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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Worlds Of If by Stanley G. Weinbaum

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #780 – READALONG: Sheba by Jack Higgins

Jesse, Will Emmons, Alex (Pulpcovers), and Jonathan Weichsel talk about Sheba by Jack Higgins

Talked about on today’s show:
Seven Pillars To Hell, Sheba, 1994, 1963, all the seven pillars into the desert, we see one we hear about two, the temple had pillars, the trail into the desert, temple to Ishtar, Astarte, Venus, a play on Seven Pillars Of Wisdom by T.E. Lawrence, pre-show jokes, hated this book, garbage, void, fluffy, airport lit, threads would get picked up and nothing would happen, Spanish fascists, Nazis, Hitler is busy inading Poland, part of the rewrite, a great script for a movie, Cain, get better again, cartoon Nazis trying to blow up the Suez Canal, worse and worse, judging it fairly harshly, a good novelization of Raiders Of The Lost Ark, fairly similar, events, Nazi base in the desert, blow up the plane, girl gets captured, trapped in the temple, no supernatural objects, suffered because of that, no metaphysical content, Jonathan is right about that, Casablanca (1942), stock characters, Sidney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, all explained by airport fiction, kinda forgetable, Alastair MacLean but second tier, something lacking, discontinuities, a time jump, fast forwarded through the video, new destination, scrub forward, not Harry Potter style scene based fiction, in the rewrite, every man in the world loves an airplane, show yours, choose only one airplane?, how stupid the premise is, you could blow up a gate, block ships, fucked things up, a secret city base in the desert, I can revise my book, Raiders is kind of a trick, decieved, novelty, perfect execution, tricked us into liking it by being perfect, sequels, shows us the error of our mistake, all stories like this, they have to be like this or they’re the Quentin Tarantino let’s kill Hitler movie, paid attention to the history, biblbical historical supernatural element, blame too big of government, “top men”, Warehouse 13, back to the warehouse, in The Crystal Skull, a way to solve a problem, we can’t have the power of god in the hands of the allies, all the stuff is tricks, superhero villians, so WWII can happen, Lex Luthor has to exist, doomed to fail, stated discontinuities, WWII movies/books, this is not Eye Of The Needle, The Eagle Has Landed, the opposite of tricks, no craft, [Ken Follett], zone off, Will feels that, by the time the plane exploded, ready for the book to be over, just over 6 hours, 4 hours, 2 hour movie, heard how big Raiders was, Storm Island, Donald Sutherland, hates the British, Robert Duvall, the Valkyrie historical figure, the guy with the eyepatch, Jesse’s brain doesn’t work very well, Michael Caine plays a Nazi, kidnap Churchill, whole team is dead, nice Nazis accidently killed a little girl, this kind of genre, something that could have happened, has to fail, a much worse direction, Inglourious Basterds, made a promise of genre, we know that didn’t happen, a wrecking of genre, Overlord (2018), American paratroopers, a black NCO commanding white enlisted, executive order 9981, we changed history, the officer scene, super-compelling, see Hitler machine gunned very well, Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, saving a historical film actress, the day Jesus was born somebody shot him with a crossbow, post-modernism, breaking the rules, bending genres, being free of the rules, we’re beyond rules, 1900-1960, future obsessed, fuzzy science, high culture vs. pop culture, meaning is important, meaning is relative and open ended, it will say “yes”, who else would be like this?, Cronenberg, is he postmodern?, The Fly remake, Videodrome (1983), this book is not post-modern, the rules of a promise, if you put a rocketship on the cover of you book you’re a liar, those are bad people and bad books, people will buy it, they’re just liars, man on the run, Hitchcock, pretty good, semi-historical figure, attested to in history, blocks of stone from almost the period, her name, she only exists in the bible, outside of the bible, archaeological hints, scientifically, the rocks, stones and statues, we the reader, metaphor in fiction, an incomplete metaphor, why is it called Sheba?, a McGuffin, it doesn’t tie in, who doesn’t like the way it sounds?, political activities of the Kings of Sheba, Yemen, for some reason Jesse knows a little bit about Sheba, where Sheba is, dispute, two areas claim the queendom of Sheba, Somaliland the empty quarter, Jesse’s brain is really good at background work, The Nameless City by H.P. Lovecraft, Iram of the Pillars, enjoyable, unless you’re just fighting the weather, Salim, a corrupt German (or French) archaeologist, especially girls, they have the up the stakes, human trafficking, this whole genre, Clint Eastwood in a Nazi uniform, make a book out of it too, Where Eagles Dare, comes out of literature, airport style fiction, what your grandpa or dad was reading, cowboy hat, range in the title, a horse, it won’t matter, not a classic for the ages, hanging out with Hitler, going into Hitler’s office, the prologue was fun, should add to the resonance, that old poem by Shelley, Ozymandias, Hitler built a temple to himself, white sam browne belts, we can assume the MP-40s, MP-38, not enough Catalina action, the revision was badly done, a 30 year gap, died in 2022, any other historical errors, there are prototypes man, random bedouins, a hare brained scheme, Ritter had showed up in the desert, we like him too much, WWII movies, girls probably don’t like it as much, Guns Of Navarone, Force 10 From Navarone, good actors in it, murky, the plot is terrific, a great read, more like a Jonathan story, is it worth it?, two genres, A Bridge Too Far, The Longest Day, as close as we could ever come to being in Operation Market Garden, actors playing themselves, a huge cast, capture every bridge, one big push, Robert Redford in a canoe, Anthony Hopkins totally outgunned using his umbrella, actually happened, actual airplanes flying into the sky, late 60s, The Dirty Dozen, 1981, The Big Red One, the end of this era, Mark Hamill, Lee Marvin, a series of vignettes, German and Russian, Das Boot, 100 WWII movies that you’ve seen, Ilsa She Wolf Of The SS, Jesus Franco, a Will movie, Spaghetti, exploitation characters, the prologue reflects on this temple that’s gone, makes it better, this book is broken, ahistorical, this temple plot, combining the two, I hate Hitler, let’s see some Nazis, archaeology, not-competent, the Spanish ones, bored because he’s a courier, trying to carry about a plot, a comedic sense, you want them to fail, not that bright, watching this Cain fellow, an interesting story in there, gone back and forth, meet at some point, until they show up and blow up, a weirdly wasted character, learn how to fly a plane, sea-captain, he’s the Mary Sue, a bastard of a book, it doesn’t meld together, motivation, he’s gotta save the girl, simply in it for the money, $6000, the British archaeologist lived, we just get the wife, the Casablanca element, the Humphrey Bogart character, we’ve beat up on this book, a small axe to grand, no rule against cringe, only black character cannot speak, tried to write dialogue with him, a 1970s movie decision, the loyal retainer, he’s Chewbacca, like a dog, the Somali, the Arab, the Greek, the German, endlessly interesting utube channel, drills down on the history the number of SS legions, foreign legions, there’s an American one, Arabic legions, Danish, they’re trying to setup an international system, the communists, the Romans, not just for propagandic purposes, Spanish Nazis, the Greek Nazi, part of the criticism we can all have for this book, him being a very successful market, seems interested in his subject, generally gets things right, just so happens there’s a lot of men out there, do men think about the Roman Empire everyday?, WWII everyday, wish you were here Paul, building civilizations, empire building, standard sorta male mindset, in reaction to/in spite of, Spanish Civil War was the prelude, can’t do anything that matters, Harry Turtledove, getting out of the desert alive, stuff happens, fuel tank being emptied, the plane they crashed, the MP-40s being a little early, technically well done, stories in the corners, blocking the Suez Canal, drop mines, airport lit fiction plots, out of the desert for no reason, an excuse to getting into the dessert, seeing the queen on the wall, big king with a star of David, the guy’s name is Cain, mark of God cain, a killer, smuggler, pilot, ship’s captain, what isn’t he? real, the mythological archetypal American, very El Borak, Robert E. Howard constructs better, sentence by sentence, Kirby O’Donnel, The Fire Of Asshurbanipal, tsk tsk, bad Jesse, a really good audio drama [blue hours], a lot like this story, Bedouins, a forbidden city, death trap, giant jewel, Weird Tales, beautiful cover, a demon bound to the jewel, puts in the sorcery reluctantly, ancient cursed city lost in the desert, The Curse Of The Golden Skull, King Kull, millennia go by, Lemuria, some guy with a beard, a snake came out of the skull, supernaturally in the curse was upon his bones, that story didn’t sell, more of a vignette than anything else, any sorcerer can be killed with steel, a stout blade is a hardy incantation, the best WWII movies, designed to make Jesse mad, The Notebook, The Great Escape, a WWII movie with Bronson, Come And See, Germans rolling in, very biblical movie, number of tanks fielded and trucks burned, adopted by the Nazi, The Imitation Game, all 19 years old Dunkirk, Jojo Rabbit (2019), Scarlett Johansson as a Nazi, Stalingrad, Defiance, Black Book (2006), Soldier of Orange (1977), maybe it’s amazing, Empire Of The Sun, Christian Bale as a baby, The Best Years Of Our Lives (1946), America has changed so much, looks like a comedy, straight drama, William Wyler, Arrested Development, smiling, get weepy, ironic, the hardest years, Patton, Rescuers Down Under, Hardcore, The Last Run (1971), a play, directed by George C. Scott’s sons, gambling addiction, famous son, rented a huge theater, Jesse doesn’t brag enough, Jesse loves old movies, Letters From Iwo Jima, a pendant to Flags Of Our Fathers, The Dirty Dozen, very of its time, Jim Brown, John Cassavetes, much better WWII movies, the scene on the beach, Burt Lancaster having sex with a nice lady on the beach, the meme movie: Downfall, Hitler in the bunker movies, Hitler finds out about x, The Thin Red Line, Terrence Malick, an artsy WWII movie, the actor list, a good cast, a cast of white guys, Nick Nolte, directing the war from the boat, on an artsier scale, Life Is Beautiful, one they would show you in highschool, a good movie, Alex just doesn’t like really sad movies, funny bits, a funny looking guy, fun times in the holocaust, not a lot of laughs in Shindler’s List, Jerry Lewis’ lost clown in the holocaust movie, an offensive concept, [The Producers], Midway (2019), Pearl Harbor (2001), the other Bridge, Dennis Quaid, Randy Quaid, the handsome, Woody Harrelson plays an admiral, 3 hour youtube documentary, Woody Harrelson’s dad was involved in the assassination of JFK, Natural Born Killers, Das Boot, the reboot of Das Boot, in the gym, pretty good, adds in girls, an on shore element, girls working for the Nazis, Dutch them, Grave Of The Fireflies, hanging out with the anime Cirsova guys, older, born in 1978, one anime every 5 years, space western anime, Robotech, Casablanca, its basically a play, where do you think the French went?, technically set during WWII, not a battlefield movie, Quentin Tarantino’s top 11 movies of all time, Sunset Boulevard, dead in a Hollywood lady’s pool, Five Graves To Cairo (1943), five stops in the desert, a British tanker, crawls out of the desert, waitstaff in a hotel, based on a play, actual tanks on screen, Nazis come up with unecssarily complex schemes, it takes Americans to…, Robert Shaw plays a blonde SS panzer, The Battle Of The Bulge, The Bridge On The River Kwai, 1957 movie starring Obi Wan Kenobi, a biopic about the actor, a WWII vet, Pierre Boullet, Saving Private Ryan, a good beach scene, the rest of it is terrible, very solid, a lot of movies have plots, Tom Hanks is ok, non-threatening, Greyhound (2020), based on a C.S. Forester, really nice low stakes, a pattern, Jonathan noticed a pattern, WWII battles, wants to be a movie, shooting, hardware, aircraft, support the invasion of Poland, set before WWII, Raiders is not a WWII movie, one of the plans, keep these guys in prison, death march them, some criteria, fill in the holes somewhere, The Man Who Never Was (1956), homeless man, remade it recently, not a better movie, some up and coming officer with a limp and an eye-patch, same plot as Where Eagles Dare, a double bluff, the plans for D-Day, recapture or kill, spill the beans, if they make computer game levels out of it, Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, give it away for free, just a multiplayer, The Guns of Navarone (1961) map, Where Eagles Dare, his son said, my dad is really depressed, best WWII movies, high on the list, a lot going on, best WWII movie not on the list, small stakes, not a D-Day movie, get some men off an island, just go around Crete, fixed gun emplacement on a beach, a really good film, tomb raiding book, Easy Go, missed every John Lange book, a lot like Anthony Quinn’s character in Guns Of Navarone, half-greek half-german?, his mother was a whore, before the shore, you never read them, how any of them is relevant to the book except as a title, to tie in as a metaphor, King James, 1 Kings 10, 29 sentences, punctuation, the name of the Lord, prove him with hard questions, the lovely Robert E. Howard language, went back in time, camels and bare spices, when she was come, communed with him, not anything hid from the king, where he told her not, the meat of his table, unto the house of the Lord, no more spirit in him, howbeit, behold the half was not told me, thy wisdom, hear thy wisdom, because the Lord loved Israel forever, an hundred and twenty talents of gold, the navy also of Ophir, almug trees, pillars for the house of the lord, psalteries for singers, all her desire, royal bounty, she and her servants, beside that, in the forest of Lebanon, another archaeological thing we can dig up, she’s just there to show how good Solomon is, inferences, a kingdom in Africa somewhere, Song Of Songs, the two disputes, the pretty part of the Bible, good reading, sexy reading, sexy reading is important, beautiful art, there was good writing in here, bastardized, a thirty year gap, something we’ve seen, King Solomon’s Mines, hokey romance, people shooting at each other, one of the malest books, true story, a very male writer, by and for dudes who watched the History Channel, the WWII channel, The World At War, here’s what’s happening, WWII by tweets, here’s what’s happening in the war, this is what happened, leaving tons of stuff out, Russia invades Poland, leaves out the context, if California invaded Oregon, boats and airplanes, borders that are always moving back and forth, in bed with Hitler, dig into this again, maybe they want to be allies, the Molotov–Ribbentrop pact, hidden pacts, we’re gonna defend France, France, we got your back, start with a sketch, forget about the pejorative part of it, drill down, really crazy details, Hitler’s Bodyguard, Churchill’s Bodyguard, protagonist from a men’s fiction novel, a WWII movie, someone on twitter reviewed it, Paperback Warrior, I’ll read that, response to Dial Of Destiny, it is a fun book, explores a part of the world not a lot of books are set in, Arabia during WWII, searching for Sheba, a Lost City with sentient gorillas, a tomb full of treasure, except for that one necklace, the femme fatale shows up looking for her husband, reinforcing the WWII stereotype, Son Of Kong (1933), giant gorilla movie, not a jewel movie, hold the girl or hold the stones, she doesn’t and she dies, Reading, Short And Deep, a Bros. Grimm story, The Woman In The Wood, tap the tree twice, cup of milk, friends with the bird, hollow tree with a door in it, witch lady in there, go into the back room, a table full of rings, pushes past the witch in the little house, the curse lifted, Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade, this is the cup of a carpenter, lifted straight out of movies, or the Bible, antikythera mechanism, another treasure hunt movie, Donald Pleasence as a Nazi, The Treasure Of The Amazon (1985), Treasure Of The Sierra Madre (1984), Cannibal Holocaust (1980), he’s a lot of fun, topless natives all over the place, exploitation feel, the bag of jewels, just sand, trick em all, gets the jewels at the end, that was kinda messed up, you can just kill somebody, that’s kinda messed up of you, a really cool dude, sounds like a boy movie, based on actual facts that occurred in 1958, Gringo, Bradford Dillman, Marathon Man (1976), Lawrence Olivier, High Risk (1981), Triple Frontier (2019), James Brolin, Lindsay Wagner, Cleavon Little, James Coburn, Ernest Borgnine and Anthony Quinn, drug lord, go to Hawaii and film this movie, good movies that are low rated, Tubi, Midnight Pulp, Shudder, Tubi is owned by Fox, Assault On Precinct 13 (1976), drop everything your doing, Siege (1983), evil presentism, understand, when talking about silent movies, silent films are more work, people don’t like work, half lazy, you’re on an airplane, Thomas Burnett Swann, saying you love farts, Safety Last (1923), The Lost World (1925), that guy’s an athlete, Antonio Banderas, how could you expect a movie from the dawn of movies, 1920, the 1990s is the problem, charismatic, Catherine Zeta Jones, Michael Douglas’ wife, a nice digression, Jesse’s thoughts on what makes a WWII movie, some books are designed to be movies, spec for a movie, the storyboard, why didn’t he just re-release it?, Stephen King, he’s a shitlib now, he had to fix it, he’s not Richard Bachman anymore, The Hunt For Red October, Jack Ryan, TOM CLANCY, dead for 10 years, still an executive producer, Eartha Kitt, Dirk Pitt, fundamentally broken, the girl plot, the promise of blowing up the canal, The Eagle Has Landed, Kelly’s Heroes (1970), 9th novel out of 75, more successful better selling pen-name, a drawer novel, a retelling of Of Mice And Men with a kidnapping, poured shitlib sauce all over it, famously right wing?, both parties are in favour of war, what do you mean when you say right wing, Steinbeck, the distribution of wealth, the ultra wealthy are against the distribution of their wealth, old money vs. new money, JFK to 9/11: Everything Is a Rich Man’s Trick (2014), George Herbert Walker Bush, the head of the CIA, 1963, his middle names, those are the people who run the state, WWI or not, let’s invest in Hitler, Henry Ford, full size painting of Henry Ford, IBM, Hitler used IBM, the Hollerith counting machines, James Tiptree, Shakespeare’s Planet, The Night Land, a lot of wading through a lot of kissing, mostly kissing, pining for kissing, 6 hours and 12 minutes, one is very very genre, one is very very experimental, a long tradition vs. pioneering, fantasy, Heavy Metal magazine, power armour, chainsaw lance, William Hope Hodgson, The House On The Borderland, James M. Cain wrote it, a super-good read, trippin balls, fishing trip in Ireland, a crevasse going into the Earth, assaulted by pigmen, sister is sleeping, his dog turns to dust, Lovecraft before Lovecraft, skulls being boiled, the whole concept of the hero, reject the idea completely, grown, the squeecore, let’s eat food and talk about snappy dialogue, the books that win Hugos, fiction inspired by Joss Whedon, perhaps a little uncharitable here and there, they all have MFAs, go to Clarion and pay the $6000 to be in the union, pal around enough, slip up and say something racist, a real phenomenon, changing your ways, buy a Hugo on ebay, how you gonna stop someone, you could get sued, products you can’t buy on ebay, you can’t buy an oscar, a rocketship, trade her some masters of the universe in the spot where one of her broken Hugos was, Your Haploid Heart, The Werewolf Principle, Project Mastodon, The World That Couldn’t Be, Our Children’s Children, thriving tribes of genderless natives, Gavin Duncan didn’t care, the berries cured mental illness, ten rows of vua, dead friend Gregg Margarite, LibriVox, Hellhounds Of The Cosmos, conflict, internal conflict, peach pie vs. apple pie, just a place and a setting and a story, stories with no conflict, that’s not a story that’s a display, no money for pizza, no problem, The Gift Of The Magi by O. Henry, the pornographic Gift Of The Magi, three wise men show up at the door with a pizza, well after the holidays, original art, who doesn’t like Clifford Simak?, everyone should, the way Douglas Adams, since I was a teenager, the right age for it, doesn’t hold up too well as an adult, get to the fucking point, getting annoyed, flying by the seat of his pants, the concepts are pretty heady, it helps to be young and thinking everything is dull, fun and hilarious, a frictionless surface, old science fiction story, No More Friction [by David H. Keller], Portals Of Tomorrow edited by August Derleth, it feels perfect, can’t stop rubbing it, do a double, Weinbaum is Mr. Sparks, an army psychiatrist, Death By Snu Snu, Weird Tales, psychologically deep, about writing, reality changes, The Hypnoglyph by John Ciardi, how short is it?, page 3 to 15, never ever have to take a show down, the Weinbaum list, had he not died of cancer he’d have been bigger than Heinlein, John Ciardi, actual 54, A Grocery Of Limericks, procastinating projects, Justified, very Elmore Leonard, Raylan, his last book, a cash grab, set in Kentucky, Graham Yost, TV Ontario, a movie family, arcturian space crystal, a cat likes to be stroked, tropism, every surface of the body, innately happy, objects for rubbing, old Chinese medicine, curio stuff, netsuke, chairs irresistible to the buttocks, sexual potency, his last child was born when he was 84, good dreams, the natural tactile organ, it is pleasant, pleasure is absolutely irresistible, I want less than you do, a curious coincidence, poisonous cheroots, do we collect so we can tell yarns, I’ll collect you, a new audience a new opportunity, the humidor, sachets, a terrific story so far, denubian brandy, a pause before the yarn that no story teller can omit, last blast into space, killed the wanderlust, being filthy rich is hardly the worst fate imaginable, an asteroid belt just popping, just an asteroid belt, pure diamond, federation prize money, a hunting implement, a snare, there are queerer things than that in space, a culture was founded on it, you’re not ready to believe, a yarn’s a yarn, that’s what space is, the constant reoccurrance of the incredible, unless you’ve got a prehensile hand and supra-orbital arch, the hand is good for picking things up, examining them, beginning to get ideas, an ungulate couldn’t use a tool in a billion years, that’s the sort of argument that gets hot in space, sidehumans, we didn’t make a report, as if running an inventory, buried in thought, coming up from a caveshaft, over the little polished dimple, the treasure room, what a lovely target I’ve made for a blackmailer, terrans can mate, I seem to be beyond surprise at this point, such lush pickings, still stroking the thing, too sound, reasonably proximate common ancestor, convergent evolution, without a common ancestor, deep space, the polished thing in his hand, to get back to DK-8, the hair and the skin structure, perpetually misty, all tropical, a fur covering, diffuse sunrays, die of suburn, nature always has a trick of trying to deal two cards at once, a tremendously developed tactile sense, their tropisms, it simply cannot stop, down into and over, a tactile science, tool culture, tactile culture, a rigid tribal matriarchy, working up a little voodoo, tactile gratification, they grow incredibly obese, a survival characteristic, such perfect control of their skin surfaces, strangely well proportioned, such hard wood, grainless, a huge seed, something like an avocado nut, extremely hard, then men set them out in the forest, these gadgets take care of all of that, they just can’t stop, the ruling clan of women, the slaughtering compound, his politeness was unfaltering, the men used to have unmanageable spells, hypnotize them, stops thrusting, breeding the life-wish out of the males, hardly enough men left to work the traps, the tribal leaders, new vigorous males, fresh blood for the lifestream, why I came back alone, the only male ever to leave DK-8, never, really, left, it, a puff of smoke, his eyes remained fixed straight ahead, only the fingers of his right hand continued to move, a door swung open, something huge and pale, a very Jonathan story, first sold story Going Native, humans and aliens mating, your cheroot is getting to you, getting over the covid cough, human in a legal sense, no matter how much they look human, anthropologist are busy learning if they can mate, a real challenge, complicated taboos, one species committing genoicide against the other, you like autism, autism in fiction, the OCD, not internal, an external force, The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Connell, August Derleth, the best of 53, Philip K. Dick, Robert Sheckley, Alfred Bester, Margaret St. Clair, Henry James, Anthony Boucher, James Blish, Mildred Clingerman, Clifford D. Simak, every story is a winner, such a good year, in future episodes, Anthony Boucher, a trilogy of novellas, One In Three Hundred by J.T. McIntosh, Earth is going to be destroyed, at least the first one is public domain, the government of the world, now we all gotta go to space, all going to go to Mars, one random dude, the most worthy people, elderly folk has wisdom, Orphans Of The Sky, piloting it from Earth to Mars, they give the rich people the good ships, One Too Many, abusing the comparison, reminds me of Poe, structured like a Poe story, The Cask Of Amontillado, little jokes about it, Behind The Curtain by Francis Stevens, very Poe, very sexual, getting his alien girlfriend a man, not prudish, psycho-sexual, use this piece of wood, a fidget spinner, it saw the future, very autistic, hypnosis is a very 50s thing, reading more David H. Keller, psychological depth, Binding Deluxe, The Little Husbands, a male bookbinders club, they’re all misogynists, of all the men who were mean to me, kinda sexy, Encyclopedia Britannica, one letter of the alphabet is missing, likes to see men tied up, tattoo on his back, turned into books, a subset, always got a wife going on, set in Africa, a forgotten writer, he’s on the second tier, Nictzin Dyalhis, a Weinbaum guy, A Martian Odyssey, a sequel, Worlds Of Weird, The Sapphire Goddess, Slaughter Of the Innocents, Weird Tales stock characters, not written for print, not hearing a strong preference, Sam Moskowitz, The Lotus Eaters, all of Weinbaum’s writing, The Hidden Planet, Donald A. Wollheim, Robert E. Howard, Frank Belknap Long, need short stories, enough time to discuss, The Sea-Thing, Giants In The Sky, really weird, the k is silent, The Horror Expert, The Man With A Thousand Legs, Mississippi Saucer, The Dog-Eared God, The Man From Time, The Man The Martians Made, The Ocean Leech, a sea-vampire story, The Sky Trap, The Timeless Ones, the pulp crew, the Cirsova-sphere, Asimov’s got good short stories, a boy who speaks with badgers, 1975, is this how you identify, getting into Avicenna, Canadian farm, half of Canadian children’s literature, Owls In The Family, My Side Of The Mountain by Jean Craighead George, makes friends with animals, Hatchet by Gary Paulsen, 5 hatchet sequels, very well written for a children’s book, Brian’s Winter, back to the hatchet, hatchet with a girl, live in the forest as an adult, not into pleasing people, decades, centuries into the future, he’s rubbing a clitoris, super-sexual, reflecting back on petting cats?, the surface that’s irresistible to touch, design work, look good feel good, the whole Ikea thing, as cheaply and with as few materials as possible, paper with a thin veneer of plastic, a pile of paper with a plastic coating, the opposite problem, this design school from the late 20th century, nostalgic for comfortable furnitures, 4 hours versus material, those young bladders can go all morning, Jesse will be talking in the background, solved a lot of the world’s problems, Galaxy: 30 Years Of Innovation, good magazine, a shadow of its former self, each story has an introduction by the author, the scene there, all the authors are living in New York, Alfred Bester wrote a story about that, Roman a Clef, recognized himself and was quite offended, Horace Gold is Galaxy magazine, John W. Campbell, nobody is super-mad at Horace Gold, homophobic fascist!, far right wing, too conservative, he’s a fuckin nutter, The Cold Equations, a reactionary old man, people get hung up, Frederik Pohl’s a communist, when you read C.M. Kornbluth, only 7 pages, she’s never going to be public domain, killed her husband and had no kids, murder suicide, suicide pact, probably definitely a lesbian, we’re both CIA, my husband says its okay, hangs up the phone, holding hands and a gun, Cost Of Living, the first one slid by, that boy of his, would he mature and take his place in society?, always kidding, he’d committed suicide, it would have been great to be a rocket pilot, a different ending, that pisses off author, that doesn’t piss off squeecore readers, the later one is probably Sheckley’s, bow out, the introduction, Jesse loves Sheckley, he’s my fave, this guy was an important science fiction writer, Scott Miller, narrator, Watchbird, autonomous drones that will zap people who are thinking about murder, a pre-crime thing, I’m not going to commit a crime, that’s why you’re dead, I don’t understand why we need civil liberties at all, the public domain version, not today, Philip K. Dick stories, a father a son in a house, future gadgets, some of his novels are meandering, highly influential to Douglas Adams, Mindswap, one damned thing after another, Candide by Voltaire, it came up, the etymology of Candide’s girlfriend, pussyhinge, giant aliens, Micromegas, novella, a long time, low on the battery.

Seven Pillars To Hell by Hugh Marlow

Sheba by Jack Higgins

Sheba By Jack Higgins

Sheba by Jack Higgins

Sheba by Jack Higgins

The Hypnoglph by John Ciardi

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The SFFaudio Podcast #778 – READALONG: Houston, Houston, Do You Read? by James Tiptree, Jr.

The SFFaudio Podcast #778 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, Scott Danielson, Trish E. Matson, Will Emmons, and Jonathan Weichsel talk about Houston, Houston, Do You Read? by James Tiptree, Jr.

Talked about on today’s show:
a collection of feminist science fiction, 1976, Vonda McIntyre, Racoona Sheldon, what dynamite on my bookshelf, me, and yet you showed up, cardboard box with sawdust at the bottom, The Screwfly Solution, she has a hobby horse, a point of view, Robert A. Heinlein, what people on twitter were saying about this book, interested in what the text says, the audio drama, the acting, the choices that the editor made, the ending, the central metaphor, it’s a pun, girls don’t read, classic history, a lot of sparks, pretty good, time jumps and transitions, what the hell’s going on, in chronological order, the novella jumps around a bit, the audiobook narrator, not great job, textually complex, she wasn’t terrible, all those voices, the Connies and the Judies, Australia, the Canadianism, the one word: aboot, northern Canada, northern Alberta, any kids?, no evidence for that, still under copyright, good prominence, more actively marketed, we are digging this stuff, we readers, we heard good things about this author, Hollywood is making so much Philip K. Dick, the estate is trying to sell that stuff, the Edgar Rice Burroughs estate, not being exploited, getting books into hands of people, Her Smoke Rose Up Forever, especially Andy, a tremendously translated narrator, Oliver Wyman, a vocal chameleon, Katey Sagal would be ideal, a spark of comedicness, a very serious story, a little too serious, I’m holding a skull while reading a book, wry humour, not brought out by the narration, super-subversive, the men were just being drugged and put back to sleep again, being put down like dogs, the “good one”, he has no brain for him, why he drinks the hemlock, Socrates ending, sweet smiles, he’s drinking it willingly, the circumstances are such, antidote for the drug, it makes a choice, he’s saying that unknowingly, pretty horrible, tastes cool going down, peace and freedom or death, so horrible, everybody is making their own decisions, hive mind, girls talk it out, it’s a pirate ship, Jesse, is this anarchism?, the answer is: maybe, approval from them, on a pirate ship, orders when in battle, the platonic ideal, Blackbeard, the golden of piracy, mutineers and slaves, the consequences for breaking one of the articles, quartermaster, share you out, this is not a pirate ship, an anarchist society, how your house works, the husband is the captain and the wife is the first mate, a horrible household, patriarchal households in the US and Canada, religious ones, a lot to say about religion, not organized like a captain, corporations, a lineal structure, flatten the structure, a company vs. a corporation, we never go to Earth, three drunk guys, the entirety of the story, did she have a POV, what people said about this, psychopaths, I’m so glad you are not my boss, this is horrible, quotes, back up your evidence, while Jesse does a search, Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed, The Tyranny of Structurelessness, observations of various feminist groups, the loudest voices dominate, nebulous, a more ruthless power, a world being inherited by woman, this is not facts, migrant, reproduced by cloning, rich white women like herself, Alice B. Sheldon, your faces oh my sister, from the male perspective, a culture of women who no longer have that problem, David Santa something, irradiated itself, quite the read, SinclairJM1987, if all men die, we are already capable of impregnating ova with another ova, in the 1970s, all the human males died, you girl girl!, holy shit!, women studies department, discussions of the books we’re reading, we think cloning is bad, Hitler’s army of clone Hitlers, making millions susceptible to disease, 11,000 different clones, 4 lines, this is a problem, so provocative in this book, the way some people think about Heinlein, good for me, dangerous for you, second wave feminism, Herland, The Yellow Wallpaper, Will should love this, three men get in a balloon, a retelling of The Lost World, a lost plateau covered in women, three American men show up, let’s party, active rape scenes, the sequel book, entirely Amazonian society, women do men’s jobs, so hard, to the nth degree, this is nightmare world, mom killing you, this guy’s a fuckin monster, protecting women from other men, giving no fucks, there are good men, in vino veritas, Thomas Ligotti, Wayne June, that sounds interesting, even harder than The Screwfly Solution, the hard feminism of Tiptree, uncompromising, ruthlessness of a pleasant smile and a faraway look, this is for your own good, sperm samples, Ethan Of Athos by Lois McMaster Bujold, get some eggies, artificial wombs, needing genetic diversity, why did she put it into space, just for the joke?, the pun?, money, farmers, everybody takes turns, four industries, activities, the loom, there for fun, Venus is boring, two million people, interest and work, a very ambitious book, cut down, too much at the beginning, the meat of the middle, the jokes, bad take about H.G. Wells not needing to be read anymore, oh my god, no idea, right away, told by the narration, Andy, androgen, funny jokes, what was the name of the chess move?, Dagmar’s gambit, a real person, a celebrity, mononamed celebrity, like Madonna, Prince, singer, comedienne, actress, stunning physique, dynamic personality, towers over Frank Sinatra, plays dumb but is smart, Judy, the Australian, American and British actor, Cary Grant, Archibald Leach, tripped out on drugs, shoved into the girl’s shower, dick in his hand, such a girl, sympathetic to the women, stereotypes about men, why she’s so dangerous, we don’t need men, set the deck, frustrated with the story, not kind to the women, she’s mean, some ideal utopia, no!, Heinlein’s worlds as utopia, The Boys, Homelander is a hero, she’s suicidal from the beginning, hates the structures, wants change, she wants to smarsh the patriarchy, making a statement, not going to be the ultimate solution, women as cold, things of interest, it’s kind, it’s not like they tortured dogs, a laboratory experiment, almost clinical, rape scene, how are you feeling, deliberately off-putting, she’s making a statement about women, shame and humiliation, power, like a scientist, nobody has had sex in 300 years, is he going to emit sperm now?, emasculating the rape, not about power and violence, how interesting, the male perspective is embodied by these three guys, canny, too much of, Lorimer, most sympathetic, he gives in, impenetrable, need to drink this hemlock, can’t we all get along, written omnisciently, playing a character, hypermasculine stories, unable to write, edited by Vonda N. McIntyre, David G. Hartwell, when her name was found out, her spigot dribbled out, Racoona Sheldon is a new hidden identity, no big gap, gets something wrong, introduction is so interesting, on Archive.org, on page vi of the introduction, The Cold Equations by Tom Godwin, who is sacrificing whom, and return to his own time, the world of the future, his name is on a plaque, we did not mention our epidemic, editorial take, Lorimer doesn’t die in the end, causes the deaths at the beginning, utter buchwa, women on the ship, “our epidemic”, the context, 6-65, as to your first point, space cadre, 0.0, notice the tense, the men’s polio shots, killed virus, childhood diseases, he does not mention their epidemic, x-chromosoming epidemic, they’re gonna die, let this sit for a minute, Y: The Last Man, the premise, one dude and his male monkey, three astronauts, it’s a tour of earth, visiting a whole bunch of women, who’s gonna do this, he’s not really important, he’s a juggler, society continuing on, a much softer take, more ruthless, the simplicity of The Cold Equations, a birth defect, infanticide, suckle, stroke, clean, bury after you strangle, the horror of this story, mischaracterizing Jesse, such a mean lady, we all have aggressive fantasies, pop into your head, society tells you a lot of stuff, finding your identity, this language thing, this history thing, notes of their lives, she’s revolutionizing so many things, couple of hours, she’s brilliant, one image, crucific in one hand gun in the other, volume of information in one image, Zardoz (1974), the gun is good the penis is evil, symbolic heavy, negative female stereotypes, chatty Cathys, if you read this as a woman, that’s so wrong, women don’t innovate, tweaks, legit stereotypes, she doesn’t only do stereotypes, smorgasbord, a buffet, a time travel book, women kill all the men, a female utopia, men need to hurry up and die, who are the sympathetic females, sympathetic, very interesting too, when he’s all excited, I felt like hitting somebody, we need to make one strong for those manual tasks, open this pickle jar, extra hormones, anywhere near queerness, if somebody wrote this today, of course I love my sisters, unrealistic, how much Connies and Ingrids, this is not a sex bus, lose a lot of context, the sex act is consequential for a lot of people, can result in babies, a lot more casual, changes the focus, that’s how the one guy, put up a statue to my penis, they dose them, the truth drug, lack of inhibitions, let’s find out the truth of these men, shade the truth, omit things, unskilled liars, change slightly, the central joke, we do for a fact, our so called great books, who do you read, there’s our future Surak, Shakespeare, not very realistic, talking to other women about books, being frustrated by that, this is not all women, terrible episode of The Twilight Zone episode Not All Men, the consequences of this, let’s take this story and say it is not a cartoon, not a dystopia, humanity has lost its soul, half-species, half broken, trying to keep the language the same, the sick part, where the men won’t understand the women, if you’re not going to write books anymore, real trouble, studying history a lot, not realistic, outside of their experience, Andys perform the roles of males on stage, all set in space, an interesting stage play, when the rape scene starts, hard to watch, we don’t get a travelogue, soulless broken, a knife edge, it could fall one way or fall the other way, nobody is right in here, really mean, very cool, everybody sucks here, Am I The Asshole (a reddit forum), is this really a normal thing, a family of violent alcoholic, hard-ass, is Jesse gonna feel oppressed, smothering, if she was dumber and tried to do this, smart, wise, typical man, they need a gun, kind of American, if written by a non-American, the captain is religious, is that allowed by NASA, he’s number 2 on the ship, Buzz Aldrin, fumbled words from Armstrong, magnificent desolation, prescripted by a committee, a lunar base, that’s not our world, in 2023, circumsolar expeditions, page 14, he often says that too, the sparkle of Spica, like a blonde fu manchu, what’s his plan, evil world domination, those orientals with their devious ancient knowledge, reverse colonialism, planting the seeds for what she’s trying to say, hard to take a good take, what’s the good take, the evil Kirk separated from the good kirk, Scott’s wisdom, the good Kirk can’t make decisions, they’re gonna be suckin my cock all day, that episode is so strong, one Kirk running around the ship raping women, Yoeman Rand, that wasn’t like me, that’s not how women would run things, some women are really fuckin bossy, Margaret Thatcher was a woman, evil lady, city garden societies, more vicious that men, Mayor Daley, that’s the theory, Jesse doesn’t buy it, personal experience, a head nun, the abbess, fraternal brothers order with different characteristics, a benedictine nunnery, who’s most experienced at this particular thing, deferring too much, everyone in this podcast today, Will, Scott, Trish, Jonathan, don’t forget Paul, we’re on a boat in the middle of the ocean, solution solved, Heinlein, anybody been on a boat before?, Jesse has been on a lot boats, who knows how to swim, how to solve this problem, seniority is the traditional way, these are the elders, they have seen many summers, many winters, society, we’ll have a meritocracy, what have they developed, fertilizing ova, some innovations, only 2 million people, all we see is the ladies on the ship, what they tell us, a 17 book series, so much idea to be mined, very easily could have been a novel, keep it small, to the idea, very very good science fiction, it doesn’t even need to be set in a spaceship, the pun first, what’s the difference between men and women, Jesse is reading too much into the play on words, it’s not the focus of the story, having the word read in there, difficulty reading, partially occluded, a very fun metaphor for what she’s doing, we’re partially blinded, Earth should be here, October not April, a tiny little package, it couldn’t be any shorter, 1972, When It Changed by Joanna Russ, a planet settled 30 generations ago, a plague wiped out all of the men, whether the women want it or not, dueling scars, killed three women in duels, dueling scars, German empire, Nazism is a distraction, ova fusion, mainly agricultural society, a couple more generations, overwhelm us, a contrast to Tiptree, violence certainly still exists in this female society, a mayor, other political currents, a different view of an all female society, just one point of view, play on gender in the 1970s, The Left Hand Of Darkness, very New Wavy, Again, Dangerous Visions, a biography out there, 1976, one preceded the other, a male activity of practicing violence, no violence from the women in this book, very soft/passive, not demonstrative violence, men went after getting these scars, dueling class, guards all over their body, fencing, to prevent eye damage, you give the guy a scar, they don’t want to lose an eye, it works either way, put on your armour, if you don’t have one, people would cut their faces, the Nazi ideology, showing their masculinist, a John Sanford book, scatheless, glass fragments to show the boys back home, cutting women in the face, a man with a cut on his face is more male, heightens his desirability, Otto Skorzeny, cheek with the duelling smites, being tall, women are acting like men in that situation, men and women are different, we have more range than that, a lady who’s proud of their dueling scars, Paul can imagine a society where women are in charge, the hot thing, the one episode of Star Trek The Next Generation, where men are tiny and women are amazons, the very male of the audience of the show, lot of heterosexual women liked that, Jesse is not a heterosexual woman, ideas by the footload, it hurts, more other works, Seven Eves by Neal Stephenson, doorstopper, cloning and other techniques, the definite this, the definite that, yet to be , Brave New World is not a cloning book, eugenics, 888 page, is it a definitive cloning book?, quasi-sub-species of humans, traits and subtraits, chemist, farmer, biology is not destiny, way to long, if you like that sort of thing it’s your thing, Jurassic Park is a cloning novel, the scientist in the book, sinister in the book, genial in the movie, sparknotes, analysts say, Cyteen, your definitive clone novel, a masterpiece, the most ambitious sci-fi novel, what makes it so good?, Will’s just a young buck, the concepts of nature and nurture, the basic plot of the novel, multi-generational cloning project, get this brilliant chemist to come back, stuff in the background, free labour, citizens, clone brothers trapped on this compound, attracting all this attention, wheels within wheels, a lot of crunchy intrigue and shenanigans, a secret colony, the whole Cyteen world, cloning and tape learning, the old fashioned way, two ideas of feminist theory that are different, become leaders in those institutions, the women should leave and start their own institutions, radical feminist, maybe that would be horrible, right up to the end of this book, I don’t want to hate her, women are capable of a lot, a contribution to society if given equal rights, wait sixty years, what would happen if women had a society without men, this is horrible, twitter takes, maybe we just need to give them more books to read, getting focused on one part, an idea that a lot of people have, the author is advocating, his vision of the future, the characterization that comes in the movie, smiling handsome children, Doogie Howser comes on with a Nazi uniform, rooting for these Nazis, sometimes Heinlein is bad at his strawmanning, humanity has been strawmanned, reading Starship Troopers as fascism, putting murder in their book, deliberate misunderstanding, a deliberate missing of things, a sophisticated story, Lord Of The Flies, foisted upon children at school, find out what this means, the answers are made up, this is human society?, no girls on the island, hey high school kids, I need to tell somebody about this book, it’s gonna hurt, too strong, it isn’t that subtle, the material is smarter than the scholastic material, always, skipping all the inconvenient because parents would be upset, with a particular ideology, from a fundamentalist perspective, don’t give women any power ever, Scott is that in the Bible?, man is the head of woman, women should submit to men, is he right about that?, should men submit to women?, David G. Hartwell, the way the old human race used to run, bisexual, maybe it’s not as horrible as we think?, trust their words, returning to Earth, pitch pumping, Return From The Stars by Stanisław Lem, different solutions, an interesting parallel case, integrate back, the lost astronaut problem, a Planet Of The Apes story, kind of an asshole, fucking monkeys, kissing one at the end, 247 pages, Will could read that, 1966, a long tradition, deep freeze, coming back from star missions, disruptions to society, in January of 2024, Jesse likes short stories, Sword Of Welleran, Radium Pool, short stories pack a punch, sometimes there’s nothing to say, The Cave Girl, ad 250, in the Koran, 300 years later, no technology has changed, your king is the same name?, a role playing game, we haven’t stumbled over a railroad yet, back in time, a cutoff for the sewers, Romans had sewers, centralized heating, when some piece of tech began, differences between the various steam engines are very subtle, China before Europe, smartphones existed before the iPhone, old social media sites, an unrelated question, start a company called twitter, if you don’t use it you lose it, this tweet doesn’t exist, tweets don’t exist anymore, Skippy Peanut Butter, old Marvel or DC comics that come back, an Unknown Soldier, Obama is giving Batman a congressional medal of honor, if they don’t do it, Superman movies, Captain America with a van, Fantastic Four, serving a particular point of law, it’s not going to work Jesse, laying fallow, Weird Tales is technically still around, they’re separated by incontinuity, all the old titles with any sort of cachet, this is that old thing you like, Babel by R.F. Kuang, what makes a Scott book?, coming into Scott’s orbit, experience it for yourself, did not make the Hugo list, capital R reason, the locus award, fantasy Japanese invasion of China, not a Jesse book, T. Kingfisher, extremely, very charismatic, not a Jesse author, character focused, Jesse hates characters, historical fantasy battles, Evan might like this book, The Oxford Translator’s Revelation, what Evan likes, non-Americans, set in Oxford, Jonathan likes provocative stuff, What?!, oh good, starting to get a sense of Westerns vs. science fiction, hard to get a read on, they like books you would get at the library, the Dragon Awards, less radical, certain subset of fandom, still trying, decrying, this is terrible, own set of blogs, leftists ruining science fiction, evidence, proof, slide into the dms, Wells is archaic at this point, socialism was just a theory, are they trying to look for a fight?, Wombat Soco, a Morlock P. thread, the same mindset, we didn’t know back then, same idea, the strength of Wells is how he presents his ideas, he never says that, communism, socialism, they’re synonyms, a weird and dumb thing to say, even the Our Opinions Are Correct, just a troll of Jesse, okay whatever, don’t read Wells, Wells was passe, they think that, maybe they haven’t read, a chicken or egg thing, otherwise your missing good stuff, fish for squid, hallucinations, fermented kimchi, Heinlein promoted long pig, if there’s a restaurant and it is humanely prepared, thank you Trish, we had a delicious conversation, not even a cannibal, cannibal curious, cannibal flag, we all had mother’s milk, it’s attractive, overstating the case, no cannibal restaurants, lab grown human meat, on a farm for a week, a mink had gotten into one of the chicken houses, summarily executed, deboning two chickens, homegrown rooster, the differences are massive, radically different creatures, very different meats, bones and skin, chicken breeding, 22 rifle, firearms acquisitions certificate, nobody kept the fur, mink in the trap, not of the execution, Evan quit harder, facebook, dms to people, like their comics, what’s life like outside of twitter?, free and easy, focus on particular thoughts, wind in your hair, dog at your side, a playtex commercial, The Mysterious Stranger, more Twain, the Library America, Twain recently, that’s the problem, more definitive than others, the audiobook really shapes it, Francis Stevens, Behind The Curtain, The Elf Trap, we’re booking way into the future, strong ideas, fantasy, the Amber series, very absorbing, tripped out stuff, Robert E. Howard, Conan, doing philosophy, they don’t believe in god, like Triumph Of The Will, a canny hobby horse, gothic novels, hah, defeated it, he’s know for this characters, that’s really cool, Conan is basically the anti-christ (but not in a negative anti-Christ way), he doesn’t die, Trump: I likes sons of god who don’t die, the Christ story is really cool, it relies on love, lust and vigour and love of adventure and love of living, almost falls in love with Belit, he has his good cry, he’s fine with it, comes back with the dead, thank you very much, in the year 6000, reconstructing Jonathan’s personality with AI, what a reviewer wrote about it, that meant that I was in charge, Vomit on the moon book, another leap for human kind, first openly transgenderwoman on the moon, the irony, a lack of progress, satirist, people don’t know what satire is, Adam Chronos, the strong beautiful, black transgender woman in space, who the hell wrote this?, both sides, strength and beauty, what on god’s earth is this crap, missing the irony in the text, a hot topic, in 1000 years, distance, people forget, its much easier to see after a little bit of time, reading Jonathan Swift, the big enders and the little enders, a religious dispute, thou shalt crack the egg, some religious fight, the annotations, Jesse doesn’t trust annotations, the original publications, people’s bad ideas, the guy in the big red shirt wants to murder Jesse, he’s a communist or whatever, even Penguin books?, do tons of research, Schmoop, Trish, Sparknotes, where’s the quote, not quotations, Bokanovsky’s process, just look at the text, that’s illegal, that’s what the news is for, following a lot of libs, a hatelist on Biden, the argument wasn’t about the things that were posted, if it’s true I don’t care, always look at the original sources if possible, clon is not in it, google ngram, clone is a very old world, 1867, it’s happening in the 1940s, copy down what chat GPT says, cloning humans, the mammals don’t survive, a barrier to continuing, not a real viable solution, she’s clever, no, Jesse’s right, Scientific American, Popular Science, this is very interesting, Dolly the sheep stuff, most people don’t read a lot of science fiction, she’s very good at it, The Game Of X by Robert Sheckley, Strange Exodous is Abernathy, also an Italian movie, Seventh Victim, sign up for this game, hunted or hunter, the sevens club, bullet proof jackets, a girl who is suicidal, you don’t have to keep playing, if you’re in the game it’s fine, The 10th Victim (La decima vittima) (1965), The Monsters, Galaxy, H.L. Gold, blow will’s socks off, the newest thing that has happened for some time, where the new thing was happening, a substance resembling fire, on his thick tail, the fifth day of lugat, I have to go home and kill my wife, I’d hate to be late, Mindswap, so many good books to read, wait 10-15 years, the whole series thing, a sequel, everything has to be a series is deadening, counterexamples, The Stainless Steel rat series, Harry Harrison, they’re funny, very enjoyable, making exceptions, the first 3 Dragonlance books, too many, The Weirwoods, gets bad in the middle, good again at the end, plot holes, each one grates on you, a real dip in quality towards the middle, thank you so much.

Tor Double 11 - Houston, Houston, Do You Read? by James Tiptree, Jr.

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The SFFaudio Podcast #775 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: No-Man’s Land by John Buchan

The SFFaudio Podcast #775 – No-Man’s Land by John Buchan, read by Connor Kaye of The Eldritch Archives. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the book (2 hours, 13 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Will Emmons, Connor Kaye, and Jonathan Weichsel

Talked about on today’s show:
a much delayed show, war torn Europe, elves living in a cave, came back traumatized, your eulogy, trolls, he went to Poland, Germany, slipped in to Ukraine did some fighting, Connor’s life is getting very meta, plaid, Scotsman wear plaid, the Scottish weave, granite, in geology class, amazed Australian, accents, two years ago, listen back, damn it I missed that, Munaroar, why in Scotland they’re all speaking Gaelic, spoke Scot, national version, Welsh, part of France, basques, Celts in Turkey, dialects, talking to the caveman, starts makin sense, a Robert E. Howard version of this story, The Little People, a theory of where this story came from, a sphere of influence, trace back to Arthur Machen, Coven 13, the official Del Rey text, essentially this story without the outer narrator, a brother and a sister, the sister gets kidnapped, she’s a flapper, she can tell her sorority sisters, the brother goes nuts, told in 15 minutes, a Pict, a connection there, similar themes, an ancient forgotten race living in the British isles, The Shining Pyramid, hidden in the hills, they abduct people for their own purposes, degenerated, cro magnon man, rolling around in that gravy, flint arrowheads and cudgels, the most influential, you would know [if you’d read Machen], kinda like Lovecraft but Welsh, detective stories, an archaeologist on the trail, prehistoric people, some guys who find some prehistoric relics, 1895, five years before, abduct a woman, The Novel Of The Black Seal, The Red Hand, 1899, knowledge of those stories?, inspiration there, Howard read Machen, Out Of The Earth, a 21 minute story, Mr Jim Moon, WWI, Machen’s reputation today, The Bowmen, Robert W. Chambers, a romance novelist, his weird fiction, before he became a smash sensation with The Thirty-Nine Steps, still in university, the Governor General of Canada, ceremonial headdress, if mentioned at all, very fun, badly written, weird fiction, Famous Fantastic Mysteries, Weird Tales, the comparison to the Robert E. Howard, dwelling and a great swoon, this was lifechanging, changeling, one of the shepherds, I’m nuts, what ya readin’, sis?, tearin his shirt off, boxes a pict, the ghost of an ancient druid shows up, great power, The Grove Of Ashtaroth, The Wind Through The Portico, folk horror-ish, weird came later, interesting precursors, The Black Cat, no it isn’t, The Thrill Book, H.P. Lovecraft, “survival”, The Call Of Cthulhu, [Algernon Blackwood], the Munsey Magazines, “different stories”, “off-trail”, skinsuit, buy the license, generic stories of today, “The Unique Magazine”, a collection of stories that were weird, a jumble of junk, the good writers, Robert E. Howard, Lovecraft, the magazine that Edgar Allan Poe would publish in, adventure stories, a feature, not a regular western, somehow different, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Black Mask, crime stories rather than mysteries, to mean off the normal trail for that particular magazine, The Mystery Of Sylmare, filler material, the idea is so good, a weird fiction story, vampire fiction, the reproduction of trees using humans as fertilizer, not a normal werewolf story, there’s a vampire story in Sherlock Holmes, The Hound Of The Baskervilles, at least very strongly hinted, opposite of the original Scooby-Doo gothic, what is the author going for, very meditative, sells all his pict books, he goes back, he has to overcome that, a usual horror story, body horror, infected with a parasite, The Troop [by Craig Davidson], how do we really know, a sciency thing, carrying some ivermectin around, stuck on an island, based in history somewhat, the Picts, Julius Caesar, i’m calling a pro-vince, Engullund, there’s some druid’s yo, fucks off for 2,000 years, then the Germans say: we’re Germans!, Picti, the picture people, tattoos, woad, Braveheart (1994), going all pict, painting themselves blue, no longer distinct, likely what really happened, hid underground for 2,000, Bone Tomahawk (2015), beggar, first class ticket, low and stinky fellow, the furnaces going, an interesting image, an oriental stories story but set in Britain, Machen does this for Wales, turning foreign lands, exotic places, souks and hareems, you go underground, you find a lost world, industry, hidden in the mountains under thousands of pounds of rubble, a completely different interpretation, late romantic period, the romantic authors, going back to nature, something terrifying, La Belle Dame Sans Merci, kissed by an elf, Lamia by John Keats, disconnected from nature, walking, hiking, fishing, the natural world, modern encroaching on a natural space, learning pulls him both directions, learned university types, go out for a walk, a cave, a civilization, these degenerate, swoon, wight (vs. knight), wench, and no birds sing, so haggard and so woe begone, a faery’s child, pacing steed, fragrant zone, sweet moan, relish sweet, honey wild, manna dew, her elfin grot, so kissed to sleep, the latest dream I ever dreamed, death pale, horrid warning gaped wide, this is why I sojourn here, picked up a lot, reverses it, a grubby male, she’s an elf/nymph, connecting it to brownies, an elf sort of creature that does household tasks, boggles and boggarts, integrate folklore into science, by discovering the truth about what the folklore was connected to, moral horror, abducting women every twenty years, human sacrifice, recounting their history for him, the fabled ale, gold this and gold that, this was a rich land, these people are the dispossessed, the lack of physical description, the lore, 10,000 words of rich lore, a received document, he’s burned a lot of his papers, reconstructed for us by the editor, Blackwood’s Magazine, read backwards to find more stuff like you like, some of the differences in the ending, later versions, the original 1899, a huge insert, polite scorn, refused by the editor, primitive peoples of the north, unanimously rejected, another little insert at the end, his obituary, you can go and dig up and find this story is actually true, it is not for me to decide, an untrodden desert, The Shadow Out Of Time, Yithian civilization, the moors, at the time of Caesar Scotland was covered in trees, deforested the entire island, giving up on then hillbillies of Scotland, you want me to go to the police?, an insane asylum, a criticism of the way Scotland is treated, if you take London out of Britain England is very poor, the GDP has been fucked, interestingly political, lorded and put in charge of Canada, very smart, diplomatic, the call to action, the names of chapters were bizarrely changed, The Darkness Under The Earth, jumbled up, Famous Fantastic Mysteries, The Troubles Of A Conscience, The Watcher By The Threshold, go back to the earliest source, the abridged version, the most accurate, the good news about FFM, art for this story, where Heart Of Darkness was first serialized, from the period of Poe forwards, a story or essay, quasi-ghost stories, a story of colonialism with an overlay, journey into the underworld, ghost stories, in Victorian times, an examination of reality with a suspicious chip on its shoulder, the footnote in FFM is the same, written by the editor of the last chapter, editing stories for space, reprinted, fixed columns, A Princess Of Mars, reinserted, the first book publication, ended very suddenly, I jumped in my horse and rode off, in retrospect, most of it’s in there, looking at the first book publication, creative control, the author’s revision, Poe recycles, fill two pages, this illustration we have licensed, fiddling, improve, wight to knight, people like the idea of knights on horseback vs. guy, it wasn’t supposed to be set in the middle ages, walks, ride, the romantics are out romanticizing nature as it is, A Predicament, lifting from the European tradition, the magazine has an editor, Galaxy magazine, Horace Gold, the author’s version, which version to do, the expanded version, the art, the magazine that attracts you, Margaret St. Clair, Ray Bradbury, reprints from Munsey’s magazines, Virgil Finlay art, the covers for Skull-Face, Fantastic Novels, artists almost never renewed, lucky for us, a shame for his estate, fuck his estate, keep changing their company name, Heroic Signatures, hello, Elon, people ask for them, by his auntie or his cousin, mostly locked down by legal threats, Sword Woman, Black Agnes stories, trademark, legal bullying, fucked by Justin [Trudeau], Mistress Of Death, Blades Against France, international treaties, if you are interested, Wikisource, Oriental Stories, Magic Carpet, Weird Tales, crusader story, Clark Ashton Smith, let’s talk about No-Man’s Land, exoticising the familiar, the rednecks, the hicks, a heartland hinterland thing, North·West Romances, RCMP guys arresting minors and indians, prospectors, Jack London exploitation, a western genre, could’ve been a bear, if it was a bear it wouldn’t be weird fiction, the indians are effected by the white people showing up, the white man is the burden, indoctrinated into the white man’s beliefs, a weird inversion, most people don’t live in the north, Scotland isn’t that big, British Columbia is way bigger than England, the inability to talk to regular people, back from Iraq, shell-shocked, exoticising the heather, a fisherman, social gossip with the ladies, who his target audience is, Scottish dialect, phonetically, strong brogue, started off lighter, the ostler, hostel, The Inn by Guy De Maupassant, The Shining by Stephen King, hostler, the local who takes care of your horse, as all Australians and every New Zealander has, cheap flophouse, a source for local lore, the locals can’t understand me, slow down, boy, guy joins the police, [Far Below by Robert Barbour Johnson] a CHUD story, we have to keep their numbers down, a slow genocide over decades, you can’t talk about it with the regular people because they won’t understand, to expand the frontier, Antarctica, underground, Mars, defamiliarize yourself, The Matrix (1999), literally underground, the world behind the world, the shepherd and his sister, the devil, only in the darkness, they poke holes in my sheet, they leave arrowheads on a stone nearby, not a very scary story, the creeps, pricking the hole in the neck of sheep, they smoke their meat, gaining sustenance the strange way, living on the moors, if you don’t have a fire, on the train back, a Hawthorne story, smelters, 700 episodes, while academia is arguing, it’s your doctor, stage five cancer, reevaluate, will prep, romance pulp, the predicament that Graves has, the editor steps in, insert character, the other scene, the pricking of the throats, weird straw, a reed, what instrument is used, they’re chupacabras, swimming across the lake, when you seee the art in FFM, a scary interpretation, and he can hear the arrows, in true darkness, disorienting and upsetting, an almost alien landscape, the scarts, nick of the threshes, primordial beings, studying up on his whole life, oh shit, I’m in real danger, when he gets into the lake, they can’t swim, if he can just get ahead of them, three very delicious cups of coffee, hunting him through the night, read it the second time, long strong arms that can grab you, a terrifying thought to have, completely different style of horror, some gothic, The Monk by Matthew Gregory Lewis, a long labourius book, Jesse will find out in 7 months, a very Victorian idea, a 20th century idea, searching for the truth, shut their ears, shut their eyes, this is ridiculous, slightly outside the box, politics is in the academic world, all the shitty scientists, people on the periphery, bunch of rich dudes, Marie Curie and her husband, shit that’s really bad for them, it’s amazing finding these things out, a new element inside a puddle of black liquid, regularized, taught in schools, academics of science, [Ben] Franklin is doing science, who gets the credit, crazy time travel idea, the idea of time travel, la la la la la, so dangerous, you’ve got to be careful talking about that, the whole academic thing (they’re very close-minded), a quack, his career thus broken short, the recondite and the quack, the end of the obituary, terrified to be considered quacks, right now they’re talking about UFOs in congress, the 1940s, saying the same thing openly, rejecting his ideas, very dogmatic, the guy who has the facts and experiences vs. the regular ordinary people, a transformative experience of revelation, the framing device for The House On The Borderlands by William Hope Hodgson, Ireland, a house hanging over a cliff, a found document, pig-men, fever dream, parts of the manuscript are burned, the textual experimentation of the found manuscript, The Little People, putting that as part of the story, life imitating art, next thing you know we’re in the middle of a sentence, the man of bronze, he’s got his fists going, pig-men coming out if a portal, see you on twitter, Dermod’s Bane, don’t got visit ireland, don’t go fight that ghost, goes out and punches the ghost, modern American whose ancestors are from the old land, had Lovecraft written it the ending would have gone a different way, mentioned in Supernatural Horror In Literature, The Lurking Fear, some similarities, Worms Of The Earth, a pict warrior, Bran Mac Morn, the last Pictish king, trying to fight the Romans, the art from Famous Fantastic Mysteries, a quote, Algernon Blackwood, found among the papers of the late…, Of such great powers or beings there may conceivably be a survival, folklore is our connective tissue to history and a people, they just start telling their story to him, they don’t write things down, oral culture, quite beautifully connected, the way Lovecraft would have done it, degenerate, our projection rather than his intentions, native peoples of the area who have been driven underground, folk horror style, a lady to sacrifice and a dude to do the sacrificing, awesome, squamous, rugose, pretty horrific, almost reptilian, the sens of the underground, a woman in danger a man there to help, Lovecraft takes the romantic man saving a woman out of it, the lady led him down the garden path, digs into a grave and comes into a tunnel, he is one of them, Innsmouth, The Thing On The Doorstep, the body snatcher, a car trip, they go underground, freaky, a gold pillar and a scary lady who wants to have sex with him, certainly interesting, as always, connecting all these dots, a fun phenomena, when you know the great book of Eibon, creating the bookshelf, the literary connection, seeing The Shining Pyramid mentioned, being a literary detective is fun, Billy Buchan?, how is he connected to this story, archaeology, a similar idea around the same time, parallel thinking, six other stories, Pan is everywhere in the 1890s, Adrian Ross, poetry, a motif and an image, like lightsabers today, Starship Troopers, what do the kids like?, lady with a giant sword, cosplay and videogames, a sword so big you wouldn’t be able to lift it, go out the woods and get scared, wendigo, hanging out with the natives, they don’t necessarily explain, this is sacred, you can’t videotape this, someone a long time ago bunched with another someones realized that was a solution to a proble, there’s a hollow log and in that log was history, you can’t see what’s going on isnide there, there’s a smell, what weird fiction does with that kind of phenomenon, I can’t go passed my death, stick a little straw in there and see what comes out, From Beyond, what happens when you invent the microscope or the telescope, that’s really cool, teasing out someone we believed in, Will was a baby in the 1980s, Gremlins (1984), they’re cute but they’re evil (kinda like kids), don’t let them stay up after midnight, a chinese shop, this exotic pet, do this and don’t do that, Mogwai, all the things go wrong, the history of gremlins comes out of airplanes, Captain Kirk, kill the gremlin, Roald Dahl, airplane difficulties, what caused it?, saying to your armourer: you fucked up, scapegoat, a way of solving problems, who’s stealing the things, who made the milk go sour, the miscarriages, the evolution from a house spirit, a way of solving problems, a diplomatic way, be on the lookout for this thing, an actual creature that stalks the muskeg, pine forests of Ontario, people going nuts is bad, The Good People by Hannah Kent, changeling, swapped with a ferry, bad baby, swapped baby, justified infanticide, Mr Jim Moon [of the Hypnogoria podcast], a birth defect, to help on the farm, in this desperate situation, the same thing, boggles, introduction, a friend who is a bit kooky, the precursor of our main character, enthusiastic about it, a former professor on the street, there was a reality behind these things, a historical basis provided, making these connections, an explanation for it all, causing problems with the sheep, stuff they can eat that poisons them and is contagious, a legitimate explanation, fits well into the horror framework: we’re going to expand your worldview, where everybody is, angels six, bandit means enemy plane, bogie means unknown plane possibly enemy, presumably hostile, bugge, frightening spectre, bogeyman, boggart, a tool to control children, the boggart’s going to get you, genus loci, spirit, a household spirit, household animals to go lame, brownies, perform various, pre-girl, swearing loyalty to a queen I’ve never met, the brownies, badges for obedience, household elf, connecting it to the things in the past, introducing a new idea, learn about nature, channel it in a good way, in both contexts, the girl scouts, the cubs, little bears, to domesticate them, helping grandmas cross the street, light fires, totally disconnected in our childhood minds, references to folklore, it’s what you’re used to, we’re the brownies, they recognized that term, the sweet dessert, cute, decades go by and it becomes lost, let everything go, let it wash over you, an experiencing on it on one level, engaging on another level, key to enjoying the experience, The Player (1992), the medium of movies vs. the medium of a book, gone through before, if you’re going to extract all the juice, audiobooks are not great for a lot of that experience, it depends on the book too, depending on the author’s writing style, this is very dense, making an audiobook, listening five or six times, by modern standards, The Count Of Monte Cristo, it’s hard to get through, not for a casual listen, when you’re ready for a deep dive into late 19th century fiction, barely, a good introduction to this, if you’ve got through this podcast so far, listen to the audiobook again, he’s really fun, a faced paced and fun book, a short novel, John McNab, bored aristocrats decide to go poaching, oppressed by ennui, that’s his audience, that’s him as well, a Lord Dunsany figure with more scrappy Scottishness, he started off as an upper class twit, landed gentry, Lord Tweedsmuir, Adrienne Clarkson, a media figure, journalist, a lot of politicians would have come into peripheral politics, he isn’t going to offend you, cater to his audience, Lt. Governors, ex-politicians who didn’t offend anybody or ex-media figures, for propaganda, service to the empire, the tail end of the empire, died in office, 1935-1940, born in 1875, professoring, readers, actual pay, adjuncts get fucked, ex-academia, academia is as lame as shit, plains indian headdress, we care about you, you are now part of the tribe so don’t fuck us, they all sign that, power struggle stuff, when the United States wants to coup them, kicking out the queen, dismiss the prime minster, socialist policies, the chief scout, he’s your boss’ boss, do they have all the patches?, extracted all the juice, the differences, Out Of the Earth, they’re evil children because they’re small, the corruption, The Bowmen, taking it as a true story, a cool idea: children are becoming corrupting, a criticism of war measures, if you wrote that story today, a trucker metaphor, Nazis, Trumpists, hard to imagine, we turned Nazi into a bugbear, sonnenrad, totenkopf, saluting like Julius Caesar, how do you tell the difference?, pop culture media vs. folklore, superheroes, Batmans, Elon Musk is supposed to be Iron Man, he’s like Tony Stark, licensenced things, owned by Disney, your own folklore metaphor, harder to tell stories that are cool, the enclosure of the commons that happened to stories, what makes these stories cool, the place where, criminalizing poor people, tenant farmers to wool industry, as you cut up reality and turn it into capital you reduce the ability to tell stories, you have to go to the periphery, or to the moors, or to Mars, Mars is the innovation, Planet Stories, stories on Venus, A Voyage To Arcturus, create a secondary world like C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, the secondary world of Hyboria, the sorcery part, a short story set in ancient Mesopotamia, The Voice Of El-Lil, a prince rides out to a hermit, lay a curse, tell information, do a favour for me, you have to kill someone for me, one stroke, completely circumvented, Oriental Stories, October-November 1930, his King Kull is Atlantis, just in service of the plot, someone’s betrayed him, talk to a guy who just tells him with magic, disposable, magic is almost unnecessary, vampires or winged men, out of body experience, the fantastical landscape of Africa, authentic Buchan experience, is that what I’m going to do with my life, a fun psychological story, that trainride back, the swim away, into the psychology, transformed over the course of the story, new aspect of reality, messes you up, Jesse’s thesis, the heartland hinterland thing, people are on their own and fucked in the country, make your argument stronger, really cool, page 18 of the original blackwoods, some form of mutton, ewes, a little smoking, the tasteless morsels, dry with thirst, the vessel was of gold, a miracle of flavour, I had known that flavour all my life, the sweet things of the moorland, that lost delicacy of the North, the heather ale, hidden mine of the precious metals, Cairnsmor, Gledwater, glen, home of gold, that secret of their heather ale, corries, freely without a scruple, not enclosures, then like a clap, this too spelled death, no fear of betrayal, the first time he’s there, making him a part of the ceremony in the perfect victim kind of way, The Wicker Man (1973), the food is not cooked properly, that’s lost, tasted before he was born, tolerable kindness, I had spoken their language, a wooden box in the corner, their orgy around the fire, why is everything gold, subject to England, ran the empire, talking to the poorest guy, the fires of industry burning, using it as a metaphor, the leftovers of colonization, it’s there, hmmm, a racial element to it, the biblical god (not capital g god), the fate of one is tied to the other, a capitalist colonialist thing, built an estate in this wilderness, The Lurker At the Threshold, syphilis, slowly going mad, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Ethan Brand, pretty close to done, the amazing novel I found, it’s Australian, an anonymous novel from the late 1890s, Gay Life In Melbourne, girl gets turned into a prostitute, controversial, am very excited to share, a spicy novel, 32 racy chapters, you should want to read this to me, Help! Help!, unmistakably feminine, the distressful sounds, a masculine form, confused mass of dainty draperies, an expression of agony and terror, “blazing eyes, it’s all right, miss”, the light from the lamp fell softly on her countenance, her fresh young beauty, he came out from behind a tree guard, what do you suppose, mustered up a blush, smiled, no-no, he did not effect his purpose, she takes it pretty cooly, smoking hot, a peculiar smile, a ladyfriend, missed the tram, so you live with an auntie, do you?, equally of course, put in a little hug where he thought it would do the most good, what his precise thoughts were cold print refuses to express, a party tonight, that peculiar smile on deck again, queer, this time of the morning, why it got canceled, racy, and Victorian, what year the tram started in Melbourne, probably 1890s, Trove, Police Gazette, would you like to be lectured about cultural sensitivity?, there’s racist stuff in here, we called them something bad in the past, one photo, about 9 hours, three months to do, maybe that time would go fast, you’d have a gay time doing it, she’s holding his neck, tiny little feet, minuscule, a big head, smoky eyes, she’s smoking hot impudence, unadulterated, what we’re about to witness, it’s wonderful, adultery, Auntie is the madam, they’re not friends they’re customers, interesting slice of Australian literature, modern cases, Little Sisters bookshop, constant lawsuit from the BC Civil Liberties Association, trynna make prude, way earlier in upside down books, how to do jiu-jitsu, buy the VHS, by a pamphlet, Hodgson’s story, Frederick Bailey Deeming, a candidate for Jack the Ripper, a good mustache, convicted and executed, six victims, more time free, The Harder They Fall (2021), too stylized, power fantasy, we’re supposed to think she’s powerful?, brinksmanship, Heinlein says okay, Mr. Heinlein I hate you so much sir, threatening to press the nuke button, the dialogue, all the shooting and the style, the focus was on the wrong things, the Bass Reeves story, Hell On The Border (2019), a historical novel trilogy, pretty good, Boss Level (2020), one of the Purge movies, a science fiction idea, what happens when you turn of the law, seems like a Heinlein thing, Niger is trying to get out from under France, French government pornography, pornography reduces sexual activity that produces babies, people can have babies if they want to, Onlyfans, you know our whole businessmodel?, regular streaming, fake communists pretend to yell at each other, Twitch, a way to record clips, kids staying at home, going outside, people playing games, non-important things, understand the appeal, social media platforms, influencers through traditional media, YouTube is very deep, doesn’t Evan do YouTube, supermodel asses and bitcoin, two things that appeal to a lot of people, finding hot things, giving money away, lady fixes up old cars, it’s her job, the giving away is to attract attention, Bryan Alexander’s youtube, a recorded meeting, reference material, stamina, having a manic spell, talking about the wrong things, the people interested in old books are all psychopaths, digging up and collecting things, a male thing, lesbians acting like men, for cars or music, deep dive on music, collecting, construction ones, books: nobody likes those, how many hours to find a bookstore?, how far to find a slurpee?, how many doors to find an x-box?, owns a pulp magazine, you aint gonna get popular, a popular podcast, compared to what?, almost none of the followers, Penthouse Comics, a good ratio, a key indicator, following way to many people, spillover, Pulpcover’s is crazy, 35,000, follows 62, he knows you, asking you to scan those, can you scan these please?, his website’s very useful and comes up a lot, all the evil corporations trade him around like a hockey star, Lenovo, Raytheons or something, spill all his known guts, Mr. Pulpcovers, fun interaction, old pulp stories, a pretty good facebook group, old guys who’ve read a lot of pulp stories, not easy to find, incredibly easy, real life access, when there was a bookstore, magazines for sale, pulpfest places have actual stock, acutely aware, enthusiastic, an extra scanner, cheap it works well, still supported by modern windows, $50 bucks, shitty printer eats your ink, its good to have a printer so you can print up stuff you want to read, you also have the file, do the whole issue, be a contributor to the renaissance, between the Greeks and the middle ages, this Arabic renaissance, a cultural renaissance, shit gets sent back to Europe before copyright, because of all those copyists, it’s immoral if you don’t copy, it’s good for them, they need to do it, a Cirsova tweet, he’s gonna be on the podcast, The Weirwoods by Thomas Burnett Swann, Christina Rossetti, she’s so good, so incestuous, and lesbian, fully illustrated, Goblin Market, some sexual excitement, since pornography has been banned in Niger…, look at the beautiful illustrations, trimming her hair, her sister, the goblins are gathering round, drug or sex-withdraw, come buy!, all ripe together, taste them and try, figs to fill your mouth, that’s what the goblins are saying, 21 pages, Lizzie veiled her blushes, fingertips, pricking up her golden head, hobbling down the glen, her glossy head, one bears a plate, no, no, no, their evil gifts would harm us, one crawled like a snail, in the pleasant weather, like a rush embedded swan, forced rhymes are hard, leering at each other, brother with queer brother, rough nuts brown, was still their cry, in tones as smooth as honey, your turn, good folk I have no coin, all my gold is on the furze, gorse, buy from us with a gold curl, sucked their fruit globes, man-rejoicing wine, that juice, that juice, cloy, too sweet, she sucked and sucked and sucked the more, she sucked until her lips were store, an orgy, a food party, 1859, wise upbraidings, the backstory, wore their flowers, sought them by night and day, then fell with the first snow, kissed her, on their mother twigs, my teeth have met in, pellucid grapes, pure the wave the drink, it’s fun right, like two pigeons in one nest, like two blossoms on one step, gold for awful kings, not a bat flapped, cheek to cheek and breast to breast, cows, house, cakes for dainty mouths to each, as modest maidens shou[l]d, most like a leaping flame, plucked purple, the sunset flushes, the bank was steep, the most sexual poem about fruit, the customary cry, sugar baited words, brisk fruit merchantmen, I dare not look, you should not loiter, each glowworm winks her spark, what should we do[e]?, come buy our fruits, her tree of life drooped from the root, her pitcher dripping all the way, gnashed her teeth, day after day night after night, exceeding pain, hawking their fruits, burn her fire away, her kernel stone, watched for a waxing shoot, the sandful breeze, and would not eat, cankerous care, she heard the tramp of goblin men, sex with a whole bunch of men, Lizzie’s the non bad-girl, the goblin had their way with Laura, she lost her virginity to too many goblin men, where the plot comes in, feared to pay too dear, fell sick and died, first glazing rime, frost, The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner, knocking at death’s door, gorse again, running, leaping, crowing, pulling wry faces, wombat-like, snail-paced in a hurry, hugged her and kissed her, panniers and plates, French for bag, a bread bag, pluck and them suck them, pomegranates, figs, eat with us, our feast is but beginning, be welcome guests with us, give me back my silver penny, proud, cross-grained, uncivil, turned from seduction into a rape, held her hands and squeezed their fruits about her mouth, flood, obstreperously like a beacon left alone, a fruit crowned orange tree, like a royal virgin town, mad to tug her standard down, she’s a city under siege, grind their fruits into her mouth, shocking, 20 cannot make her drink, mauled and mocked her, lip from lip, juice that syrruped all her face, some scudded on the gale, knew not was it night or day, copse and dingle, her penny jingle, she ran and ran, dogged her, jibe or curse or something worse, windy paced, out of breath, Laura up the garden, suck my juices, goblin dew, eat me, drink me, flung her arms up in the air, the fruit forbidden, kissed and kissed and kissed her, mouth, drought, angry mouth?, her lips began to scorch, wormwood, rent all her robe and wrung, beat her breast, like an eagle, female eagle, a flying flag when armies run, overbore her lesser flame, which an earthquake shatters down, headlong in the sea, pleasure past, is it death or is it life?, getting close to the end, dinner, cooled her face, golden sheaves, new buds with new day, Laura awoke as from a dream, more modest now, not one thread of gray, when both were wives, her early prime, the haunted glen, blood?, how her sister stood, wow, bid them cling together, there is no friend like a sister, to lift one, to strengthen as one stands, super-sexual, the good sister, covered in jizz, sticky, citrusy and delicious, apparently, your sister’s your best friend, don’t have sex outside of marriage, sex is wonderful and exciting, you gotta hold back, none of the men will wanna date you, unlike Jeannie, get dignity back somehow, her refusal to have sex with these goblin men, somehow allows her sister to get her dignity back, licking the juices off of her, about the images, I like fruit, the moral is the point of the story, sex is a reality how do you deal with it, having orgies with men, male female dynamic, more subject to the consequences of sexual drives, babies you have to give away, striking, thank you for sharing that with me, Korean takeout?, divorced from her Korean heritage, Meg And Will’s?, generic North American, pizza is a popular choice, Mexican places, while we still have choices, people in seven months will be excited to know what Will had for dinner.

No-Man's Land (The Watcher By The Threshold)

No-Man's Land

No-Man's Land

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The SFFaudio Podcast #774 – READALONG: Farnham’s Freehold by Robert A. Heinlein

Farnham's Freehold - IF - Worlds Of Science Fiction
The SFFaudio PodcastJesse, Paul Weimer, Maissa Bessada, Trish E. Matson, and Jonathan Weichsel talk about Farnham’s Freehold by Robert A. Heinlein

Talked about on today’s show:
unmuted, you’ve probably read my books, a wonderful novel from July 1964, Worlds Of If, very proud of himself, as a teenager, screenshotted, omigod, adding a new element to the story, explore this idea in the most horrible way, the Baen paperback, spoiler on the cover, the last page of the book is on the cover, what’s going on here, who wrote this, the title gives away the ending, what we now call preppers, a newspaper article, a freeholder, inspired by Heinlein, Heinlein’s changing the world, magazines about how to survive a zombie apocalypse, wanting the Walking Dead to be real, Freedom Is A Lonely Thing, what the book’s about, about being a slave, an oxymoron, if you hold something it is not free, held by your daughter/wife, mini biography of Alan E. Nourse, the dedicee, Friday was partially dedicated to the wife, both Navy men, who’s the main Heinlein in this book, former Seabee, decided to retire, 2,000 people under him, a helluva book, the scene where they’re outside and Ponce’s airplane shows up, Duke is going to live in a cave with his mother, some transition scenes, before and ponce and after ponce, three books, surviving a nuclear apocalypse, pioneering, life under Ponce, Karl K. Gallagher, is a pretelling of Starship Troopers, a partial retelling of Tunnel In The Sky, colonizing planets, he’s a YA character, The Door Into Summer, same thing happens, they steal a car, one of the cars is missing, Ponce’s world is also stuff we’ve seen in By His Bootstraps, the most extraordinary thing about this book is it’s set in 1964, there isn’t another novel where it doesn’t start in the future, such an interesting book, does an alternate history count?, Job: A Comedy Of Justice, a Heinlein break/cleanse, Glory Road, fixate on the costumes, such a distaste in your, the long pork, stick with chicken, Farah Mendlesohn’s book, her opinion, off the rails, cannibalistic, laughing so hard, tears streaming down cheeks, so weird, reread, the weakness of this book is the beginning half, skipped everything until the pregnancy reveals, character stuff, well done characters, not likeable, Jesse knows all their names, Barbara and Karen are interchangeable, we know Duke way too well, how real they are, Grace the alcoholic in denial, has her son castrated, I hate this book, if I was gonna stop, off the rails, you’re supposed to hate them, why am I reading this?, how do you fix this book?, change the POV from Hugh, straight out of Tunnel Of The Sky, as soon as Ponce shows up, tell it from Joe’s point of view, Joe talking to Hugh, Joe is sticking it to Hugh, Hugh is not a racist jerk, Karen, set in 1964, legacy racism, present day racism, we gotta stop this, there are still racists, that little joke was there to seed us for the final revelation, two different covers, redid the cover, that doesn’t solve the problem, there is no way to fix this book with another narrator’s point of view, what makes the book great, you wanna hate a racist, if you hate them so much, like Grace, insipid, we’re speculating, would she have cared?, a caricature, the fucking Karen, you fucking idiot Heinlein, he talks about taboo subjects, cannibalism, incest, horrible arguments, repopulate the planet, we don’t need to do incest, muddle through, dad I always found you handsome, what a horrible man, he was right to bring it up, a terrible movie, Noah (2014), pregnant because of Methuselah, Noah’s wife, we’ve increased out gene-pool, and the cat’s pregnant, and there’s a cow and a calf, he’s piling it up, decrease our displeasure, much more obviously as a Jonathan Swift, the grossness has an appeal, he’s an asshole, he made mistakes, authoritarian, sexist?, never chattered when her man wanted her to be quiet, he knows that he is wrong, he never does that, we think Duke is worse than Hugh, when Ponce shows up we shouldn’t have knuckled under, plot armour, or the book continued, muddle through and hopefully plot armour will save you, the first half of the book is a mirror to the second half of the book, as soon as the bombs go off you’re fired, we’re all going to be equal with no employer employee relationship, even Barbara and Karen, an equal prospect to Duke, strike a spark, everybody thinks Hugh’s sexy, my father figure, my best friend’s dad, throwing over his wife for a younger woman, acting irrationally, unreasonably, a history of alcoholism, solve their problems by drinking, decide the way they think it should be, rarely seen in literature, that was all she was, consumed by alcoholism, Hugh tells her story, shacked up with me, tarpaper roof, decadent and fussy, she was admirable at one point, turned to pot, saved all humanity, something Heinlein did himself, built a bombshelter, that’s not bad, female characters, why do women have to become fat and useless, nothing, zero, a Hugh and Ponce book, Kitty, Dr. Livingstone, cannibalism, incest, kittens, infuriating, in here twice, the other hidden theme, transgender stuff a couple of times, pleasant surprises, Doc thinks he is a boy cat, impressive actually, something in Ponce’s world, that idea, 1964 and farming, interesting, reconstruct the world with a few book, books are money, I kill you my son, the mirror universe of the future, including copyright, every kind of Heinlein theme you could want, it’s not capitalism, a funhouse mirror view of capitalism and the United States, an international planetary black supremacist, we should hate it, he’s created a funhouse mirror of American society in 1964 and hate it, wow it’s in the future, Joe is our reverse character, just his skincolour, every single character has an attitude that could be “I got mine”, his idea to get the cards, he’s a negro until he pulls a gun on you, it’s my cave, my machine gun, I know that this system is wrong, I’m in charge, enlightened Greek dictator of a city state, gonna send you back in time for fun, a parallel scene, stacking the deck 100%, to force the plot to accept the time travel bit, as a teenager, the castration reveal, shocked, we knew that it was coming, almost everybody has been tempered, thumbs taken off, what’s happening to all the sluts?, almost exclusively, some European shows up with a ship, you’re a slave now, slave bosses, I went to an island in the South Pacific, a blackbirding island, I stopped telling the story, slavery is wrong no matter what race does it for whatever reasons, we miss it, daddy I always wanted to have sex with you, I’m a sexpot, the little speech at the end, a bait and switch, have your balls cut off and serve me, the same bait and switch, structured very similarly, an annoying habit of making you infuriated, there’s so much to say, hated it less the second time through, a lot more nuanced, efforts at nuance, conflated Barbara and Karen, somewhat relieved, exploration of who should be on top, sacrificing your servants, runaways in the mountains, we are all free to walk our appointed paths, honestly convinced of his own benevolence, a cheap clincher, as a possibility, Christine Jorgensen was literally mentioned in one of the letters, any time travel story where one character is two character it’s incest, broaden our horizons, one character talking to himself all day, one of the letters, handwritten, an literary gabfest, let’s consider Edgar Allen Poe, Poe was the best writer to read or re-read, he could never be milked dry in one reading, the case of the Purloined Letter, when you consider the very subtle, how about Mark Twain next, a coded message to her, spelled correctly, if you can read this answer the same way period, he’s doing what he’s telling us what he’s doing, he’s telling us to read this book that way, consider the name of the cat, descendants of Africans, cannibalism is a planetary thing, around here any more much, serial killers, every Catholic is a cannibal, take in the divine, it’s a metaphor as well as an actual cultural practice, origins of capitalism, eating people’s lives up, different slave mentality works, as a manager of a factory, the same argument slave owners made to their slaves, in that light, it scares us more than it scares Heinlein, Heinlein is more afraid of Khrushchev actually unleashing hell, capital resources, in our timeline, it’s not a hearing aid, it bugs his wife, a very masterful book, he misjudged his audience, more sophisticated, we’re all teenagers when we read it, who’s there to root for, not a sporting event, trying to be satiryical, it’s not funny, a willing sex slave, that’s what all women become, stepping into the room and stepping on his dick, why do you do this to us, you need to have a reason to read, what outrageous thing will Heinlein say next is a reason to read, a tweet storm about Heinlein, memories of this book, To Sail Beyond The Sunset, a funhouse mirror in Ponce’s world, he’s trying to do something, he’s succeeded, we balk at the price and think the caller is an asshole, Karen’s sexing up her dad, I’m just like a black mammy, why did she do that?, she’s racist, the most Heinlein character, you try going through Alabama as a blackman, I gotta be modest here, but it’s not going to stop me, if we didn’t have this book we couldn’t hate Heinlein like we do, I’m the Karen now, an indictment of humanity, H.G. Wells, Griffin in The Invisible Man, the land lady, the bum, the indictment of the book, Prendick, Moreau, The Island Of Doctor Moreau, root for Henlein’s YA characters, Hugh is the least shitty character, Heinlein’s brinksmanship, no way to solve family problems, lifeboat rules, I have a gun to back it up, I read a book, books are valuable, you have to agree with me, you’re dead, bridge, so much bridge talk, contract bridge, games, Sixth Column, playing with a ruler, what is that chess move, what is that bridge move, such a stupid game, an old lady game, world champion bridge player, stay at home mom, will you teach me how to play bridge, my amazing game, a stratum of Americans, social function, aunts, progressive rummy, mahjong, by the book, not interesting to read about, so 1964, Omar Sharif, why is the guy from that movie, a second life, columns on bridge, it’s gone, a social activity, watch people stream, online games, people who play with their kids online, the time has passed, they don’t know what bridge is, the mirror of Hugh and his life, Anne and Alan E. Nourse, the kind of conversations that happen at the card table, hearts, why do you have a social game, sitting around and having a conversation, why do we have to have a book to talk about to have a conversation, it gives shape and excuse to it, it’s about marriage, as usual, one of the richest books, what is freedom, the American Revolution, his target is racism, slavery, American history, serious stumbling blocks by Heinlein being horribly Heinlein, almost certainly a parallel or an answer to Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court, that scene is lifted, a poem: The Congo by Vachel Lindsay, why is it like this, The Golden Faced People, The Crisis, NAACP, a rich white man publishing a story in a black magazine, from a different period of time, equality anti-racist guy, pushing peoples buttons, The Golden-Faced People: A Story Of Chinese Conquest Of America, the trouble with the laundryman, it’s Lincoln’s birthday, 2805, the United States taken over by the Chinese, white people were the slaves until very recently, Lin-Koln, a backwoodsman who freed the slaves, a fun-house mirror of the United States in 1914, he sounds racist but is anti-racist, what’s so extraordinary about this book, semi-forgive, gritty and real, the incest problem, has happened around the world a lot, soccer teams crashed in the Andes, ritualistic, ancestors or enemies, probably not a healthy practice, kings of Hawaii, marrying their sisters, Cleopatra, Pharaohs, royal families of Europe, first cousin, for political purposes, for satirical purposes, sex objects, the drug aspect, religion is missing, two ways of reading this, also science fiction, what happiness is made out of, Seconal, alcohol, their drugs are better (because they’re insidious), calms people down, as a punishment, as a control, buck, slut, we become almost immune to it, wench, literally just means girl, the context, tavern wenches, in our world that’s how its used, a much longer book just set in that world, so interesting, the chosen women are so oppressed we never meet them, we meet the sluts, who would want to live with life, a breaking up of the atomic family, his first family is dead, the family atomic unit, he presents that world so thoroughly, how white women were thought of traditionally in the south, To Kill A Mockingbird, we’re in the household, walled up in the harem, the sluts’ quarters, who Ponce chooses, she’s working against her husband, he’s cuckolding Hugh, as a plot device, consider the nephew, they cry, sexist as hell society, a masculine controlled society, inheritance goes through the nephew, Mentok is quite a good character, interesting, a cabin in the woods, a vacation estate, run off my feet at all times, you will really how things are, so tantalizing, so different from ours, 2000 years pass, lights that turn on, social stuff, line marriage, so different and so good, middle manager, despises the slaves, resents the chosen, genetics racism thing, some blood in him, improve the stock, their own eugenics system, everybody knew there were men somewhere in the stars, set in the same universe, Time For The Stars, a checklist, twins, The Rolling Stones, how was Heinlein raised, his books not his biography, a private man for a public man, in New York at that time, Horace Gold’s poker game, the who’s who of science fiction, C.M. Kornbluth, Fredrick Pohl, a couples thing, another childless couple, food and drink, LBJ, a silver star, man’s magazine, congressperson in the reserves, American bomber tour, he didn’t do anything but survived and came back with a silver star, Duke is Lyndon B. Johnson, publicly Mr. Civil Rights, privately Mr. Racist, the situation was untenable, Lincoln’s story is similar, very liberal, very racist, he’s a momma’s boy, neglected by his father, under Grace’s influence, prejudiced, horny for dad, also racist, she thinks it’s cute, DSM, extremely un-PC, what causes homosexuality, absent father, domineering mother, opportunities with women, a closeted homosexual, in the abstract, just finished law school, he has his own apartment, living on his own, prove it, as distinctly as Trish, we agreed to live as friends, you’re not longer my son, your opinions are welcome, his wife is a Lush, take the alcohol out of her hands, 3rd we’re libertarians, coming from a history of alcoholism, very good, it’s incredible, his personal life, he aint gonna never stop talking about his cats, mom’s a total Grace, watch out for the scissors bub, hardcore, COVID is fake, my son Jeffrey gets all the vaccines, I need to believe that it’s true, what alcohol does to people, call a doctor, there’s no fucking doctors, in the intervening 20 years, did you think Karen was going to die?, structurally, this baby’s gonna die, forgot for a second, so easy, when Ponce tells Hugh, we went and dug up your daughter, I brought a priest, the Koran’s in there, we put every atom back, this is not a throwback society, way better tech than we do, flying cars, we could go to the moon anytime we want, kind of stuck, tame scientists, chosen scientists, dynamism there, translating, reading from Hugh’s point of view, ho we think he should feel, he has a different emotion than we thought he did, that same language from Sixth Column, formal language, very good writing, ranking this book low, roll you eyes and throw your phone across the room sort of scenes, Evan’s [Lampe’s] shows on Heinlein, leveling the shelter, not idea rich, fixed it with dynamite, similar scenes in Tunnel In The Sky, people can make mistakes, a pen for wild animals, commute to the beach, making and argument, the list of things in the bomb shelter, prepper porn, the list of books, he wanted to have ammonia and iodine, you might need to blow up bridges, Red Dawn (1984), John Milius, Nazi staybehinds during WWII, strike back at the oppressor, an uprising after the apocalypse, fight for America, a Red Dawn prep book, inspiration for white supremacists survivalists, teaching Nazis to fish, libertarians, also Indian, neither is good, but the arc of the book, not even a benevolent dictator, whether Heinlein intended it or not, “those people”, that’s not in this book, they’re just cannibals, sub-humans, it’s human nature that whoever’s at the top, plays into, so depressing, nobody will do the right thing, nobody needs to read this book that is not a student of genre history, we’re not wrapping up yet, the list of books, page 50, books were the immortal part of man, rape a defenseless friendly book, I want to bring it in, I’ve got a tommy gun I’m gonna make them read it, so annoying, still a good book, ugh cringey, up to a point, if the book closes up before that, the characters were thin, huge plot holes, not a good book for Maissa, Duke and Karen are entitled baby boomers, Kitten’s a millennial, gen x, what baby say about gen x, limited world view, and her racist jokes, the voice, Tom Weiner, cheerful sarcasm, sarcastic but serious, is Barbara the thinnest character in the book?, a lot of screentime, getting to the plot, getting to the ideas, she’s divorced, Hugh’s divorced too, that’s not fair, since you’re divorced, a Karen move, looking at things as an outsider, most loveable character is Dr. Livingstone, the twins are slobbery, Ponce is strong as a character, Jesse was apologizing for Hitler, that makes Ponce worse, Ponce is not a good person, he’s telling Barbara this, a super-strong argument about the master slave dynamic in the South, I barely tingle them, are you happy?, haven’t I been good to you, technowhips, a work of political angst, also angsty about WWIII, grotesque, trying to solve it, a radical shift, fifth gear to 1st gear, Karen’s death could have been avoided, sets up a Farnham’s Freehold in the end, silver coins, a 45 automatic, towels, knowledge and experience, two children, looting from the gas station, in their own bombshelter we presume, children to breed with their children, they go back to an alternate world, trying to fit it in with his giant chronology, back to the past, slave dystopia anyway, a more optimistic note, good point, Trish!, subtle, some version of him comes back to the original world, infinite world, Karen is always still alive, a very writerly thing, to make you read the book again, what did I miss the first time, time is a flat circle, 30 years later, the cannibalism is a shock the first time, seeded right when they get to that world, he didn’t write this by the seat of his pants, let me construct a massive thing, you’re going to hate some of it, maybe in this universe the chosen won’t rise up, sees the bald guy, I just saw the weirdest guy, how does someone get like that, racist against himself, the car being an automatic, what it implies is the time travel is happening in all different dimensions, why did she had a stickshift?, he could repopulate the earth with himself, don’t tell Heinlein, turning people into food, on the cover, butter and somedays bread, jerked Quisling by the neck, mostly satire, racist trope, Hitler was a vegetarian, Hitler liked dogs, I can have it both ways, the brinksmanship, he (failed to) raise(d) that kid, Karl Joseph, Carl Gustaf, leader of Norway, not a very good Norwegian accent, the Vichy, from 1942-1945, a little after chat, complimentary books, Regnum Congo, mentioned in The Picture In The House by H.P. Lovecraft, In The Barn by Piers Anthony, alternate world farmhand, humans raised as meat, sensory deprivation, thumbs again, makes them more docile, improves the flavour, tempered, slut vs. tempered, made stronger, fine tuned, calmer, a good word, Heinlein was a master craftsman, you’re supposed to, intentionally being obnoxious, made me so mad at him, he’s right to do it, he knows what he’s doing, breeding, slaves bloodlines, The Domination Of The Draka by S.M. Stirling, Steven Barnes’ Lion’s Blood, the black plague, colonized by Muslims instead of Europeans, Irish slave, Africans or whatever, friends in power imbalance, a really interesting book, concur with Trish, a sequel, Zulu Heart, well done, interesting fellow, co-written with Larry Niven, Seascape Tattoo, very impressed with this book, No., Why?, Heinlein!, god damn you!, why are you doing this?!, The Water-babies by Charles Kingsley, anti-science, anti-democracy, how democracy starts, pirate ships, all volunteer, if the leadership changes, the plank, put you off on an island, Paul is going to take issue, Paul is pretty sure, there’s a lot going on, the pirate codes, A High Wind Over Jamaica by Richard Hughes, Paul can leave, abandoning this, caught between two things, Paul is not fine, one of those rights thing, you can’t get your rights back, NYRB, The New York Review Of Books, audiobook, apostrophe s, a good pirate book, a gripping story, post-colonial Caribbean, supposed innocents, atypical setting, the truth of human nature, 1929, William Golding’s horrible book The Lord Of The Flies, Blue Lagoon, Victorian, isn’t as beautiful, disturbing, saw it on a shelf, thoughtful and thorough, tell you all about the book, proof against the standard spoiler wreck, differently distributed, The Strand bookstore, Houston, Huston Do You Read, male astronauts cast forward in time, there are no men anymore, Saturday in December, posed as a male author, such male writing, only a man could have written this, a practical joke, George Elliot, George Sand, Hugh Grant, Impromptu (1991), Emma Thompson, Judy Davis, a little too French and long winded, she’s kinda like Heinlein but meaner, Paul not Jvstin, democracy and pirates, Madagascar, Pirate Enlightenment by David Graeber, richer pirating grounds in the Indian Ocean, Tortuga, the Madagascar women, colonists and natives of the Caribbean, pirate kings, pirate queens, if you’re a captain on a pirate ship, Black Sails didn’t go to sea very much, sailors don’t like sailing, they need to sail, rich people with a yacht, fishermen don’t love the sea, pirates don’t have family, they have addiction, make merry, his share is higher, bosun, they have responsibilities, pirates had to do certain things, drink all fuckin day, a whole mini-version of the political state as the nation state, Caribbean pirates, white slaves in the British and French navies, Jesse’s joke: I was impressed by the British navy’s recruiting methods, your health is fucked, they liberate your ship, why would you attack a ship with no good stuff on it, white and black slave ship sailors, not-chattel slavery, hauling humans, swabbing out shit and vomit, sometimes they’ll sell the slaves, everyone has guns and knives, Heinlein’s paradise, relatively recent scholarship, The General History Of The Pyrates, The Many-Headed Hydra by Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, the term that capitalists use to describe the slaves, you always have to be putting down the slaves down all the time, slave rebellion, history from below, Maroon communities, tri-racial isolates, Evan Lampe, when brought to shore, women were expected to run business, aliens with treasure, Against All Flags (1952), basically The Fast And The Furious (2001) but with ships or Point Break (1991), with the consent of the locals, lying claims, oral traditions and cultural practices, what parts of Africa weren’t colonized?, a pirate utopia, the history that’s coming out of there, a lot of sex for 50 – 60 years, biracial descendants, the European kings, this strange thing called democracy, those Americans in the colonies, a hidden history other than John Locke, Greece, a lot like Heinlein, a historian of the Atlantic, do another one, he’s read enough books, mostly fiction, Will and Ariel Durant, this attitude toward fiction: a character has to be likeable, damaging, some people read for comfort, Hugo books, sequel books, diminishing returns, in any series, characters are there to fulfill the job, no heroes, smiling dashing hero, Red Planet, a lot of people don’t have an identity, changing their genders, somebody gave you a name, you don’t know who you are, growing up, a lot of people never find that, most people don’t read at all, reading as an escape identity, other realities from a long time ago, not surprising but very common, it hurts literature, your characters have got to be likeable, choosing the right things to focus on, grossing out, war in Malaya, Seventh Dawn (1964), William Holden, a tropical version of Dr. Zhivago (1965), Malaysia’s failed war of independence, the British version of Vietnam, chopping people’s heads off and holding the heads of their enemies and smiling, British commandos, ghost writing gig, Catcher In The Rye, punish children.

Farnham's Freehold - IF Worlds Of Science Fiction

Farnham's Freehold - IF Worlds Of Science Fiction

Farnham's Freehold - IF Worlds Of Science Fiction

Farnham's Freehold - IF Worlds Of Science Fiction

Farnham's Freehold - IF Worlds Of Science Fiction

Farnham's Freehold - IF Worlds Of Science Fiction

Farnham's Freehold - IF - Worlds Of Science Fiction

Farnham's Freehold - IF - Worlds Of Science Fiction

If Worlds Of SF, July 1964 - list of books in the Farnham's Freehold bombshelter

Farnham's Freehold - IF Worlds Of Science Fiction

Farnham's Freehold - IF - Worlds Of Science Fiction

Farnham's Freehold - IF - Worlds Of Science Fiction

Farnham's Freehold - IF - Worlds Of Science Fiction

Farnham's Freehold - IF - Worlds Of Science Fiction

Farnham's Freehold - IF - Worlds Of Science Fiction

Farnham's Freehold - IF - Worlds Of Science Fiction

Farnham's Freehold - IF - Worlds Of Science Fiction

Farnham's Freehold - IF - Worlds Of Science Fiction

Farnham's Freehold - IF - Worlds Of Science Fiction

Farnham's Freehold - IF - Worlds Of Science Fiction

Farnham's Freehold - IF - Worlds Of Science Fiction

Farnham's Freehold - IF - Worlds Of Science Fiction

Farnham's Freehold - IF - Worlds Of Science Fiction

Farnham's Freehold - IF - Worlds Of Science Fiction

Farnham's Freehold - IF - Worlds Of Science Fiction

Doug Potter art for Farnham's Freehold

CORGI BOOKS - Jim Burns art for FARNHAM'S FREEHOLD

Paul Lehr art for FARNHAM'S FREEHOLD

SFBC Things To Come November 1965 - Farnaham's Freehold

SFBC Things To Come November 1965 - Farnaham's Freehold

Posted by Jesse WillisBecome a Patron!

Reading, Short And Deep #387 – The Autumn After Next by Margaret St. Clair

Reading, Short And Deep

Reading, Short And Deep #387

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss The Autumn After Next by Margaret St. Clair

Here’s a link to a PDF of the story.

This story was first published in If Worlds Of Science Fiction, January 1960.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!