The SFFaudio Podcast #785 – READALONG: A Time Of Changes by Robert Silverberg

Jesse, Paul Weimer, Terence Blake, and Jonathan Weichsel talk about A Time Of Changes by Robert Silverberg

Talked about on today’s show:
Self-bearer, to outsiders, we are going to talk about, a novel, serialized in Galaxy, March April May 1971, won an award, a nebula, the competition, The Lathe Of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin, The Byworlder, Half-Past Human, The Devil Is Dead, Margaret And I, interesting Poul Anderson, arguably her best book, strong stuff, meandered all over the place, T.J. Bass’ reputation, To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer, a scattered mess, The World Inside, a good book, liked, great, Paul has questions, liked the world and the worldbuilding, quasi-sister obsession, an incest book, lusting after his sister, takes his drug with his sister, the incest trope, incest is a big erotic thing, step mom, step sis, step bro, step-sister, it’s fun, the forbidden fruit, a forbidden love story, by the customs, bond brother, bond sister, it would be seen as incest, step-siblings, the only people they’re allowed to open up to and talk to, it makes sense within the world, you need to talk to people to fall in love with them, marriage and procreation is not about love, love is a dirty word, a very restrictive society, natural human impulses, puritanical catholic society, drainers, leave town, going for a sexual massage, literally it didn’t happen, a public drainer, a heterosexual dud jerked off by a professional whore, homosexuality, betrayed the confessional, all from our guy’s POV, such an important social outlet, we don’t see that part of the world, such an important social outlet, Catholic church, unfortunately, confessional booth, lawyer – client privileged, go to Silverberg, sociological ideas, a new wave book, drug books, drug smuggling, LSD or mushrooms, he’s Christ bringing love into the world, a good book, coded Catholic, protestant, puritan, corrupt, coded Jewish, a subversive element, a negative Jewish stereotype, wholesome and perfect, subversive Jew came in, a suffocating society, good ideas, the drug was coded as sodomy, butt sex, homosexuality, homoerotic, we’re doing it, a lot of pornography, to make money, because he liked it, explicit, a way of getting out of a book, not his best work, 9 minutes in, Jonathan’s gonna love this book, very homoerotic of you, I is a swear word, the worldbuilding was terrific, not many kids, the life of per-pubescent kids is minimal, other socioeconomic levels, he’s the son of a king, we’re focused on that, allows him mobility, he’s not against the king, his brother, a personal story, if this is the story of the Christians, the early church, not mass orgies, people out in the woods, the primitives, they have a wonderful time, the lower class betrays him, as a person who has experienced children in adulthood, people who’ve forgotten what children were like, completely distanced from it, me me me me me stage, not everything is about you, this is something that should come up in the book, his favourite word was Trump because it triggers adults, not illegal in the normal sense, the adults around him are triggered, sometimes it would work, cortisol spike, you have to share your toys, in a sense the idea here is very good, not focused on one’s self all the time, Mr Jim Moon, with ambient noodling by the Eldritch Light Orchestra, it’s not the way to be, one ought to be a good person, we actually believe this, made it very rigid, bond sisters and bond brothers, he did the easy version of this book, a really good idea, he did a pretty good job, it won the nebula, a book about a writer, the most taboo thing you can do, the solitary vice (masturbation), I gotta big dick, I have premature ejaculation problem, plowing that girl for three seconds, a very Silverberg book, overboard with his philosophy, too honest, too forthcoming, becoming self-absorbed like us, he’s all about love and barely mentions his children, he didn’t have any interest in talking about them, very thoughtprovoking, Jordan Peterson hell, assigned pronouns, that’s very interesting, you’re not supposed to say this, in Ontario, the thing that made Peterson famous, personal choice pronouns mandated, your honour to the judge, command respect, one ought not to do those things, distance it, constructed language, barely science fiction, mostly a fantasy setting, the drug is the technology (telepathy), a preview of Majipoor, a juggler, not fair to this book, a weird job as a writer, never a professor, always a writer, juggles words, he’s not a science guy, Dying Inside, The Book Of Skulls, very limited science interest skills, sociological skills, very far from Larry Niven, Ursula K. Le Guin in a male, Jack Vance, a veil around the sex, humans colonize a planet, the spaceships leave, The Blue World by Jack Vance, caste is pronounced kayste, giant lilypad, giant lobster, Big Planet lacks heavy metals, land on a planet, living in their world, very Le Guiny, earthman shows up and is the representative of us, why kings?, telephones, medieval, heat rods, laser guns, Gene Wolfe, Dying Earth/New Sun, groundcars, flying vehicles, sailing ships with auxiliary engines, but why kings?, makes it simpler?, personal, more relatable, how the mighty has fallen, spontaneous lumberjacks, he’s ready for it, didn’t go outside her bubble, why she did what she did, she couldn’t handle it, relativizing experiences, she’s a saint, very hierarchical, no mobility up, she’s incredibly repressed, all hidden, share souls, gotta dose, the reverse experience from the drug, loathsome, couldn’t handle it, travel psychosis, psychotic breakdown after being married, suppressed latent psychosis, go psychotic, winning the lottery, France, might get it again, strong feelings towards them, idolized and loved, very negative self-image, he doesn’t say this drug is good, he’s stupid, he is a self-barer, psychoanalysis, understood everything about themselves, two big errors in the book, the soul sharing experience, you have to say I, without changing the pronouns, Gilles Deleuze, clandestine, why do people say that the sun rises?, it doesn’t matter whether you say I or not, proselytizing, she wasn’t ready?, he was ready, one way of reading this, Timothy Leary, there are some people who need the walls, it’s because you’re fucked up inside, little funny looking fish, deep soul with krakens inside, angels or krakens, the wrong way of opening a hole in the wall, not the best way to read it, shows up personally in the desert, a little bit of pity, Jesse’s not a drug guy, what it don’t do is make Jesse he’s communicated with god, when you take some drugs, mushrooms as a group, the connectedness of everyone and everything, he didn’t learn anything from anybody, the way he acts, makes you less repressed, alcohol makes you stupider, chatting up very pregnant women, the Faustian bargain gone wrong, midichlorians, a normal high, bullshitting this guy, a reading you can make, suddenly realizes, the homosexual banker, you can hide things under the influence of the drug, self-interested, he’s also looking for someone to help him, a sharing contest with the natives, they did have a connection, two druggies, Downward To The Earth, we don’t have the legacy, the druggie experience, costs some people, melt into puddles, pharmakon, a world that’s very interesting, thinks he’s self aware because he’s saying a taboo word, not making the best decisions, his tactics were wrong, imagine we retell this story from the brother’s POV, taken on responsibility, fuckup of a brother, let me show you this thing, he thinks that’s everything, the problem of being the spare, he’s Mr. Pfizer, no side-effects, the society has a problem, too repressed, a famine in the land, the king’s responsibility, he’s interested in it, I don’t want to lie to you, very meta, the Nebula awards, a limited set of people: writers, after a certain point they stop reading, they give blurbs, a bad discussion, the drug is writing as well, somebody likes drugs, ambivalence, build the case, a guy who fucked up, a failed messiah, Le Guin’s Philip K. Dick book, more ambitious, a writer service, the opening, the whole premise of this book, first person is taboo, very sparky, writers trying to solve writing problems, why this character?, why not head-hop?, if we were in the head of the brother, the unhealthy obsession, I grew up, if you’re a middle class kid, some other family, why?, safety valved, a secret plot, makes them richer, why did this custom start, we hear the myth, bad stuff happens, myth comes from reality, the powder, this entire religion happened, the drug was the cause of their reactionary faith, hidden through myth, the world’s Satan, he’s a tempter, why does God want to keep knowledge from you, we’re reading the book, published backwards in time on earth, social anxieties, when gin is introduced to England, abstinence from alcohol, every culture that touched another, a druggie doofus, he has impulse control problems, passport works everywhere, sending him gifts, this could be a much better book if we read it properly, he fucked up royally, if from the brother’s POV, second guessing Silverberg, feels richer, working that literary mine, guilt, the secret, druggie ideas, the communion, the slaughter, the sharing of flesh, The Book Of Skulls, there’s a cult in the desert that has achieved immortality, you have to kill your friend, focus your prana all day, a road trip book, Twilight Zone style horror, riding around the planet visiting places, sex, drugs, not kids, sometimes they work amazing, a very Ursula K. Le Guiny idea, The Left Hand Of Darkness, this is better writing, how easy this flows, his vocabulary was incredible, so precisely, top notch above, if we follow the meta thing on the power of writing, Jean Jacque Rousseau’s Confessions, inventing auto-biography, take it back to Rousseau, he never considers how this is going to effect my kids, don’t you have to live what he’s all about?, he’s not a full rich Silverberg, he’s a druggie Silverberg, limited perspective, the salt of the earth, respect for the working people, age 30 in their years is 40ish in our years, there’s something wrong with him, fill in all the corners, very repressed, the implication, too conventional, job as a customs guy, corruption all the way up and all the way down, cushy job, a definite commentary, immense power and dominance, he gets gifts, he gets influence, he’s a customs guy, they make this drug illegal, a drug smuggler as an evangelist, addicted to the experience, he likes the sharing, you should do mushrooms man, selling religion door to door, maybe it benefits the church, official missionary position, a religion of sharing your inner soul, what information did he gain?, not combination to any locks, you were tripping balls too, explicitly called out in the elephant book, did he learn anything?, no, your just thinking you’re having, stuff that happens with our regular drugs, some people just don’t like dancing, that’s too much, degenerating, no man I got these really good insights, it helped me clean my house, reality is controlled by an entity, the CIA, see beyond the veil the CIA puts in front of you, so does it only help dumb people, kinda fucked up his life, seeing reality as it is, with the help of language, dialogue, discussion, William James, a blooming budding confusion, the alterity, the otherness of the other, a very useful world, gave up on LSD, the internet, he invented the app, ability to collect data on people, is what I’m hearing, mind mirror approach, personality tests, the PC is the new LSD, a similar experience, takes over your brain, videos of current events, lady in an SUV with a Starbucks on her way to her sushi job, Joe Biden bumbling across the stage, tricked into believing, anybody can be made to look a stumbling dumb idiot, same effect, too soon, the next six months will tell, criticize this podcast as soon as it comes out, creates telepathy, the fable myth story, tries to become a god, two real gods drunk, not actually a god, not actually there, he has to be a god to become a god, the only time he doesn’t share the drug with someone else, they drink together, having his drug alone, feeling the whole planet, smoking marijuana alone, drinking alone, a feel-good hallucination, feedback with somebody else, folie à deux, prophecy is fulfilled, having the book makes him the prophet, we have to imagine we are these people in the future, how do you know, like Battlestar Galactica, Silverberg is subtle, time travel drug, regressive hypnosis, while you’re back there would you mind killing Hitler?, it is from the past, 1971, spread illegally on the internet, the LSD of 2023, and legally, I believe in some sort of life force that can metaphorically exist, the reading of his own drug experiences, a good feeling of sharing, Fight Club with a Love Club, ecstasy, get hot, wanna dance, I’m taking it you’ve taken it, MDMA, without asking your age, 45 years old, a lifetime ago, things have changed, too late now we can’t talk about, six minutes in the middle of the night between too soon and too late, finding Friedman units in people’s arguments, genocide happening, the end of the world people, a moving time horizon, a drug book, a very challenging book, very suffocating, hard to read in the first half, a deliberate effect, an effective technique, doesn’t make for light reading, the ideas are right there, an unreliable narrator, you have to read him that way, what his ideas are, a veil between you and Silverberg’s ideas, that was first person too, people are merging into other peoples, broken in a way that made his smarter, not that self-aware, so many unnamed themes, religion, incredibly Freudian, liberated sexual practices, not naming to go to the general case, ambiguous all the time, maybe those Nebula guys were smarter than we thought, soft SF, dystopia, evolution, the jungle, the strange beasts, the tendrils, far future, language, coming of age, Time For The Stars, across parsecs, she likes me, is it a telepathy book?, communicate emotionally, selfishly, Deanna Troi in Star Trek, she can read emotions, autists, the drug is the thing, other people on this planet love their children, a Scandinavia thing, that must be hard for them, handsy and cuddle, supernatural or a drug, they feel dirty, they’re so repressed, alcohol does that, the backlash to the backlash, and watch football, people get together and drink, ought they?, a religion and the laws, smuggling, what’s good and what isn’t, isn’t it interesting, visits the house, it’s a palace, insight into his character, kind of a failson, a Canon movie from the 80s, hires homeless Judd Nelson, this is a failson, he’s a slob, he’s the premise, The Prince And The Pauper, we’re following the prince, journey to an ashram, an embarrassment to his society and his brother, he’s a tourist, tourist/entrepreneur, he couldn’t give a fig, he’s sleazy, he has an agenda, he plays a long game on this guy, he’s interested in taking it and selling it, synthesize it back home, take him at his word, still sleazy, corrupting this other guy, not so hard on the judgement, Socrates corrupts the youth, after several centuries, ultimately positive, their covenant is everyone should be an introvert, not express things, people who can’t really be introverts, living in repressive Finland, fuck this country, live in Mexico and Brazil, they’re all skinny (show a lot of skin), no cachet with the natives, an equalizing thing, the I I I I I, too self-centered, what makes it a dystopia is that he didn’t like it, slobber them with kisses, in the middle, the correct way, someway between Norway and Brazil, America is not fucked up, perfectly combobulated, happy medium, goes to the other extreme, enantiodromia, even when not appropriate, I want to sit between the sexy enantiodromias she has, goodbye Paul, Radium Pool, funeral, Lowdown Road, The Terminal Man, part of Jurassic Park, Time-Line, limited number of ideas, The Andromeda Strain, very cold and very solid, Prey, a cut-off point, his first 6, John Lange, Drug Of Choice, fucked up rich people, one in Nice, and one in Spain, very literary, who he’s reading, radical hemispherectomy, ancestor of cyberpunk, Gilgamesh The King, 7 people for The Weirwoods, drug withdrawal/depression, friends with Will, he’s a communist, his politics seem to be very snarky/cynical, aren’t Kentucky and Arkansas the same place?, like to talk to people who have different ideas, strangely, a little exchange about Friend Island, funny, insightful, sparking full of ideas, invented the Futurians before the Futurians, Paul Michel, either a piece of shit or making fun of something, it has to be a comedy, as supposed to be funny as opposed to pathetic, one of the words, called out, Hell In The Village by John B. Michel, Farnsworth Wright, Von Juntz, Sixth Columnist, Heinlein, supposed to be terrible, clew, a Lovecraft sort of move, shew, shewed, he just patted the female elevator on the behind, German professor scientist with a beautiful daughter, Lovecraft is called out, having fun, 1942, war stories, Lovecraftian pulp parody with a war theme, so bad its good, Lovecraft is funny, where he’s doing Jesus, The Dunwich Horror is a comedy, you have to zoom out, Stuart Gordon adaptations, a dream written down, a lame awesome ending, think through an idea, Call Of Cthulhu, it’s Dracula with a dream monster, Lord Dunsany, Chu-Bu And Sheemish, vacation, ruins of a temple, the destruction of the temple, the timing works out perfectly, a very famous Lord Dunsany story, he read this story and wrote his own version of it, an artists studio crashing down, The Tree by Lovecraft is a murder mystery, a historical setting, mother of Tiberias, Augusts’ wife, a poison story, that guy read that story, an axe to grind about art, Lord Dunsany doesn’t have an axe to grind, has fun and makes pretty stuff, I’m going to prove that New York is a hellhole, half French, half translation into English, epub, the life of Lovecraft, an ongoing feud with Heinlein, politically correct, always this feud with Heinlein, Lovecraft dies in 1991, a euchrony and dischrony, centenarian, too soon, he took an incoherent position, the next six month will tell, when Stephen Colbert used to be funny, he no longer gives FU, keeps on moving the goalposts, you should be both emotionally hot and cold, authors complaining about bad reviews is so lame, pretty weird, you want to hear about negative reviews, let’s play nice, share your toys, hang up and shut up, used to be proud, reviewers are part of the same bubble, professional reviewers, people are doing it for free, SUV with two sunroofs, go to university to get a marketing degree, cosplaying her parent’s view of what reality should be, go study business, the consensus is don’t say that, the consensus is too soon, a censorship move, not the same when you say it in the moment, people went to see the movie, Aliens was so good, Alien 3, Sigourney Weaver go a paycheck, resonant with ideas, a sequel can in someways surpass, a footnote, read everything about it, the dealer has an agenda, the situation now, writers who never get any meaningful feedback, David Fincher, studio notes, writes the next thing, goes on for 16-20 books, Charles Stross, random indie writer, not writing in a vacuum, writing in this vacuum, interpret it, a second pair of eyes, a message in the bottle, if you like this sort, intimated before, Pauline Kael, everybody does it for free, you’re friends with the people you critique, scrappy new independent, friends of the authors giving good reviews to their friends and bad reviews to their enemies, Chris Sempter, Poe’s relationship with a rich couple, tutor the wife in her sonnets, a vanity book, tried to make a living as a writer, I’m Nathaniel Hawthorne, every book’s a flop, Mark Twain died poor, desperate for cash, puffery, aka saying good things about an author, a savage critic, Tomahawk Poe, An Enigma, an acrostic, On Sonnets, sonnets suck unless…, without that context, doing it as a kind of work for hire, acrimonious break up, Philip K. Dick kinda worse, writing again to ask you for money, can I borrow money, grateful but come on, as evidenced by Charles Stross’ latest book, Laundry Files, Singularity Sky, a guy wants to make a living, not have to fix fences or whatever, the lie about all these authors are making a living, Stephen King and J.L. Rowling, TV and movie rights, most people don’t read, not making production like they were, streaming now, ambient pictures, getting a real bad feeling, Mike Flanagan’s Fall Of The House Of Usher, what relation is it to the story?, self-sacrificing for Foundation, a fashion house?, fan service for Poe but it’s own thing, rich people living in expensive houses, Glass Onion and Knives Out, rich people talking to each other, Veep, the best of Veep, every joke there were not laughs, people insulting each other, what satire is, insults are satire?, Airplane! (1980) is a parody, West Wing is a fantasy, Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister are supposed to be satire but look like reality, a competence fantasy with insults, insults = funny, laugh track, Married With Children, shoe salesman is humiliating, things have changed, satire for dumb people, parody makes fun of fiction, satire makes fun of reality, maybe it is dead-on, the writing on TV is really dumb, HBO was supposed to be better than that, are there some people who don’t have a sense of humour?, a ladder, fart jokes make little kids laugh, very very liberal, reading the New York Times has Trump insult, too soon, attitude of superiority, a rich person who has never known any kind of tragedy, Fawlty Towers is about a guy who is very class conscious, the insults there backfire, how dumb are you humiliation humour, you’ve have to had had no tragedy, coming from a place of privileged, a level of disconnect, an actor playing a poor character, the other level of humour, you are a dumb redneck hick, being impolite = humour, it’s true he’s dumb that’s why it is so funny, social faux pas, elicits laughter, gives her license to insult other people, has the president called, she wants to be important, maybe I need to get some of this drug from this book, so unfunny, professional wrestling, do suplexes, kayfabe, opera for stupid people, it’s not a comedy, the heels and the babyfaces, ancient Asgard, the criticism that it’s fake, you know the planet where this takes place isn’t real, right Jesse, dumb humour, medium humour, smart humour, smart humour is dumb, Adam Sandler movies are very funny, not high level humour, became a money laundering scam, cardboard sets, they make movies to go on vacation, stopped caring, the next Jerry Lewis, the first man-child, the guy in Elf, Steve Carell, Some Like It Hot (1959), Marilyn Monroe, the theory of humour, a very dry sense of humour, the podcast proper, causes problems for people who don’t know its humour, puns, what a crustacean is to make a Red Lobster joke, a vocab joke, fart jokes don’t require language, you can laugh without having language, Marx Brothers, switched studios, slapstick, Groucho was the intellectual jokes, Harpo is silent, jokes, tricks, Duck Soup (1933), aiming for the bottom, the middle will watch anyway, highbrow and the lowbrow, with superheroes, this is going to dumb down cinema, people got bored, Dark Knight, dumbed up, For Your Eyes Only (1981), it’s the superhero formula, class based action sequencing, skiing, scuba-diving, car racing, drops the sophistication and keeps the supervillains, the key to any particular episode, Captain Nemo is the badguy, The Spy Who Loved Me, abandoned the book, the old formula, the scubacar, all fine, train scene, lacking the sense of humour, polite lewd jokes, something’s come up, somebody being trash, rubbish, the most recent James Bond movies are not funny, I’m interested in women style joke, humiliating James Bond, doesn’t work as an action formula, a feminist joke, James Bond represents the anti-feminist, on the right side of history, people don’t get humour anymore, the concept of humour, fear trumps humour, Ebu Gogo‘s goodreads reviews, anti-furry humor, making fun of furries, at the furries’ expense, endorsing the furry lifestyle, furry porn one star, rightfully feeling tricked, woefully misguided, a theory about vocab words and phrases, stole from Lovecraft, brain puppet, anti-furry propaganda, an axe to grind, something to say, misunderstood, misinterpreted, Aristotle’s Poetics, a comedy section, elaborate blackmail scheme, kicked him in the ribs, a flurry of kicks, a lot of puritanical people, nudity, sex, especially common in the united states, scared away from the cover, scare the wrong readers off, strategic placement, a version on LibriVox, some classic stuff, Lucian’s A True Story aka A True History, he’s a fucking furry, triggered by a word or an image, everything else falls away, going in your own head, an instinct, this smells like bullshit to me, are you just being an asshole, if you’re drawing from the text, throwing dirt on people’s heads, bad, too soon, rude, sounds like feelings, principles, strong ideas ground in something, getting facts wrong in your argument, designed to hurt somebody, Connor recorded an audiobook, Thule, coulda let it pass, you learn from pain, one little mistake, the critic who believed this was furry porn was correct, taking the wrong lesson is a fun way to go, instead of entering her, rummaging around the closet, dressed in a furry fox costume, furry gloves designed to looks like paws, kink shaming, exposing his hard cock, triggered, a white rabbit, put this one, wittle bunny wabbit, completely repulse, too x-rated for the show, they know how to pronounce them they don’t say them, a repression thing, you could elide it, six months later, that’s not my particular fetish, the 1 star reviews are more valuable, the wrong takes people have, the problem of everybody being a critic, open it wide, shilling puffery, paid in attention, working on projects that nobody cares about, a bigger version, slapped together for a student’s essay, get over your own ego it’s not that exciting, the Friend Island tweet, obvious context, an opportunity to jump in, too involved for twitter, explain copyright to me on twitter, finding out how to do it, literally trained, attracting somebody who would be interested, I like your content buy why are you so political, a firehose of what’s happening, some guy falling down, a generic example, people live in bubbles, Ray Nayler, columns, short stories, shat on for being out of touch, 87/88, after a certain point your best work is behind you, John Cowper Powys, I’m senile and I’m dying, out of the fiction business, quit before, Lawrence Block is still writing, typos, afterward, introduction, speaking of mental problems, Edward Wellen, Mind Slash Matter, a guy with dementia who is a script writer in Hollywood, apps and home computer, make him functional, a murder mystery, the detective doesn’t know what’s going, a brilliant idea for a book, a lot of the stories had to do with sound, the chemical warfare service during WWII, Mouthpiece, who shot you?, to mind map the character, an AI that comes alive Neuromancer-style, get revenge based on the murder, sparky as fuck, the early 1990s, trans-issues in the 1960s, Day Million by Frederik Pohl, Mindswap by Robert Sheckley, Douglas Adams, jaunting all over to different worlds, talking to an egg, the darkness, a little lighter to cleanse the palate, 8 minutes to read with your eyes,

On this day I want to tell you about, which will be about a thousand years from now, there were a boy, a girl and a love story.

Now although I haven’t said much so far, none of it is true. The boy was not what you and I would normally think of as a boy, because he was a hundred and eighty-seven years old. Nor was the girl a girl, for other reasons; and the love story did not entail that sublimation of the urge to rape and concurrent postponement of the instinct to submit which we at present understand in such matters. You won’t care much for this story if you don’t grasp these facts at once. If, however, you will make the effort, you’ll likely enough find it jam-packed, chockfull and tiptop-crammed with laughter, tears and poignant sentiment which may, or may not, be worth while. The reason the girl was not a girl was that she was a boy.

How angrily you recoil from the page! You say, who the hell wants to read about a pair of queers? Calm yourself. Here are no hot-breathing secrets of perversion for the coterie trade. In fact, if you were to see this girl, you would not guess that she was in any sense a boy. Breasts, two; vagina, one. Hips, Callipygean; face, hairless; supra-orbital lobes, non-existent. You would term her female at once, although it is true that you might wonder just what species she was a female of, being confused by the tail, the silky pelt or the gill slits behind each ear.

Blish has never been that good, The Abominable Earth Man, C.M. Kornbluth, with Playboy’s market in mind, that’s a sparky story, inoculation against the future, treating trans-people as people, dead no kids?, fair use clause, earlier in the year, Misha Burnett, editing an anthology is really hard, a learning curve, editor is a real job, the same mistake, saying no to my own book, servers on the Moon, servers in North Korea, the legal ability to say fuck you, a closed internet, commercial servers, get in good with Kim Jong Un, a movie industry, Saddam Hussein wrote fantasy novels, favourite deceased dictator, Muammar Gaddafi, maybe not so much with the plastic surgery, paid money to get married, highest standard of living to the lowest, an active propaganda campaign, occupation force from outside, not many North Korean refugees, what’s the difference bud?, refugee status, until your area is unflooded, fleeing the oppressive education system, causes kids to kill themselves, how bad it is there, this particular school district, next to Fort Lee, New Jersey, the George Washington Bridge, if it’s such a great country how come so many people are fleeing it, a lot of corruption, a state founded on corruption, also dynamic, the Irish, successful emigrant groups, forced out, what if that’s the goal, the English were interested in making the Irish successful, this is a class thing, an economics thing, Cuban refugees, that’s geography, there are airplanes, a push pull, Iraq refugees, Afghan refugees, mostly externalizes, we’re in the bomb making business, send them to Ukraine, cluster bombs, Central America, those places not being actively bombed, happy stories, we’re making a lot of refugees, here you’re told so much, the next generation of Americans, measuring engagement, creating engagement, tell me what you think about X Y and Z, when somebody is mad, Jesse is blackpilled, being realistic about what’s going on, things are escalating to war in the middle east, proxy war, heading towards a World War, six months from now please tell you your opinion, the Friedman thing, we’ll always know in six months, unfalsifiable, if Donald Trump became president that would be the end of democracy, democracy ended many years before that, corporations and the ultra-wealthy, what the founding fathers wanted, unfinished thought, good idea or great idea, this is falsifiable, 15 months from now, American troops on the ground in Israel, already troops on the ground in Ukraine and Israel, Americans have been killed, what number of casualties, there’s an election coming up, after the presidential election, lame duck, no matter who wins, American troops are going to war after the election, president Kamala has a plan, vice president Buttigieg has her back, when this podcast comes out in 7 months, laughing so hard, Richard Nixon, Spiro Agnew, why Nixon picked Ford, tried to cheat and got caught, he won 49 states, put a bug in there, he wanted telepathy, two term successful president, a revered president, EPA, bullshit things people like, congressional veto, Ronald Reagan, totally drunk all the time, if Nixon calls you drunk, bugged his own office, slurring his words, mumbling incoherently, losing his stuff, some earlier piece of literature, claiming Silverberg rewriting Ayn Rand, Anthem, The Fountainhead, robotic and inhuman, Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward, proto-SF, characterization is not good, to convert people to his ideology, Ecotopia by Ernest Callenbach, she is the kulaks, she experienced some negativity, DRMd, written for the British, the terrible Russian civil war, mutinies in British Columbia, pro-labour, what was going on is Russia was a good thing, one of the atrocities, homes were built, people have housing?, build too much, hows the homelessness situation, doesn’t exist, homelessness situation in Vancouver, Los Angeles, so unaffordable, a Kuwaiti doctor, the housing exists, the power of a communist command economy, mitigation measures, a vacant housing [tax], that’s their solution, expropriate the land and build housing for poor people, all over Saudi Arabia, build a big building, commercial rather than residential, that was plausible at the time, how implausible it is now, a parody of Leave It To Beaver, a little cynical in the 1950s, those cynical guys would write Twilight Zones, project an image of America, homemakers, putting women back in the home, housing and schooling, the cream has successfully been drawn away from the cream-makers, they marry at 27, her life hasn’t really started yet either, secure enough to have kids, what can you afford, transgender surgery is free, what you can’t get done for free is housing, a mental contagion going on, remember bulimia and anorexia, strategies for getting thing, condemned by society, get skinny, doing bad things to your teeth, frowned upon, a fashion, now transgenderism is a fashion but officially sanctioned by every right thinking institution supports it, probably bad, people who want limbs or body parts removed, something fucked up, not exactly correct, pro-anasites, no such thing as water weight, all getting the same contagion, Matt Walsh documentary, don’t be mean to gays transferred that to anybody about anything, pro-furry, it’s comedy, just a fetish, ridiculous, a weird fetish, wanting to have sex with animals, fetishizing furryism, be nice to people, if you don’t support transgender people you’re causing their deaths, people often regret tattoos, the tattoo situation, tattoos don’t prevent you from having children, false consciousness, relatively non-invasive, a biker or a sailor, beards go in and out of fashion, those ear gauge things, an extra hole in your head, semi-reversible, taking someone’s penis away or cutting off boobs is radical change, shouldn’t be promoted even if allowable, solve an specific economic problem, state taking control of it, the whole gay marriage thing, I like living in sin with this dude, part of the attraction, they think it’s taboo, successful breeding babies, happy funeral.

A Time Of Changes by Robert Silverberg

A Time Of Changes by Robert Silverberg

A Time Of Changes by Robert Silverberg

A Time Of Changes by Robert Silverberg

A Time Of Changes by Robert Silverberg

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Reading, Short And Deep #398 – Cat Killers by Donald E. Westlake

Reading, Short And Deep

Reading, Short And Deep #398

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss Cat Killers by Donald E. Westlake

Here’s a link to a PDF of the story.

Cat Killer was published in Shock—The Magazine of Terrifying Tales, September 1960

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The SFFaudio Podcast #746 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Shadows In Zamboula by Robert E. Howard


The SFFaudio Podcast #746 – Shadows In Zamboula by Robert E. Howard – read by Mark Nelson for LibriVox. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the story (1 hour, 26 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants include Jesse, Paul Weimer, Connor Kaye, Alex, and Cora Buhlert

Talked about on today’s show:
Weird Tales, November 1935, The Man-Eaters Of Zamboula, a better title?, conforms to the Weird Tales title aesthetic, the problem, a second meaning, shadows is nebulous, cannibals, all in one night, just before dusk, the evening, a little sleep, a naked lady, a little adventure, buys a horse, leaves town, the magic ring, a roomful of gold, it makes a person irresistible to the opposite sex, lesbians are acknowledged, a gay subtext in one scene, the strangulation, Baal-Ptor, any temple wench, devil dick, the Hannuman temple, a penis, a strangle-off, his boss calls him that, that’s pretty gay, a great scene, I started with babies, and he dies, pro-cannibal, who is put in what position and why, Mark Nelson, Aram Baksh, Ralph Bakshi?, a lot of mistakes in various people’s analysis, he’s not bearded in Savage Sword, the Ablaze, he’s a bum, they’re companions, Bedouin, a middle eastern , they’re on a team, stole a horse from the satrap, don’t stay there, hookah bar, gambling den, the sword maker’s bazaar, yelp reviews, unchronicled adventures, random desert tribes, the kind of thing he tends to do, Doctor Who, for plot purposes, what city it was supposed to be, Constantinople, the western edge of Turan, Mosul, Palmyra, the comic version, Conan recognized her from the start, assumptions, 2nd to last Conan stories, he knows what’s up, full of things that should trigger people and alleviate those things, supple warriors, hawk-faces, the lords of Zamboula, ancient glories, over reading much, glowering about ancient glories, flaunting their myriad colours, loving, towers and minarets, an infodump we need to be surprised lady, judging, smote is a negative, they’ll think he’s a wizard and eat Paul, delighted as all heck, but it might stink, open sewers, third world places, Kathmandu and Nepal, loud, the Ottoman Empire, multiculturalism, hybrids and mongrels, Cross Plains, Texas, modern day Lebanon, influenced the crusader stories, cities are described negatively, civilization is corrupt, what’s cool about this story, everybody’s got their angle, subsidize sales by selling the stuff of his guests, Robert Bloch, an H.H. Holmes story, Solomon Kane, A Rattle Of Bones, The Inn In The Spessart aka The Spessart Inn by Wilhelm Hauff, join our gang or we’ll kill you, film adaptation, how they got put into that position, meat as part of their religion, let out at night like cats, steal from their masters, as they should, our heroine, they’re too valuable, they’re our property, Zamboula is dependent on their slaves, let them eat travelers and street people, Nefertari, secure her position, what happened and her story, she makes it up on the spot, the Ablaze adaptation, literally naked, her hair is covering stuff, a standard trope, the R-rated, a loin cloth, we never see a nipple, important to understand, of course we want titillation, her clothes would giver her away, silken robe, a slave who’s mute, she’s just lied to that guy, you can trust him he’s not a man-eater, Aram Baksh gets his tongue cut off, don’t eat me!, the moral, the better put together this story is, a murder mystery, set piece scenes, a conan pastiche person, The Curse Of The Monolith just rips off that hole idea, magnetic table, the Virgin Conan The Barbarian computer game, a worldwide phone company, a DOS game, a bridal sword, live out the fantasy, Virgin Bride, a bug, what we see in the Conan movie, what’s in the comics, somebody did some research, you’d lose your sword, slip that ring off the finger, he doesn’t tell us until the end, very well put together, looking for something, Conan has already stolen it, worldbuilding and setting, oh yeah that’s right, back to Paul in a flash, an article, Charles R. Saunders, quibbles, all of Sword And Sorcery, as a black person, fascinated by Africa, boxing fans, a bad website, Howard vs. Lovecraft and Clark Asthon Smith, Black Gate, Bob Byrne, Steven H. Silver, why Man Eaters Of Zamboula is the best of all time, the most quintessential, is that defensible?, the most Conan of the Conan stories, best ever written, best story of all time, compelling points here and there, part of a contest they’re having, when you’re arguing for something like that, worse stories by Robert E. Howard, worried about getting this one, a terrific story, Vale Of Lost Women, with some issues, a higher high within it, this isn’t even close, Red Nails, Queen Of The Black Coast, what happens, become more refined, word choices, a mighty theme, the theme in here is strong, what you need to do in life is be the smartest man in the room and have strong hands, offering sex, this story undercuts our expectations and goes away with a bag of cash, getting tired of writing Conan, an amazing finish, really interesting thesis in the center, laser beams, magnets, electrical magnets, the magic in here, science, superscience, radium gems, the priest is all gadgets, toned down, science or magic, cannibal slaves, the colours are more muted than other Conan stories, the setting, he gambled it away, he knew what he was doing, brawn, smarts and skill, a complete Conan, a stupid brute, play dumb, subvert your expectations, fresh to civilization, a Conan who’s seen some things, wily Conan, miles under his belt, confident enough in himself, professional strangler, an intense scene, Conan the conartist, The Jewels Of Gwahlur, Pelishtim, the mercenaries that guard the city, Nefertari, Nefartinti, Stygian, worships Set, the monkey god, on the cover of Savage Sword, clothes on and blonde, the scary monkey god, his representative, his boss,lusting after our girl, Yog, the Darfari slave god, Crom, Erlik, competing ideologies, some to swear with, strong demands, promote human happiness, sacrifices, go to the casino and lose all your cash, every man the strengths of his hands, a god for atheists, cosmicism without reference to the cosmic, prayer doesn’t make any sense, what would Evan say?, what the slaves are thinking, it fuckin sucks to be a slave but we get to have a religion, foreign bastards who are enslaving us, I’m the guy who sells you bodies to eat, they want to revolt, leave the citizens away, their shields on their back, the most powerful woman in the city, Hanuman’s temple, the heart of the story, marble walls, there’s no gate, each building has its own wall, horns, an Agatha Christie sort of scene, barbarian senses, a high perception tense, the reason he has such good hand sensing is because he’s a meat-eater, not a human meat eater, to get revenge, a man-eater too, a secret door, a giant hand, little maze, our guy sitting on a divan, back and forth allusions, The Odyssey, the guest host relationship, a really big theme, a bad relationship with the guest or the host, when they get broken bad things happen, the host comes home, Circe’s island, turn my men not into pigs, a reinforcement of this value system, how to be in a person’s space, that’s what we have here, taken by many different owners, a rival, this door is barred from the inside, climb over the wall, that pit, the slaves can leave the city, they can’t leave, they’ll die, imagine this: and we do, sexual stuff, dragon fight, stuck in somebody else’s feud, more adventures, a central core, he’s really saying something here, who else can do that with this material?, role playing things, Stygian origins, Turan, nightstalking Darfari cannibals, covetously eyes, intrigue and adventure, compared to Shadizar the Wicked, a spider god at the center of it, John Milius stole from every story, he stole from the best, Set’s temple, springing up in all the cities nearby, a power struggle, I salute you, I got a job for you, go get my daughter, snake vs. elephant, sneak into the temple, the satrap is going to be happy, rage induced coma, captain of the guard, its a job, she dosed him, she’s bad, everybody here is bad, a woman naked in the city, slightly deceiving, I’m sorry I lied to you, Conan doesn’t react, Conan doesn’t ever lie, not being chivalrous, nobody has any honour, he saves her from the cannibals, they were stealing her, if they ate the mistress, supplant the satrap, ruled by his mistress, went wild and tore her clothes off, street bum prophesying doom, his hand on Conan’s arm, speaking to him as a brother, a mini-version of the whole piece, his instinct for story is better than almost anybody, writing for a particular market, the chapters and the headings and the nude scene, the scenes that he has to have, the girl threatened by a magician, a similar scene, this ancient mummy, People Of The Black Circle, pretending to be a statue, clothes swap, a whipping scene or something, if he doesn’t get the cover he doesn’t get the bonus, magic, not in The Hour Of The Dragon, all the cities have wizards, John Dee scrying on his mirror, they fucked up, resurrection is a bad plan, that’s how Christianity started, self-ressurection, Jewel Of Seven Stars by Bram Stoker, a pretty damn good story, the Ablaze adaptation, naked the whole story, the art, black god, wonderfully portrayed, undialogued pages, Æon Flux, she looked off the whole book, to actually depict it, naked as the day she was born, a person naked in an unwalled city, at the end, she drops her lover off, is it because every piece of clothing would give away who she is?, giving Margaret Brundage a chance, the cover with the cobras, not unusual for her, how she normally dresses, that very pale skin, on a pirate ship topless, pale is beauty, the guy grew up in Texas, not a wise idea, shock the other guys by flashing them, she’s acting as a goddess, the colour distinction, the palest of pale skins with black hair, Cora is trying to make it make sense, a magic toe ring, breast bobbing, at night, hide from the Pelishtim, when we see the guy’s eyes, contrast with Conan, gets a feel, resisting eating her, playing off each other, lascivious men, the priest wants her to be his, a friend who says look bud, a man who drinks to much is crazy, tearing her clothes off, minutes ago, dragged away from his own bed, not the first time it happens to him, Black Colossus too, a nice theme, as is the reader, puts off his vengeance, a side story, get your priorities straight, save the boyfriend, kill this priest, her motivation is no one can no, I need an outsider, Vera Cruz (1954), Burt Lancaster at his hottest, don’t do that movie with Burt Lancaster, Gary Cooper, he’ll blow you off the screen, old cracked faced men in westerns, way more charismatic, the main attraction, the plot is kinda similar, mercenaries from the American Civil War, working for Emperor of Mexico, an Austrian guy, see each other at this dance, a beef with a high mucky-muck, the glove, you’re not even important, give each other the chin nod, the Kirk and Bones gif, Denise Darcel, Sara Montiel, cowboys not European royalty, why westerns are really cool, stole a horse, shooting each other in the streets, the Winnetou stories, River Of No Return (1954), Duel In The Sun (1946), The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), meta-westerns, a baby across the desert, when is Connor gonna do Howard’s western stories?, how many westerns there were, Steve Costigans, Breckenridge Elkins, his bread and butter, better and more promptly, Action Stories, Fight Stories, a bigger market, niche, how many western TV shows, a legacy, leftovers, westerns now, spaghetti westerns, silent westerns, Western Von Gestern, what Alex Baldwin tried to do, the way TV was supposed to look, westerns or war movies, all the men were old, pulp westerns, Zane Grey novels, short stories from the pulps, something you have to come to appreciate, a set of tropes, its a genre, values that are different, follow the law, follow orders, soccer match on Christmas, what happened to the guys who did it?, war movies serve a purpose, westerns are bottom up, American mythology, do they study SF at university now?, do they study westerns?, Astounding is the training for our engineers, leave town, go to the west, a national mythology, looking backwards, Clint Eastwood, looking at the future, a generation after the west was closed out, the kids or the grandkids of the generation being portrayed, they don’t study romances at university, specialized academics, finding a science fiction class was pretty hard, the Women’s Studies, looking down because it is bottom up, and some women, Range Romances, one of the longest running pulps, Railroad Stories, railroad fiction, you want a union? fuck you, good pay, high tech, like being a truck driver, dangerous, long hours, no time off, bad healthcare, Germany vs. Australia, considered a good job, a secure job, capitalism hasn’t taken over Germany completely, Space Viking by H. Beam Piper, four weeks in a row, people have weird desires, women, man, The Venom Business by Michael Crichton, Rocket Ship Galileo by Robert A. Heinlein, Unseen-Unfeared by Francis Stevens, The Hopkins Manuscript, Alec Nevala-Lee, The Crawlers by Philip K. Dick, The Golden Slave by Poul Anderson, off to farmville, Skull Face, a Steve Harrison story Names In The Black Book, Coming Attraction by Fritz Leiber, never been done before, don’t waste Connor, on Conan duty or Robert E. Howard duty, The Thing On The Roof, a cool description, hear the nipples on the roof, Robert E. Howard doing H.P. Lovecraft, “Hooves In The Night”, Unaussprechlichen Kulten, German speakers, a Justin Joffrey poem, August Derleth, wonky, Canadian public domain, M.S. Corley art, comic book adaptation, a Marvel Chillers version, weird tales sort of material, you get hooked, Howard via Conan, gonna make you a Nazi, Lancer paperbacks, really good, pastiche, boxers who go sailing, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, based on publication date and renewal, nothing to do with death, Robert Silverberg, Harlan Ellison, Condé Nast, work for hire, hero pulps, written under house names, Howard horror, Pigeons From Hell, Old Garfield’s Heart, Steve Costigan, Francis X. Gordon, a useful resource, Mark Finn, the far future, The Devil’s Elixir by E.T.A. Hoffmann, an early robot story, The Sandman, ignore the interesting good for the dull, unsuitable for teenagers, 12 hours 24 minutes, four months, E.T.A. Hoffmann and Edgar Allan Poe, doppelgangers, this story is that story minus all the long parts, The Oval Portrait, a lot of overlap, Poe inspired The Student Of Prague (1913), retreat on the shore of Lake Geneva, Bohemian ghost stories, German romanticism and gothic literature, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Influence Of E.T.A Hoffmann On Edgar Allan Poe, Connor is sick, regular sick, Hard Case Crime, epub or mobi or PDF, Google Books, look at screens all day long, screens less, had you not known a pirate…, 3kb, a remainder bookstore, ebook device technology, eink colour is not rich, snow?, vasculitis, autobahn, bahn means train.

Shadows In Zamboula - ad from WEIRD TALES

Shadows In Zamboula - Margaret Brundage cover for WEIRD TALES

Shadows In Zamboula - Vincent Napoli illustration from WEIRD TALES

Shadows In Zamboula - art by Margaret Brundage

Shadow-God Of Zamboula

SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN - Shadows In Zamboula

Neal Adams and Tony DeZuniga - SAVAGE SWORD

ABLAZE - The Man-Eaters Of Zamboula

CIMMERIAN: The Man Eaters Of Zamboula - art by Mike Krome

Shadows In Zamboula by MLPeters (DeviantArt)

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Reading, Short And Deep #349 – Freedom Of Space by Arthur C. Clarke

Podcast

Reading, Short And DeepReading, Short And Deep #349

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss The Freedom Of Space by Arthur C. Clarke

Here’s a link to a PDF of the story.

The Freedom Of Space was first published in Infinity Science Fiction, October 1957

Podcast feed https://sffaudio.herokuapp.com/rsd/rss

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The SFFaudio Podcast #682 – READALONG: The Screwfly Solution by James Tiptree, Jr.

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #682 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, Scott Danielson, Evan Lampe, and Trish E. Matson talk about The Screwfly Solution by James Tiptree, Jr.

Talked about on today’s show:
Racoona Sheldon, Analog, June 1977, special women’s issue, Eyes Of Amber by Joan D. Vinge, Analog, not just for men, Ben Bova, a 1970s thing, Women Destroy anthologies, all Harlan Issue, throw all the women in one basket, J. Michael Straczynski, a sausage fest, representation by gender, a piss per job, one woman per this episode, making room for women, what her logic was, Angel Fix, to suit different markets?, James Tiptree, Jr had to intervene on behalf of Racoona Sheldon, Robert Silverberg had to make a huge apology, it was very clear James Tiptree, Jr. was a man, the Andre Norton story, she was not hiding, a quasi-medieval romance, rationalization, this story is about rationalization, the whole religious cult element, super hard SF, as a historian, certain biological experiences (like love), fairly universal across humanity, across time however…, culture, movies, love songs, something physically is changing in these men, all the cultural baggage would be dispensed, morality wouldn’t win out?, the first time a zombie wakes up, turning some aspect up to 11, to set the society’s norms, urges, the story of Adam and Eve, uncomfortable, people use it for whatever they want, good science fiction, why Jesse likes adaptations, The Twilight Zone adaptation, the new Dune movie, The Masters Of Horror adaptation, the 90210 guy and Elliot Gould, commas missing in the PDF, the narrator of the story has comma problems but the characters writing the letters don’t, her diary entry, a fun format, enough material for a hefty novel (or a quintology), if Steven Baxter wrote this story, a hard topic to fully satisfy everybody with, like H.G. Wells’ The War Of The Worlds, horrific, creeping dread, clamping down on the news [censorship], the horror of the nice rational scientist, feels himself changing and can’t stop it, bestial/primal instincts, awakened by the aliens, existential dread, we are the monsters, we’re all going to die, humanity is going to kill itself, people do it to themselves, completely chilling, On And Off A Mountain Road, metaphors, cursed film episode Cigarette Burns, a slasher, the focus is on the micro, the outer image, Alan in Colombia, his job is what the aliens do to us,

the 2019 reboot of THE TWILIGHT ZONE has an episode called “NOT ALL MEN” which is credited to Heather Anne Campbell

it seems to be an uncredited remake of the MASTERS OF HORROR episode “THE SCREWFLY SOLUTION” scripted by Sam Hamm

Not All Men / The Screwfly Solution

except the latter is an adaptation of a 1977 story by James Triptree, Jr.

and the former isn’t

evidence:

Both have family dinner parties

The Screwfly Solution DINNER

Both have cakes with words written on them (“welcome home” and “happy birthday”)

Not All Men DINNER

Both have women being murdered by men

Both have the military showing up

Both have atypical meteors showers

and

Both have their respective blonde female protagonists driving around by day, and being chased by night, in identical yellow Volkswagen Beetles

on the left TWILIGHT ZONE on the right MASTERS OF HORROR

Not All Men / The Screwfly Solution BEETLES

THE SCREWFLY SOLUTION is biological Science Fiction and visceral Horror – an alien invasion story like THE WAR OF THE WORLDS by H.G. Wells, as intellectually rigorous, but brutal, scary, and gripping

NOT ALL MEN is decidedly not – it is almost a comedy, but there are no laughs

THE SCREWFLY SOLUTION suggest we are victims of biology

NOT ALL MEN suggest everyone has a choice and most men choose to be bad

the MASTERS OF HORROR episode makes a character from the short story gay, and makes him resistant to the biology that effect most men

the TWILIGHT ZONE episode has a gay character who chooses to be resistant

and both have females disagreeing, in their yellow Volkswagen beetles, about how to understand what is happening to the men around them

THE SCREWFLY SOLUTION is full of conscientious men and women, scientists, trying to figure out what is happening and how to help their families and the world

NOT ALL MEN has basically no scientists (@ the end, maybe?) but has a marketing company doing some sciencey or something?

THE SCREWFLY SOLUTION has the most brutally noir ending imaginable, an ironic one given the characters we follow around for the story, perhaps the last woman alive on earth watching the new tenants of Earth arriving and knowing humanity is finished

NOT ALL MEN ends with a deus ex machina, with cops or the army saving our viewpoint characters, fade to black

blood tests turn up nothing

a twist ending that throws out the main idea they’ve been pushing (the red meteors were a red herring)

there a line at the end of the episode that supposedly explains it all:

“The meteors…they were a placebo.”

then we get the cut-rate Rod Serling closing narration:

Jordan Peele (cut rate Rod Serling)

“Tonight, Annie Miller found herself in the center of a mysterious and violent epidemic. What she encountered was no material disease but rather a plague of conscience. One that gave men permission to ignore decency, consent, and fear. And tonight, all it took was a few an
innocuous little rocks to turn men into monsters here in the Twilight Zone.”

at one point during the craziness in the streets one guy says

“Fuck your feelings”

And this is the level of analysis and writing we are dealing with.

more than 2000 imdb ratings for each

IMDB RATINGS

4.8/10 for THE TWILIGHT ZONE “Not All Men”

6.4/10 for MASTERS OF HORROR “The Screwfly Solution”

Finally, both were filmed in British Columbia

THE SCREWFLY SOLUTION is set in several places, including Texas, Michigan, and British Columbia

i don’t think we know where NOT ALL MEN is set (other than a really lame corner of The Twilight Zone)

The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street, Volkswagen Beetle, understanding the point of the original, we might be unable to control ourselves vs. choosing to be bad, just attacking, just aggro, one of these is science fiction and the other is something else, nightmares, mass hysteria and people’s choices or an alien disease, the hope of the species, woken from crazy aggressive killings, In The Mouth Of Madness (1994), The King In Yellow by Robert W. Chambers, a meme vs. an enzyme or a hormone, social pressures vs. biological pressures, do you read Sutter Cane?, if so you’re infected, the reason I’m killing you is because you’re a communist or a homosexual, explaining inexplicable impulses, a phenomenon we see in reality, Trump as a symptom, the Cult of Adam, “angels”, interesting things in a compressed space, Dracula, the epistolary format, the personal and the broader picture, different perspectives, perfectly expressed, something terrible is happening in England, layers and layers of intertextuality, this is all a suicide note, yesterday I saw an angel, a real estate agent, a devastating last line, all the adults over six years old, feral kids, like a lot of Star Trek episodes, we did it to ourselves!, higher doing what we do to lower or higher species, Huston, Huston, Do You Read?, gender dynamics, women disposing of men, this thing called kissing, Y: The Last Man, a response to When It Changed by Joanna Russ, ovafusion, all female civilization, Sheri S. Tepper, a whole genre conversation, The Children Of Men by P.D. James, The Last Hawk by Catherine Asaro, gender reversed romance plots, men are the hysterical, the second most dangerous primate, another primate note, the rhesus monkeys, spider monkeys, chimpanzees, biological similarity, not well discussed at the dinner table, mating behaviors, Fritz Leiber, opinions from twitter, wishing people would read it, even the uninfected nodded and saw the killing as natural, the result is extermination, God’s will, committees, kill camps, bad things are happening, no one in authority, the mundane aspect, being called to Florida, a car flotilla [aka a convoy], the NIH, Triptree lived in Washington, D.C., her husband and her were both CIA, part of the interest here, Deep Impact (1998), a bunch of people in a control room, the media, something weird is happening in India, 150 adulteresses in Saudi Arabia, very similar headlines, “so-called Sharia Law”, Michael McKean (of Spinal Tap), #YesAllWomen, scarier and scarier every day, an over-reading, anonymous submission, George Sand, other reasons, “trans-phobic”, whatever else, transphobic by structure, a binary opposition of genders, gender binarism is real and meaningful, structurally queasy, men as naturally pedophilic, socially compelled into a straight marriage, there’s a lot there, you gotta consider the context of the story, Heinlein was, reading transphobia into texts [from 1977], Trish is cancelled, a failure of imagination, phobia is without meaning, outside the scope of what she’s exploring, how they turn on the boys, a non-binary view of sexuality, reading too much into this?, aggression hacked sexuality, a less binary reading of sexuality, she’s thinking super-hard, what is sexuality?, this strange focus on a part of science that doesn’t get a lot of attention in Science Fiction, our hero Alan, his relationship with his wife, it gets hot, he starts fantasizing on the airplane, crushed the Coke can, you need to kill me if I show up, I should throw this knife away, really good hard SF, he knows there’s something wrong with him, he should kill himself, killing (and possibly raping) his own daughter, slightly misreading what’s going on, the chase mentality is real, ovulation in some animals needs this, kinda Kinsey, the weaker have been killed, artificial wombs, Podkayne Of Mars, freeze your zygotes, Lois McMaster Bujold, people’s wrong takes, the most devastating counterargument to #NotAllMen, they are connected, an expression, traction after #MeToo, the defensive reaction, downgrading the impact of #MeToo, #BlackLivesMatter vs. #BlueLivesMatter, sarcastic uses, #AllMen, aggressive seeds, bombing Dallas, men are evil, seeds of violence, misogynistic in structure, a jihad against women, in order to do evil is to choose evil, we are biologically determined, human beings are more than their biology, condemned by our biology, its not a disease, on the ground, isn’t it horrifying that we are biologically determined?, the hashtag vs. the Twilight Zone episode of the same name, explicitly rejecting Tiptree Jr.’s idea, we should summon the will, what if we are biologically determined to do everything, an MRNA injection, a hard bitter pill to swallow, what the story is suggesting, it helps Scott make choices, seeing this in all its horror, if we don’t have choices in reality, the illusion of choices?, what about the screwflies?, they’re just flies, we write stories, we’re not as complicated as we think, slaves to our hormones, he doesn’t kill himself, noir, not pulling its punches, biological determinism or mostly biologically determined?, influenced by stories, closer to chimps or rhesus monkeys, bonobos?, sex as a way of saying hello, a dispute over a sandwich settled by sex, institutions and ideology shape how we interpret and overcome biological, the birth control pill, change society, what science fiction is, geology, how old the Earth is, life-changing, a very good science fiction story, harder than H.G. Wells’ The War Of The Worlds [not The Time Machine], take the war to Mars, maybe somebody’s working on something somewhere, so good, 1 hour to read, that fake stuff that’s 16 books long, fake science, 2 north 75 degree west, anthropology, WHO inoculations, just watched an episode of Masters Of Horror, Cordwainer Smith, off in Africa with her parents, the horse latitudes, bringing experience to the table, its not because she’s a girl, long short story format, The Women Men Don’t See, The Woman Who Was Plugged In, semi-interesting, externalize evil, religions antagonists fighting god, the devil is trying to put bad thoughts in your head, avoiding responsibility, easier, Alcohol Anonymous’ plan, accept the higher power because you’re weak, these religious pamphlets make so much sense, Genesis 3:16, women: feel the pain of childbirth and obey your husbands, short stories are a technology for delivering ideas, don’t be anti-good story, some people are willing to put anything into their bodies, good short SF is a vaccination against long terrible series that do you wrong.

The Screwfly Solution by James Tiptree, Jr.

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Reading, Short And Deep #305 – A Rose For Emily by William Faulkner

Podcast

Reading, Short And DeepReading, Short And Deep #305

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss A Rose For Emily by William Faulkner

Here’s a link to a PDF of the story.

A Rose For Emily was first published in The Forum, April 1930.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!