The SFFaudio Podcast #849 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Prize Ship by Philip K. Dick AND The Ship Who Sang by Anne McCaffrey

The SFFaudio Podcast #849 – Prize Ship by Philip K. Dick (42 minutes) and The Ship Who Sang by Anne McCaffrey (41 minutes). Both are read by Tommy Patrick Ryan. These are followed by a discussion of both. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Will Emmons, and Tommy Patrick Ryan.

Talked about on today’s show:
1954, 1961, 42 minutes or so, one is far superior to the other, which is which?, Prize Ship is superior to The Ship Who Sang, largely similarish time frame, pairing them thematically, Mr. Spaceship, thematically, far superior, first time Anne McCaffrey, a trick story, not a particularly well executed one, he muted himself but doesn’t know, this wide of a gap, particularily phenomenal, a trick, some comments, Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, never mentioned, Brobdingnag, Dragon Riders Of Pern, Eric’s book club with Tommy, okay, fun and interesting, themes, the Dick thing relied so heavily, the expanding universe, that gimmick is so thin, an interesting idea, naturally leads to sequels, leaves it open, the worldbuilding that she does, mentally good, physical deformities, these dudes are comin over, they go inside of her, try to charm her, passin out drinks, she signed off on this, that’s gross, being in love with him, a girl story, Philip K. Dick’s story is a peice of shit, way too long for the material, some other solar system, this one stupid moon, Ganymede, they don’t use cradle technology, horrible Ganymedeian emperor, so many characters, any distinction from each other, the Plutonians are Soviets or something, that’s on Philip K. Dick writing in his shit mode, time wasting stories, doesn’t put a foot wrong, leaves open the possibility of endless series, girl ideas, girl mindset, a houseparty inside of her, she sets her cap, she gets to have it every which way, she’s the girl in the wheelchair at the dance party, brain, brawn, a terrific story, also a little bit pretty, in sympathy, we probably agree, not the finest story you’ve ever read, the best McCaffrey story Jesse has ever read, what if this story were weirder or more upsetting, it should be upsetting, programming people, putting them in institutions, concerned citizens, step by step eliminates objections, increases the history, brain ship the third generation, Star Trek [The Next Generation] where Majel Barrett is the ship and Will Riker is her only crewman, girl fantasy romance in space, great at girl psychology, fetish weirdness, coyness with regard to sexuality, silly beyond 40 minutes, our primary brawn, he looks at her, being seen, whole bunch of titanium, he still looks at her, he doesn’t dance with her out of obligation, valid points, more comments about the Dick story, more to be critical of, better to shoot first on a strange planet, he fundamentally doesn’t understand military organization or business structures, when he fakes it he comes across as stupid, there’s greatness in the story idea, it’s a 4 second story, a joke story, a twist story, Gulliver’s Travels, junior year of college, of a regular curriculum, every planet and many moons, deep in the future, their own tech, an excuse to revisit the ideas that blue Philip K. Dick’s socks off when he was a kid, time travel not being really worth it, being silly, throw away characters, so long for the material, the guy who didn’t know the story, a fun brief discussion point, gone to the future, everything could be real, Wonderland, Oz, Middle Earth, Narnia, Neverland, today’s lexicon, maybe it’s not worth it, felt more dated, still out there, the story is dated by it’s dated references, when this is supposed to be, perhaps others, Erewhon, Pellucidar, all the the fantasy’s dreams, jum jum jum, Edgar Rice Burroughs’ hollow earth, going into it, tickled at the imagination, sorta fun, so referential, so meta in that way, way deep into the story, so much setup, so lame, the whole senator scene, boring, he’s terrible at that shit, so useless, did nothing for the story, the Ganymedean at the end, could have been half as long, one of these is a classic, the other one is absolutely forgetable, Return To Lilliput, something that is on his mind, boobs, direct references to The Odyssey, Strange Eden, childhood reading, work through this, social satire not science fiction or a true story, he can’t help himself, the joke is better, Prominent Author, the joke is really good, commuting, who the hell writes about commuting, multiple times, fucked by the robot at home, very fun, gotta commute, tiny little people, doesn’t report the hole, the joke is, slips of paper, not aliens from other planets, they’re the Israelites, he is god, Moses!, busy writing down the ten commandments, cribbing from the bible at work, a good joke, also this weird idea, what kind of idea is that, a result of technology, no such thing as commuting, transit time, your work can be hours away, a six hour drive to work, come back once a week, a second place in the Chicago area, relocate, a fundamental science fiction idea, the consequences of technological change, time travel is real rather than cradle technology, expanding universe isn’t just space between stars, the size of everything grows, he buries it, the title, buried by it’s own garbage, done as kind of a joke, vitriol, by having this discussion, the worst time travel story, pretty silly, it’s an idea, Robert J. Sawyer in a dinosaur novel, Shadow In Space by Philip Jose Farmer, any female characters?, liliputian female, not even a quivering look at her boobs, meat and potatoes make money mode, my beating heart, no emotions in this story, don’t care, things I should hate, Jesse hates characters and emotions, character makes you read big long series, Dragons Of Autumn Twilight, Dragons Of Winter Dawn, Dragons of Summer Festing, Time Of The Twins, reading for character, the death of Sturm Brightblade!, a way of tricking people into reading, how their stories go, the Dresden Files, Dragonlance, Drizt?, high literature, we literally form a relationship, we like them, Tanis Half-Elven, Wolverine, half-girlfriend, anti-Cyclops feelings, the X-Men has science fiction ideas sometimes, a bit of both, a bit of allegory, the junk story, the gem has problems, you want to see what happens next, the guy dies, that’s awesome, dumb, naive, the grandmother ship coming along, leads to the possibility, this federation, drug smugglers and vaccines, also The Cold Equations, a plague on Woden, just like Balto, a dog one, our noble brawn, so fucking girl psychology, the relationship between and ugly girl or a disabled girl, maybe she’s got pimples, kids exposed to thalidomide, We Didn’t Start The Fire, Jesse is very suspicious of music, things that Jesse should be worried about: institutions, corruption, abuse, is she being abused?, “power seek”, these brainships, total slaves, they have agency, how limited is that agency, later sequels, pick her person, it felt backwards, having a party inside of her, a gang rape [gang bang], a man who doesn’t suck, all as good as you can get, top 1 percent in everything, good at everything, they’re all Rikers, they’re not Barkleys and not Picards, fine starfleet officer, an exploration of the borderlines of the idea, a ship’s counselor, understand emotions, looks good in her outfit, her role is expanded when you have characters like Barkley, fucking up at work, expansive, read the whole series, the next story will be more of the same, and largely girl fantasy, all the men coming into her, a crew choosing party, courted like Jane Austen, the song by Rebecca Black called Friday, immensely inane, kick it in the back seat, that’s her life, zionists?, the disparity, her major problem is which seat should she sit in?, hilarious and endearing and stupid and anti-intellectual, almost asexual, the central question of the story, some level of agency is nice, Pride And Prejudice, just brooding, scary eyebrows, happy for Elizabeth, filthy rich, a bonus, take pity, he likes her for her, not for her money, that’s nice, themes in there, she’s the one who makes things happen in the home, she invites a man into her, they go out adventuring, planted on the ground giving advice, goes and talks to the nuns, we’re running out, runs back, they all follow Riker back into the ship, heroic efforts, a manly hero, it has everything, woman being virginal, woman being sexual, so perfect with regards using a science fiction idea, to explore female psychology, so good at it, is there a scene wasted here?, usally to give us a little information, to allay fears of abuse, institutions being very dangerous, separating kids from their families, either than our she’s going to be euthanized, pick up that ball and run with it, her other option, the Jedi in Star Wars, force sensitive, taken from their families, they can be good monks, in Judge Dredd, indoctrinated from age 5, a kind of priesthood or nunhood, saving this colony of nuns, this handsome man, parallels, jealous, only has eyes for her shell, the alternatives, the modern equivalent, put in the incinerator, a reality, taken away from your parents immediately, how the Spartan system works, out in barracks, murder a Helot, horrible disciplinary stuff, the British Public School system, brainships are female, the singing, initial attraction, her reputation, a girl in a wheelchair, a girl with a birthmark on her face, a girl with a limp, so girl psychology, it exceeds its premise, an excellent science fiction story, less luke war, the totality of the storyline, one of the joys of discussion, this does do a lot of stuff, reverse discrimination, she’s in charge, more examples, not desired, not into her for her looks, who and what they are, personality is important, physically deformed, an exterior body that’s powerful and capable, she’s the homunculus, a very Eric reading, a different kind of commuting, a pretty positive story, a female author, accomplished so well, artistic, she’s a person, not just a machine, makes her more fully round, she can paint the Last Supper on the head of a screw, and now the women are going to play the harpsichord, music, needlework, doemestic entertainment, business partners or whatever, the billiards room, a gathering at the piano, if you’re advertising for piano lessons, what sets this ship apart, she sings, music is one of the greatest things to exist, hostile, actively suspicious, it’s math in sound, what happens when people get patriotic, you shouldn’t get teary eyed at propaganda, music is fuckin dangerous, why the Puritains were worried about dancing, hymns, used to manipulate, why am I crying, I wanna get down on Friday, it shouldn’t be popular, Gagnam Style, a song about a guy who attracts girls, he’s your uncle, age and gender, older brother dances like this, he gets all the girls, translates from another language that we don’t understand, music is a direct line into people’s fuckin minds, the concern, they’re not all equal, try to get a millenial to watch a movie, Will’s seen 5 movies, try with a zoomer, obsessed with Star Wars, not all modes are equal, insidious inside of you, Mein Kampf, very few, into your ears whether you want it or not, a Burger King commercial, college sports, an earworm, Beethoven, Mozart, The Silmarillion, a joke, the opening, they make music, everything is vibration, Tolkien wasn’t a dumb man, all power has potential to be dangerous, when we make music, the source or the force, some would call God, music and yoga, more than church, about peace and stuff and understanding, use any too for good or evil, the knife that harms, toddlers are given nuclear weapons, undersea mountains, a power range, in law, noise violations, decibels or hours vs. content, physical contact is the point of assault, that demarcation, sound is everywhere, incumbent, upset at muzak in an elevator, brain activity, enjoying my audiobook, working in schools, special ed, have to put headphones, Jesse is weird and Will amped it up on purpose, Will is an agitator, not unprofitably, a key factor in human development, having heard that diatribe, we recognize the power of music, perfume, fresh bread not offense, laundry pods, but why?,no wasted characters, lots of interesting technology, psychology, what if Einstein’s theory implies this, also Lilliput, clearly they’re quite different, leaning towards Dick, the datedness, toxic masculinity, lack of women, patriarchy, not unitl Jennan comes along is she truly alive, apparently not interesting contributors, The Gun, doesn’t sound right, this is a classic science fiction story, dial down 2024 sensibilities, 2025, things have changed, [Project 2025], the only person who’s recorded those public domain stories, mostly bored, vibing, cringing, totally immersed in 1950s science fiction, had to turn in his first draft on this one, get canceled, in a very different light, not publishable in 2025, it would be independent and very popular, a tune up, it might be gay, Murderbot books, supposed to be really good, it’s awesome, character, Luke Burrage reviewing with Julianne, total Jesse hate, character based, relationship to humans, autistic relationship, book series, more more more character, Lord Of The Rings, Frodo’s going to off to the Grey Havens, oh no the story is over!, a little echo with Sam and his wife, I gotta read it again, that is a mistake, it doesn’t need sequels by other hands, several endings on it, The Scouring Of The Shire, longest epilogue, a great tramping, everything is opening up, this is depressing, debate about potatoes, what happened to Mr Sam’s frying pans, attention and relationship a reader has to the material, Murderbot is indulgence, how do we feel about Conan in this context, Conan vs. Howard, a space in which he can operate, forced to fit into a certain mode, with Dragonlance, become addictive, gather at a treehouse, they have food, two brothers, twins, warriors, gladiator, learn evil magic, fight the evil, oh, it’s epic, by book 30, am I really getting a lot of value out of this, Dragon Ball Z, Conan Doyle kept killing off Sherlock Holmes, that happens, people literally care, writing more to give people more, inevitably always happens, the fixup, that’s the first book, at least 7 books, enough already, not interesting at all, Siler, the German guy, Bassett was British, male lead, he’s Han Solo and Will Riker, a bard who’s handsome, everything a girl could loved, just like his father, the cowboy, the American, not well known for his great characters, The Wub is a great character, it’s Jesus, come to accept, non-superflouous, Instrumentality of Man, negative feedback, Player Of Games by Iain M. Banks, dangerous and insidious, the culture is like heaven, as a standalone it would be fine, anti-utopian societies, is this a utopian society?, the same premise every time, given you’re in heaven…, the edges of heaven, neat points, playing board games, video games, kids, 24 hours, their behavior afterward, what are you really getting done, fetch quests, 15 seasons of Supernatural, insightfully, “Jesse don’t you have any happy movies”, Paperback Romance (1994), disabled lady with a gimpy leg, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, admires her writing, a great movie, soft and sucky, if that is the range of your film wanting, brokenness inside of you, binging and other things, what is it for, how should we use it, how should we recognize what it is, many traps in the world, shared setting vs. series, the Ringworld books, the theory of series, diminishing returns, intellectual laziness, when sick, the ability to do the work, instead of going over to the machine, watch a couple John Carpenter movies, operating like that all the time, watch it again!, not just as a pacification, understanding and realization, somehow disabled, something comfortable, to stimulate and edify, to raise up, edify define, instruct or improve, when you’ve learned something, having the guy catch all your fish for you, good as a trilogy, gotten past the worldbuilding, The Empire Strikes Back, The Two Towers, how dense those middle parts are, they don’t want to have to learn it again, the prequels, the sequels, Rey and Finn, give me something new, not edifying, an excellent story, shown Tommy the light, take a dump in a bag and stamp literature on it, word rates, F&SF, a more literary snobby, actually produces good results, we don’t like your kind here, Boucher, by [19]61 he was gone, Robert P. Mills, quality wise it is excellent, they don’t have interior art generally, Astounding and Galaxy art, Virgil Finlay, a banana on the cover, a nebula and a galaxy and a banana, what the ship size is, the Millennium Falcon size, cooler looking, less knobby, light frigate sized, so much like the starship Enterprise, a landing gantry, female writer that Tommy’s mom likes, newer equipment, feedback, an entire book, any notes, the different accents, the interpretation an audiobook narrator brings to a story, Will is more open to dramatic readings than Jesse is, well done, is it appropriate for a man to do a story that’s so female focuses, Barbara Rosenblat, much more clunky, that’s the story, bounces around, there is no distinction between the characters, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, the most notable character, closer and warmer always is nicer, a cold room, a bigger room, they mean the same thing, less echo more close, microphone based, room based, back off the microphone, snuggled into my microphone, get closer to the cardioid, dialing down the [gain], projection, tend to Levelate, just for volume, Levelator, levelation, when you look at a million LibriVox files, nice and snuggled, breaks all of the lows and all of the high, for volume control, raw files, too sick for too long, Will got his homework done, nice and short, a lot of audiobooks, Tommy’s stuff’s pretty good, awful Hegel audiobook, teach a man to fish for compliments, technical stuff, fish the pond out, theatrical experience, theater mode, theater voice, recording stories, one should do things, playing board games for money, how to stream games for money, you’re in your bedroom, a side hustle, as a performance for other people, a horror show, sing in the car, sharing something that has value, it’s not just fun, it’s edifying, Jesse’s conviction, some listeners that have similar experiences, saying similar, that’s enough, the superior man studies literature, it’s a simplified version of the world, that is enough, I can do these things, a chance to listen to it, put some headphones in, wash the dishes, do the laundry, next week is Eaters Of The Dead by Michael Crichton, The Jameson Satellite and Mellonta Tauta, Mr. Spaceship?, asking about utopias, Mack Reynolds, not his later novels, Border, Breed, Nor Birth, Mercenary, a strange new meaning, read by Mark Nelson, 23rd of February, probably Ben Tucker, Phil Chenevert, can I be late several minutes, much appreciated, always a pleasure, salient points, appreciate, mails it in, held him on a pedestal, may the Force be with you, so fucked up by illness on Vancouver Island, a great book: Project Pope, not exactly on Catholic matters, Lilith by George MacDonald as well, done for adults, people with lots of limbs, kinda about suicide, a new reality, very interesting, more Catholic redeption, The Magic City, Edith Nesbit, they meet a man she knew as a child, she is going to marry him, super-resentful, mom and sister is being taken away, the boy acts like a jerk, secretly he builds a city out of household objects, kinda like the DREAMLANDS, everything is magical, a fantasy of child creation, The LEGO Movie is very good, ip, Batman and Star Wars, childhood materials, Lord Business, he’s mad because his dad is always at work, creates a world and falls into it, redeeming, nice right, very charming, pastoral inside of a fake city, what food do they eat, there’s a prophecy, a visitor will comes, nice little nested story, what’s going on, reading a lot, gotta do that sometimes, making reviews and notes, ancient Chinese philosophy, worth understanding Confucius and Mencius, human nature as basically good, filial duties, an elder, and so sick, we have to consider that, in the Confucian framework, a stronger duty, equal universal love, snow melt?, safe inside, Haitian independence, what does this consist of?, ate food, strange and normal, honorary Germans?, every kind of person, weird conversations, a communist, comes across as very normal, into Chairman Gonzalo, the Peruvian Communist Party, a good time, Haitian soup, a savoury quality, pork, cabbage, the broth, squash, a tasty experience, spicy chicken pastries, blood pressure down, meat and meat associated products, lots of salt, crazy things we were told, salt’s fine, you need salt to live, why animals and humans lick it, not being productive, a very strange lady, 70 years old, highly disabled, huge knowledge network, hundreds of chickens and goose and 7 cattle, nature and nurture, a little genetics and little philosophy, being sick is frustrating and annoying, take vacations, why you trying to punish me, comb the beaches, explore them, map them, learn the lore, go fishing, 6 hour podcast to edit up tonight, get Jesse and Will talking, bad habits, a long show, The Journey Of Joenes, very good time, another human, good guy.

Prize Ship by Philip K. Dick

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #846 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Lilith by George MacDonald

The SFFaudio Podcast #846 – Lilith by George MacDonald (10 hours 5 minutes) read by Pete Williams for LibriVox – followed by a discussion. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Scott Danielson, and Tom Pace.

Talked about on today’s show:
A Romance, 1895, analyses, Christian universalist, congregationalist minister, a fantasy character, fascinated, first wife of Adam, where did that come from, Jewish mythology, Kabalaha, the Talmud, acquainted, an intellectual blah blah, Answer To Job by Carl Jung, predates Joseph Campbell, 10 hours, first 10 chapters, last 10 chapters, final ending, Mr Crow, that healing cycle, hope, a level of forgiveness, this podcast, the process of becoming wiser, read some more books, some of them stick with you and make you wiser, a George MacDonald, one of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy, old books are good, Tolkien, Lewis, Phantastes, The Princess And The Goblin, A.A. Milne, in dialogue, Edgar Rice Burroughs version is a Princess Of Mars, Lieut. Gullivar Jones: His Vacation aka Gullivar Jones: His Vacation, Edwin Lester Arnold, portal fantasy, whimsy and fancy, for a comedy purpose, not a lot of humour in this book, a world that’s a parallel society, not a lot of running water, a little girl, our solo male adventurer, a transformative experience, David Lindsay’s A Voyage To Arcturus, Lin Carter, very good taste and a very avid interest, his Conan knock offs, the curator, books on books, a man with good taste, mediocre fiction writing, done a lot of good for a lot of people, since they came out, late-19th century and early 20th century, Charwoman’s Shadow, The King Of Elfland’s Daughter, The Broken Sword, twigged to, Scott Miller’s Lost Sci-Fi Podcast, The Door In The Wall by H.G. Wells, encounters a woman, a fantastic realm, 2 panthers, shows him a book, the boy having adventures, outside the door, three more times does the green door appear, an exam at school, a minister in the British government, the third time he goes through, something else going on here, a construction site, haunted that boy, made him the man he was, he sought death, what is the meaning of all that in the story, after reading this, green doors are magic doors, something that doesn’t come up any more, a portal fantasy, an explanation, relatively mundane, servants quarters, baize, felt like on a pool table, little children were taken under the wing of a servant, magical land, they love you, no longer allowed to pass through that green door, quasi-memory, is she Circe?, full of symbolism, Aslan is a lion, that’s fine, supposed to be Jesus, the raven in here, Mr. Raven, Mr. Crow, little ideas here and there, christian symbolism, dying to self, selflessness is what you need to do, Lilith with her clenched fists, the Ring in Lord Of The Rings, progression would be dying to self, allegory, roughly use the term, a deep analysis, Mr. Vane, Charles?, climbing the mountain in the city of God, literalist toward the divine, allegorical towards our lives, the end of The Last Battle, a new version of Narnia, ups and down, up is heaven down is hell, the mirror was in the attic?, in the library, if it was in the attic, the head, the brain, the cellar is the guts, water in this book, no running water, red running liquid, when he cries, are those rivers, you would never finish reading the book, it made me clean, a nice book, a very weak book compared to this, talking animal, A Night In Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny, characters presented, Dracula, you’re supposed to figure it out, this is just a big shaggy dog story, wanting to read it every October, 31 chapters, a cute book, no substantive weight, dense with meaning, events that happen in it are fine, full of ideas, propaganda for a certain point of view, we can all get salvation no matter what horror we’ve committed, everybody’s got a path to redemption and salvation, making it very clear in the book, Aslan’s a talking lion, he’s the king, all these children with no parents, we find them in the forest, not a random encounter in Dungeons & Dragons, 19th century orphans, be like little children, innocent and fearful, stunted in growth, they don’t mature, there’s these giants who are scary and dangerous, reading this with a cynical mind, that adult man should not be sleeping with a bunch of children who are not their own, our relationship to other humans in the pure light of god, true and clean and just, a striking set of scenes, experience in this book, finds the corpse of the woman, dried right to her bone, nurses her back to health, mysterious bites, getting sucked on, pretty sure she’s a vampire, it was big bad snake, I threw it in the river, an intimacy there, to give it warmth, warming it somewhat perhaps, makes clothes for her, heavily symbolic, why C.S. Lewis loves it so much, really good messaging, I can use this, shades of Narnia in it, not a book for children, stars children, the very real horror of WWII to a fantasy countryside, morally educative, accessible for children, a good C.S. Lewis quote, “put away”, Corinthians 1:13, critics who treat “adult” as a term of approval, to be concerned about being grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish, in moderation healthy symptoms, arrested development, fairy tales in secret, read them openly, the fear of childishness, very grown up, the people who stop reading science fiction regret it, I don’t want people to know I’m reading Harry Potter, when you have actually grown up, making a mistake, need to move on from this stuff, graduate to mimetic literary fiction about nothing, Ray Bradbury, he was told he needed to mature, returned to that, he got back into it very enthusiastically, one summer, summer school, playing LEGO, looking forward to playing LEGO, didn’t want to zoom it around the room, unable to be that imaginative, let’s make this airplane look good, play better, a graduation out of a certain stage, get into writing, become playful again, a cool car that somebody built, design the cool car, taps into the relationship with childhood, a long way of saying, The Screwtape Letters, Out Of The Silent Planet, very interesting, the Good Story Is Hard To Find podcast, Scott’s a Catholic, Bishop Robert Barron, play is something you do for its own sake, the highest form of doing something for its own sake, a purity to it, think of non-human baby animals, become playful, the wrestling, the chasing, becoming what they are, a puppy on Tuesday, naughty is something little kids can be, an older dog, she has a job, no sheep available, border collie, naturally wants to herd sheep, when not full of puppies and nursing puppies, watching all the chicks, go back to doing her job, if anything ever goes wrong, she doesn’t play very much, this instinctual job of being a mom or a worker, graduate out of it, getting back in touch with it, creative and fulfilment, a better explanation, divines play, something done for its own end, a means to another end, in our society, we have it backwards, impoverished, the highest form of human, Catholic Mass As Play, Jordan Peterson, seems to be helping a lot of boys a lot of men, free from utility and practicality, more beautiful, more precious than work, means are not the ends, the means are more valuable, the ends are more meaningful, what I mean to say, the ends, a need to valuate is a need to defeat the actual experience itself, to valuate love, Halloween, go trick-or-treating, random stranger’s home, demand candy, be polite when you demand your candy, a year where you stop going, not because you’re not allowed, you’ve graduated from that, make their costumes, something scary, keep part of that story going, mass as play, all holidays are play days, Christmas, pretend that santa gave you a Christmas present, you need to write a note for Santa claus, we don’t have a chimney, drinks the glass, there’s only crumbs on the plate, perpetuate that play, prefer malt liquor, on the back, a quote from C.S. Lewis, most myths were made in prehistoric times, MacDonald is the greatest genius of that kind, what Tolkien had to say, a vehicle of mystery, twitter tweet, the end of The Last Battle, the ending and the feel of the world, the end of The Silmarillion, a supreme fan of it, the six parts, the chunk of the whole story, an epilogue part 2, Of The Rings Of The Power In The Third Age, ten pages, a little by the way, the scale, 30,000 pages, it ends after the end of The Lord Of The Rings, Gimli and Legolas sail across the sea, the last elf that leaves Middle Earth, the Undying Lands, the rift from third age, bonded over killing orcs, sailing over water, the rounding of the Earth, the same ending, Milton, Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, what’s that all about, cycle of death and rebirth, a positivity that just carries, Novalis, a German writer, many hats 1802, the introduction by Lin Carter, The Land Beyond The Hidden Door by Lin Carter, William Morris, The Wood Beyond The World, The Well At World’s End, the school of modern adult fantasy, Lord Dunsany, Fletcher Pratt, a retired Scots minister, At The Back Of The North Wind, chemistry and natural philosophy, enormously successful, Within And Without, Tennyson and Lady Byron, adult fantasy novels, celebrated, famous, popular, Ruskin, Tennyson, Lewis Carroll, uniformly happy and fruitful, surrounded by an adoring family, a mystical genius for fairy romance, a large genial ebulliently happy man, Roger Lancelyn Green, an actor, Pilgrim’s Progress, his strict Calvinist upbringing, heaped atop, writer friends, begging for his opinion, instant love, so good there should be 60,000 more volumes of it, serene and happy man, warm and rare companionship, a wonderful time, fishing to his heart’s content, dark mountain caves, wild kelpies, romantic mysticism, psychological truths, deep and strong, woven into their textures, Scots blood, an inner faith, a rich multilayered style, a depth, a wisdom, and a strength, his two adult fantasies, a fairy romance, 1858, Bunyon for example, difficult to read, ten years before his death, seizes your attention, profound and moving, bright mocking faces, thrilling imaginative force, use of dream symbols is amazing, as you begin it, prodigious imaginative power, a secret door, the setting is worthy of Poe at his highest intensity, shadows of the past, ancient labyrinthine library, stifling silence, passing through he enters upon a mysterious world, a very unusual and stimulating book, Surprised By Joy, Wagner, William Morris, for The Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe, much in MacDonald, W.H. Auden, Professor Tolkien, The Hobbit or The Lord Of The Rings, Curdie, behind Tolkien’s orcs, goblins, in an afterword, absolutely fatal, kills the magic, lose yourself in it, The Golden Key, the old man of the earth, you must throw yourself in, Poe, Jesse’s very supportable and correct theory about The Raven by Poe, the difference between Poe and MacDonald, Poe is not a Christian, conversations between angels, demons, Jesus is one million percent absent, an American 19th century, map on more stuff, make a whole lot of mistakes, the name of the faun, Tumnus, a pagan symbol, don’t read too much into it, even though he has devil legs, most Christian fiction is horrible, completely transparent, his worldview oozes out of it, he’s said such things, drawing on all these sources, what would happen next, based in his worldview, that’s the good stuff, revisions, like 8, a chunky book, super Dante, with every revision the Dante retreated, very dark, kind of a science fiction story but really not, also about suicide, the heart of this book, a lot about death, is he Adam as well?, multiple identities, he is also death, this whole land is death, a mode of being, works really well, pretty good book, a fairy romance for men and women, only 6 and half hours with a single narration, that essay was good, haven’t read much Conan, his contributions, you don’t even need to read Conan, read any Robert E. Howard will do the job, when he’s not a teenager, a real power and poetry, not lead as fulfilling a life as you could have, Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, they’re buddy buddy, in his poems too, to read fiction, gave it away, The Screwtape Letters, The King Of Elfland’s Daughter, The Charwoman’s Shadow, Lord Dunsany, short little tiny 1 page stories, chunky novels, normal size, the ideal novel size, 250 pages, epics are good too, a bin of books, 99 pages, James M. Cain, Mildred Pierce, the actual narrator, narrator Pete Williams, his mic was not good in the first few chapters, Levelator, intros and outros, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a straight reader, he’s a hero, he made this for free, because he wanted to do it, we get the benefit from it, he did another one, Hymns To The Night by Novalis translated by George MacDonald, narrator Jonathan St. John, he was excellent, a commercial release through audible, OneAudiobooks, interpretive illustration, Gabrielle Ragusi, a cover, some sketches beneath, her armour, Vane, this mirror, so audio oriented, 10 illustrations, make a nice gift for somebody, as a central character in the book, she’s the object of the book, she’s the subject being discussed, dragged kicking and screaming to her salvation, what’s our narrator doing there?, legit asking, he’s not her lover, The Odyssey, fills a trench with blood, ghosts come and they drink the blood, one of the ghosts is his dad, Upon The Dull Earth by Philip K. Dick, hell or hades, things go wrong, going into the underworld to get your girlfriend, a young man’s realization of spiritual enlightenment, ambiguous enough, he’s got more to do in life, stops going into the library, the world of childish things, that mirror is hidden from him until he comes back from school, what the mirror looks like, make Grok illustrated, a black eagle, a gold chain, a black ball, another black bird, the raven, the crow, not make distinctions, not just size but proportion, an eagle and a crow, behavior, the chain is gold, is that a weight you put on prisoners, a golden chain, not a black chain, not an iron chain, very interesting, Jesse’s excellent theory, textually evident, the beautiful sounds, a vulture, more obviously death symbol, how can you not recognize an animal for what it is, the same species, not an expert on birds, especially a bird up on top of a mirror, a guy named Mr. Raven, our hero follows him into it, a moorland, a place of emptiness, a series of, adventures, a series of dream images, participating in events, he doesn’t know his own name, when did that happen, in a dream, morph from one into another, making a mistake, let the story do its job, other people do do that symbolic work, it’s all just what it is, this beautiful other level, the beautiful writing, the line about the library, FYI, back to the mirror, makes more sense, I never again sought the mirror, profoundly changed by things, where is that place, where is the land through the mirror?, a secondary world, a connection to modern earth, it’s not hell either, some sort of purgatory, a symbolic place, ineffable stuff, strange dim memories which will not abide identification, I never dream now, when most awake only dreaming the more, Walking by Henry David Thoreau, a Novalis quote, our life is no dream but it should and will perhaps become one, a line about the library and his relationship to it, born into a library it will outlive you, studies at Oxford, why would he be doing that?, within a year, profound effect, desultory fashion, the physical science, shame shame, constantly seeing, strange analogies, physical hypotheses, about to fall into a metaphysical dream, spelling it all out, mental peculiarities, the house as well of the family is of some antiquity, a fine library, before the invention of printing, nothing surely can more impress upon a man than his succeeding to an property slowly flitting before my own, he shown into the room, who is he?, the feathering top of a fountain column, a portrait in a sort of niche, the likeness of one of my ancestors, for the first time I seemed to see it, made me turn and cast a glance to the farther end of the room, my optic nerves had been momentarily affected from within, just there I had seen, the old man in search of a book, just where I had thought to find it, very close to the opening of The Raven, in December, forgotten lore, wrought its ghost upon the floor, he’s in a library, a stack of books, enjoying the light, girlfriend or wife has died, she’s come back to life, a Guy de Maupassant story, a missing finger, a person alone in a library trying to find peace by reading, out of the library and into another world, the house is on fire, still is sitting, on the pallid bust of Pallas, shall be lifted nevermore, if he’s not dying at least he’s in hell, something different with the same situation, smart people can come up with the same ideas independently, Scott’s end, Sante Fe, New Mexico, excellent, Project Pope, the schedule, one of Jesse’ hobbies, Clifford D. Simak, a robot pope, Simak is great, the collected works of Carl Jung, a good way to conclude, chip in to that vibe, audiobook, readalong, a few bugs in the reading, some really excellent quotes from the early chapters, the poetic style, when Raven is telling Vane about the prayer flower, the silent voices of characters, comes out as a dove and it ascends, Jung’s Red Book, the Holy Spirit, an anemone, that is a prayer flower, not one prayer flower is quite like another, by the expression of it, could you teach me to know a prayer flower when I see it?, why know the name of the thing when the thing itself you do not know, beautiful poetry, discomfort vanished, a pronunciation error?, a proof listener for LibriVox, if you did deep into the LibriVox forms, make this project happen, some of the meanings, we sat down to the perfect meal, the bread and wine seemed to go deeper than the hunger and thirst, expectation took their place, comfort vanished, discomfort, all would be well, what will be well is even well now, rings so well, a good book, maybe some stuff aimed at kids, the adult fantasy series, At The Back Of The North Wind, Scott does a lot of church volunteering, what they need to do, The Magic City by Edith Nesbit, Jason Thompson, a really terrific artist, Shonen Jump, manga, comic book adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft stories, The Dream-Quest Of Unknown Kadath, Stephen Colbert had a TV show, a shot of the writer’s room, a poster of The Dreamlands, the book and the poster, find some rando on the internet, make a friend, we should do a show on that one, serialized in The Strand, a giant model city, alive with the people he has populated it with, The Lego Movie (2014), Synecdoche New York (2008), a robot bishop talking to a robot monk pruning a bush, 1981, search the universe, a robotic supercomputer, I’ll read any old Simak, we’ll get an audiobook, always associated, the audio part of the SFF, Prize Ship and The Ship Who Sang, very short stories, recorded both, Eaters Of The Dead by Michael Crichton, The Thirteenth Warrior (1999), redid the whole score, the story is fun, in the paperback he plays games, The Andromeda Strain, the copyright page and the front matter, meta-stuff, a combo on two short stories, The Jamieson Satellite by Neil R. Jones and Melonta Tauta by Edgar Allan Poe, memorizing and writing poems out longhand, creative bent, everything, from Jordan Peterson’s sources, writing therapy and reading of classics, booklist, Dostevesky, clinicians, what he said about Jung, doing your shadow work?, who is in your shadow, why do I hate that guy so much, Michio Kaku, all the people he talks to, pushed back and asked questions, he got so mad, basic lies, accept it and nod their heads, a supercut, not a one off mistake, 100 years ago long distance communication was yelling out the window, telephone, medicine has improved so much, in what ways, look I’m smart, a theoretical physicist, same thing with quotes, Canadian Quotations, where did this quote actually appear in this person’s work, Robert A. Heinlein, Heinlein doesn’t use this word, kinda similar to what Heinlein had one character say, that sort of stuff is in my shadow, all presidents kill people, not everything is equal to everything else, show your work, trying to understand string-theory, where was the tests that you did for this, all theoretical, that guy’s never flying that car, the rotax engines never got the thing off the ground, getting lied to, Jesse doesn’t want to be that guy, the objective of shadow work, psychotheraputic, root influences, his career, psychiatry, medical psychology, academic psychology, theorizing and la-de-dah vs. medical psychiatry, make a person better, psychiatry, intending to make you aware of the problems, make a person not so reactive, not so volatile and reactive, qualities that are annoying to other people, socially well rounded, allowed to be annoying, obnoxiously demand, disagree on Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, 70 hours for 1 volume, there are multiple Jordan Petersons, personas, his utube, subtopics, he behaves differently, private videos, personally talking to him, he know how to perform, a character quality of his presentation, he’s a presenter, rooted in his being a professor, you could call him out on those things, dignity and courtesy, an actual dialogue, when Joe Rogan has him on Yon Mi Park, too much plastic surgery and had some traumatic experience, the Korean refugees are all from South Korea, my kid can’t handle, the government isn’t controlled by the United States as much, politics, propaganda, Russia has definitely had its problems, one of the poorest European countries into one of the richest, same thing happened in China, the Russian revolution, a really interesting fact, after [WWI], have to support the White Russians, a forgotten piece of history, how did this hate-on for Russians come from?, a pea in the same pod as Jung and Peterson, not a marketer, getting lots of money, a very useful archetype, knowing that you have something that you don’t know, until you are triggered by the thing that triggered you, ceased to be psychological, three branches of the study of the mind, psychology, sociology, collective unconscious, canceled all television subscriptions, not a huge fan of Karl Marx, pro-Peterson people, things that he should hate him for, the shadow of the Marxian/post-modern thing, vilifies it all, alter strong criticism against Marx, what the final outcome is, people don’t approach Marx, bring Marx up, even interesting, the unabridged Gulag Archipelago, 2100 pages, endless, on archive.org, you wouldn’t read that, a giant report on the prison system in the Soviet Union should not be a popular work, who could?, volume 1 of the 3 volumes, what’s going on in the 2nd volume, the Ottawa protest from 2022, the truckers, if you were there, a whole world of unbelievable experience, truckers are heroes, not written as a report, more written for the human to read as a story, an experiment in literary investigation, a venting friendly strange story, not friendly, soul searching, Solzhenitsyn was an avowed Marxian, the biggest Marxian ever, Will Emmons, self-declare communist, read a lot more Mao, a Leninist Marxist, when you approach somebody as an individual, Hitler or Pol Pot, present yourself in an interface, I’m not a weakling but I’m not going to beat you up, enemy hormones, you’re my brother, it happens so fast, presenting something that’s attractive or repulsive, allyship, amity, character traits, the story of the photographer, meets Goebbels, demon eyes looking at the camera, all roses, weird experiments, all in the show, all your interesting secret history, almost nobody listening, it’s for posterity, strange experience with some random person, what do you think of contraception, not a hypothetical, a practical tool, something you think is very important, not a good question for twitter, not good at subtlety, an interesting bookshelf that people don’t like, I have Mein Kampf, that book is not banned, Mussolini and the fascists in Italy, what do you think of Hitler, a long show, not a simple story, if we’re ever going to talk about Hitler, hired to be a spy, like Ray Epps, trick people into becoming criminals, very successful at it, why Hitler’s evil, the system that he was the head of, who you going to point your fingers at, we fucked up by joining WWI, Germany wanted to be an Empire, a snowstorm, a rolling down a hill, Hitler wanted to be allies with Britain and the United States, deputy prime minister Chrysta Freeland’s grandpa was a nazi, did a documentary on plutocracy, if you’re going to have the conversation, allow the breathing space wherever the path goes, awareness and new knowledge, touches a lot on WWII, part of the Red Army, his criticism of Stalin, how Churchill is just as culpable, treatment of the Cossacks, the cute guy who liked machine guns and won WWII, the story of the Cossacks, GoldenEye (1995), Sean Bean’s backstory, the whole history of them, a subculture of mercenary mentalities, enforcers for the Czars, horseguys hired by the Czars to do a purge, the guys who attacked the Roman Empire, ancestors have done evil, happens all the time, empires do this all day long, friendly conversation, new awareness, counterpart to writing therapy, reading therapy where you read fiction, one book leads to another, a bunch of pirate books, Marcus Rediker, books, economics, not exactly communism, anybody can defect, don’t bring women on the ship, light the place on fire, The Fearless Benjamin Lay, participating the slave trade, book leads on to book, a Simak novel, value to be drawn from it, mimetic fiction, realistic fiction, horrible stuff like The Life Of Pi, just mimetic fiction with fantasy dressing, a mainstream novel, a lady that acts like a robot but she’s not a robot, just make her a robot, it gets past your defenses, only care about the ideas, the best path for reading, conversations that we’ve had previous, kind of weird, not pleasurable to read, how long is it, get it done in a week, a whole bunch on YouTube, underneath of Peterson is Jung, Maps Of Meaning, videos, the core of his work, the force to be reckoned with, what he’s approaching, from another perspective, standing on the shoulders of many giants, three tributaries, Jung’s Alchemy, a self therapy thing, the source of spirituality and the world religions, a giant basis, a singular pool or lake, nice metaphor, 30 hours, super hard to read, dense, extra hard and three times as long, don’t read it for this podcast, The Edge Of Thought Ideas, needs social almost every day, cognition, might help, 1652, Elias Ashmole, The Ordinal Of Alchemy, allegory that points to the real world, so abstract, as if the real world was abstract, the root of the I Ching, arabic, chimera, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, what everybody says about it, people queue up on what other people are saying, a comedy piece, am I wrong, is this not supposed to be hilarious, a really dry sense of humour, cut up dead bodies, uses electricity, gets materials, creates the creature, Galvani and other such, the growing man in a jar, material reaction happens, growing crystals, sugar water, heat and time, on the end of a string, sugar crystals, the mandrake, grow a man in a jar, grew a man in a jar or an alchemical process, bones around which to grown, stitches, a black man’s arm, nothing like that, oversize, translucent skin, the ugliness could be beauty, improper proportions, Marilyn Monroe without the beauty mark, the beauty mark moves around, she has the beauty mark, the little imperfection that shows her what the image is, a giant newborn baby, the psychological reading of it, the 1818 version, no stitching, ourside the family’s home, the creature destroying Frankenstein’s remaining family, fuck off?!, fuck you!!, his bride, his cousin, his father in the Creature’s shadow, more like an exam, the best it can be, regret, six or seven months after, spurs more research and such, Strange Case Of Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde, it was supposed to be a reveal, spoilers, we know going in now, that’s what this is supposed to be, he rewrote it, a complete rewrite of the same book, earbuds, bluetooth, stuff about the writing of that book, him vs. his writing, Treasure Island, a nice guy to know, four copies of The Aeneid, the collected worlds of Carl Jung, Anna Karenina, Riverside Milton, Wagner, Voltaire, re read Candide, funny books, Der Ring des Nibelungen, Douglas Adams, a full cast production, you get one bad actor, just learning English, so distracted, reading styles, not worth the trouble, Tannhauser, Venusburg, seek absolution from the pope, only 2 hours, Nibelungenlied, epic poem, 1000 years ago, Canterbury Tales, 20 hours, the more time it takes to prep, fewer people show up, we lost three of those people, Christmas season, been fun, Geoffrey Chaucer, sharing stories, The Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale, the prologue, scammery, very enjoyable, The Alchemist by H.P. Lovecraft, episode 567, kinda similar, the best story ever, still great, the head of a dragon, no mirrors in this castle, family is warning him not to go to town, hooked on that idea, everybody seeing him in his innocence, a metaphorical ugly duckling story, a goose, a shadow of all the people who are looking at him, it lends itself to reading that way, I’m alive!, he puts on clothes, the lab coat, wanders off into the wilderness, cold and hungry, nuts and veggies, his creator was afraid of him, he comes to a house, he spies on the people through a crack in the wall, an old man who’s blind, gather wood for the fire, a little interaction, learns to read, a really fun nested narrative, Evan Lampe, Hay Ibn Yaqzan by Ibn Tufail, a guy born out of a muddle puddle, he’s a baby, a female deer becomes his mother, the mother dies, I don’t know what death is, a history of philosophy and science told through the narrative of person, science and philosophy, raised by deer, the Tarzan books, read an old book and you learn a lot, silly alchemy words, in and out narrative, written in the 1400s, Hyperion by Dan Simmons, meet the shrike, books that rhyme with other books.

Lilith by George MacDonald

Lilith by George MacDonald - cover by Gabrielle Ragusi

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #842 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Symposium by Plato

The SFFaudio Podcast #842 – The Symposium by Plato, translated by Benjamin Jowett, read by Geoffrey Edwards (2 hours 14 minutes) for LibriVox, followed by a discussion of it. Persons of the podcast: Jesse, Alex (pulpcovers), Terence Blake, and Tommy Patrick Ryan

Talked about on today’s show:
on the outside, a flute girl, from approx 2400 year ago, a nice conversation, how gay these guys were, 30 years, pretty peculiar, a callow youth, these guys are deeply gay, great books, Eric [Rabkin] our mutual friend, amp up the gayness, Socrates and all these guys were NPCs, the real love is with a man and a boy, his beard needs to be just sprouting, how okay they were with, it was the moral thing to do, it was the norm, they’re aliens, half the people aren’t okay with it, allies, real deep, what’s the cutoff line, very prevelent, slaves gettin wrecked, other dialogues, one of the Assassin’s Creed games, all these quests, very cool, the death of Socrates as a mission, Plato as a young boy, Hippocrates, Pythagoras was an elf, a few hundred years, names you would know, probably an awesome way to learn about that stuff, players appreciate depth, taking a walk, walkin and talking, partying in the street, everybody’s a master, the flute girls suck, are they filling flutes of champagne or piping of flutes, literature, right to the point, why isn’t all philosophy written this way, Aristotelian, sub bullet points, what is this book about and who’s right?, the story of the double people, two weddings, some part of that passage, the premise, connected, somersaults, androgynous, gay weddings?, best man, both were non-religious weddings, looking for that other half, in tears, I found you, not an emotional guy, 30th birthday, people being split, soul mates, super goofy, we’re punished, we’re cursed, we’re forever cursed, you need to find some way to connect, weddings usually involve some words, obviously wrong, a myth created for this particular piece, gets at something, a comedy piece, pieces are tucked in, move the genitals around to the other side, it’s silly, resonates with the Christian myth of the fall, splitting you in half, complete in another person, super-common, you complete me, people want that, not whole, a lot of propaganda in Hollywood, the #MeetCute, ideological and pathological, 17 years now, I got to find my romantic partner, I’m on the wrong path, I can’t find the one, Speed (1994), base it on sex, mimetic, Speed 2, the meeting the other half of your soul, higher and higher forms of love, inside this text, towards something, real love is a higher thing, Agathon, craziness, the greater the #MeetCute, the gal in Ecuador, randomly on the bus, a city of 400,000 people, hard to get over, there’s a narrative that we subscribe, the plot is breaking, this can’t be the end, no, it’s the end, look at the details, witty banter and personality defects that fit together, The Front Page (1931), back and forth, a high high, elevated horror, in the clouds with Aristophanes, love is wanting to share, step in, love is being drawn towards the good qua good, participating in the good, love is not inter-subjective, translated as love, erotic love, the lowest form of love, real eros is towards the good, middling eros, sublimated eros, philosophy, philia, a transformation of eros, the other forms of love, the appreciation of beauty, you have to have a consciousness, this is fun, what do I do all day long, Tommy in the chat, process stories to read them, beautiful art, it needs to be appreciated, beautiful women, why?, there’s a story there, I’m an animal, I’m a male, I’m not super-gay, what does Mr Pulpcovers do all day, beautiful pieces of art, higher DPI is better, costs a lot of money, that’s not the purpose, a certain kind of art, a lost art, commercial art, spend a nickel on a crappy magazine, designed to make it hard to look away, the same cover three times changed, aesthetic judgements, cave women uncovered pictures, suddenly jumps off the page, tasteful or better, figuring that out, a particular [John William] Waterhouse painting, one of Circe, a mirror behind her, in front of her in the mirror is Odysseus, his ship, you shouldn’t be able to see the ship, her wand, level with her head is a cup, incense burning, tile floor covered in dung, flowers strewn all about, an image rich in scent, took the painting, how is this such a great painting, recreating it in photographs, very good, in a dream last night, a poem without meter or rhyme is probably not worth reading, respect that some people don’t like rhyme, the greatest example, he has meter and he puts rhymes, prefer it, sonnets are sweet, nobody pays you for it, not something you do to get paid, unless you’ve got a guitar or are in a Korean boy band, a fun framework for a song, lyrics, one is the root of the other, grokking the image better, appreciating what’s going on, bare and graceful foot atop the head of man, how striking it is, the first story with a wand in it, very firsts, at the end he attacks her with his knife, promise not to entrance him, feeds him and bathes him, first they have sex, stay for a while, some insight into the Greek, talking about Homer, more Iliad than the Odyssey, Achilles love for Patroclus, this is part of Plato’s realm of the forms argument, getting at the same thing, what Socrates eventually talks about, Platonic theory of forms, the Platonic ideal of a pulp cover, #BrassBra and #LegCling, why is #LegCling a thing, she grabs at his knees, these Greeks are crybabies, when you have a lot of slaves and a lot of violence, a platonic ideal of a western pulp magazine, a horse a girl and guy and a #KetchupAndMustardGetup, Han Solo’s black vest, doesn’t make him any less a Western cowboy cover, when Greedo shot first, very reasonable, The Iliad, the heterome I am, iconic scenes, the sheep, the cyclops, the cattle, the island of the sun, Argus the dog, gone from 20 years, recognizes Odysseus in disguise, sees his master he dies, whatev you just a dog, how to be in the world, Odysseus doesn’t seem super gay, gets all the honors, Agathon, Alcibiades, the gay rapist traitor, famously a terrible traitor, fought for Sparta, he deserved the battle honor, saved me and my arms, he should be the one honoured, harder to understand, the desire to go home, defeat one’s enemies, so focused on male on male love, an appreciation of some sort of beauty, we can picture in our heads a pulp cover we’ve never seen, a rocketship, a bubble helmet, #SpaceBagLadies, this is this and that’s that, class notes, he would talk for years and his students would take notes, Plato is a lot more like [Saint] Augustine, more narrative, doesn’t have a clear answer, gesturing in the direction, sharing, in the content its not about sharing, harmony, the search for unity, the form, all together, Plato is giving several different answers in the content, the sharing in the form, all about eros, if it wasn’t too old, the symposium is about the love of sharing (agape), an anachronism, the whole setup is producing all sorts of concepts of love, riffing on eros, heavenly eros, earthly eros, eros as cosmic, takes you toward abstraction, excess and lack, later on we will give different names to those things, concepts at play, maybe he doesn’t even want to invent certain sorts of terms, a technical sense, terminological pinning down, in the text proper, one guy says to the other, sit here by me, let me pour myself into you, a bad vision of dialogue, drink of your wisdom, vampire, that is sharing, finish quickly, the example, water through wool, if you lay a strip of wool, capillary action, siphoning petrol, pour my wisdom into you, no wisdom by proximity or osmosis, you gotta do the work man, Zeus showing her true form, she was just exploded, ok, lightning bolt, Neo in the Matrix, download is the metaphor we are problematized today, downloading is actually just copying, copying over and copying across, an actual drinking party, the name Achilles, Diotima, super adjacent, super interesting, a narrative, almost a soap opera, some sort of different, what did you do in the war?, bard comes into town, two different Ajaxes, you don’t have to be from Ithaca to appreciate the story, Achilles was mad at Agamemnon for stealing a lady, borrows his armour, bolsters the troops, slain by Hector, taking the revenge, had a lot of lovers, The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), I go to bed with all my friends, they are really close, several lovers there, Phaedrus, lover of Agathon, unrequited love, the inverse of the image, the divine statue inside, the earthly parodic version, external beauty of the warrior, a reverse image, the Iliad is an earthly allegory, touch on this idea, why is it a symposium, a drinking party, who can get drunk, not a real drinking party, it’s diluted, the heavy drinking, the undiluted wine, dilute with some water, attenuate the effect of the alcohol, as the host, don’t give them too much, tipsy and good humour, the form is important here, ultimately, lets you understand what something’s true nature is, let’s close the door, later on in the party, when a party of street people comes in, a metaphor for his later betrayal, looking pretty and wrecking Athens, the host shares the wine with you, Jesse is not a wine guy, when the people are doing that, appreciate this, why do you invite people over to your house, diffuse good, spread it out, 48 Laws Of Power [by Robert Greene], assumes scarcity mentality, that’s not really the problem, a lack of scarcity, we are post scarce on almost everything, more and more people are skipping meals, the lower level of income, food is not scarce, scarcity is produced, the opposite of the love mindset, in fairy tales nobody ever says I love you they just give you food, a palpable need, she’s not trying to make money, she wants to express love, words are new, do you know what love is, they’re still alive, puppies covered in blood, licks them clean, helps them to find her nipples, she licks up her puppies poo and pee, they don’t have the word love, balls and owls, they did know love, this is the good, share the good, perverse incentives, using people to keep your position, assumes scarcity, the more you share information and skills and the good the better it is for you, your environment is better, comes at the end, how ugly Socrates is, it isn’t just about Alcibiades is pretty, the visual is the first step, born with your eyes closed, shared, coming there to party, drink of the ideas, the form being somehow connected, seminar is a 3 hour class, professors getting together and drinking, extemporaneous speeches, they picked a topic while they were there, set up that way, sophists or students of sophists, Aristophanes, the best versions of themselves, a literary device, an idea of preparation in it, plucked out of the air, a rhetorical competition, they’ve set pieces, so right, they’ve had this conversations multiple times, great speeches, kept having these speeches, Plato took the best of it, makes it compelling an interesting, working on it, they did it again, tweaking us, extemporaneous speeches, expected to have, frameworks, taught how to give a speech off the cuff, memorizing a speech by license, Protagoras, Gorgias, Homer’s poetry, rosy fingered dawn, each is relying on his previous work, half extemporaneous, serving up what they’ve got in their repertoire that they adapt, public speaking, canned jokes, Intoxicating Interests, the entire Skywalker saga, Shakespeare, Hamlet, 1000% they were ready to talk on this topic, experts on love, the warrior poet as a concept, Tolkien, the Battle Of The Pelennor Fields, Gurney Halleck in Dune, composing war songs on the fly, tattooed on my arm, a framework that’s lost now, a proper education for normal people, all the citizens were all senators and lawyers, coherently, persuasively, and passionately, any real powers of enjoyment, no human being has ever seen Socrates drunk, he can transform the alcohol on the molecular level, it fits, going back to Circe, Mercury comes, moly, mix you up a mess in a potion, he drinks it, he drinks the poison that’s going to turn him into a pig or a lion, turning water into wine or wine into water, part of the rhetorical story, he’s the intellectual ancestor of the stoics, self mastery, the statue of the Silenus, highly developed soul, a yogi, master the bodily reactions, that archetype, though phyiscally ugly, the tutor to Dionysus, in vino veritas, talk to a lot of randos, do you smoke weed?, what they’re doing, my brain is drugs, certain drugs, bad effects, alcohol makes Jesse stupid, makes poorer decisions, Friedrich Nietzsche, my good friend Yoda, not that wise, Yoda as a Buddha, inner beauty, whatever the yoda species is, where baby yodas come from, a female jedi, the only of that race, inner light, inner beauty, teach yoga a lot, friend from Russia, halo of golden light coming from his third eye, sees in these ways, waiver, would not take drugs, unlocked all this stuff, mistaking metaphor, Tucker Carlson, nuclear weapons were built by demons, a guy named Oppenheimer, that which is good, its as if, making it not a simile, very little metaphor, mythology of where some subset of humans come from, silly, designed to be humorous, speaks to the problem, the party gets broken up, the less of a good theory, a basic level, leveling deeper, what makes Socrates beautiful in that scene, saving his friend, retrieving his armour, his beautiful actions, talking about actions, could be taken to literally, a shift in perception, that’s not a pretty person, Steve Buscemi is not a handsome man, he fits some sort of archetype of beauty not in the supermodel department, people light up, a useful metaphor, seeing the beautiful actions, look at the actions not at the nose, Nietzsche’s thing, collective Greek psychology, beginning to come apart, classical poems, scipture, coming apart, mastered this chaos of instincts in his person, at the wrong time, the ugliness meant he was going to fail, the very next year, a series of sacrileges, the Hermes statues were disfigured, parodies, it was a plot, fled to Sparta, powers as a general, had to flee again, refuge with the Persians, assassinated, Macedonia, Agathon was one of the people accused of the desecration, this is the end of the good old times, banquet, known people who’s fates declined, judged and tried for being friends with people like that, his failure, good and strong and resistant, his undoing as well, the seeds of that were there, by implication, 416bc, the year before, high gear, the decline of Athens, underneath Socrates’s surface, the realm, to talk like Game Of Thrones, underneath the surface of Athens, this decline, this chaos, pluralism, criticize each other, typologies and instincts, the setting and the scene more resonant, written backwards, Hagel’s thing, the owl of Minerva spreads its wings at dusk, how you interpret the last scene, a paragraph, when Alcibiades had finished, you are sober, for all this long story, an ingenious circumlocution, I ought to love you and nobody else, the plot of this, has been detected, Alcibiades: Agent Of Chaos, each speech is more powerful and more inclusive, two different types, the medical point of view, the right dosage, the cosmic viewpoint, Diotima is Socrates in transgender dressing, up in the clouds in transcendence, a failed incarnation, only one person managed to do it, everyone else was scattered to the four winds, doublefaced, profitable to revisit, perceiving it as super super gay, that’s the deep state, Trump was elected to get rid of this stuff, the politics of the breaking up of the two bodies, androgynous, we only use that as an insult, he ain’t got no big bushy beard, it doesn’t fit with today’s aesthetics, too manly, the bad flow, they’re just slaves, not as sexual objects, cultivated slaves, how different the society is, appreciate the things we can connect with, supposedly a very advanced civilization, technological marvels, we were walking, so many levels of hearsay, piecing this together, we start with a walk, Ethan Frome [by Edith Wharton], frame narrative, Canterbury Tales, maybe in a novel, The Odyssey, everything is unreliable, most sacred and hallowed love, is this pedophilia, not really the best people, they’re not trying to impress us, there’s no wives mentioned here, men with men, they are literally at home supervising the slaves, another party in another part of the house, what classes you’re taking, the wife who goes down, Priam’s daughter, Orpheus tries to get into Hades alive, the relationship to women has massively changed by the time of Shakespeare, The Odyssey, Iago’s got the hots for Othello, you can have a conversation with a lady and the eros goes up, in Macbeth, she’s a real character, not the subject, the pureness of it, its relation to the pureness of it, Pulpcovers.com, the spacing between the characters, a celebrity face, make it look like Mr Spock a little bit, we want to see the original, raw, [virgin covers], making alternative covers, weird collectors, for investment purposes, we have these dudes hanging around drinking, being in academia, a trade issue, access to the Black Sea, in a finite space, they went to Ireland, after various plagues, get people banging, useful banging rather than pleasureful gay banging, tragedies, normalized those relationships, definitely changed, gay vikings, hot for finding ladies, show off too each other, interested in braggadocio, the one where Socrates dies, two dozen, not a Plato guy as such, why do they teach this one, this one’s funny, an instinct to share (not just bodily fluids), what makes someone spiritually ugly, using you to get what I want, thinking Ayn Randian thoughts, Objectivism is not that, sterile and kind of gross, mathematically planned, they both have contempt for the others, creator of great architectures, they don’t have souls, she did that to her own husband, I guess, she lived that philosophy to the max, it seems ugly, ugly in real life too, as a point of aesthetics, The Fountainhead, get it through osmosis, as great souled as him, stop watching ninjas and samurais on tv, do some more dialogues, The Burglar Who Met Fredric Brown by Lawrence Block, Project Pope, Clifford D. Simak, The Visitors by Clifford D. Simak, how fun those Simak books are, Time Is The Simplest Thing, Shakespeare’s Planet, Special Deliverance, the poetess is like Agathon, let herself die, the singing pillar, turned into a mummy, Simak is a philosophy guy doing science fiction in those books, he never really was a big plot guy, the ones written for Astounding, late Simaks, spread those out a bit, Mistress of Mellyn by Victoria Holt, The Haunted Corridors, Odd John, Lilith by George Macdonald, step away, more out there, new good stuff on LibriVox, another Plato, six months or a year, pretty long, six months or a year, how this is sci-fi, kind of curious, another website, two wordpress sites, a very good argument, crime and mystery rather than police procedural, very much the same thing as science fiction and fantasy, help a student with some homework, Fugitive Pieces, canadian lit forced upon canadian students, unreadable garbage because they don’t have wizards and they don’t have robots, necromancers, not sent in the ancient past, mimetic fiction, the author grew up in a suburb of Toronto, dad was a holocaust survivor, it’s boring, interested in interesting, philosophy and science fiction go together like ham and eggs, and the ones that aren’t confuses things, in essence, if you want to stretch it and make it easy, eight-limbed two headed creatures, fantastical writing, myth, philosophy is asking questions, myth and fantasy aren’t the same thing, a lot of Manhunt, characters are disposable generally, a six page story, Shot by Gil Brewer, I’m shot!, every picture of ladies holding guns, noirvember, The Lady From Shanghai (1947), James M. Cain is not science fiction [usually], a fantasy story by him, they kill each other and go to Hell, crime stories do some sort of sparky thing that science fiction and fantasy do, stuff that’s really good and fun but nobody should do a podcast on: Tales Of The Gold Monkey, fun, stupid and silly, wasn’t that a great scene where the nazi’s dressed up as a priest, she’s in a hot-tub, the girl who’s name is Tiki, silly and fun not deep, spark, not mimetic, my dad was traumatized when there was a flood, praised to the heavens because it has poetic devices, its narrative, not interesting, overexplained it, starting to bore myself, The Tower Treasure, Mr. Pulpcovers, he doesn’t want it shared, Tommy works for me, names online, the account name, SneakyFokker, banned certain words, WWI aircraft designer, Mr Jim Moon, he’s not Jim, it’s funnier and funner, Plato means shorty or flatty, Socrates, nothing to be written down, who do we hear it from tho?, Socrates said this, that’s a good point, committing to memory, hard to remember, as soon as we are done with it, who’s this hilarious smart guy I’m listening to, we know it’s being recorded, rote, canned, happiness is the exercise of vital powers through lines of excellence in a life affording them scope, the them refers to the vital powers, copy things and share, to understand it, we don’t know who wrote it, we tell three stories, an eagle, a horse, a human, flying and eyeing and hunting, making eggs in their eyries with their sweeties, horses, what do they like, running, grass, running in groups, I have heard that, horsey things, it’s almost like they like being scared, Shadowfax is hero, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, so noble and beautiful, I’ll be in the barn with my horses, they like the power, horses are beautiful like kittens and puppies, what is man like, what would make an eagle unhappy, not being able to fly, being in a cage, not eyeing things, specific kinds of freedom, it wants to soar, doesn’t just want food, it wants to be an eagle, to actualize it’s nature, break one of its legs, don’t let it run in groups, I’ve herd, horsey things, being brushed, back to the man, so many opinions, a narrow specific kind of man, a king from some Greek kingdom, I do like my works, fleets of fleet ships, taxed away from my people, this is exactly what I do, impress other kings, this guy’s got all the ship, the happy shipwright, he’s motivated by building ships, making a tank maker happy, if you built one and put it in the water, had admirable lines, whatever a ship is supposed to do well, what we left out, do it over time, happy in the moment, designing things, making things, doing art, reveling in creation, that’s not what happiness is, the shipwright doesn’t want to build to make money, when the old man who’s built ship for 70 years, when they stand over his grave they say this was a happy man, before the internet, better at memorizing things, a muscle to exercise through lines of excellence in a life affording them scope, this is their cheat sheet, the George Lucas witching hour, the way to St. Tropez, HMS Pinafore, Pirates Of Penance, [Major-General’s Song], forensics, rhetorical, extemporaneous, interpretive, storytelling, duo, Tom and Tommy, performative, word knowledge, the narrator, Canadian, a similar register?, Geoffrey Edwards, 400 episodes, such good stuff, always just look it up, the artifacts in it are there because of the medium it was made from, a way of oriented, they’re lost, day is coming, just the next day, sixteen different ways of saying next, there’s always more to say, that’s why that show is only half an hour long, pre-stuff, wrap it up, he’s 85, it’s not a tragedy, we can say he was happy, happiness is a verb, a thing you do, its also true, it was good, you look back on it it was good, excellent and vital somehow, punishment, there’s no happiness there, you’re not doing it through lines of excellence, little kids, problems can be solved with money, money will get you more stuff, a fun one, a great group, sound issues, that was Terence, 8th and 15th, 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, the Ayn Rand, The Time Machine, V For Vendetta, an actual novel, not written by Alan Moore, a little too hot right now, things being cold, there’s no audiobook for it, Treasure Island, read some things, I’ve always wanted to read, Sartor Resartus by Thomas Carlyle, a very forgotten novel that sounds amazing, Good Omens some time in 2020, there’s nothing here, not everything needs to be discussed, that’s how I act, I’m not happy but we’ll see, caged up with a broken leg, making eggs with my sweetie, Steve Miller, go fly like an eagle.

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #837 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Mistress Of The Dark Pool by Russell Gray and The Cold Female by Dale Harlow

The SFFaudio Podcast #837 – Mistress Of The Dark Pool by Russell Gray (1 hour 3 minutes) from Terror Tales, May 1940 and The Cold Female by Dale Harlow (19.5 minutes) from Adam, January 1957. Both are read by Mike Vendetti. These are followed by a discussion of both. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Alex (Pulpcovers), Cora Buhlert, and Tommy Patrick Ryan.

Talked about on today’s show:
Philsp.com Galactic Central, can’t get google to work, a huge magazine index, Sgt. Bilko, all the magazine contents, mostly all there, non-genre magazines, Cora’s entry is wrong, Stephenson Paine, only has one story, flourishing in the 1950s, this issue of Adam, pseudonymous, fairly well written, Jack Casanova, K. Robert Howard, a funny magazine, internet archive, before Palestine, you taking down, LibriVox is down, people who throw , PulpCovers, killed the internet archive, hackers?, online activists, a DDOS attack, LibriVox, one of the files was corrupted, work on something else, in 7 months when this podcast comes out Gaza wont be being destroyed, save the best for last, Russel Gray, excellent art, attractive and a good premise, Mistress Of The Dark Pool is just way too long, the biggest problem, an hour and 3 minutes, very similar, lakes, mountains, people in cabins, every stereotype ever, food and supplies and information, Cabin In The Woods, titular cabin, titular woods, go in clear eyed, weird sacrifice thing, the knew what they were getting into, willingly allow the vampire into your home, Reading, Short And Deep, connection through Eric [S. Rabkin], find the hidden sex, much clearer, definitely had sex with that woman, May 1940, written 5 minutes before it was published, before the US is involved in WWII, it wasn’t important yet, isfdb entry, Bruno Fisher (Russell Gray) (Harrison Storm), interesting quote, these markets, weird menace pulps, living in Florida with my family, terror/horror market, just one day the market was gone, 150 Philip K. Dick, the market collapses, it’s Chinatown, Jake, if you shutter the business that distributes magazines, paperback distribution, early 1990s, censorship, legal issue, a history of this, might be war related, all the way through the depression, ramping up for war, gonna be a paper shortage, preparing for war, army approved pulp, Playboy, I read it for the articles, the Saturday Evening Post of a certain niche, a magazine like Adam, much condensed, more censoriously, lot less placing breasts in hands, less explicit, implied more, some birds started chirping, Eric Rabkin comes out of the forest with his hat on, waterfalls and tunnels, fade away, necking in the surf, how many beds are in that house?, obsessed with the idea, too much to read, both stories use the same word, wood nymph, scary stories to tell in the dark, fireside ghost story kinda things, a filler story in Weird Tales, read versus listened, Mike Vendetti, how seriously he took it, very believable, so broad, come on guy, must be the daughter, who could have seen this coming?, a more enjoyable experience, weird menace pulps, both sex stories, ghost women in the mountain cabin, author vs. engineer, the author is the bad writer, the engineer is the good writer, forgive a lot of the things, nice art, paid by the word, seeing it in the relief, salacious title, could be a horse, sounds like it could be a Conan story, all of his titles, the blank of the blank, the castle of the harridans, a collection of Russell Gray stories, actual print book, Monster Of The Purple Mist, all sound awesome, go at it bro, Hostesses In Hell And Other Stories: The Selected Stories Of Russell Gray and My Touch Brings Death: And Other Stories, a new cover, no interior art, the artists on the shudder pulps worked overtime, great art, the editorial descriptions are good, the mangy dog he called her lover, I vowed I would kill girl I loved, way more appealing, too many scenes, repetitive, wife steps up and saves his ass, cool character, he doesn’t deserve it, the spell is have sex with this sexy lady down the street, skip to the discussion, find out pretty quick, in comparing it, so similar, the one was made longer, would it improve the story, pretty groany, yard work, describing her breasts, I’m so cold, start snuggling, reacts as a virile man should, adolescent fantasy, male fantasy, dear Ghost Story letters: you wouldn’t believe what happened to me!, jealousy is a thing, modelling Tommy’s mind, the alcoholism, drinking happening, pouring the alcohol down his throat, rye whiskey, the first alcoholism bad movie, The Lost Weekend (1945), a drug to escape reality, this potent medicine, a poison that’s hurting our health, enjoying a fine cigar, not going to make you beat your wife or drive drunk, a good glass of wine, a single malt scotch, useful for cooking, wine into cooking, so much more of it out there, the whiskey didn’t effect me, playing Hamlet, Richard Burton, what happens if I suddenly get a phone call, pulled over, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, way too drinky, a beautiful wife he loves, battles with alcohol, easier to pack up into the mountains, pretty normalized, an older time, drinking alone, a bad marriage, a lesbian or was going to murder you, women definitely drank alcohol, sherry, champagne, The Thin Man (1934), a comedy, social, the way it appears in this story, using it like a medicine, an alcohol spiral, the husband comes to his senses, the good wife helped him, saved her even though he was tired, personal psychology, go to a cabin in the woods, a beautiful woman requires you have sex with her, a mangy dog, he kills it, I didn’t mean to kill that dog, what happened to Amos?, perfectly normal, they left her body by the cabin with ribbons of skin, a better ending, together they bury the body, throws the whiskey bottle into the grave, he buried his demons along with his demons, he doesn’t believe in witchcraft, the red herring that makes it longer, six chapters, chapter titles are good, Americans are weird about alcohol, marksmanship competition, shooting clubs, the king and queen of the marksman, so German, get a gun license, a nice plaque, such a German thing, 35 and 75, nobody minds, much healthier attitude, get really drunk at a wedding, an addictive drug, Prohibition, grain into liquor, profit per ton of cargo, sever chronic alcoholism, rampant, Ecuador, major problem, French wine, getting schnockered, liquid, symbolic, Eric hat, a lake is very different than rain, or a cup of water on your desk, you go into the unconscious, let me tell you about it, a woman who goes into the water, her fantasy, her desire is the theoretical explanation for why the, sexy witch’s daughter, harridan harridan harridan, a dark liquor, the more lost you get, when you go in the water, went swimming, needed to clear my head, he’s going away from his wife, he’s straying, a symbol for femaleness, his engineering projects, the Canadian Rockies, in the off season, to go fishing, the thing that came out of the lake, the woman knocking on the door is a neighboring cabin woman, abusive husband, it went supernatural, she needs to come out of the lake, she’s a witch!, a market for science fiction, unusual, running away from a killer, and now we’re on the road together, in the mountains of Canada, not the end of the story, she’s dead, died a virgin, a male fantasy, Edgar Allan Poe, I at least married them, comes back to life, at least 20 years, really old women that looked young, The Lake by Ray Bradbury, the season is over, drag something from the lake, sandcastle, he will always love this girl, looks at his wife, why is this weird woman here?, an adult version of The Lake, never grows up, he still loves her, struck by the similarities, better scripter, retro review, on a lot of high school reading lists, May 1944, no school is in session, a link, how young, this is going to get weird, 19, it didn’t matter, might be committing crimes, she’s 19, she coulda been 16, 14 now, teacher and student, power dynamics, no one bats an eye, 14 and 19 year old, eyelashes batted, what do we make the names of Hulda and Amos, is that a name?, a witch name, a prophetess, Mother Hulda (Frau Holle), the legendary creature, what makes our character Hulda evil?, she’s old and ugly, a mangy narrator, our stupid narrator, linked to Christmas and winter folklore in the alpine region, always resorting to alcohol, stupider, mitigate it, pushed off the page, he uses the word to describe the male husband, supposedly a writer, in the mountains to get his novel finished, such a bad writer, he makes the connection for us, it explained by his alcoholism, the audience shouldn’t be ten times smarter, a different name, Timerider: The Adventure Of Lyle Swann (1982), back to the future, he’s his own grandpa, raped by his gandma, Cyngne, he didn’t make the connection, they share a family name, 6 pages, 19 and half pages, five times shorter, is it five better?, three times better, with great art, an anecdote you tell your friend, woman knocking on the door, a fish story, no creepy pun intended, he’s showing propriety, having sex with a ghost, just kinda sad, let me tell you about my Canadian girlfriend who’s a ghost and you can never find, almost wholesome, my dead lover who I turned into a dog for reasons, a shape changer, a dog by day, hot and sweaty sex, with I could have sex with humans, attracted to the wife, you dog, now you’ll live like a dog, don’t make the story longer, skinny dipping, the dog shows up, so crude and simple and badly written, kinda like it still, honest in its stupidity and baseness, Robert E. Howard, pretty good money, get enough sex in there, the explanation for why everything was happening was bizarre and bad, married couples never had children, sex happens, not newly married, three years, undue for the era, if you don’t have children, young children would be with them, off at military school, kinda the point of getting married, having kids, married characters in weird menace stories, New York brownstones, feeds you someone from the asylum, you attracted to the opposite sex, it complicates it and makes it weird, if this couple had a kid that was with them, why is daddy acting so weird, The Shining, a terrible drunk, as time goes on, this is a story about a guy who wants to kill himself, a bunch of King, a thing he says over and over again: I’m a horrible drunk, read The Mist, possibility he’s gonna kill his family, right before rescue shows up, a fog, the alcohol you’re imbibing, reading into his personal psychology, an assignment sorta style, gotta have a witch and a pool and a cliff, Test-Tube Frankenstein also had a cliff, I like cliffs, almost being stabbed, 1930 Margaret Brundage, lesbian whipping scenes, they look like they’re dancing, lesbian witch cult, way less about personal psychology and more to male psychology, so streamlined, three characters in the whole story, no personality other than hetero, the anecdote that it wants to tell, is she a wood nymph, could be a wood nymph, naked woman in the woods, a fleeting glimpse in the mist, life is a lot more interesting, straight to dryad, too complicated word for the target audience, straight out of Dungeons & Dragons, sprite, hamadryad, C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, J.R.R. Tolkien, the entire Chronicles Of Narnia, super-famous British actor, Kenneth Branagh, Vanessa Redgrave, Patrick Stewart, the performances are incredible, Phantastes: A Faerie Romance For Men And Women by George MacDonald, they all died on the same day, a photo of the Doctor, at the Kennedy assassination, C.S. Lewis died, Aldous Huxley, Paul Chadwick, comic book artist, Dark Horse, Concrete, Harlan Ellison, a movie with that scene, that’s in a movie, a newish movie, The Most Reluctant Convert, converting to Catholicism, Lovecraft says to Robert E. Howard: You should become a muslim, Robert E. Howard to Lovecraft: I will eventually, sweet as a nut, The Horse And His Boy, my favourite, the best book in the series, Voyage Of The Dawn Treader, writing/publication, how does that fit in, The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe, Magician’s Nephew, The Last Battle, for the retro Hugos, so terrible, an all volunteer pickup basketball, a cartoon adaptation, series on DVD, live action, a BBC version, Prince Caspian, Lewis is public domain in Canada, semi-professional Chrisitan audio dramas, consider that, before we lose Tommy, The Tower Treasure, a shelf of them, December 1st, blind spots, Nancy Drews, simple, hilarious, teen detective stories, Enid Blyton, Lilith by George MacDonald, Odd John by Olaf Stapledon, Symposium by Plato, Fury by Henry Kutter, Paycheck and The Weapon Shop, A.E. Van Vogt, more pairings, all the reading on Saturday, wouldnt be new, close to an hour, a William Hamilton Osborne story, The Haunted Corridors, able to clean it up, The Noseless Horror, always happy to do Howard, precedes pretty much everybody, Assyrian, in Egypt, talk across space, recorded on the farm, a twist at the end, quite different, in Portland, can’t turn down Howard, advent coffee, looking through ebay listings, a striking cover, calling the museum that has his papers, The New Jersey Historical Society, the idea seems very novel, a scientist and his beautiful daughter, a “machine”, more of a ghost story, the cover is great, the little hint, the machine is kinda like a cellphone, in a different time, to hear what they can hear there, listening through time, an audio podcast, two hours of homework for Alex, mostly reader, audio processing issues, listen to podcasts, full cast audio dramas, a whole industry, mostly one company, still alive, excellent people doing these, Big Finish Blakes 7, actors out from carbonite, a kindly elephant, a kindly witch, action oriented stuff, licensed stuff, Knightrider, that’s for you, He-Man, the German voice of Tom Selleck, Midsomer Murders, the Max Max novelization, The Terminator novelization, if they exist they’re probably very expensive, Alan Dean Foster, a novelization of Total Recall?, Terry Bisson?, Piers Anthony, Poul Anderson, novelized everything, marginal movies, Iron Eagle (1986), Kevin J. Anderson, Timothy Zahn, personality defects, Predator (1987), took that hate, especially censorship, Huawei phone, Terrifier 3 (2024), Wild Robot (2024), Ladyhawke (1985), let us rent it, The Terminator (1984) at a young age, had to watch Ladyhawke again, an assigned seat, 1 ticket vs. ten tickets, a lot to do with real estate, everything ties together, new tech, delisted, woke now, trains and WWII and Ukranian War propaganda, chicken breeding, once or twice, your dad’s station, dull people talking about politics, it was fun, a gothic romance novel, a beautiful woman with perfect hair fleeing a castle at night, Slaughterhouse Five, the sixties people, Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, Victoria Holt, Marilyn Ross, A Place Of Sapphires, piracy, governess, more Scooby Doo than Dracula, an immigrant, a reverse Dracula, female fantasy, Jane Austen, Bridgerton, romantic comedy, romcoms, gothic romance movies, Frenchman’s Creek, Jamaica Inn, The Birds, drug induced time travel, Marghanita Laski, she’s a ghost, very stylish and well done, moved to Italy with husband, Mona Farnsworth, The Three Sisters Of No-End House, completely forgotten, nurse novels, pen-names, Swedish adaptations, lesbian, from 1960, cliffs of Cornwall, past tragedy and present danger, passions overpower reason, evil lurks in the shadows, perfectly in tune, kicked off the boom, dismissed, Northanger Abbey, those are bad, commit to this, literally includes a castle with a high lit window, wearing a nightgown, retro toy and game, getting a better handle on human nature through fiction, what compels humans, Harlequin romances, daylight savings, I don’t believe you, a stupid idea from the start, China has 1 time zone, 1 time zone for the whole planet, you’re somebody, the twitter blocking thing changing, logging into an alternate twitter account, blocked or deleted, bluesky is where the writers and covid panic people hangout, threads has women obsessed about menopause, toy collectors, Lego minifigs, square format, photography, twitter as it used to be, oh well, plain gone, mad at Cora, not sufficiently anti or pro, all the time, you cannot post about your book, focused on the news, American election about to happen, a massive increase in depression, every second tweet is about Trump, if Trump is the worst thing that happened to you, in what sense is he terrible, Russia is never going to attack us, might try to sell you some gas, Anne Applebaum, Nordstream 2, they’re proud of it, set this thing on fire, so furious, hate Biden, terrible woman, spend lots of money to protect against the Russians, rat out my neighbours, it is horrible being occupied, 2 million people of Russian origin in Germany, grew up in Kazakhstan, they work hard, gardening is ex-Soviet people, paves your driveway, Jewish people, sorry for the holocaust, escaped Ukraine, communicating is difficult, so stupid to fall for it, endless amounts of weapons and money into Ukraine, weapons into hot-war zones, Israel, exporting weapons, promise not to use them to commit genocide, the weapons industry, subcontractors, specialized weapons manufactures, Airbus, the people who build tanks, Heckler and Koch, Sigsauer, Walther, submarines, campus, shipyards, superyachts for rich assholes, techbros, oligarchs, stories to tell about rich people being assholes, the Russian oligarchs are gone, taxpayer money, terrible headache, go to sealevel, 4 meters above sealevel, for dinner,

Mistress Of The Dark Pool by Russell Gray
The Cold Female by Dale Harlow

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 #835 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Aeneid by Virgil (Books IX – XII)

The SFFaudio Podcast #835 – The Aeneid by Virgil [Books IX – XII] read by George Allen (for LibriVox) and translated by John Dryden. This is the third third of the epic poem, books IX to XII(comprised of XII Books) running 4 hours 45 minutes, followed by a discussion of them. Participants in the discussion include Jesse and Scott Danielson

Talked about on today’s show:
9-12, some stuff, make more notes, wash over you, the books are not mentioned in the original, somebody’s imposition, one giant scroll, the title names, not consistent, a handy way of telling you which book it’s in, Act 1, Scene 1, here we go, more Shakespeare, a very old book, Shakespeare is old too, not a lot of Christianity in this book, the morality in this book, punishments in their version of Hell, Elysian fields for other people, that underworld stuff, work their way into heaven, doing the penance, so wicked, back in university, The Odyssey, more memorable and more personal, re-read, first read, the end, Dido stuff, superpowerful, the kind of morality you see in Shakespeare, Macbeth, a character named Old Seward, Mcduff, Ross, Scottish guys, in the context, Young Seward, did and said, these are Christian Scotsmen, witches and fate, on the border of our reality, kings and lords, this scene in relief, Act 5, Scene 7, enter Macbeth, what bloody man is that?, good writing, make a hero awesome, maybe bad writing, how Macbeth has just one the battle, how many dudes did he kill, his sword is steaming, just gone through a man or six, straight outta Robert E. Howard, a killing machine, not the wisest man, a great battler, tied me to a steak, bear-like I must fight the course, not born of woman, no man of woman born can hurt you, enter Young Seward, tho thou callest, hotter than any in hell, the devil himself, nor more fearful, abhorred tyrant, THEY FIGHT, thou wast born of woman, swords I smile at, stuff happens, winning the battle, he’s the bad guy, Scene 8, Old Seward, so great a day is cheaply bought, your son has paid a soldier’s debt, unshirking station, then he is dead?, your cause of sorrow, for then it hath no end, had he his hurts before?, did he suffer?, aye on the front, stabbed in the front not the back, as many sons as hairs, so his knell is knolled, gonna cry, found out his only son died, stabbed in the front, stabbed in the back, running away from the field, plucked untimely from his mother’s womb, fate plays a big role, the twisted words of the witches, the martialness, the warriness, 1500 years before, book XI, just war, people getting killed, Camilla’s Finest Hour, imagining in ten years what you’re going to remember, definitely Dido, the underworld, the most interesting things, lotsa battles, heroic war, not the very very end, with Aeneas killing Turnus, makes that decision, does he make a decision, no mercy please, let me have it, thinks about it for a second, considering mercy, sees the arms, his belt, let’s him have it, avenging Pallas, hilt deep in his enemy’s heart, a groan of outrage down to the shades below, we were set up for that, this paragraph, Turnus Attacks, War Rages On, The Trojans Advance, Turnuns Vs. Aeneas, Enemy At The Gates, Captains Fight And Die, Camilla’s Finest Hour, The Sword Decides All, poetic rather than functional, the ending sums up the last half of the book, prolonged fight against Turnus, local guy, teams, alliances, rivalries, prepped, John Dryden, last 2 stanzas, the lofty chief, recreant thus, I know my death deserved, think o think, thou has a father once and hast a son, or of thy vowed revenge, my body void of breath, thine the royal wife, kill me if you have to, think of your father think of your son, this is awesome, I deserve it all, care for a parent’s grief, stripped of life, victor and vanquished, go no further down the road of hatred, particularly good or evil, bad guy vs. opponents, he’s from that place, the interloper, the insurrectionist, the foreign invader, he’s from Asia, this guy’ from Europe, I have a fate, it’s my destiny, our destiny, you’re not just the lord of whatever, or soon will be, Duncan gives him too more lordships, gets into his head, Lady Macbeth all excited, I would make a great king, read the witches properly what will happen, not what should happen, histories, tragedies, comedy, a comedy ends with marriages, everybody marriages, Julius Caesar, Twelfth Night, A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream, the gods are fighting, Juno, Jupiter’s like whatever lady, the fate, set at Rome’s founding, two fates going on, the history, the destiny pushed on Aeneas and his people by the gods, a weirder character, Macbeth is evil, murder people, including children, local people, we don’t like those people, allied, this girl they’re rivaling over, in parallel with parts of The Iliad, chases Turnus around ten times, Achilles, we really ought to be reading The Iliad first, sulking in their tent, more compressed, in the shadow of that, chasing happens, they’re connecting it to their origins, secretly we’re Trojans, reverse the history, we can’t be the defeated people, an Empire now, losers who had to run away, second to last stanza, our dude, you won the battle, pity the family of those who die, you know what it is like to lose people, give my dead body back to my family, despoil the body is worse, not let him be burnt properly, in the second to last stanza, the Trojan seemed to stand, rolled his eyes, his manly soul with more compassion melt, oh oh oh, these words have struck me, a casual glance, the fatal spoils that haghty Turunus, the anime version of this, traitor!, clad as thou art, Patroclus wears the armour of Achilles, the desecration of a body, fuckbuddy cousin, a graceful offering, at the word, deep in his bosom, disstained his arms around, the disdainful soul came rushing through the wound, walking out of the movie theater, mercy, the girl is yours, can’t we live in peace, it would be nice to be… the camera zooms in on the belt, drives the blade between the shoulder blade and his neck, stabbing the heart, a killing blow, not fade to black, straight cut to black, how would you feel, we’ve seen that, SEVEN (1995), not a good feeling, goad him into it, couldn’t hold himself back, a student watched Seven recently, never want to see it again, what’s coming, it’s horrible, manipulative, Brad Pitt, what’s in the box stuff, what does that make of Brad Pitt’s character, movie logic, a Seven 2, you’re not Aeneas, the streaming blood disdainful, dis-stain, contempt, the arms are the weapons, the battle dress, claiming to be mad about, a local king’s prince, the disdainful soul, that’s amazing, we’re supposed to think, a traitor in some way, Turnus is a hothead manipulated by the gods, you won, let this war be over, you’re gone, I kill you, let my hate win, the reason Macbeth is bad, murdered children in their beds, plagued by visions, the famous dagger scene, Is this a dagger I see before me?, allow the possibility that it is a cross, an invisible dagger, remind you of this killing, or Jesus, repent, a Christian layer to that, not just a random dude, the founder of Rome, an original sin for the culture of Rome, making slaves of people, slavery is preferable to genocide, especially the men, probably pretty bad, they’re valuable, you sell them, you can’t be manumitted by death, the bond put upon you by being the end of a losing people, a national epic, an Imperial Epic, this can’t be the way it ends, choosing to end it here is the surprising thing, the shock and horror of it is huge, the hotheadedness, nothing to do with destiny, personal action, foment a secret rebellion, he’s the rival mirror to Aeneas, really great, flaring up in fury, decked in the spoils, escaped my clutches, never, not as visceral, awesome, make you pay the price, blazing with wrath, hilt deep in his enemy’s heart, lifebreath fled with a groan of outrage, the disdainful soul, the Romans think this is completely justified, Arthurian rules, realistic, not justified, a modern hero did that, 24, Keifer Sutherland, running around, no bathroom break, no snack, torture works, he’s just going to torture a guy, are you seriously going there?, we don’t torture people, there’s no white hat here, they’re the bad ones, they’re the ones who hide behind women and children, our team vs. their team, the reason we’re good is we do good things, good guy bad guy is just gone, the Romans don’t have good guy/bad guy, they have pious, dutiful to their fathers, dutiful to the gods, humans killed, a spectacle, a lot of pathos comes out of the deaths of these humans, major takeaways, this death, just beautiful when Camilla dies, protected by Diana, the huntress, goddess of the moon, Book XI, she lost her grip on the reigns, slipped down to the ground, neck drooped limp, a groan of outrage down to the shades below, 8 stanzas from the end, tugs at the spear, stands fixed in the deep wound, fighting like a superhero, the wingshaft predestined to the deed, the yew, the far distant horns on either side, the fatal arrow flew, zing!, sounding dart, felt the point with his heart, the conquering damsel, amazed by the language, high vocab, their leader lost, more on their speed than on their strength rely, take their wounds behind, he doesn’t care that his son is dead, only that he was brave, the slackened bow, the rotten ground, the rampires, the trembling matrons, rend heaven with female shrieks, a mingled multitude, then in a fright, the vanquished cry, tis terror all within, slaughter all without, the Latian virgins valiant with despair, poles sharpened, drew her bow with a vengeance, down or up, Cynthia’s maid, she wrenched the javelin with her dying hands, the steely point remains, agonizing pains, the Romans love gore, broken glass, Die Hard (1988), steps on the broken glass, one “fucker” per movie, pg-13, the bad guy who is bad, deceitful, not a gore movie, no nudity almost, fake swearing, stylized, no gore, the Romans loved gore, Ben-Hurchariot scene, guy gets run over a few times, the gore is a feature, she staggers in her seat with agonizing pains, up to her face, a gathering mist o’erclouds, he swims before my sight, fly with speed, my charge succeed, the town relieve, another breath/soul things, sliding sunk upon the plain, her open hand forsakes the rein, she pants, the lingering dude, I’m still alive, I’m quite burnt, 17 bad guys he shoots, this is the opposite, short and more short she pants, Miles Dyson in Terminator 2, lets go of the explosive, she’s panting in her death, the mind her passage from her body flees, plumey crest, her struggling, to Stygian sound retires, awesome, they fight, Donalbain is slain, the level of camerawork here is hardcore, hardcore gore, increases the tragedy, increases the pathos, women described as beautiful, beauteous, that’s even worse, Book X, plucked it out, advancing on the margin, the clowns, an omen of the fight, he first in open field defied the prince, opened wide, Lichass, from his naked mother, sacred to Pheobus, from biting steel freed, pulled out of his mother with pincers, not far from his was Gyas, with monstrous bulk, no valour nor herculean arms availed, toiled, writhed his dart, received his doom, beardless bloom, cur’d his love of boys, seven bold, his mother’s care, turned aside, spears being chucked, Cydon, courted Clytius, a pedophile, obscene lust, the united force, a random little thing, not how the Greeks are doing it, Achilles the great hero has a boyfriend who’s his cousin, the Romans: pedophiles should be killed, random list of guys getting shot, you can miss so much, moral progress, you could make the case, human sacrifice is bad, animal sacrifice is less bad, giving up meat for lent, gambling or smoking, no animals were hurt, you can make the case, regressions, we don’t do torture, enhanced interrogation, the Philippine war, in the text there, Nietzsche, slave morality vs. master morality, turn the other cheek, the reason that the Romans are ripe for takeover by Christians, a lot of slaves, mad at moneylenders, the Prince of Peace, take control of the Roman Empire, instead of having their piety be how many sacrifices, their obedience to the moral code of Jesus, not a slur against Christianity, popular among the slaves, they know what suffering is, the power of the story of Jesus, a lot of attention, the force argument, we have better weapons, better organized, the right, just a fact, why this book is so weird compared to Shakespeare, strongly obvious, Odysseus’ goodness comes from being tricky, knows how to get stuff done, journey home, dudes courting his wife, killing spree, he’s good at it, not very Christian, very good, do The Iliad some day, Beowulf, Sir Gawain, the Saga of the Volsungs, all the dwarfs that are in the Hobbit, Fafnir, Smaug, a talking dragon there is, digging a lot of this older stuff, Ballantine Adult Fantasy books, The King Of Elfland’s Daughter, The Charwoman’s Daughter, The Broken Sword by Poul Anderson, The Blue Star by Fletcher Pratt, The Sundering Flood, The Tritonian Ring by L. Sprague De Camp, most of them are old, The Wood Beyond The World, it’s got a map!, mountains, rivers, a sea eventually, Paul would not like the geography on this, Lilith by George MacDonald, a port city, put in a request, 10 hours, what’s Lilith about?, considered among the darkest, most profound, a cosmic sleep that heals tortured souls, a Christian universalist, sold, a lot of good George MacDonald, new to him, Reading, Short And Deep, The Green Door?, Odd John, Christmas break, 2008, waiting for us for all these years, duties at church, eucharistic minister, wine for the kids, assume that it is red wine, less magical, less substantial, less transubstantial, going through some Simak, Project Pope, shocked at how good it was, idea idea idea, selling me, let’s book it, the Pope part of it, gonna become infallible, feed me nothing but facts, Special Deliverance, A Choice Of Gods, fund with doubles, two short stories, Cordwainer Smith, Leigh Brackett, A Game Of Rat And Dragon, Dragon Queen Of Jupiter, Frank Herbert and Tolkien vs. Asimov and Clarke science fiction, rettitled Dragon Queen Of Venus, find and replace, this is just a French Foreign Legion story set on Jupiter, why is this terrible, why does this work?, a young lady who likes dressing up vs. a CIA agent who wrote Psychological Warfare and loved cats, a fun talk, easier, Dick and A.E. Van Vogt, men’s magazine stories, didn’t love Gods Of Mars, not a series guy, editing today, The Idiot, a short story about a robot, left it off the schedule, Partner’s Payoff, WWII veteran, get robbed, coffee, more editing.

Posted by Jesse Willis