The SFFaudio Podcast #899 – READLONG: The Rare Coin Score by Richard Stark AND Money For Nothing by Donald E. Westlake

Jesse and Misha Burnett talk about The Rare Coin Score by Richard Stark AND Money For Nothing by Donald E. Westlake

Talked about on today’s show:
1968 and 2003, 40 years apart, Trent Reynolds, the last of the nephew novels, a mode, somebody’s nephew, The Fugitive Pigeon, a character caught up in someone else’s problem, The Spy In The Ointment, Up Your Banners, the Dortmunders, driving a Toyota Avalon, a driver’s license with no picture on it, Claire is the same Claire, good female characters, quite good, that’s gotta be it, she’s saying similar things, that’s fine, kill the guy in the garage, don’t tell me anything, two guys, roaming over the country, a threesome going, fucking up punks on the boardwalk, making the fight last longer, a call from Handy McKay, there’s something wrong, all the books are great except for The Hunter, a few of the phrases, The Philosophy Of Parker, the vocabulary of what makes someone a *good* person, “self-contained”, Lempkie, the eunuch, Billie, wearing a gun to the meeting, lusting after a girl who obviously doesn’t want him, French is a mirror of Parker, respects until he has to kill him, nothing personal, what makes French a less good version of Parker, getting stupid, getting too hungry, into his stake, heist the heisters, the ultimate no-no, knowing he was going to kill them at the end of the job, we’ll deal with that later, something awesome about the creation of Parker, no first name, part 1 chapter 2, looked like a machine not yet turned on, thinking about nothing, lay waiting in the dark, self-possessed, very remote and cool, Mr. Lynch?, a fateful exchange, I would have fucked you and fucked off, she convinces him, they fuck anyways and he doesn’t fuck off, if the Parker series is a series where the character develops, a white sandy bitch named Belle, New Orleans, always good openings, Biloxi, mentioned again?, the first of that 4 series, a woman tied up on the bed, untie me I need to pee, plans to meet with Claire in 3 months, they’re compatible, Parker’s mentality, home team and away stuff, a deeper insight, she’s not moral she’s squeamish, she just wanted a stake, airline pilot, crashed into a mountain somewhere in Europe, there’s no insurance, an important word in the Westlake universe, as amoral as Parker, confirmed thesis, weird connection, Ayn Rand is a weird lady, The Fountainhead, the characters in it are not humans, the architect, ruin his career, mad enough to rape her, about the art of the building of the beautiful building, we only come together as sexual beings because of our mutual interest, fucking bizarre, inhuman and super-interesting, bizarre, the machine that is Parker, super-ignorant, outer space, how many moons Jupiter has, insurance, he has Claire explain something to him, casing the joint, African violets on the sill, he has to perform, he’s like an autist, he knows what people expect so he performs for them, engraved letters, MCMXLVII, what’s the number?, Diablo Tours, pretend to be honeymooners, she’s a part of the heist, why is that in the book?, Parker doesn’t know anything about things that don’t matter, she’s not a robot, she’s something else, she has to contain her annoyance, she takes out her feelings examines them and puts them away, she’s the opposite of Billy, Westlake’s so good at this, this book in relief, the opposite, trying to put out fires, just goes along, a new hero arises to solve it, the actor, he loves actors and acting, putting on accents, four fifths, pick up a gun and make some decisions, locked up in the estate with the thug outside his door, tricked into it, a manipulation scene, the gun is right there in front of him, maybe I don’t want to die, Jeremy and the wife, toodling along in life, the opposite kind of a book, cut-outs, things that happen in this book, what’s the name of the Stan, Freddy the absolute dictator afraid of a gypsy curse, play along fun, when he goes to the Barnes and Noble, George R.R. Martin, taking a little dig, what happened to publishing, Fire Island, New York, Too Much, And The Band Played On, contrastive books, as much play, Billy Levetard, Bank Shot, Kelp’s nephew Victor, the same sort of character, roly-poly, sweaty, unattractive and pathetic, Nobody’s Perfect, the mark is the finger, insurance scam, sneakin around in alleys dressed in black, the glamour and excitement of the job without doing the work, a serious pro or a poseur, take over the plot, Josh is so passive, everthing sort of happens to him, hapless, a deeper understanding of the english language, hap is luck, what happened, very happy, Josh is just going along, a paper company, playing all the cards that he has, mixes and matches, this shift thing, other characters POVs, security guard, ex-MP, in the nephew book, always with Josh, that out of control-ness, more playful, when he’s in Stark mode, becomes a cartoon, Dormunder mode, well drawn, and precise, a deadly edge, he’s dead, he could have worked with, his professionalism, why French is dead, French assumed Parker was going to bail, the drawing, he’s pal skinned, can he hold it together for one more job, Claire clarifies the situation, it doesn’t work like that, Lempke, Murder Incorporated, Levetard, it’s not William it is Billy, childlike, Parker won’t shake his hand, where the money’s going, coming out of Lempke’s half, everybody’s who’s dead gets their piece, a very strong book, changes thing up and quite works, Westlake’s interest in coins, Lawrence Block wrote tons about numismatist (and philately), a Hit Man who’s a stamp collector, the hobby of kings and the king of hobbies, connections to history, a coin convention, they’re writers, wow man, what would Parker do if he were here, such a good job with backstory, well explained, how you build a character, how you act against another character, until they died, inherited some money, fell into becoming a coin dealer, a felon, these are his friends that he’s betraying, Indianapolis, Indiana, he’s very solid about describing, when he goes to Europe he takes notes, Parker is not driving, everything about this job is amateur, everything goes well until a professional steps in and fucks things up, super-interesting, in relief, double the length, the backstory is superwell worked out, taken money a long time ago, now you’re activated, impinging upon, the plot, slight of hand, Dancing Aztecs, make up a country, so many things that he’s playing with, Fetherbender, Mr. Nimrin, anagrams of each other, a trilogy, so stupid, Chapter 13, David L. Fogware, Enchantress Of Nim, more open to him as he rose, rubbing it in, author reading, new Dortmunder book, a real Barnes and Noble, ENCHANTRESS, some even smaller letters, not quite 7pm, none of them were Mr. Nimrin, so playful, strange people, sixties flower children, cryogenically frozen for 30 years, homelessness, condemntation, people who’d lost their luggage, windbreakers and pony tails, pony tails up front, amiable about it, glad not to be in, scuttling in, slim, bespectacled, pocket protector, a certain amount of jealousy?, annoyance, so popular, he left science fiction mad, Smoke is by him, invisible man burglar story, a phenomena, getting huge, press release, certain enthusiasm, Mr. Nimrin, a fellow carrying a book, the most enthusiastic applause at all, and a windbreaker, over L.L. Bean boots, becoming modesty, two kinds of burliness, the burliness of beer, Donald E. Westlake tapping his own pot belly, what is all this in aid of?, diversion, a little old lady in a walker comes up, his contact, the assassination plot, deep in the book, it never really comes off, Prisoner Of Zenda by Anthony Hope, Graustark, Ruritania, Kamastanish, the granddaddy of all these, Double Star, Edgar Rice Burroughs, the one by Winston Churchill, most of Marvel is this, Dr. Doom, Latvia, Latveria, The Duchy of Grand Fenwick, an ammo dump, Charles, lost her mind, she hasn’t lost her mind, she knows that she’s a captive, blow it up, so funny, revenge estates, spite wall, Marathon, is there a Dortmunder character in this book, the Taxi driver, more of a type, not actually Merch’s mom, in the five boroughs, the same kind of character, the type, authors getting trapped in these 7 book series, really really popular, doin well, start something up, can’t you give us another Dortmunder?, series vs. standalone books, specificaly at Hugo award winners, used to be, even now it is still true, N.K. Jemisin, Ringworld, too popular, ten years later, they don’t get progressively better, a “mystery” writer, Mysterious Press, lifetime Edgar awards, this pressure to create series, like Agatha Christie, Poirot, Travis McGee, James Bond, more freedom, he got away with it, anything with your name on it, in the balance, you could only have series or you could only have standalones, weird philosophy of efficiency, he wont put up with anything that’s inefficient, that kind of philosophy is very helpful, professional colleagues, most people don’t read much, because he gets away with it, he makes criminals very cool, most criminals are not professionals, a hardend criminal, when people are stupid in a Stark novel, weird mindset, fun but not philosophy, 52 theory, Laverne & Shirley, schlemiel Schlimazel, bad luck, bad stars, The Handle, The Road To Ruin, similar scenes, the planners, in their own private world, their plan is coming together, the ruthlessness, nobody dies in the Dortmunder books, nobody gets hurt, brutal animal death, implied rape scenes, so soft, it should almost be done as a cartoon, film noir, black and white, very hard, a period piece, this is what the word hard-boiled is for, soft boiled?, poached, worked on equipment of various different kinds, machines fear and obey me, stuff that isn’t following the rules, a lighting circuit, driving you nuts, no fault of his own, a scene in almost every book, you can figure this out, reinforces his collapsing mentality, her tuna casserole, Transylvania Station, Dortmunder’s conscience, a very selective conscience, Drowned Hopes, forces him to figure out how to keep the bad guy from blowing up the dam, Dortmunder has different needs, do they ever get married?, commonlaw, the neighbours think they’re married, a lot of the same stuff disguised by the modes, how writing is done, the theatre, travel, insurance, why is that date 1947?, when Tina shows up in Money For Nothing the book is derailed, Westlake’s realism, Chekov’s gun, it has to be doing a job, it has to work like a red herring, it’s a puzzle that you are solving, anticipated or see how it fits together, a Philip K. Dick novel, scenes vs. that great plot, The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd, Edgar Rice Burroughs, relies on coincidence to solve all problems, the more experimental Westlake novels, they’re not all equally good, the ideas are not as good, formulaic after the 2nd one, pushes the envelope on the formula, the next book after The Handle, a changeup, Claire is his anchor, even when she’s not really in the story he has her to go back to, an identity that he needs to protect, The Green Eagle Score, Plunder Squad, double the length, Butcher’s Moon, an interlibrary loan to the Yukon, the thrift shop, never see a Westlake, exactly the right time, Michael Crichton, Next and Timeline, people dying, people downsizing, the fact that you can’t get a Westlake unless you go out looking for him, The Actor (2025), Memory, an interesting book, that James Bond one, Forever and a Death, international heist, profit in seeing Westlake in bookstores, there’s gold here, the book industry has gone to shit, published or republished, movie posters good, book covers based on movie posters bad, when Jurassic Park came out as a book, the 80s is sort of the end of good covers, getting to be a reader, either by being bored, an island with no electricity, John Buchan, no pictures, a little invisible man talking to a dragon, Tolkien didn’t want his books in paperback, allow paperback publication, mother’s collection of paperbacks, Samuel Delany, large random, Edna St. Vincent Millay, collected poems, Charles Fort, bored, C.M. Kornbluth, nurse romances, Night Nurse, went to college, college textbooks, parasitology, ecclectic background, science fiction and fantasy, they’re cool, Yoda got me into mysteries, Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, full of stupid stuff, changed in the years between, parents were divorcing, a paperback copy of Thomas Disch’s Camp Concentration, Disch Delany Dick, new wave, not safe for work/kids, going backwards, not quite as god as you think, 25 times on HBO, lawnmowing money, he’s Fozzy Bear, the way his X-Wing is dragged into the muck, in reaction to that, broadening out from science fiction, Joseph Wambaugh, The Blue Knight, The New Centurions, an older woman, Dancing Aztecs, madcap, the first 2 or 3 pages, that many characters, individual and distinct, you’ll enjoy the ride, Money For Nothing is full of characters, every one of them is fun, the Robert E. Howard, the colours are gonna come up, axes to grind, he never goes into a story without anger about something, plot tricks he uses over and over again, some of the details, that’s clearly a Westlake right there, any walkon character, Josh is the least interesting character in this book, the narrator is much more interesting and judgey, Tina’s great, the actor who’s activated, almost a cartoon, fairly interesting and serious spy story, we had a good show, that Sheckley would be a good choice, paperback mentality.

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #777 – READALONG: Zero Cool by Michael Crichton

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #777 – Jesse, Terence Blake, and Cora Buhlert talk about Zero Cool by Michael Crichton

Talked about on today’s show:
1969, very impressed until the end, there’s a DVD, he re-wrote the book slightly, opening and closing chapter, the etext, old man Grandpa Ross, nephew, grandson, Todd, a very non-60s name, was it true you once visited Spain?, Grandpa nobody will believe this story, DVD?, it was a true story!, of course it was, you could get videotape in the 60s, these two sections are not in the original book, historical document, became famous, Janet Evanovich, a SpongeBob t-shirt, considered dated, it doesn’t work, complained Stephen King under the Bachman name, if I fix it up, replaces contemporary references, puts the Smurfs, flashbacks to the 50s, all the tech is of the period 1970 or earlier, Stephen King’s shitlib politics of today, 10 references to the Republicans are bad, in the middle of this book, words left out to make it shorter, some words were put in to make it explanatory, no other pattern, stylistic, the additions at the beginning and the end damage the center, he’ll soon know about my falcon, it’s not first person, you can’t have that frame make a lot of sense, kind of a James Bond story, two James Bond villains, Herve Villichez to playh the count, henchpeople, character actor, no voicebox, machine gun when he answers the door, a strange omission, changes hair colour, editing mistake, Karin is blonde, Angela has dark haired, blonde on the original cover, Eric John Stark, on the Hard Case Crime cover Angela’s the beach lady, raven haired, the nurse, Karin, European Karen, what was Angela’s actual profession, henchwoman, she’s not working for the count anymore, a few moments where the rug is pulled out, a radiologist standing on a rug, rugs all the way down, she pulls out a gun, where’s the jewel, if I give it to you what would we do, we’d go to Capri, I don’t trust her, pretty good, not great, on the latest cover (from Blackstone), didn’t notice his girlfriend had been replaced, stubble, she’s a transwoman, she hasn’t shaved for a while, very progressive, movie logic, not that different today, in colour, people have cellphones on the beach, Costa Brava, young attractive women, families, he didn’t have eyes for them, show off their bodies and get seen, another holiday he went on, he sexed it up, what percentage of the book do we not know why anything is happening?, 60%?, our Hari Seldon figure, Sherlock Holmes’ smarter brother, Mycroft Holmes, some of that was fake, round numbers, you’re both watching the show, the count, James Bond villains interests, perfumes, falconry?, and you’re a dwarf, cognitive estrangement, he’s not as smart as you thought he was, very pastiche, the whole doctor thing, radiologist, gynecologist would have been funnier, an autopsy, like a Hitchcock plot, more Donald Westlake, disappointed, not the right relationships to his experiences, facts he likes to throw down, shortest lifetimes of all doctors, exposure to radiation, that changes it, back at the hospital, extext?, republished with a new intro and new extro, breaking it down, really missing some core goodness, The Last Run (1971), a big jewel that Montezuma had, lost and found, in the Bermuda Triangle, that’s what you say grandpa, that’s another story, solve it, what does the grandpa story do?, successful radiologist, daughter or son had a son, didn’t marry Angela, what did this adventure prove?, nothing, the center story is an anecdote, makes the book less, looking for an idea, radiologists see things in black and white, the conversation wit the blonde, accepts him as a lover, the game has no rules, how detective stories or thrillers or whatever ultimately we mean have no foundation, it doesn’t work on the back end, a kid’s eye version of reality, thinking grandpa is cool, don’t tell any of my friends, grandpa tells sex stories, contradictory personality, pick up hot girls, he’s 11?, he might say that ironically, he aged backwards, a screwup, fine with it, doesn’t react in the right way, he had children, an interesting video, Caleb Maupin, American communist christian, why the liberals turned against Michael Crichton, State Of Fear, a rich kid, he went to Harvard, we knew these things, high graded kids, really smart, not that great academically, clever, interested, not the ultra rich, traveling to Europe, not glamorous, becoming democratized, part of the jet-set, travel to Egypt and Spain, Amsterdam, Nice, Cannes, he’s not there on a Eurail pass, life experience, reading paperbacks and being a doctor, rich assholes, those are his people, drinking beer on the beach, not doing his medical stuff, good at doing the cramming, Hunter Biden is a lawyer, you don’t have to be a good lawyer, pass the bar, test intensive, ways of cheating, medical school, wanting the title, not how he defines himself, a lot of people will do that, I’m a filmmaker, I’m a writer, a confection, supposed to be sweet, made up of a bunch of things, no major nutritional substance, a Philip K. Dick book written by Michael Crichton, a massive list of these?, set in the Spanish hotel, pretty good, a computer path analysis, not very big, Odds On, an island hotel, Scratch One, Easy God, Egypt, Grave Descend, Drug Of Choice, Binary, set a very high bar, ranking these, the most substantial, the best fun book, well written too, somewhere in the middle, too long, Harold Robbins, doctor stuff, doesn’t stay and dwell, drug aspect, perfume acting, hawks use their sniffers?, maybe Jesse is wrong, he personally has discovered, what does it add to the book, murderhawks, having a gun, the count, traveling is Spain, Grenada, that’s going in the book, ok, that’s cool, one or two European locations, it’s all fake, a commentary on vacations, really well structured, no major commentary on reality, there’s something to it, Grave Descend, ranking, the order in which we read, on a high high, three good ones in a row, starts off really well, stuck with the smuggling and the snakes, Jesse why don’t you write a novel, inauthentic hurts, Jesse can you write this for me, originally it wasn’t his name on the book, just money, that guy is a different guy than the John Lange that wrote it in the 60s, embarrassing, the central plot of this book, not something you’re supposed to think about, a beach reader, an airport novel, a little deeper, wanting to do something and not having anything to do, something to do, tomb raid, the puzzle of that, if it were told from another POV, from the femme fatale’s POV, why is this stupid radiologist in this book at all, erectile dysfunction, a republican presidential candidate, mirrors of each other, two forces coming together, a science fiction novel painted as something else, a show like Magnum, P.I., anything cool, it’s mentioned in there, he has zero cool, cool title, surprised you’re taller, not the exact age, I’m a doctor, I’m a writer, but you’re six foot four, basketball players are tall, prestigious college, librarians have classes, football players are big, in reality it’s a bell curve or something like that, North Americans are smaller than north Europeans, Dutch, notable, clothes, made for completely different, 6 foot 9, join my football team, that’s a basketball player, goal keepers, guards, take up more space, something that probably happened, dropped his sunglasses, because he’s rich, he’s a doctor, he’s tall, above the norm, what women want, 7 foot 9 is preferred, we’ve got a dwarf, uncomfortable, he’s not a count, a descendant of Montezuma, a similar story, Sharpe series, Bernard Cornwell, your peninsular war porn, Sharpe’s Gold, treasure in Spain, the TV adaptation was written by Nigel Kneale, surprised, the cross cultural exchange, the conquest of Mexico, writing it for a film parody or satire, finding this corpse, why is he being obtuse about it?, Washington Irving wrote about the Alhambra, what was he doing in pain?, Edgar Allan Poe went to Scotland, trips to Europe, far fetched and weird, worshipping in the right way, the moors, going underground, witchcraft in England, the protestant reformation, semi-plausible, a lot of implausible stuff, the professor could have had his own book, Hari Seldon, a proto-Hari Elsdon, his book is The Dynamics Of An Asteroid, a supergenius and a dwarf perfume collection, what happens to Tex?, the humour aspect, wacky development, I will put you in my dungeon, am I supposed to buy this as defiance, a parody of those things, Peter Ross, he’s nobody, we’re supposed to be him, he’s chasing the girl, keeps getting pulled off track, German, Sindey Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, two other Peter Lorre roles, being the bad guy, the sympathetic villain, at least 25 characters, random henchpeople, the guy with the voicebox, one and dones, some random guy with women’s clothes on, why is this a good idea, wacky, the pulling the rug out at every opportunity, Karin with a wig, when we get the first time someone gets sprayed with cologne, overhearing his captors, very interesting about the splatter on the ceiling, the height of the ceiling, another character, the cop has him in jail for murder, his girlfriend, boy is he mad at her for five minutes, the author is telling us we know that the character is not privy to, trying to work with Michael Crichton, a mystery to be solved or something else, the prison scene, the embassy walk on character, this may have happened to him, still garroting people, a joke about Franco, an East German guy, a false passport, until 1975, during the Franco era, the last Spain book, The Clash, during the Spanish Civil War, police on the streets, go on holiday in a pretty nasty dictatorship, the background, Portugal was also a dictatorship, a revolution, members of the E.U., school atlas, a developing country, it’s not in the first world, just slurs, the Third World doesn’t mean developing country, at one point he starts describing an assassination attempt on Charles de Gaulle, The Day Of The Jackal, unknown motivation, a hardboiled noir story about a deeply philosophical idea, he gets sex, non-Spanish people for holiday and sex, eat some food, drinking the beer, going to the pool in the hotel, socialized, reading books, the bastardization, updating and framing, some of them are really good, we did the best ones first, had we started with The Venom Business, in print with Blackstone, saying it’s like a Philip K. Dick novel is a high compliment, more boobs, fairly rapidly forget Zero Cool, retain an impression, we had a good talk out of it, those three are a lot more memorable, reminded of a lot of scenes, rich guys obsessed with something, easy girls, sand, which one was Zero Cool, easy come easy go, the original covers, the top row vs. the bottom row, by the 1970s, is this the order of publication, the target audience, why anybody would read those, people are hard to understand, James Michener, if you try to talk to people about them, The Mists Of Avalon, the reason Terence read this book, Hard Case Crime cool covers, reading books for weird reasons, The Name Of The Rose, this book is full of references, so big, conspiracy in the Vatican books, The Da Vinci Code, unstoppable steamroller, run for high ground with your old Heinlein paperbacks, a pretty good fantasy book, why would anyone read Fifty Shades Of Grey, taps into class?, some era of people, even if you aren’t reading it, that chatter, a Scandinavia book, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Swedish politics, Men Who Hate Women, an airport paperback for very short flights, thin paperbacks, five-six hours, people read old books in old books, television at home, I Love Lucy or Star Trek, go out to a movie or read a book, as a form of casual entertainment, audiobooks are replacing that, the paperback genre, a drugstore spinner rack, the new format size, mass market size, fit in a jacket pocket, back pocket of your jeans, super-portable, reading can become a fashion accessory, on a bus holding a paperbook today, justify the price, is larger better for the printer?, more glue, more ink, a bigger format so it feels more substantial, cellphones started getting bigger, folding phones, if you’re going to pay $2000 for a phone, people are kinda simple that way, controlled by the price, it can radically effect the book, perhaps the reason to add those opening and closing chapters, older books, bigger fonts, small and physically thin, break your wrists trying to read a book, too many characters, too much running around, a lot of scenes in Scratch One like the scenes in Zero Cool, early on in the book, the French feeling of deja vu, a sample on Audible, the girl on the beach, the restaurant, the relationship with the girl, I love you, that femme fatale role, never bought into it at all, half a villain, happened at the end, epiphany at the end, can’t we punch this up a bit, I don’t really buy me, sarcastic, more along for the ride for a lot of it, not contributing much, not the long arm that got him out of prison, she was in the same room, did you kill that guy?, she did get him out, they’re the same guy, switching sides, not his best book, watch The Last Run (1971), read Binary, Drug Of Choice, Easy Go, maybe Grave Descend, whip up something for dinner, Cora’s dad, really annoying, needs to go to the gas station, you tell him how things are, move on to other Crichtons if necessary, The Andromeda Strain is a solid book, Eaters Of The Dead, Antonio Banderas as an Arab, The Thirteenth Warrior, AD 922, 1976, Norsemen, Rus, a retelling of Beowulf, a real guy, the Marco Polo of the Arabs, lies on the copyright page, fake notes about references to actual incidences, a meta-text, The Great Train Robbery, Sean Connery and Donald Sutherland, super-funny, he put all his good stuff in one book, cold and clinical, as a piece of writing, really cool science fiction, coming out of a different writing system, make sure it’s a good one sometime, The Terminal Man, 2nd novel under his own name, serialized in Playboy, epilepsy, a brain pacemaker, let’s do it, a plutonium power pack, takes place over four days, pre-cyberpunk, Elon Musk’s computer brain interface, read by Luke Daniels, right after Lowdown Road, November 12, gluttons for Crichton punishment, series about a girl, goes into adulthood, early 20th century, in the middle of WWII, why is she flirting with young men?, childrens books in the 1930s, heart racing trip across 70s America, CB radios are hot, 70s truckers movies, learning all the lingo, phrases that get turned into normal English, fender bender, CB radio jive, sex stuff, information, list of CB slang, Smokey And The Bandit, bear in the air, full grown bear, local yokel, a subculture of people who don’t have a fixed community that they live in, truckers live all over Canada and the United States, their community is their people they communicate, like BBS, Convoy (1978), a ballad, civil disobedience, authoritarian war measure act, you live in the capital, trying to get a meeting with the prime minister, protests are supposed to be inconvenient, gluing themselves to the road, idiots, a good cause, the method isn’t so great, the names of cities, Beantown, The Big Apple, why is it called that?, Cowtown (is Calgary), Disneytown, Hotlanta, California is Idiot Island, not all cited, Motorcity, Emerald City, Dallas, Texas, Rhymes With Fun, (Vagina) Regina Saskatchewan, super-ephemeral, preserved in film, a way of being connected, there’s an app for that, a way of being in touch with that community, same money different stamps, too slow, convinced, culture, a fun book, nobody knows really, Hayy Ibn Yadhan by Ibn Tufail, a book from 1185-ish, most translated text from Arabic, boy raised by a deer, the gazelle boy, supposedly a true story, the wolfchildren, has to keep up with his mom, a permanent baby, animal-raised children, wolf-children, never snake children, they don’t have the milk, dodo-child, extincted family, the self-taught philosopher, going after Avicenna, in the bosom of an antelope, Frankenstein, 2023 politics, Genghis Khan was really cool, it’s been a while, a conversation with Deleuze, nomads, Genghis Khan, trying to cancel Nietzsche, Jordan Peterson, so many people are triggered by him, read a Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, semi-ignorant, he’s not a politician, gives speeches, clean up your room, get married, you have to clean up your room if you want to get married, a simple idea, a lot of people need, good advice, very good on the Bible, Maps of Meaning, a rationalist, good analysis, thinking mythical, symbolically, more coherent than Slavoj Žižek, systematic ones, Sex And The Failed Absolute, that new movement of leftists, for Freud and Lacan, Less Than Nothing, more conceptual meat, youtube is not great for good feedback, participating in their engagement systems, corrupted by spam and failed updates, emails, moderation, because blogging was destroyed, rss is defeated, we defeated them, now were stuck, the other things, we’ll see, you should write a novel, 13 year old blog, why would I write a novel?, a terrible idea, buying a printing press, what if I typset it wrong, that’d be a lot better, Cirsova guy, magazines and books published, no feedback, lying, Jesse doesn’t want headaches, 200 people listen in the first week and a1000 over the next ten years, evolving all the time, people can’t believe their own thoughts, they want an official stamp of approval, the phyiscial copy of the book, Appendix N by Jeffro Johnson, Jesse loves blogposts, a real shame they’ve been de-platformed, what is Cory Doctorow doing, BoingBoing.net was a thing, probably still going, on Twitter, pluralist something, too much, his interests are not the same as mine, a really good science fiction idea guy, Down And Out In The Magic Kingdom, Robert J. Sawyer, interactions, his ethics are spot on, made a wrong turn, where’s my RSS, there’s no way to get them, there’s no ecosystem, let’s get that blogger who we really like reading, finding people who blog and bring them on, deplatform non-twitter blogging, and why did they do that, all consuming, this is where all those blogs went, jokes all day, threads, dream at the beginning of blogging, guest posting, dialoguing, narrow and eat everything, resilient against what google, trying to kill the internet, we can talk about our blogposts on our podcasts or youtubes, you in the past, no longer me now, vivid dreams, physical things, listening to a Doctor Who episode, politics, writing that down immediately, really interesting this guy is brilliant, different medium, short stories are also weird and hard, putting on a play, people want dialogue, arbitrary rules, Terence reads Jesse’s dreams, a cliche from the past, plans for the future, tell me when you want to be a doctor in the future and ride a horse, “last night I dreamt”, boring people have boring dreams, stress dreams, obscure kinds of dreams, a warehouse full of product, I need this capital, assorted chocolates, Sigourney Weaver, dark alien chocolate, mam, something about xenomorphing, esprit d’escalier moment, Bob Hope had come to visit and someone had ordered 36 cases of red wine, the sociology of dreams, social class, different jobs, not the last word on dreams, last night I dreamed, just a fantasy, just a joke not a dream, Baldur’s Gate, people are doing it for themselves, she had a white dove in her hand, a long black sedan, the inventor of non-philosophy, François Laruelle, this is close to a non-philosophy dream, a door to the beach, translucent toaster, little feet and hands, it’s organelles glowing yellowy, Mr. Punch, a living alarm clock, back to back, a supplement to this analysis of The Road Warrior, pithy, concise, observing everyday life, cash reserves, a reverse Edith Keeler style, vintage 1960s money, the purpose for my time-travelling, it was garbage day, broken bicycle pumps, dozens of photo albums, shiny new dimes, I audibly swore, a man stepped out of an alcove nearby, bud, the artifacts, we are collecting across the whole stratum, there was a lot more work ahead, that guy stepping out is me, these are like experiences you become amnesiac to, they can’t leave physical scars, you’re ignorant of them, phases, seven years of writing dreams down all the time, 2000 dreams, the old reflexes, read it again and put a title on it, it’s good, it gains in meaning, not wanting to write it down, this is really good, I need to remember this, the only way to preserve, loses the detail, the extemporaneous immediacy, it didn’t come in text, not copying and pasting, the sleepy voice is not present in the experience, the transposition is good for the dream, writing it down the first time is the definitive form, typos, get it all down, always start with the same word, dreamt, he’s talented, an art contest in Israel, takes job, 120 characters, transport all this stuff to another blue sky, it won’t be public if it’s not there, deleting tweets, major typo, spelling rules in French, straight away, part of the archive, reconstruct your life in 212 years from now, let’s bring Terence back online, somebody like Bobby Derie, sure he was racist about spaghetti, but he also says good things about ravioli, full of soybean oil, spaghetti’s feminine, you choose the stars, macaroni, they all taste the same, with our brains, which one should I choose, the cheapest one, call up Mr. Job, a good show and good talk, curse Jesse a little, see if you like it, mutilated versions, ThePirateBay, the 1971 film with 4 seeders, qbittorent, reddit is a really horrible place, so censored, super-censored, people talking about the letter mu, qbittorents the new mutorrent, what a great website, more bitcoin to give them, mined bitcoin, windshield repair, heat the apartment from mining, it might be a classic, as philosophically deep, philosophically famous, she’s got a Hugo as well, a lot of location based, southern France’s roads, a boy movie, there’s a girl in it, a pretty substantial role, plays some games.

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The SFFaudio Podcast #762 – READALONG: Sixth Column by Robert A. Heinlein

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #762 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, Evan Lampe, Terence Blake, and Jonathan Manfred Weichsel talk about Sixth Column by Robert A. Heinlein

Talked about on today’s show:
get people to believe he’s Terence, J stands for Jonathan, Manfred sounded cooler, just change your last name to Scalzi and all the blessing will come, you can replace Heinlein, this John Scalzi book called Sixth Column, serialized in Astounding, not based on a Heinlein idea at all, the original idea was Campbell’s, all the problems it has are Heinlein’s fixings, Jack Vance shitting on Campbell, psychics and telepathy, well done for a bad idea, not one of his best, major works, thought experiment, opposite thought experiment, Revolt In 2100 in reverse, theocracy, make people believe, If This Goes On is Revolt In 2100, revolts against people in power, revolution, fighting against the forces of prophet, pan-Asian tyranny, motives of the character, technomage weapon, falls for a girl, the movement culture makes the ideology, the change in him, less emotional growth, learns to become a rebel, how people get radicalized: through women, against god, The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, the conspiracy element, the secret society within and a false leader, Adam Selene, Mike, the disciple is coming, enjoyed the book, one of the strongest competency fantasies, this Ledbetter effect, what a Campbell move, they’re genetically different from us, isn’t the US filled with other than white people too?, race is a thing, in the original texts, the whites vs. the pan-Asians, setting from Asian to not Asian, tone down some of the binary, unfixable, Anson MacDonald was racist, tiny brain – galaxy brain, old Heinlein, troll way you want to do it, changes, some city has been atom-bombed, considering the year, it starts when the war was over, we’re the werewolves of this Nazi empire, individual stories were fighting, you can make the argument they’re still there, on the Moon?, still guys in the mountains, people being killed into the late-1940s, ideological true believers, a hand that touched them to make them military, an uprising, a prison revolt, start a religion to solve a problem, a very American move, the turbans and the staffs, the beards, he stacked the deck, pan-Asianism, this less is less bullshit, the pan-Asian movement, Noble Drew Ali, Moorish Science, fezzes, little Hitler mustache, if this was happening in your community, government did stuff, the Black Muslim movement, Nat Turner, a movement out of Japan, the Black Dragon Society, take over Asia, Pan-Asian Orientalism, they’re trying to create a force against European colonization of Asia, unequal treaties, China, an attempt to unify counties under threat, nationalism, a congruency there, civic nationalist ideas, anschluss, an Ottoman identity, Pan-Africanists, Sun Yat-sen, the Asia for the Asians idea, largely a creation of the Japanese, the Japanese Empire, we have to fight the imperial power, they’re bad like us, as a way to avoid war and fight the west, Manchurians, national ambitions, disconnect between political realities and what unites us in people’s minds, post-colonial African, a pan-Germanist, a pan-Europeanist, subject to the master race, propaganda to that extent, not serious about pan-Asianism, Savage Headhunters, Shinto, edge out the other religions, atrocities, the Rape of Nanking, they weren’t being altruistic, the psychology of creating this book, it’s the Japanese, a god emperor somewhere in Asia, they conquered India, this pan-Asian government, the Soviets, Korea, set in the future, flying vehicles, The Final Blackout by L. Ron Hubbard, 1940, the end of the world, Europe is off the map, Beyond Thirty by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the South Pole, a similar setup, blackout and curtain, blackout curtains, they’re out of the game, a country knocked out of the Risk game, right before the novel begins, the United States is washed up, a plothole in the book, buildings, people walking around, it wasn’t bombs, a electromagnetic weapon, Washington is gone, the last flight out, Cheyenne Mountain, where NORAD is, Colorado Springs, tentacles, a fun book, the swami hats, the halos, he can sell it to Campbell, Heinlein operating at the Anson MacDonald level, early Heinlein comedy, the great God Motar, it got the cover, the conversation with the prince, the Divine Hand, silly and racist, funny dialogue, if Japan wins, states make nations, a national identity, folklore, flags, constitutions, anthems, winning in Asia, controlling this vast empire, give it enough time, a white republic became multi-ethnic, the original illustrations, the troops look Japanese, the Hand looks Manchu, scholar hat, more Chinese than Japanese, Mongolian, mongoloid, the five races theory, they’ve got a religion too, a divinity aspect, they don’t understand American religion, just use Christianity, Japanese spies, Francis Xavier, Commodore Perry, the Non-Intercourse Act, Trinity RPG, why can’t you close yourself off, capitalism won’t let you, the Khmer Rouge, the 1st world, the 2nd world, and the 3rd world, unequal treaties, you’re trading with us now, we set the terms of the trade, gunships, they are really good at this colonialism, free trade, snuggle up, after a war, more unequal than others, Cuba is not allowed to trade with the United States, open up countries to trade, many port cities, everybody get their own port, a lot of dissatisfaction, you are the slave class now, protectorate, brutal, this isn’t as racist as it could be, these two groups think race is a thing, you have to buy in, a biological fact, what the theme is, defeated by your prejudices, binary racist skeleton plot, what leads to decline and downfall is a set of prejudices, a native American born Asia, subject to the ray, Heinlein doing his Heinlein thing, I’m different from him, so about racist, police are the same everywhere, will they stay bribed?, pedagogical motifs, people are prejudiced, the summary of the first 2 parts, the Blitzkrieg of the United States Empire, the Citadel, military research, Ardmore works hard, Colonel Calhoon, believes himself to be Mota, or Motak?, he’s John W. Campbell, complete atomic power, selective death ray, a general solution of unified field, well behaved slaves require religion, encouragement and disencouragement, render under Caesar, African American religion, religion is a delusion, Stranger In A Strange Land, so much time focusing on religion, it’s a fake from the beginning, he’s Jesus, the disciple depicted, black and a thousand feet tall, Joseph Smith (not Jesus), doing more than one thing, Valentine Michael Smith, the disciple of Jesus, vanishing people, he dies like Jesus, stoned to death, but didn’t come back, the Mormons get a very favourable mention, a good version of religion, practical, the business aspect, they’ve got good business sense, an infinite money generator, Robert Heinlein being a gold bug, a DC superhero character from the 40s, Doctor Fate, The Flash with a WWI helmet, Babylon 5, not for religious purposes, a Mormon-like branch of Christianity, mumbo jumbo, invent and remember, a short novel, people offended by this, an evangelical branch of Christianity, ripped from daily headlines, slot-machines in their megachurches, come die with us anyway, people die for Christianity all the time, there is a third rail in the United States, American friends, there are Canadian religious people, tied to the land in the U.K., writing for a very secular Science Fiction magazine, make up a Christian religion and say it’s all fake, people would be very offended, when the Beatles compared themselves to Jesus, Dungeons & Dragons, third hand worried, when the panic came out, an American media thing, spill-over, the one with Harry Potter, if it gets to be a big enough interest, having fun, all the names, the other aspects of Mota, reading this in the 1940s, smile slyly inside, he’s being sneaky but I get it, it works as an anti-religious polemic, what makes this a lesser book, if Evan got his away, people would think about it in a different way, tying Americanism to Christianity, John W. Campbell’s All, racialism, using the dopey religion, so religious they’d be wrong about using Christianity, the conversations with the Christian believers, wrestling with using this fake religion, so contrived, For Us, The Living, just ignore Europe, the religions of Iran or Turkey, Chinese didn’t know that Americans were Christian, an Iron Curtain around the United States, closed off from the rest of the world, Donald Trump, build a wall around America, consume itself in war, Heinlein has no interest in Europe, Hitler, Medieval European, a feudal Catholicism, like monks living in cells, armour, nuns, charismatic Christianity, Job: A Comedy Of Justice, literalist, the Republican party, living in Job’s universe, atomic power, the serial we are about to read, fair probability, the effectiveness of invention, plausible, the whole setup is wholly implausible, invasion literature, if we had this setup, so many coincidences, they just happen to…, so constructed so as to be not one of his best book, whoever that is, definitely Heinlein, biggest problems, general acceptance of drugs, magic, the drugs only have the effect they say on the label, you have to take sleeping pills, also I don’t you getting up, konking you out, a naivete about drugs, good healthy skepticism, what happens right after these pre-WWII books, a think tank to help win the war, L. Sprague DeCamp, commissioned as an officer, pressure suits, Astounding [by Alec Nevalla-Lee], is the tech ripe, tech-bro, is there government funding for this thing, Larry Niven and Benford, rods from god, beat the Soviets, same thing, let’s think up scenarios, now everybody has to take their shoes off forever, you could combine liquids and make a bomb, endemic and super dangerous, the Slan effect, reading a Philip K. Dick novel, now I can run the world, that guy is weird, what maleness means, maybe children are smarter than adults, principles, all you have to do is take your hypnodrugs and you can learn languages, he can’t see it about himself, spin-up, he’s wonderful, it’s hokum, man can he write, criticism of Heinlein, sexual politics, the collapse of America, not for the betterment, to undermine things, the society of Friday, Balkanized, royals have moved to Canada, California, Ottawa, never a threat to world peice, a planetary society, the beanstalk in Kenya, she’s the James Bond working for a secret organization, tied to Gulf, in the future of Gulf, a take that at his own work, takes his own piss, time travel pussy one: The Door Into Summer, why Evan needed to do Heinlein for his podcast, he’ll mention other countries, he’s trying to bomb America, bombing the Taj Mahal, mostly he just cares about the United States, practically the United States, he’s so smart and good at spinning up, no impact with working at the navy yard, the Edison trust goes on, like G.E. or Bell, Bell Labs, their existence is there because they’re a trust, wild speculation, you’re given the monopoly so you have to give back, he’s got transmutation, lead into gold, poison gas into oxygen, there’s a change in energy, win WWII with alchemy, a broad comedy, very comedic, forgettable Heinlein, religion as a mask for science, power-play, Isaac Asimov’s Foundation, Dune, is the religion fake in Dune?, planted, a psychology of the masses, staff officers, soft sciences, planted the seeds for that chapters, precedents, Orphans Of The Sky, Universe, the science became a religion, gravity as a metaphor, a secret society, long and too big, the concept is really cool, he takes the long view, six months?, how many years are they at this?, couple years at most, he has only three issues to write it, where did this idea start in American literature, Mark Twain’s criticism of the Christian scientists, diet books, Extract From Captain Stormfield’s Visit To Heaven biblical justification, post-apocalyptic, what’s the name of that story?, many different satires of religion, hardly anybody there speaks English, they jailed his corpse, are they believing their own shit, Theosophy, L. Frank Baum, you can’t say I’m an atheist, having an argument ready, what’s a Christian, take you to their temple, what’s that?, judo flipped them, join someone else’s services, soul-searching, doing good, whatever names doesn’t matter, unity of all faiths, a scientific based version of the theosophical ideology, Muslim cleric in a Jewish temple, the audiences take it, the scientiologiston the street corner, we welcome Christian, play to whatever, they don’t start with you’re wrong, I worship Mithra, The Altar by Robert Sheckley, Two Dooms by C.M. Kornbluth, half-colonized America, a very C.M. Kornbluth story, if Weinbaum had lived, could have been bigger than Heinlein, nobody’s trying to say Scalzi’s the new Weinbaum, Zelazny death anniversary thread, google nGram, his works aren’t in print, locked away under copyright, H. Beam Piper is bigger than it ever was, the evidence is huge but Paul is not convinced, Scalzi wrote a reboot of the public domain book, after 1963, sinecure, go to youtube and look at all the views and compare to sales on audible, it’s huge, I only read free, free as I can do anything I want with it, a certain racial slur against African Americans, the good stuff rises, peter want the better stuff, the bad covers on Amazon are commercial, excised, taking offense by being babied, flatfaces, yellow monkeys, aliens, slanty-eyes, slanties, made that up for this book?, made up slurs are less problematic, thought experiment, Farnham’s Freehold next, pan-Africans invading the United States, The New Sun, we’ve got some white guys we need to hate, the token guy, Heinlien is anti-racist, the character is in the serial, who would die from their beam, the antidote to the racism in this book, lifeboat rules, a prejudice you have to overcome, just take this pill, go in with a ray and kill cleanly, soul-searching, get over your prejudices, promoted instead of fired, took the black pill, have you ever butchered a hog, Heinlein wrote these lines, pages and pages of dialogue Heinlein talking to himself, walking down the street of Des Moines, roll tanks, you’re a slave now, handing out gold, one foot in the Great Depression, soup kitchens, poor relief, Beyond The Horizon, in this era of his career, the changing nature of the stake, ambivalent, biases, dismissing female priests, can’t wear the beard, the oppressor, comfort women, mobilizing the women, traditional, burning the past, no research in it, hara-kiri everything’s to do with face, white women turned into comfort women, we need to liberate women, all hands on deck, salable chattel, 1911, anarchist feminist Chinese radical, comfort stations, a discussion in Japan about the new woman, changing the roles of women, the audience for this, written real fast, writing so much, chronological read through of Heinlein, the development of ideas, not an issue in 1941, the future history stories are under Heinlein, a rule throughout magazines, whole issues written by Robert Silverberg, we need more L. Sprague DeCamps, guess Caleb Saunders is getting a cheque today, recruiting guys, almost every issue, one year of Astounding, off magazines, a quarter of the way through, a future history laid out, And He Built A Crooked House, competence fantasy, Elsewhen, if I was running the war, Civilization with infinite gold or tanks, fun but weak, a pressor beam a sucker beam, the stacks were stacked against, the chess move, god damn them, enjoyable but a weak book, Paul didn’t enjoy reading this book?, the gun one, compare, by Paul, going at it on Twitter, it’s about guns, head and shoulders above this one, silly, a paycheck, I have this story here, unsalable, doesn’t stop him, Campbell’s writing was never amazing, maybe you could do something with this, more ambitious, social credit, post-scarcity, honor culture, a gun controlled society, cultural regulation, also not one of his best, one of the best of his early works, The Green Hills Of Earth, the novels that go down hill, crackin little ideas, he excels at novels, Friday is a really good book, bulky, falling in love with your rapist, a relationship with the guy, some mitigating fiction, your puritan locked down guy, a bit strange, a minor bug, Heinlein is at his best when he’s challenging you, shallow appreciation of Starship Troopers, the classroom stuff, arguing against, engage, come to an agreement, some candidate for the evil party, raise the age to 25, as a platform, get more people not to vote, does the Army vote for Biden?, the cultural perception, officers vs. non-officers, pro-war vs. anti-war, what’s the purpose, explicitly telling you this is for engagement, that speaks very well to the society, indoctrinate, in comparison, to write about his present, a veteran teaching the class, teacher pay, anything that will disrupt, learning things, conformity, marks are a way of controlling, we gotta do way more of that, a weird book, a classroom setting, a very complex book, a poll before the election, the 2020 election, the Army voted for Biden, go talk to the people, 2016, a choice between warhawks, Paul needs to flee, Clark Ashton Smith, a google ngram, you see the spikes, Edgar Allan Poe compared to H.P. Lovecraft, work it to make it work, Silverberg’s Downward To The Earth, 1981, Majipoor, throw in a contemporary of both of them, his presence doesn’t drop like Zelazny’s, H.G. Wells, pushing people’s buttons, not as controversial, challenging, Harlan Ellison, mostly a TV guy, mostly essays, Edgeworks, really bad press, full of typos, shoulda been smarter, reprint rights, number one is Ray Bradbury, he’s part of the curriculum, book guy, if you wanna be big you have to be mandated, Bradbury is safe and tame, he’s not great, he’s good, he’s got real good stuff, The Martian Chronicles, The Veldt, A Sound Of Thunder, he’s all about the feeling, he’s nostalgic, his ideas always have to do with feelings, what makes Fahrenheit 451, books are good, he’s in the slicks, his novels come later, his first movie is so flat, Rocket Ship Galileo, the worst Heinlein movie is the one he was involved with, was he smoking, Waldo, Magic Inc., a messy publication history, a lot of fixups, The Penultimate Truth, the Virginia Collection, full of typos, archive.org, The Unpleasant Profession Of Jonathan Hoag, at a certain point, I love Heinlein, I hate him, I love him so much, wow!, the market is drying up a little bit, that furious pace, that was his job, he was a fiction writer, Hal Clement was a teacher, Searchlight, All You Zombies, he loves the drugs, By His Bootstraps, how can he be so trusting of drugs?, he’s a tech bro, isn’t it the same worldview?, they’re the problem solvers, COVID on the brain, ivermectin, Jesse gets credit for something?, not that long ago in the 1970s and the 1980s, Alzheimer’s vs. dementia, cancer’s an old one, cancer is fundamental, the chances get greater and greater, a Whiggish view of science, revised or updated, why be so arrogant about our own views, historian, Heinlein: Tech-Bro by Evan Lampe, disrupting systems, taking government funding, the French Revolution, Enlightenment tech-bros, how about a 10 day week, the Temple of Reason, we got some good stuff out of that, Silicon Valley, they’re lighting, disruption is good, computer miniaturization, making things small and faster, multi-threads, a legit improvement, it doesn’t scale to non-hardware very well, running cooler, can do more at a faster pace, the software is magic on top of it, your monthly subscription, a Philip K. Dick story, Cory Doctorow, Australia has month, you will own nothing and you will eat bugs, funny on slack, mass resistance to the policy, why do students have phones with them, the Cory Doctorow explanation, the Evan Lampe explanation, Douglas Adams, cell phones looks like crumpets, a mainstream guy, the zoomers have revisited the Karl Marx line, my cell phone is trying to kill me, William Gibson, hacking the gibson through my cortex, Transmetropolitain by Warren Ellis, Neal Stephenson, because they’re geniuses, after whuffie, how good my camera is, how fast the wifi is, how come i don’t have a clip tray in my Windows, better and better then real bad, Mark Twain, the Civil War, avoiding poetry, 100 page poems, take a break from Mark Twain, both very Americans, traveled a lot, wrote for a living, Innocents Abroad, Life On The Mississippi, A Tramp Abroad, a short story that’s an anecdote, A Literary Nightmare, Anthony DeSimone, the story of a meme, feels relief, an early example of a meme, a little rhyme to remember ticket prices, so fuckin good, so clear but also has stuff to say, started out very optimistic ended cynical, gilded ages, everything travel, The Number Of The Beast, sick in bed, bedridden, trails off into nonsense, veers into the wrong direction, To Sail Beyond The Sunset, episode 103, Time Enough For Love, gonna explain something in Methuselah’s Children, he’s his own grandpa, very Heinlein, maybe that’s a different book, The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, upcoming slots, Paul’s not available, the first Carson of Venus novel in on LibriVox, it’s different, builds a rocketship, crashes on Venus, a parody of the competency narrative, wrong way Carson, read it as a self-parody, Bison Frontiers of Imagination, Pirates Of Venus, unusual for Burroughs, Lost Of Venus, do the Heinlein, Black House, Logan’s Run, Clifford D. Simak, a VR novel, Lord Dunsany, Michael Crichton, Progeny by Philip K. Dick, (Alex) Pulp Covers, bother Paul, totally racist, still really good, the mom’s an alcoholic and the dad’s a lawyer, the drama of it, the family relationships, mixed African race, enslaved all the white people, all good, he’s experimenting, The Puppet Masters, people in a certain class, different shades of skin, being extra-specially sensitive to this stuff, they’re just people, people are people, they’re all Americans, he thinks men and women are very similar, Heinlein’s sexual politics, screenshotting, raping his own daughters, sexy Heinlein books, they go to the future, skinny dipping, he likes lookin at ladies, missing in Sixth Column, a similar scene, the rebels are all nudists, Heinlein got over it, being comfortable with his body, marriages, he’s right about that shit, people bang more, abolish gender?, nudism in Nazi Germany, body culture, ready for the military, read the back of the comics, if this goes on, many different body types, the cat one, Nudist Camp, gold wire, David Ashton Walsh, just a fascist who wanted to fuck his mom, Mike B. Young, his twin daughters as well, who is going to stop you, Lazarus Long, these are his fantasies, The Roads Must Roll is anti-union, the Canadian truckers protest, as a guy, a guild, not what unions are after, they’re not for solidarity, eugenicists want to take over, create a master race, what the engineers are after, Starman Jones, without joining a guild, stowaways on the ship pick it up by doing it, Lester Del Rey, Badge Of Infamy, be a guild member to use Chat GPT, a class of people, they’re tv writers, movie writers, Professor Coolbreeze, a rich tapestry, who still fucked babes, they’re puritans, strawman the guy who’s a writer of books from a long time ago, do some raping, why does he have rape in his stories, all the libertarian sci-fi, libertarian tendencies, he’s thinking things true, people can’t win an argument with a dead guy without strawmanning him, a skill that people lack, what people read, formulaic stories, maybe challenging, Jonathan is a writer who breaks a lot of rules, accidentally vs. intentionally, intent, appreciation of popular fiction and literature, people say they read Heinlein then can’t believe how racist he was, the party discipline requires denouncing, you gotta say this now, a very twitter phenomenon, party conformist, people who still watch actual broadcast television, two different worlds, far right far left, a maga hat on, keep a sun out of his eyes, BCIT hat, visible maga people, hand painted signs, Trump flags, being visibly breaking decorum, rainbow pin on their lapel, Ukraine flag on the lawn, a laptop class, political people on twitter, very political most days, how is this processing, something Paul tweeted to Evan, there’s something wrong with me, how come I don’t get this, Elon Musk was defending him limiting some traffic in Turkey about the election, especially in right wing countries, hearing Erdogan is pro-Putin, not conforming with NATO, ethno-nationalist, continuing policy, he caved on that one, did you lose your brain, Evan is against ethno-states, always thinking about the people of the United States being white, projecting 100s of years in the future, doesn’t fit into his future history, should have worked harder on the re-write, the Americans fighting against eh pan pan-Asian, fundamentally flawed, you can’t really fix this, a thoughtwave pattern, those kind of experiments, a magic wand that kills all the women and Dylan Mulvaney is still alive, servicing John Campbell’s position and needs, I’m selling books here, kills only Asians, why not just disperse the death ray in a wide beam, the recruitment, what stupidness that it is, a very minor work, more silly than anything else, goofy, enjoyable, character heavy and painful and a transformed world, very engaging, the character of the alcoholic mother, he recycles them a lot, the mother-son relationship, allows him to be castrated, never before explored before, doctor my balls don’t work, insert some glands in yeah, some pain down there, okay doctor, drugs work perfectly, did he tech bro himself out of babies?, if he had had babies, he would have petered out, they’re all about children, childbirth is the goal, Lazarus Long has hundreds of children, what’s the point of life, I may be awesome, life is kind of absurd, reading writers who have these problems, Edgar Allan Poe, going to the ladies, Zora Neale Hurston, girls, yes, invented everything, for an American audience at least, much more than that, literary criticism of his, this is shit, here’s why it’s shit, a lot of context, his novel is rich, interesting nested, figure out what mode he’s in, he has to fill pages, writes a story to a piece of art, William Wilson, for the present volume, written for a book called The Gift, doppelganger and debauchery, Evan’s plan, Gertrude Stein, ambitious, 2 a week, 895 episodes, Lovecraft and Dick readthrough, Civil War, the American character, the American spirit, it came from those authors, Twain is much more of a common man, the great American author, America made its historical context, feed into later works, American culture made something distinctive before it went into massive decline, the anarchist socialist communes, counted out America, right after the Civil War, an alternative that doesn’t suck in the world, Jesse’s pitch, being America’s bitch sucks, do it in Canada, oppression but not much, basic government service, Colossus will get things done, getting the temple built, Mary McCarthy, Willa Cather, Margaret Atwood, the Canadian education system, Canadian literature is not the best, 10 times the population, extremes that Canadians don’t suffer, have your literature imported, the CBC’s job, other countries’ literature, Poe and Dick and Lovecraft, Stephen King, great literature exporters, chains, people claim there is, Mark Fisher, good history being written, new history vs. new fiction, Neil Gaiman, wonderful scholarship, self-aggrandizing, Jesse’s argument, a smart way to do it, nice microphone, quiet time, Jesse’s a terrible narrator, come to some arrangement, focused on audio, evangelical for it, audible [the website] didn’t exist, a growth industry, good product and great covers, listening while walking, from a commercial standpoint, only still on the rise, Jonathan has been converted, somebody is listening to this five hour show, gab in the background, nope, Tommy Patrick Ryan audiobooks, he wants to help out, not a money relationship, a wheelbarrow with a big hole in it, wheelbarrows are expensive, cover that hole, Jesse was right the whole time, publishing tasks, corporeal, orgy, divan, figures out the voice of the narrator, the Bronson Pinchot vs. Tom Weiner, straight reader vs. performer, a female accent, speech impediment or style of speaking, nobody has any inflections, there is a spectrum, transparent narrators, the elephants are very calm, he’s from Brooklyn, you’re never going to hear the end of it, people think they can reinvent the wheel, profits in new markets, used bookstore project, who doesn’t want to own a used bookstores, when 9/11 happened, homeland security, the US Postal Service, you’re fucking with me, street traffic vs. online only, a good location without a bookstore, buy a bookstore, you get the market, an inventory, people bring in free stock, pandemic rules, the pandemic was a very good thing, jubilee, she gets a prize you get nothing, wait until Kamala is your queen, reelected for the 2nd time, carrying his corpse around from press conference to press conference, Canadian foreign and domestic policy is largely dictated by US foreign policy, a demented guy in charge, the institutions, Bryan Alexander, speech impediment, its not on the news, shaking hand with butlers, juice him up, the clips are out there, that’s the scenario, brings nothing to the table, rumblings, Megan Markle, Oprah, renounce her royal title, a bad book, pan Atlantic country, H2O (2004 CBC miniseries), plausible scenario, a reverse coup, as sequel too, David Cronenberg, James Cameron, Marilyn Chambers, early controversy, a movie industry, set in Toronto, The Fly (1986), A History Of Violence (2005), Scanners (1981), filming there, architecture is Canadian, brutalist, a fetish for him, Canadian actors who never leave Canada, any kind of traction, just move to the states, William Shatner, where the work is, pass yourself off, Deadpool guy, aggressively Canadian, Ryan Reynolds, big weird country, kinda fake, founding myth, the North-West Passage, this big thing that was in the way, French Canadians, teach the controversy, two big companies, 54:40 or fight, break the line at 49, take up to Alaska, war with Britain, Vancouver, Washington, Hudson’s Bay, two business men go into a meeting, fuck the people who live on either side of this line, the black exclusion laws, Oregon has a racist foundation, escaped slaves, the problems that that entailed, no black people allowed, weird behavior, weird politics, every year Jesse goes with boats with clubs, Jesse puts his skins in a warehouse, all Americans live in California, a very arctic thing, more into salmon and cedar, three day festival and everybody goes clubbing, almost like a J. Manfred Weichsel story, satire, Heinlein and all of them went to the government, Astounding by Alec Nevala-Lee, there’s an audiobook of it, using science fiction ideas, Giants Of Eternity by Manly Wade Wellman, like in The War Of The Worlds, dig up all the super-scientists, Marie Curie, this is amazing, Charles Darwin, Thomas Alva Edison, Louis Pasteur, Isaac Newton, make fun of their personalities, got a big beard, the jokes write themselves, a cult of Edison, Edison skepticism, very important and also an asshole, a patent troll, a copyright troll, self-promotion, a machine that talks to the dead, break that out of the old dusty lab, Alfred Bester, telescopist, a baby seahorse nebula made out of anti-matter, wax cylinder, Ray Cummings, The Girl In The Golden Atom, super-science, a huge effect on science fiction, for a pulp author, still writing in the same mode, second pass at Edison, 1887-1957, the opposite of The Girl In The Golden Atom, our galaxy is an atom, just needs to fill pages, he had an idea about science, old fashioned for his time, Fitz James O’Brien, he’s sparky, What Was It?, dope smokin fiends, an invisible creature, while they’re smoking their hash, super racist, The Diamond Lens, a little lady, The Lost Room, Edgar Allan Poe, hoping to be sent to the front, lingered until April, died of tetanus, the biggest insurrection in U.S. history, 1/6, hundreds of people died in New York, The Wondersmith, nice big mustache, Guy De Maupassant, he’s in Weird Tales, Famous Fantastic Mysteries, Vanity Fair, Atlantic Monthly, died at 35, he really did cosmicism before Lovecraft, a cosmic point of view, some tech, 100% down with science fiction, Mary Shelley, Margaret Cavendish, travel to other planets, it has to be Wells, Edward Page Mitchell, C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne, Jack London, 1899, The Clock That Went Backwards, The Chronic Argonauts, ancestors in Amsterdam, their aunt is immortal, one of them stays and makes her, Back To The Future, that’s like Heinlein, Travel By Wire by Arthur C. Clarke, The Man Without A Body, this new fangled technology called telephone, a teleporter or a transporter like in Star Trek, didn’t charge the battery, Victorian era science fiction, Sam Moskowitz renewed all his copyrights, Science Fiction By Gaslight, Under The Moons Of Mars, scientific language, carbon emissions are going to kill everybody, coal heaters, the air becomes solid, heavy stuff, an idea that is science fiction vs. feels like science fiction, this is science fiction, looking back from our perspective, writes it off, A Corner In Lightning by George Griffith, electricity is a finite resource, a battery in the Arctic, her non-fiction, the Royal Society, arguing against the scientific method, giant like a lobster, tools to examine the world, distorting the view of the world, her major argument, being facetious, people took it like I was serious, hyperbole, aka he’s evil, an over-reading, trying to enact political change, excluded, utopian fiction, women in power, all we need is Hillary and everything will be all right, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, he makes fun of himself, liberal positions, made Britain a very powerful science, the science, peer reviewed then it’s science, a 30 page essay, coherence problems, doing science, replicate it, that’s science, holy shit I did this thing with electricity, this Ben knows what he’s talking about, spoilers, trained not to care, peer reviewed scientific study on whether spoilers spoil, subsequent studies, they don’t want to hear it, they believe that spoilers spoils, hearing about a good science fiction novel makes me want to read it, who dunnit?, Twin Peaks, Glass Onion (2022), getting triggered, incorrect view of books, shipping, relationshipping, root for the two character get together, have they not seen Moonlighting?, lotta dumb people appreciate things because they’re dumb, people wanted to watch adult things, Are You Being Served, Yes, Minister, I like Scooby Doo, still stuck in the Scooby Doo phase, unable to put their pants on, they’re not thinkers, Dune, just gave a Hugo award to, they didn’t do the banquet scene because they’re making it dumber, Lady Jessica is crying every three seconds, no voice over narration, no whisper talking, the miniseries, Dune is a smart book, they’re reading it wrong, they’re reading it shallowly, jumpin on Heinlein, it’s literature, think critically about it, some guy wrote a fiction book, Kittycat Massacre, Cat Killer by Donald E. Westlake, the death of a fake cat, basically The Cats Of Ulthar with a juvenile delinquent in New York, Donald E. Westlake, The Balloon Tree, Nolan and Simak, slow/fast, new to audiobook, first audiobook last week, coming into something new in this format, Motar/Mota/Motak, page breaks, chapter titles, you gain your eyes back, ebook bumps (braille), feeling a book, so hardcore, half-assed job, oeuvre, exercise, Jonathan is not ready for this, never go back, Aftershocks to Shokz, they screw on your bone?, sits near your ear canal, transmits through the skin into the bone into your ear, vibraty, implants?, Open Run, Open Comm, one ear free is the rule, this tech is ripe, proprietary but magsafe style, big long charge, soon…, bluetooth doesn’t work underwater, swim while listening.

Sixth Column by Robert A. Heinlein

Sixth Column by Robert A. Heinlein

Sixth Column by Robert A. Heinlein

Sixth Column by Robert A. Heinlein

Sixth Column by Robert A. Heinlein

Sixth Column by Robert A. Heinlein

Sixth Column by Robert A. Heinlein

Sixth Column by Robert A. Heinlein

Sixth Column by Robert A. Heinlein

Sixth Column by Robert A. Heinlein

Paul Rivoche art for Sixth Column

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The SFFaudio Podcast #663 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Murder In The Gunroom by H. Beam Piper

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #663 – Murder In The Gunroom by H. Beam Piper – read by Anthony Wilson. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the novel (6 hours 46 Minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Paul Weimer and Trish E. Matson.

Talked about on today’s show:
1953, a dedication, Colonel Henry W. Shoemaker, WWII, 1947, post-WWII, German stuff, The Prisoner, the mind-switching, consciousness swapping vs. body swapping, heil, the US is going crazy right now, Shicklegruber’s war, ink stained, Corporal Kavalein, an insufflator, m’god sarge, lousy with prints, half the wehrmacht, war crimes commission, if published today, the sting or the bite, historical novels, references, half of average readers, The Hill’s Rising with Ryan Grim explaining how WWII worked, the reason we fought WWII, the Russians did that, ignorance of history is ubiquitous, Civilization games, nobody knows all of Egyptian history, nobody can keep up, recording, She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan, the Mongol dynasty in China, two ways of reading this book, a locked room mystery book, Agatha Christie style, its a cozy, Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe mysteries, his first novel, more about firearms than it is about mysteries, poisons, all Christie does is poisons, a WWI nurse, medicines are poisons, a slow acting agent, gun collecting, a setup for a series, a business owner vs. a private detective, the exception that will always happen, detectives who work for him, posing as a butler, more Rex Stouty or Nero Wolfey, amateur detectives, Miss Marple, Poirot, as a detective mystery novel, locked room mysteries, know who the murderer a page before, playing a game with the author, a good writer can pull it off for the reader, Murder By Death (1976), a game you play solo, a historical document of 1947, a window into time, reading books like this is understanding 1947 in no other way, three major things going on, smoking, they must all stink so bad, drinking, how much of an alcoholic are you?, a nymphomaniac and a dipsomaniac, guns, the subset of people involved, a stamp collecting society, what person would us a collectible stamp, hence it was the butler, Charade (1963), Randall Garrett’s Napoli Express, a massive conspiracy by everyone, The Orient Express, equal reason to keep silent, having fun, self-parody, Jesse has the science on spoilers, some people don’t believe in science, masterfully handled for a first novel, digressions, sociological societies, less than 7 hours, a science fiction writer, they’re all him, what Piper’s life actually was like, was his first name Horace?, co-authored Piper’s first publication, Army intelligence guy, killed some Nazis, a stand in for Shoemaker, only pistols, the evolution of the pistol, the crooked arms merchant named Price?, Rivers, Lord Rivers, Richard III, creative about their backstories, a foreign dignitary, Pennsylvania history and folklore, marrying to wealth, railroad company, hanging out with a gun collector, bachelor, hanging out in the gunroom, why his name is in the dedication, why this colonel gets a colonelcy, a gentlemanly thing to do, Rand seems to not want to lie, misleading vs. lying, approaching with one of his many hats, general semantics, World Of Null-A by A.E. van Vogt, a lot of Aristotle or Aristotelian thinking, its bullshit, important for Piper, use this method and you will be able to solve this mystery, more was than is, Alfred Korzybski, whatever them is, social and personal problems solvable, a messianic flavour, the one true way, dismissed in the 1960s, Science And Sanity An Introduction To Non-Aristotelian Systems, a plenum of some values, academic speak for I don’t know what I’m talking about, trying to make this a general semantics mystery novel, since that’s what the book is about, example: the word “unicorn”, it has a little beard, it smells nice, it has cloven hooves, vampire, a pejorative, a mythical creature, a bat from South American, in you images are conjured up that we should care about and try to understand, writing some kind of hobbyhorse, you can read it as a straight mystery, a lot of Rand’s detection starts with a lot of assumptions, he’s objectively correct in his universe, talking about the client, he judges her to be worthy, Tri-State Detective Agency, Jefferson Davis Rand, Ayn Rand + Jefferson Davis, some very American things going on, some guns, the NRA all over this, that’s investigation isn’t it, totally unbelievable, Gladys Fleming, the principles of general semantics, an untenable position, she’s a good chess player, when he’s talking to the science fiction author, I write for Astonishing Stories, don’t worry about the title (its just traditional), in 1947 Piper is not a known Science Fiction writer, useful for plotting, reading Astounding, John W. Campbell, this Dianetics is terrific!, this must be true!, too deep in the subject and not enough skepticism, S.I. Hayakawa, so practical and smart, the assessment of the gun estate, the executrix, the lawyer, being setup, its all right, super-competent, almost Heinleinian, not smarmy where a Heinleinian superman, technically bulletproof, carrying two pistols around randomly, this is also how he died, suicide, a strange echo, he would have written a note, Jesse’s general semantics hat, “gun violence”, he violently combed his mustache, he violently pet his dog, target shooting as violence, hunting animals, “putting to sleep”, euphemisms control our minds, conjuring up images of school shootings, homicides of other people, having access to firearms, completely natural, the parallels between H. Beam Piper and Robert E. Howard, the world does not cater to being a professional writer, losing their mothers, not a good industry, Weird Tales was not on a great financial footing, the paperback market, co-authorship, smoke or drink themselves to death, a lubrication to suicide, the oily rag, homicide of the self, brain fodder, a foreshadow, human beings seem to be the only animals prone to suicide, reach out and get help, a touchy and untalked about subject, a bad theory, Jim Jones’s thing, Heaven’s Gate, the connection between self-image and suicide, an absolute gentleman, an unmarried man’s man, the dream of H. Beam Piper, kind to widows, appreciating a woman who knows how to handle a firearm, turning down money and jobs at will, keep some shred of dignity, bachelor life vs. married life, irreconcilable, Nero Wolfe likes to play with his orchids, he’s rude, Archie Goodwin, ice cream, beer, the cozy aspect, hanging out with a Mary Sue character, the author is playing fair, going to Rivers’ shop, blackmail or coerce, trigger to the plot, seeing inside his head after a scene happens, not a plotting mistake, how well put together this plot is, monologues about guns, a huge audience for guns, goodreads reviews, a temporary problem on LibriVox, HOW. DARE. YOU., how to turn dropbox mp3s into a podcast HuffDuffer.com), thinking about this question, eliding gives a false image of the past, Overlord (2018), a black sergeant commanding white US Airborne soldiers, representation, Jews and Indians, a lot of what happens in fiction is idealization, private detectives do exist, an armoured car guy, the pre-mix, the corporate shenanigans, insider trading, a conflict of interest, very realistic, the relationship to the cops, the class stuff, the replacement butler, colleagues and friends with the boss, black people in this book, the whole thing is a fantasy, a reality for some people, hanging out with rich people -> rich people problems, fantasy situations, a very meta-book, one and done, Star Trek: Deep Space NineOur Man Bashir“, a holodeck adventure, Bashir’s cover identity is a rich playboy, more fun to write about a country house mystery, a cozy, the deep underbelly, Mike Hammer, hard-boiled, James Bond in the movies, Roger Moore is always smirking, a comedy in essence, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Renfaires have no mud farmers, pick your fantasy world, a brightly coloured disease free Renaissance, gay space communism, Carrie Vaughn’s Questland, a Dreampark scenario, the great appeal of Westworld, we get to dwell with the workers, the elites who rape and kill and swagger, sickos who wanna live there, treating what are essentially human beings as objects, getting into these metastories, general semantics will not get us out of WWIII, a little bit of perspective, letting shows peter-out…

Murder In The Gunroom by H. Beam Piper

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The SFFaudio Podcast #661 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Mr. Adam by Pat Frank

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #661 – Mr. Adam by Pat Frank – read by Evan Lampe. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the novel (5 hours 41 Minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants include Jesse, Evan Lampe and Will Emmons.

Talked about on today’s show:
1946, a serious problem with your narration, obstetrician, editing, who was what voice, Alas, Babylon, dulcet tones, well suited for Evan, like a pervert, the attitude of the newspaperman, an affinity between Mr. Smith and Mr. Lampe, hitting the humour notes right, say something bad, an amateur narration, speed of narration, garbled here and there, was it LibriVox quality?, a very fine job, Evan’s nexty, Prince Alberic And the Snake Lady by Vernon Lee, teaching from home, a short and serious lockdown in China, the extended Spring Festival, you seem to be good at talking, how big Pat Frank was, a supposition, he’s talking about stuff happening in 1946, their field rank being swapped back to original rank, Eisenhower was a Colonel before being a 5 star general, this new civilian period, the U.S. war effort, as soon as the war is over they’re bickering again, an armed forces services edition, a cool collectible book, shirt flap, Lovecraft in armed services edition, donate books to soldiers and sailors, what you really need is a book, most people didn’t come home right away, a mid-20th century author, speaking to the baby boomer producers, how horny they are, I’m gonna plow my wife so hard I’m going to make fifty babies, a funny book, what happens after WWII is a huge boom in paperbacks, by the 1960s publishers have cottoned on the paperbacks, they don’t have USO shows every day, why we don’t have as much interest in paperbacks today, this legacy of shoving a book in your pocket and clip of ammo for your M1 Garand, Jeeps, Wrigley’s Chewing Gum, the ration pack, chocolate bars, American cheese, WWI, Spam for Korea, a delicacy in Korea, creating whole industries, how theaters survive today, “gold rush”, the new bureaucracy, a pressing governmental concern, New Deal programs, NRP, AI Day, D-Day, a satire but realistic, a tragi-comedy, a tragedy of bureaucracy, a happy ending, he sterilizes himself, I didn’t see that coming, the pickles and the eggs, Marge, seaweed, so funny, a big joke, what happens to Homer Adam is pretty dark, he didn’t castrate himself, JC’s ideology, some importance, dose your husband, the events of the story are very compressed, on the slugline, the dateline, the placeline, you have to be on this committee, its all a metaphor, the Soviets have two Mongolians, heady stuff, he’s a subversion, the last virile man is shy and gangly, loyal to his wife, interested in archaeology, neat and tidy ending, not a very science fictiony thing, they did this book wrong, he needed to continue the incompetence and stupidity, the Arthur Jermyn / White Ape way, the H.P. Lovecraft story, She by H. Rider Haggard, Allan’s Wife, strategic gorilla reserve, monkeys mating with their wives, a pipesmoking silverback gorilla with his great grandmother in the room, Planet Of The Apes, an under-explored element, the racial component, Genghis Khan, Yellow Peril, the blacks don’t want to be excluded, the settlement, are the women are willing to have Mongolian babies, female perspectives in the novel, all the women want is babies, untermenschen, a sexist book, Marissa’s or Maissa’s take on the book, everybody is really comical, farce, a child named after Eleanor Roosevelt, P. Schuyler Miller’s review from Astounding, May 1948, just another dirty book, a joyous satire, just plain fun, where’s the breeding?, I kept expecting the breeding to start, it doesn’t dwell in the place Science Fiction dwells, siblings or half siblings, a lot of older women, you better hurry, half brothers and half sisters, Homer Adam’s kid is a girl, a problem for the plot and the planet, its dealt with as premise to show off the idea of bureaucracy being incompetent in peacetime, the execution is not science fiction, speculative fiction, this is not really Science Fiction, a reddit thread, a super-dated commentary on the baby boom, it doesn’t go anywhere, a timely book whose time has passed, Catch-22, bureaucracy nightmare, bombing raids, the disincentive to keep going is to get killed, daylight bombing raids, if the crew has solidarity, changing the rules mid-stream, longer legs, the Vietnam War, a second tour, the legacy of WWII’s draft service, 1973, Nixon’s second term, endless wars now, victory gardens, a volunteer force allows permanent war, pre-modern wars, summer wars with tiny armies, unified front during the war, social groups, labour unions, a strikewave, securities collapsed, the CIO and AFofL, a wholly capitalistic world, Greece’s long record of service to mankind, special pleading, international affairs, a new world order, given to the U.N., Mr. Adam is a metaphor for the atomic bomb (MR. ATOM), the USA has an A-BOMB, the BOMARC missile crisis, medium range ballistic missiles without the nukes, too efficient in killing people, before the novel started there’d already been a nuclear accident before Mississippi, no fallout except for actual fallout, getting rid of nukes, How To Survive The H-Bomb And Why by Pat Frank, a reporter, the Office of War Information (aka propaganda), cynicism and absurdity, his science is terrible, radiation traveled at the speed of light across the planet except for one guy in one mine?, other apocalyptic novels, he doesn’t really care about the science, not a tear is shed, a scarce resource being seized by the government, a funny little thing about reproduction, his characterization of women is hilarious, his charity towards men, not a dirty book, “Mr. Adam was wanted by every woman in the world”, women don’t care who the father is, women need to be more careful about their men, women have to hold a tighter rein over their men, what male or female motivation is, women like babies and men want to be fathers, cuckolding the entire planet, I’m a proud father of 6 red headed boys, a caricature of humans, in this zone of comedy, such a breezy fun book, Smith Field is mentioned 20 times, the narrator’s fantasy bed, built for lazy living, a refrigerator and bar, things happen on Smith field, the radio, boogie-woogie, weird geography in Smith Field, domestic geography, stay in bed all day gambling, when Mr Adam is lying in his new residence, his feet hang off the edge, if I were in his position I would want to do something about it, why don’t we have a refrigerator next to our bed?, Transylvania, a contemporary news thing, England asks for aid, traditional American sportsmanship, a final solution to the question of Transylvania, when Marge is preggers, the Transylvania question, Trump or Covid, the domestic issues, more than just seaweed, of too vital of importance , the secret of Thompson’s Tonic, dynamite is nukes, Gregg Margarite, during the ’80s he built giant surrogate penises for Ronald Reagan, stuff that could be happening today, if a lot of new hospitals had been built, a very skilled writer, fighting in Palestine, China, Burma, Syria, the setup for the whole book, literally in the news this week, the long legs of his wife, a serious problem you shouldn’t take too seriously, pretty funny stuff, a really funny book, Alas, Babylon, a military presence in Lebanon, space supremacy, food from third world countries, Playhouse 90, Burt Reynolds, Stephen King’s The Stand, trusting S.T. Joshi, great book, had it more science fiction ideas…, who doesn’t want to be a James Bond?, The Big Book of Classic Fantasy: The Ultimate Collection edited by Ann VanderMeer and Jeff VanderMeer, pre-Tolkien fantasy was goofier, E.T.A. Hoffman, The Nose by Nikolai Gogol.

POCKET BOOKS - Mr. Adam by Pat Frank

Mr. Adam by Pat Frank

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The SFFaudio Podcast #547 – READALONG: The Angel Of Terror by Edgar Wallace

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #547 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, Maissa Bessada, Julie Davis, and Terence Blake talk about The Angel Of Terror by Edgar Wallace

Talked about on today’s show:
1922, mean and bad people who all look very pretty, act so sweet, physically beautiful, even the ugly people are distinctive, surprised, Julie has read it three or four times, Terence read it in two sittings, the LibriVox was too slow, he wrote a tonne of books, super-popular, very exciting, you read it as fast as he wrote it, he dictated his writings, he roared through them, Kevin J. Anderson does the same thing, very extensive Wikipedia biography, aha!, he used every part of the buffalo, stuff that happens in his life, he’s the bad guys, they all go to the South of France, he wrote King Kong, the best way to approach him, using themselves, churning out a great adventure, more complete, the angel and the other woman, you can’t like her but you can admire her, she’s so complete, Lydia liked her, Maissa enjoyed it like candy, the author loved her (the angel), so nefarious, Jack O’ Judgement, Batman/Joker character, what genre is this?, suspense, is she going to get away with it?, will she do it, it wasn’t suspenseful, armchair interesting, interesting jumping, that style of writing/thinking, working the plot out on the fly, putting out a novel in three days (with no editing), he’s got magic, breaking it down, funny lines, Terence’s neighborhood, Cannes, Monte Carlo, Nice, San Remo, the true reason they go down there, he has to get rid of his money as quickly as possible, you can’t drink and drug that much, the best way to get rid of money, very exotic, a few sound problems at the beginning of the audiobook, we open with the conclusion of a murder case, how can we get our client off even though he’s been convicted, the lawyers flout the law, family loyalty, they knew she was guilty, she’s his white whale, will you please just take these steps?, falling under the sway of a charismatic personality, unrelenting naivete, Edgar Wallace is the main character, he was working for a newspaper, how many times he got married, there was dictation, To Catch A Thief (1955), a very strange taffy-pull, a reverse Les Misérables, off to North Africa, Edgar Wallace plot wheel, what kind of Edgar Wallace plot you’re in, wheel of blind trails by which the hero is mislead or confused, planted clues, false confession, document forged, go around the room, having those prompts, watching Jean have to improvise, somebody is going to get Lydia, double plans, “oh great, the chauffeur’s in love with me”, when Lydia’s being shot at on the raft, there’s something funny about it, things become more and more far-fetched, A Series Of Unfortunate Events, Jesse’s mom read him a book for Christmas (A Peculiar Curiosity by Melanie Cossey), the reason that book exists as it does, trying to make everything right, he’s much more like Elmore Leonard, I don’t know anything about diving, go find out about that stuff for me, dialogue driven crime sort of stuff, that external research, Civil War reenactors, “farbs” they’re in it for the weekend, it’s just what we do, Alexander Dumas, set in London, John Buchan’s The 39 Steps, less he-man, Wallace was in love with his villain, this malignant disease, forgotten to say her prayers, a broken moral compass, damn!, it’s natural to her, I fear life without money, the cold mutton of yesterday, the people reading these books, she’s a sociopath, deep into his biography, when he joined the army, Edgar Wallace is named after Lew Wallace author of Ben Hur, religious as an undercurrent, the premise is uniquely interesting, her debts are because she’s so moral, some rando stranger somewhere on the internet dies, we’ll marry him off, that hook is so important, ooh hey!, this wide eyed innocent but quite competent lady, can she compromise her moral values and the plot is rolling along, did Jesse doctor the audiobook’s speed?, some sort of weird forced marriage?, by any means necessary, genre expectations, Brewster’s Millions (1985), a false tension, George Barr McCutcheon’s novel Brewster’s Millions, new clothes, new place, she IS a fashion plate,

The novel revolves around Montgomery Brewster, a young man who inherits 1 million dollars from his rich grandfather. Shortly after, a rich uncle who hated Brewster’s grandfather (a long-held grudge stemming from the grandfather’s disapproval of the marriage of Brewster’s parents) also dies. The uncle will leave Brewster 7 million dollars, but only under the condition that he keeps none of the grandfather’s money. Brewster is required to spend every penny of his grandfather’s million within one year, resulting in no assets or property held from the wealth at the end of that time. If Brewster meets these terms, he will gain the full 7 million; if he fails, he remains penniless.

Edgar Wallace’s dream, the house always wins, whatchu gonna do with that money?, the kind of plot premise that starts off this money, she marries a murderer, he’s suicided, she’s an heiress loose on the goose, study with the Italian masters, It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), our anti-hero is a “femme fatale”, she cuts the guy’s hand, your handkerchief please, she’s a monster, a very attractive monster, brought to justice?, she hoodwinks one more guy, it’s for the wildlife, you don’t want to hurt a dolphin, she’s met her match, Jesse got the sense the cycle was going to repeat, she meant it, he’s an interesting man, the last line, five million francs, money did not interest her, a sphere of might and power, an intellectual is somebody who has discovered something more interesting than sex, he was likeable, he loves her anyway, simpering, saving Lydia, love was more important, chose something good at the end, fooled by Mr Jags, the train station, he’s gonna follow her, because I have a criminal mind, a wholesome respect for the law, Jack Glover = Jag, who was the angel of terror?, at no moment does she inspire terror, Jag is the Hyde aspect of Jack Glover, the two angels, she conducts terror, she feels terror, Jean might corrupt Lydia, a first class criminal, born 600 years to late, Lucrezia Borgia, Dexter, a do good framework, did Edgar Wallace know Jags was gonna be Jack, the character shift is pretty massive, a very good fellow (illiterate and speaks amazing French), I wouldn’t mind a pipe, a disguise, Julie agrees with Terence, too much weight on the dictation?, a flow of consciousness, increasingly outlandish, he knew and he didn’t know, fiction writing, seeing connections, plots in opposition, a twist that inverts, deliberate, trying to hide identity, Carmilla, Mircalla, an acronym of your own name, a tribute to Edgar Wallace, its hard to tell, this is a job for Superman!, from a writer’s perspective, he was there the whole time, one alternate title: The Destroying Angel, a quote from Duino Elegies by Rainer Maria Rilke, maybe both are the angel of terror, disguised, her beauty is her disguise, lookism, I’ll get you my pretties!, the opening of Chapter 2, the writing is “choice”, mmmm yes,

Lydia Beale gathered up the scraps of paper that littered her table, rolled them into a ball and tossed them into the fire.

There was a knock at the door, and she half turned in her chair to meet with a smile her stout landlady who came in carrying a tray on which stood a large cup of tea and two thick and wholesome slices of bread and jam.

“Finished, Miss Beale?” asked the landlady anxiously.

“For the day, yes,” said the girl with a nod, and stood up stretching herself stiffly.

She was slender, a head taller than the dumpy Mrs. Morgan. The dark violet eyes and the delicate spiritual face she owed to her Celtic ancestors, the grace of her movements, no less than the perfect hands that rested on the drawing board, spoke eloquently of breed.

“I’d like to see it, miss, if I may,” said Mrs. Morgan, wiping her hands on her apron in anticipation.

Lydia pulled open a drawer of the table and took out a large sheet of Windsor board. She had completed her pencil sketch and Mrs. Morgan gasped appreciatively. It was a picture of a masked man holding a villainous crowd at bay at the point of a pistol.

“That’s wonderful, miss,” she said in awe. “I suppose those sort of things happen too?”

The girl laughed as she put the drawing away.

“They happen in stories which I illustrate, Mrs. Morgan,” she said dryly. “The real brigands of life come in the shape of lawyers’ clerks with writs and summonses. It’s a relief from those mad fashion plates I draw, anyway. Do you know, Mrs. Morgan, that the sight of a dressmaker’s shop window makes me positively ill!”

at the end of this chapter is a review of this book, Philip K. Dick, the promise of the book:

“Since when has the Daily Megaphone been published in the ghastly suburbs?” asked the other politely.

He saw the girl, and raised his hat.

“Come along, Miss Beale,” he said. “I promise you a more comfortable ride—even if I cannot guarantee that the end will be less startling.”

a nice turn of phrase, Mrs Cole Mortimer was a chirpy pale little woman of forty-something, descriptions of the south of France, my soul has been in a hundred collisions, she had no sense of metaphor, page 52, waiting for the detective to arrive, picturesque dressing gown and no-less picturesque pajamas, to impress, the staging and artifice, hoodwinked all the way through, the ability to surprise while we’re in the know, cotton candy, it’s very old, on LibriVox, Lee Elliott was a good narrator, getting professional about our amateurism, Terence is sounding good, our show, Terence’s sound is terrible, content is king, sometimes narrators have really good taste, Phil Chenevert does tonnes of science fiction, narrating a novel is a huge commitment, “yup I’m doing another one for money, Jesse”, the narrator of Weiland (Karen Joan Kohoutek), Greener Than You Think by Ward Moore, almost like reading a super-old style comic book, this mysterious cloaked and masked character, no one knows who he is, Moon Knight, a minor Marvel character, The Joker, The Riddler, youre almost on the evil guy’s, The Shadow, Orson Welles, a giant prosthetic nose, Wallace didn’t live that long, proto-superhero magazines, the foreshadowing of that, The Spider, Doc Savage (the guy with the big shiny muscles), Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins, Buckaroo Banzai, failed MCUs (Marvel Cinematic Universes), an aspect like the Watchmen, Sherlock Holmes, Zorro, the evolution, James Bond, superhero-like stories, going in blind, understanding the phenomenon, we couldn’t quit reading, on his writing process, Brian Aldiss, you begin with a striking image, a crazy robot on the moon firing into the void, he probably began with the beautiful evil woman, there is a huge unity to the story, imagistic unity, Jack and Jean’s story, there’s this 1971 movie, nope it’s not that, conventions stuck in the period in which it is set, House, M.D. works much better, differential diagnostics, he’s a consulting doctor, what Arthur Conan Doyle really did, very Agatha Christie territory, to see the actors chewing up the scenery, set it after WWII, Casino Royale by Ian Fleming, get some colour, Jean would laugh at Dexter, you’re wasting your talents!, as any flapper would pick up any nut, proto-feminism, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Scarlett Johansson as Jean,

Edgar Wallace plot wheels

Edgar Wallace plot wheel blind trails

Posted by Jesse Willis