The SFFaudio Podcast #781 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The History Of Hayy Ibn Yaqdhan by Ibn Tufail

The SFFaudio Podcast #781 – The History Of Hayy Ibn Yaqdhan by Ibn Tufail, read by Evan Lampe. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the book (2 hours, 57 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Evan Lampe, and Terence Blake.

Talked about on today’s show:
Terry the loner, a conversion, Terénce is better than Terence, the necessary existent, why are we listening to old dead Europeans?, it’s Tarzan, Stranger In A Strange Land, enriched it with sex, implied sex, conceives the possibility of sex being a distraction, might be converting to Islam, raised Lutheran, if Evan were to convert: Islam or Calvinism, neo-platonic symbolic interpretation of Islam, Avicenna, John Vervaeke, Awakening From The Meaning Crisis, alternative titles, human reason, the History Of Hayy Ibn Yadhan, is this a story of humanity story?, yes, a history of philosophy story, a scientific interpretation of a history of humanity on earth story, there was a pool of very muddy water, it had fermented a lot, it so came to pass, a receptacle, the crappy story of how earth got life, full sized human baby, cute and fun and silly and gets us where we need to be, a bad novel, a fun thing for what it is, forgotten about Roman novels, for dramatic events, more like a Philip K. Dick novel than Edgar Rice Burroughs, raised Christian, the aesthetics, he would definitely have dug it, this book doesn’t wrestle with evil very much, what is good, evil as blindness, on the ethical side, his moral code, through his system, life the universe everything, necessary existent, are your podcast listeners familiar with Avicenna?, ethics are rooted in communities, morals vs. ethics, ethics is for jobs, Deleuze’s definitions based on Spinoza, the application, universal constants, not in a hurry, puppy drowning in the river, get that puppy, dog catcher, commitment or relationship, I can help you cheat at school but I can’t help you cheat at learning, make your prison stay better, good ethics vs. good morals, you shouldn’t lie except…, find a way to be tricky and deceptive, on the same page, new friend, many points in the 115 chapters, this is all impossible, 28 years old, now he’s going to learning language, that burning bush over there, get past that, those things are in Tarzan, a primer (how to read book), he’s also a child, lots of impossible things happen, improbable things, either way the creation myth works, nurses her son, puts him in an ark, God take care of my son, beach, a roe nearby, the baby ain’t changing her own diapers, lick up their shit, how everything works in this, figuring out what the stars are, this is not a fiction story, a fiction way of making your students be introduced to all of these concepts, mostly right, wrong in the details, from the physical to the spiritual, wanting to live in a videogame, deny their body, focus on the mind of god, mortification and starvation, getting closer to that perfect union through understanding god with mirrors, largely concerned with science, the philosophy of religion, let’s form a society, just like the scholastic in Latin Europe, Thomas Aquinas, justify this through Aristotle, Plotinus, a doctor, scholarship, what makes it a golden age, parallels with what is happening, a condensed text, an autodidact, packaged like we think of as a novel, two creation myths, let’s just examine the facts of how the sun works, how heat works, all tricks to get you into the science, natural philosophy is what we would call science, talking about the food, the morality of the food that you put into your body, animals and eggs, vegetables, stand on fruit, fruit is the most interesting kind of food to talk about philosophically, fruitarians, not kill a plant, roots and bark, fresh vegetables, weird cases, fruit or vegetable, pumpkin, strawberries, parafruit, acting like a fruit, doing what the plant wants, how drugs work, obliquely referencing quinine, Jesuit bark, developing our relationship with plants, we had this discussion, eating fake meat, if it tastes like meat, super-interesting, modern Muslim and Jewish orthodox people, philosophically disposed, religious ideas people just accept, if you think it through, a consequentialist, being offended by a dildo, something is fake, dildos do offend people, glossed over, daily ablutions, the philosophy of washing up, plants rubbed into his private areas, he took them where they were abundant, more from the roe’s point of view, god killed her fawn, there’s no predators on this island, this ecosystem is fucked, two and a half hours, do your own Hayy Ibn Yadhan fan fiction, he spent a year thinking about his relationship to scented plants, why it is good to keep your bum clean, the Robinson Crusoe connection, eating of that guy’s food, not a food that he should eat (because it is too good), generally right, vaping scented vapes, a chemical that helps them regulate their mind and mood, drugs to excess, to escape the pain of capitalism or whatever, don’t enjoy things too much, sleep cycle, sleep hygiene, having this character learn about reality, the ecosystem, this other, philosophy of religion, all up their own asses, not on observation of the universe, inner knowledge, rationalist and empiricist, why is she not moving, she will move again, he loves his mom, after a certain point you can’t fix the plumbing, a traumatic theme, more of a medical explanation for why people die, going into the soul, better explained using brain chemicals, all reductionist, fastidious about what he eats, pleasure therefore not really necessary, drunk on the spinning, the Sufi stage, exercise, that’s still the body, you have to go in circles like the heavenly bodies, still material or sensory or corporeal, runs around his house, runs around the island, not far enough, whirling dervishing, little kids do it naturally, special dresses that fly up, his solution is go in the cave, get in the tantric pose, starve yourself, hare shirt, whip yourself, high on your own supply, mushrooms, peyote, Joe Rogan talking to aliens, the gateway to the aliens, just replace God with aliens, looking for meaning, satisfied with the educational steps, high enough state, we won’t have to worry about meaning anymore as we will be in communion with god, look at that lumpy rug, a history of mistakes, bring it together, better understanding, meaning has to be derived from experience on the earth, this is how we’ve been doing it, how early and how right, lot a Greek stuff in here, Peter Adamson on The History Of Philosophy Without Any Gaps, it’s never gonna end, other traditions, China next, third most translated from Arabic, the Koran, The Arabian Nights, it has a bit of a story to it, fish out of water books, utopias, which is why we like science fiction, what are the rules, Stranger In A Strange Land, subject to Heinlein’s philosophy, The Outsider by H.P. Lovecraft, surrounded by books, assumes he is like the characters in the books, candles, he can’t go into the forest, out of Plato’s cave, spiders and bats and silent rats, a familiar path, to heaven, did some horrible thing come into the house behind me, male or female, a memory of a better place, visions of heaven and being close to god, built into humans, a better place available to us, where the power of saying there is a God out there, how we’re different from the other animals because we have this faculty, a spirit that they don’t have, important unto themselves but not like us, why it is a story, scientist and proto-scientists, 1160 AD, thousand year old book, a meta-fiction story, the two origins, both are true, Moses and Adam, the bible has both stories, silly, incompatible but presented, it’s wrong but a good way to get access to an idea that is helpful, a stage of development, the princess puts her baby in an ark, the book is more intelligent than us, a few extracts from the introductions by modern editors, old science, when it seems really impossible it’s supposed to shock you into an allegorical reading, take away the veil, this story with the light, neo-Platonist, the light, divine light, materialist explanation with the clay is not enough, the light comes first to make the human, the end is not full enlightenment, worldly life, the next step, The Ten Ox-Herding Pictures, the enlightened one, the oneness of God, the story of the Buddha, nobody reads the bible as a scientific text, references to the Koran, a book about the history of why we can know things about the real world, engaging with the creator of the world, transcending the world to appreciate the creator of the world, sometimes he’s starving himself to get to enlightenment, don’t eat meat/cows, what the proper things to eat are, non-fable, things that are not fables, a mist in the center, empiricism, I study facts, steam, the soul coming out?, animal spirits, a white mist that explains that why it was alive, part of the heart is clogged, more than one chamber, one is empty one is full, heart attack, blood clotting, the whole point of that, he looks at the body, there are no holes in it, nobody poked a hole in my mom, if there’s something broken inside of her, what surgeons do, go in there and fix it, transcendence to she is a mechanical creature, but still good, not my job to eat all of these things, not completely separate, why does he covers up his genitals?, furrier genitals, they’ve got a tail, he duplicates that, he’s into imitation, he’s smelling good, he’s radiating light, dressed in a sophisticated way, he looks amazing, he’s not fat, only eating what he needs to, part of his movement, bodily objects in the heavens, get out and take a walk, Tai chi is based on circles or spirals, the best movement is spirals within spirals within spirals, doesn’t hurt the joints, low or no impact, he wants to be with God, he’s not allowed to kill himself, he has to be good to his body, he has to be good to the environment for God’s sake, he’s not going to uproot anything, when he sees a plant that’s too dry he gives it water, he’s healing the creation, a flash of Greta Thunberg, gotta save the world, but for what purpose?, minimize the corporeal element, the incorporeal element in him, too… be one with it?, where the author intends to be, the ultimate goal is that unity with God in the city, those two characters introduced at the end, a cave, an island, an introvert and an extrovert, a Sufi mystic approach, a duty to that community, those ethics are established, you’ve finished the book, as a young person, take what you’ve learned into society, in doing so your spreading the religion/knowledge, the way Jesse finds meaning, share it with everybody, most people don’t read, a nice poem in an old magazine, job well done Jesse, the others don’t like it, they’ll never get to it, be good, be nice, and protect your business, the writer is all three, too literal minded, follow your inclination then, be one with God and do what you will, born on an island and stay on an island, going into the cave and meditating until you die, you’ve gotta go into the city, you live in a dumpster, you laugh at the politicians as you eat your onions, that’s Diogenes, hang out with dogs, need to be close to services to dig through dumpster, masturbating in public, modelling himself on Socrates, Diogenes is mystical? tell me more, I’ll go live on Instagram, very backwards, selfish, lame, it might be immoral, he’s the one who could stay in the cave ethically, the problem with the libertarian point of view, Trish’s voice, not that way Trish, not more female voices in this sausage fest, a natural instinct, a goat that suckles a kitten with no mom, lonely, not of its own species, morality and instincts are related, go away or soothe, built in, for females they suckle children, they lick them clean, one day my child will take over my business, as a male we don’t have that instinct as much, categorization, taking things apart, the instinct to be a mechanic is more male, nurture and take care, cut and dried, people disagree are fuckin nuts, if this princess had had a daughter it wouldn’t go into a cave, lady sitting in a cave, meditating all day, early Christian church mothers, once they’re indoctrinated, female brains, blind people brains, different skills, definite dispositions, this book doesn’t go there because it’s just one dude, trying to go there, there are female religious fanatics, flagellate yourself, deny the body, a more male phenomenon, I gotta go, the baby needs to have milk, once your kids are grown, grandkids, supervision, the occasional story, wipe dirt off wipe dirt in, because we live in a gendered society, societies are gendered, we could abolish gender, males and females then, the progeny has to be raised up, done by groups of people, the suckling is only done by the female, more weaving, men weave too, hunting in the forest, once they get out of a certain stage they’re into a city, lenses, glasses, burning glasses, related to the tech you can get from the city, mirrors, do your science stuff, in order to have cities, bringing supplies to the lens-grinders, a guy who doesn’t have a lot of needs, when that guy comes to the island they’re having sex, funny, very high spirtiual status, have sex without even noticing, a baby appears on a puddle on the beach, a sealion comes by and nurses this pup, god is busy strangling it’s pup, married Apollo, Pythia, these are animals pretending they’re not animals, if there was a woman on the island, whatever the Koran said about marriage and family, he gets ultimately to Islam, multiple wives, a controversial position, the Jews not so much, one at a time with the Romans, making connections between tribes, Mohammad’s wives, the favourite wife, alliance style marriages, having lots of children, to build up, nation states and empires, go to Tahiti, if the food is easy and the weather’s nice, recruits for moving rocks, war with a neighboring island over rock resources, when he goes to the city, cities could be sacked, these are things that are not touched upon, nobody can critique my stuff, you need some guy to tell you to take the slide cover off, researching something that doesn’t exist, the car is out a gasoline, basic baby things that we need to learn, that’s not how real science really works, what are you doing?, ohhh!, solves huge problems, an argument for rationalism that I could flick away, trying to learn from experience, the community of science, it tends to go to the cave, learn this stuff on your own, an experience that’s very rare, a high on drugs style experience, non-transferable but felt real, fiction helps you learn things that are real, use a fiction example, you’re dad’s dead, I would feel terrible, j/k, if they can give their own fictional explanation, how you acquire that meaning, not just the engine, read this book then go talk about it with a bunch of other people, it can’t live without us talking about it, it’s missing something, one of Evan’s specialties is the history of the worker movement, a whole history, The Ignorant Schoolmaster by Jacques Rancière, master-pupil model, social power relations, science is collective, any kind of work outside of the most primitive is , underdog educated by the topdog, if I teach something we are now equal, educational establishments, I’ve been teaching him like he’s inferior, in mathematics, G.H. Hardy, strange letters from an Indian [Srinivasa Ramanujan], at this level in mathematics, workers education is social, you don’t have to go through official channels, I get that point, learning from other people, a defect of the book, he thinks in terms of heaviness, what do you think will happen?, heaviness is not the same as gravitation, it must be shorter, a proof on a page, the proof blew Terence’s mind at 11, a part of an infinite set is the same size as the original, math is a real problem, live in a cave with a slide-rule, Cantor’s diagonal proof, other kinds of knowledge, geology is not solvable in a cave in a human lifetime, figuring out the rock cycle, water’s states, impressively frozen on the equator, water gets bigger when it freezes, less dense in its frozen state, the Greeks, doing all inferences, takes that step into being the caretaker of the island and the animals on it, what the , he says to the deer he can make sounds of but can’t answer them back, this is not how it works, Rene Descartes, I have an idea of god in my mind, gymnastics, people can be wrong, people can be confronted, internal experiences, going in the wrong direction, reform a city, Plato to step in, that’s probably wrong Mr. Plato, retreat to the cave, get closer to God, Aristotle’s physics, look at how happy he is, why would the laughter cease?, would never have been able to write the book, language came letter, writing in parables then in metafiction, why Ibn Tufail has gone a step further, a book that encourages more books, heirachy in educations, becomes a guru, he’s the master, he has his followers, that’s bad, that’s the wrong attitude, inherently hierarchical, being older makes you more wise (not always), [Mikhail] Bakunin’s dentist, two people on a beach, the older one, giving my game away, knows how the oars work, pulls up a chain, a little cage, a crab or a lobster, Jesse’s not a lobsterman, eventually that shorter one will know how to do this job, where to put these traps, one of them is a young person, transfers the knowledge on, outside of school systems, flint tip arrows, one can’t do the lobster trapping anymore, more like a chain of responsibilities, explaining stuff, learn a lot, students aren’t always great teachers, if circumstances are such, so wonderful, learning so much, given the system we’re in, servers to pay for, a really nice book, they’ll learn even more in discussion, hear somebody talk about a book, talk with somebody else, how the genuine learning is genuinely happening, documentary, a room with a bunch of nurses wearing masks, swaddling babies, a table with forty or fifty babies, those babies have no names, piles of baby, raising children, this is my baby I love it, when your breast milk is working again, widgets, you’re in this class and I will mark you, they tell you about a book they read, I’m too old for that genre of book, that’s fun, the social aspect as well, recommend not just one book, not just ten, explanation, discussions, Evan’s blog on Philip K. Dick, built on a foundation got from society, a tabula rasa from birth, he’s not sharing, throw in other people, society makes something out of that, already enmeshed in social relations, factually wrong, allegorically interesting, podcast or write a blog, intellectual evolution, born on an island, possibly a puddle on a beach, get away from the ego, learn on their own, Evan’s blog is: philipkdickreview.wordpress.com, what book is his best, juvenalia, buddy, posthumous, Olaf Stapledon, also science fiction that is not a novel, Sirius, a novel, the banner is a big slum, Mars, kipple, everywhere humans go, trashy and garbage, super-socially active in his community, trashing the school board, make political change, writing congratulations to Richard Nixon, what an autodidact there, that’s when he gets nutty, stops engaging in society, big mistake you’re not meant to make, at the height of illumination you think you are God, something about avoiding the mistake, fell into the mistake however you define it, even along the way, the occasional place he would revert back, do something fun with it, we don’t need to be bipolar, the crazy ones, he believes everything, just great ideas, born on drugs, sparking all over the place all the time, his reputation, the drugs are to stay up late and write a novel, LSD, his fleshy hariry sweaty world around him, he wrote a lot about drugs, Heinlein’s sex-life, a guru for some aspect of the sexual revolution, weird cult, The Church Of All Worlds, Oberon Zell-Ravenheart, annoyed, Ayn Rand, The Harrad Experiment by Robert Rimmer, nothing can possibly go wrong, sexual anxiety is learned, educate he current generation, a wonderful book about this, Make Love, Not War: The Sexual Revolution: An Unfettered History by David Allyn, Thermidor, vs. humidor, a month, effecting the social movements, drugs are cool, weird shit happens, chew that Chew-Z, druggie reputation, Heinlein is more deserving of his reputation, a pretty sex-free book, we need that sequel, Jesse and Connor, an immoral book, the guy’s a fuckin asshole, you’re my slave now, a Pierce Brosnan adaptation, they have to do things to make the characters not monstrous, Friday judo flips him, you look like me, I don’t understand words, food, cultivate this relationship, friendship is sealed, a non-hierarchical relationship, I’m doing a mini-colonialism and you can to, thank god for all your providence from god, then you get slaves to increase your yields, a go out and do this kid book, there’s a cave in the book, a general mistake, a way of retreating from horror in the world, born into a world of pain, so I can get closer to God, the stories are often quite attractive, if you’re really hardcore about this you’ll go live in a monastery, thank you for recording it, good discussion, Mating Center please, Frank Belknap Long, some other sex books, more Orrie Hitt, Orrie Hitt country, audiobooks, the beautiful and the frustrated fought to go to the…, eugenics society, social role, a frightening view of life and forbidden love, breeders, set aside to breed, horn people that can’t breed wanna fuck, a new rubric, Water Is For Washing, the original scan, one of his shortest stories ever, slavery for a while, Harriet Beecher Stowe, three of her books, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, two volumes, serialized in a newspaper, her whole reputation today lies on this one book, until next week, Terence is a pirate too, LibGen, studying up for the next podcast, writing, three episodes, the essays, say something nice about it, youtubing on the philosophy of mathematics, the poetical philosophical history of mathematics, Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth, symbolic logic, Bertrand Russell, some Greek guys, a comic about Oppenheimer, 3 hours is a lot, Terence sat through Oppenheimer (2023), the history of blowing people up?, something really baby about it, just look at the trailer and read the script, Dunkirk (2017) or Tenent (2020), no sound problems, people used to being coddled, Bane character, some special sounds, clear and distinct, a clear and distinct voice of god, a Goddard movie, attached to the dialogue, a secret advantage, follow better, subtitles allow you to read movies, just the words that are being said by a person, turning somebody’s podcast into text, simultaneously, double participation, you can see the artistry or inartistry, preparation, it’s a spoiler is what you’re saying, spoilers is the search light in the bucket theory, Popper’s famous essay, Karl Popper, I love deep buckets, Christopher Nolan, movie makers reputations as directors anymore, one of the last operating, Momento (2000), small scale, you could talk about the ending, the premise is awesome, the conclusion or beginning naturally follows, Insomnia, The Prestige, based on Christopher Priest’s novel, The Dark Knight (2008), Inception, it doesn’t have a fatal flaw like The Matrix (1999), sequels, one special cut of the sequels, cut out all the zion scenes, Interstellar (2014), idea wise it is slow, Contact (1997), pretty normal except for the last part with the voyager, the both have Matthew McConaughey, the religious nut, is it meaty?, movies aren’t as generally deep as good books, very well done for the gimmick that it is, look and see if there’s something I should download, more utube, Red Letter Media, Best Of The Worst, one of the characters from the Star Trek cartoon, he plays Hughie on The Boys, he’s in Oppenheimer (2023) as well, whatever those guys are, slipping him a script to give to Nolan, teach me to read, Jesse’s level of jokes, a nice little joke here and there, that format has never existed before, a kind of media that has never existed in any other format, One Minute Critic, a review of it in 60 seconds, over the course of 40 minutes or an hour and half, wonderful, right, when they invented plays, own TV channel, talk about whatever I wanted to, but now it’s real, the format and the server space, plop into the hands for virtually zero cost, when podcast started, you don’t need video, a slow motion big wrong stamp, to enhance the joke, Russell Brand, a little more flexible in the definition now, it’s something else, a very weird podcast, plan for a career in watching old VHS tapes, a career in reading old books, that they do this as a job is incredible, are you serious right now?, a big enough casual enough less time intensive, turned off books, longer blogposts into several chapters of a book, if you’re not in the system, if you don’t play the game, he’s terrible at marketing, a university professor contacted Terence about a blogpost about François Laruelle, in fact you will be paid nothing, things that need to be changed, can you do some more work for my book?, as if Terence was an idiot, normal procedure, academics write books and publish for free their articles so they can put it on their CV, you don’t need to sell these books, don’t bug me, I won’t re-write, I’m busy, online magazines, even if they’re not getting paid, makework projects, pre-existing contact or relation, to make them happy, keep money out of the system, lousy translation, improve it for them for free, they just forget Terence afterwards, busy trying to find their own meaning, when the web is inaccessible, you might stumble over an old book in a bin, whatever the version of scanning is in the future, a list of stories, a reprint of a 1959 short lived magazine, two Silverbergs under pseudonyms, two, Laurence Janifer, Demons Of Cthulhu, $23 shipping, I don’t need money just don’t get new things, occasionally replace a tire, be born rich, putting stuff online, find people who have a copy of that, what Terence just did for Evan there, that’s the great thing about working in a community, a little piece of advice, drag and drop and it’s done, get out of your fucking cave, three books just received, The Weird Tales Boys by Stephen Jones, relations between Lovecraft, Howard, and Smith, Robert Silverberg’s Monster And Things, The Thing Behind Hell’s Door, these are public domain, don’t ask is my policy, published in May 2023, the shipping, peripheral material, Asimov’s introductions, Worlds Of Wonder by Robert Silverberg, Science Fiction 101, Sheckley and Bester, you got it exactly, thank you so much, explaining a book, reading a book is more work, pay close attention to grok it properly, it’s the bucket and the searchlight again, an interesting light, college instructor, flying off to Germany, The New York Review of Books, a Stanislaw Lem collection, prefaces to unwritten books, Sartor Resartus, “Imagine dedicating much time and effort to a parody! (And a quick perusal indicates it’s quite well done, not a slipshod (albeit very droll) Devil’s Dictionary.)” a book about books, LibriVox, it will come, one on yotube as well, AI is fuckin horrible, it’s an AI, getting really good, they don’t know how to read sentences, even a flawed human, garbage truck makes a noise, a real guy reading a real book makes a huge difference, a readalong, sometimes they coincided for fragments of sentences, an extra dimension, quite good, 1.3 speed, it became a short story, incredibly dense, 900 years ago, when it’s that far back, whole decades and systems and fashions have gone by, Avicenna was contemporaneous?, when the king was sick, a trap, 1037, 1105, they were overlapping, court physician, the king died, his creed avicennaism, creed instead of religion, a formalized set of belief, you say these words Terry, ok, then you do it, your ethical responsibility, you took on this creed, the Nicene Creed, this guy who was mad at Jesse in Australia, Sci-Phi, evangelical christian, worldview, a cynic?, sounds bad, fairly skeptical, the Iraq War, dropping bombs on people, just war theory, this is not just, what about WWII, on forums, critiquing his podcasts, Battlestar Galactica, trying to be evangelical online, the movie version, it just doesn’t have the depth, Next (2007), The Golden Man, three levels in a story, Blade Runner (1982) is quite deep, they’re children, the movie goes pretty deep because it doesn’t have a definitive, a very watchable 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), fall asleep, we see the unicorn being placed, the world falling apart around them, they reinforce each other, the Denis Villeneuve one, the horrible setup for a sequel, three or four sequels, garbage, boiling his food, heavy kipple, the hitman showing up, the kids working in the garbage factor, the opening scene is quite solid, the robot and his robot girlfriend with no body, when he though maybe he was the one, stupid in itself, filled my barf bag, imperfect and flawed, the bad parts about The Matrix (1999), there is no spoon, fuck off with your spoon, we need to recruit you because it’s the right thing to do, space Jesus, a purpose for action, Come And See (1985), Belorusan boys, a mascot, witnesses horror, a line from the bible, Revelation 6:1-17, all shall be revealed to you, The Poor Miller’s Boy And The Cat, Bros. Grimm, Old Woman In The Wood, a good one, a good episode too, The Cat’s Advice by Jesse, for those still listening, seething, the cat is touching the knee, Puss In Boots, the curious feline, there are many options for a young strong thing, the moral at the end, problematic, what used to be called twitter, too involved, the entity that was formerly called Prince, it was temporary, you need to be active, don’t just react, be ready, worthy of a repost, what a stupid change, dangerous like slot machines, Hippocampus Press, a Clark Ashton Smith novel, a symbolic thing, put some money into a podcast you like, being a patron, a very small server, only for the Canadian stuff, these known billionaires, they hide it, he’s the dumbest of the rich people, he’s the trolliest, Peter Thiel, the lawsuit that broke Gawker, Hulk Hogan against Gawker, a sex tape or something, they’re gonna find out through this proxy, the rest of the billionaires, Bill Gates, MSNBC, positive press, very responsible for the COVID thing, Windows is getting so bad, on Ubuntu all the time, a very robust ecosystem for freeware on Windows, games were bad for Mac, same with phones, Apple is very locked down and pure evil, you can’t stop it, Android is locked down, Linux phones, a Linux basement in it, if you wanna fuck the system, Neuromancer, a very good book, Case, in order to do his hacking, know who the big enemy is and be very similar with their systems, you have to flow down the river, the river is taking everything, maybe capitalism is inevitable, it’s what I’m drowning in, a terrible extended metaphor, needs work, Anti-Oedipus by Félix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze, make their obsessions sound interesting, a river composed of rivers, taking us horrible places, some countries are on the same train or river, not in the same position on the river, the federal government of Canada is completely corrupted, deputy Prime Minister of Canada is the grandchild of a Ukranian Nazi, this country has been invaded, a standing ovation to a WWII veteran, fought bravely against the Russians, he was in the SS, fight the communists for the Nazis, magic wand waved, they surrendered, Ukranian Nazi moved to Canada, seen holding a Bandera flag, SS monuments in Canada, guys we might be making mistakes here, I can’t believe what a monster I was, a willful blindness, the corruption is such that…, the provincial government is much better (but not perfect everywhere), homeless everywhere, neoliberalism hasn’t fully taken over, except for North Korea, China, Burma, Venezuela, Cuba, let’s privatize everything and give everything to the billionaires, the Macron government, gonna survive?, nothing bad is happening to them, the arguments are wrong, sorry we’re just doing it, King Charles has come over, nobody much has protested, mass with the Pope in Marseilles, that was not his role, the new education minister, the Abaya is not to be worn, we’re a secular state, a personal trip, me and my buddy the pope, touching the king, against protocol, they’re in the same class, president is not the king of France, banging on the walls of Vatican city, this boat is very leaky, what’s the alternatives, this particular party is a Nazi party because it is threatening the establishment, Macron centrists, the major left wing party, Nazi again, whitewashed, they hardly say it, Réunion island, not a part of France you get to see much, Lahania, Maui, Réunion is more than twice as far, not quite a million people who live there?, how do the people of France think about Réunion?, what the general ideas are, isolated part of the world, Mauritius, islands in the Indian Ocean, Madagascar, never colonized, the remotest parts of the Earth, a comedy action movie, put your feelers out, a sports trainer, girlfriend is a dentist, they couldn’t earn enough, housing is cheap, imports expensive and not a lot of work, did pretty good, worried, prepared for a month, covers a lot but not very deep, university, several paragraphs from each chapter, this feels like that, don’t forget we’re very religious, working things out for himself, everything that is said is taking sides, stoicism, the different currents and schools, each and every thing, siding with Avicenna, combining Aristotle and Plato’s Timaeus, most of it is inarguable, today it’s all finished, it’s important, it gets us to the next thing, interesting discoveries along the way, Breakthroughs In Science by Isaac Asimov, more influence on the sequels, The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, and the angels, a book of essays, as if the writer was Robinson Crusoe, typical Hebrew scholars, what you care about books we never knew, doing their own stuff, nice to spend some time in that period of time, the golden age, get old books, read em, write your own, what makes a golden age, doing basic science, philosophy, and art, why don’t we do that again, not everybody is participating, the gentleman scholar vs. the university scholar, our income, mostly cover basic needs, freedom to a podcast every weekend or so, where did it all go, four hours.

Hayy ibn Yaqdhan

Hayy ibn Yaqdhan

Hayy ibn Yaqdhan

Hayy ibn Yaqdhan

Hayy ibn Yaqdhan

Hayy ibn Yaqdhan

art for The Cat's Advice by Jesse

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The SFFaudio Podcast #772 – READALONG: A Meeting With Medusa by Arthur C. Clarke

The SFFaudio PodcastJesse, Scott Danielson, and Terence Blake talk about A Meeting With Medusa by Arthur C. Clarke

Talked about on today’s show:
under heavy pressure, Playboy, December 1971, the audiobook, superfamous, The Star and Nine Billion Names Of God, A Fall Of Moondust, Dolphin Island, a middle school library, an introduction to hard science fiction, all about characters in relationships, a mystery involved, a disaster movie, what he’s really good at, the twist at the end, sprinkled the hints, the paintings in Playboy, a hot air balloon, multiple gases, a giant medusa, aka a jellyfish, Jupiter, on Earth, the story this is most similar to by Arthur Conan Doyle, the Sherlock Holmes Professor Challenger guy, The Horror Of The Heights, pilots go up and disappear, crushed, giant jellyfish in the upper atmosphere story, Queen Elizabeth IV, an abrupt end, the sequel inside of it, awesome opening scene, imagery and everything, the shocking end of that section, really good, among the best Scott has ever read of Clarke’s, the structure hurts it, the beautiful writing, a bit of symbolism, an idea punch that hits you out of science fiction and into philosophy, he’s doing propaganda, he don’t cheat at all, is there an Arthur C. Clarke story where the knowledge of the solar system at the time of writing is ignored to tell an idea, he won’t write a story unless it’s plausible, petty concerns of being a human, deep time and cosmic depths, what does that make you, the Olaf Stapledon thing, characters, the guy in here, important to tell the story, solid, now he’s very solid, concentric circles of sense of wonder, a little bit in the future, almost cinematic action, some of the phrases are ambiguous, going on another mission, lightning reflexes, reconstructed him, after they reconstructed me, we’re just not fast enough, tai chi teacher, not explicit, his pilot’s reflexes, he doesn’t say this is the murderer, when they put me together again, the surgeons made some improvements, this is one of them, set more than 100 years in the future, treaty on first contact, the line that blew me away, the Mao Tse Tung in the American museum, what?, Americans got over their hatred of red China and think Mao is a hero as the rightly should?, the San Diego naval museum, war trophy, do you want to make friends with the Russians?, name an aircraft carrier after Stalin, or Ho Chi Mihn, named after people now, destroyers are named after cities, how do you embrace other countries?, incorporate their heroes, adopting Greek stuff, they’re ours now, we’re the inheritors of the Romans and the Greeks, it shook me to my core, what a good writer he is, it’s a good one, another ship that he named the Kon-Tiki, one man across the biggest sea, the prime directive in this, amongst six or more other phrases, Asimov, encounters with the American Indians and Africa, three laws, how to be in the world, don’t lie, what’s going to make you happy, start with that, it causes problems, fuck you is not a lie, be polite?, what would the basis of the prime directive, the categorical imperative, don’t use others as a means to an end, a negative, let them get used to you, not the Star Trek one, they break it all the time for purposes of plot, there’s something behind it, those are how you should act as a person, just replace the word robot with human, a human must consider other except where injure, my feelings are hurt, fuck your feelings, a person must protect his or her own existence, interesting application, we’re not robots, methods and plans of dealing with other people, taking stuff coming out of philosophy, parallel evolution, Asimov’s fourth law, the zeroth law, technically fourth, The Evitable Conflict, 1950, Chairman Mao, Nixon goes to China, detente, because Sri Lanka (or India) had to play a role, a tornado touched down, doesn’t cheat at all, an airship book, more of a hot air balloon than anything else, hot hydrogen of course, thinking through the scenario, the twist at the end that brings it up, this guy’s immortal?, a ship of Theseus scenario, rolls away at a calm 30 km per hour, 7 feet tall, to give him self-confidence, feeling separate from humanity, the ambassador between the ones made of carbon and the ones made of silicon, the aliens, radio dish heads, are they intelligent, I’m convinced that Medusa knew your blindspot, hunting, the intelligent species must be the predator species, a feint, a lightning bolt, why not, up for grabs, the aimed at manta fell like stone, Jupiter is a lightning bolt god, when we see him at the end, he’s turned to silicon, identified with his metallic aspect, Medusified, plummeting manta, I’ve studied a lot of jellyfish, Juliana and Luke on the Science Fiction Book Review Podcast, octopus books, a Ray Nayler book, spiders, eight-legged non-human creatures, the length of the story that’s required to do the job, an hour and half, somewhere in between, two parts, a view of humanity, superchimps/simps, clothes, slaves, brought out of mothballs, a POV of Earth from someone not interested in it, be a pioneer, no one could go, a super-pioneer, why this book exists, the opposite of the moonbus book, trying to conform, people want shitty romance cheating on your wife disaster relatable, I’m more like this guy, Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World, almost none of it is that interesting, his brain level, he’s just not interested in the normal things people are interested in, exploring the ocean, so interesting down there, Jacques Cousteau, collecting notes on hailing frogs, not the normal science fiction writer, maybe Olaf Stapledon, his personal life, not interested in slow pitch, Arthur C. Clarke goes to hell, develop a deep philosophy to deal with it, Howard Falcon, like HAL, Jesse I’m afraid that’s not possible, HAL has conflicting orders, The Sentinel, wow!, full of philosophical things, sense of wonder things, it’s all earned, if this then that, Criminolly, garbaugust, worldbuilding, there’s no distinction between science fiction and fantasy right now, cool ideas about how the world works, tried a few more, testing the theory, wanting to be engaged, turning into Jesse, why we have to be so enjoying about terms, The Kaiju Preservation Society, infodumps about made up facts, could you explore it?, honest, solid, he doesn’t cheat, he’s standing on what he knows, realities that might be interesting explored, he’s not a cheater, when Larry Niven cheats it’s so he can get to another thing, twists something, a third of the episodes, are there any Star Trek episodes that are hard SF, the closest they come is The Galileo Seven, a rip off of The Cold Equations, Spock gambles, there’s a percentage chance there’s a passing alien spaceship, why did I read this story, have their cake and eat it too, angry fights, be hard about these things, you inhuman monster, Spock’s being very logical, fan service episodes, not memorable episodes, social soft science, what should our relationships be, the good stuff, people watched a lot of television and movies with spaceships in it, wouldn’t it be cool if, aliens, almost none, Childhood’s End, even The Star, doing soft science fiction, why I don’t like science fiction and fantasy books, fantasy is a whole other thing, show me where Ted Chiang cheats, an interesting thought, The Merchant And The Alchemist’s Gate, Howard Falcon was unloveable, a novel called The Medusa Chronicles by Alastair Reynolds and Stephen Baxter, a sequel to The Time Machine, Terry Pratchett, the childhood of Howard Falcon, when Star Trek goes back and explains the early life of Kirk and Spock, a fallacy involved, for what purpose, what does it matter?, unless there’s an idea there, why it’s shit, this episode we find out Kirk has a brother, why?, a massacre on some planet, just to raise the stakes, to make the Holocaust personal, to do a technical job, a Chekov’s gun on the wall, Spock having eyelids, to press the reset button, a technical requirement of a show where it’s not serialized, Vulcan nerve pinch, the ears are not what make Mr. Spock Mr. Spock, an emotional being controlling his emotions, him being a spawning salmon Theodore Sturgeon episode (Amok Time), every time they bring up a Vulcan, there’s exceptions, response video, Michael K. Vaughn, he has good taste, a good youtuber, people say why don’t you, here’s a recommendation, seem to be following Luke Burrage’s podcast, a big thing in France, amongst the aficionados, how intelligent it is, boring, The Mountain And The Sea, quite into philosophy, coming at it from a philosophical side, setting the scene before anything noticeably strange happened, how long it is, judging books by their cover and how long they are, bad cover, does it need to be this long, poingant and mind expanding, the UK does better covers than the USA, the UK edition, RayNaler.net, translated into French, thought it was brilliant, June 2023, Cthulhu, Japanese style, maybe this book is necessary, another cover with more tentacles, almost doesn’t ever talk about tentacles, cosmic horror = tentacles, Antarctica, the melting and stuff, a giant frozen 17 tall penguin, Tekeli-li!, philosophies of writing, Robert E. Howard is writing for money, very successful as a pulp writers, 4 times as big, Lovecraft doesn’t write stories that don’t need to be written, this is what is selling right now, even when he’s doing very pulpy stuff, things that are not needed for the story (to make the cover), a born storyteller, writing story, they like stories too, they don’t have the chops, people who won’t write for the commercial market, antagonistic to commercialism, Clarke is a bit of both, very elderly collaborations, sullying his legacy, The Light Of Other Days, very disenchanted with Arthur C. Clarke, and Isaac Asimov, Silverberg, cash-ins, a reader need not be subject to the whims of the author, because your friend wrote the book, fuck you, go back to basic principles, Clarke has a purity in him at times, Bob Shaw, an expansion, Light of Other Days, the New York Times lie list, Talisman by Peter Straub and Stephen King, Black House, shouldn’t be trying or able, necessary compared to Asimov/Silverberg, Clarke/Baxter, Olaf Stapledon wrote this, he didn’t write for cash, the unique fluke, King’s psychology, King has a limiter or a governor, he doesn’t use it for evil (or for good), hurts his own work, a fantasist of childhood and American life, a fantasy writer, we just don’t think of him that way, “fantasy realm”, The Goblin Emperor book, secondary world fiction, worldbuilding is mostly bad, silly worldbuilding, 2001: A Space Odyssey, psychedelic experience, intelligent worldbuilding, to fill pages, fall apart in a mush, a speculative component, the sensory impact of the trip, highly informed, standing on what is know and speculating, if there was life it would be in this zone, that kaiju book of Scalzi’s, wonder about your purpose, none of this is helping me in my life, what happens during the game, processing a magazine, sitting too long, certain number of hours, that’s fun, but it ain’t a novel, it ain’t good science fiction, what would our guy from youtube think about Philip K. Dick, make a magic system work, things are happening because they have to, if time started going backwards, still in the Roman Empire, spins up a world in order to explore it (not to fill pages), his novels are all worse than his short stories, just better, his short stories are better than that book (The Man In The High Castle), a children’s book, Galactic Pot-Healer, work and being out of work, a frontier where people are challenged to find meaningful work, that gunfight was really cool, some people act like robots, unemotional or mean, is sex with co-workers cool?, very fun and very rich, he didn’t need a setting for some characters, if your story doesn’t have idea at its core it’s not science fiction, imagine with ideas, live with ideas, a Philip K. Dick essay, Olaf Stapledon writes big long thick books that are science fiction but not novels, that’s interesting, how do you do that, a history of the last and first men, like reading a whole bunch of Clarke stories, unique in fiction, poor guy, there’s a lot not to enjoy, How To Build A Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later, until you toss it across the room, a good theory of fantasy, fantasy is pretty big, the hardest of the hard, uploading and downloading your brain, it’s not, Ringworld, a whole bunch of gimmes, smart aliens, an aggressive species, they generate a D&D party, the Larry Niven character, just an excuse, a gravitational feeling thing, complete bullshit book, everything is fiction, it would just fall apart, 100% cheater and it works because he has an idea at the core and everything else is to get to that idea, he cheats in every possible way, Clarke has a very different philosophy, even in A Fall Of Moondust, not his best book, a bunch of boring characters, people get lead astray, super-good, a lot of Silverberg lately, Tor Doubles, read about a third of half of each of those books, a Silverberg novella, especially with his novels, he’s a contemplative dude, he’s sorta artsy and literary, he likes old books, Heart Of Darkness on another planet, elephants for the economy, sex on the brain, human relationships, the worldbuilding is to get to the transcendent point, The Book Of Skulls, being a good writer helps, Passengers, what is he famous for?, made Majipoor maybe?, Lord Valentine’s Castle, Nightwings, doesn’t have a killer book, big stature for a guy who doesn’t have a killer book, Neuromancer by William Gibson, rather than the fixup, his standalone short stories are really good, Phases Of The Moon by Isaac Asimov, a writing machine, wrote for money, still alive and not licensing his name out, 2010, now that he’s not poor, not getting his pension padded, good story, good writer, Arthur C. Clarke, he knows what to do, Farnham’s Freehold, he’s gonna rant about it, it’s not as bad as you think, Paul, oh my god, at the time, Westlake, revving back up, The Colorado Kid illustrated edition, Justified: City Primeval, there are character in it, Elmore Leonard short story, Tommy Patrick Ryan, some random guy on the internet, through Eric, 11th ever published story, readability through the fucking roof, so much characterization, got worse at the end, No Man’s Land by John Buchan, early evening, a reasonable hour of the evening, save the hunger to be angrier, approaching it satisfied, Houston, Houston, Do You Read?, Ace Double, a subpodcast of only Tor Doubles, we started with the first one, The Screwfly Solution, The Girl Who Was Plugged In, Run For The Stars by Harlan Ellison, savage, a juvenile delinquent in space, clairvoyant ability, very Harlan Ellison, A Boy And His Dog, Eye For Eye by Orson Scott Card, The Last Castle by Jack Vance, The Dragon Masters, I love the lengthy, Ill Met In Lankhmar, Vintage Season, The Sword Of Rhiannon, Ursula K. Le Guin, Kate Wilhelm, Kim Stanley Robinson short stuff, they don’t list the table of contents, The Ugly Little Boy, Edmond Hamilton, Screwtop, Enemy Mine, Hardfought by Greg Bear, an idea man, he shoulve had a badge that said “idea man”, The Blind Geometer, Fritz Leiber, Universe by Robert A. Heinlein, fantasy, Damon Knight, Icehenge, Press Enter by John Varley, Death Of Doctor Island also The Island Of Doctor Death, Karen Haber, Home Is The Hangman by Roger Zelazny, Wheels Of If, Gene Wolfe, The Book Of The Short Sun, Conjure Wife is on LibriVox, Ben Tucker is good, a five hour book, unleash hell, we got this in our back podcast, shownoting, back in the day, Sartor Resartus by Thomas Carlyle, Naxos, the torch of science, a metabook, 1831 novels, so many good ones, Scottish essayist, Fraser’s Magazine, purports to be a commentary, Godborn Devilsdung, a book review of that book, transcendentalist, German idealism, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Immanuel Kant, there are things in themselves, things as we perceive them, the laws of our mind, ways round, suppressing different premises, this book sounds really good, in a funny way, Johnathan Swift, Tristam Shandy, Laurence Sterne, founding text and serious organizing study of clothing, fashion theory, sartorial ambitions, clearly a book we both need to read, my all time favourite book, this is one of the books that makes life worth living, only seeing through clothes can we understand life, not composted, a half-mad saint, 320 pages, in the PDF, the torch of science, not the smallest cranny or doghole can remain unilluminated, what is he famous for?, some sort of hero worship, a precursor to the superman, the great providential men who make history, Hayy Ibn Yaqdhan by Ibn Tufail, like Tarzan, most translated, 1,000 Nights, the dream one, very solid, very Borgesian, Borges never wrote a collab book to make money, Frank Herbert son, Tom Clancy ghost author to write Borges books, a funny tweet thread, Hobbits and wizards, good morning as in fuck off, Justin fucked every Canadian for 20 more fucking years, he’s bought and paid for and corrupt as fuck, persist, not a big damn hero, very bad man, make some coffee.

Playboy, December 1971 - A Meeting With Medusa by Arthur C. Clarke

Playboy, December 1971 - A Meeting With Medusa by Arthur C. Clarke

Playboy, December 1971 - A Meeting With Medusa by Arthur C. Clarke

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The SFFaudio Podcast #771 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Pirates of Venus by Edgar Rice Burroughs

The SFFaudio Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #771 – Pirates of Venus by Edgar Rice Burroughs, read by Phil Chenevert for LibriVox. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the book (6 hours, 12 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Alex (Pulpcovers.com), and Evan Lampe

Talked about on today’s show:
Argosy in 6 parts in 1932, the scanning community, go by date, somebody didn’t renew it, sticklerish, The Mad King, The Girl From Hollywood, fantasy oriented, dedicated to the craft of pulpwriting, cranked out words, do 700 episodes, he’s really good writer, Evan was shitting all over this book on Twitter, quibbles, not his best book, let’s start with the poo, my thoughts on Pirates Of Venus, meme with Sorpanos, listen to yourself you sound demented, the attack is…, high on its own supply, its a fantasy, very fantasy, riding the line on self-parody, cutting lose and veering into self-parody, playing with the tropes, Burroughs is demented, what are your problems, strawmans socialism, the same communist revolution from The Moon Maid, wink wink to the KKK, the birdmen, the treemen, they’re simps, unless he’s being ironic, a really bad take, during the depression, escapism?, escapist, his politics, my entire reaction: “really?”, what a freak he is, four books in this series, a fifth book, the ending on this, you’re going to have to read the next book, John Carter books, wrapped up nicely, I’ve got gold here, at least 7 books in that series, signed up to write a bunch of books, see about the politics, gets his money from his great grandfather, soldier in India, continuing the colonial project, Will [Emmons], somehow doesn’t motivate me, why this series doesn’t get the attention that Barsoom does, the takeaway, written as a retro piece, 1912, sword and planet, closer to Leigh Brackett, Weinbaum, a sop to the older readers, Asimov is coming up here, closer to Foundation, we’re moving in that direction, deliberate throwbacks, Burroughs wrote this, no one else, Philip Jose Farmer, no one could do it like he did, these are Burroughs’ sentences, a really fun book, really interesting, there are merits to A Princess Of Mars, same plot, kidnapping dekidnapping, lots of animals and creatures, weird alien not quite monster, anybody there?, crab monster!, kind of annoying, not much happens at the end, she says I love you, there’s no more time in this episode, read the next book, flown away by a birdman, various art, pretty cool, treading water with a sword, pirate ships with no sails, powered by endurium or plutonium or handwavium, a sailing ship with masts removed, in order to recognize it, I’m vaguely familiar with this piece of tech, starts typing, his non-science fiction books, not enough pirates, not enough piracy, the third third of the book, too much trees, earthlike tech, a lot of gun-polishing, that Graeber book, paying close attention, when the revolution happens on the ship, our hero is in charge because he planned the revolution, yeah and if you don’t like it, obey me, that is never how a pirate ship, pirate ships are democracies, communist democracies, a takedown of communism, the Thorist are supposed to be communists, presented so weak, in 1930s America?, the communists were the badasses, he’s wrong not to like them, point to the mountains of skulls, the skull counting, once we start attatching names to particular skulls, 100 million counted Nazi soldiers as victims of communism, the parody of Victims Of Communisms, look at all those guys he killed, Carson Napier, Burroughs is in this story, via telepathy which he learned from a hindu, never uses his telepathy on Venus, only a mechanism to communicate the story, I got it from my uncle, you can go visit his tomb but he’s not really dead, great opening line, he’s not really again, master of illusions never pays off, framework to get it back to earth, astral projection, Spider-Man 2 (2004), Octavius is inventing nuclear fusion, AI controlled arms, a neuroinhibitor chip, build the fusion thing faster, invests 7 different groundbreaking fields of technology, I forgot the moon existed, silly, very instinctual, put the girl in, I need more girl, Sikorsky Amphibian, only left in the world, not a cheap peice of kit, became a stuntman because deathwish because his mom died?, rich and bored, built rocket cars in German, rocket spaceship, Mars is the ceiling, books and a year’s worth of food, Venus is fun, trying to see the Russian revolution, the narrative was so different back then or…, it’s not in the text, am I stupid?, socialism or communism, economic systems, violent revolution, that’s the core of it, everyone becoming equal and level, no more kings, complete leveling, giant dormitories, children will be raised by the state, strains of that, communal kitchens, the history of cooking utensils, the ideal city of the future, westerners writing about it, writing a place they’ve not, everybody eating in cafeterias, H.G. Wells, G.K. Chesterton, what drove people to socialism, socialist agitation, socialism in the 1880s, economic necessity, suffering in the streets, I don’t want to live in a tenement, the thinkers of socialism, William Morris, an idyllic and pastoral future, freed from stupid work, how pirates work, a great scene, I’m not giving up my weapon, if he’s really critiquing socialism/communism, that’s a parallel of that, prisoners aka slaves, clean guns all day, prisoners with jobs, seize the weapons, important officers, a new officer class, I’m not going to give up my gun, another guy laughs and the revolution is over, if I’m just handsome dashing main character, the NPCs fall in line, the pirate campaign, Pathfinder, the PCs: we’re gonna kill all of them, treat people as people, a lot of people operate their lives that way, some bureaucracy, denying someone a kidney, the United States is worse at than most countries, so many levels of bureaucracy, University Of Kansas, Uncle Remus magazine, these are really bad we don’t endorse these things, a 600 word essay, we hate racism, we don’t endorse racism, are you sure you want to click on this?, trigger warnings, a button on google: I feel Lucky, the whole point is they want to curate your experience of reality, a piratical revolution, the jongs and the thorists, the royal guy has a cute daughter, the extent of my thoughts, a serious critque of communism, you don’t know what you’re talking about, you can choose your master, choose me, some other boss you can work for, the surplus army of labour, Carson Napier doesn’t because he has inherited money, it’s been washed, his mom was perfect, extracting value from Indian colonialism, that’s not the way to make money, an absolute spendthrift, hire the Mexican government, rocket sled, sitting on an omnibus in the 1930s, that’s me one day, peak pulp era, when the Shadow was big, Batman, am lift, Doc Savage, independently wealthy, inherited wealth, found gold mine in South America, he owns twitter now, on the Wikipedia entry, it’s just not that, the main thing they do, separate class systems are a bad idea, each is respecting each other, when there’s somebody from the lower classes, bullshit statements, no such thing as marriage, also no infidelity, a fantasy of humans and how they, sword AND pistol, shoot your enemy from across the room, had I known this guy was so good at swordfighting…, once again sheer dumb luck, literally astronomical odds, living in the ewok village, a shared balcony, this is your big security system, the mansion can only be so big, absolutely required, this has a recipe, they’re always princesses, he is never a king, he’s an up and comer, I’m officer class, I don’t even believe in presidency, I believe in royalty, very successful businessman, hyping things, let’s make a movie out of it, Tarzana at this point?, WWII happens, I’m going to be a journalist now, put on military officer uniform, his own fantasy life, soup kitchens, moving from state to state, horrors of being superpoor, like Stephen King he has a knack, on the back of letterhead, compared to Robert E. Howard, always poor, he’s got a car, didn’t try to sell to Weird Tales, he has magic fingers, Max Brand, such a huge hit, $100,000 or something, WWI deserter to wealthy man right into WWII, he bought that whole part of southern California, maybe it was the movies, he was the #1 selling authors of the 20s, and those movie serials, Johnny Weissmuller, Sheena is sexy, everyboduy thought he was the greatest thing ever, later Tarzan, really crazy real fast, arab shiek, hunting lions, too close to the daughter, lost Atlantean colony, sexual dimorphism gone crazy, shipwrecked, where Tarzan’s parents died, lost Roman legions, hollow earth, Pellucidar, weird ghost letter, marriage, line marriage, should’ve been a line marriage book, obsessed with monogamy, whoever Mrs. Burroughs was, life extension, amazing laser tech, amazing medical tech, radios, effective maps of their planet, all fun, the NPC handwaving problems away, he has an explanation that’s bad, low fertility, the Thorists want both, secret recipe, the scientists, such a strawman, not recognizable, and Marx starved two of his own children, they were so fucking poor, we don’t have enough food, an immigrant, that can’t be true, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, he was sad about his kids dying, infant mortality was really high, terrible service, he may have said that, other people may have seen that, the pop culture view of communism, people say lots of bad things about Putin, that’s the character your making in your head, The Efficency Expert, The Mucker, Tarzan Of The Apes, cringey because of the hanging, we’ve done this before, fishmen, Lost On Venus, not enough time with the birdmen, Heinlein’s 4 years away from this, Heinlein’s Time For The Stars, twins shows up every once in a while in Heinlein, indistinguishable twins, Space Cadet, his plan for the UN and nukes, the intro part, joining the army, going through basic training, when you nuke your own city, very aware of his audience, you’ve got to close your eyes and drop marbles into a beer bottle, proprioception,, arbitrary tests, you’re a grown boy, the female princess daughter of Duras, green screen, darker skin, green skin space babe, Star Trek, hot alien, sometimes she’s brunette, vaguely Arabic looking, pretty, the trees are not green, presumed pink, in contrast to Mars being the red planet, green being Venus, in the injury to his buddy, the wounds, Shelob, this is a fantasy book in almost every respect, rocketships to the Moon before this, gun to the Moon, Cavorite trip to the Moon, an anti-gravity, Weinbaum comes in, well actually, she lives in a bottle, a jellyfish floating in the clouds, that’s your gene pool, you can romance it, laid eggs, women have breasts but they lay eggs, the element of the KKK, not a condemnation, why does he bring it up?, a thing that’s popular, making these alien names, Olthar, Camlot, taking sounds, Amtor, fiddling around, he is so not J.R.R. Tolkien, Tolkien goes to farm, elfish poetry, where elfen poetry was once read, he enjoys himself, nobody asked for this, Tolkien is the anti-Burroughs, noodling around in his own head, my books should not be lowered [to paperback], pirated in the United States, Evan making a defense of The Lord Of The Rings tv show, the orcs, the orc stuff was really based, the Galadriel stuff was really good too, just a woke cuck, Jesse doesn’t know what a simp is, you gotta watch more streamers, why do these guys come up every three years, Vaush, Matt Christman, Evan likes both, he’s like a troll, he’s pretty good at that, most of what Vaush says is on point, there’s something wrong with Evan’s brain, and yet I have not murdered you, these should all just be podcasts, Jesse doesn’t need video, playing Elden Ring and just listening to it, are people still Elden Ringing, we’re all boomers, we all live in the age of US supremacy, I’d have a boat, consumer republic, less and less relevant, 26 Tarzan books, lost colony of Atlantis, a James Bond figure, where Tarzan was seriously assigned, is Tarzan a book about empire?, a really good insight into this period of time, maybe My Little Pony is comprehensible, I’m a dude, I wouldn’t say no to a loincloth and a knife made out of stone but 26 books, L. Frank Baum, 14 Oz books, basic language, generational, coming out every couple of years, Harry Potter, the Glinken country, the Yellow Brick road is about the gold standard, William Jennings Bryan’s cross of gold speech, 100 years later, is it the fact that this is supposed to be a critique of communism, blatant, the state’s controlling you, as opposed to the king, it wasn’t a libertarian revolution, more parallels to the French Revolution, that’s what was happening, something racist about Oz?, all of it was racist, pay not attention to the man behind the curtain, the emperor’s new clothes, useful concepts that come out of literature, people knowing them, a psychological defense, a psychological arm-bar with concepts, a series of images, a girl away from home, all on a quest, place everybody’s talking about, going to Hollywood, that’s exactly right, the Emerald City is a complete lie, to keep the emeralds from blinding you, a good concept, as a young person, in a different way than Encyclopedia Brown, the sword that says awarded after the first battle of Bull Run, the Battle of First Manassas, the only kid with Wikipedia on his phone running around solving crimes, The Only Man On Mars With Wifi, detective solves with chat GPT, list the clues in chat GPT and it will tell you who did the crime, a telephone chat GPT that uses spam callers waste their time, Hello Mrs. Blah Blah Blah, if you’re in India or Pakistan and your name is Simon or Stephen, this person’s a little weird, oh there’s a bee on my arm, an elderly person who can’t hear very well, the chat GPT salesperson, email and phone calls have been destroyed by spam, this was a fine book, direct messages, Burroughs Sucks As Does This Tweet, an ideology that has killed millions of people, it’s not an argument, not even a satire, I need some bad guys, what do bad guys look like, the sequels to The Moon Maid, so he could get to the totalitarian communist future, Red Dawn-style, let’s not do that, they’re Moon communists, when Will read about, protestant emotional repression, her brows knit in thought, what is that?, love, it is wicked, is love wicked on Amtor?, whatever her name is, without sinning, the daughter of a jong, Korean word for king, what are the odds he knew that?, not good, he believes everything he’s writing, not a construction, but an explication, not a lot of ideology, the win condition is marrying the princess, a storytelling technique, little girls want to be princesses, its okay for the dude to marry up into a princess family, the girl wants to marry into a competent family, Edgar Rice Burroughs is a fantasy men, Cinderella is a fantasy for women, Prince Charming is faceblind, spicy foods for everybody to enjoy, laughing about him, laughing along, they’re not set aside, The Mad King, in all of these books, it can’t be just a regular girl, it has to be , even the one about working at Sears (The Efficiency Expert), daughter of a high class person, romance for men in the same way that Conan is, Conan’s class consciousness, American men have always been incels, Jesse doesn’t use that language, dreaming of marrying up, how the incels talk, chads get all the girls, left miserable, but they can read Burroughs, hypergamist, the men always marry up, marrying up, he’s not, Zenobia is not a queen, Conan makes her a queen, she was a harem girl, she was not a virgin princess, a class thing there, Howard would have been wealthy had he lived longer, he wasn’t in bookstores, Lovecraft would have been wealthy, the demand is high, when reading Robert E. Howard, different kinds of games, sometimes he says “what is the nature of reality” and then he stabs the wizard, satisfied for a moment, showing up on LibriVox, we’ve seen it before, Howard is capable of much more on this guy, he’s not substantive, YouTube podcast, frothy and fun and light, compared him to Stephen King, a different cast, Burroughs never talks about kids, King talks about kids, kid protagonists, he has a lot more to say, most writers have more to say, space em out, adventure, avoid execution, marry the princess, The Girl From Hollywood, a female finding a man?, none of his popular stuff, no Tarzan books need to be Jane centered, Lois Lane or Jimmy Olsen comics, Superman’s girl friend, Supergirl, Jungle Girl, everything is about Superman, she’s always sexperving on Superman, is this what girls want?, Cambodia, stories for boys, a female protagonist story, he was a brand, you don’t want to piss off the audience, what the romance writers do, hardboiled detective under another name, The Cave Girl, a lost world novel, 1913, Dolores Claiborne, chain people up on beds, Gerald’s Game, domestic abuse, Misery, Rose Matter, Lisey’s Story, Outlaw Of Torn, relaxing rather than engaging, a society made out of tree people, other criticisms?, Donald E. Westlake, Killing Time, territories respected, a fine place to live, an anti-corruption investigator, 210 pages, still working on a couple, Mating Center by Frank Belknap Long, Hay Ibn Yaqzan by Ibn Tufail, guys raised by a gazelle, time next year, not that great, Paul will be upset by it, too much mating, specialized job, we’re there, reproduction is also a specialized job, horny people out in society, a frightening view of life in 2061, hey, we’re guarding, that Ninteen Eighty-Four cover, Winston Smith and Julia, lesbians in prison, encourage Evan to finish, he’s andalusian, Andalusian Aristotelian, Green Mansions by William Henry Hudson, Rima The Jungle Girl, Green Mansions, a primitive girl, Abel, Tarzan from South America, Sheena, The Jungle Book, another Kipling thing?, Citizen Of The Galaxy by Robert A. Heinlein, reading the writers who read stuff, it isn’t super-literary, reading material, Rocket Ship Galileo, Jack London would have made it the center of the book, the counter to Burroughs, fantasy strawman, fantasy animals, life is mean, let’s have fun, how much did Burroughs read?, hold my beer, he probably read the newspaper and a few pulp magazine, rips off Prisoner Of Zenda, today we have a lot of writers who are writing to make movies or tv shows, what’s so amazing about a good book, using the medium what it’s for, it is what it is, assigning a bunch of Ted Chiang stories, psychology, assign these short stories, grumble at first, they’re simps, they’re boomers, he’s short and he hits, they’re not designed to be adapted, Burroughs’ Tarzan is easy to adapt, some plants and a rope, Black Mirror, Charlie Brooker, how we use language, so psychologically relevant, substantive, that’s what you get for giving a historian the job, not your thing?, he marries a princess who’s an orangutan, like Robinson Crusoe, Rousseau would’ve loved this book, noted father, how to raise children to be free, Plato is wrong but he has amazing ideas, we can use those things, bad maps give us maps to territories that we can get to and give us better bad maps, commentary on education, the point of education, bye kids, I gotta go write about being free, Jesse is tryna be free, make the most of their freedom, what does Alex do about this, a weird high school, very lucky and happy, worry about college, college can be fun, top schools, Asians are the new white people, University of Minnesota Duluth, homeschooled, you’re going to horse school, you’re going to be a farmer, locked in, my cheques are going over there, homeschool, something to do, big college tip, under recognized as a great place to meet a spouse, just marry a princess at your college, this is the person I really like, Midwest cow college, with cows, between Indiana and the Rocky Mountains, north of the Ohio river, Brown, first major boss was a Brown Phd and a major dick, he really wanted to be a manager, he was right about that, fun trouble, save your anger up for the show, provoking Evan, the first 2 hours, the ideology that killed the most, this boring shit, Burroughs took quite a dump, he can go fuck himself, oh come on, not that much more to do, he has a lot of sequels, maybe if youre in a factory job, you’ve got a big commute, your escape on the way to work, 6 hour podcast, 8 hour podcast at work, putting up with a lot of shitty shit Jesse says, the secret to his success, doesn’t explain Stephen King that well, he knows people, brain mashing, Burroughs isn’t a character writer, both are incredibly smooth in transferring thoughts into your brain, there’s no difference, they’re blank slates, Carson is a lot less competent, incredibly stupid mistakes, he’s a sloppy researcher, John Carter was hypercompetent, he’s like The Highlander, hypercompetent, has superpowers, he’s Superman, gentleman adventurer, luck saves him again, coulda used a Woola, alien companion dog, an inversion of The Star Beast, explicitly just people, space tiger, Weinbaum’s a genius, he’s jokey, why the genre moved on, this is kinda retro, The Mysterious Island, the wish fulfillment engineer story, building the ship, inventing the thing, Black Priestess Of Varda, rawer, Erik Fennel, near the end, he’s just a romance guy, really, how do they even have the concept of a year, they don’t even have the sun, Farscape.

Toronto Star Weekly - artist Matania - Pirates Of Venus by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Pirates Of Venus by Edgar Rice Burroughs

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The SFFaudio Podcast #733 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Nudist Camp by Orrie Hitt


The SFFaudio Podcast #733 – Nudist Camp by Orrie Hitt – read by Evan Lampe. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the novel (4 hours 21 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants include Jesse and Evan Lampe.

Talked about on today’s show:
1957, paperback original, Evan’s falsetto, a fun one to read, an interesting guy, 150 or so books, mostly public domain, disposable, available to read, available to be narrated, title wise, Never Cheat Alone, Torrid Wench, each was easy pickins, lovers kissin, crime novel adjacent, “sleazecore”, a science fiction novel but the genre is different, stupid-interesting entertainment, an adult at the time, the drug store, the spinner rack, behind the counter?, well written, fluffy, the plot makes sense, fetish for sex, ideas in my science fiction, talking about the fins on rocketships, fetish books for men, romance novels for men: talking about guns, Executioner and Deathlands novels, some hard man walking through the Mad Max world, extended mag, books for dumb people, really interesting things in this book, Brother And Sister by Donald Westlake, real estate obsession, Levittowns, rising middle class, who owns property, an easy go to plot, a marriage breaking up, men who went overseas, Iceland vs. Germany, a poor girl from Iceland, an Iceland slur, bojack?, bohunk, making up Iceland like an alien planet, the cultural stuff, interesting if true?, am I learning something about Iceland, the hotsprings, the brief summers, it being poor, some Viking culture that somehow survived, a very small population, one of the smallest european countries by population, taken over by the British who handed it to the Americans, you’re free now, apparently they don’t have a Swedish accent, Paul didn’t want to do this one because of all the nudity, all the violence, all the wife hitting, abusive, get back together at the end, they reconcile, we’lll go with Ed being the badguy, scamming people, taking the photos then blackmailing people, the hotel room, the film, get the property from her, the ex-husband comes and saves the day, not a classic, always Jesse’s story, an archaeological stratum, this fossil, what other fossils are under there?, floating around in people’s minds, learning about nudism, granola crunching islands, religious colonies, summer camps for various church organizations, fearful of falling under their religions, weird festival people, real life experience of weird nudists, Allan Alda’s character in MASH, nudism magazines, photographer magazine, he liked women, Corporal Klinger, 50s aesthetic, The Door Into Summer by Robert A. Heinlein, spending time with a nudist, their philosophy, a thing in Germany, the whole theory of nudism, he doesn’t get more serious, trying to separate nudism from sex, supposed to titillate, the opening scenes of the book, looks at herself in a full length mirror, a smut book but very educational, seems kinda of tame, very little penetration, very few pearl necklaces, the good organizer, the speech, the lecture, it’s about health and our natural state, body positivity, one step away from a pure smut book, a scene that should turn you off, ugly flabby lady, gut over her thighs, boobs like pendulums, that was a test, is this about sex?, not identical with being a swinger, related?, Heinlein did both, your average person picking up the book, from the woman’s pov, our Icelandic gorgeous lady and her abusive husband, they’re rich in land, she has a maid and a gardner, an interesting subplot, the pregnancy, an ethical gloss, written quickly, “Sometimes the whole world stinks”– Orrie Hitt, the King of Tri-State Sleaze, Apocalypse-Confidential.com, Orrie Hitt’s mythos, that’s amazing!, Lawrence Block, easter eggs, always the same movie playing in the movie theatre, you’re getting a secret history of the united states, all the sex shops, punanyi train fan , Orrie Hitt is on the rise, good to hear, EAP aka @punanytrainfan [account deleted] on twitter, literally read it aloud, a thousand year old book, Ḥayy Ibn Yaqẓān by Ibn Tufail, a book of philosophy, Daniel DeFoe, raised by a gazelle, Aristotelianism filtered through the Arabic worldview, Avicennan Aristotelianism, building the whole system from scratch, building capitalism from scratch, a short book, a few things he’s working on, Mark Twain, hinted at Heinlein, just teasing Jesse, excusing with the Library Of America, every book, taking Heinlein in doses, doing it with a Hugo in mind, Jesse’s Tom Godwin cold equations told as a star trek episode, the plot of Mudd’s Women, a bajoran slave girl, race jokes on a federation ship, it deserves a hugo and a nebula and a seuin and a master of fantasy award, the atom award, does it come with a rocket ship, a carbon atom, throw them in a garbage, awards, just play the games, put your pronouns in your bio, a lot of laughing, psychopath laughing at yourself, too pale, too male, looking at the lists, not impressed, consistently poorly researched, Jesse wants to learn something, entertainment, back to Orrie Hitt, not called nudist colonies anymore they’re called nudist camps now, a counterculture, a separate state, go for a week, summer camp, a nudist colony in the winter, why they like the location, set in New Jersey, hidden away, not bothered by the locals, not going to happen in the winter, Florida, what do they do?, standing around naked eating hot dogs, swimming, croquet, let’s go to the nudist camp!, like minded body positive people without hangups, written just as a non-sex book, the sex stuff in it, have only couples come together, don’t take singles, the subplot, blackmail, keep coming to the camp, not a very good sex book, subplot, a chaste proper good relationship, 1950s morality, she gets pregnant, a morality tale, Della has this new boyfriend, after she breaks up with her husband, not ethically suspect, we’re titillated, putting her bra on, fit in with the crowd, she gets shot in the leg, defending nudism, on the cover it is a sex book, a crime novel, genuinely surprised, we’re supposed to be suspicious of him, seemed legit, we were surprised, do you blame her for getting back together with him, wraps up the plot nicely, getting back together with, Stephen King wouldn’t be able to write this book, the woman has to escape, he’s got too many hangups for this book, could Bachman try?, the wrong kinda traumas, a nice person, very sympathetic, as an immigrant story, tricked into marrying a German whore, a cloud over her, a poor Icelandic waif, a golddigger, reputation in the community, one scene in the hotel, the pornographic film, the bank, the lawyer, learned a lot about the 1950s, experiencing it on the periphery, why Hawkeye likes nudist magazines, the nudist philosophy vs. wanting to see naked people, very clear about that, a legit claim, born nude, practically naked, shorts and short sleeves, not being over-clad, getting vitamin D, having a tan making you feel mentally better?, not enough sun, given our species previous history, we probably get too little sun, a funny phenomenon, not allowed to show boobs unless they’re natives, nude foreign women, a british or Irish, the page 3 girl, how do we explain this phenomena, a racy thing, what makes it racy is the prudery, creepy to see a creeper, scary old bodies, herniated bodies, a book all about bodies, their experience through their heads, the injury to her leg, getting pregnant and thinking about that, why is she saying these things about this baby, you don’t need to get an abortion, in most of the sleaze books, sex doesn’t necessarily lead to worries about pregnancy, begging for a baby from her husband, more smut books, more sleazecore books, more to them just sex, here too, the time?, self-censorship, doctor labels, The Naked Lunch supreme court case, what happened to comics neutered comics, defending it to your wife, the study of strange women who do strange things, she’s super hot in the shower, fat bodies, another bait and switch, pick that up for the incest, a horrible suicide and insanity ending, real estate calculations, the shame is different, a shame book, she’s a poor girl, essentially raped in Iceland, a traumatized person she’s pretty strong, pretty fucking terrible, Paul would not like how this book ends, what are her options?, not highly educated, what marriage is so popular for, real estate, big in China, she’s rock poor, she marries a middle class guy who thinks he’s going to inherit wealth, squanders the money, ends on a happy note, gives her a baby and becomes a doting father, be good Christians and believe in redemption, what are her skills?, he knew how to build a big house (with full length mirrors), look at her assets, run a little business, something she can do with her life, reveals himself as the bad guy, what can she get from Ricky?, adopt that baby, partners, all the men betrayed her, Ricky saved the day, in “Sleaze Camp Part 2”, a good moral camp, what the future’s going to be like, set in the 1850s, the photography stuff, if it was the 1750s, a guy behind a curtain sketching quickly, civil war portraits, still images, sunbathers, it is a tech book, pre-birth control (the pill), a tech thing, what makes this non-mimetic fiction is that it is somehow is like a piece of science we can explore, look what people are worried about, an after WWII Iceland plot, we don’t know much about Orrie Hitt, seems to be thoughtful, as book every two weeks at the prime of his career, six sex scenes, explaining to Scott [Danielson], agreeing with a J.K. Rowling, you’re going to have to put TERF in your twitter bio now, why people like her books, set pieces, very movie like this big battle, this cute scene, that cute scene, a plot in the background, the ride, titillation throughout the book, attentive to the plot, the first Harry Potter book, it read like a movie, not that much internal getting to know the character, this is an intellectual experience, didn’t get hard at all, Lawrence Block and Donald Westlake, not heavy on the sex, Netflix everyday, the covers/posters/cards, The Reader, a nazi woman?, an illeterate woman?, Kate Winslet in her pajamas, the strategy is still there, two naked guys on the card, a lot of prudery in the states, no explicit sex on Netflix?, on the newsstands besides the explicit, science fiction, westerns, romance, nice to look at, more titillation on the covers and in the descriptions, Hustler, sex letters, Penthouse forum?, letters about free speech!, reading a magazine with a nakedish woman on the cover, like the HBO of magazines, less censored things that people are interested in, Jimmy Carter had lust in his heart, rather than the lie they do all day, Obama’s exit interview, Joe Rogan’s interview with the founder of Rolling Stone, way less censored than everything else, shitlib former hippie, upset and worried, now that Trump had won, I’m not really interested in lying anymore, softcore interview, a formality, the shitty answer and the truthful answer, being more honest, a weird sleazecore book, insight into, a good prose stylist, clean and easy to follow and interesting, unaffected, he reminds us of her body every few pages, experiencing interest, a big enough sample, read a romance novel, anything of value, tiny little bit of sex, as tame or tamer, slim romance volumes, Blaze by Stephen King, A Night In Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny, less mad as time goes by, thinking of Jesse as the star, Harry Turtledove, Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain, why Evan is not a fan of tourism or travel in general, why travel sucks, Michael Crichton books, Grave Descend, Easy Go, super consumable, very solid writer, maybe that was never true, “science fiction books”, not natural writers, Stephen King is a natural writer, Neil Gaiman, Ted Chiang, Stephen King, Andy Weir, The Troop, near the bottom, just body horror, the lowest level, the gross out, fewer of those, idea based stuff is really cool, Cosmic Computer/Junkyard Planet by H. Beam Piper, The Heads Of Cerberus by Francis Stevens, The Black Stranger by Robert E. Howard, seven John Lange books, fairly thrilling at times, Hard Case Crime republished them, a reuse of a failed hard case crime spinoff [Gabriel Hunt], Hunt For Adventure, The Spider, The Shadow, Indiana Jones, an adventure book series, churn out a series character, Binary, Eaters Of The Dead, he’s really playful, amazingly good at transforming thought into words in the form of a novel, after Blaze, its long, spending 20 hours with Mark Twain.

Nudist Camp by Orrie Hitt

Nudist Camp by Orrie Hitt

Nudist Camp by Orrie Hitt

Posted by Jesse WillisBecome a Patron!