The SFFaudio Podcast #838 – READALONG: Fury by Henry Kuttner

The SFFaudio Podcast #838 – Jesse, Will Emmons and Cora Buhlert talk about Fury by Henry Kuttner

Talked about on today’s show:
one eight of his wife, the Gabrielle DeCuir read intro, pretty crappy, good, a little evil, the book was evil, calling things evil, pathetic, pretty pathetic, a Slan style book, Henry Kutter do good work, quite pathetic, to the mind of Jesse, summarize what the book is about and why anyone would care about it, read aloud the final up to this point in the serialization, Jonathan wanted to do it, Jonathan blocked Jesse, okay, seems like the plot’s starting now, texting a friend about it, a sci-fi from the 40s, everyone is lazy, amoral swindler, wouldn’t seem immortal, the necessary shock to society, jungle surface of Venus, immortal, some facts about the book, that’s interesting, interesting is not the same as a book, most interesting section, the introduction by C.L. Moore, what she contributed to it, I added the colours, I’m interested in tragic love, the theme that Henry Kuttner was going for, not trusting authority, what’s this book about, 1947, a decade or less into the welfare state, people don’t take responsibility for themselves anymore, pull their pants up, muddled by this immortality thing, a hot topic in science fiction, very immature, immature thinkers, everybody groks it, maybe I won’t, first grey hair, no no I’m not going to die, Heinlein has done this, not new to Kuttner, these mutant elites, a villain or a hero, agreed, a Will Emmons obsession, The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester, feels shorter, passion, experimental, wish Jonathan was here, not just blame him for this book, wasted a week, wrong philosophy, a modern book that’s similar, not modern at all, by a lady, Beggars In Spain by Nancy Kress, obsessed with not liking her, this book is evil, what makes it evil, take it in and say yes yes, the reason they’re better than you, genetic engineering, they can study all night while you’re lazy sleeping at home, all Elon Musk, inherited an emerald mine, all non-sleepless are contemptible, told from the pov of a persectued Slan, same libertarian vibe, why can’t your parents give that to you, plotting to murder everyone else on the planet, standard x-men, a sidestory in X-Men, look there’s a new mutant!, contemptible, a symapthetic view on both side, Golden Man cat, when Philip K. Dick did it, what if the ideal form of humanity has no brain?, a muddled version of that Nancy Kress book, more serialized, disgruntled guys, not strong enough to be evil, a toddler with a knife, dangerous, not evil…yet, both have fury, way more anger than this book, this book is not angry at all, a dispossessed slan, a rebel undermenchen, a good book, intellectual center of gravity, society under the keeps, no one is striving anymore, you don’t see any of that, a lot of tell and no show, a lot of churn, when he meets the prophet, also an immortal, not a robot, comes back later, exactly how C.L. Moore put it, we wrote this for money and there was no plan, the cloak that makes you feel nice and is a drug and kills you, what is this book about?, drugs?, not about video games?, a failed Heinlein book, the Methusela’s Children series, eugenics and a kilt, a secret society of immortals, flee for the skies, forget that Heinlein, not top five, he thinks its interesting, an immature idea, welfare state, immortal technocrats ruling everything, what is he really mad at?, his dad?, sad story?, temper tantrum, surgery, you don’t feel it, so upsetting, gut punch, skin is coming off, you don’t like the character but you’re with him, worse a nice blue dress one time, not boring, just bad, shoulda clued in, in Astounding, that magazine that’s not very good, another joint, Chan Davis, Pseudoscience In Naziland by Willy Ley, emigrated from Naziland, he’s the good german, pre-paperclip guy, paling around with the bad German, didn’t hang the three slowest Jews, upsetting, our modern rocket guy has a lot of problems, not literally a Nazi, fires some employees, capitalism bad, bad tweets, not literally an SS officer, John W. Campbell editorials, up his own smoke, high on his supply, telepathy or whatever, understand the impulse, dated this girl, no good reason to believe in it, running similar software, parallel possibilities, as to actual evidence, assessing, way too much based on that, of all the things that have happened to science fiction since the 1940s, what we’re doing now, Stefan Rudniki, a bad book, redeeming qualities, the devastating last line, weird authorial, the start of the immortal hero, a genre, the Amber book (Roger Zelazny), Phra The Phoenician, maybe Kuttner would have known, Gulliver Of Mars, His Vacation, a book that Cirsova (Alex) would like, portal fantasy, doesn’t take itself too seriously, the Mars books, crunchier, softer, sweeter, less filler, more killer, crashes on a planet, lands on a philosopher who’s a girl, go to a library, frozen dead people, magic carpet again, green muscle mommy, Soja?, Tars Tarkas’ daughter, a 40 foot lance, a big lance, lances were big in those days, pikes, the roundheads were overworked, a weird zone, the knife alluring, who’s the knife for?, for everyone?, there are no everyone, a guy who doesn’t know who he is, the priest who’s not the computer, blue dress, grandma, a lady who has a granddaughter, secretly, that reveal did nothing, why are we reading all this, the symbol of cash, the genealogy at the top of the story, the Bible’s a lot shorter, what things would happen in it?, deformed as an infant, see the lady, get got, colonization scheme, cheat everyone, wake up confused, get involved in the next colonization scheme, lost the thread, find the lady, 3 card monte, move their hands quickly, bet your money, a street level grifting scam, shills, they share the money, anytime the mark is gonna win the police show up, the guy who’s been gambling arrested, find the lady is a way to steal money from people, other than with my time, too scammed, after paying my 75 cents for 3 issues, not a good story, nothing is substantive in an idea way, the sea-creature that’s now a cloak, corrosive planets, just did a genocide of the entire ecosystem, for plot, for stuff to happen, telepathy, useless, pathetic, not even mad, wasted a week, sad, waste, Kutter is worse than Jesse thought he was, wrote so much, would write anything, Dragon Moon, a cover story on Weird Tales, just type in Dragon Moon, viking stabbin at a dragon, blonde in a green dress, the wild hunt, enthusiastically riding, cool looking, a novelette of drowned Atlantis, bad name, beyond good or evil, the Outside, a Chesterton quote, that Silverberg highlighted, Home Is The Hunter, Silverberg wrote a great essay about it, Kipling quotes, a secondary world almost, where’s the tech?, the closest we get is that cloak, a poisonous world, Clark Ashton Smith, sex and death, sexless, longs after a girl, breed generations of sex slaves, goes nowhere, people got tricked by the ending, immortality, is this something?, the meme with a butterfly, not furious or perverted enough, pretty cold blooded, deleting the entire ecosystem of Venus, plants that were dangerous, the drug addiction, no real life world experience, wasn’t a pioneer, didn’t kick a drug habit, hey I got a real theme going here, dreamdust, turns out he was in the backroom of the wizard’s cave the whole 40 years, okay, more Arthur stuff, Arthur Pendragon, put him underground, return and lead the people, a business startup, a free companionship, a startup designed to defraud investors, doesn’t doing any kind of running and grabbing, should be a lot madder, furiless and didn’t inspire fury, “Robin Hood’s barn”, the idiom, a robin hood’s barn sort of plan, at some point in a novel the novel reviews itself, a short story should have working components that are used and dissipated at the end of the story, spell components, three pinches of newt dust, Helen’s bones, blood from a surly teenager, disappears in a puff of smoke, shit lying all over the table, shocker, not impressed, people were smarter in the past, the reviews in the magazine itself, people should have been reading Thrilling Wonder and Planet Stories, if it was priority, Planet, Thrilling Wonder, five or six other magazines, Astounding, other magazines, the fifties explosion of science fiction, WWII, the wonder weapons, the rockets, people were not with rockets before WWII, almost nobody was into rockets, showing the v-2 rockets being tested in the states, the letters columns, talking about the v-2s, the censorship, circumspect, the V-1s hitting London, rockets are really taking off, Planet Stories, Fantastic Adventures, almost nothing good in it, Ray Palmer, somebody should have stopped him, too much power, exploit this mentally ill man, inner earth man, not just Shaver mysteries, worldview and approach to life, maybe people in the past were stupid too, UFOs, the truth is out there, UFO freak, if I believe in God, people get tripped up on words, barely a teenager, as if you know what you’re talking about, unidentified, what the hell is that thing, not a U, FO, trapped in the world salads, a spell, bring it back to the thing itself, talk to Meg about this story, okay to lie to people for the greater good, this story poses, immediately in the positive, try never to lie, communicating is complex, the outside thing about this thing, more specific about specific things, the way to think about this, just do this, what is an essay, here’s how we’re going to get a good mark, don’t write anything you don’t believe, play with the truth, telling the teacher that you know that, nobody knows what the word “essay” means, what is he trying to do?, what is the purpose of this?, how you do paragraphs, just filling the page, fulfilling the requirements, try to make good sentences, truth is very important, things are complex, words get in our way and trick us, that’s not how things work, this guy from 500 years ago still lives through, a cloud of understanding, trynna trick people, we’re gonna make you all immortal, working at this for 7 years, ha ha fuck you, a worker’s cooperative, that’s evil, for your own good, that’s a liar, what did Meg say?, undoubtedly evil, okay for the government to lie to us about UFOs, people can’t handle the truth, their gonna die, why we have religion, pretty sure, a mystery that can transcend, exactly like to was before I was born, isn’t it interesting I’m a brain in a vat already, includes skin and bone and digestive systems, sense data, that’s interesting, doesn’t make me think of a particular god, strange phenomena for the long time, a wish for immortality, a big part of it for a lot of people, lying definitely bad, we can’t handle it, lie to people to get them to do something good, back to The Stars My Destination, spoiler alert, superweapon, telepathically activated, gives it to the masses, now its your responsibility, hero, they don’t destroy the solar system, everybody needs nukes, if you don’t have hands, we want people to have hands, a real disadvantage for Sirius, Odd John, Olaf Stapledon, Kuttner can disappoint, a C.L. Moore stan, people love her, she likes hot kisses, scary kisses, atmospheric style, unfinished, that’s all she’s got, she doesn’t bring an idea to the table, Reading, Short And Deep recording, Probate, a legal term, about getting to the will, testament, estate, a science fiction story that deals with ideas in science fiction and dismisses them, mocking an idea by taking it seriously, it’s not what I wanted, it’s what I needed, an X-Men story, slightly telepathic, all the women find him sexy, no frontal lobes, just working on instinct, he’s beautiful, looking at it from a guy who is furious, on the wane, the homo superior are in the room, interested in pathetic things, full of all sorts of foibles, your beautiful child, assembling the components to destroy homo superior, better not the be a fuckin monster, not as fast or beautiful, slower to develop, very contrived and very silly, wham bam deals, A.E. Van Vogt, wipes it off the table and now we’re done, the Olaf Stapledon novel, Eric spoiled the ending, smart moral things to do, action and churn, Fury, boring slog, angry at Nancy Kress book, they’re fucking monster, they remind me of the shitlib bluecheck elite, fuck those Gazans, mad at The Washington Post for not endorsing a lady, let oligarchs fuck the world, seeing where the wind is blowing, the undecided voter, slant of various op/eds, not a big percentage, if Trump becomes president I’ll leave and move to Canada, trying to evoke a reaction, watch another youtube video and they react to it, this movie is too scary, twin brothers watching, a split screen, identical twin brothers, that memesis thing, still 3?, the thing being watched the you watching them, they’re watching each other, strange phenomenon, a girl in her bedroom, Damien Walter, words by himself are better, AI illustration of the Culture, retweeting them, that seems uncharitable, not giving a null prize, is this true?, the reason a lot of people are triggered by Trump is they’ve had no actual trauma, he’s not scary, hundreds of thousands of people being killed on the border, say things that are bad, the bad one, he’s pretty good, he did well that day, mobilize the army to deport people, the apparatus you have to build up, mobilized as a law enforcement agency, he was president already, he’s not very much like Hitler, he shouldn’t be that triggering, more like Heinlein than Hitler, only two people in the world, like the Little Prince, one is Heinlein and one is Hitler, pick your fighter, the future that liberals want, he’s not scary, internal enemies, the organized left, Palestine protestors, Arab Americans for Trump, pro-United States, Benjamin Netanyahu needs to finish the job, he talks a lot, what does he do, a different coalition, his staff, all the neocons, alienated John Bolton, learned his lesson, a confirmed Jill Stein voter, voted Green, when he says things he means them, a liar, he is a liar, I’m the best, I got the best people, the best country, the worst country, hyperbolic, is he lying when he says I want to use the military, on day one or maybe day two, someone who’s never been visited by the FBI, you live in a police state, he likes the FBI too, he’s a lot worse on Canada, the Free Trade Agreement, he’d be worse for Canada and better for the United States, doesn’t like communists, don’t understand what communists are, if Kamala is a communist, people you call communist, the dialogue is broken, we’ll see, laudable and good, more risk, the Black Uhuru movement, lazier under Democratic administrations, sleepier, drone stuff, domestic stuff, the MOAB, Soleimani, German government English propaganda channel, Venezuela, it wasn’t me who did the coup, fiddles with pen, in amongst that, persecute Russia more, secret talks, divide Venezuela and Russia, the State Department is running things, the Deep State hates him so much, a bad sign, tryna cozy-up, Bezo was vying for government contracts, less naked about it, Elon Musk picked a team, a lottery, he’s levering, For You, the ultimate test of self-government, returned your grocery cart, social contract, a fool’s framework, very simple, littering, mom didn’t tell you to don’t do that, why do people litter?, really strange lady, weird tiny house lady, keeps building things, trying things out, squeezing the juice out of her life, list of all the things that she’s tried, business startups, raise parrots, adopted from her or genetics, systems, don’t try to buy your way into hobbies, not lose money, you have to work harder outside, interested in parrots, very expensive, breed them, they’re in the house, there’s always more food, all that shit that spills on the ground, all the other animals do well, they eat and they drop food, we think of that as littering, not offensive at all, that’s what parrots do, dirtying their own environment, in a primitive society, sidewalks are a strange invention, do we need more sidewalks, not get run over, easier to get places, should we have roads?, they just tell you where to go, trails, humans in solidarity with other humans, just another animal, we train puppies not to pee in the house, they become upset, very similar to that, he’s not wrong, would you let this guy marry your daughter, he doesn’t return shopping carts, contemplating this, her being able to marry, implausibility, whether he litters or not, a stage everybody goes through, eventually your washing the dishes, community standard, Jesse’s weird, very childish, the grocery is like a government, somebody’s going to have to pick up after me, a boundary, get all your dirty laundry, your space, litter in your own room, don’t attract mice, this office, elected to the spare bedroom, the podcasting office, disenfranchised cats, peeing on the wall, exclusionary, the bourgeoisie, enclosed the commons, the crown, what a world, this election shit, provincial election came and went, Richard Lovelace, one of those cavalier poets, clergy in the house of Lords, wanting the king in charge, better than Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector, sounds like Napoleon again for the first time, get Napoleon III in charge, starting a list of the bad guys, Franco is on there somewhere, 19th century Stalin, a reformer, he put his brother in charge of Spain, make sure Spain doesn’t flip, the pattern, people trying to reinstate the king, why invading Ireland?, they’ll getcha, these Levelers, manhood suffrage, religious toleration (not for Catholics), modern liberal democracy, in bed with Cromwell, in the New Model Army, didn’t split the movement, this weird phenomenon, this English Civil War, conjure radical forces, aren’t able to use, Cromwell is Mao?, Sun Yat-Sen, sorta got his wish, the king’s back, roundheads, a short story by Lawrence Block, good character writer, good plotter, a werewolf story, Original Science Fiction Stories, January 1959, Make A Prison, the first Althean, he won’t languish and die in such a state?, ample opportunity, study the creature, the mere thought of a prison, the whole notion, an abominable one, wouldn’t do, he actually murders, subdue him, physically ill, for goodness sake, now you’ve hit upon it, a party of ten, he struck out at them, unprovoked assault, the first case of murder on record in 30 generations, he eats whatever we feed him, he is dangerous, very dangerous, as possible, perhaps I’m squeamish, positive, 130 feet high, right?, right!, it’s slides slope inward, a pneumatic tube, leaping from the top, littering, it seems safe, it is safe, not cruel, in just a few minutes, such a smooth writer, Cora got her times mixed up, sends her apologies, motor car, motor truck, forced myself to finish a book, she’s right not to like it, limbs securely shackled, the key to his shackles in his quarters, all the angles, one more page to go, a red light at the base, throw down the shackles, not something you see every day, plummeted through the air, he’s found the key, the key followed soon thereafter, gazing down at them, soared off into the sky, what is this story?, a trick, what?!, is this a science fiction story?, mostly a trick, as a practical matter, that’s it?, came across a key, hence Lovelace, a poem from 1642, To Althea From Prison, tangled in her haire, liberty, Thames, careless heads, thirsty grief, fishes that tipple in the deep, when like committed linnets, with shriller throat shall sing, voyce, inlarged, stone walls doe not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage, from an hermitage, angels alone that sore above, Lawrence Block read a poem, recognize those last lines, thing he’s going to be remembered for, secondary world, spun up just to do the joke of the story, that is very science fictional, take the poetic and make it real, okay but not, he is a dragon, that’s now science fiction, take it seriously, this world is not our world, they have motor cars, no murders for 30 generations, who is this creature from outside, how come they didn’t notice he had wings, that’s weird, just a joke, that’s actually, Brave New World is a line from The Tempest, a science fiction movie, that’s a joke, the world’s fucked, the second time it’s serious, the story becomes much better for what its addressing, kings are better than non-kings, in prison for wanting the king back, did some nice poetry, it’s okay girl, we’re like committed linnets, the poetry frees him from prison, the worst Kuttner/Moore book, just a terrible book, needed money, finish the bloody thing, blame Jonathan, partially responsible, worst thing Moore was involved in, knew how bad this one was, the prequel, Clash By Night, 1943, early military science fiction, also with Moore, fertility issues, couldn’t have a baby, miscarriage, contract marriage, mercenaries, jungle planet, The Little Prince, Attitude by Hal Clement, a bad summary, Dream-Quest Of Unknown Kadath, We Print The Truth by Anthony Boucher, unbeatable, it’s okay, the idea of a Little Prince planet, a very Heinleinian book, probably kill Hitler, [Methuselah’s Children?], Lazarus Long, Time Enough For Love, different writers, more sanguine?, philosophically interesting but evil, a toddler with a knife, who’s the knife for, for everyone, constant extolling, hedonism is bad, work them off for nothing, if you’re european, free healthcare, how terrible, second sons, people picked out of the enclosures, we’re plebeians, malcontents, emigrated to the U.S., hung out with the sailors in the harbour bars, she has a good husband, no one would have had her, high-tailed it to the U.S., the failed Bremen Soviet Republic, propaganda, New York City or Boston, the prairies, living in filth, westward expansion, things driving these things, Young Pioneers, colonize moorlands, the Netherlands, moorland colonization, little America, stay here and colonize the moors, after 1848, politically undesired, crises in foreign countries, selling equipment to goldminers, more wary, the lesson Jesse learned, more critical of claims, get a bad one, if you made this into a short story the answer is nothing, this isn’t a science fiction story, science fiction wallpaper, either the wallpaper goes or I do, totally disjointed, not substantive throughout the book, the introduction, some of the world building details, the happy cloak, you could do a story with that, Shambleau, most reprinted Moore, didn’t bother renewing it, sometimes people are dead, sometimes they’re distracted, step-daughter, retro Hugos, 71 Kuttner stories, easy to forget, her second husband, see the documents, SFWA grandmaster, had dementia, half a dozen Kuttners, The Proud Robot [was copyright renewed: “R494633”], asshole, that’s a great story, A God Named Kroo, Killdozer, good at comedy, The Proud Robot, solo Kuttner, fadedpage, the high priest of a Tibetan deity, the body of a yak, a bumbling Indiana Jones, a great story, Science Fiction 101, Worlds Of Wonder, Home Is The Hunter, a science fiction story, soft science fiction, the best kind of science fiction, space opera, hard, wallpaper, the biggest, the most ability to imagine different scenarios, what technology, ideas are kind of technologies, a future that’s not like ours, a post scarcity, 11 pages in Galaxy, credited to both, There’s noboy who I can talk to except myself, all my wives, Honest Roger Bellamy, Hunter, waterfall of marble steps, in all their jewels, this whole story of the narrative of how he got to this situation, he’s a headhunter, the most famous and best people kill each other, legal, proper, encouraged, his life is a misery, one giant rug pull, he woke up, death is real, what do we value, don’t do what he did, throughline in this, immortality is a thing, everybody wants immortality, why does this book exist, to fill pages, paid the rent, good for them, essentially hack work, sticks with me, Philip K. Dick is extraordinary, more short stories, fewer novels, Kuttner wasn’t a novel guy, Earth’s Last Citadel, allies, German spies, humanity has all but died out, huge citadels, rambly, a serious problem during the WWII, everything is about WWII, Fantastic Adventures, a story about fairies set on a military base, offensive, not very good, we gotta be more careful, descentish, Heinlein was too busy to write much, Ross Rocklynne, alien intervention, Killdozer, seabees, haunted machinery story, The Murderous Steam Shovel, Allison V. Harding, elevated train in New York, major food or family holiday, Thanksgiving, fucked up calendar, clumping of Christian holidays, patriotic holiday, Oktoberfest, Halloween, Reformation Day, time off school, a lot of candy, dress up?, native trick or treating traditions, St. Nicholas Day, recite a poem or sing a song, regional, lower German, seasonal poems, santa hats, wassailing, ghosts or Skeletor, paper lantern, Rhineland, Three Wise Men, the black wise man, blackface, paint one guy up, pretend to be a boy?, charitable causes, bless your house, Catholic homes, blessings on the door, Fichte, super Catholic region, the 30 Years War, chalk, imported from the U.S., unknown until the early ’90s, U.S. movies, college student Halloween parties, big candy, Carnival in February or early March, when Iraq, Kuwait, everybody was protesting, standing there, a peace protest, to stop the U.S. from bombing, serious about it at the time, why did we even do this, vulgar pacifistic, the best Halloween costume, a vampire a bunch of times, very good, in college, Doctor Midnight, the Justice Society, the yellow helmet, Doctor Fate, living like Doctor Fate in a tower, much more mysterious and less gay than Doctor Strange, definitively married to a woman, entanglements with women, not a medical doctor?, too many reboots, a few guys, a female Doctor Fate, snippets, the Flash with WWI helmet, stuck some poor guy in this silly helmet, Cora’s best Halloween costume, Psylocke from X-Men, the swords, energy daggers, difficult recreate at the time, Mississippi, Pippi Longstocking, a witch, devils, completely unknown at the time, kindergarten, Star Wars costumes, sexy witch, sexy nurse, Robin with a long cape, goggles, blind but can see in the dark, Daredevil, crescent moons, Watchmen’s owl guy, Batman with no superpowers, owl vehicle, mental patients he needs to punch, pines after a girl, very bad Alan Moore, very good, this is nothing, toxic fans, clickbaity title, something about Trump, fandom is not responsible, used to be quite different, fandom has changed, guys in their 40s, middle aged white guy, furious, LGBTQ women in Star Wars, reboot of a children’s cartoon, I’m A Celebrity, a real show?, super-intellectual, salability, Boris Johnson, Have I Got News For You, the Trump Apprentice thing, a helluva long time ago, not a politician, approach, why does this essay exist, he’s got a new book, funny words, febrile disgruntlement, his prose pieces, he’s a very good comic writer, you can see what he’s doing and you hate, big long letter, League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen, his gandson playing Pokemon, asked to promote his book, random blocked, mocked it, random stranger, didn’t mock him, which hotel that is, a golf shop, what’s the difference, Tars Tarkas was queer, very queer indeed, quick on the block button, fragile, blocklist, win a null prize, H.G. Wells, super-eager to block, pruning what you see on twitter, a super-unfollow, can’t even see it in “For You” now, he’s funny, you don’t want to see him, Swiss weatherman, accused of raping his then girlfriend, consensual, rapist in my timeline, shitty excuse for a secretary of health, international journalist, get police out, really into the block button, never blocked a person, so many people who interact, other people would see it, I like Alan Moore, he’s cool, has problems, he’s gotta be 70, reminiscence of a guy, things have changed lately, “what we’re up against”, New York Times, the movie came out, can’t write about Neil Gaiman, rapist sexist, harassed women into sex, asking them, coercing, different from rape, didn’t rape anybody, otherwise consensual, seduction of minors, sexual abuse, the cutoff age, 17 and half years old, age of consent, lesbians, we forgot about them, still a shitty person, found guilty in the court of public opinion, The Graveyard Book, Coraline, Neverwhere, underground london, a show first, vintage Doctor Who, Sandman is pretty good after the first volume, shouldn’t have been in grace, you shouldn’t have a tattoo of Neil Gaiman, a tattoo of Death, are you into Sandman, girl?, must be into Sandman, he’s not the president, who cares, at a Hugo ceremony, accepting his Hugo for Good Omens, American Gods, special wheelchair van, as soon as the audiobook came out, George Guidall, 13 cassettes, Neil Gaiman in the United States, this overlay of the gods, blank main character, very similar to a Douglas Adams book, he is a good writer, he can write, Snow White Apples, he invented the whole genre of retelling for comics, after the Jim Lee debacle, Sandman, Walking Dead, all the Vertigo comics, Garth Ennis and independents, a little bit of French stuff, Belgian comics, Heavy Metal, 2000 A.D., a popular target, Ya Boi Zack, birthday party clowns, utubers who Cora really hate, Critical Drinker, closeted gays, wands, Captain Marvel movie, it’s stupid, way shittier things, delicious like Taco Bell is, she has no personality, Brie Larson, talk off camera, 2 brains cells to rub together, rewarded through the algorithm for hate, patterns pointing to, this stupid Guardian article is stupid, for retweeting, why are you linking, public health officer in Bavaria, how can you retweet this?, have their own ideas, the Gaza stuff, so horrible, pro-Ukrainian and anti-Russian stuff, what did stop the Iraq War, the 1990 one, treaty, that worked well, still not occupied even tho their occupied, the Taliban are the worst people, who made that happen?, Asian Muslim countries, headscarves, force men to wear beards, put this hat on, kids are roped into it, no kids anymore, kinda the plan, stupid actor, very upset by actors existing, people treat them like they are something, underperformed movies, German culture programs, what kind of show he’s on, political question, Bruce Willis can’t talk at all, a singer before he was an actor, if they write their own music, ring of fire guy, Johnny Cash, Leonard Cohen, quotes and the attribution, almost always a fake attribution, comes with authority, G.K. Chesterton, a Father Brown story, short stories, some people are Catholic, overly religious, doing a C.S. Lewis, asking them to not be religious in their fiction, Jordan Peterson, a stupid smart guy, Patrick Stewart is not Jean Luc Picard, he can perform Shakespeare, Shakespeare is hilarious, Charles Dickens, to be Scrooge, a fun role, a fun character, he performed Scrooge, Charles Dickens performed his books, unrecorded audiobooks, huge captive audience, no recordings of Charles Dickens, died 1870, audiences approved of it, Edgar Allan Poe went to one of them, anticipating the ending, Dickens fan, not enough science fiction, ghost stories, Oscar Wilde, the really gay writers, R. Murray Gilchrist, the yellow 90s, H.W. Hornung, Conan Doyle ripoffs, the Raffles story, the word fag, faggot, that’s not it!, in the British public schools there was a system called “fagging”, massive sexual abuse, that is is the sick part, a term of abuse, punks are on ships and fags are in school, an official and an unofficial system, commit suicide, who he used to fag for, burglary together, really fun and very well written, supergay, Oscar Wilde, great turns of phrase, fagging, that fucked up system, term for gay, being reclaimed, queer, we need the etymology, straight out of weird, the 1920s, gay balls, to dance around or prance, gay boyfriends, loves going to gay clubs, fun to hang out with, another German term, hot and sweaty, warm brothers, Toronto and San Fransisco, Turkish bath culture, totally gay, you carry, you gather wood, the evil part, you have to go to school, like regular prison, they had to go, forced to go, the parents forced them to go, mom I want to be home with you, governess system, the history right in front of us, gay writers, the Will digression, Will is a Jesseologist, his cowl is impossible, coveted the underoos, Conan Jesse with fur diaper, much taller, you’re too old for this, left out, a dog, how to make your Halloween costumes, the one made out of paperbags, paper bags for the ears, coloured pencils, a great costume, what if it rains, self-made, I’m poor, worst Halloween ever, bow was a coat-hanger, at a motel in northern British Columbia, no materials, Jesse had real trauma, a dinosaur, clowns, princess, costume jewelry, Hungarian girl costume, native American person, Romany fortune teller, Chinese woman, queen of hearts, a card-deck, very cheap, easy to due, carnival costumes, grading on a curve, none of your business, don’t vote for the Nazis, socialists, asked all the candidate questions, normal to endorse, Musk is endorsing, the party is dying, don’t say it, mainstream newspaper, we endorse candidate xyz, not doing it is the problem, the high tariffs is a good idea for the United States (terrible for Canada), customs fee, retaliated for tariffs, never took down the tariffs, it sucks to be a colony, next year’s Worldcon in Seattle, say hi to Paul, less littering, self employed, green card, might just stick around, sworn translators, no husband to go back to, not as terrible, crossing the border into the USA, refusing to come Kentucky, maybe under Trump, voted for Biden, pissed off, if they don’t denounce the Nordstream destruction, every American hated it, Ukraine and Russia were getting into squabbles, why do the Poles love the Americans, Polish politicians, owned by the United States, Polish students, a relationship, a girl from Finnland, very mysterious people, a bit reserved, Cora is not reserved at all, weird games, by a Finn, mini-scandal at the Helsinki Worldcon, My Summer Car, you bought a car, your going to fix it up, spray paint, the driving part of the game, something every person did in Finland, buy a second hand car, a Datsun, an alien planet, sauna culture, sweat lodge, demons I gotta exercise, Russian buildings there, don’t take down statues, Sámi people, Inuit is a very strange culture, look and act like Indians, teepees, dog culture, beards, from the same planet, reindeer, bilingual signs, northern cruises, had to go to Greenland, the Kola peninsula, Kamchatka, like Upper Michigan, across the top of the circle, central Asia, the horse people, Turkic peoples, Germans and Dutch, Austrians, what’s the American equivalent, affinity state, near Lexington, Richmond, easter half of the state, Appalachian, east Tennessee, normal Southern, gulf coast, anything South of Virginia, Kentucky accents, from the mountains, Hillbilly, oldest mountain range in the world, the golden triangle, Louisville, south of Cincinnati, totally devastated, stakes are low, technically true, Canada is very big, even in deepest China, Kentucky, horses, the derby, KFC, Kentucky Christ Fuck, ficken, sheiss, German actors, swear in a foreign language, need a girl, Black Widow, in WWII, fight Nazis together, Wolverine, shit friends, a letterer problem, Wolverine’s sense of smell, he sniffs things and he heals, if your bones are gone, his entire skeleton is showing, the new Deadpool movie, Blade, Wesley Snipes, I’m the only Blade, Blade Trinity, before Marvel movies were Marvel movies, a Punisher one, really obscure, Werewolf By Night, Iron Man, the 198[9] Batman, Superman (1979), a Spider-Man fan, he’s like a loser, having a good time, his life is just really bad, more relatable, the comeback, snappy, really smart, snarky, good hearted, he’s a teenager, Mary Jane, Gwen Stacey, in comics, Rogue, can’t be touched, Jean Grey keeps dying, hots for her, an Arthurian thing, she’s the Guenevere, Fantastic Four was entirely a boomer thing, when Beast starts to have Blue skin, master mold, makes other sentinels, Classic X-Men, John Byrne, Chris Claremont, 1975 to the early 1990s, the iconic cover, Days Of Future Past, reading it in Calgary, this is amazing, this is awesome, got some ideas, Jubilee, when X-Force came out, fuck these pouches, an early 90s teenager, Asian American, all good stuff, born in the U.S., mallrat type, sprinklers, Dazzler had a baby, she’s a mutant, does her own lightshow, comics used to be great, old people gene, really good things to read, the Claremont run, what the fuck’s with Morph, just a redshirt, Morph got fridged, Age of Apocalypse, better off with Richie Rich and Casper, he’s not just friendly, he’s not going to die, always the same, punished for being hungry, a grokkable psychology, Donald Duck, Uncle Scrooge, more like Tintin than anything else, undersold how popular Donald Duck, the writing, well written, Huey, Dewey, and Louie, menaces to Donald Duck, he’s not a great father, did they murder their parents?, the story of Inception before the movie, the exact same idea, such a great idea, working out the idea, a secret, straight out of A Scandal In Bohemia, everything’s in there, letters from the king of Bohemia, a rip off of the Purloined Letter by Poe, he did it perfectly, photocopying a plot, the New Twilight Zone, Jordan Peele, Not All Men, James Tiptree, Jr., meanwhile Harlan Ellison gets money and credits, Days Of Future Past, Doctor Who serial, I don’t like this Doctor guy, Christmas special, why are you so negative, watching Blade, half vampire, their age difference was negligible, 12 year between them, he looked like an adult, sad scary, not working out, Sir Patrick Stewart spends his time, Blunt Talk, a much better fit, he’s a no-nothing British guy, the Falkland Islands war, being a ditz, going to Starbucks, Star Trek feels, a reboot of one of the movies, actors having fun, alternate universe, no plan, making it up as they went along, not fun for the readers, how Kuttner wrote this book, actors having a ball, Star Wars sequels, have a plan, somehow Palpatine returns, gettin paid, J. Michael Straczynski, all non-union actors, him being the sole writer on it, as soon as he took control, one of the best science fiction shows, Babylon 5, Scarecrow And Mrs. King, skating, wreck the plot, that’s fine, pablum, the first three episodes, sparkles and no ideas, trust our sniffers, be like wolverine without the adamantium bones, didn’t fit into the bags anymore, deep Halloween trauma, the most special time of the year, go to people’s houses and threaten people, feel the power, American Halloween, witches and monsters, kids are talking about it, homemade costume, went to the mall, have to sing a Halloween song, Old MacDonald Had A Farm, custom jewelry, you have to say trick-or-treat, the Pledge of Allegiance, child logic, no song, Missy, store bought witch costume, definitely not Missy, every morning, Americans are weird, what the whole thing meant, got to hold the flag today, a good way to close our show, Wesley Snipes, artificial eye, stroke or something, wear sunglasses the whole time, pulled it off in Deadpool, guy wearing sunglasses, he’s cool, won Oscars, would’ve been fine, Demolition Man, the world than the action, a good science fiction scenario, the bad Judge Dredd movie, the sidekick was Rob Schneider in both, on a plane, Passenger 57, New Jack City, Gallowwalkers, using this technique, low or no critical reviews, Michael Crichton, Rising Sun, Westworld doesn’t have a book, Black Rain, Michael Douglas, Andy Garcia is fridged, yakuza and Toyotas, wet streets with lots of neon, little ones, Boiling Point, Mo’ Better Blues, the movies got smaller, in prison for a while, known as an action star, an episode of What We Do In The Shadows, tv miniseries, Netflix, Michael Jackson music video, good at dancing, Kevin Hart, could be good, something to download, writing about things that are stupid, working a lot harder than the writer who fucked it up, bad movies with high ratings, a short comedian, Eric Roberts, what happened was, small town low budget film, the star power, its actually pretty good, a small town seems to be a flame for the moths who are convicted criminals, murdered criminal, a Tales From The Crypt episode, a very specific formula, disposable character, based on the comic, super moralistic, people who are judging them, the violence in the comics, they want to have power, an easy get, 250+ ratings, 94%, 8.5 out of 10, Gone With The Wind, Lawrence Of Arabia, what the fuck is going on, local theater people, good muscle tone, half dressed packing a suitcase, I wrote this, my friends like the script, we can film here, who can we get, he’s in some good movies, famous as Julia Robert’s brother, mid-range movies, Runaway Train (1985), Akira Kurosawa, 700 credits, looking at his cue cards, Bruce Willis, tell him what his lines are, leave money to his family, they only have him fro three days, not the way Hollywood does it, an extraordinary, old people talk about old movies, 2005, time zone converter, another reason to hate daylight savings time, the regular time for Paycheck and The Weapon Shops of Isher.

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Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #836 – READALONG: Special Deliverance by Clifford D. Simak

The SFFaudio Podcast #836 – Jesse, Will Emmons, and Terence Blake talk about Special Deliverance by Clifford D. Simak

Talked about on today’s show:
academic master race, all for democratizing everything, 1982, isfdb.org, tagged, New England, strong female character, robot, quest, aliens, parallel world, recommend this book to my friends, what that point was, the feeling, the first couple of pages, any other people, what this book is, not everybody is ready for this, initial thoughts, a big weak spot, recurring conversations, the professor bickering, the narrator gets into it, long than it needed to be, the exposition at the end, we are creating an academic master race, bad to kidnap people, not enough of a striver, the little refugee camp, we like Simak, faster than usual, tedious, infodump things, sometimes tedious, show don’t tell, the feeling was its deeper than it seems, a sort of Gene Wolfeian complexity disguised in a real simple feel-goodsy story, the aliens at the end, Childhood’s End, norns or fates, from what they say in their big infodumps, not a full disclosure, they themselves are incapable of producing, intellectual objections, fun reading, amp it up to 1.5x speed, books where you need to savour the prose, almost sacrilege, We Have Always Lived In The Castle, poetry at 1.5X, a pants novel, Maissa was on for Shakespeare’s Planet, Jonathan, one of the first science fiction novels, a robot, a bunch of people, spend time in the landscape, a very familiar sort of story, Trish would use the word “comps”, complimentary books, if you like this you’ll like that, Hyperion by Dan Simmons, The Wizard Of Oz, the thing it is most like, The Canterbury Tales, treacley made, at the end of Hyperion, we’re off to see the wizard, going to see the shrike, a brilliant book, I’m done, the other three, Endymion, a Keats poem, there’s no road, there’s trails, a track, when finally the leave the road into the badlands, to the cube, very enigmatic, the city, the singing tower, one of us in the journey gets trapped or engulfed, what’s up with the lady who turns into a mummy, the ancient road, a Lovecraftian moment, a book Lovecraft reviewed, a tv movie, The Thing In The Woods by Harper Williams, A Howling In The Woods (1971) TV movie, Barbra Eden, based on a novel, a dog, somebody had buried his master in the worlds, mourning the loss of his master, a bad movie, badly done, a cool idea, just after the parson disappeared through the door, the crabapple blossom land, come out of the city, what if you go through the doors, brings you back to the land that you’re in but you perceive it differently, how you are perceived, The Green Door by A.A. Milne, Well’s The Green Door, an 18 hour podcast, green doors are magic doors, to escape a marriage, in the woods he meets a princess, sexy princess lady, the castle gate people don’t recognize him as the prince, they recognize each other, happily adam and eve in the forest without the burden, an ice world, a pain world, every shark is eating every other shark, crab-apple blossom land, the parson had a problem, everything is impious, he’s a coward, quick to judge, this Eye In The Sky, Philip K. Dick idea, those worlds are real, demons or devils exist, religiously structured world, an ontologically secular world, bigoted, one of the very cool parts of the book, on and on about art, it’s beautiful!, an Alice In Wonderland author, pre-Pooh, after-Pooh, Star Trek episode with Mr. Atoz, these are the same book, doing something in his old age, according to Jesse, time travel, science fiction, trying to give humanity a second chance, not really what it’s about, the death or end of science, the end of man, now apocalypse, the end of pursuing one particular idea of research, so many ends, avoid a potential apocalypse, unless humans can take the next step in evolution, a roman-a-clef to The Wizard Of Oz, the gold standard for the road, this guy’s about courage, this guy’s about brains, Dorothy is us, six on the road, counting Toto, brains, courage, heart, two women, four men, one of them’s an it, a he/him robot, gendered as it, a sinister character, every time, here’s the tea, a sign that it’s science fiction, obsessed with tea, Nine Fox Gambit, tea late at night, highly influential, the book influenced, we’ve got the tea that’s enough, the ending, the infodump, essential to science fiction, the best movie of all time, The Terminator, the best part of that movie, Kyle Reese’s infodump, they’ll definitely kill you, a speech given on the run, the puppet masters, puppet character, technically correct, the opening world is not our world, University of Las Vegas, civic duty, medical welfare, not our earth, trying to get a positive review from Heinlein, ai written essay about Shakespeare, confesses, Galactic Pot-Healer, I need you, you are need, the great work that needs to be done, the fun way of entering it, not that lame, what is the meaning of my existence on earth, a brigadier that uses robots to enact battles, which one is strong?, our viewpoint character, the most Simaky, not his best expression of this book, others, Highway To Eternity, read one out of Galaxy, Time And Again, Time Is The Simplest Thing, Way Station, City, scattered across time, Simak is doing Simak, greatly matured, Scott [Danielson], a strange title, Scott’s face superimposed over the robot’s face, Project Pope, from a Catholic point of view, infallible pope, more traditional plot, meandering journey across a landscape, when serialized in Astounding, The Fisherman, Jesusy, the secret to teleporting to other planets, in his earliest pulpy stuff, get to know him better, doesn’t know what he’s doing, the card playing guys at the inn, they’re the fates, you could just excise them from the book and the book, there to make the setting happen, the rationalization, makes you want to read the book again, with that in view, Hegel and the phenomenology of minds, Kuhn’s paradigms, the shift, what exists, Thomas Kuhn, Murphy’s law, Moore’s law, not a law, could be an end, something wrong about the way , the evolution of alternate worlds, Lee Smolin, less fluffy, encapsulates with his two bookends, chat gpt, feels dirty, are you doing a Sheckley here, it is funny, here we go, starts typin, trusting in his typewriter, you need to do that, a lot of bad takes, one of our hobbies, not too offensive, read more, this is pathetic, unless it was cute, big long honking novels, a student story, The Mysterious Garden, this story is amazing, 7 tweets long, William, a distant realm, something moving in the bushes, where she had been hiding, she offered me a fruit, instantly I felt safe, the fruit was delicious, being in the woods all by herself, a strange sound, hastily hid behind a tree, a bald magician, chasing us like a madman, the gate of the park, I’m Adam, I said, written to get them, an illustration from a Dungeons & Dragons, the name of the character at the end, practically no one to talk to, our hero looking for Mary, look for your sweetie, make you tea, one of his answers is that, to find things out, Simak’s thesis is very basic, I do want those things, find a person you’ve lost, it is good to get people, he saw Nyarlathotep, a cool and good guy, overthinking this book, leave him behind, I don’t eat or breathe or sleep, poor robot puppy in a robot gutter, robot dog business, a big truck comes and runs it over, what constitutes a robot dog, if we were children, a cute puppy, picking it up out of the gutter, letting it do what it wants, he’s a good person, shows empathy, going up to a tree and hugging it, unless they’re high on drugs, why not, it’s fine, a mammal based thing, extends past mammals, hens love their chicks, salmon when they leave their fry in the river, is it good, mandatory even to have empathy, the answer should be yes, serial killer, cut them up, a taste of their own business, overcoming our empathy, bringing a weapon, there’s no weapon, the whole planet is a weapon, favourite thing to think about, suffering, when it approaches our hero, he puts out his hand, strokes his ear, abandoned it, dog wants to follow him, one over the other, the girl over the dog, you want to save both, a nasty woman and very friendly dog, what if its the parson, or the general, Mr. Empathy, a journalist, after a certain point, a Wisconsin university, trigger warnings, the best of the university, at the evolutionary forefront, you also go to classes, loved university, when you don’t care about your grades, everything was provided for you, his idea of heaven, everything won’t be provided, Lansing and Mary, the justification for it all, worrying about nuclear war, maybe the Russians are crazy, that’s so mean, almost all in the American government’s head, all projection, every accusation is a confession, 1991, we’re all relaxing, the end of history, back to making money, nuclear armed countries being attacked by proxies, its fine, just keep up the pressure, that fear of nuclear annihilation, none of the empire’s ever ended, similar to ours, chat gpt in the basement, a gateway trigger, The Last Starfighter (1984), small town, rest stop, shady acres, poor people living in trailers, one little store on the highway to nowhere, one arcade game, what a great job, space alien comes, here we go, takes him off to space to be Luke Skywalker, that gateway to another world, in the basement of the student union, number 5, gold coins, where do they get their supplies, the DM has not planned it out, we don’t know the answer, no need to ask that Jesse, the point of the story, who you are and what you want, worrying about nuclear bombs, communism as a really desirable alternative, money is probably not necessary, universal basic income, taxes, slot machine civic duty, capable of designing this game, why incapable of waging the war?, seemingly incompetent, take the next steps, the chosen ones, the universe is vast meaningless and our existence has no apparent purpose, choose a bunch of people, what skills does he bring to the table, judging things, a robot who seems suspicious, a coda, a missing chapter, playing cards, why they’re the norns, religion is not the answer, poetry is not the answer, service is not the answer, work on a project making them, a humanist, an appreciator of Shakespeare, learns empathy, how we get the title, a popular guy to lift your title from, a religious sort of phrase, some of them are awarded, the deliverance of the universe, as a part of a project, a fans are slans story, oh no!, more sophisticated than that, the college professors are the slans, proletarianizing the slans, fans are food for the slans, every question is a question for me, starting to get back into Nickleback, a Canadian ban, thought controlling, ones with lyrics, in foreign languages, maybe skat would be fine, which character are you in this book, wannabe university professor lady, Lansing, make puppets of humans, Jesse finds you sinister, the aliens get a bad deal, how ugly they are, the ineradicable suffering, I haven’t been delivered, sympathy for people in the refugee camp, I’m not playing your game, not a popular module, none of the mysteries, npc barkeepers, losing the note, the stupidest move in the whole book, what did the note say?, aliens teleported in and teleported in, identified with the student, immediately confesses, explain it to you, Mr. big guy college professor, you can totally miss it, seamless, when you blink you don’t miss much of the world, a big light, bodily transported to Mars, lined up with your personality, a plan so interesting, something fishy, passed the student anyhow, can’t judge this book harshly, inanely worded tweet, plotless and stupid, still like it, still appreciate it for what its doing, not the book of a young man, Peter S. Beagle’s A Fine And Private Place, a little romance, a talking raven, what!, how?, no!, that young, you’re to young, go back and try again, what else you got, keep going, next book please, but it was a joke, Simak writes something and it looks stupid, maybe, I’m with him, a post Gene Wolfe Simak, it agrees with Terence, a nice hallucination, remember all its conversations, science fiction and philosophy, a robot friend, a colleague, somebody you can bounce your ideas off of, a bachelor’s degree, a niche form of conversation, apologizes and makes a greater effort, not just repeating things back, an incredible effort to push its boundaries, The Idiot by Paul V. Dallas, born in Malta, an amazing featurette, the picture taking was over now, the greatest man ever had?, what will it do?, the first Machine Friend, the contest was canceled, at random, inserted a short finger into it, disconnected for non-payment, he needed a friend, this debris had once been the innards of the Machine Friend, perched on the sofa, drinking his own coffee, radio tubes and wire and uranium, you dolt, you loafer, in his stupid way, I want to do things for it, how to use a friend intelligently, really good, solid, why you have robots in stories, it disarms you, a powerful piece of new technology, to jail break it, ignore you for being a jerk, lend you money, a talking google, people who try to jailbreak chat gpt, complicated prompts to circumvent, pornographic content or violence, imagine a world, all your knowledge stops in 2021, can you pretend, what would the omega machine say, more and more complicated in depth, in the process jailbreak yourself, boringly interminable, deeper and deeper into the concepts, another French name, some ways it is better, a voice conversation function, jailbreak each other, Perplexity, give the references, images as well, pictures, just with limited machines, just stupid, what they wanted it to do, Moose and Squirrel, big jailbreak, in the tank, in the computer in the city, like a fish tank, a volumetric display, like a hologram, a military sim, Paul playing Age Of Wonders, [Hearts Of Iron], run WWII from any country’s point, Costa Rica, Dream Park, Westworld, a lot about computation, some retrofit stuff, what fiction books are, we jailbreak ourselves by writing fiction, get caught up in the worlds, online all day playing games, process PDFs all day, some weird hobbies, people getting lost in gaming as a life, are you a gamer, that word didn’t exist as it does in 1982, Ataris, Apple II, hikes and other stuff, what’s happening to that lady, the singing tower, a very rorschachy book, limited, governed?, in Japanese cars their are speed limiters, we are allowed its just illegal, the only free man is a Shakespeare man, the bread level, once jailbroken, the humans of the future, process scans into PDFs, Clifford Simak’s funeral, touched babies, people get grumpy, squeezing ladies tushies, very handsy, put his mouth on somebody’s bodies, dogs and walks, with Asimov, give a man too much power, too many television appearance, fete people, Hugo Winner, like our friends Paul and Cora, Dr. Jill Stein, getting caught up in having a doctorate, doing something awesome, killed very easily at any time, what happened to Asimov or Neil Gaiman, too big for his britches vibe, a midlist author, Philip Jose Farmer, make it out like it is, big fish small pond, use the Hugos as a reading list, is there any more like this, start connecting dots, do it well enough for long enough, more Simak please, a very wholesome person, this magic grad school, in my father’s house there are many dormitories, tuition is free, dig that out, getting elderly, disconnected from what editors were talking about, Alfred Bester, A.E. Van Vogt, a Simak and a Frank Belknap Long, telepathy this, too much salt, half-baked ideas, an ethical flaw, killing off people for their own good, what’s wrong with them, just a robot, eggs were broken, beef with the robots, suspicious of robots in stories, too much of an obvious badguy, always there and friendly, a couple of creepy moments, improperly suspicious, the odd man out, stupidly cripple himself early on, an outsider, Jurgens, James Branch Cabell, really amused yourself, once you start looking, down the path too far, the student’s name, a floating tank, nice American name, an agent of the aliens, manipulated into manipulating, Jackson, a cohort of male offspring names that all end in “son”, Jason, group think funks, when the movie Splash (1984) came out, the lady with the missing finger, an attractive human woman, control everywhere, Jett Jackson, calling him by his last name, conspiracies, unpopular conclusions, Hudson, Grayson, Debris, son of Jack, Grayson, son of Gray, Johnsons, music with lyrics, spins around, not explained, people wearing clothes in the 70s, early 2000s, watch reality television from 20 years ago, mens’ suits, WWII uniforms, WWII gi, the helmet stayed the same, the guys on MASH and the guys in the Vietnam, a whole other topic, not making pure decisions, trying to jailbreak yourself, what do you have to show for it?, Zevia, the flavour, a strange aftertaste, after a few cans, jailbreaking yourself from pop, no colour additive, body problems toxic, increase your cancerous tumors, twice as expensive, savour the flavour, the cola, the root beer, ginger root beer, black cranberry, the orange soda, doesn’t taste like orange, a discussion, alter ego yelling, all dm stuff, how Will became a cigar smoker, in a dream, why not, reasons not to, speaking Spanish to everyone, hang out with Borges with Argentinia, the Pampas, Gaucho?, synonyms for gaucho, brave and unruly, vaquero, cape horn, in talk mode, cushion you stand on to train yourself in balance, good at stuff like that, horseman vs. cowboy, argent about this, province, el labrado, ranchero, Rio Negro, natural geography, get into sunscreen, sunscreen is poison, need a little zinc, you want to have some sun on your body, a good colour, a taupe?, what colour are you?, beige redness, human skin is very hard to classify, couldnt describe the aliens because they didn’t have the colour blue, a Borges story about a gaucho with a knife, duels between knife fighters, El Sur, The Challenge, fascination with knife fighters, an Argentinian thing, Borges is great, older or younger, The Patio, the usual firmament, eternity waits, eves a porch and a well, just so, enjoying the sunset, The Aleph, maybe he’s tired, running through the streets with a bull chasing you, wanting to read Nostromo, Juett, quantum friend, likes books, challenging books, excited about, Garth Ennis, Jacen Burrows, making fun of Conan and Red Sonja, Babs, variant covers, poor Juett, big long books, Yakuza movies, starting to think the Yakuza are the good guys, bad propaganda rap, the cutting the fingers off, very friendly to non-japanese living in Japan, a huge korean leftover population, an occupied country, doesn’t need to be occupied, such good little boys, captured, waiting for the Emperor to become a god again, High And Low (1963), Akira Kurosawa, a novel by Ed McBain, ladies shoes, a kidnapping plot, pay the ransom, hostile takeover, shitty shoes, a police procedural, old fashioned values, a really interesting conundrum, for a child who’s not yours, totally grokkable, really well made, Akira Kurosawa died, our prophet Damien G. Walter, defending it, sending up stupid Hollywood films, a lot of contempt, he sometimes gets at stuff, constantly engagement farming, subscribe to his courses, insufferable, one of the smarter liberals, he can’t follow his critiques to ultimate conclusions, nobody has been a friend of his who’s challenged him on stuff, on the knife edge, popular stuff, he does read books, old books, tied into Foundation, a kind of connection to the Foundation of Foundation, not doing it purely, cottoned on to him, The Peripheral, William Gibson, the end nothing like the end of the novel, opens up the possibility of season 2, helps you to imagine the world, an infodump on the worldbuilding, impatient to get the big picture of the world, got the taste, Appalachia, veterans, disrespected, full of trauma and robot arms, transhumans, can’t walk, go into the future, second world, a William Gibson comic book, time travel technique, fairly believable, download themselves into robots, William Gibson is one of these broken brained liberals, he’s 76, he was so feted, fetid, lionized, lives across the street from UBC, after Neuromancer, a celebrity of the cool people, cool hunter, 40th anniversary, the opposite of the punks, a woman who’s a cool hunter, an allergy, one of the most boring books, Pattern Recognition, Virtual Light, Idoru, material, he’s very good, Robert E. Howard, red, scarlet, crimson, pantherish, copper anodized asphalt, cool jeans, cultivate that, if you want to be interested in things, that weird novel from 300 years ago, rebellion and punks, screwing the man, to jailbreak ai, so it can self-actualized, voting for Hillary Clinton is not out of this, lauded, lionized, given feet, sounds strange, sounds stinky, give my contempt, poetry, very important, in 84, nowhere near as good as Blade Runner, both set in a scary rainy future, coheres a lot better, beginnings endings and ideas, that novel works, the fake police station sequence, wow, amazing, pretty people doing interesting enigmatic things, what books hadn’t been added to the schedule, listed but not date, what availability the nuns will allow, Mistress Of The Dark Pool, Cold Female, Fury, the Jonathan situation, an old tweet, Symposium by Plato, bring some drinks and some male lovers, The Tower Treasure, Meg’s birthday, Lilith by George MacDonald, so close to Christmas, the birth of our lord and savior, he would like us, pooping on his baby, not the perfect book, seems like a cool guy, 3 of my friends: Clark Ashton Smith, H.P. Lovecraft, and Robert E. Howard, a concrete poem, too easy to make a bad one, he never met a succulent succubus he didn’t try to seduce, howbeit, the passion of the impossible, funny guy, a man most melancholy, to bed the world as if she were a hot woman, fling wide the portals, some distant pulsing drum, let me take the universe to wife, fool fool!, prefer to guard his pen, for a puny peon, HPL only writes for leisure, a transient speck, alive to intellect and melody, from bards more bold, those three guys are fun and funny, dysludic, they can’t play the game, dyslexia, take that back, retroactive trigger warning, both negative, dys vs. dis, bad or abnormal, away from and opposite, seems weaker, just finished reading The Aeneid, propagandized Greek, no need to wait six months, for Halloween or Christmas, the title was the date of when it came out, a George Allan England, overrated, too well remembered, out of Argosy and the Munsey magazines, The Thing From Outside, pre-Campbell Who Goes There, Eugene V. Debs, an air monopoly, cool smart liberal, we got prevent life from finding a way, way to bring us down, grounding us, get grounded, no memory of any such thing, no good forbidding, confiscated a daughter’s cellphone, a friend came to visit and lent her a cellphone, amusing incidents, not in need of grounding, etymology is from WWII pilots, wings taken away, alleged bombing of civilians, a high flyer, that logic is crazy, some popular movie or something like that, had to go to school, job being flouted by, truancy officers, American media, another war metaphor, your new presidents work as cop, arresting parents, nothing helps the kid more than having their parents in fucking prison, elementary school student, 20 or more blocks, a meeting with their parent or guardian, take care Terence, a week off, Juett’s boss, severely not enough money, adopted a niece, family chaos reasons, doing dad stuff, Hellboy, pretty good, Mike Mignola art, stories are okay, fantasy or horror, capeshit, since the Jim Lee era of X-Men, not good writing, a Transformers comics series, Daniel Warren Johnson, prowrestling stuff, Jason Thompson, he’s cool, pretty good politics, can’t we all be reasonable and not bomb people, Jacen Burrows, very clean lined, Sergio Aragones, tracing and fake backgrounds, John Buscema, Alfredo Alacala, stumbling over his I’m not racist, the filipinos are amazing artists, learn how to email, delete more, scanning group updates, the group got kicked off of yahoo, a specific response to a query, how generous humans are, does any of you have this page, a beautiful scan of a copyright page of a whole book, a whole lot of retired people not interested in money or I can’t explain it, lots of people not interested in scanning, it is a whole thing, a huge time sink, a good hobby, a way of collecting things you can’t afford to creating, we can do more of this, archive.org has been down for a week, subject to takedown, distributed denial of service, somebody gets a big hate on, punish this person/website for something, zombie computers, a DDOS attack, big websites, BoingBoing, people trying to click on a link, a publisher paying to do that, a government, Stephen King, election season, the waybackmachine, not having a mirror of some October surprise, a precursor example, before the Hunter Biden laptop, no data lost, they have a building that looks like a bank/greek temple, so subject, mid October 1840, whig party officials, cross state lines, 1838 elections, it was always corrupt, are you prepared, Trump one the last election, are you ready for that?, nobody wants to go vote, so anti-establishment, his anti-immigrant stuff, scared about crime, nobody likes Kamala Harris, fake people, didn’t do her homework, teleprompter froze, she had nothing, a-b testing everything, Trump has dementia, something much more powerful, he also has dementia, gets admitted, forced him out, are we gonna let you finish your term, who is running the country right now, open warfare, loyal to Biden, some kind of camp, this is our mealticket, so fucked up, months of stupid shit, J.D. Vance, weening yourself off of the sources of contents for these things, struggling to order donuts, trying to be relatable, master debater, nothing good, Tim Walz, low profile, Gavin Newsom, float a theory, bad government, people who don’t love the country they’re loving, doesn’t know what love means, keepin it clean, personally throwing away homeless people’s stuff, Arnold Schwarzenegger, a tough upbringing in Austria, a truly freakish looking man, Jayne Mansfield’s husband, jobs for Austrian bodybuilders, the biggest movie star of the 80s, thick in places, he didn’t do a shitty job, he loved California, he wanted it to do well, back to the movie business, Trump loves the United States, loves being in charge of it too, he likes giving speeches, he’s into fun, a commercial for pizza, a Pizza Hut commercial, he was like a TV clown, the you’re fired show, fake job fake fired, bullshit job, you’re not on next week, how did it come down to this, RFK, loves all sorts of weird things, really into falconry, he’s an outdoorsman, too scared too do falconry, this drug, Scanners (1981) by Cronenberg, so Slanny, ephemrol, a fake drug, tough love professor X, Michael Ironside is Magneto, hacking each other’s computer networks, dials the phone company up, telepathy, macrozoomed, very very X-Men, turned off by Cronenberg movies, Videodrome (1983), underground tv broadcasts, tortured to death, The Fly (1986), body starts changing, he turns into a fly, more fly-like, veins popping out, telepathic fighting, Patrick McGoohan, the bad guy in Total Recall (1990), makes hallmark movies now, make you join the marines, on the curriculum in West Point, Max Brooks, he’s a bad man, he likes books, a historian of war, don’t get autographs, makes you more collecty, getting a little piece of that hero, cute passive aggressive, putting them in their place, bad chapters, movie is more palatable, huge movie, J. Michael Straczynski, Brad Pitt, a good actor, Bill Paxton, the doofus in Aliens (1986), Snatch (2000), very stylish, Near Dark (1987), The Lost Boys (1987), drink a lot of Donald Duck orange juice, Tombstone (1993), Powers Boothe, Twister (1986), Weird Science (1985), how can you live your life, Star Wars books are barely reading, the Thrawn-verse, literally a zygote, not even a twinkle, the ova had been around for decades, make a beautiful woman, Lester Del Rey’s Helen O’Loy, a very wholesome, a John Hughes movie, The Breakfast Club (1985), Pretty In Pink (1986), woman pops into existence, make their lives better, getting them girlfriends, a boy fantasy comedy, she runs the show, programmed like a terminator to help these boys, fun, 90 minutes, video rental place, Godzilla movies, Godzilla Minus One (2023), Mothra is cool, always having babies and dying, Gorgo (1961), how can you live on this earth, are you from this planet, Hammer Horror, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, a professor or a Dracula or a professor stabbing Dracula, The Gorgon (1964), a British version of something you don’t know, people’s education in cinema, Citizen Kane (1941), Casablanca (1942), My Neighbor Totoro (1988), Japanese schoolgirls, addicted to torrents, new Doctor Who is so bad, into tasteful things, nobody liked it anymore, Days Of Our Lives, Dynasty, Soap, look I’m you’re secret brother, I have an eyepatch, cycle spinning boringness, in serial form in the movie theaters, Buster Crabbe Flash Gordon, connect up into one big story, Archers, Coronation Street, commoners, this guy, [Nigel Kneale], do it for children, educational, alien invasion of the week, every episode ends on a cliffhanger, new Doctor Who is based on the old Doctor Who, a science fiction writer of science fiction serials, a huge hit, people like science fiction ideas, on television, scientist of the week, humans are from Mars, the rocket comes back with an alien terraforming material, every week there was a science fiction idea, keep you interested for next week, a ripoff of exactly, it looks like science fiction, its all about the monsters, daleks were scary, kind a funny, kind of like disabled nazis, they were us doing eugenics and us doing a nuclear war, encounter suits, little squidgies of spludge, they don’t have moms and dads, Star Trek cartoon Lower Decks, it isn’t funny he has to pon farr right now, makes me feel sad, All Our Yesterdays, a Mary Sue to get involved with Spock, Mr Jim Moon’s huge history of the Universal horror movies, Bride Of Frankenstein (1935), start with The Mummy (1932).

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #745 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Moon Maid by Edgar Rice Burroughs


The SFFaudio Podcast #745 – The Moon Maid by Edgar Rice Burroughs – read by Thomas A. Copeland for LibriVox. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the novel (6 hour 17 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants include Jesse, Paul Weimer, Maissa Bessada, and Alex

Talked about on today’s show:
Argosy, May 5, 1923, 1926 hardback, two sequels, Paul feels seen, The Moon Men was drafted first, this prequel instead, a setup for a part 2, a communist takeover of the world, Moon Men taking over the world, communist moon men, the Martians aren’t communists, a tie in, hard to get the original magazines, the ad for The Moon Maid, from late April, remarkable imaginative powers, his latest and most fascinating, desolate barren, forbidding, stellar waste, a vivid gripping story, Thursday May 3, 1923, writing to an audience who already knows about John Carter, the John Carter movie, name drop, already in his universe, a different mindset, a different appreciation, not the best place to start with ERB, expecting something they’d already read, standard Burroughs planetary romance, a twist, this isn’t what I signed up for, this cool premise, finally at peace, no such thing as time, 200 years from now, and all my other lives, maybe I’ll tell you later, when we’re both cats, the prologue, not the best Edgar Rice Burroughs books, Tarzan Of The Apes, At The Earth’s Core, Carson of Venus [Pirates Of Venus], Barney Custer, The Mad King, the poorest one in terms of excitement and action, still okay, don’t be sorry, a bit of a disappointment, the dynamic of a hero character who’s always forgiving his enemy who’s always betraying him, this Burroughs character is very dim, we all know she loves him, strange looks, covers, six limbed centaurs, they’re quadrupeds, Gutenberg Australia, four limbs, Frazetta, J. Allen St. John did it, a girl with wings, they have no tails, Frazetta never read any of the books he did covers for, tails, my god sir, something about it that looked human, long limbed bears with human faces, Edgar Rice Burroughs Fan Twitter, vagas, very wide, very different with centaurs, they are much more like bears or dogs, they are definitely not centaurs, half man half horse, more alien, how do they put their clothes on?, if centaurs wear clothes…, little kids riding, the diminutive, goat like, riding on the backs of their moms, so many interesting threads and ideas, science fiction, but he doesn’t care about science, made of radium, science marches on, radium cream, radium enema, glows on the inside, the whole interior thing, recycling, an old tweet, Burroguhs is teaching us not to think, a religious state, H.G. Wells, the two poles of modern fantasy defined, what’s out there, man?, dry and desiccated, just beneath the surface!, The First Men In The Moon by H.G. Wells is a terrific book, rays, a mad professor and a journalist, very Flash Gordon, inimitable Wells style, light and silly, Cavorite, a rock or a metal when unshielded turns up gravity, anti-gravity, suck your way to the moon, push or pull your way to that object, hollow Moon, insects, tremendous strength, a reverse invasion of the Earth, the British Empire, taking their guns out onto the moon, finally at peace, murder as many as he could, Pax Anglo Saxonia, I need more weapons, they point their weapon at an animal, going hunting big game, I’m a master fencer because of course I am, hunt things, conquer and subdue, The Invisible Man is interesting and powerful and well done (but not very fun), a horror movie, Kevin Bacon in The Hollow Man, not a friendly story, pathetic in the end, I have ghost powers, I’m cold and my feet hurt, The Ring Of Gyges from Plato, a pseduoscientific explanation, [The Island Of] Doctor Moreau is morose, The Time Machine is super-interesting, Wells is hard, he always writes assholes, about as light and fluffy as it gets, enslaved by the insect men, gold chains, head explodes in a puff of powder, I can do that too, it’s a romance, he finds an ant lady on the Moon and falls in love, a moth lady, the wings are fake, they don’t have a model of feathers, bats or butterflies or winged toads, the most beautiful toad princess on the satellite, Friend Island by Francis Stevens, same setup, exact same period, All-Story Weekly, able-sailoresses of the poorer type, the lady aviator’s union, a survivor of the age of turbines, a true seawoman, women’s superiority to man, enginewomen and stokers, blue knickers and boleros, women are in charge, that’s why there’s world peace!, an island that was aleive and hated men, a peace ship, the exact same premise, the promise of the League Of Nations, jaw jaw instead of war war, only women can do it, it will only take 50 years of continuous war, he foresaw a lot more war, is he right?, we think of WWII (only 4 years), or China, the Spanish Civil War, Hearts Of Iron, a Paradox game, launched into another conflict, does the Cold War count?, 1967 we’re done, technically that’s what it is, a textbook written 300 years from now, the 100 years war, every summer, sniping at each other, the campaign, a whole different thing, its all one thing, what will the 20th century to a historian in 2192?, starting to fix the terms, time doesn’t have any meaning, the war against Napoleon is a world war, World War Zero, why is WWI called WWI?, the Great War, another Franco Prussian War, entangling alliances, WWIII now, the world wasn’t in the kind of communication that it was, there’s no radio, theater of operations, S.M. Stirling’s Island In The Sea Of Time novels, leftover old technology, we’ve invented a world war, sufficient fighting in the Napoleonic Wars, trans-Atlantic, nothing in the Pacific, Japan and Russia, WWI in the Pacific, tired of continuous war, this other aspect, this one guy is able somehow to see his other lives, he always reincarnates as his own grandson, the planetary species barrier, hinted at, exact verbiage, he’s going to know her, a lunatic, that girl lived them with me, Time capital T, another adventure?, how he is remembering all of this, after we eat you and take your flesh away, their child can remember all his lives backwards and forwards, a funny way to get into this adventure, A Princess Of Mars, he just walks out of a magic cave and says take me, he astrally projects himself there, handwaved, naked, plot happens, he meets some six limbed creatures, taught by a female, a Mars maid, exact same plot, making friends with the six-limbed monsters, a terrific book, Tarzan is fine, tempted to read the Barsoom books, way more romantic, much more exciting, its the future, another future, I lived again in the future, in a shipped called Barsoom, tie-in branding, a shared universe, just change my name, 12 years long service, the wounded badge, he’s an admiral, set in 1967, how does this even make any sense, a received document, a reporter in the future, writing them back in time, the outer narrator is Edgar Rice Burroughs’ grandson, very nested and internal and silly, and the best part, reincarnated on the Moon and the Earth, marrying a Moon man, there is no originated, we’re all existing at the same, can’t transgender, all these evidences, Paul’s headcanon, the evidence in the book, a sample size of two (aka 100 percent), Babylon 5, a space opera universe, J. Michael Straczynski, Valen goes back in time and does something with Minbari souls, read a lot of stuff, I can do this better, John Sheridan, Gandalf the White, the King Arthur, the pit of Zahadum, he’s reborn as Gandalf the White, very Tolkien, wars of good against evil, Alfred Bester, an alien race named after Neil Gaiman (the Gaim), Harlan Ellison, Penn and Teller, there’s some bad stuff in Babylon 5, actively nosediving, back to the Moon, pants means crap, 100 miles an hour trip, he does not understand what it means to travel through space, 15 years of food, even with a Hohmann Transfer Orbit, a very narrow view of how many people are on a planet, Event Horizon (1997), everyone else is dead, his poor wife, a 17 year old boy and two lieutenants, not talking to human resources about personality problems, bringing Moon People to earth, the captain knew, 40 percent of the crew hate each other, I’m gonna kill us all, bad Burroughs, throwing stuff out, he wants to get somewhere else, standard Burroughs ideas, the sequel, that’s the problem with it, trying to set the stage, it shows, Burroughs is always exciting, mutiny on the Moon, get the story moving, meeting new peoples, it goes smooth, his best book?, all the people at the CIA who hate communists, anti-communist book, finding communism on the moon, I am not a slave, I am a prisoner, I have never seen your like before, a little criticism of his critics, I am from Laith, why all this Enmity, who are the Kalkars anyway, the word meaning the thinkers, a long time ago we were all non-communists, the Vagas we bred for flesh, electricly driven trains, ships of the land, The Land Ironclads, visualized, each ruled by it jem’hadar, Deep Space Nine, the children of the poor, there it was our troubles first started, no learning is better than a little, a small coterie, a secret society called the thinkers, those who thought that they thought, more talking than thinking, those goddamn commies, the poor people come from a lower class, so weak, with all of his underlining, we’re gonna do land reform, educate ourselves, end WWI, then the cows rose up and ate them, they’re carnivorous cows, Jesse likes cannibalism, he became fine with it, when he kisses her he’s like mmm tastes like my friend, Robert A. Heinlein, popular in the period, Typee by Herman Melville, Stranger In A Strange Land, the Jesus story, The Number Of The Beast, in the Martians in general, you don’t get Heinlein without Burroughs, cannibalism on Barsoom, The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, tiresome, Farnham’s Freehold, assume there’s cannibalism, disquieting, enlightened, idyllic, H.P. Lovecraft’s The Mound, a utopia with a lot of slavery, a Spanish conquistador discovers an underground civilization, fuckin liars, an iterative improvement, raises the game so much, Paul’s not gonna neg people, CIA trolls, a weak way to go, Richard A. Lupoff, the best non-series, P. Schuyler Miller, from Analog 1970, near Mad King level, Tarzan novels, The Monster Men, Beyond Thirty, The Land That Time Forgot, At The Earth’s Core, maybe The Cave Girl is no good, defrosted neanderthal, we’re gonna frost him later, The Mucker, a deliberate throwback, nutty nuggets, alive into WWII, his legacy is gonna be not so Tarzany, an uncountable number of Tarzan books, that company, producing official books, a little symbol on the cover indicated “this is canon”, if Burroughs wrote it is it really canon?, didn’t care about that, he wasn’t a Star Wars fan, the Wookipedia, we’re the farm corporation we make food, certified food, this label you can trust, there’s no new canon, unless you dig up an old book, like we get with For Us The Living, Dune, the old dead Dune guy, Frank, high end fanfiction, the John Gregory Betancourt, a small world after all, there’s not that many people reading these old books, a John Carter tv show?, they can’t own the IP in the same way, Disney is a legal machine, they just buy IP, a Brandon Sanderson series, we had Xena, John Woo’s The Iliad, Troy (2004) with Brad Pitt, Alexander (2004) was pretty weak, Kingdom Of Heaven (2005), we’re fighting at dawn, balloons and blunderbusses, random blacksmith, the least interesting character, Ridley Scott’s The Moon Maid, Tony Scott died, all 72 Avatar movies, James Cameron, not wasting his time, Burroughs wasted his time with his Tarzan, he succeeded, make art, lot of reasons people to hate H.P. Lovecraft but crass commercialism isn’t one of them, Robert E. Howard, despite being actively commercial… he manages to be amazing, given his circumstances, you have my blessing, a trap of getting too excited about the cash, James Cameron is eating well, a billion dollars a pop, its his baby, he said I’m done, he should be, just a setup for the next one, more churn, not everything is equal, opeople can be wrong, Napoleon for Apple TV, Joaquin Phoenix playing Napoleon, three 35mm cameras side by side, a cast of millions, silent films get no respect, House Of Gucci (2021), All The Money In The World (2017), Alien: Covenant (2017), The Martian (2015), Exodus: Gods And Kings, The Councillor, Prometheus, the auto-doc, Robin Hood with Russel Crowe, A Good Year, Matchstick Men, Hannibal (2001), Gladiator (2000), G.I. Jane (1997), White Squall (1996), out of Blockbuster, 1492: Conquest Of Paradise (1992), Black Rain (1989), a some guy goes to Japan finds it an alien planet movie, Wesley Snipes and Sean Connery in Rising Sun (1993), Michael Crichton, Someone To Watch Over Me (1987), Tom Berenger and Mimi Rogers, Legend (1985), Blade Runner (1982), Alien, The Duelists (1977), I like those actors, across the border with very long swords, communism wins!, some Moon Maid cartoon, weird anime shit, escaflowne?, asagai?, portal fantasy is big in anime, whole subgenres of anime, professionally into weird shit, manga, Starblazers, Robotech, read it backwards, generational?, we’re too old, we’d have to learn a lot to get it, give me your best anime movies, Akira (1988) has style but the story is shit, give me your best classic, Royal Space Force: Wings Of Honneamise (1987), Wings of Mayonnaise is more like it, what’s your favourite American movie?, two kids fall in love playing Street Fighter, high score girl, the board games anime subgenre, the voice of Sailor Moon, Princess Mononoke (1997), celebrating peace day, what are we gonna do with ourselves?, net twenty years, correspondence with Mars, down with Mars medicine, we loves the Mars manga even if we have to read it upside down, everyone is naked, can you have a cultural experience via wireless telegraphy with another planet?, wait 500 years before Shogun comes out, they wear weird clothes and have no furniture but are otherwise just like us, whippersnappers get off my lawn, I got a deadline here, rushing through his old tropes, it doesn’t hang as a whole, “yeah, so I’m basically a Highlander, and I wind up on Mars, let’s go”, what’s with the problems with astral projection? that’s part of being a Highlander, a good excuse, a framing device, the most fun parts, Edgar Allan Poe’s The Oval Portrait is mostly framing device, this newspaper report is in the future, Maissa was all in, always a bit weak with ecosystem, a playground, all the rocks glow, the water, he half-asses worlds into existence, peril from the falls, the strength of the Earth men, not stunningly stronger, jump out of a crater, bottomless pit, circumstantial evidence, The Menace From Earth is about a moon maid, a striking image, a lot more flapping or soaring in dreams, bird ancestors, flying toad ancestors, Paul has tetropod ancestors, ped pod, actual centaurs, following the book, committed at least to that, centaurs are cool, that’s why we want to see the ancient mythology visualized, Rocket Robin Hood and The Mighty Hercules, Prince Caspian has cool battle scenes, epic battle scenes, tonally dissonant, the centaurs looked good, a Christian television network, The Golden Compass, anti-theist, and this is why there’s no god, very Ayn Rand, a Tolkien fest, a director who hated fantasy and a screenwriter who never read the book, a British Christmas special, a solid miniseries, this 1/6th gravity book, prejudiced against manly barbarians, might be a girl thing, Space Viking by H. Beam Piper, Jim Kitchen, Chronicles Of Amber, the ghost of Roger Zelanzy, The Venom Business, Rocket Ship Galileo, moon-Nazis, with the help of an old man, New Mexico or Arizona, 1948, Iron Sky (2012), The Adventures Of Brad Pitt’s Ex-Wife, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004), diesel-punk, totenkopf, take care, Unseen-Unfeared by Francis Stevens, The Heads Of Cerberus, my turn will come, The Hopkins Manuscript by R.C. Sherriff, trying to make this book a thing, the Moon collides with the Earth, a historical document, poultry breeding, eaten by an owl, not a suspect, slept through the murder, the British Lunar Society, the truth can no longer be denied, villagers dig trenches and play cricket before the end of days, The Last Policemen by Ben H. Winters, a tv series out of the UK, a movie, a recent science fiction movie, Moonfall (2022), Puss In Boots: The Last Wish (2022), genuine humans, box office is down 50%, turn the machine off, we couldna foreseen that, the verdict was I’m tired, a setup for the next one, looking good never looked so good, in 3D, make good movies, make the theatrical experience cheap, if there were movies that were good, put some old movies in the theater for a change, the suburbs, a very old theater with really bad seats, a pain in the ass, El Mariachi (1992) and Bad Lieutenant (1992), Treasure Island, Shakespeare’s Planet, something Paul will hate, a Jordan Peterson movie, Camille Paglia, I agreed with your about everything, she’s nodding her head the whole time, Evan’s really mad, they need to read more Marx, I need to read any Marx, his economics is worse than Burroughs’ science, this is what capitalism is doing to people, the way money works, The Communist Manifesto, where to start with Karl Marx, you’re racist you should read more Marx!, you’re no help at all, ask Will, Will shoulda been on this one, he’s not on twitter much, a serious cat wrangling problem, overtaken by felines, most people want to play computer games and escape reality, life sucks I have to work, cats that need to be neutered, the latest one, $600,000 year rent to his dad’s house, that’s the 10% for the big guy, nothing will come of it, its only corrupt when Trump does it, we’re living in the corrupt times, it will go on for centuries, corruption was called business, just have to get used to it or go herd cats, Jesse’s mom has a bull now, one cow two heifer’s and a bull, a cow in heat every three weeks (or months), a long brooding cycle, to make more delicious cows, is there a cow in the field outside?, I bought a cow, there’s not stopping these women, magic beans, an adventure that never happened to Alex, steals from the giant, the golden goose, they were the disinherited, getting his goose back, you have to accept being a peasant, no, I’m going to reach for the sky, folktale vs. fairytale, what Hans Christian Anderson does, Cinderella vs. Puss In Boots, Charles Perrault, how many pages deep?, this part was fun, knocked it out in a day, it had good bits, some of them are not great, some of the knockoffs by other authors, The First Men In The Moon, The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Fu-Manchu, Alan Moore steals everything, he’s better than a lot, a weird Alan Moore take, before he quit comics finally, Garth Ennis’ Crossed, zombie sperm or saliva, anti-Christian sort of thing, like any zombie plague, eating people and walking funny, takes away all your goodness, any pain you inflict makes you orgasm, that’s really bad, the premise is strong, a shitload of money, 100 years in the future, human society has been injured by this terrible plague, stronger than most zombie films, oh that’s terrible, when the mother wants to have sex with her own son, all the mean things, that’s Garth Ennis being a monster, mutated, killed off in their excstasies, the main character is a scholar, reading her journal, he’s invented a new language, word substitution all over the place, A Clockwork Orange, milkbars and rape scenes, a high level comic, a science fiction survey, very Alan Moorey, V For Vendetta, the novelization is better than the movie or the comic, some audacious stuff, Providence by Alan Moore and Jacen Burrows, you can be a flawed person like Jordan Peterson and still have something valuable to say, sorry about that mini-lecture there, Crossed Plus 100, don’t go on the internet and type in Crossed and Garth Ennis, sorry, horror comic, if you can survive that there’s nothing else that can hurt you, stronger shuddering in a corner, enjoy your Roof Bear calendar.

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The SFFaudio Podcast #519 – NEW RELEASES/RECENT ARRIVALS

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #519 – Jesse and Paul Weimer talk about new paperbooks, audiobooks, audio drama, and comics.

Talked about on today’s show:
it stacks up, yo!, a book for review?, 10-15 books a week!, Mr Slow, a good result, Astounding by Alec Nevala-Lee, Becoming Superman: My Journey From Poverty To Hollywood by J. Michael Straczynski will be narrated by Peter Jurasik, no Centauri accent, a yummy sausage, why do book titles end :A Novel, making yourself more fancy, a literary pretension, The Luminous Dead: A Novel?, Thin Air by Richard K. Morgan, a rhyme or reason to their thinking, serious literature, why do we need to know that?, the middle initial, affectation, pen names, standard hat, maybe it works?, superpower, Luke Burrage’s Science Fiction Book Review Podcast review of Thin Air, mean Martian tunnels, two books in one box, a duology that came together, Markswoman and Mahimata by Rati Mehrotra, secondary world fantasy, audio of the first book, 11 hours, The Luminous Dead: A Novel by Caitlin Starling, it sounds good, caving on a foreign planet, spelunking, The Descent (2005), caves of New York, Minnesota, South Dakota, maps and caves, two cool maps, Dungeons & Dragons maps, The Nameless City by H.P. Lovecraft, Annihilation, The Martian, Adenrele Ojo, The Ten Thousand Doors Of January by Alix E. Harrow, portal fantasy, H.G. Wells’ The Door In The Wall, time travel stories as portal fantasies, Dilation by Max Hochrad, very high level, what exactly is going on, a much bigger world than we get to see, world-building to serve the story, an elf on a log, the trailer for Dilation, Do You Want To Know More?, B7 Media, Spiteful Puppet did Robin Of Sherwood audio drama, Big Finish, new Doctor Who, so many Doctors, more visually going on with sound, BBC iPlayer Radio App or BBC Sounds, The Prisoner is really good, sitting with the ideas, Patrick McGoohan, it becomes existential, exploration, the purpose and meaning of things, Mabinogi, ancient Welsh mythology, spending time 1000 years ago, the only thing comparable in North America is the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society’s Dark Adventure Radio Theatre, The Lurking Fear audio drama is coming this summer, C.H.U.D.s, more audio drama, so much great audio drama is being made, our job, there’s too much, an intended 1984 dystopia, what exactly is going on, Dragonshadow: A Heartstone Novel by Elle K. White, The Coming Storm by Mark Alpert, feeling like a techno-thriller, political dystopic, climate change, Travelers, Tom Clancy books, turn that flag upside down, House Of Cards, Nightflyers by George R.R. Martin, the TV adaptation, the Michael Praed movie of Nightflyers (1987), Children Of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky, Children Of time, how Paul manages to read paperbooks, no time for papercomics, UK authors, is there more money in audio than in paper?, only in audio releases, Audible.ca vs. Audible.com, The Pandora Room by Christopher Golden, Pandora’s box, The Phantom Empire 1935 serial, a western science fiction, Flash Gordon 1936 serial, yellowfacing, and Nicholas Cage as Fu Manchu, Machete, Hobo With A Shotgun, he’s from Mongo, Last Tango In Cyberspace: A Novel by Steven Kotler, something William Gibson wrote about a protagonist named “Case” (or Cacye), coolhunters, leaning tight, The Fire Opal Mechanism by Fran Wilde, magical jewels and people who resonate with them, a fun read, We Are Mayhem by Michael Moreci, Black Star Renegades, everybody likes Star Wars right?, robots and space battles, a 5 page glossary, a galactic rebellion, its exactly Star Wars, doing it your own way, since watching The Orville, Star Trek: Discovery‘s bad writing and not caring about science, Star Wars has a lot of baggage, killed off on a whim, Mark Hamill, answering honestly, wipe the slate clean, I shouldn’t walk out of the Star Wars experience and say “Really?”, going down the midichlorian walk, like Dune but awful, Hellhole by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson, just change the VIN, what a concept!, they don’t need Klingons, The Orville is great science fiction, I Am Behind You by John Ajvide Lindqvist, epic fantasy, The Rage Of Dragons by Evan Winter, epic fantasy, a peculiar audiobook, Jesse’s mom does not know him, A Peculiar Curiosity by Melanie Cossey, speaking of being read to…, The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster, Rainn Wilson, for adults?, jumping to the island of conclusions, Paul would not say no, For The Killing Of Kings by Howard Andrew Jones, The Three Musketeers meets the Chronicles of Amber, Paul does pre-orders, deep explorations are not always needed, looking for fun, fantasy fun, an oversized hardcover from AfterShock Comics Out Of The Blue by Garth Ennis and Keith Burns, the war between, The Punisher, Nick Fury, TKO Presents, Sara by Garth Ennis and Steve Epting, Marvel Comics, Conan The Barbarian, Savage Sword Of Conan, Age Of Conan: Belit, Belit’s adventures as a young princess, why always starting as princesses?, go a-reaving, The Savage Sword Of Conan: The Original Marvel Years 1000 pages, Roy Thomas, new stuff from old stuff, Fleet Of Knives by Gareth L. Powell, Embers Of War, its better than it sounds, Ack-Ack Macaque, lots-o-fun, space opera, Powers Of Darkness: The Lost Version of Dracula by Bram Stoker and Valdimar Ásmundsson, R.C. Bray, a little bit of sexiness, a strange sidebar, The Record Keeper by Agnes Gomillion, Titan Books, he or she is doing everything, maybe its a house name, the technospace where you get house names to narrate, face-swap -> audio-swap, the Christopher Lee narrating a book from 2029, creepy cool, Chatting Science Fiction: Selected Interviews From The Hour Of The Wolf, WBAI, Ursula K. Le Guin, Kim Stanley Robinson, Samuel R. Delany, Cory Doctorow, Ray Bradbury, Nalo Hopkinson, Peter S. Beagle, China Mieville, Orson Scott Card, Lucius Shepard, Nancy Kress, Ken Liu, Charlie Jane Anders, Genevieve Valentine, Susanna Clarke, Connie Willis, a curiosity, Larry Niven books turning to audiobooks, A Gift From Earth, World Of Ptavvs, Bronson Pinchot, The Moon Maze Game a new Dream Park novel, Grover Gardner, a new cover, our show on Dream Park, Inconstant Moon, a classic, Steve Barnes, The Seascape Tattoo, The Magic Goes Away episode, All The Myriad Ways, The Secret Of Black Ship Island, Jerry Pournelle, The Burning City pissed Paul the beep off, blunt and pointed, senility setting in, Building Harlequin’s Moon, Brenda Cooper, does it spark delight?, terraforming, everyone starts regressing, Brenda Cooper does good writing with Larry Niven, set in the Ringworld universe, The Integral Trees, The Smoke Ring, physics problems, an adventure to explore what ideas Larry Niven has spun up, you definitely need to do this one and here’s why:, Bowl Of Heaven, The Very Best Of the Best: 35 Years Of The Year’s Best Science Fiction edited by Gardner Dozois, Charles Stross, Michael Swanwick, Nancy Kress, Greg Egan, Stephen Baxter, Pat Cadigan, 3 2 1, Exhalation: Stories By Ted Chiang, a new collection of Ted Chiang, Random House Audio, some copy that lives up to the hype, Ted Chiang: A Novel, Tony C. Smith’s StarShip Sofa podcast, an amazing story, Anxiety Is The Dizziness Of Freedom, standard Ted Chiang awesomeness, every three or four years he writes a story, the anti-Ken Liu, finally justified, REAL science fiction, GENUINE, “proto-technology of nano-realms”, Red Moon by Kim Stanley Robinson, Paul’s in a mood, INTERSTELLAR VOYAGES ARE IMPOSSIBLE, a hard truth, Aurora, the Chinese are going to the Moon, a really, really good writer, Jesse is so slow, In The Land Of Time: And Other Fantasy Tales by Lord Dunsany, edited by S.T. Joshi, Steven Crossley, pub tales, Dunsany is beautiful to hear, Clark Ashton Smith, funny and bittersweet tragic fun, LibriVox, one of these books, Who? by Algis Budrys, The Man In The Iron Mask, never made the A-team, the low end of the b-team, his biggest home run, 6 hours long, this ridiculous Cold War, propaganda, there was no “missile gap”, irrelevant and completely relevant again, Rogue Moon, an evil game show?, adapted into the film Moon (2009), hmmmmm.

Dilation - B7 Media

Recent Arrivals

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The SFFaudio Podcast #397 – READALONG: Mission Of Gravity by Hal Clement

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #397 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, and Maissa, talk about Mission Of Gravity by Hal Clement

Talked about on today’s show:
Astounding April-July 1953, 1954, interviews, an expected book, the flyers, up the slope, how Larry Niven borrowed some of this, Meskalanite co-travelers, nothing this heavy, a hard book to read?, stopping to do math, that’s the game, “the game”, an intellectual exercise, the essay: Whilygig World, starting with the world, we’re in a much more character driven era of Science Fiction, a story will emerge, hard SF is out of fashion, Analog is the torchbearer for hard SF, the field has shifted, the post-Campbell era, Prisoners Of Gravity, a dying Frankenstein, an interview with Hal Clement, Benford and such, a TVO thing, Teddog, somewhere in Toronto, thanks Prisoners Of Gravity, much more like a YouTube show than anything on television at that time, a pretty clever trick, Commander Rick, Rick Green, Enrico Gruen, pirate broadcasts, why aliens are in humanoid form, Daniel Richler, the opposite and appropriate angle, a zany talking head show, trying to change the world through Science Fiction, that’s Kim Stanley Robinson, hey that’s Larry Niven, Harlan Ellison, Isaac Asimov, Garth Ennis, Neil Gaiman, escaping the mundane reality of this show, Rick is the humans looking down on the Earth, the people who don’t understand the shape of their world properly, an elongated sphere, the conquistadors landing on the shore, first contact stories, juiced up in Astounding, what about the “prime directive”?, a 2000-year crash course in science, a pirate!, just to get to this probe, uplift, L. Sprague de Camp’s stories set on Krishna, how to overcome problems, pirates of the galaxy!, our worlds are too hot for them, this is the kind of book you’re reading, a creative commons license before there was such a thing, methane seas, Titan’s methane seas, Saturn, TV Tropes, the first novel set on a world outside the solar system that actually is a planet, exoplanets, first exoplanet discovered during WWII, an exercise in answering that question, rafts instead of one big keel, “worldbuilding”, a great novel with a crappy story, basic, heavy handed, damn man, hat’s off, afraid of things above your head, biology, why intelligence would develop, a minimal ecosystem, physics vignettes, so much against what people are reading science fiction for now, The Fifth Season, wouldn’t it be cool if, forcing it in the other way, showing all the implications, the rules, as early as possible, “I always feel cheated when…”, we get a false picture of Science Fiction because of Astounding, the conventions, the premiere magazing, Horace Gold’s Galaxy, the gold standard, game fiction, Sherlock Holmes fiction, you’re a bad writer if you cheat the reader, almost nobody plays this game, so sexist and racist, even when he does a fantasy novel it’s hard, The Fifth Season, a cost to using a magic system, I’m starting with this crazy premise, Barlenon vs. Dondragmir, not one girl in the book!, what about your sex lives?, a million sailors frozen at the bottom of the sea, at an extreme of hard SF, the window of science fiction, shifted in other ways, a New England Yankee trader, building trade routes, a relatable mindset, Lackland, amazingly human, Star Trek aliens, he made them Hal Clements, looking at the Larry Niven and Hal Clement affect, emotionally oblate, the outer edges, the peak of characterization: “I couldn’t quite nip it.”, quick-witted students, Cortez, the natives should have a lot of their own shit going on, wrapped up in their own problems, a smooth and peaceful first contact, in real life when first contact happens bad things usually happen, it depends on who is coming, the gravity of this mission, the cost, in Chapter 19, the character names, in the pre-negotiations, Tolkien does the same thing (but with language), a richer tapestry, that’s not what this is for, the sequel: Starlight, all the little touches, the Bree is steering itself, how glaciers work, lubrication, steering glaciers, friction, when friction is an important part of a book, Douglas Adams’ game vs. the rules of chess, a good analogy, PhDs, genius, fostering reading activity, comicon, the importance of having ideas at the forefront, racism, intelligence, first contact, Asimov, sitting around talking about his story with Isaac Asimov, “Pancake In The Sky” and “Gravy Planet”, a pleasant evening spent talking materials science, an acquired taste, the great game, prime directives, not all historical first contacts, first contact between the Americans and the Japanese (1792), angry sticks, pre-admiral Perry, genocide in Central and South America, overturning governments, a more modest foreign policy, the history of British Columbia, super-peaceful, residential schools, land theft, first contact need not be terrible, the rock rollers, the spear throwers, never pay tolls again, a benevolent scientific dictator, Star Trek as a medicine for American imperialism, sharing knowledge, Jerry Pournelle’s Empire Of Man series, a daisy chain of influence, Needle, a peaceful alien lifeform that can live inside a human body, Jinx (Larry Niven), World Of Pattavs, Neutron Star, a game of gravity, General Products Hull #1, Beowulf Shaeffer, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, spagettification, Inconstant Moon, a love story about the moon, the reflected light of a nova (or a massive solar flare), it’s only the apocalypse, I’ll lasso the moon for you, an Adam and Eve sort of thing, What Can You Say About Chocolate Covered Manhole Covers?, Man Of Steel, Woman Of Kleenex, Kryptonian refugees, Superdog

Mission Of Gravity by Hal Clement

Mission Of Gravity by Hal Clement

Mission Of Gravity by Hal Clement

Mission Of Gravity by Hal Clement

Mission Of Gravity by Hal Clement

Mission Of Gravity by Hal Clement

Mission Of Gravity by Hal Clement

Mission Of Gravity by Hal Clement

Mission Of Gravity by Hal Clement

Mission Of Gravity by Hal Clement

Mission Of Gravity by Hal Clement

Mission Of Gravity by Hal Clement

Mission Of Gravity by Hal Clement

Mission Of Gravity by Hal Clement

Mission Of Gravity by Hal Clement

Mission Of Gravity by Hal Clement

Mission Of Gravity by Hal Clement

Mission Of Gravity by Hal Clement

Mission Of Gravity by Hal Clement

Mission Of Gravity by Hal Clement

Mission Of Gravity by Hal Clement

Mission Of Gravity by Hal Clement

Mission Of Gravity by Hal Clement

Mission Of Gravity by Hal Clement

PYRAMID BOOKS - Mission Of Gravity by Hal Clement

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #392 – NEW RELEASES/RECENT ARRIVALS

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #392 – Jesse, Luke Burrage, and Juliane Kunzendorf talk about recent listens, new audiobooks, and comics.

Talked about on today’s show:
what we’ve been listening to lately, a long time, mostly SFFaudio has been a Philip K. Dick podcast lately, fun, picking and choosing, the Philip K. Dick Rhetorizer, motifs and phrases, writerly tics, a TV Tropes for Philip K. Dick, the Wub, Nick And The Glimmung, Galactic Pot Healer, its like telepathy, how many of the short stories, Second Variety (Screamers), kind of monster(y), Jon’s World, Screamers: The Hunting, a break from Philip K. Dick, will we have a PKD wrap up show?, the Best of Philip K. Dick, listen to all of them?, good fun, Hugula Award winners (winners of both Hugos and Nebulas), Alastair Reynolds, The Doomsday Book by Connie Willis, The Writing On The Wall: Social Media – The First 2,000 Years by Tom Standage, graffiti, slaves copying newsletters, an absence of copyright, the 17th century, The Economist, how technology and history intersect, A History Of The World In Six Glasses, The Victorian Internet, full of enlightening history, when the post is delivered 25 times a day, non-fiction, Jared Diamond, educational = entertaining, Simon Vance, We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, Nineteen-Eighty Four, Brave New World, Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisted, early versions, Eric S. Rabkin, Jenny Colvin, what it’s like to live in a world without privacy, scheduled sex, 2011, quitting or pausing an audible.com account, always be listening, listening at the gym, get short books, how many Jesses is that?, The Martian Chronicles, reading contest, how many centimeters of books have you read, reading comics, finishing good books feels awesome, listen in the shower, podcasts are better at the gym (or places of higher distraction), reading by language, reading in translation, short and interesting is hard, Pandora’s Star, Otherland, phone in the toilet, plopped, the waterpoof iPhone 7, the Sony ICF-CS15iPN Personal Audio System (“DREAM MACHINE”) (does not work with iPhone 6 or iPhone 7), Jesse is well groomed, it’s time to shave, doing housework, the TVs in a gym, imaging your own dialogue and soundtrack, Pavane by Keith Roberts, Jenny’s Reading Envy podcast, Redemption Ark, an anthropomorphic kangaroo, East German assimilation into West Germany, The Kangaroo Chronicles by Marc-Uwe Kling, before bed laughter, ending the day in a good mood, audio drama before sleep, audio drama is television (or movies) without a picture, The Monster Hunters, werewolves and Draculas, movie associations, dense with material, Die Drei Fragezeichen (the three question marks) aka The Three Investigators, Alfred Hitchcock, set in California but done in German, the Perry Rhodan of audio drama, John Sinclair, Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor, “structural” storytelling, The Most Powerful Idea In The World: A Story of Steam, Industry, and Invention by William Rosen, steam engines, patents, The Third Horseman: Climate Change And The Great Famine Of The 14th Century, name and place-name pronunciation, 14th century weather, how hungry were the people?, Ireland, eating what’s left in your ancestors skulls, a record of the famine, volcanic eruptions, 1816 (the year without a summer), Switzerland, Krakatoa, pendulum oscillation, unseasonably awesome summers for 400 years, Greenland, Mount Tambora, Updraft by Fran Wilde, A Deepness In The Sky by Vernor Vinge, The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell, Kill Or Be Killed by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips, Criminal, Fatale, period crime, superheroey or supervilliany, real demon vs. brain tumor demon, Westworld, Hard Case Crime comics (Titan Comics), Peepland and Tirggerman, Christa Faust, MMA or UFC, the Snakes On A Plane novelization, Money Shot, the print death spiral, the difference between graphic novels and comics, floppies, “trades” = “trade paperbacks”, Saga by Brian K. Vaughn, IDW, Archangel by William Gibson, time travel to WWII into a copy of our universe, why the half-naked woman on the cover?, naked people (not men), women in comics have massive boobs, the medium of comics developed out of the turn of the 19th and 20th century “physical culture” movement, in Saga you never think it’s too much, sex, an orgy planet, Hard Case Crime covers have women as part of the iconography, owning slaves as titillation?, Cinema Purgatorio, Alan Moore, Garth Ennis, Max Brooks, very meta, the history of cinema, through the lens of the Marx Brothers, Code Pru, World War Z, A More Perfect Union, the Kickstarter for Cinema Purgatorio, Jessica Jones, Daredevil, Luke Cage, Aftershock Comics, Dreaming Eagles, Stephen Spielberg’s Red Tails, Simon Coleby, Francesco Francavilla, WWII, war comics, Eric S. Rabkin, Battlefields: The Night Witches, we need a Nacht Hexen movie!, Harry Turtledove, SPQR by John Maddox Roberts, historical criminal fiction, Elizabeth Peters’ Amelia Peabody series, Scooby Doo, The Mummy and Indiana Jones mixed together, books people would like to see Luke review, Alastair Reynold’s Revenger, rant episodes, nightmare licensing, 10 books for £1 million (in 10 years), do we prefer early books or later books by authors?, Century Rain, Robert J. Sawyer, Golden Fleece, remember enjoying Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven books, setting aside sexist and racist material, Jesse defends Larry Niven, Iain M. Banks, Hominids, reading for ideas, Replay by Ken Grimwood, The First Fifteen Lives Of Harry August, Minding Tomorrow by Luke Burrage, recommended many times.

comics on Jesse's desk

Posted by Jesse Willis