The SFFaudio Podcast #884 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Valley Of Spiders by H.G. Wells and Valley Of The Lost by Robert E. Howard

The SFFaudio Podcast #884 – The Valley Of Spiders by H.G. Wells (24 minutes) read by Robert Dickson for LibriVox and Valley Of The Lost by Robert E. Howard (41 minutes) read by Tommy Patrick Ryan, followed by a discussion. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Alex (Pulpcovers), and Tommy Patrick Ryan

Talked about on today’s show:
other Jim Brill stories, The Mound, set in Texas, the same character in both?, a southern accent, a cowboy, valleys and spiders, other stories with valleys and spiders, a novel by Samuel Delany, listening to him talk about it, gay garbagemen who open a pornographic movie theater, later on they become handymen for a lesbian colony, asking around the robots, fetches reviews, the spiders are metaphorical, dude, spiders and spiderwomen go together, the female creature, a gender flipped vampire, brides of Dracula, Carmilla, LEGO minifigs, Medusa, the Spider Woman, Tiger Girl, a story here, 10 minutes to read aloud, connect these 2 stories, The White Death by Don Mark Lemon, he was an American, Virginia, South America, Mexican guide, in Tarantula Valley?, is it a pestilence of some kind, a snake?, no senor, poisonous gases, banditi?, half savage as he was, queer, policy, treble it, American gold, stack a mortgage, a Catholic, meet the White Death, superstitious, well armed, Winchester, the infernal poet, a diseased poet, with one by his side, sylvan charm, two burros, snake, buzzards, a half-wild burro, somehow, the man fools around the ear of a friend, such quick tracks, three dirty streaks of light, strangest of all, the witness of his own eyes, collections of bones, a open air cosmopolitian graveyard, the cat tribe, a cow, skeleton of a man, the prey of a month or so, a second collection, bleaching in the sun, the third day, what manner of thing it was, a great panther of some kind?, a huge snake?, then he struck gold, down the river in search of game, the latest feeding ground of the Thing, a cool million, try to bag something, proceed to watch, a huge collection of boulders, scratch her sweetheart’s name in the dirt, her name, his own name, more like spades than the human heart, his brains were tangled, 6X3 is 18, squatted upon the pile of rock, he couldn’t do other than watch, not the slightest noise, a gigantic spider, large as a full grown tiger, why, talking or thinking, the light that came out of the eyes, deprived him as the power of motion, the long white hair, intense heat, the 30 foot spring, maudlin lips, “mother”, flashed before his soul, the face had the mouth of his sweetheart, laugh foolishly like a baby, flaccid and flabby, through the hot air, horrible fangs, now I lay me down to sleep, he’s amazing right?, intense little story, a giant snake, massively oversized, the two covers, Forgotten Fantasy, guy on a horse and spider, 1966, Magazine Of Horror, guy on a horse and a giant spider, barely got any spiders in it, a spider cover, super-science fictiony, familiar, The Noseless Horror, another one, werewolf in Louisiana, the mummy one, the dude who went to Mongolia, it is kinda awesome, the number of things that Robert E. Howard does in that story, stack up, a laser beam, a tv movie in the 1970s, The Stone Tape, Nigel Kneale, audio recording company, they bought a castle, the resonance of this chamber, recording people’s experiences in the actual stone, tape doesn’t exist when Robert E. Howard was writing this, television is legit, Electrical Experimenter, recipes for making your own television, mechanical television, amazing and terrible, cathode ray tubes make it viable, so much science fiction ideas, transforming into Genghis Khan, give my wife as a gift to the mongols, jammed together in 10 pages, the Philip K. Dick and the Anne McCaffrey, Alex is fine, in spanish the vowels always make the same sound, unless dipthong, British Columbia goldrushes, reading along, it was good, the better one, of the three, the Wells had a certain ambiance to it, the gaunt man, the silver bridled man, Chinese accent, an Austrian, Arnold Schwarzenegger, it was fine, the Robert E. Howard, the aftermath, they’re escape, the disintegration ray, still happening, still talking, nothing useful, so much stuff that happens, the D&D escape from the castle, more like Gamma World, it’s not a weird western, it’s science fiction with a cowboy, a revolver?, acp 1911, he’s a cowboy, draw really fast, a cowboy in Mongolia, adapted into a Conan The Barbarian Annual drawn by Gil Kane, a whole battle sequence, Hyrkanians, a mission from Nemedia (not Texas), whenever lifting from the descriptions of the actual story it is good, to fill out the length there’s a circle around twice, Afghanistan, where the evil super-science lives, Genghis Kahn’s tomb, off-limits, sounds found, a forbidden plateau of leng, pretty small, not super important, giant spider, he did a monkey man, runs off screen, save it for the show, a great loneliness of tableland, a woman who has fled with one of the native servants, muted, mestizo, metis, mixed people, a summary of the story with characters, where are you getting the character names from, in the actual text, desciptions and pronouns, “the man”, “lord”, courser companions, waxed mustache, half-breed tracker, poet-like?, explicitly triggered, the insight about ai, Our Opinions Are Correct, people who don’t think like Jesse, science fiction related, on bluesky, almost enough said, don’t get tricked, WWII, Tolkien would hate that, he abhors allegory, Gandalf is kinda like Churchill, if Tolkien denies it later, “so done with Lovecraft”, an interview with Alec Nevalla Lee, Buckminster Fuller, the boss of his community, editor of weird tales, gross and disgusting, pejorative stuff, ugly red hair, the ugly part, good or bad, the argument describing it as good or bad, the one we weren’t supposed to do, awesome, the most interesting and difficult, pursing, mestizo, mixed race, started questioning about the H.G. Wells story, combing it for facts, not explicitly, not Africa, a little too much happening, where is the spanish?, half-breed, silver bride, Argentina, hint, Latin America, a tracker, west, commands a whole city, they have swords, Winchesters, why this story is so weird, medieval armor, a Norman helmet, why it is so interesting, what are all 3 of these stories about?, they’re all about going into unknown places, before we lose this thread, just waking up for Wells, picturing Eastern, New England, England, West Virginia, escaped woman, Appalachian weird, Deliverance (1972), not explicitly wrong, a hallucination, or interpretation, the Howard is pretty good and very fun, fun to read, compelling, what was going to happen, 25 minutes, the Howard dragged at the end, superfluous, paid by the word, rough draft, submitted, rejected, couple of weeks tweaking it, an afternoon pass, an incredibly confused history, stories published later, mistook this story for another story, The Lost Valley As Iskander, Afghanistan, crunchable media, submitted to Strange Tales, announced in the last issue and then never published, profiting by it now, multiple magazines, a story by Jack London, no supernatural element, what kinda story this is, War by Jack London, guys on horses at war at an unknown place at an unknown time, comb through it, the only indication of where it is, apples grow all over, a temperate zone, a deciduous forest, winters and summers, the point of that story, people in combat are on two teams, there’s no context clues, that’s deliberate, trying to read it as South America, make it super generic, so as to create and effect, sorted soon, the mistiness, the effect he was going for, it could be anywhere, what they’re skin tone was, are they white men, pictured as white, the kinda jerks they are chasing down this woman, whatever the deal was, white men tend to be the kind that control other people, happening subconsciously, there is one point, these white men, incredibly present, names and locations, kinds of trees, white is pointed out, the lord is shitting on white horses, the back end of the story, damned white horses, what is the final line of the story and why is that?, as he rode he picked his way, many dead spiders on the ground, feasted guilty on there fellows, in the Conan adaptation, their time had passed, a winding sheet ready, a nautical term, where we get ghosts from, could do him little evil, flicked with his belt, dismount and trample them with his boots, spiders he muttered, I will spin a web, a very weird ending for this story, 3 guys go looking for a half-caste girl, towards colonialism, the target of this story, the class system, there’s three guys, two a servants, questions the leader, the back end of this story, I’m better than you, I’m also a coward, what makes you better?, what defeats the one guy in his pursuit is nature, white men?, white spiders, what does he mean by this, deliberately so, spins a web and waits, figure out a way to trap her, why valleys and spiders go together, a place that’s protected, an attic is full of spiderwebs because their webs will last, maybe the Robert E. Howard one is the one that doesn’t fit, most of the setup for the story, The Last Valley (1971) with Michael Caine, our wizard, he’s a scientist, a chain blocking the entrance, a roadblock, get zapped, electricity explained, he’s a wizard, quite terrible, elktro, I’m out, one of these stories is not like the other, there’s more than one, a bunch, in both, what could it be in the valley of the tarantuala?, Shelob, Ungoliant, Tolkien’s spiders the valley of shadows, the valley of nightmare, a valley in the first age, consumes herself, birthed out some children, regular spiders, a sign of his genius, the disintegration ray, point it like this, press this button, you will be our king, followed the instructions, Princess Leia on that gun shooting Genghis Kahn, a 6th or 7th level spell, press a button and have things turn to dust, Thanos-like, snap the fingers, genius yadda yadda, hot Chinese dancing girl and nobody wants her, I got a girl back home, he didn’t care for Chinese women, very hot, languorous view of her body, not gonna look too long, a White Stripes song, pretty good looking for a girl, that would have been weird at the time, Skull-Face, our hero goes after the Chinese girl, Egyptian or something?, dark haired foreign chick, the scary race shit, I’m fine with being Genghis Kahn, the most interesting part of the story, meditating Genghis Kahn’s chamber with a rock from outer space, what we see in The Grisly Horror, the werewolf story, from Tibet, Black Hound Of Death, to get the guy who got away, Texas to Mongolia, The Island Of Doctor Moreau, mutating, building man-creatures, degenerating people, the finale in the trailer, almost Big Trouble In Little China, that can’t be right, Buckaroo Banzai, fun for the whole family, the climactic fight sequence, what do you need him for?, he is the sidekick, point of view character, go to Chinatown, as a non-chinese person, almond cookies, the viewpoint, Jim Brill, Steve Brill?, Conan is reused, also a Conan story set in England?, a Bran Mac Morn story, why the Wells story is so interesting, stripping away things, The Valley Of The Blind, genetically blind, he thinks he can see things, acts like an asshole, the two hot things under his brow, very symbolics, the colour of these spiders is white, did the girl get away?, how did she get through, a day ahead of them, the spider wind might have missed her, some native knowledge here, a burrow in both, Don Mark Lemon, so delightful, now I lay me down to sleep, he turns into a baby, killing everyone and everything in the valley, two donkeys, talks to his donkey, that’s odd, maybe I should get my rifle, it’s beautiful I think, Wells is trying to make a point, different kinds of assholes, hubristic assholes, the little man, we’re both cowards, why are you my lord?, the amount of text devoted to it, where the Howard puts action they ave this conversation, both made of the same material, write you into this story, it isn’t really about spiders is it?, is this a science fiction story, giant monsters, nailed it on the Wells, his bridle is silver, two minutes later he abandons him, a wealth distribution thing, he’s trying to make it universal, that half-breed could be anywhere, people realizing this is an asshole, there is no justice, in the Howard there is justice, get konked on the head, Kim Stanley Robinson, great ideas, almost no plot, full of good ideas, what happens and what’s the point, besides entertainment, body horror, turning Japanese, moral horror, what’s it all about, gettin paid, more in the Wells, prefer the narrator did the Howard, British accent, these white men, deleted the word white, does it change the story at all, absolutely not about racism, defy his racial purity, half-caste, let’s look at the actions, colonialism has happened, as a modern thing, that guy who thinks he’s better than me, just fun adventure, inventive and fun, didn’t trust the natives, beautiful fun, he doesn’t pick up the rifle, the anti-Robert E. Howard, our mad scientist, he’s not a hero, what is the white death, a giant tarantula that’s white, mesmerism, 4 giant piles of bones, imma keep looking for gold, dialogue back and forth, really happy, back in Virginia, leaps 30 feet, white hopping death, funnier, The Black Cat, where Jack London was first published, the art is always cats, mushrooms growing, a piquancy, this magazine has a flavour, The Mansion Of Forgetfulness, very Edgar Allan Poe inspired, lost their girl, sits u in a chair, a purple ray makes you forget, he lost his girl at sea, you don’t remember me, meeting again for the first time, the Poe character names, science fiction before Amazing Stories, Howard is a much better entertainer, a pointed stab at people, something beautiful about the simpleness, spoilers is a 21st century invention, Luke Skywalker stabs the guy, podcasting and stuff like that, editor of old Weird Tolds, C.C. Senf spoiled the H.P. Lovecraft, they read that story because it sounds good, every H.P. Lovecraft story starts: yes it is true i sent 6 bullets through the head of my friend, but trust me, bro, you’re going to love this story!, go back to Nemedia, sex with her along the way, that’s not Jim Brill, the honorable guy, clearly in love with this guy’s wife, less honourable, in the middle of nowhere, for honour, if he were not so honourable, makes Tommy’s skin crawl, she was pretty, who is the hero?, we know, Jim Brill’s story Jim Brill is, in the Wells there’s no heroes, man is against man, what is the point of The White Death, well written, he sees in the face of his mother his girl’s lips, he turns into a baby, the white nape, going through the list, featuring the White Death, camping for the next three weeks, Lozo, how did he know not to go there, do not mention my name, I don’t know, anybody who goes there doesn’t come back, a very short story, some white thing, this white thing took them, a little gem, a little placer gold, playfully written, bent toward Robert E. Howard, the most enjoyable story to read, a complete story, not making the same kind of point, a little horror story, pretentions of literary fictionness, dreamland with no details, class and cowardice, what does that mean?, feels like a rough draft, which would be a good movie, a Twilight Zone that’s terrible, a great cartoon, not getting the comedy out of it, rewriting, so many good movie things, more work to do, rewrite a lot of things, she’d be there with him, Temple Of Doom, Willie Scott stuff, absolutely tolerable, not the actress’ fault, we’ve done the three now, as expertly read by Alex,short to the point, extra stuff, the Wells is in the middle, the most relevant, the most important, what is Robert E. Howard’s point? buy this magazine, entertainment value, social commentary, the one they give you at school, at least it is short, Reading, Short And Deep, another precursor to Weird Tales, funny little story, I love living in this house with you, goes to the hardware store for a hammock, follows a butterfly, comes back, can you get me a hammock?, three times, she doesn’t know what I’m talking about, she’s a spider-woman, his eyes had grown more accustomed to the dark, glue covered cords, a thing that had two luminous eyes set in a woman’s face, what is the point of this stupid story, making nests and trapping men, that’s really funny, is it sexist?, I’m in favour of it if it makes me laugh, keep seeing the signs, talking donkeys, it’s a cartoon, reading it on the page, random capitalization, name brand, where nothing is capitalized in the Wells, taking away all allusion, a giant tarantula that eats everybody, a tiger sized tarantula, explicitly set in Mexico, it’s South America, the Mexican was Catholic, Mexicans can travel to South America, I don’t speak Mexican, Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish, cross the border into Norway, these are our Norwegian hats, Spanish in Latin America vs. Argentina vs. Spain, my name is Thomas, s into a th, they really shuh, swallowing a potato, Australians, Kiwis, Britain, French Guiana, Mayor Pete, in Peru, people from France, working at a hostel, he knew Englsh, you speak so fast, your accent was weird, is it easier for you to understand me, the Pepe Le Pew accent, laughable, we are speaking French now, German accents = speaking German, you’ve got the accent, an impression of someone speaking Spanish, what was that word, the current Pope is an American, right after Tommy became Catholic, a new Pokemon, multiclassing, do yoga and sing in Sanskrit, when he speak Italian now, the Pope’s Italian is easy to understand for Americans, The Great Impersonation by E. Phillips Oppenheim, The Case Of Charles Dexter Ward, a wizard guy, drunken destitute British nobleman wandering around Africa, Eaton, Sandhurst!, mission from the German government, man do I love the Kaiser, still a nobleman right?, found a diamond mine, getting into British politics, car sound, bolted down, packing in, Clifford Simak, The Ablest Man In The World by Edward Page Mitchell, cyborg short story, unscrew the top of head, public domain Asimovs, The Man That Was Used Up by Edgar Allan Poe, 1839, no electronics, 19th century cyborgs, replacing body parts, lots of French, A Tale Of The Late Bugaboo and Kickapoo Campaign, all his body parts are artificial, the brain, compare and contrast, Sunfire by Francis Stevens, from Weird Tales, no previous experience, just did it, couple hours, read stories around with the kid, Treasure Island, before people started this let’s read on our ebooks, people read aloud, snitches and snatches about Poe and Dickens, I read this aloud to my wife and now she’s mad, everyone should do it, why not Mona, Sweet Slow Death, Grifter’s Game, hooks her on heroine, 145 pages.

The Valley Of Spiders by H.G. Wells

Valley Of The Lost - ad in Strange Tales

Valley Of The Lost by Robert E. Howard

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #882 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Phantastes by George MacDonald

The SFFaudio Podcast #882 – Phantastes by George MacDonald (6 hours 25 minutes) read by Brad Powers for LibriVox, followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion are Jesse and Scott Danielson.

Talked about on today’s show:
1858, about 34 when this thing came out, Lilith, 24 years old!, very similar, thematic differences, not fundamentally different the way they’re done, a young man coming to a home where the rest of the family is gone, an inheritance, Mr. Crow, a mirror into fairyworld, less fairy than in this one, the same thing happens, through a desk, one of earliest, and the last, express some inadaquacies, Phantastes needs more time, each chapter, how to be a good man, supersymbolic dreaming things that are happening, plunged forward, stew a little bit, like it vs. understand it, an object of contemplation, a subconscious exploration, a book you can talk about easily, fairly rambly, way more of a plot, a message that spirtualized, clearly spiritual, all about yearning, the young man is very mature, contemplating what being a good man is, about searching how to be a good man, the focus of his ramblings, the female form, numerous females in there, the porcelain one, the one he was after, almost like a statue, a Pygmalion story, spiritual enlightenment, a woman is part of it, how does a good man love?, what does a good man love?, the statuesque one, sit on it more, boy that needs a minute, get it done in time, a series of waves, Gene Wolfe’s The Book Of The New Sun, a gorgeous gem you can look at, so many classics, this trek through some land, important symbolic things are happening, books like this, what we think of a standard story plot, William Hope Hodgson’s The Night Land, 1912, a throwback style, from the 17th century, the far future, dying earth, subgenre, kinda hopeful, Hodgson is not a Christian, absent the spiritual stuff he focuses more on the girl, the female form, the joy of children, all in relation to the man, what he ought to be doing, young man’s yearnings, wants to love god, he’d be a terrible monk, prefer not to be a monk, Arthur Machen’s The Hill Of Dreams, 1908?, semi-autobiographical, Wales to London, a man of letters, extraordinary experiences in nature, with women or young ladies, girls, transcendent experiences, more dreams the The Hill Of Dreams, the effect of dreams on a waking person, every chapter is a dream, Novalis, 3 paragraphs of German, in indirect effect a nursery, a store room and a junk closet, a music fantasy, nature itself, in a true fairytale, everything alive, strangely interwoven, the time of anarchy, the primal state of nature, the world of truth, similar to it, a completed creation, stories without coherence, like music does, being modern, we recognize it as such, Ivanhoe, 1819, a huge hit, the Waverly books, by the guy who wrote Waverly, ate it up, more modern, popular, Charles Dickens, old fashioned modern, A Voyage To Arcturus, is that a science fiction novel?, fairyland on another planet, the relationships of human males to human and semi-human females, older ways of telling stories, The Devil’s Elixirs by E.T.A. Hoffmann, fairly like that of Candide, doppelgangers, your double out there, in 2 volumes, a serial, Batman Fights The Joker Part 1, we don’t like that, be self-contained, finish the movie, a journey across physical space, the cliffhangers feel like cheating, maybe it is getting at something, William Wilson by Edgar Allan Poe, madness, something all young men feel, condense it down, reading it in 1859, where fantasy comes from, there’s a kobold in it, weirdness, at school, a mirror, sees a woman in the mirror, where she is, she’s only in the mirror, if he smashes the mirror that will help her, the princess is really sick, wow!, runs back to his room and frees her, she’s gonna be grateful, a pattern of insight into reality that doesn’t come from everyday under the sun, through dream and on the periphery of dream, more going on than what we can sense, these experiences or beliefs are connective to what I should do, we’re creating myth here, mythopoetic, C.S. Lewis really loved MacDonald, more coherent, not a polemic, a lot more like Lilith than this book, a subject in mind, a judgement to how to be, the introduction from C.S. Lewis, from this it follows, 1946, the Curdie books, The Wise Woman, the Everyman edition, a great frontier, waist deep in romanticism, the bright shadow coming out of it, a strange new quality, of eternity, dipped in the myth of the Holy Grail, but a preparation for this, strange, also true, a voice from the regions we all come from, what MacDonald does best, the ordinary laws of nature are suspended, MacDonald’s world, a world of discovery, sermons, theological writings, a great frontier, a glimpse of something beyond the ordinary, real in a deeper sense, I was not alone, when the process was complete, the very essence of the experience, a gilded pill, the pill was gold all through, shocked in my teens, what I learned to love in Phantastes was goodness, the sweet air blowing from the land of righteousness, in Sappho’s phrase, he’s in love, crossed the frontier, the modern Morpheus, a fun one, about truth, Joseph Campbell, looking at myths, mankinds attempt to touch the transcendent, it exists, humanity all has this, Augustine, we restless until we rest out heads in thee, talking about God, the sub-creation, a train of thought, throw 2 things down, J.R.R. Tolkien, something that nobody else does, in all the photocopies, nobody throws poetry at you like Tolkien does, and then the elves said, the hobbits have a homey rhyme, a page of verse, in re-reading it, on my own reading it, skip this part?, that’s not story, that’s just somebody singing, I don’t want to read about you singing, every chapter starts with a bit of poetry, literally verse, Lin Carter, saccharine rhymes, from the 1970 reprint, it’s hurting the story, it does hurt the story, we’re barely hanging on to what he’s trying to say, if you get a book today, any random book, 2 lines that rhyme, in the dedication, fundamentally connected, a mode actually, quotations, inspirational, the name of the quoter, is this true?, this could be anybody, how to remember it, the meter and the rhyme, our narrator, rhyme should be forced, rhymes by sight, reinforcing the idea, not just random, each of these chapters is doing the same thing, does it again and again, a linear narrative, he becomes a squire, the goldenness of a squire to a knight, by love, the being loved, assures blessedness, super male, from a male perspective, bigender, parallels, right and proper to me, submissive to my husband, not polite to say, women shouldn’t be voting, leader of a household, the man’s role to…, different philosophies, presented with an experience, a reaction or an acceptance, a relationship thing that goes both ways, the female version of this book, neurotic, deeply thinking all the time, don’t just accept the sense experience and act like a robot, filter it through an inner guide to reality, yearning for everything being correct, dispose of the Christian overlay, the source for a lot of this, roll this back 2000 years, the Platonic, the realm of the forms, the ideal, the ideal relationship, the ideal woman, we can also think of this as connected to nature, armour, platonicized, where do you actually find these experiences thrust upon you is in nature, funny to think about, cyborgs and fairies, my new novel, Shadowrun is the game, one of these genres, Neuromancer but with elves, it doesn’t seem to make sense, throw em in the blender, elves are of the forest, cyborgs are of the cities, Gligamesh and Enkidu, characters raised by non-humans, Romulus and Remus, Haay Ibn Yaqdhan, Tarzan, cattle, raised by a cow, he is a bull, a lot of a strength there, not a lot of thought, raw beast of running free, best of friends, Murtagh meets Riggs, buddy cop movies, what we see in that late chapter, the knight can retire, the shield and the lance to the squire, become the black knight, I get to have sex with all the ladies, the son of the prophet, 17 wives, a meeting place between our experience of the spiritual, best done not in the store, in nature where there is no money, a lady hiding in the woods, this nature thing, The Tolkien Gateway, trust the oak and elm and the great beech, take care of the birch, shun the ash and the alder, her web of hair, in Chapter 3, this notion perhaps some remote influence on his creation of the Ents, old man willow, The Golden Key, never finished the preface, an interview with Harry Resnick 1967, a muddled sentence, humility, valour and courage, the queen is rather a mother, a highly selective memory, things that moved me, filled me with distaste, kind of shunned him, not an appreciator, quite a statement, the grandfather of the Inklings, hold up these two things, suddenly confronted at the pearly gates, you have to answer honestly, Phantastes or The Lord Of The Rings, why?, its better at what it’s doing, he’s not gonna be some Melville, he’s exceptional at this, he’s doing something special, there’s beauty there even its not as well woven, related to fantasy, similarities to some Poul Anderson here and there, Lilith is a much better book, more of a united theme, nuggets of contemplation, like a poem or music, it has the shape of a novel, a series of meditations with chapters, not exactly united, G.K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday, more of a city, The 39 Steps meets George MacDonald, not actually a good book either, John Buchan, the meaning of the title changes, Reading Short And Deep, the way he wrote these ones, Chesterton was employed to write a column, you need to fill this space, journalism, an editorial, what newspapers really are, they want people to buy this paper with ink on it, newspapers would have relationships with other newspapers, in Australia and London, producing column, he Chesterton, near Christmas time, a toy store, describes the toys, falls into a reveries, they’re all grubby, touched by the hands of children, The Shop Of Ghost, the spirit of generosity and Christmas, Tremendous Trifles, how to write a story, the proprietor is incredibly old, is this actually in London, Charles Dickens, Robin Hood, a comedic meditation on the spirit of Christmas, you’re still alive?, I’ve been dying for centuries, he’s Santa Claus, that spirit that gives you gifts without asking for money, give the children this experience, a barbed attack, they’re trying to kill Christmas, when the news was on, a war on Christmas, you get old, you don’t feel it the same way as when you’re young, all crass commercialism, a failure of imagination, why people would maybe reject Phantastes, pointing towards the direction of reality, we can feel the hormones, those hormones are in memory, rub up against trees in the woods, one of the trees engulfs him and embrace them, laugh, that was weird back then, this is a good book, rough, trying to be poetic, the poetry that he removed was hurting the effect of the book, trying to make money, a concern of many publishing people, trying to make a case that this is a fantasy novel, weird spirituality in the forest, no costume involved, becoming something else, point to certain passages, the goblins, the goblins we see in Tolkien the first time, the goblins are the orcs, no orcs in The Hobbit, they don’t act the same, what’s an orc to do?, a running song, tonally they’re very different, they’re not, one is written for children, the other is not written for children, as a man matures, he might write about things for different purposes, similar, more to explore, take a passage out, lots of beautiful, he was a sailor, Sargasso Seas, strange islands, strange creatures, you can just sort of tell, weird comparison, another Simak, those later Simak novels, kinda similar, episodes happening, some females, not a young man’s lust, a little more humour going, the love of the countryside and nature, then he throws in a robot, I think we should build a fire, other creatures, almost like what you would think of as goblins, not menaces exactly, the robot community, how weird is it?, The Goblin Reservation, his mature stuff, Shakespeare’s Planet on, Graveyard Planet, hints, questing innerly to find the story, lobby for it with the dictionary council, Destiny Doll, Simak reading, do more, two shorts, H.G. Wells vs. Robert E. Howard, who valleyed it better, a werewolf made by tibetan evil monks who’ve given us all human technology fighting a guy in the swamps of Mississippi, finding some ads, uprooting, The Maltese Falcon, a lot of new good stuff, not enough weeks in the year to read all the good stuff that’s coming out, The White Company by Arthur Conan Doyle, that’s impressive, pair up, The Solitary Cyclist, The Red-Headed League, The Adventure Of The Cardboard Box, human ears, sounds good, forget how good at what he was doing, how good he is, Travels With A Donkey, could be this year, could be next year, the 28th, New Years Parties, a little hiccup, missed three shows in a row, mostly from switching from Skype to Teams, little snotty, the eye thing, the vision is never gonna come back a direction that’s not super important, in hospital, it sucks to be in a hospital, dependent on other people, most of all your sick, the widget area, giant space, that’s not how you use your phone, open in new window, the hamburger, The Black Hound Of Death by Robert E. Howard vs. In The Abyss by H.G. Wells, a lady naked on a table, a diving bell, aliens at the bottom of the ocean.

Phantastes by George MacDonald

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #873 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Killing Time by Donald E. Westlake

The SFFaudio Podcast #873- Killing Time by Donald E. Westlake (4 hours 25 minutes) read by Ben Tucker for LibriVox, followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Scott Danielson, Maissa Bessada, and Misha Burnett

Talked about on today’s show:
1961 novel, the great Donald E. Westlake, different titles, the same book, The Mercenaries, tore this book up, a new Donald Westlake, a phase, found everything by him, many pseudonyms, a lot of books, the Parker novels, strongly recommended, Plunder Squad, Butcher’s Moon, so much more Westlake, something to live for, maybe 10 of them, science fiction shorts, Anarchaos, a handful, I love him, as you should, real hard at the end, poor Maissa, mostly, feels like Donald Westlake, about the ending, for real, pretend to talk about the book, the “spoiler” word, one of the most stupid words for understanding reality, can there be a sequel to this book with the main character, he’s dead?, any other ideas?, the rules of fiction, a first person narrative where he dies at the end, first person past tense, another interpretation, he shot Cathy, the last three paragraphs, the pile of lumber, the front stoop, only got 2 minutes left, calling my name, far far away, between us was Cassal, cradling a shotgun, you set this up, I had to, the sound I heard was Cathy screaming, he shot Cathy, that hurt him more than anything, both ways, a first person narrative, if he died, even cooler now, he’s good, he didn’t forget that, how this book works, pretty weird book, what this book is, Red Harvest from the insider’s perspective, a Dashiell Hammett novel, Bruce Willis, can’t talk anymore, Yojimbo (1961) by Akira Kurosawa, samurai, very famous western starring Clint Eastwood, A Fistful Of Dollars (1964), an unproductive screenplay adapting Red Harvest, the Op, the Continental Op, a series character, was a Pinkerton, very quiet these days, Blackwater, private military agency, Red Dead Redemption, terrific game, Grand Theft Horse, a podcaster, Pinkerton’s Ghosts, a paranormal investigation branch, Hearst, the HBO show Deadwood, the first Hearst, the way you get rich is not by finding gold but by finding people who found gold, corruption, legal corruption, a private police force, a private army, mercenaries, security guards, overthrowing a town, we don’t find that out right away, a super-political book, social commentary, the situation people are in, hobby horse ideas, he’s very non-office, a book about politics, different factions, politics today, political philosophy, pure power, causes, 2 parties, which one is trying to take over, confused, the why behind all of it, Tim, a sympathetic character, do anything to defend his life, justified and necessary, three quarters of the killing, a war, stretching, an allegory for other wars, pointless killing, my team, your team, that is his political position, reading it today, zoom out, one country getting in the middle, a proxy war, manipulating both, my own army now, now I can fight this war, making that climax occur, to destroy both of them, he’s kinda like Conan, how can I exploit this situation, for a fist full of dollars, a comedy, a ronin, a samurai without a master, he’s talking about things he knows, themes, secretly obsessed with insurance, me not notice, this book has insurance, tomato boxes, gets the girl to do it, to protect himself, hedge your bets, something to do with insurance, my guy Richard Stark, kinda shocking, the stage, excited about producing local theater, write plays?, a performer, like Grofield in the Parker novels, Westlake is making fun of himself, really I’m an actor, I need to rob this bank to make another season of summerstock, producing plays that nobody goes to, 2017, many years ago, the name of the play that was produced, Tim Smith, leaned over and looked at the script, read it upside down, on page 68, A Sound Of Distant Drums, if it was a hit, good luck, this is a game of tennis Donald Westlake played with Lawrence Block, a movie theater, thinking about something, deciding on something, a restaurant, a Pizza Hut, when he walks out of the movie theater, reading a paperback on a park bench, what fun, why is that in there, a little piece of colour, the whilhelm scream, very distinctive, the Tarzan yodel, a little checkbox, Westlake does that a lot, self-referential moments, the Dortmunder novels, Jimmy The Kid, Andrew Kelp is in jail and reads “Child Heist” by Richard Stark, reads snippets, this is how we do it, Adios Scheherazade, Point Blank in the movie theater, the worst (first) of the Parker novels, became himself, out for revenge, revenge is stupid, a character arc, we get this instead, she was screaming, listen, that last page, 221 pages, page 211, the plant was wrapped in flames, the neutral cops, crawl down backwards, way down the street, cradling, icy cold, you set this up, the sound I heard, who’s dead, shot by somebody else, shooting the last vestiges of himself, Tim shot Cathy, it doesn’t say that, the worst thing he could have done, he raised the shotgun, that’s not what it says, if we’re filming this, he points the shotgun at Tim, fade to black, but fade to black, choose your own ending, either way it works really well, the spinning top at the end of Inception, no matter how many Donald Westlake movies you think exist there’s always more, It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) sort of movies, half-way through it, Cops And Robbers (1973), 2 new adaptations, Memory (retitled The Actor), right after Westlake died, always new last books coming out, a Bob Hope style character, one of the Stark novels, or a Dortmunder novels, the Stark novels get pretty bizarre, Ask The Parrot, 1951 Ford, an interesting fact, Score in the title, The Green Eagle Score, an airforce base, Westlake was a cop, he was a “snowtop” white helmeted, Navy police, break up fights, a cop in Germany, he’s never really on their team, or they’re criminals, a bit surprising, a little tubby, a little flab on him, he’s rich, he doesn’t have to work for a living, the easy life, the anti-Raymond Chandler, not starving, they don’t make good cars anymore, he’s getting paid by everybody, he’s the badguy, listening to his arguments, the pot-holes are filled, useless turds who didn’t know how to run the town, the analogy, The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis, the safest road to hell is gentle underfoot, the perfect rationalizer, he doesn’t think of himself as a bad guy, evil, him staying quiet, screwed out of his house, the tax shift, never willing to say I did something wrong, confess to a lawyer, confess to a priest, not my job, to do terrible things and say it was my job, as an example, AOC, she thinks she’s a good person, she ain’t she won’t talk about things that are true, the other team, stuff they won’t talk about, with Tim in the diner, why is he up so late eating that sandwich, difficulty sleeping, why won’t he marry her, the death of the family, what’s missing, he likes her well enough, deep down he’s not a good guy, he’s not thinking about her, Westlake never hits us with this, this guy’s trying to kill him, Somebody Owes Me Money, people getting knocked off, a light comedy with romance, the girl is involved with trying to kill him, gambling winnings, fun, his father is constantly trying to find a loophole, The Risk Profession, an insurance adjuster, roads and traffic, tiny little wee story, technically science fiction?, people driving around New York, a hyperrealized version of our reality, a parking lot, people sitting in their cars, they’re just in there, they live in there, sit behind the driver’s seat of the car and wait in a parking lot?, do they have a job they’re supposed to be at?, that’s what inspires Westlake, a story idea, the overturning of the government in this town is not a good idea, corrupt but works, a clue, it works for him, incompetent government is a real thing, switching to another team, this reformist group, one party to get it over on the other party, this association secretly backed, for his own power, a very very cynical book but doesn’t feel it until the end, floating along, it’s a whodunit, the bodyguard, maybe I’m misreading this book, one of the lines that repeats, one of my seven closest friends is trying to kill me, he can’t honestly say, depressing, gets arrested, national guard, definitely not him, we think of Cathy being close to him, does he love her?, you didn’t even bother to tell me, shot at the first time, I had a need to talk to somebody, unload, is that selfishness, Scott does a lot of stuff for me, I hope I’m not using, a trade?, some people keep score, helped you move three times, when your dog is sick, fetched that ball for you, I need that dog for that sled dogging race next week, gut punch, got nervous, why are we going to war?, you should leave town, the final time: I’m going to war, why?, selfishness, he is a bad guy, almost tries to stop, killing his friend, I’m just gonna stand here and watch and wait, pulls him back, conscience, his first impulse, willing to accept corruption as the price of soft roads, if you listen to the mafia, all the good works they do for their town, I keep the neighbourhoods clean, no racism element, an all black town, an all white town, very targetedly political, as they get older, at certain point they freeze politically, can’t be surprised by new things, Lawrence Block, very closed mouths about his poltics, his home, New York, Hollywood, Hills View?, random audiobook of a Donald Westlake short, The Girl Of My Dreams, upstate New York, Manhattan, when you move to a small town, a store over there, that guy is a veteran, the lady who collects cats, the high school, the cement was filled with sand, he’s a good guy, a story, a thing that happened, Las Vegas 30 years ago, his last day, retiring, when the mob was in charge of Las Vegas, some pickpocket, they just took care of it, nice for the tourists, my potholes are full, this incident a lot, a true story, a break-in, stolen comics, a burglary, not, that’s not a thing, I know how this system works, in this conversation, trying not to dispatch cops, investigate burglaries, a criminal gang, the Bacon brothers, what building they’re in, should I go an knock on this person’s door, ask them to do it?, this is how it works, if I can’t get justice from the official system, the unofficial system, the opening sequence of The Godfather, political parties come and go, drugs not to be dealt in the schoolyard, he’s not going to stand for that, his only client is blackmailing everybody who’s grafting, the cop who he waves to, a member of a family who gets all the contracts, everybody needs a job, selling out the country, giving away everything, everyone is corrupt, this fake insurgency, drain the swamp, maybe Westlake knows better than me, everything is corrupt and totally evil, the Westlake Review (website), this paragraph, intentions, played both ends against the middle, didn’t know who he was, the moral of the piece, a complete picture, not a soft book, a whole lot deeper than it appears, brilliantly, look on the surface like happy goofy comedies, just fun entertainment, in the middle of the night, subtle, year and year and years ago, early 80s, reading everything by him, The Fugitive Pigeon, a “nephew” novel, a throw away line, used to write crossword puzzles for a living, the poet is on the pumpkin (five letters), 40 years later, Frost!, always working, he’s really good at that, a mystery novel, he wrote those, his science fiction books, it has a mystery in it, that’s not really what it’s about, hanging out with a good guy, a corrupt jerk?, evil guy?, pretty fuckin evil, oh man!, filming the ending, prefer Cathy be killed, it hits harder, underscores the point more, we care whether he does or not, that’s why we don’t need any more, a girl like her is a dime a dozen, figuring out where to end a story, figuring out where to beginning a story, I didn’t mean to read the whole thing, make sure the file is all there, 100 something pages into it, amazing, a page of opening lines of Parker novels, When the phone rang the Parker was in the garage killing a man, the night apron man, a mirror of him, unusual moniker, he glanced at me, ex-middleweight, his suit was brown and old, better to hide the gun with, it is that, he agreed, that’ll help, being sarcastic to each other, what’s this Smith’s front name?, a whole lot of buildup, writing stuff, writing stuff, keep your typewriter ribbon wet, quick, get it done, a little bit of revision, writing a novel is different, you have to make it work, Westlake novels and Block novels, Westlake never wrote a bad novel, they’re not all The Score, Kahawa, the coffee one set in Kenya, still no audiobook of it, Swahili for coffee, the reign of Idi Amin, very powerful, you don’t think politics, near Aruba, a non-fiction book coup, very interested in politics, in constructing this book, can we reconstruct how it was constructed, a full time writer, he writes, he observes people, with that observer’s eye, trained to look for stories, driving up to Westchester, this town is different, he was a solider, probably in WWII, he goes to war again, boosting tires and selling them (maybe to the Nazis), he was in the army but he was corrupt, undercuts, we can’t sympathize with Parker because he’s inhuman, so efficient, commentary on people, he’s everyman, just wants to be comfortable, everybody wants to be comfortable, Citizens For Clean Government, a voice of reason and conscience, she was wrong to put her faith in him, why are you doing this, he has money in the bank, he could have, a way to say: have a look, here you go, Guy De Maupassant, a 1906/1907 reprint, retell the plot of a Maupassant story, observant of humans, the same taskmaster, there was a family friendship, Gustave Flaubert, train in the practice of fiction writing, go and walk about the town, really seen the things, make me see them, eagerly write, the most essential points, send him out again, he had seen nothing whatsoever, little by little, this discipline trained the mind, the fewest possible words, a perfect etching, a wonderful observer, in his 30th year, Ball Of Fat, everyone instantly recognized, a new writer of great power, 200 or more short stories, a writer’s writer, Stephen King, named his own pseudonym, Richard Bachman, how sublte he is, he doesn’t hit you over the head, understated, who wrote this book, it was Westlake, he does this thing with character’s hands, they spread their hands, particular personality types, to talk to the first representative, hands going all over the place, a Westlakism, observing, play with your hands a lot, observing a real thing, a few that do, perfect little chracterization, a signature by Westlake, in his comic books, dialogue with somebody’s whole body, seek to incorporate, in this particular case, hands waving all over the place, not just personality, how emotionally invested, specific examples, page 40, the scene, page 39, we are only interested in dishonesty in government, the town: Winston, 1 tavern which stays open, pays bribes to the patrolman on the beat, the crime of staying open, the crime of accepting bribes, the CCG, seems very reasonable, the second gloss, moving the politics needle, changing the politics, 1 finger raised, icy enthusiasm, he had memorized it because he liked it, the reason is what the reason is, honest local citizens, cop on the beat, slight trace, stylistic reasons, can’t help but be comedic, he didn’t talk he wrote out loud, an honest patrolman, he spread his hands and smiled once more, by ending the first crime, the permission or even assistance, wipe out governmental crime, dandy theory, liable to be just as money hungry, a permanent incorruptible watchful guard, an aroused and aware citizenry, keep the crooks out forever, some of it would be more than useful in our fight against corruption, turns out he’s naive, he’s right, the scales are lifted from your eyes, you really believe that, oh no, the follow-up scene, come clean as it were, pretty clear he knows the score, he’s like us, because he doesn’t see it, it doesn’t happen, ai manipulation in this genocide, he wouldn’t come at it directly, very very subtle book, the political issues of the day, The Spy In The Ointment, Up Your Banners, a pacifist secret agent, passivist political organization, it’s funny, politics of the 1960s, public schools in New York, a humorous story, generally funny, one of the most serious books, inverted humour, you don’t understand something until it makes you laugh, recognition, handling serious subjects with the lightest of touch, compare him to Block, a little more overtly political, The Thief Who Couldn’t Sleep, joins every revolution, an uprising in Tanganyika, La Guardia airport, was it political, thought process, if I say yes the conversation is over, oh ok, a political movement then it is okay, very subtle, it doesn’t come across, a short story, The Spy In The Elevator, Curious Facts, dystopia hellscape, in a dystopian novel in a short story, funny funny little world, it’s Socrates and the myth of the cave, they don’t know there’s an external reality, how great is Westlake, superlatives, Tolkien and Westlake, subtlety, look for the signs, so smooth, literally great, he’s GREAT, undercut by how digestible it is, spoonful of sugar, a very sour book, it went down real easy, this is a poison pill, that’s well measured, he did it real well, his theater influence, performing and producing, adept at getting into people’s heads, stage stuff, the worst actor, doing bad acts, performer, very well done, that guy’s like me, doesn’t know what to do with hands, he can’t help himself, hard-boiled book, the sandwich gets shot, and the formica, are really hardboiled book, pick up another Westlake, Westlakes to read, Westlakes that I have read, a chihuahua having a nervous breakdown, not much that we can do, Westlake.com website’s down, a Japanese adaptation of The Axe, a Michael Caine movie that’s similar, quite long for a Westlake, Robert Duvall, none of them are right, he laughs in that one, the best adaptation, not Mel Gibson, the spirit of it, not Jathan Stathem, the one called Parker, a mashup of The Hunter and Slayground, City Of Industry, not an official adaptation, very much a Parker plot, The Sour Lemon Score, much too subtle, pacifist secret agent, Up Your Banners, a schoolteacher during desegregation of public schools, inverted humour, you don’t really understand something until it makes you laugh, don’t want to be dumb, because of recognition, handling serious subjects, with the lightest of touch, tennis game, overtly political, The Thief Who Couldn’t Sleep, joins every revolution, an uprising in Tanganyika, Dancing Aztecs, Pedro Ninny, was it political?, if I say yes the conversation is over, The Spy In The Elevator, so light and fluffy, dystopian hellscape, a dystopian novel in a dystopian hellscape in a short story, Socrates in the myth of the cave, an external reality, reject it, how great is Westlake, comparing to superlatives, so smooth, he’s GREAT, undercut by how digestible it is, a very sour book, went down real easy until the war starts, a poison pill, well measured, his theater influence, performing and producing, adept at getting into people’s heads, stage stuff, the worst actor, doesn’t know what to do with hands, a hardboiled book, the sandwich gets shot, don’t forget about the formica, pick up another Westlake, chihuahua nervous breakdown, movies come out, a new adaptation of The Axe, a Michael Caine movie, who was the best Parker, Robert Duvall, he laughs in that one, the best adaptation, not Mel Gibson, the spirit of it, Jason Statham, City Of Industry (1997), Harvey Keitel, at a stoplight, Reservoir Dogs, almost Parker scenes, his own stuff, Cops And Robbers is a good movie, the book is better, Robert Redford, The Hot Rock, with him it’s the words, and the perfomances, he puppeteers those characters, the Dortmunder/Kelp relationship, George C. Scott, a comedy of errors, habitual crime, softboiled, the best Parker novel?, The Man With The Getaway Face, Westlake writing about Dortmunder, a hot potato, Bank Shot, supplemental characters, a lot like cheers, Drowned Hopes, for Scott, Humans, His own Creation, ragtag collection of human misfits, a fireman from Chernobyl, The Last Novel You Will Ever Read, more public domain novels, send it to Scott, too expensive, ex-wife took his books, grounds for divorce, front seat of the van, The Comedy Is Finished, Bob Hope and his illegitimate son, more Westlake is always good, National Enquirer, Trust Me On This, Baby Would I Lie, Florida based vacations, he knew somebody, so vividly, too well, The Cutie (The Mercenaries), Hard Case Crime, shy away, the punk was innocent, find that cutie before the cutie, The Busybody, 361, Brothers Keepers, Bank Shot is only 6 hours, no massive violence, cronies, The Capitalists And Immigrants Trust, ditch the bank, Kelp’s nephew, gangbusters, Herman X, a lockman, black militant, pirated version, The Girl Of My Dreams read by Roddy McDowell, Don’t Ask, Get Real, tabloid ones, What’s So Funny, Sin Hellcat with Lawrence Block, I’m sold, 4 hour 4 minutes, probably wrote it in a weekend, a nice way to kill a few hours, erotica, Adios Scheherazade, A Likely Story, The Stepfather, an alternative proposal, Too Much by Donald Westlake, a comedy, a movie, kind of a comedy, a gimmick cover, a special name for that, some fuzzy texture over part of the cover, bikinis, remove the fuzzy pink stuff, on camera, Melanie Griffith and Antonio Banderas, Daryl Hannah, a lot deeper, goofy sex comedy, the main character ends up not being who you think he is, a warning, cute and cuddly on the surface and murderous underneath, today’s narrator Ben Tuck, a 45 minute commute, reading Conan, three or four months later, read a Solomon Kane story, ready for another Conan, space em out, you don’t want to spend your whole week with Jesse, too recently, flexible, a Two Much Easter egg, the greeting card company, a rather ridiculous memory, real world stuff, fictional stuff, Detour by Martin M. Goldsmith, nice and short, there’s a movie version, considered a b-movie classic, the book is way better, wrote 2 episodes of the original Twilight Zone, movie scripts, the nuking of New York, a realtime nuking, from the 1940s, a hitchhiker, across the desert, injuries sustained earlier, he buries him in the desert, a girl at a gas station, what’d you do with the body?, backstory, halfway through the book, she’s got her own affair going on, really good narrative voice, really solid book, a prewar book, some co-writing on movies, wreck your life, The Princess Bride, nothing of theirs is never published again, making money writing, screenplays, writing into the void, moved back away from Hollywood, so lucky, treasure, sounds fun, how can you know, until you start running out, there I was, Tim Powers, his first book that’s still around, Laser Books, Dinner at Deviant’s Palace, they’re not the same guy, Westlake is much more prudish, broader humour and less dry, got a lot more sex in it than anything else he’s written, did he go to Africa for that?, something that actually happened, people involved in the heist, repay the people, by never mentioning their names, we’ve done Sin Hellcat, Westlake wrote a superhero story, The Busy Body, Brother And Sister, in for a treat, yay incest!, do I have to?, 3 hours 25 minutes, not horrible, his enthusiasm is not in it, downmarket swamp, Swamp Hoyden, a boisterous girl, Nudist Camp by Orrie Hitt, Veronica by Donald Westlake, write a lot of them, a real novel with a stupid premise, write me a book to match this title, the Block one we did, The Triumph Of Evil, assassinating the president, not as dark as that, this book sneaks up on you, The Anderson Tapes, Such Men Are Dangerous, Hit Man, collects stamps, numismatist and philatelist, travels across the country, a woman who books his hits, a weird philosophical I’m a hitman and a nice guy, regular characters, levity, just fun, this matter-of-factness of the characters, how many Bloch shorts have you read, he’ll take the silliest little idea of a story, Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, nice jeans, it’s hard to get good jean, dog food factory, that’s the whole story, dogfood out of humans, gets paid both ways, little twist of the knife, did fantastic, opportunities to jabber on about your favourite books, I loved that book, finding people to talk about ai, an old guy from the 60s, take that chihuahua for some food, cruising right along, trained up, going to work, a white lab, a yellow lab that’s platinum, lab coat, a lot of fun, very active dude, throw the ball, loves to retrieve, watch it roll by, threaten to steal the ball, homeland in newfoundland, see the old country, 4 day visit, uncles and aunts and cousin, she wanted to have a farm, 50 years, a goose, 2 calves born recently, a million chickens, turkeys, wanting to get up at 4am, all-in, since she was a little girl, getting her wish, starting new people every month, on and on, almost like you’re training people, certify-em then train-em, old job, Florida parking garage, small town Idaho, pumice factory, cement blankets, Technovelgy (Bill Christensen), a culvert or ditch, burlap embeded with cement, spray it, makes an instant contoured bank, a hard foundation, pumice for cement, fluffing it up, regular cement and rebar, very flat, students love stories, really?, yes indeed, might learn something this way, control systems, little piece of tech, Mr. Spock was Scott’s Mr. Rogers, not engineer Scott, the guy that was relied on, the miracle work, transporters are bullshit, this is a nebula, we can drink ourselves into it, the space hippies one, he’s interested in them, convinces Kirk, overdone, meet some millenials, different customs and lifestyles, as a gen-x er, who wrote that one, The Way To Eden, D.C. Fontana, he’s on the crew, he wrote The Sound Of Music, Arthur Heinemann, The Wink Of An Eye, Space Lincoln!, a lot of dumb things, riles me up, seems like a nice guy, Bear Island, Alistair MacLean, bin full, can you read it to me?, pass it around, Fortnite, more cartoony version, building, High Adventure, Samuel Holt is Donald Westlake, I Know A Trick Worth Two Of That, giant Tor, from his time in Hollywood, an ex-actor, a cross between James Garner and Tom Selleck, drives a fancy car, gets involved in crimes, people saw him as a private detective on TV, a bin, bins full of books, how do we get people to do audiobooks, no possibility of keeping them online, Quasar Spectra, Meteor Strike by Donald Westlake, crusin for a brusin, 1965, pre-90s science fiction, new stuff all the time, The Robot Who Looked Like Me by Robert Sheckley, Solar Shoe Salesman, John Sladek making fun of Philip K. Dick, good narration, quite a few new audiobook people on utube, we’re lucky, living in a glorious time, also horrible, find some coffee, throw the ball for dog, having a helluva time, it has become impossible to sell books, used to be, unless pretty obscure, zero views, ebay, facebook marketplace, good pricing and fast moving, a bookseller, stack of stuff, goodwill store, signed and numbered, at some point your putting in effort to get less than a reward, stacks and stacks, new used books, unless scanning, this is a book!, a problem, work book group, not the best thing in the world, Dungeon Crawler Carl, litRPG, got a cat with him, 2020, pretty popular, a romance, the median is new, that’s the problem, Ben-Hur or Beowulf, if you’ve read the author before, toss a Westlake over the wall, if it is on kindle, what happened to the estate, everything went ebook, a shame, One Of Us Is Wrong, no ebook, when will there be one?, a hardcover for $25, used bookstores have been disappearing, thrift shop, they still have books, used bookstores, we’re at the price floor situation, Alien Earth episodes, strung out, it’s ok, the boy wonder facebook guy, the lost boys, the lost girl wendy, Raised By Wolves, fun premise, petered out nothing happened, Timothy Olyphant, another mom and dad style robot, interstellar flight, raising humans, decanted on the other planet, raised by robots, kinda like a science fiction novel premise, stuff happens is the worst thing ever, it’s the fetch quest starting, I can turn it off, Mission Impossible movie, two-parter, a summing up of all the Mission Impossible movies, giant fetchquest, what it really was, Collosus The Forbin Project, the badguy is an ai, spend all our time saying Tom Cruise is Jesus, do we trust, the anti-god, it’s all on the surface, why we got to save the planet this time, about nothing, good parts but, the surface depths, nothing from the ai’s point of view, climbing, falling, stuff happening very well, a strong idea, a painful idea, how can we do better than that?, luck on your Dungeon Crawl with Carl, a good talk out it?, allowed to say bad things, if nobody loves the book already, if favourite writer, we could do better, you’re wrong we can never be friends again, none of them are bad, traumatizing, thank you sir.

Killing Time

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #872 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Hour Of The Dragon by Robert E. Howard

The SFFaudio Podcast #872 – The Hour Of The Dragon by Robert E. Howard (8 hours 56 minutes) read by Mike Vendetti, followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Alex (Pulpcovers), Cora Buhlert, and Mike Vendetti

Talked about on today’s show:
Weird Tales, December 1935 – April 1936, the chronologies, which order to read them in, the writing order, a summary, the first chapter, I was a mercenary, a pirate, a thief, one of the last ones written, Conan’s greatest hits, with an overarching plot, the Del Rey versions, an offer from a British publisher, in comics, the way it is serialized by Marvel the first time, very serial, the text itself, the individual sections, King Conan (the comic), Savage Sword, Red Sonja comics, Robert E. Howard’s horror fiction (with Cthulhu on the cover), Lovecraftian homages, Cora’s first Robert E. Howard, Conan The Conqueror, original Lancer in good condition, very very evil American trash, this is educational, terrible trash, pretty good, pastiches by Robert Jordan, committed suicide, every paperback, every introduction, 19898/9, there are risks, writers die of suicides, the guy who wrote Conan the Barbarian, the FBI didn’t kill Howard but…, Ernest Hemingway, two things, Lord Of The Rings, the phrase: The Return Of The King, an object that needs to be gotten rid of, thrown into the sea, hold up fantasy writers, polar opposites, low fantasy/high fantasy, the structure of this, the morality is completely different, contempt for kings, a king who doesn’t want to be a king, bother with all the Aquilonia stuff, reading enough of the Savage Sword, heads to North America and has adventures with the Aztecs, a novel there, Galactic Journey, Aztec dragon boats, Juhn Buscema, Ernie Chan, Roy Thomas, Alfred Alcala, amazing, Ben-Hur and this book, the movie, a downfall and a quest for vengeance, crawling back up, how Robert E. Howard wrote this, a map of Hyboria, thee same old map, Sygia is Egypt, Shem is Palestine or Israel, Shemites with blue beards, probably read Lew Wallace, he did, correspondence, did Tolkien steal it from Howard, not liking it, Cimmeria is Ireland, an Irishman, Asgard and Vanheim, the scando countries, fake europe, Aquilonia, Charlemagne style France, Nemedia, Zingara is Spain, Argos, placenames, there’s no Mediterranean, Kush is on the map, a tour thorough the Hyborian lands, a galley slave for all of 5 minutes, you’re my slave now, slave revolt, nice try, history as Amra, sailed with Belit, saves the black slaves, Conan is a good king, he’s been poor a lot, treats people well, let them worship their stupid gods, they’re transporting arms and armour, associated lands, Kull was a galley slave, a grist mill, wheel pain, to make Conans, a Conan factory, no other purpose, water or wind, an awesome scene in the movie, one guy on twitter shits on it, it’s not true to the stories, let’s talk about the Kevin Sorbo in the room, look at it without listening to it, it is put together like a film, the tone is wrong, Kevin Sorbo as Hercules, goofy, problems taking Conan seriously, Clonan series, Thongor the Barbarian, the He-Men, masculine muscular, the butt of the joke, a condescending article, slush for Strange Horizons, a rebuttal, academic scholarship, academic work on Robert E. Howard, too much, a pulp fiction “journal”, don’t feed the trolls, lay it out a little more, a huge chonky book, a great book, in comparison to Lovecraft, a sense of identity that comes from his family, a country gentleman out of time, much more unstable, aggressive with his arguments, a piece of propaganda that’s excellently done, Jews are just like us, a story of the Christ, Christianity is awesome, well done, how do I incorporate the ideas of Christianity into my life, surrounded by Christian people, in order to not be overwhelmed by it, a statement about the world, just reject it, ignore it, rebut it, his greatest hits, sell a book, religion, Conan’s religion has no substance to it, wants to be left alone, Robert E. Howard’s perfect god, somebody to swear by, Mike is waiting, link above, will leave a mark on you, engaging, look I can be in the world to, is this the only Howard story, we’re the good cult, dark gods, witchcraft with old ladies, she’s great, evil cults, Mitra, ineffective, share?, cults!, the Ashurrities, Roman era Christians, we got Mike, the movie with Charlton Heston, his response to Ben Hur, the chariot races, the galley slave incident, he’s in opposition to Ben Hur, all kinds of opposition, learning to let go of vengeance, suspicion, suspicious, played by Harvey Fierstein, Jubba, gender swapped Xaltotun, fine with the gender swap, The Spy Who Loved Me by Ian Fleming, From Russia With Love, loved him from afar, respected him as king, king by his own hand, By This Axe I Rule, smashes the tablets, no more law, one of the best scenes, the best Kull scene, a response, helps explain why it is a bit weird along the edges, so many characters who are part of the bureaucracy and power structure, a lot of guys who keep track of, The Phoenix On The Sword and The Scarlet Citadel, a woman’s waist, an early trans-person, not as manly as Conan, this is what he looks like, in what way is this story working, C.L.A.I.M., descriptions of colour, arms being lopped off, the colour of black lotus, amazing lotus, when reading Isaac Asimov, everything was in my mind, no actual description of them, robot stories, a black man, the two novels, The Naked Sun, American robotics investigators, narrating up a Robert E. Howard Conan, how long is that, 26 hours and 18 minutes, 21 stories, The Black Stranger and some later stuff, The Tower Of The Elephant, his best little story, magazine compilation copyright, Wikisource will have it, everything that was there, Robert E. Howard doing Conan, just so imagely rich, every sentence is almost a poem in terms of description, approaching a city, so much text, so flowery, this gets you an incredibly detailed image in one or two lines, very very right on, a blonde female, son’s fiancé doesn’t like blondes, Margaret Brundage, her Conan is the scrawniest, he’s not a skeleton, Robert Valentino Conan, he looks powerful, masculine, completely limp, need some Yul Brenner energy, laying down, we get a legit monkey fight in this book!, the movie adaptation, he’s sort of a half-simian something, remakes of Planet Of The Apes, you could give him a really good Thak, give him a cape, a gorilla face, Mighty Joe Young but a little small, the monkey’s stronger than Conan, he doesn’t say my guy is the chosen one, the son of god, or a devout believer, a canny survivor that comes from good morality (by not being a civilized fuck), being a barbarian, all the people who were sold into slavery, in the comic book adaptation, almost a wedding party, the Marvel one, Dark Horse, too asiany and too dark, the Cimmerian one, Aquilonina girl tied to an altar, the book is not about Zenobia, make the comparison, brass bra, in the sky is all the other Conan loves, Belit, Red Sonja, Valeria, queen of them all, Groucho Marx, in the internal chronology, the Aquilonias think he’s dead, no son and no descendant, sexual interest vs. moral interest, that witch with the dog, kingdoms, lineage, he has no heir, the whole plot is essentially about a lack of authority because of a lack of attention to that future, a rightful heir, conspires with the Germans, the Prussian invasion of France, you need to have succession, he rejects empire, it has to be the end, king stories don’t really work, usurping some guy, just playing RISK, someone is trying to usurp him, our period now, The Goblin Emperor, half-goblin, weird half-breed, who murdered, finding himself in a position, a good person in a difficult situation, the bad side of the family, William the Conqueror (aka William the Bastard), as you do, he has legitimacy because he has royal blood, he’s super-anti-royal blood, King Kull is also a barbarian, effete, the slight against one of the Aquilonian court, a description, they inherited their stuff, Xaltotun is in his tent and smoking hash, he’s a wizard, undead vampire, she’s great, more of her, cultists, Conan crashes the resurrection, the high priest of Set, he walks back into the pyramid, Aquivasha, also undead, hookin up and rulin the pyramid, pyramid and mummy interlude, Xuthal Of The Dust, The Slithering Shadow, they never go outside into their garden, instead of watching tv, high on lotus juice, slug monster from Cthulhuville, his commentary on non-outdoor work, being cozy, my uber eats delivered to the door, all live indoors, Red Nails, the one with the laser beam, stegosaurus, top 2 Conan stories, problems as a narrator, do you remember the weather you forecast, it just goes away, in six months, a reexperience of the book, a sequence of things, fathers and upwards respect, towards the emperor, surrogate fathers, towards a legit Jesus, generous with water and food, wants to heal the sick, wants people to be honest and nice, do the people of Aquilonia deserve Conan?, the hero they need right now, get some drinks, the gold isn’t power, surrenders, to the Nemedians, the knights, Provenance, protect the city, they came too late to the battle, they roll over, reading this again as an adult, 1933/34, Conan riding across the devastated Aquilonia, destroyed plantations, the utter fury he feels, the rise of fascism in Europe, hated Mussolini, hated Hitler, Europe in flames, the Prussian invasion of France in 1870, WWI, scorched earth, a conquering, they took the city, but they left again, Alsace/Lorraine, the Border Kingdoms, a German speaking minority, ballistas not canons, war devastation, the responses of the people to power, getting things back together, feels quite complex but the messaging is fairly simple, the driving thrust of the book is a series of interesting tours, the Heart of Ahirman, the most McGuffin McGuffin that’s ever McGuffined, The Fire of Asshurbanipal, a terrific one, a lost city, they find a magical jewel, a different jewel, more dangerous somehow, a little bit like The Ring, Xaltotun doesn’t want it, his phylactery, he’s a lich, a soul box/jar, hide it, keep it safe, hot potato, silly, a review on YouTube, it shouldnt be named The Hour Of The Dragon, a flag of Nemedia, Conan the Reconquer, invisible friend on the internet, a pivotal time of crisis and opportunity, destruction power and rebirth, the mix of the european and asian dragons, monsters, water creatures, they’re lucky, dragonboat festival, rebirth/rains, the guardsman of the king are the Red Slayers (in Kull), the Black Dragons, there isn’t a central female character in it, he sleeps with one of them?, doesn’t have sex, the original Conan movie, about to be executed, set pieces, puts on his outfit, kills the guards, rescues the woman, on the cover of Conan The Conqueror (Ace double), in any other story she’d be the love interest, Count Trocero of Poitain, he does sleep with her, he stables with her, in a cave, like in a manger, another scene out of Ben-Hur, I am Zalata, child of the night guiding armed men, the raven, not at this point, the answer fantastic, mounted the rocks, circuitous path, an eagle, an uncanny thing, she’s like Circe, she commands multiple wild animals, she lead the way, the great wolf trotting at her side, a narrow precipice of stone, half-hut/half-cavern, dethroned, now’s our chance to fuck this witch up, settling scores, the children of the wild are kinder than the children of men, brooding in the silence of glens, vs. city streets, my children, your sword, those Nemedian dogs, the foolish villagers in the valley, my answers angered them, you’ll be king one day, she tries to eat him or suck his blood, throws her into the fire, wow, scary, old women in Robert E. Howard stories, young maidens or ancient goddesses, she’s millennial old from Ancient Acheron, she told me she was 19, played for comedy, a very Kevin Sorbo line, her minion, damage from his face, you promised me blah blah blah, the line from The Empire Strikes Back, I’ve altered the pact, he’s kind of alien, when Orestes comes back, so much worse than we knew, normal good human ancestors, the absolute, he’s from Python, where they squeeze you death, resurrect a dead empire, necromancy on a national scale, drag the world into the past, the actual present world, really nasty strain of conservatism, make Archeron Great Again, Make Acheron Again, people rise to power for different reasons, it’s kind of an accident, it happens offscreen, super-competent, merit matters, you should be able rise, your skills should enable you to rise, king by his own hand, The Hyborian Age, the Probable Outline Of Conan’s Career, son of the blacksmith, in America you can become president, 10,000 years ago, Greek democracy and Kings or Emperors, the other direction, that tour of Stygia, the big evil snake is on the street, a theocracy, the Egyptian system, King Kull story, Exile Of Atlantis, fell in love with a Lemurian pirate, burned at the stake, he throws his dagger at her, Atlantis: I hate it, forbidden love, laws are against it, wondering about existence, really existentialist, no progeny, an analogue for Robert E. Howard, racially mixed marriages, Lemurian pirates and Atlantean maidens, The Curse Of The Golden Skull, Bran Mak Morn stories, a Weird Tales filler story, better than Tolkien, the Battle Of The Five Armies, Bard shooting the arrow, great incidence in The Return OF The King, I am no man, it’s a girl!, a thief sneaking into a temple, million year old vampire lady, a scroll, Jewels of Gwahlur, that suspicion usually pays off, she gets a reward (him), the opening, plot’s not super awesome, little short stories, details, the weird goblin people, that’s so cool, the powerplays, becoming a pirate again, bite sized bits of story, loosely strung, From What Hell Have You Crawled, bring back chapter titles, The Haunter Of The Pits, all comes together, there I won, it’s just over suddenly, him wanting to get paid, more words, Almuric, never completed, more Otis Adelbert Kline, Dennis Archer, went to Weird Tales in 1935-1936, summer of 1936, the anniversary of his death, the grave, leave little gifts, alcohol, he drank beer, leaving spirits, a Robert E. Howard bar guide, off twitter now, switched over to Bluesky, post everything four times, look into Solomon Kane, Conan as a character, Solomon Kane stories, more our world, 1600s/1700s, maybe this guy is just insane, purposely religious, African witch doctor, not Christian but good, the staff of the biblical Solomon, immortal vampire woman, zombies, vampires, flying monsters, innkeeper, the shortest one, Rattle Of Bones, Red Shadows, Men shall die for this, he’s like The Punisher, found her on the side of the road, swore vengeance, Wings In The Night, will they sell, a little cachet, second tier, still before Kull, El Borak, and the boxing stories, books about war, Ambrose Bierce, An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge, What I Saw Of Shiloh, All Quiet On The Western Front, Cora got PTSD from the movie, Through The Wheat by Thomas Boyd, 1st infantry division, the disillusionment of young men going to war, Jack London, the Japanese invasion of Korea, he liked being first hand, War by Jack London, pre-WWI war, that really amazing Jack London hit, Tales Of Soldiers And Civilians, too many people watching, dying but not dead yet, remember forever, vividly to this day, Belgium, much better balm, too young to appreciate it, WWI letters, WWII all the time, Dolce Et Decorum Est, WWI poetry, Soldier’s Home by Ernest Hemingway, everywhere he walks in the town, as if there is purpose here, a tiny little branch of hope, a younger sister, his only connection to not killing himself, the dedication, so powerful, captured the experience of so many soldiers all over the world, Erich Maria Remarque museum, cottage industry, Die Brücke (1959), The Razor’s Edge by Somerset Maugham, he doesn’t fit in with everybody anymore, goes off to Asia, told from the POV of his friends, George Time, stealing food from a dead German’s pack, a ring off a corpse, so many stories we just let go, the right questions to ask, Cora’s great uncle, born in 1897, WWI German sailor mutiny, locked up, home in Bremen, the Bremen Soviet Republic, run of to the US, died in the early 1980s, surname, want to ask but don’t, family secrets that no one talks about, Nazis, these people were bad, we don’t talk about them, German POWs, Fort Riley, a powerful statement, least of all an adventure, a generation of men, escaped the shells, destroyed by the war, the modern movie, completely ruins the story, a grunt’s eye view of the war, ruin the end, Paul gets killed on November 11, a quiet day, Wonder Woman (2007), Twelve O’Clock High (1949), written for Jimmy Stewart, had PTSD in spades, I can not go back there, Flight Of The Phoenix (1965) with Hardy Kruger, the bombing raid, I was on the other side, almost killed, it was a long time ago, Hal Clement, Gene Roddenberry, last time I was here I was bombing the place, terrible stories of the bombing nights, graphic descriptions of hiding in bunkers, an American airbase, practicing on the moors, low flying noisy miliary airplanes, born in 1938, taking potshots at him, these people, Stephen Crane, his graphic description, The Red Badge Of Courage, The Bride Comes To Yellow Sky, The Open Boat, Manacled, it’s vivid, an epic poem, Storm Of Steel by Ernst Jünger, chiming in, the most powerful war book, weird answer: For The Temple, the Roman sack of Jerusalem, the first Horatio Hornblower book, the entire collection, not public domain, short stories, C.S. Forester, E.M. Forster’s The Machine Stops, it does everything, everything was provided for people, the plot is almost non-existence, guy calls up his mom on Microsoft Teams, the machine stops, the plot is not the story, utopian literature, English 12, reading science fiction in school, Germans don’t use the word dystopia, Brave New World, Nineteen Eighty-Four, won’t survive reentry, the machine stopped, lost without the internet, our phone, my navigator, literally lost, try to by a map now, the B.C. Ferries are trying to make people reserve your ticket and space online, not the winged creatures, if it has to be online, no ebay store, amazon store, government services, reserve bus tickets on your phone, scan a qr code, clipboard, to use the bank machine, it is the machine stops, old/poor/homeless, really hard to get stuff, government service, access to the road, the Amish will win, we’re competing here, the Leigh Brackett book, really interesting, a better short story guy than a novelist, for a guy who only wrote one novel, some of the best short stories, also wrote a lot of poems, he’s so good at it, they just didn’t sell, here Merry sing a song at a pub, Gandalf talking about Mordor, he wrote a suicide note 3 days before he killed himself, more than once, a year after his suicide, so amazingly powerful and rich, that rich language he’s so good at, a Robert E. Howard movie that was funny, Dennis Dorgan, Sailor Steve, a Breckinridge Elkins is a cartoon, a dumb smart guy, Popeye style villains, A Gent From Bear Creek, they don’t advertize it, MFA creative writing woman, his suicide note as a poem, June 18th 1937, The Cross Plains Review, The Tempter by Robert E. Howard, dream away the ages, who are you, I am Rest, Alpha and Omega, lusted for the resting, set me free, this world of human cattle, long I sat, never free, huger grew the phantom’s figure, through the fogs of old Time came striding, gliding gliding, from the shadows into day, he put the trigger in the poem, why would you write your suicide note in rhyme?, because he’s a poet, a trigger warning, cause people to commit suicide, never talk about war, just let everybody learn it on their own, “died of suicide”, you have to coddle everybody, you don’t go outside, comfortably nesting, she’s a podcaster, she’s a streamer, Australian music in the 20th century, 3 viewers, that’s us now, a yard party, on this note, we all should, see you all next time, Mike is 84 years old and looking at the world a lot differently, a good morning/afternoon, lunch/dinner.

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #860 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Return Engagement by Margaret St. Clair AND The Black Abbot Of Puthuum by Clark Ashton Smith

The SFFaudio Podcast #860 – Return Engagement by Margaret St. Clair (28 minutes) read by Ben Tucker for LibriVox AND The Black Abbot of Puthuum by Clark Ashton Smith (54 minutes) read by Tommy Patrick Ryan, followed by a discussion of both. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Will Emmons, and Tommy Patrick Ryan

Talked about on today’s show:
1950S, 1930S, fantasy and science fiction, a nice match, correspondence between Margaret St. Clair and Clark Ashton Smith, different, somebody saves somebody else, the way they are told, why did she tell the story that, resentful, the unnamed I, straightforwardly, the story is better that way, twice as long but less happens, what other connections do they have, sex and food and drink, food and drink and a lot less sex, a science fiction story about class resentment, a low status person upset, less intelligent than him?, less canny, less knowledgeable, naive, an ugly American, a sailor who has traveled all over the planet, how you act in Saudi Arabia, strictly by the word “information”, successful, a famous cook, makes recipes from the solar system, a really good sense of taste?, so full of resentment, on an airplane with a celebrity, docked two months pay, by being generous?, not mean?, a psychic, a comeuppance, has to go back every year and do the dance, porcupine people, hedgehog people, silly stories, with the lens of 100 years later, a little cringey, being a negro, overt racism, movement, timeframe, white people afraid of the black man coming and taking their women, mandingo, purple lips, red teeth, three inch claws, horns, a monster who happens to be black, an incubus, unnecessarily black, a multivalent word, an evil abbot, not even the actual abbot, we don’t need to collapse that valency, one is evil, one is defeated by evil, how this was constructed, a Robert E. Howard story, a Solomon Kane story, an evil innkeeper, lock this door, a house where they kill travelers, a Margaret St. Clair story that deals with the same thing, the Benders, kill travelers, a historical kind of thing, on the Oregon Trail, murdered their stuff is taken, are the incestuous, probably German, the daughter or the wife?, what you get in The Odyssey, cyclops closes the door and starts eating you, Circe, guest host relationship and violations of it, black wall in the desert, not a natural sudden reason, forced into it, she takes the agency and chooses the pikeman, funny hook or twist at the end, cut up his fingers, cheat each other, this beefy guy, the heroic work, he did all the stuff, Spanish for spoon [Cuchara], a big bluff dumb strong guy, wiry, D&D characters, a very D&D story, a oneshot, make the abbot a Drow, the dead one?, a black underground elf, African, they’re evil too, Drizzt Do’Urden, drow ranger with a panther, Gencon, a statue of him, super well known, deep enough into the fandom of D&D, R.A. Salvatore, accidently omitted Clark Asthon Smith, mini-quest, dungeon crawl, at the end of the story you have been entertained, that’s it, Peter Schmitt [@raskolnik2] tweets, precursors to Fafhard And The Grey Mouser, one of them gets eaten by a pudding, further adventures, disposable, go along and hangout with these guys, weird sense of honour about it, the dudes eat humans, serving them meat, strange meat, tuck in, they skipped the meal, they wanted to skip everything, the beer, chary, tasting the liquor, a potent kind of ale, baked meats that neither could identify, the effects of the ale, premature sleepiness, the eunuch, simba, enraged tembo, set in Zothique, dying earth far future continent, the black men come from the north, an inverted world, lamias are called out, he loves sex monsters, almost every Clark Ashton Smith story, fun while reading, insubstantial in terms of heft, ornate and pretty, a sidequest, shoot it, the animals are getting upset, donkeys and horses, is he bent?, the strange meats, constitution save, investigate, four pages of exposition, from the title of the story, slay a monster, boss battle, minions, the no shadow thing is cool, a ripoff of another story in Weird Tales previously, the same plot as The Tower Of The Elephant, a previous guest host relationship that went bad, stapled to a chair, a team-up, Conan and another master thief, shoot me again, a sympathy kill, kill this guy to help him, murder hobos, kill him!, he’s an evil wizard, sometimes the evil wizard is the good guy, misery unending, by the numbers, ornates it up, why did this story come into existence?, wanted to make a sale, enjoyed writing it, artistic merit, with the language and the immersion, a lesser artistic achievement, a prose poem, he loves poetry, poetic language, an ironwood bow, so cool, dark, incredibly dense, wood that will sink, why would you have that, material is superimporant to Clark Ashton Smith stories, enough description of the armour, chainmail and leather, enchanted arrows, bronze, acclaimed by bowmen, and all his brood, magic arrows mattered, special potions or elixirs, fell asleep, try to stay awake this time, the girl and him were talking, divide the girl, we worked way to hard for this and she’s way too hot, he shook the helmet vigorously, the forefingered talon, he’s cheating his buddy, dearly coveted index talon, what are you doing?, is she dumb?, is she not present, more of a chiding, they’re not bros as much as Fafhard And The Grey Mouser, the button on the story, endings are superimportant, inter-related, a lot of people on twitter talking about what science fiction is vs. what fantasy is, bad takes, fantasy and science fiction are the same thing, space and tech vs. swords and magic, an adventure stories, let’s test this theory with semi-random stories, like both authors, fantasy and weird fiction, main mode is science fiction, technology in every instance, a grandma who is on a return trip from Venus, a special spot nobody talks about, through the thief, bribed and studied his way into finding a forbidden city on Venus, a very Clark Ashton Smithy sort of story, on her way back the thief has a comeuppance, the sungod of venus, magics a guy out of existence, we don’t have perfect access to all of reality, worshiping strange phenomena not fiction, not wholly embodied in physical form, in the illustration, if you scroll down far enough, our cookbook writer being zapped for the first time, hedgehog guys, zappers on their heads, crests, even more technological than it is, tomato babies, discover in the story, the new novel thing, a really horrible tweet, too stupid, political compass with star wars and star trek 2 others some other fantasy on the other axis, a really bad way of thinking, the reason Star Trek episodes are good, later Vulcans go into Pon Far, space salmon, that’s the idea of that episode, his spawning ground, a cool idea, subsequent episodes that have that, facts about Star Trek lore are not inherently interesting, the idea that they’re going to explore, warp engines and transporters, when some idea inherent in them, split into 2 Rikers, what if your life took a diversion how would you feel, the transporter technology, philosophical ideas in a fantasy story, adventurey, Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories, how to be in the world, you exist in a place where there is a heartland and hinterland, how ought one act, from one cave to another island, how ought one act, lost the thread, rare for fantasy to engage to ideas of technology, Star Wars, second mode, replicator stuff, social science fiction, what if you live in a society that thinks everyone should have a good death?, submit himself to euthanasia, time for him to be euthanized, good thing or bad thing, philosophical dilemma, to get to that idea, Eric [Rabkin], along the lines of, what could or might have been, what could be and what could be the implications, what does it mean, a teleportation device, and human behavior, what does that implicate, exploring the human condition, does the fantasy story today explore the human condition?, explore sexuality, the most interesting thing in it is there is a harem that needs to be added to it, most interesting idea, here’s William Emmons’ little fantasy, a literature of pure craft, similar to literary fiction, what the narrative is doing, a very different mode from science fiction, joined at the hip, it’s metaphor, realistic fiction there’s no metaphor, Walter Kirn and Matt Tiabi, A Good Man Is Hard to find, a road trip, grandma in the back seat with some kids, an agenda, if I was a painter I’d pay that, racist, a reflection rather than a metaphor, a space sailor who goes on a space cruise, exhausted the entirety of realistic fiction, Ulysses by James Joyce, a roman-a-clef, every scene is paralleled, an interesting mode, Milan Kundera, realistic fiction is something, when Conan fights a god from space, that’s not the same as wanting to divorce my wife, non-genre fiction, literary fiction, in the book trade, market novels, an established genre, considered serious art, high falutin people, we don’t agree on what makes it good, a better wordsmith than Margaret St. Clair, sentence by sentence, better at ideas by a lot, obsessed with drugs, flowers and their relationship to sexuality, aliens that are not humans, they have some human like qualities, not considered intelligent, circles back on that, the official line vs. the experienced sailor, he’s the canny one, a third character, why are you so resentful, didn’t teach you this stuff in school, how much you don’t learn, bottom up education, top down on earth, kind of cool, very often the case, an aunt stuck on earth, a nephew brings her various plants, a response to the idea, eat whatever your parents give you, stole it from a chicken, the loss of the chicken baby, veganism, a science fiction idea, veganism, vegetarianism, health, things in animal foods, chicken beef or eggs, a lot healthier, kindness to animals, that’s huge, environmental, cow farming, milk or beef, methane, internal environment, external environment, third concern, it is cruel to be cruel, the act of killing, distressing to the animal, when these creatures are not considered human, eat their souls, the contract is not with them, it is with their governing body, the stewards of these creature, in loco parentis, the chicken dance, the flower dance, the point of the story, the heart of the story, what makes someone or something human or not, the constitution, not a part they’re focused on today, so messed up, women were not considered people, all personal, lust, contracted out, themselves lusty, personal stuff, not very high in the brain, literary fiction, double twinning, the semi-dead abbot, evil incubus replacement abbot, her own sexual desire, Clark Ashton Smith lust stories, lust goes in many directions, an exploration of an idea, an exercise in colour and scent, they don’t know what to do, ways of analyising stories, C.L.A.I.M. character, language, allusion, imagery, message, that is there life, allusion is the hardest one, on the planet, all of Shakespeare, the poems, how outdated Jesse is, that’s so old, how many things about, what words does he repeat, he’s great at it, almost always pointed toward message, she’s focused on some idea she’s exploring, look at this idea, what do you think of my exploration of it?, that’s not the best mode probably to do it, a fur coat turns into a pine tree, fantastical escape to a mirror world, C.S. Lewis, Tolkien escaping into a fantasy world, aspects of that, The Lord Of The Rings is not for the children, had an idea, a story for that language, create a mythology, specific to England, Arthurian legend, it’s England, there’s no Scottish hobbits, in the creation, fictional language, got so lost in it, a reason for all this language, a fun story for kids, The Silmarillion, in which to escape, Forgotten Realms books, Dragonlance, places to escape into, massive diminishing returns, Ringworld 1, Ringworld 2, 3, 4, use the one to escape into the other, very solid, you don’t need to have a series, the resentful sailor, so cozy, not really idea fiction, twig your brain, watching Star Wars vs. watching Star Trek, brain stimulated, older Star Trek, more recent Star Wars movies, does Star Wars scratch the same itch as the movies go on, the sequel movies, do kids like them?, the prequels, special effects, less for kids, the back stories, the sequels, Luke’s a bitch, Han dies, but Chewbacca gets a medal, go on to be heroes, the extended universe, an entire alien invasion, went and hid, like Obi Wan or Yoda, hermitting, Andor, the story of Stalin, historical fiction, empire people, everybody’s villainous, using Star Wars to tell a stories, light sticks, a sword guy, tricked with spaceships, that’s not right, we profit by trying to understand what makes something good, better and better at discrimination in a positive way, look for the signs, standard Lovecraft, standard Robert E. Howard, very flowy, you wrestle with Howard, you have to, the Kull stuff, not fully justified, his boxing stuff, his western stories, Ghost Stories, a ghost boxing story, he’s a really funny guy, ghost boxing, you get killed in the ring and you come back fighting, The Spirit Of Tom Molyneaux, better male role models, suicide, canny dude, sword into anything, there’s something there, what Lovecraft does that Smith doesn’t do, The Moon Bog, a pocket version of The Rats In The Walls, a story for St. Patrick’s Day, he’s dwelling on what it means to have a legacy you’re not fully aware of, race as a synonym for your family tree, mom and dad die in mental asylum, what does it say about me that my ancestry is a cannibalistic monstrosity, deep time and it’s connection to us, very unusual, Sadastor, Weird Tales, 1930, almost a prose poem, a fair lamia, above the sources of the Nile, the lamia was vexed, fearful of her lips, cautious of her embrace, mythical tears, the demon tells a story to her to make her feel better, a tale of sexual conquest through astral projection, he really digs lamias, succubus and incubuses, he has sex with her, make you feel better, a lot funnier, so silly, so fantastical, no humans involved, the luxury of luxurious things?, everybody knows she’s a lamia, hasn’t had sex in two weeks, Farnsworth Wright can’t do anything with it, Lovecraft Smith commentary, as hefty, horny and materialistic, haunted, one’s a drinker and the other isn’t, let him drink, he lived longer than everybody else, some good stuff out of him, the great appeal of his sculpture, back when he was alive, his drawings, his poetry and his prose poetry, hard to get people to do shows on poetry, epic poem, something of the Necromancer, George Sterling, an influence, why George Sterling liked him, A Wine Of Wizardry, liked to tipple, did him in, turn to my lady Margaret St. Clair, she puts soma in it on purpose, Lazarus, artificial meat, shown to me, this podcast, a topic show on something, what?!, food?!, in fairy tales people never say I love you tyhey just give you food, Ambrosia? [The Food Of The Gods], carnivores, all the meat is fake now, really good, speaking before a senate committee, the very idea people would consume the flesh of animal, really popular fake meat, cannibal, a replicant of human flesh, goes deep into us, the body of Christ, becoming divine, spiritual, H.G. Wells’ The Food Of The Gods, a giant chicken, The Space Merchants, aka Gravy Planet, grown in this vat, food is a technology, cooking is a technology, should we adopt them or not, ads for listerine and toothpaste and tampax, as a man, up in arms about it, yelling at people, a diva cup person?, silicone cup, a consumable good, use it over and over again, absolutely would not allow, the ingredients list, in Germany, no crap in here, processed foods, halal, their not allowed to put certain things into their foods, religious stricture, raw meat, raw apple, pay a little more, guaranteed in whatever way that means, sugar is added to almost everything, German purity laws for beer, water, hops, barley, sugar, that’s it, cheap, selling drugs, baking soda in your cocaine, filling it up with crack, fentanyl in their heroin, jet juice, sharing with his passenger, his zero-g hooch, his lips had drawn down in a sour grimace, a dose of picrin, so much worldbuilding, unpleasant memories, what had gotten into us, how the old man had felt, Tisiphone, a celebrity, fine emporium clothes, a wonderful batch of juice, biliol berries, martian fungi and grains, mangosteens, durian, cocla extract, away from the anti-gravs, cloudy peach green, under his bunk, diplitating kit, extraordinary, a man of taste, a connoisseur, a cookbook, you can’t eat the Jupiterian food, a moon, semi-electrical, tomato babies, what do you do when you’re at the market, an asian fruit, spiky on the outside, a really bad smell, a delicious taste, creamy and custardy flavour, very scoopable, asian watermelon, not everybody likes it, he asks about it, they pour him more, he’s mad himself, he seduced me, the narrator, what are you so mad about, McBreem, he didn’t mention me in the thanks section, Farquarson, he shouldn’t be as mad, why does this story exist as it was, some celebrity comes over to your house, he used in the movie, you’re mad at him, why this story is pretty good, cool tech world changing stuff, her interest in food, a fury, that fits, near the end, a non-humanoid species, Zink explained to him, the interplanetery, bindin’, a barrel full of nuclear bond glues, extract it, she’s very funny, a Star Trek solution, not word salad, technobabble, the way they wrote Star Trek The Next Generation, plausible, reverse the neutron flow, that’s not the point, the point is the idea, little subtle ideas about things, drunkard characters, the other fun part about it, he knows things, lovely jet-juice, the opening line, the ingratitude of humans, interplanetary units, fish a terrestrial out of water, a lucite spitoon, working class, breeding dachshunds, gardening, a rare bulb business, a classicist, wiccan, autobiographies, who is this author, introducing the authors, a homebody having fun at home, a retrospective introduction, the purpose of science fiction is to prepare the way for a global consciousness, good husband characters, married late, son by marriage, step-son, meet the author, 1947, Startling Stories, March 1947, hang on tightly, H.H. Munro, Saki, solid comparison, off and on, young sprout indeed, immediate cause, detective and other stories, rejected by a different bunch of people, a feeling that they cannot compete successfully in it, Kansas, propagated the carnations, low quality housekeeping, funny names for dogs, they have fleas like ordinary dogs, The Soma Racks, a sense of her character, shots fire by her in a letter to Weird Tales, Bobby Derie’s blog, June 1934, about ten years, another story by Edmond Hamilton, nothing but exclamation marks, flies in my soup, science fiction at its worst, a waste of space, vampire and werewolf stories, garlic is something to put in salad, a rounded jewel-like self-containedness, Jules De Grandin is a pain in the neck, Seabury Quinn, not what Jesse reads for, Fantastic Adventures, 1946, Rocket To Limbo, presenting the author, she’s got bangs, send a photograph, snapshots, airmail one in, meet a deadline, women liking to talk about themselves, fiction instead of fact, Frank Stockton’s My Terminal Moraine, Jules Verne, old Hugo Gernsback’s publication “Electrical Something”, science and fantasy fiction, “battle between worlds”, human interest style stories, turned to writing, “quality stories”, detective or quality magazines, the same kick, personal taste, a great deal of fun, gadgetry of super-science, the laws of thermodynamics, straight out of her studies, pet hobbies, carnations, flowering bulbs, financial hobbies, chamber of commerce, Richmond, California, if we could build a thirty foot wall, pulp writers, the big slick magazines, the pulps at their best, touch a genuine folk tradition, balladic quality, the slicks lack, the columns of The New Yorker, science fantasy fiction, editors and readers, tough PDFs, some scans are not great, readable, small font, Frank Stockton’s, a moraine, the gravel from a retreating glacier, the Rocky Mountains, the glaciers carve the mountains as they push through, down towards the center of the earth, a river of rock, gravel, millions of years old, buried underneath things, a recently retreating glacier, found in the ice, show you what they find in the moraines of retreating glaciers, satchels that got lost somehow, Moraine Park, they look like a river or rock, terrible, not on LibriVox, sell Tommy on it, The Lady Or The Tiger, leave the ending off, what do you think happened?, somewhere in the east, obsessed with randomness, behind door number 1 is death, behind door number 2 is, half barbaric, half civilized, just like her father, she knows, what is behind each door, indicating for her happiness or her happiness, a quick death or marriage to woman who is not her, half jealous, half nice, character revealing, which do you think she indicated, so well balanced there’s no way to know which one it is, not insubstantial, Recalled To Life by Robert Silverberg, another pair of shorts, record some stuff again, pleasantly surprised, the room noise, the narrator, daily classes, new stuff on LibriVox, more of an Alex (pulpcovers novel), a gold medal paperback crime novel?, new Arthur C. Clarke, adventure fiction with lightsabers, fantasy anyway, peace, pair something with Will, knowing what to pick, done in two weeks, two hours, Philip K. Dick, The Ship Who Sang, Ithaqua by August Derleth, sometimes he’s actually okay and good, The Snow Thing, The Wendigo by Algernon Blackwood, what would pair well with August Derleth, and then there were two, dm business, continue think immigrants are there to destroy my father’s mill, broadly not true of Venezuelan people, fleeing, megaprison, my favourite president, very Jonathan of Jesse, favourite president, kill the fewest, Carter killed fewer than most in recent memory, Mitterand, he’s dead, Macron?, executive branch, the king and the street, a funny weird twisted mirror, competence, not be focused on enriching a class of people who are not a member im a member of, things happening in the world, transnational people, abeing meeting in DAVOS, Bildeberg Meeting, annual off-the record, chattam house rules, Nayib Bukele, pretty scary, extracting slave value from them, Salvadorians, cutting down crime, if your news businesses, old businesses, French Guiana, Papillon (1973), if you had watched more movies, Devil’s Island, love me some human trafficking, late friend Gary, how to look for human trafficking, talk to the staff at the hotel and you’ll find them, southernmost key, Key West, Peter Santorello, Haitians, artists, a facilitator for ultra wealthy people to have fun vacations, aquatic sport, living his best life as he can, how Bryan Alexander operates too, Qatar, the best use of Bryan’s skills, kids not getting any tutoring, protect your time, drive down everybody’s wages even further, not serving the wrong function of your job, send French people far away, the guy is popular in El Salvador, prisoners, what’s going to happen there, bitcoin vs. regular crypto, Maxime Bernier, such a fig leaf, Wilfred Laurier, most don’t have French accents, also French, a way of keeping the Quebecois in, mostly a western Canadian, young manness, skibum, not working for Canada’s best interest, for Canada to live Canada must die, very silly, immigration, Alberta First, people getting upset, what’s the opposite?, fuck your country, middle class is kicked, not very American, or New Zealand, very pro American, Obama did the same thing, more spread out, copyright change, opportune, the federal employees?, Elon Musk, an Afrikaner, easier to get in, work permit, income comes from loans, a house of cards, still bombing Yemen, leverage with Putin, improving things vs. making things worse, an Epstein guy, Israel guy, look at the photos dude, pee tape, ideological affinity, mean?, lack of go along to get along, Ukraine invasion, the most recent one, it didn’t start in 2014, it didn’t start in 2021, use of military force is either good bad, liberate would be another way of putting it, North Korea invaded South Korea, puppet government in Ukraine, Syngman Rhee is a lot like our guy in Ukraine, the loser her is Ukraine, made the situation better for whom, also Slavs, Serbs, Poles identify as Poles more than Slavs, it’s complex, Russians in Ukraine, the Soviet Union, war is bad and kills a lot of people, Paul would have said, Putin could just leave, pretty true, Stalin could have just left Moscow, no holocaust going on, incursion into Kursk, repel the invader, what time you want?, 25 minutes to solve eastern european history, boistered vs. bolstered, similar, an alternative term, boisterous, colloquial English, Kentuckian, the English speaking peoples, WWI and WWII, the English speaking peoples, so many bullshit stories on when Canada became a country, we fought at Vimy Ridge under our own command, Canada is dead but dreaming, could be a good idea, triggered by border stuff, what nation states do, I like immigrants, I like immigrants too, successive administrations, cruel to them, using them as a tool, building a deportation machine, border security guards getting worked, get to the root of it, stop making people flee their countries, might not even win his own seat [he didn’t], People’s Party Of Canada, Canadian national identity, immigration, view all policies, platform, gender ideology, global warming, Canadian identity might be interesting, trap a Canadian, proud to be a Canadian, make something really funny happening, what makes somebody Canadian, not American, defined only in opposition, what are the French, what are the German, a sense of belonging, project, sentiments, trust and common understanding, gradually integrated, multiculturalism, the dad, Pierre Trudeau, Justin’s dad or theoretical dad, the Castro one is cute, much cooler than the reality, integrated into our society, with a distinct flavour, official multiculturalism, what’s unstated here, leftover fears about Sharia law, cult of diversity, pushed his ideology, extreme multiculturalism, quotation marks, no core identity, cherish and maintain, cutting spending, a lot of money in it, for every cultural group there is money available to help them celebrate, multiculturalism budget, Maillardville, Festival de Bois, party of the forest, innocuous, francophone festival, these precedes Justin, my son is Cuban!, blackface paint, tortieree, meat pie, pride is really scary, a sin, in the time available, gender ideology, next time, focus on the multiculturalism, in our time, a time thing, if Canada is a real country…, European identity, bicultural, binational, Upper Canada and Lower Canada, Ontario and Quebec, told you’re a citizen, Indians, First Nations, Native Americans, Amerindian, for treaty peoples, vaguely when WWII happened, voting, 1934, it’s weird, kinda makes sense, reservations, Canadian identity doesn’t exist, Rambo, Sylvester Stallone, First Blood (1982), filmed locally, goes crazy, calmed down and arrested, 2nd movie, boss comes and says, prove there are POWs in Vietnam, a big thing in the 1980s, POW flag, the Vietnamese and the Russians have been using them for farm labourers, betrayed again, betrayed by the politicians, goes to Afghanistan, find him in Thailand, the gallant people of Afghanistan, a funny speech, super hilarious, he’s an Indian, they make him into an Indian, half German half Indian, he gets a bow and is riding a horse, Indians signed up for the military at a disproportionate rate, fairly accurate, giving stinger missiles, used against the evil evil Russians, it’s all projection, headband, a little stone piece of jade, you take home to America, really base cartoonist propaganda, Germand and American, a melting pot, melted down this Italian American into a german indian, sundered from the land, Americans are not Canadians, institutions, the German country is bigger than the country of Germany, their sense of identity comes from Julius Caesar, showing up and talking about what Britain is like, a fun riff, Heart Of Darkness, when the Romans came into Britain, this dark country, everything that goes on in the Congo, the story is told in the time it takes for the tide to change, is it science fiction, definitely fiction, is it horror?, horror is hard to understand, is it fantasy, with that direction backwards, the terror the terror, the horror the horror, more than one movie, dying words, The Horla!, The Horla!, The Secret Sharer, also him, who loved him, that guy Joseph Conrad, Robert Silverberg, we could pair The Secret Sharer with The Secret Sharer, was he slav tho?, immigrant from Poland, eastern european names, Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, say their names right, Minnesota, Scandinavia up there, 1059, vikings fighting indian, runic stone found under a tree, did the go to Minnesota?, Kentuckian culture, really cold, Paul doesn’t speak to Will on bluesky, sad story, new Paul comments, hurt his feelings, gotta live with your choices, kicking yourself over and over, it wasn’t unreasonable, the irony, it all happens over hate for Jonathan, in disgrace, block for no apparent reason, Jesse is a lot, too many dms, at peace with it, suddenly change, beecome a lot less?, seems unlikely, new Jesse: a little, less concentrated, more diluted, new recipe, The Moon Bog by H.P. Lovecraft, ancient, nice illustration, fearsome region, all the peasants and police in county Meath, the frogs piping in the swamps, right!, it’s happening right now!, a nice guy to know, nice racist guy, just like Jonathan, funny tho, interested in understanding other minds, how dare you, sir!, he rhymed with peasants and police with county Meath, no one will stop Jesse, super racist, let’s read his stuff, quite racist, Koreans are pretty racist, Instagram, what you go there for, funny racism, kids are not okay, pressing the number 9, bye.

Return Engagement by Margaret St. Clair

The Black Abbot Of Puuthum by Clark Ashton Smith - art by Virgil Finlay

The Black Abbot Of Puthuum art by Sergiy Krykun

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #854 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Candide by Voltaire

The SFFaudio Podcast #854 – Candide by Voltaire, (3 hours 49 minutes) read by Ted Delorme for LibriVox, followed by a discussion of both. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Will Emmons, and Tom Pace

Talked about on today’s show:
done in French, as a person, very European, very funny, a few digs on France, complaining about Canada, fighting over a few acres of snow, super-dense, an interesting introduction, a good argument, Michel Houellebecq, Lovecraft, Against The World Against Life, the only book most people ever read by him, notable works, The Maid Of Orleans, on the list since a teenager, apocryphal meeting, Benjamin Lay, Catherine The Great of Russia, very popular, a rock star to your inauguration, birthday dinners, I am the king of Poland, I am also the king of Poland, a lot of the jokes, you should read this book, really funny, nice and short, new jokes this time, slaves, hit with a bull’s pizzle, a whip, a pizzle is a penis, penne, pen and pencil, dog treats, cattle’s pizzles, not a valued menu item (except with dogs), the sex throughout, the rape jokes, the rude jokes, hit with a bull’s penis, makes so much sense, the names are all funny, candid, telling you the secrets, an offshoot from the story, in a library, 501 Must Read Books, classics, Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, writings about his wife, Surprised By Joy, drawn from the name of the character, the etymology wrong, cunnagonde, good pussy, a naive narrator, horrible looking, gotten stubborn, a dig in on some Jesuits, throwin digs, really good at making pastry, all based on a real guy’s philosophy, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, all is for the best, the best of all, Spinoza, “the best of all possible worlds”, high end reading at the time, addressing the problem of evil in the world, how is that compatible with a loving god, it couldn’t be any better, the minimum number of horrible things happen, he could have made the world worse, people suffering, god did his best, a number of postulates, an important conclusion to have, a defense of god, god did his best, taking the piss on this idea, suffering is bad, a consolation, a baby run over by a truck, birth defects?, who are they good for?, god gave me this burden because I’m strong enough to carry it, a Robert Frippism, suffered in interesting ways, a grateful comearound, an opportunity to develop, especially addressive of the world, earthquake, a more beautiful or safer city, balcony collapse, kid got squished, so did a cat, just throw a cat or a racoon in there, operate on the assumption this is a silly idea, the universe is as best it could be, human beings being meat eaters, eating cows is mean to cows, you can’t have jesse without him being a carnivore, be like the Maasai turn their dicks into pizzles for whipping people, a dog nuzzling a duck, Leibniz is right, the corollary to this, the worst of all possible worlds, how so, there isn’t another world, we imagine another planet, if the laws of the universe are consistent across, implies alternatives, counterfactual, just as truthfully, the point of this philosophy is to give you consolation, balconies fall because of gravity, become better engineers, make earthquakes survivable, we didn’t make the world, god did his best, a convoluted way of making yourself feel better, re-meetings, misfortune, still beautiful, stomach cut open, ravished by work, he’s been hung, everything is okay in the end, it was for the best, cultivate your garden, a compatible and also good philosophy, worried about Jesse’s mental health with regard to the politics, Canadian flag bullshit, talking to boomers, people stuck in tv mode, upset about what’s happening that you can’t control, bitter and wrong, make some PDFs, to read some more books, the resources to watch the murder that’s happening in Gaza, reasons for sharing, a compatible philosophy, all the philosophies, very funny and fun book, ten thousand thoughts an hour, a bookshelf rooted, notes and biblography of Jordan Peterson’s Maps Of Meaning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 And The Final Solution In Poland, that book is 70 hours long, The Rape Of Nanking, committed suicide after wrioting it, Unit 731, more brutal, go cold, realistically a good framing, a blunt tool, having birthday cake, about as simple and effective, can’t they just have your cake it and eat too, it’s awesome, not a natural disaster, a human folly story, pride and empire, we are better people, huge human mistakes, as best He could, full of sin, choice, a dumb guy who thinks that a guy who’s a philosopher is much wiser than he, disabused, audited the others, the number 3 version on LibriVox, spot on, very solid [John Van Stan, narrator], more Voltaire, Zadig, interested in the origins of the detective story, Sherlock Holmes was ripping off Poe, Voltaire did a comedic detective before, in the same style of Sherlock Holmes, C. August Dupin, a series of misfortunes happen to him, he observes things correctly, the colour of the horse, missing a horseshoe, a bit of fur caught on a treebranch, dog ran away, Micromégas, Scott Miller’s podcast, busy making new stuff, hallucinating, he was really good, contacted, a breakdown, they went nuts, will you forgive me type message, their gut torn open, kicked out of the castle in Germany, Portugal, at the house of a woman, the person that you loved, let’s talk, two or three thousand words of response, a weird thing, the plot as it is, each chapter tells you what happens as the title, trunks, fartcastle, mooning over Cunégonde, maid, mistress to the Don in portugal, I can tell a story better than you, I only have one buttcheek, she’s not just the daughter of a king, she’s the daughter of a pope, Roman Catholics, that’s part of the joke, illegitimate children, everybody knows, the world in this book is very fallen, everything is full of sin, the enhancement, the story of misery, Brazil?, Argentina?, line up a whole bunch of dudes to tell their horror stories, horror stories of life, their horror story is they got bad service at a restaurant one time, never done something to a friend and regretted it for decades, that kind of punishment of yourself, out of duty, that’s hilarious, it points in every direction, the pain is in every direction, we’re all fools is the takeaway, people who’s trauma is so minimal, the worst thing we’ve ever experienced is the worst thing we’ve ever experienced, terrible things happen to them, live to tell the story, Pangloss still believes , it has to still be true, a very good mocking takedown, just tend to your garden, you can work on yourself a lot easier than other people, you should lift more, if lifiting is the thing you think is important, the manichaeism, Martin, in Suriname, El Dorado, Utopia by Thomas More, Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift, women chased by monkeys, the monkeys were biting their butts, sexual dimorphism, they breed with monkeys to a certain degree, quarterings back in your ancestry, one of the quarterings was missing 75 countings back, I am the rightful king of Brittany, a lot of people still believe in and operate, such a short amount of space, comparing it, a sleep after shooting, in the Bulgarian war, an ultramarksman, without rustling the leaves, whipped so hard, I was impressed by the British Navy’s recruiting methods, have some cash, nah man you’re good, how do you feel about the king of Bulgaria?, you’re in for life, you’re in the army now, boy, take the gauntlet, 9000 guys whip him, the honorable thing to do, please shoot me in the head, all the skin stripped from his back but he’s fine, it’d have to be a cartoon, too horrific otherwise, the cartoon version of this, hard cuts in comics, in French, it is cartoonish, there’s no talking animals, unbelievably fun and funny, he’s taking the piss, there’s nothing he doesn’t make fun of, tied down, he killed the Jesuit and proves that, a juncture, ridiculous, The Mission (1986), Black Robe (1991), continuous rape scenes, not being able to ride on horses very well, the juxtaposition, sold into slavery, stabbed open, that Monty Python sketch [the Four Yorkshiremen sketch], Deep Space 9, Bajor needs the energy, tamed earth, fingernails to plow, humour is the best solution to almost all problems, share that horror story, it makes you feel better, God did his best, when kittens get crushed, no help at all, I loved that kitten, the kitten’s mom, isn’t it hilarious, enough of a consolation, tell each other our horror stories and laugh about it, on a list of books to read, an internet friend, school is about reverence, an irreverent book, some fancy king, you’re not allowed to make fun of that guy, a particular heresy, the devil has creative powers in the world, in contrast, the Devil’s at work, the theory that Solomon Kane is insane, he commits genocide against vampires, The Moon Of Skulls, Red Shadows, demonic things, or vampires, crazed black people, their unholy idol, King Solomon, famous as a judge, and Cain is the killer, his own brother, condemned to walk the earth, the right hand of God, the normal reading, the subversive reading, deluded, a more fun reading, how interested Howard was in Cain, an alliance with a JuJu man, a Puritan in fact, by the devil’s active work in the world, that’s actually good actually, earthquakes are good actually, there’s an earthquake in this story, Lisbon gets earthquaked, make a meal, really good at burning people, without a philosopher to give him guidance, he picks up Martin, Jesse doesn’t describe to ideologies, are you sure about that?, is that an ideology?, more obligation to go along, basic team human behavior, tie yourself to the mast of a sinking ship, a huge mistake, the comparison is almost perfect, both abstractions and connectable, an up and down, trying to appease an idea of god by burning somebody at the state, punished by an earthquake, a good thing to do, the exact opposite happens, either god making a joke of it, the god of this book is Voltaire, a planet spanning book, Europe and South America, a cross section of travel, we gotta talk about El Dorado, jewels on the ground, have a meal, pay with pebbles, buildings made out of gold, they leave with sheep full of diamonds, spends that money continously, 10,000 peasters, 20,000 peasters!, nothing bad seems to happen there, how come the whole earth isn’t like that, engaging with Utopia, no accounting for taste, philosophy of optimism, what Thomas More is grappling with, internal themes, conversations, needs to join the court of a king, should we bow, should we scrape, should we lick the dust, go hug him, this is an anti-king, the live action version get Jeff Bridges wearing the bathrobe, couldn’t we all get along better?, making fun of Utopia, wouldn’t it better if we could be richer than other people, no need unmet, his quest, his slave, Cacombo, the native, why people buy expensive stuff, lord it over other people, I paid full price, the badge of the product, overpriced handbag, she wants to be upper-class, not wanting to be inferior, lording it over that girl at school, funny funny stuff, not a funny book, stuff written in the 20th century, time creates a barrier between us and our ancestors, the world we live in, the people are the same, same kinds of foibles and personality defects, the systems are different, shownoting The Aeneid, the story of the founding of Rome to fit within the mythology of the founding of Rome, a piece of propaganda for the Romans, figuring out the audience, see what these symbols mean, their religion is more leagalistic, a person 2000 years ago reading this book, hone in on it, glimmers, this book feels pretty modern, lots of kings, no electricity, more like Plato, more like Play-Doh?, not a novel exactly, a modern novel (except it is much shorter), more of that please, not Thomas More please, concise, to the point, the chapters are short, things happen immediately, cut some of the adventures out, the stories are pretty short, a series of unfortunate events, the beginning of the intro by Littel, 1759, in ridicule of the notion, the world has been a gayer place, written in 3 days, like the number 40, a magic number, not the right date, he’s right but not in the details, Lovecraft is channeling a certain mode in certain stories, every real person is a richer character than any fictional character, one named wonders, volt is electricity, he’s shocking, he’s playing a game, jokeism?, horrible tweet, Max Blumenthal from the Grayzone, they learned it from these guys, a horrible truth, put that star of David, they learned it from, Nakba, Holocaust, burnt sacrifice, the catastrophe, this ideal world, you can see why the argument make sense walking out of the Holocaust, built to help support the creation of Israel, settler colonialism, you can laugh, you’re crying, are you Joker?, the Joker, feels everything, wants to lash out violently, recent Joker movies, people who humiliated him, he’s laughing, in the second Nakba, Taxi Driver (1976), this baggage, DC Comics universe, salience, a morbid symptom, laugh or cry, not prescriptive, take this Candide and call me in the morning, that’s why we share it, busy lifting, doing more than cultivating your own garden, gardening tips, lifting videos on instagram, lifting bins of potatoes, sculpting, I got books to read, challenging yourself, interject, into the depths, avoid the analysis, J.R.R. Tolkien, the emotional effect of the story, have a garden, he does get a little farm, they’re all coming together, a bunch of diamonds hidden in somebody’s pocket, I think I still want to marry her, sell him back into slavery, and they’re bored, burn the garden down just to get his way, Candide is punished, he doesn’t like her personality, he doesn’t like her looks, good at baking desserts, Colony by Philip K. Dick, so bad at writing military stuff, goes into the bathroom for a shower, the towel tries to kill him, comparing notes, “I trusted the rug completely”, rugs all the way down, stable in the new meta, that’s true for us too, we learn to wiggle our legs and arms, runaround and grab cookies, why am I using this walker?, who I am again?, nobody gets out of this alive, the way to approach it, slavery is bad, let’s sell him into slavery, seems objectively more dangerous than ours, even with its problems Europe is more stable, we have other problems, he was right, laughter is the solution, not trusting anything, have a good laugh over it, is that an ism?, probably, you have an ideology, I like this, it’s not manicheanism, what is it?, lying is bad, first strategy, what is my ideology if I haven’t spelled it out, cosmicism, a follower of Jesseism, “there is no recognizable divine presence, such as a god, in the universe, and that humans are particularly insignificant in the larger scheme of intergalactic existence”, that’s fun, don’t worry about it, you’re nothing but a mote of dust in the beam of a sun with a short lifespan, does it require, ideology: define, “a system of ideas and ideals, especially one which forms the basis of economic or political theory and policy”, against copyright, it’s used as a censoring tool, a free speech absolutist, give em 10 years if they want, why not?, making it infinite, reasonablism?, eclectic, between Jesse and Jesse, do dogs have ideologies, they like bones, a set of behaviors, bring animals into a conversation, we are talking weird chimps, dogs don’t have policy, a special and rare and precious person, a very strange lady, a nice person too, strong will, not good when you are a little kid and have no defenses, tricks and techniques, an anti-ideology, ideologies make you week by outsourcing, not wanting to be weak, I like being effete, do you have the power to be as weak as a baby, putting on diapers, a weak colon, if you have a fetish, you wanna be a weak baby seems insane, weak like an infant, we all start off as infants who are weak, a newborn child, protected from insects, it’s mind is innocent, weakness and strength together, being obsessed with not being weak, lifting seems kinda silly, the only what is happiness, for a bear, rubbin against trees, what is happiness for a human?, ships or airplanes or tacos, doing intellectual works, writing poems, the real place where strength is needed, in the intellectual realm vs. lifting crates, quit the gym, new popular fads, all sailor related, pulling ropes and flipping big tires, get stuff off the ship, these are not sailors, sit for 8 hours, just observing, what kinda car they’re driving, they wanna be buff, skin salons and teeth whitening and nail salons, not a lot of personality improvement stores, a philosopher who gives you good argument, that’s why you got to Socrates, you don’t want to be mentally weak, that would hurt you, Paul in the New Testament, being spiritually strong vs. being physically strong, criticizing the use of physical strength, the psychological and intellectual training, the name Plato, broad or wide, short, he looks like a plate, he’s wider than he is tall, he’s a wrestler, wide in his variety of thought, a soldier wrestler, that was his nickname, I’ll wrestle you actually, bro, what is Plato’s real name, Aristocles, slave, time to work on your body and your mind, wrestle at symposia, where everything happened, some CBC guy on BlueSky, obscure social media network, Stephen Quinn of CBC, those Convoy types, we’re not the 51st state, getting ready for Flag Day, the day they switched the flag, the Suez Crisis, “peacekeeping”, if you call soldiers peacekeepers, Lester B. Pearson, why does Australia have the same flag, and New Zealand, why do they all have the Union Jack, pretend they’re not part of the British empire, a distinct society, we’re just these friendly dudes, Canada’s third way is to be the bully’s best friend, take nukes on or Bomarc missiles, laugh at Canada, because the TV told you to, don’t listen to the TV or radio guy, everyday is Flag Day in the USA, Jesse is mentally strong, Candide can help you mentally strong, if they’re not a mental baby, re-readable for one, the chapters are really short, a few jokes per chapter, like an episode of Friends, the cast of Friends in the adaptation of Candide, Buenos Aires, Abraham and his wife Sarah, just my sister, their relationship as brother and sister, a Wikipedia, a pun referring to the female genitalia, they’re brought up in a castle together, Candide is the son of the sister of the baron, not fully quartered, missing one of his provenances, at the very least they’re cousins, the reason he was disabused he was hanging out with her, they were half-siblings, son of the baron from another mother, that would make him the heir, the bastard heir, avoid more incest, underreporting, some of the scenes are elided, they don’t say they ate her buttock (but that’s what happened to it), chased away from his uncle’s home, marauding soliders, a lot of what could be seen as anti-jew, did you finish your podcasting?, soon!, not offended by this Jew talk, more Jews to sell more diamonds, everybody is equally stupid and lame, a comedy of humanity, are they half-brother and sister legit?, quite reasonable, keep it in the family, keep the money, fucked up stuff, the philosopher is fine with it, the best of all possible incest, the worst of all possible incest?, the final question: who is the idiot?, who is the fool philosopher, Pangloss, we all murdered each other, it’s fine, he has to say he believes in it, clarified right at the end, is this truly the best of all possible worlds?, from Suriname to Bordeaux, the philosophical conversations, so much analysis and stories, the funniness, tend to your own garden, clean your room isn’t the end of the story, god you stink you really need a shower, smell yourself first, I wanna shave more, that beard looking real raggy, bro, in terms of nations too, what Canada should be saying to the United States, trying to fix what’s going on in Suriname, we’re not states, we’re individuals, clean your room, check your messages, email is a scam, the dollar, a podcast on The Declaration Of Independence, the Federalist Papers, it makes no sense, 51st through 63rd, does PEI get it’s own state?, potato wars, Greenland’s not getting a statehood, Panama wouldn’t get a statehood either, the Canal Zone, why we getting worked out about, covered in comic books and printer cartridges and toilet paper, thank you guys, a good story to read, makes you laugh and think.

Posted by Jesse Willis