Joe Rogan – SFFaudio

The SFFaudio Podcast #741 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Heads Of Cerberus by Francis Stevens

The SFFaudio Podcast #741 – The Heads Of Cerberus by Francis Stevens – read by Christina Fu for LibriVox. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the novel (6 hour 14 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants include Jesse, Paul Weimer, Maissa Bessada, and Alex

Talked about on today’s show:
The Thrill Book, August 15 August 15 1919, Polaris Books, the opening illustration, found and enhanced, three persons, two men and a woman, described for the listen, suits and ties and coats and pants, grey dust presumably, a topless lady in a dress at the center of the web, about an hour into the book, Ulithia, she’s not wearing a badge, the warning voice of the land of illusion, she’s a weaver, she’s a spider woman, she’s a spinner and a snipper and a weaver, the Fates, the Mori or the Norns, a long and detailed plot summary, E.F. Bleiler, 1990, in it everyday, a story summary of every science fiction story, Science Fiction The Early Years, densely packed, a typewriter, like a wikipedia of ancient books, like reading goodreads, authentically focused on giving summarized thoughts and a plot description, tricky to summarize, taking it seriously,

Questions of reality in the form of science-fantasy,
shading into both true science-fiction and supernatural
fiction. * Philadelphia and an other-world.
* Drayton, a down and out, unjustly disbarred lawyer,
breaks into a house, intending to burglarize
it, and is caught by the occupant, a former close
friend (Trenmore). * Trenmore has no hard feelings
about the intended crime and is willing to help his
friend. After some general conversation he shows
Drayton a novelty he bought at an auction, a small
glass vial with a metal cap formed of three canine
heads. Labelled “Dust from the Rocks of Purgatory,”
the contents of the vial were supposedly collected
by Dante, while the container was Benvenuto Cellini’s
work. * The friends pry open the bottle, a dust
swirls out, and Trenmore disappears. While Drayton
is standing in shock, Trenmore’s sister Viola bursts
in, accuses Drayton of foul play, and also disappears.
Drayton, an honorable man, decides that he,
too, must die, and deliberately inhales the gray
dust. # He awakens in a strange land, curiouslylighted,
littered with ruins, along with Trenmore
and Viola. Judging from an inscription the land is
called Ulithia. It is peopled with fantastic beings,
perhaps supernatural, who urge them on their
way. * After passing through a moon-shaped door they
find themselves back in Philadelphia, but with a
difference. They are arrested almost immediately
for not wearing numbers, and when they resist, are
beaten unconscious. * Background: The new Philadelphia
is a separate nation encompassing the former
Pennsylvania. The year is 2118. The land is run by
Penn Service, which permits no knowledge of the outside
world. Technology is about the same as in our
world, but the political and social systems are very
different. The masses of the people, who have no
rights j are not allowed to have personal names, only
numbers. They are also forbidden to read books or
newspapers, and are completely under the authority
of Penn Service. * The administration consists of
two groups, a hereditary aristocracy called the Service
that controls the land, and executives called
Superlatives, who administrate. The Service is composed
of decadent, degenerate capitalists of the
most vicious sort, while the Superlatives are crooks
and flunkies. The Superlatives have titles: the
chief of police is Quickest; the high judge is Virtue;
the head of the lawyers’ guild is Cleverest;
while Loveliest is a figurehead woman ruler with
little real power. * The Numbers (the masses) are
allowed to conduct their businesses as they wish—
the monetary unit being a work unit— but Penn Service
can seize what it needs or desires. Protest or
rebelliousness on the part of the Numbers is treated
harshly, with the ultimate, often-used Pit of the
Past, a spike-lined pit containing a mechanical monster.
* The Numbers are also kept down by the state
religion, which venerates William Penn and focuses
on a red bell that hangs in the great Temple (our
City Hall). The official belief is that the land
will dissolve into nothing if the bell is rung.
Most of the officials consider this dogma to be only
a superstition useful for controlling the masses. *
To return to the story: When Drayton and Trenmore
regain consciousness, they are hauled before Mr.
Virtue, who offhandedly sentences the men to the Pit
and awards Viola to a fellow Servant. It looks like
death, but the earth people are saved by two other
Servants who want to use them for their own plots.
The Superlative Loveliest has developed a passion
for the Herculean Trenmore, while the scheming Cleverest
hopes to use Viola to overthrow Loveliest.
He also lusts for Viola’s beautiful body. * The
mechanism for fulfilling these plots is the Contests,
or the Civil Service Examinations, in which
contestants can challenge incumbents, the losers
being thrown into the Pit. Loveliest wants Trenmore
to challenge the current Strongest, and Cleverest
wants Viola to challenge Loveliest for her office.
The earth people decide to go along temporarily, but
intend to double cross the Servants. * The Contests,
which take place over the Pit, are supervised by Mr.
Justice Supreme, a vile and vicious old man. As the
comrades should have guessed, the tests are rigged
and proceed according to the wishes of Mr. Justice
Supreme and his nephew, Cleverest. * How the contests
might have ended is never told, for there are
disruptions. First, there is a small rebellion of
the Numbers, bloodily suppressed, then Drayton’s
escapade. He wandered off, entered the forbidden
library, and learned not only the prohibited secret
history of the land (which emerged out of crooked
contractors and gangsters), but its precarious existence.
The legend of the bell is true. A twentieth-
century scientist, who discovered how to destroy
matter by means of resonances, embodied the
resonance of the land in the bell, which is the old
Liberty Bell recast. Its vibrations can destroy
Philadelphia. * A melee follows. The comrades escape
for a time, but are trapped, facing certain
death, when Trenmore, desperate, strikes the great
bell. The land dissolves, and the comrades find
themselves back in their own Philadelphia. * As a
subplot, a fourth twentieth-century person was also
present in the other Philadelphia. This was Bertram
the burglar, who accidentally followed Drayton and
the Trenmores into the other-world. More adaptable
than the others, he survived unobtrusively until the
dissolution of the land. Indeed, he even started an
affair with a local young woman, Miss 23000, who
survived the dissolution and came to our Philadelphia
with Bertram. Unfortunately, she disappears
when she loses contact with the vial. * Explanations
are in order, and they are offered in plenitude
by Mr. Scarboro, a collector who desperately
wants the dust and is caught sneaking about the
house. According to Scarboro, the dust is not ancient,
but is the discovery of the great modern
scientist Andrew Power (whose name is familiar as
one of the founders of Penn Service). The universe
is filled with parallel worlds that interpermeate
and are separated by vibratory rate. Power’s chemical
changes one’s vibration, moving one to Ulithia,
which seems to be a necessary staging area and
common ground for such worlds. After Power left to
explore various parallel worlds, Scarboro carried on
his work; while he does not know how to make the
powder, he has worked out a controllable means of
returning, which Power does not have. * Scarboro
continues in somewhat contradictory expansions of
what he has just said. He turns the parallel worlds
into the whims of superbeings, and then claims that
the worlds do not really exist. He further attributes
the corrupt nature of Penn Service to the corruption
in the minds and hearts of the three explorers,
who projected their own flaws into the land. *
Highly imaginative work, one of the classics of early
pulp fantastic fiction. While the characterizations
are pulp simplistics, the cynical anti-authoritarian
note in the description of the culture of
Penn Service is refreshing. The final destruction
of reality or rationality is a fine anticipation of
the work of Philip K. Dick.

The Cosmic Computer by H. Beam Piper, Vulcan’s Hammer?, Eye In The Sky, the Bevatron, paranoid communist world, a similar mechanism, one alternative world, not including the staging area, setup for sequels, like a role playing game, grey powder, The Strange, Monte Cook Games, more about those otherworlds, I wanna read that book, chases Power, there’s a book here, there’s a book under there, her premise is awesome, the premise is stronger than the center, the Dante dust from purgatory, it’s actually all mad science, I liked the ancient powder, she loves mad scientist, half-Japanese and half-German, get as many of the axis powers in, The Curious Experience Of Thomas Dunbar, the first superhero, bitten by a radioactive spider, superpowers, Samson, 40 years too early, comics hadn’t been invented yet, 2118, the cab looks like a 1918 cab, she explains it away, the same uniforms, the same sheets, not a simple time travel story, pulls the rug out from under us, metafictional, bought at the drug store, strange experience in another world, these no-readers playboying about time, explaining to Scott, this burglar and another burglar, that’s cool, totalitarian universe, she’s having a helluva lot of fun, how imaginative this lady is, anticipating Philip K. Dick, there’s no more timely science fiction story than E.M. Forster’s The Machine Stops, the system is falling apart, skype calls with people on the other side of the planet, damaged relationships, very very timely, Howard’s End, a mixing of genres, pre-the word science fiction or scientifiction, it’s not H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine, not fantasy purely, scientific romance, she moved to Philadelphia, the husband was a treasure hunter who died on an expedition, to pay the bills, sick mother, whatever this is, a five year period, really really good at it, Sunfire, 1917-1920, a few novels, a good handful of short stories, it’s fun!, a fun book!, very peppy, a secret plot, the bell of doom!, powderland, you create the world out of your personality, right at the end, true but not in the book, none of their personalities seem to match, Miss 23000, I say she but she was nothing, the metafictional aspect, an excuse, our hero murdered an entire country of people, you destroyed an entire world, they’re on a train reading a pulp fiction magazine, after, The Goddess Of Atvatabar, more 1890s than 1920s, 1884, the year she was born, totalitarian and dystopian, Penn Service Philadelphia, not 1984 world, not Brave New World world, theater?, no more school!, abolishing all grades, dance halls and free movies!

“And they–the grafters–set themselves up as masters of the city under threat of its complete destruction. They called themselves the Servants of Penn. They curtailed the education of the people as needless and too expensive. When the people complained, they placated them by abolishing all grades above the primary and turning the schools into dance halls and free moving-picture theaters.”

you’ll end up a number, what almost makes it science fiction, a pulp style cover of Nineteen-Eighty Four, anti-sex league, I’m going to sex you, the signet giant edition, I wanna visit that dystopia, security guy BDSM, the trick to get you into this world, a movement afoot, the illusory universe we live in, less interested in prurient things, ban pornography, Everyone Is Beautiful And No One Is Horny by R.S. Benedict, enemies to friends, interior Pennsylvania place, great friend, you’re from Earth too!, villain of the week, villain light, I like kimchi you like kimchi, a petty thief, not even his house, everybody in the house except Martin, some subtle stuff, mirror mirror song, time’s a traitor but the web is real, liar/lyre,

“The web lies broad in the weaving room.

(Fly, little shuttle fly!)

The air is loud with the clashing loom.

(Fly, little shuttle fly!)”

There was a brief pause in the melody, then:

“Year on year have I woven here.

Green earth, white earth, and autumn sere;

Sitting singing where the earth-props mold;

Weave I, singing, where the world grows old.

Time’s a traitor, but the loom is leal–

Time’s a liar, but the web is real!

Hear my song and behold my web!

(Fly, little shuttle–!)”

Francis Stevens moving the typewriter carriage return, very focused on making it all consistent, the four people, Robert E. Howard’s favourite character: hulking irishman, a giant!, he’s the strongest, sent in superlatives, cleverest, the most beautiful, only 19, this criminal, two win the superlatives, aha!, ooh!, very pulpy, plot twist, weird scientific explanation, phantasmagoria, bookended, Voyage To Arcturus by David Lindsay, that was unexpected, lacking colour, the three colours of the buttons, rolling up your D&D character, sorcerer, a D&D party, a setup for RPGs, storytelling like this, 40 years, rolling dice, telling stories, facing threats and being heroes, dealing with what you’ve been dropped into, collaborative storytelling, fantastical situations, literally a Shakespearean style comedy, marriage, shocked about it, interesting and early, Atvatabar was tedious in many spots, pacy, a day of listening at work, it didn’t flag, reseeing these characters, now you need to read the next book, cinematic universe, nickname was “Skidoo”, corny old fashioned, kale, a gat, he pulled a gat, gangsters wreck America, Buck Rogers, sleeping for 500 years, Killer Kane, a queer kind of totalitarianism, seeing it from a particular scale, badly then well treated, as Skidoo did, where she came from, found her at a whorehouse, introduced to her parents, at a dancehall, 1918 scolding has become their religion in 2118, Brave New World and Soma, kept ignorant, the forbidden library, Logan’s Run (1976), don’t trust anybody over 30, youre dosed with alcohol, pre-genes genetic engineering, making people deliberately dumb, our big handsome irishman, Trenmore, did he win the lottery?, homeless, a gold cigarette case, a pulpy version of The Time Machine, the Eloi and the Morlocks, effete cute, delicious elven people, descendants of coal shoveler and engineers, their food product, not objects of sexual desire, only into the future, a bunch of different futures, the dying earth, strange symbols adorn a garden world, the gatherers of the Eloi, make them clothes, bizarre, collars to cows, hobby horse, we have a class of people who are useless, the gentlemanly class, other people who know how things work, a hereditary class, the singing contest, new kid sounds great, condemned to the pit, making an argument about government corruption, the mob running the city, a fear of mobs and organized crime that has been lost culturally, over there, drug cartels, the gangs were going to take over the whole things, The Warriors (1979), and they have, not mafia, gangs have taken over politics, do crime on a large scale, CIA running drugs, geopolitical scale, movies exposing this to the public, the whole genre of pulp magazine, Scarface (1929), gangland movies, Goodfellas (1990), Casino (1995), more like [Richard Stark’s] Parker, taking scores, The Score (2001), biographical, The Godfather (1972), Black Mass (2015), he played it bald, Leonardo Di Caprio and Marky Mark, The Departed (2006), Pain And Gain (2013), Ed Harris, Tony Shaloub, muscles big and robbing, such a light touch, he’s been naughty, woodshed, masculine storytelling, A Princess Of Mars is light, male wish fulfillment, the pallyness, they liked each other so much, a woman’s imagination of men’s relationships, oh my dear boy!, a boy who likes a girl, a lesbian woman, had never been a teenage boy, probably true, similar in intensely different ways, the new PDF Page, how many exist, three possibly missing things (possibly 2, maybe 1), the description doesn’t match, 11 items total, The Labyrinth from All-Story, July-August 1918, Behind The Curtain, a cute little mummy story, Serapion, Argosy in 1920, Claimed, Friend Island, The Elf Trap, Unseen-Unfeared, that’s not enough, a magic dust to take us to her laboratory, when she got remarried?, gave up her daughter?, the biographical details on her are very bad, Gertrude Barrows Bennett, two pictures come up, people didn’t know that she wasn’t A. Merritt until the 1940s, okay at best, Dwellers In The Marriage, The Moon-Pool, The Ship Of Ishtar, LibriVox, poor and poorly sourced, dubious, discuss, an illustrator, invalid mother, 1917-1920, the kinda citation, moved to California, death certificate, the Social Security Administration, the woman who invented “dark fantasy”, Aztec temples, most of her stuff is much more like science fiction, a scientist who we never meet, materialize certain eastern ideas, a scientific process, Spider-Man is a super-science story, weirdly undercuts, not even set in the future, a weird hell, that’s what would happen to you, their descendants become numbered people in a weird corrupt society, The Last Ship, everybody’s dying, reestablishing the American government in Missouri?, the new White House, regional leadership, the backstory of this, dystopia/utopia, a secret group, who those people are, who are they?, special badges, this planet that doesn’t really exist, weird totalitarian differences, Sliders, everybody’s a cat planet, Soviet America planet, not knowing social norms, what science fiction does, the book as written, something like proto-science fiction, this future was Andrew Power’s fault, fuck all of you, the borders are closed, I’ve heard of him, changing all these different places, he made the dust, he’s the changer, if we read the next book in the series, diminishing returns, the ice cream store, so many options and flavours, with ideas, as a premise is exhausted, as the ideas are wrung out, the idea of series comes out, Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, Sherlock Holmes, the biggest series ever, Dracula II, stick around for more of the same, really creative, she’s drawing on her experience of moving to Philadelphia, not hard science, the social science is exploring social norms, a pulp package, missing people, here’s a woman, our loss, when the next one comes out, we’re going to have to treasure it, LibriVox, no requirement, Christina Fu, a really great title, Benvenuto Cellini, autobiography, his Perseus, Alexander Dumas, Rolex, Herman Melville, Mark Twain, Lois McMaster Bujold, Ian Fleming, How To Steal A Million, Nick Carter’s stiletto, Killmaster novels, Randolph Carter, The Punisher, airport books, Executioner, Deathlands, gun polishing books, tough guy in dystopian, fucking off across the United States, Clive Cussler, Nelson DeMille, non-book people, oh I see you like books, really good, Jesse doesn’t know everything, Lion’s Game, good books by people you’ve never read, an airport novel, the main character is sarcastic, a thin read and thick book, this guy is really fun, enjoying reading it, Reacher, Lee Child, character driven fun plot stories thing, need to read other books, feel the need or market demand, a great sense of loss, a tragedy, The Elf-Trap was a long time ago, pre-pandemic, 553, a couple hundred episodes ago, November 2019, hang on Maissa!, a major book, out, a good book, revelations about reality, the skill of a fantasist, connecting with somebody from 100 years ago, what she’s trying to do, far enough away for time to pass, staying in hotels and other people’s houses, what an imagination!, fly away Friday, The Dark Is Rising by Susan Cooper, The Skull by Philip K. Dick, most close for The Terminator, blackmailed into The Moon Maid, Shadows In Zamboula, Space Viking by H. Beam Piper, she loves a good libertarian, percentages of libertarians who are women, Ayn Rand is the only one, H. Beam Piper and his no-wife were libertarians, the Traveler RPG, bros pumping iron and robbin banks, the Swat Team are clearly post-9/11, space soldiers, The Last Ship, nautical stuff, little bit like Star Trek, 10,000 refugees, The Cosmic Computer, Excalibur, sword worlds, legendary swords, one day a starship rediscovered…, space vikings!, this boy book, a bit boy, scarred from The Cosmic Computer, good H. Beam Piper, more actiony, sit around creating economics, two-fisted, Poul Anderson, The Golden Slave, a sword and sandal book, sold!, hungry homeless pagan tribe, 1960, barbarian in chains with a lady on a divan with really nice hair, whipped by a lady, Esther Friesner, Chicks ‘n Chained Males, a chick in chain mail and a guy chained up, the puns got worse, I hear baby, players calling, a thundering novel of conquest and vengeance, a dude in a fur bikini chained up, the lady has some grapes, lines, Vancouver Island, wrecked the business, as new kids come…, that’s the hope, some people are not mask-obsessive anymore, masks recommended on BC Ferries, hairnet is fine, do something to society, wrecking the tutoring business (as an in person thing), online is not as good, share a drawing, share food, treating them like humans (to be feared), harbingers of doom and gloom, clearly likes it to commit to three cows, from chickens to cows, an old disabled retired lady, a picture of cows, 9 chickens, 3 cows, 4 dogs, farmhands?, milking, a spring thing, how long does a cow gestate, raising for beef, commune with the cows, Maissa and Will, Will must be in a depressed mode, handsome cows, funny looking, furrier, spottingness, hobby cows, what they think of themselves as, happy cows, there’s a Joe Rogan episode, a Spotify person, a cattle guy, regenerative farm, chemicals and hormones, beef for eating, learn a lot, wrestling or whatever, an apiary lady, sadly no apes, a bee lady, Erika Thompson, her heroes were Jane Goodall and the ape lady (Dian Fossey), pr, full time bees, a tiktok star, a bee problem, the bees have taken over, more suitable for everybody, practical stuff, bee stuff, what their society is like, bees are not like humans, that hive-mind things, the queens are the sex organs of the superbeing, how are queens made, is the queen in charge, the drones are all females, the males don’t do anything, really fascinating, interesting questions, interested in interesting things, talk about bees for 3 hours, Joe Rogan gets a lot of shit, how the smoke works, “drowsy”, the smoke prevents them from detecting alarm pheromones, a shield, interesting people talking about things they’re interested in talking about, book focused, some person who wrote a book, popular with guys, depending on the subject, fighting stuff, a commentator, working on Fear Factor, some farm somewhere, until they sort it out, fight to the death, individually bees have no intelligence, as a collective they act like a big organism, the sad life of a male bee, when your skin cell falls off, not important, give it royal jelly, a collective consciousness, neurotransmitters are outside their bodies, school fucks up, hanging out with the bee lady, school doesn’t teach the right things, sad story, interesting podcast, go for a walk with the bee lady, kitty litter, cream, fear of black coffee, after a good podcast, tea, absence makes the stomach go fonder, just enough, playing it close, cream on the regular, milk her cow, eggs, enjoy your walk.

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The Heads Of Cerberus by Francis Stevens from The Thrill Book, August 15, 1919

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The SFFaudio Podcast #712 – READALONG: Strawberry Spring by Stephen King

The SFFaudio Podcast #706 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, Marissa VU, and Evan Lampe talk about Strawberry Spring by Stephen King

Talked about on today’s show:
Ubris, Fall 1968, pornography magazines, men’s magazines, set in the 70s, the audio drama, the audiobook is 24 minutes, seeds, the ads are horrendous, iheartradio, the style of the audio soundscape, music and soundbed all the time, phones are constantly ringing, all the standard audio drama stuff, stressful, a traumatizing podcast experience, ads would wreck your life, crawling to more podcasts, random jump in ads, worth my time, we will never put an adskipper into my podcast, we are the manufacturer of televisions that won’t make a mute button, very obtrusive short ads, there’s so many good podcasts, of these 20 great podcasts, who has the time?, how stories are put together, one big ad-free file, the spiking pain sound, they destroyed their own artwork, network deal, I Hate Ads Network, jumping back and forth in time, very linear, takes place over the course of an evening, describing the landscape as he walks, their favourite, the worst thing by Stephen King, not his best serial killer story, really good at the short stories, sharper work, Night Shift, journeyman, 20 stories, the stuff that didn’t make the cut, picked for a feel, an E.C. Comics kind of vibe, the Cryptkeeper, really pulpy and fun, the Night Shift narration, Graveyard Shift, rats have evolved in the sub-basement, having so much fun, The Man Who Loved Flowers, Boogeyman, ambiguous ending, The Good Marriage, Full Dark, No Stars, Night Surf, hanging out on the beach, they sacrifice a guy, this is well written, reading to enjoy or reading for a podcast, The Mangler, Trucks, Lawnmower Man, Children Of The Corn, 1975, 1968, a little subtle point, a re-write, the Cavalier publication, set in the 1970s after 8 to 10 years, recalling the events at a campus in the 1960s, Ubris bud, Stephen King is so collectible, we’re seeing his gloss on his original story, similar in plot to Alfred Bester’s Fondly Fahrenheit (in reverse), every time it gets to hot, smelling the sea through the sewer, wife abuser, car accident in the fog, traumatized, fog in a Stephen King story, obsession with fog, who doesn’t have an obsession with fog, All The Myriad Ways by Larry Niven, changing the narrator, like a werewolf story, a phrase, Cycle Of The Werewolf, the answer is always yes, Bernie Wrightson art, showcase, the order, the plot, the crippled boy being the hero, very King, a disabled child, an interesting idea, Silver Bullet (1985), Creepshow Stephen King, let’s get together, William Wilson by Edgar Allan Poe, it’s not me, early Stephen King, it doesn’t feel awesome, so short, without comparing the two texts, we’re never going to see this in a collection, a picture of Stephen King holding a shotgun, Study Dammit, insane hippie with a shotgun, Stephen King of today, that wildness that’s inside him, a good story, polished later King, a proposal for a column, the campus newspaper, rejected along with a request for a date, the ending is clearly forecast, the amazing last line, Campus Life, Hearts In Atlantis, blow their scholarships playing hearts all the time, I Know What You Need, someone who shines, an incel stories, to manipulate a woman, mismatched socks, doesn’t take care of himself, he knows what she needs, Everything’s Eventual, 1997, so simple, why is it springheeled jack?, 1819, 1830s, mass hysteria, urban legend, looking in the wrong direction, making a folk tale out of the murderer, expecting someone to jump out, expecting more jumping, prodigous feats of jumping, seven league boots, The Strange Affair Of Spring Heeled Jack by Mark Hodder, Richard Burton and Algernon Swinburne, a time traveler, The Time Traveler’s Wife, the deliciousness of enjoying, Springheeled jack research, 1838, leaf springs vs. coil springs, he looks like the devil, horns, fingernails, a cape, a moral reinforcement, a laser of evilness, a free spirit, damn the consequences, Indian Summer, Halloween, how to do Halloween, unlike Christmas, wassailing songs, Halloween is done by children, hopscotch, a thing that kids do, the Spring Jack, a license to be wild, Jack the Ripper, Black House by Stephen King and Peter Straub, Wisconsin, no other suspects, fangs, description of the first girl who dies, a weird contradictory mix, a serial where we’ve forgot, the added material makes it confusing, most stories are at least 40 minutes or an hour, more characters (suspects), yes, she was at the next table, she wore granny glasses and had a good figure, most promiscuous girl on campus, ugly but cute, it was strawberry spring, the temperature 480 degrees deliciously Fahrenheit, steal from Alfred Bester, a masterpiece for the ages, when you compare them, this is good, how do you make your game so much more amazing, the Quentin Tarantino knock off, the feet, a good story for a young writer, that’s good writing, a lot of adverbs, Gale = wind, a rabbit’s foot key-chain he pounced, reading it charitably, the narrator is playing a game with us (the reader), my wife is upset, that lovely creeping fog, the lovely shadows without, such an ugly word “trunk”, I think so too, he’s been caught, a good interpretation, his dad hit his mom, more concrete, we see dudes like that in the world, jilted, bear re-reading, a subversive reading, expectation, drawn from life, an accidental Pickman’s Model, the SDS, Students for a Democratic Society, a breakaway, repeats, animal sciences, to protest the war, ha ha, the cryptic note, the campus right-wingers, outside agitators, Unlikely Fame: Poor People Who Made A Difference by David Wagner, heavily involved, fractured after the 1968 Democratic convention, civil rights groups, SCLC, breaking up or broken up?, more radical voices, civil rights groups, similar in strategy, confrontational, black power organizations, more northern and urban, student movements, Maoist groups, Democratic Socialists, how are we going to talk about this, talking politics, its all over this story, the reason people are reading it, an old Jack London story, used as a study text, used in English classes, a big clamour for it, Reading, Short And Deep, a knock-on effect, or a long tail, this doesn’t suck!, why Stephen King’s so great, he’s their gateway drug, hooking people into reading, substantial, light, The Shining, I can’t believe how good the writing is, so much electricity, come look at me, out on the balcony at 2am, the complete experience, you get lost in it, the worst is totally good, what do you make of the politics, a teaching university, the animal sciences parking lot, veterinary school, New Sharon teacher’s college, agricultural science is for crops, livestock, for farmers, how to solve problems with your livestock, raising of things to be slaughtered, for purposes of slaughtering, she wasn’t an animal sciences student, all good stuff, when night came, moving silent and white, the fog is spring jack, slow as cigarette smoke, out of joint, strange, magical, The Grinder, hard clear starriness, ancient gutters, you half expected to see Frodo or Sam, a druid circle, a fairy rings, enjoying a Tolkien experience, pastoral, Gollum’s there too, a bear, a wildcat, nature thinks your food too, super-obvious, a lack of other characters, how rather than if, when we jump to 1971, obviously he’s the killer, in the photo, oh is he the killer?, as if he was there, her eyes were sparkling, students who haven’t read a lot of Stephen King, stories can do this?!, the story didn’t need the narrator to be the murderer, cycles, nostalgia for college, fog really fucks up people and makes people murder each other, correlation but no mechanism, just an incel, he has a wife at the end, incels can have wives too, don’t talk to me right now I’m in an incel fog, other bodies, leaving a trail, worried about his wife, A Good Marriage, a box of 80 drivers licenses, the new Dexter TV show, exactly the same stuff, upstate New York, collecting of souvenirs, the story is the souvenir, listening to everybody’s rumours, “hi” extra loud, the monster behind the face, this is the guy who is very worried about gun violence, self-canceled [Rage], he’s got this monster inside him, how do you do such horrible stories, I like scaring myself, I just like being scared, she humiliated me, I could kill her, no no the fog the fog, romancing it, that Joe Rogan clip about Stephen King, full of these demons (drugs and alcohol and hostility to his family), recent Stephen King, Richard Bachman is under the surface of a lot of Stephen King’s works, Revival, Jesse’s never read The Shining, triggered Marissa, the second half of his career, Dreamcatcher, Doll’s House, pure book, the short films for Strawberry Spring, pacing timing, Stephen King’s saturation point, two or four or five television shows, let’s just do The Shining by itself, Stanley Kubrick, meat enough on these potatoes, opportunity to correct that defect, a college course on American Horror.

Study, Dammit!

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The SFFaudio Podcast #521 – READALONG: The Mucker by Edgar Rice Burroughs

The SFFaudio Podcast #521 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, and Evan Lampe talk about The Mucker by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Talked about on today’s show:
David Stifel, more explicitly racist, some language, chinks, a dago with affection, a class thing, an interesting book to look at, its about class, Japanese headhunters, isolates, out of time, they might as well be on Mars, historical context, yellow peril, American aristocracy, Burroughs is relaxing and enjoyable, licensees, defenders of the estate, a massively loyal older fanbase, old websites absolutely dedicated to Edgar Rice Burroughs, he threw all of this together, it goes down so easily, so fun, not everything has to be deep and profound, very comparable to Herman Melville’s Typee, a travelogue, protagonists on headhunting islands, the differences couldn’t be larger, the whole appendix, Tarzan, the Mars novels, action beats, adventure, man against the world, surprised by the ending of The Mucker, hooligan brawler, alcoholism, he walks away, easy to miss, the pattern repeats itself, Lord Greystoke, civilized, A Princess Of Mars, dating a princess, marrying a princess, a lowest class Chicago hoodlum cannot ascend, aristocracy is the word, reformed by this aristocratic figures, Derrier vs. Theriere, models for our anti-hero (hero), acting heroic, an interesting attack, Billy Byrne’s upbringing, trying to make a sociological point, taking it seriously, Jack London, similar characters, working class vulgar, class switching, a researcher in the slums of California, bougie academic jobs, Martin Eden, learning how to speak from the middle class, The Iron Heel, this reformist agenda, a working class story, the underclass, Studs Lonigan trilogy, ennui about capitalism, a descent, awakened into his heroic character, underplaying the role of Theriere, Mallory, Barbara, which classes are represented, the captain of the ship, The Call Of The Wild, the story arc of Buck, a pampered king, a slave, free in a new way, the man with the red sweater, the power of man over beast, physical abuse from his mom, no friends only heroes, thieves and murderers, very Burroughsian in its romance, island paradise, an island within an island, what was Burroughs thinking?, love for dogs and girls and falling in love, very romantic, swords and sandals and radium pistols, the romance of friendship, getting emotional, they start crying, brother and mother animals, in this process of transformation, not even the main character, his epithet, Billy was a mucker, a term that survives, a term that was in use, covered in shit, to muck out stalls, low-class person, that dirt doesn’t rub off, he fixes his grammar, improving oneself by improving one’s grammar, act like the class you’re moving into, Google N-Gram, those guys in the muck, the trauma, the most dignified sons of our nation, indiscriminate, shells and gas, the sudden reform, abstaining from alcohol, reflective of the minds of people in 1913, the progressive era, urban problems, prostitutes and drunkard, sewer socialism, clean up the city, the temperance movement, rural alcoholism is less conspicuous, in reading about drugs, the history of drugs, misidentifying the power of a drug in its ascendancy, smoking cigarettes, clamped down, personal virtue, western Canada, vaping is taking off, vaping in the bathroom, the smoking pit, they were the bad ones, the same drug, we don’t have our defenses up, a nice artifact, gangs in the street, his kindergarten, a metaphor, a dented bucket of beer, a bunch of thugs, a certain class of people, why was Theriere disgraced?, class-based, cheap and social, the health benefits, working class leisure, the work ethic, a lot of paranoia about drugs is about people not working, marijuana, John Barleycorn, drinking at a young age, part of working life, you couldn’t function with drink, getting you past the pain, no empathy, empathy for the manliness, John Carter is insane, psychosis and confabulation, Stephen R. Donaldson’s Lord Foul’s Bane, Glory Road by Robert A. Heinlein, hybrid samurai cannibals, I was promised cannibals, Popeye: The Sailor Man, I am what I am and that’s all that I am, break out the spinach, a professor, the science of boxing, Joe Rogan and Mike Tyson, a low class guy with drug addicted parent, using anger and hate to make him a monster, Japanese endogamy, a lost colony of Japan, medieval age samurais, samurai headhunters?, The Land That Time Forgot, inbreeding, the late Ashikaga daimyo, a lawless frontier, uninhabited islands, the image, Madame Butterfly, all those islands, something interesting there, The Philippines, cultural relics, the War in the Pacific, how it is science fictional, most explicitly SFF related, Tarzan is about the blank slate, natural experiments, wild children, getting on a ship and seeing what’s there, the Pacific is spaceship and space and island worlds allowing you to have adventures, Planet Stories, F&SF, Galaxy magazine, transferable from the ocean to space, Ted Chiang, the chemistry and biology, one little weird tick, the monsters, the father and the son, all for the sake of allowing Billy to have his adventures, who is the intended audience, selling it to a pulp, some people appreciated it, I wanna make some money, selling to the workman, this cool looking train heist, by the guy who wrote Tarzan, Burroughs is trying to find out what sells, his version of a Yellow Peril story, San Fransisco, tongs, the ship action, learning to be a sailor, Robert E. Howard’s Sailor Steve Costigan, muscled doofuses with good hearts, the sailor tough-guy, the way Popeye talks, a strange guy with a tattoo, the middle classes have tattoos, sailors made this a thing, weird tattoos, its a prison thing, sailors looking at each other’s tattoos, anchor tattoo, the anime character that they like, the heart of the Yellow Peril anxiety, the Yellow Peril is a fake threat that’s fun to think about, they’re out-breeding us and they’re smarter than us, laws against intermarriage, medieval military savagery, relapsed into primitive ignorance, racial hierarchy, white yellow brown black and red, Chinese eugenicists, degenerated by intermingling, slavs, miscegenation, he fails to interbreed with the upper-class, in the sequel, bandits in Mexico, The Oakdale Affair, Two Dooms by Cyril M. Kornbluth, wrong about everything, a Hopi Indian, full of Asians, yellow peril-y, this is really stupid, taking our land and our women, save American from these threats, fun storytelling, so fake as to be not worthy of attention, the Fu-Manchu stories, The Mysterious Dr Fu Manchu, Hong Kong, an anti-colonialist narrative, Nyland and Petrie are boring, the one with the principles, so devilishly ambitious and smart, as a genre, red scare books, yellow peril is both up and down, interest in the East, Judge Dee, Robert van Gulik, Red Scare, Red Dawn (1984), we need breeding programs!, they tried to remake -> Red Dawn (2012), Cubans running around in Africa, we would like to be so organized, the brotherhood of man, no classes, an Australian red-peril yellow-peril movie, Tomorrow, When The War Began (2010), taboo, the white ghost, coming from a place of ignorance, don’t use that word, you have to use the right word for it, its not the actions, change the terminology, too ignorant, that top down acceptance, I’ll live on Park Avenue and he’ll live across the street, a fantasy world in a hollow in the woods, it becomes important to him, as real as anything else in this book, an unreal inside of an unreal, jockeying for whose going to marry this girl, a prize to be won, Burroughs makes active women, her knowing Japanese, give her something to do, something more to it?, this image of the Pacific, the centerpiece of the American Empire, not that preposterous, fantasy world, technocrats, Obama’s kids learning Chinese, training for the ruling class, German lessons, Legend Of Tarzan (2016), no origin story, just a Tarzan story, Tarzan was his moneymaker, trying to deal with a real horror, Belgian Congo, Tarzan in Heart Of Darkness, the villain is a historical character, Léon Rom, white savior, undignified, he and his friends don’t have hands they have mitts or paws, the mean streets, tribalistic, a book about psychological change, accepting vs. changing, married to a red princess, red indians, dealing with race (badly), Mowgli, all class, to make Billy all the tougher, they’re vicious, how many times his pistol fails him, mortal injuries, shakes it off and keeps going, it has no effect, primal brutality, one other racial element, the tracking ability of a red indian, from an era that is thinking about race all the time, its fun interesting and easy, not high art, entertaining, breezy, relaxing, all on the surface, this artifact from a period when you can get shanghaied, all the tropes, I’d like to get shanghaied!, the Taiping rebellion, emigrant cities, nationalist nonsense, regional cultures, Sisters And Strangers: Women In The Shanghai Cotton Mills, 1919-1949 by Emily Honig, an immigrant city, the prototype of Chinese cities, ethnic groups, the Chinese revolutions are about class, nationalism in the context of empire, the Nationalists, the Communists, the national bourgeoisie, intellectual purges, class politics in China, the global proletariat, the Boxer Rebellion, uphold the Ching, a gendered movement, the traditional family is holding back our progress, concubinage, the most oppressed women in human history, too much into Chinese history, the exotic East, how the West sees the Cultural Revolution, the massive factory, in the news, extraditing the head of Huawei, getting between the major super-powers, The Breaker.News podcast, The People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force, a treaty port, majority not-white, theBreaker.news Podcast, a sign of the times.

All-Story Weekly, October 24, 1914 - THE MUCKER

The Mucker dustjacket

The Mucker, page 8

The Mucker, page 109

The Mucker

The Mucker - illustration by Frank Frazetta

BOOKS IN MOTION - The Mucker by Edgar Rice Burroughs

The Mucker comic strip

Billy Byrne: The Mucker from The Greatest Adventure

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #510 – READALONG: Understand by Ted Chiang

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #510 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, and Wayne June talk about Understand by Ted Chiang

Talked about on today’s show:
still alive, still putting out stuff, novelette, an interesting topic, intelligence and stupidity, pair things up, an interesting and complex topic, the school system, true features, a story about an incredibly stupid guy, the title is not intelligence, a long traditon in Science Fiction, Flowers For Algernon, the arc that happens within it, Idiocracy (2006), The Marching Morons by C.M. Kornbluth, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, a lot of bad answers, a short theory, first impression, so success and smartness, very successful stupid people, Bill Maher on Stan Lee, wrong about a long of things, Jerry Springer, propelling interest, a calculated effect, a bigger issue, a Reading, Short And Deep, on YouTube, its about awareness, the “bubble” you’re in, the blinders you have, going back to first principles, how do you know what you think you know?, epistemology, jargon, technical talk, very skilled, you have to be super-intelligent to have written it, very studied, the integration of hard science into the story, super smooth, Arrival (2016), Story Of Your Life, the audiobook by Todd McClaren, the BBC version, a response to Flowers For Algernon, spinning out implications, fatal error, the end of the story, hypercritical, such a great metaphor, he’s a bomb, he’s about to go off, where he was coming from, lofty concepts, meta-cognition or thinking about one’s thinking, computer science, artificial intelligence, being self-aware, the nature of consciousness, the limits of our consciousness, hormone k, how far will intelligence get us, Leon and Reynolds, how to use it, conflicting philosophies and moralities, I I I, save the planet, how selfish Leon is, go transcendental, changing whole industries, the good guy won, the whole view of the outside world, the normals and their world, aesthetics and beauty vs. saving the world from itself, who are you to decide?, threw Wayne for a loop, kinda monstrous, admirable, Eric S. Rabkin, one of the few people alive I want to read, how do you think he made this?, as we see his growth, Limitless (2011), don’t bother with the TV show, super creative, stock market trading, the book, methamphetamine, set in the future, Asimov’s, August 1991, The Dark Fields by Alan Glynn, came out 2001, tweaking, in manic mode, less about accumulating new knowledge, going over and over and over, the way this story gives you the sense of intelligence growth, playing ahead, if this happens then this will happen, hacks in to a terminal at his doctor’s office, service port, a desktop safe, bio-metric device with a service port, all these steps to think ahead, what we think of as chess, teaching chess, constricting an opponents movements, fewer choices, anticipating, gestalt, an organized whole that is perceived than more than the sum of its parts, micromanaging details of everything, the gestalt of everything, the ultimate meaning of everything, as a result of his powers, read a person’s body language, intentions and nature, the smell of their pheromones, microscopic details, one little thing, the whole is much more than the sum of their parts, Sherlock Holmes to the nth degree, time chess to speed chess, transcendental enlightenment, he’s Buddha, the point of the story, an infinite staircase, close to futile, other creature’s intelligence, a critical mass thing, reading a Lovecraft story, consonance and resonance and sonar, animals that use sonar, bats and whales, sperm whales, massive resonance chambers, free divers, six times the size of a human brain, they have no hands, can’t forge metal, and have no writing implements, Icarus and Daedalus, father and son, godlike in their abilities, just like in Watchmen, already won, already in the trap, the note at the doctor’s office, gloating, his undoing, a real thing and a real phenomenon, vocabulary words, that gestalt and that surprise, the guy with the psychedelic shirt, an Inception (2010) story, literally happening all around us, advertising, my friend Maissa Bessada, skeletons, lesbians, two more skeletons, a pattern of acceptance and dissolving your preconceptions, that scene in Total Recall (1990), this is exactly why this is so effective (is because it can be so affective), René Girard’s triangular desire or mimetic desire, other monkeys, supreme manipulators, don’t participate or try to minimize it, the dominant chatter, chatter controls action, a slowdown, intelligence as getting what you want, what drops out of the story is everybody else in society, what makes Reynolds the good guy, a group animal, meaning and intelligence are tied together in a strong way, bad at math, can brain damage make you better at math?, his regret is evident, idiot savants, the CIA, Greco, accurate in assessing Reynolds, a reliable narrator, merely a savior, his judgement is optimal, how he justifies himself, people don’t trust themselves, a meta-human, how we’re supposed to think of him, once as an experiment on a drug dealer, testing your power, Joe Rogan, UFC, which system of fighting is the best system, how do you test it?, which techniques is really better, jujitsu, Steven Seagal, all about the testing, what techniques work, testing our limits, what animals do when they’re young, a drug dealer, drug users, a beneficent god in a certain sense, not without sin, not necessarily unironic, I dissolve, Word is capitalized, the Logos, page 116, the sentence that when uttered will destroy the mind of the listener, it makes the title a really clever punchline, meta-awareness, self-awareness, ultimate understanding, taxing the limits of the structure of my brain, tricks him into understanding, the trap, he’d already programmed him, triggering the word, he got what he wanted, very good, a really clever punchline, less science than it is fantasy, fetal brain tissue, repair when not rejected, anoxia, damage more parts of his brain, his former life, there’s no girlfriend, a business, looking at Understand through the lens of The Dark Fields, a line from The Great Gatsby, a book about people without purpose, enhancing what you have, about methamphetamine, to speed people up, more active, paradoxical effect, your brain is not an engine, the Le Mans 24 hour race, the continual racing, testing to endure, an extended amount of high performance, Reynold’s weapon, implants the mandala, beyond his endurance, a metaphor, composing poetry, emotional impacts from words, the right combination of words can make an audience explode, pointing to real things, how writers and ad writers get their money, an impact on the reader, we change our lives, we sacrifice peoples lives for words, more real than most things, those whales without tools, they have lives we can never understand, what they’re communicating and how they even live and hunt is incredibly complex, very rare, the lives of beings that are not like us, Lucy (2014), psychokinetics, Morgan Freeman babbling, that stupid bullshit, most people don’t use the engine at maximum RPM, sleep, rest for the cars engine, a new air filter, stress tests, adrenalin, a super fuel, super good, Mr Jim Moon puts out a lot of podcasts, working smart, have a plan and be open, wherever you can get progress you push, the journey of a thousand miles, Rome wasn’t built in a day, the Devil’s in the details, navigating and picking which ones to go with, attempts at wisdom, when smart people say stupid things, committed to a system or a person, made commitments that they were unwilling to examine, Exhalation, a robot who opens up his own brain, the Galen of the robot universe that he lives in, pneumatic, a self-consistent brilliant idea, examining the internal to examine the external, Jesse’s not a drug guy, the brain is thinking, the body is thinking, so inside your own brain, focus, memory and thought and action, a brilliant guy, amazing stories, he can’t really tell the truth here, he knows what truth sounds like and it sounds like this, that poetic canto, the art, two naked dudes, a skull brain, climbing out of his own brain, representing out two main characters, a metaphor for the hyper-intelligence, a symbol, not the size of your brain, brain body ratio, Protector by Larry Niven, a particular drive, how certain kinds of intelligence to survive, hummingbirds, we can create niche (or destroy the niche) we’re in, there are stupid people, lead, fetal alcohol, no comic books for 20 years, behavior, the right habits, intention and purpose, a self appointed savior, incompatible, almost into programing, no quotation marks, the meta-textual text you may miss in the audio, only one bit that tells you its in the future, Pittsburgh, white air filter masks, not necessarily a pollution thing, hoodies, restricting vision, feeling cozy, women are more likely to wear masks, all sorts of reasons, welder masks, keeping skin pale, it allows you to hide, license to do it, you’re the crazy ones, a critical mass, trends, everybody used to wear hats, the fashion man, smoking their asses off, vaping, people who would have been ashamed to be smoking, wearing baseball hats, cowboy hats, fake street kids, $200 t-shirts, strange phenomenon, what makes this story fantastic (fantasy), could there ever be a drug or hormone, a metaphor for a kind of approach to that direction, like the ending of Dagon, past tense with present tense interruptions, we don’t expect the ending because told first person in present tense, “I’m standing” not “I was standing”, Ted Chiang is doing what Reynolds is doing and we’re the protagonists.

Understand by Ted Chiang

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #488 – READALONG: Dune (Book III of III) by Frank Herbert

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #488 – Jesse, Paul, Marissa, Bryan Alexander, and Will talk about Dune: Book III “The Prophet” by Frank Herbert aka the third third of Dune.

Talked about on today’s show:
1965, The Santaroga Barrier, El Santos!, Luke Burrage, the worst part of the book, good stuff in here, amazing, stupendous, and really good, not spectacular, the most spectacular, man to man, a knife fight, the sparkling knife fights of conversation, reading the books for the action, an idea person, heavy on the ideas, the setup, the culmination, splayed out, family atomics, Paul’s analysis, which baby to never see again, it isn’t a Dune problem it’s an every book problem, who wants answers?, Herbert’s answers, it can’t exist without the other two, the only movie we should ever talk about, the scenes, the dialogue is all there, what’s missing, there’s a gun that doesn’t go off, very strange, the gun of Count Fenring, denouement, a friend of an emperor, Fenring vs. Paul, “Count Fenring: A Profile”, within his capabilities, not about Paul, this is Count Fenring’s book, this guy’s the one guy that’s never been in my vision, a lot of promise, what kind of power is it going to be?, the power of invisibility, Kwisatz Haderach, Jesse’s twitter profile, who Jesse modeled himself after, I don’t want that mantle, about the accretion of power, why Dune Messiah is such a fantastic book, private language, they did seduce Feyd, the Imperium beyond the Harkonnens, Russian Czar’s abdication, even if Fenring could defeat and kill Paul it wouldn’t stop anything, tapping into the collective consciousness, a Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Handerson quadrology, no attempt has ever been completed, walking wounded, sterile, a could-have-been, a powerless eunuch, forty or fifty pages where Paul isn’t mentioned, worldbuilding, Leto II, Alia lives, seeing all ends, the surfer on the wave, a lot of smart folks anticipating, the flags, C.H.O.A.M. or U.N., does that mean the bombs don’t hurt?, cover, saves the emperor’s life, a beautiful cruel joke, to reign in Hell, soft and wonderful, straight from the Iliad, too comfortable, from their decadence, a callback to the Trojan War, rest and pay taxes, Ottoman Janissaries, going crazy without a purpose, all the what ifs, suppose Paul dies, kill the rest of the universe, a tyrannical genocide, let’s go conquer the galaxy, destroy the spice, galactic civilization collapses, interstellar society, the best possible outcome, a Boethian decision, Book II, parallel structure, ooh I’m smart, happy birthday, it makes you feel like a supergenius, plans within plans feints within feints, combat to the death, another parallel, Feyd tries to take the Baron’s position, Thufir’s blindside, the Baron is so lovably evil (and competent), make Arrakis great again?, gluttonous lust, the slaveboy with a posion stinger in his thigh, let Feyd think that I saw it myself, actually I’m the smart one, Nefud, you still need me, I’m going to show you still need me, I’m going to remember this, the next scene that we never see, killing his harem, to take his punishment, Alia sting, Stilgar’s challenge for Paul’s leadership, should I cut off my right arm, so well highlighted, a fear-power relationship vs. a love-power relationship, the Baron hates truthsayers, the Bush administration, it could be true that’s good enough, truth means nothing, for the sake of tradition, ride the maker, this idea of history or necessity, bought a Bene Gesserit, you pay for that Amazon Echo dot but Amazon should be paying you, you know my tastes, I’m totally gay, the straight up interpretation, I don’t want them spying on me and manipulating me, on the Kinsey scale, other ways of getting semen, one would be valuable for…, advice, I trust them not, changing the subject, when Thufir has a fight with the Baron, there are things that you don’t need to know, Salusa Secundus, that tiny little fact (that the Baron wanted to turn the Arrakis into a prison planet), you fucked up, Rabban has to be cut off, the whole of the missing years, at least three years, the toddler, to save himself from the emperor, how the sardaukar are created, a spare heir, acting instinctually smartly, a political calculation that saves the Emperor’s life, to tame Thufir Hawat, making all the right chess moves, the Baron’s fate is not as forseeable, Baron Harkonnen did nothing wrong!, shall I dispatch her now Emperor, a victory for her brother, the revenge, kills her own grandfather, justice, this poor Baron, still ends up dead, a brilliance to this, easy to dismiss, everybody here is a monster, you should be afraid of Paul, Gurney gets an Earldom, and every surviving Atredies gets a title, Baronets all over the place, massive reward, this victory, the prophet Mohamed, all the Muslim lands, satrapys, Alexander the Great, Leopold II, plundering Africa, squeezing and squeezing, always a touch of the calculated, not from the heart, wanting everyone loyal, I NEED him, he’s a tool, forget the equipment, we need men now, like in the first book, shortly thereafter, not what the old Atredies would have done, regretting the loss of the equipment, the men vs. the equipment, nicely balanced parallel, the appeal of Paul, one of many many games, a fantastic power fantasy, Slan, the X-Men, Kyle MacLachlan, master of the universe, age 14, Achilles was 17 in the Iliad, cheeks too full for the desert, seductive, quietly undermining, if Aragorn was the main character in The Lord Of The Rings, Voltaire, tend your own garden, Irulan, how cruel Paul is to Irulan, I’m gonna treat her so bad baby!, Irulan plotting to kill Paul, the ultimate internal question, religion and politics in the same cart, the ultimate power fantasy for Paul, this quote is fantastic, treating Herbert as non-fiction, the Amish, that orthodox effort, that moment of peace for Paul and Chani, quiet hypocrisy, “terrible purpose” is repeated 23 times, another change, feeling it, a nice lady who has a little test for a little boy, the heat and pain pile, an iconic scene for all of science fiction, I see the truth of it, explosion of realization in the mental sphere, a drug book, Gaius Helen Mohiam appears like a witch, kind of kind, wench poured my water, her apprentice, you disobeyed your orders, until she shows up here at the end, how is she depicted, this child is an abomination!, is it TP? telepathy?, just like when I was getting consciousness uploaded when I was a girl, is she wrong?, mom shouldn’t do drugs when she is pregnant, making the sacrifice, child genius, leading a regiment at age 3, she’s meant to be the bad guy, we’re supposed to recoil, the coming jihad, only a glimpse, the dark future, this desert power, addicted to oil, solar power, Dune solved, when they go too far, only spice powered, no solar, no wind, cutting-off avenues of caught, Jesse is not Elon Musk’s team, artificial intelligence, AI as a weapon, hippy dippy engineering sociologist anthropology guy, terraforming, this is about O.P.E.C., the Hudson’s Bay Company or the East India Company, his stock in CHOAM is forfeit, brutal indignity, title rich and money poor, the role of oil, Butlerian Jihad as a useful phrase, techlash, jihad is not a word that sells well today, biased data, accentuating inequalities, dreadful flavour, future history, Isaac Asimov’s future history, tinkering back towards that, cast away AIs, the decline of Empire, science as priesthoods, that last Cold War, Giving Up The Gun by Noel Perrin, banning crossbows, giving up nuclear stockpiles, blew their noses off, high technology and its opposite, star spanning starcraft and medieval style politics, how Marissa’s games match her audiobooks, Horizon Zero Dawn, a robot safari, retreating from technology, ruins are computer screens, going back to the Amish, Mennonites, weird policy, no electricity, airpower, blenders running on compressed air, technological policies, what are the ramifications of this technology, landline telephones, cellphone technology, Africa’s wired cellular wallets, digital currency based on cellphone credits, what technology will be useful, Canada’s participation in NORAD, Cheyenne Mountain, WarGames (1983), nukes, we took the missiles but not the nuclear tips, Defense Minister and Prime Minster of Canada, advice on top secret stuff, managing treaties, political cost, being in NORAD, Iceland’s invasion during WWII, you can have your country back, a giant bully south of the border, obey the will of the giant country, John Diefenbaker, John F. Kennedy, what Syria is all about, the White Helmets, no giant surprise, an actual machine out there doing work, get on board or find a path through, the Bomarc Missile Crisis, the joint strike fighter debacle, if you look at the history of Canada in the right way, a positive force, Pierre Eliot Trudeau was paling around with Castro, a true image, Cuban doctors, plot machinations in the book mirroring a reality happening in the nows, mushrooms, more Marissa territory, hanging out with that worm, a coma for three weeks, some trip, time opening up, a sniff of a new drug, Feyd’s knife’s poison is transmuted, “poison” appears 117 times in Dune, chief poisoner, the Russian doping epidemic, bend over comrade, early on in book three, she took the coffee and sipped it, Frank Herbert’s at a rock concert, tripping out on the floor is transmuting, hot and delicious, room service, heaven for Jessica, she had thought of coffee and it had appeared, Tau, the subtle poison of the spice diet, enlightenment, their minds rejected what they could not encompass, more Slan, the guide, guided through the trip, Joe Rogan, taking the arrogance out of it, training, the etymology of psychedelic, psyche = soul/mind, delos = clarity/manifest, no mischaracterization, pattern recognition enhancement, seeming like a truth, the way the birds fly, “truth” is in the book 90 times, “pattern” comes up 48 times, the pre-spice mass, gathering up the magic mushrooms, a convenience, metaphorical, the power to destroy a thing is the power to control it, heavy shit, super-dark, science fiction genre history, partaking in jaspers, not the full-dune effect, amphetamines or coffee, town awareness, telepathy, drugs as a huge theme, stimulants, barefoot in the head, Robert Silverberg, Norman Spinrad, 1980, super-anti drugs, an exponent of coffee, Neuromancer, case is strung out all the time, reflecting what was happening in the culture, his case officer, Armitage implants a drug neutralizer, the ultimate solution for Reagan, The Hellgramite Method, how Keith Moon of The Who died, suicide, how science fiction shifts, innerspace going from biological to cyberspace, dated in interesting ways, the role of gender, Planet Of The Apes (1963), where Paul rides the sandworm, making the models feel realistic and big, the worm as a dragon, the Conqueror Worm by Edgar Allan Poe, much of madness more of sin, coffin worm of a dead world, a man making a steed out of a giant god, Reading, Short And Deep, Strange Exodus, gutted cosmic carcass, primal lust, humanity becomes a parasite, the image of man conquering death, it looks like a shot from Dune, a flea on a dog, the ecology, threatening a chain reaction, destroying all the oil like Saddam Huessein during the first Gulf War, not an atomic model, oil and drugs, Jessica’s power to transmute, a superhero story, Doc Savage stuff, if you’re anxious about your body, why Bryan doesn’t like the Lynch movie, minute operations, a weirding module defense in The Appendix show, that interior way, the women dare not look in that place, a place that women can’t go, the balance of the force, controlling the gender of their babies, controlling ovulation, super-yoga, a superpower, ultradiscipline, she didn’t seem to have an inner life, the women in here have huge inner lives, we spend a ton of time in Jessica’s mind, what’s going on in Paul’s mind, he becomes an enigma, the way Jordan Peterson talks about male and female minds, Jessica is a mom then she’s a reverend mom, Paul you do what’s good for you, is her mind expansion there a reflection, if men don’t have father figures, being raised by mothers alone, mothers want to protect their children, toughening, only giving into one instinct, having been tested, why the kwisatz haderach has to be male, the Y chromosome, how midwives are always women, midwives dudes, are male obstetricians uncool?, a caste based thing, training schools, Gurney even went to some school, the Suk school, training academies, he’s a mentat, who is the emperor’s mentat?, male domains and female domains, women’s roles and men’s roles, anthropological science fiction, traditional societies, strict gender roles, a remix of a medieval society, historical framework, Paul as the white savior, a male who solves a female problem, sexism, too easy, how powerful the role of Jessica is, Chani and Jessica and Alia, the brilliant one, the wise one, here too, there has to be a pattern, a version of Dune with Paula Atredies, Leta who bears a daughter, Grass by Sheri S. Tepper, if one was doing a university course on science fiction, one semester for each of Dune’s three books, an amazingly rich text, he’s the baddie, the subversion, from the fourteen year-old’s point of view, a wonderful adventure that makes you feel smart, over and over, a war book, a drug book, history, the Folio Society edition, Scott Lynch, Dracula, Bram Stoker, non of his other books are Dune level, The Dosadi Experiment, Whipping Star, Herbert is playing games of complexity and depth, Gene Wolfe, mind stretching, Samuel Delaney, a mental workout, an emotional workout, The White Plague, The Children Of Men, emotional destruction, taking story into all kinds of places, 159

The Sandworm Strikes - illustration by Ed J. Hannigan

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #465 – READALONG: Dune (Book I of III) by Frank Herbert

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #465 – Jesse, Paul, Scott, Marissa, Matthew Sanborn Smith, Will, and Bryan talk about Dune: Book I “Dune” by Frank Herbert aka the first third of Dune.

Talked about on today’s show:
1965, serialized in Analog 1963, 1964, 15 years old, start the training early, mentat training, Bene Gesserit training, a trope, the crowning trope of a certain kind of science fiction, we are the universal super-being, fans are slans, it turns you into an asshole, peak podcast, a lot of drugs, the truthsayer drug, #thedrugsofdune, a drug book influenced by a drugee, rachag, coffee, the cranberry coloured stain of the sapho juice, mentats is a drug in the Fallout games, Nefud squatted, semuta, trance drugs, call on Doctor Yeuh, a wakeshot, sleeping drugs, ups and downs, poisons, the gom jabbar, inspiration, mushroom collecting, some science, Joe Rogan’s mushroom guy, psilocybin, pretty obvious, mushroomy, ecological science fiction, the creatures, part plant and part animal, the spice is worm poop, the network of how everything is interconnected, why it is so different from every other book, Philip K. Dick, A Clockwork Orange, Brave New World, a technology of the self, a drug of choice, meditation practices, how embodied the training Paul is doing, a very Joe Rogan book, body training, he is Joe Rogan, consciousness expansion, a prophecy laid down for him, a nice book about a mother and son going on a camping trip in the desert, wherever Paul goes, trite and facile, when Paul was 14/15, he has the same name as me, a mentat duke, save it for the next podcast, the first book of the first book of Dune, and baby sister in the womb, up to the point where Paul is crying for his daddy, high on spice beer, Florida, reading while travelling intensifies the reading experience, Tuscon, Idaho, the belly of a sandworm, walking around L.A., wasting water, get the squeezings, water discipline, what makes Dune so amazing, ecological novel, A Game Of Thrones before A Game Of Thrones, read it, read it, read it, an electro-static charged novel, pushing fifty, Dune Messiah, sparse, elegant, The Dune Encyclopedia, thoughtful and oblique, think harder and reflect, J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord Of The Rings, Arthur C. Clarke, a deep book, preparing for six years, sand dune migration in Oregon, comparative religion, psychology, twenty years, his genetic unconsciousness, a lot of poetry, Gurney Halleck, Dune World, try a Caladanian daughter, dense layer of referential, a second order approximation, a reaction to WWII and WWI, in different directions, Muslim history, resource politics, the ecological movement, decolonization politics, Orientalism by Edward W. Said, Napoleon, Lawrence Of Arabia turned on its head, exploiting the exotic, Misionaria Protectiva, a naked power grab, pretty subtle, intertwining change and stagnation, stress and response, the prison planet, galactic messiah, Arnold J. Toynbee, Chinese Gordon, Karthoum, the Mahdi, distributing information, a small film book of a small sandworm, a propaganda system, three great tutors for his sun, his mom is his yoga instructor, Thufir for math, Gurney for fighting, less internet than it should be, educating Paul, the Anderson/Herbert prequels, mentats are their YouTube, the Harkonen veil, basic facts, the Imperial Ecologist and Planetologist, the spacing guild, an information bottleneck, weather satellites, this information thing, the effect of a messiah on a society, the structure around a messianic leader, reflecting on the casualties of Paul’s jihad, unbelievers all, information transfer, Bene Gesserit fake news, accusing Russia, propaganda, this is a good duke, stories transfer (not YouTube videos), no rocketry, background ecology, door seals, meditation and the Arrakis version of chakras, a sense of pedagogy, a re-imagination of space-opera, Paul and Feyd are both students, formal and informal teachers, are you catching this?, loving relationship, one is the twisted and one is the pure, the policy and the curriculum, training up an aristocracy, Marcus Aurelius, Commodus, the medieval space opera, Star Wars, why it works for bad reasons, monoplocies, CHOAM, autocracies, a dream of Jesuits, House Corrino, the terrible crime of stagnation, cybernetics, the great mind, Game Of Thrones type tactics, a thoughtful parody, a retro universe, an intervention in the history of Science Fiction, your magna carta, family atomics, kanly, reading this novel after 1990, reading it in the 1980s, an appendix show?, the banquet scene, such a faithful adaptation of a novel, Dr Yueh’s droopy mustache, it’s not about what you film, the emotional undercurrent above the table, players roles, chess pieces, a microscopic view of the macroscopic greatness of this book, Ted Chiang’s Understand, picking up all these things, Paul gets an insult, Liet Kynes’ ally, this is why Jesse doesn’t like going to dinner parties, the most important scene in the book?, what a lot of novels are afraid to do, head-hopping, what they’re thinking, how they’re plotting, the power of Herbert, an unpaid-off plot thread, the stillsuit’s manufacturer’s daughter, who put her into play?, in light of later events…, George Guidall’s is the best audiobook version, how proof against modern times, “roles for women” and “mansplaining”, strictly defined, maybe we’re being double out-thought, from the eyes of other characters, false information, when Yueh gives himself away, the distraction we see in him, unreliable head-hopper, the narrator makes us like Paul, the epigraphs, you have a traitor amongst you, we know pretty much everything, the tension comes from elsewhere, who the father of Jessica was, the only surprise, so awesome, spoilers are not the important thing, who the hidden murderer is doesn’t matter, not Yueh, inconceivable to break imperial conditioning, B.F. Skinner’s behaviorism, a towering achievement of world-building, a classic suspense story, Ken Schneyer, Princess Irulan is a propagandist, the opening, inside the propaganda machine, Hart To Hart, predestination as storytelling technique, Agamemnon by Aeschylus, two great houses, a knowing walk into doom, a reversal of the hero’s journey, a romance, the seeds of tragedy are being sown, remixes of contemporary and historical events, Gom Jabbar as a pun on Kareem Abdul Jabbar? [or is the jabbar derived directly from the Arabic for coercion or force?], the “Lansdraad”, the Hanseatic League, whipping all these things together, Tolkien, very Shakespearean, the soliloquy, Piter De Vries, watching Dune under the effect of edibles, watch the David Lynch movies first!, Starlog, a fascinating movie and book, The Twilight Zone Magazine, the reader creates the world for themselves, how an ornithopter works, Jodorowsky’s Dune, sparking off your imagination, Eric S. Rabkin’s “transformed language”, dragons, worm = wyrm, the epithets, silky and effeminate, the Harkonnen sexuality vs. the Atredies’ kanly manliness, the Baron’s an awesome villain, appetites, plans within plans, surrounded by weak terrible characters, don’t waste this sexy lady, whoever seduced the Baron in his youth, the greatest villains, Night At The Museum, to enhance the horror of the Harkonens, a love of a certain kind of efficiency and morality, trying to get revenge, the unexpected, “Russian hacking”, the internet research agency, it’s a bot, billionaires know each other, foolish and stupid thinking, seeing the inner workings of people’s minds, subtle body cues and motivational signals, we are trained by Herbert, the “my dead wife excuse”, when did Yueh flip, for murder?, securing his seed for another bloodline?, a text for analyzing reality, James Risen‘s debate with Glenn Greenwald, we’re becoming the Kwisatz Haderach while we’re reading it, priming for skepticism, the weirding way, Bene Gesserit kung fu, the voice is real, “the teacher voice”, the “parent voice”, The Wire, Stilgar spits on the table, the book is sneaky and devilish, a science of pain, living your life in a pain amplifier, similar to LSD and hallucinogens, layers going on underneath, collective unconscious, everything is interconnected, Jungian racial memory, the Reverend Gaius Helen Mohiam, Siân Phillips, you treat her as a common serving wench?, sequel and prequel books, Hellhole by Kevin J. Anderson, Seleucus Secundus, Sardukar, mining ideas, marrying soft and hard science fiction, Dune as a fat fantasy novel, noble houses, sword fights, magical powers, a fantasy book with science fiction discipline, science fiction tools, anthropology, Black Panther, a scientific ecology, no sense of the fantastic, The Stars My Destination, cold eyed realpolitik, political science, Michael Moorcock’s Starship Stormtroopers, what makes Mordor evil, when Gurney becomes to old, a moral difference, the evil is real, wanting to have the scenes, the road goes ever on, but what are the healing properties of that tree?, a walking tour of England, the greatest connection to fantasy is with how the Kwisatz Haderach works, a cool insane idea, the Mass Effect games, space magic, “everything’s connected man, I can travel to the stars!”, “I can read your mind, man!”, when Paul has a dream of Chani, the waking dream, Muad’dib, drunken Duncan Idaho, Altered Carbon, brain chemistry, advanced mental training to appreciate your dreams, lucid dreaming, pure fantasy, working against the Missionaria Protectiva, never mind about Elijah!, actual nuns took Scott away, the zeitgeist of science fiction in the 1960s, The Nine Billion Names Of God by Arthur C. Clarke, Larry Niven’s indestructible hulls, Philip K. Dick, Athena visiting Telemachus, the metaphor for a bowstring being drawn and released, the Butlerian Jihad, human machines and our magic and engineering, focused consciousness, the animal and the human, love and duty, fantasy strips away choice, Frodo, a fantasy of international relations, Tolkien wants to leave the world, those orcs, ultimately killable, tools for dealing with the world, take walks and smoke pipes, a training manual, it’s all coming together, points of realization, “wow, my mind blown!”, the morality and humanity of your parents, Dune World (the Analog serialization), the heroes are wiped out, the trap is sprung, when Gandalf is killed, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, great relief, traipsing through Farmer Maggot’s mushroom fields.

Dune World - illustration by John Schoenherr

CAEDMON - Dune Banquet Scene - art by Kelly Freas

Dune illustration by John Schoenherr

Posted by Jesse Willis