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon, do your own research, really great actors, just forced, hammerlock, you’re in a vulnerable place in your life, make you more manly, correct and cornily done ending, an interesting think, a learning experience, Hal Clement in 1954, a pretty good list, Childhood’s End, Juett told Will about it, the first version is public domain, 1951, whatever stupid don’t care, just fascist white men winning, Farmer In The Sky beat The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe, Heinlein for the win, C.S. Lewis’ most famous novel, Maissa not Will, sad story, you still have an opportunity to read this excellent book The Dying Earth by Jack Vance, a fixup, super episodic, The Mule, The World Of Null-A, always a complete mess, a weaker year, 1945, Leigh Brackett’s Shadow Over Mars, Sirius: A Fantasy Of Love And Discord, Brackett over Stapledon, Fritz Leiber’s Conjure Wife, Hermann Hesse, Weapon Shops, 1943, Beyond This Horizon, The Uninvited by Dorothy MacArdle, Donovan’s Brain, move on from the Lensman, second stage lensmen, lost their legs now they’re slugging around, 1941, Slan by A.E. Van Vogt, a lot of people have not turned against fans are slans, planets run by women are better than planets run by men, this yes (evil), stay on your meds, final year, 1939, T.H. White’s The Sword In The Stone, Legion Of Time, Out Of The Silent Planet is a blather is space book, best off when it doesn’t happen, I was reading this great book Dad had given me…, make note, Narnia reference, Enid Blyton, court judgement for fraud case, how many of the guys are innocent?, actual numbers, what percentage are guilty?, sneak over to your purse, zero percent innocent?, Rawandan refugee, 4% innocent, most English speakers are guilty, illegal fireworks, drug cases, obviously guilty, prices.

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #797 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The World That Couldn’t Be by Clifford D. Simak AND The Worlds of If by Stanley G. Weinbaum

The SFFaudio Podcast #797 – The World That Couldn’t Be by Clifford D. Simak, read by Gregg Margarite AND The Worlds of If read by by Stanley G. Weinbaum – read by Mike Mike Manolakes (both recorded for LibriVox). These are complete and unabridged readings of the stories (2 hours 8 minutes) followed by a discussion of them. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Maissa Bessada, Will Emmons, Jonathan Weichsel, and Terence Blake

Talked about on today’s show:
the podcast boosted intelligent version of Terence, The World That Couln’t Be and The Worlds Of If, paired these up, two short stories, they both have world or worlds, subjunctivity, subjuntivier, by raise of hands, Professor Van Manderpootz, Pygmalion’s Spectacles is very similar, The Ideal, student Dixon Wells shows up, uses the machine, falls in love with a girl in the machine, profesor dismantles the machine, commercially for a few years, off hand line towards the begining, check it, falsifiable, The Point Of View, February 1936, Worlds Of If is the first one, don’t need to be read in order, realized while listening, Philip K. Dick has a tribute to Professor Von Manderpootz’s stories, two short stories starring a professor who invents machines, narrated by a former student, Doc Brown and Marty McFly, 1st 2nd and 3rd Back To The Futures, crazy scientist and student or younger, Professor Dumkopf, Pootz is like Putz, mander like meander, greatest scientist who ever lived, beat the asians in 3 months, A Martian Odyssey, had read before, disniguishing each of the stories apart, they’re all the same, guy narrates his experience falling in love with a woman inside of a machin Girl In The Golden Atom, preceded by girl in the drop of water, Fitz James O’Brien’s The Diamond Lens, weird fiction, science fiction, The Short Happy Life Of The Brown Oxford, a dutch oven, a way of cooking or baking on top of a stove, shoes inside, they come to life, run around the yard like little rabbits and breed, combining these two stories together, dance themselves to death, Philip K. Dick’s brain is awesome, must have read in reprints, first visit to Von Manderpootz!, a story with him in it, a familiar character, Dixon, the Wells from H.G. Wells, just fits, the Soviet Union wanting to dig a tunnel through the Urals, various desserts, nothing about them being communists and evil, the future of 2015 or so, very 1935 optimistic science fiction, lobster salad, full future luxury communism soviet rocket, precedes the jetset class, post WWII, transoceanic flights, clippers, refuel in Hawaii, make your way to Shanghai, much more like getting on the Concorde, casual and fun, running late, misses his airplane, hold the plane for him, the Beirut office, very nice future, not the focus of the story, the picture we get of it is nice, a critique of the story: overwhelmingly bourgeois, inherited money, still financial crises in capitalism in this future, chorus girls and caddies, this high end education, a terrible student, highly incompetent and competent, no real consequences, bourgeois fiction, tends to dramatize minor inconveniences, cozy, the butterfly affect, there’s a whole magazine named after this story, what we deal with in science fiction is the worlds of if, IF, Worlds Of Science Fiction, a skinsuit mag for it debuting next month, Stanley G. Weinbaum stories, If Reader Of Science Fiction edited by Frederik Pohl, A.E. VanVogt, 1952-1971, the Galaxy guy, Hugo Gernsback delve, Gernsbacked pilled, read Weinbaum everyday, fluffy and light, an H.G. Wells story without the H.G. Wells heaviness, a very interesting cynical message, no matter which choice he takes is the wrong one, that’s what happens, a better deal, this is the best of all possible worlds, not getting the desired object, the best thing that could have happened, conflating the two women together, not good to have as a wife, silly airplane, fixated on him, a horrible wife as well, he got the better deal, like The Time Machine, you get enlightenment, you get affirmation, not satisfied, being not satisfied is satisfying, when their on the rocket ship together, expected to be a friendship of the ship, vacation girlfriend, together with another couple, promised to write, not proximate to you, friendship that seem really great, talking about the podcast right now, accidentally make a baby, desire is subjunctive rather than indicative, he was lucky he lost his money, a good wife who only loved him for his money, stayed in the subjunctive type of desire, a refutation of the power, of all the sad words the worst: it might have been, called out in the story, Maude Manner It might have been, [Maud Muller by John Greenleaf Whittier], it wouldn’t have worked out,

God pity them both! and pity us all,
Who vainly the dreams of youth recall.

For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: “It might have been!”

Ah, well! for us all some sweet hope lies
Deeply buried from human eyes;

And, in the hereafter, angels may
Roll the stone from its grave away!

a bit of hope, pie in the sky, we get sequels, two sequels, I want more, it didn’t need to have the same characters, easier, more commercial, people like series, here’s another with the same characters, more marketable, A Martian Odyssey, Valley Of Dreams, unneeded, Professor Challenger, Tom Sawyer, Detective, good story, expected to be more blown away by Weinbaum, our Simak story, much meatier, more interesting, three times longer, it’s great, an attack on Jesse, Clifford Simak didn’t have conflict, appears to have more conflict, how much Simak have we all read, a bit, Shakespeare’s Planet, Way Station, Goblin Reservation, Over The River And Through The Woods, really nice, of the countryside, Leiningen Versus the Ants by Carl Stephenson, a war against army ants, classifies as science fiction, German, foreigners going to Brazil, rubber plantation owners, Confederates went to Brazil, Confederados, the last country to get rid of slavery, NATO brought it back to Lybia, more alien than red indians, set in space Africa, hominy, exposed to it as a child, parched corn, dried popcorn?, food going on, sytha, slow drip of information, very cool story, thank you, asexual, James Tiptree Jr story, Your Haploid Heart, we’re doing this for you, sorry, gotta fuck you, taboo for them, they don’t want to tell, they don’t know how they reproduce, our main helper dude, Sapar, it says something, I grew up with that thing, all those other creatures are taboo, a list of creatures that are taboo, make a claim as to what is actually happening on The World That Couldn’t Be, like on our planet, adaptation evolution, an alternative form of evolution, this hunt, to help the Sytha learn and evolve, instinctual knowing but not consciously aware, who is it faithful to?, it is faithful to Duncan, the mother function, the same brood, several sequences of broods, a bigger Sytha, a planetary Sytha, Shotwell, is it eternal?, is it immortal?, a young one, right to the ending, oh wow cool, chapter 6, they halted on a knoll, vua, wearing thin, it is an awful effort to keep on being smart, it was nice knowing you, back to animal again, very simple said the sytha, just begin hunting me, get smart, I guess that will work, admirable, next time I have a brood, old uncaring comfort coming back again, seethed with happiness, won’t he be happy and surprised, will he be ever pleased, slipping back into unintelligent, you can almost miss it, a psychoactive drug for humans, it’s not good to be intelligence, pathologically trying to kill this creature, he goes nuts, reading from a collection of Galaxy stories, originally published in Galaxy, an H.L. Gold ending, making a lot of claims about editors, reviewing a bunch of random pulp stories, joint, especially when there’s two editors, a question about Planet Stories, Jerome Bixby, very interesting, it has to be Simak, otherwise Jesse’s theory wouldn’t be true, a lot more pulpy, the length, the character development comes out through the action, discover by talking, curious about the origin of the story, suggested by somebody else?, wonder, not early, in the middle, ended in the 80s, squarely in the middle, our main character is an asshole, for a Simak character, Philip K. Dick’s Beyond Lies The Wub, the natives, the way the captain treats the natives, our planter, our food grower, he is an asshole at the beginning, a typical Simak character at the end, projecting, conflict is fixable by cogitating together, not ethnic cleansing and not genocide, anti-colonial, in the same way as Wells always does, this is really good science fiction, by knowledge, finding out what the world is actually like, at the end, he’s found a way to coexist with this alien planet, he’s gonna get a surprise, little girls and boys, they’re all gonna be like him, they’re gonna be smarter, I found this very stimulating, actually smarter, added to the genepool, no species on the planet is sexed, adding sex to the planet as well, he’s gonna have a brood of Duncans show up, the sample has been taken, Donovan, a sampling, the Donovan kept walking, now we are even said the Sytha, the more assholish human on the planet, things that hunt, what’s cool about this story, this is a planet without conflict, two things: 1. the hunt, 2. is the ability to stop, much more aggro, a big preshow discussion, a lot of people goin vegan, they have theory that backs up their behavior, people who identify as vegan and practice veganism, everything eats everything, weird exceptions, we tamed each other, they found jobs for us, we found dogs for them, sheepdogging and cowdogging, mostly their job is companion/housewarmer, tooth and claw, in the form of Eden, healing the sick, some of it is not for their natives, hominy, they’re changing the planet, they engage with the sytha, a non-edenic planet, that’s a positive, almost religious story, the edenic world was imperfect, what we needed was a war of all against all, growing to something better, it is that, right?, felix culpa, back to Will, H.L. Gold, appraising a story, Walter M. Miller’s A Canticle For Leibowitz, wasn’t a damn bit grateful for it, not your pussycat editor, plain damned brilliant, a character in The Space Merchants, high speed tempo, the books success, the nagging nagging nagging presence, if he hadn’t demanded it, a great book, serious problems, pacing issues, a very involved editor, the anti-John W. Campbell, positive but annoying influence, a much different experience, a better experience, better stories, personal essays, more or less the same thing, you worked very closely with him, a Greek monster, Scylla, Lewis Carroll, boojum, alien names, nonsense words, hang your associations on, the endpoint is more satisfying, empathy is learned, emotional intelligence, up to a higher emotional intelligency, ends in exogamy, The Lovers by Philoip Jose Farmer, inputs, asexual reproduction at the end, Edward Sapir, even if just through the news, an engagement with the American landscape, bucolic landscape, Simak stories not set on a planet?, A Choice Of Gods, Time Is The Simplest Thing, these are native indians, engaging in a different way, enslaving them?, still in initial contact, smarter even though it is dumber most of the time, incorporating the new mode into its system, 8 year olds show up, the male female dynamic is needed, little Duncans that are different than each other, toes on their feet, like different flavours of ice cream, if we know anything, having sexuality, maybe not by volume, avoids the disease problem, develop a new banana, science class, clone armies will die, cloned mammals, a different kind of cloning problem, sea-lizard that does parthenogenesis, theoretical too, twins and triplets, same exact genes, in plants all the time, a genetic bottleneck, brown lizards, especially common in plants, letting the forest plant itself, monoculture farming, pesticides, herbicides, fencing, overwhelmed suddenly, cavendish banana, other plants as well, one guy gets a fungal infection, this whole planet is theoretically an army clones, genetically human, a cognitive mapping of human, the sequel to the story, the sytha will discovered that it’s fucked up, surprised at the reaction, more aggro, eating the others, close the restaurants, a good transitional thing, The Word For World Is Forest, The Queen Of Air And Darkness by Poul Anderson, become friends, a fascist story, overcome their prejudices, the wrong side and the right side, anarchistic hippy nature lovers, our prophet would disagree with you, a Vietnam war allegory, more grist to ignore it, they can do more than one thing, Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War, it can do more than one thing, the bad reading, one of the things, environmentalism vs. rapacious capitalism, Avatar (2009), Call Me Joe, friendship with misunderstanding on both sides (colonialism), a positive ending, humorous, a big surprise, you need more humans just like you, could be very strange, a cat: my master would like a sparrow, will the empathy acquisition keep on going up, some descendant Duncan it, vegan, will he forget?, will he lose his emotional intelligence?, The Monsters by Robert Sheckley, this is a comedy of a morality that’s different, ecogenetics, little sexless natives, how can they have familial feeling without having a mom?, acts like a female, only one scytha on the planet?, multiple bodies, this one, all the oceans are connected, this embodiment of a scytha, a force of nature being, individual minds, not even eggs, budding?, the youngs are raised together, form their taboos in the same way that, poo poo go in toilet, don’t sleep with your sister, twist endings, very earned, if you’ve got a premise start with it, my god it’s a time machine, my god it’s Adam and Eve, overpopulation, good but necessary, underconsumption, The Midas Plague, The Stars My Destination, a final revelation, very Horace Gold, undercut ideas people have, this story is not that great, understood the world, a revelation, an evolution, we never see the face of the girl who’s so ugly, they were hiding something, the story wouldn’t exist, will his brood forget?, afraid of one of them, that one forgets, they’re gonna be like him, losing his place on this planet, he will be displaced, they’ll be farming, moving in a new direction, people don’t ask for rewrites, printed, asked for rewrites, Warrior Soul, set in the far future, set in the present, he was right, good criticism, a much better story, copy editing, put typos in the magazine, Cirsova, changed a little bit, sold 2 to him, Clarke of Clarkesworld, certain similarity to the stories, want their own voice, to get that voice, submission guidelines, traditional publishing, Barnes & Noble, the way tradpub works, agent vs. publisher, many cooks, reviewing a lot of audiobooks, somebody need to work on this book, why is this in here three times, Stephen King, pulp, lower tier, interesting voices in science fiction, in the old pulps, Philip K. Dick couldn’t work with John W. Campbell very well, Anthony Boucher, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Argosy, Blue Book, they wanted him to edit his story, rejected The Outlaw Of Torn, basically Robin Hood, wanted to make money quickly, a folk hero, The Cave Girl, King Richard, its just this particular royal is bad, being very frustrated, art and thou, medieval England, prince kidnapped as a baby, mislead by political radicals, The Lad And The Lion, democratic rebels that are really fascists, assassinate the king and rule the country, WWI basically, WWII references too, very clever, unable to rule because they’re incompetent, this pattern goes on continuously, more incompetent from the last one, more diluted blood, he has terrible politics, my Tarzana, nobody in the right mind would agree with it, a pet lion, crash in Africa, goes around Africa, happens everyday, the rewritten one, bidding wars, Heinlein, Starship Troopers, the juveniles too, Podkayne Of Mars, when a government decides to take away your guns, don’t kill her, Stranger In A Strange Land, late late Heinlein, The Pursuit Of The Pankera vs. The Number Of The Beast, Sam Moskowitz, book editor vs. magazine editor, a commentator, 1963 or prior, Weird Tales, Fantasy Times, Under The Moons Of Mars, the fluffiness, just another fluffy cute story, big long story by Simak, paying off so well, it’s built into the idea of the story, everything was leading up to that, why write the story at all, Simak over Weinbaum in this instance, Simak has more better stuff, in the course of a year, two handfuls of short stories, really good stuff, very solid, both fun, both good, pretty close to amazing, if this was a novel, a three character story, the anthropologist, one of them kills himself, he finished what he needed to do, he has a thorn in his foot, thorns come up a lot, just before chapter 5, I will be with you to the death of both of us, a very biblical thing, it stayed with me, it’s hard to figure out these jokers, seethings of emotions, what variety of belief, Simak trying to make an asshole out of the guy, missed the trail, fearing it had gone, loyal and faithful, the outlander and intruder?, is there a common meeting ground?, stroked it polished it petted it, just another chance, a steady bead, back to the farm and field, that misty other life, very interesting stuff, Good., a soggy blanket wrapped tightly around the body, another dirty trick, distraction from what’s about to happen, progress in empathy, relativity of beliefs and ethics, perhaps it has reasoned, sentient beings can do tricks, cognitively map the enemy, induce that mentality into error, a theory of mind type empathy, this dirty beast, a worthy adversary, here’s the end, your knife mister, if we take this as a falsehood, take it as a truth, looking straight at Duncan, the native cut it’s throat, from helping you to the end, psychic communication, spear, rock, smarter and smarter, doesn’t need to be alive anymore to evolve the scytha, the turning point for the story, committed to a purpose and a challenge, it was something more than that, weird entangling, this pronoun thing, big in the 2020s so far, as another man might stroke a woman’s throat, rubbing the gun, petting it, “mister” said a voice, bwana, respected outsider who we really don’t respect but have to, Duncan stiffened, it now can talk, the Sapir language, the story seems that way, never shouted out at all, for you to extrapolate, an elephant and tiger and a grizzly bear, how big is this thing?, you start imagining what he’s not saying, near great, our Weinbaum, the action scene are a little bit overdone, the action scenes are fun, went on a little too long, future stuff, another Simak on the schedule, Hellhounds Of The Cosmos, space opera, A Choice Of Gods, The Call From Beyond, Empire is a short novel, City, Kevin Green, City is a fixup, Foundation, Dune, when you’re doing short stories, you can’t talk about 10 Ted Chiang stories in one show, maverick science, threaten the corporation’s monopoly, sounds super-science, Fury by Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore, super-science is kinda dumb, carefully modestly super-sciencing, Roger Zelazny, Unicorn Variation, The Horses Of Lir, A Night In Lonesome October, Creatures Of Light And Darkness, Lord Of Light, This Immortal, post-nuclear war, a tour of the Greek islands and Egypt, a rebel who wanted to kick off the aliens, undercover, torn between, might be a sequel, Damnation Alley, post-apocalyptic suburbia, before the white man came, robots are priests, how they fit in, very Simak, something we never brought up, “Moby-Dick with a twist”, let’s get something good, got distracted, Project Mastodon, Mastodonia, Second Childhood, Cemetery World, Time Is The Simplest Thing, A Spell For Chameleon by Piers Anthony, a book for the blind, how it was produced, in the commercial space, a special loophole in copyright, a great thing, put into the ears of blind people, not in favour of following the law, Xanth, exiled to Florida, Charles Burnett Swann, marketed to kids, 344 pages, On A Pale Horse, he liked to do series, a huge amount of effort and inspiration into the first volume, 12 hours, a nice 8 hours Simak, named the land after himself, before we lose anybody, Return From The Stars, what exotic location, a Valentine’s play, playtime, nothing can live up to The Taming Of The Shrew (1976), I will rip it, Marc Singer plays Petruchio, amazing peak performance, staged for television, if that was on TV!, remember Bravo?, artsy shit, television is full of filler, Dark Carnivals, we miss you, bud, Jesse’s email is a horror show, a Connor show, 50 Jesse messages, message him less, doesn’t engage with twitter for months, Confessions Of An English Opium Eater, go to drug guy, 5 hours 21 minutes, more possible, a lot of feedback on youtube, the greatest thing ever, almost all positive, he sounds insanely awesome, Martin Geeson, The Seventh by Richard Stark, The Gun by Philip K. Dick, The Mad Planet, its all gonna be on Will, its all gonna be on Jonathan, Alex pulpcovers, very understandable, a novella, it’s all on Alex, Jetta Of The Lowlands, assuming he hasn’t contracted shingles, The Pathological Liar, a case of deceiving the enemy, lie for the sheer pleasure of lying, a compromise, there’s no digits in my name, that’s a robot bud, The Liar, Penguin Classics, Dialogues, dramatic readings, acting level, thickest accent on the planet, it can be a nightmare, keep hoppin away, Plato, The Story Of A Cat, do this research off air, What Mad Universe by Fredric Brown, culture shock, sewing machines that open to a voyage in space, H.G. Wells, an implacably hostile alien species, Arena, The Case Of The Dancing Sandwiches, Lawrence Block’s The Burglar Who Met Fredric Brown, The Jesse Show, 700 episodes in, Just Jessing, more demographic audience, none of the trolls listen to this podcast, The Triumph Of Evil, Paul Kavanaugh, do no research come up with an idea novel, supposed to be a true story, doing pushups and drinking alcohol, montagnards, heist a shipment of nuclear weapons, Vietnam War is happening, we need more Paul Kavanaugh, a guy confesses to a crime, pure writing talent, a historical crime, Not Comin’ Home To You, a Lawrence Block devotee, goes down so smooth, much younger dad, live to 103, not a sequel, would be wise to do so, writers abilities, Maissa won’t love it as much because she’s a girl, Travels by Michael Crichton, given the power he does nothing with it, he would prefer not to, Bartleby The President, power hungry dictator, Good Omens, Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, beloved, could be spicy, love the spice, there’s a podcast that exists because this show is too spicy, Julie Davis and Scott Danielson’s A Good Story Is Hard To Find, this is not a Christian podcast, this is pre-antivaxx, personality and flag, pirate flag should not be hoisted there, flags in bio, the Yemen flag, qualified, the new one is the red triangle, a theory about Yemen, the Rawandan genocide, houthis, who from the empires outside?, a big deal in Canada, how traumatized he was, Romeo Dallaire, a big deal in Canada, bureaucracy, macheted to death, sad spicy stuff, the Julie and Scott show, not supposed to be one of his best books, who chose that one?, not responsible, Wikipedia, Lem himself judged the novel as unsuccessful, treated in a simplistic way, who is responsible?!, we validated, convinced, Stan Lem, I’m not a Lem stan, become slan, the meme: fans are slans, more advanced than other people, form a world government, focusing on utopia, the least pessimistic, a hope punk book?, a 1989 Soviet play, yes because of the name, Strugatsky, asian racist, russian racist, they’re all the same, who is he to judge his own books?, Philip K. Dick, how trustworthy his own claims are, Solaris, the Andrei Tarkovsky movie, The Futurological Congress, to catch the drug experience, The First And Last Men movie, a short French film, hit by various psychoactive drugs, The Congress, what Cora says about it, boundless interest, needs his own podcast, when is that podcast coming out?, much easier to show up on Jesse’s, eventually, a lot of work, Eric doesn’t listen to podcasts, you can tell kind of, he likes doing podcasts, you can kinda tell, well hidden?, good at talking, he was a professor, University Of Michigan, Dean of Stony Brook?, lot of people don’t, cuts into audiobook time, you’re missing out on a whole genre, audio drama series, Toby Stephens, the Philip Marlowe series, what are you listening to, I have that in my car, used to be the BBC’s James Bond, British guys doing American characters, Raymond Chandler, Farewell My Lovely, The Long Goodbye, Red Harvest, The Maltese Falcon, two good stories, one really great, a silly question, the first season of Reacher, reviewed the first book, I don’t love this, he’s not human, he’s Conan, that almost makes sense, The Terminator, he smiled, he relaxed with his army buddies, Conan is not a patriot, he gets a pension mailed to him every month, a fantasy, the first book was fine, done with Reacher, a one concept thing, like a theorem, a deduction, a flashback character, don’t care, to be fair Jesse was sick, still a little bit of phlegm in there, F. Paul Wilson, Repairman Jack, still alive and on twitter, scary stories, Dean Koontz, Soft by F. Paul Wilson, makes you go soft, a blob of jelly on the floor, cats become your biggest problem, starts from the bottom up, New York City, I Am Legend by Richard Matheson, keep his daughter’s spirits up, before the rats get you, the softness continues, a hard story called Soft, The Keep (1983), Michael Mann, WWII Nazis, a retelling of Dracula, set during WWII, 80s music aesthetic, not winning any Hugos, Tangerine Dream, did musical soundtracks for movies, the 1977 epic Sorcerer, William Friedkin, fuck that shit!, completely subsumed, The Wages Of Fear (1953), they go to Brazil to escape death, 4 guys to drive 2 trucks, land be despoiled, snuffs out the fire, second gulf war, the dynamite has gone bad, nitroglycerine, girls won’t like it, but if you’re a dude, Roy Scheider, existential rather than psychological, I’m a movie fan now, Star Wars is good and all, The Exorcist (1973), way to popular, The French Connection (1971), the fish people one, The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre (1948) with fish people, names in profile, hyperBadiou, set theory mathematics, a scoop, explain it to an English speaking audience, this is really good, a video series, hyperthinking the absolute, occasionally talks about science fiction, Gilles Deleuze, François Laruelle, philosophy is generalized science fiction, if it’s not doing philosophy it is not science fiction, Bruno Latour, pioneering figures in science studies, the Salk Institute, an anthropological study, no preconceptions, what people did and what materials they used, Kim Stanley Robinson, Red Moon, when the Chinese land on the Moon, so loyal, Bernard Stiegler, grew old and died, Jacques Derrida, a seminar on Youtube once a month, conceptually powerful, used some of his concepts, individual and collective individuation, Marxist French theory type way, without needing to carry the Jungian baggage, Agent Swarm blog, Anathem by Neal Stephenson, his masterpiece, quantum physics, Logics Of Worlds: Being And Event II, Olaf Stapledon, Arthur C. Clarke, Xenoswarm blog, analyze Dune, hence your recent interest on being on a podcast a lot, dialogue is better than monologue, a defense of the bad review, a lot of time liking tweets and blogs in French, a friendly retweet, absolute silence, Ray Nayler’s The Mountain In The Sea, has Terence been blackballed?, The Peripheral, my videos are horrible, totally improvised, lots of umming and ahhing, well prepared, he’s high on his own supply, meaty for youtube, he has opinions, some of them are good, the occasional insight, the presentation, David Brin, thinks he’s the smartest guy on the planet, multiple podcasts, a promotional exercise, they didn’t know enough about him, he aint dumb, here’s the thing about Ursula K. Le Guin, the Ng person, the acceptance of the award, Joseph Campbell, really young, conflating Amazing and Astounding, Hugo Gernsback is not John W. Campbell, Astounding SF, similar name, Analog, Ray Palmer, women were discriminated against, hidden women we don’t know about, were not as many female readers based on the letters, discriminated against, by readership or editors, repeat what wikipedia says, how you end up being the prophet, this lady from Germany who does the, Sabine Hossenfelder, a baby explanation of capitalism and why it’s not so bad, turning all the externalizes, dumb smart people, got a degree, physics there’s almost nothing to do, Michio Kaku, some things are so base and clear, no matter what 100 years ago you pick, email is no longer usable says Jesse, most people don’t use email, full of spam, an email manager, never a message that is relevant, occasionally there is an important one, you have not paid your bill, dip into that horror show, auto subscribed to, already in every system, worried about the wrong things, when he becomes famous or more famous, daughter of Afflecks and Garners, email is not a great way to harass people, spreading rumours via email: not a thing, yahoomail, you might need this, 1997, 26 years full of spam, Mike emails twice a week, Mike Nowak, Jesse’s an indian now, or always was, adopted into the band, tsleil waututh, can’t wait to tell Paul, Indian status, if you want to bore everybody: you people gotta get off of my land, Paul will not like this concept at all, a hierarchy of people who need representation, BIPOC, fairly recent, excludes, so important, wanting to exclude Asians now, no acronym yet, reserve certain positions, Kamala Harris becomes VP because of skin colour, a scary ideology that is not wise, a black robot president, open source AI, dictator Jonathan to unite everyone, Will: this one is for you, student in a minute, Black House, excited about that, read it twice, early incarnation, a student in Sydney, does he reference, inspired to come to France, the cinema, a quotation from Confessions Of An English Opium Eater, well expressed in various films, more interested in drug culture, other than coffee, noted Will’s dream, I don’t need drugs I am drugs, brain under sleep is on drugs, tapping into it while awake, defenses are down, we are multiple drugs, dreams and science fiction (same thing), a coherence, the same thing for free, Will was in it but he was a pug, deceased dog, I wonder if he smells like cigars, dming reading Planet Stories, never smoke on a pulp, don’t smoke the pulps, they don’t smell when they’re scanned, nobody listens except for Mike Nowak, heartbroken mother, parents friends, almost never, the one time they shouldn’t lock, that was me in the past, delete it, a student coming in 1 minute, double talking to you, 5 hours, Jesus!, 10pm, something more presentable.

The World That Couldn't Be by Clifford D. Simak

The Worlds Of If by Stanley G. Weinbaum

Posted by Jesse Willis